against home rule the case for the union by arthur j. balfour, m.p.; j. austen chamberlain, m.p.; walter long, m.p.; george wyndham, m.p.; lord charles beresford, m.p.; j.h. campbell, k.c., m.p.; gerald w. balfour; thomas sinclair; marquis of londonderry; earl percy; l.s. amery, m.p.; george cave, k.c., m.p.; godfrey locker lampson, m.p., &c. with introduction by sir edward carson, k.c., m.p. and preface by a. bonar law, m.p. edited by s. rosenbaum london frederick warne & co, and new york irish essays committee chairman. the rt. hon. sir edward carson, m.p. vice-chairman. godfrey locker lampson, m.p. committee. l.s. amery, m.p. george cave, k.c., m.p. the rt. hon. j.h. campbell, k.c., m.p. a.l. horner, k.c., m.p. a.d. steel-maitland, m.p. a.w. samuels, k.c. p. cambray secretary & editor. s. rosenbaum, m.sc., f.s.s. preface by the right hon. a. bonar law, m.p. this book, for which i have been asked to write a short preface, presents the case against home rule for ireland. the articles are written by men who not only have a complete grasp of the subjects upon which they write, but who in most cases, from their past experience and from their personal influence, are well entitled to outline the irish policy of the unionist party. ours is not merely a policy of hostility to home rule, but it is, as it has always been, a constructive policy for the regeneration of ireland. we are opposed to home rule because, in our belief, it would seriously weaken our national position; because it would put a stop to the remarkable increase of prosperity in ireland which has resulted from the land purchase act; and because it would inflict intolerable injustice on the minority in ireland, who believe that under a government controlled by the men who dominate the united irish league neither their civil nor their religious liberty would be safe. to create within the united kingdom a separate parliament with an executive government responsible to that parliament would at the best mean a danger of friction. but if we were ever engaged in a great war, and the men who controlled the irish government took the view in regard to that war which was taken by the same men in regard to the boer war; if they thought the war unjust, and if, as under the last home rule bill they would have the right to do, they passed resolutions in the irish parliament in condemnation of the war, and even sent embassies carrying messages of good-will to our enemy, then this second government at the heart of the empire would be a source of weakness which might be fatal to us. the ameliorative measures originated by mr. balfour when he was chief secretary, and which culminated in the wyndham purchase act, have created a new ireland. mr. redmond, speaking a year or two ago, said that ireland "was studded with the beautiful and happy homes of an emancipated peasantry." it is a true picture, but it is a picture of the result of unionist policy in ireland, a policy which mr. redmond and his friends, including the present government, have done their best to hamper. the driving power of the agitation for home rule has always been discontent with the land system of ireland, and just in proportion as land purchase has extended, the demand for home rule has died down. the nationalist leaders, realising this, and regarding political agitation as their first object, have compelled the government to put insurmountable obstacles in the way of land purchase--not because it had not been successful, but because it had been too successful. the prosperity and the peace of ireland depend upon the completion of land purchase, and it can only be completed by the use of british credit, which in my belief can and ought only to be freely given so long as ireland is in complete union with the rest of the united kingdom. in the present deplorable position of british credit the financing of land purchase would be difficult; but it is not unreasonable to hope that the return to power of a government which would adopt sane financial methods would restore our credit; and in any case, the object is of such vital importance that, whatever the difficulties, it must be our policy to complete with the utmost possible rapidity the system of land purchase in ireland. it will also be our aim to help to the utmost, in the manner suggested in different articles in this book, in the development of the resources of ireland. the nationalist policy, which is imposed also on the radical party, is in fact more politics and less industry. our policy is more industry and less politics. the strongest objection, however, and, in my opinion, the insurmountable obstacle to home rule, is the injustice of attempting to impose it against their will upon the unionists of ulster. the only intelligible ground upon which home rule can now be defended is the nationality of ireland. but ireland is not a nation; it is two nations. it is two nations separated from each other by lines of cleavage which cut far deeper than those which separate great britain from ireland as a whole. every argument which can be adduced in favour of separate treatment for the irish nationalist minority as against the majority of the united kingdom, applies with far greater force in favour of separate treatment for the unionists of ulster as against the majority of ireland. to the majority in ireland home rule may seem to be a blessing, but to the minority it appears as an intolerable curse. their hostility to it is quite as strong as that which was felt by many of the catholics of ireland to grattan's parliament. they, too, would say, as the catholic bishop of waterford said at the time of the union, that they "would prefer a union with the beys and mamelukes of egypt to the iron rod of the mamelukes of ireland." the minority which holds this view is important in numbers, for it comprises at the lowest estimate more than a fourth of the population of ireland. from every other point of view it is still more important, for probably the minority pays at least half the taxes and does half the trade of ireland. the influence and also the power of the minority is enormously increased by the way in which its numbers are concentrated in belfast and the surrounding counties. the men who compose this minority ask no special privilege. they demand only--and they will not demand in vain--that they should not be deprived against their will of the protection of british law and of the rights of british citizenship. contents. preface _by the rt. hon. a. bonar law, m.p._ introduction _by the rt. hon. sir edward carson, k.c., m.p._ historical i. a note on home rule _by the rt. hon. a.j. balfour, m.p._ ii. historical retrospect _by j.r. fisher_ critical iii. the constitutional question _by george cave, k.c., m.p._ iv. home rule finance _by the rt. hon. j. austen chamberlain, m.p._ v. home rule and the colonial analogy _by l.s. amery, m.p._ vi. the control of judiciary and police _by the rt. hon. j.h. campbell, k.c., m.p._ vii. the ulster question _by the marquis of londonderry, k.g._ viii. the position of ulster _by the rt. hon. thomas sinclair._ ix. the southern minorities _by richard bagwell, m.a._ x. home rule and naval defence _by admiral lord charles beresford, m.p._ xi. the military disadvantages of home rule _by the earl percy._ xii. the religious difficulty under home rule (i.) the church view _by the rt. rev. c.f. d'arcy, bishop of down._ (ii.) the nonconformist view _by rev. samuel prenter, m.a., d.d. (dublin)._ constructive xiii. unionist policy in relation to rural development in ireland _by the rt. hon. gerald balfour._ xiv. the completion of land purchase _by the rt. hon. george wyndham, m.p._ xv. possible irish financial reforms under the union _by arthur warren samuels, k.c._ xvi. the economics of separatism _by l.s. amery, m.p._ xvii. private bill legislation _by the rt. hon. walter long, m.p._ xviii. irish poor law reform _by john e. healy, editor of the "irish times."_ xix. irish education under the union _by godfrey locker lampson, m.p._ xx. the problem of transit and transport in ireland _by an irish railway director._ introduction by the right hon. sir edward carson, m.p. the object of the various essays collected in this book is to set out the case against home rule for ireland, and to re-state unionist policy in the light of the recent changes in that country. the authors are not, however, to be regarded as forming anything in the nature of a corporate body, and no collective responsibility is to be ascribed to them. each writer is responsible for the views set out in his own article, and for those alone. at the same time, they are all leaders of unionist thought and opinion, and their views in the main represent the policy which the unionist government, when returned to power, will have to carry into effect. among the contributors to the book are an ex-premier, four ex-chief secretaries for ireland, an ex-lord lieutenant, two ex-law officers, and a number of men whose special study of the irish question entitles them to have their views most carefully considered when the time comes for restoring to ireland those economic advantages of which she has been deprived by political agitation and political conspiracy. at the present moment the discussion of the irish question is embittered by the pressing and urgent danger to civil and religious liberties involved in the unconditional surrender of the government to the intrigues of a disloyal section of the irish people. it is the object of writers in this book to raise the discussions on the home rule question above the bitter conflict of irish parties, and to show that not only is unionism a constructive policy and a measure of hope for ireland, but that in unionist policy lies the only alternative to financial ruin and exterminating civil dissensions. we who are unionists believe first and foremost that the act of union is required--in the words made familiar to us by the book of common prayer--"for the safety, honour and welfare, of our sovereign and his dominions." we are not concerned with the supposed taint which marred the passing of that act; we are unmoved by the fact that its terms have undergone considerable modification. we do not believe in the plenary inspiration of any act of parliament. it is not possible for the living needs of two prosperous countries to be bound indefinitely by the "dead hand" of an ancient statute, but we maintain that geographical and economic reasons make a legislative union between great britain and ireland necessary for the interests of both. we see, as irish ministers saw in , that there can be no permanent resting place between complete union and total separation. we know that irish nationalists have not only proclaimed separatist principles, but that they have received separatist money, on the understanding that they would not oppose a movement to destroy whatever restrictions and safeguards the imperial parliament might impose upon an irish government. the first law of nature with nations and governments, as with individuals, is self-preservation. it was the vital interests of national defence that caused pitt to undertake the difficult and thankless task of creating the legislative union. if that union was necessary for the salvation of england and the foundation of the british empire, it is assuredly no less necessary for the continued security of the one and the maintenance and prestige of the other. mr. j.r. fisher, in his historical retrospect, shows us how bitter experience convinced successive generations of english statesmen of the dangers that lay in an independent ireland. one of the very earliest conflicts between the two countries was caused by the action of the irish parliament in recognising and crowning a pretender in dublin castle. then the fact that the reformation, which soon won the adherence of the english government and the majority of the english people, never gained any great foothold in ireland, caused the bitter religious wars which devastated europe to be reproduced in the relations of the two countries. when england was fighting desperately with the spanish champions of the papacy, spanish forces twice succeeded in effecting a landing on the irish coast, and were welcomed by the people. later on, by the aid of subsidies from an irish parliament, strafford raised , men in ireland in order to support charles i. in his conflict with the english people. cromwell realised that the only remedy for the intrigues and turbulence of the irish parliament lay in a legislative union. but, unfortunately, his union parliament was terminated by the restoration. then, again, when france became the chief danger that england had to face, tyrconnel, with the aid of french troops and french subsidies, endeavoured to make ireland a base for the invasion of england. under the old pretender again, another effort was made to make the irish parliament a medium for the destruction of english liberties. in these long-continued and bitter struggles we see the excuse, if not the justification, for the severe penal laws which were introduced in order to curb the power of the irish chieftains. we see also the beginning of the feud between ulster and the other provinces in ireland, which has continued in a modified form to the present day. strafford found that, in order to bolster up the despotism of the stuarts, he had not only to invade england, but to expel the scottish settlers from the northern province. the irish parliament in the time of tyrconnel again began to prepare for the invasion of england by an attempt to destroy the ulster plantation. the settlers had their estates confiscated, the protestant clergy were driven out and english sympathisers outlawed by name, in the "hugest bill of attainder which the world has seen." admiral lord charles beresford points out the danger from a naval point of view of the french attempts to use ireland as a base for operations against england, both under louis xiv. and under the republican directory. he quotes admiral mahan as saying that the movement which designed to cut the english communications in st. george's channel while an invading party landed in the south of ireland was a strictly strategic movement and would be as dangerous to england now as it was in . when grattan extorted from england's weakness the unworkable and impracticable constitution of , the danger which had always been present became immensely increased. in less than three years from the period of boasted final adjustment, ireland came to a breach with england on the important question of trade and navigation. then, again, at the time of the regency, the irish parliament was actually ready to choose a person in whom to rest the sovereign executive power of the nation, different from him whom the british parliament were prepared to designate. in , when the french had made themselves masters of brabant, flanders, and holland, the rebel government of united irishmen was so well-established in ireland that, as lord clare, the irish chancellor, subsequently admitted in the house of lords, ireland was for some weeks in a state of actual separation from great britain. when the great rebellion of broke out, the french directory sent assistance to the irish rebels in order to facilitate the greater scheme--the conquest of england and of europe. when we come to estimate the danger which the grant of home rule to ireland would bring to the safety of england, we are faced with two considerations. in the first place, the movements of the french in the past were, as we have said, strategic. given an irish parliament that was hostile to england, or at least dubious in her loyalty to this country, the movement of a hostile fleet against our communications would be as dangerous now as it was in the past. when we try to estimate what would be the feelings of an irish government when england was at war, we have to consider not only the speeches of avowed enemies of the empire like major mcbride and the irish americans, but we have also to remember the attitude adopted upon all questions of foreign policy by the more responsible nationalists of the type of mr. dillon. not only have the irish nationalist party consistently opposed every warlike operation that british governments have found to be necessary, but they have also fervently attacked the powers on the continent of europe that have been suspected of friendship to england. we have only to imagine the element of weakness and disunion which would be introduced into our foreign policy by an irish parliament that passed resolutions regarding the policy of the governments, say, of russia and of france, in order to realise the immense dangers of setting up such a parliament when we are again confronted with a mighty confederation of opponents in europe. it is admitted that the next european war will be decided by the events of the first few days. in order to succeed, we shall have to strike and strike quickly. but in order that there should be swift and effective action, there should be only one government to be consulted. the irish ministry that was not actively hostile, but only unsympathetic and dilatory, might, in many ways, fatally embarrass ministers at westminster. moreover, another complication has been introduced by the dependence of england upon irish food supplies. lord percy points out that there are two stages in every naval war; first, the actual engagement, and then the blockade or destruction of the ships of the defeated country. he points out that, even after the destruction of the french navy at trafalgar, the damage done to british oversea commerce was very great. modern conditions of warfare have made blockade an infinitely more difficult and precarious operation, and we must therefore face the certainty that hostile cruisers will escape and interfere with our oversea supplies of food. since ireland lies directly across our trade routes, it is probable that the majority of our food supplies will be derived from ireland or carried through that country. but irish ministers would not have forgotten the lesson of the famine, when food was exported from ireland though the people starved. curious as it may seem, ireland, though a great exporting country, does not under present conditions feed herself, and therefore an irish ministry would certainly lay in a large stock of the imported food supplies before they were brought to england, in order first of all absolutely to secure the food of their own people. it would be open for them at any time, by cutting off our supplies, our horses and our recruits, to extract any terms they liked out of the english people or bring this country to its knees. "england's difficulty" would once again become "ireland's opportunity." the experience of would be repeated. resistance to ireland's demands for extended powers would bring about war between the two countries. in the striking phrase of mr. balfour's arresting article, "the battle of the two parliaments would become the battle of the two peoples." it is only necessary to refer briefly to the fact that the active section of the nationalist party has continually and consistently opposed recruiting for the british army. it is perfectly certain that, under home rule, this policy would be accentuated rather than reversed. we now draw recruits from ireland out of all proportion to its population. under home rule, the difficulties of maintaining a proper standard of men and efficiency must be immensely increased. if there were no other arguments against home rule, the paramount necessities of imperial defence would demand the maintenance of the union. but the opposition to the proposed revolution in ireland is based not only on the considerations of imperial safety, but also on those of national honour. the historical bases of irish nationalism have been destroyed by the arguments summarised in this book by mr. fisher and mr. amery. it was the existence of a separate parliament in dublin that made ireland, for so many centuries, alike a menace to english liberty and the victim of english reprisals. miss a.e. murray has pointed out[ ] that experience seemed to show to british statesmen that irish prosperity was dangerous to english liberty. it was the absence of direct authority over ireland which made england so nervously anxious to restrict irish resources in every direction in which they might, even indirectly, interfere with the growth of english power. irish industries were penalised and crippled, not from any innate perversity on the part of english statesmen, or from any deliberate desire to ruin ireland, but as a natural consequence of exclusion from the union under the economic policy of the age. the very poverty of ireland, as expressed in the lowness of irish wages, was a convenient and perfectly justifiable argument for exclusion. mr. amery shows that the protestant settlers of ulster were penalised even more severely than the intriguing irish chieftains against whom they were primarily directed. it was the consciousness of the natural result of separation that caused the irish parliament, upon two separate occasions, to petition for that union with england which was delayed for over a century. the action of grattan and his supporters in wresting the impossible constitution of , from the harassed and desperate english government, began that fatal policy of substituting political agitation for economic reform which has ever since marred the irish nationalist movement. john fitzgibbon[ ] pointed out in the irish house of commons that only two alternatives lay before his country--separation or union. under separation an irish parliament might be able to pursue an economic policy of its own; under union the common economic policy of the two countries might be adjusted to the peculiar interests of each. pitt, undoubtedly, looked forward to a customs union with internal free trade as the ultimate solution of the difficulty, but a customs union was impossible without the fullest kind of legislative unity. it is true that the closing years of the eighteenth century were years of prosperity to certain classes and districts in ireland, but mr. fisher has shown beyond dispute that this prosperity neither commenced with grattan's parliament nor ended with its fall. it was based upon the peculiar economic conditions which years of war and preparations for war had fostered in england; it was bound in any case to disappear with the growing concentration of industrial interests which followed the general introduction of machinery. the immediate result of the passing of the act of union was to increase the irish population and irish trade. but to a certain extent that prosperity was fictitious and doomed to failure so soon as peace and the introduction of scientific methods of industry had caused the concentration of the great manufactures. then came the great economic disaster for ireland--the adoption of free trade by england. the irish famine of was not more severe than others that had preceded it, but its evil effects were accentuated by the policy of the english government. the economists decided that the state ought to do nothing to interfere with private enterprise in feeding the starving people, and as there was no private enterprise in the country, where all classes were involved in the common ruin, the people were left to die of hunger by the roadside. the lands the potato blight spared were desolated by the adoption of free trade. the exploitation of the virgin lands of the american west gradually threw the fertile midlands of ireland from tillage into grass. a series of bad harvests aggravated the evil. the landlords and the farmers of ireland were divided into two political camps, and, instead of uniting for their common welfare, each attempted to cast upon the other the burden of the economic catastrophe. to sum up in the words of mr. amery-- "the evils of economic separatism, aggravated by social evils surviving from the separatism of an earlier age, united to revive a demand for the extension and renewal of the very cause of those evils." the political demand for the repeal of the act of union, which had lain dormant for so many years, was revived by the energies of isaac butt. he found in the irish landlords, smarting under the disestablishment of the irish church, a certain amount of sympathy and assistance, but the "engine" for which finton lalor had asked in order to draw the "repeal train," was not discovered until parnell linked the growing agrarian unrest to the home rule campaign. this is not the place to tell again the weary story of the land war or to show how the irish nationalists exploited the grievances of the irish tenants in order to encourage crime and foment disloyalty in the country. it is sufficient to say that this conflict--the conduct of which reflects little credit either upon the irish protagonists or the british government which alternately pampered and opposed it--was ended, for the time at least, by the passing of mr. wyndham's land act. we look forward in perfect confidence to the time when that great measure shall achieve its full result in wiping out the memory of many centuries of discord and hatred. but the separatist movement, which has always been the evil genius of irish politics, has not yet been completely exorcised. the memory of those past years when the minority in ireland constituted the only bulwark of irish freedom and of english liberty, has not yet passed away. the irish nationalist party since parnell have spared no exertions to impress more deeply upon the imaginations of a sentimental race the memory of those "ancient weeping years." they have preached a social and a civil war upon all those in ireland who would not submit their opinions and consciences to the uncontrolled domination of secret societies and leagues. the articles upon the ulster question by lord londonderry and mr. sinclair show that the northern province still maintains her historic opposition to irish separatism and irish intrigue. she stands firmly by the same economic principles which have enabled her, in spite of persecution and natural disadvantages, to build up so great a prosperity. she knows well that the only chance for the rest of ireland to attain to the standard of education, enlightenment and independence which she has reached, is to free itself from the sinister domination under which it lies, and to assert its right to political and religious liberty. ulster sees in irish nationalism a dark conspiracy, buttressed upon crime and incitement to outrage, maintained by ignorance and pandering to superstition. even at this moment the nationalist leagues have succeeded in superseding the law of the land by the law of the league. we need only point to the remarks which the lord chief justice of ireland and mr. justice kenny have been compelled to make to the grand juries quite recently, to show what nationalist rule means to the helpless peasants in a great part of the country. but the differences which still sever the two great parties in ireland are not only economic but religious. the general slackening of theological dispute which followed the weary years of religious warfare after the reformation, has never brought peace to ireland. in england the very completeness of the defeat of roman catholicism has rendered the people oblivious to the dangers of its aggression. the irish unionists are not monsters of inhuman frame; they are men of like passions with englishmen. though they hold their religious views with vigour and determination, there is nothing that they would like more than to be able to forget their points of difference from those who are their fellow christians. it is perhaps necessary to point out once again that the roman catholic church is a political, as well as a religious, institution, and to remind englishmen that it is by the first law of its being an intolerant and aggressive organisation. all protestants in ireland feel deep respect for much of the work which is carried on by the roman catholic church in ireland. they gladly acknowledge the influence of its priesthood in maintaining and upholding the traditional morality and purity of the irish race. they venerate the memories of those brave irish priests who defied persecution in order to bring succour to their flocks in time of need. but they are bound to deal with the present political situation as they find it. they are determined that no church, however admirable, and no creed, however lofty, should be forced upon them against their wills. there is a dark side to the picture, on which it is unnecessary to dwell. we have only to ask the nonconformists of england what would be their feelings were a roman catholic majority returned to the british house of commons. in most of the articles in this book which deal with the religious question; special stress is laid upon recent papal legislation. the _ne temere_ and the _motu proprio_ decrees have constituted an invasion of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the minority in ireland, and they are even more significant as an illustration of the policy of the roman curia. those who have watched the steady increase of roman aggression in every roman catholic country, followed as it has been by passionate protest and determined action by the civil governments, must realise the danger which home rule would bring to the faith and liberty of the people of ireland. it is not inconsistent to urge, as many of us have urged, that home rule would mean alike a danger to the protestant faith and a menace to catholic power. the immediate result of successful papal interference with civil liberties in every land has been a sweeping movement among the people which has been, not protestant, but anti-christian in its nature. if we fear the tyranny which the roman catholic church has established under british rule in malta and in quebec, may we not fear also the reaction from such tyranny which has already taken place in france and portugal. but we are told that there are to be in the new home rule bill safeguards which will protect the minority from any interference with their civil and religious liberties. it is not necessary for me to go over again in detail the ground which is so admirably covered by mr. george cave and mr. james campbell. they show clearly that the existence of restrictions and limitations upon the activities of a dublin parliament, whether they are primarily intended to safeguard the british connection or to protect the liberties of minorities, cannot be worth the paper on which they are printed. let us take, for instance, an attempt to prevent the marriages of irish protestants from being invalidated by an irish parliament. we may point out that an amendment to the home rule bill, designed to safeguard such marriages, was rejected by the vote of the irish nationalist party. but even were legislation affecting the marriage laws of the minority to be placed outside the control of a dublin parliament, the effect would not be to reassure the protestant community. mr. james campbell mentions a case which has profoundly stirred the puritan feelings of irish protestantism. a man charged with bigamy has been released without punishment because the first marriage, although in conformity with the law of the land, was not recognised by the roman catholic church. however justifiable that course may have been in the exceptional circumstances of that particular case, the precedent obviously prepares the way for a practical reversal of the law by executive or judicial action. we must remember that, since the _ne temere_ decree has come into force, the marriages of protestants and roman catholics are held by the roman catholic church to be absolutely null and void unless they are celebrated in a roman catholic church. we have also to bear in mind that these marriages will not be permitted by the priesthood except under conditions which many irish protestants consider humiliating and impossible. no more deadly attack upon the faith of the protestant minority in the three provinces in ireland can be imagined than to make a denial of their faith the essential condition to the enjoyment of the highest happiness for which they may look upon this earth. the second decree prohibits, under pain of excommunication, any roman catholic from bringing an ecclesiastical officer before a court of justice. even under the union government this decree is a danger to the liberty of the subject. under an independent irish government, nothing except that vast anti-clerical revolution which some people foresee could possibly reassure the people as to the attitude of the executive government in dealing with a large and privileged class. these considerations make one more reason for refusing the colonial analogy which is so ingeniously pressed by such apologists for home rule as mr. erskine childers. mr. amery analyses the confusion of thought between home rule as meaning responsible government and home rule as meaning separate government which underlies the arguments of liberal home rulers. ireland has home rule in the sense of having free representative institutions. she is prevented by geographical and economic conditions from enjoying separate government under the same terms on which the colonies possess it. as mr. amery points out, the united kingdom is geographically a single island group. no part of ireland is so inaccessible from the political centre of british power as the remoter parts of the highlands, while racially no less than physically ireland is an integral part of the united kingdom. economically also the two countries are bound together in a way which makes a common physical policy absolutely necessary for the welfare of both countries. the financial arguments which might have made it possible to permit an independent fiscal policy for ireland under free trade, have disappeared with the certain approach of a revision of the tariff policies of england. there can be no separate tariffs for the two countries, or even a common tariff, without a common government to negotiate and enforce it. if there were no other objection to the establishment of a separate government in dublin, it would be impossible because legislative autonomy can only be coupled with financial independence. the financial difficulties in the way of any grant of home rule are fully explained by mr. austen chamberlain. three attempts at framing schemes for financing home rule were made by mr. gladstone in the past. all the powers of this great and resourceful dialectician were employed in defending these various schemes in turn. he was not deterred from pressing any scheme by the fact that in important details it was inconsistent with or even opposed to what had been previously recommended. but if there was one principle on which mr. gladstone never turned his back it was in demanding a contribution from ireland for imperial services. at one time he demanded a cash payment, at another the assignment of the customs, and on yet another occasion the payment to the imperial exchequer of a quota--one-third--of the tax-revenue in ireland. the effect of recent social legislation, such as old age pensions, labour exchanges, and sickness and unemployment insurance has been to confer on ireland benefits much greater in value than the irish contribution in respect of the new taxation imposed. in consequence of this change the present irish revenue falls short of the expenditure incurred for irish purposes in ireland. mr. chamberlain shows that if any scheme even remotely resembling any of those put forward on previous occasions by mr. gladstone is embodied in the new bill, and if a moderate contribution for imperial services is included, the irish deficit must range from £ , , to £ , , . if by any process of juggling with the figures the irish parliament is again to be started with a surplus the deficit must have been made good by charging it against the imperial taxpayer. but again there is no permanence in such a surplus. it must disappear if the ameliorative measures which are long overdue in ireland are undertaken by an irish parliament; and previous experience has already illustrated that even without the adoption of any such new schemes surpluses would long ago have made room for deficits. it will be the duty of the nationalists party to say definitely what are the fiscal reserves upon which they can draw in order to establish permanent equilibrium between revenue and expenditure in ireland. not only does unionist policy for ireland involve considerations of national safety and national honour, but it is also necessary for the economic welfare of both countries. the remarkable success which has attended mr. wyndham's land act of has alarmed the political party in ireland, which depends for its influence on the poverty and discontent of the rural population of ireland. mr. wyndham in his article upon irish land purchase shows clearly the blessings which have followed wherever his act has been given fair play, and the evils which have resulted in the suppression of land purchase by mr. birrell's act of . the dual ownership created by mr. gladstone's ill-advised and reckless legislation led to ireland being starved both in capital and industry and brought the whole of irish agriculture to the brink of ruin, and under these circumstances, conservative statesmen determined, in accordance with the principles of the act of union, to use a joint exchequer for the purpose of relieving irish distress. credit of the state was employed to convert the occupiers of irish farms into the owners of the soil. the policy of the ashbourne acts was briefly that any landlord could agree with any tenant on the purchase price of his holding. the state then advanced the credit sum to the landlord in cash, while the tenant paid an instalment of per cent. for forty-nine years. it is important to notice that the landlord received cash and that the tenants paid interest at the then existing rate of interest on consols, namely, per cent. the great defect in these acts was that they applied only to separate holdings and not to estates as a whole; but their success can be estimated by the fact that under them twenty-seven thousand tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over ten million pounds. under mr. balfour's acts of and , the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash, and the tenants still paid per cent., the interest being reduced to the then rate on consols-- - / per cent.--and the sinking fund being proportionately increased. it will be noticed that these acts began the practise of paying the landlord in stock, though at that time irish land stock with a face value of £ became worth as much as £ . the exchequer was, moreover, permitted to retain grants due for various purposes in ireland and to recoup itself out of them in case of any combined refusal to repay on the part of tenants. the irish land act of was the product of the experience gained during eighteen years of the operation of the preceding purchase acts. it was founded upon an agreement made in between representatives of irish landlords and tenants. cash payments were resumed to the landlords, the tenants' instalments were reduced to - / per cent., and a bonus, as it was called, of twelve millions of money was made available to bridge the gap between the landlords and the tenants at the rate of per cent, on the amount advanced. that act possessed the additional advantage of dealing with the estates as a whole instead of with individual holdings, and it substituted the principle of speedy purchase for that of dilatory litigation. this remarkable and generous measure initiated a great and beneficent revolution, but every popular and useful feature of the act of was distorted or destroyed in the land act which the present government passed at the instigation of the irish nationalist party in . in mr. wyndham's words "a solemn treaty framed in the interest of ireland was torn up to deck with its tatters the triumph of mr. dillon's unholy alliance with the british treasury." under the act of , landlords, instead of cash payments, are to receive stock at per cent. issued on a falling market. this stock cannot possibly appreciate because owing to the embarrassment of irish estates a large proportion of each issue is thrown back upon the market at the redemption of mortgages. the tenant's annuity is raised from - / per cent, to - / per cent., a precedent not to be found in any previous experiment under irish land purchase finance. the bonus is destroyed and litigation is substituted for security and speed. the results of the two acts are instructive. under the act the potential purchasers amounted to nearly a quarter of a million; under the act the applications in respect of direct sales being less than nine thousand. it is hardly necessary to go into the reasons advanced for this disastrous change. it has been brought about not in order to relieve the british treasury, but in order to rescue from final destruction the waning influence of irish nationalism. mr. wyndham has the authority of the leader of the unionist party for his statement that the first constructive work of the unionist party in ireland must be to resume the land policy of and to pursue the same objects by the best methods until they have all been fully and expeditiously achieved. unionist policy cannot, however, be confined to the restoration of land purchase. the ruin which free trade finance has inflicted upon irish agriculture can only be remedied, as mr. childers saw at the time of the financial relations commission in , by a readjustment of the fiscal system of the united kingdom. mr. gerald balfour shows us in one of the most able papers in the book the extraordinary development which has been seen in recent years in irish agricultural methods. the revival of irish rural industries dates from mr. balfour's chief-secretaryship. the parliament which set up in ireland the congested districts board and sanctioned the building of light railways at the public expense, also witnessed the formation in ireland of a society which was destined to work great changes in the social conditions of the country. the irish agricultural organisation society represents the fruit of a work begun in the face of incredible difficulties and remorseless opposition by sir horace plunkett in . "better farming, better business, better living"--these were the principles which he and mr. anderson set out to establish in ireland. their representatives were described as monsters in human shape, and they were adjured to cease their "hellish work." now the branches of the society number nearly , with an annual turnover of upwards of - / millions, and they include creameries, village banks, and societies for the purchase of seeds and manure and for the marketing of eggs. it is not necessary to tell again the story of the recess committee and the formation of the department of agriculture. the result of its work, crowned as it was by mr. wyndham's purchase act, is shown by the fact that irish trade has increased from millions in to millions in . the steady object which sir horace plunkett has set before him is to counteract the demoralising effect of paternal legislation on the part of the government, by reviving and stimulating a policy of self-help. the i.a.o.s. has done valuable work in enabling the irish farmers, by co-operating, to secure a more stable position in the english market, to secure themselves against illegitimate and fraudulent competition and to standardise the quality of their product, but even more important has been the work of the society in releasing the farmers from the bondage of the "gombeen" man who has for so many years been the curse of irish agriculture. the "gombeen" man is alike trader, publican, and money-lender, and he is the backbone of official nationalist influence. by lending money to the peasant proprietors at exorbitant rates, by selling inferior seeds and manures and by carrying on his transactions with the farmers chiefly in kind, the "gombeen" man has grown fat upon the poverty and despair of the farmer. it is not surprising that he views the liberating work of the i.a.o.s. with the bitterest hostility--an hostility which has been translated into effective action by the nationalist party in parliament. sir horace plunkett was driven from office on the pretext that it should be held by a member of parliament. his successor, mr. t.w. russell, lost his seat in the general election of , but he was retained in power since he was willing to lend himself to the destructive intrigues of the "molly maguires." the unionist party does not intend to interfere with the independence of the i.a.o.s. which constitutes in their eyes its greatest feature, but they are determined that it shall have fair play, and that the hundred thousand irish farmers which constitutes its membership shall be enabled to increase their prosperity by co-operative action. the unionist party will also have to undertake more active measures in order to restore to irish agriculture the position of supremacy for which it is naturally fitted. mr. amery and mr. samuels both discuss in outline the effects of tariff reform upon the future of ireland. i do not intend at the present moment to go further into the details of the policy which the unionist government will be likely to adopt on this question. i think, however, it would be desirable to point out that in dairy produce and poultry, in barley and oats, in hops, tobacco, sugar-beet, vegetables and fruit, in all of which ireland is especially interested, irish products would have free entry into the protected markets of great britain, canadian and australian products would of course have such a preference over foreign competitors as a home rule ireland might claim, but it is only under the union that ireland could expect complete freedom of access to our markets. mr. amery sees in the train ferry a possible bridge over the st. george's channel and looks forward to the time when the west coast of ireland will be the starting point of all our fast mail and passenger steamers across the atlantic. two schemes with this object have received the attention of parliament. how far the present practical difficulties can be surmounted it is not very easy to say, but it is certain that if home rule were granted the blacksod bay and the galway bay atlantic routes would have to be abandoned. these conditions naturally raise the whole transport problem in ireland. mr. arthur samuels suggests a scheme of state assistance to a cheap transport which may require attention later on, though it can only form part of a larger scheme of traffic reorganisation. the nationalist party seems definitely to have pledged itself to a scheme of nationalisation. this policy has been urged in season and out of season upon an apathetic ireland by the _freeman's journal._ the cost of the nationalisation of irish railways could not be less than fifty millions, while the annual charge on the exchequer was assessed by the irish railways commission at £ , , and it was anticipated that a further recourse to irish rates might be required. it would be obviously impossible to ask the british treasury to advance such an enormous sum of money to an independent irish government. at what rate could an irish government raise the money? the present return on irish railway capital is . per cent., and thus, to borrow fifty millions at per cent, will involve an annual loss of over £ , a year, even without a sinking fund. it is extremely doubtful whether the credit of an irish government would be better than that of hungary or argentina. if anything more surely led an irish government to financial disaster it would be the working of railways. as the majority report of the railway commission recommended on other than commercial lines, the per cent. reduction in rates and fares suggested by nationalist witnesses would involve a loss of more than half a million a year. we see, therefore, immediately, that if anything is to be done at all to improve irish transport it must be done by a government that has the confidence of the money market. the railway director who contributes the principal article on this subject in the book calculates that a public grant of two millions, and a guaranteed loan of eight millions would suffice to carry out all the reforms that are necessary in order to place irish railways in a thoroughly sound position. it is obvious that with the development of trade which will follow on the adoption of tariff reform by england, irish companies will be in a better position to help themselves, and the increase in the wealth and prosperity of ireland must soon enable the railways to carry out constructive works which they all admit to be necessary. mr. locker lampson's article on education undoubtedly shows the irish government in its less favourable light. the neglect and starvation of irish education has been a reproach to the intelligence and humanity of successive irish administrations. mr. locker lampson shows, however, that financially and politically it would be impossible for any irish administration to carry out the great and sweeping reforms in irish education as are still necessary. the mischievous principle of paying fees by results, although it has disappeared from the national schools, still clings to intermediate education in ireland. before any other kind of reform is even considered the intermediate system in ireland should be placed upon a proper foundation. the secondary system is also deficient because--what mr. dillon called "gaps in the law"--there is no co-ordination between the primary and the secondary schools. the establishment of higher grade schools in large centres and the institution of advanced departments in connection with selected primary schools in rural districts would only cost about £ , a year, and would go far to meet the disastrous effects of the present system. but no system of education can possibly be successful that does not place the teachers in a position of dignity and comfort. at the present moment the salaries of the secondary teachers are miserable; lay assistants in secondary schools are paid about £ a year. they have no security of tenure; they have no register of teachers as a guarantee of efficiency. the other problems which immediately confront the irish government are the establishment of a private bill legislation and a reform of the irish poor law. with regard to the private bill legislation i will say no more than that it has always formed part of the unionist policy for ireland, and that i agree fully with the arguments by which mr. walter long shows the necessity and justice for such a reform. finally, having given to the irish farmers the security of a freehold in their holdings at home, and a free entrance into the protected markets of great britain; having assisted the development of rural industries of the country; having placed irish education on a sound and intelligible basis, it would be necessary for the unionist party to undertake a reform of the poor law in ireland. whether this reform will be undertaken the same time as the larger social problems of england, with which the party is pledged to deal, may be a matter of political expediency, but there is no reason why the reform which is so urgently required in ireland should have to await the adoption of a scheme for england. in outlining the problems, the supreme necessity is the abolition of the present workhouse system. the vice-regal commission and the royal commission on the poor laws are in agreement as to the guiding principles of reform. they recommend classification by institutions of all the present inmates of the workhouses; the sick in the hospital, the aged and infirm in alms-houses; the mentally defective in asylums. they suggest the bringing together into one institution of all the inmates of one class from a number of neighbouring workhouses. the sick should be sent to existing poor law or county hospitals, strengthened by the addition of cottage hospitals in certain districts, while children must be boarded out. the able-bodied paupers, if well conducted, might be placed in labour colonies; if ill conducted, in detention colonies. if these are established, they must be controlled by the state and not by county authorities. of course, the resources of the existing unions are much too limited to undertake such sweeping reforms, and the county must be substituted for the union as the area of charge. the establishment of the public assistance authority will relieve us from the greatest scandal which now mars the administration of the poor law reform in ireland--the corrupt appointment of officers in the poor law medical service. if we cannot have a state medical service, we can at all events ensure that appointments under the poor law shall be placed in incorruptible hands. it is not to be assumed that this short sketch of policy is exhaustive, or that it touches even in outline upon all that the unionist party might fairly hope to do in ireland. it is designed to show only that financially and politically, every step which can be taken to relieve the poverty and oppression which has too long continued in ireland must be taken by a unionist parliament and a government pledged to secure the administration of law and order in ireland. i desire on behalf of the committee under whose auspices this work has been prepared to thank mr. s. rosenbaum for the ability and zeal he has shown in editing the book and in preparing it for publication. i wish also to acknowledge my personal debt to mr. g. locker lampson, m.p., who, as vice-chairman of the committee, has shown so much zeal and assiduity in connection with this important work. footnotes: [footnote : "commercial relations between england and ireland." by miss a.e. murray (p.s. king & sons).] [footnote : attorney general in the irish parliament, and later earl of clare.] historical i a note on home rule by the right hon. a.j. balfour, m.p. the greater part of the present volume is devoted to showing why this country should not adopt home rule; but it is perhaps worth while for the ordinary british citizen to ask himself a preliminary question, namely, why he should be pressed even to consider it. that the establishment of an irish parliament must involve doubtful and far-reaching consequences is denied by no one. what then is the _primâ facie_ case which has induced many englishmen and scotchmen to think that it ought to be seriously debated? if we could erase the past and approach the problem of framing representative institutions in their most practicable shape for the inhabitants of the united kingdom, who would think it wise to crowd into these small islands two, or, as some would have it, three, four, or five separate parliaments, with their separate elections, their separate sets of ministers and offices, their separate party systems, their divergent policies? distances are, under modern conditions, so small, our population is so compact, the interests of its component parts are so intimately fused together, that any device at all resembling home rule would seem at the best cumbersome, costly, and ineffective; at the worst, perilous to the rights of minorities, the peace of the country, and the unity of the kingdom. if, then, these common-sense considerations are thrust on one side by so many well-meaning persons, it must surely be because they think that for the destruction of our existing system there is to be found a compelling justification in the history of the past: i am well aware that many of the persons of whom i am thinking profess to base their approval of home rule on purely administrative grounds. the parliament of the united kingdom, they say, is overweighted; it has more to do than it can manage; we must diminish its excessive burdens; and we can only do so by throwing them in part upon other and subordinate assemblies. but this, if it be a reason at all, is certainly a most insufficient one. would any human being, anxious merely to give relief to the house of commons, adopt so illogical a scheme as one which involves a provincial parliament in ireland, and no provincial parliaments anywhere else; which puts ireland under two parliaments, and left the rest of the country under one; which, if irishmen are to be admitted to the imperial parliament, would give ireland privileges and powers denied to england and scotland, and, if they are to be excluded from the imperial parliament, would deprive ireland of rights which surely she ought to possess? again, if the "administrative" argument was really more than an ornament of debate, would any one select ireland as the administrative district in which to make trial of the new system? would any one, in his desire to relieve the imperial parliament of some of its functions, select as an area of self-government a region where one part is divided against another by passions, and, if you will, by prejudices, more violent, and more deeply-rooted than those which afflict any other fraction of the united kingdom, choose that other fraction where, and how, you will? i take it, then, as certain that in the mind of the ordinary british home ruler the justification for home rule is not administrative but historical. he pictures ireland before the english invasion as an organised and independent state, happy in the possession of a native polity which englishmen have ruthlessly destroyed, now suffering under laws and institutions forced upon her by the conquerors, suitable it may be to men of anglo-saxon descent, but utterly alien to the genius and temper of a celtic population. to him, therefore, home rule presents itself as an act of national restitution. personally, i believe this to be a complete misreading of history. it is not denied--at least i do not deny--that both the english and british governments, in their dealings with ireland have done many things that were stupid, and some things that were abominable. but among their follies or their crimes is not to be counted the destruction of any such state as i have described; for no such state existed. they did not uproot one type of civilisation in order to plant another. the ireland with which england had to deal had not acquired a national organisation, and when controversialists talk of "restoring" this or that institution to ireland, the only institutions that can possibly be "restored" are in their origin importations from england. this does not, of course, mean that the english were a superior race dealing with an inferior one. indeed, there is, in my view, no sharp division of race at all. in the veins of the inhabitants of these islands runs more than one strain of blood. the english are not simply teutonic--still less are the irish celtic. we must conceive the pre-historic inhabitants both of britain and of ireland as subject to repeated waves of invasion from the wandering peoples of the continent. the celt preceded the teuton; and in certain regions his language still survives. the teuton followed him in (as i suppose) far greater numbers, and his language has become that of a large fraction of the civilised world. but in no part of the united kingdom is the teutonic strain free from either the celtic or pre-celtic strain; nor do i believe that the celtic strain has anywhere a predominance such as that which, speaking very roughly, the teutonic strain possesses in the east of these islands, or the pre-celtic strain in the west. there is, therefore, no race frontier to be considered, still less is there any question of inferiority or superiority. the irish difficulty, historically considered, arises in the main from two circumstances. the first of these, to which i have just referred, is that when england began to intervene in the welter of irish inter-tribal warfare, she was already an organised state, slowly working its way through feudal monarchy to constitutional freedom. the second is that while the religious revolution of the sixteenth century profoundly and permanently affected the larger island, it left the smaller island untouched. the result of the first of these has been that irish institutions, irish laws, irish forms of local government, and irish forms of parliamentary government are necessarily of the english type. the result of the second has been that while no sharp divisions of race exist, divisions of religion have too often taken their place; that in the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century ireland was not the partner but the victim of english factions; and that civil war in its most brutal form, with the confiscations and penal laws which followed in its train, have fed, have indeed created, the bitter fiction that ireland was once a "nation" whose national life has been destroyed by its more powerful neighbour. to all this it will perhaps be replied that even if the general accuracy of the foregoing statement be admitted (and nothing about ireland ever _is_ admitted), it is quite irrelevant to the question of home rule; because what is of importance to practical statesmanship is not what did actually happen in the past, but what those who live in the present suppose to have happened. if, therefore, to the imagination of contemporary irishmen, ireland appears a second poland, statesmen must act as if the dream were fact. in such a contention there is some element of truth. but it must be observed in the first place that dreams, however vivid, are not eternal; and, in the second place, that while this particular dream endures it supplies a practical argument against home rule, the full force of which is commonly under-rated. for what are the main constitutional dangers of creating rival parliaments in the same state? they are--friction, collision of jurisdiction, and, in the end, national disintegration. of these, friction is scarcely to be avoided. i doubt whether it has been wholly avoided in any state where the system, either of co-equal or of subordinate parliaments, has been thoroughly tried. it certainly was not avoided in the days past when ireland had a parliament of its own. it is incredible that it should be avoided in the future, however elaborate be the safeguards which the draughtsman's ingenuity can devise. but friction, in any case inevitable, becomes a peril to every community where the rival assemblies can appeal to nationalist sentiment. the sore gets poisoned. what under happier conditions might be no more than a passing storm of rhetoric, forgotten as soon as ended, will gather strength with time. the appetite for self-assertion, inherent in every assembly, and not likely to be absent from one composed of orators so brilliantly gifted as the irish, will take the menacing form of an international quarrel. the appeal will no longer be to precedents and statutes, but to patriotism and nationality, and the quarrel of two parliaments will become the quarrel of two peoples. what will it avail, when that time comes, that in the irish leaders declared themselves content with a subordinate legislature? it is their earlier speeches of a very different tenour that will be remembered; and it will be asked, with a logic that may well seem irresistible, by what right irish "nationality" was ever abandoned by irish representatives. on these dangers i do not in this brief note propose to dwell, though it seems to me insane either to ignore them or to belittle them. the point on which i desire to insist is that they arise not from the establishment of a subordinate parliament alone, nor from the existence of a "nationalist" sentiment alone, but from the action and reaction of the sentiment upon the institution, and of the institution upon the sentiment. let me conclude by asking whether irish history does not support to the full these gloomy prognostications. the parliament that came to an end at the union was a parliament utterly antagonistic to anything that now goes by the name of irish nationalism. in every sphere, except the economic sphere, it represented the forces, political and religious, which the irish nationalist now regards as english and alien, and against which, for many years, he has been waging bitter warfare. yet this parliament, representing only a small minority of the inhabitants of ireland, found its position of subordination intolerable. it chose a moment of national disaster to assert complete equality, and so used its powers that at last the union became inevitable. it is surely no remedy for the ancient wrongs of ireland--real, alas! though they were--that we should compel her again to tread the weary round of constitutional experiment, and that, in the name of irish nationalism, we should again make her the victim of an outworn english scheme, which has been tried, which has failed, which has been discarded, and which, in my judgment, ought never to be revived. ii historical retrospect by j.r. fisher (author of "the end of the irish parliament"; editor of the _northern whig_) when pitt commended his proposals for the union to "the dispassionate and sober judgment of the parliament of ireland," he argued that such a measure was at once "transcendently important" to the empire, and "eminently useful" to the true interests of ireland. lord clare, as an irishman, naturally reversed the order, but his compelling points were the same:--to ireland the union was a "vital interest," which at the same time "intimately affected the strength and prosperity of the british empire." from that day to this the two fundamental arguments for the union of great britain and ireland have remained unchanged, and they apply with ever-growing force to the existing situation at home and abroad. but the argument from history has, perhaps, been a little neglected of late, and calls for at least a passing notice. popular oratory will have it that england has always been keen and aggressive in regard to the incorporation of ireland within the empire, but as a matter of fact, the very opposite has been the case. from the time of pope adrian's bull, _laudabiliter_, in , which granted to henry ii. the lordship of ireland, but which henry left unemployed for seventeen years, to that of the irish petition for a legislative union in , which remained unanswered for nearly a century, vacillation and hesitation rather than eagerness for aggression have been the characteristic marks of english policy in ireland. far-sighted statesmen could point out the benefits to ireland from such a connection, but as a rule it was the presence of actual foreign danger that forced the british parliament to act. for four centuries the lordship of the english kings over ireland was largely nominal. it was only when the religious quarrels of the sixteenth century became acute that the tudors--already alarmed at the action of the irish parliament in recognising and crowning a pretender in dublin castle--found themselves compelled to assert direct kingship. from that time till the legislative union every enemy of england could safely count on finding a foothold and active friends in ireland. it is much too late in the day to indulge in any recriminations on this score. the issues were the most tremendous that have divided europe; each side was passionately convinced of the rightness and justice of its cause. there were, in pitt's words relating to a later day, "dreadful and inexcusable cruelties" on the one side, and "lamentable severities" upon the other, just as there were all over europe. but in the case of ireland every evil was exaggerated and every danger intensified by the system of dualism which encouraged resistance from within and invited interference from without. for england and english liberty it was more than once a question of existence or extinction, and the knowledge of the constant danger from the immediate west did not tend to sweeten the situation. in elizabeth's time the menace was from spain; spanish forces twice succeeded in effecting a landing on the irish coast, and were welcomed by the inhabitants. spain was then the most powerful enemy of england and of civil and religious liberty all the world over; elizabeth was declared by the pope to have forfeited the crown of england, and if the armada had been successful at sea, the spanish army in england would have found enthusiastic supporters in ireland. later on it was in ireland, and by the aid of subsidies from an irish parliament, that strafford raised , men to invade scotland and england in support of charles i. against his parliament, and, incidentally, to drive the scottish settlers out of ulster. as the articles of impeachment put it, his object in raising the irish army was "for the ruin and destruction of england and of his majesty's subjects, and altering and subverting the fundamental laws and established government of this kingdom." strafford fell, but the insurrection and massacre of were the natural result of his intrigues with the irish parliament and the irish chiefs. it was under the impression of this manifest danger that cromwell--a century and a half before his time--abolished the dublin parliament and summoned irish representatives to the first united parliament at westminster. as the power of spain declined, france came to be the chief menace to england and to the peace of europe. again ireland instinctively allied herself with the enemy. tyrconnel now played the part of strafford, and with the aid of french troops and french subsidies, and a sympathetic irish parliament, endeavoured to destroy the ulster plantation, and make ireland a jumping-off place for the invasion of england. the irish parliament, in the meantime, did its part by confiscating the estates of the settlers, driving out the protestant clergy, and outlawing english sympathisers by name in "the hugest bill of attainder which the world has seen."[ ] it was the successful defence of derry and enniskillen by the scotch and english colonists that saved ireland and gave king william and his troops the foothold that enabled them to save england, too, in the irish campaign of the following year. not the least remarkable instance of the use to which separate parliaments within the kingdom could be put for the ruin of england occurred during the activity of james the second's son, the so-called "old pretender." in his chief adviser, the earl of mar, presented to the regent of france a memorial setting out in detail a project for betraying britain into the power of france by dismembering the british parliament.[ ] the irish parliament, in close alliance with a restored scottish parliament, was to be used to curb the power of england. "the people of ireland and scotland," according to mar, "are of the same blood and possess similar interests," and they should thus always be allied against england and oppose their "united strength"--backed, of course, by that of france--to any undue growth of the english power. the scheme came to nothing, but if the pretender had possessed a little more energy and capacity; if the french court had been in earnest, and if ireland and scotland had each possessed a separate parliament, "with an executive responsible to it," and with the control of a national militia, the story of might have ended differently. it is necessary that these facts should be kept in mind when complaint is made of the oppressive and demoralising irish penal code. that code no one defends now, although it was lauded at the time by swift as a bulwark of the church against the catholics on the one hand, and the presbyterians on the other. it was the product of a cruel and bigoted age, and at its worst it was less severe than similar laws prevailing against protestants in those parts of the continent where the roman church held sway.[ ] spain and france were at that time vastly more powerful, populous, and wealthy countries than england: england was never free from the dread of foreign invasion, and to the would-be invader ireland always held a guiding light and an open door. finally, it must also be remembered that at a time when the chances seemed fairly even, as between william and england on the one hand, and james and france on the other, the prince of orange, accustomed to the german way of settling such differences, had made formal offer to tyrconnel of a working compromise--the free exercise of their religion to the irish catholics: half the churches of the kingdom: half the employments, civil and military, if they pleased, and even the moiety of their ancient properties. "these proposals," says the chevalier wogan, tyrconnel's nephew and confidant, who is our informant, "though they were to have had an english act of parliament for their sanction, were refused with universal contempt." in other words, the party which with the assistance of france still hoped to obtain all, refused to be content with half. it is true that wogan, in the letter from which we have quoted,[ ] after stating that the exiles, "in the midst of their hard usage abroad, could not be brought to repent of their obstinacy," justifies their refusal by the way in which the articles of limerick were afterwards disregarded by the irish parliament. but this is evidently an argument of retrospective invention, and it may fairly be argued that the position would have been very different if peace on equal terms had been made on the direct authority of the king before aughrim rather than by his deputies after limerick. the eighteenth century. and if the separatist theory has involved, as we have seen, such external dangers to the empire, the case for the old irish parliament from the point of the "vital interests" of ireland itself is even weaker. by it the bulk of the irish people were treated for a century in a fashion described by an irish chief secretary as "ingrafting absurdity on the wisdom of england and tyranny on the religion that professes humanity." it was conspicuous for its corruption even in a corrupt age, and, as was inevitable, it involved ireland in constant conflicts with england, conflicts that were vexatious and injurious to both countries. swift, who, amongst those who have not read his works, passes for an irish patriot, is at his savagest when inveighing against this sham parliament.[ ] its members are, he says-- "...three hundred brutes all involved in wild disputes, roaring till their lungs are spent privilege of parliament'!" and if only the devil were some day to come "with poker fiery red," and-- "when the den of thieves is full, quite destroy the harpies' nest, how might then our isle be blest!" capable observers, from swift to arthur young, bear continuous testimony to the systematic and habitual corruption of the irish parliament. offices were multiplied and were distributed among clamorous applicants on the ground of family or personal influence, or political support--never by any chance on the ground of merit or capacity. public money was squandered for private purposes. sir george macartney, himself an irishman and a member of parliament, in his "account of ireland," speaking of the year , says--[ ] "the house of commons now began to appropriate a considerable part of the additional duties to their own use. this was done under pretence of encouraging public works such as inland navigation, collieries, and manufactories of different kinds; but the truth is that most of these public works were private jobs carried on under the direction and for the advantage of some considerable gentlemen in the house of commons." arthur young, whose careful and impartial study of the state of affairs in ireland under the dublin parliament has become a classic, speaks of the same class of transaction,[ ] "the members of the house of commons at the conclusion of the sessions met for the purpose of voting the uses to which this money should be applied: the greater part of it was amongst themselves, their friends or dependants, and though some work of apparent use to the public was always the plea, yet under the sanction there were a great number of very scandalous jobs." young admits that some useful public work was done, but that most of the money was misappropriated was matter of common report. after a reference to the construction of a certain canal he adds-- "some gentlemen i have talked with on this subject have replied, 'it is a job: 'twas meant as a job: you are not to consider it as a canal of trade, but as a canal for public money!' ... sorry i am to say that a history of public works in ireland would be a history of jobs." money was voted, he says elsewhere, for-- "collieries where there is no coal, for bridges where there are no rivers, navigable cuts where there is no water, harbours where there are no ships, and churches where there are no congregations." and when the union was finally on its way, hamilton rowan, one of the founders of the united irishmen, then in exile in america, wrote home to his father: "i congratulate you on the report which spreads here that a union is intended. in that measure i see the downfall of one of the most corrupt assemblies, i believe, that ever existed."[ ] it is little wonder that men of good will in ireland prayed to be delivered from such a parliament. molyneux, the first of the irish parliamentary patriots, whose book, "the case of ireland's being governed by laws made in england stated," was burnt by the common hangman, pleaded indeed for a reformed and independent parliament, but only because fair representation in the english parliament was at the time "a happiness they could hardly hope for." and a few years later the irish house, in congratulating queen anne on the union of england and scotland, added, "may god put it into your royal heart to add greater strength and lustre to your crown by a yet more comprehensive union." the english parliament, through sheer lethargy and carelessness, missed at this time an opportunity which would have peacefully launched ireland on her career on an equality with scotland and england, and must have profoundly modified the relations of the two countries. immediate prosperity, in the case of a land wasted by a century of strife and bloodshed, was not indeed to be hoped for any more than in the case of scotland, which had still two armed rebellions, and much bickering and jealousy in store before settling down to peaceful development. but if ireland had been granted her petitions for union in and , and had thus secured equal laws and equal trading privileges, she would at any rate have emerged from her period of trial and discord not later than scotland, and would have anticipated the economic and social advantages predicted by adam smith,[ ] when he says-- "by a union with great britain, ireland would gain, besides the freedom of trade, other advantages much more important, and which would much more than compensate any increase of taxes that might accompany that union. by the union with england, the middling and inferior ranks of people in scotland gained a complete deliverance from the power of an aristocracy which had always before oppressed them. by a union with great britain, the greater part of the people of all ranks in ireland would gain an equally complete deliverance from a much more oppressive aristocracy, an aristocracy not founded, like that of scotland, in the natural and respectable distinctions of birth and fortune, but in the most odious of all distinctions, those of religious and political prejudices.... without a union with great britain, the inhabitants of ireland are not likely, for many ages, to consider themselves as one people." pitt, who was proud to proclaim himself the pupil of adam smith in politics and in economics, found himself, a quarter of a century after these words were written, in a position to carry out, in face of great difficulties and dangers at home and abroad, the beneficent reform advocated by his great master--a reform which, as we have seen, could have been carried a century earlier without any difficulty whatever. but the century that had been wasted involved many concurrent miseries and misfortunes: social and economic stagnation, an intensification of religious and racial bitterness, conspiracy, and invasion; savage outbreaks savagely repressed. when the time comes to measure up the rights and wrongs of those dark days, the judgment on england will assuredly be that her fault was not the carrying of the union, but the delaying of that great measure of reform and emancipation until it was almost too late. the story of the union has been told and retold in the utmost detail throughout the century. the present writer has attempted quite recently to summarise it,[ ] and there is little to add. the charge that it was carried by corruption is simply another way of saying that it had, constitutionally, to be passed through the dublin parliament, that body which, from the days of swift's invective to those of its final condemnation, lived and moved and had its being solely in and by corruption. as lord castlereagh, who had charge of the bill in the irish house of commons, put it, the government was forced to recognise the situation and its task was "to buy out and secure to the crown forever the fee simple of irish corruption, which has so long enfeebled the power of government and endangered the connection." the union. the irish parliament had run its course, and had involved the unhappy country in chaos, bankruptcy, revolution, and bloodshed. lord clare--a late and reluctant convert to the policy of the union--said in the irish house of lords (feb. , )-- "we have not three years of redemption from bankruptcy, intolerable taxation, nor one hour's security against the renewal exterminating civil war. session after session have you been compelled to enact laws of unexampled rigour and novelty to repress the horrible excesses of the mass of your people: and the fury of murder and pillage and desolation have so outrun all legislative exertions that you have been at length driven to the hard necessity of breaking down the pale of municipal law, and putting your courage under the ban of military government--and in every little circle of dignity and independence we hear whispers of discontent at the temperate discretion with which it is administered.... look to your civil and religious dissensions. look to the fury of political faction and the torrents of human blood that stain the face of your country, and of what materials is that man composed who will not listen with patience and good will to any proposition that can be made to him for composing the distractions and healing the wounds and alleviating the miseries of this devoted nation?" lord clare's words--unanswered and unanswerable then and now--constitute a sufficient comment on the foolish fable of later invention, that ireland was a land of peace and harmony, of orderly government and abounding prosperity, when a wicked english minister came and "stole away the parliament house"--since which all has been decay and desolation. the halcyon period is generally made to coincide with that of "grattan's parliament"--of the semi-independent and quite unworkable constitution of , which had been extorted from england's weakness when ireland was denuded of regular troops, and at the mercy of a volunteer national guard, when cornwallis had just surrendered at yorktown, and spain and france were once more leagued with half europe for the destruction of the british empire. it is quite true that the latter part of the eighteenth century was, on the whole, a time of considerable prosperity to certain classes in ireland--a prosperity varied by periods of acute depression and distress. but that prosperity, such as it was, neither began with grattan's parliament nor ended with it--had, indeed, no more connection with the irish parliament in any of its phases than had the goodwin sands with tenterden steeple. with the exception of the respite between the treaty of versailles and the outbreak of the french revolution, england was almost constantly at war, or feverishly preparing for war. simultaneously came the unprecedented increase of urban industry, following on the invention of the steam-engine and spinning machinery. the result was an enormous and growing demand for corn, beef, and pork, sailcloth, stores of all kinds for our armies and fleets, a demand which england, owing to the growth of her town population and the consequent growth of the home demand, was unable adequately to meet. ireland reaped the benefit. as a largely agricultural country, she was as yet little influenced by the discoveries of watt, of hargreaves, of arkwright, or of crompton. but her long-rested soil could produce in apparently unlimited quantities those very products of which the british forces stood most in need. the fleets were victualled and fitted out at cork, and they carried thence a constant stream of supplies of all sorts for our armies in the field. indeed, so keen was the demand that it was soon discovered that not only our own troops, but those of the enemy, were receiving irish supplies, and smugglers on the south and west coasts reaped a rich harvest. the result was obvious. cattle graziers and middlemen made enormous profits, rents were doubled and trebled. dublin, cork, waterford, limerick and belfast flourished exceedingly on war prices and war profits. but there is no evidence that the mass of the people in their degraded and debased condition shared to any extent in this prosperity. it was at this very period that arthur o'connor spoke of them as "the worst clad, the worst fed, the worst housed people in europe." whiteboyism, outrage and lawlessness spread over the face of the country, and, as lord clare reminded parliament, "session after session have you been compelled to enact laws of unexampled rigour and novelty to repress the horrible excesses of the mass of your people." it has been made a charge against the union that during some disturbed periods of the nineteenth century the united parliament had to pass "coercion" acts at the rate of nearly one every session. the complainants should look nearer home and they would find from the records of the irish legislature that during the "halcyon" days of "grattan's parliament"--the eighteen years between and the union--no less than fifty-four coercion acts were passed, some of them of a thoroughness and ferocity quite unknown in later legislation. the close of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth were, in reality, in spite of a certain amount of agrarian crime, organised and subsidised from abroad, a period of much greater peace and more widespread prosperity than the bloodstained years that marked the close of the eighteenth century--and of the irish parliament. another fiction regarding the union may perhaps be worth notice. it has sometimes been suggested that it was carried by a venal oligarchy in opposition to the will of the great mass of the population, of the roman catholic population in particular. this is precisely the reverse of the truth. the oligarchy controlled the parliament, and it therefore followed that the uniformly corrupt traditions of the irish parliament had to be observed in carrying the union as in carrying every other government bill throughout the century. but, so far from the act of union being carried by landowners and protestants against the will of the catholics, it was, as a matter of fact, carried with the ardent and unanimous assent and support of the catholic hierarchy, and against the embittered opposition of the old ascendancy leaders, who feared the loss of their influence of power. the evidence on this point is documentary and precise. indeed, no one thought of doubting or challenging it at the time; grattan contented himself with denouncing the catholic bishops as "a band of prostituted men." dr. troy, archbishop of dublin, was, as his correspondence shows, a warm, consistent and active supporter of the union. dr. dillon, archbishop of tuam, wrote in september, , that he had had an opportunity during his recent visitation "of acquiring the strongest conviction that this measure alone can restore harmony and happiness to our unhappy country." his neighbour, dr. bodkin, bishop galway, wrote that the union was the only measure to save "poor infatuated ireland" from "ruin and destruction." dr. moylan, bishop of cork, was equally emphatic. "i am perfectly satisfied," he says, "that it is impossible to extinguish the feuds and animosities which disgrace this kingdom, nor give it the advantages of its natural local situation, without a union with great britain. god grant that it may soon take place!" as for the feeling of the rank and file of the electors--under a very widely extended franchise--two examples will suffice. in two cases--in the county of kerry and the borough of newry--both open constituencies--by-elections occurred during the passing of the union legislation. in both instances the roman catholic vote predominated, and in both the feeling was so strong in favour of the union that no opponent dared to face the poll. in after years mr. maurice fitzgerald, the knight of kerry, recounted his experiences. "having accepted office," he says, "as a supporter of the union, i went to two elections pending the measure and was returned without opposition in a county where the roman catholic interest greatly preponderated, and a declaration almost unanimous in favour of the union proceeded from the county of kerry. one of my most strenuous supporters in bringing forward that declaration was mr. maurice o'connell, uncle of mr. daniel o'connell, and my most active partisan was mr. john o'connell, brother of mr. daniel o'connell." in newry an attempt was made to put up an anti-unionist candidate, but the roman catholic bishop, dr. lennan, met and repulsed the intruder in militant fashion. "mr. bell," he reports to archbishop troy, "declined the poll, and surrendered yesterday. the catholics stuck together like the macedonian phalanx, and with ease were able to turn the scale in favour of the chancellor of the exchequer." to the irish catholic at the time of the union, the dublin legislature was, indeed, in the words of mr. denys scully, a leading catholic layman, "not our parliament, for we had no share in it, but their club-house." the summing up of the whole matter is perhaps best expressed in the measured judgment of mr. john morley in his study of the life of edmund burke. burke, in an evil moment for himself and for ireland, had lent himself in to what mr. morley called the "factious" and "detestable" course of fox and the english whig leaders in destroying pitt's commercial propositions. "had it not been for what he himself called the delirium of the preceding session" (writes burke's biographer)[ ] "he would have seen that pitt was in truth taking his first measures for the emancipation of ireland from an unjust and oppressive subordination and for her installation as a corporate member of the empire--the only position permanently possible for her.... a substantial boon was sacrificed amid bonfires and candles to the phantom of irish legislative independence. the result must have convinced pitt more firmly than ever that his great master, adam smith, was right in predicting that nothing short of the union of the two countries would deliver ireland out of the hands of her fatuous chiefs and of their too worthy followers." what would mr. john morley, the historian who wrote those words in the prime of his intellectual strength and judgment, have said if any one had told him that in his old age lord morley, the politician, would have been actively engaged in assisting another generation of "fatuous chiefs" and still more worthy followers to sacrifice the true interests of ireland in the pursuit of "the phantom of irish legislative independence"? after the union. that the union to some extent failed in the beneficent effects which it was calculated to produce in ireland is only another instance of the working of the "curse of mis-chance" which has so often, before and since, interposed to thwart the intentions of statesmen in their dealings with the two countries. pitt, castlereagh, and cornwallis, the three men chiefly concerned in planning the change, were all agreed in explaining that the union was not a policy complete in itself, but was only the necessary foundation upon which a true remedial policy was to be based. as lord cornwallis said at the time, "the word 'union' will not cure the ills of this wretched country. it is a necessary preliminary, but a great deal more remains to be done." catholic emancipation, a series of parliamentary, educational, financial, and economic reforms, and the abolition of the viceroyalty, the visible symbol of separatism and dependence, were all essential portions of pitt's scheme. but pitt was destined to sink into an early grave without seeing any of them materially furthered. treacherous colleagues and the threatened insanity of the king blocked the way of some of them: england's prolonged struggle for existence against the power of napoleon, involving as it did financial embarrassment and a generation of political reaction, accounted for the rest. pitt and castlereagh resigned on the king's refusal to accept their advice, "and so," as lord rosebery says,[ ] "all went wrong." it was "like cutting the face out of a portrait and leaving the picture in the frame. the fragment of policy flapped forlornly on the deserted mansions of the capital." a generation of agitation, strife, and discontent was to pass before emancipation was carried, and the reforms had to wait still longer. meanwhile a wonderful change of front had taken place. the leading opponents of the union--plunket, foster, beresford--even grattan himself--came to accept it, and, in some cases, figured as its warmest defenders. and the catholic party, whom we have seen so strongly supporting the union, gradually grew into opponents. daniel o'connell, whose brother and uncle were the leading supporters of the union candidate for kerry, started a formidable agitation first for emancipation and then for repeal of the union. in the former he succeeded because enlightened public opinion in both countries was on his side: in the latter he failed utterly, both parties in great britain and a large section in ireland being inflexibly opposed to any such reactionary experiment. in the end o'connell died disillusioned and broken-hearted, and the repeal movement disappeared from the field of irish politics till revived many years later in the form of home rule. but whilst recognising the fact that the union, owing to the causes stated, failed partially, and for a time, to respond to all the anticipations of its authors, readers must be warned against accepting the wild and woeful tales of decay and ruin that were recklessly circulated for propagandist purposes by o'connell and the repealers. many people who are content to take their facts at second hand have thus come to believe that the legislative union changed a smiling and prosperous kingdom into a blighted province where manufactures and agriculture, commerce and population fell into rapid and hopeless decline. needless to say, things do not happen in that way: economic changes, for better or for worse, are slow and gradual and depend on natural causes, not on artificial. ireland has not, as a whole, kept in line with nineteenth-century progress, and her population, after a striking increase for over forty years, showed under peculiar causes an equally striking decrease; but to assert that her course has been one of universal decay and of decay dating from the union is to say what is demonstrably untrue. it was inevitable that a city of very limited industry like dublin should suffer from the disappearance of its parliament, which brought into residence for some months in every year some hundreds of persons of wealth and distinction. it was also inevitable that the mechanical inventions to which we have already alluded--the steam-engine, the "spinning jenny," and the "mule"--which revolutionised the world's industry, should have their effect in ireland also. under primitive conditions, with lands almost roadless and communications slow, difficult and costly, the various districts of any country had of necessity to produce articles of food and clothing to satisfy their requirements, or they had to go without. with the progress of invention, and with the opening up of the world by roads and canals, a totally different state of things presents itself. industries tend to become centralised--the fittest survive and grow, the unfit wither away. this is what occurred in many districts of england and scotland, and the course of events was naturally the same in ireland. when we read of small towns now lying idle, which in the eighteenth century produced woollen cloth, linen, cotton, fustian, boots, hats, glass, beer, and food products, it simply means that a more highly organised system of industry has in its progress left such districts behind in the race. the woollen manufacture has centred in yorkshire, cotton in lancashire, linen in belfast, and so forth--one district dwindled as others advanced and tended to monopolise production, without the legislature having anything to say to it. to say that this or that manufacture is not so prosperous in ireland as it was a century ago before power looms, spindles, steamships, and railways came to revolutionise industry, is simply to say that ireland, like other countries, has had its part, for better or for worse, in the great world-movement of nineteenth-century industry. the figures of irish exports and imports lend no countenance to the story of decay setting in with the union. taking the two decennial periods, before and after the union, the figures are as follows:--[ ] total value total value of imports. of exports. - ... ... £ , , £ , , - ... ... £ , , £ , , ----------- ----------- increase ... £ , , £ . , an increase of over fifty per cent. in imports, and over twenty-three per cent. in exports in the ten years after the union as compared with the ten years before it. taking single years the result is similar. the amalgamation of the two exchequers and the financial re-arrangements that followed, put an end to the accurate record of exports and imports until quite recently, but the increase during the early years of the union and also over the whole country is unmistakable. the average annual value of irish exports at the time of the union was, according to mr. chart.[ ] £ , , . in they had increased to £ , , , a corresponding increase being recorded in imports. coming down to the period of the financial relations commission ( ), that very cautious and painstaking statistician, the late sir robert giffen,[ ] roughly estimated irish imports at £ , , and exports at £ , , . since that time the irish agricultural department has been created, and has undertaken the collection and tabulation of such statistics. turning to their latest report we find that the imports had in attained the relatively enormous figure of £ , , , and the exports £ , , , a total of over £ , , in place of nine or ten millions, at the very outside, of the time of the union. and it is worth noting in addition that, for the first time in these recorded tables, ireland's exports exceed her imports. but we are assured with triumphant and invincible despondency that population has decreased alarmingly. the movements of population since the time of the union have been, it may be admitted, very remarkable, but the figures are double-edged and require a more careful handling than they generally receive. if we are to assume, as the prophets of gloom will have it, that increase and decrease of population are an infallible test of a country's growth or decay, then ireland for nearly half a century after the union must have been the most prosperous country in europe. the population of ireland, which in was estimated at , , , had increased in to , , , in to , , , and in to , , . in other words, the population, like the trade, of the doomed island had more than doubled since the union. we doubt if any european country could say as much. then came the great disaster, the potato famine of - , which, undoubtedly, dealt a stunning blow to irish agriculture. it was not the first, nor the worst, of irish famines--there is evidence that the famines of and were, proportionately, more widespread and more appalling in their effects. but, occurring as it did, in the middle of the nineteenth century, with the press of the world as witnesses, it attracted immense attention, and the nations, whom england, then high and mighty in the undisputed supremacy of the doctrines of _laissez faire_ and free trade, were not slow in retorting on their mentor. the state, it was laid down dogmatically by the economists, must not do anything to feed the starving people, because that would interfere with the principle of private enterprise; and as there was naturally no private enterprise in wide stretches of country where landlord and tenant, shopkeeper and labourer, were involved in common ruin, the people starved. for the same reason, the sufferers must not be paid to do useful work, so they were set to make roads that led to nowhere--and that have been grass-grown ever since--and to build walls that had to be pulled down again. it was a ghastly specimen of doctrinaire dogmatism run mad, and though it was not the fault of the government so much as of the arid doctrines of ill-understood economics which then prevailed in the schools, it did more than anything to embitter the relations between the irish people and the imperial government. the death-rate from famine and famine-fever was appalling. the poor law system--then a new experiment in ireland--broke down hopelessly, and agitators were not slow to improve the occasion by denouncing the "callousness" of the imperial government. nations, as a rule, recover from such calamities as famine, war, and pestilence with surprising quickness; but there were certain incidents connected with the famine of - that intensified and perpetuated the evil in the case of ireland. we have already referred to the high-and-dry doctrines of _laissez faire_ then in the ascendant, and any real or permanent recovery of irish agriculture was rendered practically impossible by england's adhesion to the doctrine of free imports, by the abolition of the corn laws, and by the crushing increase of taxation under mr gladstone's budgets of and the succeeding years. ireland was entitled under the act of union to "special exemptions and abatements" in taxation, in consideration of her backward economic condition. all chancellors of the exchequer till mr. gladstone's time respected these exemptions, and although no one could suggest, in view of ireland's recent progress, that she could have been permanently exempted from the burdens imposed on the british taxpayer, it will be admitted that the time chosen by mr. gladstone for abruptly raising the taxation of ireland from _s._ _d._ per head to _s._ _d._ was inopportune, not to say ungenerous. sir david barbour, in his minority report on the financial relations commission, perhaps the most carefully thought out and the most practical of all the many reports emanating from that heterogeneous body, gives a table of the "estimated true revenue" extracted from great britain and ireland respectively from to . this table shows that the revenue raised from ireland was increased between - and - from £ , , to £ , , , and he adds: "it will be observed that a great and rapid rise took place in the taxation of ireland during the decade - . this great increase was due to the equalisation of the spirit duties in the two countries, and the extension of the income tax to ireland. the special circumstances of ireland do not appear to have received due consideration at this time. many arguments of a general character might be employed to justify the equalisation of the spirit duties, and the imposition of an income tax, but ireland was entitled under the act of union to such exemptions and abatements as her circumstances might require, and the time was not opportune for imposing additional burdens upon her." irish agriculture was thus almost simultaneously struck down by the greatest famine of the century, which swept away two million of the population, disabled for resuming the competition by the free admission of foreign grain, which in the long run rendered successful corn-growing in ireland impossible, and saddled with an additional two and a quarter millions of taxation. when remonstrated with, mr. gladstone retorted flippantly that he could not see that it was any part of the rights of man that an irishman should be able to make himself drunk more cheaply than the inhabitant of great britain. the taunt would have possessed more relevance if whisky had been an article of importation. seeing, however, that it was an article of manufacture and export, employing directly or indirectly much capital and labour, the injury to irish industry was very serious, many distilleries and breweries being obliged to close their doors. as miss murray says in her masterly work on irish commerce[ ]:-- "just as the country was thoroughly exhausted from the effects of the famine, the whole financial policy adopted towards ireland changed, and irish taxation began to be rapidly assimilated to british at a time when great prosperity had come to great britain, and the reverse to ireland. the repeal of the corn laws had stimulated the commercial prosperity of britain; large cities were expanding, railways were developing, and the foreign trade of the country was increasing by leaps and bounds. but ireland had just passed through the awful ordeal of famine: her population had suddenly diminished by one fourth, there had been a universal decline in irish manufactures, the repeal of the corn laws had begun the destruction of the irish export trade in cereals, and the extension of the poor law system to ireland had greatly increased the local rates. just as the famine subsided the results of free trade began to take effect. wheat-growing decayed; local industries were destroyed by the competition of large manufacturing towns in great britain; every class of irish producers saw ruin staring him in the face, while landlords and farmers were further impoverished by the huge poor-rates, which sometimes reached _s._ in the £. the misery and poverty of the country could hardly have been greater, and to us at the present day it seems extraordinary that just at this inopportune time the government should have thought fit to go back from the conciliatory fiscal policy which had existed since ." it is not to be wondered at that gladstonian finance was ever after looked at with well-grounded suspicion in ireland. another circumstance that has had a serious and lasting effect on irish population has still to be mentioned. at first the emigration movement was largely a flight from starvation, a movement that would have come to an end under normal circumstances with the end of the famine crisis. but as we have seen, the conditions were not normal; the crisis was artificially protracted by injurious financial legislation. and, in addition, although many of them perished by the way owing to the abominably insanitary conditions of the coffin ships employed for the journey, the emigrants arriving at new york or boston soon found conditions unexpectedly favourable for the class of labour which they were best qualified to supply. america was just then opening up and turning to the new west, and the demand for unskilled labour for railway work was unlimited. the irish emigrant seldom or never takes to the land when he goes to america, and navvy work just suited him. to a man accustomed to sixpence a day the wages offered seemed to represent unbounded wealth, and as the news spread in ireland the move to america, which at the first seemed hopeless exile, presented itself as a highly desirable step towards social betterment. emigration is now the result of attraction from america rather than of repulsion from ireland, a fact which explains the failure of more than one well-meant attempt to check the movement by action on this side of the atlantic. ulster's development. a word should perhaps be given to the position of the industrial portion of ulster, which has flourished so remarkably since the union. this of itself affords sufficient proof that that act, whatever its defects, cannot be held accountable for any lack of prosperity that may still exist in other parts of ireland. it is sometimes stated that ulster was favoured at the time when the commercial jealousy of certain english cities succeeded in securing a prohibition of the irish woollen industry. the southern wool, it is alleged, was checked, and the belfast linen was favoured--hence the prosperity of the northern capital. this is a really curious perversion of quite modern history. the linen industry was at the time in question in no sense confined to the north and was by no means prominent in belfast. it was distributed over many districts of ireland, for whilst louis crommelin was sent to lisburn to look after the french colony settled there, and to improve and promote the industry, his brother william was sent on a similar errand to kilkenny, and stations were also started at rathkeale, cork and waterford. when, later on, the irish parliament distributed bounties through the linen board, the seat of that board was in dublin, and its operations included every county in ireland. at the time of the union, indeed, the linen manufacture was almost unknown in belfast, the "manufacturers" or handloom weavers in the north, as elsewhere, living mostly in the smaller country towns and bringing their webs in for sale on certain market days. from benn's "history of the town of belfast," published early in the century, we learn that at that time the principal manufacture of the town was "cotton in its various branches." this industry had been introduced in , we are told, to give employment in the poorhouse, but it caught on and spread amazingly. "in many of the streets and populous roads in the suburbs of the town, particularly at ballymacarrett, the sound of the loom issues almost from every house, and all, with very few exceptions, are employed in the different branches of the cotton trade. in the year this business engaged in belfast and its neighbourhood , persons." in there were eight cotton mills at work with steam power driving , spindles. on the other hand, "there is very little linen cloth woven in this town or parish. in belfast contained looms, only four of which were for weaving linen." the story of the sudden change from cotton to linen is an instructive one. cotton appears to have forced itself to the front because cotton spinning could be carried on by machinery whilst the linen weavers were still dependent on the spinning wheel for their yarn. it was andrew mulholland, the owner of the york street cotton mill, who first took note of the fact that while the supply of hand-made linen yarn was quite insufficient to justify the manufacture of linen on a large scale in belfast, quantities of flax were shipped from belfast to manchester to be spun there and reimported as yarn. mulholland determined to try if he could not spin yarn as well as the manchester people, and accordingly in , "the first bundle of linen yarn produced by machinery in belfast was thrown off from the york street mill." that, and not legislation nor any system of state bounties or state favour, was the beginning of the belfast linen industry in which the york street mill still maintains its deserved pre-eminence. when the critical moment arrived, as it does in the case of all industries, when manufacturers must adapt themselves to new methods or succumb, the belfast leaders of industry rose to the occasion and secured for themselves the chief share in the linen trade. in the rest of ireland, it is true, the manufacture dwindled and disappeared, but whatever may have been the cause of that disappearance, it was certainly not the act of union. the land question. the agrarian problem has caused more trouble in ireland than any other, and statesmen have long recognised that on its definite settlement depends the hope of permanent peace and progress over the greater part of the country. it is not, and never has been, the real cause of rural depopulation, for, as we have seen, the increase of the rural population was most rapid at the time when agrarian conditions were at their very worst, whilst on the other hand emigration continues almost unchecked in counties where the question has been virtually settled. and in the late mr. j.h. tuke discovered by an analysis of the census returns that the only "townlands" in which the rural population was actually increasing were those scattered along the western seaboard of ireland, where the tenure and the conditions of existence seemed most hopeless. but, as the devon commission announced in , it was an essentially defective system of land tenure that lay at the root of the perennial discontent with which ireland was troubled, and things went from bad to worse until the party organised for the defence of the union and the social betterment of ireland took up the task of settling the question by the transfer on fair terms of the ownership of the soil from the large landowners to the tenants. the system of land tenure in england has been the growth of custom gradually hardening into law; in ireland the traditional custom was suddenly abolished, and english law substituted in its place. the english law was no doubt a better law, and one more fitted to a progressive community; but in ireland it violently upset the traditional law of the country, and, consequently, was met with sullen and unremitting hostility. by irish law, the tribe was owner; the tribesmen were joint proprietors, and the forfeiture of the chief did not involve the forfeiture of the land occupied by the tribesmen. by english law, however, these latter, such of them as were not expelled or exiled, suddenly found themselves transformed from joint-owners into tenants at will. further, the difficulty of dealing direct with tenants, experienced by landlords who were in very many cases absentees, led to the abominable "middleman" system by which the owner leased great stretches of land to some one who undertook to "manage" it for him, and who in turn sub-let it in smaller patches at rack-rents to those who, to get back their money, had to sub-let again at still higher rents. the result was, as an official report in the eighteenth century states: "it is well known that over the most part of the country, the lands are sub-let six deep, so that those who actually labour it are squeezed to the very utmost." and lord chesterfield, when viceroy, complained of the oppression of the people by "deputies of deputies of deputies." the eighteenth-century policy of checking or suppressing the industrial enterprises of the english colony aggravated the evil until, as lord dufferin expressed it: "debarred from every other industry, the entire nation flung itself back upon the land, with as fatal an impulse as when a river whose current is suddenly impeded, rolls back and drowns the valley it once fertilised." in time the middleman tended to die out, but the evil results of the system in preventing direct and friendly and helpful relations between landlord and tenant remained. here and there, even in arthur young's time, enterprising and devoted landlords had established something like the "english system" on their estates, but, as a rule, the landlord remained a mere rent charger. the report of the devon commission says:-- "it is admitted on all hands that, according to the general practice in ireland, the landlord neither builds dwelling-houses nor farm offices, nor puts fences, gates, etc., in good order before he lets his land to a tenant. the cases where a landlord does any of these things are the exception. in most cases, whatever is done in the way of building or fencing is done by the tenant, and in the ordinary language of the country, dwelling-houses, farm buildings, and even the making of fences, are described by the general word, 'improvements,' which is thus employed to denote the necessary adjuncts of a farm without which in england or scotland no tenant would be found to rent it." in a word, as one who owned land both in england and in ireland put it, "in england we let farms, in ireland we let land." and by law an unjust landlord had the power at any moment to expel a tenant or a group of tenants, although no rent was owing, and without giving any compensation for the "improvements" which were the sole work of the tenant. most landlords acted reasonably and equitably in such matters, but, especially among the new class of purely mercantile purchasers who came in under the landed estates court after the great famine of , there were too many who insisted on their extreme legal rights, thus disturbing the peace of the country and producing the irish land question in an acute form that called for state interference. the systems of "compensation for improvements" ( ), and of rent fixing by itinerant tribunals ( ), were tried in turn, but each was found to raise more difficulties than it settled, until finally mr. parnell and his land league set the whole country in a flame, and produced a series of strikes against the payment of any rent. for some years it is hardly too much to say that the law of the league, with its purely revolutionary propaganda, supplanted the law of the land and reduced large areas to a condition of chaos, the decrees of the "village ruffians," who ruled the situation, being enforced by systematic outrage and assassination. the first statesman who made a really serious attempt to meet this appalling state of things was mr. arthur balfour, who, as chief secretary for ireland, resolutely took up the task, first of repressing crime and enforcing the law, and then of recasting the whole land system in such a way that the tenant, transformed into an owner, would for the first time feel it his interest to range himself on the side of the law and of orderly government. at the same time, a systematic attempt was made to deal with the question of perennial poverty in the extreme west of ireland in what came to be known as the "congested districts." the construction of railways and piers, the draining of land, and the provision of instruction in agriculture, fisheries, etc., speedily gave promise of a new era in the economic history of a hitherto helpless and hopeless population. all this was done by mr. balfour and his successors in spite of opposition and obstruction of a kind such as no chief secretary had ever before had to encounter. formerly, all through the centuries, whenever a viceroy or chief secretary was face to face with an organised outbreak of crime and sedition in ireland, both british parties united in supporting and strengthening the hands of the executive as representing the crown. mr. gladstone's extraordinary reversal of policy and principle in the winter of - put an end to all this, and gravely increased the difficulties of the irish government. when mr. gladstone was first confronted with the demand for home rule, even in the mild and constitutional form advocated by mr. isaac butt, and his home government association, founded in the autumn of , he promptly declared, like mr. john morley, that legislative union with great britain was the only position permanently possible for an island situated as ireland is. in a speech at aberdeen[ ] he indignantly asked-- "can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind and crippling any powers we possess for conferring benefits on the country to which we belong." and for fifteen years, in power or in opposition, mr. gladstone preached and acted upon the same doctrine. when the land league was founded he denounced it as an organisation whose steps were "dogged with crime," and whose march was "through rapine to the dismemberment of the empire." the league was finally "proclaimed" by his government as a criminal conspiracy and its members, from mr. parnell downwards, arrested and imprisoned without trial as being "reasonably suspected" of criminal practices. this continued until in an unfortunate moment for himself mr. gladstone discovered, in november, , that the votes of mr. parnell and his eighty-six colleagues were necessary for his own return to power as prime minister, whereupon he entered into negotiations which resulted, on the one hand, in his securing the necessary votes, and on the other in his accepting the principles and the policy of those whom until then he had denounced and imprisoned as instigators to crime and sedition. he rightly recognised that there was no half-way house, and that he could not become a home ruler without accepting and defending the actions of the home rulers. he worshipped what he had formerly burnt, and he burned what he had hitherto worshipped. the result was that for several years england beheld for the first time the scandalous spectacle of men who had held high office under the crown openly defending--and even instigating--lawlessness and disorder, shielding and excusing criminals, proved such before the courts, and thwarting, misrepresenting, and obstructing those whose duty it was to restore order and legality in ireland. such were the difficulties that confronted mr. arthur balfour as chief secretary for ireland from to , difficulties which he surmounted with such resolution and such statesmanship that he retired from an office that has been called "the grave of reputations" with a reputation so much enhanced as to ensure him the leadership of his party and the gratitude of irishmen of all classes for generations to come. and yet his method was a supremely simple one--to reassert the supremacy of the law, to neglect, almost ostentatiously, all merely political cries, and to set himself seriously to deal with the real irish question, that of conferring some measure of security and prosperity on a population which over wide districts had known too little of such things. occupying ownership of irish land by means of state credit was not, of course, a new policy in mr. balfour's day. the bright clauses ( ) had introduced the principle into the statute-book, and lord ashbourne's act ( ) had carried it several steps further. but it was mr. arthur balfour and his successors, mr. gerald balfour and mr. george wyndham, who carried it by a series of boldly conceived steps almost within sight of completion. so thorough was the success of this policy of land purchase, and so marked was the cessation of crime and outrage and seditious agitation in every district into which it was carried, that those who made their living by agitation grew alarmed, and did all in their power to stop the working of the purchase acts. one nationalist member declared that the process had gone "quite far enough," and that he wished it could be stopped. the farmers who had purchased their holdings were declared to have become selfish, and "as bad as the landlords." in other words, they had become orderly and industrious, and had ceased to subscribe for the upkeep of the united irish league and its salaried agitators. the unhappy result of this outcry on the part of those whose occupation would be gone, and who would be compelled to resort to honest industry should ireland become peaceful and prosperous, was the passing of mr. birrell's "amending" bill, which has practically stopped for the present the beneficent working of the wyndham act of . under the various purchase acts over , irish farmers have become the owners of their holdings, thanks to over one hundred millions of public money advanced on imperial credit for the purpose. the first task of a unionist government, when again in power, must be the resumption of this policy of state-aided land-purchase--the only completely and unquestionably successful and pacifying piece of agrarian legislation in the history of english rule in ireland. other writers will give, later on, a more detailed account of various branches of unionist practical policy in ireland. the story of the congested districts board, mr. arthur balfour's special work, is a romance in itself. so well, in fact, has it accomplished its immediate task that the time has probably come when it could with advantage be merged in the later-created department of agriculture and technical instruction. this department, which has been linked up with the county or borough councils, by the legislation of mr. gerald balfour, has done an immense amount of educational and practical work in connection with agriculture in all its branches, including dairying, poultry rearing, fruit-growing, and other rural industries, not to speak of technical instruction in matters suited for artisans and town workers. these remarkable achievements, the work of successive unionist governments from to , have revolutionised the face of the country, and are bringing about a new ireland. the chief danger now lies in the intrigues of discredited politicians, whose object is to divert the eyes of the people from practical, remedial, and constructive legislation, and to keep them fixed upon what mr. john morley has called "the phantom of irish legislative independence." footnotes: [footnote : j.r. green, "short history," chap. ix. sec. .] [footnote : "dict. nat. biog.," sub.-tit. "erskine, john, earl of mar," p. .] [footnote : "england," says mr. james bryce in his introduction to "two centuries of irish history," "acted as conquering nations do act, and better than some nations of that age."] [footnote : wogan to swift, feb. th, .] [footnote : swift, "the legion club."] [footnote : "life of macartney," vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : "tour in ireland," vol. ii., p. ff.] [footnote : hamilton rowan's "autobiography," p. .] [footnote : "wealth of nations," book v., chap. iii.] [footnote : "the end of the irish parliament," , edward arnold.] [footnote : "edmund burke, a historical study," by john morley, pp. ff.] [footnote : "pitt," by lord rosebery, p. .] [footnote : from the official returns embodied in "a statement to the prime minister," irish loyal and patriotic union, dublin, .] [footnote : "ireland from the union to catholic emancipation," by d. a. chart, m.a. a most valuable and instructive work.] [footnote : it is, i hope, no reflection on the memory of an eminent public servant to suggest that in this, as in too many of the estimated figures contained in his evidence before the commission, and upon which the majority report of the commission was largely based, sir robert seriously under-estimated the resources of ireland. it is obvious when the ascertained figures of are compared with the estimated figures of that sir robert giffen must have been several millions below the truth. the steady nature of the growth of irish commerce is shown by the following figures taken from the official report for the year ended december , . imports, exports, total, mill. £. mill. £. mill. £. ] [footnote : "a history of the commercial relations between great britain and ireland," by alice e. murray, d.sc.] [footnote : sept. , .] critical iii the constitutional question by george cave, k.c., m.p. introductory few things are more remarkable in the parliamentary history of the home rule movement than the complete absence from the counsels of the english advocates of home rule of any definite and settled policy as to the form of self-government to be offered to ireland, and their consequent oscillation between proposals radically differing from one another. since the "new departure" initiated by davitt and devoy in ,[ ] it has been the deliberate practice of irish nationalists to abstain from defining the nationalist demand and to ask in general terms for "self-government," doubtless with the object of attracting the support of all who favour any change which could be described by that very elastic term. such a policy has its advantages. but confusion of thought, however favourable to popular agitation, is a disadvantage when the moment for legislation arrives; and uncertainty as to the aim goes far to explain the vacillation in home rule policy. mr. gladstone's home rule bill of would have given to ireland the substance of "responsible" or colonial self-government, subject only to certain reservations and restrictions, the value of which will be considered later in this chapter, and would have excluded the irish members and representative peers from the parliament of the united kingdom. by the bill of the reservations and restrictions were increased, and representatives of ireland were to be permitted to sit at westminster--by the bill as introduced for some purposes, and by the bill as passed by the house of commons for all purposes. after the defeat of this second bill, a "cold fit" appears to have seized the liberal party. lord rosebery, in , declared that before home rule could be carried england, as the predominant partner, must be convinced. sir edward grey in declared that his party on its return to power would "go on with sir anthony macdonnell's policy," which he rightly described as a policy of large administrative reforms; and mr. asquith "associated himself entirely and unreservedly with every word" of sir edward grey's speech.[ ] accordingly the irish council bill proposed by mr. asquith's government in was purely a measure of devolution, certain administrative functions only being put under the control of an irish council, subject to the veto of the lord lieutenant, and the whole legislative power remaining in the parliament of the united kingdom. this proposal, having been condemned by a national convention at dublin, was incontinently withdrawn. in the years succeeding this fiasco the liberal policy for ireland appeared to be at the mercy of shifting winds. for some time liberal speakers contented themselves with vague declarations in favour of federalism or "home rule all round"--phrases which may mean much or little according to the sense in which they are used. more recently an able writer,[ ] while admitting that "there is no public opinion in ireland as to the form of the irish constitution," has argued in a work of pages in favour of the grant to ireland of full legislative, administrative and financial autonomy; while a member of the government[ ] declared that fiscal autonomy for all practical purposes means separation and the disintegration of the united kingdom. in a publication recently issued by a committee of liberals, comprising several members of the present government,[ ] two views directly contrary to one another are put forward, one writer arguing for a devolution to an irish body of "definite and defined powers only," and another for the grant of the widest possible form of home rule and the exclusion from westminster of all irish representation. the latest official pronouncements indicate that the government have it in their minds to revert to the gladstonian form of home rule; but even now[ ] no one outside the cabinet, and possibly few inside that inner circle, would venture on a confident prophecy even as to the broad lines of the measure which in a few days may be submitted to parliament as representing the urgent and considered demand of public opinion. franklin said truly that-- "those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects." but surely on a question of such vital moment to the empire as the revision of the constitution of the united kingdom, the bases, if not the details, of the contemplated change are deserving of prolonged consideration and even of some public and ordered discussion. the british north america act, , by which the relation of the dominion of canada to its provinces is regulated, was the result, not only of years of preliminary debate in the provincial legislatures and elsewhere, but of a formal conference at quebec in , followed by the appointment of delegates to confer with the imperial government on the matter. in australia the proposal for union, agitated at intervals since , was canvassed in every detail at inter-colonial conferences or conventions in , in , and in - , as well as in the several colonial legislatures, before it was embodied in the australia constitution act, . and although in the case of south africa, owing to the urgency of the question of union, the time occupied in the discussion was less than in the other great dominions, yet in the convention of - the best brains in the country were occupied for months in considering every detail of the proposal for union before it was submitted to the colonial and imperial parliaments for their sanction.[ ] and yet in the mother country, where centuries of military and political conflict have given us the union, it is considered that a few weeks' consideration by a committee of the cabinet, without advice from independent constitutional experts,[ ] and without formal consultation even with the government's own supporters outside the ministry, is sufficient to determine both the general form and the details of a proposal for its dissolution. in the confusion so engendered it may be useful to consider in some detail the different proposals which have been or may be made under the name of home rule, their special qualities and dangers, and the results to which they may severally lead. responsible government. a proposal to give to ireland full "responsible" government, without any other limitations than such as are imposed on our self-governing colonies, would find few supporters in this country. under such a constitution an irish government would have power to forbid or restrict recruiting for the imperial forces in ireland, and to raise and train a force of its own. it might establish or subsidise a religion, make education wholly denominational, levy customs duties on imports from great britain and give fiscal advantages to a foreign power, confiscate or transfer property without payment, and deprive individuals of nationality, franchise, liberty, or life without process of law. however improbable some of these contingencies may appear, it is right on a matter of so much moment to consider possibilities and not probabilities only. such powers as these could not without serious risk be conceded to any part of the kingdom, and in the case of ireland there would be a special danger in granting them to a popularly elected body. in the first place, the national safety would be involved. englishmen were at one time too fond of saying that the great colonies might, if they chose, sever the link which binds them to the mother country. happily, in their case, no such catastrophe need now be considered. but it would be folly to shut our eyes to the fact that to many irishmen national independence appears to be the only goal worth striving for. if the concession of full responsible government should be followed (at whatever interval) by an assertion of complete independence, we may assume that great britain would follow the example of federal america and re-establish the union by force of arms, but at how great a cost! those who deny the possibility of a serious movement towards separation would do well to remember mr. gladstone's reference[ ] to the position of norway and sweden, then united under one crown:-- "let us look to those two countries, neither of them very large, but yet countries which every englishman and every scotchman must rejoice to claim his kin--i mean the scandinavian countries of sweden and norway. immediately after the great war the norwegians were ready to take sword in hand to prevent their coming under the domination of sweden. but the powers of europe undertook the settlement of that question, and they united those countries upon a footing of strict legislative independence and co-equality.... and yet with two countries so united, what has been the effect? not discord, not convulsions, not danger to peace, not hatred, not aversion, but a constantly growing sympathy; and every man who knows their condition knows that i speak the truth when i say that in every year that passes the norwegians and the swedes are more and more feeling themselves to be the children of a common country, united by a tie which never is to be broken." the tie was broken within twenty years. it may be that the nationalist leaders, or some of them, do not desire separation; but it by no means follows that a concession of their demands would not lead to that result. franklin, in , had an interview with chatham, in which he says-- "i assured him that, having more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent (of america) to the other, and kept a great variety of company, eating, drinking, and conversing with them freely, i never had heard in any conversation from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or a hint that such a thing would be advantageous to america."[ ] and yet independence came within ten years. in the case of the united kingdom there is no need to consider in detail how serious would be the effects--naval, military, and economic--of separation, for the gravity of such a contingency is admitted by all. admiral mahan, the american naval expert, writes that-- "the ambition of the irish separatists, realised, might be even more threatening to the national life of great britain than the secession of the south was to that of the american union.... the instrument for such action in the shape of an independent parliament could not safely be trusted even to avowed friends." some home rulers are able to-- "rise superior to the philosophy, as fallacious in fact as it is base and cowardly in purpose, which sets the safety of a great nation above the happiness and prosperity of a small one,"[ ] but to less lofty souls it appears that the safety of the nation is paramount, and that upon it depends the prosperity of each of its component parts. in the next place, in considering whether complete "colonial" self-government can be conceded to ireland, it must not be forgotten that the island is bi-racial, that the two races differ widely in character, in politics, and in religion, and that the differences are apt to find vent in violent conflict or secret attacks. further, ireland has for generations been the scene of a revolt against one particular species of property, the ownership of land; and although under the operation of the land purchase acts this cause of conflict tends to abate, it still breaks out from time to time in the form of cattle drives and attacks on "land grabbers."[ ] hitherto we have, broadly speaking, kept the peace. that we should now forsake this duty, and, washing our hands of ireland, leave the protestant and the landowner, at or small, to his fate is unthinkable. in connection with the question last-mentioned it may be necessary at some time to consider how far it is the constitutional right of this country to impose upon the minority in ireland the new obligations implied in a grant to the whole island of colonial home rule. it may be that the imperial parliament can disallow the claim of a section of the population of ireland to remain subject to its own control. but it is one thing to reject the allegiance of a community, it is quite another thing forcibly to transfer that allegiance to a practically independent legislature; and this is especially the case when the transfer may involve the use against a loyal population of coercion in its extreme form. checks and safeguards. in every formal proposal for home rule in ireland, weight has been given to the above considerations, and attempts have been made to meet them by qualifying the grant of responsible government. the qualifications suggested have taken the form of _(a)_ the reservation of certain powers to the imperial parliament, or (_b_) the restriction of the powers granted to the irish legislature by prohibiting their exercise in certain specific ways, or (_c_) the provision of some form of imperial veto or control. it is important to consider whether and how far such checks or "safeguards" are likely to prove effective and lasting. the "safeguards" proposed by the government of ireland bill, , were somewhat extended by the bill of ; and the proposals shortly to be submitted to parliament, so far as they can be gathered from recent speeches of ministers, will not in this respect differ materially from those contained in the latter bill. it will therefore be convenient to take as a basis for discussion the provisions of the bill of , as passed by the house of commons. the bill of , after stating in a preamble that it was "expedient that without impairing or restricting the supreme authority of parliament an irish legislature should be created for such purposes in ireland as in this act mentioned," proposed to set up in ireland a legislature[ ] consisting of the sovereign and two houses, namely a legislative council of members to be returned under a restricted franchise by the irish counties and the boroughs of dublin and belfast, and a legislative assembly of members to be returned by the existing parliamentary constituencies in ireland. a bill introduced into the irish legislature was to pass both houses; but in the event of disagreement the proposals of the legislative assembly were to be submitted, after a dissolution or a delay of two years, to a joint session of the two houses. the executive power was to remain in the crown, aided and advised by an irish ministry (called an executive committee of the privy council of ireland), and the assent of the crown to irish legislation was to be given or withheld on the advice of this executive committee subject to any instructions given by the sovereign. the specific reservations and restrictions were contained in clauses and of the bill, which were as follows:-- " . the irish legislature shall not have power to make laws in respect of the following matters or any of them:-- "( ) the crown, or the succession to the crown, or a regency; or the lord lieutenant as representative of the crown; or "( ) the making of peace or war or matters arising from a state of war; or the regulation of the conduct of any portion of her majesty's subjects during the existence of hostilities between foreign states with which her majesty is at peace, in respect of such hostilities; or "( ) navy, army, militia, volunteers, and any other military forces, or the defence of the realm, or forts, permanent military camps, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings, or any places purchased for the erection thereof; or "( ) authorising either the carrying or using of arms for military purposes, or the formation of associations for drill or practice in the use of arms for military purposes; or "( ) treaties or any relations with foreign states or the relations between different parts of her majesty's dominions, or offences connected with such treaties or relations, or procedure connected with the extradition of criminals under any treaty; or "( ) dignities or titles of honour; or "( ) treason, treason-felony, alienage, aliens as such, or naturalisation; or "( ) trade with any place out of ireland; or quarantine, or navigation, including merchant shipping (except as respects inland waters and local health or harbour regulations); or "( ) lighthouses, buoys, or beacons within the meaning of the merchant shipping act, , and the acts amending the same (except so far as they can consistently with any general act of parliament be constructed or maintained by a local harbour authority); or "( ) coinage; legal tender; or any change in the standard of weights and measures; or "( ) trade marks, designs, merchandise marks, copyright, or patent rights. "provided always, that nothing in this section shall prevent the passing of any irish act to provide for any charges imposed by act of parliament, or to prescribe conditions regulating importation from any place outside ireland for the sole purpose of preventing the introduction of any contagious disease. "it is hereby declared that the exceptions from the powers of the irish legislature contained in this section are set forth and enumerated for greater certainty, and not so as to restrict the generality of the limitation imposed in the previous section on the powers of the irish legislature. "any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. " . the powers of the irish legislature shall not extend to the making of any law-- "( ) respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, whether directly or indirectly, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or "( ) imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, advantage, or benefit, on account of religious belief, or raising or appropriating directly or indirectly, save as heretofore, any public revenue for any religious purpose, or for the benefit of the holder of any religious office as such; or "( ) diverting the property, or, without its consent, altering the constitution of any religious body; or "( ) abrogating or prejudicially affecting the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education, or any denominational institution or charity; or "( ) whereby there may be established or endowed out of public funds any theological professorship, or any university or college in which the conditions set out in the university of dublin tests acts, , are not observed; or "( ) prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at that school; or "( ) directly or indirectly imposing any disability or conferring any privilege, benefit, or advantage upon any subject of the crown on account of his parentage or place of birth, or of the place where any part of his business is carried on, or upon any corporation or institution constituted or existing by virtue of the law of some part of the queen's dominions, and carrying on operations in ireland, on account of the persons by whom or in whose favour, or the place in which any of its operations are carried on; or "( ) whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law in accordance with settled principles and precedents, or may be denied the equal protection of the laws, or whereby private property may be taken without just compensation; or "( ) whereby any existing corporation incorporated by royal charter or by any local or general act of parliament may, unless it consents, or the leave of her majesty is first obtained on address from the two houses of the irish legislature, be deprived of its rights, privileges, or property without due process of law in accordance with settled principles and precedents, and so far as respects property without just compensation. provided nothing in this sub-section shall prevent the irish legislature from dealing with any public department, municipal corporation, or local authority, or with any corporation administering for public purposes taxes, rates, cess, dues, or tolls, so far as concerns the same. any law made in contravention of this section shall be void." the power to impose taxation other than duties of custom and excise was to be transferred, subject to a short delay as to existing taxes and to a special provision in respect of taxes for war expenditure, to the irish legislature (clause ii). two judges of the supreme court in ireland, to be called "exchequer judges," were to be appointed under the great seal of the united kingdom, and to be removable only on an address from the imperial parliament; and proceedings relating to the reserved powers or to the customs or excise duties were to be determined by such judges (clause ). appeals from the courts in ireland were to lie to the judicial committee of the imperial privy council (clause ); and any question as to the powers of the irish legislature could be referred to the same committee (clause ). the royal irish constabulary and dublin metropolitan police force were gradually to disappear, and police matters to be regulated by the irish legislature and executive (clause ). the irish legislature was to be prohibited from passing land legislation for a period of three years (clause ). as to these proposals the first observation that occurs is that, in addition to the matters proposed to be reserved, there are others in which legislative uniformity throughout the kingdom is greatly to be desired. to mention but a few such matters, questions of status, contract and succession, of international trade and navigation, of the regulation of railways and of industrial labour, and of the criminal law, should not be differently determined in different parts of the kingdom; and as life becomes more complex, the number of subjects in which diversity of laws is a hindrance continues to increase. in the next place, it is to be noted that the checks proposed affect legislation only and not administration. if the bill of or any similar bill should become law, the whole executive power in ireland will be in an irish ministry responsible to an irish assembly; and it is obvious that many of the wrongs against which the restrictive clauses of the bill were directed may be inflicted by administrative act or omission as effectively as by legislation. to quote a work of authority[ ]-- "an independent irish executive will possess immense power. it will be able by mere administrative action or inaction, without passing a single law which infringes any restriction to be imposed by the irish government act, , to effect a revolution. let us consider for a moment a few of the things which the irish cabinet might do if it chose. it might confine all political, administrative, or judicial appointments to nationalists, and thus exclude loyalists from all positions of public trust. it might place the bench, the magistracy, the police, wholly in the hands of catholics; it might, by encouragement of athletic clubs where the catholic population were trained to the use of arms, combined with the rigorous suppression of every protestant association suspected, rightly or not, of preparing resistance to the parliament at dublin, bring about the arming of catholic, and the disarming of protestant, ireland, and, at the same time, raise a force as formidable to england as an openly enrolled irish army. but the mere inaction of the executive might in many spheres produce greater results than active unfairness. the refusal of the police for the enforcement of evictions would abolish rent throughout the country. and the same result might be attained by a more moderate course. irish ministers might in practice draw a distinction between 'good' landlords and 'bad' landlords, and might grant the aid of the police for the collection of 'reasonable,' though refusing it for the collection of 'excessive,' rents." irish ministers might even refuse actively to oppose the "moral claim" of the irish catholics to the use of the cathedrals and of the accumulated capital of the irish church.[ ] to contemplate the possibility of action or calculated inaction of the character above described is not to attribute to irishmen any special measure of original sin. in every case where the executive power is divorced from the ultimate legislative authority such divergencies are likely to recur; and more than one instance may be found in our own recent history. in the canadian government warned the home government that any attempt to interfere with the customs policy of the dominion was inadmissible, unless the home authorities were prepared to undertake the responsibility of administering the whole government of canada. the home government gave way.[ ] in the governor of cape colony proposed to place the colonial forces under the control of the officer commanding the imperial forces. the cape government resisted, and refused to resign; and eventually the governor, on the advice of the home government, dismissed his ministers. in this case a change of government occurred after the general election, but in the end the claim put forward by the imperial authorities had to be withdrawn.[ ] in the natal government proclaimed martial law, and ordered the execution of twelve natives on charges of murder. the imperial government intervened, and suggested the suspension of the order pending further consideration. the natal ministry immediately resigned; and as there was no chance of the formation of a new government, the imperial authorities hastily withdrew.[ ] differences have arisen even on so grave a matter as the succession to the throne. the union of england and scotland in was preceded and hastened by the so-called act of security, by which the scottish estates asserted the right to name a successor to the throne of scotland, who should not (except under certain specified conditions) be the person designated as sovereign by the english law. and during the illness of king george iii. in the year , grattan, in defiance of the views of pitt and of the majority in both houses of the imperial parliament, carried in the irish parliament an address to the prince of wales, calling upon him (without waiting for a regency bill) to assume the government of the irish nation, "and to exercise and administer all legal power, jurisdiction and prerogatives to the crown and government thereof belonging"--words borrowed from the address by which in the revolution of william of orange was requested to assume the crown. happily, the viceroy declined to present the address, and a deputation sent from ireland to present it found on their arrival that the king had recovered; but the incident might have led to a conflict upon a matter so important as the exercise of the royal power. the fact is that the word "supremacy," so often used in this controversy, is one of ambiguous meaning. parliament is supreme in the united kingdom, parliament is likewise supreme in new zealand; but the two supremacies are of widely different kinds. supremacy consists of two ingredients--authority to enact and power to enforce; and without the latter the former is little more than a legal figment, which may have no more practical importance than the theoretical right of veto which is retained by the crown. mr. balfour, speaking on the second reading debate of the bill, referred to this matter as follows:-- "legally, of course, the imperial parliament would be supreme: no one has doubted it. but what layman takes the slightest interest in these paper supremacies? for my part i take no more interest in the question of whether the imperial parliament is on paper superior to the irish parliament, than i do as to the order of precedence at a london dinner party. the thing is of no public interest or importance whatever. what we want to know is where the power lies. who is going to exercise supremacy? who is going to be the _de facto_ ruler of ireland?" special importance attaches to these considerations owing to the heavy liabilities undertaken by this country in respect of land purchase in ireland. at the present time many millions of british money are sunk in irish land, and the amount may increase to a sum approaching two hundred millions. the tenants now pay their annuities because, in the last resort, the government can turn them out. under home rule the powers of government would rest with men who have led "no rent" agitations in the past, and who would be dependent upon the votes of those personally interested in repudiating the debt. the british treasury can hardly run such a risk; and some sort of concurrent control, with all its evils and risks, seems to be necessary. and yet financial independence is the first essential to genuine autonomy. but, it may be said, if the irish government go beyond the law, the irish courts may be asked to interfere; and in the event of their refusal, the bill provides an appeal to the judicial committee in london. no doubt it does, but in practice the person aggrieved might have very great difficulty in making the remedy effective. he must obtain a decision in his favour from the judicial committee of the privy council, at no small cost of money and personal odium; and the decision of that "alien" tribunal (as it would be called) must then be enforced under the jurisdiction of a government which (on the hypothesis which we are considering) would be unfriendly, by judges and executive officers appointed and perhaps removable by that authority, and in the midst of a population hostile to "foreign" interference. is it extravagant to suppose that the complainant would not gain much by his appeal to cæsar? and even if we suppose the irish legislature and executive to confine themselves within the letter of the act, are the checks of any real value? the irish parliament might still interfere with contracts, or might validate contracts now held to be void as contrary to public policy. they might defeat the mortmain acts. they might deal as they thought fit with internal trade; and the great industries of belfast and its neighbourhood might find their views on trade questions of no avail. the irish legislature might create new offences and institute new tribunals; and the reference in the bill to "due process of law" would not necessarily secure trial by jury or by an impartial tribunal.[ ] it is said that legislation of this character would be subject to the veto of the crown. but that veto is to be exercised on the advice of the irish ministry subject to any instructions given by the sovereign; and so long as an irish legislature is entitled to withhold irish supply, a veto against the advice of the irish ministry would surely tend to become impossible. again, it is said that an unjust law passed by the irish parliament might be repealed by the imperial parliament. doubtless the technical right would exist, as in the case of the colonies; but no one dreams that, with "responsible" government existing in ireland and irish representatives at westminster, it would in practice be used. the imperial government has never been known to interfere with the legislation of a self-governing colony except where imperial interests are concerned, or where a fraud on the colony can be established;[ ] and the same rule would obtain in the case of ireland. lastly, it is said that in the last resort there is the british army. but if the civil power in ireland does not call in the military force, how can the latter be used to enforce the law? are the forces to be controlled from england, and what is this but a counter revolution? it is hardly worth while to liberate ireland from the peaceful rule of the imperial government in order to govern her by military force. but in fact the so-called "safeguards" would not last. professor dicey[ ] and professor morgan,[ ] writing from opposite sides of the controversy, agree in holding that no colony would tolerate them for a moment; and it is incredible that ireland, with a parliament of her own, would submit to them for more than a few years.[ ] suppose the majority of the irish legislature to grow weary of the "safeguards," and to demand their repeal. the imperial ministry might refuse, but the reply of the irish ministry (if in command of a majority in the irish house of commons) would be to resign and to make the government of ireland impossible except by force. and if ireland were still represented in the imperial parliament, the new "sorrows of ireland" would find eloquent and insistent expression there. what, then, would england do? what could she do, except, after a futile struggle, to give way? the truth is, that if you part with the executive power, all checks and "safeguards" are futile. mr. redmond[ ] eagerly "accepts every one of them," and will accept others if desired; for he knows that they must prove ineffective. "if," said lord derby in , "ireland and england are not to be one, ireland must be treated like canada or australia. all between is delusion or fraud." irish representation at westminster. the hybrid form of government proposed in the home rule bills of and gave rise to a further difficulty, and one which went far towards wrecking them both. should ireland under home rule be represented at westminster by its members and representative peers? under a system of gladstonian home rule there appear to be only three possible answers to this question. the irish representatives may be excluded altogether, they may be retained altogether, or they may be retained in diminished numbers and with some limitation on their voting powers. the total exclusion clause in the bill of was one of the most unpopular parts of an unpopular bill. it was immediately urged that this arrangement was virtually equivalent to separation, and mr. gladstone admitted[ ] that the argument had force. since public sentiment has advanced in the direction of a closer imperial unity, and it is unlikely that the country will recur in to a proposal which in was admitted to be intolerable. moreover, if the british parliament is to retain control of the whole foreign policy of the kingdom, and--what is likely to be of enormous importance in the future--of its whole fiscal policy, it would be manifestly unjust to deny to ireland a voice and vote in such matters. how would it be possible, for instance, to discuss the effect upon agriculture of a tariff reform budget in the absence of competent representatives of the irish farmers, or to consider the yearly grant to be made (as it is said) in aid of irish finance without the assistance of any representatives of ireland? a recognition of the difficulties in the way of total exclusion led mr. gladstone to propose, in , what was known as the "popping-in-and-out clause," under which irish members would have sat at westminster, but would have voted only on imperial measures. the best criticism of this attempt to distinguish between local and imperial matters was supplied on another occasion by mr. gladstone himself:-- "i have thought much, reasoned much, and inquired much with regard to that distinction, but i have arrived at the conclusion that it cannot be drawn. i believe it passes the wit of man." to distinguish between matters which might and those which could not affect ireland was impossible to the ordinary man, and the device of committing all matters of special difficulty to the decision of mr. speaker had not then its present vogue. further, it was obvious that under such a system a british ministry might have on one day, when english or scottish affairs were under discussion, a commanding majority; but on the next, when a vote possibly affecting the sister island was in question, might find itself labouring in the trough of the sea; while on the third day, that vote having been disposed of and the irish members having taken their leave, it might rise once more on the crest of the wave. the proposal was too ludicrous to be long defended. the sense of humour of the house prevailed over mr. gladstone's earnestness, and he fell back on inclusion for all purposes. but inclusion for all purposes had its own difficulties. under the gladstonian system the imperial parliament would have considered, not only matters affecting the whole kingdom, but also purely english or purely scottish affairs; and to give to the irish representatives the control in their own parliament of purely irish affairs, and also a voice at westminster on matters affecting england or scotland only, was obviously unjust. such a power would have been used, not for the benefit of england or scotland, but as an instrument for wresting further concessions for ireland. "i will never be a party," said mr. gladstone at one time, "to allowing the irish members to manage their own affairs in dublin, and at the same time to come over here and manage british affairs. such an arrangement would not be a bill to grant self-government to ireland, but one to remove self-government from england; it would create a subordinate parliament indeed, but it would be the one at westminster, and not that in dublin."[ ] the problem seems insoluble because, under a hybrid (or gladstonian) system of home rule, it is insoluble. if a clear line is taken, there is no difficulty under this head. if full "responsible" or colonial government is granted, clearly representation in the imperial parliament (i do not now speak of a federal assembly) is an anomaly. on the other hand, if nothing more is in question than the extension of local government generally known as devolution, then adequate representation in the imperial parliament is a matter of course. if a federal government is established, each member of the federation must needs be represented in the federal parliament; but in that case there must be no attempt to entrust to the same assembly both the duties of the federal parliament and those of a legislature for one of the federating states. it was this attempt to treat the imperial parliament as the local or state legislature for great britain, and also as the federal parliament for great britain and ireland, which was fatal to mr. gladstone's proposals. federalism. these considerations bring us face to face with federalism, or, to use the phrase which to so many perplexed liberals has seemed to point the way to safety, "home rule all round." the expression covers a wide field, and before any opinion can be pronounced upon the proposal, it is essential to know what its advocates in fact desire. to some the phrase means nothing less than gladstonian home rule "all round," in other words that we should meet the objections to dissolving the legislative and executive union with ireland by dissolving also the older union with scotland, and even (for some do not shrink from the _reductio ad absurdum_) the yet older unity of england and wales. consider what this means. for more than two hundred years the english and scottish races have been united by a constitutional bond strengthened by mutual respect and good feeling, and scotsmen, like englishmen, have taken their part in the government of these islands. if in the division of labour and of honours there has been a balance of advantage, it has not been against the virile scottish race, from which have sprung so many of our great soldiers and administrators, so many leaders of the nation. and such a combination is to be broken up, and scotland to become a colony, because ireland, unwilling to bear her share in the duties of government, desires to be reduced to that status! to such a proposal mr. gladstone's phrase about home rule applies in all its force:-- "can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for bestowing benefits through legislation on the country to which we belong?" the proposal would be incredibly stupid, if it were not recklessly mischievous. but to most advocates of the federal system the word means less than this; and the conception, usually vaguely expressed, is that the relations of england, scotland, and ireland, should be something like those of the communities which make up (to quote instances commonly given) the german empire, the swiss federation, the united states of america, or the british self-governing dominions of canada, australia, and south africa. so expressed, the aspiration for a federal union deserves respectful consideration. in the first place, it must not be forgotten that no proposal of this nature has yet been put forward, even in general terms, by any english or irish party. mr. john redmond, the leader of the irish nationalists, has indeed said that he and his friends "were only asking what had already been given in twenty-eight different portions of the empire:"[ ] and a speaker usually more careful in his language[ ] lately suggested to his audience that they should "ask the twenty-eight home rule parliaments if the empire would be split in pieces if there were a twenty-ninth." but in order to make up the number of parliaments and legislatures within the empire to twenty-eight it is necessary to include in one category the parliament of the united kingdom, the colonial parliaments of newfoundland and new zealand, the federal parliaments of canada and australia, the provincial or state legislatures (widely differing from one another in their constitution and powers) comprised in those federations, the union of south africa and its constituent provinces, and the tiny assemblies surviving in the channel islands and the isle of man. from a reference so vague and confused no inference as to the real meaning or desire of either speaker can safely be drawn.[ ] but let us put aside, with the foreign confederacies (which have in most cases been achieved or maintained by armed conflict), the practically independent parliaments within the british empire, and confine ourselves to the federations of canada and australia, and to the union (sometimes incorrectly called a federation) of south africa. in the first place, it is not immaterial to observe that each of the legislatures here referred to resulted, not from the dissolution of an existing union, but from the voluntary assumption by communities formerly independent of one another of a closer bond. in other words, there was in each case a real _jædus_ or treaty, not imposed by the imperial power, but having a local origin and springing from the need of common action. the operative force was centripetal; and as the force continues to operate, the tendency of the mass is towards a chemical in lieu of a mechanical fusion.[ ] but in the case of the united kingdom a change from organic union to federation would be the beginning of dissolution; and the centrifugal force, once set in motion, might lead further in the same direction. again, there can be no true federation without ( ) provincial legislatures and executives, ( ) a central parliament and executive, ( ) a careful definition of the powers of each, and ( ) a federal court to which should be entrusted the duty of determining questions arising between the federal and provincial governments and legislatures. if, therefore, provincial or state governments are created for ireland and for scotland, a like government should logically be created for england. are we prepared to see four (or, if wales be added, five) legislatures, and four (or five) executives, in these islands? have we considered the possible effect on our whole system of government, on the theory of cabinet responsibility to parliament, on the powers of the house of commons over grievance and supply? must not each unit in a federation be put as regards financial matters upon a like footing; and, if so, can ireland bear her share? is federation consistent with the predominance of one state, england, in wealth and population? these questions are vital, and none of them have received consideration. by declaring in general terms for federalism you go but a little way. and if we treat the proposal for federation as indicating a desire to adopt a constitution under which the relations of the united kingdom to each of its constituent parts would be as the relation of some one of the three self-governing dominions to the states or provinces of which it is composed, the question remains, which of those dominions should be adopted as a model? for they differ not only in form but in essence. under the british north america act, , and the amending statutes, there is "one parliament for canada" (sect. ), while each province has its legislature. each provincial legislature is empowered exclusively to make laws in relation to certain specified subjects (including property and civil rights and the administration of justice), and also in relation to "all matters of a merely local or private nature in the province"; while the dominion parliament may "make laws for the peace, order, and good government of canada in relation to all matters not coming within" the classes of subjects assigned exclusively to the provincial legislatures. the division of functions has given rise to much confusion and litigation; but, speaking generally, the trend of judicial decision has been towards a wide interpretation of the provincial powers. the "residuary powers" are in the dominion parliament. the constitution of the commonwealth of australia, as defined by the commonwealth of australia constitution act, , is of a different character. the federal parliament is entrusted with power to make laws with respect to a number of subjects divided into no less than classes (sect. ); the state legislatures have concurrent powers of legislation, but in case of conflict the law of the commonwealth is to prevail over the state law (sect. ). the "residuary powers" are in this case left to the states. there is power to alter the constitution with the consent of a majority of the electors in a majority of the states and of a majority of the electors of the commonwealth (sect. )--a power which has been freely used. the case of south africa is sometimes cited as a precedent for loosening the bonds in the united kingdom. it is a strong precedent for closer union. the south africa act, , created in fact as well as in name, not a federation but a true legislative union. under the act, the south african colonies were "united in a legislative union under one government under the name of the union of south africa" (sect. ). the legislative power is vested in the parliament of the union (sect. ), which has full power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the union (sect. ). in each province (formerly a colony) there is an administrator appointed by the governor-general of the union in council (sect. ), and a provincial council (sect. ); but the powers of the provincial councils are confined within narrow limits (sect. ), and their ordinances (they are not called laws) have effect within the province as long as and so far as they are not repugnant to any act of the union parliament (sect. ). the supreme courts of the old colonies become provincial divisions of the supreme court of south africa (sect. ), and the colonial property and debts are transferred to the union (sects. - ). in fact, in south africa, where, as in ireland, the distinction in the past has been racial and not territorial, union and not federation has gained the day. it is safe to prophesy that the coming proposals of the government will not follow the south african plan. devolution. the south african precedent leads naturally to a few observations on the proposals for the extension of local self-government, usually classified under the head of devolution. these proposals differ, not in degree only but in kind, from schemes for the granting of responsible government, or gladstonian home rule. under all devolutionary schemes, properly so-called, the central parliament and executive remain the ultimate depositaries of power; and the powers entrusted to local bodies are administrative only, and can be resumed at will. the acts by which county councils were set up, first in great britain and afterwards in ireland, were steps in this direction. the welsh intermediate education act, , was another. the establishment by the agriculture and technical instruction (ireland) act, , of a council of agriculture, as agricultural board, and a board of technical instruction, was a third. by these statutes wide powers are delegated to representative bodies directly or indirectly elected by popular vote; but in each case the delegated powers are strictly defined, their exercise is made subject to central control, and the right of parliament to modify or withdraw any of them is absolute and unquestioned. the appointment by the house of commons of a grand committee for scottish bills is another experiment of a similar character, though on different lines. such delegations of power are consistent with the maintenance in its entirety of the union of the kingdom, and there is no reason whatever why further progress should not be made in the same direction. the events of are evidence that devolution, regarded merely as a means of satisfying the political cry for home rule, is indeed "dead." but when the din of political battle has once more passed by, it may be possible to obtain consideration for a moderate and clearly defined scheme of delegation which, if applied not exclusively to ireland, but to the whole country, might relieve the house of commons of much of its work, and strengthen the habit of local self-government throughout the united kingdom. footnotes: [footnote : see "_times_ special commission," vol. v. p. , and "home rule. what is it?" by a.w. samuels, k.c. (simpkin marshall, ), p. .] [footnote : see no. of the liberal league publications.] [footnote : erskine childers, "the framework of home rule" (arnold, ).] [footnote : see speech of j.m. robertson, m.p., london, january , .] [footnote : "home rule problems" (p.s. king & son, ).] [footnote : written in march, .] [footnote : see egerton, "federations and unions in the british empire" (clarendon press, ). introduction.] [footnote : on the financial questions involved the government have been advised by a committee containing financial experts; but the report of this committee is withheld from publication, and it is believed that its advice will not be followed.] [footnote : house of commons, april , .] [footnote : quoted in "the true history of the american revolution," by s.g. fisher (lippincott, ).] [footnote : childers, p. .] [footnote : see cambray, "irish affairs and the irish question" (murray, ), p. .] [footnote : mr. gladstone always declined to call it a "parliament," but some ministers of to-day are less scrupulous.] [footnote : dicey, "a leap in the dark" (murray, ), p. .] [footnote : see "the church of ireland and home rule," by j.h. bernard, d.d., bishop of ossory, .] [footnote : house of commons papers, , xli. .] [footnote : parliamentary papers, .] [footnote : parliamentary papers (cd. ).] [footnote : "home rule problems," p. .] [footnote : see the newfoundland railway case of (parliamentary papers, cd. , ).] [footnote : "a leap in the dark," p. .] [footnote : "home rule problems," p. .] [footnote : mr. redmond rejected the provisions of the bill, saying in the house of commons on august , , that "as the bill now stands, no man in his senses can any longer regard it as a full, final, or satisfactory settlement of the irish nationalist question."] [footnote : speech at belfast, february , .] [footnote : july , , at cockermouth.] [footnote : see "the perils of home rule," by p. kerr-smiley (cassell, ), p. , where lord morley's opinion to the same effect is quoted.] [footnote : speech at whitechapel (_times_, october , ).] [footnote : sir john simon at dewsbury (_times_, february , ).] [footnote : no such charge of ambiguity applies to the forcible letters of "pacificus" on "federalism and home rule" (murray, ).] [footnote : the changes in the australian constitution have been in favour of greater unity.] iv home rule finance by the right hon. j. austen chamberlain, m.p. the financial problems connected with the grant of home rule in are among the most complicated that call for solution, and differ fundamentally from those which faced the governments of and . and by common consent, the problems are not merely different; they are immensely more difficult. no clauses in the earlier bills lent themselves more readily to destructive criticism; and though the provisions of the new scheme are still shrouded in mystery, it is inherent in the conditions under which it must be framed that the financial clauses will prove to be even less defensible on the grounds of logic or equity than those of either of its predecessors. since the first home rule bill was introduced the interests of ireland--social, economic, industrial, and political--have become increasingly identified with those of the other parts of the united kingdom. the commercial, banking, and railway systems of ireland are intimately associated with those of the greater and more firmly established systems of great britain. irish railways are so largely controlled at the present time by british concerns, and there exist so many agreements and understandings between them and british companies as to facilities and rates, that they might be regarded as part of the same network of communications. hardly less close are the relations which now exist between british and irish banks. it is not, however, on the commercial side only that greater intimacy and more firmly established relations exist now than formerly. irish industries are agricultural, dairying and manufacturing. in each of these branches the country is increasingly dependent on the markets of england and scotland; while reciprocally the products of the factories and workshops of great britain find in ireland one of their most important markets. we do not always sufficiently realise that on the other side of the st. george's channel lies a country whose annual imports amount to sixty-five millions sterling. even less do we realise that one-half (thirty-two millions sterling) is the value of the imports of manufactures, mainly british, into ireland. this trade in manufactured goods is not only already enormous; it is rapidly growing. it has increased by more than four millions in four years. any ill-considered legislative measure which interfered with or disturbed this great volume of trade would no doubt cause serious loss to ireland; but it would bring bankruptcy and disaster to many british firms and their workmen. it is, nevertheless, in respect of the political changes and the legislative measures passed in the last quarter of a century that the most serious obstacles will be found in the way of framing any satisfactory scheme for financing a measure of home rule. the irish local government system, framed on the british model by the act of , the congested districts board, and the department of agriculture, have hitherto depended financially, either wholly or in part, on imperial grants in aid. local taxation payments alone from the imperial exchequer amounted in - to £ , , . the financial scheme under home rule must obviously contemplate and provide for the continuance of those grants. land purchase schemes have been enacted which have already had the effect of converting a quarter of a million tenants into owners under a contingent liability of millions sterling guaranteed by the imperial exchequer. no financial scheme can ignore the fact that the earliest of the annuities created under the wyndham act will not expire before , so that the imperial liability for the payment of the bulk of the annuities already created will continue for at least seventy years more. finally, we are faced with the fact that in the last twenty-five years the relations of the state to its citizens have been completely reformed and extended. social reform is now in the programme of all parties. education costs several times as much as in . the aged poor have been provided with pensions by the state, and the insurance act of last year will shortly call for additional subventions from the imperial treasury. in addition to the new duties thus undertaken by the state, the cost of defence and of the civil services has grown by leaps and bounds. we need not look too closely into the apportionment of these charges whilst we remain partners in a united kingdom, but if the partnership is to be dissolved at the suit of irish nationalism, a new balance must be struck, and on any fair basis the contribution of ireland under present-day conditions should far exceed the amount under either of the schemes for which mr. gladstone made himself responsible. both schemes recognised the equity of some contribution for these services from ireland, and it must be assumed that the same broad principles will be applied in any scheme which may be framed hereafter. by way of introduction to any adequate discussion of the possible financial proposals of any home rule measure, it is desirable to set out in some detail the existing financial relations of ireland and great britain. the treasury calculations on this subject are embodied in two white papers which have been prepared and published annually during the last eighteen years. it is true that doubts have from time to time been cast on the accuracy of these calculations and of the methods by which the materials on which they are based have been collected. as to this, it is only necessary to say that the information in the possession of the treasury officials is infinitely more voluminous and likely to be more accurate than any in the possession of private individuals; and there is no reason to suppose the succession of eminent public servants, who have been in turn responsible for the preparation of these returns have been moved in one direction or the other by prepossessions or bias. their one attempt has been throughout to present a statement, as accurate as it is possible to make it on the one hand of the cost of the existing administration in ireland and the expenditure incurred there, and on the other of the revenue derived from persons or property living or situated in that country. as the prime minister said on november of last year-- "the utmost pains have been taken to make the estimates of 'true' revenue approximately correct, and it is believed that the total revenue as given in the revised returns approximates closely to the facts."[ ] so long as ireland is an integral part of the united kingdom, such an investigation has mainly an academic interest. the state is a homogeneous entity; the taxes imposed on individuals similarly circumstanced are the same (with some trifling exceptions--all in favour of ireland) in whatever quarter of the united kingdom the individual resides. but the case is wholly different when a proposal is made to split up the state into its constituent parts. it then becomes necessary to inquire if there is any prospect that the constituent parts will have resources sufficient for the various services, commitments and liabilities--present and contingent--which do or will belong to them. and the beginning of any such inquiry is, as has been already said, the present irish revenue and expenditure. the essential figures for such an investigation are contained in the following statement. this shows separately the expenditure on the various items which have been the subject of discussion or special mention in the different financial schemes proposed in connection with home rule. on the revenue side the effect of the delayed collection of duties under the budget of - has been eliminated by taking the average revenue in the two years in certain items. the figures of expenditure relate to the year - . the corresponding figures for both collection and contribution are set out in this table in consequence of the suggestion made in some quarters that we should revert to the gladstonian proposal of and credit ireland with the full revenue as collected. though any such proposal is patently absurd it is mentioned here for the sake of completeness. statement showing estimated revenue and expenditure in ireland (based on white papers and of ). revenue as collected. as contributed. £ £ . customs[a] , , , , . excise (_ex._ licences)[a] , , , , . licence duties[a] , , . estate, etc.[a] , , . general stamps[a] , , . income tax[a] , , , , . postal services , , , , . miscellaneous , , total £ , , £ , , [a] = average of two years, - and - . expenditure. £ . civil list and miscellaneous charges (_ex._ lord-lieutenant's salary) , . lord-lieutenant's salary , . local taxation payments , , . public works , . civil service departments , . department of agriculture , . police , , . judiciary, etc. , . education, etc. , , . old age pensions , , . superannuation, etc. , . ireland development grant , . miscellaneous , . revenue departments , . postal services , , total £ , , the first striking fact in the foregoing statement is the large difference between "contributions" and "collections," _i.e._ between the "true" revenue derived from ireland and the sums merely collected there. during the last two financial years this difference amounted to an average of £ , , . the excise collections alone represent an excess of £ , , over the actual contribution. this, of course, arises from the movements of duty-paid spirits and beer between different parts of the united kingdom. the last report of the commissioners of customs and excise (cd. ) gives the amount of home-made spirits on which duty has been paid in ireland at , , proof gallons, whereas the quantity retained for consumption was only , , proof gallons. a similar but smaller difference exists in the case of beer. to credit ireland with the full amounts of the duties collected in ireland, as was done by mr. gladstone in , and as is now proposed in some quarters, would, in effect, amount to a gift from the british exchequer of £ , , a year. and there is obviously no security that the irish exchequer could rely on this boon being continued for more than a short time. there would be nothing to prevent the british spirit merchant from removing his spirits to this country in bond and paying the duty here after arrival. it is obvious that the treasury would be compelled to grant facilities for this course. the present system is merely one of book-keeping and administrative convenience, but as the withdrawal of this sum from the british exchequer to which it properly belongs would have to be made good from other british sources, there would be every inducement for the british merchant to effect such slight changes of method as would transfer the whole of this sum from the irish to the british exchequer. having regard to the fact that on the other sources of revenue the collections in ireland are estimated to fall short of the actual contributions by nearly £ , , and that these are in the main direct taxes paid by the individuals concerned, it is not unlikely that a scheme which gave to ireland the full benefit of her revenues as collected would in a short time be converted from a gain of some £ , , to a loss of £ , to £ , to the irish taxpayer. stability in the tax system and reliability upon the realisation of the estimated revenue could not be assumed if "collections" instead of "contributions" were to be made the basis of any financial arrangements. turning next to the contributed revenue upon which alone an irish parliament could rely, we note first the large proportion of the revenue represented by customs and excise. contrasted with the figures for great britain, it is seen by the following table that whereas in ireland the revenue from customs and excise amounts to per cent. of the total, in great britain the proportion was not more than per cent. percentage of revenue from different sources contributed by ireland and great britain respectively in two years ending march , .[ ] ireland. great britain. per cent. per cent. customs - / excise (_ex._ licences) - / estate, etc., duties - / income tax - / postal, etc. other sources --- --- exclusive of the licence duties the average yield (contribution) of customs and excise in great britain amounted in the last two years to £ , , , or at the rate of £ _s._ _d._ per head; in ireland the average yield was £ , , , or at the rate of £ _s._ _d._ per head. the incidence of our consumption taxes is thus seen to be at the present time practically the same in ireland as in great britain; and the much larger proportion of the irish revenue obtained from them is due to the smaller relative yield of direct taxes. ireland being mainly an agricultural country, income tax, death duties, and stamps yield much less per head of the population there than in great britain. such conditions are highly suggestive of inelasticity. an irish chancellor of the exchequer will find no such fiscal reserves in direct taxes as does his more fortunate british colleague. this conclusion should give pause to those who think that if the customs and excise continued to be controlled from westminster, it would be still possible to extract the larger revenue needed for the growing expenditure of ireland by higher rates of income tax and death duties. such a course would increase the burdens of the direct taxpayers of ireland, but it would not fill the irish treasury. on the other hand, it is clear that there is no chance of relief being afforded to the irish indirect taxpayer under home rule, supposing customs and excise were handed over to the irish parliament. yet whenever a british chancellor of the exchequer has found it necessary to increase any of the taxes on consumption, the protests from the irish benches have been invariably both loud and vehement. irish members have pointed to the low wages earned in ireland, the greater addiction of the people to tea and spirits, and the higher toll of their earnings consequently extracted by the exchequer. the yield of existing taxes, therefore, whether direct or indirect, is not elastic in ireland. neither of them afford sufficient resources to meet the necessities of an irish parliament. there are, of course, other reasons why there should be no delegation of the power to impose customs and excise. the constitutional objections to such a course are overwhelming. it would involve the abandonment of the plea that home rule for ireland was the prelude to home rule all round; in other words, that separation was the condition precedent to federalism. in every federal system in the world the control of customs and excise has been retained by the central authority. this is true not only of the quasi-federations within the british empire; it is equally true of the united states, germany, and switzerland. one can scarcely be surprised at the emphatic repudiation which such a proposal received at the hands of the parliamentary secretary to the board of trade (mr. j.m. robertson) when, on february , , in a speech at lincoln, he said-- "there was, however, just one thing that must remain one for three kingdoms, and that was the fiscal system, customs and excise. _it was a federal union we want, a federal state._ if they were to do as some of his unreflecting home rule friends, irish and english, have done, and demand that ireland should not only have power to lay taxes but to fix customs and excise then they had no state left at all." another obvious objection to such a course is that it necessitates the erection of a customs barrier between ireland and great britain. tariff reformers are ready to admit that the present fiscal system is at least as injurious to ireland as to other portions of the united kingdom. the power to impose customs duties on british goods--and the proportion of british total imports is so large that if this power were limited to foreign goods it would be financially valueless--would no doubt provide the irish exchequer with considerable funds and might be used to develop her prosperity. but the separation of the customs systems for the purpose of enabling ireland to impose tariffs in her own interests would necessarily be followed by a demand for treaty-making powers such as have been successfully claimed and are now enjoyed by british dominions overseas. under a general tariff for the united kingdom the same advantages would accrue to ireland without any corresponding damage to british or imperial interests. thus, whether customs and excise are handed over to the irish parliament or retained by the imperial parliament, the consequences are equally embarrassing. in the one case ireland would be deprived of the control of some per cent. of her present revenue, and of all power of expansion; in the other, british trade with ireland might be gravely injured by hostile legislation, and the union of the three kingdoms in financial and commercial policy would be destroyed. but this is not federation, nor is it a step towards it. it is separation pure and simple. unless we are prepared to accept separation as the end of our policy the control of customs and therefore of excise, must remain an imperial affair. there can, therefore, be no justification for taking the control of the customs and excise from the imperial parliament. the irish parliament would thus be left with some per cent. of present revenue under her own control. but the power to raise further revenue within the limits legally reserved to the irish parliament would be even less than this figure would imply. for of the £ , , of revenue other than customs and excise, nearly £ , , comes from the postal services; and even if these services were controlled by ireland, it may be taken that the rates charged will be the same as in great britain. of the remaining £ , , nearly one-half comes from income tax. it has already been pointed out that its yield cannot be materially increased. there are only two ways by which an irish chancellor might attempt such a task. he might raise the rate of income tax or he might lower the exemption limit. the former course would almost certainly be followed by two equally undesirable results. so far as the tax continued to be paid in ireland it would fall with crushing force on the already heavily-burdened agricultural industry. still, from the point of view of the exchequer, there might be some additional revenue on this account. on the other hand, there would be a check to the investment of capital in ireland--and no country needs capital more--and a powerful temptation to transfer it where the tax would be lower. it may be seriously questioned, therefore, whether any increase in the income tax above the british rate is practicable. the other alternative, namely, the lowering of the exemption limit, would be so unpopular that no irish chancellor is ever likely to consider it seriously. passing from the consideration of revenue it is necessary to examine the relation of present revenue to present expenditure. the first table in the present article shows that the ascertainable expenditure for irish purposes in - was about £ , , more than the revenue. to this expenditure must be added about £ , for the state share of the benefits under part i. of the national insurance act, about £ , in respect of part ii., and about £ , for cost of administration of both parts, increasing the immediate deficit to about £ , , . this calculation, moreover, includes no charge against irish revenue on account of imperial services--navy and army; national debt, interest and management; the diplomatic services, and so forth. the equity of such payments has been consistently recognised in the two bills and the three financial schemes submitted by mr. gladstone. however moderate the scale of contribution it would in the present case double or treble the margin between irish revenue and irish expenditure for local purposes. if, for example, the precedent of the bill were followed, and ireland charged with a contribution for imperial services in proportion to the estimated relative taxable capacities, the additional charges on the irish exchequer would amount to not less than about £ , , on the - figures if the taxable capacity of ireland be taken at one-twenty-fifth, and to nearly £ , , if it be taken at one-thirtieth. it may be worth while here to refer to the amazing statement that great britain has made a large "profit out of the union." at the last meeting of the british association, prof. oldham affected to prove that ireland "in the course of one hundred years ... had sent across the channel as her contribution to the british exchequer a clear net payment of about millions sterling." the same contention has been urged by lord macdonnell. this calculation ignores the fact that even the irish parliament between and acknowledged its obligation to contribute to imperial services, and voted contributions for imperial purposes, besides raising and maintaining in ireland a force of , to , men, some of whom were available for foreign service. it makes no allowance also for the debt which ireland brought into the union when the exchequers were amalgamated in . the importance of the last item may be judged from the fact that if the whole of the so-called contribution to imperial services, _i.e._ the excess of true revenue over local expenditure, had been employed since in paying interest at per cent. on the old irish debt and the whole of any balance remaining after payment of interest had been used for redemption of the capital, this debt would only have been extinguished in . if a contribution of only per cent. to the cost of imperial services had been previously charged against this excess, there would be a large balance of the irish debt still outstanding. as a matter of fact, in the same period that ireland is said to have contributed £ , , , great britain may be shown by a precisely similar calculation to have contributed no less than £ , , , for imperial purposes. the measure of "injustice to ireland" meted out by unsympathetic britons in respect to the imperial contribution extracted from ireland may be seen from the following comparison for different dates in the last century. ratios of populations and contributions to imperial services of ireland and great britain at decennial intervals. ratio of british to ratio of british to irish populations. irish contributions. - · · - · · - · · - · · - · · - · · - · · - · · - · · - · [ ] the truth is that from a financial point of view ireland has no valid complaint to make on the score of her contributions for imperial purposes. between and the irish population was a little less than one-half of the population of great britain; her contribution for imperial services varied from one-eleventh to one-thirteenth. in - the british contribution was - / times the irish, though the population was less than nine times as large. if any contribution for imperial services from ireland is justified, and mr. gladstone at least acknowledged it, no one can say that the contribution actually taken from ireland has been excessive. as already stated we are still without any information as to the financial proposals to be included in the home rule bill of . the government have appointed a committee to advise them upon this subject. though the cost of the committee has been met out of public funds, and sources of information were laid open to them which are not readily available to the public, the prime minister has steadily refused to supply to parliament any information as to the results of their labours.[ ] the terms of reference to the commission; the witnesses examined by them; the information placed at their disposal; the character of the conclusions and recommendations; these have, all alike, been refused to the house of commons. but while parliament has been denied this information, there is every reason to believe that the leaders of the nationalist party have been taken fully into the confidence of the government. we do not know whether, for example, the customs or excise or both will be imposed and collected by the future irish parliament. we do not know whether any contribution will be required for the irish share of imperial services. we are equally uncertain whether any and what purely irish services will be retained by the imperial parliament, and charged on the imperial exchequer. and lastly, the intentions of the government in regard to the payment of a subsidy from the imperial exchequer to the irish parliament, with which rumour is busy, are as yet unrevealed. in spite of this lamentable paucity of information as to the government plan, i think it can be safely said that no scheme even remotely resembling any of those presented in connection with the two previous bills can be put forward now. each of those schemes would involve the irish parliament in a huge deficit from the very outset. even if the schemes were adapted to the changed modern conditions the same impassable gap between available revenue and certain expenditure remains. those schemes presumably embodied principles which the governments of and , and the nationalist parties of those dates regarded as adequate. it would be strange if it were otherwise, seeing that an examination and comparison of the separate schemes can discover no other consistent principles except the solitary one of juggling with the revenues, expenditures, and contributions in such manner as would start the irish parliament with a small surplus. in view of the importance of these earlier attempts to secure an approximation to financial equilibrium, it appears desirable to examine how ireland would fare in modern conditions under each of them. the essential features of the scheme were as follows:-- . customs and excise to be under the complete control of the imperial parliament. . irish parliament to have power to levy any other taxes. . ireland to contribute annually to the consolidated fund of the united kingdom. (_a_) £ , , for interest and management of irish share of national debt. (_b_) £ , , for contribution to imperial defence. (_c_) £ , for contribution to imperial civil services. (_d_) £ , , for irish constabulary. . contributions (_a_) to (_d_) were not to be increased for thirty years, but might be diminished. . irish share of national debt to be reckoned at £ , , , and irish sinking fund to begin at £ , , increasing by amount of interest released on redeemed portion of debt. . contribution to imperial defence and civil services not to exceed one-fifteenth of the total cost in any year. . irish contribution to be credited with receipts on account of crown revenues in ireland. . if expenditure on constabulary fell below £ , , , contribution (_d_) to be correspondingly reduced. . customs and excise _collected_ in ireland were to be subject to following charges:-- (_a_) cost of collection, not more than per cent. (_b_) contributions to consolidated fund of the united kingdom. (_c_) payments to national debt commissioners. (_d_) any sums required under the land act of that session the balance being paid over to the irish government. . the lord lieutenant's salary not to fall on the irish exchequer. broadly the scheme gave to the irish government credit for the customs and excise _collected_ in ireland and charged it with annual payments of £ , , in addition to the cost of collection. it is clear that mr. gladstone, at the time when the irish population was about one-eighth of the united kingdom, assumed ireland to have a taxable capacity of one-fifteenth. if such a scheme were introduced at the present moment it is obvious that, owing to the further decline in the population of ireland, a smaller figure for taxable capacity must be taken. what that figure should be it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide satisfactorily. it is generally assumed that on the basis of the calculations made by the financial relations commission in , the present relative taxable capacity for ireland would be about one-twenty-fifth that of the united kingdom. in the last two financial years the irish contribution to income tax has been one-twenty-eighth, and the contribution to estate duties one-twenty-sixth of the total collection in the united kingdom. these proportions, taken as measures of taxable capacity must be exceptionally favourable to ireland, where the proportion of income tax payers and of persons possessing property paying death duties is relatively to the total population smaller than in the united kingdom as a whole. if, therefore, for the sake of the present calculations the mean of two proportions--_i.e._ one-twenty-seventh deducible from the income tax and death duty contributions is assumed, we employ a figure exceptionally favourable to ireland. the financial statement on the next page showing the scheme applied to present conditions has been drawn up on this basis. the revenue is here assumed to come in at the average rate of the last two years ( - and - ) and the expenditure is taken as that of - . the state of the irish exchequer under the foregoing scheme would be indeed a parlous one. it would start with a deficit of £ , , , and with a prospective immediate increase by about £ , on account of the insurance act. the actual budget deficit would thus be about £ , , . the imperial parliament would collect about £ , , , and after deducting £ , , would hand back to the irish exchequer the difference of £ , , . the revenues upon which the chancellor in the irish parliament could rely would be, therefore, £ , , . out of this an expenditure of £ , , would have to be met. the postal services would probably not stand any increased charges; there is left, therefore, only £ , , of free revenue, and only £ , , under the unrestricted control of the irish parliament. with such resources it would be obviously impossible to make good a deficit of £ , , by any increase of taxation. it must not be overlooked, also, that the effect of crediting ireland with customs and excise as "collected" instead of as "contributed" is practically to make the irish parliament a further free gift of nearly £ , , . a totally different scheme accompanied the home rule bill of as introduced. the principal features of the new scheme were as follows:-- . customs, excise, and postage to be imposed by the imperial parliament. . excise and postage to be collected and managed by the irish parliament. . customs to be collected and retained by the imperial parliament in view of contribution to imperial services. . excise duties collected in ireland on articles consumed in great britain to be handed over to imperial exchequer. . if excise duties be increased the yield of the excess duties to be handed over to the imperial exchequer. . if excise duties be reduced and irish revenue diminished, the deficiency to be made good to irish revenue. . two-thirds of the cost of the constabulary to be repaid to the imperial exchequer. some of the provisions of this scheme are of exceptional interest. if it had ever been in operation the plan, for example, of adjusting the payments from one exchequer to the other in the event of changes being enacted by the imperial parliament in the excise duties must have been fruitful of difficulties and created much friction. if the duties had been reduced there might have been an increased consumption. who can say how much of the revenue lost to the irish exchequer in the event of a reduction of duties would have been due to the reduced rates of duty, and how much had been regained by increased consumption. again, if the excise duties had been increased, as in the budget of , to such a degree that the total revenue at the higher duty was less than the total revenue from the lower duty, who could have determined whether this was a case requiring a payment from the irish to the british exchequer, or from the british to the irish exchequer. perhaps the most striking novelty of the first scheme of was the retention of the customs duties in lieu of ireland's contribution to imperial services. at that time the estimated value of the customs contributed by ireland was £ , , , and seeing that in her reasonable share of liability on account of imperial services was put at £ , , , the very large gift to ireland represented by this scheme may be readily imagined. even with the full advantage of this gift the estimated irish surplus was put at £ , . during the discussions of the bill an error in the excise contributions, reducing the revenue available to the irish exchequer by £ , was discovered. the reduced surplus of £ , was regarded by mr. gladstone as "cutting it too fine," and the financial scheme was completely recast. before explaining the third scheme it might be well to examine as before how the original scheme of would work out at the present time. this is shown in the following balance sheet. scheme b (based on bill of , as introduced). revenue. £ expenditure. £ . excise (true revenue . civil government _ex._ licences) , , charges (_ex._ constabulary . local taxes-- and lord (_a_) stamps , lieutenant's salary) , , (_b_) death duties , . collection of ireland (_c_) income tax , , revenues, etc. , (_d_) excise licences , . postal services , , . postal revenue , , . contribution to constabulary . miscellaneous , ( / rds of --------- £ , , ) , , , deficit , , --------- --------- , , , , the narrow surplus of £ , has disappeared, and instead there is on present-day figures the substantial deficit of £ , , . here again it may be observed that the excise duties are fixed by the imperial parliament, and the postal charges are presumably also invariable. the first budget deficit would, as before, be not less than £ , , . the taxes within the absolute control of the irish parliament would have been producing a revenue of £ , , . it is within this range of taxation, or by the imposition of new direct taxes, that the irish chancellor of the exchequer would have been compelled to raise an additional £ , , in order to make the two sides of his account balance. owing to the mistake already referred to, mr. gladstone prepared and presented a third scheme, whose principal features were as follows:-- . ireland's contribution to imperial expenditure to be one-third of the true revenue of taxes levied in ireland. . ireland to be credited with miscellaneous receipts and surplus (if any) arising from postal services. . ireland to pay out of revenues credited to her, two-thirds of the cost of the constabulary, all civil government charges and any deficit on postal services. . the customs and inland revenue duties and the rates for postal charges to be fixed and collected by imperial parliament. . after six years ( ) irish contribution to imperial services to be revised; ( ) the collection of inland revenue duties to be undertaken by irish government; ( ) irish legislation to impose the stamp duties, income tax, and excise licences. the financial clauses as thus remodelled and simplified were expected to produce a surplus of £ , . the characteristic feature of this arrangement was the provision for handing over to the imperial exchequer one-third of the irish true tax revenue as ireland's payment on account of imperial services. how matters would stand if this arrangement were applied to the present financial situation in ireland may be seen from the following table. scheme c (based on bill of , as amended). revenue. £ expenditure £ . customs , , . civil government . excise (_ex._ licence charges , , duties) , , . constabulary ( / rds . stamps , of £ , , ) , . death duties , . estimated deficit on . licence duties , postal services , . income tax , , . crown lands, etc. , --------- , , --------- . / rds of £ , , , , . miscellaneous receipts , --------- , , deficit , , --------- --------- total , , total , , --------- --------- the main irish objection to a scheme of this description is that, whatever tax be imposed, the amount taken from the irish taxpayer would be per cent. greater than the amount going into the irish exchequer. it is easy to foresee that such an arrangement would have led to much friction and difficulty, and that it could not have lasted even the six years for which it was provisionally fixed. if applied to the present situation ireland would have been contributing less than £ , , for imperial services, although a very moderate estimate of what her contribution should be would require her to pay at least £ , , . in spite of this modest payment, however, this scheme would have confronted the irish chancellor of the exchequer with a deficit of more than £ , , rising at once to £ , , in consequence of the insurance act. in reviewing the three financial schemes which have previously seen the light, the following facts stand out clearly:-- . some contribution was expected from ireland for imperial services in each scheme. . the rates of customs, excise, and postage were in all cases to be controlled by the imperial parliament. . the customs were in every case to be collected by officers of the imperial exchequer. . in the two schemes of "true" revenue and not "collected" revenue was the basis of the financial arrangement. . each of these schemes would involve the irish parliament from the outset in a huge deficit. in view of these facts it is certain that any arrangement which pretended to give a budget surplus to the irish parliament would involve, overtly or covertly, the payment of a large subsidy to ireland out of the imperial exchequer. such a contingency is not likely to make home rule more acceptable, or the path of any bill through parliament more easy. footnotes: [footnote : see parliamentary debates.] [footnote : based on white papers ( ) and ( ).] [footnote : no contribution from ireland in this year; local expenditure is estimated to have been in excess of revenue contributed.] [footnote : since the above was written, mr. birrell has promised (march , ) to publish the report "some time" after the introduction of the home rule bill.] v home rule and the colonial analogy. by l.s. amery, m.p. there is no argument in favour of home rule for ireland which is more frequently used to-day than that which is based on the analogy of our colonial experience. in the history of every one of our colonies--so runs one variant of the argument--from lord durham's report on canada down to the grant of responsible government to the transvaal, "home rule" has turned disaffection into loyalty, and has inaugurated a career of prosperity. why should we then hesitate to apply to irish discontent the "freedom" which has proved so sovereign a remedy elsewhere? again, if our dominions have been able to combine local home rule with national unity--so runs another variant--why should a policy which works successfully in canada or australia not work in the united kingdom? another suggestion freely thrown out is that home rule is only the beginning of a process of federalisation which is to bring us to the goal of imperial federation. in one form or another the colonial analogy occupies the foreground of almost every speech or article in favour of irish home rule. the ablest, as well as the most courageous, piece of home rule advocacy which has so far appeared, mr. erskine childers's "framework of home rule," is based from first to last on this analogy and on little else. that the argument is effective cannot be gainsaid. it is the argument which appeals most strongly to the great body of thoughtful liberals who from every other point of view look upon the project with unconcealed misgiving. it is the argument which has appealed to public opinion in the dominions, and has there secured public resolutions and private subscriptions for the nationalist cause. in one of its forms it appealed to the imagination of an imperialist like cecil rhodes. in another it has, undoubtedly, in recent years attracted not a few unionists who have been prepared to approach with, at any rate, an open mind the consideration of a federal constitution for the united kingdom. and, indeed, if the analogy really applied, it would be difficult to resist the conclusion. if ireland has really been denied something which has proved the secret of colonial loyalty and prosperity, what englishman would be so short-sighted as to wish to deprive her of it for the mere sake of domination? if home rule were really a stepping-stone towards imperial federation, how insincere our professions of "thinking imperially," if we are not prepared to sacrifice a merely local sentiment of union for a great all-embracing ideal! but, as a matter of fact, there is no such analogy bearing on the question which, here and now, is at issue. on the contrary the whole trend of colonial experience confirms, in the most striking fashion, the essential soundness of the position which unionists have maintained throughout, that the material, social and moral interests, alike of ireland and of great britain, demand that they should remain members of one effective, undivided legislative and administrative organisation. the whole argument, indeed, plausible as it is, is based on a series of confusions, due, in part, to deliberate obscuring of the issue, in part to the vagueness of the phrase "home rule," and to the general ignorance of the origin and real nature of the british colonial system. there are, indeed, three main confusions of thought. there is, first of all, the confusion between "free" or "self-governing" institutions, as contrasted with unrepresentative or autocratic rule, and separate government, whether for all or for specified purposes, as contrasted with a common government. in the next place there is the confusion between the status of a self-governing dominion, in its relations to the imperial government, and the status of a colonial state or provincial government towards the dominion of which it forms a part. a truly inimitable instance of this confusion has been provided by mr. redmond in a declaration made on more than one occasion that all that ireland asks for, is, "what has already been given to twenty-eight different portions of the empire."[ ] considering that the "portions" thus enumerated include practically sovereign nation states like canada, provinces like those of the south african union, with little more than county council powers, and stray survivals, like the isle of man, of an earlier system of government, based on the same principle of ascendency and interference as the government of ireland under poynings's act, it is difficult to know which to admire most, mr. redmond's assurance, or his cynical appreciation of the ignorance or capacity for deliberate self-deception of those with whom he has to deal. the third confusion is that between imperial functions and national or dominion functions, due to the fact that the two are combined in the united kingdom parliament, which is also, under present conditions, the imperial parliament, and to the consequent habitual use of the word "imperial" in two quite different senses. it is this last confusion which makes such a declaration as mr. asquith's about safeguarding "the indefeasible authority of the imperial parliament" a mere equivocation, for it affords no indication as to whether the supremacy retained is the effective and direct control maintained by canada over ontario, or the much slighter and vaguer supremacy exercised by the united kingdom over the dominions. it is this same confusion, too, which is responsible for the notion that the problem of creating a true imperial parliament or council by a federation of the dominions would be assisted, either by creating an additional dominion in the shape of ireland, or by arranging the internal constitution of the united kingdom, as one of the federating dominions, on a federal rather than on a unitary basis. the confusion of ideas between self-government and separate government pervades the whole argument that the granting of "home rule" to ireland would be analogous to the grant of responsible institutions to the colonies. the essence of home rule is the creation of a separate government for ireland. the essence of our colonial policy has been the establishment of popular self-government in the colonies. that this self-government has been effected through local parliaments and local executives, and not by representation in a common parliament, is a consequence of the immense distances and the profound differences in local conditions separating the dominions from the mother country. it is an adaptation of the policy to peculiar conditions, and not an essential principle of the policy itself. this is obvious from any consideration of the circumstances under which the policy of colonial self-government originated. under the old colonial system which preceded it, the governor not only controlled the executive government, whose members were simply his official subordinates, but also controlled legislation through a nominated upper chamber or legislative council. the object of this restrictive policy was not interference with local affairs, but the supposed necessity of safeguarding general imperial interests. local affairs were, in the main, left to the local government. but the peculiar constitution of that government rendered it almost inevitable that the practical control of those affairs should fall into the hands of a narrowly limited class, clustering round the governor and his circle, and by its privileges and prejudices creating in those excluded from that class a spirit of opposition, which extended from its members to the whole imperial system which they were supposed to personify. in each of the north american colonies a small oligarchy, generally known as the "family compact," was able to "monopolise the executive council, the legislative council, the bench, the bar, and all offices of profit." it was against this system, and not against the imperial connection or even against undue interference from england, that the canadian rebellion of was directed. in lord durham made his famous report in which he attributed the troubles to their true cause, the disregard of public opinion, and proposed that the governor should in future govern, in local affairs, in accordance with the advice given by colonial ministers enjoying the confidence of the popular assembly. a few years later his policy was put into execution by lord elgin in canada, and rapidly extended to other colonies. five years ago the same system of government was applied to the transvaal and to the orange river colony.[ ] from the foregoing brief summary, it is sufficiently clear that the really vital feature of the policy inaugurated by lord durham was the acceptance of responsible popular government in local affairs, and not the separation of colonial government from imperial control. the policy did not involve the setting up of new legislative machinery or a new definition of imperial relations. for an existing system of separate government in local affairs, which created friction and discontent, it simply substituted a new system which has, in the main, worked smoothly up to the present. from the success of this policy, what possible direct inference can be drawn as to the effect of setting up in ireland, not a similar system of government, for ireland already enjoys political institutions as fully representative as those of any colony, or of any other portion of the united kingdom, but a separate centre of government? at the same time the success of responsible government in the colonies is, on closer examination, by no means without bearing on the problem of ireland. that system of colonial responsible government which seems to us so simple and obvious is, on the contrary, one of the most artificial systems the world has ever known, based as it is upon conditions which have never been present before in the world's history, and which are now rapidly disappearing, never, perhaps, to recur. that a popular assembly in complete control of the executive, should respect an unwritten convention limiting its powers and rights to purely local affairs, and submit to a purely external control of its wider interests and destinies, seemed to most of lord durham's contemporaries almost unthinkable. not only those who opposed the policy, but many of those who advocated it, were convinced that it would lead to complete separation. nor were their fears or hopes by any means ill-grounded. that they were not justified by the event was due to an altogether exceptional combination of factors. the first of these was the overwhelming supremacy of the united kingdom in commerce and naval power, and its practical monopoly of political influence in the outer world. sheltered by an invincible navy, far removed from the sound of international conflict, the colonies had no practical motive for concerning themselves with foreign affairs, or with any but purely local measures of defence. even when, as in , they were technically involved by the united kingdom in war with a great power, they were not so much as inconvenienced. the united kingdom, on the other hand, incurred no serious expenditure for their defence beyond what was in any case required for the defence of its sea-borne commerce, nor was its foreign policy at any time seriously deflected by regard for colonial considerations. even when the colonies encroached on the original limits set them, and began to establish protectionist tariffs against the mother country, british manufacturers could afford to disregard a handicap of which they were at first scarcely sensible, while british statesmen smiled condescendingly at the harmless aberrations of colonial inexperience. another factor was the very fact that it was colonies that the united kingdom was dealing with, new countries where every other interest was secondary to that of opening up and developing the untamed wilderness, to creating the material framework which, in fulness of time, might support a complete national life. there was consequently little real interest in external policy in the colonial assemblies, little leisure for criticism of the imperial authorities, little desire to assert any particular point of view. last, but not least, was the factor of distance, interposing a veil of obscurity between the different communities in the empire; mitigating minor causes of friction, keeping colonial politics free from being entangled in the british party system. the british system of colonial self-government has so far proved workable because of the exceptional circumstances in which it originated. but its success cannot be regarded as wholly unqualified. the failure to provide any direct representation of colonial interests and aspirations in the imperial parliament may not have mattered as far as foreign policy and defence were concerned. but it did affect the colonies most seriously from the economic point of view, for it precluded them from pressing with any effect for the development of inter-imperial communications, or from resisting the abolition of the system of preferential trade which meant so much to their prosperity. under the influence of a narrowly selfish and short-sighted policy, inspired by english manufacturing interests, canada saw the stream of commerce and population pass by her shores on its way to the united states. the relative progress of the british colonies and of the united states since the abolition of preference is some measure of the economic weakness of a political system which has no common trade policy. in any case the british colonial system, as we have known it is inevitably moving towards its crisis. the conditions under which it originated are fast disappearing. the commercial and political expansion of europe, of america, of asia, are bringing the dominions more and more into the arena of international conflict. the growth of foreign navies is forcing them to realise the necessity of taking a larger part in their own defence. their growing national self-consciousness demands not only that they should cease to be dependent on the mother country for their safety, but also that they should exercise control over the foreign policy of which defence is merely the instrument. there are only two possible solutions to the problem which is now developing: the one is complete separation, the other is partnership in an imperial union in which british subjects in the dominions shall stand on exactly the same footing, and enjoy the same powers and privileges in imperial affairs, as british subjects in the united kingdom. the conditions--geographical, economic, political--which, in the colonies, made the grant of free institutions, unaccompanied by some form of political federation or union, even a temporary success, were, indeed, exceptional. none of them were present in the circumstances of ireland before the union. they are not present to-day. geographically the united kingdom is a single compact island group, of which ireland is by no means the most outlying portion. no part of ireland is to-day, or ever was, as inaccessible from the political centre of british power as the remoter parts of the highlands, not to speak of the shetlands or hebrides. racially, no less than physically, ireland is an integral part of the united kingdom, peopled as it is with the same mixture of racial elements as the main island of the group. the blend of celt with dane, with normans and english of the pale, with english citizens of the seaports and cromwellian settlers, which constitutes celtic ireland, so-called, is less celtic both in speech and in blood than either wales or the highlands. religion alone has maintained a difference between a predominantly celtic and a predominantly teutonic ireland which would otherwise have disappeared far more completely than the difference between celtic and teutonic scotland. economically, the connection between ireland and great britain, always close, has become such that to-day ireland subsists almost wholly upon the english market. in these respects, at least, there is no resemblance between the conditions of ireland and that of any of the colonies. on the other hand, politically, ireland was for centuries treated as a colony--"the first and nearest of the colonies," as mr. childers puts it. the difficulties and defects of early colonial government were intensified by the great conflict of the reformation, which made ireland a centre of foreign intrigue, and by the long religious and constitutional struggle of the seventeenth century, which fell with terrible severity upon a population which had throughout espoused the losing cause. cromwell; realising that "if there is to be a prosperous, strong and united kingdom there must be one parliament and one parliament only," freed ireland from the colonial status. unfortunately, his policy was reversed in , and for over a century ireland endured the position of "least favoured colony"--least favoured, partly because, with the possible exception of linen, all her industries were competitive with, and not complementary to english industries, and so were deliberately crushed in accordance with the common economic policy of the time, partly because the memories of past struggles kept england suspicious and jealous of irish prosperity. every evil under which the old colonial system laboured in canada before the rebellion was intensified in ireland by the religious and racial feud between the mass of the people and the ascendant caste. the same solvent of free government that durham recommended was needed by ireland. in view of the geographical and economic position of ireland, and in the political circumstances of the time, it could only be applied through union with great britain. union had been vainly prayed for by the irish parliament at the time of the scottish union. most thoughtful students, not least among them adam smith,[ ] had seen in it the only cure for the evils which afflicted the hapless island. meanwhile, in , the dominant caste utilised the ulster volunteer movement to wrest from great britain, then in the last throes of the war against france, spain, and america, the independence of the irish parliament. theoretically co-equal with the british parliament, grattan's parliament was, in practice, kept by bribery in a position differing very little from that of canada before the rebellion. still the new system in ireland might, under conditions resembling those of canada in , have gradually evolved into a workable scheme of self-government. but the conditions were too different. a temporary economic revival, indeed, followed the removal of the crippling restrictions upon irish trade. but, politically, the new system began to break down almost from the start. its entanglement in english party politics, which geography made inevitable, lead to deadlocks over trade and over the regency question, the latter practically involving the right to choose a separate sovereign. the same geographical conditions made it impossible for ireland to escape the influence of the french revolution. the factious spirit and the oppression of the ruling caste did the rest. there is no need to dwell here on the horrors of the rising of , and of its repression, or on the political and financial chaos that marked the collapse of an ill-starred experiment. england, struggling for her existence, had had enough of french invasion, civil war, and general anarchy on her flank. the irish parliament died, as it had lived, by corruption, and castlereagh and pitt conferred upon ireland the too long delayed boon of equal partnership in the united kingdom. the mistakes which, for a century, deprived the union of much of its effect--the delay in granting catholic emancipation, the folly of free trade, acquiesced in by irish members, by which agrarian strife was intensified, and through which ireland again lost the increase of population which she had gained in the first half century of union--need not be discussed here. the fact remains that to-day ireland is prosperous, and on the eve of far greater prosperity under a sane system of national economic policy. what is more, ireland is in the enjoyment of practically every liberty and every privilege that is enjoyed by any other part of the united kingdom, of greater liberty and privilege than is enjoyed by dominions which have no control of imperial affairs. the principle which in the case of the colonies was applied through separate governments has, in her case, been applied through union. it could only have been applied through union in . it can only be applied through union to-day. railways and steamships have strengthened the geographical and economic reasons for union; train-ferries and aircraft will intensify them still further. meanwhile the political and strategical conditions of these islands in the near future are far more likely to resemble those of the great napoleonic struggle than those of the colonial empire in its halcyon period. in one aspect, then, the union was the only feasible way of carrying out the principle which underlay the successful establishment of colonial self-government. in another aspect it was the last step of a natural and, indeed, inevitable process for which the history of the british colonies since the grant of self-government has furnished analogies in abundance. it has furnished none for the reversal of that process. it is only necessary to consider the reasons which, in various degrees, influenced the several groups of independent colonies in north america, australia, and south africa to unite under a single government, whether federal or unitary, thus wholly or partially surrendering the "home rule" previously enjoyed by them, in order to see how close is the parallel. the weak and scattered north american colonies were at a serious disadvantage in all political and commercial negotiations with their powerful neighbour, the united states, a fact very clearly emphasised by the termination of lord elgin's reciprocity treaty in . none of them was in a position to deal with the vast territories of the north-west, undeveloped by the hudson's bay company, and in imminent danger of american occupation. a common trade policy, a common railway policy, and a common banking system were essential to a rapid development of their great resources, and only a common government could provide them. in australia the chief factor in bringing about federation was the weakness and want of influence of the separate colonies in dealing with problems of defence and external policy, impressed upon them by german and french colonial expansion in the pacific, and by the growth of japan. in south africa, on the other hand, the factors were mainly internal. the constant friction over railway and customs agreements, continually on the verge of breaking down, embittered the relations of the different colonies and maintained an atmosphere of uncertainty discouraging to commercial enterprise. four different governments dealt with a labour supply mainly required in one colony. four agricultural departments dealt with locusts and cattle plagues, which knew no political boundaries, and which could only be stamped out by the most prompt and determined action. four systems of law and four organisations for defence secured, as lord selborne pointed out in a striking memorandum (blue book cd. ) a minimum of return for a maximum of expense. a native rising in natal warned south africans that the mistake of a single colony might at any moment set the whole of south africa ablaze with rebellion. in the absence of larger issues local politics in each colony turned almost exclusively on the racial feud. a comprehensive union alone could bring commercial stability and progressive development, mitigate race hatred, and pave the way to a true south african nationality. all the weakness in external relations, all the internal friction and impediment to progress, all the bitterness and pettiness of local politics, which marked the absence of union among neighbouring colonies, also characterised the relations of great britain and ireland in the eighteenth century. but there was this difference: the immense disproportion in wealth and power, and the political control exercised by the greater state, caused all the evils of disunion to concentrate with intensified force upon the smaller state. to undo the mischief of eighteenth century disunion required at least a generation. a series of political mistakes and mischances, and a disastrous economic policy, have left the healing task of union incomplete after a century. but renewed disunion to-day would only mean a renewal of old local feuds to the point of civil war, a renewal of old economic friction, in which most of the injury would be suffered by the weaker combatant, the indefinite postponing for ireland of the prospect, now so hopeful, of national development and social amelioration, a weakening of the whole united kingdom for diplomacy or for defence. it is a policy which no dominion in the empire would dream of adopting--a policy which every dominion would most certainly resist by force, just as the united states resisted it when attempted, with more than a mere pretext of constitutional justification, by the southern states. now for the "exception which proves the rule": there is one colonial analogy for what would be the position of ireland under home rule, namely, the position of newfoundland outside the confederation of the other north american colonies.[ ] the analogy is only partial, for this reason, that whereas ireland is almost wholly dependent economically on great britain, newfoundland has little direct trade with canada, and moreover enjoys a virtual monopoly of one particular commodity, namely codfish, by which it manages to support its small population. nevertheless, no one can doubt that with its favoured geographical position, and with its great natural resources, newfoundland would have been developed in a very different fashion if for the last forty years it had been an integral part of the dominion. nor is the loss all on the side of newfoundland, as the history of even the last few years has shown. in , newfoundland negotiated a commercial convention with the united states which, in return for a free entry for newfoundland fish into the united states, practically gave the newfoundland market to american manufacturers, and explicitly forbade the granting of any trade preference to the united kingdom or to canada. when, fortunately, the american senate rejected the convention, newfoundland embarked on a course of legislative reprisal against american fishing. but this involved the imperial government in a diplomatic conflict which, but for the excellent relations subsisting with the united states, might easily have led to a grave crisis. the inconveniences and dangers which irish trade policy might lead to under home rule can easily be inferred from this single example, all the more if irish policy should be influenced, as newfoundland's policy certainly was not, by a bias of hostility to the empire. so much for the first confusion, that which would base the case for a _separate government_ in ireland on the success of _free institutions_ in the colonies, entirely ignoring the whole movement for union, which has made every geographical group of colonies follow the example of the mother country. we must now deal with the second confusion, that which is based on a hazy notion that home rule is only a preliminary step to endowing the united kingdom as a whole with a working federal constitution like that of canada or australia. ireland, in fact, so runs the pleasing delusion, is to be set up as an experimental quebec, and the other provinces will follow suit shortly. not all home rulers, indeed, are obsessed by this confusion. mr. childers, for instance, makes short work of what he calls the "federal chimera," dismissing the idea as "wholly impracticable," and pointing out that home rule must be "not merely non-federal, but anti-federal." but the great majority of liberals to-day are busy deluding themselves or each other, and the nationalists are, naturally, not unwilling to help them in that task, with the idea of home rule for ireland followed by "home rule all round." the new home rule bill has not yet appeared, but certain main features of it can be taken for granted. it will be a bill which, save possibly for a pious expression of hope in the preamble, will deal with ireland only. it will set up in ireland an irish legislature and executive responsible for the "peace, order, and good government" of ireland, subject to certain restrictions and limitations. it will assign to ireland the whole of the irish revenues, though probably retaining the control of customs and excise, and in that case retaining some irish representatives at westminster. so far from fixing any contribution to imperial expenditure from ireland, it will, apparently, include the provision of an imperial grant in aid towards land purchase and old age pensions. any such measure is wholly incompatible with even the loosest federal system. a federal scheme postulates the existence over the whole confederation of two concurrent systems of government, each exercising direct control over the citizens within its own sphere, each having its legislative and executive functions, and its sources of revenue, clearly defined. the home rule bill will certainly not set up any such division of government and its functions in great britain. nor will it, in reality, set up any such effective double system of government in ireland. what it will set up will be a national or dominion government in ireland, separate and exclusive, but subject to certain restrictions and interferences which it will be the first business of the irish representatives, in dublin or westminster, to get rid of. long before scotland or wales, let alone england, get any consideration of their demand for home rule, if demand there be, the last traces of any quasi-federal element the bill may contain will have been got rid of. in a federation every citizen, in whatever state or province he resides, is as fully a citizen of the federation as every other citizen. he not only has the same federal vote, and pays the same federal taxes, but he has the same access to the federal courts, and the same right to the direct protection of the federal executive. in what sense are any of these conditions likely to be true of, let us say, an irish landlord under this home rule bill? again, federalism implies that all the subordinate units are in an equal position relatively to the federal authority. is this bill likely to be so framed that its provisions can be adapted unchanged to scotland, wales, or england? and if they could, what sort of a residuum of a united kingdom government would be left over? take finance alone: if every unit under "home rule all round" is to receive the whole product of its taxation, what becomes of the revenue on which the general government of the united kingdom will have to subsist? the fact is that the creation of a federal state, whether by confederation or by devolution of powers, must be, in the main, a simultaneous act. additional subordinate units may subsequently join the confederation under the conditions of the federal constitution. backward areas which are unable to provide for an efficient provincial expenditure, over and above their contribution to federal expenditure, may be held back as territories directly controlled by the federal authorities till they are financially and in other respects ripe for the grant of provincial powers. if a federal scheme were really seriously contemplated by the present government they would have to adopt one of two courses. they would either have to establish it simultaneously for the whole united kingdom, and in that case limit the powers and functions of the provinces so narrowly as to make it possible for ireland to raise its provincial revenue without undue difficulty, the rest of ireland's needs being met by a substantial federal expenditure carried out by federal officials. or else they might begin by the creation of a federal constitution with considerable provincial powers for england, scotland, and wales, keeping back ireland as a federal territory till its economic and social conditions justified the establishment of provincial institutions. the converse policy of treating the case of ireland as "prior in point of time and urgency,"[ ] of giving the poorest and most backward portion of the united kingdom the whole of its revenue and a practically unfettered control of its territory, is, indeed, "not merely non-federal, but anti-federal." the truth is that the federal element in this home rule bill, as in that of , will be merely a pretence, designed to keep timid and hesitating home rulers in line--a tactical manoeuvre of much the same character as the talk about a reformed second chamber which preceded the parliament act, and found due burial in the preamble to that act. in essence the bill will set up ireland as an entirely separate state subject to certain restrictions which the government have no serious intention of enforcing, and the irish every intention of disregarding, or abolishing as the outcome of further agitation. for this policy of pretence there is one admirable parallel in our colonial history--the policy by which "home rule" was "given" to the transvaal after majuba. it was the same policy of avoiding expense and trouble, political or military--the policy, in fact, of "cutting the loss"--tricked out with the same humbug about "magnanimity" and "conciliation," about trust in boer (or nationalist) moderation when in power, the same contemptuous passing over of the loyalists as persons of "too pronounced" views, or as "interested contractors and stock-jobbers."[ ] it was embodied in a convention by which the "inhabitants of the transvaal territory" were "accorded complete self-government, subject to the suzerainty of her majesty" under a series of limitations which, if enforced, would have implied a measure of british control in many respects greater than that exercised over a self-governing colony, and with a number of guarantees to protect the loyalists. the government was able to "save its face," while its hesitating followers were able to quiet their consciences, by the reassuring phrases of the convention. the boer volksraad frankly declared itself still dissatisfied, but ratified the convention, "maintaining all objections to the convention ... and for the purpose of showing to everybody that the love of peace and unity inspires it, for the time being, and provisionally submitting the articles of the convention to a practical test." if any nationalist convention in dublin should accept the new home rule bill, we can take it for granted that it will be in exactly the same spirit, and possibly in almost the same phraseology.[ ] from the first the limitations of the convention were disregarded. short of armed intervention there was no machinery for enforcing them, and the boers knew perfectly well that there was no real desire on the part of an embarrassed government to raise a hornet's nest by making the attempt. the british resident, with his nominally autocratic powers, was a mere impotent laughing stock. the ruined loyalists left the country, or remained to become the most embittered enemies of the british government. in three years a new convention was drafted--an even greater masterpiece of make-believe than the first--which could be expounded to parliament as a mere modification of certain unworkable provisions, but which the boers took as a definite surrender of all claims to suzerainty, and as a definite recognition of their position as an "independent sovereign state," bound temporarily by the provisions of a treaty, which could have no permanent force in "fixing the boundary to the march of a nation." so far from being reconciled they were only emboldened to embark on a policy of aggression, which in involved the british government in military measures costing nearly as much as would have been required to suppress the whole rising in . for the time being the stagnation and chronic bankruptcy which followed the removal of british rule and the exodus of the loyalists limited transvaal ambitions. the gold discoveries both increased that ambition by furnishing it with revenue, and at the same time brought about a close economic intercourse with the neighbouring colonies which, under the political conditions of disunion, was bound to create friction. in the end the policy of make-believe and "cutting the loss" had to be redeemed at the cost of , lives and of £ , , . reconciliation, in large measure, has come since. but it has only come because british statesmen showed, firstly, in the war, their inflexible resolution to stamp out the policy of separation, and secondly, after the war, their devotion to the real welfare of south africa in a policy of economic reconstruction, and in the establishment of those free and equal british institutions under which--by the final dying out of a spurious nationalism based on racial prejudice and garbled history--south africa may become a real, living nation. the reservations and guarantees which this home rule bill may contain cannot possibly constitute the framework of a federal constitution. all they can guarantee is a period of friction and agitation which will continue till ireland has secured a position of complete separation from the united kingdom. at the best the home rule experiment would then reduce ireland to the position of another newfoundland; at the worst it might repeat all the most disastrous features of the history of "home rule" in the transvaal. at the same time it may be worth inquiring how far there would really be any valid colonial analogy for the introduction of a federal system of "home rule all round" if such a scheme had been honestly contemplated. the first thing to keep in mind is that the internal constitution of the dominions presents a whole gradation of constitutional types. there is the loose federal system of australia, in which the commonwealth powers are strictly limited and defined, and all residuary powers left to the states. there is the close confederation of canada in which all residuary powers are vested in the dominion. there is the non-federal unitary government of south africa with a system of provincial local governments with somewhat wide county council powers. there is, lastly, the purely unitary government of the two islands of new zealand. each of these types is the outcome of peculiar geographical, economic, and historical conditions. to understand the federal system of australia it is essential to remember that till comparatively recent times australia consisted, to all intents, of four or five seaport towns, each with its own tributary agricultural and mining area, strung out, at distances varying from to miles, along the southern and eastern third of a coast line of nearly miles looped round an unexplored and reputedly uninhabitable interior. each of these seaports traded directly with the united kingdom and europe in competition with the others. with economic motives for union practically non-existent, with external factors awakening a general apprehension rather than confronting australia with any immediate danger, it was impossible to find the driving power to overcome local jealousies sufficiently to secure more than a minimum of union. the commonwealth constitution is a makeshift which, as the internal trade of australia grows and as railway communications are developed, will inevitably be amended in the direction of increasing the power of the commonwealth and diminishing that of the states. in canada the economic link between canada proper and the maritime provinces was, before confederation, almost as weak as that of australia. british columbia, which it was hoped to include in the confederation, was then separated by a journey of months from eastern canada, and was, indeed, much nearer to australia or new zealand. quebec, with its racial and religious peculiarities, added another problem. that the confederation was nevertheless such a close and strong one was due both to the menace of american power in the south, and to the terrible example of the weakness of the american constitution as made manifest by the civil war. yet even so, sir john macdonald, the father of confederation, frankly declared the federal constitution a necessary evil-- "as regards the comparative advantages of a legislative and a federal union i have never hesitated to state my own opinions.... i have always contended that if we could agree to have one government and one parliament ... it would be the best, the cheapest, the most vigorous, the strongest system of government we could adopt." this also was the view of the framers of the south african union. the circumstances of south africa enabled them to carry it into effect. for all its extent, south africa is geographically a single, homogeneous country with no marked internal boundaries. it is peopled by two white races everywhere intermixed in varying proportions and nowhere separated into large compact blocks. the immense preponderance and central position of the rand mining industry makes south africa practically a single economic system. the very bitterness of the long political and racial struggle which had preceded intensified the argument for really effective union. if we compare the conditions in the united kingdom with those of the dominions it is obvious at once that there is no possible analogy with the conditions of canada or australia, but a considerable analogy with south africa and new zealand. the british isles are but little larger than the new zealand group, and much more compact and homogeneous. their close economic intercourse, the presence of two races with a history of strife behind them, but compelled by their inextricable geographical blending to confront the necessity of union, are reproduced in the conditions of south africa. in so far then as the colonial analogy bears upon the question at all, it cannot be said to be in favour of federal home rule any more than of separatist home rule. the most it can fairly be said to warrant is the establishment of provincial councils with powers akin to those of the south african councils. for such councils, built up by the federation of adjoining counties and county boroughs, carrying out more effectively some of the existing powers of those bodies, and adding to them such other powers, legislative or administrative, as it may be convenient to bestow on them, a very strong case may be made on the grounds of the congestion of parliamentary business. but that has nothing to do with home rule, either separatist or federal. but if the congestion of parliamentary business might be appreciably relieved by some such provincial bodies--larger "national" bodies would only duplicate work, not relieve it--the true remedy for the confusion of principles and objectives which, rather than the mere waste of time, is the chief defect of our parliamentary system, lies in a proper separation of the local affairs of the united kingdom from the general work of the empire, in other words, in some form of imperial federation. what is needed is not the creation of separate parliaments _within_ the united kingdom, but the creation of a separate parliament _for_ the united kingdom, a parliament which should deal with the affairs of the united kingdom considered as one of the dominions, leaving the general problems of imperial policy to a common imperial parliament or council equally representative of the citizens of every dominion. no form of home rule can in any sense advance that desirable solution of our imperial problems. the creation of an additional dominion in the shape of ireland would merely add one to the number of units to be considered, and would be contrary to the spirit of the resolution passed at the conference, that it was desirable "wherever and whenever practicable, to group together under a federal union those colonies which are geographically united." the problem would be no more affected by the setting up of a federal constitution for the united kingdom, than it would be if south africa decided, after all, to give her provinces federal powers, or australia carried unification by a referendum. the notion that the dominions could simply come inside the united kingdom federation, though it sometimes figures in home rule speeches, is merely a product of the third form of confusion of ideas previously referred to, and is a sheer absurdity. the terms and conditions of a united kingdom federation would necessarily differ in almost every respect from those of an imperial federation, and a constitution framed for the one object would be unworkable for the other. nor would it ever be acceptable to the dominions, which regard themselves as potentially, if not actually, the equals of the united kingdom as a whole. from their point of view the united kingdom might almost as well be asked to step inside the australian commonwealth on the footing of tasmania, as that they should be asked to join in, in the capacity of an additional ireland, scotland, or wales, under any scheme of "home rule all round." it should be sufficiently clear from the foregoing analysis that the vague and confused claim that the success of british colonial policy is an argument for the home rule bill has no shadow of justification. it has been shown, first of all, that the factor of success in our colonial policy was not the factor of separatism implied in home rule, but the factor of responsible government already secured for ireland by the union. it has been shown, secondly, that the experience of the colonies since the establishment of responsible government has in every case forced union upon them, and union in the closest form which the facts of trade and geography permitted of. colonial experience is thus no argument even for a federal scheme of "home rule all round," if such a scheme could possibly result from an irish home rule bill, which it cannot. the disadvantages and dangers of the contrary policy of disunion have been shown, in their least noxious form in the case of newfoundland, which has simply remained outside the adjoining dominion, and in their deadliest form in the case of the transvaal, where "home rule" was given in , as it would be given to ireland to-day, if the government succeeded, not from conviction and whole-heartedly, but as a mean-spirited concession, made to save trouble, and under the most disingenuous and least workable provisions. lastly, it has been made clear that home rule cannot possibly assist, but can only obscure and confuse, the movement for the establishment of a true imperial union. unionists and imperialists can choose no better ground for their resistance to home rule than the wide and varied field of colonial experience. but colonial experience can give us more than that. it can provide us not only with an immense mass of arguments and instances against disruption, but with invaluable instances of what can be done to strengthen and build up the union against all possible future danger of disruptive tendencies. the confederation of canada was accomplished in the teeth of all the geographical and economic conditions of the time. canadian statesmanship thereupon set itself to transform geography, and to divert the course of trade in order to make the union a reality. the intercolonial railway, the canadian pacific, the grand trunk pacific, the proposed hudson bay railway, and the georgian bay canal schemes, all these have been deliberate instruments of policy, aiming, first of all, at bridging the wilderness between practically isolated settlements scattered across a continent, and creating a continuous canada, east and west; and, secondly, at giving that continuous strip depth as well as extension. hand in hand with the policy of constructing the internal framework of transportation, which is the skeleton of the economic and social life of a nation, went the policy of maintaining a national tariff to clothe that skeleton with the flesh and blood of production and exchange, and, as far as possible, to clothe it evenly. australia, too, is waking, though somewhat hesitatingly, to the need of transcontinental railways, for the protection of new industries and for the even development and filling up of all her territories. in south africa the economic process preceded the political. it was the dread of the breakdown of a temporary customs union already in existence that precipitated the discussion of union. and it was the development of the rand as the great internal market of south africa, and the competitive construction of railway lines from the coast, that really decided the question of legislative union against federation. all three instances lead to the same conclusion that union to be really effective and stable needs three things: firstly, a developed system of internal communications reducing all natural barriers to social, political, and commercial intercourse to the very minimum; secondly, a national tariff, protective or otherwise, sufficient at least to encourage the fullest flow of trade along those communications rather than outside of them; thirdly, a deliberate use of the tariff and of the national expenditure to secure, as far as possible, the even development of every portion of the national territory. in the united kingdom all these instruments for making the union real are still unutilised. the system of _laisser faire_ in the matter of internal communications has allowed st. george's channel still to remain a real barrier. a dozen train-ferries, carrying not only the railway traffic between great britain and ireland, but enabling the true west coast of the united kingdom to be used for transatlantic traffic, would obliterate that strip of sea which a british minister recently urged as an insuperable objection to a democratic union.[ ] to construct them would not be doing as much, relatively, as little denmark has long since done, by the same means, to unite her sea-divided territory. the creation of a tariff which shall assist not only manufactures, but agriculture and rural industries, is another essential step. in view of ireland's undeveloped industrial condition the giving of bounties to the establishment in ireland of new industries, such as the silk industry, would be a thoroughly justifiable extension of the unionist policy carried out through the congested districts board and the department of agriculture. the diversion to ireland of a larger part of the general national and imperial expenditure, whether by the establishment of a naval base, or the giving out of battleship contracts, or even only of contracts for army uniforms, would also be of appreciable assistance to ireland and to the union. ireland suffers to-day economically and politically, from the legacy of political separation in the eighteenth century, and of economic disunion in the nineteenth. it is the business of unionists not only to maintain the legal framework of the union, but to give it a vitality and fulness of content which it has never possessed. footnotes: [footnote : speech at whitechapel, oct. , . there is an almost identical passage in mr. redmond's article in _mcclure's magazine_ for october, . sir j. simon, the solicitor-general, has since perpetrated the same absurdity (dewsbury, feb. , ).] [footnote : the usual rhetorical appeal to "what home rule has done in south africa" presents, indeed, a most perfect specimen of the confusion of thought which it is here attempted to analyse. for no sooner had the transvaal received "home rule" (_i.e._ responsible government) than it surrendered the "home rule" (_i.e._ separate government) which it had previously enjoyed in order to enter the south african union. stripped of mere verbal confusion the argument from the transvaal analogy then runs somewhat as follows: "the transvaal is now contented because it enjoys free representative institutions as an integral portion of a united south africa; therefore, ireland cannot be contented until she ceases to be a freely represented integral portion of the united kingdom!"] [footnote : quoted on p. .] [footnote : the position of new zealand, outside the australian commonwealth, is no parallel. new zealand is almost as far from australia as newfoundland is from the british isles; it differs from australia in every climatic and physical feature; there is comparatively little trade between them.] [footnote : mr. asquith at st. andrews, dec. , .] [footnote : see "the _times_' history of the south african war," vol. i. pp. _et seq._] [footnote : _cf_. mr. j. redmond on the third reading of the home rule bill of . "the word 'provisional,' so to speak, has been stamped in red ink across every page of the bill. i recognise that the bill is offered as a compromise and accepted as such.... england has no right to ask from irish members any guarantee of finality in its acceptance."] [footnote : colonel seely at newry, december , .] vi the control of judiciary and police by the right hon. j.h. campbell, k.c., m.p. the various forecasts, inspired and uninspired, of the new home rule bill which have been given to us, have shed little light upon the future of the irish judiciary and police. the two previous bills contemplated the handing over of the control of the whole administration of justice in ireland to the irish executive after an interval, in the first case of two years, and in the later bill, of six years. we may assume that, whatever period of grace may be allowed to us under the coming measure, it will propose to vest this control in the irish government within six years. the interposition of any interval at all will probably be regarded by ministers as a concession to unionist fears and as one of the "safeguards" in which the minority will be urged to place its trust. it must be realised at once that, so far from this interval making the transition from british justice to irish intrigue easier and more safe, it may have precisely the contrary effect. once the irish police are convinced that they are about to be delivered into the hands of the secret organisations who have been the most successful and relentless enemies of public order in ireland, a paralysis must fall upon the force. during the closing years of the transition, at all events, the royal irish constabulary will be given nominal responsibility for the peace of the country without any opportunity effectually to preserve it. it would be fairer and better to cast upon puppet nominees of the ancient order of hibernians and the irish republican brotherhood the responsibility and odium of controlling the passions that they have helped to raise. the present judges would of course continue to do their duty without fear or favour, but it is impossible that the sentence passed upon them and the system of law and government for which they stand could leave their authority unimpaired. we have recently seen in england how easy it may be to stir up popular clamour against judges who administer the law without regard to the prejudices of any political party. directly the irish courts sought to translate the paper safeguards of the home rule bill into practical effect, they would be faced by the violent hostility of an ignorant and excitable assembly stimulated by an irresponsible and inexperienced executive. the result would be recriminations and friction which must deplorably injure and lower the reputation and prestige of both the executive and the judiciary. the first thing necessary for securing public and private liberty in a country like ireland, where party feeling runs high and internal disputes have a bitterness from which more fortunate countries are free, is a strong independent and impartial administration of the law. this can only be secured by freeing the courts from any kind of interference or control on the part of the executive, and by ensuring that the whole armed forces of the executive should be at the disposal of the courts for executing and enforcing their decrees. let us only assume a case to arise after the statutory period had elapsed, such as is now of frequent occurrence in the irish courts. the land judge, for instance, or the judge of the court of bankruptcy, finds it necessary to order the arrest of the chairman and secretary of a local branch of the united irish league for interfering by gross intimidation with a sale under the order of his court. the case excites a good deal of local feeling and the arrests can only be effected by the employment of a large force of armed police. the question is raised on a motion for adjournment in the irish house of commons. the majority of the members owe their seats to the intervention of the united irish league, many of them--perhaps most--have themselves been in similar conflicts with the court. the result is that ministers have to choose between a refusal of the police and expulsion from office. once the government could decide which decrees of the judiciary it would enforce and which it would not, the technical immovability of the judges would be irrelevant, since the real control of justice would be vested, not in the courts but in the executive ministers in dublin castle. the very existence of the limitations and safeguards foreshadowed in the coming home rule bill would naturally tempt the irish government to adopt a policy which would reduce to a minimum the effective power of these restraints upon the popular will. the most obvious way of attaining this result would be to keep the police, and with them the judicature, in a position of greater dependence upon the executive than is consistent with the supremacy of law and the safety of private rights and individual freedom. we must remember that the men who would have the control of the new irish government would be those who have spent the greater part of their lives in violent conflict with the attempts of the irish courts to secure respect for the elementary rights of property and of personal freedom in ireland. power which has been won by the open violation of every principle of english law, is not likely either to assert the authority it has lived by defying to maintaining the independence of the courts and institutions which have been its deadliest opponents. the corruption of judicial authority and prestige in ireland will be accomplished by entrenching the executive behind large and shadowy discretionary powers, and also by manipulating the personnel and jurisdiction of the judges and magistracy throughout the country. the most deplorable movement in modern nationalism is the attempt to introduce into irish politics the worst methods of american political corruption. there have recently sprung into prominence in ireland two societies which are in some respects the most sinister, the most immoral, and the most destructive of those which have corrupted and infected public life in the country. these two--the ancient order of hibernians and the irish republican brotherhood--have in common the secrecy of their operations and the destructiveness of their aims. their influence is marked not only by despotic and tyrannical government, but, what may be even more mischievous from the point of view of the community, by the deliberate persecution and suppression of all independent thought. those who have watched the proceedings of the dublin corporation have felt the increasing strength of an influence proceeding from belfast--an influence which is threatening to control the whole course of nationalist politics in dublin and the south. the forces of influence, combination, and intimidation which forced the budget on a reluctant ireland and routed the roman catholic hierarchy over the insurance bill will not be disbanded under home rule. on the contrary, they are now being exercised so as to enable the board of erin to absorb the older organisations and to place in the hands of its leaders--or rather in those of a single man--the nomination of most, if not all, the representatives of the nationalist party in ireland. mr. joseph devlin, who seeks to build this vast power, is a politician of american ideals and sympathies, and under the guidance of his organisation politics in ireland would be shaped after the model of tammany hall rather than that of st. stephen's. the party which appoints the municipal officers of dublin in secret caucus, meeting for reasons which are never avowed and after debates which are never published, is only waiting to extend its operations. even now it is notorious that the magistrates' bench in ireland is regularly and systematically "packed" whenever licensing or agrarian cases are under discussion. the scandalous inaction of the present irish executive in reference to cattle driving and other forms of organised intimidation, the failure to enforce the law and the absolute immunity which the present chief secretary has persistently allowed to nationalist members of parliament and paid organisers in incitement to outrage and intimidation, have paralysed the administration of justice and disheartened and disgusted the judiciary, the magistrates, and the police. but under home rule the measure of protection which is still afforded by a strong and independent bench would be removed. the resident magistrate would be as much under the heel of the caucus as the local justice; the recorder's bench and even the high court would be constantly subjected to influences of a mischievous and incalculable kind. whatever may be said against the present occupants of the judicial bench, their integrity and fairness have never been seriously questioned. since the days when the irish judges issued a writ of _habeas corpus_ for the release of wolfe tone, while the irish rebellion was actually in progress, they have consistently held an even balance between the two parties. their learning, their impartiality and their wit have rightly made irish judges respected throughout the world. their reputation and their services alike demand that they shall not be set aside wantonly or without consideration. but there is no doubt that home rule must mean the end of the irish bench as we have seen it in history. the men who have been proud to represent the british crown would resent with indignation the idea that they should become the tools of the hibernian caucus. they realise that the judges who oppose the lawless will of popular ministers will have to face obloquy and perhaps direct attack in the irish parliament. even if the concurrence of both houses in the irish parliament were made necessary for the removal of judges, it would not adequately safeguard their independence. the lower house would be composed of the men whom nationalist constituencies already return to parliament--excitable, fierce partisans, always ready to subordinate private convictions to the exigencies of party discipline. nor would there be in ireland under home rule any power or influence, either of property or station, sufficiently strong to furnish a constituency which would return a senate representing interests, opinions, or desires substantially distinct from those of the more powerful house elected upon the wider suffrage. the situation has been strongly complicated by the promulgation of the _motu proprio_ decree, and the refusal of the authorities of the roman catholic church to say definitely whether it applies to ireland or not. we may assume that, if archbishop walsh could have given a categorical denial to the statement that the decree must operate in ireland under home rule, he would have done so. the decree _motu proprio_ forbids any roman catholic to bring his priest or bishop into court under pain of excommunication. the roman catholic church has made many similar efforts during history to oust the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, and each attempt has had to be sharply and sternly resisted by the civil authorities of roman catholic countries. we need not discuss how much there may be said from a theological standpoint for the decree; we are only concerned to show that it raises pretensions which no state can possibly permit to be recognised. there have been too many attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to oust the jurisdiction of the king's courts in ireland, for this new attempt to be viewed with equanimity. the united irish league has set up courts which try men for imaginary offences committed during the exercise of their ordinary civil rights, and pass illegal sentences and inflict illegal punishments. under the reign of liberal governments the writ of these courts runs where the king's writ cannot run, and the law of the league has been allowed in great measure to supersede the law of the land. we have also an increasing force in irish nationalism which seeks to paralyse the government of ireland by means of the general or sympathetic strike. this organisation seeks to establish courts in ireland in opposition to the ordinary law courts, and to enforce their decrees by means of illegal intimidation and outrage. the people of ireland have therefore been familiarised with the idea of courts competing in authority with those of the king's government. supposing under home rule the judiciary proved less pliable than was expected or desired, the development of such competing authorities would be facilitated by a complaisant cabinet in dublin. but of all attempts to over-ride the authority of law this conspiracy to exempt ecclesiastical persons from its scope is the most insidious and dangerous. the existence of a class of men answerable for their actions, not to any domestic tribunal, but to a foreign ecclesiastical court, cannot now be tolerated by any self-respecting government. yet it is not easy to see how an irish cabinet could refuse to make, by executive if not by legislative action, what is now the law of the church eventually the law of ireland. against this danger no safeguards can be devised. if the administration refuses to put the law into effective operation against a certain class of offender or abuses the prerogative of mercy in his favour, there is no power in the constitution to coerce it. a few years ago we saw in ireland the extraordinary spectacle of persons being prosecuted for cattle-driving and similar offences, while those who openly incited them to crime escaped with impunity. we saw judges from the bench complaining in vain that the real offenders were not brought before them, and criticising openly the negligence and partiality of the crown. if the nationalists, whose influence then paralysed the aims of the government, ever get supreme control of the executive, we are certain to see these abuses revived on a still more shocking scale. the operation of the new decree places the roman catholic minister or law officer who is called upon to administer justice under the terms of his oath in a position of cruel embarrassment. as a law officer it might be his duty to order the prosecution of some clerical offender; as a roman catholic compliance with his duty to the state must entail the awful consequences of excommunication. it needs no elaboration to show that what may be a grave embarrassment under the rule of impartial british ministers, must under a local irish government develop into a danger to the state. a case recently tried at the waterford assizes establishes a precedent which may prove most mischievous. recent illustrations in ireland of the working of the _temere_ decree have secured for it a sort of quasi-legality and provided a great argument to those devout churchmen who, under home rule, would naturally desire to carry the process a further step. we have proceeded on the assumption that the irish parliament would--formally, at least--confine itself within the limits prescribed by the law of its creation. but it is necessary at least to contemplate the possibility that it would prove less complaisant. the safeguards and limitations inserted in any act of the kind must of necessity be couched in general terms. the constitutional history of the united states and other countries is full of cases showing how difficult it is to define in practice where the border line between _intra_ and _ultra vires_ comes. it is the custom of all governments, if there is any possible room for debate as to their competence to take any particular line of action, to give themselves the fullest benefit of the doubt, and the irish government is unlikely to prove any exception to the rule. when the judicature and all the forces of executive government, except the direct command of troops, is in their hands, the laws passed by the irish parliament could be put in force in ireland. the british government could not intervene except by acts which would amount to open war between the two countries. we must remember that this enforcement of irish laws by irish police in spite of the decisions of a "foreign" government at westminster is openly advocated and contemplated by the large and active section of the nationalists who have adopted as their watchword the motto "ourselves alone" (_sinn fein_). nothing could be more futile than the idea that the judgments of the judicial committee of the privy council would ever be accepted as final by the nationalist majority, or that the royal assent could ever be withheld from an act constitutionally passed by the irish legislature, without precipitating a crisis. the result of applying the veto of the house of lords in england to the measures of liberal ministers was the agitation for removing the veto. the nationalists took part in that agitation and have learned its lesson. directly the british government asserts its technical right of veto, a similar agitation to get rid of all obnoxious restraints would arise in ireland. if anything could increase the danger of friction, it would be the scheme favoured by mr. erskine childers and other liberals of submitting constitutional questions to the decision of the british privy council reinforced by irish judges. either these judges would concur in verdicts given against the pretensions of the irish parliament or they would not. if they did concur, there would be a fierce outcry against the right of judges appointed under the union government to nullify acts of the irish legislature. but if they did not concur, the patriotic indignation with which a decision over the heads of the irish representatives would be received is easy to foresee. it would be a matter of the greatest difficulty to enforce any such decision when the irish government, supported by an agitation in the country, refused to be bound by it. the situation thus created has no parallel in the case of the colonies. in canada or australia, where the legislative power is divided between federal and provincial parliaments, a decision that the one legislature is incompetent affirms the competence of the other. both legislatures have on the spot proper means of enforcing, by judicial and executive authority, decisions which are within their powers. the case of ireland is fundamentally different. there can be no half-way house between keeping ireland a partner in all our legislative and judicial activities, or giving to her with a separate executive uncontrolled and unchecked rights of internal sovereignty. vii the ulster question by the marquis of londonderry, k.g. in the home rule controversy to-day ulster occupies the place of public interest. lord rosebery upon one occasion committed himself to the opinion that, before home rule was conceded by the imperial parliament, england, as the predominant member of the partnership of the three kingdoms, would have to be convinced of its justice.[ ] he did not foresee that the party of which he was then the leader would, under duress, abandon even the pretence of consulting the "predominant partner," much less be guided by its wishes. but it has come to pass: and ulster alone remains the stumbling-block to the successful issue of the plot against the constitution. by ulster we do not mean, as mr. sinclair points out, the geographical area, but the district which historical events have made so different in every respect from the rest of ireland. in the act of union i have a personal interest from family connection. i am convinced that lord castlereagh was absolutely right on both imperial and irish grounds. i feel that so far as ireland is concerned the conditions and position of ulster to-day afford ample confirmation: and of ulster i may claim to have some knowledge. i represented county down in the imperial parliament at westminster before it was divided into constituencies, and in my later days i have maintained my close interest in ulster. at the least, then, i may say that the temperament, the political and religious convictions, and the character of ulster unionists are not unknown to me. i often read of "the ulster bogey;" and i believe mr. john redmond once devoted an article in a sunday paper to elaborate statistical calculations from which he drew the deduction that there was no ulster question. other home rulers, by an expert use of figures, show that there is a home rule majority in ulster itself. to those who know ulster their efforts fail to carry the slightest conviction. figures, however skilfully chosen, articles in the press, however cleverly written, cannot destroy the facts of ulster unionist opposition to home rule, the intensity and seriousness of which is, i believe, only now beginning to be appreciated by his majesty's ministers. i hear of "ulster bigots," "ulster deadheads," and assertions made that the opposition only proceeds from a few aristocratic tory landlords. hard words do us no harm; but abusive epithets will not lessen ulster opposition. indeed the more we are reviled by our opponents, the more we believe they recognize the futility of persuading us to accept home rule. we read of the intense anxiety of irish nationalists on english platforms lest even the suspicion of intolerance should cloud their administration and legislation under home rule, with interest but without respect. we do not believe in these sudden repentances, and we have heard these professions time and again when the exigencies of the moment demanded them. the spirit of change has even affected the government. at first ulster was to be ignored; now it is to be conciliated. there is no safeguard that they will not insert in the bill at our request. the first lord of the admiralty has a list already prepared; and they will welcome additions. mr. redmond accepts them all; and the fact that he does it readily raises our suspicions of their worth. has not mr. john dillon said that artificial guarantees in an act of parliament were no real protection,[ ] and for once it is possible to agree with him. why should "bigots" be conciliated; or "deadheads" receive so much consideration? why should the opposition of aristocratic tory landlords be thought worthy of respect? whenever have they been treated in this manner before by the government in their schemes of legislation? that our views receive so much attention is indeed the proof of the falsity of these hard names. opposition to home rule in ulster proceeds not from "bigots" or "deadheads," not from "tories," or "aristocrats," or "landlords" exclusively. it is neither party question, nor class question. it has destroyed all differences between parties and classes. i doubt if there are any more democratic organizations than those of the ulster unionist council, the unionist clubs, and the orangemen. nor are the religious bodies less popularly organized--the church of ireland, the presbyterians, and other protestant denominations have no class restrictions in their government. and as for party distinctions, those of us who took part in the old political contests before home rule became an urgent danger are now side by side in this greater fight for our very existence. what stronger evidence that opposition to home rule in ulster is no party question is to be found than in the disappearance of the liberal party. i can remember when it was powerful; but it has vanished before the threat of home rule. all attempts to resuscitate the corpse have failed, and a liberal party, independent of the nationalists, representing ulster constituencies in the house of commons, in spite of repeated efforts, does not exist. let me impress upon the people of great britain that ulster opposition to home rule is no party matter. it is an uprising of a people against tyranny and coercion; against condemnation to servitude; against deprivation of the right of citizens to an effective voice in the government of the country. mr. birrell said recently at bristol that ulster would be right to fight if it were oppressed in its religion or despoiled of its property. we welcome his conversion. when he pleads for ulster to wait until it is plain that oppression has come, we recall to mind the phrase so often on liberal lips, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and we say that we should be false to ourselves and to our trust if we were unprepared for what the future will bring under home rule. for our opposition to home rule we are condemned by the irish nationalists as the enemies of our country. we believe ourselves to be its best friends. we believe home rule to be the greatest obstacle to irish progress and prosperity. irish nationalists have made home rule their only idol and denounce every one who will not worship at its shrine. every reform, unless they thought that it tended to advance home rule or magnify their powers, has received their hostility, sometimes open and avowed, at other times secret and working through devious ways. no one who reads the history of ulster can doubt that its inhabitants have not as much love of ireland and as much wish to see her prosperous as the nationalists. they indeed attribute all irish shortcomings to the union. ulstermen, bearing in mind their own progress since the union, not unnaturally decline to accept so absurd an argument. the union has been no obstacle to their development: why should it have been the barrier to the rest of ireland? ulstermen believe that the union with great britain has assisted the development of their commerce and industry. they are proud of the progress of belfast and of her position in the industrial and shipping world. without great natural advantages it has been built up by energy, application, clearheadedness and hard work. the opposition to home rule is the revolt of a business and industrial community against the domination of men who have shown no aptitude for either. the united irish league, the official organization of the home rule party, is, as a treasurer once confessed, remarkably lacking in the support of business men, merchants, manufacturers, leaders of industry, bankers, and men who compose a successful and progressive community.[ ] in the management of their party funds, their impending bankruptcy but a few years ago, the mad scheme of new tipperary, and the fiasco of the parnell migration company there is the same monotonous story of failure. can surprise be felt that ulstermen refuse to place the control of national affairs in the hands of those who have shown little capacity in the direction of their own personal concerns. what responsible statesman would suggest that the city of london, liverpool, manchester, sheffield, newcastle, or any advancing industrial and commercial centre in great britain should be ruled and governed and taxed, without the hope of effective intervention, by a party led by mr. keir hardie and mr. lansbury? yet home rule means much like that for ulstermen, and the impossibility of the scheme is emphasized in the example of ireland by religious differences which have their roots in irish history. ulster's opposition to home rule is no unreasoning hate. it proceeds not from the few; it is not the outcome of political prejudice; it is the hostility of a progressive and advancing people who have made their portion of their country prosperous and decline to hand it over to the control of representatives from the most backward and unprogressive counties. they are actuated by love of their country. they yield to no one in their patriotism and their desire for ireland's welfare. they have always given their support to movements which have had for their objects the improvement of irish conditions and the increase of irish well-being. their sympathies are with irish social reform--and the sympathies of many of them with social reform of an advanced character. contrast their attitude with that of the irish nationalist party in respect of reforms which have proceeded from the imperial parliament and movements within ireland herself. take the irish land act of , accepted by both political parties in great britain as affording the real solution of the irish agrarian problem. what has been the irish nationalist attitude? praise for it on platforms in the united states when it was essential to reach the pockets of subscribers by recounting a record of results gained from the expenditure of american donations; but in ireland itself opposition to its effective working. read nationalist speeches and there is always running through them the fear that the act by solving the land question would remove the real motive power which made home rule a living issue. hence the interference to prevent landlords and tenants coming to an agreement over sales without outside assistance. so to-day irish nationalists are still endeavouring to keep alive the old bad feeling between landlord and tenant which they so successfully created in the seventies and eighties. what better proof of this deliberate attempt to prevent the success of a great reform is to be found than the frank utterance of mr. john dillon at swinford.[ ] "it has been said," he declared, "that we have obstructed the smooth working of the act. i wish to heaven we had the power to obstruct the smooth working of the act more than we did. it has worked too smoothly--far too smoothly to my mind.... some men have complained with the past year that the land act was not working fast enough. for my part i look upon it as working a great deal too fast, and at a pace which has been ruinous to the people." what have the ulster people done which can compare with this opposition to a measure that has admittedly effected a beneficial revolution in irish agrarian life? yet mr. john dillon is acclaimed as a true irish patriot and we are denounced as the enemies of our country! what greater blow to the continuance of land purchase than the birrell act of . granted that some revision of the law was necessary in respect of finance; yet, the act of went far beyond finance. any one with a knowledge of land purchase law knows that the measure of contained innumerable provisions of a technical character calculated to make the free sale between landlord and tenant difficult, and in respect of a large portion of ireland impossible. no wonder it was welcomed by the irish nationalist party, since it did so much to restore them to their self-elected position of counsellors and arbiters in the affairs of the tenants. and ulster unionists for declining to accede to this re-establishment of the old supremacy of the agitators are regarded as the opponents of liberty and freedom! the same sad story of nationalist opposition to irish progress meets the student of the co-operative movement at every period of its existence. no one who knows sir horace plunkett will believe for a moment that he was actuated by other than the sole desire to do something for ireland's benefit. from the leaders of the nationalist party he has had no assistance, although they claim to be the only workers for irish progress, and the co-operative movement was intended to complete the agrarian revolution. in more recent times the hostility of the nationalist leaders has become bolder as they found a ready instrument in mr. t. w. russell in his official capacity as vice-president of the department of agriculture. the co-operative movement is flourishing in spite of the opposition of the nationalist leaders. from ulster it has received considerable support for the reason that ulstermen believed it to be for the benefit of irish agriculture. their support, unlike nationalist hostility, has not arisen from political motives. they do not believe that sir horace plunkett has given a moment's thought to politics in their relation to the co-operative movement, and they have appreciated his movement either as co-operators or as supporters and members of the irish agricultural organization society. contrast the ulster welcome with the nationalist opposition, and ask why we should be denounced as bad irishmen and the nationalists receive praise as true lovers of ireland. the co-operative movement has brought into existence another movement which has for its object the prosperity of irish industries. the industrial development movement which seeks to bring before the people of ireland and the irish public bodies the excellence of irish manufactures is as yet in its infancy. it has no political character, yet i should hesitate to say that official irish nationalism gives it hearty support. in belfast, however, it has made great strides. it gains its support in ulster not for any political reason, but simply and solely because the north of ireland thinks that the industrial movement is to ireland's advantage. where in these instances is our "bigotry" or our hostility to irish progress? does not the balance of credit when the comparison is made with the nationalists come on the side of ulster? the nationalists show their unreasoning opposition by proclaiming that they would rather see ireland in rags and poverty than abate their demand for home rule. ulster unionists desire to see ireland prosperous and contented. for that reason they welcome all reforms and movements from whatever quarter which have this excellent end in view. they intend to offer the strongest and most unrelenting opposition to home rule not as political partisans for party gain, but as irishmen determined to resist so reactionary a measure which they firmly believe will prove of the greatest evil to their unhappy country. footnotes: [footnote : house of lords, march , .] [footnote : salford, november , .] [footnote : mr. a.j. kettle, _freeman's journal,_ july , .] [footnote : september , .] viii the position of ulster by the right hon. thos. sinclair by ulster, i mean the six counties, antrim, down, londonderry, armagh, tyrone, fermanagh, with the important adjacent unionist sections of monaghan, cavan, and donegal, in all of which taken together the unionist population is in an unmistakable majority, and in which the commercial and manufacturing prosperity of the province is maintained by unionist energy, enterprise, and industry. the relation of ulster to a separate irish parliament, with an executive responsible to it, is a question which demands the most serious consideration on the part of english and scotch electors. the ulster scot is not in ireland to-day upon the conditions of an ordinary immigrant. his forefathers were "planted" in ulster in the troublous times of the seventeenth century. although at the end of the reign of queen elizabeth peace had been secured all over ireland, war was renewed in the northern province early in the seventeenth century. the uprising was speedily crushed, and the lands of several of the rebellious nobles forfeited to the crown. in order to prevent a repetition of lawlessness, the forfeited estates were entrusted to undertakers, on whom the obligation rested of peopling them with settlers from great britain. this scheme was devised in the hope that through the industry, character, and loyalty of the new population, the northern province at all events should enjoy peace and prosperity, and become an attached portion of the king's dominions; and that eventually its influence would be usefully felt throughout the rest of ireland. this policy was carried out under the rule of an english king, himself a scot--james vi. of scotland and i. of england. large numbers of settlers were brought over to ulster, many of them english, but the majority scotch. we ulster unionists who inhabit the province to-day, or at least the greater number of us, are descendants of these settlers. the overwhelming majority are passionately loyal to the british throne and to the maintenance of the integrity of the united kingdom. these things being so, it seems to ulster unionists that a grave responsibility rests on their english and scottish fellow-citizens, with regard to our position, should any constitutional changes be imposed upon our country. we are in ireland as their trustees, having had committed to us, through their and our forefathers, the development of the material resources of ulster, the preservation of its loyalty, and the discharge of its share of imperial obligations. it cannot be denied, on an examination of the history of the last three centuries, and especially of that of the one hundred and ten years since the establishment of the legislative union, that, through good report and ill report, and allowing for all our shortcomings, we have not unsuccessfully fulfilled our trust. our forefathers found a province, the least favoured by nature of the four of which ireland consists, and it is to-day the stronghold of irish industry and commerce. its capital, belfast, stands abreast of the leading manufacturing centres in great britain; it contains the foremost establishments in europe, in respect of such undertakings as linen manufacturing, ship-building, rope-making, etc. it is the fourth port in the united kingdom in respect of revenue from customs, its contributions thereto being £ , , in , as compared with £ , , from the rest of ireland. ulster's loyalty to the british king and constitution is unsurpassed anywhere in his majesty's dominions. the north of ireland has contributed to imperial service some of its greatest ornaments. england owes to ulster governors-general like lord dufferin and lord lawrence; soldiers like john nicholson and sir george white; administrators like sir henry lawrence and sir robert montgomery; great judges like lord cairns and lord macnaghten. at the recent delhi durbar the king decorated three ulster men, one of them being sir john jordan, british ambassador at pekin. ulster produced sir robert hart, the incomparable chinese administrator, who might also have been our ambassador to china had he accepted the position. the ulster plantation is the only one which has fulfilled the purpose for which irish plantations were made. the famous colonisation on both sides of the shannon by cromwell entirely failed of its design, the great proportion of its families having, through inter-marriage, become absorbed in the surrounding population. ulster unionists, therefore, having conspicuously succeeded in maintaining the trust committed to their forefathers, and constituting as they do a community intensely loyal to the british connection, believe that they present a case for the unimpaired maintenance of that connection which is impregnable on the grounds of racial sentiment, inherent justice, social well-being, and the continued security of the united kingdom and of the empire. they cannot believe that their british fellow-citizens will, at this crisis, turn a deaf ear to this claim. three or four decades after the ulster plantation, when, in the midst of the horrors of , the scotch colony in ulster was threatened with extermination, it appealed for help to its motherland. it did not appeal in vain. a collection for its benefit was made in the scottish churches, supplies of food and several regiments of scottish soldiers were sent to its aid, and its position was saved. we are confident that the descendants of these generous helpers will be no less true to their ulster kith and kin to-day. the history and present condition of ulster throw an important light on what is currently described as the national demand of ireland for home rule. there is no national irish demand for home rule, because there never has been and there is no homogeneous irish nation. on the contrary, as mr. chamberlain long ago pointed out, ireland to-day consists of two nations. these two nations are so utterly distinct in their racial characteristics, in their practical ideals, in their religious sanctions, and in their sense of civic and national responsibility that they cannot live harmoniously side by side unless under the even-handed control of a just central authority, in which at the same time they have full co-partnership. ireland, accordingly, cannot make a claim for self-government on the ground that she is a political unit. she consists of two units, which owe their distinctive existence, not to geographical boundaries, but to inherent and ineradicable endowments of character and aims. if, then, it is claimed that the unit of nationalist ireland is to be entitled to choose its particular relation to the british constitution, the same choice undoubtedly belongs to the unionist unit. but mr. birrell, for example, would tell us that the nationalist unit in ireland is three times as large as the unionist unit, and that therefore the smaller entity should submit, because, as he has cynically observed, "minorities must suffer, for that is the badge of their tribe." but a minority in the united kingdom is not to be measured by mere numbers; its place in the constitution is to be estimated by its contribution to public well-being, by its relation to the industries and occupations of its members, by its association with the upbuilding of national character, by its fidelity to law and order, and by its sympathy with the world mission of the british empire in the interests of civil and religious freedom. tried by all these tests, ulster is entitled to retain her full share in every privilege of the whole realm. tried by the same tests the claim of , , irish nationalists to break up the constitution of the united kingdom, of whose population they constitute perhaps one-fifteenth, is surely unthinkable. other writers in this volume have discussed home rule as it affects various vital interests in ireland as a whole. it remains for me briefly to point out its special relation to the northern province-- . _home rule, in the judgment of ulster, would degrade the status of ulster citizenship by impairing its relationship to imperial parliament._ this would be effected both by lessening or extinguishing the representation of ulster in that parliament, and by removing the control of ulster rights and liberties from imperial parliament and entrusting it to a hostile parliament in dublin. ulstermen would thus stand on a dangerously lower plane of civil privilege than their fellow-citizens in great britain. to place them in this undeserved inferiority, they hold to be unjust and cruel. . _home rule would gravely imperil our civil and religious liberties._ ireland is pre-eminently a clerically controlled country, the number of roman catholic priests being per head greater than that of any country in europe. her staff of members of religious orders, male and female, is also enormous, their numbers having increased during the last fifty years per cent., while the population has decreased per cent. it is undeniable, therefore, that in a dublin parliament, the overwhelming majority of whose members would be adherents of the roman catholic faith, the roman ecclesiastical authority, which claims the right to decide as to what questions come within the region of faith and morals would be supreme. great stress has lately been laid in nationalist speeches from british platforms on the tolerant spirit towards protestants which animates irish roman catholics. we gladly acknowledge that in most parts of ireland protestants and roman catholics, as regards the ordinary affairs of life, live side by side on friendly neighbourly terms. indeed, that spirit, as a consequence of the growing prosperity of ireland, had been steadily increasing, till the recent revival of the home rule proposal, with its attendant fears of hierarchical ascendency, as illustrated by the promulgation of the _ne temere_ decree, suddenly interrupted it. but the fundamental fact of the case is, that in the last resort, it is not with their roman catholic neighbours, or even with their hierarchy, that irish protestants have to reckon; it is rather with the vatican, the inexorable power behind them all, whose decrees necessarily over-ride all the good-will which neighbourly feeling might inspire in the roman catholic mind. the _ne temere_ decree affords a significant premonition of the spirit which would direct home rule legislation. it is noteworthy that no nationalist member has protested against the cruelties of that decree as shown in the m'cann case, and mr. devlin, m.p., even defended what was done from his place in parliament. this action is all the more significant in view of the fact that during the committee stage of the home rule bill mr. gladstone, mr. redmond, and his irish nationalist colleagues voted against, and defeated, an ulster amendment which proposed to exempt marriage and other religious ceremonies from the legislative powers of the dublin parliament. it would be intolerable that such litigation as in the hubert case at present in progress in montreal, arising out of the marriage law of the province of quebec, should be made possible in ireland. no paper safeguards in a home rule bill could prevent it. again, a most serious peril has just been disclosed in the publication of the _motu proprio_ papal decree, under which the bringing by a roman catholic layman of a clergyman of his church into any civil or criminal procedure in a court of law, whether as defendant or witness, without the sanction previously ob tamed of his bishop, involves to that layman the extreme penalty of excommunication. the same penalty appears to be incurred _ipso facto_ by any roman catholic member of parliament who takes part in passing, and by every executive officer of the government who takes part in promulgating, a law or decree which is held to invade the liberty or rights of the church of rome. this is a matter of supreme importance in our civil life. it was one of the questions which, in reformation times, led to the breach between henry viii. and the pope. in a dublin parliament no power could resist the provisions of this decree from becoming law. as a matter of fact, the liberty of speech and voting attaching to every member of the roman catholic majority in a dublin parliament would be under the absolute control of their hierarchy. each roman catholic member would be bound to act under the dread of excommunication if he voted for or condoned any legislation contrary to the asserted rights of his church, or which conflicted with its claims. not only would the legislative independence of a dublin parliament be thus destroyed, but the administration of justice would be affected on every bench in the country, from the supreme court of appeal down to ordinary petty sessions. a grievous wrong would be inflicted on roman catholic judges and law officers, some of whom are unsurpassed for integrity and legal ability. it is contrary to every principle of justice to place these honourable men in a position in which they would have to choose between their oath to their king and their duty--arbitrarily imposed upon them--to their church. jurymen and witnesses would be equally brought under the sinister influences of the decree, and confidence in just administration of the law, which is at the root of civil well-being, would be fatally destroyed. . _home rule would involve the entire denominationalising, in the interests of the roman catholic church, of irish education in all its branches._ to secure this result has long been the great educational aim of the irish hierarchy. how they have succeeded as regards higher education mr. birrell's irish universities act ( ) gives abundant evidence. the national university of ireland, created by that act, which on paper was represented to nonconformists in england as having a constitution free from religious tests, is now, according to the recent boast of cardinal logue, thoroughly roman catholic, in spite of all paper safeguards to the contrary. persistent attempts have been made to sectarianise the irish primary national school system, founded seventy years ago, and which now receives an annual state endowment of £ , , , with the object of safeguarding the faith of the children of minorities, on the principle of united secular and separate religious instruction. that system worked so satisfactorily through many decades that lord o'hagan, the eminent first roman catholic lord chancellor of ireland, declared that under it, up till his time, no case whatever of proselytism to any church had occurred. but gradually a sectarian system of education under the roman catholic church was developed through the teaching order of christian brothers, whose schools are now to be found all over ireland, and which in many places now supplant the non-sectarian schools of the national board. the strongest efforts were made to bring these sectarian schools into the system of the national board, and thus entitle them to a share of the state annual endowment. there is no greater peril to the religious faith of protestant minorities in the border counties of ulster and elsewhere in ireland than the sectarianising of primary schools by roman catholics. a few years ago a protestant member of a public service was transferred upon promotion from belfast to a roman catholic district, in which his boys had no available school but that of the christian brothers, and his girls none but that of the local convent. i shall never forget the expression of that man's face or the pathos in his voice while he pressed me to help him to obtain a transfer to a protestant district, as otherwise he feared his children would be lost to the faith of their fathers. given a parliament in dublin, the management of education would be so conducted as gradually to extinguish protestant minorities in the border counties of ulster and in the other provinces of ireland. it is here that a chief danger to protestantism lies. . _home rule will seriously injure ulster's material prosperity--industrial, commercial, agricultural._ the root of the evil will lie in the want of credit of an irish exchequer in the money markets of the world. the best financial authorities agree that if ireland should be left to her own resources, there would be, on the present basis of taxation, and after providing for a fair irish contribution towards imperial defence, an annual deficit in the irish exchequer of £ , , to £ , , . an irish government in such circumstances--consols themselves being now some £ under par--could not borrow money at any reasonable rate of interest. ever; if the british taxpayer were compelled to provide for the deficiency, either by an annual grant or by payment of a divorce penalty of £ , , to £ , , , or by both, a prudent investor would fear that the annual dole might at any moment be withdrawn should, for instance, john bull become irritated by the action of a dublin parliament, say, in declaring enlisting in his majesty's forces a criminal act; or that the capital gift would soon be frittered away in the interests of agitators and their friends. he would simply refuse to invest in irish stock. now, a fundamental condition of commercial and industrial well-being is financial confidence. if the public exchequer of a country lacks confidence, it is a truism to say that consequently commercial confidence must be gravely impaired. the magnates of lombard street and wall street would view their irish clients with unpleasant reserve. irish bankers would in turn restrict advances to their customers, and these again would limit the credit of those with whom they transacted business. curtailment of industrial enterprise, the shutting down of many manufacturing concerns, with consequent depreciation of buildings and plant, as well as increase of unemployment, would follow. already, since the present home rule crisis has become acute, the handwriting on the wall has been made evident in the depreciation of leading irish stocks to the extent of to per cent. every one in trade would suffer from the diminution of purchasing power, capital would shrink, income and wages decrease, and the incentives to emigration, which is already depriving our population of some of its most hopeful elements, would be dangerously increased. all these tendencies would be stimulated by the social disorganisation which would certainly follow home rule. unionist ulster, from the ulster convention of , to the craigavon demonstration of , has been consistent in her loyal determination that no parliament but the imperial parliament shall control her destinies. it is an ignorant mistake to say that she is weakening in this resolve. the steadily increasing unionist majorities in contested ulster seats at both elections in conclusively prove that she is more staunch than ever in her unionist faith. she would certainly resist the decrees of a dublin parliament and refuse to pay its taxes. the result of its passive resistance would be civil disorder, which would certainly gravely injure her industrial welfare, especially that of her artisan and working population. but ulstermen ask, what is industrial prosperity without freedom? and if, in defence of freedom, they should suffer disaster, the responsibility would lie with their fellow-citizens in great britain who would impose a hostile yoke upon them. under home rule, agricultural ulster would also suffer. very many ulster farmers are now occupying owners. but a large number have not yet succeeded in purchasing, and these eagerly desire the privilege of doing so. mr. birrell's act has already practically strangled further land purchase in ireland, and if he intends that its completion should be the work of a home rule parliament, the ulster tenants ask where would the £ , , to £ , , necessary to accomplish the process, come from?[ ] they know that the procuring of such a sum from an irish government would be hopeless, for they are aware that englishmen have better judgment than to allow their parliament to lend further money to a country over which they had relinquished direct parliamentary authority, and whose exchequer would be bankrupt. home rule would thus permanently relegate the agricultural population, not only of ulster, but of ireland generally, into two classes living side by side with each other--one consisting of occupying owners, the other of rent-payers without hope of ownership. the evil results in discontent, friction, deterioration of agricultural methods and lessened production would inflict serious injury on ulster prosperity. again, home rule would involve ulster industry and commerce in excessive taxation. no one who is aware of the passionate desire amongst irish agitators and their friends for lucrative jobs, of the efforts that would be made to subsidise industries with government funds, of the determination of the clergy to have their monastic, christian brothers', monastic and convent schools largely supported by the state, and of the impossibility, in view of the social disorder all over ireland that would follow home rule, of reducing further the police force or the judiciary, entertains any doubt that retrenchment in irish expenditure would be impossible. on the contrary, irish taxation would increase, and as recent legislation has placed upon irish farmers imposts greater than they think they can bear, the additional revenue would be sought for mainly from the industrial north. but with business disorganised, incomes decreased and unemployment increased, the yield of taxation would be much reduced, and the rate must therefore be made higher. all this would fortify ulster in her determined refusal to pay home rule taxation, and the bankruptcy of the dublin exchequer would be complete. it is from having regard to considerations such as i have outlined, and of the validity of which she is profoundly convinced, that ulster has registered the historic convention declaration, "we will not have home rule." her position is plain and intelligible. she demands no separation from her nationalist countrymen. on the contrary, she wishes, under the protection of the legislative union, to live side by side with them in peaceful industry and neighbourly fellowship, with the desire that they and we may in common partake of the benefits conferred on ireland by generous imperial legislation and repay it by sympathetic and energetic contribution to the service of the empire. but if home rule legislation should be passed contrary to ulster's earnest and patriotic pleading, then she claims--not a separate parliament for herself, but that she may remain as she is in the unimpaired enjoyment of her position as an integral portion of the united kingdom and with unaltered representation in imperial parliament. she wishes to continue as an irish lancashire, or an irish lanarkshire. in this relationship to great britain she is confident she will best preserve, not only her own interests, but also those of her fellow loyalists, roman catholic as well as protestants, whose lot is cast in the other provinces and whose welfare will always be her responsible and earnest concern. but if this demand--based on loyalty to the king and constitution, and founded on the elementary right of british citizens to the unimpaired protection of imperial parliament--be refused, then the only alternative is the ulster provincial government, which will be organised to come into operation on the day that a home rule bill should receive the royal assent; and under that provisional government we shall continue to support our king, and to render the same services' to the united kingdom and to the empire as have characterised the history of ulster during the past three hundred years. footnotes: [footnote : see mr. wyndham's article, p. .] ix the southern minorities by richard bagwell, m.a. at the present moment no county or borough in the three southern provinces of ireland returns a unionist member. there are substantial minorities in many places, but very few in which there would be any chance of a successful contest. the university of dublin sends two conspicuous unionists to parliament, who represent not only a constituency of graduates, but the vast majority of educated and thinking people. the bearing of the question on religious interests will be dealt with by others, but it may be said here that the protestant community is unionist. the exceptions are few, and are much more than counter-balanced by the roman catholic opponents of home rule, who for obvious reasons are less outspoken, but are quite as anxious to avert the threatened revolution. the great bone of contention has always been the land, the cause of various wars and of ceaseless civil disputes. parnell saw and said that purely political nationalism was weak by itself, and he took up the land question to get leverage. for many years it has been evident that the only feasible solution was to convert occupiers into owners, and a very long step was made by the purchase act of . progress has now been arrested, for the act of does not work. the vendors or expropriated owners, whichever is the more correct term, are expected to take a lower price and to be paid in depreciated paper. the minorities to be most immediately affected by legislation consist of landlords who are unable, though willing, to sell, and of tenants who are unable but very anxious to buy. the present deadlock is disastrous, for many tenants think they ought not to pay more than their neighbours, and demand reductions of rent without considering that the owner has received no part of his capital and dares not destroy the basis on which he hopes to be ultimately paid. it has been an essential part of the purchase policy that the instalment due by the occupier to recoup the state advance should be less than the rent. this has been made possible by the magic of british credit, and if that is withheld the confusion in ireland will be worse than ever. the exchequer has lost little or nothing, and even at much greater cost it would be the cheapest money that england ever spent. more than half the tenanted land has now passed to the occupiers, and it would be the most cruel injustice to leave the remaining landlords without power either to sell their property or to collect rents judicially fixed and refixed. they would fare badly with an irish legislature and an irish executive. they are, for the most part, poor but loyal men, and have exercised a great civilising influence. are they to be deserted and ruined to keep an english party in place by the votes of men who have never pretended to be anything but england's enemies? irish unionists laugh at the idea of a local parliament being kept subordinate. it will have the power of making laws for everything irish, that is, for everything that immediately concerns those that live in ireland. there will be ceaseless efforts to enlarge its sphere of action, and if irish members continue to sit at westminster they will be as troublesome as ever there. if there are to be no irish members ireland will be a separate nation. even candid home rulers confess that statutory safeguards would be of none effect. hedged in by british bayonets the lord lieutenant may exercise his veto, but upon whose advice will he do it? if on that of an irish ministry the minority will have no protection at all, and does any one suppose it possible to go back to the practice of the seventeenth century, when all irish bills were settled in the english privy council, and could not be altered in a dublin parliament? orators declaim about our lost legislature, but they take good care not to say what it was. in the penultimate decade of the eighteenth century the trammels were taken off, and a union was soon found necessary. during the short interval of independence there were two french invasions and a bloody rebellion. protestant ascendency, though used as a catchword, is a thing long past. roman catholic ascendency would be a very real thing under home rule. the supremacy of the imperial parliament alone makes both the one and the other impossible. if a legislature is established it must be given the means of enforcing its laws. we do not know what the present government propose to do with the irish police, but whatever the law says in practice, they will be under the local executive. unpopular people will not be protected, and many of them will be driven out of the country. parliamentary home rulers draw rosy pictures of the future arcadia; but they will not be able to fulfil their own prophecies. apart from the agrarian question, there is the party of revolutionists in ireland whose headquarters are in america. they have furnished the means for agitation, and will look for their reward. the fenian party has less power in the united states than it used to have, but there will be congenial work to do in ireland. a violent faction can be kept in order where there is a strong government, but in a home rule ireland it would not be strong for any such purpose. appeals to cupidity and envy would find hearers, and there could be no effective resistance. the french jacobins were a minority but they swept all before them. in the end better counsels might prevail, but the mischief done would be great, and much of it irreparable. the justice dealt out by the superior courts in ireland is as good as it is anywhere. a judge in the last resort has the whole force of the state behind him, and no one dreams of resistance. with an irish parliament and an irish executive this would hardly be the case. the judges would still be lawyers, but their power would be greatly impaired. in ireland popular feeling is always against creditors, and it would be very hard indeed either to execute a writ of ejectment or a seizure of goods. if the sanction of the law is weakened, public respect for it is lessened, and the result will be a general relaxation of the bonds which draw society together. there is nothing in the antecedents of the home rule party to make one suppose that it contains the materials of a good and impartial government. home rule politicians are talkative and pertinacious. as members of parliament they are of course listened to, while unionists outside ulster make little noise; it is, therefore, constantly said that they acquiesce in the inevitable change. unrepresented men cannot easily make themselves heard, but they have done what they could. an enormous meeting has been held in dublin, and the building, which contains some , was filled in a quarter of an hour. there has since been a large gathering of young men who wish to remain full citizens of the empire in which they were born, and others are to follow. in rural districts it is almost impossible to collect people in winter. days are short and distances are long. unionist farmers cannot forget the outrages that prevailed some years ago, and are not yet unknown. in the native land of boycotting and cattle-driving it is not surprising that they do not wish to be conspicuous. the difficulty extends to the towns, in many of which it would be almost impossible to hire a room for unionist purposes. hotel keepers object to risking their business and their windows, for a mob is easily excited to riot on patriotic grounds. shopkeepers also have to be cautious in a country which has been wittily described as a land of liberty where no one can do as he likes, but where every one must do exactly what everybody else likes. in the summer people can meet in the open air, and there will, no doubt, be abundant protests from southern unionists. there will then be something definite to talk about. it is often said that the county councils have done well, and that therefore there is no danger in an irish parliament, but the two things are different in kind. county or district councils, or boards of guardians, are constituted by acts of the imperial parliament to administer acts of the same, and are subject to constant supervision by the local government board, and to the peremptory action of the king's bench. a parliament is by nature supreme within its sphere of action, and its constant effort would be to enlarge that field. the men who aim at independence would have the easy part to play, for no one in or out of ulster, former unionist or confirmed nationalist, would have any interest in opposing them. in the meantime local councils have taught us what is likely to happen. minorities are virtually excluded from them and from paid places in their gift. of protestants holding local office the great majority are survivals from the old grand jury system. political discussions are frequent, but they are all among nationalists. intolerance of independent opinion and impatience of criticism are everywhere noticeable, and the corporation of dublin does not show a good example. it is intolerance of this kind rather than any approach to religious persecution that protestants suffer from in the present and fear for the future. men who have something to lose dread the idea of home rule, including farmers who have bought their holdings, but as yet this has not been allowed time to work. there is a long way between not caring to support a nationalist and voting for a unionist. the chief employers of labour are mostly for the union, but few are in a position to help the unionist cause effectively, for they have to deal with strike makers and possible boycotters. when labour troubles come, nationalist politicians try to make out that they are caused by english agitators, and that there would be none under home rule. the probability is all the other way. there could be nothing in the existence of an irish parliament to prevent english socialists from crossing the channel, and some labour leaders in england are irish. we have heard a great deal lately about the union of the two democracies, and that is the point where they would unite. passing from labour to land, which is after all the great interest of southern and western ireland, the danger is even greater. with the loss of british credit it would be almost impossible to carry out the plan of occupying ownership without the grossest injustice, and the mischief would not stop there. an irish government would be poor, but would be expected to do all and more than all that the united government has done. at first the gap might be stopped by extravagant super-income tax, by half-compensated seizures of demesne land, and by penalising the owners of ground rents and town property. confiscation is not a permanent source of wealth, for it soon kills the goose that laid the golden egg. then the turn of the large farmer would come. most unionists, and many who call themselves home rulers, are satisfied with the form of government they now have. the country has prospered wonderfully, and it will continue to prosper if the land purchase system is carried out to the end in a liberal spirit. the worst danger comes from the check given to the process by the present ministry. but the national feelings of ireland must not be ignored. her far-back history, bad in itself, but represented worse by unscrupulous writers, makes it necessary to maintain an impartial power above the warring elements. in a pastoral country people have much time on their hands, and are apt to spend it in brooding over bygone wrongs. but over the past not jove himself hath power, and it is for the future that we are responsible. from wellington onwards ireland has given many great soldiers to the british army, and it is the classes from which they spring that it is now proposed to abandon. under home rule the flag would be a foreign emblem, useless to protect the weak in ireland, and perhaps available to oppress them. england would have cast off her friends and gained none in exchange. nothing will conciliate the revolutionary faction in ireland, and there is every reason to think that it would become the strongest. modern ireland is the creation of english policy, and many wrong things were formerly done, but for a long time amends have been making. if england, from weariness or for the sake of party advantage, abandons her supporters, they will have no successors. ireland will be more troublesome than ever, and the crime will receive its fitting punishment. x home rule and naval defence by admiral lord charles beresford, m.p. ireland under home rule must, in the event of war, be regarded as a potentially hostile country. in this statement resides the dominant factor of the situation viewed from the naval and military point of view. it is not asserted that the government of ireland would be disloyal; but it is asserted that the authorities charged with the defence of his majesty's dominions cannot afford to take risks when the safety of the country is at stake. that such risks must exist under the circumstances indicated, is obvious to all those who have studied the speeches of the leaders of the irish nationalist party, in which they have unequivocally declared their intention to rid ireland of english rule, and in which they extol as heroes such men as theobald wolfe tone, who intrigued with france against england in order to achieve irish independence, and who took his own life rather than receive the just reward of his deeds. that some among the irish nationalist leaders have recently professed their devotion to the british empire cannot be regarded by serious persons as a relevant consideration. the demand for home rule is in fact a demand for separation from the united kingdom or it is nothing. naval officers are accustomed to deal with facts rather than with words. in the great sea-wars of the past, ireland has always been regarded by the enemy as providing the base for a flank attack upon england. had king louis xiv. rightly used his opportunities, the army of king william would have been cut off from its base in england, and would have been destroyed by reinforcements arriving from france to assist king james ii. there is no more concise presentment of the case than the account of it given by admiral mahan in "the influence of sea power upon history, - ." "the irish sea, separating the british islands, rather resembles an estuary than an actual division; but history has shown the danger from it to the united kingdom. in the days of louis xiv., when the french navy nearly equalled the combined english and dutch, the gravest complications existed in ireland, which passed almost wholly under the control of the natives and the french. nevertheless, the irish sea was rather a danger to the english--a weak point in their communications--than an advantage to the french. the latter did not venture their ships-of-the-line in its narrow waters, and expeditions intending to land were directed upon the ocean ports in the south and west. at the supreme moment the great french fleet was sent upon the south coast of england, where it decisively defeated the allies, and at the same time twenty-five frigates were sent to st. george's channel, against the english communications. in the midst of a hostile people the english army in ireland was seriously imperilled, but was saved by the battle of the boyne and the flight of james ii. _this movement against the enemy's communications was strictly strategic, and would be just as dangerous to england now as in _[ ].... "there can be little doubt that an effective co-operation of the french fleet in the summer of would have broken down all opposition to james in ireland, by isolating that country from england, with corresponding injury to william's power.... "the battle of the boyne, which from its peculiar religious colouring has obtained a somewhat factitious celebrity, may be taken as the date at which the english crown was firmly fixed on william's head. yet it would be more accurate to say that the success of william, and with it the success of europe, against louis xiv. in the war of the league of augsburg, was due to the mistakes and failure of the french naval campaign in ; though in that campaign was won the most conspicuous single success the french have ever gained at sea over the english." every great naval power has gone to school to admiral mahan; and this country can hardly expect again to profit by those mistakes in strategy which the gifted american writer has so lucidly exposed. ireland, lying on the western flank of great britain, commands on the south the approaches to the channel, on the west the north atlantic; and on the east the irish sea, all sea-roads by which millions of pounds' worth of supplies are brought to england. on every coast ireland has excellent harbours. there are lough swilly on the north, blacksod bay on the west, bantry bay, cork harbour and waterford harbour on the south, kingstown harbour and belfast lough on the east--to name but these--besides numerous lesser inlets which can serve as shelter for small craft and destroyers. it should here be noted that belfast harbour, owing to the enterprise of the harbour board, now possesses a channel and dock capable of accommodating a ship of the dreadnought type[ ]. there is no necessity to presuppose an actively hostile ireland; but an ireland ruled by a disloyal faction would easily afford shelter to the warships of the enemy in her ports, whence they could draw supplies, where they could execute small repairs, and could coal from colliers despatched there for the purpose or captured. thus lodged, a fleet or a squadron would command the main trade routes to england; and might inflict immense damage in a short time. intelligence of its position could be prevented from reaching england by the simple method of destroying wireless stations and cutting cables. these considerations would necessarily impose upon the navy the task of detaching a squadron of watching cruisers charged with the duty of keeping guard about the whole of ireland. is the admiralty prepared to discharge this office in the event of war? if not, there falls to be considered the further danger of the invasion of ireland. that such a peril is not imaginary, is proved by the fact that ireland has been invaded in the past. the attempt of hoche and grouchy to land in bantry bay in failed ignominiously; and the next expedition designed to invade ireland was defeated at camperdown. but in , the year of the great rebellion in ireland, three french frigates evaded the british cruisers, and on august dropped anchor in killala bay. general of brigade, jean joseph amable humbert, landed with his second in command, general sarazin, several rebel irish leaders, men and officers. on august humbert defeated the british troops at castlebar "races." on september , his forces surrendered at ballinamuck to lord cornwallis. general humbert was carried to england; and it is worth noting that while he was on his way, admiral bompard set sail from brest with a ship of the line and three frigates, carrying men and officers, commanded by general hardy and the notorious wolfe tone (called general smith for the occasion). bompard was turned back by an english fleet of forty-two sail. the obvious conclusion of the whole matter is that the fleet can stop an invasion, always provided that the ships thereof are the right number in the right place at the right time. the irish rebellion of is often discussed as though it was wholly bred of the corruption of ireland itself. the fact was, of course, that it was an offshoot of the french revolution, and that the condition of ireland at the time was no more than a contributory cause. my lords cornwallis, castlereagh, and clare, in combating the forces of the rebellion, were actually in conflict with the vast insurrections of the french nation. the design of the irish rebels was to enlist the mighty destructive force of france to serve their own ends. wolfe tone and his colleague lewens, in , had succeeded in persuading carnot and the french directory to embrace the cause of ireland. when the rebellion of broke out, lewens wrote to the directory reminding them that they had promised that france should postulate the conferring of independence upon ireland as the condition of making peace with england, and specifying five thousand troops of all arms, and thirty thousand muskets with artillery and ammunition, as sufficient to ensure the success of the rebellion. the attitude of the directory is defined in the despatch addressed to general hardy (upon whom the supreme command of the humbert expedition at first devolved) by bruix, minister of marine, dated july , . "the executive directory is busily engaged in arranging to send help to the irish who have taken up arms to sever the yoke of british rule. it is for the french government to second the efforts of a brave people who have too long suffered under oppression." in other words, the directory regarded the achievement of her independence by ireland as an enterprise incidental to the greater scheme of the conquest of england and of europe. it was further laid down in the despatch that "it is most important to take every possible means to arouse the public spirit of the country, and particularly to foster sedulously its hatred of the english name ... there has never been an expedition whose result might more powerfully affect the political situation in europe, or could more advantageously assist the republic...." irish conspirators have never risen to play any part higher than the office of cat's-paw to a foreign nation. to-day, they are content--at present--to bribe with votes a political party in england. but it is none the less essential to remember that, as in and as in a great and militant foreign power used the weapon of irish sedition against england, so in the same instrument lies ready to hand. for the home rule conspiracy of to-day is nothing but the lees of the evil heritage bequeathed by the french revolution. it is the business of the naval officer, who is not concerned with party politics, to estimate the posture of international affairs solely in relation to the security of the state. the condition of ireland at this moment, when the home rule issue has been wantonly revived, would, in the event of a war occurring between great britain and a foreign power, involve the necessity of regarding ireland as a strategic base of essential value, a part of whose inhabitants might combine with the hostile forces by giving them shelter and supplies, and even by inviting them to occupy the country. elsewhere in these pages, lord percy has pointed out that the necessity of holding a disaffected ireland by garrisoning the country would totally disorganise our military preparations for war--such as they are. these considerations must materially affect strategical dispositions in the event of war, involving the establishment and maintenance of a separate force of cruisers charged with the duty of patrolling the sea routes which converge upon ireland, and of watching the harbours of her coasts. as matters stand at present, such a force does not exist. it may, of course, be urged that a strategical plan designed for the double purpose of surveying the movements of a hostile battle-fleet and of guarding the trade-routes, must of necessity cover the coasts of ireland, on the principle that the greater includes the less. the argument, however, omits the essential qualification that a part of the irish population cannot be trusted. it is this additional difficulty which has been introduced into the problem of naval defence by the revival by politicians of the agitation of , under another name. footnotes: [footnote : the writer's italics.] [footnote : according to _the daily telegraph_ of january , .] xi the military disadvantages of home rule by the earl percy the problems of imperial defence have become of late years extremely complex, owing to the rise of a great european naval power, and also to the predominance of japan in the pacific. these two factors, combined with the invention of the dreadnought type of ship which is now being built by other powers whose navies we could formerly afford to ignore, have rendered our position in the world more precarious, more dependent upon foreign alliances and _ententes_, and have rendered combination for defence far more essential. no home rule scheme can be judged without taking into consideration what its effect will be on this situation. it is proposed to consider it first in the light of the more pressing european danger, and next to examine how it will affect the wider problem of the future, namely, the co-operation of all parts of the british empire for defence. but first it is of course necessary to find out what home rule means, and what the internal state of ireland will be if it passes. on this point there is at present no certainty. we can dismiss at once mr. redmond's picture of a serenely contented and grateful ireland, only desirous of helping her benefactor, and, under a strong and incorruptible government, engaged in setting its house in order. the presence of a strong protestant community, the history of the roman catholic church in all countries, and the deliberate fostering of separatist national ideals preclude the possibility of anything but a prolonged period of unrest, which, on the most favourable hypothesis, can only cease altogether when the present generation has passed away. this unrest may take two forms; either civil war, or a condition where the rousing of old animosities, religious and otherwise, leads to internal disturbances of all kinds. it is not proposed to deal here with the consequences involved by the calling in of troops to suppress by force of arms an insurrectionary movement against the government of ireland. in view of the present state of affairs in ulster, such an event seems extremely probable, but the disastrous results of passing home rule in face of it are so patent to all that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon them here. we have, therefore, to consider a condition of things in which old mutual hatreds have re-awakened, in which ireland will be governed by men who have up till now preached sedition, have done their best to check recruiting, who have deliberately set up an ideal of "complete separation" as their ultimate goal, and whose motto has always been "england's difficulty is ireland's opportunity." it is conceivable, of course, though it is extremely improbable, that these aims and ideals may be abjured in course of time, but the gravity of these risks must be taken into account in examining ireland's position in any scheme of national and imperial defence both now and in the future. and in this connection it may be remarked that an almost exact analogy to the situation which will probably result from this measure may be seen in the events which preceded the boer war, and it seems somewhat remarkable that those who endeavour to justify home rule by the supposed colonial analogy should overlook a warning so evident and so recent in the history of our oversea dominions. a separatist party in ireland would be enabled to work for ultimate independence as did president kruger, and by the same methods, the same secret acquisition of arms and implements of war, the same building of fortresses with a view to a declaration of independence when a suitable opportunity arrived; and this would be all the more likely to occur if ulster were exempted from a home rule parliament. in this case ulstermen would occupy exactly the same position as did the uitlanders from to . the same arguments for granting independence to ireland are used now, the same talk of injustice towards those who are disloyal with equal disregard of the loyalist section, and the results will be the same. would independence have been granted to the transvaal or orange free state had their use of it been foreseen? taking the factors in both cases into account, is there anything to justify the doubt that a repetition of that situation will occur, with the only difference that eventual rupture will probably entail the dismemberment of the empire? it is universally acknowledged that this country is at present faced with a more critical european situation than any we have experienced for a hundred years. it has tied our fleet to home waters, and has induced a very large and influential section of our people to advocate the necessity of compulsory military service. our military organisation is on the face of it a makeshift, and the makeshift is not even complete, for in the territorial army and the special reserve alone there is a shortage of more than , men. now, our foreign policy of _ententes_ and the needs of our oversea territories have necessitated a military organisation, the foundation of which is readiness to undertake an oversea expedition as well as to provide for home defence. the critical situation in europe especially will demand the instant despatch of our expeditionary force on the outbreak of war, in which case there will be left in these islands the following forces after deducting per cent, for casualties:-- about , regulars, of whom , will be under years of age. about , reservists. these will be required to reinforce the expeditionary force. about , special reservists. some , of these are under . this force is to be used to reinforce the troops abroad. about , territorials. , of these are under . in all there are some , men, of whom , are boys and , will leave the country soon after war breaks out. this will leave some , men to provide for the defence of england, scotland, and ireland, supplemented by , boys. these troops will be deprived of practically all regular and even reserve officers, and will have to provide for coast defence, for the security of law and order, and for the numbers required for a central field force. by means of juggling with figures, by the registration of names in what is called the national reserve, but has no organisation or corporate existence, and by similar means, the seriousness of this situation has been concealed to some extent, but it is generally recognised as being little short of a national scandal, and would not be tolerated were it not for the general ignorance of our people concerning the exigencies of war and their blind belief in the omnipotence of the navy. this defencelessness has two dangers: firstly, the chance of a successful raid or invasion. as long as our navy is not defeated, no invading force of more than , men is supposed to be capable of landing. the second danger is that the mere fear of such an event will prevent the despatch of the expeditionary force and the fulfilment of our oversea obligations. it must be obvious that in the precarious state of our national defence anything which renders either of these dangers more probable should be avoided at all costs. if, for instance, the condition of ireland should demand the maintenance of a larger garrison in that country, the whole of our present organisation for defence falls to pieces. looking only at the present foreign situation, and the ever-growing menace of increasing armaments, if the passing of home rule should require the retention of a single extra soldier in ireland, it is perfectly certain that nothing could justify the adoption of such a measure. it is not intended to convey the impression that there is any fear of ireland repeating the history of and welcoming a foreign invasion, although it is impossible to ignore the anti-english campaign of agitation, or to say to what length it will go; but the mere fact of internal dissension in that country will give an enemy exactly the chance he looks for. many of those best qualified to judge are of opinion that germany is only waiting to free herself of an embarrassing situation, until one power of the triple entente is for the time being too much occupied to intervene in a continental struggle. we have had one warning when, in september, , a railway strike at home coincided with a foreign crisis. are we deliberately to take a step which will almost certainly involve us in a similar dilemma? this is the more immediate danger, but, apart from this, the strategical value of ireland will be profoundly affected by its separation from england, and this constitutes a grave source of weakness, even if internal trouble be avoided, and a comparatively loyal government be installed. ireland lies directly across all the trade routes by which nearly all our supplies of food and raw material are brought, and it covers the principal trade centres of the midlands and the south of scotland. in any attack by an enemy on our commerce, ireland will become of supreme importance. there are two stages in every naval war: first, the engagement between the two navies; second, the blockade or destruction of the ships of the beaten side. this was the method by which we fought napoleon, but even then we could not prevent the enemy's ships escaping from time to time; and even after we had destroyed their navy at trafalgar, the damage to our oversea commerce was enormous. nowadays, torpedoes, submarines, and floating mines have rendered blockade infinitely more precarious, and consequently we have to take into account the extreme probability, and indeed, certainty, of hostile cruisers escaping and menacing our oversea supplies. this danger will be increased tenfold if germany has been able to defeat france, and use french, dutch, and belgian ports for privateering purposes. in the second, if not in the first, stage of european war, therefore, the closest co-operation between the governments of ireland and england will be essential. in this case, queenstown and lough swilly will be the bases for our own protecting cruisers, and on their success will depend the issues of life and death for our people. as the west of ireland is the nearest point in these islands to america, it is probable that cargoes destined for english ports will reach them _via_ ireland to avoid the longer sea-transit. lord wolseley has even gone so far as to minimise the dangers of blockade, because the irish coast offered such facilities for blockade-running. it is certain that in our greatest need ireland might well prove our salvation, provided we had not absolutely lost command of the sea, and this advantage a liberal government is prepared to jeopardise for reasons, which, compared with the interests at stake, are little less than sordid. but even if ireland be less directly affected by war than in this case, and even if its internal condition should give little anxiety, the very nature of its resources should prevent us taking a step which may deprive us of them in emergency or, at least, render them less readily available. not only do we draw a number of our soldiers from there, out of all proportion to the quotas provided by the populations of england and scotland, but we are absolutely dependent for our mounted branches on irish horses. for our supplies in time of stress, for our horses, and for a great and valuable recruiting area, we shall be forced to rely on a government whose future is wrapped in the deepest obscurity, and which at the best is hardly likely to give us enthusiastic support. our whole military organisation is becoming more decentralised and more dependent on voluntary effort; it is devolving more and more upon territorial associations and local bodies of all kinds. we do not possess the reserves of horses and transport which continental nations hold ready for use on mobilisation, and, as a substitute, we have had to fall back on a system of registration which demands care, zeal, and energy on the part of these civilian bodies. how will an irish government and its officials fulfil a duty which will be distorted by every nationalist into an attempt to employ the national resources for the sole benefit of england? war is a stern taskmaster, demanding long years of preparation and combination of effort for one end. the political separation of the two countries does not alter the fact that they are, in the military sense, one area of operations and of supply, and, at a time like the present, when the mutual dependence of all parts of the empire is gradually being realised; when the dominions are building navies, and all our dependencies are co-operating in one scheme of defence for the whole; when the elaboration of the details of this scheme are the pressing need of the hour, the dissolution of the union binding together the very heart of the empire, is a strategic mistake, the disastrous significance of which it is impossible to exaggerate. for it must be remembered that here is no analogy to a federation of semi-independent provinces as in canada, where national defence is equally the interest of the whole. ireland has never recognised this community of interest with england. quebec, it is true, stands aloof and indifferent to the ideals of the sister provinces; but there is no bitter religious hatred, no fierce, anti-national aims fostered by ancient traditions, life-long feuds and unscrupulous agitation, and every canadian knows that quebec would fight to the last against american aggression, if only to preserve her religious independence. there is no such bond here--or, at least, the irish nationalist has refused to acknowledge it. the year has opened amid signs of unrest and change, the meaning or the end of which no man can know. in the far east and the near east political and religious systems are disappearing, and chaos is steadily increasing. in europe the nations have set out on the march to armageddon, and there is no staying the progress of their armaments. in great britain alone the question of preparation for war is shirked on the plea that it is one for experts, and even soldiers and sailors, drawn into the political vortex, make light of our necessities, believing in the hopelessness of ever convincing the people of the truth until "a white calamity of steel and iron, the bearing of burdens and the hot rage of insult," fall upon us. it is for this reason that we see the extraordinary phenomenon of men denying the necessity for becoming a nation in arms, and yet urging our government to contract no friendships abroad, and to interfere on behalf of every petty princedom oppressed by a powerful neighbour, and every downtrodden subject of some foreign power. it is these same men who wish to dissolve the union, and to impose obligations at home upon an inadequate army which would leave us powerless abroad. and the longer war delays in coming, the greater will be the danger when it comes. with the increase in armaments, this country must undergo a proportionate sacrifice. if compulsory service should be adopted, it must apply to ireland as well as the united kingdom. but how will an independent government in dublin view the compulsory enrolment of the manhood of ireland, two-thirds of which have been taught to regard england as the national and hereditary enemy? the irish are, above all, a military race. had we been able to enforce such service within the union, whatever temporary opposition it might have encountered, it might ultimately have proved an indissoluble bond of friendship. the future is very dark, and it is all important that we should face it with open eyes. war cannot long be delayed, and there is too little time left to put our house in order. even if home rule could be shown to be an act of justice due to a wronged people who have proved themselves capable of self-government, even then it could not be justified in the present crisis abroad. but it is not so. ulster will fight for the same cause as did the northern states of america, and may well show the same self-sacrifice. it will be civil war in a country peculiarly adapted to the movements of irregular troops, well acquainted with its features; it will be accompanied by atrocities which will be remembered for centuries. and this is the tremendous risk we are deliberately running, when we only possess six divisions of regular troops to support our allies on the continent and to safeguard the interests of the whole british empire. it is for the british people to decide whether the thin red line is to be still thinner in the day of battle, and whether those who should be fighting side by side shall be embittered and divided, or whether they will rather believe the words of the greatest naval expert living[ ]: "it is impossible for a military man or a statesman with appreciation of military conditions, to look at the map and not perceive that the ambition of the irish separatists, realised, would be even more threatening to the national life than the secession of the south was to that of the american union." footnotes: [footnote : admiral mahan.] xii the religious difficulty under home rule (i) the church view by the rt. rev. c. f. d'arcy, bishop of down irish unionists are determined in their opposition to home rule by many considerations. but deepest of all is the conviction that, on the establishment of a separate legislature and executive for ireland, the religious difficulty, which is ever with us here, would be increased enormously. occasionally, in english newspapers and in irish political speeches, there occur phrases which imply that the protestant ascendency, as it was called, still exists in ireland. those who know ireland are well aware that this is not merely false: it is impossible. even in belfast, as a recent controversy proved, roman catholics get their full share of whatever is to be had. there are no roman catholic disabilities. the majority has every means of making its power felt. at the present moment, the most impossible of all things in ireland is that roman catholics, as such, should be oppressed or unfairly treated. it used to be imagined that when this happy condition was attained there would be no more religious disagreement in ireland. but events have shown the exact opposite to be the case. there never was a time when there was in the minds of irish protestants so deep a dread of roman aggression, and so firm a conviction that the object of that aggression is the complete subjection of this country to roman domination. recalling very distinctly the events and discussions of and , when home rule for ireland seemed so near accomplishment under mr. gladstone's leadership, the writer has no hesitation in saying that the dread of roman tyranny is now far more vivid and, as a motive, far more urgent than it was at those epochs. protestants are now convinced, as never before, that home rule must mean rome rule, and that, should it be forced upon them, in spite of all their efforts, they will be face to face with a struggle for liberty and conscience such as this land has not witnessed since the year . that such should be the conviction of one-fourth of the people of ireland, and that fourth by far the most energetic portion of its inhabitants, is a fact which politicians may well lay to heart. approaching this subject as one whose duties give him the spiritual oversight of more than , of the protestants of ireland--members of the church of ireland, and who has had twenty-seven years of experience as a clergyman in ireland, both in the north and in the south, the writer may venture to speak with some confidence as to the mind of the people among whom he has worked for so long. in doing so, he feels at liberty to say that he is one who has always avoided religious controversy, and who has ever made it his endeavour to be tolerant and considerate of the feelings and convictions of others. he has a deep regard for his roman catholic fellow-countrymen, and recognises to the full their many excellent qualities and the sincerity of their religion. it is possible to bring to a single point the reasons which make irish unionists so apprehensive as regards the religious difficulty under home rule. their fears are not concerned with any of the special dogmas of the roman church. but they recognise, as people in england do not, the inevitable tendency of the consistent and immemorial policy of the church of rome in relation to persons who refuse to submit to her claims. they know that policy to be one of absolute and uncompromising insistence on the exacting of everything which she regards as her right as soon as she possesses the power. they know that, for her, toleration is only a temporary expedient. they know that professions and promises made by individual roman catholics and by political leaders, statements which to english ears seem a happy augury of a good time coming, are of no value whatever. they do not deny that such promises and guarantees express a great deal of good intention, but they know that above the individual, whether he be layman or ecclesiastic, there is a system which moves on, as soon as such movement becomes possible, in utter disregard of his statements. at the time when catholic emancipation was in view, high roman authorities gave the most emphatic guarantees that the position of the then established church in ireland would never be endangered, so far as their church and people were concerned. but when the time came, such promises proved absolutely worthless. whether the disestablishment of the irish church was a good thing or not, is not the question here. the essential point, for our present purpose, is that the guarantees of individual roman catholics, no matter how positively or how confidently stated, are of no account as against the steady age-long policy of the roman church. it is well known to all students that, while other religious bodies have, both in theory and in practice, renounced certain old methods of persuasion, the roman church still formally claims the power to control states, to depose princes, to absolve subjects from their allegiance, to extirpate heresy. she has never accepted the modern doctrine of toleration. but there are many who think that these ancient claims, though not renounced, are so much out-of-date in the modern world that they mean practically nothing. such is the opinion of the average englishman, and the mild and cultivated form of romanism which is to be met with usually in england lends colour to the opinion. in ireland we know better. the recent papal decree, termed _ne temere_, regulating the solemnisation of marriages, has been enforced in ireland in a manner which must seem impossible to englishmen. according to this decree, "no marriage is valid which is not contracted in the presence of the (roman) parish priest of the place, or of the ordinary, or of a priest deputed by them, and of two witnesses at least." this rule is binding on all roman catholics. it is easy to see what hardship and wrong must follow the observance of this rule in the case of mixed marriages. as a result, it is now the case that, in ireland, marriages which the law of the land declares to be valid are declared null and void by the church of rome, and the children of them are pronounced illegitimate. nor is this a mere academic opinion: such is the power of the roman church in this country that she is able to enforce her laws without deference to the authority of the state. the celebrated mccann case is the most notable illustration. even in the protestant city of belfast we have seen a faithful wife deserted and her children spirited away from her, in obedience to this cruel decree. and we have seen an executive afraid to do its duty, because rome had spoken and justified the outrage. those who know intimately what is happening here are aware of case after case in which husband or wife is living in daily terror of similar interference, and also know that protestants married to roman catholics, and living in the districts where the latter are in overwhelming majority, often find it impossible to stand against the odium arising from a bigoted and hostile public opinion. nor does such interference stop here. only a few weeks ago the kidnapping of a young wife by roman catholic ecclesiastics was prevented only by the brave and prompt action of her husband. in this case a sworn deposition, made in the presence of a well-known magistrate and fully attested, has been published, and no attempt at contradiction or explanation has been made. let none imagine the _ne temere_ question is extinct in ireland. it is at this moment a burning question. under home rule it would create a conflagration. and surely there is reason for the indignation of protestants. here we see the most solemn contract into which a man or woman can enter broken at the bidding of a system which claims supreme control over all human relations, public and private; and this, not for the maintenance of any moral principle, but to secure obedience to a disciplinary regulation which is regarded as of so little moral value that it is not enforced in any country in which the government is strong enough to protect its subjects. as if to define with perfect clearness, in the face of the modern world, the traditional claim of the roman see, there has issued from the vatican, within the last few weeks, a decree which sets the roman clergy above the law of the land. this ordinance, which is issued _motu proprio_ by the pope, is the re-enactment and more exact definition of an old law. it lays down the rule that whoever, without permission from any ecclesiastical authority, summons any ecclesiastical persons to a lay tribunal and compels them to attend publicly such a court, incurs instant excommunication. the excommunication is automatic, and absolution from it is specially reserved to the roman pontiff. this fact adds enormously to the terror of it, especially among a people like the irish roman catholics. great discussion has taken place as to the countries in which this decree is in force. no one was surprised to hear that germany was exempt. archbishop walsh, the roman catholic archbishop of dublin, in an elaborate discussion, gives the opinion that the decree is abrogated under british law by the custom of the country, which has in the past rendered impossible the observance of the strict ecclesiastical rule in this matter, but is careful to add that this is only his opinion as a canonist, and is subject to the decision of the holy see. when this plea is examined, it is found to mean simply this, that the law is not strictly observed in case of necessity. that this is the meaning of archbishop walsh's plea is proved by a quotation which he makes from pope benedict xiv. the principle laid down by pope benedict is that when it became impossible to resist the encroachment of adverse customs, the popes shut their eyes to what was going on, and tolerated what they had no power to prevent. it is exactly the principle of toleration as a temporary expedient. the re-enactment of the law by the present pope means surely, if it means anything, that such toleration is to cease wherever and whenever the law can be enforced. but, be it observed, this necessity is entirely dependent on the strength of the authority which administers the civil law. the moment the civil authority grows weak in its assertion of its supremacy, the plea of necessity fails, and the ecclesiastical law must be enforced. those who know ireland are well aware that this is exactly what would happen under home rule. here is the crowning proof of the truth that, above all the well-intentioned persons who give assurances of the peace and goodwill that would flourish under home rule, there is a power which would bring all their good intentions to nothing. but what of the church of ireland under home rule? formerly the established church of the country, and as such occupying a position of special privilege, she still enjoys something of the traditional consideration which belonged to that position, and is more than ever conscious of her unbroken ecclesiastical descent from the ancient church of ireland. her adherents number , , of whom , are in ulster. as part of her heritage she holds nearly all the ancient ecclesiastical sites and the more important of the ancient buildings which still survive. these possessions, thus inherited from an immemorial past, were secured to her by the act of disestablishment. for the rest, the endowments which she enjoys at the present time have been created since by the self-denial and generosity of her clergy and laity. under british law, her position is secure. but would she be secure under home rule? those of her advisers who have most right to speak with authority are convinced that she would not. the bishop of ossory, in an able and very moderate statement made at the meeting of the synod of that diocese, last september, showed that both the principal churches and the endowments now held by the church of ireland have been claimed repeatedly by prominent representatives of the church of rome. it is stated that the church sites and buildings belong to the roman communion in ireland because, on roman catholic principles, that communion truly represents the ancient irish church, and no lapse of time can invalidate the church's title; and that the endowments belong to the same communion because they "represent moneys derived from pre-disestablishment days, which were, in their turn, the alienated possessions of the roman church" (see bishop of ossory's synod address, p. ). as regards this last statement, it must be noted that the only sense in which it can be truly said that the endowments represent moneys derived from pre-disestablishment days is that the foundation of the new financial system was laid by the generosity of the clergy in office at the time. they entrusted to the representative body of the church the capitalised value of the life-interests secured to them by the act. the money was their private property, and their action one which involved great self-denial, for they gave up the security offered by the state. the money was so calculated that the whole should be exhausted when all payments were made. by good management, however, it yielded considerable profit, and meanwhile formed a foundation on which to build. it was, however, in no sense an endowment given by the state, nor was it a fund on which any but the legal owners (_i.e._ the clergy of the time) had a justifiable claim. the bishop of ossory's statement excited much discussion, but, though many roman catholic apologists endeavoured to laugh away his fears as groundless, not one denied the validity of his argument. the fact that, as he showed, the church of ireland holds her churches by exactly the same title as that by which the english church holds westminster abbey, and that, for the irish church, there is the additional security of the act of , count for nothing in the eye of roman canon law. in an ireland ruled by a parliament of which the vast majority would be roman catholics, devout and sincere, representing constituencies peopled by devout and sincere persons who believe that the laws of the vatican are the laws of god, with a clergy lifted above the civil law by the operation of the recent _motu proprio_ decree, an ireland in which even the school catechisms (see the "christian brothers' catechism," quoted by the bishop of ossory, _op. cit._ p. ) teach that an alien church unlawfully excludes "the catholics" from their own churches, how long would it be before a movement, burning with holy zeal and pious indignation, against the usurpers, would sweep away every barrier and drive out "the heretics" from the ancient shrines? irish churchmen who know their country are aware that even the most stringent guarantees would be worthless in such a case, as they proved worthless in the act of union, and at the time of catholic emancipation. some english liberals imagine that home rule would be followed by an uprising of popular independence which would destroy the power of the roman church in ireland. let those who think this consider that the more independent spirits among the irish roman catholics go to america, and let them further consider what has happened in the province of quebec in canada. the immense strength of the bonds--religious, social, and educational--by which the mass of the people in the south and west of ireland are held in the grip of the roman ecclesiastical system, and the power which would be exerted by the central authority of that system by means of the recent decrees, make it certain that clerical domination would, from the outset, be the ruling principle of an irish parliament. there is no desire nearer to the hearts of the clergy and people who form the church to which the writer belongs than that they should be enabled to live at peace with their roman catholic fellow-countrymen, and work in union with them, for the good of their country and the promotion of that new prosperity which recent years have brought. they dread home rule, because they know that, instead of peace, it would bring a sword, and plunge their country once again into all the horrors of civil and religious strife. the religious difficulty under home rule (ii) the nonconformist view by rev. samuel prenter, m.a., d.d. (dublin), _moderator of general assembly of presbyterian church in ireland in_ - . for obvious reasons, the religious difficulty under home rule does not receive much attention on the political platform in great britain. but in ireland a religious problem flames at the heart of the whole controversy. this religious problem creates the cleavage in the irish population, and is the real secret of the intense passion on both sides with which home rule is both prosecuted and resisted. irishmen understand this very well; but as home rule, on its face value, is only a question of a mode of civil government, it is almost impossible to make the matter clear to british electors. they say, what has religion got to do with home rule? home rule is a pure question of politics, and it must be solved on exclusively political lines. even if this were so, might not englishmen remember that the nationalist members of parliament have been controlled by the church of rome in their votes on the english education question? i mention this to show that under the disguise of pure politics ecclesiastical authority may stalk in perfect freedom through the lobbies of the house of commons. is it, then, an absolutely incredible thing that what has been done in the english parliament in the name of politics may be done openly and undisguised in the name of politics in a home rule parliament? that such will be the case i shall now attempt to show. let us begin with the most elementary facts. according to the official census of the population of ireland is grouped as follows:-- roman catholics , , irish church , presbyterians , methodists , all other christian denominations , jews , information refused , i beg the electors of great britain to look steadily into the above figures, and to ask themselves who are the home rulers and who are the unionists in ireland. irish home rulers are almost all roman catholics, and the protestants and others are almost all stout unionists. does this fact suggest nothing? how is it that the line of demarcation in irish politics almost exactly coincides with the line of demarcation in religion? quite true, there are a few irish roman catholics who are unionists, and a few protestants who are home rulers. but they are so few and so uninfluential on both sides that the exception only serves to prove the rule. these exceptions, no doubt, have been abundantly exploited, and the very most has been made of them. but the great elementary fact remains, that one-fourth of the irish people, mostly protestant, are resolutely, and even passionately, opposed to home rule; and the remarkable thing is that the most militant irish unionists for the past twenty years have not been the members of the irish church who might be suspected of protestant ascendency prejudices, but they are the presbyterians and methodists who never belonged to the old protestant ascendency party. it is of irish presbyterians that i can speak with the most ultimate knowledge. their record in ireland requires to be made perfectly clear. in they were the champions of catholic emancipation. in they supported mr. gladstone in his great irish reforms. they have been at all times the advocates of perfect equality in religion, and of unsectarianism in education. they stand firm and staunch on these two principles still. but they are the sternest and strongest opponents of home rule, and their reason is because home rule spells for ireland a new religious ascendency and the destruction of the unsectarian principle in education. i ask on these grounds that english and scottish electors should pause for a moment, and open their minds to the fact that there is a great religious problem at the heart of home rule. irish presbyterians claim that they know what they are doing, and that they are not the blind dupes of religious prejudice and political passion. it is for a great something that they have embarked in this conflict; they are determined to risk everything in this resistance, and in proportion as the danger approaches, in like proportion does their hostility to the home rule claim increase. what, then, is the secret of this determination? it lies in a nutshell. a parliament in dublin would be under the control and domination of the church of rome. two facts in irish life render this not only likely and probable, but inevitable and certain. the first fact is that three-fourths of the members would be roman catholic, and the second fact is that the irish people are the most devoted roman catholics at present in christendom. no one disputes the first fact, but the second requires to be made clear to the electors of great britain. let no one suppose that i am finding fault with irishmen for being devoted roman catholics. what i wish to show is that the church of rome would be supreme in the new parliament, and that she is not a good guardian of protestant liberties and interests. ireland has been for the last two generations brought into absolute captivity to the principles of ultramontanism. when italy asserted her nationality, and fought for it in , ireland sent out a brigade to fight on the side of the pope. when france, a few years ago, broke up in that land the bondage of ecclesiasticism, the streets of dublin were filled sunday after sunday for weeks with crowds of irishmen, headed by priests, shouting for the pope against france. the church first, nationality afterwards, is the creed of the ultramontane; and it is the avowed creed of the irish people. but this would be changed in an irish parliament, british electors affirm. let us hear what mr. john dillon, m.p., says on the point. speaking about a year ago in the free trade hall in manchester, mr. dillon said-- "i assert, and it is the glory of our race, that we are to-day the right arm of the catholic church throughout the world ... we stand to-day as we have stood throughout, without abating one jot or tittle of that faith, the most catholic nation on the whole earth." what mr. dillon says is perfectly true. the irish parliament would be constituted on the roman model. if there were none but roman catholics in ireland, ireland would rapidly become a "state of the church." but how would protestants fare? just as they fared in old papal days in italy under the temporal rule of the vatican. but it may still be said that irishmen themselves would curb the ecclesiastical power. this is one of the delusions by which british electors conceal from themselves the peril of home rule to irish protestants. they forget that irishmen are, if possible, more roman than rome herself. i take the following picture of the romanised condition of ireland from a roman catholic writer-- "mr. frank hugh o'donnell, who 'believes in the papal church in every point, who accepts her teaching from nicaea to trent, and from trent to the vatican,' says, 'while the general population of ireland has been going down by leaps and bounds to the abyss, the clerical population has been mounting by cent. per cent. during the same period....' a short time ago, when an austrian cabinet was being heckled by some anti-clerical opponents upon its alleged encouragement of an excessive number of clerical persons in austria, the minister replied, 'if you want to know what an excessive number of the clergy is like go to ireland. in proportion to their population the irish have got ten priests and nuns to the one who exists in austria. i do not prejudge the question. they may be wanted in ireland. but let not honourable members talk about over-clericalism in austria until they have studied the clerical statistics of ireland.' a jesuit visitor to ireland, on returning to his english acquaintances, and being asked how did he find the priests in ireland, replied, 'the priests in ireland! there is nobody but priests in ireland. over there they are treading on one another's heels.' while the population of ireland has diminished one-half, the population of the presbyteries and convents has multiplied threefold or more. comparisons are then instituted between the sacerdotal census of ireland, and that of the european papal countries. i shall state results only. belgium has only one archbishop and five bishops; but if it were staffed with prelates on the irish scale it would have nine or ten archbishops and some sixty bishops. i suppose the main army of ecclesiastics in the two countries is in the same grossly incongruous proportions--ten or twelve priests in ireland for every one in belgium! the german empire, with its , , roman catholics, has actually fewer mitred prelates than ireland with its , , of roman catholics. the figures of austria-hungary with its roman catholic population of , , are equally impressive. it has eleven archbishops, but if it were staffed on the irish scale it would have forty-eight. it has forty bishops, but if it were like ireland it would have . mr. o'donnell goes on: 'this enormous population of churchmen, far beyond the necessities and even the luxuries of religious worship and service, would be a heavy tax upon the resources of great and wealthy lands. what must it be for ireland to have to supply the episcopal villas, the new cathedrals, and handsome presbyteries, and handsome incomes of this enormous and increasing host of reverend gentlemen, who, as regards five-sixths of their number, contribute neither to the spiritual nor temporal felicity of the island? they are the despotic managers of all primary schools, and can exact what homage they please from the poor serf-teachers, whom they dominate and whom they keep eternally under their thumb. they absolutely own and control all the secondary schools, with all their private profits and all their government grants. in the university what they do not dominate they mutilate. every appointment, from dispensary doctors to members of parliament, must acknowledge their ownership, and pay toll to their despotism. the county councils must contribute patronage according to their indications; the parish committees of the congested districts supplement their pocket-money. they have annexed the revenues of the industrial schools. they are engaged in transforming the universal proprietary of ireland in order to add materials for their exactions from the living and the moribund. i am told that not less than £ , , are lifted from the irish people every year by the innumerable agencies of clerical suction which are at work upon all parts of the irish body, politic and social. nor can it be forgotten that the material loss is only a portion of the injury. the brow-beaten and intimidated condition of the popular action and intelligence which is necessary to this state of things necessarily communicates its want of will and energy to every function of the community.'" of course mr. f.h. o'donnell has been driven out of public life in ireland for plain speaking like this; and so would every man be who ventured to cross swords with his church. it aggravates the situation immensely when we take another fact in irish life into account. in quite recent months mr. devlin, m.p., has brought into prominence a society called the ancient order of hibernians (sometimes called the molly maguires) which, according to the late mr. michael davitt, is "the most wonderful pro-celtic organisation in the world." this is a secret society which at one time was under the ban of the church; but quite recently the ban has been removed, and priests are now allowed to join the order. the present pope is said to be its most powerful friend. it has branches in many lands, and it is rapidly gathering into it all the great mass of the irish roman catholic people. this is the most wonderful political machine in ireland. mr. william o'brien, m.p., has recently given an account of this society which has never been seriously questioned. "the fundamental object of the hibernian society is to give preference to its own members first and catholics afterwards as against protestants on all occasions. whether it is a question of custom, office, public contracts, or positions on public boards, molly maguires are pledged always to support a catholic as against a protestant. if protestants are to be robbed of their business, if they are to be deprived of public contracts, if they are to be shut out of every office of honour or emolument, what is this but extermination? the domination of such a society would make this country a hell. it would light the flame of civil war in our midst, and blight every hope of its future prosperity." and now we reach the core of the question. it is perfectly clear that home rule would create a roman catholic ascendency in ireland, but still it might be said that the church of rome would be tolerant. on that point we had best consult the church of rome herself. has she ever said that she would practise toleration towards protestants when she was in power? never; on the contrary, she declares most clearly that toleration of error is a deadly sin. in this respect the church of rome claims to differ _toto coelo_ from the churches of the reformation. in ireland she has passed through all the stages of ecclesiastical experience from the lowest form of disability to the present claim of supremacy. in the dark days of her suffering she cried for toleration, and as the claim was just in protestant eyes she got it. then as she grew in strength she stretched forth her hands for equality, and as this too was just, she gradually obtained it. at present she enjoys equality in every practical right and privilege with her protestant neighbours. but in the demand for home rule there is involved the claim of exerting an ecclesiastical ascendency not only over her own members but over irish protestants, and this is the claim which is unjust and which ought not to be granted. green, the historian, points out that william pitt made the union with england the ground of his plea for roman catholic emancipation, as it would effectually prevent a romish ascendency in ireland. home rule in practice will destroy the control of great britain, and, therefore, involves the removal of the bulwark against roman catholic ascendency. the contention of the irish protestants is that neither their will nor their religious liberties would be safe in the custody of rome. in an irish parliament civil allegiance to the holy see would be the test of membership, and would make every roman catholic member a civil servant of the vatican. that parliament would be compelled to carry out the behests of the church. the church is hostile to the liberty of the press, to liberty of public speech, to modernism in science, in literature, in philosophy; is bound to exact obedience from her own members and to extirpate heresy and heretics; claims to be above civil law, and the right to enforce canon law whenever she is able. there are simply no limits even of life or property to the range of her intolerance. this is not an indictment; it is the boast of rome. she plumes herself upon being an intolerant because she is an infallible church, and her irish claim, symbolised by the papal tiara, is supremacy over the church, supremacy over the state, and supremacy over the invisible world. unquestioning obedience is her law towards her own subjects, and intolerance tempered with prudence is her law towards protestants. it is a strange hallucination to find that there are politicians to-day who think that rome will change her principles at the bidding of mr. redmond, or to please hard-driven politicians, or to make rome attractive to a protestant empire. rome claims supremacy, and she tells us quite candidly what she will do when she gets it. here is our difficulty under home rule. irish protestants see that they must either refuse to go into an irish parliament, or else go into it as a hopeless minority, and turn it into an arena for the maintenance of their most elementary rights; in which case the irish parliament would be simply a cockpit of religio-political strife. but it would be a great mistake to suppose that the religious difficulty is confined to irish protestants. it is a difficulty which would become in time a crushing burden to roman catholics themselves. the yoke of rome was found too heavy for italy, and in a generation or two it would be found too heavy for ireland. but for the creation of the papal ascendency in ireland, the responsibility must rest, in the long run, on great britain herself. england and scotland, the most favoured lands of the reformation, by establishing home rule in ireland, will do for rome what no other country in the world would do for her. they would entrust her with a legislative machine which she could control without check, hand over to her tender mercies a million of the best protestants of the empire, and establish at the heart of the empire a power altogether at variance with her own ideals of government, fraught with danger, and a good base of operations for the conquest of england. can this be done with impunity? can great britain divest herself of a religious responsibility in dealing with home rule? is there not a god in heaven who will take note of such national procedure? are electors not responsible to him for the use they make of their votes? if they sow to the wind, must they not reap the whirlwind? in brief compass, i hope i have made it quite clear what the religious difficulty in ireland under home rule is. it is not a mere accident of the situation; it does not spring from any question of temper, or of prejudice, or of bigotry. the religious difficulty is created by the essential and fundamental genius of romanism. her whole ideal of life differs from the protestant ideal. it is impossible to reconcile these two ideals. it is impossible to unite them in any amalgam that would not mean the destruction of both. under imperial rule these ideals have discovered a decently working _modus vivendi_. mr. pitt's contention that the union with great britain would be an effectual barrier against romanism has held good. but if you remove imperial rule than you create at a stroke the ascendency of rome, and under that ascendency the greatest injustice would be inflicted on the protestant minority. questions of public situations and of efficient patronage are of very subordinate importance indeed. mr. redmond demands that irish protestants must be included in his home rule scheme, and threatens that if they object they must be dealt with "by the strong hand," and his home rule parliament would be subservient to the church of rome. does any one suppose that a million of the most earnest protestants in the world are going to submit to such an arrangement? neither englishmen nor scotsmen would be willing themselves to enter under such a yoke, and why should they ask irishmen to do so? it is contended, indeed, that the power of the priest in ireland is on the wane. this is partly true and partly not true. it is true that he is not quite the political and social autocrat that he once was. but it is not true that the church of rome is less powerful in ireland than she was. on the contrary, as an ecclesiastical organisation rome was never so compact in organisation, never so ably manned by both regular and secular clergy, never so wealthy nor so full of resource, never so obedient to the rule of the vatican, as at the present moment. give her an irish parliament, and she will be complete; she will patiently subdue all ireland to her will. emigration has drained the country of the strong men of the laity, who might be able to resist her encroachments. dr. horton truly says: "the roman church dominates ireland and the irish as completely as islam dominates morocco." by ireland and the irish dr. horton, of course, means roman catholic ireland. are you now going to place a legislative weapon in her hand whereby she will be able to dominate protestants also? it is bad statesmanship; bad politics; bad religion. for ireland it can bring nothing but ruin; and for the empire nothing but terrible retribution in the future. constructive xiii unionist policy in relation to rural development in ireland by the right hon. gerald balfour "_for the last two and twenty years, at first a few and now a goodly company of rural reformers with whom i have been associated, and on whose behalf i write, have been steadily working out a complete scheme of rural development, their formula being better farming, better business, better living."_--sir h. plunkett, letter to the _times_, december, . "_ireland would prefer rags and poverty rather than surrender her national spirit."_--mr. john redmond, speech at buffalo, september , . it should never be forgotten that the maintenance of the legislative union between ireland and great britain is defended by unionists no less in the interests of ireland than in that of the united kingdom and of the empire. that the ills from which ireland has admittedly suffered in the past, and for which she still suffers, though in diminished measure, in the present, are economic and social rather than political, is a fundamental tenet of unionism. unionists also believe that economic and social conditions in ireland can be more effectively dealt with under the existing political constitution than under any form of home rule. ireland is a poor country, and needs the financial resources which only the imperial parliament can provide. she is, moreover, a country divided into hostile camps marked by strong racial and religious differences. as sir george trevelyan long ago pointed out, there is not one ireland, there are two irelands; and only so far as ireland continues an integral part of a larger whole can the antagonism between the two elements be prevented from forming a dangerous obstacle to all real progress. nationalist politicians, of course, diagnose the situation very differently. apply suitable remedial measures, say the unionists, to the social and economic conditions of the country, and it is not unreasonable to hope that political discontent--or, in other words, the demand for home rule--will gradually die away of itself. give us home rule, say the nationalists, and all other things will be added to us. the main object of the present paper is to give a bird's eye view of unionist policy in relation to rural development in ireland during the eventful years - . it does not pretend to deal with the larger issue raised between unionism and nationalism; but incidentally, it will be found to throw some interesting side lights upon it. the irish question in its most essential aspect is a farmers' question. the difficulties which it presents have their deepest roots in an unsatisfactory system of land tenure, excessive sub-division of holdings, and antiquated methods of agricultural economy. mr. gladstone endeavoured to deal with the system of land tenure in the two important acts of and ; but the system of dual ownership which those acts set up introduced, perhaps, as many evils as they removed. it became more and more evident that the only effectual remedy lay in the complete transference of the ownership of the land from the landlord to the occupying tenant. the successful application of this remedy with anything like fairness to both sides absolutely demanded the use of state credit on a large scale. the plan actually adopted in a succession of land acts passed by unionist governments, beginning with the ashbourne act of , and ending with the wyndham act of , is broadly speaking as follows:--the state purchases the interest of the landlord outright and vests the ownership in the occupying tenant subject to a fixed payment for a definite term of years. these annual payments are not in the nature of rent: they represent a low rate of interest on the purchase money, plus such contribution to a sinking fund as will repay the principal in the term of years for which the annual payments are to run. the practical effect of this arrangement is that the occupier becomes the owner of his holding, subject to a terminable annual payment to the state of a sum less in amount than the rent he has had to pay heretofore. the successful working of the scheme obviously depends on the credit of the state, in other words, its power of borrowing at a low rate of interest. in this respect the imperial government has an immense advantage over any possible home rule government: indeed, it is doubtful whether any home rule government could have attempted this great reform without wholesale confiscation of the landlords' property. here then in land purchase and the abolition of dual ownership, we have one of the twin pillars on which, on its constructive side, the irish policy of the unionist party rests. but to solve the problem of rural ireland--which, as i have said, is _the_ irish problem--more is required than the conversion of the occupying tenant into a peasant proprietor. the sense of ownership may be counted on to do much; but it will not make it possible for a family to live in decent comfort on an insufficient holding; neither will it enable the small farmer to compete with those foreign rivals who have at their command improved methods of production, improved methods of marketing their produce, facilities for obtaining capital adequate to their needs, and all the many advantages which superior education and organised co-operation bring in their train. looking back to-day, the wide field that in these directions was open to the beneficent action of the state, and to the equally beneficent action of voluntary associations, seems evident and obvious. it was by no means so evident or obvious twenty years ago. at that time the traditional policy of _laisser faire_ had still a powerful hold over men's minds, and to abandon it even in the case of rural ireland was a veritable new departure in statesmanship. the idea of establishing a voluntary association to promote agricultural co-operation was even more remote; and, as will be seen in the sequel, it was to the insight and devoted persistence of a single individual that its successful realisation has been ultimately due. so far as state action was concerned, a beginning was naturally made with the poorest parts of the country. mr. arthur balfour led the way with two important measures. one of these was the construction of light railways in the most backward tracts on the western seaboard. these railways were constructed at the public expense, but worked by existing railway companies, and linked up with existing railway systems. the benefits conferred on those parts of the country through which they passed have been great and lasting. mr. balfour's second contribution to irish rural development was the creation of the congested districts board in . the "congested districts" embraced the most poverty-stricken areas in the western counties, and the business of the board was to devise and apply, within those districts, schemes for the amelioration of the social and economic condition of the population comprised in them. for this purpose, the board was invested with very wide powers of a paternal character, and an annual income of upwards of £ , was placed at their free disposal, a sum which has been largely increased by subsequent acts. the experiment was an absolutely novel one, but no one who is able to compare the improved condition of the congested districts to-day with the state of things that prevailed twenty years ago can doubt that it has been amply justified by results. every phase of the life of the irish peasant along the whole of the western seaboard has been made brighter and more hopeful by the beneficent operations of the board. its activities have been manifold, including the purchase and improvement of estates prior to re-sale to the tenants; the re-arrangement and enlargement of holdings; the improvement of stock; the provision of pure seeds and high-class manures; practical demonstration of various kinds, all educational in character; drainage; the construction of roads; improvement in the sanitary conditions of the people's dwellings; assistance to provide proper accommodation for the livestock of the farm, which too frequently were housed with the people themselves; the development of sea fisheries; the encouragement of many kinds of home industries for women and girls; the quarrying of granite; the making of kelp; the promotion of co-operative credit; and many other schemes which had practical regard to the needs of the people, and have contributed in a variety of ways to raise the standard of comfort of the inhabitants of these impoverished areas. it will be noticed that among the other activities of the congested districts board, i have specially mentioned the work of promoting co-operative credit by means of village banks managed on the raffeisen system. the actual work of organising these co-operative banking associations has not been carried out directly by the board, but through the agency of the irish agricultural organisation society (generally known by the shorter title of the i.a.o.s.), to which the board has for many years past paid a small subsidy--a subsidy which might well have been on a more generous scale, having regard to the immense advantages which co-operation is capable of conferring on the small farmer. the i.a.o.s. is a voluntary association of a strictly non-political character. "business, not politics," has been its principle of action; and partly, perhaps, for this very reason it may claim to have contributed more than any other single agency towards the prosperity of rural ireland. to its work i now turn. the i.a.o.s. the movement which the i.a.o.s. represents was started by sir horace plunkett, and he has remained the most prominent figure in it ever since. sir horace plunkett bears an honoured name wherever the rural problem is seriously studied; but, like other prophets, he has received perhaps less honour in his own country than elsewhere. at all events, in the task to which he has devoted his life, he has had to encounter the tacit, and indeed at times the open opposition, of powerful sections of nationalist opinion. happily he belongs to the stamp of men whom no obstacles can discourage, and who find in the work itself their sufficient reward. sir horace plunkett's leading idea was a simple one, and has become to-day almost a commonplace. he compared the backward state of agriculture in ireland with the great advance that had been made in various continental countries, where the natural conditions were not dissimilar to those of ireland, and asked himself the secret of the difference. that secret he found in the word _organisation_, and he set himself to organise. the establishment of co-operative creameries seemed to afford the most hopeful opening, and it was to this that sir horace plunkett and a few personal friends, in the year , directed their earliest missionary efforts. the difficulties to be overcome were at first very great. "my own diary," writes sir horace, "records attendance at fifty meetings before a single society had resulted therefrom. it was weary work for a long time. these gatherings were miserable affairs compared with those which greeted our political speakers." the experiences[ ] of another of the little band of devoted workers, mr. r.a. anderson, now secretary of the i.a.o.s., throw an interesting light upon the nature of some of the obstacles which the new movement had to encounter. "it was hard and thankless work. there was the apathy of the people, and the active opposition of the press and the politicians. it would be hard to say now whether the abuse of the conservative _cork constitution_, or that of the nationalist _eagle_ of skibbereen, was the louder. we were 'killing the calves,' we were 'forcing the young women to emigrate,' we were 'destroying the industry.' mr. plunkett was described as a 'monster in human shape,' and was adjured to 'cease his hellish work.' i was described as his 'man friday,' and as 'roughrider anderson.' once when i thought i had planted a creamery within the town of rathkeale, my co-operative apple-cart was upset by a local solicitor, who, having elicited the fact that our movement recognised neither political nor religious differences--that the unionist-protestant cow was as dear to us as her nationalist-catholic sister--gravely informed me that our programme would not suit rathkeale. 'rathkeale,' said he pompously, 'is a nationalist town--nationalist to the backbone--and every pound of butter made in this creamery must be made on nationalist principles, or it shan't be made at all.' this sentiment was applauded loudly, and the proceedings terminated." eventually, however, the zeal of the preachers, coupled with the economic soundness of the doctrine, prevailed over all difficulties. by the movement had outgrown the individual activities of the founders, and the irish agricultural organisation society was established in dublin in order to promote and direct its further progress. that progress has been rapid and continuous, and to-day the co-operative societies connected with the i.a.o.s. number nearly , with an annual turnover of upwards of - / millions. they extend over the length and breadth of the land, and include creameries, agricultural societies (whose main business is the purchase of seeds and manure for distribution to the members), credit societies (village banks), poultry keepers' societies (for the marketing of eggs), flax societies, industries societies, as well as other societies of a miscellaneous character. in the liberal party came into power. during their three years' tenure of office a home rule bill was introduced and passed through the house of commons, but little or nothing was attempted by the government for the economic regeneration of the country. the unionist party came back with a large majority in , and the attention of the new irish government, in which the post of lord lieutenant was held by lord cadogan and that of chief secretary by the present writer, was from the first directed to the condition of the irish farmer. the session of was largely devoted to the passing of a bill for amending the land acts, and for further facilitating the conversion of occupying tenants into owners of their holdings. time, however, was also found for a new light railways act, under the provision of which railway communication has been opened up at the expense of the state in the poorest parts of north-west ireland. it was in the following year that the first attempt was made to establish an irish department of agriculture. the bill was not carried beyond a first reading, because it was ultimately decided that a local government act should have precedence of it. but the project was only put aside for a time, and it was always looked upon by me as an integral part of our legislative programme. in framing the bill of , and also the later bill of , which passed into law, we received the greatest assistance from the labours of a body known as the recess committee, concerning which a few words must now be said. the recess committee. to be the founder of agricultural co-operation in ireland was sir horace plunkett's first great achievement; the bringing together of the recess committee was his second. he conceived the idea of inviting a number of the most prominent men in ireland, irrespective of religious or political differences, to join in an inquiry into the means by which the government could best promote the development of the agricultural and industrial resources of ireland. this idea he propounded in an open letter published in august, . the proposal was a bold one--how bold no one unacquainted with ireland will easily realise. amongst nationalist politicians the majority fought shy of it. mr. justin mccarthy, the leader of the party, could only see in sir horace's letter "the expression of a belief that if your policy could be successfully carried out, the irish people would cease to desire home rule." "i do not feel," he added, "that i could possibly take part in any organisation which had for its object the seeking of a substitute for that which i believe to be ireland's greatest need--home rule." fortunately, then as now, the irish party was divided into two camps, and mr. redmond, at the head of a small minority of "independents," was at liberty to take a different line. "i am unwilling," he wrote, "to take the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful legislation in ireland." ultimately, sir horace plunkett's strong personality, his manifest singleness of purpose, and the intrinsic merits of his proposal carried the day. a committee, truly representative of all that was best in irish life, was brought together, and commissioners were despatched to the continent to report upon those systems of state aid linked with voluntary organisation which appeared to have revolutionised agriculture in countries not otherwise more favoured than ireland itself. a large mass of most valuable information was collected. in less than a year the committee reported. the substance of the recommendation was "that a department of government should be specially created, with a minister directly responsible to parliament at its head. the central body was to be assisted by a consultative council representative of the interests concerned. the department was to be adequately endowed from the imperial treasury, and was to administer state aid to agriculture and industries in ireland upon principles which were fully described."[ ] with the general policy of these recommendations the irish government were in hearty sympathy, and the bill of , already referred to, was a first attempt to give effect to it. but in the absence of popularly elected local authorities an important part of the machinery for carrying out the proposals was wanting. irish local government act. a reform of local government in ireland had long been given a place in the unionist programme, but the magnitude of the undertaking and the pressure of other business had hitherto stood in its way. it was now decided to take up this task in earnest, on the understanding that other measures relating to ireland should be postponed in the meantime. the irish local government bill was accordingly introduced and passed in the following session ( ). of this act, which involved not merely the creation of new popular authorities, but also an entire re-arrangement of local taxation, and some important changes in the system of poor relief, i will only say here that it must be counted as another of the great remedial measures which ireland owes to the unionist party, and which it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to carry out in a satisfactory manner without assistance on a generous scale from the ample resources of the imperial exchequer. irish department of agriculture and technical instruction. the way was now open for the measure to which i had looked forward from the first moment of my going to ireland, and which was to constitute the final abandonment of the old _laissez faire_ policy in connection with irish agriculture and industries. great care and labour were devoted to the framing of the new bill, and i was in constant touch throughout with members of the recess committee. it contained clauses dealing with urban as well as rural industries, but these lie outside my present subject, and i shall not refer to them further here. on the side of rural development the bill embodied a novel experiment in the art of government--novel at all events in british or irish experience, though something like it had already been tried with conspicuous success in various countries on the continent. it was the continental example which had inspired the report of the recess committee, and it was the recommendations of the recess committee which in their turn suggested the main features of the bill of . there was indeed one body in ireland whose functions corresponded in some degree with those of the authority it was now proposed to set up. this body was the congested districts board; and it might be said with some approximation to the truth that the object we had in view was to do for the rest of ireland, _mutatis mutandis_, what the congested districts board was intended to do for the poverty-stricken districts of the west. but there was this very important difference. the operations of the congested districts board were carried out, and necessarily carried out, on strictly "paternal" lines; the dominant note in the new departure was to be the encouragement of self-help. this difference carried with it an equally important difference in the constitution and methods of the administering authority. out of a total endowment of £ , a year, a sum of over £ , was placed at the disposal of the department to be applied to the "purposes of agriculture and other rural industries." these "purposes" are defined in the act as including-- "the aiding, improving, and developing of agriculture, horticulture, forestry, dairying, the breeding of horses, cattle, and other live stock and poultry, home and cottage industries, the preparation and cultivation of flax, inland fisheries, and any industries immediately connected with and subservient to any of the said matters, and any instruction relating thereto, and the facilitating of the carriage and distribution of produce." this part of the endowment fund was, in short, a grant to the department to be applied to what may be described as rural development in the widest sense of the term. as to the methods, little or no restriction was imposed upon the scope of its powers; and in the expenditure of the money it was to be as free from treasury control as the congested districts board itself. on the other hand, the congested districts board was not only free from treasury control, it was free from any control whatever. it was an unpaid board, and it could spend its money where it pleased and how it pleased, and there was nobody to say it nay. true, its members were appointed by government, and the chief secretary was _ex-officio_ a member of the board; but he had no greater authority given to him than any of his colleagues, and in case of any difference of opinion the decision was that of the majority of the board. no single member of the board could be held responsible for any of its acts; and accordingly, although the vote for the board came annually before parliament, of real parliamentary responsibility there was none. such an arrangement was not without its disadvantages even as regards the congested districts board itself: its adoption in the case of the authority to be created under the agriculture and industries bill would have been open to yet greater objection. a further point was this. the congested districts board was an unpaid body. an unpaid body consisting of busy men cannot be in perpetual session. the congested districts board, as a matter of fact, met only once a month; and in the intervals of its meeting there was no one with full authority to act on its behalf. the problem, then, in connection with the expenditure of the endowment fund was to provide for its administration by an efficient and promptly-acting executive, responsible to parliament on the one hand, and on the other hand brought by the very nature of its administrative machinery into the closest possible touch with the new local authorities, as well as with the voluntary organisations which were now springing up all over the country. in order to satisfy these requirements, the bill provided that the control of the endowment fund should be vested not in a board attached to the new department, but in the department itself; that is to say, in a minister appointed by the government of the day. the chief secretary was to be the titular head of the department, but it was not intended that he should intervene in its ordinary administrative business. the real working head was to be the vice-president, a new minister with direct responsibility to parliament. so far as related to certain powers and duties transferred from existing departments of the irish government, and similar to the powers and duties of the english board of agriculture, the new minister was to have complete executive authority. but as regards the administration of the endowment fund, a different arrangement was proposed--an arrangement without precedent, so far as i know, in any previous legislation in this country. in order to bring the department into close touch with local bodies, the bill attached to it a "council of agriculture" and an "agricultural board." one-third of the members of each of these bodies were to be nominated by the department, and the intention was that in making these nominations due regard should be had to the representation of voluntary organisations. the remaining two-thirds were to be elected in the case of the "council of agriculture" by the newly created county councils, in the case of the "agricultural board" by the "council of agriculture," divided for this purpose into four "provincial committees." in addition to the functions of an electoral college thus entrusted to its four provincial committees, the business of the "council of agriculture" as a whole was to meet together, at least once a year, for the discussion of questions of general interest in connection with the provisions of the act; but its powers were only advisory. the "board," on the other hand, was more than an advisory body; for it was given a veto on any expenditure of money out of the agricultural endowment fund. the application of the endowment fund was thus made dependent on the _concurrence_ of the "agricultural board" and of the minister in charge of the department--an entirely novel plan which, although it might clearly result in a deadlock as regards any particular application of money from the fund, has nevertheless, i believe, worked extremely well, and answered the purpose for which it was devised of reconciling ministerial and executive responsibility with a reasonable power of control given to local bodies. finally, with a view to stimulating local effort and the spirit of self-help, a provision was inserted in the bill to which i attached the greatest importance. power was given to the council of any county or of any urban district, or to two or more public bodies jointly, to appoint committees composed partly of members of the local bodies and partly of co-opted persons, for the purpose of carrying out such of the department's schemes as were of local rather than of general interest. but in such cases, it was laid down that "the department shall not, in the absence of any special considerations, apply or approve of the application of money ... to schemes in respect of which aid is not given out of money provided by local authorities, or from other local sources." to meet this requirement, the local authorities were given the power of raising a limited rate for the purposes of the act. that the act of has in the main answered the expectations formed of it by those who were responsible for its introduction there can, i think, be no doubt. the act itself, as well as the methods of administration adopted in carrying out its provisions, have been the subject of a full inquiry by a departmental committee which reported in . their report must be regarded as on the whole eminently favourable. in one point only has any important change been recommended. the committee suggest that the post of vice-president of the department should not be held by a minister with a seat in parliament, nor yet by a regular civil servant, but should be an office _sui generis_ tenable for five years with power of reappointment. no effect has so far been given to this proposal by legislation. the unionist attitude. in this brief sketch of the measures passed by unionist governments since with the object of promoting the material prosperity of ireland, many points of interest have been necessarily omitted; but what has been said will suffice to show how baseless is the assertion, so frequently urged as an argument for home rule, that the imperial parliament is incapable of legislating successfully for irish wants.[ ] nothing could be more futile than to represent irish problems, and especially the problems of irish rural life, as so unique that only a parliament sitting in dublin can hope to solve them satisfactorily. as a matter of fact, the rural question in ireland is, in most of its essential features, very similar to the rural question in other countries, of which denmark is perhaps the best example; and the methods which have been successful there are already proving successful here. single ownership of the land by the cultivator; state aid, encouraging and supplemementing co-operation and self-help; co-operation and self-help providing suitable opportunities for the fruitful application of state aid--these are the principles by which unionist legislation for ireland has been guided, and they are the principles which any wise legislation must follow, whether it emanate from an irish or from the imperial parliament. indeed, if there is anything "unique" in the irish case, it is the deep division of sentiment inherited from the unhappy history of the country and reinforced by those differences of race and creed to which i have already alluded as making two irelands out of one. but the remedy for this is not to cut ireland adrift and leave the two sections to fight it out alone, but rather to maintain the existing constitution as the best guarantee that the balance will be held even between them. sir horace plunkett has well summed up the real needs of rural ireland in the formula "better farming, better business, better living." he has himself done more than any other single man to bring the desired improvement about. i am not ashamed to acknowledge myself his disciple, and in the measures for which i was responsible during my time in ireland, i ever kept the practical objects for which he has striven steadily in view. in a speech which i made shortly after taking office i used the phrase "killing home rule with kindness." this phrase has been repeatedly quoted since, as if it had been a formal declaration on the part of the incoming irish government that to "kill home rule" was the alpha and the omega of their policy. what i really said was that we intended to promote measures having for their object an increase in the material prosperity of the country; that if we could thereby kill home rule with kindness, so much the better; but that the policy stood on its own merits, irrespective of any ulterior consequences. in my view that is the only true attitude for a unionist government to take up. but in our efforts to improve material conditions and to remove grievances, how small is the encouragement or help that we have received from leaders of the nationalist party! "their aim," said goldwin smith long ago, "has always been to create a nationalist feeling, which would end in political separation, not the redress of particular wrongs and grievances, or the introduction of practical improvements." i should imagine that there has seldom, if ever, been an important political party which has exhibited so little constructive ability as the irish parliamentarians. their own legislative proposals during the last thirty years have been a negligible quantity; and i think i am justified in saying that there is not one of the great measures passed by unionist governments since which has not been either opposed by the accredited leaders of the party, or, at best, received with carping and futile, rather than helpful, criticism. i must personally acknowledge--and i do so gladly--that i received useful assistance and valuable criticism from the messrs. healy in conducting the local government bill through the house of commons; and credit must also be given to mr. john redmond for the part he took in aiding to bring together the recess committee. but the messrs. healy have always acted independently; and mr. john redmond was, at the time referred to, leader of only a small minority of the irish nationalists. the feeling of the majority, and certainly of the leaders of the majority, was reflected, as we have seen, in the refusal of mr. justin mccarthy to have anything to do with the movement. mr. dillon in particular has shown a disposition to regard minor political grievances, and even poverty and discontent, as so much fuel wherewith to stoke the lagging engine of home rule. remedial measures short of home rule seem to take in his eyes the character of attempts to deprive the irish party of so many valuable assets. nor is this spirit of tacit or open hostility confined to acts of the legislature. of all the social and economic movements in ireland during recent years, the spread of agricultural co-operation has been without doubt among the greatest and the most beneficial. it has never found a friend in mr. dillon. in the movement itself and in the irish agricultural organisation society, founded expressly to promote it, he can only see a cunning device of the enemy to undermine nationalism. in this matter mr. dillon's attitude is also the official attitude of the irish party. thus mr. redmond (now reconciled with mr. dillon and become leader of the main body of nationalists), in a letter to mr. patrick ford, dated october , , does not scruple to say of sir horace plunkett's truly patriotic work:-- "i myself, indeed, at one time entertained some belief in the good intentions of sir horace plunkett and his friends, but recent events have entirely undeceived me; and sir horace plunkett's recent book, full as it is of undisguised contempt for the irish race, makes it plain to me that the real object of the movement in question is to undermine the national party and divert the minds of our people from home rule, which is the only thing that can ever lead to a real revival of irish industries." those who have read sir h. plunkett's "ireland in the new century" will hardly know which most to wonder at in these words, the extraordinary misdescription of the whole spirit of his book, or the total failure to realise the absolute necessity to irish farming of a movement which not only has its counterpart all over the continent of europe, but has since inspired similar action in the united states, in india, and quite recently in great britain as well. nationalist hostility. nationalist hostility to the i.a.o.s. has not been confined to words. when the agriculture and technical instruction bill was passing through the house of commons, mr. dillon endeavoured to secure an undertaking from me that public moneys should not be employed to subsidise the work of the society. i naturally refused to give any such undertaking.[ ] i had followed the efforts of the society very closely; i was deeply impressed with the value of the results which it had accomplished; but its field of activity was limited by the narrowness of its resources. in my opinion, a subsidy to the society from the endowment fund of the department would be a useful and proper application of public money. at the same time i pointed out that if the agricultural board, which in the main represented the popularly-elected local authorities, thought differently, they had a power of veto and could use it in this case. sir horace plunkett held the position of vice-president of the department of agriculture and technical instruction from to , and during his tenure of office, as i had always expected and intended, there was close co-operation between the department and the i.a.o.s. during that period a sum amounting in all to less than £ , was paid by the department to the i.a.o.s., of which more than half was for technical instruction, while the balance represented contributions to the work of co-operative organisation.[ ] when sir h. plunkett was replaced by mr. t. w. russell, the pressure of the irish parliamentary party immediately began to make itself felt. the new vice-president informed the council of agriculture that he had made up his mind to withdraw the subsidy, but he undertook to continue a diminishing grant for three years, £ for the first year, £ for the second, and £ for the third. the i.a.o.s. were not seriously opposed to the gradual withdrawal of the subsidy, the loss of which they hoped to be able to cover in course of time by increased voluntary subscriptions. the opposition of the nationalist party was, however, not yet exhausted. in the _freeman's journal _of january , , there appeared a letter from mr. john redmond enclosing a copy of a letter from mr. t. w. rolleston to a correspondent at st. louis. mr. rolleston accompanied his letter with a copy of a speech by sir horace plunkett. in his letter he remarked plainly upon the antagonism displayed by the irish nationalists to the co-operative movement. although sir horace plunkett declared that he had nothing whatever to do with the letter, the irish parliamentarians professed to find in it abundant proof of an intention to destroy nationalism. "that correspondence," said mr. t. w. russell,"[ ] compelled me to take action. mr. john redmond made it imperative upon me by his letter--i mean a public letter to the press--and as so much was involved, i took the precaution of convening a special meeting of the agricultural board." the board decided that the subsidy should be withdrawn at the end of the year . the last act in this drama of hostility to sir horace plunkett and all his works is still in the course of being played. under the provisions of the development fund act of , the development commissioners were empowered to make advances for the organisation of co-operation, either "to a government department or through a government department to a voluntary association not trading for profit." during the report stage of the development fund bill, mr. dillon tried to get a ruling from the solicitor-general that the i.a.o.s. would be excluded from receiving grants from the fund, thus repeating the manoeuvre which he had already unsuccessfully attempted in connection with the agriculture and technical instruction (ireland) bill of . in accordance with this provision, the three agricultural organisation societies for england, scotland, and ireland, each applied for a grant in aid. the applications were referred in due course for report to the government departments concerned--that is to say, to the board of agriculture and fisheries for the english and scottish applications, and to the department of agriculture and technical instruction for that from the i.a.o.s. the board of agriculture and fisheries reported favourably, and the british and scottish organisation societies are to have their grant. but the i.a.o.s. had to reckon with mr. t. w. russell, behind whom stood mr. dillon and the politicians. the report of the irish department on the irish application was adverse, but the commissioners do not appear to have found the reasons given convincing. much delay ensued, but, ten months after the application was sent in, the matter was submitted to the council of agriculture. the machinery of the united irish league was brought into action to influence the votes of this body. mr. russell delivered an impassioned harangue, and eventually the council was induced to endorse his action by a majority of to . any grant in aid of agricultural co-operation is to be administered, if mr. russell has his way, not by the society which has already been instrumental in establishing nearly a thousand co-operative associations in ireland, and has served as a model on which the corresponding english and scottish organisation societies, now in the enjoyment of a state subsidy, have been founded, but by the department, which has hitherto had no experience whatever of such work. moreover, the co-operation promoted by the department is to be "non-competitive," by which i suppose is meant, that it is not to affect any existing trading interest. it is safe to say that agricultural co-operation, which has _no_ effect upon any trading interest, will have very little effect upon the farmers' interests either. so far as i know, the development commissioners have not decided what course to take in this strange situation. it may be that ireland will lose the grant altogether; but in any case i can well believe that they must hesitate to reverse the policy already approved for england and scotland, and in the face of all experience commit the work of organising agricultural co-operation to a state department rather than to a voluntary association possessing such a record as the i.a.o.s. has placed to its credit. if now we ask what are the grounds of the hostility of the nationalist party to the most hopeful irish movement of recent years, the answer appears to be twofold. the first is economic, or purports to be economic: the second is frankly political. . co-operation, it is urged, injures the middleman and the small trader. to encourage farmers to do well and economically for themselves what is now done indifferently and expensively for them by the middleman, must of course act injuriously on some existing interests. this is not disputed. but the change is absolutely necessary for the regeneration of rural ireland, and this objection cannot be allowed to stand in the way. looked at in its broader and more enduring aspects, co-operation is bound to stimulate and improve general trade by increasing the spending power of the farmers. the chambers of commerce of dublin and belfast have not been slow to perceive this, and have warmly endorsed the society's application for a grant from the development commissioners. . the political objection to the movement, so far as it takes the definite form of charging the i.a.o.s. with being a propagandist body aiming under the mask of economic reform at the covert spread of unionist opinions, will not stand a moment's examination. there is not a particle of evidence in support of such a charge, and the presumption against it is overwhelming. to mix political propagandism with organisation would be the certain ruin of the movement. the committee of the i.a.o.s. consists of men of all shades of political faith. these men could never have joined hands except on the basis that politics should be rigidly excluded from the work of the society. the members of the co-operative societies founded by the i.a.o.s. number nearly , . probably at least three-fourths of these are nationalists. in order, however, that all doubt on the subject might be finally removed, the i.a.o.s. issued a circular to all its societies, in which the following question was directly put:-- "has the i.a.o.s., as a body, or the committee acting for it, done, in your opinion, any act in the interest of any political party, or any act calculated to offend the political principles of any section of your members?" the answers received have been published and form very interesting reading. not a single society, of the many hundreds that have replied from all parts of ireland, has been found to assert that politics have ever been mentioned by the agents of the parent association. the hostility of the politicians to the co-operative movement rests, it is safe to surmise, upon some other foundation than these flimsy charges against the i.a.o.s. in itself the movement is vital to the prosperity of rural ireland. the disfavour shown to it arises from apprehensions respecting its _indirect_ bearing upon the great issue between unionism and nationalism. home rulers who oppose the co-operative movement find themselves in this dilemma: either they hold that nothing in the way of material improvement could affect the demand for home rule, or else they are really afraid lest "better farming, better business, and better living," should weaken the attractions of their own political nostrum. in the former case, they are left without a shadow of justification for their attitude towards the i.a.o.s.; in the latter, they tacitly admit that the interests of the farming classes must suffer in order that the cause of home rule may be promoted. unionists are in no such difficulty. our policy is clear and consistent. improvement in the social and economic condition of the people must be our first object. it is an end to be pursued for its own sake, whatever the indirect consequences may be. but the indirect consequences need cause us no anxiety. increased material prosperity, and the contentment which inevitably accompanies it, whatever their other effects may be, are not likely to strengthen the demand for constitutional changes. successful resistance to home rule at the present crisis may well mean the saving of the union for good and all. footnotes: [footnote : originally published in the _irish homestead_, and quoted in sir horace plunkett's "ireland in the new century," p. .] [footnote : "ireland in the new century," p. .] [footnote : in this connection attention may be called to the remarkable increase of wealth in ireland in the past twenty years. the deposits in the joint stock banks have increased from £ , , in to £ , , in , the balances in the post office savings banks in ireland from £ , , in to £ , , in , and the number of accounts from , in to , at the end of . irish investments in government funds, india stocks, and guaranteed land stock have increased from £ , , in to £ , , in . but more noteworthy still, perhaps, is the increase in irish trade. figures are only available since , but in that period irish imports have increased from £ , , to £ , , --an increase of £ , , in seven years. irish exports have increased in the same period from £ , , to £ , , , or an increase of £ , , . or, if we take the aggregate trade, there has been an increase from £ , , in to £ , , in , an increase of £ , , . in other words, the aggregate import and export trade in ireland in the year amounted to nearly £ sterling per head of population, while the corresponding figure for great britain is just over £ . these figures are, i submit, eloquent testimony that the general policy of the imperial parliament in relation to ireland during recent years has been wisely conceived, and that the successful solution of the "irish problem" is to be found in the steady pursuit of methods which have already achieved such striking results.] [footnote : it appears that mr. dillon was under a misapprehension on this point. he thought he had obtained an amendment to the bill which prevented the i.a.o.s. from getting a subsidy. this, however, was an entire mistake. see app. b. to the report of the committee on the dept. of agriculture. cd. of .] [footnote : the _voluntary_ contributions to the i.a.o.s. for the work of organisation amounted to no less than £ , .] [footnote : see his evidence before the house of lords committee on the thrift and credit bank bill (paper of ).] xiv the completion of land purchase by the right hon. george wyndham, m.p. the case for resisting all attempts at impairing the union between great britain and ireland can be made unimpeachable without reference to the irish land question. it would be our duty to defend the union as a bulwark of national safety, an instalment of imperial consolidation, and a protection to the freedom of minorities in ireland, even if it could be shown that agriculture, the chief industry of ireland, had little to gain under the union and nothing to lose under home rule. fortunately, this cannot be alleged except by those who shut their eyes to the results of state-aided land purchase in ireland, and refuse to consider the consequences of tampering with the mainspring of that beneficent operation: i mean the credit of a joint exchequer under one parliament for both countries. "england's case against home rule" coincides with ireland's need for retaining the prosperity that has come to her, after long waiting, under, and because of, the union. it is, therefore, fitting that a place should be found in this book for a brief account of what irish agriculture may hope from the union and must fear from home rule. the history of irish agriculture until recent years differed from the history of english agriculture at many points, and always to the marked disadvantage of ireland. dynastic and religious controversies which--if we except the suppression of monasteries and the exile of a few jacobites--left english countrysides untouched, in ireland carried with them the confiscation of vast territories and the desolating influence of penal laws. changes in economic theory contributed even more sharply to the decay of irish enterprise. when england favoured protection irish industry was handicapped out of manufactures. when england adopted free trade irish agriculture, on which the hopes of ireland had perforce been fixed, suffered in a greater degree. the doctrine of _laisser faire_ wrought little but wrong when applied by absentee buyers of bankrupt estates to tracts hardly susceptible of development by capital, amid a peasantry wedded to continuity of tenure, and justified in that tradition by the fact that they and their forbears had executed nearly all the improvements on their holdings. most of the nation were restricted to agriculture under conditions that spelt failure, and imposed exile as the penalty for failure, since other avenues to competence were closed. the climax of misfortune was reached a generation after the triumph of free trade. ireland, being almost wholly an agricultural country, suffered as a whole, whereas england, an industrial country, suffered only in districts, from the collapse of agricultural prices in . that catastrophe in rural life precipitated mr. gladstone's land law act (ireland), . being precluded by his political tenets from protecting irish agriculture against foreign competition, or assisting it with the resources of the state, mr. gladstone aimed at alleviating the distress due to the decadence of a national industry by defining with meticulous nicety the respective shares which the two parties engaged in agriculture--landlord and tenant--were to derive from its dwindling returns. he believed that the proportion of diminishing profits due to the landlord, because of the inherent capabilities of his property, and to the tenant, because of his own and his predecessors' exertions, could be roughly determined by a few leading cases in the land court; and, further, that landlords and tenants throughout ireland would conform to such guidance as these decisions might afford. in this anticipation he ignored the vital function of agriculture in irish life, and the effect which the growing stringency of agricultural conditions would have on a population that loved the land and rejoiced in litigation. he created dual-ownership throughout ireland, and this led, as lord dufferin and other far-seeing statesmen had foretold, to the land being starved of both capital and industry. irish agriculture was brought to the brink of ruin. the misery of those involved in that pass was exploited to engineer an attack on the fabric of social order, and the lawlessness so engendered was adduced as an argument for dissolving the union under which such tragedies could occur. the leaders of the conservative party, when confronted with this situation, determined that their duty, in accordance with the spirit of the act of union, demanded some use of the resources of a joint exchequer for ministration to the peculiar needs of ireland. they decided that the credit of the state should be employed to effect the abolition of dual-ownership by converting the occupiers of irish farms into owners of the soil. let it be granted that this policy had been advocated by john bright and enshrined in the land law acts of and . it must be added that these pious intentions remained a "dead letter" until adequate machinery for giving them effect was provided by the land purchase acts, commonly called the ashbourne acts, of and . the method pursued was as follows. any individual landlord could agree with any individual tenant on the price which he would accept for the extinction of his interest in that tenant's holding. the state facilitated the transaction by advancing that amount to the landlord in _cash_ whenever the holding offered sufficient security, and accepting from the tenant an undertaking to pay an instalment of £ a year for every £ advanced over a period of forty-nine years. the instalment comprised £ for interest, _s._ _d._ for expenses, and _s._ _d._ for sinking fund. the loan from the exchequer was secured against individual failures to pay by the realisable value of the holdings. the salient features in this procedure were that the landlord received cash and that the tenant paid interest at the then existing rate on consols, viz. per cent. both these features are important. a payment in cash, or its equivalent, is preferable for such transactions to a payment in stock, with a fluctuating value, because, if the stock appreciates the landlord gets more than he bargained for, and this, by arousing the suspicions of other would-be tenant-purchasers, produces a disinclination on their part to buy. again, if the stock depreciates, the landlord cannot carry out contemplated redemptions of mortgages on his property, and this produces a disinclination on the part of other landlords to sell. in the second place it is difficult to persuade irish tenants that the state is assisting them if they, the poor, are asked to pay higher interest for the state's credit than the state pays for the credit of the rich. the chief defect in this procedure lay in its restriction to separate bargains in respect of single holdings. it made a patchwork, whereas the untoward results of the historic and economic causes on which i have touched demanded the wholesale treatment of convenient areas. under these acts, in the course of six years, more than , tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over £ , , . the largest number of applications for purchase in any one year was , for £ , , in , and the average price for all the holdings bought under these acts was £ . when the sums provided by the ashbourne acts were exhausted, mr. arthur balfour carried the act of , subsequently amended by the act of . under these acts the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash. the tenant still paid an instalment of £ , which was, ultimately, divided into £ _s._ for sinking fund and £ _s._ for interest. this large sinking fund, £ _s._ instead of _s._ _d._, was retained after interest had been reduced to the rate on consols, - / per cent., chiefly to avoid a discrepancy in the total of annual instalments as between purchasers under the act of and purchasers under the ashbourne acts. difficulties were feared if the earlier purchasers were to pay £ and the later purchasers only £ _s._ for each £ advanced, so the spare five shillings was put in the sinking fund. this speculative difficulty was afterwards discounted in order to deal with one of a more practical character. under mr. gladstone's land law act of , which dealt with rent-fixing, statutory rents were revised every fifteen years, and the second term rents, beginning in , seemed certain to reveal considerable reductions on the rents payable during the first period. it was felt that the security for the earlier advances would be endangered if rents throughout ireland fell below the level of the purchase-instalments, and that purchase would be retarded if the purchaser did not obtain immediate relief by agreeing to buy. to meet this practical difficulty mr. gerald balfour, in , permitted the purchaser to write off the amount repaid by sinking fund during the first and two successive periods of ten years. these "decadal reductions" were optional. if the purchaser forewent them he paid £ per £ , and extinguished his debt in - / years. if he availed himself of them he paid £ _s. d._ per £ after the first ten years, and continued to pay, with two further reductions in prospect, till the debt was extinguished in a period undefined, but estimated at about - / years. but this privilege was made retrospective, so that purchasers under the ashbourne acts could also reduce their instalments of £ to £ _s. d._ the salient features in the procedure of the acts of and were that, ( ) the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash. but owing to the rise in the value of gilt-edged securities, irish land stock, with a face value of £ , became at one moment worth as much as £ ; ( ) the purchaser's interest was at - / per cent. _i.e._ the existing rate on consols; but ( ) his instalment, prospectively fined down by decadal reductions, enabled him to offer an acceptable price and yet pay far less to the state, by way of instalment, after purchase than was due to his landlord, by way of rent, before purchase. the operation of purchase was still confined, almost wholly, to single bargains. but in mr. arthur balfour's act of a new departure was authorised which, after development in mr. gerald balfour's act of , has led to important and far-reaching consequences. the congested districts board was established to deal with scheduled areas in the west of ireland that comprised a large number of holdings at once too limited in area, and too poor in soil, for any one of them to support a family by farming or to afford security to the state, under existing facilities for purchase, in the event of the occupier wishing to become the owner. a select committee of the house of commons, so long ago as in (no. , pp. and ), when disraeli was prime minister, had recommended that a properly constituted body should be empowered to purchase, not single farms, but whole estates, and to re-sell them after amalgamating, enlarging, and re-distributing what are now called "uneconomic" holdings. provisions to this end had been inserted in earlier acts, but, in the absence of administrative machinery and financial resources, they remained abortive. it had for long been evident that the small, impoverished holdings, which had supported a dense population before the famine, stood in need of fundamental remodelling if they were to support even a largely reduced population. the efforts made by wealthy irish landlords in this direction were arrested by the land law act of and rendered impossible by the land law act of . with the purchase acts of and a beginning was made. another feature must be noted. in addition to the value of any one holding, as a security against individual failure, a further security was provided against the risk of a combined refusal to repay. the exchequer was empowered to retain grants due for various purposes in ireland and to recoup itself in proportion to the defalcation in any county. it should be added that individual failures have been rare to the point of insignificance, and that no combined refusal has been attempted, or advocated, even during periods of agricultural unrest. under the acts of and in the course of just over twelve years more than , tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over £ , , . here we must note that the success of these acts coincided with, and depended on, a rise in the price of gilt-edged securities. the number of applications rose from in the year ending march , , to in the year ending march , . but, with the fall in the price of stock, land purchase showed signs of coming to a standstill. by it was evident that new legislation was needed, and in the next year the irish land act of was carried. the irish land act of was not, as some suggest, a short cut to the millennium, evolved on the spur of the moment, and translated into fantastic finance. it had two bases, the one practical, the other moral. in the first place, it was founded on the ripe experience garnered during eighteen years from the operation of preceding purchase acts. in the second place, it was founded on the historic agreement spontaneously arrived at in by accredited representatives of irish landlords and tenants. they resolved that dual ownership ought to be abolished throughout ireland, and that this primary policy should be accompanied by effective remedies for the uneconomic conditions prevalent in the west, but existing elsewhere, though sporadically, to a limited extent. this agreement, in itself unprecedented, was rendered the more remarkable by the fact that the signatories assumed the responsibility of telling the government how the first object could be achieved. they advised that landlords could not be expected to sell, as a class, unless the price paid to them in cash would yield from sound securities per cent. of their income in terms of a rent that had been twice revised under the land law act of ; and that tenants could not be expected to buy, as a class, unless their instalments due to the treasury after purchase were from per cent. to per cent. less than such rents so revised. they invited the government to give effect to that agreement. the government accepted and, in the act of , tendered the costly but, under the circumstances, not extravagant _imprimatur_ of the treasury on a political treaty thenceforward to be binding on all three contracting parties: landlords, tenants, and the state. the nationalist members, as spokesmen for the tenants, and the representatives of the landlords, subscribed to the provisions offered, and the reports of the estates commissioners prove that these have been fulfilled so exactly that, in the case of second term rents, landlords and tenants have obtained average incomes and reductions that differ only by a decimal from the mean advocated at the conference. the objects of the irish land act were, in conformity with the conclusions of the conference, to abolish dual ownership rapidly and, at the same time, to deal systematically with "agricultural slums." its salient features fall under four heads. a. _state assistance to voluntary bargaining._ for this purpose it was provided that ( ) cash payments should be resumed to the landlords; ( ) that the tenants' instalments should be £ _s._ for each £ advanced, divided into £ _s._ ( - / per cent.) for interest and _s._ for sinking fund. this was not, as the able and well-informed special correspondent of the _times_ suggests (february , ) a sudden departure from an instalment of £ . "decadal reductions" under the act of had, as i have said, diminished the instalments of purchasers under the act of to £ _s. d._ after ten years with further prospective diminutions, and subjected the instalments of purchasers under earlier acts to a similar process. a wholesale expansion of purchase was impossible unless would-be purchasers were offered terms comparable to those accorded to their predecessors. for this reason the tenantry of ireland were offered repayment at £ _s._ per £ for a period of about years, in lieu, under the act of , of repayment at £ _s. d._, with further reductions, for about - / years, and their representatives accepted the offer. they would certainly have refused, and rightly, the offer substituted by mr. birrell in the act of , viz. an instalment of £ _s._ with the same sinking fund-- _s._--and interest increased to £ . the third feature to be noted under this head is, that the terms agreed to by representatives of landlords and tenants at the conference could not be ratified unless the state added some help by way of cash to the assistance of its credit. it was agreed by all parties that £ , , should be available to bridge the gap, at the rate of per cent. on the amount advanced, with the right to revise that rate after five years, but _only for the purpose of extending the bonus_--as it was called--_to all future transactions_. it was an integral part of a solemn covenant that the bonus should not be diverted to any object other than the abolition of dual ownership and the remedy of "congestion." b. _the substitution of speedy purchase for dilatory litigation._ to all members of the conference of and of the house of commons in , with, i believe, the exception of mr. dillon, who was away in america while the conference sat, it was evident that, if dual ownership was to be abolished, our choice was confined to two courses. we could, on the one hand, pursue, under the guise of purchase, the metaphysical and costly distinctions between landlord-right and tenant-right, which mr. gladstone had established under the guise of rent-fixing; or else, as the only alternative, we had "to cut the cackle" and get to business. under this head the house of commons--mr. dillon ingeminating dissent--decided in so far as landlords and tenants were concerned, two things: ( ) it was agreed that where the tenant-purchaser's instalment, after purchase, was substantially less than his statutory rent revised at great cost--£ , a year for land courts--then, in those cases the state needed not to inquire at further cost and delay into either its own security in the holding, or the metaphysical distinction between value due to the landlord's ownership of the soil and value due to the tenant's improvement of the soil. this close approximation to unanimity will not surprise those who grasp that every landlord and tenant was to make a voluntary bargain on precisely those terms which the representatives of their classes had combined to obtain from the state. the alternative method of delay and litigation had been further discounted, for everybody except mr. dillon, by the fact that in the classic case--_adams_ v. _dunseath_--tried out in accordance with mr. gladstone's panacea, adams, after repeated lawsuits, improved his financial position by an infinitesimal sum per annum without becoming an owner of his farm. it was also agreed that the estates commissioners appointed to administer the act, should be administrative officials under the government, and not amateur judges. this was essential, not only to substitute cheap speed for costly delay, but also to ensure that the benefits offered by the state should not be absorbed, say, in the rich province of leinster to the detriment of the poorer province of connaught, or--for who knows what may happen in ireland?--absorbed in the home rule province of connaught to the detriment of the unionist province of ulster. c. _dealing with estates as a whole instead of with single holdings._ this process, till then applied tentatively in the congested districts of the west, became the general method throughout ireland, and was assisted by the provision of working capital for carrying out necessary amalgamations and improvements before resale. d. _increase in the 'borrowing power and funds of the congested districts board,_ for the purpose of dealing systematically with "agricultural slums." the features of the irish land act ( ), founded, as they were, on experience and the consent of all parties concerned, became widely popular in ireland. but, by mr. birrell's act of , they were all distorted or destroyed. a solemn treaty, framed in the interest of ireland, was torn up to deck with its tatters the triumph of mr. dillon's unholy alliance with the british treasury. the effect of this betrayal on the prospects of irish agriculture will appear from a recital of the changes made by mr. birrell's act, followed by a comparison of the results obtained under the two acts. from that comparison i shall proceed to an examination of the reasons alleged for the breach of faith, and a statement of the unionist party's pledge to continue their policy of . i shall then conclude by inviting all who care for ireland to weigh the prospects of irish agriculture under the union against its prospects under home rule. _changes made by the act of _ .--( ) instead of cash payments landlords are to receive stock at three per cent. issued on a falling market, and this stock cannot appreciate because, owing to the embarrassment of irish estates, about half of each issue must be thrown back on the market for the redemption of mortgages; a result fatal to land purchase and detrimental to the credit of the state. ( ) instead of paying £ _s._ per £ , tenants are to pay £ _s._ without any reduction in the period of repayment. the sinking fund remains at _s._ and the interest £ is, for the first time since land purchase was attempted, placed at a higher rate than in the preceding purchase act, whilst the whole instalment of £ _s._ is raised, not only above the rate of the act of , but also above the rates, diminished by decadal reductions, of purchasers under still earlier acts. this again, in view of these reductions and of periodic revisions of _rent_ under the land law act of , is fatal to purchase. ( ) the bonus of £ , , --on the application of which all parties agreed in --was diverted from the unanimous policy of that year and brought in aid of mr. dillon's hobby, which all parties then rejected. mr. dillon is at liberty to rejoice over the ruin of one landlord more than over the salvation of , tenants. the laws of lunacy do not, and ought not to, touch him. but there is no reason why taxpayers should minister to his peculiar pleasure, with the result of postponing indefinitely any settlement of the irish land question. ( ) by reverting to inspection for security delay is substituted for speed, and speed is necessary in the conclusion of bargains that are themselves the result of prolonged negotiations; the more so when, as now, owing to the substitution of stock for cash, the seller cannot know what his bargain will turn out to be; and the buyer, owing to the block in agreements under the act of , cannot know when his bargain will take effect. in most cases it will not do so for from six to eight years, which must be added to the period of repayment, although his instalment has been increased. ( ) the reversion to attempts at defining the metaphysical rights of the landlords and tenants revives the social poison of litigation of which, in , every one but mr. dillon was weary. ( ) the revival of litigation in respect of single holdings defeats the policy of dealing with convenient areas. ( ) by transforming the estates commissioners, much i imagine to their disgust, from administrative officers into amateur judges, a further premium is put on litigation and delay, whilst the interests of one province as against the interests of another, are left without protection from the state. ( ) although more than half the holdings of ireland are valued at less than £ a year, a presumption is created that all holdings below that value are to be deemed "uneconomic." the whole of connaught with the counties of donegal and kerry and part of county cork are branded as "congested," and the board, charged with conducting purchase in that area, is swollen to unmanageable size, whilst three commissioners are held sufficient for the rest of ireland, which is twice as large. to these eight changes, all inimical, and, as i believe, fatal to the abolition of dual ownership, two have been added of a more insidious effect. compulsion has been adopted. this of itself checks voluntary purchase. it kills it when, as under this act, compulsory purchases are to be paid for in cash and voluntary purchases in depreciated stock. finally, the act contemplates diverting the resources, applied under the treaty of to the abolition of dual ownership and the remedy of congestion, to a new purpose, for which ireland can make no special claim. i mean the creation, over all ireland, of new tenancies, to be sold to new men, who have never suffered from dual ownership or uneconomic conditions, and may be presumed to be ignorant of farming. this new policy amounts to a repeal of the policy sanctioned by all, viz. of giving special state aid to meet the peculiar needs of ireland. _a comparison of the results obtained under the acts of_ _and_ .--in order to gauge the respective efficacy of these two acts for the purpose of abolishing dual ownership, it is necessary to distinguish between applications for purchase, and advances actually made in respect of completed transactions. the applications exhibit the comparative popularity and convenience of the two acts. the advances exhibit only the readiness of the government to proceed with purchase. they pertain to the financial, rather than the political, aspect of the problem, and may be examined later together with the reasons alleged for the delay of its solution. the fact of the delay appears from the following figures:-- under the irish land act ( ) the number of purchase agreements lodged in respect of direct sales by landlords to tenants was , in the course of less than six years from november , , to september , . to these should be added proposed purchasers in other categories, viz. in respect of estates sold to the land commission for subsequent re-sale, or to the congested districts board, or in the court of the land judge, or in respect of offers to evicted tenants. these bring the total of potential purchasers up to , . under the act of , in two years from december , , to december , , the number of applications in respect of direct sales stands at , . in the other categories the number of potential purchasers amounted to up to march , . since then tentative negotiations have been essayed, under the threat of compulsion and the menace of home rule, which suggest a far larger figure. but these transactions--to which i shall return--are of an eminently dubious character. we are on safe ground if we compare the number of tenants who were ready under the two acts to acquire their holdings. after discounting whatever may be claimed on the score that the operation of the act of was expedited by the fear of its destruction, a comparision of , would-be purchasers in six years with , in two years demonstrates that the abolition of dual ownership has been thrown back to the conditions which called for the treaty of . furthermore, it is proper to discount, in turn, even the meagre total of , . for it includes the remainders of estates, other parts of which had been sold under the act of and the spurt of applications expedited, in this case, by the revolution of last august. to the over-sanguine and the over-timid this seemed to foreshadow the rapid passage of home rule, and, bad as are the terms of the act of , they are estimated to be better than any obtainable after the union has been thrown on the scrap-heap of the constitution. one other comparison may be noted. it was part of the treaty of that landlords should be encouraged to remain in their native land by assistance in the repurchase of their demesnes--that is, homes--after selling their properties. under the act of the advances on resale to owners sanctioned by the land commission numbered . under the act of they number two. it will readily be inferred, even by those unacquainted with ireland; that a process for healing ancient wounds has been turned into a process for exasperating future conflicts. a blister has been substituted for a poultice on the sores of centuries. existing agreements are blocked. future agreements--for this is their appropriate, if cynical--designation, are relegated to a future which few can foresee. landlords who have contracted to sell are threatened with bankruptcy by the foreclosure of mortgages. tenants who have contracted to buy see their hopes deferred with sick hearts. whilst to owners and occupiers who have not completed their bargains "no hope comes at all." the newly won prosperity of ireland is doomed because the nationalist party and british government have not kept faith; and with prosperity peace is departing. the environment that breeds agrarian disorder and crime has been restored, and agitators, in expectation of home rule, are already at "their dirty work again." a new plan of campaign menaces the peace of ireland in those districts whose past records are most darkly stained. _examination of the reasons alleged for tearing up the treaty of _.--the government defended their reversal of the policy of , and departure from their pledges to carry out that policy, by making two assertions. they asserted ( ) that the size of the problem, which all parties undertook to solve, would exceed by far the speculative estimate put forward in ; ( ) that the credit of the british exchequer, which they have depressed, would prove unequal to the burden foreshadowed by the new dimensions, which they have assigned. ( ) _size of the problem_. the first assertion, that much nearer £ , , than £ , , must be borrowed in order to complete purchase, is based on two assumptions explicitly stated in the return presented to parliament (cd. of ) as follows: "it will be observed that the purchase money of the agricultural land not yet brought before the commissioners for sale under the land purchase acts has been estimated _on the assumption that it will be all sold_ and that _it will be sold on an average at the price for which lands had been sold up to th april last, under the irish land act_ ( )." the assumptions on which the government proceeded are not, therefore, in doubt, but the validity of those assumptions, on which the whole case of the government depends, is refuted by the ascertained facts of irish agriculture. the census shows that the number of agricultural holdings in ireland is about , , including nearly million acres. the whole area of ireland includes some million acres, apportioned to - / million acres under crops, million acres of waste, and - / million acres under grass. the return to which i have referred (cd. of ) cavils at the figures given in the census on the ground that the , "holdings" are more accurately , "land-holders," since a tenant holding "half a dozen farms in the same county is returned as having a single holding." but it is right to take "holders" when, as under the act of , the limit on advances applies to the person who receives them. again, the return throws over the census for figures supplied by the department of agriculture. but it is wrong to use these figures, for they include holdings not exceeding one acre, of which there are , in ireland, and many more that cannot be described as "in the main agricultural or pastoral." no special pleading on the part of the government can alter the fact that the , holdings given by the census include all the lands under crops and grass and two-thirds of the waste. they embrace million acres, and more than cover the ground. for the purpose of an estimate it is an outside figure, the more so since, in respect of grass lands the value of a single farm may exceed the limit of any one advance, and it is not uncommon for a large grazier to rent many grass farms. if the government, by conferring a judicial status on the estate commissioners, surrendered their control over the amounts of single advances; and again, if the government, at the dictation of mr. dillon, embarked on a new policy of creating tenancies in grass land and selling them to new men, they are debarred from increasing the estimate to cover their own misfeasance. in tendering the speculative estimate of , it was clearly laid down that the amount of one advance was only to be increased in rare cases, and the sub-division of permanent pasture was denounced as a "form of economic insanity." it was also explained that deductions must be made from the , holdings in respect of small town plots, accommodation plots, and market gardens; nor are these insignificant, for to the , holdings not exceeding one acre we must add , of from to acres. in the face of these facts, the assumption that "all agricultural land"--as defined in the return--will be sold, is not only unsound but preposterous. the second assumption, that the average price of future transactions will equal that of past transactions is opposed to the presumption that better, and therefore dearer farms, came into the market before worse and therefore cheaper farms. i am not referring to the number of years' purchase offered, a point on which i have never expressed an opinion, but to the value of the property which passes. it is with farms as with oranges, the good ones go first. the pertinence of this maxim to land purchase is proved by the reports of the estates commissioners. these contradict the government's second assumption, for they exhibit a steady and continuous decline in the average of advances that have been made. the average amount of advances under the act of to march , , was in round numbers £ . on some such figures the second assumption rests. i ventured at the time to assert that the average in the future would not exceed £ . this estimate has been confirmed, for the average advances from march , , to september , --when the act ceased to operate--was £ . a further reduction may be confidently expected, since the progress of purchase in the richer provinces has by far exceeded its progress in connaught. in leinster over , agreements have been lodged at an average price of over £ ; in munster over , at an average of over £ ; in ulster over , at an average of over £ ; whilst in connaught only some , at an average of just under £ . the reasons alleged in defence of the act of failed to justify, or even to explain, the changes it imposed. an explanation must be sought in the real reasons, and they are not far to seek. the first was that the old methods of litigation and delay, abjured by all parties in , were substituted for the new methods of speed and ease, because mr. dillon so willed it; and the second, that the policy of abolishing dual ownership, to which mr. redmond stood pledged, had to be ousted, again at mr. dillon's dictation, to make way for the folly of creating new tenancies, of symmetrical size, throughout all ireland. the treaty was torn up because mr. dillon, acting as deputy for mr. birrell (whose main argument for home rule is that it bores him to be chief secretary), ordered mr. redmond to eat his words. from this examination of the reasons for destroying the act of , the true size and nature of the financial problem emerges. from the total of some , holdings substantial reductions must be made in respect of waste lands, grass lands, and accommodation plots, and, again, in view of the limitation on the amount that may be advanced to one person. we ought probably to deduct per cent., but if, to be on the safe side, we deduct only per cent., , are left. these, however, include some , sold before the act of , or under the land commissioners as distinct from the estates commissioners. in respect of the , remaining, , agreements have been lodged under all categories in the acts of and . indeed, a larger number have been lodged, for in most cases our information is only to march , , leaving less than , holdings that may still come into the market. this is an outside figure, provided always that the policy of be adhered to, viz. that advances are made to _occupiers_ and not to new men, except as under the act of that year (sect. (i) _b_ and _d_, and sect. ) in rare cases, rigidly defined, of the sons of tenants and of evicted tenants. if the average price remains at the figure for the period march , , to september , --viz. £ --a further sum of £ , , may be required in excess of £ , , already required under the acts of and ; making £ , , . this total includes nearly £ , , for re-sales to owners and some provision for evicted tenants. under these heads it will not expand in a greater relative degree. it includes, also, purchase of whole estates and of untenanted land by the estates commissioners and congested districts board, and these may involve larger sums than were originally contemplated. i promised to return to that point, and will now do so. since the return under these heads up to march , , tentative negotiations have been made for the purchase of a number of estates and for supplying more evicted tenants with holdings. but this does not increase the money size of the problem by much, because many of these estates--if sold to the new congested districts board--are subtracted from business that would have been done by the estates commissioners; again, it is, as we know, impossible to spend much money, or move many migrants, or even enlarge many holdings, in one year. if the new congested districts board attempts to handle some millions' worth of land in a hurry, one of two things must happen, either their work will be indefinitely delayed, or else they will sell off "uneconomic" holdings without amending their defects. the business will not cost more. it will only be scamped, or shirked. i doubt if the additions, which do not conflict with the policy of , will increase the amount to be borrowed in the market, though they may increase the sums needed for working capital. let us add for these expansions, which are strictly limited by physical impediments, £ , , or even twice that amount. it still remains obvious that, even after expansions, good, bad, or indifferent, of the policy of , the total sum to be borrowed cannot exceed from £ , , to £ , , , as the outside figure that need be contemplated, provided we refrain from the "economic insanity" of distributing eleven million acres of permanent pasture among shopkeepers and "gombeen" men. this figure of £ , , , indeed, exceeds what may reasonably be expected. the average of advances fell from £ on the earliest agreements, to £ on all agreements to march , , and to £ on agreements between that date and september , . we may count on a continuation of that fall until the average approaches £ , the price for connaught, where purchase has proceeded most slowly. but let the total stand at £ , , . that sum neither warrants the breach of faith of which the government and the nationalist party have been guilty, nor does it present an insoluble problem to the resources of a united exchequer. £ , , has already been borrowed in the market, and advanced, in less than eight years. the policy to which the leaders of the unionist party stand pledged may now be re-stated in the words which i was authorised to use by mr. arthur balfour and lord lansdowne after consultation with their colleagues. speaking on july , , i said:-- "our attitude is, that it is necessary to deal effectively with the block of pending agreements, but in dealing with that block it is not necessary to prejudice the interests either of the landlords or tenants, who may come to terms on some future agreements. we think that the spirit of the act of must be observed in the case of pending agreements, but it must not be departed from in the case of future agreements."--hansard, , vol. vii. no. , cols. , . mr. bonar law confirms this pledge. he instructs me to say that the unionist party will resume the land policy of , and pursue the same objects by the best methods until all have been fully and expeditiously achieved. the prospects of irish agriculture under the union include a return to the land policy of , with its fair hopes of reconciliation between classes and creeds, and its accomplished result of abounding prosperity. what are the prospects of irish agriculture under home rule? of what home rule may mean in this, as in other respects, we have been told so little that we are driven to consider its effect on irish agriculture in the light of two contingencies. it may be that the extremists, with whom mr. dillon invariably ranges himself, as a preliminary to dragging mr. redmond after him, will have their way. in that case, ireland will exact complete fiscal autonomy from a government which invariably surrenders to mr. dillon's puppet. should this occur, land purchase will cease abruptly in the absence of credit for borrowing the sums it requires. take the other alternative, hazily outlined by mr. winston churchill at belfast. we glean from his pronouncement that the government intend--if they can--to refuse fiscal autonomy, and to preserve control over land purchase. can it be expected that this attempt, even if it succeeds, will produce better results for land purchase than the pitiable failure of the act of ? is it not certain that less money will be raised in england, for ireland, after home rule? and if raised in driblets, on what will it be spent? obviously, not on the policy of , but on the policy substituted by mr. dillon in . it will be spent on expelling landlords and graziers to make room for subscribers to the propaganda of extremists. we must judge of what will happen to agriculture after home rule by what has happened since the treaty of was repudiated. nor must we forget that mr. dillon's destructive activity has ranged beyond land purchase. that policy could have achieved little but for the untiring and generous patriotism of sir horace plunkett. he established the department of agriculture and converted his countrymen to co-operation, in the absence of which no system of small ownership can succeed. he, too, based his efforts on a conference--the recess committee. how has he been met? mr. redmond, a member of that committee, as later of the land conference, has, here again, succumbed to mr. dillon, who seeks to defeat co-operation between farmers, in the interests of his disciples; whilst mr. russell, with the hectic zeal of a pervert, has refused ireland's share of the new development grant in order to spite sir horace plunkett. such signs of the times are read in ireland more quickly than in england, and in several ways. to this man they spell speedy triumph for the form of economic insanity in which he vindictively believes; to that man, the retention of an office won by recanting his opinions. but there are others in the saddest districts of ireland who must also be taken into account. to the few--for they are few--who thrive by deeds of darkness whenever the union is attacked, these signs of coming change suggest a more tragic interpretation, from which the fanatic and the place-hunter would recoil--when too late. the blatant publican who strangles a neighbourhood in the toils of usury and illicit drink, and the bestial survivor of half-forgotten murder-rings take note of these signs. the atavism of cruelty returns. emboldened by mr. birrell's bland acquiescence in milder prologues to home rule, a new plan of campaign is, even now, being devised, charged with sinister consequences from which all men in trusted that ireland would be for ever absolved. the prospects of irish agriculture under home rule include the return, after a brief chapter of "hope, and energy the child of hope," to the old cycle of bitterness and listlessness and despair. a consideration of these alternatives leads to this dilemma. if the government concede fiscal autonomy land purchase ends. if they refuse it, and mr. redmond accepts a "gas-and-water" bill, that compromise, so accepted, will receive from mr. dillon the treatment accorded to the recommendations of the recess committee and of the land conference. the compromise will be repudiated and the millions already advanced for purchase will be used as a lever to extort complete autonomy. the lever is a powerful one. all depends upon who holds the handle. it may be said in conclusion that the unionist policy of land purchase vindicates the union, and that the treatment it has received demonstrates the futility, and the tragedy, of granting home rule. xv possible irish financial reforms under the union by arthur warren samuels, k.c. the constitutional position. the best possible system for irish financial reform is adherence to the principles of the act of union. the constitution, as settled by the act of union and the supplementary act for the amalgamation of the exchequer, contemplated that each of the three kingdoms should contribute by "equal taxes" to the imperial exchequer. "equal taxes" were to be those which would press upon each country equitably in proportion to its comparative ability to bear taxation. these taxes were to be imposed subject to such exemptions and abatements as scotland and ireland should from time to time appear to be entitled to. if their circumstances should so require, they should receive special consideration. all the revenues of england, scotland and ireland, wherever and however raised, when paid into the common exchequer, form one consolidated fund. the act for the consolidation of the exchequers directs that there shall be paid out of the common fund "indiscriminately" under the control of parliament all such moneys as are required at any time and in any place for any of the public services in england, scotland, ireland or elsewhere in the empire.[ ] such payments are to be made without consideration of anything but necessity. they are to be without differentiation on the ground of the locality of the expenditure, or of the relative amount of the contributions to the common chest of england, scotland or ireland. all expenditure is alike "common"; whatever its object may be, civil, naval or military or foreign, it is all alike "imperial," and all of it is under the constitution "indiscriminate." the whole united kingdom forms one domain, and but one area for the purposes of expenditure. as long as the act of union lasts no one of the three kingdoms can be said to be "run" either "at a loss" or "at a profit." they are all run together as one incorporate body. the common revenue balances the common expenditure, and they bear together one another's burden and the weight of empire. the vice-treasurership of ireland. the act for the amalgamation of the exchequers of great britain and ireland contained provisions for the continued representation of ireland in fiscal matters at the exchequer and in parliament. power was given to his majesty by letters patent under the great seal of ireland to appoint a vice-treasurer of ireland. the vice-treasurer could sit in parliament, and appointment to the office did not vacate a seat in the house of commons. this office has been allowed to fall into abeyance. the exchequer is only represented in ireland by a treasury remembrancer. most persons who know ireland would concur in the view that the existing arrangement is not satisfactory, and that it would be of great advantage to great britain, as well as to ireland, to have in parliament a minister specially responsible for irish finance, acting under the chancellor of the exchequer. the vice-treasurership should be revived, and the occupant of it should be a member in touch with irish opinion, understanding ireland and her real wants, which are often very different from the demands upon the exchequer that are most loudly proclaimed. the restoration of the office would facilitate business, and tend to remove many misunderstandings, and prevent many mistakes. personal interviews in ireland with such a minister would be worth reams of correspondence, and would save weeks of time. promptitude, economy and efficiency would be secured. irish interests under tariff reform. for the purposes of a system of tariff reform, the revival of the irish vice-treasurership is expedient. the peculiar circumstances, conditions, aptitudes, and requirements of ireland must be regarded, inquired into, discussed and weighed. her commercial, industrial, and agricultural interests must be specially considered. they vary in many particulars from those of scotland and england. this can only be done satisfactorily by a responsible irish minister charged with the duty of protecting and securing her interests and harmonising them with those of the sister kingdoms in the framing of a scientific scheme of tariff reform. if irish interests are properly provided for, she should gain greatly under tariff reform. the effect of the whig finance, inaugurated by gladstone in , accompanied by a rigid application of the ricardian theories of political economy, and the continuous narrowing of the basis of indirect taxation, told against ireland most severely, depleted her resources and retarded her progress. sir stafford northcote thus addressed the house of commons after twelve years' experience of the gladstone budget:-- "the upshot of our present system of taxation has been to increase the taxation of the united kingdom within the last ten or twelve years by per cent., and they would find that whereas the taxation of england had increased by per cent., that of ireland had increased no less than per cent, between and . this disproportion had been brought about by laying upon ireland the burden of the income-tax and by heavily increasing the spirit duties, making use at the same time of these two great engines of taxation to relieve the united kingdom, but more especially england, of particular fiscal impositions.... taxation in these two parts have pressed so heavily on ireland, it was incumbent upon the people of england to take into account the necessity of relieving ireland in any way they could."[ ] this plea of a great conservative financial authority for that special consideration for ireland to which she is entitled in fiscal matters under the act of union was not carried into effect until the unionist administration of lord salisbury, in . then began, under the chief secretaryship of mr. arthur balfour, that practical application of the "exemptions and abatements" clause of the act of union in the policy of constructivism which has fructified so magnificently, and which, if allowed to continue uninterrupted by home rule, will lead ireland to affluence. the lloyd george budget penalised ireland still further by exaggerating those methods of whig finance which persistently narrowed the basis of indirect taxation and heaped up disproportionate imposts on a few selected articles--articles which are either very largely produced or very largely consumed in ireland. the effect of gladstone's budget of was to reduce the area under barley in ireland by , acres in six years; the lloyd george budget has reduced the irish barley crop by , acres in one year. therefore in the framing of the tariff reform budgets of the future, ireland's equitable claim under the act of union should be recognised and given effect to. reform of agricultural land taxation. agricultural land in the hands of the farmers who have bought their holdings under the irish land acts has been made liable to extravagant burdens by the lloyd george budget. these peasant purchasers are treated as if they were "dukes." when they discover their real position, their resentment will be bitter. form iv. has not yet been circulated among them. it has been kept back deliberately. it would not suit mr. redmond or the ministry, should the irish farmer discover what the actual working of the new land taxes means while the legislative logs are still being rolled by the radical-socialist-nationalist combination. when home rule is defeated unionist finance should provide that the burden imposed by these taxes on agricultural progress and national prosperity shall be removed, and that the benefits conferred by the great unionist policy of state purchase on the peasant proprietors shall not be allowed to be filched away by the socialist budget, though it was by that very irish party, whose first duty should have been to protect them, that the irish farmers' interests have been betrayed. constructivism. it was found by the financial relations commission that ireland contributed a revenue in excess of her relative capacity. mr. childers, in his draft report, suggested that practical steps might possibly be taken to give ireland relief or afford her equitable compensation in three different ways--[ ] ( ) by so altering the general fiscal policy of the united kingdom as to make the incidence of taxation fall more lightly on ireland. it was suggested that the taxation upon tea, tobacco, and spirits, which weigh more heavily on ireland in proportion to her relative capacity, because of the habits of the people, and the larger proportion in ireland of the poorer classes, might be reduced and a part of the burden transferred to other commodities. it was, however, felt, he said, that this would open up questions of such magnitude--like free trade and the incidence of taxation as between different classes--that it would be inexpedient to urge it, when the object in view was the solution of a pressing difficulty with regard to ireland taken apart from the rest of the united kingdom. but that difficulty will be removed under tariff reform--one-sided free trade is no longer a sacrosanct fetish--and the case of ireland must be taken not as apart from, but as part of, the united kingdom. irish interests, agricultural and industrial, can be far better promoted, furthered, and secured under a scientific tariff system than under the so-called free trade system, which insists on the fallacy that identity of imposts means equality of burden, and concentrates its pressure on the great irish industries of brewing, distillery, and tobacco manufacturing; a system which taxes heavily tea--the great article of consumption--and has brought peculiar disaster on agriculture. therefore, the remedy which mr. childers thought impracticable in will become eminently practicable with a tariff reform ministry in power. ( ) the second suggestion then made was that there should be a policy of distinct customs and excise for ireland as apart from great britain. this would involve a customs barrier between the two islands. the inconvenience of such a course would be immeasurable and disastrous under modern conditions. it would certainly come sooner or later under home rule, but it would be a reversal of the policy of the union. ( ) the third method which most strongly recommended itself to mr. childers was to give compensation to ireland by making an allocation of revenue in her favour, to be employed in promoting the material prosperity and social welfare of the country. this is the course which has been pursued by unionist statesmen, and finds practical expression in their constructive policy. the results cannot be better proved than by the fact that within the six years from , during which the statistics of irish export and import trade have been kept, her commerce has increased in money value by more than twenty-seven millions. at least four-fifths of that great increase represents a corresponding increase in british trade with ireland. mr. childers wrote in -- "apart from the claim of ireland to special and distinct consideration under the provisions of the act of union, and upon the ground that she has for many years been, and now is, contributing towards the public revenue a share much in excess of her relative taxable capacity; i think that great britain as a manufacturing and trading country would in the course of time be amply repaid by the increase of prosperity and purchasing power in ireland for any additional burdens which this annual grant to ireland might involve. looked at simply as a matter of good policy, it would be that often advocated with regard to crown colonies of imperial expenditure with a view to the development of a backward portion of the imperial estate. ireland is so much nearer to and more exclusively the customer of the trading and manufacturing districts of great britain than any colony, that this argument in her case should have redoubled weight. it is at least probable that, if in place of the fitful method of casual loans and grants hitherto pursued, there was a steady, persevering, and well-directed application of public money by way of free annual grant towards increasing the productive power of ireland, the true revenue derived from that country might in time be no longer in excess of its relative taxable capacity."[ ] the wisdom of this liberal chancellor of the exchequer makes a strange contrast with the folly of the radical chief secretary, who tells england to "cut the loss" at the moment of ireland's rapid progress because irish old age pensions have exceeded in number the reckless anticipation of the right hon. mr. lloyd george. a suggestion for state transit of home-grown produce. the present writer ventures to suggest that under a general scheme of tariff reform, the home-grown food supply of the united kingdom might be generally increased and cheapened, and ireland, along with the other agricultural districts of the united kingdom greatly developed, by an extension of the principle of the parcel post, and the constitution of a great home-grown commodity consignment service worked through arrangements between the post office, the railway companies, the agricultural departments and farmers' co-operative associations. the railways already provide special rates for farm produce. but if the system were organised by the state in connection with the railways and agricultural associations, and the parcel post expanded from the carriage of parcels of eleven pounds weight to the carriage of consignments of a tonnage limit to be delivered on certain days at depots in the large cities and centres of population, great national interests might be served. the value of proximity to the home markets which has been so depreciated in favour of foreign supplies by modern transit methods and quick sea passages, would be restored to the british and irish farmer. if this were accompanied by a tariff system which would secure a preference for home-grown cereals such as oats and barley, a direct effect in stimulating agriculture, and an indirect effect in increasing winter dairying, cattle feeding and poultry rearing, would be produced. the country would become more self-sustaining. the peace food supply would be cheapened and the food supply in time of war augmented. the defensive power of the realm would be increased. if, under the new tariff system, it seems not inexpedient to reimpose the small registration duty on imported foreign as contrasted with colonial wheat and flour, the revenue thus produced might, without exactly earmarking it, be applied partly towards encouraging and advancing agriculture in the united kingdom, and partly towards financing such a commodity post as above suggested. this subvention to domestic, agricultural and pastoral industries would balance the tariff on foreign manufactured goods, and the farmer of england, scotland and ireland would share amply in the stimulus of a new fiscal policy. tariff reform may assist the manufacturer and artisan by imposing duties at the ports, and the farmer and agricultural labourer by cheapening transit and encouraging food production within the united kingdom. equivalent grants in aid. in a system was inaugurated by which grants in aid of local purposes have been made in the three kingdoms on the basis that england should get per cent., scotland per cent., and ireland per cent., when such subventions are given from the imperial exchequer. the legislation sanctioning this proportional allocation began with the english local government act of , when grants in aid were made out of the probate duties, and has been carried into several other statutes relating to england, scotland and ireland. these proportions have become to a large extent stereotyped in the allocation of such grants. the new basis of contribution was originated by mr. goschen and was stated by him to depend upon the amount of the assumed contribution of each country to the revenue for common purposes. the method of calculation, he said, was a very complex one.[ ] it was pointed out at the time that under the new system the party that would probably require the largest amount of the grant would be the poorest country, and yet the richer country would get the larger proportionate grants.[ ] the method of segregation is as follows. the revenue and expenditure returns divide public expenditure into four clauses: (a) "imperial or common services," (b) "english services," (c) "scottish services," and (d) "irish services"; and having treated the three latter as "local services" and charged the particular outlay on them against each of the three countries, they estimate the balance left in cash as "the contribution" of england, scotland and ireland to the "imperial" expenditure. it is admitted that this division is absolutely arbitrary. it has no sanction by any act of parliament. it is opposed to the system of finance under the act of union. all the revenues of england, scotland or ireland are contributed for "common" purposes, and in which all expenditure of any kind in any portion of the united kingdom is alike "common" or "imperial." the details of the division were never disclosed, when the proportions were originally fixed. the segregation of the services classified as "imperial" is open to serious objections. the method of computation is empirical and unconstitutional, and if carried to its logical conclusion would now result in depriving ireland of any share whatever in future equivalent grants, as her contribution to the services thus classified as "imperial" is practically a minus quantity, though the revenue actually raised in ireland is much higher than it ever has been before. this method of distribution of grants in aid has been condemned by a succession of the highest financial authorities. lord ritchie, as chancellor of the exchequer, said, "he did not think it possible really to defend in all its details distribution by contribution."[ ] mr. wyndham said-- "it leads to results which all must hold to be illogical, and results which everybody in ireland holds to be unjust because the greater the increase of taxation the less is the proportion that comes from ireland, the poorer partner in the business, and so the less is the equivalent grant. as the evil increases the remedy diminishes, and you have only to force up taxation sufficiently high to extinguish the remedy altogether."[ ] mr. asquith said-- "a more confused and illogical condition of things it is impossible to imagine. the house ought really to take the opportunity of threshing out the principle upon which these equivalent grants ought to be distributed between the three countries."[ ] lord st. aldwyn said-- "that he always had a very strong objection to the system of equivalent grants, because when they had to make a grant for certain purposes to england, they were obliged to make proportionate grants to ireland and scotland quite irrespective of whether they needed them or not."[ ] neither the "imperial" contribution basis nor the "population" basis, which has in some instances been resorted to for grants in aid, is satisfactory, nor is the method desirable of setting aside a certain fund raised by some particular tax to finance a particular service. for instance, the subvention of education in ireland out of the "whisky money" recently broke down owing to the diminution of the revenue from this source. the more sober ireland became, the less she got for education. chaos was imminent, and finally, after much friction, a special grant had to be made from the treasury to save the situation. there are numerous instances in which great complications have been caused in dealing with local authorities owing to these methods of making grants in aid, and the system should be reformed. the true basis is the basis of each kingdom's need.... england has her needs, let them be supplied. scotland has hers, let them be supplied. ireland has hers, and having regard to her present comparative poverty, let them be supplied "not grudgingly or of necessity," but by the chancellor of the exchequer "as a cheerful giver." this is the constitutional principle under the act of union, and the soundest financial principle to observe for the united kingdom. footnotes: [footnote : geo. iii. c. .] [footnote : "hansard," feb. , , vol. , p. .] [footnote : "financial relations report," , c. , vol. iii. p. .] [footnote : , c. , p. .] [footnote : "hansard," , vol. , p. .] [footnote : "parl. deb.," vol. , p. .] [footnote : ibid., vol. , p. .] [footnote : "parl. deb.," vol. , p. .] [footnote : ibid., vol. , p. .] [footnote : ibid., may , .] xvi the economics of separatism by l. s. amery, m.p. the history of ireland for the last two centuries and more is a continuous exposition of the disastrous consequences of political and economic separatism within an area where every natural condition, and the whole course of historical development, pointed to political and economic union. geographically, racially and historically an integral part of a single homogeneous island group, ireland has never really been allowed to enjoy the full advantages of political and economic union with the adjoining main island. almost every misfortune which ireland has suffered is directly traceable to this cause. in spite of this, it is now seriously proposed to subject her once again to the disadvantages of political separation, and that on the very eve of an inevitable change of economic policy, which, while it would restore real vitality and purpose to political union, would also once more intensify all the injury which economic disunion has inflicted upon ireland in the past. in the long constitutional struggle of the seventeenth century her position as a separate political unit made ireland a convenient instrument of stuart policy against the english parliament. cromwell, with true insight, solved the difficulty by legislative union with england. but his work was undone at the restoration, and for another years ireland remained outside the union as a separate and subordinate state. her economic position was that of a colony, as colonies were then administered. but it was that of a "least favoured colony." this was due, in part, to a real fear of ireland as a danger to british constitutional liberty and british protestantism[ ] which long survived the occasion which has seemed to justify it. but what was a more serious and permanent factor was the circumstance that ireland's economic development could only be on lines which competed with england, and not like colonial development on lines complementary to english trade. one after another irish industries were penalised and crippled by being forbidden all part in the export trade. a flourishing woollen industry, a prosperous shipping, promising cotton, silk, glass, glove making and sugar refining industries were all ruthlessly repressed,[ ] not from any innate perversity on the part of english statesmen, or from any deliberate desire to ruin ireland, but as a natural and inevitable consequence of exclusion from the union under the economic policy of the age. whatever outlet irish economic activity took there was always some english trade whose interests were prejudicially affected, and which promptly exercised a perfectly legitimate pressure upon the government to put a stop to the competition. the very poverty of ireland, as expressed in the lowness of irish wages, was an ever convenient and perfectly justifiable argument for exclusion. the linen industry alone received a certain amount of toleration, and even encouragement. these regulations were so little animated by direct religious or racial antipathy that it was upon the protestant scotch and english settlers that they fell with the greatest severity, driving them into exile by thousands, to become, subsequently, one of the chief factors in the american revolution. but if the direct economic effect of political separation weighed less heavily upon the catholic majority, they suffered all the more from the utter paralysis of all industry and enterprise consequent upon the penal laws. these laws, monstrous as they seemed even to burke, were in their turn a natural outcome of a political separation which made the security of protestantism in ireland rest upon the domination of a narrow oligarchy in instant terror of being swamped. under union they would never have been devised, or could certainly never have endured. the revolution by which the irish parliament, in , asserted its constitutional equality with the british parliament, subject only to the power of bribery, direct or indirect, retained by the crown, brought out in still more glaring relief the utter unsoundness of the existing political structure under separation. after eighteen years of ferment within ireland and friction without, british and irish statesmen, face to face with civil war and french invasion, realised that the sorry farce had to come to an end. meanwhile the immediate economic effect of liberation from the direct restrictions on irish foreign trade, already conceded in , and helped in various directions by judicious bounties, was undoubtedly to give a new impetus to production in ireland. the first ten years of grattan's parliament were, on the whole, years of growing prosperity. whether, even apart from civil war and increasing taxation, that prosperity would have continued to increase, if the union had not come about, is, however, a more doubtful matter. the immense industrial development of england during the next half-century would probably, in any case, have crushed out the smaller and weaker irish industries, while the existence of a separate tariff in great britain would have been a serious obstacle to the development of irish agriculture. a full customs union, with internal free trade, was undoubtedly the best solution of the difficulty. but pitt's commercial propositions of failed, partly, indeed, owing to political intrigues, but still more owing to the fundamental impossibility of securing an effective customs union without some form of political union. when finally ireland entered the union it was with the severe handicap of an industrial system artificially repressed for over a century. the removal of the last traces of internal protection in only accelerated the process, inevitable in any case, by which irish industries, with the exception of linen, were submerged. but manufacturing industry was at the best a small matter in ireland compared with agriculture. and to irish agriculture the union meant an immense development in every direction. unfortunately the inheritance of the preceding century, a vicious agrarian system and a low standard of living, was not easily to be eliminated, and little attempt was made to eliminate it. the great increase of agricultural production was accompanied, not by a progressive and well-diffused rise in the standard of national well-being, but by high rents and extravagance on the one side, and, on the other, the rapid multiplication of a population living on the very margin of subsistence. the terrible year of famine was a warning to british statesmanship of the need of a constructive and conservative policy for the reorganisation of irish agricultural life and for the broadening of the economic basis in ireland by the deliberate encouragement of new industries. under a true conception of union, political and economic--and there were not wanting men like lord george bentinck and disraeli who entertained it--ireland might within a generation have been levelled up to the general standard of the united kingdom. but the evil effects of political and economic separatism in the eighteenth century were still unremedied when the whole economic policy of union was abandoned. the very principle and conception of free trade is, inherently, as opposed to the maintenance of national as of imperial union. ireland was deprived of that position of advantage in the british market which was one of the implied terms of the union, and was not allowed to protect her own market. incidentally, and as a consequence of the new fiscal policy, ireland was saddled with a heavy additional burden of taxation which only handicapped her yet further in the struggle to recover from the famine and to meet foreign competition. the full severity of that competition was, however, not experienced till towards the end of the seventies, when the opening up of the american west, coupled with the demonetisation of silver, brought down prices with a run. a series of bad harvests aggravated the evil. the same conditions were experienced all over europe, and were everywhere met by raising tariffs to the level required to enable agriculture to maintain itself. even in england "fair trade" became a burning issue. given normal agrarian conditions in ireland the irish vote would have gone solid with the fair traders, and the united kingdom would in all probability have reverted to a national system of economics a generation ago. as things were, landlords and farmers in ireland, instead of uniting to defend their common interest, each endeavoured to thrust the burden of the economic _débâcle_ on the other. the bitterness of the agrarian struggle which ensued was skilfully engineered into the channel of the home rule agitation. in other words, the evils of economic separatism, aggravated by the social evils surviving from the separatism of an earlier age, united to revive a demand for the extension and renewal of the very cause of these evils. since then the underlying conditions of irish economic life have undergone a complete transformation. the wealth and credit of the united kingdom have been used to inaugurate a settlement of the agrarian question. the productive and competitive efficiency of irish agriculture has been enormously increased both by government advice and assistance and by patriotic private effort. old age pensions have alleviated the burden of an excessive residue of older persons, and irrigated the poorer districts with a stream of ready money. in every direction there is a deliberate effort to raise the economic standard of ireland to the british level. last, but by no means least, the exclusion of all foreign live stock from the united kingdom, though originally designed only as a precautionary measure against cattle disease, has in effect protected one most important branch of irish agriculture and given it a vital interest in the maintenance of the union. on the eve of the revival of a national policy of economic development ireland stands on a far sounder basis, and in a far better position to take advantage of that development, than in . the standard of life is rising, and will of itself put a check on a mere multiplication of beings living on the margin of subsistence. for the natural increase of population, which will once more come about, there will be provision not only through more intensive cultivation and in rural industries, but also in a real, though possibly gradual, development of new manufacturing industries. incidentally the establishment of a protective tariff for the united kingdom will, by lowering the excessive duties on tea and tobacco which weigh so heavily upon ireland, increase still further the local excess of government expenditure over revenue and facilitate the local accumulation of capital, already so noticeable a feature of recent years, and thus provide an essential factor in stimulating new enterprise, whether agricultural or industrial. nor would it be in any way inconsistent with a national economic policy for the united kingdom as a whole to devote special sums, through bounties and in other ways, towards the opening up of new fields for the economic activities of the irish people. for the first time in her history ireland will have a fair start, and, under the union, the twentieth century may yet prove ireland's century just as canadians claim that it will prove canada's century. now let us turn to the other side of the picture. the establishment of home rule, in other words of political separatism, must inevitably be followed by active economic separatism, _i.e._ by the creation of a completely separate fiscal system in ireland. the idea that an irish chancellor of the exchequer can carry on in dependence on a british budget, which may at any moment upset all his calculations of revenue, is absurd. so is the idea that there can be separate tariffs with mutual free trade, or a common tariff without a common government to frame it. if free trade, indeed, were to be maintained in england, fiscal separation would be no disadvantage to ireland. on the contrary, she would continue to enjoy the same access to the british market while giving her own industries such protection as might be convenient. it is one of the glaring weaknesses of the policy of free imports that it actually puts a premium on separatism. but it is impossible to discuss the future on that assumption. whatever the fate of the home rule bill may be it is certain that free trade is doomed, and that the united kingdom, whether united or divided, will revert to a policy of national protection and national development. what will be the effect upon ireland? assuming mutual good will, assuming that the irish government will be ready to grant a substantial preference to british trade over foreign trade, there can be no doubt that great britain would respond and give to irish products the same preference as might be extended to canadian or australian products. but the first duty of the british government would be to british producers. while empire-grown wheat, and possibly meat, would come in free, the british farmer would receive a measure of protection against the rest of the empire in dairy products and poultry, in barley and oats, in hops, tobacco, sugar beet, vegetables and fruit, in all those crops, in fact, in which the british production could meet the british demand without an undue effect upon prices. now, it is precisely by these intensive forms of production that ireland stands to gain most under union. under home rule she would lose this advantage and have to compete on an equality with the rest of the empire both in respect to these products and in respect to wheat and meat. it is extremely doubtful, too, whether her special privileges with regard to store cattle would long survive. they could no longer be defended, as against canada, by the arguments now used, and as a piece of pure protectionism there would be no reason for great britain to give them a separate fiscal entity. and if the hopes of irish agriculture would be severely checked, still more would that be true of those hopes of new industries already referred to. even the great linen industry might find a small duty enough to transfer a large part of its production within the british tariff zone. on the other hand, it is doubtful whether any tariff that ireland could impose, consistently either with preference or with reasonable prices in so small a market and on so small a scale of production, could be of much effect against the competition of british industries, strengthened and made aggressive under the stimulus of a national trade policy. this is the most favourable hypothesis. but it is at least conceivable that a nationalist government, whether actuated by a laudable desire to hurry on irish industrial development, or influenced by the tradition of animosity which still plays so strong a part in nationalist politics, may refuse to enter upon the policy of imperial preference. it might even be tempted by various considerations to give a preference to the united states or to germany. germany is a large importer of foodstuffs. the establishment of a british tariff may prove a serious blow to her manufacturing interests. a trade agreement with ireland might be a very useful temporary business expedient from the german point of view. incidentally a large increase of german merchant shipping in irish harbours might, in the case of possible hostilities, be of no little service in providing commerce destroyers with a most convenient excuse for being in the most favourable area for their operations. any fiscal excursions of that sort would inevitably be visited upon ireland by severe economic reprisals of one kind or another on the part of great britain, from which ireland would receive permanent injury far outweighing any temporary advantage which might be secured from foreign countries. in other words, ireland under home rule would be in almost every respect thrust back into her eighteenth century position of "least favoured colony." she would, at the best, be handicapped in the british market in respect of those products by which she could profit most, and in those which she is less fitted to produce would have to compete with the virgin soil and competitive energy and organisation of the great dominions. at the worst, her fiscal policy might invite reprisals and make her "least favoured" not only by her circumstances but by the intention of those who would frame the british tariff. it is true that the british government would no longer dream of directly interdicting irish exports. but in that respect modern organised capital has an influence to promote or kill almost as great as that of governments in former times. and the influence of british capital, under such circumstances, would certainly not tend to be directed towards the economic development of ireland. but the use of the customs tariff is by no means the only great instrument of a national economic policy. to promote the flow of trade in national channels, to secure the fullest development of the national territory and resources, the removal of natural internal barriers is often even more important than the setting up of artificial external barriers. statesmen who have had to face the task of giving strength and solidity to weak political unions have always aimed at the development of internal communications. washington's first concern after the success of the american war of independence was to endeavour to create a system of internal river and canal navigation in order to help to bind the loosely allied states into a real union. bismarck used the prussian railways as well as the zollverein to build up german unity. in the making of canada the intercolonial railway and the canadian pacific were essential complements to the national tariff. railways forced south africa into union, and will gradually give australia real cohesion and unity. in the united kingdom there has been no national policy with regard to communications, least of all any nationally directed or stimulated effort to cement the political union of . but such a policy is essential to the reality of the union. to get rid, as far as possible, of the barrier which the st. george's channel presents to-day both to the convenience of passenger traffic and to the direct through carriage of goods between internal points in the two islands should be one of the first objects of unionist policy in the future. in the train-ferry, which has bridged the channels of sea-divided denmark, which in spite of the baltic, has made sweden contiguous with germany, which for the purposes of railway traffic, has practically abolished lake michigan, modern developments have provided us with the very instrument required. to irish agriculture the gain of being put into direct railway communication with all england and scotland would be immense. from the tourist and sporting point of view ireland would reap a doubled and trebled harvest. more than that, the bridging of st. george's channel will for the first time enable the west coast of ireland to become what it ought to be, the true west coast of the united kingdom, the starting point of all our fast mail and passenger services across the atlantic. but all this implies the union, the existence of a single government interested in the development of the united kingdom as a whole. separate governments in great britain and ireland would not have the same inducement to give financial encouragement to such schemes. irish manufacturers and british farmers alike might protest against being taxed to facilitate the competition of rivals in their own markets. an irish government would have neither sufficient money nor sufficient interest to give the subsidies necessary to secure a three days' service across the atlantic. a british government would naturally develop one of its existing ports, or some new port on the west coast of scotland, rather than build up a new source of revenue and national strength in a separate state. no one could blame it, any more than we could blame the canadian government for wishing to subsidise a fast service from halifax or some other port in the dominion rather than one from st. john's, newfoundland. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the navigation acts deliberately destroyed irish shipping. a policy of _laisser faire_ in matters of national communication has hitherto prevented its revival. to-day new ideas are in the air. those ideas can be applied, either from the standpoint of the union or from that of separatism. in the one case ireland has the prospect of becoming, what her geographical position entitles her to be, the eastern bridge-head of the north atlantic. in the other the immense power of the larger capital and larger subsidies of great britain will be as effective as any navigation laws of the past in leaving her a derelict by the wayside, continuing to wait idle and hungry, with empty harbours, while the great streams of commerce flow past her to north and south. and if the theory of _laisser faire_ is rapidly dying out in matters of trade and communications, it has already been largely superseded in regard to social questions. the duty of the state to expend money in order to level up the standard of life of its citizens, or to prevent their sinking below that standard, is to-day universally recognised. the methods by which that object is aimed at are various. there is the crudest form, that of direct money relief, such as is involved in old age pensions. there is the subsidising of socially desirable economic operations, such as insurance against sickness or the acquisition of freehold by tenants. there is the expenditure of money on various forms of education, in the scientific assistance of industry and agriculture, in promotion of forestry, drainage, or the improvement of local communication. there is the enforcement of innumerable regulations to safeguard the health and safety of the working population. nowhere has this conception of the duty of the state exercised a greater influence than in ireland during the last twenty years. the congested districts board, the department of agriculture, the land purchase scheme, illustrate one phase of its carrying into effect. old age pensions, cheap labourers' cottages, sickness insurance illustrate another. all these have been provided out of the united kingdom exchequer. they could not be provided out of irish revenues. still less could irish revenues provide for a continuous extension of this policy in order to keep on a level with english conditions. it has been stated by mr. churchill that under the government scheme of home rule, land purchase and old age pensions will be paid by great britain. even if that were a workable arrangement it only covers a small part of the field. for the rest home rule would mean the complete abandonment of the attempt to level up the social conditions of great britain and ireland to a common standard. the irish government would never have the means to carry out the same programme of social legislation as will be carried out in great britain. handicapped in competition with british industries it would, moreover, naturally be disinclined, even apart from the question of cost, to apply any legislation or any regulations which might tend to raise the cost of production. there will thus not only be an inevitable falling back for want of means, but, in addition, a continual temptation to the weaker and more backward state to meet superior industrial efficiency by the temporary cheapness of inferior social conditions.[ ] but such a policy would not only be disastrous in itself in its ultimate effect upon irish national life. it would at once provide a fresh and valid excuse for effective fiscal differentiation against ireland in great britain. once again, as in the eighteenth century, ireland would be penalised for being a poor and "sweated" country. so far the discussion of the economic results of separation has been confined to ireland, because ireland would undoubtedly be the chief sufferer. her dependence on the english market, the smallness of her home market, her backward social condition, would all be insuperable obstacles to a really healthy development on independent lines. great britain, on the other hand, would suffer relatively much less from home rule. the immediate shrinkage of trade with ireland, even with an irish tariff to overcome, might not be very great. the real loss would be not so much any actual decrease of trade, as the loss judged by the standard of the possibilities of irish development under the union. the essence of the situation after all is that the united kingdom is a single economic area. the exclusion of one part of that area from the political and economic life of the rest, while injurious to the rest, must prove disastrous above all to the part excluded. after centuries of alternate neglect and repression ireland has at last been brought to a condition in which she is capable of taking the fullest advantage of a new era of progress and development for the united kingdom as a whole. and this is the time which is chosen for seriously suggesting that she should once again be excluded from all the benefits of partnership in the united kingdom and driven out into the wilderness of poverty and decay. the plea for this folly is an unreal sentiment which is itself merely the survival of the mistaken political or economic separatism of the past, and which is nothing to the real and justifiable sentiment of bitterness which would be roused in ireland if the plea were accepted. footnotes: [footnote : this fear itself was the result of separatism. miss a. e. murray, in her work on "the commercial relations between england and ireland" (p. ), points out: "it was not so much jealousy of ireland as jealousy and fear of the english crown which influenced the english legislature. experience seemed to show that irish prosperity was dangerous to english liberty.... the difficulty was that ireland was a separate kingdom, and that the english parliament had no direct authority over her. it was this absence of direct authority which made england so nervously anxious to restrict irish resources in all those directions in which they might even indirectly interfere with the growth of english power."] [footnote : for details, see miss murray's "commercial relations between england and ireland."] [footnote : it is worth noting that in the liberal government rejected amendments moved by mr. whiteley to prevent existing laws for the protection of workers in factories, workshops, and mines, being repealed by the proposed irish legislature, and by sir j. gorst to reserve laws affecting the hours and conditions of labour to the united kingdom parliament.] xvii private bill legislation by the right hon. walter long, m.p. the argument so often and so plausibly presented in favour of home rule, which urges that the imperial parliament is overburdened with local affairs, contains an element of truth. it would, however, be more in accordance with the facts to put the case the other way round: for localities are much more seriously inconvenienced in certain respects by the necessity of referring local business to the imperial parliament, than the imperial parliament is inconvenienced by the transaction of such business, which, if we are to believe the chancellor of the exchequer, it neglects (vide _nash's magazine_, february, ). at the same time, to affirm that, in order to remedy what is no more than a defect in administration, it is necessary to overturn the british constitution, and to build on its ruins four semi-independent legislatures and one supreme parliament, is merely to exemplify the cynical imposture of partisan misrepresentation: what mr. balfour described as "the dream of political idiots." there is no impartial person who does not clearly recognise that to constitute a separate parliament for ireland (to say nothing of england, wales, and scotland) must necessarily result, not in the more efficient despatch of legislative and administrative business, but in perpetual friction, clogging the mechanism alike of the subordinate and the predominate body. ireland enjoyed--or endured--an independent parliament during eighteen years, from to ; and, in the result, the greatest statesmen both in ireland and in england were forced to acknowledge that the system had in practice failed utterly; and that there remained no alternative but the union. to that view of the situation the great majority of the irish people, irrespective of race or creed, were converted within a year before the passing of the act, an event which was hailed with rejoicing. the experience of years, fraught as they have been with occasional calamity and burdened with many blunders, has not produced a single valid objection to the principle of the union, unless the survival among a diminishing section of the population of the old, bad tradition of hatred towards england, and its deliberate exploitation by pledge-bound politicians, is to be regarded as a reason for sacrificing the welfare and the prosperity of both countries. the framers of the act of union did not, and indeed could not, provide for every contingency. it is therefore the business of those who are determined to maintain the union, to adjust its machinery to modern requirements. an omission of capital import was the failure to provide for the efficient promotion of private bills. the matter was, indeed, actually considered by the authors of the act of union. the duke of portland wrote to lord cornwallis, lord lieutenant of ireland, under date december , , as follows:-- "one of the greatest difficulties, however, which has been supposed to attend the project of union between the two kingdoms, is that of the expense and trouble which will be occasioned by the attendance of witnesses in trials of contested elections, or in matters of private business requiring parliamentary interposition. it would, therefore, be very desirable to devise a plan (which does not appear impossible) for empowering the speaker of either house of the united parliament to issue his warrant to the chairman of the quarter sessions in ireland, or to such other person as may be thought more proper for the purpose, requiring him to appoint a time and a place within the county for his being attended by the agents of the respective parties, and reducing to writing in their presence the testimony (for the consents or dissents, as the case may be) of such persons as, by the said agents, may be summoned to attend, being resident within the county (if not there resident a similar proceeding should take place in the county where they reside), and such testimony so taken and reduced into writing may, by such chairman or by the sheriff of the county, be certified to the speaker of either house, as the case may be. it seems difficult to provide a detailed article of the union for the various regulations which such a proceeding may require, but the principle might perhaps be stated there, and the provisions left to be settled by the united parliament." according to lord ashbourne's "life of pitt," the prime minister himself framed a scheme for constituting a court of appeal in ireland, with power to examine evidence and certify all preliminaries and other matters respecting private bills. why the provision was not included in the act of union is not clear. the fact of its omission, however, proves that the necessity of resorting to the imperial parliament for the transaction of private business was not an objection that hindered the passage of the act of union, although to-day the same omission is absurdly used as an argument in favour of the repeal of that measure. at the same time, it is true that the requirements have immensely increased in proportion as the resources of the country have been developed since . the introduction of railways, telegraphs, telephones and electric appliances, together with the grant of compulsory powers to municipalities, has involved the promotion of numerous private bills at vast expense to ireland. mr. a. w. samuels, k.c., who contributed a paper on the subject to the statistical and social inquiry society of ireland in november, , quoted some instances of the cost of private bill legislation in ireland:-- "the ratepayers of dublin, of rathmines, of pembroke, of clontarf, and other suburbs of the city, long will feel the burden added to their rates by the london litigation of the session that has passed. the dublin boundaries extension bill of has cost the city, as i am informed on reliable authority, between £ , and £ , . there were twenty-four separate sets of opponents. the cost to rathmines of its opposition approaches, i am informed, £ , . to meet it about one shilling in the pound must be added to the taxation of that township. the costs of pembroke cannot be far short of the same sum. if we add those of the oppositions of kilmainham, drumcondra, clontarf, and of the county of dublin, and of private persons and public bodies, the total expense to the inhabitants and ratepayers of the city and its suburbs will not fall short of £ , . "mr. pope, q.c., stated before the committee which considered the irish railways amalgamation scheme of last session, that the bill at hearing was costing £ per minute. a high authority conversant with the proceedings in this case has informed me that this was an under-estimate rather than an over-estimate, having regard to the fact that there were twenty-seven separate oppositions. the bill occupied twenty-seven working days of four hours each, and its cost to the shareholders of the promoting company were calculated to amount to about £ per day. what the loss was to the shareholders of other companies, and to the ratepayers represented by public bodies, it would be impossible to say. the bill probably cost at least £ , . there was a belfast corporation bill. there was an armagh and keady railway bill. there were several other irish bills before the houses, exhausting thousands more of irish capital, and diverting it from the material development of the country. so abnormal was the waste of irish money on the railway bill that it excited general attention even in england, and became the subject of comment in parliament. mr. j. h. lewis, the member for flint burghs, speaking on the th july, , on the third reading of the scotch private legislation procedure bill, said, 'i am sure everybody must have regarded with great dissatisfaction the enormous expenditure to which certain irish railway companies were put during the last few weeks within the walls of the house. surely a better system can be devised than that which drags over from different parts of the united kingdom a host of witnesses, who could be examined on the spot. i am sure all honourable members deeply regret this great waste of public money.'" these disabilities have been the subject of frequent representations. resolutions advocating reform have been repeatedly passed by the irish chambers of commerce, by the incorporated law society, and by local bodies. leaders of the unionist party have constantly urged the necessity of a provision for expediting and cheapening private bill procedure. in a deputation from the dublin chamber of commerce laid the matter before mr. gerald balfour, who was then chief secretary for ireland. he expressed a hope that the government would introduce a reform. in the queen's speech of february, , it was announced that bills for amending the procedure with respect to private bills coming from scotland and ireland had been prepared. the opportunity for laying these measures before parliament did not arise. but in a bill amending the procedure of scottish private bill legislation was passed into law. the measure forms the precedent for future legislation. in the year , mr. atkinson (now lord atkinson), speaking for the government, said that the government were-- "most favourable to the introduction and passing of a bill dealing with private bill legislation for ireland. he thought the real and substantial difficulty was the creation of the tribunal which was to sit locally and to inquire into these matters. the irish government thought it wise to wait until they should see what would be the effect of the operation of the scotch act." subsequent experience has proved that the private legislation procedure (scotland) act of may well be taken for the model of a similar measure designed to apply to ireland. the scottish act substituted for procedure by means of a private bill, procedure in the first instance by means of a provisional order. instead of applying to parliament by a petition for leave to bring in a private bill, any public authority or persons desirous of obtaining parliamentary powers now proceed by presenting a petition to the secretary for scotland, "praying him to issue a provisional order in accordance with the terms of a draft order submitted to him, or with such modifications as shall be necessary." before the secretary for scotland proceeds with the provisional order, the draft order is considered by the chairman of committee of the house of lords, and the chairman of ways and means in the house of commons; and they report to the secretary for scotland whether or not the matters proposed to be dealt with by the draft order, or any of them, should be dealt with by provisional order or by private bill. should the chairmen report that these matters, or any of them, should be dealt with by a private bill, the secretary for scotland, without further inquiry, refuses to issue the provisional order so far as it is objected to by the chairmen; but the advertisements and notices already given by the promoters of the scheme are regarded as fulfilling (subject to standing orders) the necessary conditions to be observed prior to the introduction of a private bill. should the chairmen report that the provisional order, or a part of it, may proceed, the procedure is as follows. if there is no opposition, the secretary for scotland may at once issue the provisional order, which is then embodied in a confirmation bill for the assent of parliament. if there is opposition, or in any case where he thinks inquiry necessary, the secretary for scotland directs an inquiry, and the order is then considered by the tribunal described below; and if passed by that tribunal, with or without modifications, it is brought up in a confirmation bill for the assent of parliament. it follows that in the case of unopposed schemes brought in under the act, there is a great saving of time and expense as compared with the former system. with regard to schemes which are opposed, the judicial functions of a parliamentary committee dealing with private bills were transferred by the act of to a special tribunal, composed of two panels, a parliamentary panel and an extra-parliamentary panel, whose members shall have no local or personal interest in the questions at issue. from these is formed a commission of four members. mr. a. w. samuels, k.c., thus describes the constitution of the commission:-- "in the first instance it is provided that the members shall be taken--two from the lords and two from the commons. in the event of that being found impossible, three may be taken from one house and one from the other. in the next resort all may be from the same house. finally--if members cannot be procured to serve--the extra parliamentary panel can be called upon, and the commission manned from it. "the next great reform introduced by the measure is, that the inquiry is to be held at such place, in scotland, as may be convenient. the inquiry is to be localised as far as possible. it is to be held in public. the commissioners are to settle questions of _locus standi_--they can decide upon the preamble before discussing clauses--and persons having a _locus standi_ can appear before them in person or by counsel or agent. "when they have heard the evidence the commissioners are to report to the secretary of scotland, and they can recommend that the provisional order should be issued as prayed for, or with such modifications as they may make. if there is no opposition to the provisional order as finally settled by the commissioners, it is embodied in a confirmation bill by the secretary of scotland and passed through parliament. "if there is opposition a petition must be presented to parliament against the order, and then, on the second reading of the confirmation bill, a member can move that the bill be referred to a joint committee of both houses of parliament, and if the motion is carried in the house a joint committee of lords and commons shall sit, at the peril of costs to the opponents, to hear and take evidence and decide upon the measure in the same way as in the case of a private bill." (private bill procedure, pp. and .) in , the select committee appointed to consider the provisions of a similar measure to be applied to wales, reported that in practice the scottish act had proved a success, which they attributed largely to the supervision of the provisional orders conducted by the scottish office. there would seem, then, every reason to believe that a measure framed upon the lines of the scottish act, to apply to ireland, would be equally successful. the remarkable increase in the prosperity of ireland, which has occurred during the last twenty years, demonstrates the necessity for providing every means of encouraging the further development of the country. all the available statistics amply confirm and corroborate the evidence of this prosperity, which is known to every man with the smallest direct acquaintance of ireland in recent years. the figures of savings, bank deposits, external trade, all alike show the exceptional advances in prosperity now enjoyed by ireland. the progress of ireland under the union thus indicated, was inaugurated by mr. balfour, the best chief secretary ireland ever had; to this day his name is always mentioned with respect and gratitude by the people of ireland, especially by the residents in the south and west, where his policy produced splendid and lasting results. insufficient credit has been given to the work of agricultural and commercial development steadily pursued by mr. gerald balfour; the results upon which we rejoice to-day are mainly due to the policy adopted by mr. balfour and his brother. this policy, coupled with the restitution of sales under the land act of , is the one which unionists intend resolutely to pursue. the figures on the next page show that the increase of population in some important centres in the south and west is very small, and that in other centres there is a decrease. ireland being mainly an agricultural country, the population tends to decrease owing to emigration, although of late years, owing to the rise in prosperity, the tendency is rather to remain stationary. at the same time, the increase of the population in the provincial towns is not commensurate with the increase of material wealth in the country. with regard, for instance, to the increase in the number of tourists visiting ireland, both private persons and local bodies desire to extend existing inducements and to improve the means of transit and to raise the standard of accommodation. it is clear that, under a reformed method of procedure in respect of private bill legislation, enterprise would be freed from the restrictions which at present hinder its free exercise, and a substantial and a steadily increasing benefit would accrue to ireland. increase and decrease of population of cities and towns in ireland having in a population exceeding , . (_census of ireland_ .) cities, towns, etc. percentage of increase since . rathmines and rathgar · portadown · pembroke · belfast · belfast[a] · dublin · lisburn · ballymena · lurgan · sligo · dublin[a] · wexford · waterford · cork[a] · londonderry[a] · limerick[a] · clonmel · cork · limerick · dundalk · newry[a] · newry · drogheda · galway[a] · galway · kilkenny[a] · kingstown · kilkenny · waterford[a] · those marked [a] are parliamentary boroughs. xviii irish poor law reform by john e. healy (editor of the _irish times_) an article on irish poor law reform written within the limits assigned to me can only be constructive in the broadest sense. it is a serious and tangled problem: the existing system has developed in a haphazard fashion; there is about it hardly anything that is logical, much that is anomalous, some things that are tragic. the present conditions of the irish poor law system are set forth in the reports of various royal and viceregal commissions. the most important are those of the viceregal commission on poor law reform in ireland ( ), the departmental commission on vagrancy, the royal commission on the care and control of the feeble-minded, and the royal commission on the poor laws (majority report). the study of all these reports is a rather distracting business. they establish between them an urgent need for reform; on the methods, and even principles, of reform there are wide differences of opinion. i propose to set out here, so far as may be possible, a summary of those reforms on which the various reports and irish public opinion are nearly, or quite, unanimous. such a summary may at least help to acquaint the rank and file of the unionist party with the primary conditions and necessities of a work which, for historical, moral, social and political reasons, must receive the party's early and practical attention when it returns to power. the unionist party, as representing the best elements in british government, owes in this matter a great act of reparation to ireland. the present poor law system is based on the most fatal of all blunders--the deliberate disregard of educated opinion in ireland. the story, a very remarkable and suggestive one, is told in the viceregal commission's report. the royal commission of came to the conclusion that the english workhouse system would be unsuitable for ireland. the irish royal commissioners, including the famous archbishop whately, made two sets of recommendations. one set involved a compulsory provision for the sick, aged, lunatic and infirm. the other proposed to attack poverty at the root by instituting a large series of measures for the general development of ireland. looking back over nearly eighty years of irish history, we must be both humbled and astonished by the almost inspired precision and statesmanship of these proposals. they included reclamation of waste land and the enforcement of drainage; an increased grant to the board of works; healthy houses for the labouring classes; local instruction in agriculture; the enlargement of leasing powers with the object of encouraging land improvement, and the transfer of the fiscal powers of grand juries to county boards. here we have in embryo the irish labourers acts from to , the department of agriculture and technical instruction, the irish land acts from to , the local government act of --reforms which ireland owes almost entirely to the statesmanship (though it seems a rather belated statesmanship) of unionist governments. these irish recommendations were ignored by the government of the day. it sent an english poor law commissioner (mr. nicholls) to ireland. he spent six weeks in the country. on his return he recommended the establishment of the english poor law system there, and it was accordingly established. the first poor law act for ireland was passed on july , . between that year and one hundred and sixty-three poor law unions were created. the number is at present one hundred and fifty-nine, and they are administered by elected and co-opted poor law guardians to the number of more than eight thousand. in every union there is a workhouse, and in that workhouse all the various classes of destitute and poor persons are maintained. they include sick, aged and infirm, legitimate and illegitimate children, insane of all classes, sane epileptics, mothers of illegitimate children, able-bodied male paupers, and the importunate army of tramps. the mean number of such inmates in all the workhouses on any day is about , , of whom about one-third are sick, one-third aged and infirm, one-seventh children, one-twentieth mothers of illegitimate children, and one-twelfth insane and epileptic. this awful confusion of infirmity and vice, this purgatory perpetuating itself to the exclusion of all hope of paradise, presents the vital problem of irish poor law reform. a radical solution must be found for it. on that point the reports of all the commissions are unanimous. they differ, where they do differ, only as regards means to the end. the supreme reform which must be undertaken by any government that seeks to remove this great blot on irish administration is the abolition of the present workhouse system on some basis which, while effective, will make no addition to the rates. the two chief reports (those of the viceregal commission and the royal commission on the poor laws) are in agreement, not merely as to this necessity, but as to the guiding principles of reform. they recommend classification, by institutions, of all the present inmates of the workhouses--the sick in hospitals, the aged and infirm in almshouses, the mentally defective in asylums. appalling evidence was given before the viceregal commission and the royal commission on the care and control of the feeble-minded with regard to the present association of lunatics, epileptics, and imbeciles with sane women and children in the workhouse wards. the latter commission recommended the creation of a strong central authority for the general protection and supervision of mentally defective persons. the reforms do not contemplate the amalgamation of unions and the complete closing of only a certain number of workhouses. they suggest rather the bringing together into one institution of all the inmates of one class from a number of neighbouring workhouses, and the closing of all workhouses as such. the sick should be sent to existing poor law or county hospitals, strengthened by the addition of cottage hospitals in certain districts. children should be boarded out. the bulk of the remaining inmates, classified with regard to their defects and infirmities, should be segregated according to counties or other suitable areas. on the treatment of able-bodied paupers there are different opinions. it is suggested by the philanthropic reform association, which includes some of the most earnest and disinterested philanthropists in ireland, that the well-conducted of this class should be placed in labour colonies, and the ill-conducted in detention colonies--both classes of institutions to be maintained and controlled by the state, and not by the county authorities. the areas and resources of the existing unions are in most cases too limited, and the numbers of necessitous persons too small, to warrant the present boards of guardians in erecting as many types of institutions as there are classes of inmates. the break-up of the workhouse system involves, of necessity, the establishment of larger areas of administration. it is clear that the county must be substituted for the union in any radical scheme of reform. on this point the royal commissioners and the viceregal commissioners are agreed. county rating must take the place of union rating, since the inmates of the different institutions would be drawn from all parts of each county or county borough. substantial economies in administration might be expected from this plan. hospitals should be brought into a county hospital system, with the county infirmary as the central institution, and nurses should be trained there for the county district hospitals (now workhouse infirmaries). about such a general scheme of decentralised reform there is little or no disagreement. there is, however, a good deal of disagreement concerning the control of the new institutions. the viceregal commission advocates the retention by the poor law guardians of many of their existing functions. it suggests, for instance, that county hospitals should be managed by a committee consisting of all members of the present district hospital committees, strengthened by nine members appointed by the county council; and that the chairman of the board of guardians should be the chairman of the district hospital committee. the royal commission, on the other hand, votes boldly for the abolition of the boards of guardians. it argues that, if we are to have a county system of institutions maintained by a county rate, we must adopt the logical consequence that the county council which strikes and collects the rate should have the direct or indirect management of the institutions. it proposes that the council should appoint a statutory committee (one-half to be taken from outside its own members), to be called the public assistance authority, and that this authority should manage and control all the institutions in the county. the philanthropic reform association, which has given much study to this question, suggests a _via media_ between the two official schemes. it recommends that all the institutions should be controlled by the county council, through committees directly responsible to it, to which persons of experience from outside should be added. such committees need not be elected by the poor law guardians, as recommended by the viceregal commission, or by the statutory committee of the county council, as recommended by the royal commission. the association desires, and it has a large volume of irish opinion behind it in this, to minimise the existing powers, and reduce the numbers, of the poor law guardians. it is also very earnestly impressed with the need of bringing women into the poor law administration. in this it is absolutely right. the women's national health association and the united irishwomen have demonstrated triumphantly the value of women's services in improving the social, economic, and sanitary conditions of rural life in ireland. a recent act of parliament qualifies women for election to the irish county and borough councils. no great reform of the poor law system can be effective without their aid. the unionist party will only be acting consistently with its social ideals if it encourages, by every means within its power, an irish feminist movement, full of hope for the country and wholly dissociated from party politics. any thorough reform of the irish poor law system will demand an increased expenditure of imperial funds. the growing severity of irish taxation under recent radical budgets forbids the possibility of addition to the ratepayer's burdens. the anomalous distribution of the grants in aid of irish local taxation has done much to complicate the poor law question. the royal commission reported that "no account whatever is taken of the burden of pauperism, the magnitude of the local rates, or the circumstances of the ratepayers and their ability to pay rates in the different areas." under this system the minimum of relief is extended to the districts in which the weight of taxation is most oppressive. the commission proposed a scheme by which the old union grants within each county would be pooled and credited to the common fund in aid of the poor rate in that county. the viceregal commission also complained of inequality of expenditure, and advised a reapportionment of the grants in aid of local taxation, on the basis of the recommendations of the minority of the royal commission on local taxation ( ). that commission was unanimous in recommending increased grants for poor law service in ireland. the distribution of such new grants would be a matter for discussion; of the necessity for them there is no doubt. the unionist party must not rest content with reforming the irish poor law system; it must help the reformed system to pay its own way. no fair-minded englishman who reads sir george o'farrell's evidence as to the distribution of the irish church surplus (report of the royal commission on the care and control of the feeble-minded, page ) will dispute his country's obligations in this matter. the cost of irish poor law reform is one of the strongest arguments against home rule. the unionist party's full and generous recognition of its duty to ireland in this respect will establish a new argument for the union. one vital factor in poor law reform remains to be considered--the poor law medical service. the dispensary districts of ireland are now administered by a little more than medical officers. the salaries of these doctors, amounting in all to nearly £ , per annum, are paid as to one half by the poor law guardians, and as to the other half out of the local taxation (ireland) account. most of the doctors, in addition to their public duties as servants of the poor, engage in private practice, of which, in most of the rural areas, their official position gives them a monopoly. a large--perhaps, a surprisingly large--number of the dispensary doctors are earnest and self-sacrificing men; but the system is corrupted by one radical defect. owing to the security of private practice involved, there is a fierceness of competition for these appointments out of all proportion to their financial value. the elections are made by the guardians, and it is a fact so notorious as even to be acknowledged by mr. birrell that flagrant canvassing and bribery are a common feature of these elections. candidates have been known to distribute sums of £ or £ to guardians, in order to secure appointments of £ or £ a year. another serious and extending feature of the present system is the boycotting by the guardians of all candidates who have not graduated at the new roman catholic university. the most highly qualified men from the university of dublin have now practically abandoned competition for these dispensary offices outside the protestant counties of ulster. moreover, throughout the whole country local candidates are consistently preferred to superior men from outside. both the viceregal and royal commissions recognise the necessity of radical reform in this system, but they suggest different remedies. the royal commission proposes that the election and control of all the dispensary medical officers of a county shall be vested in the public assistance authority for that county; and that little or no change be made in the present financial basis of the payment of salaries. the viceregal commission suggests a bolder and more drastic remedy. it advocates the establishment of a state medical service on the lines of the existing services in egypt and india. this would require the payment by the state of the whole, instead of half, of the salaries of medical officers. the commission regards it as proper and equitable that such a service should be, in the beginning, at any rate, restricted to candidates educated in ireland. a representative medical council should elect the candidates by competitive examination, and deal with all important questions of promotion, removal and superannuation. the commission maintains that the creation of a state medical service in ireland would mean a very small increase in the parliamentary grant in comparison with the benefits involved. this i believe to be the ideal system, but one must recognise that its accomplishment is confronted with many difficulties. the irish local authorities would not willingly relinquish a privilege which is a primary element in their influence and prestige. irish medical opinion is acutely divided on the question, which is now further complicated by the prospect that the medical benefits under the national insurance act may soon be extended to ireland. it would be outrageous to expect the dispensary officers to add the heavy medical duties under the act to their present responsibilities without adequate payment. indeed, the extension of the medical benefits to ireland would make inevitable an early reform of the whole poor law system. this is one reason why the unionist party, when it returns to office, should be ready to tackle the subject without delay. to no department of the work will it be asked to apply greater sympathy, knowledge, tact and firmness, than to the problems of the poor law medical service. during the last three years the irish unionist party has made three vain attempts to bring the reform of the irish poor law before parliament. its bill, which now stands in the name of sir john lonsdale, asks for the appointment (as recommended by the viceregal commission) of a body of five persons with executive powers to carry out the recommendations made by that commission. these temporary commissioners would have authority to draft all necessary schemes, to consolidate or divide existing institutions, and generally to reform the whole administration of the irish poor law service. the bill assigns to them an executive lifetime of five years--hardly, perhaps, an adequate time for the establishment of reforms which, in their making, must affect nearly every aspect of irish life, and, in their operation, may reconstitute the basis of irish society. it is to be supposed that, when the whole unionist party addresses itself seriously to the question, it will give further and careful attention to the principles of reform before setting up this, or some other, executive machinery. i can think of no more thirsty or fruitful field in ireland for the exercise of the highest constructive statesmanship that the party may possess. the need is urgent, the time is ripe, all the circumstances are favourable. the old age pensions act and the insurance act, if not vitiated by further increases in irish taxation, will greatly simplify the task of poor law reform. the former act has reduced the number of old inmates in the workhouses; the insurance act should lead to a reduction in expenditure on outdoor relief. moreover, it may be hoped that the infirm and pauper classes will be henceforward, like the old age pensioners, a diminishing fraction of the population of ireland. they are, to a large extent, flotsam and jetsam over the sea of ireland's political troubles. land agitation, with its attendant vices of restlessness and idleness, the emigration of wage-earners, the discouragement of industry under governments indifferent to the administration of law and the development of national resources, have all contributed to the dantean horrors of the irish workhouse system. these poor people are an excrescence on the body of ireland which good government, if it does not wholly remove, may reduce nearly to vanishing point. hitherto the chief rewards and blessings of british administration in ireland have gone to the hard voters and to the strong agitators. it is time for the unionist party to think of the hapless, the helpless, the voteless, and, therefore voiceless, elements in irish life. ireland, as she becomes better educated, gives more thought and truer thought than formerly to her social and economic problems. her gratitude and loyalty will go in abundant measure to those who take counsel with her about these problems and help her to solve them. the government which cleans up many sad relics of the past by a complete reform of the irish poor law system will put all irishmen and irishwomen under a deep sense of obligation to it. policy, not less than duty, should give this reform a place in the forefront of the unionist party's constructive programme for ireland. xix irish education under the union[ ] by godfrey locker lampson, m.p. education is probably the most sorrowfully dull of all dull subjects. it is difficult to repress a yawn when the word is mentioned. yet we owe everything to it that we value most. through it we become emancipated citizens of the world. through it we are able to appreciate what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is right and what is wrong, what is permanent and what is merely transitory. if the people of a country can make it their boast that they are truly educated, they need boast of little else, for all the rest will have been added unto them. it will be found next to impossible to draw any argument for home rule from the history of irish education during the last decade. indeed, if a nationalist parliament were now to be established in college green, it is more than probable that the progress made by educational reformers since would be largely thrown away, and the prospects of still further improvement endangered and perhaps destroyed. what has been done in the domain of irish education, and what still remains to be done? leaving out of account the problem of the universities, which, so far as can be seen, has at any rate been temporarily solved--and solved, let it be marked, under the legislative union, with the participation and consent of the nationalist party--there are two broad branches of the educational tree which every year are growing in volume and putting forth finer leaves and fruit. primary and secondary education, by far the most important parts of the irish educational system, if only allowed to continue their development, tended with care by those who have the interests of the younger generation at heart and left unmolested by the poisonous creepers of political prejudice, will be found to do more for the increase of irish prosperity and the establishment of national and religious concord than any device for legislative separation that the wit of man can frame. not that educational reform is not sorely needed. far from it. there are few aspects of irish life where reform is more urgently required. but let it be reform, as far as possible, along existing lines of progress, and in full recognition of religious susceptibilities and of certain stubborn facts which may be deplored, but which it would be unwise to ignore. let it be reform undertaken and pursued on the advice of those who understand this question and are in sympathy with its peculiar difficulties, and let not the treasury turn a deaf ear to the demands of reason, when a few extra thousand pounds might make all the difference between failure and success. above all, let it be reform unembittered by the strife of creeds warring for supremacy in an irish house of commons. let it reap the advantages of a continuous policy undisturbed by the rise and fall of local ministries and the lobbying and log-rolling of sects and factions. treat it, as it is being treated to-day, in a calm spirit of inquiry and recommendation, and the richest blessing of the legislative union will be an ireland at peace within herself, honoured for her learning, distinguished by her refinement, and intellectually the equal of any nation upon earth. primary education.[ ] the national board which presides over primary education has shown itself, under the union, singularly free from prejudice, either political or religious. during the last few years it may be said to have changed the face of the national schools in ireland, and in a large part of the country has contributed to make primary education what it ought to be--not a mere glut of random scraps of knowledge, not a mere conglomerate of facts, dates, and figures, undigested and unassimilated, of no practical use to the pupil in his later life, and stifling any constructive powers of thought with which he might have been born, but a system of self-development and self-expression, with the future of the pupil as a citizen in view, rather than his mere monetary value in the shape of school fees. this in itself is a remarkable stride in advance, which the separatist will find difficult to explain away. who will be so bold as to calculate the harm which was inflicted by the arid and artificial system of "cram," introduced in , but now fortunately abandoned in the national schools, which had only one object in view--the money grant that was made proportionate to the output of heterogeneous lumber that could be retained by the pupil until called for by the examiner? surely, the great aim of education should be self-culture, the development of the mind, body, and character of the pupil, consideration being had to the career he is likely to pursue in the future. this the national board has realised in time, and it is owing to its efforts and the co-operation of men and women of all shades of opinion who labour in the schools that such signal improvement has taken place during the last few years. apart from this larger question, there are various other features of the national schools that ought not to be excluded from this brief review. some of them are evidence of progress made, others of grievances which still require redress. no one will deny that, taking ireland as a whole, the structural character of the school buildings has been greatly improved in recent years, and that the cleanliness of school premises, which still leaves a good deal to be desired, is attended to with far more care than it used to be. in days gone by, the board could grant only two-thirds of the estimated cost of a new building of the cheapest and shabbiest description. the result was that, for a whole generation, a low standard of school-house was stereotyped, and the requirement of a local contribution entirely prevented the erection of new school-houses in poor districts where they were most needed. the new plans, on the other hand, are designed according to the most modern ideas, and as a local contribution is not insisted upon in impecunious districts, where valuation is low, the board can grant the whole of the cost where necessary. it is easy to appreciate what a difference this important reform must make, not merely to the landscape or to the comfort and health of the children, but to the general efficiency of pupils and teachers alike. there is, however, still much room for improvement. the grants hitherto given have been sadly inadequate, and in order to provide suitable school buildings, even in those cases alone where the present structures are actually a danger to the health of the children, it would be necessary to make grants at the rate of about £ , a year for the next or years, after which they might be reduced to £ , . another satisfactory development is the increase of teachers' salaries which has taken place during the last two decades. in , the average income from state sources of principal teachers in primary schools was £ in respect of men, and £ in respect of women. by , it had risen to £ and £ respectively. notwithstanding this, their financial position, especially in large and important schools in centres where the cost of living is high, is not yet as good as it ought to be, if it be compared with that of similarly situated teachers in england and scotland. as for the incomes of assistant teachers, they also have risen in the same period from £ for men, and £ for women, to £ and £ respectively, and the money, though still insufficient, is now being paid for a better article. readjustment of numbers in the higher grades of national teachers is also required, so as to enable all efficient teachers who have complied with the conditions of service to receive the increases of salary to which they are entitled. the cost of such a readjustment would be about £ , a year for the present, but the expense would gradually increase, and might ultimately amount to £ , per annum. for the convenience of the profession, it is also desirable that salaries should be paid monthly, instead of quarterly, to the teaching staffs of the schools. the expenditure (non-recurring) required under this head would be about £ , , with an additional yearly sum of £ , , due to increased cost of administration. that a dublin parliament would welcome or even less be able to satisfy these various demands upon its purse without further taxation is extremely improbable, especially in view of mr. birrell's warning that the finances of home rule would be a very "tight fit." since , a period of training has been required from the principals, and this rule has recently been extended to assistant masters. in fact, the qualifications demanded of national teachers in ireland are much higher than in england. when all the foregoing changes are considered, it will be quite evident that not only must the teachers benefit from them, but that the children cannot fail to benefit as well. indeed, it is these various reforms which, in all probability, have conduced to a better school attendance than could be boasted of in the past. many an educational reformer has had cause to wring his hands over the meagreness of attendance in days gone by. even to-day it is not as it should be. it is lower than in england and in scotland, but it has steadily risen, and continues to rise, and stands now at about per cent., an advance of between or per cent. upon what it was less than years ago; a fact which is certainly remarkable, when the poverty of the population and its scattered character are taken into account. another evil which the board has had to fight has been the mushroom-like multiplication of small schools. it is hardly necessary to emphasise what must be a manifest disadvantage for any authority which is trying to raise the standard of educational efficiency in a country. this multiplication was largely due to the fact that protestant schools were accustomed to receive grants when they could maintain an average attendance of pupils, quite irrespective of how many other schools of the same or a similar denomination there might be in the immediate vicinity, and whether they were really wanted or not. how far these grants were conducive to unnecessary multiplication may be gauged from the fact that, whilst there were , schools in operation in , when the population of ireland was five and a half millions, there were , in , or , more, when the population was a million less. this vast and unprofitable growth in the numbers of educational establishments could be stayed only by drastic regulation. where neighbouring mixed catholic or protestant schools cannot show an average attendance of , they are now obliged to amalgamate, and the same result has to follow if neighbouring boys' and girls' schools fall below an average attendance of . these regulations have had the desired effect, and no less than superfluous schools have been absorbed in this manner during the last five years. before leaving the details of the national schools, some mention should be made of the conspicuous improvement in the curriculum which has taken place in the first decade of the new century. formerly, it was hidebound, bloodless, unintelligent, and useless. now, it does what it can to cater for the practical side of the pupil's future life, and is designed with the object of helping him to think out problems for himself and of equipping him with any knowledge of the historic past which may serve him, not as a collection of antiquities, but as example and precept. during the last twelve years an astonishing advance has been made. in , hand and eye training (including kindergarten) was taught in schools, in it was taught in , . in , elementary science was taught in schools only, in it was taught in , . in the former year cookery was taught in schools, in the latter year in , . in , laundry work was taught in schools, in in . if this is not progression--and progression under the legislative union--to what can the predicate be more truthfully applied? statistics are apt to be barren and uninforming and can be adapted, with almost equal plausibility, to support the arguments of either side; but these figures are eloquent and speak for themselves. they embody a large and vital portion of the history of irish primary education, and are a proof of the interest which is being taken in it and of the activity of the architects behind the scenes. long may this spirit of progress flourish and enlighten the generations that are yet to come! it is only fair to say that, amid a good deal of discouragement and not always intelligent criticism, the national board has proved itself broad-minded and open to argument wherever the interests of irish education have been concerned. although nominated by the lord lieutenant, and therefore not an elected body, it has never lagged behind public opinion. in the teaching of the irish language, for example, it has shown itself peculiarly sympathetic. in fact, the experience of the board has been, that the irish parents are not quite so anxious that their children should be taught irish as the gaelic league would have us suppose. indeed, the difficulty of the board has been to maintain sufficient interest in the subject. nevertheless, it has done its best. in , teaching in irish was provided in schools for , children. in , it was provided for , children in , schools, and during the same time bilingual instruction has been introduced into some schools. in spite of what has been, and is being done, further reforms in primary education are still unquestionably required, and can, moreover, be easily effected without any of the convulsions of a constitutional revolution. the salaries of principals and assistants, especially in large and important schools, ought to be increased. in particular, the pensions act needs modification, for, under the present act, teachers who retire before reaching the age qualifying for a pension receive gratuities considerably less than the old age pensions. even those who qualify for pensions are very shabbily treated if they retire before sixty years of age. building grants also should be increased, so that the constant applications for the rebuilding of bad premises could be met.[ ] the teaching of infants, greatly improved by the institution of junior assistant mistresses by mr. walter long during his chief secretaryship, can be still further improved and brought up to the english standard; and the efficiency of primary education generally can be promoted in the direction of sympathetic appreciation of the real needs of the children, regarded from the point of view of thinking human beings, and not merely as recording machines. the following desirable improvements may also be mentioned:-- (_a_) encouragement of the teaching of gardening in connection with country schools for boys, at a cost of about £ a year. (_b_) provision for instruction in wood-work for pupils of urban districts, at central classes in technical schools, at a cost of about £ a year. (_c_) the provision of medical inspection and the treatment of school children, which would cost about £ , a year, and dental inspection and clinics, which would cost another £ , . this expense should be defrayed largely out of the local rates, one third, say £ , , to come out of the estimates. there would also be the cost of supervision, etc., by the education department, amounting to about £ a year. committees, as for school attendance, composed partly of representatives of school managers and partly of local authorities, could be formed for administration. (_d_) a considerable impetus might be given to evening continuation schools, on which about £ , a year is at present spent. a beginning could be made of compulsory attendance, and the amount of the grant doubled. much might be done in all these directions. much has been accomplished already. the worst that can happen is that a separate legislature should be set up in dublin, devoid of the requisite means, as it would most certainly be (unless, indeed, it had recourse to the rates, or the taxpayer) of financing irish education; swayed from side to side by the exigencies of the party programme of the moment; and temperamentally unable to look at the educational problem from the standpoint alone of the needs of the country in the way that it is now regarded. at present, under the union, irish education is fortunately liberated from all appeals to party passion, and organised with but one end in view, the upbringing of the infant race whose possession is the future. secondary education. the need for reform is more urgent and, in many respects, better defined in the system of secondary than in that of primary education in ireland. but the two ought to be closely interconnected, and in discussing one at least of the more important changes which it is desirable to introduce, the national schools have as good a claim to be heard in the matter as their elder brethren. since great efforts have been made by the intermediate board to promote the interests of secondary schools and to supply the educational needs of those who want to equip themselves for the struggle of life in its various departments. in , the board of intermediate education was empowered to appoint inspectors, but it was not until quite recently, after many fruitless applications and under a threat of resignation by the board, that inspection was placed on a business-like footing and a permanent staff of six inspectors appointed. but this, after all, is a comparative detail, and reform will have to strike deep indeed if the secondary schools in ireland are to take their place as a living part of a living body. the question of reform may be dealt with under three principal heads: ( ) the abolition of the examination tests, ( ) the inter-relationship between the primary and secondary systems, and ( ) the position of teachers. although there are other matters which will be briefly referred to, these are the three cardinal difficulties that beset the intermediate board to-day and obstruct the most public-spirited efforts to convert the irish educational system into one organic whole. ( ) although the mischievous principle of fees by results has disappeared for ever from the national schools, it still clings to intermediate education, numbing and constricting, like some remorseless ivy limb, the growth and free exercise of the central stem and its branches, and preventing the natural sap from rising and vitalising the whole. it is not as though the rest of the world had set the seal of its approval upon this kind of examination. the contrary is the fact. almost every country in the world has rejected this system as wholly pernicious, injurious for the pupil, demoralising for the teacher, and wasteful for the state. to regard the youth of the secondary schools merely as the geese that lay the golden eggs when the examinations occur, is to destroy the true aims of education and pervert the principle of rational development. in fact, payments to intermediate schools ought to depend largely on the results of inspection, and much less on written examinations, a change which would involve the appointment of a larger number of inspectors than at present exist. it is all-important that this alteration should be undertaken without delay. the mechanical agglomeration of lifeless snippets of information which characterises the present method is an absurd and antiquated remnant of the bad old times, and the sooner this part of the system is hewn down the better it will be for the conscientious discharge of the teacher's duties and the self-respect of all concerned. ( ) as for any proper official relationship between the primary and secondary systems, it may be said as yet to be practically non-existent. that co-ordination of the two is essential--nay, vital--if irish education is to be placed on a sound footing, may be appreciated from the fact that a large proportion, or per cent, of the membership of intermediate schools is recruited from the schools of the national board. there seem to be only two ways in which this co-ordination can be satisfactorily effected. either the pupils must transfer from the national to the secondary schools at an age when they will be young enough to profit by secondary instruction, or some sort of higher instruction must be given in the national schools so as to fit the children, when they leave the latter at rather a later age, for the curriculum awaiting them in the secondary system. it is the treasury at the present moment, and the treasury alone, that blocks the way to this reform. since it has been asked to sanction the establishment of higher grade schools in large centres; the national board also has repeatedly pleaded for the institution of a "higher top," or advanced departments, in connection with selected primary schools in rural districts. but all these requests, founded though they have been on intimate knowledge of the requirements of irish education and a ripe experience ranging over many years, have been brushed aside by the officials at the exchequer, although the cost would be only about £ , a year, on the very insufficient ground that the development grant has been depleted to defray the loss of flotation of stock for the purposes of land purchase. what, in the name of common sense, has land purchase to do with education? what indissoluble relationship is there between the two that the expenditure upon the one should be made dependent upon the requirements of the other? this niggardly and short-sighted attitude is hardly worthy of one of the richest countries in the world. it is but a matter of a few thousands, and surely the efficient training of the youth of ireland is quite as important as buying out the irish landlords and placing the irish tenant in possession of the soil. the result of the present want of co-ordination is that the clever pupil is now kept far too long in the lower school. there he remains, kicking his heels until he is sent up to the intermediate school at or --much too late an age at which to begin the study of languages. the primary teachers are, of course, only too pleased to retain the clever boys as long as possible in the national schools, but it is unfair to the children, and is robbing the community of services which might be rendered to it by these pupils in the future if fair opportunities were afforded them of training themselves while there was yet time. without higher grade schools, without scholarships, without at least some system of a "higher top" in connection with the primary schools, there can never be proper co-ordination of administration, and education in ireland will never be able to progress beyond a certain point. the christian brothers have set the treasury a good example in this matter. in their schools there is close co-ordination of primary and intermediate education. promising boys in the fifth standard are removed when they are or years of age into the higher schools and thus given an opportunity, at the most receptive period of their lives, of acquiring knowledge which they will be able to turn to good account in after life. over and over again has the national board attempted to persuade the treasury to adopt a similar system, but hitherto without avail. the crust of the official mind has been impervious to every appeal. there seems, indeed, to be now some chance of the establishment of scholarships for pupils in primary schools, but unless an intelligent mind is brought to bear upon it, and the scholarships limited, as in england and scotland, to pupils under or years of age, the same unfortunate result will follow, as in the case of the society for promoting protestant schools and other similar bodies, where the scholarships have turned out to be a practical failure. an exception, however, as suggested by dr. starkie, and as allowed in scotland, might be made in favour of the best primary schools. that is to say, where satisfactory secondary teaching is given at a primary school, the pupil might be relieved of one or two of the three years he is obliged to spend in the secondary school before he can compete for the intermediate certificate which is awarded at years of age. the argument is sometimes used that the establishment of higher grade schools would lead to unfair competition with the intermediate schools already in existence. no one desires to do this. where the intermediate schools already hold the field, such overlapping can easily be avoided by proper administrative co-ordination between the national and secondary systems. where, on the other hand, there is a dearth of intermediate schools, as in connaught and kerry, higher grade schools can, and should be established without any risk either of overlapping or competition. they would supply a want which is deplored by all educational reformers, and make their influence felt far outside the mere circle of the schoolroom. a private commercial school has already been founded in kerry and has continued for some time without state help, but, through want of encouragement, it has recently been compelled to adopt the programme of the intermediate board, which is entirely unsuited to its particular aims. surely, private enterprise of this kind ought not only to be welcomed, but stimulated by a state grant, and everything possible done to encourage schools to develop along their own lines. at the present moment, they are bound hand and foot by the examination rules of the intermediate board, and it is quite impossible for any central authority, however eagle-eyed and sympathetic, to appreciate the peculiar atmosphere and wants of every locality. in such cases, local initiative is far more valuable than red tape, and more likely to result in an intelligent interest in his pupils and subject on the part of the teacher. ( ) the position of the secondary teachers, especially of lay assistant teachers, cries aloud for reform. in fact, their case is an acknowledged scandal. how can any one expect that the training of the youth in the secondary schools can be really satisfactory when the teachers are so miserably underpaid, when the elements of self-respect are given no room in which to develop, and the whole profession are treated rather as beasts of burden than as a noble and responsible body to whom is entrusted much of the destiny of the race? the question of reform is here largely a question of money. there are signs that this fact is becoming more appreciated as the years go by, and it is devoutly to be hoped that before long the teaching profession in the secondary schools will have no more to complain of than the primary teachers, or than is usual in even the most cared-for and prosperous professions in this our imperfect world. salaries, pensions, a register, security of tenure, opportunities of proper training--these may be said to embody the chief requirements of secondary teachers at the present moment. in existing circumstances there is no attraction for competent men and women to enter the teaching profession so far as intermediate education is concerned. the most incompetent crowd into it, although there are many exceptions, and teaching is regarded as a stop-gap during periods of impecuniosity rather than as a permanent career to be proud of and to be worked for. the salaries are beggarly--considerably lower than the incomes of the teachers in the primary schools. in , the average salaries of principals in the primary schools were £ for men and £ for women, and in the county boroughs £ and £ respectively, whilst in the secondary schools lay assistants were paid about £ _per annum. _in view of this, surely the demand that is being made on behalf of highly qualified secondary teachers is not exorbitant, namely, salaries of £ to £ for men and of £ to £ for women. if the maximum rate were £ for men and £ for women the cost would be £ , a year. where is the money to come from? will a nationalist parliament be prepared to find it, and if so, from what source? ireland is a comparatively poor country and is not in a position to bear much more taxation. the intermediate board, with its present resources, cannot afford to step into the breach, and the only solution seems to be that the british exchequer should come to the rescue and that the board should be granted the means of dealing with this all-important matter, the neglect of which is having a most injurious effect upon the efficiency of the intermediate schools. it has been suggested that a half-way house might be found, that the treasury should grant £ for each assistant master and £ for each assistant mistress, and that the remainder should be raised by the authorities of the schools under the direction of the board. this alternative scheme would cost the state about £ , a year, but, like all makeshifts, would not effect a real settlement of the difficulty, creating, as it would, a patchwork system of payment which might break down at any moment. on the other hand, let the settlement be a generous one, and the return will be a hundredfold in added efficiency, a higher sense of duty, and an increased personal interest on the part of the teacher in the class of which he has charge. in close connection with the question of salaries are those of pensions and security of tenure. the pensions of the primary teachers, inadequate though they be, would be looked upon as a provision of the most munificent kind by the poor men and women who enter service under the intermediate system. the primary teachers, moreover, can fall back upon subsidiary occupations if they find that their salaries are insufficient for their maintenance. they can run a little farm or keep a shop or do other remunerative work, but the assistants in secondary schools are debarred from these methods of supplementing their exiguous wage. those terrible words might, without any extravagance, be inscribed for them over the doors of their schools: "all hope abandon ye who enter here." something must be done. a starvation wage, with an adequate pension to follow, might be tolerable, a decent wage, without any pension, might be borne, but starvation at both ends is a disgrace to the treasury while it lasts and one of the things which should be taken in hand without any further delay. security of tenure is equally important. how can a teacher be expected to devote the whole of his mental energies to his scholastic duties, how can any one expect him to throw himself heart and soul into his work, if there is always lurking in his mind the haunting fear of dismissal through no fault of his own? it is unreasonable to suppose that any human being can give of his best under these distracting conditions. in the national schools a system of appeal has been in force for some time, and has been carried out with fairness on the part of those in authority and to the apparent satisfaction of the teaching profession. the dismissal order of every roman catholic manager has to be countersigned by the bishop of the diocese, and in the case of all teachers an appeal is now allowed to the board itself, and is often utilised by protestants. in fact, so far as the national schools are concerned, the tenure of the primary teachers during good behaviour is practically secured. why cannot similar safeguards be introduced into the intermediate system? an appeal to the board in this case is not proposed by those who know all the circumstances best; but teachers in roman catholic schools might have the right of appeal, in the case of diocesan colleges, to the bishop of the diocese, or in the case of schools under religious orders to the provincials or generals, and protestant teachers might be allowed to appeal to the board of governors of their schools, or they might sign an agreement, providing for a referee, such as the no. and agreements under the national board. a register of teachers is also required. every existing teacher in the intermediate schools who satisfies the tests of efficiency should be placed upon it without delay. as far as future appointments are concerned, qualifications might be adopted similar to those which now obtain in the scotch department, _e.g._ (_a_) a degree in a university, or its equivalent; (_b_) a diploma following professional training for one year; and (_c_) two probationary years in a good school. special terms would probably be demanded for those who, like nuns, are precluded by their calling from attending lectures at a university. these are some of the reforms which could, and should be introduced to make the teaching profession more efficient, more attractive for competent and clever men and women, and more of a permanent and honourable career than it has been in the past. once again, it is not unreasonable to ask--how will a dublin parliament be able to provide the necessary funds? an extra annual sum of roughly £ , is required, in addition to a further sum of about £ , to meet non-recurring expenditure. these are, admittedly, moderate estimates. the matter, anyway, is now ripe for settlement, and procrastination can only aggravate the financial difficulty. so far as the educational problem is concerned, it is a manifest obligation upon the nationalist party to outline their proposals for the redress of these grievances, and to indicate the means by which they can be carried out, before a separate legislature is set up for the people of ireland. within the scope of these few pages it is not possible to comprise all the aspects of modern irish education which are worthy of discussion. what are most urgently needed to-day are the necessary funds to continue the good work which is being done, and to introduce the reforms that have been sketched above. parsimony in educational matters is the most wasteful of all misplaced thrift. let the reformers be dealt with wisely and generously, and the harvest will exceed even the expectations of those who are working most hopefully upon the problem. withhold the funds on some niggardly and mistaken principle of petty economy, and the present progress will be discouraged and the educational tree become stunted in its growth. from an administrative point of view, nothing, finance apart, would contribute more to the efficiency of irish education than the amalgamation of the national and intermediate systems, as well as of the technical work at present administered by the department of agriculture and technical education, under one board. the method of examination by the department is far sounder than that which is forced upon the intermediate board by the acts of parliament under which it works. in the case of science, the two are to be seen working to-day side by side in the secondary schools, to the undoubted benefit of the scientific course, which enjoys a double subsidy from the state, and is subject to the superior method of examination by the department, being treated as a detached subject and the candidates being passed _en bloc_. on the other hand, the obsolete method of examination by the board tends to the serious disadvantage of the classical curriculum, the grants being made on the unprofitable results of a general examination of individual candidates, the class not being regarded as a whole, as is the case with the department. by the repeal of the intermediate acts, and by the amalgamation of the various boards into one, these anomalies would rapidly disappear, and for the first time a genuine system of co-ordination could be introduced into irish education, which would knit together the strength of all the parts and overcome many of the prevailing weaknesses, making the whole system what it ought to be, a living, growing, pulsating organism, developing and shaping itself with the life of the nation. is it conceivable that all this can he accomplished if the union between the countries is rent asunder? what chance will there be of effecting this great settlement, which requires money and, above all, requires peace, when ireland is plunged once again into the old internecine struggles of the eighteenth century? the warning is writ very large upon the wall, so that he who runs may read. the best hope for education in ireland are the resources of great britain and a uniform policy undisturbed by party feuds. neither of these can be looked for under a separate parliament. under the union ireland can have both, for the welfare of her children and the building of a noble history. footnotes: [footnote : in writing the above i should like to acknowledge my indebtedness to the address published by dr. starkie in for many useful facts and figures.] [footnote : see the th and th reports of the commissioners of national education in ireland--cd. , , and cd. , .] [footnote : the residential buildings of the commissioners' training college in marlborough street, dublin, still require to be completed by the addition of a new residence for women students, at a cost of about £ , spread over three or four years.] xx the problem of transit and transport in ireland by an irish railway director any scheme giving self-government to ireland must seriously affect the problem of local transit and transport, by rail and water, which all parties in ireland agree to be pressing and important. nor is it merely a local question. as recent returns show, the trade between ireland and great britain has of late years enormously increased, to the great advantage of both; for if irish farmers profit by the export of beef, mutton, milk, eggs, butter, bacon and other articles, great britain has the benefit of a near food supply within the united kingdom. nor does any one doubt that this trade is capable of enormous increase. the improvement of irish agricultural methods, the growth in england of a town population, the increased price of the necessaries of life, are some of the factors pointing in this direction. if this trade is to expand, irish traffic routes and facilities with great britain must be improved and increased, especially as the articles carried are largely of a perishable kind. moreover, the internal traffic of ireland, by rail, waterways, and canals is capable of and needs great development, as witness the recent reports of the viceregal commission on irish railways, and of the royal commission on canals and waterways.[ ] the problem of inland navigation is again intimately bound up with that of arterial drainage, as the commissioners have reported. it is then strange to find, that on these pressing questions of first importance, there is an almost absolute silence on the part of those who advocate home rule in and out of parliament. solution of transit problem impossible under home rule. it is true that the nationalisation of the irish railways has in past years found the keenest advocates amongst individual members of the home rule party; that the majority report of the late viceregal commission favouring state purchase of the irish railways was formally approved of by the parliamentary party, and that mr. redmond has named "transit" as one of the special matters that should be left to be dealt with by an irish legislature. but there the matter ends. we are not given the slightest inkling what is proposed to be done on this matter, or how it will be done, or the slightest proof that under any system of home rule, the financial difficulties of the problem can be solved at all. the reports of both the commissions referred to are based, first on the continuance of the present system of laws and government, and secondly, on the use of imperial credit to the tune of many millions. yet amongst the shoals of literature on home rule problems and finance, i can find no enlightenment as to how the transit problem is to be solved under the new conditions; _i.e._ how any home rule government, whether it has control of customs and excise or not, and however it economises, is to find the money necessary to buy out the irish railways and canals. a government that is faced with the problems of poverty and congestion, of housing, of increased educational grants, of afforestation, and of arterial land drainage, will have an almost impossible task in raising money for these purposes alone. and, let those who can, inform us how an irish parliament and executive (with all else they will have in hand), will be able to raise even the £ , , necessary to improve the irish light railway system; not to speak of the sum at least tenfold greater which will be required for a complete purchase scheme. so far we are without that information. the irish parliamentary leaders have not touched upon the point. the pamphleteers are almost equally silent. professor kettle, in his "home rule finance," mentions the "nationalisation of railways" in one line of print, merely stating that "the project will have to be financed by loans and not out of annual revenue" (p. ); and he further remarks, generally (p. ), "that for the development of any future policy, approved by her own people, ireland relies absolutely on her own fiscal resources." what fiscal resources, and under what conditions are they obtainable? in the volume entitled "home rule problems" issued by the liberal home rule committee, with a preface by viscount haldane, not one word is said on the subject, though there are chapters on irish finance, and on irish commercial and industrial conditions. neither has mr. stephen gwynn a single word on the subject in his "case for home rule," though he makes the large assertion that "there is no country in the world where resources are more undeveloped than those of ireland." mr. erskine childers[ ] merely refers to the irish railway problem as one that is "obvious and urgent," "which no parliament but an irish parliament can deal with, and which calls aloud for settlement." details of railway transit problem. let us now look at the problem in more detail; and first is the question of the railways. the property to be dealt with consists of miles of railway, representing a total capital of £ , , , of which, at the date of the report of the commission, £ , , paid no dividend; the gross annual receipts of the whole system being £ , , and the net receipts £ , , , representing a return on the whole capital of . per cent.[ ] of these lines, the railways constructed under the tramways and light railways acts cover miles, of which are narrow gauge, involving a liability on various baronies which have guaranteed interest on capital to the amount of £ , per annum. to bring these light railways up to a proper standard and equipment; to widen the gauge in many cases; to provide new sheds, stations, and rolling stock, and redeem the guarantees, a sum of about £ , , would probably be necessary. in addition, projects for no less than eighty-three new railways were brought before the commission;[ ] and it is admitted on all hands, and the commission find, that practically none of these railway extensions would be undertaken by private enterprise, and that these developments need the credit, help, and direction of the state. even the necessary improvement of the existing light railways cannot now be undertaken, for under the system of legislation under which they were constructed, there is no means of raising new capital.[ ] now, what is advocated by the majority report is the-- "compulsory purchase by the state of these railway systems great and small, to be then worked and managed by an irish elected authority as one concern, mainly with a view of developing irish industries by reduction of rates and otherwise, and not strictly on commercial principles."[ ] this was the scheme supported by the parliamentary party, written up unceasingly by the _freeman's journal_, and held out under the term "nationalisation of railways," as one of the special boons which home rule will bring to irish traders and farmers. but mark how the operation is to be carried out. the commission reported that the sum required should be raised by a railway stock charged primarily on the consolidated fund of the united kingdom, with recourse to irish rates to make up possible deficiencies, and further, that there should be an annual grant from the exchequer of not less than £ , to the irish railway authority. seeing that the commissioners refer to "the financial terms prescribed by the act of " (regulation of railways act, & vict. c. , ss. - ), and that a _cash_ payment to shareholders was provided for by that act, it is to be presumed that the commissioners intended irish shareholders to be paid in cash. the act of provided for payment to the companies of a sum in cash equal to twenty-five years' purchase of the previous three years' annual profits; but this was the minimum only, for it was provided that the companies could, under arbitration, claim additional payment in respect of future "prospects." now twenty-five years' purchase of the divisible profits, which at the date of the commission, were £ , , , would amount to over £ , , , and if in addition sums had to be raised for "prospects," purchase of lines paying no dividend, special provision for prior stocks standing at a premium, redemption of guarantees, and the large sums required for the extensions and improvements we have mentioned, a sum not less than £ , , , and probably nearer £ , , , would be required.[ ] from the beginning to the end of the inquiry there was no suggestion that this immense operation could be carried out except by the use of imperial credit, involving the two conditions: ( ) that the consolidated fund of the united kingdom be charged, and ( ) that the british public be asked, and should be willing to find the money. although the majority report contemplated an irish elected authority to work the railways so purchased and amalgamated, it was never suggested that any such irish authority could raise the necessary purchase capital, or, indeed, any portion of it. the whole scheme from beginning to end pre-supposed the continuance of the union, with its advantages of credit and capital. upset that union, establish an irish parliament working out its own salvation, financially and otherwise, and the basis of the whole scheme of railway nationalisation vanishes. that the british government should allow its credit to be used to the tune of fifty millions, after full legislative, executive and taxing powers were handed over to an irish parliament, is too fantastic to be considered seriously. whether an irish or english authority controlled the working of the railways would under such circumstances make little difference, with the courts of law, the executive, and police in other hands than that of the government guaranteeing the interest. the security for the advance would be imperilled; and, indeed, it is doubtful whether a tenth of the money required would be advanced, even in london, on those terms. for a similar reason any formal pledge of irish rates and taxes, to make up deficiencies in working, would be illusory. at any rate, if irish land purchase is to be continued under british credit (and it certainly will be a prior claim and charge), it is idle to expect parliament to undertake the vast additional obligations involved in irish railway nationalisation. parliament would pay the piper but could not call the tune. irish credit not sufficient. there remains the alternative of the new irish parliament financing the operation. this it must do by means of payment in cash to the selling shareholders, for reasons which will be hereafter stated, unless it wishes to start its career by a scheme of spoliation, which would not merely rob the shareholders (who are mostly irish), but would destroy the credit of the irish government. mr. redmond has recently acknowledged that a large number of irish railway shareholders are good nationalists; and it is certain that a great portion of the ordinary stock is held by irish farmers and traders; and much of the preference and debenture stocks are also held by irish charities, convents, diocesan trustees, and monastic institutions. these persons will expect, and justly expect, cash on a compulsory purchase, on basis of market value, or capitalisation of dividend, so as to secure the same return of interest. could the irish government borrow £ , , , and at what rate? to borrow at a higher rate than the present return on irish railway capital, namely, . per cent., would be to incur a loss on working the railways, from the outset, which irish ratepayers or taxpayers would have to make up. the net receipts, at the time of the commission's report, were, in round figures, £ , , , and thus to borrow £ , , , even at per cent., would mean an annual loss of £ , a year, even if there were no sinking fund. a _s._ per cent sinking fund would increase the total annual loss to £ , . but, could an irish government guaranteed railway stock be issued at per cent.? would ireland's credit stand better than that of hungary, whose per cent. gold _rentes_ stand at , or of the argentine, which has to borrow at nearly per cent.? there are grave doubts whether the large sum required would be subscribed at all, at even / per cent, or / per cent. basis. it is not likely that english investors would take up such a loan, seeing that they have consistently fought shy of irish investments, and they are not likely to change their views upon the break up of the union. it may be said that the sum required could be raised in ireland--that patriotic feeling would stimulate the operation, and the large sum of money (over £ , , ), lying on deposit at the irish banks may be referred to as available. patriotism that has not financed the irish parliamentary party will not be likely to finance a gigantic railway loan. nor is the large sum appearing as banking deposits really free money available for investment. with increase of deposits, the items of loans and advances in banking accounts have also correspondingly increased, and they largely balance each other. not only is the money deposited by one customer lent to another, and therefore already utilized, but, to a large extent well known to bankers, the deposits, _i.e._ the credits to particular accounts, represent money lent to the persons having these accounts, and are not, in fact, their own free balances. so also credits in the accounts of one bank, figure as debits on the balance sheet of another bank. there probably has been in recent years considerable saving in ireland, but it is also certain that those savings have largely gone, and will continue rightly to go in improvements of farms, which the land acts and land purchase acts have made worth improving for their possessors. those who have not saved enough borrow, and the bank advances represent largely the capital required by farmers and traders. the deposits, therefore, are being well used, and are not dead money. divert them to any large extent to another purpose, and there will probably be a contraction of banking credit, which irish farming and industry will be the first to feel. purchase by state paper. it may be said that the nationalisation of railways could be carried out, not by a cash payment, but by a paper exchange of existing railway stocks into newly created irish government stock, the amount of the existing net receipts being guaranteed. but, unless the irish government could actually borrow in cash the sum required, at a rate equal to that nominally put on the new stock, the shareholders would be robbed of a capital sum equal to the amount of the discount on the stock, _i.e._ the amount of the market quotation below par, or issue price. there will be sellers of the new stock from the beginning, and what the public will give for it, and not the nominal figure put upon it by the irish government, will be its real value. the irish government may issue the railway stock at - / per cent., but if they could borrow the sum required only at - / per cent., the new stock will at once find its level at about instead of , and the capital value of irish railways will be reduced from, say, £ , , to £ , , , and the difference, £ , , , would come out of the pockets of irish shareholders. the irish government would be, however, in this unpleasant dilemma, that if they issued the stock at a rate per cent, nominally higher than the present return in railway capital, namely, . per cent., the annual charge for interest would be greater than the net receipts, and so from the beginning there would be an annual loss; and the fact of this annual loss would be another factor tending to depreciate the new railway stock. the alternatives before an irish prime minister, pressed to carry out a "nationalisation" policy, are not enviable. he will either have to provide by taxation for the annual loss involved in taking over the railways on a fair basis, or to deprive the most thrifty and industrious classes of his fellow-countrymen of a large slice of their savings and investments. in either event, the new government will have received a serious blow to its credit at the outset of its career. effect of reduction of railway rates. there is, moreover, a special reason why such a stock, from its inception, would tend to depreciate in value; namely, that from the moment the irish government or their nominees became the owners, there would be almost irresistible pressure put upon them to reduce the railway rates, and generally (as indeed the majority report recommends) to work the railways on other than commercial lines.[ ] a reduction of rates has been held out as the great resulting boon of nationalisation ever since the irish parliamentary party specifically raised the question in parliament in . a per cent. reduction in rates and fares (suggested by nationalist witnesses) would involve an annual diminution of net receipts to the government of over £ , , per annum, and if the reduction were in goods rates alone, the loss would be £ , per annum. it would be years, if ever, before such a loss could be recouped, however the traffic was increased. experience has shown that in recent years running expenses tend to increase nearly parallel with the gross receipts, and a large increase in gross traffic would involve enormous capital outlay for rolling stock, engines, sidings, etc. it is unnecessary to comment upon the suggestion that the railways should not be run on "commercial principles." the irish ratepayers and taxpayers, who would have to bear the loss, would loudly call out for business management when it was too late. it is hardly necessary to add that another result of such an operation would be to prevent the irish government raising the very large sum necessary for improving and standardising the light railways and for extensions, except at an unremunerative rate of interest. even if shareholders be put off with state paper, contractors will have to be paid with cash. moreover the creation of such a large amount of debt at the beginning of the new regime would render it difficult, if not impossible, for the irish government to raise sums necessary for other public works and services of a pressing character, arterial drainage, canals, education, and other objects, not to speak of migration, congestion, and land purchase. the conclusion, in fact, is inevitable, that without the security of the united kingdom, and the market of british investors willing to lend, it is idle to think that either state purchase of railways, or any other of the boons mentioned, are reasonably possible. mr. erskine childers, though a home ruler, does not fail to perceive, to use his own words, "that financial independence will now mean a financial sacrifice to ireland."[ ] effect of nationalisation on trade relations. there are other important considerations which confirm the view that, if the control of irish railways were taken away from the imperial parliament, and placed under a parliament sitting in dublin, and if the general code of railway legislation now binding on both countries could be altered by a home rule legislature, results disastrous to the trade between the two countries would probably follow, whether "nationalisation" were carried out or not. the majority report recommends, as one of the chief objects of "nationalisation" under an irish authority, the reduction of _export_ rates, both local and through rates, on the irish railways, as "essential to the development of irish industry," and this seems the pet project of a large number of witnesses, and of irish local authorities. import and export railway rates are now the same for the same classes of produce, and no irish railway company could now differentiate between them, without being pulled up by the railway commission at the suit of british traders, or british railway companies. the policy suggested is practically to use railway rates as a system of local protection, similar to the existing practice and policy on the continental, and notably the prussian state railways. it is easy to see that without any customs barrier between the two countries, such a policy would inaugurate practically a tariff war between ireland and great britain, which would be disastrous to both. that such a policy should be subscribed to by free-traders, and that a free-trade government should advocate a change in the relations between the two countries, under which such a system could be possible, is indeed surprising. to use imperial credit for such a purpose would be midsummer madness. even without any scheme of nationalisation, the establishment of a separate executive and legislature in ireland might have sinister effects on traffic arrangements between great britain and ireland and on the harmonious administration of the railways. the right solution. the truth of the matter, and the inference to be drawn from the above considerations and the whole trend of modern trade, is that to break up the railway systems of great britain and ireland into two rival and hostile systems of transit, working for different objects and by different methods, would be to stop a natural and healthy process of uniform working and harmony, which has enormously advanced in the last decade, to the great advantage of ireland. almost every scheme of amalgamation in ireland has been connected with the opening or development of a new cross-channel route, as the history of the fishguard and rosslare and the new heysham routes fully shows. as part of this process, english companies, like the midland and the great western, are either acquiring irish lines or making special traffic arrangements with them. enormous sums have been spent on harbours and steamers by english companies for the purpose of developing traffic with ireland, and the increased interchange of goods has been of great advantage to both countries. the ideal put forward by advocates of railway nationalisation and irish independence, that in respect of trade and traffic ireland should be a sort of watertight compartment, self-supporting and self-contained, is, i submit, a mischievous delusion which, if put into practice, would undo much of the good progress ireland has recently made. such an ideal would also be the exact contrary of the line of national development as based on transit and transport followed in almost every other civilized country. in germany, canada, the united states, and australia, we see the policy consistently pursued of amalgamation, consolidation, and facilities for long-distance traffic, so that between all parts of each state and empire there shall be the freest and most perfect interchange of traffic. canada and the united states have been so far inspired by this principle as to spend countless millions first on east and west (and now on north and south) lines, even before there was traffic to carry, and in order to create traffic; and the principle has been justified in its results. from this point of view st. george's channel and the irish sea should be a means of communication, constant and in every direction, between the two islands, and not a sort of boundary ditch to be deepened and rendered difficult of passage. if ireland wishes to share england's prosperity she must not build up a wall against the credit, trade, and special products of her richer sister. if england wishes to have and to foster a magnificent source of food supply, well and strategically secured against continental foes, she also must do all that can be done to encourage intercourse. to develop traffic between great britain and ireland is the policy which both experience and theory point to as advantageous to both countries; to subvert this policy and make ireland's commerce local and self-sufficing, seems to be the narrow and mistaken ideal of nationalist aspirations. unionist policy. it follows that the unionist party must oppose any plan for "nationalising" the irish railways, whether by the credit of the united kingdom, or otherwise. the policy we advocate is to be found in the minority report of the viceregal commission, signed by sir herbert jekyll, mr. w.m. acworth, and mr. john aspinall, not as politicians, but experts; and in the report of the royal commission on canals and inland navigation dealing with the question of canals and water transport in ireland. in the case of railways, the aim should be to amalgamate them into two or three large companies to standardise as far as possible the light railways, and level them in respect of gauge, gradients, works, and rolling stock with the larger companies. unquestionably many of the smaller railways to be amalgamated, though not light railways, need large expenditure for the purpose of duplication of running lines, straightening of curves, stations, stores, and conveniences, and many extensions and cross-lines will also be needed to connect them with the trunk lines, and to open out districts now unprovided with railway facilities. many of these projects, though industrially remunerative to ireland and advantageous to england also as tapping new sources of food supply, would not be, in strictness, commercially remunerative in the sense of giving fair return on capital over working expenses, and it is idle to expect that private capital will ever be subscribed for these purposes. they can only be undertaken either directly by state funds, or by money provided by the state, and lent to the large amalgamated lines at low interest. this is the policy inaugurated by mr. arthur balfour, which has been of untold benefit to many districts in ireland. probably a public grant of, say, £ , , , and loanable money available to the extent of £ , , , would largely solve the problem. for the reasons already given it is only by imperial credit, and under the ægis of a united parliament and government, that capital on this large scale can be available for these purposes. canals and navigation. the problem of canals and inland navigation in ireland is a minor one, but the same principles largely apply. the royal commission[ ] recommended that all the chief waterways, canals, and rivers necessary for inland transport should be purchased and remain under the control of the state, the controlling authority, however, not themselves, to become carriers on any waterways. at the same time, they strongly urged that the problem of arterial drainage and relief from floods should not be treated separately, but that the control of drainage works should be under the same central authority as that which is to control waterways and navigation. it is not necessary to refer in detail to the report. apart from the sum necessary to buy out the existing owners of canals and waterways, towards which £ , , had been contributed from private sources, the commissioners contemplated a further expenditure of about £ , on new works. in addition the sum of £ , would be required, on a moderate estimate for drainage and the prevention of floods. the pressing nature of the latter problem is once more emphatically evidenced by the wholesale injury to property and the public health by the recent flooding of the basins of the shannon, barrow, bann, and other rivers. here, again, we have problems which it is idle to expect an irish parliament to solve satisfactorily for years to come, or, indeed, ever. ways and means must be an effectual bar. drainage and navigation form only one problem out of a dozen facing a home rule government needing the raising of enormous capital. probably the commissioners conducting the canals inquiry, who were persons of all shades of political opinion, were well aware that only under the present system of state credit could the financial difficulties be overcome. according to their report, the state (_i.e._ the government of the united kingdom) were to acquire the control, which was to be carried out by an act of parliament, naming the waterways commissioners, "who should be persons disassociated from party politics." the one dissentient out of twenty-one signatories, lord farrer, significantly adds that he does not favour a "charge on the public purse and new boards of management _until a purely irish elected authority has agreed to pay for them_." precisely; lord farrer has looked ahead. will an irish elected authority agree to pay for these boons, and will they be able to pay? that is a question which will cause some searching of hearts amongst all interested in ireland's welfare;--in these pages we have attempted to give an answer. conclusion. the conclusion is in fact inevitable. ireland cannot have it both ways. she cannot have financial independence and financial dependence at the same time. no colony has ever claimed or been granted these inconsistent conditions. if colonial precedents are cited, their essential limitations should also be borne in mind. colonial loans are not charged on the consolidated fund. nor have colonial railways been nationalised with the money and credit of the united kingdom, in order to favour local exports at the expense of imports from england. our examination of the question brings us to the clear conclusion that it is only under the existing system of a single parliament and executive for the united kingdom that the problems of transit and transport in ireland, or between great britain and ireland, can be satisfactorily solved, whether from the point of view of finance, justice to shareholders, or advantage to the trade and convenience of both countries. note.--it has been suggested, since the above was written, that the balance in the irish post office savings banks (now about £ , , ) might be available to the new irish government, for advances to farmers and other public purposes. the suggestion involves the applicability of such advances for the purchase or amalgamation of the irish railways under an irish public authority. such a proposal will not bear close examination. it is an essential condition of the existence of savings bank deposits that the deposits should be always available on the call of depositors; and this condition would no longer be fulfilled if the balances were locked up in irish railways. in fact, if there was any suggestion that these balances should be used for the purpose of enabling the irish government to run the railways on uncommercial principles, the deposits would very soon diminish or disappear--and this apart from the question whether under home rule, the deposits would in any event remain at anything like their present high figure. footnotes: [footnote : viceregal commission on irish railways, final report, (cd. ). final report on the canals and inland navigations of ireland, (cd. ).] [footnote : "the framework of home rule," p. .] [footnote : figures are taken from viceregal commission reports, p. , report.] [footnote : page , report.] [footnote : page , report.] [footnote : final report, pp. - .] [footnote : we have taken the act of as the basis referred to by the commissioners, though it is very doubtful (having regard to the great variety of railway share and loan capital), if the terms of sect. are now suitable; moreover sect. requires a special act of parliament to be passed to raise the money, and settle the special conditions of the purchase option.] [footnote : majority report, p. .] [footnote : "framework of home rule," p. .] [footnote : final report on the canals and navigations of ireland. . (cd. .)] transcriber's note: in , at age , anthony trollope became a junior clerk in the british postal service. he did not get on well with his superiors, and his career looked like a dead end. in he accepted an assignment in ireland as an inspector, remaining there for ten years. it was there that his civil service career began to flourish. it was there, also, that he began writing novels. several of trollope's early novels were set in ireland, including _the macdermots of ballycloran_, his first published novel, and _castle richmond_. readers of those early irish novels can easily perceive trollope's great affection for and sympathy with the irish people, especially the poor. in ireland was in the midst of great troubles, including boycotts and the near breakdown of law and order. in may of that year lord frederick cavendish, the newly-appointed chief secretary for ireland, and thomas burke, a prominent civil servant, were assassinated in dublin. the news stirred trollope, despite his poor health, to travel to ireland to see for himself the state of things. upon his return to england he began writing _the landleaguers_. he made a second journey to ireland in august, , to seek more material for his book. he returned to england exhausted, but he continued writing. he had almost completed the book when he suffered a stroke on november , . he never recovered, and he died on december . trollope's second son, henry, arranged for publication of the almost finished novel. the reader should note henry trollope's preface to volume i and postscript at the end of the book. readers familiar with trollope's early irish novels will be struck, as they read _the landleaguers_, by his bitterness at what was happening in ireland in and . the landleaguers by anthony trollope in three volumes--vol. i. london chatto & windus, piccadilly [all rights reserved] charles dickens and evans, crystal palace press. contents chapter i. mr. jones of castle morony. ii. the man in the mask. iii. father brosnan. iv. mr. blake of carnlough. v. mr. o'mahony and his daughter. vi. rachel and her lovers. vii. brown's. viii. christmas-day, . ix. black daly. x. ballytowngal. xi. moytubber. xii. "don't hate him, ada." xiii. edith's eloquence. xiv. rachel's correspondence. xv. captain yorke clayton. xvi. captain clayton comes to the castle. note. this novel was to have contained sixty chapters. my father had written as much as is now published before his last illness. it will be seen that he had not finished the forty-ninth chapter; and the fragmentary portion of that chapter stands now just as he left it. he left no materials from which the tale could be completed, and no attempt at completion will be made. at the end of the third volume i have stated what were his intentions with regard to certain people in the story; but beyond what is there said i know nothing. henry m. trollope. the landleaguers. chapter i. mr. jones of castle morony. in the year the two estates of ballintubber and morony were sold to mr. philip jones, under the estates court, which had then been established. they had been the property of two different owners, but lay conveniently so as to make one possession for one proprietor. they were in the county galway, and lay to the right and left of the road which runs down from the little town of headford to lough corrib. at the time when the purchase was made there was no quieter spot in all ireland, or one in which the lawful requirements of a landlord were more readily performed by a poor and obedient tenantry. the people were all roman catholics, were for the most part uneducated, and it may be said of them that not only were their souls not their own, but that they were not ambitious even of possessing their own bodies. circumstances have changed much with them since that date. not only have they in part repudiated the power of the priest as to their souls, but, in compliance with teaching which has come to them from america, they claim to be masters also of their bodies. never were a people less fitted to exercise such dominion without control. generous, kindly, impulsive, and docile, they have been willing to follow any recognised leader. when philip jones bought the property that had belonged to the widow o'dwyer--for ballintubber had for the last hundred years been the property of the o'dwyers--and morony, which, had been an outlying town-land belonging to the hacketts for the last two centuries, he had at first been looked down upon as a new comer. but all that had passed by, and mr. jones was as much respected as though he had been an o'jones from the time of queen elizabeth. but now the american teaching had come up, and things were different. mr. jones had expended over £ , in purchasing the property, and was congratulated by all men on having done well with his money. there were some among his friends in england--and his friends were all english--who had told him that he was incurring a great risk in going into so distant and wild a country. but it was acknowledged that he could not in england have obtained so good a return in the way of rent. and it was soon found that the opportunities for improving the property were many and close at hand. at the end of ten years all men who knew mr. jones personally, or had seen the increasing comforts of morony castle, declared that, as he liked the kind of life, he had done uncommonly well for himself. nor had he done badly for his three married sisters, each of whom had left £ , in his hands. all the circumstances of the miss jones's as they had been, it will be here unnecessary to explain. since philip had become owner of morony castle, each of them had married, and the three brothers-in-law were equally well satisfied with the investment of their money. it will, however, thus be understood that the property did not belong entirely to mr. jones, and that the brothers-in-law and their wives were part owners. mr. jones, however, had been in possession of some other means, and had been able to use capital in improving the estate. but he was an aspiring man, and in addition to his money had borrowed something beyond. the sum borrowed, however, had been so small and so well expended, as to have created no sense of embarrassment in his mind. when our story commences he was the father of four children. the elder and the younger were boys, and two girls came between them. in , frank, the elder, was two-and-twenty. the two girls who followed close after were twenty and nineteen, and the youngest boy, who was born after an interval of nearly ten years, was but ten years old. some years after the mother had died, and mr. jones had since lived as a widower. it may be as well to state here that in he was fifty-five years old. when his wife had died, the nature of the man had apparently been changed. of all men he had been the most cheerful, the most eager, and the most easily pleased. he had worked hard at his property, and had loved his work. he knew every man and woman about the place, and always had a word to say to them. he had had a sailing boat on the lake, in which he had spent much of his time, but his wife had always been with him. since her death he had hardly put his foot within the boat. he had lately become quick and short-tempered, but always with a visible attempt to be kind to those around him. but people said of him that since his wife had died he had shown an indifference to the affairs of the world. he was anxious--so it was said--to leave matters as much as possible to his son; but, as has been already stated, his son was only twenty-two. he had formerly taken a great pleasure in attending the assizes at galway. he had been named as a grand juror for the county, which he had indeed regarded as a great compliment; but since his wife's death he had not once attended. people said of him that he had become indifferent to the work of his life, but in this they hardly spoke the truth. he had become indifferent rather to what had been its pleasures. to that which his conscience told him was its work, he applied himself with assiduity enough. there were two cares which sat near his heart: first, that no one should rob him; and secondly, that he should rob no one. it will often be the case that the first will look after itself, whereas the second will require careful watching. it was certainly the case with philip jones that he was most anxious to rob no one. he was, perhaps, a little too anxious that no one should rob him. a few words must be said of his children. frank, the eldest, was a good-looking, clever boy, who had been educated at the queen's college, at galway, and would have been better trained to meet the world had circumstances enabled him to be sent to a public school in england. as it was he thought himself, as heir to morony castle, to be a little god upon earth; and he thought also that it behoved his sisters and his brother, and the various dependents about the place, to treat him as though he were a god. to his father he was respectful, and fairly obedient in all matters, save one. as to that one matter, from which arose some trouble, much will have to be said as the story goes on. the two girls were named ada and edith, and were, in form and figure, very unlike each other. ada, the eldest, was tall, fair-haired, and very lovely. it was admitted in county galway that among the galway lasses no girl exceeded ada jones in brightness of beauty. she was sweet-tempered also, and gracious as she was lovely. but edith did not share the gifts, which the fairy had bestowed upon her sister, in equal parts. she was, however, clever, and kind, and affectionate. in all matters, within the house, she was ready to accept a situation below her sister's; but this was not by her sister's doing. the demigod of the family seemed to assume this position, but on ada's part there was no assumption. edith, however, felt her infirmity. among girls this is made to depend more on physical beauty than on other gifts, and there was no doubt that in this respect edith was the inferior. she was dark, and small of stature, not ungraceful in her movements, or awkward in her person. she was black-haired, as had been her mother's, and almost swarthy in her complexion, and there was a squareness about her chin which robbed her face of much of its feminine softness. but her eyes were very bright, and when she would laugh, or say something intended to make another laugh, her face would be brightened up with fun, good-humour, or wit, in a manner which enabled no one to call her plain. of the younger boy, florian, much will be said as the story goes on; but what can be said of a boy who is only ten which shall be descriptive and also interesting? he was small of his age, but clever and sharp, and, since his mother's death, had been his father's darling. he was beautiful to look at, as were all the children, except poor edith, but the neighbours declared that his education had been much neglected. his father intended to send him to college at galway. a bright vision had for a short time flitted before the father's eyes, and he had thought that he would have the boy prepared for winchester; but lately things had not gone quite so well at morony castle, and that idea had passed by. so that it was now understood that florian jones would follow his brother to galway college. those who used to watch his ways would declare that the professors of galway college would have some trouble with him. while the mother had lived no family had been more easily ruled than that of the jones's, but since her death some irregularities had gone on. the father had made a favourite of the younger boy, and thereby had done mischief. the eldest son, too, had become proud of his position, and an attempt had been made to check him with a hard hand; and yet much in the absolute working of the farm had been left to him. then troubles had come, in which mr. jones would be sometimes too severe, and sometimes too lenient. of the girls it must be acknowledged that they were to be blamed for no fault after the first blow had come. everyone at morony had felt that the great blow had been the death of the mistress. but it must be confessed that other things had happened shortly afterwards which had tended to create disturbance. one of the family had declared that he intended to become a roman catholic. the jones's had been protestants, the father and mother having both come from england as protestants. they were not, therefore, ultra-protestants, as those will know who best know ireland. there had been no horror of a catholic. according to mrs. jones the way to heaven had been open to both catholic and protestant, only it had suited her to say her prayers after the protestant fashion. the girls had been filled with no pious fury; and as to mr. jones himself, some of the protestant devotees in the neighbourhood of tuam had declared that he was only half-hearted in the matter. an old clergyman, attached to the cathedral, and who had been chaplain to bishop plunket, had been heard to declare that he would rather have to deal with an avowed papist. but the one who had now declared himself as a convert,--i will say pervert if my readers wish it,--was no other than our young friend florian. he came in one day and assured his sisters that he meant to be a roman catholic. they only laughed at him, and told him that he did not know what he was talking about. "don't i though?" said florian. "i've had no end of an argument with father malachi, and he's got the best o' me. i'm not going to church any more." when his brother frank was told, he threatened to "lick the young sinner." "that's about the best can be said for you protestants," said the young imp. "you lick us when you're strong enough." but the father, when he heard the tidings, declared that he would not have his son molested. no doubt he would live to see his mistake. it was to be hoped that he would do so. but there should be no compulsion. so master florian remained for the present attached to his catholic propensities, and duly went to mass at ballintubber. this had taken place in the autumn of the year. there had occurred a circumstance which may be called the beginning of our story. it must first be told that mr. jones kept about four hundred acres of the estate in his own hands, and had been held to have done very well with it. a tract of this land lay down on lough corrib, and had in former days produced almost nothing but rushes. by means of drains and sluices, which had not been brought into use without the expenditure of much capital, he had thoroughly fertilised some eighty acres, where he grew large crops of hay, which he sent across the lake to galway, and fed his sheep on the after-grass with great profit. but the care of the sluices had been a great labour, and, latterly, a great trouble to mr. jones. he had looked for no evil at the hands of his workmen, or tenants, or neighbours. but he had been taught by experience to expect great carelessness. it was when the rain had fallen in heavy quantities, and when the lough was full that the evil was chiefly expected. late in the autumn there came news up to the castle, that the flood gates on the ballintubber marshes had now been opened, and that the entire eighty acres were under water. mr. jones and his eldest son rushed down, and found that it was impossible to do anything. they could only wait till the waters had retreated, which would not take place for six months. the entire crop for the next year had been destroyed. then mr. jones returned to the castle stricken by a great blow, and was speechless for the rest of the day. when the news had been brought, the family had been together at the breakfast table. the father and son had gone out together with the teller of the story. but ada and edith and florian were left at the table. they all sat looking at each other till edith was the first to speak. "flory, what do you know of all this?" "what should i know?" said flory. the two sisters looked at him, and each was aware that he did know something. ada was not so quick as edith, but even she was aroused. and from this moment edith began to take the lead in managing her brother. "you do," said ada. "how was it done? who did it--and why?" "sorrow a know, i know," said the boy. "flory, that is a lie," said edith very solemnly, looking at him with all her eyes. "you've no right to say that," said florian. "it's just because i've turned catholic, and it's all your spite." but the boy blushed ruby red, and the colour told its own story. as soon as the news had been announced, edith had seen the boy's countenance and had instantly watched him. his colour had not risen at once; but his lower jaw had fallen, and his eyes had glanced furtively round, and his whole frame had quivered. then the rush of blood had flown to his face, and the story had been told so that edith could read it. his first emotion had made it plain even to ada. "flory, you know all about it," said ada. edith got up and went across the room and knelt down at the boy's side, leaning against his chair and looking up into his face. "flory, you may lie with your voice, but you cannot stifle your heart within you. you have confessed the truth." "i have not," said flory; "i wasn't in it at all." "who says that you were in it? but you know." "'deed and i know nothin'." now the boy began to cry. "you have no right to say i did it. why should i do the likes of that?" "where were you at four o'clock yesterday afternoon?" asked edith. "i was just out, up at the lodge yonder." "flory, i know that you have seen this thing done. i am as certain of it as though i had been there myself." "i haven't seen anything done--and i won't stay here to be questioned this way," said the boy, feeling that his blushes would betray him, and his incapacity to "lie square," as the americans say. then the two sisters were left to talk over the matter together. "did you not see it in his face?" said edith. "yes, i saw something. but you don't mean to say that he knew it was to be done? that would make him a fiend." "no; i don't think he knew it was to be done. but when frank was teasing him the other day about his catholic nonsense, and saying that he would not trust a papist, florian took the part of pat carroll. if there be a man about the place who would do a base turn to father, it's pat carroll. now i know that flory was down near the lough yesterday afternoon. biddy ryan saw him. if he went on he must have seen the water coming in." "what shall we do?" asked ada. "ah!--that's just it. what shall we do? if he could be made to tell the truth, that would be best. but as he denies it, father will believe him. florian will say that we are spiting him because of his religion." "but, edith, we must tell father." at last it was decided that edith should take the boy and talk to him. he was more prone to listen to edith than to ada. edith did find her brother, and talked to him for an hour,--but in vain. he had managed to collect himself after his past breakdown, and was better able to bear the examination to which his sister put him, than at the first moment. he still blushed when he was questioned; till he became dogged and surly. the interview ended with repeated asseverations on flory's part, that he knew nothing of the meadows. mr. jones and his eldest son returned to the house, having been absent the entire day. "as sure as i am a living man, pat carroll has been at the doing of it," said frank. "he cannot have done it alone," said ada. "there have been others in it." "that has been the worst of it," said the father. "of course i have known since the beginning of the year, that that man would do any devil's turn of work against me. but one man cannot do much." "too much! too much!" said edith. "one man can murder me, of course. but we haven't yet come to such a state of things as that. twelve months ago i thought there was not a man about the place who would raise his hand to do me an ill turn. i have done them many good turns in my time." "you have, father," said ada. "then this man came to me and said that because the tenants away in county mayo were not paying their rents, he could not pay his. and he can sell his interest on his holding now for £ . when i endeavoured to explain this to him, and that it was at my cost his interest in the farm has been created, he became my enemy. i don't mind that; one has to look for that. but that others should be joined in it, and that there should be no one to say that they had seen it! there must have been five pairs of hands at work, and twenty pairs of eyes must have seen what the others were doing." the two sisters looked at each other, but they said nothing. "i suppose we shall work it out of them some day," said frank. "i suppose nothing of the kind," said the father. "there are eighty acres of meadow lying under lough corrib this moment which will not give a ton of hay next summer, or food for a sheep next autumn. the pastures will be saturated, and sheep would perish with foot-rot and fluke. then money must be laid out again upon it, just that mr. carroll may again wreak his vengeance." after that there was silence, for the children felt that not a word could be spoken which would comfort their father. when they sat down to dinner, mr. jones asked after florian. "he's not well," said edith. "florian not well! so there's another misfortune." "his ill-health is rather ill-humour. biddy will take care of him, father." "i do not choose that he should be looked after by biddy in solitude. i suppose that somebody has been teasing him." "no, father," said edith, positively. "has anyone been speaking to him about his religion?" "not a word," said edith. then she told herself that to hold her tongue at the present moment would be cowardly. "florian, father, has misbehaved himself, and has gone away cross. i would leave him, if i were you, till to-morrow." "i know there is ill-will against him," said the father. all this was ill-judged on behalf of mr. jones. peter, the old butler, who had lived in the family, was in the room. peter, of course, was a roman catholic, and, though he was as true as steel, it could not but be felt that in this absurd contest he was on the side of the "young masther." down in the kitchen the conversion of the "young masther" to the true religion was a great affair, and mr. frank and the young ladies were looked upon as hard-hearted and cruel, because they stood in the way of this act of grace. nothing more was said about florian that night. chapter ii. the man in the mask. edith, before she went to bed that night, crept up to her brother's bedroom and seated herself on the bedside. it was a little room which florian occupied alone, and lay at the back of the house, next to that in which peter slept. here, as she sat on the bed, she could see by a glance that young florian feigned to be asleep. "flory, you are pretending to be asleep." flory uttered a short snore,--or rather snort, for he was not a good actor. "you may as well wake up, because otherwise i shall shake you." "why am i to be shaked up in bed?" "because i want to speak to you." "why am i to be made to speak when i want to sleep?" "papa has been talking about you downstairs. he has come home from ballintubber, very tired and very unhappy, and he thinks you have been made to go to bed without your supper because we have been attacking you about religion. i have told him that nobody has said a word to you." "but you did." "not a word." "you didn't tell him all that you told me--about letting in the water?" this was asked in a tone of great anxiety. "not a word,--not as yet." "and you won't? mind, i tell you it's all untrue. what do i know about letting in the water?" "who did it?" "i'm not going to tell." "you know, then?" "no, i don't. but i'm not going to tell as though i knew it. you don't care about it in your religion, but we catholics don't like telling lies." "you saw nothing?" "whatever i saw i'm not to tell a lie about it." "you've promised not, you mean?" "now, edy, you're not going to trap me. you've got your own religion and i've got mine. it's a great thing in our religion to be able to hold your tongue. father malachi says it's one of the greatest trials which a man has to go through." "then, flory, am i to gather that you will say nothing further to me?" here the boy shook his head. "because in that case i must tell father. at any rate, he must be told, and if you do not tell him, i shall." "what is there to be told?" "i shall tell him exactly what i saw,--and ada. i saw,--we saw,--that when the news came about the flood, you were conscious of it all. if you will go to father and tell him the truth he will be but very little angry with you. i don't suppose you had a hand in it yourself." "no!" shouted the boy. "but i think you saw it, and that they made you swear an oath. was that not so?" "no!" whispered the boy. "i am sure it was so." then the boy again plucked up his courage, and declared with a loud voice, that it was not so. that night before she retired to rest, edith went to her father and told him all that she had to say. she took ada with her, and together they used all their eloquence to make their father believe as they believed. "no," said edith, "he has not confessed. but words drop from him which make us sure that he knows who did it. i am certain that he saw it done. i don't mean to say that he saw the whole thing. the water, i suppose, was coming in all night." "the whole night! while we were sleeping in our beds, the waters of the lough were ruining me," said the father. "but he saw enough to be able to tell you who did it." "i know who did it. it was that ruffian carroll." "but father, you will want evidence." "am i to bring up my own boy to swear that he was there, witnessing what was done, as the friend of my enemies? i do not believe that he was there at all." "if you question him, he will probably own to it. it will be better to get at the truth and face it. he is only ten years old. you must tell me the story of his pretended conversion." "why should it be pretended?" asked the father. "well; of his conversion," said edith. "i don't see what it has to do with it? am i to put myself forward as a bigoted protestant? florian has been foolish, but am i to say that i am angry, where i am not angry--not specially angry." "it will show the influence under which he has taken up carroll's side," said edith. "or the influence under which he has been made to hold his tongue," said ada. "just so," said edith. "we do not think that he has made one with your enemies in the matter. but he has seen them at work and has been made to promise that he will hold his tongue. i don't suppose you mean to let the affair slip by without punishing any one." when the girls left him, mr. jones was by no means persuaded. as far as he could ascertain from examination of the persons about the locality, there was no one willing to state in evidence that he had seen anything. the injury had been done in november, on a wet, dreary, dull afternoon. he did learn that at half-past three the meadows were in their usual condition. as to the sluices, the gates of which had been pulled out and thrown away in twenty different places, he could learn nothing; no one had seen a sluice gate touched. as to florian, and what florian had been seen to do, he had asked no question, because florian's name had not then been mentioned. but he had been struck by the awful silence of the people. there were women there, living on the spot, with whose families his family had been on the most kindly terms. when rheumatism was rife,--and rheumatism down on the lough side had often been rife--they had all come up to the castle for port wine and solace. he had refused them nothing,--he, or his dear wife, who had gone, or his daughters; and, to give them their due, they had always been willing to work for him at a moment's notice. he would have declared that no man in ireland was on better terms with his tenantry than he; and now, because there had been a quarrel between him and that pestilent fellow carroll,--whom he had been willing to buy out from his bit of land and let him go to america, so that they might all be at peace,--could they all have turned against him and taken carroll's part? as far as he had been able to gather the feelings of the people, from conversations with them, they had all acknowledged carroll to be wrong. he would have said that there was not one among them who was not his friend rather than carroll's. he was aware that there had been ill-feeling about in other parts of the country. there had been,--so he was told,--a few demagogues in galway town, american chiefly, who had come thither to do what harm they could; and he had heard that there was discontent in parts of mayo, about ballyhaunis and lough glinn; but where he lived, round lough corrib, there had been no evil symptoms of such a nature. now suddenly he found himself as though surrounded by a nest of hornets. there were eighty acres of his land under water, and no one would tell him how it was done, or by whom. and now, to make the matter worse, there had come upon him this trouble with reference to his own boy. he would not believe the story which his daughters had told him; and yet he knew within his heart that they were infinitely the better worthy of credit. he believed in them. he knew them to be good and honest and zealous on his behalf; but how much better did he love poor florian! and in this matter of the child's change of religion, in which he had foolishly taken the child's part, he could not but think that father malachi had been most unkind to him; not that he knew what father malachi had done in the matter, but florian talked as though he had been supported all through by the priest. father malachi had, in truth, done very little. he had told the boy to go to his father. the boy had said that he had done so, and that his father had assented. "but frank and the girls are totally against it. they have no sense of religion at all." then father malachi had told him to say his prayers, and come regularly to mass. mr. jones agreed with his daughters that it behoved him to punish the culprit in this matter, but, nevertheless, he thought that it would be better for him to let it go unpunished than to bring his boy into collision with such a one as pat carroll. he twice talked the matter over with florian, and twice did so to no effect. at first he threatened the young sinner, and frowned at him. but his frowns did no good. florian, if he could stand firm against his sister edith, was sure that he could do so against his father. then mr. jones spoke him fair, and endeavoured to explain to him how sad a thing it would be if his boy were to turn against his own father and the interests of the family generally. "but i haven't," said florian confidently. "you should tell me what you saw on that afternoon." "i didn't see anything," said florian sulkily. "i don't believe he knew anything about it," said mr. jones to edith afterwards. edith could only receive this in silence, and keep her own opinion to herself. ada was altogether of her mind, but frank at last came round to his father's view. "it isn't probable," he said to his sisters, "that a boy of his age should be able to keep such a secret against four of us; and then it is most improbable that he should have seen anything of the occurrence and not have come at once to his father." but the girls held to their own opinion, till at last they were told by frank that they were two pig-headed nincompoops. things were going on in this way, and mr. jones was still striving to find out evidence by which a case might be substantiated against pat carroll, when that gentleman, one winter afternoon, was using his eloquence upon master florian jones. it was four o'clock, and the darkness of the night was now coming on very quickly. the scene was a cottage, almost in the town of headford, and about two miles from the nearest part of the morony estate. in this cottage carroll was sitting at one side of a turf fire, while an old woman was standing by the doorway making a stocking. and in this cottage also was another man, whose face was concealed by an old crape mask, which covered his eyes and nose and mouth. he was standing on the other side of the fireplace, and florian was seated on a stool in front of the fire. ever and anon he turned his gaze round on the mysterious man in the mask, whom he did not at all know; and, in truth, he was frightened awfully through the whole interview by the man in the mask, who stood there by the fireside, almost close to florian's elbow, without speaking a word; nor did the old woman say much, though it must be presumed that she heard all that was said. "faix, mr. flory, an' it's well for you you've come," said carroll. "jist you sit steady there, 'cause it won't do the laist good in life you're moving about where all the world'd see you." it was thus that the boy was addressed by him, whom we may now call his co-conspirator, and carroll showed plainly, by his movements and by the glances which he cast around him, that he understood perfectly the dreadful nature of the business in which he was engaged. "you see that jintl'man there?" and carroll pointed to the man in the mask. "i see him," said poor florian, almost in tears. "you'd better mark him, that's all. if he cotches a hould o'ye he'd tear ye to tatthers, that's all. not that he'd do ye the laist harum in life if ye'd just hould yer pace, and say nothin' to nobody." "not a word i'll say, pat." "don't! that's all about it. don't! we knows,--he knows,--what they're driving at down at the castle. sorra a word comes out of the mouth o' one on 'em, but that he knows it." here the man in the mask shook his head and looked as horrible as a man in a mask can look. "they'll tell ye that the father who owns ye ought to know all about it. it's just him as shouldn't know." "he don't," said florian. "not a know;--an' if you main to keep yourself from being holed as they holed muster bingham the other day away at hollymount." the boy understood perfectly well what was meant by the process of "holing." the mr. bingham, a small landlord, who had been acting as his own agent some twenty miles off, in the county of mayo, had been frightfully murdered three months since. it was the first murder that had stained the quarrel which had now commenced in that part of the country. mr. bingham had been unpopular, but he had had to deal with such a small property, that no one had imagined that an attack would be made on him. but he had been shot down as he was driving home from hollymount, whither he had gone to receive rent. he had been shot down during daylight, and no one had as yet been brought to justice for the murder. "you mind's muster bingham, muster flory; eh? he's gone, and sorra a soul knows anything about it. it's i'd be sorry to think you'd be polished off that way." again the man in the mask made signs that he was wide awake. to tell the truth of florian, he felt rather complimented in the midst of all his horrors in being thus threatened with the fate of mr. bingham. he had heard much about mr. bingham, and regarded him as a person of much importance since his death. he was raised to a level now with mr. bingham. and then his immediate position was very much better than bingham's. he was alive, and up to the present moment,--as long as he held his tongue and told nothing,--he would be regarded with friendly eyes by that terrible man in the mask. but, through it all, there was the agonising feeling that he was betraying them all at home. his father and edith and frank would not murder him when they found him out, but they would despise him. and the boy knew something,--he knew much of what was due by him to his father. at this moment he was much in dread of pat carroll. he was in greater dread of the man in the mask. but as he sat there, terrified by them as they intended to terrify him, he was aware of all that courage would demand from him. if he could once escape from that horrid cabin, he thought that he might be able to make a clean breast and tell everything. "it's i that'd be awful sorry that anything like what happened bingham, should happen to you, muster flory." "why wouldn't you; and i'd have done nothing against you?" said florian. he did feel that his conduct up to the present moment deserved more of gratitude than of threats from pat carroll. "you're to remimber your oath, muster flory. you're become one of us, as father brosnan was telling you. you're not to be one of us, and then go over among them schaming prothestants." "i haven't gone over among them,--only my father is one of them." "what's yer father to do with it now you're a catholic? av you is ever false to a catholic on behalf of them prothestants, though he's twice yer own father, you'd go t' hell for it; that's where you'd be going. and it's not only that, but the jintl'man as is there will be sending you on the journey." then pat signified that he alluded to the man in the mask, and the gentleman in the mask clenched his fist and shook it,--and shook his head also. "you ask father brosnan also, whether you ain't to be thrue to us catholics now you're one of us? it's a great favour as has been done you. you're mindful o' that--ain't you?" poor flory said that he was mindful. here they were joined by another conspirator, a man whom florian had seen down by the sluices with pat carroll, and whom he thought he remembered to have noticed among the tenants from the other side of ballintubber. "what's the chap up to now?" asked the stranger. "he ain't up to nothin'," said carroll. "we're only a cautioning of him." "not to be splitting on yourself?" "nor yet on you," said carroll. "sorra a word he can say agin me," said the stranger. "i wasn't in it at all." "but you was," said florian. "i saw you pick the latch up and throw it away." "you've sharp eyes, ain't you, to be seeing what warn't there to be seen at all? if you say you saw me in it, i'll have the tongue out of your mouth, you young liar." "what's the good of frightening the boy, michael. he's a good boy, and isn't a going to peach upon any of us." "but i ain't a liar. he's a liar." this florian said, plucking up renewed courage from the kind words pat carroll had said in his favour. "never mind," said pat, throwing oil on the troubled waters. "we're all frinds at present, and shall be as long as we don't split on nobody." "it's the meanest thing out,--that splitting on a pal," said the man who had been called michael. "it's twice worse when one does it to one's father. i wouldn't show a ha'porth of mercy to such a chap as that." "and to a catholic as peached to a prothestant," said carroll, intending to signify his hatred of such a wretch by spitting on the ground. "or to a son as split because his father was in question." then michael spat twice upon the floor, showing the extremity of the disgust which in such a case would overpower him. "i suppose i may go now," said florian. he was told by pat carroll that he might go. but just at that moment the man in the mask, who had not spoken a word, extemporised a cross out of two bits of burned wood from the hearth, and put it right before florian's nose; one hand held one stick, and the other, the other. "swear," said the man in the mask. "bedad! he's in the right of it. another oath will make it all the stronger. 'that ye'll never say a word of this to mortial ears, whether father or sister or brother, let 'em say what they will to yer, s'help yer the blessed virgin.'" "i won't then," said florian, struggling to get at the cross to kiss it. "stop a moment, me fine fellow," said michael. "nor yet to no one else--and you'll give yourself up to hell flames av you don't keep the blessed oath to the last day of your life. now let him kiss it, pat. i wouldn't be in his shoes for a ten-pun note if he breaks that oath." "nor i neither," said pat. "oh laws, no." then florian was allowed to escape from the cabin. this he did, and going out into the dark, and looking about him to see that he was not watched, made his way in at the back door of a fairly large house which stood near, still in the outskirts of the town of headford. it was a fairly large house in headford; but headford does not contain many large houses. it was that in which lived father giles, the old parish priest of tuam;--and with father giles lived his curate, that father brosnan of whom mention has above been made. chapter iii. father brosnan. there has come a change among the priests in ireland during the last fifty years, as has been natural. among whom has there not come a change in half a century? in england, statesmen are different, and parsons, and judges, and peers. when an entire country has been left unmoved by the outside world, so as to seem to have been left asleep while others have been awake, the different classes will seem to be the same at the end of every half century. a village lawyer in spain will be as was a village lawyer fifty years ago. but a parish priest in ireland will be an altered personage, because the country generally has not been sleeping. there used to be two distinct sorts of priests; of whom the elder, who had probably been abroad, was the better educated; whereas the younger, who was home-nurtured, had less to say for himself on general topics. he was generally the more zealous in his religious duties, but the elder was the better read in doctrinal theology. as to the political question of the day, they were both apt to be on the list against the government, though not so with such violence as to make themselves often obnoxious to the laws. it was natural that they should be opposed to the government, as long as the protestant church claimed an ascendency over them. but their feelings and aspirations were based then on their religious opinions. now a set of men has risen up, with whom opposition to the rulers of the country is connected chiefly with political ideas. a dream of home rule has made them what they are, and thus they have been roused into waking life, by the american spirit, which has been imported into the country. there is still the old difference between the elder and the younger priests. the parish priest is not so frequently opposed to the law, as is his curate. the parish priest is willing that the landlord shall receive his rents, is not at least anxious, that he shall be dispossessed of his land. but the curate has ideas of peasant proprietors; is very hot for home rule, is less obedient to the authority of the bishops than he was of yore, and thinks more of the political, and less of the religious state of his country. this variance of feeling might be seen in the three priests who have been already mentioned in our story. father giles was the parish pastor of headford, in which position he had been for nearly forty years. he was a man seventy years of age, in full possession of all his faculties, very zealous in the well-being of his people, prone to teach them that if they would say their prayers, and do as they were bid by their betters, they would, in the long run, and after various phases of catholic well or ill-being, go to heaven. but they would also have enough to eat in this world; which seemed to be almost more prominent in father giles's teaching than the happy bliss of heaven. but the older father giles became the more he thought of the good things of this world, on behalf of his people, and the less he liked being troubled with the political desires of his curate. he had gone so far as to forbid father brosnan to do this, or to do that on various occasions, to make a political speech here, or to attend a demonstration there;--in doing which, or in not doing it, the curate sometimes obeyed, but sometimes disobeyed the priest, thereby bringing father giles in his old age into infinite trouble. but father malachi, in the neighbouring parish of ballintubber, ran a course somewhat intermediate between these two. he, at the present moment, had no curate who interfered with his happiness. there was, indeed, a curate of ballintubber--so named; but he lived away, not inhabiting the same house with father malachi, as is usual in ireland; having a chapel to himself, and seldom making his way into our part of the country. father malachi was a strong-minded man, who knew the world. he, too, had an inclination for home rule, and still entertained a jealousy against the quasi-ascendency of a protestant bishop; but he had no sympathy whatever with father brosnan. ireland for the irish might be very well, but he did not at all want to have ireland for the americans. father giles and father malachi certainly agreed on one thing--that brosnan was a great trouble. if the conversion of florian jones was to be attributed to any clerical influence, father brosnan was entitled to claim the good or the evil done; but in truth very few polemical arguments had been used on the occasion. the boy's head had been filled with the idea of doing something remarkable, and he had himself gone to the priest. when a protestant child does go to a priest on such a mission, what can the priest do but accept him? he is bound to look upon the suppliant as a brand to be saved from the burning. "you stupid young ass!" the priest may say to himself, apostrophising the boy; "why don't you remain as you are for the present? why do you come to trouble me with a matter you can know nothing about?" but the priest must do as his church directs him, and the brands have to be saved from the burning. father brosnan sent the boy to father malachi, and father malachi told the lad to go to his terrestrial father. it was this that mr. jones had expected, and there the boy was received as a catholic. but to father brosnan the matter was much more important in its political view. father brosnan knew the application as to his rent which had been made by pat carroll to his landlord. he was of opinion that no rent ought to be paid by any irish tenant to any landlord--no rent, at least, to a protestant landlord. wrath boiled within his bosom when he heard of the answer which was given, as though mr. jones had robbed the man by his refusal. mr. brosnan thought that for the present a tenant was, as a matter of course, entitled to abatement in his rent, as in a short time he must be entitled to his land without paying any. he considered not at all the circumstances, whether, as had been the case on certain properties in mayo, all money expended had been so expended by the tenant, or by the landlord, as had been the case with pat carroll's land. that was an injustice, according to mr. brosnan's theory; as is all property in accordance with the teaching of some political doctors who are not burdened with any. it would have been unfair to mr. brosnan to say that he sympathised with murderers, or that he agreed with those who considered that midnight outrages were fair atonements; he demanded rights. he himself would have been hot with righteous indignation, had such a charge been made against him. but in the quarrel which was now beginning all his sympathies were with the carrolls at large, and not with the jones's at large. at every victory won by the british parliament his heart again boiled with indignation. at every triumphant note that came over the water from america--which was generally raised by the record of the dollars sent--he boiled, on the other hand, with joy. he had gleams in his mind of a republic. he thought of a saxon as an evil being. the queen, he would say, was very well, but she was better at a distance. the lord-lieutenant was a british vanity, and english pomp, but the chief secretary was a minister of the evil one himself. he believed that england was enriched by many millions a year robbed from ireland, and that ireland was impoverished to the same extent. he was a man thoroughly disloyal, and at the same time thoroughly ignorant, altogether in the dark as to the truth of things, a man who, whatever might be his fitness for the duties of the priesthood, to which he had been educated, had no capability of perceiving political facts, and no honesty in teaching them. but it would have been unjust to him to say that he was a murderer, or that he countenanced murder. to him it was that young florian now betook himself, and found him seated alone in the back parlour in father giles's house. the old priest was out, and father brosnan was engaged on some portion of clerical duties. to give him his due, he performed those duties rigidly, and the more rigidly when, in doing them, he obeyed the letter of the law rather than the spirit. as father giles, in his idea of his duties, took altogether the other side of the question, and, in thinking of the spirit, had nearly altogether ignored the letter, it may be imagined that the two men did not agree together very well. in truth, father giles looked upon father brosnan as an ignorant, impertinent puppy, whereas father brosnan returned the compliment by regarding father giles as half an infidel, and almost as bad as a protestant. "well, master florian," said the priest, "and how are things going with you?" "oh! father brosnan, i'm in terrible throuble." "what throuble's up now?" "they're all agin me at home, and father's nearly as bad as any of them. it's all along of my religion." "i thought your father had given his consent?" "so he has; but still he's agin me. and my two sisters are dead agin me. what am i to do about pat carroll?" "just hould your tongue." "they do be saying that because what pat and the other boys did was agin father's interest, i am bound to tell." "you've given a promise?" "i did give a promise." "and you swore an oath," said the priest solemnly. "i did swear an oath certainly." "then you must hould your tongue. in such a case as this i cannot absolve you from your word. i don't know what it is that pat carroll did." here it must be admitted father brosnan did not stick to the absolute truth. he did know what pat carroll had done. all headford knew that mr. jones's meadows had been flooded, and the priest must have known that the present cause of trouble at castle morony, was the injury thus done. father brosnan knew and approved of pat carroll's enmity to the jones family. but he was able to justify the falsehood of his own heart, by stumbling over the degree of knowledge necessary. there was a sense in which he did not know it. he need not have sworn to it in a court of law. so he told himself, and so justified his conscience. "you need not tell me," he went on to say when the boy was proceeding to whisper the story, "i am not bound to know what it is that pat carroll does, and what it is that your father suffers. do you go home, and keep your toe in your pump, as they say, and come to me for confession a day or two before christmas. and if any of them say anything to you about your religion, just sit quiet and bear it." the boy was then dismissed, and went home to his father's home, indifferent as to who might see him now, because he had come from the priest's house. but the terror of that man in the mask still clung to him; and mingled with that was the righteous fear, which still struck cold to his heart, of the wicked injury which he was doing his father. boy though he was, he knew well what truth and loyalty, and the bonds which should bind a family together, demanded from him. he was miserable with a woe which he had not known how to explain to the priest, as he thought of his terrible condition. at first pat carroll and his friends had recommended themselves to him. he had, in truth, only come on the scene of devastation down by the lough, by mere accident. but he had before heard that pat was an aggrieved man in reference to his rent, and had taken it into his boyish heart to sympathise with such sorrows. when pat had got hold of him on the spot, and had first exacted the promise of secrecy, florian had given it willingly. he had not expected to be questioned on the subject, and had not attributed the importance to it which it had afterwards assumed. he had since denied all knowledge of it, and was of course burdened with a boy's fear of having to acknowledge the falsehood. and now there had been added to it that awful scene in the cabin at headford, and on the top of that had come the priest's injunction. "in such a case as this i cannot absolve you from your word." it was so that the priest had addressed him, and there was something in it that struck his young mind with awe. there was the man in the mask tendering to him the oath upon the cross; and there had been pat carroll assuring him of that man's wrath. then there had come the other stranger, speaking out angrily, and promising to him all evil, were he to divulge a word. nevertheless, his conscience was so strong within him, that when he reached the castle he had almost made up his mind to tell his father everything. but just as he was about to enter the lodge gate, he was touched on the arm by a female. "master florian," said the female, "we is all in your hands." it was now dark night, and he could not even see the woman's face. she seemed indeed to keep her face covered, and yet he could see the gleam of her eyes. "you're one of us now, master florian." "i'm a catholic, if you mean that." "what else should i main? would ye be unthrue to your own people? do ye know what would happen you if ye commit such a sin as that? i tould them up there that you'd never bring down hell fire upon yer head, by such a deed as that. it isn't what ye can do to him he'll mind, i said, but the anger o' the blessed virgin. worn't it thrue for me what i said, master florian?" she held him in the dark, and he could see the glimmer of her eyes, and hear the whisper of her voice, and she frightened him with the fear of the world to come. as he made his way up to the hall door, it was not the dread of the man in the mask, so much as the fear inspired by this woman which made him resolve that, come what come might, he must stick to the lie which he had told. after breakfast the next morning, his father summoned him into his room. "now," said flory to himself, as he followed his father trembling,--"now must i be true." by this he meant that he must be true to his co-conspirators. if he were false to them, he would have to incur the anger of the blessed virgin. how this should be made to fall upon him, he did not in the least understand; but he did understand that the virgin as he had thought her, should be kind, and mild, and gracious. he had never stopped to think whether the curse as uttered by the woman, might or might not be true. of loyalty to his father he had thought much; but now he believed that it behoved him to think more of loyalty to the virgin, as defined by the woman in the dark. he followed his father into the magistrates' room, leaving his brother and two sisters in the parlour. he was glad that none of them were invited to accompany him, for he felt that his father was more prone to believe him, than were either his sisters or even his brother. "florian," said his father, "you know, do you not, the trouble to which i have been put about this man, pat carroll?" "yes, father; i know you have." "and the terrible loss which i have incurred! eighty acres are under water. i suppose the miscreant will have cost me between £ and £ ." "as much as that?" said florian, frightened by the magnitude of the sum named. "indeed he will. it is hard to calculate the extent of the malignity of a wicked man. whether the barony will share the loss with me i cannot yet say; but in either case the wickedness will be the same. there is no word bad enough for it. it is altogether damnable; and this is done by a man who calls me in question because of my religion." here the father paused, but florian stood by without an answer. if pat carroll was right in his religion, his father must be wrong; and florian thought that pat carroll was right. but he did not see how the two things were joined together,--the opening of the sluices, and the truth of pat carroll's religious convictions. "but bad as the matter is as regards pat carroll, it is all as nothing in reference to the accusation made against you." here the father came up, and laying his two hands on the boy's shoulders looked sadly into his face. "i cannot believe that my own boy, my darling boy, has joined in this evil deed against me!" here the father ceased and waited for his son to speak. the son remembered the determination to which he had come, and resolved to adhere to it. "i didn't," he said after a pause. "i cannot believe it of you; and yet, your sisters who are as true as steel, who are so good that i bless god morning and night that he in his mercy has left me such treasures,--they believe it." "they are against me because of my religion." "no, florian, not so; they disapprove of your change in religion, but they are not brought to accuse you by such a feeling. they say that they see it in your face." "how can they see all that in my face?" "that though you are lying persistently, you cannot hide from them that you are lying. they are not only good girls, but they have very sharp wits. a cleverer girl than edith, or one better able to read the truth of a boy's head, or even a man's, i have never known. i hardly dare to put my own judgment against hers." "in this case she knows nothing about it." "but to me it is of such vital importance! it is not simply that your evidence is needed to punish the man; i would let the man go and all the evil that he has done me. but not for any money that i could name would i entertain such an opinion of my son. were i convinced at this moment that you are innocent, i should be a happy man." "then you may, father." "but your manner is against you. you do not answer me with that appearance of frankness which i should have expected." "of course it all makes me very miserable. how can a fellow be frank when he's suspected like this?" "florian, do you give me your most solemn assurance that you saw nothing of this evil work while it was being perpetrated?" "yes, father." "you saw nothing, and you knew nothing?" "no, father." "you have no reason to accuse pat carroll, except by what you have heard?" "no, father." "nor anyone else?" "no, father." then mr. jones stood silent, looking at his son. and the more he looked the more he doubted him. when the boy had uttered "no, father," for the last time, mr. jones felt almost convinced--almost convinced that edith was right. "you may go now, florian," he said. and the boy departed, fully convinced that his father had disbelieved him. chapter iv. mr. blake of carnlough. three or four days after the occurrences narrated in the last chapter, mr. jones got on to his car and had himself driven down to carnlough, the seat of mr. thomas blake, a gentleman living about two miles the other side of tuam. to reach carnlough he had a journey to make of about ten miles, and as he seldom went, in these days, so far away from home, the fact of his going was known to all the household. "father is going to carnlough," florian said to peter, the butler. "what is he going for?" "'deed, then, master flory, who can tell that? mr. blake is a very old friend of master's." "but why is he going now? it isn't often he goes to carnlough; and when he does go, he is sure to say why." "i shouldn't wonder af he's going to ax him as to how he shall get rid of the waters." "he knows that better than mr. blake can tell him." "or maybe he's going to inquire how he shall cotch a hould of pat carroll." it was evident, from the butler's answers, that all the world at morony castle felt that at present mr. jones could engage himself on no other subject than that of the flood. "i wish father wouldn't think so much about the flood. after all, what's £ ? it won't ruin a man like my father." but the butler showed by his visage that he regarded £ as a very serious matter, and that he was not at all astonished by the occupation which it gave to his master's thoughts. mr. blake, of carnlough, was the first irishman with whom mr. jones had become acquainted in the county galway. it was through his instance, indeed, that the morony and ballintubber properties had been bought, so that the acquaintance must have been well established before the purchase had been made. mr. blake was a man of good property, who, in former years, had always been regarded as popular in the county. he was a protestant, but had not made himself odious to the roman catholics around him as an orangeman, nor had he ever been considered to be hard as a landlord. he thought, perhaps, a little too much of popularity, and had prided himself a little perhaps, on managing "his boys"--as he called the tenants--with peculiar skill. even still he could boast of his success, though there had arisen some little difficulties as to rent over at carnlough; and, indeed, he was frightened lest some of the evil ways which had begun to prevail in the neighbouring parts of county mayo, should make their way into county galway. mr. blake and mr. jones had been very intimate. it had been at mr. blake's instance that mr. jones had been brought on to the grand jury. but latterly they had not seen very much of each other. mr. jones, since the death of his wife, did not go frequently to galway, and carnlough was a long distance for a morning's drive. but on this occasion mr. jones drove himself over simply with the view of making a morning call. "well, jones, how are you;--and how are the girls, and how is frank, and how is that young pickle, master florian?" these questions were answered by others of a similar nature. "how are the girls, and how is mrs. blake, and what is going on here at carnlough?" there was no inquiry after the eldest son, for it was mr. blake's misfortune that he had no male child to inherit his property. "faith, then, things ain't going on a bit too well," said mr. blake. "abatement, abatement, nothing but abatement! nobody abates me anything. i have to pay all family charges just the same as ever. what would they say if i was to take away my wife and girls, shut up carnlough, and go and live in france? i could give them some abatement then and be a richer man. but how would they like to have carnlough empty?" "there's no danger of that, i think." "upon my word, i don't know. the girls are talking of it, and when they begin to talk of a thing, i am very likely to do it. and mrs. blake is quite ready." "you wouldn't leave the country?" "that's just it. i'll stay if they'll let me. if they'll pay me rent enough to enable me to live here comfortably, i'll not desert them. but if they think that i'm to keep up the place on borrowed money, they'll find their mistake. i didn't mind ten per cent. for the last two years, though i have taken to drinking whisky punch in my old age, instead of claret and sherry. and i don't mind ten per cent. for this year, though i am sorely in want of a young horse to carry me. but if the ten per cent. is to go on, or to become twenty per cent. as one blackguard hinted, i shall say good-bye to carnlough. they may fight it out then with terry daly as they can." now, terry daly was the well-known agent for the lands of carnlough. "what has brought you over here to-day?" asked mr. blake. "i can see with half an eye that there is some fresh trouble." "indeed there is." "i have heard what they did with your sluices. that's another trick they've learnt out of county mayo. when a landlord is not rich enough to give them all that they want, they make the matter easier by doing the best they can to ruin him. i don't think anything of that kind has been done at carnlough." "there is worse than that," said mr. jones sorrowfully. "the devil there is! they have not mutilated any of your cattle?" "no, there is nothing of that kind. the only enemy i've got about the place, as far as i know, is one pat carroll. it was he and others, whom he paid to serve him, that have let the waters in upon the meadows. eighty acres are under water at this moment. but i can bear that like a man. the worst of that is, that all the neighbours should have seen him do it, and not one of them have come forward to tell me." "that is the worst," said mr. blake. "there must be some terrible understanding among them, some compact for evil, when twenty men are afraid to tell what one man has been seen to do. it's fearful to think that the priests should not put a stop to it. how is master florian getting on with his priest?" "it's about him that i have come to speak to you," said mr. jones. "about florian?" "yes; indeed. when i tell you my story, i think you will understand that i would tell it to no one but yourself in county galway. i fear that florian saw the men at work upon the flood gates." "and will he not tell the truth?" "you must remember that i cannot say that i know anything. the boy declares that he saw nothing; that he knows nothing. i have no evidence; but his sisters are sure that it is so. edith says that he certainly was present when the gates were removed. she only judges from his manner and his countenance." "what made her suspect him?" asked mr. blake. "only that she saw him when the news was brought to us. edith is not ill-natured. she would not be prone to make a story against her brother." "if edith says so, it is so," said mr. blake, who among all edith's admirers was one of the most ardent. "i don't quite say that. i only mean to express my conviction that she intends to get at the truth." "i'll wager my life upon her," said mr. blake. "as to the other;--well, you know, jones, that he has turned roman catholic." "that means nothing," said the distressed father. "he is only ten years old. of course he's a fool for his pains; but he would not on that account do such a deed as this." "i don't know. you must remember that he will be telling everything to the priests." "we have two priests about us," said mr. jones, "and i would trust them in anything. there is father giles at headford, and he is as fair a man as any clergyman of our own could be. you cannot imagine that he would give such advice to my boy?" "not father giles certainly," said the other man. "then down with us at ballintubber there is father malachi." "i know him too," said mr. blake. "he would not interfere with a boy like florian. is there no one else? what curate lives with father malachi?" "there is none with him at ballintubber. one brosnan lives with father giles." "that man is a firebrand," said mr. blake. "he is a wretched politician, always preaching up home rule." "but i do not think that even he would teach a boy to deceive his own father in such a matter as this." "i am not sure," said blake. "it is very difficult to get at the vagaries of mind in such a man as mr. brosnan. but what do you intend to do?" "i have come to you for advice. but remember this:--in my present frame of mind, the suspicion that i feel as to poor florian is ten times worse to me than the loss of all my meadows. if i could find out edith to have been wrong, i should be at once relieved of the great trouble which sits heaviest at my heart." "i fear that edith is right," said mr. blake. "you are prejudiced a little in her favour. whatever she says you will think right." "you must weigh that, and take it for what it's worth," said mr. blake. "we know that the boy has got himself into bad hands. you do not suspect him of a desire to injure you?" "oh, no!" said the father. "but he has seen these men do it, and now refuses to tell you. they have terrified him." "he is not a cowardly boy," said mr. jones, still standing up for his son. "but they have made him swear an oath that he will not tell. there has been something of that sort. what does he say himself?" "simply that he knows nothing about it." "but how does he say it? does he look you in the face? a boy of that kind may lie. boys do--and girls also. when people say they don't, they know nothing about it; but if it's worth one's while to look at them one can generally tell when they're lying. i'm not a bit afraid of a boy when he is lying,--but only of one who can lie as though he didn't lie." "i think that florian is lying," said mr. jones slowly; "he does not look me in the face, and he does not lie straightforward." "then edith is right; and i am right when i swear by her." "but what am i to do with him? if, as i suppose, he saw pat carroll do the mischief, he must have seen others with him. if we knew who were the lot, we could certainly get the truth out of some of them, so as to get evidence for a conviction." "can't he be made to speak?" asked mr. blake. "how can i make him? it will be understood all about morony that he has been lying. and i feel that it is thought that he has made himself a hero by sticking to his lie. if they should turn upon him?" mr. blake sat silent but made no immediate reply. "it would be better for me to let the whole thing slide. if they were to kill him!" "they would not do that. here in county galway they have not come to that as yet. there is not a county in all ireland in which such a deed could be done," said mr. blake, standing up for his country. "are you to let this ruffian pass unpunished while you have the power of convicting him? i think that you are bound to punish him. for the sake of your country you are bound to do so." "and the boy?" said mr. jones hoarsely. "he is but ten years old, and will soon live it down. and the disgrace of the lie will be drowned in the triumph of telling the truth at last. we should all feel,--i should feel,--that he would in such case deserve well, rather than ill, of his father and of me, and of all of us. besides you had some idea of sending him to school in england." here mr. jones shook his head, intending to indicate that no such expensive step as that would be possible after the loss incurred by the flooding of the eighty acres. "at any rate my advice to you is to make him declare the truth. i think little harm of a boy for lying, but i do think harm of those who allow a lie to pass unnoticed." so saying mr. blake ended the meeting, and took mr. jones away to see mrs. blake and the girls. "i do suppose that father has gone to carnlough, to consult with mr. blake about this affair of the flood." it was thus that ada spoke to her brother florian, when he came to her discussing the matter of their father's absence. "what can mr. blake know about it?" said florian. "i suppose he means to ask about you. it is quite clear, florian, that no one in the house believes you." "peter does." "you mean that peter thinks you are right to stand to the lie now you have told it. more shame for peter if he does." "you wouldn't have a fellow go and put himself out of favour with all the boys through the country? there is a horrible man that wears a mask--" then he remembered, and stopped himself. he was on closer terms with ada than with edith, but not on terms so close as to justify his whispering a word about the man in the mask. "where did you see the man in the mask?" asked ada. "who is the man in the mask?" "i don't know." "but you know where you saw him. you must know that. what did the man in the mask say to you?" "i am not going to tell you anything about him," said the boy. "i am not going to have my secrets got out of me in that way. it isn't honest. nobody but a protestant would do it." so saying florian left his sister, with the tale of the man in the mask only half told. chapter v. mr. o'mahony and his daughter. we must now turn to another personage in our story, and tell our readers something of the adventures and conditions of this gentleman;--something also of his daughter. the adventures of her early life will occupy much of our time and many of our pages; and though her father may not be so interesting as it is hoped that she will become, still he was so peculiar in his modes of thought, and so honest, though by no means wise, in his manner of thinking, as to make his story also perhaps worth the telling. gerald o'mahony was at the time of the flooding of mr. jones's meadows not much more than forty years old. but he was already the father of a daughter nearly twenty. where he was born, from what parents, or to what portion of ireland his family belonged, no one knew. he himself had been heard to declare a suspicion that his father had come from county kerry. but as he himself had been, according to his own statement, probably born in the united states, the county to which his father had belonged is not important. he had been bred up as a roman catholic, but had long since thrown over all the prejudices of his religion. he had married when he was quite young, and had soon lost his wife. but in talking of her now he always described her as an angel. but though he looked to be so young as to be his daughter's brother, rather than her father, he had never thought of marrying again. his daughter he declared was everything to him. but those who knew him well said that politics were dearer to him even than his daughter. since he had been known in county galway, he had passed and repassed nearly a dozen times between new york and ireland; and his daughter had twice come with him. he had no declared means, but he had never been known to borrow a shilling, or to leave a bill unpaid. but he had frequently said aloud that he had no money left, and that unless he returned to his own country he and his daughter must be taken in by some poor-house. for mr. o'mahony, fond as he was of ireland, allowed no one to say that he was an irishman. but his troubles were apparently no troubles to him. he was always good-humoured, and seemed always to be happy--except when in public, when he was engaged upon politics. then he would work himself up to such a state of indignant anger as seemed to be altogether antagonistic to good-humour. the position he filled,--or had filled,--was that of lecturer on behalf of the united states. he had lectured at manchester, at glasgow, at liverpool, and lately all over ireland. but he had risen to such a height of wrath in advocating the doctrine of republicanism that he had been stopped by the police. he had been held to have said things disrespectful of the queen. this he loudly denied. he had always, he said, spoken of the queen's virtues, her graces, and general fitness for her high office. he had declared,--and this was true,--that of all kings and queens of whom he had read in history she was the best. but, he had gone on to say there should be no king or queen. the practice was an absurdity. the reverence paid even to the high office was such as, in his idea, degraded a man. even in america, the kotooing which took place before the president's toe was to him an abomination. no man in accordance with his theory should worship another man. titles should only be used as indicative of a man's trade or occupation. as one man was mr. general grant, another man should be mr. bricklayer green. he could not do away with the queen. but for the woman, he was quite disposed to worship her. all women were to be worshipped, and it was a privilege of a man to worship a woman. when a woman possessed so many virtues as did the queen of england, it became a man's duty to worship them. but it was a woman whom he would worship, and not the queen. this was carried to such a length, and he was so eloquent on the subject that the police were desired to interfere, and he was made to hold his tongue,--at any rate as far as england and ireland were concerned. he had made galway a kind of centre home, attracted thither by the friendship which his daughter had made with ada and edith jones. for though ada and edith were by no means republican in their thoughts and feelings, it had come to pass that they dearly loved the american girl who was so. rachel o'mahony had frequently been at morony castle, as had also her father; and mr. jones had taken delight in controverting the arguments of the american, because, as he had said, the american had been unselfish and true. but since his lecturing had been stopped, it had become necessary that he should go elsewhere to look for means of livelihood, and he had now betaken himself to london for that purpose,--a circumstance which will be explained at greater length as the story progresses. republicanism was not the only matter in his political creed to which gerald o'mahony was devoted. though he was no irishman, as he delighted to intimate, his heart was irish; and during his various visits to the country, he had filled his bosom with thoughts of irish wrongs. no educated man was ever born and bred in more utter ignorance of all political truths than this amiable and philanthropic gentleman. in regard to ireland his theory was that the land should be taken from the present proprietors, and divided among the peasants who tilled it. when asked what should be done with the present owners, he was quite ready with his answer: "let them be paid for the property by the state!" he would have no man injured to the extent of a shilling. when asked where the state was to get the money, he declared that that was a mere detail. states did get money. as for the landlords themselves, with the money in their pockets, let them emigrate to the united states, if they were in want of something to do. as to the division of the land,--that he said would settle itself. one man would have ten acres, and another fifty; but that would be fair, because one man had been used to pay for ten, and another to pay for fifty. as for the men who got no land in the scramble he could see no injustice. the man who chanced to have been a tenant for the last twelve months, must take the benefit of his position. no doubt such man could sell his land immediately after he got it, because freedom of sale was one of the points of his charter. he could see the injustice of giving the land at a rent fixed by the state, because the state has no right to interfere in ordinary contracts between man and man. but if the land was to be given up without any rent, then he could see no injustice. thus, and thus only, could ireland be made to return to the beauty and the grace of her original simplicity. but on the wrongs arising from the want of home rule he was warmer even than on those which the land question had produced. "why should ireland be governed by a british parliament, a british lord-lieutenant, a british chief-secretary, a british commander-in-chief, and trodden under foot by a british soldiery? why should scotland be so governed, why should wales, why should yorkshire?" mr. jones would reply, "repeal the unions; restore the heptarchy!" mr. o'mahony had but a confused idea of what the heptarchy had been. but he was sure that it would be for the benefit of ireland, that irish knives should be made of irish steel. "as undoubtedly would have been the case if the question of protection were to be left to an irish parliament to settle," said mr. jones. "heaven help the man who would want to cut his mutton. his best chance would be that he would soon have no mutton to cut." so the dispute was carried on with much warmth on one side, and with many arguments on the other, but without any quarrelling. it was impossible to quarrel with o'mahony, who was thoroughly unselfish, and desirous of no violence. when he had heard what had been done in reference to mr. jones's meadows, and had been told of the suspected conduct of pat carroll, he was as indignant as though he had himself been a landed proprietor, or even an orangeman. and on mr. jones's part there was a desire to do justice to all around him, which came within the capacity of o'mahony's vision. he knew that mr. jones himself was a fair-dealing, honest gentleman, and he could not, therefore, quarrel with him. there is a steamer running from the town of galway, across lough corrib, to the little village of cong, on the mayo side of the lake, which stops and picks up passengers within a mile of morony castle. from this, passengers are landed, so that the means of transit between galway and mr. jones's house are peculiarly easy. up and down by this steamer ada and edith jones had frequently gone to visit their friend, and as frequently that friend had come to visit them. but unfortunately the steamer had been open to others besides the young ladies, and rachel o'mahony had found a dearer friend than either of the girls at morony castle. it had come to pass that frank jones and rachel o'mahony had declared themselves to be engaged. on no such ground as want of wealth, or want of family, or want of education, had mr. jones based his objection to the match; but there had been a peculiarity in the position of rachel which had made him hesitate. it was not that she was an american, but such an american! it was not that he was a republican, but such a republican! and she was more anxious to carry frank away with her to the united states, and to join him in a political partnership with her father, than to come and settle herself down at the castle. thus there had arisen an understanding on the part of the young people, that, though they were engaged, they were engaged without the consent of the young man's father. rachel therefore was not to be brought to the castle while frank was there. to all this rachel's father had assented, in a smiling indifferent manner, half intended to ridicule all who were concerned. as it was not a question of politics, mr. o'mahony could not work himself up to any anger, or apparently even to anxiety in the matter. "your young people,"--here he meant english and irish generally,--"are taught to think they should begin the world where we leave it off." "your young people are just as fond of what money will buy as are ours," said mr. jones. "but they are fonder of one another, even, than of money. when they love one another they become engaged. then they marry. and as a rule they don't starve. as a rule people with us seldom do starve. as for making out an income for a young man to start with, that with us is quite out of the question. frank some day will have this property." "that won't give him much of an income," said mr. jones, who since the affair of the flood had become very despondent in reference to the estate. "then he's as well off now as ever he will be, and might as well marry the girl." but all this was said with no eagerness. "they are merely boy and girl as yet," said mr. jones. "i was married, and rachel was born before i was frank's age." so saying, mr. o'mahony consented to come to morony castle, and bid them adieu, without bringing his girl with him. this was hard upon ada and edith, as mr. frank, of course, went into galway as often as he pleased, and made his adieu after his own fashion. and there had come up another cause which had created further objections to the marriage in mr. jones's mind. mr. o'mahony had declared that as his lecturing was brought to an end by the police, he must throw himself upon rachel's capabilities for earning some money. rachel's capabilities had been often discussed at the castle, but with various feelings on the three sides into which the party had formed themselves. all the jones's were on one side, and declared that the capability had better not be exercised. in this they were probably wrong;--but it was their opinion. they had lived for many years away from london. the children had so lived all their lives; and they conceived that prejudices still existed which had now been banished or nearly banished from the world. mr. o'mahony, who formed another party, thought that the matter was one of supreme indifference. as long as he could earn money by lecturing it was well that he should earn it. it was always better that the men of a family should work than the women; but, if the man's talent was of no use, then it might be well to fall back upon the woman. he only laughed at the existence of a prejudice in the matter. he himself had no prejudices. he regarded all prejudices as the triumph of folly over education. but rachel, who was the third party in the discussion, had a very strong feeling of her own. she was of opinion that if the capability in question existed, it ought to be exercised. on that subject,--her possession of the capability,--she entertained, she said, strong doubts. but if the capability existed it certainly ought to be used. that was rachel's opinion, expressed with all the vigour which she knew how to throw into the subject. this capability had already been exercised in new york, where it had been efficacious, though the effect had not been great. she had been brought up to sing, and great things had been promised of her voice. an american manager had thought much of her performance, though she had hitherto, he said, been young, and had not come to the strength of her throat. but he had himself seen to her education, almost as a child, and had been sure that sooner or later she would do great things in the musical world. mr. mahomet m. moss was the gentleman in question, and he at present was in london. that such a voice as rachel o'mahony's should be lost to the world, was to his thinking a profanity, an indecency, an iniquity, a wasting of god's choicest gifts, and an abomination not to be thought of; for mr. mahomet m. moss was in the affairs of his own profession a most energetic gentleman. rachel rather turned up her nose at mr. mahomet m. moss; but she was very anxious to go to london and to take her chance, and to do something, as she said, laughing, just to keep her father's pot a little on the boil;--but for mr. mahomet m. moss she did not care one straw. mr. o'mahony was therefore ready to start on the journey, and had now come to morony castle to say farewell to his friend mr. jones. "are you sure about that fellow moss?" said mr. jones. "what do you call sure about him? he's as big a swindler, i guess, as you shall find from here to himself." "and are you going to put rachel into his hands?" "well, i think so;--after a sort of fashion. he'll swindle her out of three parts of what she earns;--but she'll get the fourth part. it's always the way with a young girl when she's first brought out." "i don't mean about money. will you leave her conduct in his hands?" "he'll be a clever chap who'll undertake to look after rachel's conduct. i guess she'll conduct herself mostly." "you'll be there to be sure," said mr. jones. "yes, i shall be there; and she'll conduct me too. very likely." "but, mr. o'mahony,--as a father!" "i know pretty well what you would be saying. our young folk grow old quicker a long sight than yours do. now your girls here are as sweet as primroses out of the wood. but rachel is like a rose that has been brought up to stand firm on its own bush. i'm not a bit afraid of her. nor yet is your son. she looks as though you might blow her away with the breath from your mouth. you try her, and you'll find that she'll want a deal of blowing." "does not a young girl lose something of the aroma of her youth by seeing too much of the world too soon?" "how old do you expect her to be when she's to die?" "rachel! how can i tell? she is only as yet entering upon life, and her health seems to be quite confirmed." "the best confirmed i ever knew in my life. she never has a day's illness. taking all the chances one way and another, shall we say sixty?" "more than that, i should think," said mr. jones. "say sixty. she may fall down a trap in the theatre, or be drowned in one of your cunarders." "the cunard steamers never drown anybody," said mr. jones. "well, then, a white star--or any cockle-shell you may please to name. we'll put her down for sixty as an average." "i don't know what you are driving at," said mr. jones. "she has lived a third of her life already, and you expect her to know nothing, so that the aroma may still cling to her. aroma does very well for earls' daughters and young marchionesses, though as far as i can learn, it's going out of fashion with them. what has an american girl to do with aroma, who's got her bread to earn? she's got to look to her conduct, and to be sharp at the same time. mr. mahomet m. moss will rob her of seventy-five cents out of every dollar for the next twelve months. in three years' time he'll rob her of nothing. only that she knows what conduct means, he'd have to look very sharp to keep his own." "it is not natural," said mr. jones. "but it's american. marvels are not natural, and we are marvellous people. i don't know much about aroma, but i think you'll find rachel will come out of the washing without losing much colour in the process." then the two friends parted, and mr. o'mahony went back to galway, preparatory to his journey to london. chapter vi. rachel and her lovers. on the day following that of o'mahony's return to galway, he, and his daughter, and frank jones were together at the galway station preparatory to the departure of the o'mahonys for dublin and london. "i guess you two have got something to say to each other, so i'll leave you to yourselves," said the father. "i guess we have," said rachel, "so if you'll wait here we'll come to you when the cars are fixed." so saying, rachel put her hand on her lover's arm and walked off with him along the platform. rachel o'mahony had not been badly described when her father said of her that she looked as though she might be blown away. she was very fair, and small and frail to look at. her father had also said of her that her health was remarkably good,--"the best confirmed that he had ever known in his life." but though this too, was true, she hardly looked it. no one could have pointed out any sign of malady about her; only one would have said that there was nothing of her. and the colour on her face was so evanescent that he who watched her was inclined to think that she herself was like her colour. and she moved as though she was always on the vanishing point. "i'm very fond of eating," she had been heard to say. "i know it's vulgar; but it's true." no doubt she was fond of eating, but so is a sparrow. there was nothing she would not attempt to do in the way of taking exercise. she would undertake very long walks, and would then fail, and declare that she must be carried home; but she would finally get through the day's work better than another woman who appeared to have double her strength. her feet and hands were the tiniest little adjuncts to a grown human body that could be seen anywhere. they looked at least to be so. but they were in perfect symmetry with her legs and arms. "i wish i were bigger," she had once been heard to say, "because i could hit a man." the man to whom she alluded was mr. mahomet m. moss. "i sometimes want to hit a woman, but that would be such a small triumph." and yet she had a pride in her little female fineries. "now, frank," she had once said, "i guess you won't get another woman in all galway to put her foot into that boot; nor yet in new york either." "i don't think i could," said the enraptured frank. "you'd better take it to new york and try, and if you find the lady you can bring her back with you." frank refused the commission, saying something of course very pretty as to his mistress's foot. "ten buttons! these only have eight," she said, objecting to a present which her lover had just brought her. "if i had ten buttons, and the gloves to fit me, i'd cut my arm off and put it under a glass case. lovers are sent out to do all possible and impossible things in order to deserve their lady-loves. you shall go and wander about till you find a glove with ten buttons to fit me, then i'll consent to be mrs.----jones." by all of which little manoeuvres frank was charmed and oppressed to the last degree. when she would call herself the "future mrs.----jones," he would almost feel inclined to abandon both the name and the property. "why not be mrs. morony," rachel would say, "or mrs. ballintubber? the ballintubber, of ballintubber, would sound exquisitely, and then i should always be called 'madam.'" her beauty was all but perfect, as far as symmetry was concerned, only that there was not enough of it; and for the perfection of female beauty a tone of colour is, methinks, needed somewhat darker than that which prevailed with rachel o'mahony. her hair was so light that one felt it rather than saw it, as one feels the sunlight. it was soft and feathery, as is the under plumage on the wings of some small tropical birds. "a lock of my hair!" she had once said to frank; "but it will all go into nothing. you should have paid your vows to some girl who could give you a good lump of hair fit to stuff a pillow with. if you have mine you will think in a few weeks that the spiders have been there and have left their dust behind." but she gave him the lock of hair, and laid it on his lips with her own little hands. there was not enough of her beauty. even in touching her a lover could not but feel that he had to deal with a little child. in looking at her he could only look down upon her. it was not till she spoke, and that her words came to his assistance, that he found that he had to deal with one who was not altogether a child. "mr. mahomet m. moss declares his opinion that i shall be seen above the gaslights. it was very civil and complimentary of mahomet m. m. but i mean to make myself heard. mahomet m. m. did not seem to think of this." since frank had known her she had taken every opportunity in her power of belittling mahomet m. m., as she was wont to call mr. moss. frank jones was, in truth, a handsome stalwart young man, clever enough for the world, who thought a good deal of himself, and who thought very much more of the girl whom he loved. it was chiefly because he was absolutely unlike an american that rachel o'mahony had come to love him. who does not know the "got up" look of the gentleman from the other side of the water, who seems to know himself to be much better than his father, and infinitely superior to his grandfather; who is always ready to make a speech on every occasion, and who feels himself to be fit company for a prime minister as soon as he has left school. probably he is. young jones was not so; and it was on account of this deficiency that rachel prized him. "i'm not like a young girl myself," she had said to her father, "but i do love a jolly nice boy. with us at sixteen, they are all but decrepit old men, and yet they are such little monkeys." "for a little monkey, what do you think of yourself?" her father had replied. but the conversation then had not gone any further. "i know you'll be after me before long," rachel said to frank, as they walked up and down the platform together. "if i do, i shall ask you to marry me at once," he replied. "i shall never do that without your father's leave." "is that the way they manage things in america?" "it's the way i shall manage them here," said rachel. "i'm in the unfortunate position of having three papas to whom i must attend. there is papa o'mahony--" "you will never be incommoded much by him," he replied. "he is the least potent of the three, no doubt. then there is papa jones. he is absolutely omnipotent in this matter. he would not let me come down to castle morony for fear i should contaminate you all. i obeyed without even daring to feel the slightest snub, and if i were married to-morrow, i should kiss his toe in token of respect, and with a great deal more affection than i should kiss your half-bearded lips, sir." here frank got a hold of her hand beneath his arm, and gave it a squeeze. "he is the real old-fashioned father in the play, who is expected to come out at last with a hundred thousand dollars and his blessing." "and who is the third papa?" "don't you know? mahomet m. moss. he is the third papa--if only he would consent to remain in that comparatively humble position." here frank listened to her words with sharp ears, but he said nothing at the moment. "mahomet m. moss is at any rate my lord and master for the present." "not whilst i am alive," said frank. "but he is. there is no use in rebelling. you are not my lord and master until you have gone through a certain ceremony. i wish you were. will that satisfy you?" "there is something in the name of lord and master which a girl shouldn't apply to anyone but to him who is to be her husband." "fiddlestick! mr. lord and master that is to be, but is not as yet. but he is, in many respects. i don't think, frank, you can imagine the horror i feel in reference to that vilest of human beings. i shall carry a dagger with me, in order to have it ready for any occasion." "what does he do? you shall not go to be subjected to such danger and such annoyance." she turned round, and looked up into his face as with derision. "the annoyance no doubt will be mine, frank, and must be endured; the danger will be his, i think. nor shall i use the dagger that i spoke of. i can look at him, and i can make him hear my voice, in spite of the smallness of my stature. but there is no one in this world whom i detest as i do that greasy jew. it is not for what he does, but that i simply detest him. he makes love to me." "what!" "oh! he does. you needn't look like that. you needn't be a bit jealous." "i shall come over at once." "and knock him on the head! you had better not do that, because we want to make some money by his means. as a lover i can keep him at a distance. i wish i could do so to you, mr. jones." "why do you wish to keep me at a distance?" "because you know how to be troublesome. it is much harder to keep a lover at a distance when you really love him with all your heart"--here she looked up into his face and squeezed his arm, and nearly made him mad for the moment--"than a beast like that, who is no better than a toad to you. there, do you see that ugly old man there?" she pointed to a cross-looking old gentleman of sixty, who was scolding a porter violently. "why aren't you jealous of that man?" "you never saw him before." "that's just the reason. he may be worth my affection, but i know that that mahomet m. m. is not. you begin with the most bitter hatred on my part. i don't hate that old gentleman. i rather like him on the whole, though he was so cross. at any rate he's not a greasy jew. papa says that hating jews is a prejudice. loving you is a prejudice, i suppose." "my darling!" "you can't suppose you are the best man i ever saw, can you?" "it's a sort of thing we are not to reason about." "then it's a prejudice. i'm prejudiced against mahomet m. m. i'm equally prejudiced in favour of mr. jones, junior, of ballintubber. it's horrible to be troubled by the one." "well!" "well! there's nothing more coming, mr. jones. only don't you come over in any of your fits of jealousy, or you'll have to be sent back again. you're not my lord and master--yet." "i wish i were." "so do i. what more do you want than that? i don't believe there's another girl in new york would say as much to you,--nor yet in county galway." "but what does he say to you?" "well; just the kind of things that you never say. and he certainly never does the kind of things which you do; and that, mr. jones, is an improvement. but papa is in a hurry, and i shouldn't wonder if the train didn't go on in a quarter of an hour. i'll write to you about mahomet m. m.; and if i behave very badly, such as prodding him with the dagger, or something of that sort, then i will let you know the details. you can't do it here, so you may as well go." so saying, she jumped into the carriage, and the train had started before frank jones had begun to think whether he could do it there or no. "he's a good fellow, take him all round," said mr. o'mahony, when the carriages had left the station. "as good as the rest of them." "i think he is better." "of course we all think so of our own. why should he be better than any other young lady's mr. jones? i don't suppose he is better; but we'll endeavour to believe that he is up to the average." "is that all that you've got to say for him, rachel?" "what! to you? not exactly--if i am to speak the solid truth; which i don't see why i should have to do, even to my own father. i do think him above the average. i think him so much above the average as to be the best of all. but why? simply because i believe him when he says he wants to marry me, and make me his companion for life. and then there's an affinity between us which god certainly manages. why should i trust him in every detail of life with a perfect faith, and not trust mr. mahomet m. moss to the extent of half-a-crown? if he were to ask me for everything i have in the world, i should give it to him, without a thought except of his goodness in taking care of it for me. i wouldn't let mahomet m. moss have a dollar of mine without giving me his bond. papa, there will be a row between me and mr. mahomet m. moss, and so it's well to put you on your guard." "what sort of a row, my dear?" "a very rowy row. i don't mean about dollars, for you'll have to manage that just at first. when we have got into the running, i think i shall have something to say on that subject too." "what row do you mean?" "he'll misbehave himself. he always does, more or less." "the poor fellow can't open his mouth without your saying that he misbehaves himself." "that's quite true; he can't. he can't brush his hair, or tie his cravat, or settle his pantaloons, without misbehaving himself. he certainly can't look out of his eye without gross misbehaviour." "what is he to do then?" said mr. o'mahony. "nature has imbued him with all these peculiarities, and you are fantastic to find fault with him." "perhaps so--but then i am fantastic. when you've got a dirty coat on, or frank, i don't find fault with it; but when he's got a clean coat, i writhe at him in my disgust. yet, upon the whole, i like men to have clean coats." "but you haven't said how the row is to come." "because i don't know; but it will come. it won't be about his coat, nor yet his hat, unless he puts it close down under my nose. my time, as i understand, is to be at his disposal." "there will be an agreement made as to all that." "an agreement as to my performances. i quite understand that i must be present at fixed times at the theatre, and that he must fix them. that will not worry me; particularly if you will go to the theatre with me." "of course i will do that when you want it." "but he is to come to me with his beastly lessons. am i to have no relief from that?" "the hours can be fixed." "but they won't be fixed. there's no doubt that he understands his trade. he can make me open my mouth and keep it open. and he can tell me when i sing false or flat. providence when she gave him that horrid head of hair, did give him also the peculiarity of a fine ear. i think it is the meanest thing out for a man to be proud of that. if you can run a straight furrow with a plough it is quite as great a gift." "that is nonsense, my dear. such an ear as mr. moss's is very rare." "a man who can see exactly across an entire field is just as rare. i don't see the difference. nor when a woman sings do i respect her especially because of her voice. when a man can write a poem like homer, or rule a country like washington, there is something to say for him. i shall tell him that i will devote one hour a day to practising, and no more." "that will settle the difficulty; if it be enough." "but during that hour, there is to be no word spoken except what has to do with the lessons. you'll bear me out in that?" "there must be some give and take in regard to ordinary conversation." "you don't know what a beast he is, papa. what am i to do if he tells me to my face that i'm a beautiful young woman?" "tell him that you are quite aware of the fact, but that it is a matter you do not care to talk about." "and then he'll simper. you do not know what a vile creature he can be. i can take care of myself. you needn't be a bit afraid about that. i fancy i could give him a slap on the face which would startle him a little. and if we came to blows, i do believe that he would not have a leg to stand upon. he is nearly fifty." "my dear!" "say forty. but i do believe a good shove would knock him off his nasty little legs. i used to think he wore a wig; but no hairdresser could be such a disgrace to his profession to let such a wig as that go out of his shop." "i always regarded him as a good-looking young man," said mr. o'mahony. here rachel shook her head, and made a terrible grimace. "it's all fancy you know," continued he. "i suppose it is. but if you hear that i have told him that i regard him as a disgusting monkey, you must not be surprised." this was the last conversation which mr. o'mahony and his daughter had respecting mahomet m. moss, till they reached london. chapter vii. brown's. when mr. o'mahony and his daughter stepped out of the train on the platform at euston square, they were at once encountered by mr. mahomet m. moss. "oh, dear!" ejaculated miss o'mahony, turning back upon her father. "cannot you get rid of him?" mr. o'mahony, without a word of reply to his daughter, at once greeted mr. moss most affectionately. "yes, my bird is here--as you see. you have taken a great deal of trouble in coming to meet us." mr. moss begged that the trouble might be taken as being the greatest pleasure he had ever had in his life. "nothing could be too much to do for miss o'mahony." he had had, he said, the wires at work, and had been taught to expect them by this train. would miss o'mahony condescend to take a seat in the carriage which was waiting for her? she had not spoken a word, but had laid fast hold of her father's arm. "i had better look after the luggage," said the father, shaking the daughter off. "perhaps mr. moss will go with you," said she;--and at the moment she looked anything but pleasant. mr. moss expressed his sense of the high honour which was done him by her command, but suggested that she should seat herself in the carriage. "i will stand here under this pillar," she said. and as she took her stand it would have required a man with more effrontery than mr. moss possessed, to attempt to move her. we have seen miss o'mahony taking a few liberties with her lover, but still very affectionate. and we have seen her enjoying the badinage of perfect equality with her papa. there was nothing then of the ferocious young lady about her. young ladies,--some young ladies,--can be very ferocious. miss o'mahony appeared to be one of them. as she stood under the iron post waiting till her father and mr. moss returned, with two porters carrying the luggage, the pretty little fair, fly-away rachel looked as though she had in her hand the dagger of which she had once spoken, and was waiting for an opportunity to use it. "is your maid here, miss o'mahony?" asked mr. moss. "i haven't got a maid," said rachel, looking at him as though she intended to annihilate him. they all seated themselves in the carriage with their small parcels, leaving their luggage to come after them in a cab which mr. moss had had allowed to him. but they, the o'mahonys, knew nothing of their immediate destination. it had been clearly the father's business to ask; but he was a man possessed of no presence of mind. suddenly the idea struck rachel, and she called out with a loud voice, "father, where on earth are we going?" "i suppose mr. moss can tell us." "you are going to apartments which i have secured for miss o'mahony at considerable trouble," said mr. moss. "the theatres are all stirring." "but we are not going to live in a theatre." "the ladies of the theatres find only one situation convenient. they must live somewhere in the neighbourhood of the strand. i have secured two sitting-rooms and two bedrooms on the first floor, overlooking the views at brown's." "won't they cost money?" asked the father. "of course they will," said rachel. "what fools we have been! we intended to go to some inn for one night till we could find a fitting place,--somewhere about gower street." "gower street wouldn't do at all," said mr. moss. "the distance from everything would be very great." two ideas passed at that moment through rachel's mind. the first was that the distance might serve to keep mr. moss out of her sitting-room, and the second was that were she to succeed in doing this, she might be forced to go to his sitting-room. "i think gower street would be found to be inconvenient, miss o'mahony." "bloomsbury square is very near. here we are at the hotel. now, father, before you have anything taken off the carriages, ask the prices." then mr. moss, still keeping his seat, made a little speech. "i think if miss o'mahony would allow me, i would counsel her against too rigid an economy. she will have heard of the old proverb,--'a penny wise and a pound foolish.'" "'cut your coat according to your cloth,' i have heard of that too; and i have heard of 'burning a candle at both ends.'" "'you shouldn't spoil your ship for a ha'porth of tar,'" said mr. moss with a smile, which showed his idea, that he had the best of the argument. "it won't matter for one night," said mr. o'mahony, getting out of the carriage. half the packages had been already taken off the cab. rachel followed her father, and without attending to mr. moss got hold of her father in the street. "i don't like the look of the house at all, father, you don't know what the people would be up to. i shall never go to sleep in this house." mr. moss, with his hat off, was standing in the doorway, suffused, as to his face, with a bland smile. it may be as well to say at once that the house was all that an hotel ought to be, excepting, perhaps, that the prices were a little high. the two sitting-rooms and the two bedrooms--with the maid's room, which had also been taken--did seem to be very heavy to rachel, who knew down to a shilling--or rather, to a dollar, as she would have said--how much her father had in his pocket. indefinite promises of great wealth had been also made to herself; but according to a scale suggested by mr. moss, a pound a night, out of which she would have to keep herself, was the remuneration immediately promised. then a sudden thought struck miss o'mahony. they were still standing discussing the price in one of the sitting-rooms, and mr. moss was also there. "father," she said, "i'm sure that frank would not approve." "i don't think that he would feel himself bound to interfere," said mr. o'mahony. "when a young woman is engaged to a young man it does make a difference," she replied, looking mr. moss full in the face. "the happy man," said mr. moss, still bowing and smiling, "would not be so unreasonable as to interfere with the career of his fair _fiancée_." "if we stay here very long," said rachel, still addressing her father, "i guess we should have to pawn our watches. but here we are for the present, and here we must remain. i am awfully tired now, and should so like to have a cup of tea--by ourselves." then mr. moss took his leave, promising to appear again upon the scene at eleven o'clock on the following day. "thank you," said rachel, "you are very kind, but i rather think i shall be out at eleven o'clock." "what is the use of your carrying on like that with the man?" said her father. "because he's a beast." "my dear, he's not a beast. he's not a beast that you ought to treat in that way. you'll be a beast too if you come to rise high in your profession. it is a kind of work which sharpens the intellect, but is apt to make men and women beasts. did you ever hear of a prima donna who thought that another prima donna sang better than she did?" "i guess that all the prima donnas sing better than i do." "but you have not got to the position yet. mr. moss, i take it, was doing very well in new york, so as to have become a beast, as you call him. but he's very good-natured." "he's a nasty, stuck-up, greasy jew. a decent young woman is insulted by being spoken to by him." "what made you tell him that you were engaged to frank jones?" "i thought it might protect me--but it won't. i shall tell him next time that i am frank's wife. but even that will not protect me." "you will have to see him very often." "and very often i shall have to be insulted. i guess he does the same kind of thing with all the singing girls who come into his hands." "give it up, rachel." "i don't mind being insulted so much as some girls do, you know. i can't fancy an english girl putting up with him--unless she liked to do as he pleased. i hate him;--but i think i can endure him. the only thing is, whether he would turn against me and rend me. then we shall come utterly to the ground, here in london." "give it up." "no! you can lecture and i can sing, and it's odd if we can't make one profession or the other pay. i think i shall have to fight with him, but i won't give it up. what i am afraid is that frank should appear on the scene. and then, oh law! if mr. moss should get one blow in the eye!" there she sat, sipping her tea and eating her toast, with her feet upon the fender, while mr. o'mahony ate his mutton-chop and drank his whisky and water. "father, now i'm coming back to my temper, i want something better than this buttered toast. could they get me a veal cutlet, or a bit of cold chicken?" a waiter was summoned. "and you must give me a little bit of ham with the cold chicken. no, father; i won't have any wine because it would get into my head, and then i should kill mr. mahomet m. moss." "my dear," said her father when the man had left the room, "do you wish to declare all your animosities before the waiter?" "well, yes, i think i do. if we are to remain here it will be better that they should all know that i regard this man as my schoolmaster. i know what i'm about; i don't let a word go without thinking of it." then again they remained silent, and mr. o'mahony pretended to go to sleep--and eventually did do so. he devoted himself for the time to home rule, and got himself into a frame of mind in which he really thought of ireland. "the first flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea." why should she not be so? she had all the sentiment necessary, all the poetry, all the eloquence, all the wit. and then when he was beginning to think whether something more than sentiment and eloquence were not necessary, he went to sleep. but rachel was not sleeping. her thoughts were less stationary than her father's, and her ideas more realistic. she had been told that she could sing, and she had sung at new york with great applause. and she had gone on studying, or rather practising, the art with great diligence. she had already become aware that practice was more needed than study. all, nearly all, this man could teach her was to open her mouth. nature had given her an ear, and a voice, if she would work hard so as to use it. it was there before her. but it had seemed to her that her career was clogged with the necessary burden of mr. moss. mr. moss had got hold of her, and how should she get rid of him? he was the old man of the sea, and how should she shake him off? and then there was present to her alone a vision of frank jones. to live at morony castle and be frank jones's wife, would not that be sweeter than to sing at a theatre under the care of mr. mahomet m. moss? all the sweetness of a country life in a pleasant house by the lake side, and a husband with her who would endure all the little petulancy, and vagaries, and excesses of her wayward but affectionate temper, all these things were present to her mind. and to be mistress jones, who could look all the world in the face, this--as compared with the gaslight of a theatre, which might mean failure, and could only mean gaslight--this, on the present occasion, did tempt her sorely. her moods were very various. there were moments of her life when the gaslight had its charm, and in which she declared to herself that she was willing to run all the chances of failure for the hope of success. there were moments in which mr. moss loomed less odious before her eyes. should she be afraid of mr. moss, and fly from her destiny because a man was greasy? and to this view of her circumstances she always came at last when her father's condition pressed itself upon her. the house beside the lake was not her own as yet, nor would it be her husband's when she was married. nor could there be a home for her father there as long as old mr. jones was alive, nor possibly when his son should come to the throne. for a time he must go to america, and she must go with him. she had declared to herself that she could not go back to the united states unless she could go back as a successful singer. for these reasons she resolved that she would face mr. moss bravely and all his horrors. "if that gentleman comes here to-morrow at eleven, show him up here," she said to the waiter. "mr. moss, ma'am?" the waiter asked. "yes, mr. moss," she answered in a loud voice, which told the man much of her story. "where did that piano come from?" she asked brusquely. "mr. moss had it sent in," said the man. "and my father is paying separate rent for it?" she asked. "what's that, my dear? what's that about rent?" "we have got this piano to pay for. it's one of erard's. mr. moss has sent it, and of course we must pay till we have sent it back again. that'll do." then the man went. "it's my belief that he intends to get us into pecuniary difficulties. you have only got £ left." "but you are to have twenty shillings a day till christmas." "what's that?" "according to what he says it will be increased after christmas. he spoke of £ a day." "yes; if my singing be approved of. but who is to be the judge? if the musical world choose to say that they must have rachel o'mahony, that will be all very well. am i to sing at twenty shillings a day for just as long as mr. moss may want me? and are we to remain here, and run up a bill which we shall never be able to pay, till they put us out of the door and call us swindlers?" "frank jones would help us at a pinch if we came to that difficulty," said the father. "i wouldn't take a shilling from frank jones. frank jones is all the world to me, but he cannot help me till he has made me his wife. we must go out of this at the end of the first week, and send the piano back. as far as i can make it out, our expenses here will be about £ s. a week. what the piano will cost, i don't know; but we'll learn that from mr. moss. i'll make him understand that we can't stay here, having no more than twenty shillings a day. if he won't undertake to give me £ a day immediately after christmas, we must go back to new york while we've got money left to take us." "have it your own way," said mr. o'mahony. "i don't mean to remain here and wake up some morning and find that i can't stir a step without asking mahomet m. m. for some money favour. i know i can sing; i can sing, at any rate, to the extent of forty shillings a day. for forty shillings a day i'll stay; but if i can't earn that at once let us go back to new york. it is not the poverty i mind so much, nor yet the debt, nor yet even your distress, you dear old father. you and i could weather it out together on a twopenny roll. things would never be altogether bad with us as long as we are together; and as long as we have not put ourselves in the power of mahomet m. m. fancy owing mr. moss a sum of money which we couldn't pay! mahomet's 'little bill!' i would say to a christian: 'all right, mr. christian, you shall have your money in good time, and if you don't it won't hurt you.' he wouldn't be any more than an ordinary christian, and would pull a long face; but he would have no little scheme ready, cut and dry, for getting my body and soul under his thumb." "you are very unchristian yourself, my dear." "i certainly have my own opinion of mahomet m. m., and i shall tell him to-morrow morning that i don't mean to run the danger." then they went to bed, and slept the sleep of the just. they ordered breakfast at nine, so that, as rachel said, the heavy mutton-chop might not be sticking in her throat as she attempted to show off before mr. moss on his arrival. but from eight till nine she passed her time in the double employment of brushing her hair and preparing the conversation as it was to take place between herself and mr. moss. when a young lady boasts that she doesn't "let a word go without thinking of it," she has to be careful in preparing her words. and she prepared them now. "there will be two of them against me," she said to herself as she made the preparation. "there'll be the dear old governor, and the governor that isn't dear. if i were left quite to myself, i think i could do it easier. but then it might come to sticking a knife into him." "father," she said, during breakfast, "i'm going to practise for half an hour before this man comes." "that means that i'm to go away." "not in the least. i shall go into the next room where the piano lives, and you can come or not just as you please. i shall be squalling all the time, and as we do have the grandeur of two rooms for the present, you might as well use them. but when he comes we must take care and see that matters go right. you had better leave us alone at first, that i may sing to him. then, when that's over, do you be in waiting to be called in. i mean to have a little bit of business with my trusted agent, manager, and parent in music, 'mahomet m. m.'" she went to the instrument, and practised there till half-past eleven, at which hour mr. moss presented himself. "you'll want to hear me sing of course," she said without getting up from the music-stool. "just a bar or two to know how you have improved. but it is hardly necessary. i see from the motion of your lips that you have been keeping your mouth open. and i hear from the tone of your voice, that it is all there. there is no doubt about you, if you have practised opening your mouth." "at any rate you shall hear, and if you will stand there you shall see." then the music lesson began, and mr. moss proved himself to be an adept in his art. rachel did not in the least doubt his skill, and obeyed him in everything as faithfully as she would have done, had he been personally a favourite with her. "allow me to express my great delight and my strong admiration for the young débutante. as far as miss o'mahony is concerned the word failure may be struck out of the language. and no epithet should be used to qualify success, but one in the most superlative degree. allow me to--" and he attempted to raise her hand to his lips, and to express his homage in a manner certainly not unusual with gentlemen of his profession. "mr. moss," said the young lady starting up, "there need be nothing of that kind. there had better not. when a young woman is going to be married to a young man, she can't be too careful. you don't know, perhaps, but i'm going to be mrs. jones. mr. jones is apt to dislike such things. if you'll wait half a moment, i'll bring papa in." so saying she ran out of the room, and in two minutes returned, followed by her father. the two men shook hands, and each of them looked as though he did not know what he was expected to say to the other. "now then, father, you must arrange things with mr. moss." mr. moss bowed. "i don't exactly know what i have got to arrange," said mr. o'mahony. "we've got to arrange so that we shan't get into debt with mr. moss." "there need not be the least fear in the world as to that," said mr. moss. "ah; but that's just what we do fear, and what we must fear." "so unnecessary,--so altogether unnecessary," said mr. moss, expecting to be allowed to be the banker for the occasion. "if you will just draw on me for what you want." "but that is just what we won't do." then there was a pause, and mr. moss shrugged his shoulders. "it's as well to understand that at the beginning. of course this place is too expensive for us and we must get out of it as soon as possible." "why in such a hurry?" said mr. moss raising his two hands. "and we must send back the piano. it was so good of you to think of it! but it must go back." "no, no, no!" shouted mr. moss. "the piano is my affair. a piano more or less for a few months is nothing between me and erard's people. they are only too happy." "i do not in the least doubt it. messrs. erard's people are always glad to secure a lady who is about to come out as a singer. but they send the bill in at last." "not to you;--not to you." "but to you. that would be a great deal worse, would it not, father? we might as well understand each other." "mr. o'mahony and i will understand each other very well." "but it is necessary that miss o'mahony and you should understand each other also. my father trusts me, and i cannot tell you how absolutely i obey him." "or he you," said mr. moss laughing. "at any rate we two know what we are about, sir. you will not find us differing. now mr. moss, you are to pay me twenty shillings a day." "till christmas;--twenty shillings a night till christmas." "of course we cannot live here on twenty shillings a day. the rooms nearly take it all. we can't live on twenty shillings a day, anyhow." "then make it forty shillings immediately after the christmas holidays." "i must have an agreement to that effect," said rachel, "or we must go back to ireland. i must have the agreement before christmas, or we shall go back. we have a few pounds which will take us away." "you must not speak of going away, really, miss o'mahony." "then i must have an agreement signed. you understand that. and we shall look for cheaper rooms to-day. there is a little street close by where we can manage it. but on the one thing we are determined;--we will not get into debt." chapter viii. christmas-day, . on christmas-day rachel o'mahony wrote a letter to her lover at morony castle: cecil street, christmas-day, . dearest frank, you do love me, don't you? what's the use of my loving you, and thinking that you are everything, only that you are to love me? i am quite content that it should be so. only let it be so. you'll ask me what reason i have to be jealous. i am not jealous. i do think in my heart that you think that i'm--just perfect. and when i tell myself that it is so, i lay myself back in my chair and kiss at you with my lips till i am tired of kissing the space where you ain't. but if i am wrong, and if you are having a good time of it with miss considine at mrs. mckeon's ball, and are not thinking a bit of me and my kisses, what's the use? it's a very unfair bargain that a woman makes with a man. "yes; i do love you," i say,--"but--" then there's a sigh. "yes; i'll love you," you say--"if--" then there's a laugh. if i tell a fib, and am not worth having, you can always recuperate. but we can't recuperate. i'm to go about the world and be laughed at, as the girl that frank jones made a fool of. oh! mr. jones, if you treat me in that way, won't i punish you? i'll jump into the lough with a label round my neck telling the whole story. but i am not a bit jealous, because i know you are good. and now i must tell you a bit more of my history. we got rid of that lovely hotel, paying £ s., when that just earned £ . and i have brought the piano with me. the man at erard's told me that i should have it for £ s. a month, frankly owning that he hoped to get my custom. "but mr. moss is to pay nothing?" i asked. he swore that mr. moss would have to pay nothing, and leave what occurred between him and me. i don't think he will. £ a year ought to be enough for the hire of a piano. so here we are established, at £ a month--the first-floor, with father's bedroom behind the sitting-room. i have the room upstairs over the sitting-room. they are small stumpy little rooms,--"but mine own." who says--"but mine own?" somebody does, and i repeat it. they are mine own, at any rate till next saturday. and we have settled this terrible engagement and signed it. i'm to sing for moss at "the embankment" for four months, at the rate of £ a year. it was a jew's bargain, for i really had filled the house for a fortnight. fancy a theatre called "the embankment"! there is a nasty muddy rheumatic sound about it; but it's very prettily got up, and the exits and entrances are also good. father goes with me every night, but i mean to let him off the terrible task soon. he smiles, and says he likes it. i only tell him he would be a child if he did. they want to change the piece, but i shall make them pay me for my dresses; i am not going to wear any other woman's old clothes. it's not the proper way to begin, you have to begin as a slave or as an empress. of course, anybody prefers to do the empress. they try, and then they fail, and tumble down. i shall tumble down, no doubt; but i may as well have my chance. and now i'm going to make you say that i'm a beast. and so i am. i make a little use of mahomet m. m.'s passion to achieve my throne instead of taking up at once with serfdom. but i do it without vouchsafing him even the first corner of a smile. the harshest treatment is all that he gets. men such as mahomet m. will live on harsh treatment for a while, looking forward to revenge when their time comes. but i shall soon have made sure of my throne, or shall have failed; and in either case shall cease to care for mahomet m. by bullying him and by treating him as dust beneath my feet, i can do something to show how proud i am, and how sure i am of success. he offers me money--not paid money down, which would have certain allurements. i shouldn't take it. i needn't tell you that. i should like to have plenty of loose sovereigns, so as to hire broughams from the yard, instead of walking, or going in a 'bus about london, which is very upsetting to my pride. father and i go down to the theatre in a hansom, when we feel ourselves quite smart. but it isn't money like that which he offers. he wants to pay me a month in advance, and suggests that i shall get into debt, and come to him to get me out of it. there was some talk of papa going to new york for a few weeks, and he said he would come and look after me in his absence. "thank you, mr. moss," i said, "but i'm not sure i should want any looking after, only for such as you." those are the very words i spoke, and i looked him full in the face. "why, what do you expect from me?" he said. "insult," i replied, as bold as brass. and then we are playing the two lovers at "the embankment." isn't it a pretty family history? he said nothing at the moment, but came back in half an hour to make some unnecessary remarks about the part. "why did you say just now that i insulted you?" he asked. "because you do," i replied. "never, never!" he exclaimed, with most grotesque energy. "i have never insulted you." you know, my dear, he has twenty times endeavoured to kiss my hand, and once he saw fit to stroke my hair. beast! if you knew the sort of feeling i have for him--such as you would have if you found a cockroach in your dressing-case. of course in our life young women have to put up with this kind of thing, and some of them like it. but he knows that i am going to be married, or at any rate am engaged, mr. frank. i make constant use of your name, telling everybody that i am the future mrs. jones, putting such weight upon the jones. with me he knows that it is an insult; but i don't want to quarrel with him if i can help it, and therefore i softened it down. "you hear me say, mr. moss, that i'm an engaged young woman. knowing that, you oughtn't to speak to me as you do." "why, what do i say?" you should have seen his grin as he asked me; such a leer of triumph, as though he knew that he were getting the better of me. "mr. jones wouldn't approve if he were to see it." "but luckily he don't," said my admirer. oh, if you knew how willingly i'd stand at a tub and wash your shirts, while the very touch of his gloves makes me creep all over with horror. "let us have peace for the future," i said. "i dislike all those familiarities. if you will only give them up we shall go on like a house on fire." then the beast made an attempt to squeeze my hand as he went out of the room. i retreated, however, behind the table, and escaped untouched on that occasion. you are not to come over, whatever happens, until i tell you. you ought to know very well by this time that i can fight my battles by myself; and if you did come, there would be an end altogether to the £ which i am earning. to give him his due, he's very punctual with his money, only that he wants to pay me in advance, which i will never have. he has been liberal about my dresses, telling me to order just what i want, and have the bill sent in to the costume manager. when i have worn them they become the property of the theatre. god help any poor young woman that will ever be expected to get into them. so now you know exactly how i am standing with mahomet m. m. poor father goes about to public meetings, but never is allowed to open his mouth for fear he should say something about the queen. i don't mean that he is really watched, but he promised in ireland not to lecture any more if they would let him go, and he wishes to keep his word. but i fear it makes him very unhappy. he has, at any rate, the comfort of coming home and giving me the lecture, which he ought to have delivered to more sympathetic ears. not but what i do care about the people; only how am i to know whether they ought to be allowed to make their own petticoats, or why it is that they don't do so? he says it's the london parliament; and that if they had members in college green, the young women would go to work at once, and make petticoats for all the world. i don't understand it, and wish that he had someone else to lecture to. how are you getting on with all your own pet troubles? is the little subsiding lake at ballintubber still a lake? and what about poor florian and his religion? has he told up as yet? i fear, i fear, that poor florian has been fibbing, and that there will be no peace for him or for your father till the truth has been told. now, sir, i have told you everything, just as a young woman ought to tell her future lord and master. you say you ought to know what moss is doing. you do know, exactly, as far as i can tell you. of course you wouldn't like to see him, but then you have the comfort of knowing that i don't like it either. i suppose it is a comfort, eh, my bold young man? of course you want me to hate the pig, and i do hate him. you may be sure that i will get rid of him as soon as i conveniently can. but for the present he is a necessary evil. if you had a home to give me, i would come to it--oh, so readily! there is something in the glitter of a theatre--what people call the boards, the gaslights, the music, the mock love-making, the pretence of being somebody, the feeling of mystery which is attached to you, and the feeling you have that you are generally unlike the world at large--which has its charms. even your name, blazoned in a dirty playbill, without any mister or mistress to guard you, so unlike the ways of ordinary life, does gratify one's vanity. i can't say why it should be so, but it is. i always feel a little prouder of myself when father is not with me. i am miss o'mahony, looking after myself, whereas other young ladies have to be watched. it has its attractions. but--but to be the wife of frank jones, and to look after frank's little house, and to cook for him his chicken and his bacon, and to feel that i am all the world to him, and to think--! but, oh, frank, i cannot tell you what things i think. i do feel, as i think them, that i have not been made to stand long before the glare of the gas, and that the time will certainly come when i shall walk about ballintubber leaning on your arm, and hearing all your future troubles about rents not paid, and waters that have come in. your own, own girl, rachel o'mahony. chapter ix. black daly. frank jones received his letter just as he was about to leave castle morony for the meet at ballytowngal, the seat, as everybody knows, of sir nicholas bodkin. ballytowngal is about two miles from claregalway, on the road to oranmore. sir nicholas is known all through the west of ireland, as a sporting man, and is held in high esteem. but there is, i think, something different in the estimation which he now enjoys from that which he possessed twenty years ago. he was then, as now, a roman catholic,--as were also his wife and children; and, as a roman catholic, he was more popular with the lower classes, and with the priests, who are their natural friends, than with his brother grand-jurors of the country, who were, for the most part, protestants. sir nicholas is now sixty years old, and when he came to the title at thirty, he was regarded certainly as a poor man's friend. he always lived on the estate. he rarely went up to dublin, except for a fortnight, when the hunting was over, and when he paid his respects to the lord lieutenant. the house at ballytowngal was said, in those days, to be as well kept up as any mansion in county galway. but the saying came probably from those who were not intimate in the more gloriously maintained mansions. sir nicholas had £ a year, and though he did manage to pay his bills annually, spent every shilling of it. he preserved his foxes loyally, and was quite as keen about the fishing of a little river that he owned, and which ran down from his demesne into lough corrib. he was particular also about his snipe, and would boast that in a little spinney at ballytowngal were to be met the earliest woodcock found in the west of ireland. he was a thorough sportsman;--but a roman catholic--and as a roman catholic he was hardly equal in standing to some of his protestant neighbours. he voted for major stackpoole, when major stackpoole stood for the county on the liberal interest, and was once requested to come forward himself, and stand for the city as a roman catholic. this he did not do, being a prudent man; but at that period, from twenty to thirty years ago, he was certainly regarded as inferior to a protestant by many of the protestant gentlemen of the country. but things are changed now. sir nicholas's neighbours, such of them at least that are protestants, regard sir nicholas as equal to themselves. they do not care much for his religion, but they know that he is not a home-ruler, or latterly, since the land league sprang into existence, a land leaguer. he is, in fact, one of themselves as a county gentleman, and the question of religion has gone altogether into abeyance. had you known the county thirty years ago, and had now heard sir nicholas talking of county matters, you would think that he was one of the old protestants. it was so that the rich people regarded him,--and so also the poor. but sir nicholas had not varied at all. he liked to get his rents paid, and as long as his tenants would pay them, he was at one with them. they had begun now to have opinions of their own upon the subject, and he was at one with them no longer. frank jones had heard in galway, that there was to be a difficulty about drawing the ballytowngal coverts. the hounds were to be allowed to draw the demesne coverts, but beyond that they were to be interrupted. foxes seldom broke from ballytowngal, or if they did they ran to moytubber. at moytubber the hounds would probably change,--or would do so if allowed to continue their sport in peace. but at moytubber the row would begin. knowing this, frank jones was anxious to leave his home in time, as he was aware that the hounds would be carried on to moytubber as quickly as possible. black daly had sworn a solemn oath that he would draw moytubber in the teeth of every home-ruler and land leaguer in county galway. a word or two must be said descriptive of black daly, as he was called, the master of the galway hounds. they used to be called the galway blazers, but the name had nearly dropped out of fashion since black daly had become their master, a quarter of a century since. who black daly was or whence he had come, many men, even in county galway, did not know. it was not that he had no property, but that his property was so small, as to make it seem improbable that the owner of it should be the master of the county hounds. but in truth black daly lived at daly's bridge, in the neighbourhood of castle blakeney, when he was supposed to be at home. and the house in which he lived he had undoubtedly inherited from his father. but he was not often there, and kept his kennels at ahaseragh, five miles away from daly's bridge. much was not therefore known of mr. daly, in his own house. but in the field no man was better known, or more popular, if thorough obedience is an element of popularity. the old gentry of the county could tell why mr. daly had been put into his present situation five-and-twenty years ago; but the manner of his election was not often talked about. he had no money, and very few acres of his own on which to preserve foxes. he had never done anything to earn a shilling since he had been born, unless he may have been said to have earned shillings by his present occupation. as he got his living out of it, he certainly may have been said to have done so. he never borrowed a shilling from any man, and certainly paid his way. but if he told a young man that he ought to buy a horse the young man certainly bought it. and if he told a young man that he must pay a certain price, the young man generally paid it. but if the young man were not ready with his money by the day fixed, that young man generally had a bad time of it. young men have been known to be driven not only out of county galway, but out of ireland itself, by the tone of mr. daly's voice, and by the blackness of his frown. and yet it was said generally that neither young men nor old men were injured in their dealings with mr. daly. "that horse won't be much the worse for his splint, and he's worth £ to you, because you can ride him ten stone. you had better give me £ for him." then the young man would promise the £ in three months' time, and if he kept his word, would swear by black daly ever afterwards. in this way mr. daly sold a great many horses. but he had been put into his present position because he hunted the hounds, during the illness of a distant cousin, who was the then master. the master had died, but the county had the best sport that winter that it had ever enjoyed. "i don't see why i should not do it, as well as another," tom daly had said. he was then known as tom daly. "you've got no money," his cousin had said, the son of the old gentleman who was just dead. it was well understood that the cousin wished to have the hounds, but that he was thought not to have all the necessary attributes. "i suppose the county means to pay for all sport," said tom. then the hat went round, and an annual sum of £ a year was voted. since that the hounds have gone on, and the bills have been paid; and tom has raised the number of days' hunting to four a week, or has lowered it to two, according to the amount of money given. he makes no proposition now, but declares what he means to do. "things are dearer," he said last year, "and you won't have above five days a fortnight, unless you can make the money up to £ , . i want £ a day, and £ i must have." the county had then voted him the money in the plenitude of its power, and daly had hunted seven days a fortnight. but all the galway world felt that there was about to be a fall. black daly was a man quite as dark as his sobriquet described him. he was tall, but very thin and bony, and seemed not to have an ounce of flesh about his face or body. he had large, black whiskers,--coarse and jet black,--which did not quite meet beneath his chin. and he wore no other beard, no tuft, no imperial, no moustachios; but when he was seen before shaving on a morning, he would seem to be black all over, and his hair was black, short, and harsh; and though black, round about his ears it was beginning to be tinged with grey. he was now over fifty years of age; but the hair on his head was as thick as it had been when he first undertook the hounds. he had great dark eyes in his head, deep down, so that they seemed to glitter at you out of caverns. and above them were great, bushy eyebrows, every hair of which seemed to be black, and harsh, and hard. his nose was well-formed and prominent; but of cheeks he had apparently none. between his whiskers and his nose, and the corners of his mouth, there was nothing but two hollow cavities. he was somewhat over six feet high, but from his extraordinary thinness gave the appearance of much greater height. his arms were long, and the waistcoat which he wore was always long; his breeches were very long; and his boots seemed the longest thing about him--unless his spurs seemed longer. he had no flesh about him, and it was boasted of him that, in spite of his length, and in spite of his height, he could ride under twelve stone. of himself, and of his doings, he never talked. they were secrets of his own, of which he might have to make money. and no one had a right to ask him questions. he did not conceive that it would be necessary for a gentleman to declare his weight unless he were about to ride a race. now it was understood that for the last ten years black daly had ridden no races. he was a man of whom it might be said that he never joked. though his life was devoted in a peculiar manner to sport, and there may be thought to be something akin between the amusements and the lightness of life, it was all serious to him. though he was bitter over it, or happy; triumphant, or occasionally in despair--as when the money was not forthcoming--he never laughed. it was all serious to him, and apparently sad, from the first note of a hound in the early covert, down to the tidings that a poor fox had been found poisoned near his earth. he had much to do to find sport for the county on such limited means, and he was always doing it. he not only knew every hound in his pack, but he knew their ages, their sires, and their dams; and the sires and the dams of most of their sires and dams. he knew the constitution of each, and to what extent their noses were to be trusted. "it's a very heavy scent to-day," he would say, "because gaylap carries it over the plough. it's only a catching scent because the drops don't hang on the bushes." his lore on all such matters was incredible, but he would never listen to any argument. a man had a right to his own opinion; but then the man who differed from him knew nothing. he gave out his little laws to favoured individuals; not by way of conversation, for which he cared nothing, but because it might be well that the favoured individual should know the truth on that occasion. as a man to ride he was a complete master of his art. there was nothing which a horse could do with a man on his back, which daly could not make him do; and when he had ridden a horse he would know exactly what was within his power. but there was no desire with him for the showing off of a horse. he often rode to sell a horse, but he never seemed to do so. he never rode at difficult places unless driven to do so by the exigencies of the moment. he was always quiet in the field, unless when driven to express himself as to the faults of some young man. then he could blaze forth in his anger with great power. he was constantly to be seen trotting along a road when hounds were running, because he had no desire to achieve for himself a character for hard riding. but he was always with his hounds when he was wanted, and it was boasted of him that he had ridden four days a week through the season on three horses, and had never lamed one of them. he was rarely known to have a second horse out, and when he did so, it was for some purpose peculiar to the day's work. on such days he had generally a horse to sell. it is hardly necessary to say that black daly was an unmarried man. no one who knew him could conceive that he should have had a wife. his hounds were his children, and he could have taught no wife to assist him in looking after them, with the constant attention and tender care which was given to them by barney smith, his huntsman. a wife, had she seen to the feeding of the numerous babies, would have given them too much to eat, and had she not undertaken this care, she would have been useless at daly's bridge. but barney smith was invaluable; double the amount of work got usually from a huntsman was done by him. there was no kennel man, no second horseman, no stud-groom at the ahaseragh kennels. it may be said that black daly filled all these positions himself, and that in each barney smith was his first lieutenant. circumstances had given him the use of the ahaseragh kennels, which had been the property of his cousin, and circumstances had not enabled him to build others at daly's bridge. gradually he had found it easier to move himself than the hounds. and so it had come to pass that two rooms had been prepared for him close to the kennels, and that mr. barney smith gave him such attendance as was necessary. of strictly personal attendance black daly wanted very little; but the discomforts of that home, while one pair of breeches were supposed to be at daly's bridge, and the others at ahaseragh, were presumed by the world at large to be very grievous. but the personal appearance of mr. daly on hunting mornings, was not a matter of indifference. it was not that he wore beautiful pink tops, or came out guarded from the dust by little aprons, or had his cravat just out of the bandbox, or his scarlet coat always new, and in the latest fashion, nor had his hat just come from the shop in piccadilly with the newest twist to its rim. but there was something manly, and even powerful about his whole apparel. he was always the same, so that by men even in his own county, he would hardly have been known in other garments. the strong, broad brimmed high hat, with the cord passing down his back beneath his coat, that had known the weather of various winters; the dark, red coat, with long swallow tails, which had grown nearly black under many storms; the dark, buff striped waistcoat, with the stripes running downwards, long, so as to come well down over his breeches; the breeches themselves, which were always of leather, but which had become nearly brown under the hands of barney smith or his wife, and the mahogany top-boots, of which the tops seemed to be a foot in length, could none of them have been worn by any but black daly. his very spurs must have surely been made for him, they were in length and weight; and general strength of leather, so peculiarly his own. he was unlike other masters of hounds in this, that he never carried a horn; but he spoke to his hounds in a loud, indistinct chirruping voice, which all county galway believed to be understood to every hound in the park. one other fact must be told respecting mr. daly. he was a protestant--as opposed to a roman catholic. no one had ever known him go to church, or speak a word in reference to religion. he was equally civil or uncivil to priest and parson when priest or parson appeared in the field. but on no account would he speak to either of them if he could avoid it. but he had in his heart a thorough conviction that all roman catholics ought to be regarded as enemies by all protestants, and that the feeling was one entirely independent of faith and prayerbooks, or crosses and masses. for him fox-hunting--fox-hunting for others--was the work of his life, and he did not care to meddle with what he did not understand. but he was a protestant, and sir nicholas bodkin was a roman catholic, and therefore an enemy--as a dog may be supposed to declare himself a dog, and a cat a cat, if called upon to explain the cause for the old family quarrel. now there had come a cloud over his spirit in reference to the state of his country. he could see that the quarrel was not entirely one between protestant and catholic as it used to be, but still he could not get it out of his mind, but that the old causes were producing in a different way their old effects. whiteboys, terryalts, ribbonmen, repeaters, physical-forcemen, fenians, home-rulers, professors of dynamite, and american-irish, were, to his thinking, all the same. he never talked much about it, because he did not like to expose his ignorance; but his convictions were not the less formed. it was the business of a protestant to take rent, and of a roman catholic to pay rent. there were certain deviations in this ordained rule of life, but they were only exceptions. the roman catholics had the worst of this position, and the protestants the best. therefore the roman catholics were of course quarrelling with it, and therefore the roman catholics must be kept down. such had been mr. daly's general outlook into life. but now the advancing evil of the time was about to fall even upon himself, and upon his beneficent labours, done for the world at large. it was whispered in county galway that the people were about to rise and interfere with fox-hunting! it may be imagined that on this special day mr. daly's heart was low beneath his black-striped waistcoat, as he rode on his way to draw the coverts at ballytowngal. at the cross-roads of monivea he met peter bodkin, the eldest son of sir nicholas. now peter bodkin had quarrelled long and very bitterly with his father. every acre of the property at ballytowngal was entailed upon him, and peter had thought that under such circumstances his father was not doing enough for him. the quarrel had been made up, but still the evil rankled in peter's bosom, who was driven to live with his wife and family on £ a year; and had found himself hardly driven to keep himself out of the hands of the jews. his father had wished him to follow some profession, but this had been contrary to peter's idea of what was becoming. but though he had only £ a year, and five children, he did manage to keep two horses, and saw a good deal of hunting. and among all the hunting men in county galway he was the one who lived on the closest terms of intimacy with black daly. for, though he was a roman catholic, his religion did not trouble him much; and he was undoubtedly on the same side with daly in the feuds that were coming on the country. indeed, he and daly had entertained the same feelings for some years; for, in the quarrels which had been rife between the father and son, mr. daly had taken the son's part, as far as so silent a man can be said to have taken any part at all. "well, peter." "well, daly," were the greetings, as the two men met; and then they rode on together in silence for a mile. "have you heard what the boys are going to do?" asked the master. peter shook his head. "i suppose there's nothing in it?" "i fear there is." "what will they do?" asked mr. daly. "just prevent your hunting." "if they touch me, or either of the men, by god! i'll shoot some of them." then he put his hand into his pocket, as much as to explain a pistol was there. after that the two men rode on in silence till they came to the gates of ballytowngal. chapter x. ballytowngal. daly, among other virtues, or vices, was famed for punctuality. he wore a large silver watch in his pocket which was as true as the sun, or at any rate was believed by its owner to be so. from daly's watch on hunting mornings there was no appeal. he always reached the appointed meet at five minutes before eleven, by his watch, and by his watch the hounds were always moved from their haunches at five minutes past eleven. though the lord lieutenant and the chief secretary and the lord chancellor had been there, there would have been no deviation. the interval of ten minutes he generally spent in whispered confabulations with the earth-warners, secrets into which no attendant horseman ever dived; for black daly was a mysterious man, who did not choose to be inquired into as to his movements. on this occasion he said not a word to any earth-warner, though two were in attendance; but he sat silent and more gloomy than ever on his big black horse, waiting for the minutes to pass by till he should be able to run his hounds through the ballytowngal coverts, and then hurry on to moytubber. mr. daly's mind was, in truth, fixed upon moytubber, and what would there be done this morning. he was a simple-minded man, who kept his thoughts fixed for the most part on one object. he knew that it was his privilege to draw the coverts of moytubber, and to hunt the country around; and he felt also, after some gallant fashion, that it was his business to protect the rights of others in the pursuit of their favourite amusement. no man could touch him or either of his servants in the way of violence without committing an offence which he would be bound to oppose by violence. he was no lawyer, and understood not at all the statutes as fixed upon the subject. if a man laid a hand upon him violently, and would not take his hand off again when desired, he would be entitled to shoot that man. such was the law, as in his simplicity and manliness he believed it to exist. he was a man not given to pistols; but when he heard that he was to be stopped in his hunting on this morning, and stopped by dastardly, pernicious curs who called themselves landleaguers, he went into ballinasloe, and bought himself a pistol. black daly was a sad, serious man, who could not put up with the frivolities of life; to whom the necessity of providing for that large family of children was very serious; but he was not of his nature a quarrelsome man. but now he was threatened on the tenderest point; and with much simpler thought had resolved that it would be his duty to quarrel. but just when he had spoken the word on which barney and the hounds were prepared to move, sir nicholas trotted up to him. sir nicholas and all the sporting gentlemen of county galway were there, whispering with each other, having collected themselves in crowds much bigger than usual. there was much whispering, and many opinions had been given as to the steps which it would be well that the hunt should take if interrupted in their sport. but at last peter bodkin had singled out his father, and had communicated to him the fact of black daly's pistol. "he'll use it, as sure as eggs are eggs," said peter whispering to his father. "then there'll be murder," said sir nicholas, who though a good hunting neighbour had never been on very friendly terms with mr. daly. "when tom daly says he'll do a thing, he means to do it," said peter. "he won't be stopped by my calling it murder." then sir nicholas had quickly discussed the matter with sundry other sportsmen of the neighbourhood. there were mr. persse of doneraile, and mr. blake of letterkenny, and lord ardrahan, and sir jasper lynch, of bohernane. during the ten minutes that were allowed to them, they put their heads together, and with much forethought made mr. persse their spokesman. lord ardrahan and sir jasper might have seemed to take upon themselves an authority which daly would not endure. and blake, of letterkenny, would have been too young to carry with him sufficient weight. sir nicholas himself was a roman catholic, and was peter's father, and peter would have been in a scrape for having told the story of the pistol. so mr. persse put himself forward. "daly," he said, trotting up to the master, "i'm afraid we're going to encounter a lot of these landleaguers at moytubber." "what do they want at moytubber? nobody is doing anything to them." "of course not; they are a set of miserable ruffians. i'm sorry to say that there are a lot of my tenants among them. but it's no use discussing that now." "i can only go on," said daly, "as though they were in bed." then he put his hand in his pocket, and felt that the pistol was there. mr. persse saw what he did, and knew that his hand was on the pistol. "we have only a minute now to decide," he said. "to decide what?" asked daly. "there must be no violence on our side." daly turned round his face upon him, and looked at him from the bottom of those two dark caverns. "believe me when i say it; there must be no violence on our side." "if they attempt to stop my horse?" "there must be no violence on our side to bring us, or rather you, to further grief." "by god! i'd shoot the man who did it," said daly. "no, no; let there be no shooting. were you to do so, there can be no doubt that you would be tried by a jury and--" "hanged," said daly. "may be so; i have got to look that in the face. it is an accursed country in which we are living." "but you would not encounter the danger in carrying out a trifling amusement such as this?" daly again turned round and looked at him. was this work of his life, this employment on which he was so conscientiously eager, to be called trifling? did they know the thoughts which it cost him, the hard work by which it was achieved, the days and nights which were devoted to it? trifling amusement! to him it was the work of his life. to those around him it was the best part of theirs. "i will not interfere with them," daly said. he alluded here to the enemies of hunting generally. he had not hunted the country so long without having had many rows with many men. farmers, angry with him for the moment, had endeavoured to stop him as he rode upon their land; and they had poisoned his foxes from revenge, or stolen them from cupidity. he had borne with such men, expressing the severity of his judgment chiefly by the look of his eyes; but he had never quarrelled with them violently. they had been contemptible people whom it would be better to look at than to shoot. but here were men coming, or were there now, prepared to fight with him for his rights. and he would fight with them, even though hanging should be the end of it. "i will not interfere with them, unless they interfere with me." "have you a pistol with you, daly?" said persse. "i have." "then give it me." "not so. if i want to use a pistol it will be better to have it in my own pocket than in yours. if i do not want to use it i can keep it myself, and no one will be the wiser." "listen to me, daly." "well, mr. persse?" "do not call me 'mr. persse,' as though you were determined to quarrel with me. it will be well that you should take advice in this matter from those whom you have known all your life. there is sir nicholas bodkin--" "he may be one of them for all that i can tell," said daly. "lord ardrahan is not one of them. and sir jasper lynch, and blake of letterkenny, they are all there, if you will speak to them. in such a matter as this it is not worth your while to get into serious trouble. to you and me hunting is a matter of much importance; but the world at large will not regard it as one in which blood should be shed. they will come prepared to make themselves disagreeable, but if there be bloodshed it will simply be by your hands. and think what an injury you would do to your side of the question, and what a benefit to theirs!" "how so?" "we are regarded as the dominant party, as gentlemen who ought to do what is right, and support the laws." "if i am attacked may i not defend myself?" "no; not by a pistol carried loaded into a hunting-field. you would have all the world against you." then the two men rode on silently together. the hounds were drawing the woods of ballytowngal, but had not found, and were prepared to go on to moytubber. but, according to the galway custom, barney smith was waiting for orders from his master. daly now sat stock still upon his horse for awhile, looking at the dark fringe of trees by which the park was surrounded. he was thinking, as well as he knew how to think, of the position in which he was placed. to be driven to go contrary to his fixed purpose by fear was a course intolerable to him. but to have done that which was clearly injurious to his party was as bad. and this persse to whom he had shown his momentary anger by calling him mr., was a man whom he greatly regarded. there was no one in the field whose word would go further with him in hunting matters. he had clearly been rightly chosen as a deputation. but daly knew that as he had gone to bed the previous night, and as he had got up in the morning, and as he had trotted along by monivea cross-roads, and had met peter bodkin, every thought of his mind had been intent on the pistol within his pocket. to shoot a man who should lay hold of him or his horse, or endeavour to stop his horse, had seemed to him to be bare justice. but he had resolved that he would first give some spoken warning to the sinner. after that, god help the man; for he would find no help in black tom daly. but now his mind was shaken by the admonitions of mr. persse. he could not say of mr. persse as he had said, most unjustly, of sir nicholas, that he was one of them. mr. persse was well-known as a tory and a protestant, and an indefatigable opponent of home-rulers. to sir nicholas, in the minds of some men, there attached a slight stain of his religion. "i will keep the pistol in my pocket," said tom daly, without turning his eyes away from the belt of trees. "had you not better trust it with me?" said mr. persse. "no, i am not such an idiot as to shoot a man when i do not intend it." "seeing how moved you are, i thought that perhaps the pistol might be safer in my hands." "no, the pistol shall remain with me." then he turned round to join barney smith, who was waiting for him up by the gate out of the covert. but he turned again to say a word to mr. persse. "thank you, persse, i am obliged to you. it might be inconvenient being locked up before the season is over." then a weird grin covered his face; which was the nearest approach to laughter ever seen with black tom daly. from ballytowngal to moytubber was about a mile and a half. some few, during the conversation between mr. persse and the master, had gone on, so that they might be the first to see what was in store for them. but the crowd of horsemen had remained with their eyes fixed upon daly. he rode up to them and passed on without speaking a word, except that he gave the necessary orders to barney smith. then two or three clustered round mr. persse, asking him whispered questions. "it'll be all right," said persse, nodding his head; and so the _cortège_ passed on. but not a word was spoken by daly himself, either then or afterwards, except a whispered order or two given to barney smith. moytubber is a gorse covert lying about three hundred yards from the road, and through it the horsemen always passed; on other occasions it was locked. now the gate had been taken off its hinges and thrown back upon the bank; and daly, as he passed into the field, perceived that the covert was surrounded by a crowd. chapter xi. moytubber. "what's all this about?" said tom as he rode up the covert side, and addressing a man whose face he happened to know. he was one kit mooney, a baker from claregalway, who in these latter days had turned landleaguer. but he was one who simply thought that his bread might be better buttered for him on that side of the question. he was not an ardent politician; but few local irishmen were so. had no stirring spirits been wafted across the waters from america to teach irishmen that one man is as good as another, or generally better, kit mooney would never have found it out. had not his zeal been awakened by the eloquence of mr. o'meagher, the member for athlone, who had just made a grand speech to the people at athenry, kit mooney would have gone on in his old ways, and would at this moment have been touching his hat to tom daly, and whispering to him of the fox that had lately been seen "staling away jist there, mr. daly, 'fore a'most yer very eyes." but mr. o'meagher had spent three glorious weeks in new york, and, having practised the art of speaking on board the steamer as he returned, had come to athenry and filled the mind of kit mooney and sundry others with political truth of the deepest dye. but the gist of the truths so taught had been chiefly this:--that if a man did not pay his rent, but kept his money in his pocket, he manifestly did two good things; he enriched himself, and he so far pauperised the landlord, who was naturally his enemy. what other teaching could be necessary to make kit understand,--kit mooney who held twenty acres of meadow land convenient to the town of claregalway,--that this was the way to thrive in the world? "rent is not known in america, that great and glorious country. every man owns the fields which he cultivates. why should you here allow yourself to be degraded by the unmanly name of tenants? the earth which supports you should be as free to you as the air you breathe." such had been the eloquence of mr. o'meagher; and it had stirred the mind of kit mooney and made him feel that life should be recommenced by him under new principles. things had not quite gone swimmingly with him since, because nicholas bodkin's agent had caused a sheriff's bailiff to appear upon the scene, and the notion of keeping the landlord's rent in the pocket had been found to be surrounded with difficulties. but the great principle was there, and there had come another eloquent man, who had also been in america; and kit mooney was now a confirmed landleaguer. "faix thin, yer honour, it isn't much hunting the quality will see this day out of moytubber; nor yet nowhere round, av the boys are as good as their word." "why should they not hunt at moytubber?" said mr. daly, who, as he looked around saw indeed ample cause why there should be no hunting. he had thought as he trotted along the road that some individual landleaguer would hold his horse by the rein and cause him to stop him in the performance of his duty; but there were two hundred footmen there roaming at will through the sacred precincts of the gorse, and daly knew well that no fox could have remained there with such a crowd around him. "the boys are just taking their pleasure themselves this fine christmas morning," said kit, who had not moved from the bank on which he had been found sitting. "begorra, you'll find 'em all out about the counthry, intirely, mr. daly. they're out to make your honour welcome. there is lashings of 'em across in phil french's woods and all down to peter brown's, away at oranmore. there is not a boy in the barony but what is out to bid yer honour welcome this morning." kit mooney could not have given a more exact account of what was being done by "the boys" on that morning had he owned all those rich gifts of eloquence which mr. o'meagher possessed. tom daly at once saw that there was no need for shooting any culprit, and was thankful. the interruption to the sport of the county had become much more general than he had expected, and it was apparently so organised as to have spread itself over all that portion of county galway, in which his hounds ran. "bedad, mr. daly, what kit says is thrue," said another man whom he did not know. "you'll find 'em out everywhere. why ain't the boys to be having their fun?" it was useless to allow a hound to go into the covert of moytubber. the crowd around was waiting anxiously to see the attempt made, so that they might enjoy their triumph. to watch black tom drawing moytubber without a fox would be nuts to them; and then to follow the hounds on to the next covert, and to the next, with the same result, would afford them an ample day's amusement. but the bodkins, and the blakes, and the persses were quite alive to this, and so also was tom daly. a council of war was therefore held, in order that the line of conduct might be adopted which might be held to be most conducive to the general dignity of the hunt. "i should send the hounds home," said lord ardrahan. "if mr. daly would call at my place and lunch, as he goes by, i should be most happy." tom daly, on hearing this, only shook his head. the shake was intended to signify that he did not like the advice tendered, nor the accompanying hospitable offer. to go home would be to throw down their arms at once, and acknowledge themselves beaten. if beaten to-day, why should they not be beaten on another day, and then what would become of tom daly's employment? a sad idea came across his mind, as he shook his head, warning him that in this terrible affair of to-day, he might see the end of all his life's work. such a thought had never occurred to him before. if a crowd of disloyal roman catholics chose to prevent the gentry in their hunting, undoubtedly they had the power. daly was slow at thinking, but an idea when it had once come home to him, struck him forcibly. as he shook his head at that moment he bethought himself, what would become of black daly if the people of the county refused to allow his hounds to run? and a second idea struck him,--that he certainly would not lunch with lord ardrahan. lord ardrahan was, to his thinking, somewhat pompous, and had been felt by tom to expect that he, tom, should acknowledge the inferiority of his position by his demeanour. now such an idea as this was altogether in opposition to tom's mode of living. even though the hounds were to be taken away from him, and he were left at daly's bridge with the £ a year which had come to him from his father, he would make no such acknowledgment as that to any gentleman in county galway. so he shook his head, and said not a word in answer to lord ardrahan. "what do you propose to do, daly?" demanded mr. persse. "go on and draw till night. there's a moon, and if we can find a fox before ten, barney and i will manage to kill him. those blackguards can't keep on with us." this was daly's plan, spoken out within hearing of many of the blackguards. "you had better take my offer, and come to ardrahan castle," said his lordship. "no, my lord," said daly, with the tone of authority which a master of hounds always knows how to assume. "i shall draw on. barney, get the hounds together." then he whispered to barney smith that the hounds should go on to kilcornan. now kilcornan was a place much beloved by foxes, about ten miles distant from moytubber. it was not among the coverts appointed to be drawn on that day, which all lay back towards ahaseragh. at kilcornan the earths would be found to open. but it would be better to trot off rapidly to some distant home for foxes, even though the day's sport might be lost. daly was very anxious that it should not be said through the country that he had been driven home by a set of roughs from any one covert or another. the day's draw would be known--the line of the country, that is, which, in the ordinary course of things, he would follow on that day. but by going to kilcornan he might throw them off his scent. so he started for kilcornan, having whispered his orders to barney smith, but communicating his intentions to no one else. "what will you do, daly?" said sir jasper lynch. "go on." "but where will you go?" inquired the baronet. he was a man about daly's age, with whom daly was on comfortable terms. he had no cause for being crabbed with sir jasper as with lord ardrahan. but he did not want to declare his purpose to any man. there is no one in the ordinary work of his life so mysterious as a master of hounds. and among masters no one was more mysterious than tom daly. and this, too, was no ordinary day. tom only shook his head and trotted on in advance. his secret had been told only to barney smith, and with barney smith he knew that it would be safe. so they all trotted off at a pace much faster than usual. "what's up with black tom now?" asked sir nicholas of sir jasper. "what's daly up to now?" asked mr. blake of mr. persse. they all shook their heads, and declared themselves willing to follow their leader without further inquiry. "i suppose he knows what he's about," said mr. persse; "but we, at any rate, must go and see." so they followed him; and in half an hour's time it became apparent that they were going to kilcornan. but at kilcornan they found a crowd almost equal to that which had stopped them at moytubber. kilcornan is a large demesne, into which they would, in the ordinary course, have made their entrance through the lodge gate. at present they went at once to an outlying covert, which was supposed to be especially the abode of foxes; but even here, as barney trotted up with his hounds, at a pace much quicker than usual, they found that the ground before them had been occupied by landleaguers. "you'll not do much in the hunting way to-day, muster daly," said one of the intruders. "when we heard you were a-coming we had a little hunt of our own. there ain't a fox anywhere about the place now, muster daly." tom daly turned round and sat on his big black horse, frowning at the world before him; a sorrowful man. what shall we do next? it does not behove a master of hounds to seek counsel in difficulty from anyone. a man, if he is master, should be sufficient to himself in all emergencies. no man felt this more clearly than did black tom daly. he had been ashamed of himself once this morning, because he had taken advice from mr. persse. but now he must think the matter out for himself and follow his own devices. it was as yet only two o'clock, but he had come on at a great pace, taking much more out of his horse than was usual to him on such occasions. but, sitting there, he did make up his mind. he would go on to mr. lambert's place at clare, and would draw the coverts, going there as fast as the horse's legs would carry him. there he would borrow two horses if it were possible, but one, at least, for barney smith. then he would draw back by impossible routes, to the kennels at ahaseragh. men might come with him or might go; but to none would he tell his mind. if providence would only send him a fox on the route, all things, he thought, might still be well with him. it would be odd if he and barney smith, between them, were not able to give an account of that fox when they had done with him. but if he should find no such fox--if he, the master of the galway hounds, should have ridden backwards and forwards across county galway, and have been impeded altogether in his efforts by wretched landleaguers, then--as he thought--a final day would have to come for him. he spoke no word to anyone, but he did go on just as he proposed to himself. he drew clare, but drew it blank; and then, leaving his own horses, he borrowed two others for himself and barney, and went on upon his route. before the day was over--or rather, before the night was far advanced--he had borrowed three others, in his course about the country, for himself and his servants. quick as lightning he went from covert to covert; but the conspiracy had been well arranged, and a holiday for the foxes in county galway was established for that day. some men were very stanch to him, going with him whither they knew not, so that "poor dear tom" might not be left alone; but alone he was during the long evening of that day, as far as all conversation went. he spoke to no one, except to barney, and to him only a few words; giving him a direction as to where he should go next, and into what covert he should put the hounds. they, too, must have been much surprised and very weary, as they dragged their tired limbs to their kennel, at about eight o'clock. and tom daly's ride across the country will long be remembered, and the exertions which he made to find a fox on that day. but it was all in vain. as tom ate his solitary mutton-chop, and drank his cold whisky and water, and then took himself to bed, he was a melancholy man. the occupation of his life, he thought, was gone. these reprobates, whom he now hated worse than ever, having learned their powers to disturb the amusements of their betters, would never allow another day's hunting in the county. he was aware now, though he never had thought of it before, by how weak a hold his right of hunting the country was held. he and his hounds could go into any covert; but so also could any other man, with or without hounds. to disturb a fox, three or four men would suffice; one would suffice according to tom's idea of a fox. the occupation of his life was over. tom daly was by nature a melancholy man. all county galway knew that. he was a man not given to many words, by no means devoted to sport in the ordinary sense. it was a hard business that he had undertaken. the work was in every sense hard, and the payment made was very small. in fact no payment was made, other than that of his being lifted into a position in which he was able to hold his head high among gentlemen of property. what should he do with himself during the remainder of his life, if hunting in county galway was brought to an end? he was an intent, eager man, whom it was hard to teach that the occupations of his life were less worthy than those of other men. but there had come moments of doubt as he had sat alone in his little room at ahaseragh and had meditated, whether the pursuit of vermin was worthy all the energy which he had given to it. "you may sell those brutes of yours now, and then perhaps you'll be able to educate your children." so sir nicholas bodkin had addressed his eldest son, as they rode home together on that occasion. "why so?" peter had asked, thinking more of the "brutes" alluded to than of the children. he was accustomed to the tone of his father's remarks, and cared for them not more than the ordinary son cares for the expression of the ordinary father's ill humour. but now he knew that some reference was intended to the interruption that had been made in their day's sport, and was anxious to learn what his father thought about it. "why so?" he asked. "because you won't want them for this game any longer. hunting is done with in these parts. when a blackguard like kit mooney is able to address such a one as tom daly after that fashion, anything that requires respect may be said to be over. hunting has existed solely on respect. i had intended to buy that mare of french's, but i shan't now." "what does all that mean, lynch?" said mr. persse to sir jasper, as they rode home together. "it means quarrelling to the knife." "in a quarrel to the knife," said mr. persse, "all lighter things must be thrown away. daly had brought a pistol in his pocket as you heard this morning. i have been thinking of it ever since; and, putting two and two together, it seems to me to be almost impossible that hunting should go on in county galway." chapter xii. "don't hate him, ada." among those who had gone as far as mr. lambert's, but had not proceeded further, had been frank jones. he had heard and seen what has been narrated, and was as much impressed as others with the condition of the country. the populace generally--for so it had seemed to be--had risen _en masse_ to put down the amusement of the gentry, and there had been a secret conspiracy, so that they had been able to do the same thing in different parts of the county. frank, as he rode back to morony castle, a long way from mr. lambert's covert, was very melancholy in his mind. the persecution of mahomet m. moss and of the landleaguers together was almost too much for him. when he got home his father also was melancholy, and the girls were melancholy. "what sport have you had, frank?" said the father. but he asked the question in a melancholy tone, simply as being one which the son expects on returning from hunting. in this expectation mr. jones gave way. frank shook his head, but did not utter a word. "what do you mean by that?" asked the father. "the whole country is in arms." this, no doubt, was an exaggeration, as the only arms that had been brought to moytubber on the occasion had been the pistol in tom daly's pocket. "in arms?" said philip jones. "well, yes! i call it so. i call men in arms, when they are prepared to carry out any illegal purpose by violence, and these men have done that all through the county galway." "what have they done?" "you know where the meet was; well, they drew ballytowngal, and found no fox there. it was not expected, and nothing happened there. the people did not come into old nick bodkin's demesne, but we had heard by the time that we were there that we should come across a lot of landleaguers at moytubber. there they were as thick as bees round the covert, and there was one man who had the impudence to tell tom daly that draw where he might, he would draw in vain for a fox to-day in county galway." "do you mean that there was a crowd?" asked mr. jones. "a crowd! yes, all claregalway seemed to have turned out. claregalway is not much of a place, but everyone was there from oranmore and from athenry, and half the town from galway city." this certainly was an exaggeration on the part of frank, but was excused by his desire to impress his father with the real truth in the matter. "i never saw half such a number of people by a covert side. but the truth was soon known. they had beat moytubber, and kicked up such a row as the foxes in that gorse had never heard before. and they were not slow in obtaining their object." "their object was clear enough." "they didn't intend that the hounds should hunt that day either at moytubber or elsewhere. daly did not put his hounds into the covert at all; but rode away as fast as his horse's legs could carry him to kilcornan." "that must be ten miles at least," said his father. "twenty, i should think. but we rode away at a hand-gallop, leaving the crowd behind us." this again was an exaggeration. "but when we got to the covert at kilcornan there was just the same sort of crowd, and just the same work had been on foot. the men there all told us that we need not expect to find a fox. a rumour had got about the field by this time that tom daly had a loaded pistol in his pocket. what he meant to do with it i don't know. he could have done no good without a regular massacre." "did he show his pistol?" "i didn't see it; but i do believe it was there. some of the old fogies were awfully solemn about it." "what was the end of it all?" asked edith, who together with her sister was now listening to frank's narrative. "you know mr. lambert's place on the road towards gort. it's a long way off, and i'm a little out of my latitude there. but i went as far as that, and found a bigger crowd than ever. they said that all gort was there; but tom having drawn the covert, went on, and swore that he wouldn't leave a place in all county galway untried. he borrowed fresh horses, and went on with barney smith as grim as death. he is still drawing his covert somewhere." it was thus that frank jones told the story of that day's hunting. to his father's ears it sounded as being very ominous. he did not care much for hunting himself, nor would it much perplex him if the landleaguers would confine themselves to this mode of operations. but as he heard of the crowds surrounding the coverts through the county, he thought also of his many acres still under water, by the operation of a man who had taken upon himself to be his enemy. and the whole morning had been spent in fruitless endeavours to make florian tell the truth. the boy had remained surly, sullen, and silent. "he will tell me at last," edith had said to her father. but her father had said, that unless the truth were now told, he must allow the affair to go by. "the time for dealing with the matter will be gone," he had said. "pat carroll is going about the country as bold as brass, and says that he will fix his own rent; whereas i know, and all the tenants know, that he ought to be in galway jail. there isn't a man on the estate who isn't certain that it was he, with five or six others, who let the waters in upon the meadows." "then why on earth cannot you make them tell?" "they say that they only think it," said edith. "the very best of them only think it," said ada. "and there is not one of them," said mr. jones, "whom you could trust to put into a witness-box. to tell the truth, i do not see what right i have to ask them to go there. if i was to select a man,--or two, how can i say to them, 'forget yourself, forget your wife and children, encounter possible murder, and probable ruin, in order that i may get my revenge on this man'?" "it is not revenge but justice," said frank. "it would be revenge to their minds. and if it came to pass that there was a man who would thus sacrifice himself to me, what must i do with him afterwards? were i to send him to america with money, and take his land into my own hand, see what horrible things would be said of me. the sort of witness i want to back up others, who would then be made to come, is florian." "what would they do to him?" asked edith. "i could send him to an english school for a couple of years, till all this should have passed by. i have thought of that." "that, too, would cost money," said ada. "of course it would cost money, but it would be forthcoming, rather than that the boy should be in danger. but the feeling, to me, as to the boy himself, comes uppermost. it is that he himself should have such a secret in his bosom, and keep it there, locked fast, in opposition to his own father. i want to get it out of him while he is yet a boy, so that his name shall not go abroad as one who, by such manifest falsehood, took part against his own father. it is the injury done to him, rather than the injury done to me." "he has promised his priest that he will not tell," said edith, making what excuse she could for her brother. "he has not promised his priest," said mr. jones. "he has made no promise to father malachi, of ballintubber. if he has promised at all it is to that pestilent fellow at headford. the curate at headford is not his priest, and why should a promise made to any priest be more sacred than one made to another, unless it were made in confession? i cannot understand florian. it seems as though he were anxious to take part with these wretches against his country, against his religion, and against his father. it is unintelligible to me that a boy of his age should, at the same time, be so precocious and so stupid. i have told him that i know him to be a liar, and that until he will tell the truth he shall not come into my presence." having so spoken the father sat silent, while frank went off to dress. it was felt by them all that a terrible decision had been come to in the family. a verdict had gone out and had pronounced florian guilty. they had all gradually come to think that it was so. but now the judge had pronounced the doom. the lad was not to be allowed into his presence during the continuance of the present state of things. in the first place, how was he to be kept out of his father's presence? and the boy was one who would turn mutinous in spirit under such a command. the meaning of it was that he should not sit at table with his father. but, in accordance with the ways of the family, he had always done so. a separate breakfast must be provided for him, and a separate dinner. then would there not be danger that he should be driven to look for his friends elsewhere? would he not associate with father brosnan, or, worse again, with pat carroll? "ada," said edith that night as they sat together, "florian must be made to confess." "how make him?" "you and i must do it." "that's all very well," said ada, "but how? you have been at him now for nine months, and have not moved him. he's the most obstinate boy, i think, that ever lived." "do you know, there is something in it all that makes me love him the better?" said edith. "is there? there is something in it that almost makes me hate him." "don't hate him, ada--if you can help it. he has got some religious idea into his head. it is all stupid." "it is beastly," said ada. "you may call it as you please," said the other, "it is stupid and beastly. he is travelling altogether in a wrong direction, and is putting everybody concerned with him in immense trouble. it may be quite right that a person should be a roman catholic--or that he should be a protestant; but before one turns from one to the other, one should be old enough to know something about it. it is very vexatious; but with flory there is, i think, some idea of an idea. he has got it into his head that the catholics are a downtrodden people, and therefore he will be one of them." "that is such bosh," said ada. "it is so, to your thinking, but not to his. in loving him or hating him you've got to love him or hate him as a boy. of course it's wicked that a boy should lie,--or a man, or a woman, or a girl; but they do. i don't see why we are to turn against a boy of our own, when we know that other boys lie. he has got a notion into his head that he is doing quite right, because the priest has told him." "he is doing quite wrong," said ada. "and now what are we to do about his breakfast? papa says that he is not to be allowed to come into the room, and papa means it. you and i will have to breakfast with him and dine with him, first one and then the other." "but papa will miss us." "we must go through the ceremony of a second breakfast and a second dinner." this was the beginning of edith's scheme. "of course it's a bore; all things are bores. this about the flood is the most terrible bore i ever knew. but i'm not going to let flory go to the devil without making an effort to save him. it would be going to the devil, if he were left alone in his present position." "papa will see that we don't eat anything." "of course he must be told. there never ought to be any secrets in anything. of course he'll grow used to it, and won't expect us to sit there always and eat nothing. he thinks he's right, and perhaps he is. flory will feel the weight of his displeasure; and if we talk to him we may persuade him." this state of things at morony castle was allowed to go on with few other words said upon the subject. the father became more and more gloomy, as the floods held their own upon the broad meadows. pat carroll had been before the magistrates at headford, and had been discharged, as all evidence was lacking to connect him with the occurrence. further effort none was made, and pat carroll went on in his course, swearing that not a shilling of rent should be paid by him in next march. "the floods had done him a great injury," he said laughingly among his companions, "so that it was unreasonable to expect that he should pay." it was true he had owed a half-year's rent last november; but then it had become customary with mr. jones's tenants to be allowed the indulgence of six months. no more at any rate would be said about rent till march should come. and now, superinduced upon this cause of misery, had come the tidings which had been spread everywhere through the county in regard to the galway hunt. tom daly had gone on regularly with his meets, and had not indeed been stopped everywhere. his heart had been gladdened by a wonderful run which he had had from carnlough. the people had not interfered there, and the day had been altogether propitious. tom had for the moment been in high good humour; but the interruption had come again, and had been so repeated as to make him feel that his occupation was in truth gone. the gentry of the county had then held a meeting at ballinasloe, and had decided that the hounds should be withdrawn for the remainder of the season. no one who has not ridden with the hounds regularly can understand the effect of such an order. there was no old woman with a turkey in her possession who did not feel herself thereby entitled to destroy the fox who came lurking about her poultry-yard. nor was there a gentleman who owned a pheasant who did not feel himself animated in some degree by the same feeling. "as there's to be an end of fox-hunting in county galway, we can do what we like with our own coverts." "i shall go in for shooting," sir nicholas bodkin had been heard to say. but black tom daly sat alone gloomily in his room at ahaseragh, where it suited him still to be present and look after the hounds, and told himself that the occupation of his life was gone. who would want to buy a horse even, now that the chief object for horses was at an end? chapter xiii. edith's eloquence. thus they lived through the months of january and february, , at morony castle, and florian had not as yet told his secret. as a boy his nature had seemed to be entirely altered during the last six months. he was thoughtful, morose, and obstinate to a degree, which his father was unable to fathom. but during these last two months there had been no intercourse between them. it may almost be said that no word had been addressed by either to the other. no further kind of punishment had been inflicted. indeed, the boy enjoyed a much wider liberty than had been given to him before, or than was good for him. for his father not only gave no orders to him, but seldom spoke concerning him. it was, however, a terrible trouble to his mind, the fact that his own son should be thus possessed of his own peculiar secret, and should continue from month to month hiding it within his own bosom. with father malachi mr. jones was on good terms, but to him he could say nothing on the subject. the absurdity of the conversion, or perversion, of the boy, in reference to his religion, made mr. jones unwilling to speak of him to any roman catholic priest. father malachi would no doubt have owned that the boy had been altogether unable to see, by his own light, the difference between the two religions. but he would have attributed the change to the direct interposition of god. he would not have declared in so many words that a miracle had been performed in the boy's favour, but this would have been the meaning of the argument he would have used. in fact, the gaining of a proselyte under any circumstances would have been an advantage too great to jeopardise by any arguments in the matter. the protestant clergyman at headford, in whose parish morony castle was supposed to have been situated, was a thin, bigoted protestant, of that kind which used to be common in ireland. mr. armstrong was a gentleman, who held it to be an established fact that a roman catholic must necessarily go to the devil. in all the moralities he was perfect. he was a married man, with a wife and six children, all of whom he brought up and educated on £ a year. he never was in debt; he performed all his duties--such as they were--and passed his time in making rude and unavailing attempts to convert his poorer neighbours. there was a union,--or poor-house--in the neighbourhood, to which he would carry morsels of meat in his pocket on friday, thinking that the poor wretches who had flown in the face of their priest by eating the unhallowed morsels, would then have made a first step towards protestantism. he was charitable, with so little means for charity; he was very eager in his discourses, in the course of which he would preach to a dozen protestants for three-quarters of an hour, and would confine himself to one subject, the iniquities of the roman catholic religion. he had heard of florian's perversion, and had made it the topic on which he had declaimed for two sundays. he had attempted to argue with father brosnan, but had been like a babe in his hands. he ate and drank of the poorest, and clothed himself so as just to maintain his clerical aspect. all his aspirations were of such a nature as to entitle him to a crown of martyrdom. but they were certainly not of a nature to justify him in expecting any promotion on this earth. such was mr. joseph armstrong, of headford, and from him no aid, or counsel, or pleasant friendship could be expected in this matter. the trouble of florian's education fell for the nonce into edith's hands. he had hitherto worked under various preceptors; his father, his sister, and his brother; also a private school at galway for a time had had the charge of him. but now edith alone undertook the duty. gradually the boy began to have a way of his own, and to tell himself that he was only bound to be obedient during certain hours of the morning. in this way the whole day after twelve o'clock was at his own disposal, and he never told any of the family what he then did. peter, the butler, perhaps knew where he went, but even to peter the butler, the knowledge was a trouble; for peter, though a stanch roman catholic, was not inclined to side with anyone against his own master. florian, in truth, did see more of pat carroll than he should have done; and, though it would be wrong to suppose that he took a part against his father, he no doubt discussed the questions which were of interest to pat carroll, in a manner that would have been very displeasing to his father. "faix, mr. flory," pat would say to him, "'av you're one of us, you've got to be one of us; you've had a glimmer of light, as father brosnan says, to see the errors of your way; but you've got to see the errors of your way on 'arth as well as above. dragging the rint out o' the body and bones o' the people, like hair from a woman's head, isn't the way, and so you'll have to larn." then florian would endeavour to argue with his friend, and struggle to make him understand that in the present complicated state of things it was necessary that a certain amount of rent should go to morony castle to keep up the expenses there. "we couldn't do, you know, without peter; nor yet very well without the carriage and horses. it's all nonsense saying that there should be no rent; where are we to get our clothes from?" but these arguments, though very good of their kind, had no weight with pat carroll, whose great doctrine it was that rent was an evil _per se_; and that his world would certainly go on a great deal better if there were no rent. "haven't you got half the land of ballintubber in your hands?" said carroll. here florian in a whisper reminded pat that the lands of ballintubber were at this moment under water, and had been put so by his operation. "why wouldn't he make me a statement when i asked for it?" said carroll, with a coarse grin, which almost frightened the boy. "flory," said edith to the boy that afternoon, "you did see the men at work upon the sluices that afternoon?" "i didn't," said florian. "we all believe that you did." "but i didn't." "you may as well listen to me this once. we all believe that you did--papa and i, and frank and ada; peter believes it; there's not a servant about the place but what believes it. everybody believes it at headford. mr. blake at carnlough, and all the blakes believe it." "i don't care a bit about mr. blake," said the boy. "but you do care about your own father. if you were to go up and down to galway by the boat, you would find that everybody on board believes it. the country people would say that you had turned against your father because of your religion. mr. morris, from beyond cong, was here the other day, and from what he said about the floods it was easy to see that he believed it." "if you believe mr. morris better than you do me, you may go your own ways by yourself." "i don't see that, flory. i may believe mr. morris in this matter better than i do you, and yet not intend to go my own ways by myself. i don't believe you at all on this subject." "very well, then, don't." "but i want to find out, if i can, what may be the cause of so terrible a falsehood on your part. it has come to that, that though you tell the lie, you almost admit that it is a lie." "i don't admit it." "it is as good as admitted. the position you assume is this: 'i saw the gates destroyed, but i am not going to say so in evidence, because it suits me to take part with pat carroll, and to go against my own father.'" "you've no business to put words like that into my mouth." "i'm telling you what everybody thinks. would your father treat you as he does now without a cause? and are you to remain here, and to go down and down in the world till you become such a one as pat carroll? and you will have to live like pat carroll, with the knowledge in everyone's heart that you have been untrue to your father. they are becoming dishonest, false knaves, untrue to their promises, the very scum of the earth, because of their credulity and broken vows; but what am i to say of you? you will have been as false and perfidious and credulous as they. you will have thrown away everything good to gratify the ambition of some empty traitor. and you will have done it all against your own father." here she paused and looked at him. they were roaming at the time round the demesne, and he walked on, but said nothing. "i know what you are thinking of, flory." "what am i thinking of?" "you're thinking of your duty; you are thinking whether you can bring yourself to make a clean breast of it, and break the promises which you have made." "nobody should break a promise," said he. "and nobody should tell a lie. when one finds oneself in the difficulty one has to go back and find out where the evil thing first began." "i gave the promise first," said florian. "no such promise should ever have been given. your first duty in the matter was to your father." "i don't see that at all," said florian. "my first duty is to my religion." "even to do evil for its sake? go to father malachi, and ask him." "father malachi isn't the man to whom i should like to tell everything. father brosnan is a much better sort of clergyman. he is my confessor, and i choose to go by what he tells me." "then you will be a traitor to your father." "i am not a traitor," said florian. "and yet you admit that some promise has been given--some promise which you dare not own. you cannot but know in your own heart that i know the truth. you have seen that man carroll doing the mischief, and have promised him to hold your tongue about it. you have not, then, understood at all the nature or extent of the evil done. you have not, then, known that it would be your father's duty to put down this turbulent ruffian. you have promised, and having promised, father brosnan has frightened you. he and pat carroll together have cowed the very heart within you. the consequence is that you are becoming one of them, and instead of moving as a gentleman on the face of the earth, you will be such as they are. tell the truth, and your father will at once send you to some school in england, where you will be educated as becomes my brother." the boy now was sobbing in tears. he lacked the resolution to continue his lie, but did not dare to tell the truth. "i will," he whispered. "what will you do?" "i will tell all that i know about it." "tell me, then, now." "no, edith, not now," he said. "will you tell papa, then?" said edith. "papa is so hard to me." "whom will you tell, and when?" "i will tell you, but not now. i will first tell father brosnan that i am going to do it; i shall not then have told the lie absolutely to my priest." on this occasion edith could do nothing further with him; and, indeed, the nature of the confession which she expected him to make was such that it should be made to some person beyond herself. she could understand that it must be taken down in some form that would be presentable to a magistrate, and that evidence of the guilt of pat carroll and evidence as to the possible guilt of others must not be whispered simply into her own ears. but she had now brought him to such a condition that she did think that his story would be told. chapter xiv. rachel's correspondence. there was another cause of trouble at morony castle, which at the present moment annoyed them much. frank had received three or four letters from rachel o'mahony, the purport of them all being to explain her troubles with mahomet m. m., as she called the man; but still so as to prevent frank from attempting to interfere personally. "no doubt the man is a brute," she had said, "if a young lady, without ceasing to be ladylike, may so describe so elegant a gentleman. if not so, still he is a brute, because i can't declare otherwise, even for the sake of being ladylike. but what you say about coming is out of the question. you can't meddle with my affairs till you've a title to meddle. now, you know the truth. i'm going to stick to you, and i expect you to stick to me. for certain paternal reasons you want to put the marriage off. very well. i'm agreeable, as the folks say. if you would say that you would be ready to marry me on the first of april, again i should be agreeable. you can nowhere find a more agreeable young woman than i am. but i must be one thing or the other." then he wrote to her the sort of love-letter which the reader can understand. it was full of kisses and vows and ecstatic hopes but did not name a day. in fact mr. jones, in the middle of his troubles, was unable to promise an immediate union, and did not choose that his son should marry in order that he might be supported by a singing girl. but to this letter frank added a request--or rather a command--that he should be allowed to come over at once and see mr. mahomet. it was no doubt true that his father was, for the minute, a little backward in the matter of his income; but still he wanted to look after mahomet, and he wanted to be kissed. you must not come at all, and i won't even see you if you do. you men are always so weak, and want such a lot of petting. mahomet tried to kiss me last night when i was singing to him before going to dress. i have to practise with him. i gave him such a blow in the face that i don't think he'll repeat the experiment, and i had my eyes about me. you needn't be at all afraid of me but what i am quick enough. he was startled at the moment, and i merely laughed. i'm not going to give up £ a month because he makes a beast of himself; and i'm not going to call in father as long as i can help it; nor do i mean to call in your royal highness at all. i tell everybody that i'm going to marry your royal highness, king jones; there isn't a bit of a secret about it. i talk of my mr. jones just as if we were married, because it all comes easier to me in that way. you will see that i absolutely believe in you and i expect that you shall absolutely believe in me. send you a kiss! of course i do; i am not at all coy of my favours. you ask mahomet also as to what he thinks of the strength of my right arm. i examined his face so minutely when i had to fall into his arms on the stage, and there i saw the round mark of my fist, and the swelling all round it. and i thought to myself as i was singing my devotion that he should have it next time in his eye. but, frank, mark my words: i won't have you here till you can come to marry me. frank did not go over, even on this occasion, as he was detained, not only by his mistress's danger, but by his father's troubles. florian had almost, but had not quite, told the entire truth. he had said that he had seen the sluices broken, but had not quite owned who had broken them. he had declared that pat carroll had done "mischief," but had not quite said of what nature was the mischief which carroll had done. it was now march, and the hunting troubles were still going on. the whole gentry in county galway had determined to take black tom daly's part, and to carry him on through the contest. but the effect of taking black tom daly's part was to take the part against which the land leaguers were determined to enrol themselves. for of all men in the county, black tom was the most unpopular. and of all men he was the most determined; with him it was literally a question between god and mammon. a man could not serve both. in the simplicity of his heart, he thought that the landleaguers were children of satan, and that to have any dealings with them, or the passage of any kindness, was in itself satanic. he said very little, but he spent whole hours in thinking of the evil that they were doing. and among the evils was the unparalleled insolence which they displayed in entering coverts in county galway. now frank jones, who had not hitherto been very intimate with tom, had taken up his part, and was fighting for him at this moment. nevertheless the provocation to him to go to london was very great, and he had only put it off till the last coverts should be drawn on saturday the nd of april. the hunt had determined to stop their proceedings earlier than usual; but still there was to be one day in april, for the sake of honour and glory. but in the latter days of march there came a third letter from rachel o'mahony. like the other letter it was cheerful, and high-spirited; but still it seemed to speak of impending dangers, which frank, though he could not understand them, thought that he could perceive. my present engagement is to go on till the end of july, with an understanding that i am to have twenty guineas a night, for any evening that i may be required to sing in august. this your highness will perceive is a very considerable increase, and at three nights a week might afford an income on which your highness would perhaps condescend to come and eat a potato, in the honour of "ould" ireland, till better times should come. that would be the happy potato which would be the first bought for such a purpose! but you must see that i cannot expect a continuance of my present engagement as the head of your royal highness' seraglio. i should have to look for another chancellor of the exchequer, and should probably find him. mr. mahomet m. moss would hardly endure me as being part of the properties belonging to your royal highness. and now i must tell you my own little news. beelzebub has taken a worse devil to himself, so that i am likely to be trodden down into the very middle of the pit. i choose to tell you because i won't have you think that i have ever kept anything secret from you. if i describe the roars of mrs. beelzebub to you, and her red claws, and her forky tongue, and her fiery tail, it is not because i like her as a subject of poetry, but because this special subject comes uppermost; and you shall never say to me, why didn't you tell me when you were introduced to beelzebub's wife? and assert, as men are apt to do, that you would not have allowed me to make her acquaintance. mrs. beelzebub appears on the stage as belonging to mahomet but how they have mixed it all up together among themselves, i do not quite know. i do not think that they're in love with one another, because she is not jealous of me. she is madame socani in the plot, and a genuine american from new york; but she can sing; she has a delicious soprano voice, soft and powerful; but she has also a temper and temperament such as no woman, nor yet no devil, ought to possess. of monsieur socani, or signor socani, or herr socani, i never yet heard. but such men do not always make themselves troublesome. i have to sing with her, and a woman you may say would not be troublesome, but she and mahomet between them consider themselves competent to get me under their thumb. i don't intend to be under their thumb. i intend to be under nobody's thumb but yours; and the sooner the better. now you know all about it; but as you shall value the first squeeze which you shall get when you do come, don't come till your coming has been properly settled. then there was a fourth letter in which she described her troubles, still humorously, and with some attempt at absolute comedy. but she certainly wrote with a purpose of making him understand that she was subjected to very considerable annoyance. she was still determined not to call upon him for assistance; and she warned him that any assistance whatever would be out of his power. a lover on the scene, who could not declare his purpose of speedy marriage, would be worse than useless. all that she saw plainly,--or at any rate declared that she saw plainly, though she was altogether unable to explain it to frank jones. mrs. beelzebub is certainly the queen of the devils. i remember when you read "paradise lost" to us at morony castle, which i thought very dull. milton arranged the ranks in pandemonium differently; but there has been a revolution since that, and mrs. beelzebub has everything just as she pleases. i am beginning to pity mahomet, and pity, they say, is akin to love. she urges him,--well, just to make love to me. what reason there is between them i don't know, but i am sure she wants him to get me altogether into his hands. i'm not sure but what she is mahomet's own wife. this is a horrid kettle of fish, as you will see. but i think i'll turn out to be head cook yet. if god does not walk atop of the devils what's the use of running straight? but i am sure he will, and the more so because there is in truth no temptation. she told me the other day to my face, that i was a fool. "i know i am," said i demurely, "but why?" then she came out with her demand. it was very simple, and did not in truth amount to much. i was to become just--mistress to mr. moss. frank jones, when he read this, crushed the paper up in his hand and went upstairs to his bedroom, determined to pack up immediately. but before he had progressed far, he got out the letter and read the remainder. "you," i said, "are an intimate acquaintance of mr. moss." "i am his particular friend," she said, with that peculiar new york aping of a foreign accent, which is the language that was, i am sure, generally used by the devils. "ask him, with my best compliments," i said, "whether he remembers the blow i hit him in the face. tell him i can hit much harder than that; tell him that he will never find me unprepared, for a moment." now i have got another little bit of news for you. somebody has found out in new york that i am making money. it is true, in a limited way. £ a month is something, and so they've asked papa to subscribe as largely as he can to a grand home-rule, anti-protestant, hate-the-english, stars-and-stripes society. it is the most loyal and beneficent thing out, and dear papa thinks i can do nothing better with my wealth than bestow it upon these birds of freedom. i have no doubt they are all right, because i am an american-irish, and have not the pleasure of knowing black tom daly. i have given them £ , and am, therefore, at this moment, nearly impecunious. on this account i do not choose to give up my engagement--£ a month, with an additional possibility of twenty guineas a night when august shall be here. you will tell me that after the mild suggestion made by mrs. beelzebub, i ought to walk out of the house, and go back to county galway immediately. i don't think so. i am learning every day how best to stand fast on my own feet. i am earning my money honestly, and men and women here in london are saying that in truth i can sing. a very nice old gentleman called on me the other day from covent garden, and, making me two low bows, asked whether i was my own mistress some time in october next. i thought at the moment that i was at any rate free from the further engagement proposed by mrs. beelzebub, and told him that i was free. then he made me two lower bows, touched the tip of my fingers, and said that he would be proud to wait upon me in a few days with a definite proposal. this old gentleman may mean twenty guineas a night for the whole of next winter, or something like £ a month. think of that, mr. jones. but how am i to go on in my present impecunious position if i quarrel altogether with my bread and butter? so now you know all about it. remember that i have told my father nothing as to mrs. beelzebub's proposition. it is better not; he would disown it, and would declare that i had invented it from vanity. i do think that a woman in this country can look after herself if she be minded so to do. i know that i am stronger than mr. moss and mrs. beelzebub together. i do believe that he will pay me his money, as he has always done, and i want to earn my money. i have some little precautions--just for a rainy day. i have told you everything--everything, because you are to be my husband. but you can do me no good by coming here, but may cause me a peck of troubles. now, good-bye, and god bless you. a thousand kisses. ever your own, r. tell everybody that i'm to be mrs. jones some day. frank finished packing up, and then told his father that he was going off to athenry at once, there to meet the night mail train up to dublin. "why are you going at once, in this sudden manner?" asked his father. frank then remembered that he could not tell openly the story of mrs. beelzebub. rachel had told him in pure simple-minded confidence, and though he was prepared to disobey her, he would not betray her. "she is on the stage," he said. "i am aware of it," replied his father, intending to signify that his son's betrothed was not employed as he would have wished. "at the charing cross opera," said the son, endeavouring to make the best of it. "yes; at the charing cross opera, if that makes a difference." "she is earning her bread honestly." "i believe so," said mr. jones, "i do believe so, i do think that rachel o'mahony is a thoroughly good girl." "i am sure of it," said ada and edith almost in the same breath. "but not less on that account is the profession distasteful to me. you do not wish to see your sisters on the stage?" "i have thought of all that, sir," said frank, "i have quite made up my mind to make rachel my wife, if it be possible." "do you mean to live on what she may earn as an actress?" here frank remained silent for a moment. "because if you do, i must tell you that it will not become you as a gentleman to accept her income." "you cannot give us an income on which we may live." "certainly not at this moment. with things as they are in ireland now, i do not know how long i may have a shilling with which to bless myself. it seems to me that for the present it is your duty to stay at home, and not to trouble rachel by going to her in london." "at this moment i must go to her." "you have given no reason for your going." frank thought of it, and told himself that there was in truth no reason. his going would be a trouble to rachel, and yet there were reasons which made it imperative for him to go. "have you asked yourself what will be the expense?" said his father. "it may cost i suppose twelve pounds, going and coming." "and have you asked yourself how many twelve pounds will be likely to fall into your hands just at present? is she in any trouble?" "i had rather not talk about her affairs," said frank. "is not her father with her?" "i do not think he is the best man in the world to help a girl in such an emergency." but he had not described what was the emergency. "you think that a young man, who certainly will be looked on as the young lady's lover, but by no means so certainly as the young lady's future husband, will be more successful?" "i do," said frank, getting up and walking out of the room. he was determined at any rate that nothing which his father could say should stop him, as he had resolved to disobey all the orders which rachel had given him. at any rate, during that night and the following day he made his way up to london. chapter xv. captain yorke clayton. at this period of our story much had already been said in the outside world as to flooding the meadows of ballintubber. like other outrages of the same kind, it had not at first been noticed otherwise than in the immediate neighbourhood; and though a terrible injury had been inflicted, equal in value to the loss of five or six hundred pounds, it had seemed as though it would pass away unnoticed, simply because mr. jones had lacked evidence to bring it home to any guilty party. but gradually it had become known that pat carroll had been the sinner, and the causes also which had brought about the crime were known. it was known that pat carroll had joined the landleaguers in the neighbouring county of mayo with great violence, and that he had made a threat that he would pay no further rent to his landlord. the days of the no-rent manifestation had not yet come, as the obnoxious members of parliament were not yet in prison; but no-rent was already firmly fixed in the minds of many men, about to lead in the process of time to "arrears bills," and other abominations of injustice. and among those conspicuous in the west, who were ready to seize fortune by the forelock, was mr. pat carroll. in this way his name had come forward, and inquiries were made of mr. jones which distressed him much. for though he was ready to sacrifice his meadows, and his tenant, and his rent, he was most unwilling to do it if he should be called upon at the same time to sacrifice his boy's character for loyalty. there had been a man stationed at castlerea for some months past, who in celebrity had almost beaten the notorious pat carroll. this was one captain yorke clayton, who for nearly twelve months had been in the county mayo. it was supposed that he had first shown himself there as a constabulary officer, and had then very suddenly been appointed resident magistrate. why he was captain nobody knew. it was the fact, indeed, that he had been employed as adjutant in a volunteer regiment in england, having gone over there from the police force in the north of ireland. his title had gone with him by no fault or no virtue of his own, and he had blossomed forth to the world of connaught as captain clayton before he knew why he was about to become famous. famous, however, he did become. he had two attributes which, if fortune helps, may serve to make any man famous. they were recklessness of life and devotion to an idea. if fortune do not help, recklessness of life amidst such dangers as those which surrounded captain clayton will soon bring a man to his end, so that there will be no question of fame. but we see men occasionally who seem to find it impossible to encounter death. it is not at all probable that this man wished to die. life seemed to him to be pleasant enough: he was no forlorn lover; he had fairly good health and strength; people said of him that he had small but comfortable private means; he was remarkable among all men for his good looks; and he lacked nothing necessary to make life happy. but he appeared to be always in a hurry to leave it. a hundred men in mayo had sworn that he should die. this was told to him very freely; but he had only laughed at it, and was generally called "the woodcock," as he rode about among his daily employments. the ordinary life of a woodcock calls upon him to be shot at; but yet a woodcock is not an easy bird to hit. then there was his devotion to an idea! i will not call it loyalty, lest i should seem to praise the man too vehemently for that which probably was simply an instinct in his own heart. he lived upon his hatred of a landleaguer. it was probably some conviction on his own part that the original landleaguer had come from new york, which produced this feeling. and it must be acknowledged of him with reference to the lower order of landleaguers that he did admit in his mind a possibility that they were curable. there were to him landleaguers and landleaguers; but the landleaguer whom captain yorke clayton hated with the bitterest prejudice was the landleaguing member of parliament. some of his worst enemies believed that he might be detected in breaking out into illegal expressions of hatred, or, more unfortunately still, into illegal acts, and that so the government might be compelled to dismiss him with disgrace. others, his warmest friends, hoped that by such a process his life might be eventually saved. but for the present captain yorke clayton had saved both his character and his neck, to the great surprise both of those who loved him and the reverse. he had lately been appointed joint resident magistrate for galway, mayo, and roscommon, and had removed his residence to galway. to him also had pat carroll become intimately known, and to him the floods of ballintubber were a peculiar case. it was one great desire of his heart to have pat carroll incarcerated as a penal felon. he did not very often express himself on this subject, but pat carroll knew well the nature of his wishes. "a thundering bloody rapparee" was the name by which carroll delighted to call him. but carroll was one who exercised none of that control over his own tongue for which captain clayton was said to be so conspicuous. during the last month mr. jones had seen captain clayton more than once at galway, and on one occasion he had come down to morony castle attended by a man who was supposed to travel as his servant, but who was known by all the world to be a policeman in disguise. for captain clayton had been strictly forbidden by the authorities of the castle to travel without such a companion; and an attempt had already been made to have him dismissed for disobedience to these orders. captain clayton, when he had been at morony castle, had treated flory with great kindness, declining to cross-question him at all. "i would endeavour to save him from these gentlemen," he had said to his father. "i don't quite think that we understand what is going on within his mind;" but this had been before the conversation last mentioned which had taken place between flory and his sisters. now he was to come again, and make further inquiry, and meet half-a-dozen policemen from the neighbourhood. but florian had as yet but half confessed, and almost hoped that captain clayton would appear among them as his friend. the girls, to tell the truth, had been much taken with the appearance of the gallant captain. it seems to be almost a shame to tell the truth of what modest girls may think of any man whom they may chance to meet. they would never tell it to themselves. even two sisters can hardly do so. and when the man comes before them, just for once or twice, to be judged and thought of at a single interview, the girl,--such as were these girls,--can hardly tell it to herself. "he is manly and brave, and has so much to say for himself, and is so good-looking, that what can any girl who has her heart at her own disposal wish for better than such a lover?" it would have been quite impossible that either of mr. jones's daughters could ever have so whispered to herself. but was it not natural that such an unwhispered thought should have passed through the mind of ada--ada the beautiful, ada the sentimental, ada the young lady who certainly was in want of a lover? "he is very nice, certainly," said ada, allowing herself not another word, to her sister. "but what is the good of a man being nice when he is a 'woodcock'?" said edith. "everybody says that his destiny is before him. i daresay he is nice, but what's the use?" "you don't mean to say that you think he'll be killed?" said ada. "i do, and i mean to say that if i were a man, it might be that i should have to be killed too. a man has to run his chance, and if he falls into such a position as this, of course he must put up with it. i don't mean to say that i don't like him the better for it." "why does he not go away and leave the horrid country?" said ada. "because the more brave men that go away the more horrid the country will become. and then i think a man is always the happier if he has something really to think of. such a one as captain clayton does not want to go to balls." "i suppose not," said ada plaintively, as though she thought it a thousand pities that captain clayton should not want to go to balls. "such a man," said edith with an air of firmness, "finds a woman when he wants to marry, who will suit him,--and then he marries her. there is no necessity for any balls there." "then he ought not to dance at all. such a man ought not to want to get married." "not if he means to be killed out of hand," said edith. "the possible young woman must be left to judge of that. i shouldn't like to marry a 'woodcock,' however much i might admire him. i do think it well that there should be such men as captain clayton. i feel that if i were a man i ought to wish to be one myself. but i am sure i should feel that i oughtn't to ask a girl to share the world with me. fancy marrying a man merely to be left a sorrowing widow! it is part of the horror of his business that he shouldn't even venture to dance, lest some poor female should be captivated." "a girl might be captivated without dancing," said ada. "i don't mean to say that such a man should absolutely tie himself up in a bag so that no poor female should run any possible danger, but he oughtn't to encourage such risks. to tell the truth, i don't think that captain clayton does." ada that afternoon thought a great deal of the position,--not, of course, in reference to herself. was it proper that such a man as captain yorke clayton should abstain from falling in love with a girl, or even from allowing a girl to fall in love with him because he was in danger of being shot? it was certainly a difficult question. was any man to be debarred from the pleasures, and incidents, and natural excitements of a man's life because of the possible dangers which might possibly happen to a possible young woman? looking at the matter all round, ada did not see that the man could help himself unless he were to be shut up in a bag, as edith had said, so as to prevent a young woman from falling in love with him. although he were a "woodcock," the thing must go on in its own natural course. if misfortunes did come, why misfortunes must come. it was the same thing with any soldier or any sailor. if she were to fall in love with some officer,--for the supposition in its vague, undefined form was admissible even to poor ada's imagination,--she would not be debarred from marrying him merely by the fact that he would have to go to the wars. of course, as regarded captain yorke clayton, this was merely a speculation. he might be engaged to some other girl already for anything she knew;--"or cared," as she told herself with more or less of truth. captain yorke clayton came down by the boat that afternoon to morony castle, frank jones having started for london two or three days before. he reached the pier at about four o'clock, accompanied by his faithful follower, and was there met by mr. jones himself, who walked up with him to the castle. there was a short cut across the fields to mr. jones's house; and as they left the road about a furlong up from the pier, they were surrounded by the waters which mr. carroll had let in upon the ballintubber meadows. "you won't mind my fellow coming with us?" said captain clayton. "'your fellow,' as you call him, is more than welcome. i came across this way because some of pat carroll's friends may be out on the high road. if they fire half-a-dozen rifles from behind a wall at your luggage, they won't do so much harm as if they shot at yourself." "there won't be any shooting here," said clayton, shaking his head, "he's not had time to get a stranger down and pay him. they always require two or three days' notice for that work; and there isn't a wall about the place. you're not giving mr. pat carroll a fair chance for his friends. i could dodge them always with perfect security by myself, only the beaks up in dublin have given a strict order. as they pay for the pistols, i am bound to carry them." then he lifted up the lappets of his coat and waistcoat, and showed half-a-dozen pistols stuck into his girdle. "our friend there has got as many more." "i have a couple myself," said mr. jones, indicating their whereabouts, and showing that he was not as yet so used to carry them, as to have provided himself with a belt for the purpose. then they walked on, chatting indifferently about the landleaguers till they reached the castle. "the people are not cowards," captain clayton had said. "i believe that men do become cowards when they are tempted to become liars by getting into parliament. an irishman of a certain class does at any rate. but those fellows, if they were put into a regiment, would fight like grim death. that man there," and he pointed back over his shoulder, "is as brave a fellow as i ever came across in my life. i don't think that he would hesitate a moment in attacking three or four men armed with revolvers. and gold wouldn't induce him to be false to me. but if mr. pat carroll had by chance got hold of him before he had come my way, he might have been the very man to shoot you or me from behind a wall, with a bit of black crape on his face. what's the reason of it? i love that man as my brother, but i might have hated him as the very devil." "the force of example, sir," said mr. jones, as he led the way into the quiet, modern residence which rejoiced to call itself morony castle. "what are we to do about this boy?" said mr. jones, when they had seated themselves in his study. "are you friends with him yet?" "no; i declared to his sisters that i would not sit down to table with him till he had told the truth, and i have kept my word." "how does he bear it?" "but badly," said the father. "it has told upon him very much. he complains to his sister that i have utterly cast him off." "it is the oddest case i ever heard of in my life," said the captain. "i suppose his change of religion has been at the bottom of it--that and the machinations of the priest down at headford. when we recollect that there must have been quite a crowd of people looking on all the while, it does seem odd that we should be unable to get a single witness to tell the truth, knowing, as we do, that this lad was there. if he would only name two who were certainly there, and who certainly saw the deed done, that would be enough; for the people are not, in themselves, hostile to you." "you know he has owned that he did see it," said the father. "and he has acknowledged that pat carroll was there, though he has never mentioned the man's name. his sisters have told him that i will not be satisfied unless i hear him declare that pat carroll was one of the offenders." "let us have him in, sir, if you don't mind." "just as he is?" "i should say so. or let the young ladies come with him, if you do not object. which of them has been most with him since your edict went forth?" mr. jones declared that edith had been most with her brother, and the order went forth that edith and florian should be summoned into the apartment. ada and edith were together when the order came. edith was to go down and present herself before captain yorke clayton. "mercy me!" said edith jumping up, "i hope they won't shoot at him through the window whilst i am there." "oh! edith, how can you think of such a thing?" "it would be very unpleasant if some assassin were to take my back hair for captain clayton's brown head. they're very nearly the same colour." and edith prepared to leave the room, hearing her brother's slow, heavy step as he passed before the door. "won't you go first and brush your hair?" said ada; "and do put a ribbon on your neck." "i'll do nothing of the kind. it would be a sheer manoeuvring to entrap a man who ought to be safeguarded against all such female wiles. besides, i don't believe a bit that captain clayton would know the difference between a young lady with or without a ribbon. what evidence i can give;--that's the question." so saying, edith descended to her father's room. she found florian with his hand upon the door, and they both entered the room. i have said that captain clayton was a remarkably good-looking man, and i ought, perhaps, to give some explanation of the term when first introducing him to the reader in the presence of a lady who is intended to become the heroine of this story; but it must suffice that i have declared him to be good-looking, and that i add to that the fact that though he was thirty-five years old, he did not look to be more than five-and-twenty. the two peculiarities of his face were very light blue eyes, and very long moustachios. "florian and i have come to see the latter-day hero," said edith laughing as she entered the room; "though i know that you are so done up with pistols that no peaceable young woman ought to come near you." to this he made some sportive reply, and then before a minute had passed over their heads he had taken florian by the hand. chapter xvi. captain clayton comes to the castle. "well, my boy, how are you?" asked the captain. "there's nothing particularly the matter with me," said florian. "i suppose all this is troubling you?" "all what? you mean about pat carroll. of course it's troubling me. nobody will believe a word that i say." "but they do believe you now that you are telling the truth," said edith. "do you hold your tongue, miss," said the boy, "i don't see why you should have so much to say about it." "she has been your best friend from first to last," said the father. "if it had not been for edith i would have turned you out of the house. it is terrible to me to think that a boy of mine should refuse to say what he saw in such a matter as this. you are putting yourself on a par with the enemies of your own family. you do not know it, but you are nearly sending me to the grave." then there was a long pause, during which the captain kept his eyes fixed on the boy's face. and edith had moved round so as to seat herself close to her brother, and had taken his hand in hers. "don't, edith," said the boy. "leave me alone, i don't want to be meddled with," and he withdrew his hand. "oh, florian!" said the girl, "try to tell the truth and be a gentleman, whether it be for you or against you, tell the truth." "i'm not to mind a bit about my religion then?" "does your religion bid you tell a lie?" asked the captain. "i'm not telling a lie, i am just holding my tongue. a catholic has a right to hold his tongue when he is among protestants." "even to the ruin of his father," suggested the captain. "i don't want to ruin papa. he said he was going to turn--to turn me out of the house. i would go and drown myself in the lake if he did, or in one of those big dykes which divide the meadows. i am miserable among them--quite miserable. edith never gives me any peace, day or night. she comes and sits in my bedroom, begging me to tell the truth. it ought to be enough when i say that i will hold my tongue. papa can turn me out to drown myself if he pleases. edith goes on cheating the words out of me till i don't know what i'm saying. if i am to be brought up to tell it all before the judge i shan't know what i have said before, or what i have not said." "_nil conscire tibi_," said the father, who had already taught his son so much latin as that. "but you did see the sluice gates torn down, and thrown back into the water?" said the captain. here florian shook his head mournfully. "i understood you to acknowledge that you had seen the gates destroyed." "i never said as much to you," said the boy. "but you did to me," said edith. "if a fellow says a word to you, it is repeated to all the world. i never would have you joined with me in a secret. you are a great deal worse than--, well, those fellows that you abuse me about. they never tell anything that they have heard among themselves, to people outside." "pat carroll, you mean?" asked the captain. "he isn't the only one. there's more in it than him." "oh yes; we know that. there were many others in it besides pat carroll, when they let the waters in through the dyke gates. there must have been twenty there." "no, there weren't--not that i saw." "a dozen, perhaps?" "you are laying traps for me, but i am not going to be caught. i was there, and i did see it. you may make the most of that. though you have me up before the judge, i needn't say a word more than i please." "he is more obstinate," said his father, "than any rebel that you can meet." "but so mistaken," said the captain, "because he can refuse to answer us who are treating him with such tenderness and affection, who did not even want to wound his feelings more than we can help, he thinks that he can hold his peace in the same fashion, before the entire court; and that he can do so, although he has owned that he knows the men." "i have never owned that," said the boy. "not to your sister?" "i only owned to one." "pat carroll?" said the captain; but giving the name merely as a hint to help the boy's memory. but the boy was too sharp for him. "that's another of your traps, captain clayton. if she says pat carroll, i can say it was tim brady. a boy's word will be as good as a girl's, i suppose." "a lie can never be as good as the truth, whether from a boy or a girl," said the captain, endeavouring to look him through and through. the boy quavered beneath his gaze, and the captain went on with his questioning. "i suppose we may take it for granted that pat carroll was there, and that you did see him?" "you may take anything for granted." "you would have to swear before a jury that pat carroll was there." then there was another pause, but at last, with a long sigh, the boy spoke out. "he was there, and i did see him." then he burst into tears and threw himself down on the ground, and hid his face in his sister's lap. "dear flory," said she. "my own brother! i knew that you would struggle to be a gentleman at last." "it will all come right with him now," said the captain. but the father frowned and shook his head. "how many were there with him?" asked the captain, intent on the main business. but florian feeling that it would be as good to be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and feeling also that he had at last cast aside all the bonds which bound him to pat carroll and father brosnan,--feeling that there was nothing left for him but the internecine enmity of his old friends,--got up from the floor, and wiping away the tears from his face, spoke out boldly the whole truth as he knew it. "it was dark, and i didn't see them all. there were only six whom i could see, though i know that there were many others round about among the meadows whose names i had heard, though i do not remember them." "we will confine ourselves to the six whom you did see," said the captain, preparing to listen quietly to the boy's story. the father took out a pen and ink, but soon pushed it on one side. edith again got hold of the boy's hand, and held it within her own till his story was finished. "i didn't see the six all at once. the first whom i did see was pat carroll, and his brother terry, and tim brady. they were up there just where the lane has turned down from the steamboat road. i had gone down to the big sluice gates before anyone had noticed me, and there were tim and terry smashing away at the gate hinges, up to their middles in mud; and pat carroll was handing them down a big crowbar. terry, when he saw me, fell flat forward into the water, and had to be picked out again." "did they say anything to threaten you?" said the captain. "tim brady said that i was all right, and was a great friend of father brosnan's. then they whispered together, and i heard terry say that he wouldn't go against anything that father brosnan might say. then pat carroll came and stood over me with the crowbar." "did he threaten you?" "he didn't do it in a threatening way; but only asked me to be hand and glove with them." "had you been intimate with this man before? asked the captain. "he had been very intimate with him," said the father. "all this calamity has come of his intimacy. he has changed his religion and ceased to be a gentleman." here the boy again sobbed, but edith still squeezed his hand. "what did you say?" asked the captain, "when he bade you be hand and glove with him?" "i said that i would. then they made the sign of a cross, and swore me on it. and they swore me specially to say nothing up here. and they swore me again when they met down at tim rafferty's house in headford. i intended to keep my word, and i think that you ought to have let me keep it." "but there were three others whom you saw," urged the captain. "there was con heffernan, and a man they call lax, who had come from lough conn beyond castlebar." "he's not a man of this county." "i think not, though i had seen him here before. he has had something to do with the landleaguers up about foxford." "i think i have a speaking acquaintance with that mr. lax," said the captain; and everybody could perceive that the tone of his voice was altered as he spoke about mr. lax. "and who was the sixth?" "there was that old man, papa, whom they call terry. but he wasn't doing anything in particular." "he is the greatest blackguard on the estate," said the father. "but we will confine ourselves to the five," said the captain, "not forgetting mr. lax. what was mr. lax doing?" "i can't remember what they were all doing. how is a fellow to remember them all? there were those two at the hinges, and pat carroll was there pulling his brother out of the water." "terry was pat's brother?" "they are brothers," said the father. "and then they went on, and took no notice of me for a time. lax came up and scowled at me, and told me that if a word was said i should never draw the breath of life again." "but he didn't do anything?" asked the captain. "i don't remember. how is a fellow to remember after so many months?" "why didn't you tell the truth at the time?" said his father angrily. another tear stood in each of the poor boy's eyes, and edith got closer to him, and threw her left arm round his waist. "you are spoiling him by being so soft with him," said the father. "he is doing the best he can, mr. jones," said the captain. "don't be harsh with him now. well, florian, what came next?" "they bade me go away, and again made me swear another oath. it was nearly dark then, and it was quite dark night before i got up to the house. but before i went i saw that there were many others standing idle about the place." "do you remember any particularly?" "well, there was another of the carrolls, a nephew of pat's; and there was tony brady, tim's brother. i can't at this moment say who else there were." "it would be as well to have as many as we do know, not to prosecute them, but to ask them for their evidence. three or four men will often contradict each other, and then they will break down. i think we have enough now. but you must remember that i have only questioned you as your friend and as your father's friend. i have not taken down a word that you have said. my object has been simply that we might all act together to punish a vindictive and infamous outrage. pat carroll has had nothing to get by flooding your father's meadows. but because your father has not chosen to forgive him his rent, he has thought fit to do him all the injury in his power. i fear that there are others in it, who are more to blame even than pat carroll. but if we can get hold of this gentleman, and also of his friend mr. lax, we shall have done much." then the meeting was over for that evening, and captain clayton retired to his own room. "you needn't mind following me here, hunter," he said to the policeman. "i wouldn't be too sure, sir." "you may be sure in mr. jones's house. and no one in the country has any idea of committing murder on his own behalf. i am safe till they would have had time to send for someone out of another county. but we shall be back in galway to-morrow." so saying, hunter left his master alone, and the captain sat down to write an account of the scene which had just taken place. in this he gave every name as the boy had given it, with accuracy; but, nevertheless, he added to his little story the fact that it had been related from memory. edith took her brother away into her own room, and there covered him with kisses. "why is papa so hard to me?" said the boy sobbing. then she explained to him as gently as she could, the grounds which had existed for hardness on his father's part. she bade him consider how terrible a thing it must be to a father, to have to think that his own son should have turned against him, while the country was in such a condition. "it is not the flood, flory, nor the loss of the meadows being under water. it is not the injury that pat carroll has done him, or any of the men whom pat carroll has talked into enmity. that, indeed, is very dreadful. to these very men he has been their best friend for many years. and now they would help in his ruin, and turn us and him out as beggars upon the world, because he has not chosen to obey the unjust bidding of one of them." here the boy hung down his head, and turned away his face. "but it is not that. all that has had no effect in nigh breaking his heart. money is but money. no one can bear its loss better than our papa. though he might have to starve, he would starve like a gallant man; and we could starve with him. you and i, frank and ada, would bear all that he could bear. but--" the boy looked up into her face again, as though imploring her to spare him, but she went on with her speech. "but that a son of his should cease to feel as a gentleman should feel,--and a christian! it is that which moves him to be hard, as you call it. but he is not hard; he is a man, and he cannot kiss you as a woman does;--as your sister does;" here she almost smothered the boy with kisses, "but, florian, it is not too late; it is never too late while you still see that truth is godlike, and that a lie is of all things the most devilish. it is never too late while you feel what duty calls you to do." and again she covered him with kisses, and then allowed him to go away to his own room. when edith was alone she sat back in an easy-chair, with her feet on the fender before the turf fire, and began to consider how things might go with her poor brother. "if they should get hold of him, and murder him!" she said to herself. the thought was very dreadful, but she comforted herself with reflecting that he might be sent out of the country, before the knowledge of what he had done should get abroad. and then by means of that current of thought, which always runs where it listeth, independent of the will of the thinker, her ideas flew off to captain yorke clayton. in her imagination she had put down captain clayton as a possible lover for her sister. she possessed a girlish intuition into her sister's mind which made her feel that her sister would not dislike such an arrangement. ada was the beauty of the family, and was supposed, at any rate by edith, to be the most susceptible of the two sisters. she had always called herself a violent old maid, who was determined to have her own way. but no one had ever heard ada speak of herself as an old maid. and then as to that danger of which ada had spoken, edith knew that such perils must be overlooked altogether among the incidents of life. if it came to her would she refuse her hand to a man because his courage led him into special perils? she knew that it would only be an additional ground for her love. and of ada, in that respect, she judged as she did of herself. she knew that ada thought much of manly beauty, and her eyes told her that captain yorke clayton was very handsome. "if he were as black as beelzebub," she said to herself, "i should like him the better for it; but ada would prefer a man to be beautiful." she went to work to make a match in her own mind between ada and captain clayton; but the more she made it, the more she continued to think--on her own behalf--that of all men she had ever seen, this man had pleased her fancy most. "but captain yorke clayton, you were never more mistaken in all your life if you think that edith jones has taken a fancy to your handsome physiognomy." this she said in almost audible words. "but nevertheless, i do think that you are a hero. for myself, i don't want a hero--and if i did, i shouldn't get one." but the arrangements made in the house that night were those which are customary for a favoured young man's reception when such matters are left to the favouring young lady in the family. when mr. jones found himself alone in his study, he began to think of the confession which florian had made. it had gradually come to pass that he had been sure of the truth for some months, though he had never before heard it declared by his son's lips. since the day on which he had called on mr. blake at carnlough, he had been quite sure that edith was right. he was almost sure before. now the truth was declared exactly as she had surmised it. and what should he do with the boy? he could not merely put him forward as a witness in this case. some reason must be given, why the truth had not been told during the last six months. as he thought of this, he felt that the boy had disgraced himself for ever. and he thought of the boy's danger. he had rashly promised that the boy should be sent to england out of harm's way; but he now told himself that the means of doing so were further from him than ever; and that he was daily becoming a poorer, if not a ruined man. of the rents then due to him, not a penny would, he feared, be paid. end of vol. i. charles dickens and evans, crystal palace press. * * * * * the landleaguers by anthony trollope in three volumes--vol. ii. london chatto & windus, piccadilly charles dickens and evans, crystal palace press. contents chapter xvii. rachel is free. xviii. frank jones has ceased to exist. xix. fifth avenue and newport. xx. boycotting. xxi. lax, the murderer. xxii. morony castle is boycotted. xxiii. tom daly is boycotted. xxiv. "from the full heart the mouth speaks." xxv. the galway ball. xxvi. lord castlewell. xxvii. how funds were provided. xxviii. what was not done with the funds. xxix. what was done with the funds. xxx. the road to ballyglunin. xxxi. the galway court house. xxxii. mr. o'mahony as member of parliament. the landleaguers. chapter xvii. rachel is free. rachel o'mahony found her position to be very embarrassing. she had thought it out to the best of her ability, and had told herself that it would be better for her not to acquaint her father with all the circumstances. had he been told the nature of the offer made to her by madame socani, he would at once, she thought, have taken her away from the theatre. she would have to abandon the theatre, at which she was earning her money. this would have been very bad. there would have been some lawsuit with mahomet moss, as to which she could not have defended herself by putting madame socani into the witness-box. there had been no third person present, and any possible amount of lying would have been very easy to madame socani. rachel was quick enough, and could see at a moment all that lying could do against her. "but he tried to kiss me," she would have had to say. then she could see how, with a shrug of his shoulders, her enemy would have ruined her. from such a contest a man like moss comes forth without even a scratch that can injure him. but rachel felt that she would have been utterly annihilated. she must tell someone, but that someone must be he whom she intended to marry. and she, too, had not been quite prudent in all respects since she had come to london. it had been whispered to her that a singer of such pretensions should be brought to the theatre and carried home in her private brougham. therefore, she had spent more money than was compatible with the assistance given to her father, and was something in debt. it was indispensable to her that she should go on with her engagement. but she told her father that it was absolutely necessary that he should go with her to the theatre every night that she sang. it was but three nights a week, and the hours of her work were only from eight till ten. he had, however, unfortunately made another engagement for himself. there was a debating society, dramatic in its manner of carrying on its business, at which three or four irish home-rulers were accustomed to argue among themselves, before a mixed audience of englishmen and irishmen, as to the futility of english government. here mr. o'mahony was popular among the debaters, and was paid for his services. not many knew that the eloquent irishman was the father of the singer who, in truth, was achieving for herself a grand reputation. but such was the case. a stop had been put upon his lecturings at galway; but no policeman in london seemed to be aware that the galway incendiary and the london debater were one and the same person. so there came to him an opening for picking up a few pounds towards their joint expenses. "but why should you want me now, more than for the last fortnight?" he said, contending for the use of his own time. "mr. moss is disagreeable." "has he done anything new?" he asked. "he is always doing things new--that is more beastly--one day than the day before." "he doesn't come and sing with you now at your own rooms." "no; i have got through that, thank heaven! to tell the truth, father, i am not in the least afraid of mr. moss. before he should touch me you may be sure that he would have the worst of it." "of course i will do what you want," said her father; "but only if it be not necessary--" "it is necessary. of course, i do not wish to be dragged up to the police-court for sticking mr. moss in the abdomen. that's what it would come to if we were left together." "do you mean to say that you require my presence to prevent anything so disagreeable as that?" "if they know, or if he knows that you're in the house, there will be nothing of the kind. can't you arrange your debates for the other nights?" so it was, in fact, settled. everybody about the theatre seemed to be aware that something was wrong. mr. o'mahony had not come back to be constantly on the watch, like a newfoundland dog, without an object. to himself it was an intolerable nuisance. he suspected his daughter not at all. he was so far from suspecting her that he imagined her to be safe, though half-a-dozen mosses should surround her. he could only stand idle behind the scenes, or sit in her dressing-room and yawn. but still he did it, and asked no further questions. then while all this was going on, the polite old gentleman from covent garden had called at her lodgings in cecil street, and had found both her and her father at home. "oh, m. le gros," she had said, "i am so glad that you should meet my father here." then there was a multiplicity of bowing, and m. le gros had declared that he had never had so much honour done him as in being introduced to him who was about to become the father of the undoubted prima donna of the day. at all which mr. o'mahony made many bows, and rachel laughed very heartily; but in the end an engagement was proposed and thankfully accepted, which was to commence in the next october. it did not take two minutes in the making. it was an engagement only for a couple of months; but, as m. le gros observed, such an engagement would undoubtedly lead to one for all time. if covent garden could only secure the permanent aid of mademoiselle o'mahony, covent garden's fortune would be as good as made. m. le gros had quite felt the dishonesty of even suggesting a longer engagement to mademoiselle. the rate of payment would be very much higher, ve-ry, ve-ry, ve-ry much higher when mademoiselle's voice should have once been heard on the boards of a true operatic theatre. m. le gros had done himself the honour of being present on one or two occasions at the charing cross little playhouse. he did believe himself to have some small critical judgment in musical matters. he thought he might venture--he really did think that he might venture--to bespeak a brilliant career for mademoiselle. then, with a great many more bowings and scrapings, m. le gros, having done his business, took his leave. "i like him better than mahomet m.," said rachel to her father. "they're both very civil," said mr. o'mahony. "one has all the courtesy of hell! with the other it is--well, not quite the manners of heaven. i can imagine something brighter even than m. le gros; but it does very well for earth. m. le gros knows that a young woman should be treated as a human being; and even his blandishments are pleasant enough, as they are to take the shape of golden guineas. as for me, m. le gros is quite good enough for my idea of this world." but on the next day, a misfortune took place which well-nigh obliterated all the joy which m. le gros had produced. it was not singing night, and mr. o'mahony had just taken up his hat to go away to his debating society, when frank jones was announced. "frank, what on earth did you come here for?" these were the words with which the lover was greeted. he had endeavoured to take the girl in his arms, but she had receded from his embrace. "why, rachel!" he exclaimed. "i told you not to come. i told you especially that you were not to come." "why did you tell him so?" said mr. o'mahony; "and why has he come?" "not one kiss, rachel?" said the lover. "oh, kisses, yes! if i didn't kiss you father would think that we had already quarrelled. but it may be that we must do so. when i had told you everything, that you should rush up to london to look after me--as though you suspected me!" "what is there to suspect?" said the father. "nothing--i suspect nothing," said frank. "but there were things which made it impossible that i should not wish to be nearer. she was insulted." "who insulted her?" "the devil in the shape of a woman," said rachel. "he takes that shape as often as the other." "rachel should not be left in such hands," said frank. "my dear mr. jones, you have no right to say in what hands i shall be left. my father and i have got to look after that between us. i have told you over and over again what are my intentions in the matter. they have been made in utter disregard of myself, and with the most perfect confidence in you. you tell me that you cannot marry me." "not quite at present." "very well; i have been satisfied to remain as engaged to you; but i am not satisfied to be subject to your interference." "interference!" he said. "well now; i'm going." this came from mr. o'mahony. "i've got to see if i can earn a few shillings, and tell a few truths. i will leave you to fight out your battles among you." "there will be no battles," said frank. "i hope not, but i feel that i can do no good. i have such absolute trust in rachel, that you may be quite sure that i shall back her up in whatever she says. now, good-night," and with that he took his leave. "i am glad he has gone, because he would do us no good," said rachel. "you were angry with me just now because i spoke of interference. i meant it. i will not admit of any interference from you." then she sat with her two hands on her knees, looking him full in the face. "i love you with all my heart, and am ready to tell everyone that i am to become your wife. they have a joke about it in the theatre calling me mrs. jones; and because nobody believes what anybody says they think you're a myth. i suppose it is queer that a singing girl should marry mr. jones. i'm to go in the autumn to covent garden, and get ever so much more money, and i shall still talk about mr. jones,--unless you and i agree to break it off." "certainly not that," said he. "but it is by no means certain. will you go back to ireland to-morrow morning, and undertake not to see me again, until you come prepared to marry me? if not we must break it off." "i can hardly do that" "then," said she, rising from her chair, "it is broken off, and i will not call myself mrs. jones any more." he too rose from his chair, and frowned at her by way of an answer. "i have one other suggestion to make," she said. "i shall receive next october what will be quite sufficient for both of us, and for father too. come and bear the rough and the smooth together with us." "and live upon you?" "i should live upon you without scruple if you had got it. and then i shall bear your interference without a word of complaint. nay, i shall thank you for it. i shall come to you for advice in everything. what you say will be my law. you shall knock down all the mosses for me;--or lock them up, which would be so much better. but you must be my husband." "not yet. you should not ask me as yet. think of my father's position. let this one sad year pass by." "two--three, if there are to be two or three sad years! i will wait for you till you are as grey as old peter, and i have not a note left in my throat. i will stick to you like beeswax. but i will not have you here hanging about me. do you think that it would not be pleasant for me to have a lover to congratulate me every day on my little triumphs? do you think that i should not be proud to be seen leaning always on your arm, with the consciousness that mr. moss would be annihilated at his very first word? but when a year had passed by, where should i be? no, frank, it will not do. if you were at morony castle things would go on very well. as you choose to assume to yourself the right of interference, we must part." "when you tell me of such a proposition as that made to you by the woman, am i to say nothing?" "not a word;--unless it be by letter from morony castle, and then only to me. i will not have you here meddling with my affairs. i told you, though i didn't tell my father, because i would tell you everything." "and i am to leave you,--without another word?" "yes, without another word. and remember that from this moment i am free to marry any man that may come the way." "rachel!" "i am free to marry any man that may come the way. i don't say i shall do so. it may take me some little time to forget you. but i am free. when that has been understood between us i am sure you will interfere no longer; you will not be so unkind as to force upon me the necessity of telling the truth to all the people about the theatre. let us understand each other." "i understand," said he, with the air of a much injured man. "i quite know your position. trusting to your own prospects, you cannot marry me at present, and you do not choose to accept such income as i can give you. i respect and even approve your motives. i am living a life before the public as a singer, in which it is necessary that i should encounter certain dangers. i can do so without fear, if i be left alone. you won't leave me alone. you won't marry me, and yet you won't leave me to my own devices;--therefore, we had better part." he took her by the hand sorrowfully, as though preparing to embrace her. "no, mr. jones," she said, "that is all done. i kissed you when my father was here, because i was then engaged to be your wife. that is over now, and i can only say good-bye." so saying, she retired, leaving him standing there in her sitting-room. he remained for awhile meditating on his position, till he began to think that it would be useless for him to remain there. she certainly would not come down; and he, though he were to wait for her father's return, would get no more favourable reply from him. he, as he had promised, would certainly "back up" his daughter in all that she had said. as he went down out of the room with that feeling of insult which clings to a man when he has been forced to quit a house without any farewell ceremony, he certainly did feel that he had been ill-used. but he could not but acknowledge that she was justified. there was a certain imperiousness about her which wounded his feelings as a man. he ought to have been allowed to be dominant. but then he knew that he could not live upon her income. his father would not speak to him had he gone back to morony castle expressing his intention of doing so. chapter xviii. frank jones has ceased to exist. to tell the truth, rachel had a thorough good cry before she went to bed that night. though there was something hard, fixed, imperious, almost manlike about her manner, still she was as soft-hearted as any other girl. we may best describe her by saying that she was an american and an actress. it was impossible to doubt her. no one who had once known her could believe her to be other than she had declared herself. she was loyal, affectionate, and dutiful. but there was missing to her a feminine weakness, which of all her gifts is the most valuable to an english woman, till she makes the mistake of bartering it away for women's rights. we can imagine, however, that the stanchest woman's-right lady should cry for her lost lover. and rachel o'mahony cried bitterly for hers. "it had to be done," she said, jumping up at last in her bedroom, and clenching her fist as she walked about the chamber. "it had to be done. a girl situated as i am cannot look too close after herself. father is more like my son than my father; he has no idea that i want anything done for me. nor do i want much," she said, as she went on rapidly taking the short course of the room. "no one could say a word about me till i brought my lover forward and showed him to the theatre. i think they did believe him to be a myth; but a myth in that direction does no harm till he appears in the flesh. they think that i have made an empty boast about my mr. jones. the ugliest girl that ever came out may do the same thing, and nobody ever thinks anything of it. a lover in the clouds never does any harm, and now my lover is in the clouds. i know that he has gone, and will never come to earth again. how much better i love him because he would not take my offer. then there would have been a little contempt. and how could i expect him to yield to me in everything, with this brute moss insulting me at every turn? i do not think he had the courage to send me that message, but still! what could i do but tell frank? and then what could frank do but come? i would have come, let any girl have bade me to stay away!" here she had imagined herself to be the lover, and not the girl who was loved. "but it only shows that we are better apart. he cannot marry me, and i cannot marry him. the squire is at his wits' end with grief." by "the squire" mr. jones had been signified. "it is better as it is. father and the squire ought never to have been brought together,--nor ought i and frank. i suppose i must tell them all at the theatre that mr. jones belongs to me no longer. only if i did so, they would think that i was holding out a lure to mahomet m. there's papa. i'll go down and tell him all that need be told about it." so saying she ascended to their sitting-room. "well, my dear, what did you do with frank?" "he has gone back to ireland under the name of mr. jones." "then there was a quarrel?" "oh dear yes! there was safe to be a quarrel." "does it suit your book upon the whole?" "not in the least. you see before you the most wretched heroine that ever appeared on the boards of any theatre. you may laugh, but it's true. i don't know what i've got to say to mr. moss now. if he comes forward in a proper manner, and can prove to me that madame socani is not madame mahomet m. moss, i don't know what i can do but accept him. the adriatic is free to wed another." then she walked about the room, laughing to prevent her tears. "did you hear anything about castle morony?" "not a word." "or the boy florian?" "not a syllable;--though i was most anxious to ask the question. when you are intent upon any matter, it does not do to go away to other things. i should have never made him believe that he was to leave me in earnest, had i allowed him to talk about florian and the girls. he has gone now. well;--good-night, father. you and i, father, are all in all to each other now. not but what somebody else will come, i suppose." "do you wish that somebody else should come, as you say?" "i suppose so. do not look so surprised, father. girls very seldom have to say what they really wish. i have done with him now. i had him because i really loved him,--like a fool as i was. i have got to go in for being a singing girl. a singing woman is better than a singing girl. if they don't have husbands, they are supposed to have lovers. i hope to have one or the other, and i prefer the husband. mr. jones has gone. who knows but what the marquis de carabas may come next." "could you change so soon?" "yes;--immediately. i don't say i should love the marquis, but i should treat him well. don't look so shocked, dear father. i never shall treat a man badly,--unless i stick a knife into mahomet m. moss. it would be best perhaps to get a singing marquis, so that the two of us might go walking about the world together, till we had got money enough to buy a castle. i am beginning to believe m. le gros. i think i can sing. don't you think, father, that i can sing?" "they all say so." "it is very good to have one about me, like you, who are not enthusiastic. but i can sing, and i am pretty too;--pretty enough along with my singing to get some fool to care for me. yes; you may look astonished. over there in galway i was fool enough to fall in love. what has come of it? the man tells me that he cannot marry me. and it is true. if he were to marry me what would become of you?" "never mind me," said her father. "and what would become of him; and what would become of me? and what would become of the dreadful little impediments which might follow? of course to me frank jones is the best of men. i can't have him; and that is just all about it. i am not going to give up the world because frank jones is lost. love is not to be lord of all with me. i shall steer my little boat among the shiny waters of the london theatres, and may perhaps venture among the waves of paris and new york; but i shall do so always with my eyes open. gas is the atmosphere in which i am destined to glitter; and if a marquis comes in the way,--why, i shall do the best i can with the marquis. i won't bring you to trouble if i can help it, or anyone else with whom i have to do. so good-night, father." then she kissed his forehead, and went up to bed leaving him to wonder at the intricacies of his position. he had that night been specially eloquent and awfully indignant as to the wrongs done to ireland by england. he had dealt with millions of which great britain was supposed by him to have robbed her poor sister. he was not a good financier, but he did in truth believe in the millions. he had not much capacity for looking into questions of political economy, but he had great capacity for arguing about them and for believing his own arguments. the british parliament was to him an abomination. he read the papers daily, and he saw that the number of votes on his side fell from sixty to forty, and thirty, and twenty; and he found also that the twenty were men despised by their own countrymen as well as englishmen; that they were men trained to play a false game in order to achieve their objects;--and yet he believed in the twenty against all the world, and threw in his lot without a scruple and without a doubt. nor did he understand at all the strength of his own words. he had been silenced in ireland and had rigorously obeyed the pledge that he had given. for he was a man to whom personally his word was a bond. now he had come over to london, and being under no promise, had begun again to use the words which came to him without an effort. as he would sweep back his long hair from his brows, and send sparks of fire out of his eyes, he would look to be the spirit of patriotic indignation; but he did not know that he was thus powerful. to tell the truth,--and as he had said,--to earn a few shillings was the object of his ambition. but now, on this evening, three london policemen in their full police uniform, with their fearful police helmets on, had appeared in the room in which his dramatic associates had on this evening given way to gerald o'mahony's eloquence. nothing had been said to him; but as he came home he was aware that two policemen had watched him. and he was aware also that his words had been taken down in shorthand. then he had encountered his daughter, and all her love troubles. he had heard her expound her views as to life, and had listened as she had expressed her desire to meet with some marquis de carabas. she had said nothing with which he could find fault; but her whole views of life were absolutely different from his. according to his ideas, there should be no marquises, no singing girls making huge fortunes--only singing girls in receipt of modest sums of money; and that when dire necessity compelled them. there should be no gorgeous theatres flaring with gas, and certainly no policemen to take down men's words. everything in the world was wrong,--except those twenty members of parliament. three or four days after this, rachel found that a report was abroad at the theatre that she had dissolved her engagement with mr. jones. at this time the three policemen had already expressed their opinion about mr. o'mahony; but they, for the present, may be left in obscurity. "_est-il vrai que m. jones n'existe plus?_" these words were whispered to her, as she was dressing, by madame socani, while mr. o'mahony had gone out to say a word to a police detective, who had called to see him at the theatre. as madame socani was an american woman, there was no reason why she should not have asked the question in english--were it not that as it referred to an affair of love it may be thought that french was the proper language. "mr. jones isn't any more, as far as i am concerned," said rachel, passing on. "oh, he has gone!" said madame socani, following her into the slips. they were both going on to the stage, but two minutes were allowed to them, while mahomet m. moss declared, in piteous accents, the woe which awaited him because alberta,--who was personated by rachel,--had preferred the rustic trullo to him who was by birth a prince of the empire. "yes, mr. jones has gone, madame,--as you are so anxious to know." "but why? can it be that there was no mr. jones?" then rachel flashed round upon the woman. "i suppose there was no mr. jones?" "_o, mio tesor._" these last three words were sung in a delicious contralto voice by elmira,--the madame socani of the occasion,--and were addressed to the prince of the empire, who, for the last six weeks, had been neglecting her charms. rachel was furious at the attack made upon her, but in the midst of her fury she rushed on to the stage, and kneeling at the feet of elmira, declared her purpose of surrendering the prince altogether. the rustic trullo was quite sufficient for her. "go, fond girl. trullo is there, tying up the odoriferous rose." then they all four broke out into that grand quartette, in the performance of which m. le gros had formed that opinion which had induced him to hold out such golden hopes to rachel. rachel looked up during one of her grand shakes and saw frank jones seated far back among the boxes. "oh, he hasn't left london yet," she said to herself, as she prepared for another shake. "your papa desires me to say with his kindest love, that he has had to leave the theatre." this came from mr. moss when the piece was ended. he was dressed as princes of the empire generally do dress on the stage, and she as the daughter of the keeper of the king's garden. "so they tell me; very well. i will go home. i suppose he has had business." "a policeman i fear. some little pecuniary embarrassment." a rumour had got about the theatre that mr. o'mahony was overwhelmed with money difficulties. mr. moss had probably overheard the rumour. "i don't believe that at all. it's something political, more likely." "very likely, i don't know, i will see you to your house." and mahomet m. looked as though he were going to jump into the brougham in the garments of the imperial prince. "mr. moss, i can go very well alone;" and she turned round upon him and stood in the doorway so as to oppose his coming out, and frowned upon him with that look of anger which she knew so well how to assume. "i have that to say to you which has to be said at once." "you drive about london with me in that dress? it would be absurd. you are painted all round your eyes. i wouldn't get into a carriage with you on any account." "in five minutes i will have dressed myself." "whether dressed or undressed it does not signify. you know very well that i would on no account get into a carriage with you. you are taking advantage of me because my father is not here. if you accompany me i will call for a policeman directly we get into the street." "ah, you do not know," said mr. moss. and he looked at her exactly as he had looked about an hour ago, when he was making love to her as trullo's betrothed. "here is my father," she said; for at that moment mr. o'mahony appeared within the theatre, having made his way up from the door in time to take his daughter home. "mr. o'mahony," said mr. moss, "i shall do myself the honour of calling to-morrow and seeing your daughter at her apartments in gower street." "you will see father too," said rachel. "i shall be delighted," said moss. "it will give me the greatest pleasure on earth to see mr. o'mahony on this occasion." so saying the imperial prince made a low bow, paint and all, and allowed the two to go down into the street, and get into the brougham. mr. o'mahony at once began with his own story. the policeman who had called for him had led him away round the corner into scotland yard, and had there treated him with the utmost deference. nothing could be more civil to him than had been the officer. but the officer had suggested to him that he had been the man who had said some rough words about the queen, in galway, and had promised to abstain in future from lecturing. "to this i replied," said he, "that i had said nothing rough about the queen. i had said that the queen was as nearly an angel on earth as a woman could be. i had merely doubted whether there should be queens. thereupon the policeman shook his head and declared that he could not admit any doubt on that question. 'but you wouldn't expect me to allow it in new york,' said i. 'you've got to allow it here,' said he. 'but my pledge was made as to ireland,' said i. 'it is all written down in some magistrate's book, and you'll find it if you send over there.' then i told him that i wouldn't break my word for him or his queen either. upon that he thanked me very much for my civility, and told me that if i would hurry back to the theatre i should be in time to take you home. if it was necessary he would let me hear from him again. 'you will know where to find me,' said i, and i gave him our address in farringdon street, and told him i should be there to-morrow at half-past eight. he shook hands with me as though i had been his brother;--and so here i am." then she began to tell her story, but there did not seem to be much of interest in it. "i suppose he'll come?" said mr. o'mahony. "oh, yes, he'll come." "it's something about m. le gros," said he. "you'll find that he'll abuse that poor frenchman." "he may save himself the trouble," said rachel. then they reached gower street, and went to bed, having eaten two mutton-chops apiece. on the next morning at eleven o'clock tidings were brought up to rachel in her bedroom that mr. moss was in the sitting-room downstairs. "father is there?" exclaimed rachel. then the girl, who had learned to understand that mr. moss was not regarded as a welcome visitor, assured her that he was at the moment entertained by mr. o'mahony. "he's a-telling of what the perlice said to him in the city, but i don't think as the jew gentleman minds him much." from which it may be gathered that rachel had not been discreet in speaking of her admirer before the lodging-house servant. she dressed herself, not in a very great hurry. her father, she knew, had no other occupation at this hour in the morning, and she did not in the least regard how mr. moss might waste his time. and she had to think of many things before she could go down to meet him. meditating upon it all, she was inclined to think that the interview was intended as hostile to m. le gros. m. le gros would be represented, no doubt, as a jew twice more jewish than mr. moss himself. but rachel had a strong idea that m. le gros was a very nice old french gentleman. when he had uttered all those "ve-rys," one after another with still increasing emphasis, rachel had no doubt believed them all. and she was taking great trouble with herself, practising every day for two hours together, with a looking-glass before her on the pianoforte, as mr. moss had made her quite understand that the opening of her mouth wide was the chief qualification necessary to her, beyond that which nature had done for her. rachel did think it possible that she might become the undoubted prima donna of the day, as m. le gros had called her; and she thought it much more probable that she should do so under the auspices of m. le gros, than those of mr. moss. when, therefore, she went down at last to the sitting-room, she did so, determined to oppose mr. moss, as bidding for her voice, rather than as a candidate for her love. when she entered the room, she could not help beginning with something of an apology, in that she had kept the man waiting; but mr. moss soon stopped her. "it does not signify the least in the world," he said, laying his hand upon his waistcoat. "if only i can get this opportunity of speaking to you while your father is present." then, when she looked at the brilliance of his garments, and heard the tones of his voice, she was sure that the attack on this occasion was not to be made on m. le gros. she remained silent, and sat square on her chair, looking at him. a man must be well-versed in feminine wiles, who could decipher under rachel's manners her determination to look as ugly as possible on the occasion. in a moment she had flattened every jaunty twist and turn out of her habiliments, and had given to herself an air of absolute dowdyism. her father sat by without saying a word. "miss o'mahony, if i may venture to ask a question, i trust you may not be offended." "i suppose not as my father is present," she replied. "am i right in believing the engagement to be over which bound you to mr.--jones?" "you are," said rachel, quite out loud, giving another quite unnecessary twist to her gown. "that obstacle is then removed?" "mr. jones is removed, and has gone to ireland." then mr. moss sighed deeply. "i can manage my singing very well without mr.--jones." "not a doubt. not a doubt. and i have heard that you have made an engagement in all respects beneficial with m. le gros, of covent garden. m. le gros is a gentleman for whom i have a most profound respect." "so have i." "had i been at your elbow, it is possible that something better might have been done; but two months;--they run by--oh, so quickly!" "quite so. if i can do any good i shall quickly get another engagement." "you will no doubt do a great deal of good. but mr. jones is now at an end." "mr. jones is at an end," said rachel, with another blow at her gown. "a singing girl like me does better without a lover,--especially if she has got a father to look after her." "that's as may be," said mr. o'mahony. "that's as may be," said mr. moss, again laying his hand upon his heart. the tone in which mr. moss repeated mr. o'mahony's words was indicative of the feeling and poetry within him. "if you had a lover such as is your faithful moss," the words seemed to say, "no father could look after you half so well." "i believe i could do very well with no one to look after me." "of course you and i have misunderstood each other hitherto." "not at all," said rachel. "i was unaware at first that mr. jones was an absolute reality. you must excuse me, but the name misled me." "why shouldn't a girl be engaged to a man named jones? jones is as good a name as moss, at any rate; and a deal more--" she had been going to remark that jones was the more christian of the two, but stopped herself. "at any rate you are now free?" he said. "no, i am not. yes, i am. i am free, and i mean to remain so. why don't you tell him, father?" "i have got nothing to tell him, my dear. you are so much better able to tell him everything yourself." "if you would only listen to me, miss o'mahony." "you had better listen to him, rachel." "very well; i will listen. now go on." then she again thumped herself. and she had thumped her hair, and thumped herself all round till she was as limp and dowdy as the elder sister of a low church clergyman of forty. "i wish you to believe, miss o'mahony, that my attachment to you is most devoted." she pursed her lips together and looked straight out of her eyes at the wall opposite. "we belong to the same class of life, and our careers lie in the same groove." hereupon she crossed her hands before her on her lap, while her father sat speculating whether she might not have done better to come out on the comic stage. "i wish you to believe that i am quite sincere in the expression which i make of a most ardent affection." here again he slapped his waistcoat and threw himself into an attitude. he was by no means an ill-looking man, and though he was forty years old, he did not appear to be so much. he had been a public singer all his life, and was known by rachel to have been connected for many years with theatres both in london and new york. she had heard many stories as to his amorous adventures, but knew nothing against his character in money matters. he had, in truth, always behaved well to her in whatever pecuniary transactions there had been between them. but he had ventured to make love to her, and had done so in a manner which had altogether disgusted her. she now waited till he paused for a moment in his eloquence, and then she spoke a word. "what about madame socani?" chapter xix. fifth avenue and newport. "what about madame socani?" rachel, as she said this, abandoned for the moment her look against the wall, and shook herself instantly free of all her dowdiness. she flashed fire at him from her eyes, and jumping up from her seat, took hold of her father by his shoulder. he encircled her waist with his arm, but otherwise sat silent, looking mr. moss full in the face. it must be acknowledged on the part of rachel that she was prepared to make her accusation against mr. moss on perhaps insufficient grounds. she had heard among the people at the theatre, who did not pretend to know much of mr. moss and his antecedents, that there was a belief that madame socani was his wife. there was something in this which offended her more grossly than ever,--and a wickedness which horrified her. but she certainly knew nothing about it; and madame socani's proposition to herself had come to her from madame socani, and not from mr. moss. all she knew of madame socani was that she had been on the boards in new york, and had there made for herself a reputation. rachel had on one occasion sung with her, but it had been when she was little more than a child. "what is madame socani to me?" said mr. moss. "i believe her to be your wife." "oh, heavens! my wife! i never had a wife, miss o'mahony;--not yet! why do you say things so cruel to me?" he, at any rate, she was sure, had sent her that message. she thought that she was sure of his villainous misconduct to her in that respect. she believed that she did know him to be a devil, whether he was a married man or not. "what message did you send to me by madame socani?" "what message? none!" and again he laid his hand upon his waistcoat. "he asked me to be--" but she could not tell her father of what nature was the message. "father, he is a reptile. if you knew all, you would be unable to keep your hands from his throat. and now he dares to come here and talk to me of his affection. you had better bid him leave the room and have done with him." "you hear what my daughter says, mr. moss." "yes, i hear her," answered the poor innocent-looking tenor. "but what does she mean? why is she so fierce?" "he knows, father," said rachel. "have nothing further to say to him." "i don't think that i do quite know," said mr. o'mahony. "but you can see, at any rate, mr. moss, that she does not return your feeling." "i would make her my wife to-morrow," said mr. moss, slapping his waistcoat once more. "and do you, as the young lady's papa, think of what we two might do together. i know myself, i know my power. madame socani is a jealous woman. she would wish to be taken into partnership with me,--not a partnership of hearts, but of theatres. she has come with some insolent message, but not from me;--ah, not from me!" "you never tried to kiss me? you did not make two attempts?" "i would make two thousand if i were to consult my own heart." "when you knew that i was engaged to mr. jones!" "what was mr. jones to me? now i ask your respectable parent, is miss rachel unreasonable? when a gentleman has lost his heart in true love, is he to be reproached because he endeavours to seize one little kiss? did not mr. jones do the same?" "bother mr. jones!" said rachel, overcome by the absurdity of the occasion. "as you observed just now, mr. jones and i are two. things have not turned out happily, though i am not obliged to explain all that to you. but mr. jones is to me all that a man should be; you, mr. moss, are not. now, father, had he not better go?" "i don't think any good is to be done, i really don't," said mr. o'mahony. "why am i to be treated in this way?" "because you come here persevering when you know it's no good." "i think of what you and i might do together with moss's theatre between us." "oh, heavens!" "you should be called the o'mahony. your respectable papa should keep an eye to your pecuniary interest." "i could keep an eye myself for that." "you would be my own wife, of course--my own wife." "i wouldn't be anything of the kind." "ah, but listen!" continued mr. moss. "you do not know how the profits run away into the pockets of _impresarios_ and lessees and money-lenders. we should have it all ourselves. i have £ , of my own, and my respectable parent in new york has as much more. it would all be the same as ours. only think! before long we would have a house on the fifth avenue so furnished that all the world should wonder; and another at newport, where the world should not be admitted to wonder. only think!" "and madame socani to look after the furniture!" said rachel. "madame socani should be nowheres." "and i also will be nowheres. pray remember that in making all your little domestic plans. if you live in the fifth avenue, i will live in street; or perhaps i should like it better to have a little house here in albert place. father, don't you think mr. moss might go away?" "i think you have said all that there is to be said." then mr. o'mahony got up from his chair as though to show mr. moss out of the room. "not quite, mr. o'mahony. allow me for one moment. as the young lady's papa you are bound to look to these things. though the theatre would be a joint affair, miss o'mahony would have her fixed salary;--that is to say, mrs. moss would." "i won't stand it," said rachel getting up. "i won't allow any man to call me by so abominable a name,--or any woman." then she bounced out of the room. "it's no good, you see," said mr. o'mahony. "i by no means see that so certain. of course a young lady like your daughter knows her own value, and does not yield all at once." "i tell you it's no good. i know my own daughter." "excuse me, mr. o'mahony, but i doubt whether you know the sex." the two men were very nearly of an age; but o'mahony assumed the manners of an old man, and mr. moss of a young one. "perhaps not," said mr. o'mahony. "they have been my study up from my cradle," said mr. moss. "no doubt." "and i think that i have carried on the battle not without some little _éclat_." "i am quite sure of it." "i still hope that i may succeed with your sweet daughter." "here the battle is of a different kind," not without a touch of satire in the tone of his voice, whatever there might be in the words which he used. "in tournaments of love, you have, i do not doubt, been very successful; but here, it seems to me that the struggle is for money." "that is only an accident." "but the accident rises above everything. it does not matter in the least which comes first. whether it be for love or money my daughter will certainly have a will of her own. you may take my word that she is not to be talked out of her mind." "but mr. jones is gone?" asked moss. "but she is not on that account ready to transfer her affections at a moment's notice. to her view of the matter there seems to be something a little indelicate in the idea." "bah!" said mr. moss. "you cannot make her change her mind by saying bah." "professional interests have to be considered," said mr. moss. "no doubt; my daughter does consider her professional interests every day when she practises for two hours." "that is excellent,--and with such glorious effects! she has only now got the full use of her voice. my g----! what could she not do if she had the full run of moss's theatre! she might choose whatever operas would suit her best; and she would have me to guide her judgment! i do know my profession, mr. o'mahony. a lady in her line should always marry a gentleman in mine; that is if she cares about matrimony." "of course she did intend to be married to mr. jones." "oh! mr. jones, mr. jones! i am sick of mr. jones. what could mr. jones do? he is only a poor ruined irishman. you must feel that mr. jones was only in the way. i am offering her all that professional experience and capital can do. what are her allurements?" "i don't in the least know, mr. moss." "only her beauty." "i thought, perhaps it was her singing." "that joined," said mr. moss. "no doubt her voice and her beauty joined together. madame socani's voice is as valuable,--almost as valuable." "i would marry madame socani if i were you." "no! madame socani is,--well a leetle past her prime. madame socani and i have known each other for twenty years. madame socani is aware that i am attached to your daughter. well; i do not mind telling you the truth. madame socani and i have been on very intimate terms. i did offer once to make madame socani my wife. she did not see her way in money matters. she was making an income greater than mine. things have changed since that. madame socani is very well, but she is a jealous woman. madame socani hates your daughter. oh, heavens, yes! but she was never my wife. oh, no! a woman at this profession grows old quicker than a man. and she has never succeeded in getting a theatre of her own. she did try her hand at it at new york, but that came to nothing. if miss rachel will venture along with me, we will have , dollars before five years are gone. she shall have everything that the world can offer--jewels, furniture, hangings! she shall keep the best table in new york, and shall have her own banker's account. there's no such success to be found anywhere for a young woman. if you will only just turn it in your mind, mr. o'mahony." then mr. moss brushed his hat with the sleeve of his coat and took his leave. he had nearly told the entire truth to mr. o'mahony. he had never married madame socani. as far as madame socani knew, her veritable husband, socani, was still alive. and it was not true that mr. moss had sent that abominable message to rachel. the message, no doubt, had expressed a former wish on his part; but that wish was now in abeyance. miss o'mahony's voice had proved itself to him to be worth matrimony,--that and her beauty together. in former days, when he had tried to kiss her, he had valued her less highly. now, as he left the room, he was fully content with the bargain he had suggested. mr. jones was out of the way, and her voice had proved itself to his judgment to be worth the price he had offered. when her father saw her again he began meekly to plead for mr. moss. "do you mean to say, father," she exclaimed, "that you have joined yourself to him?" "i am only telling you what he says." "tell me nothing at all. you ought to know that he is an abomination. though he had the whole fifth avenue to offer to me i would not touch him with a pair of tongs." but she, in the midst of her singing, had been much touched by seeing frank jones among the listeners in the back of one of the boxes. when the piece was over there had come upon her a desire to go to him and tell him that, in spite of all she had said, she would wait for him if only he would profess himself ready to wait for her. there was not much in it,--that a man should wait in town for two or three days, and should return to the theatre to see the girl whom he professed to regard. it was only that, but it had again stirred her love. she had endeavoured to send to him when the piece was over; but he was gone, and she saw him no more. chapter xx. boycotting. frank jones went back to county galway, having caught a last glimpse of his lady-love. but his lady-love could not very well make herself known to him from the stage as she was occupied at the moment with trullo. and as he had left the theatre before her message had been brought round, he did so with a bitter conviction that everything between them was over. he felt very angry with her,--no doubt unreasonably. the lady was about to make a pocketful of money; and had offered to share it with him. he refused to take any part of it, and declined altogether to incur any of the responsibilities of marriage for the present. his father's circumstances too were of such a nature as to make him almost hopeless for the future. what would he have had her do? nevertheless he was very angry with her. as he made his way westward through ireland he heard more and more of the troubles of the country. he had not in fact been gone much more than a week, but during that week sad things had happened. boycotting had commenced, and had already become very prevalent. to boycott a man, or a house, or a firm, or a class of men, or a trade, or a flock of sheep, or a drove of oxen, or unfortunately a county hunt, had become an exact science, and was exactly obeyed. it must be acknowledged that throughout the south and west of ireland the quickness and perfection with which this science was understood and practised was very much to the credit of the intelligence of the people. we can understand that boycotting should be studied in yorkshire, and practised,--after an experience of many years. laying on one side for the moment all ideas as to the honesty and expediency of the measure, we think that yorkshire might in half a century learn how to boycott its neighbours. a yorkshire man might boycott a lancashire man, or lincoln might boycott nottingham. it would require much teaching;--many books would have to be written, and an infinite amount of heavy slow imperfect practice would follow. but county mayo and county galway rose to the requirements of the art almost in a night! gradually we englishmen learned to know in a dull glimmering way what they were about; but at the first whisper of the word all ireland knew how to ruin itself. this was done readily by people of the poorer class,--without any gifts of education, and certainly the immoderate practice of the science displays great national intelligence. as frank jones passed through dublin he learned that morony castle had been boycotted; and he was enough of an irishman to know immediately what was meant. and he heard, too, while in the train that the kennels at ahaseragh had been boycotted. he knew that with the kennels would be included black daly, and with morony castle his unfortunate father. according to the laws on which the practice was carried on nothing was to be bought from the land of morony castle, and nothing sold to the owners of it. no service was to be done for the inhabitants, as far as the laws of boycotting might be made to prevail. he learned from a newspaper he bought in dublin that the farm servants had all left the place, and that the maids had been given to understand that they would encounter the wrath of the new lords in the land if they made a bed for any jones to lie upon. as he went on upon his journey his imagination went to work to picture to himself the state of his father's life under these circumstances. but his imagination was soon outstripped by the information which reached him from fellow-travellers. "did ye hear what happened to old phil jones down at morony?" said a passenger, who got in at moate, to another who had joined them at athlone. "divil a hear thin." "old phil wanted to get across from ballyglunin to his own place. he had been down to athenry. there was that chap who is always there with a car. divil a foot would he stir for phil. phil has had some row with the boys there about his meadows, and he's trying to prosecute. more fool he. a quiet, aisy-going fellow he used to be. but it seems he has been stirred now. he has got some man in galway jail, and all the country is agin him. anyways he had to foot it from ballyglunin to headford, and then to send home to morony for his own car." in this way did frank learn that his father had in truth incurred boycotting severity. he knew well the old man who had attended the ballyglunin station with almost a hopeless desire of getting a fare, and was sure that nothing short of an imperious edict from the great landleaguing authorities in the district, would have driven him to the necessity of repudiating a passenger. but when he had reached the further station of ballinasloe he learned sadder tidings in regard to his friend tom daly. tom daly had put no man in prison, and yet the kennels at ahaseragh had been burned to the ground. this had occurred only on the preceding day; and he got the account of what had happened from a hunting man he knew well. "the hounds were out you know last saturday week as a finish, and poor tom did hope that we might get through without any further trouble. we met at ballinamona, and we drew blake's coverts without a word. we killed our fox too and then went away to pulhaddin gorse. i'll be blest if all the county weren't there. i never saw the boys swarm about a place so thick. pulhaddin is the best gorse in the county. of course it was no use drawing it; but as we were going away on the road to loughrea the crowd was so thick that there was no riding among them. ever so many horsemen got into the fields to be away from the crowd. but tom wouldn't allow barney and the hounds to be driven from the road. i never saw a man look so angry in my life. you could see the passion that was on him. he never spoke a word, nor raised a hand, nor touched his horse with his spur; but he got blacker and blacker, and would go on whether the crowd moved asunder or not. and he told barney to follow him with the hounds, which barney did, looking back ever and anon at the poor brutes, and giving his instructions to the whips to see well after that they did not wander. they threatened barney scores of times with their sticks, but he came on, funking awfully, but still doing whatever tom told him. i was riding just behind him among the hounds so that i could see all that took place. at last a ruffian with his shillelagh struck barney over the thigh. i had not time to get to him; indeed i doubt whether i should have done so, but tom,--; by george, he saw out of the back of his head. he turned round, and, without touching his horse with spur or whip, rode right at the ruffian. if they had struck himself, i think he would have borne it more easily." "how did it end?" "they said that the blackguard was hurt, but i saw him escape and get away over the fence. then they all set upon tom, but by g---- it was glorious to see the way in which he held his own. out came that cross of his, four foot and a half long, with a thong as heavy as a flail. he soon had the road clear around him, and the big black horse you remember, stood as steady as a statue till he was bidden to move on. then when he had the hounds, and barney smith and the whips to himself,--and i was there--we all rode off at a fast trot to loughrea." "and then?" "we could do nothing but go home; the whole county seemed to be in a ferment. at loughrea we went away in our own directions, and poor tom with barney smith rode home to ahaseragh. but not a word did he speak to anyone, even to barney; nor did barney dare to speak a word to him. he trotted all the way to ahaseragh in moody silence, thinking of the terrible ill that had been done him. i have known tom for twenty years, and i think that if he loves any man he loves me. but he parted from me that day without a word." "and then the kennels were set on fire?" "before i left loughrea i heard the report, spread about everywhere, that tom daly had recklessly ridden down three or four more poor countrymen on the road. i knew then that some mischief would be in hand. it was altogether untrue that he had hurt anyone. and he was bound to interfere on behalf of his own servant. but when i heard this morning that a score of men had been there in the night and had burned the kennels to the ground, i was not surprised." such was the story that frank jones heard as to tom daly before he got home. on reaching ballyglunin he looked out for the carman, but he was not there. perhaps the interference with his task had banished him. frank went on to tuam, which increased slightly the distance by road to morony. but at tuam he found that morony had in truth been boycotted. he could not get a car for love or money. there were many cars there, and the men would not explain to him their reasons for declining to take him home; but they all refused. "we can't do it, mr. frank," said one man; and that was the nearest approach to an explanation that was forthcoming. he walked into town and called at various houses; but it was to no purpose. it was with difficulty that he found himself allowed to leave his baggage at a grocer's shop, so strict was the boycotting exacted. and then he too had to walk home through headford to morony castle. when he reached the house he first encountered peter, the butler. "faix thin, mr. frank," said peter, "throubles niver comed in 'arnest till now. why didn't they allow mr. flory just to hould his pace and say nothing about it to no one?" "why has all this been done?" demanded frank. "it's that born divil, pat carroll," whispered peter. "i wouldn't be saying it so that any of the boys or girls should hear me,--not for my throat's sake. i am the only one of 'em," he added, whispering still lower than before, "that's doing a ha'porth for the masther. there are the two young ladies a-working their very fingers off down to the knuckles. as for me, i've got it all on my shoulders." no doubt peter was true to his master in adversity, but he did not allow the multiplicity of his occupations to interfere with his eloquence. then frank went in and found his father seated alone in his magistrate's room. "this is bad, father," said frank, taking him by the hand. "bad! yes, you may call it bad. i am ruined, i suppose. there are twenty heifers ready for market next week, and i am told that not a butcher in county galway will look at one of them." "then you must send them on to westmeath; i suppose the mullingar butchers won't boycott you?" "it's just what they will do." "then send them on to dublin." "who's to take them to dublin?" said the father, in his distress. "i will if there be no one else. we are not going to be knocked out of time for want of two or three pairs of hands." "there are two policemen here to watch the herd at night. they'd cut the tails off them otherwise as they did over at ballinrobe last autumn. to whom am i to consign 'em in dublin? while i am making new arrangements of that kind their time will have gone by. there are five cows should be milked morning and night. who is to milk them?" "who is milking them?" "your sisters are doing it, with the aid of an old woman who has come from galway. she says she has not long to live, and with the help of half-a-crown a day cares nothing for the landleaguers. i wish someone would pay me half-a-crown a day, and perhaps i should not care." then frank passed on through the house to find his sisters, or flory as it might be. he had said not a word to his father in regard to florian, fearing to touch upon a subject which, as he well knew, must be very sore. had florian told the truth when the deed was done, pat carroll would have been tried at once, and, whether convicted or acquitted, the matter would have been over long ago. in those days pat carroll had not become a national or even a county hero. but now he was able to secure the boycotting of his enemy even as far distant as ballyglunin or tuam. in the kitchen he found ada and edith, who had no comfort in these perilous days except when they could do everything together. at the present moment they were roasting a leg of mutton and boiling potatoes, which frank knew were intended especially for his own eating. "well, my girls, you are busy here," he said. "oh, yes, busy!" said ada, who had put up her face to be kissed so as not to soil her brother's coat by touching it with her hands. "how is rachel?" "rachel is pretty well, i believe. we will not talk of rachel just at present." "is anything wrong," asked edith. "we will not talk about her, not now. what is all this that has happened here?" "we are just boycotted," said ada; "that's all." "and you think that it's the best joke in the world?" "think it a joke!" said edith. "why we have to be up every morning at five o'clock," said ada; "and at six we are out with the cows." "it is no joke," said edith, very seriously. "papa is broken-hearted about it. your coming will be of the greatest comfort to us, if only because of the pair of hands you bring. and poor flory!" "how has it gone with flory?" he asked. then edith told the tale as it had to be told of florian, and of what had happened because of the evidence he had given. he had come forward under the hands of captain yorke clayton and repeated his whole story, giving it in testimony before the magistrates. he declared it all exactly as he had done before in the presence of his father and his sister and captain clayton. and he had sworn to it, and had had his deposition read to him. he was sharp enough, and understood well what he was doing. the other two men were brought up to support him,--the old man terry and con heffernan. they of course had not been present at the examination of flory, and were asked,--first one and then the other,--what they knew of the transactions of the afternoon on which the waters had been let in on the meadows of ballintubber. they knew nothing at all, they said. they "disremembered" whether they had been there on the occasion, "at all, at all." yes; they knew that the waters had been in upon the meadows, and they believed that they were in again still. they didn't think that the meadows were of much good for this year. they didn't know who had done it, "at all, at all." people did be saying that mr. florian had done it himself, so as to spite his father because he had turned catholic. they couldn't say whether mr. florian could do it alone or not. they thought mr. florian and peter, the butler, and perhaps one other, might do it amongst them. they thought that yorke clayton might perhaps have been the man to help him. they didn't know that yorke clayton hadn't been in the county at that time. they wished with all their hearts that he wasn't there now, because he was the biggest blackguard they had ever heard tell of. such was the story which was now told to frank of the examination which took place in consequence of florian's confession. the results were that pat carroll was in galway jail, committed to take his trial at the next assizes in august for the offence which he had committed; and that florian had been bound over to give evidence. "what does florian do with himself?" his brother asked. "i am afraid he is frightened," said ada. "of course he is frightened," said her sister. "how should he not be frightened? these men have been telling him for the last six months that they would surely murder him if he turned round and gave evidence against them. oh, frank, i fear that i have been wrong in persuading him to tell the truth." "not though his life were sacrificed to-morrow. to have kept the counsels of such a ruffian as that against his own father would have been a disgrace to him for ever. does not my father think of sending him to england?" "he says that he has not the money," said edith. "is it so bad as that with him?" "i am afraid it is very bad,--bad at any rate, for the time coming. he has not had a shilling of rent for this spring, and he has to pay the money to mrs. pulteney and the others. poor papa is sorely vexed, and we do not like to press him. he suggested himself that he would send florian over to mr. blake's; but we think that carnlough is not far enough, and that it would be unfair to impose such a trouble on another man." "could he not send him to mrs. pulteney?" now mrs. pulteney was a sister of mr. jones. "he does not like to ask her," said edith. "he thinks that mrs. pulteney has not shown herself very kind of late. we are waiting till you speak to him about it." "but what does florian do with himself?" he asked. "you will see. he does little or nothing, but roams about the house and talks to peter. he did not even go to mass last sunday. he says that the whole congregation would accuse him of being a liar." "does he not know that he has done his duty by the lie he has told?" "but to go alone among these people!" said ada. "and to hear their damnable taunts!" said edith. "it is very hard upon him. i think it is papa's idea to keep him here till after the trial in august, and then, if possible, to send him to england. there would be the double journey else, and papa thinks that there would be no real danger till his evidence had been given." then frank went out of the house and walked round the demesne, so that he might think at his ease of all the troubles of his family. chapter xxi. lax, the murderer. frank jones found his brother florian alone in the butler's pantry, and was told that peter was engaged in feeding the horses and cleaning out the stables. "he's mostly engaged in that kind of work now," said florian. "who lays the tablecloth?" asked frank. "i do; or edith; sometimes we don't have any tablecloth, or any clean knives and forks. perhaps they'll have one to-day because you have come." "i wouldn't give them increased trouble," said frank. "papa told them to put their best foot forward because you are here. i don't think he minds at all about himself. i think papa is very unhappy." "of course he's unhappy, because they have boycotted him. how should he not be unhappy." "it's worse than that," whispered florian. "what can be worse?" "if you'll come with me i'll tell you. i don't want to say it here, because the girls will hear me;--and that old peter will know everything that's said." "come out into the grounds, and take a turn before dinner." at this florian shook his head. "why not, flory." "there are fellows about," said flory. "what fellows?" "the very fellows that said they'd kill me. do you know that fellow lax? he's the worst of them." "but he doesn't live here." "all the same, i saw him yesterday." "you were out then, yesterday?" "not to say out," said flory. "i was in the orchard just behind the stables; and i could see across into the ten-acre piece. there, at the further side of the field, i saw a fellow, who i am sure was lax. nobody walks like him, he's got that quick, suspicious way of going. it was just nearly dark; it was well-nigh seven, and i had been with peter in the stables, helping to make up the horses, and i am sure it was lax." "he won't come near you and me on the broad walk," said frank. "won't he? you don't know him. there are half-a-dozen places there where he could hit us from behind the wall. come up into your room, and i'll tell you what it is that makes papa unhappy." then frank led the way upstairs to his bedroom, and florian followed him. when inside he shut the door, and seated himself on the bed close to his brother. "now i'll tell you," said he. "what is it ails him?" "he's frightened," said florian, "because he doesn't wish me to be--murdered." "my poor boy! who could wish it?" here florian shook his head. "of course he doesn't wish it." "he made me tell about the meadow gates." "you had to tell that, flory." "but it will bring them to murder me. if you had heard them make me promise and had seen their looks! papa never thought about that till the man had come and worked it all out of me." "what man?" "the head of the policemen, yorke clayton. papa was so fierce upon me then, that he made me do it." "you had to do it," said frank. "let things go as they might, you had to do it. you would not have it said of you that you had joined these ruffians against your father." "i had sworn to father brosnan not to tell. but you care nothing for a priest, of course." "nothing in the least." "nor does father. but when i had told it all at his bidding, and had gone before the magistrates, and they had written it down, and that man clayton had read it all and i had signed it, and papa had seen the look which pat carroll had turned upon me, then he became frightened. i knew that that man lax was in the room at the moment. i did not see him, but i felt that he was there. now i don't go out at all, except just into the orchard and front garden. i won't go even there, as i saw lax about the place yesterday. i know that they mean to murder me." "there will be no danger," said frank, "unless carroll be convicted. in that case your father will have you sent to a school in england." "papa hasn't got the money; i heard him tell edith so. and they wouldn't know how to carry me to the station at ballyglunin. those boys from ballintubber would shoot at me on the road. it's that that makes papa so unhappy." then they all went to dinner with a cloth laid fair on the table, for frank, who was as it were a stranger. and there were many inquiries made after rachel and her theatrical performances. tidings as to her success had already reached morony, and wonderful accounts of the pecuniary results. they had seen stories in the newspapers of the close friendship which existed between her and mr. moss, and hints had been given for a closer tie. "i don't think it is likely," said frank. "but is anything the matter between you and rachel?" asked edith. at that moment peter was walking off with the leg of mutton, and ada had run into the kitchen to fetch the rice pudding, which she had made to celebrate her brother's return. edith winked at her brother to show that all questions as to the tender subject should be postponed for the moment. "but is it true," said ada, "that rachel is making a lot of money?" "that is true, certainly," said her brother. "and that she sings gloriously?" "she always did sing gloriously," said edith. "i was sure that rachel was intended for a success." "i wonder what captain yorke clayton would think about her," said ada. "he does understand music, and is very fond of young ladies who can sing. i heard him say that the miss ormesbys of castlebar sang beautifully; and he sings himself, i know." "captain clayton has something else to do at present than to watch the career of miss o'mahony in london." this was said by their father, and was the first word he had spoken since they had sat down to dinner. it was felt to convey some reproach as to rachel; but why a reproach was necessary was not explained. peter was now out of the room, and the door was shut. "rachel and i have come to understand each other," said frank. "she is to have the spending of her money by herself, and i by myself am to enjoy life at morony castle." "is this her decision?" asked edith. it was on frank's lips to declare that it was so; but he remembered himself, and swallowed down the falsehood unspoken. "no," he said; "it was not her decision. she offered to share it all with me." "and you?" said his father. "well, i didn't consent; and so we arranged that matters should be brought to an end between us." "i knew what she would do," said ada. "just what she ought," said edith. "rachel is a fine girl. nothing else was to be expected from her." "and nothing else was possible with you," said their father. and so that conversation was brought to an end. on the next day captain clayton came up the lake from galway, and was again engaged,--or pretended to be engaged,--in looking up for evidence in reference to the trial of pat carroll. or it might be that he wanted to sun himself again in the bright eyes of ada jones. again he brought hunter, his double, with him, and boldly walked from morony castle into headford, disregarding altogether the loaded guns of pat carroll's friends. in company with frank he paid a visit to tom lafferty in his own house at headford. but as he went there he insisted that frank should carry a brace of pistols in his trousers' pockets. "it's as well to do it, though you should never use them, or a great deal better that you should never use them. you don't want to get into all the muck of shooting a wretched, cowardly landleaguer. if all the leaders had but one life among them there would be something worth going in for. but it is well that they should believe that you have got them. they are such cowards that if they know you've got a pistol with you they will be afraid to get near enough to shoot you with a rifle. if you are in a room with fellows who see that you have your hand in your trousers' pocket, they will be in such a funk that you cow half-a-dozen of them. they look upon hunter and me as though we were an armed company of policemen." so frank carried the pistols. "well, mr. lafferty, how are things going with you to-day?" "'deed, then, captain clayton, it ain't much as i'm able to say for myself. i've the decentry that bad in my innards as i'm all in the twitters." "i'm sorry for that, mr. lafferty. are you well enough to tell me where did mr. lax go when he left you this morning?" "who's mr. lax? i don't know no such person." "don't you, now? i thought that mr. lax was as well-known in headford as the parish priest. why, he's first cousin to your second cousin, pat carroll." "'deed and he ain't then;--not that i ever heard tell of." "i've no doubt you know what relations he's got in these parts." "i don't know nothin' about terry lax." "except that his name is terry," said the captain. "i don't know nothin' about him, and i won't tell nothin' either." "but he was here this morning, mr. lafferty?" "not that i know of. i won't say nothin' more about him. it's as bad as lying you are with that d----d artful way of entrapping a fellow." here terry carroll, pat's brother, entered the cabin, and took off his hat, with an air of great courtesy. "more power to you, mr. frank," he said, "it's i that am glad to see you back from london. these are bad tidings they got up at the castle. to think of mr. flory having such a story to tell as that." "it's a true story at any rate," said frank. "musha thin, not one o' us rightly knows. it's a long time ago, and if i were there at all, i disremember it. maybe i was, though i wasn't doing anything on me own account. if pat was to bid me, i'd do that or any other mortal thing at pat's bidding." "if you are so good a brother as that, your complaisance is likely to bring you into trouble, mr. carroll. come along, jones, i've got pretty nearly what i wanted from them." then when they were in the street, he continued speaking to frank. "your brother is right, though i wouldn't have believed it on any other testimony than one of themselves. that man lax was here in the county yesterday. a more murderous fellow than he is not to be found in connaught; and he's twice worse than any of the fellows about here. they will do it for revenge, or party purposes. he has a regular tariff for cutting throats. i should not wonder if he has come here for the sake of carrying out the threats which they made against your poor brother." "do you mean that he will be murdered?" "we must not let it come to that. we must have lax up before the magistrate for having been present when they broke the flood gates." "have you got evidence of that?" "we can make the evidence serve its purpose for a time. if we can keep him locked up till after the trial we shall have done much. by heavens, there he is!" as he spoke the flash of a shot glimmered across their eyes, and seemed to have been fired almost within a yard of them; but they were neither of them hit. frank turned round and fired in the direction from whence the attack had come, but it was in vain. clayton did bring his revolver from out his pocket, but held his fire. they were walking in a lane just out of the town that would carry them by a field-path to morony castle, and clayton had chosen the path in order that he might be away from the public road. it was still daylight though it was evening, and the aggressor might have been seen had he attempted to cross their path. the lane was, as it were, built up on both sides with cabins, which had become ruins, each one of which might serve as a hiding-place. hunter was standing close to them before another word was spoken. "did you see him?" demanded clayton. "not a glimpse; but i heard him through there, where the dead leaves are lying." there were a lot of dead leaves strewed about, some of which were in sight, within an enclosure separated from them by a low ruined wall. on leaving this the captain was over it in a moment, but he was over it in vain. "for god's sake, sir, don't go after him in that way," said hunter, who followed close upon his track. "it's no more than to throw your life away." "i'd give the world to have one shot at him," said clayton. "i don't think i would miss him within ten paces." "but he'd have had you, captain, within three, had he waited for you." "he never would have waited. a man who fires at you from behind a wall never will wait. where on earth has he taken himself?" and clayton, with the open pistol in his hand, began to search the neighbouring hovels. "he's away out of that by this time," said hunter. "i heard the bullet pass by my ears," said frank. "no doubt you did, but a miss is as good as a mile any day. that a fellow like that who is used to shooting shouldn't do better is a disgrace to the craft. it's that fellow lax, and as i'm standing on the ground this moment i'll have his life before i've done with him." nothing further came from this incident till the three started on their walk back to morony castle. but they did not do this till they had thoroughly investigated the ruins. "do you know anything of the man?" said frank, "as to his whereabouts? or where he comes from?" then clayton gave some short account of the hero. he had first come across him in the neighbourhood of foxford near lough conn, and had there run him very hard, as the captain said, in reference to an agrarian murder. he knew, he said, that the man had received thirty shillings for killing an old man who had taken a farm from which a tenant had been evicted. but he had on that occasion been tried and acquitted. he had since that lived on the spoils acquired after the same fashion. he was supposed to have come originally from kilkenny, and whether his real name was or was not lax, captain clayton did not pretend to say. "but he had a fair shot at me," said captain clayton, "and it shall go hard with me but i shall have as fair a one at him. i think it was urlingford gave the fellow his birth. i doubt whether he will ever see urlingford again." so they walked back, and by the time they had reached the castle were quite animated and lively with the little incident. "it may be possible," said the captain to mr. jones, "that he expected my going to headford. it certainly was known in galway yesterday, that i was to come across the lake this morning, and the tidings may have come up by some fellow-traveller. he would drop word with some of the boys at ballintubber as he passed by. and they might have thought it likely that i should go to headford. they have had their chance on this occasion, and they have not done any good with it." chapter xxii. morony castle is boycotted. the men seemed to make a good joke of the afternoon's employment, but not so the young ladies. in the evening they had a little music, and captain clayton declared that the miss ormesbys were grand performers. "and i am told that they are lovely girls," said ada. "well, yes; lovely is a very strong word." "i'd rather be called lovely than anything," said ada. "now, captain clayton," said edith, "if you wish for my respect, don't fall into the trap which ada has so openly laid for you." "i meant nothing of the kind," said ada. "i hope that captain clayton knows me better. but, captain clayton, you don't mean that you'll walk down to the boat to-morrow?" "why not? he'll never have the pluck to fire at me two days running. and i doubt whether he'll allow me so fair a chance of seeing him." "i wonder how you can sleep at night, knowing that such a man as this is always after your life." "i wonder whether he sleeps at night, when he thinks such a man as i am after his life. and i allow him, to boot, all his walks and hiding-places." then ada began to implore him not to be too rash. she endeavoured to teach him that no good could come from such foolhardiness. if his life was of no value to himself, it was of great value to others;--to his mother, for instance, and to his sister. "a man's life is of no real value," said the captain, "until he has got a wife and family--or at any rate, a wife." "you don't think the wife that is to be need mind it?" said edith. "the wife that is to be must be in the clouds, and in all probability, will never come any nearer. i cannot allow that a man can be justified in neglecting his duties for the sake of a cloudy wife." "not in neglecting absolute duties," said ada, sadly. "a man in my position neglects his duty if he leaves a stone unturned in pursuit of such a blackguard as this. and when a man is used to it, he likes it. there's your brother quite enjoyed being shot at, just as though he were resident magistrate; at any rate, he looked as though he did." so the conversation went on through the evening, during the whole of which poor florian made one of the party. he said very little, but sat close to his sister edith, who frequently had his hand in her own. the captain constantly had his eye upon him without seeming to watch him, but still was thinking of him as the minutes flew by. it was not that the boy was in danger; for the captain thought the danger to be small, and that it was reduced almost to nothing as long as he remained in the house,--but what would be the effect of fear on the boy's mind? and if he were thus harassed could he be expected to give his evidence in a clear manner? mr. jones was not present after dinner, having retired at once to his own room. but just as the girls had risen to go to bed, and as florian was preparing to accompany them, peter brought a message saying that mr. jones would be glad to see captain clayton before he went for the night. then the captain got up, and bidding them all farewell, followed peter to mr. jones's room. "i shall go on by the early boat," he said as he was leaving the room. "you'll have breakfast first, at any rate," said ada. the captain swore that he wouldn't, and the girls swore that he should. "we never let anybody go without breakfast," said ada. "and particularly not a man," said edith, "who has just been shot at on our behalf," but the captain explained that it might be as well that he should be down waiting for the boat half an hour at any rate before it started. "i and hunter," said he, "would have a fair look out around us there, so that no one could get within rifle shot of us without our seeing them, and they won't look out for us so early. i don't think much of mr. lax's courage, but it may be as well to keep a watch when it can be so easily done." then ada went off to her bed, resolving that the breakfast should be ready, though it was an hour before the boat time. the boat called at the wharf at eight in the morning, and the wharf was three miles distant from the house. she could manage to have breakfast ready at half-past six. "ada, my girl," said edith, as they departed together, "don't you make a fool of that young man." "what do you mean by that?" "didn't you tell me that a man who has to be shot at ought not to be married; and didn't he say that he would leave his future wife up among the clouds?" "he may leave her where he likes for me," said ada. "when a man is doing so much for us oughtn't he to have his breakfast ready for him at half-past six o'clock?" there was no more then said between them on that subject; but edith resolved that as far as boiling the water was concerned, she would be up as soon as ada. when the captain went into mr. jones's room he was asked to sit down, and had a cigar offered to him. "thanks, no; i don't think i'll smoke. smoking may have some sort of effect on a fellow's hand. there's a gentleman in these parts who i should be sorry should owe his life to any little indulgence of that sort on my behalf." "you are thinking of the man who fired at you?" "well, yes; i am. not that i shall have any chance at him just at present. he won't come near me again this visit. the next that i shall hear from him will be from round some corner in the neighbourhood of galway. i think i know every turn in that blackguard's mind." "have you been speaking to florian about him, captain clayton?" "not a word." "nor has his brother?" "i think not." "what am i to do about the poor boy?" said the anxious father. "because of his fear about this very man?" "he is only a boy, you know." "of course he is only a boy. you've no right to expect from him the pluck of a man. when he is as old as his brother he'll have his brother's nerve. i like to see a man plucky under fire when he is not used to it. when you've got into the way of it, it means nothing." "what am i do about florian? there are four months before the assizes. he cannot remain in the house for four months." "what would he be at the end of it?" said the captain. "that is what we have to think of." "would it alter him?" "i suppose it would,--if he were here with his sister, talking of nothing but this wretched man, who seems to haunt him. we have to remember, mr. jones, how long it was before he came forward with his story." "i think he will be firm with it now." "no doubt,--if he had to tell it out in direct evidence. when he is there in the court telling it, he will not think much of mr. lax, nor even of pat carroll, who will be in the dock glaring at him; nor would he think much of anything but his direct story, while a friendly barrister is drawing it out of him; but when it comes to his cross-examination, it will be different. he will want all his pluck then, and all the simplicity which he can master. you must remember that a skilful man will have been turned loose on him with all the ferocity of a bloodhound; a man who will have all the cruelty of lax, but will have nothing to fear; a man who will be serving his purpose all round if he can only dumbfound that poor boy by his words and his looks. a man, when he has taken up the cause of these ruffians, learns to sympathise with them. if they hate the queen, hate the laws, hate all justice, these men learn to hate them too. when they get hold of me, and i look into the eyes of such a one, i see there my bitterest enemy. he holds captain yorke clayton up to the hatred of the whole court, as though he were a brute unworthy of the slightest mercy,--a venomous reptile, against whom the whole country should rise to tear him in pieces. and i look round and see the same feeling written in the eyes of them all. i found it more hard to get used to that than to the snap of a pistol; but i have got used to it. poor florian will have had no such experience. and there will be no mercy shown to him because he is only a boy. neither sex nor age is supposed to render any such feeling necessary to a lawyer. a lawyer in defending the worst ruffian that ever committed a crime will know that he is called upon to spare nothing that is tender. he is absolved from all the laws common to humanity. and then poor florian has lied." a gloomy look of sad, dull pain came across the father's brow as he heard these words. "we must look it in the face, mr. jones." "yes, look it all in the face." "he has repeated the lie again and again for six months. he has been in close friendship with these men. it will be made out that he has been present at all their secret meetings. he has been present at some of them. it will be very hard to get a jury to convict on his evidence if it be unsupported." "shall we withdraw him?" asked mr. jones. "you cannot do it. his deposition has been sworn and put forward in the proper course. besides it is his duty and yours,--and mine," he added. "he must tell his story once again, and must endure whatever torment the law-rebels of the court have in store for him. only it will be well to think what course of treatment may best prepare him for the trial. you should treat him with the greatest kindness." "he is treated kindly." "but you, i think, and his sisters and his brother should endeavour to make him feel that you do not think harshly of him because of the falsehoods he has told. go out with him occasionally." here mr. jones raised his eyebrows as feeling surprised at the kind of counsel given. "put some constraint on yourself so as to make him feel by the time he has to go into court with you that he has a friend with him." "i trust that he always feels that," said mr. jones. they went on discussing the matter till late at night, and captain clayton made the father understand what it was that he intended. he meant that the boy should be made to know that his father was to him as are other fathers, in spite of the lie which he had told, and of the terrible trouble which he had caused by telling it. but mr. jones felt that the task imposed upon him would be almost impossible. he was heavy at heart, and unable to recall to himself his old spirits. he had been thoroughly ashamed of his son, and was not possessed of that agility of heart which is able to leap into good-humour at once. florian had been restored to his old manner of life; sitting at table with his father and occasionally spoken to by him. he had been so far forgiven; but the father was still aware that there was still a dismal gap between himself and his younger boy, as regarded that affectionate intercourse which captain clayton recommended. and yet he knew that it was needed, and resolved that he would do his best, however imperfectly it might be done. on the next morning the captain went his way, and did ample homage to the kindly exertions made on his behalf by the two girls. "now i know you must have been up all night, for you couldn't have done it all without a servant in the house." "how dare you belittle our establishment!" said ada. "what do you think of peter? is peter nobody? and it was poor florian who boiled the kettle. i really don't know whether we should not get on better altogether without servants than with them." the breakfast was eaten both by the captain in the parlour and by hunter in the kitchen in great good humour. "now, my fine fellow," said the former, "have you got your pistols ready? i don't think we shall want them this morning, but it's as well not to give these fellows a chance." hunter was pleased by being thus called into council before the young ladies, and they both started in the highest good humour. captain clayton, as he went, told himself that ada jones was the prettiest girl of his acquaintance. his last sentimental affinity with the youngest miss ormesby waxed feeble and insipid as he thought of ada. perhaps edith, he said to himself, is the sharpest of the two, but in good looks she can't hold a candle to her sister. so he passed on, and with his myrmidon reached galway, without incurring any impediment from mr. lax. in the course of the morning, mr. jones sent for florian, and proposed to walk out with him about the demesne. "i don't think there will be any danger," he said. "captain clayton went this morning, and the people don't know yet whether he has gone. i think it is better that you should get accustomed to it, and not give way to idle fears." the boy apparently agreed to this, and got his hat. but he did not leave the shelter of the house without sundry misgivings. mr. jones had determined to act at once upon the captain's advice, and had bethought himself that he could best do so by telling the whole truth to the boy. "now, florian, i think it would be as well that you and i should understand each other." florian looked up at him with fearful eyes, but made no reply. "of course i was angry with you while you were hesitating about those ruffians." "yes; you were," said florian. "i can quite understand that you have felt a difficulty." "yes, i did," said florian. "but that is all over now." "if they don't fire at me it is over, i suppose, till august." "they shan't fire at you. don't be afraid. if they fire at you, they must fire at me too." the father was walking with his arm about the boy's neck. "you, at any rate, shall incur no danger which i do not share. you will understand--won't you--that my anger against you is passed and gone?" "i don't know," said the boy. "it is so,--altogether. i hope to be able to send you to school in england very soon after the trial is over. you shall go to mr. monro at first, and to winchester afterwards, if i can manage it. but we won't think of winchester just at present. we must do the best we can to get a good place for you on your first going into the school." "i am not afraid about that," said florian, thinking that at the time when the school should have come all the evils of the trials would have been passed away and gone. "all the same you might come and read with me every morning for an hour, and then for an hour with each of your sisters. you will want something to do to make up your time. and remember, florian, that all my anger has passed away. we will be the best of friends, as in former days, so that when the time shall have come for you to go into court, you may be quite sure that you have a friend with you there." to all this florian made very little reply; but mr. jones remembered that he could not expect to do much at a first attempt. weary as the task would be he would persevere. for the task would be weary even with his own son. he was a man who could do nothing graciously which he could not do _con amore_. and he felt that all immediate warm liking for the poor boy had perished in his heart. the boy had made himself the friend of such a one as pat carroll, and in his friendship for him had lied grossly. mr. jones had told himself that it was his duty to forgive him, and had struggled to perform his duty. for the performance of any deed necessary for the boy's security, he could count upon himself. but he could not be happy in his company as he was with edith. the boy had been foully untrue to him--but still he would do his best. chapter xxiii. tom daly is boycotted. when the time came round, frank jones started for ballinasloe, with his father's cattle and with peter to help him. they did succeed in getting a boy to go with them, who had been seduced by a heavy bribe to come down for the purpose from ballinasloe to morony castle. as he had been used to cattle, peter's ignorance and frank's also were of less account. they drove the cattle to tuam, and there got them on the railway, the railway with its servants being beyond the power of the boycotters. at ballinasloe they could not sell the cattle, as the name of mr. jones of morony had become terribly notorious throughout county galway. but arrangements had been made to send them to a salesman up in dublin, and from ballinasloe they had gone under the custody of peter and the boy. no attempt was made absolutely to harm the beasts, or even to stop them in the streets. but throughout the town it seemed to be perfectly understood that they were the property of philip jones of morony castle, and that philip jones had been boycotted by the league. the poor beasts were sent on to dublin without a truss of hay among them, and even frank himself was refused a meal at the first inn at which he had called. he did afterwards procure accommodation; but he heard while in the house, that the innkeeper was threatened for what he had done. had it not been that peter had brought with him a large basket of provisions for himself and the boy, they, too, would have been forced to go on dinnerless and supperless to dublin. frank, on his way back home, resolved that he would call on mr. daly at daly's bridge, near castle blakeney. it was daly's wont to live at daly's bridge when the hounds were not hunting, though he would generally go four or five times a week from daly's bridge to the kennels. to castle blakeney a public car was running, and the public car did not dare, or probably did not wish, to boycott anyone. he walked up to the open door at daly's bridge and soon found himself in the presence of black tom daly. "so you are boycotted?" said tom. "horse, foot, and dragoons," said frank. "what's to come of it, i wonder?" tom as he said this was sitting at an open window making up some horse's drug to which was attached some very strong odour. "i am boycotted too, and the poor hounds, which have given hours of amusement to many of these wretches, for which they have not been called upon to pay a shilling. i shall have to sell the pack, i'm afraid," said tom, sadly. "not yet, i hope, mr. daly." "what do you mean by that? who's to keep them without any subscription? and who's to subscribe without any prospect of hunting? for the matter of that who's to feed the poor dumb brutes? one pack will be boycotted after another till not a pack of hounds will be wanted in all ireland." "has the same thing happened to any other pack?" asked frank. "certainly it has. they turned out against the muskerry; and there's been a row in kildare. we are only at the beginning of it yet." "i don't suppose it will go on for ever," said frank. "why don't you suppose so? what's to be the end of it all? do you see any way out of it?--for i do not. does your father see his way to bringing those meadows back into his hands? i'm told that some of those fellows shot at clayton the other day down at headford. how are we to expect a man like clayton to come forward and be shot at in that fashion? as far as i can see there will be no possibility for anyone to live in this country again. of course it's all over with me. i haven't got any rents to speak of, and the only property i possess is now useless." "what property?" asked frank. "what property?" rejoined tom in a voice of anger. "what property? ain't the hounds property, or were property a few weeks ago? who'll subscribe for next year? we had a meeting in february, you know, and the fellows put down their names the same as ever. but they can't be expected to pay when there will be no coverts for them to draw. the country can do nothing to put a stop to this blackguardism. when they've passed this coercion bill they're going to have some sort of land bill,--just a law to give away the land to somebody. what's to come of the poor country with such men as mr. gladstone and mr. bright to govern it? they're the two very worst men in the whole empire for governing a country. martial law with a regiment in each county, and a strong colonel to carry it out,--that is the only way of governing left us. i don't pretend to understand politics, but every child can see that. and you should do away with the constituencies, at any rate for the next five years. what are you to expect with such a set of men as that in parliament,--men whom no one would speak to if they were to attempt to ride to hounds in county galway. it makes me sick when i hear of it." such were tom daly's sad outlooks into the world. and sad as they were, they seemed to be justified by circumstances as they operated upon him. there could be no hunting in county galway next session unless things were to change very much for the better. and there was no prospect of any such change. "it's nonsense talking of a poor devil like me being ruined. you ask me what property i have got." "i don't think i ever asked that," said frank. "it don't matter. you're quite welcome. you'll find eight or nine pair of leather breeches in that press in there. and round about the room somewhere there are over a dozen pair of top-boots. they are the only available property i have got. they are paid for, and i can do what i please with them. the four or five hundred acres over there on the road to tuam are mostly bog, and are strictly entailed so that i cannot touch them. as there is not a tenant will pay the rent since i've been boycotted it doesn't make much matter. i have not had a shilling from them for more than twelve months; and i don't suppose i ever shall see another. the poor hounds are eating their heads off; as fine a pack of hounds as any man ever owned, as far as their number goes. i can't keep them, and who'll buy them? they tell me i must send them over to tattersall's. but as things are now i don't suppose they'll pay the expense. i don't care who knows it, but i haven't three hundred pounds in the world. and i'm over fifty years of age. what do you think of that as the condition for a man to be brought to?" frank jones had never heard daly speak at such length before, nor had he given him credit for so much eloquence. nor, indeed, had anyone in the county of galway heard him speak so many words till this misfortune had fallen upon him. and he would still be silent and reserved with all except a few hunting men whom he believed to be strongly influenced by the same political feeling as he was himself. here was he boycotted most cruelly, but not more cruelly than was mr. jones of morony castle. the story of florian jones had got about the county, and had caused mr. jones to be pitied greatly by such men as tom daly. "his own boy to turn against him!" tom had said. "and to become a papist! a boy of ten years old to call himself a papist, as if he would know anything about it. and then to lie,--to lie like that! i feel that his case is almost worse than mine." therefore he had burst out with his sudden eloquence to frank jones, whom he had liked. "oh, yes! i can send you over to woodlawn station. i have got a horse and car left about the place. here's william persse of galway. he's the stanchest man we have in the county, but even he can do nothing." then mr. persse rode into the yard,--that mr. persse who, when the hounds met at ballytowngal, had so strongly dissuaded daly from using his pistol. he was a man who was reputed to have a good income, or at any rate a large estate,--though the two things at the present moment were likely to have a very various meaning. but he was a man less despondent in his temperament than tom daly, and one that was likely to prevail with tom by the strength of his character. "well, tom," said persse, as he walked into the house, "how are things using you now? how are you, jones? i'm afraid your father is getting it rather hot at morony castle." "they've boycotted us, that's all." "so i understand. is it not odd that some self-appointed individual should send out an edict, and that suddenly all organised modes of living among people should be put a stop to! here's tom not allowed to get a packet of greaves into his establishment unless he sends to dublin for it." "nor to have it sent over here," said tom, "unless i'll send my own horse and cart to fetch it. and every man and boy i have about the place is desired to leave me at the command of some d----d o'toole, whose father kept a tinker's shop somewhere in county mayo, and whose mother took in washing." there was a depth of scorn intended to be conveyed by all this, because in daly's estimation county mayo was but a poor county to live in, as it had not for many a year possessed an advertised pack of fox-hounds. and the o'tooles were not one of the tribes of galway, or a clan especially esteemed in that most aristocratic of the western counties. "have all the helpers gone?" "i haven't asked them to stay; but unless they have stayed of their own accord i have just shaken hands with them. it's all that one gentleman can do to another when he meets him." "mr. daly is talking of selling the hounds," said frank jones. "not quite yet, tom," said mr. persse. "you mustn't do anything in a hurry." "they'll have to starve if they remain here," said the master of hounds. "i have come over here to say a word about them. i don't suppose this kind of thing will last for ever, you know." "can you see any end to it?" said the other. "not as yet i can't, except that troubles when they come generally do have an end. we always think that evils will last for ever,--and blessings too. when two-year-old ewes went up to three pound ten at ballinasloe, we thought that we were to get that price for ever, but they were soon down to two seventeen six; and when we had had two years of the potato famine, we thought that there would never be another potato in county galway. for the last five years we've had them as fine at doneraile as ever i saw them. nobody is ever quite ruined, or quite has his fortune made." "i am very near the ruin," said tom daly. "i would struggle to hold on a little longer yet," said the other. "how many horses have you got here and at ahaseragh?" "there are something over a dozen," said tom. "there may be fifteen in all. i was thinking of sending a draught over to tattersall's next week. there are some of them would not be worth a five-and-twenty-pound note when you got them there!" "well, now i'll tell you what i propose. you shall send over four or five to be summered at doneraile. there is grass enough there, and though i can't pay my debts, my credit is good at the corn-chandler's." black tom, as he heard this, sat still looking blacker than ever. he was a man who hated to have a favour offered to him. but he could bear the insult better from persse of doneraile than from anyone else in the county. "i've talked the matter over with lynch--" "d---- lynch," said daly. he didn't dislike sir jasper, but sir jasper did not stand quite so high in his favour as did mr. persse of doneraile. "you needn't d---- anybody; but just listen to me. sir jasper says that he will take three, and nicholas bodkin will do the same." "they are both baronets," said daly. "i hate a man with a handle to his name; he always seems to me to be stuck-up, as though he demanded something more than other people. there is that lord ardrahan--" "a very good fellow too. don't you be an ass. lord ardrahan has offered to take three more." "i knew it," said tom. "it's not as though any favour were offered or received. though the horses are your own property, they are kept for the services of the hunt. we all understand very well how things are circumstanced at present." "how do you think i am to feed my hounds if you take away the horses which they would eat?" said daly, with an attempt at a grim joke. but after the joke tom became sad again, almost to tears, and he allowed his friend to make almost what arrangements he pleased for distributing both hounds and horses among the gentry of the hunt. "and when they are gone," said he, "i am to sit here alone with nothing on earth to do. what on earth is to become of me when i have not a hound left to give a dose of physic to?" "we'll not leave you in such a sad strait as that," said mr. persse. "it will be sad enough. if you had had a pack of hounds to look after for thirty summers, you wouldn't like to get rid of them in a hurry. i'm like an old nurse who is sending her babies out, or some mother, rather, who is putting her children into the workhouse because she cannot feed them herself. it is sad, though you don't see it in that light." frank jones got home to castle morony that night full of sorrow and trouble. the cattle had been got off to dublin in their starved condition, but he, as he had come back, had been boycotted every yard of the way. he could get in no car, nor yet in all tuam could he secure the services of a boy to carry his bag for him. he learned in the town that the girls had sent over to purchase a joint of meat, but had been refused at every shop. "is trade so plentiful?" asked frank, "that you can afford to do without it?" "we can't afford to do with it," said the butcher, "if it's to come from morony castle." chapter xxiv. "from the full heart the mouth speaks." ada was making the beds upstairs, and edith was churning the butter down below in the dairy, when a little bare-footed boy came in with a letter. "please, miss, it's from the captain, and he says i'm not to stir out of this till i come back with an answer." the letter was delivered to edith at the dairy door, and she saw that it was addressed to herself. she had never before seen the captain's handwriting, and she looked at it somewhat curiously. "if he's to write to one of us it should be to ada," she said to herself, laughing. then she opened the envelope, which enclosed a large square stout letter. it contained a card and a written note, and on the card was an invitation, as follows: "the colonel and officers of the west bromwich regiment request the pleasure of the company of mr. jones, the misses jones, and mr. francis jones to a dance at the galway barracks, on the th of may, . dancing to commence at ten o'clock." then there was the note, which edith read before she took the card upstairs. "my dear miss jones," the letter began. edith again looked at the envelope and perceived that the despatch had been certainly addressed to herself--miss edith jones; but between herself and her sister there could be no jealousy as to the opening of a letter. letters for one were generally intended for the other also. i hope you will both come. you ought to do so to show the county that, though you are boycotted, you are not smashed, and to let them understand that you are not afraid to come out of the house although certain persons have made themselves terrible. i send this to you instead of to your sister, because perhaps you have a little higher pluck. but do tell your father from me that i think he ought, as a matter of policy, to insist on your both coming. you could come down by the boat one day and return the next; and i'll meet you, for fear your brother should not be there.--yours very faithfully, yorke clayton. i have got the fellows of the west bromwich to entrust the card to me, and have undertaken to see it duly delivered. i hope you'll approve of my mercury. hunter says he doesn't care how often he's shot at. it was, in the first place, necessary to provide for the mercury, because even a god cannot be sent away after the performance of such a journey without some provisions; and edith, to tell the truth, wanted to look at the ball all round before she ventured to express an opinion to her sister and father. her father, of course, would not go; but should he be left alone at morony castle to the tender mercies of peter? and should florian be left also without any woman's hands to take charge of him? and the butter, too, was on the point of coming, which was a matter of importance. but at last, having pulled off her butter-making apron and having duly patted the roll of butter, she went upstairs to her sister. "ada," she said, "here is such a letter;" and she held up the letter and the card. "who is it from?" "you must guess," said edith. "i am bad at guessing, i cannot guess. is it mr. blake of carnlough?" "a great deal more interesting than that." "it can't be captain clayton," said ada. "out of the full heart the mouth speaks. it is captain clayton." "what does he say, and what is the card? give it me. it looks like an invitation." "then it tells no story, because it is an invitation. it is from the officers of the west bromwich regiment; and it asks us to a dance on the th of may." "but that's not from captain clayton." "captain clayton has written,--to me and not to you at all. you will be awfully jealous; and he says that i have twice as much courage as you." "that's true, at any rate," said ada, in a melancholy tone. "yes; and as the officers want all the girls at the ball to be at any rate as brave as themselves, that's a matter of great importance. he has asked me to go with a pair of pistols at my belt; but he is afraid that you would not shoot anybody." "may i not look at his letter?" "oh, no! that would not be at all proper. the letter is addressed to me, miss edith jones. and as it has come from such a very dashing young man, and pays me particular compliments as to my courage, i don't think i shall let anybody else see it. it doesn't say anything special about beauty, which i think uncivil. if he had been writing to you, it would all have been about feminine loveliness of course." "what nonsense you do talk, edith." "well, there it is. as you will read it, you must. you'll be awfully disappointed, because there is not a word about you in it." then ada read the letter. "he says he hopes we shall both come." "well, yes! your existence is certainly implied in those words." "he explains why he writes to you instead of me." "another actual reference to yourself, no doubt. but then he goes on to talk of my pluck." "he says it's a little higher than mine," said ada, who was determined to extract from the captain's words as much good as was possible, and as little evil to herself. "so it is; only a little higher pluck! of course he means that i can't come near himself." "you wouldn't pretend to?" asked ada. "what! to be shot at like him, and to like it. i don't know any girl that can come quite up to that. only if one becomes quite cock-sure, as he is, that one won't be hit, i don't see the courage." "oh, i do!" "but now about this ball?" said edith. "here we are, lone damsels, making butter in our father's halls, and turning down the beds in the lady's chamber, unable to buy anything because we are boycotted, and with no money to buy it if we were not. and we can't stir out of the house lest we should be shot, and i don't suppose that such a thing as a pair of gloves is to be got anywhere." "i've got gloves for both of us," said ada. "put by for a rainy day. what a girl you are for providing for difficulties! and you've got silk stockings too, i shouldn't wonder." "of course i have." "and two ball dresses, quite new?" "not quite new. they are those we wore at hacketstown before the flood." "good gracious! how were noah's daughters dressed? or were they dressed at all?" "you always turn everything into nonsense," said ada, petulantly. "to be told i'm to wear a dress that had touched the heart of a patriarch, and had perhaps gone well nigh to make me a patriarch's bride! but taking it for granted that the ball dresses with all their appurtenances are here, fit to win the heart of a modern captain instead of an old patriarch, is there no other reason why we should not go?" "what reason?" asked ada, in a melancholy tone. "there are reasons. you go to papa, and see whether he has not reasons. he will tell you that every shilling should be saved for florian's school." "it won't take many shillings to go to galway. we couldn't well write to captain clayton and tell him that we can't afford it." "people keep those reasons in the background," said edith, "though people understand them. and then papa will say that in our condition we ought to be ashamed to show our faces." "what have we done amiss?" "not you or i perhaps," said edith; "but poor florian. i am determined,--and so are you,--to take florian to our very hearts, and to forgive him as though this thing had never been done. he is to us the same darling boy, as though he had never been present at the flood gates; as though he had had no hand in bringing these evils to morony castle. you and i have been angry, but we have forgiven him. to us he is as dear as ever he was. but they know in the county what it was that was done by florian jones, and they talk about it among themselves, and they speak of you and me as florian's sisters. and they speak of papa as florian's father. i think it may well be that papa should not wish us to go to this ball." then there came a look of disappointment over ada's face, as though her doom had already been spoken. a ball to ada, and especially a ball at galway,--a coming ball,--was a promise of infinite enjoyment; but a ball with captain yorke clayton would be heaven on earth. and by the way in which this invitation had come he had been secured as a partner for the evening. he could not write to them, and especially call upon them to come without doing all he could to make the evening pleasant for them. she included edith in all these promises of pleasantness. but edith, if the thing was to be done at all, would do it all for ada. as for the danger in which the man passed his life, that must be left in the hands of god. looking at it with great seriousness, as in the midst of her joking she did look at these things, she told herself that ada was very lovely, and that this man was certainly lovable. and she had taken it into her imagination that captain clayton was certainly in the road to fall in love with ada. why should not ada have her chance? and why should not the captain have his? why should not she have her chance of having a gallant lovable gentleman for a brother-in-law? edith was not at all prepared to give the world up for lost, because pat carroll had made himself a brute, and because the neighbours were idiots and had boycotted them. it must all depend upon their father, whether they should or should not go to the ball. and she had not thought it prudent to appear too full of hope when talking of it to ada; but for herself she quite agreed with the captain that policy required them to go. "i suppose you would like it?" she said to her sister. "i always was fond of dancing," replied ada. "especially with heroes." "of course you laugh at me, but captain clayton won't be there as an officer; he's only a resident magistrate." "he's the best of all the officers," said edith with enthusiasm. "i won't have our hero run down. i believe him to have twice as much in him as any of the officers. he's the gallantest fellow i know. i think we ought to go, if it's only because he wants it." "i don't want not to go," said ada. "i daresay not; but papa will be the difficulty." "he'll think more of you than of me, edith. suppose you go and talk to him." so it was decided; and edith went away to her father, leaving ada still among the beds. of frank not a word had been spoken. frank would go as a matter of course if mr. jones consented. but ada, though she was left among the beds, did not at once go on with her work; but sat down on that special bed by which her attention was needed, and thought of the circumstances which surrounded her. was it a fact that she was in love with the captain? to be in love to her was a very serious thing,--but so delightful. she had been already once,--well, not in love, but preoccupied just a little in thinking of one young man. the one young man was an officer, but was now in india, and ada had not ventured even to mention his name in her father's presence. edith had of course known the secret, but edith had frowned upon it. she had said that lieutenant talbot was no better than a stick, although he had £ a year of his own. "he'd give you nothing to talk about," said edith, "but his £ a year." therefore when lieutenant talbot went to india, ada jones did not break her heart. but now edith called captain clayton a hero, and seemed in all respects to approve of him; and edith seemed to think that he certainly admired ada. it was a dreadful thing to have to fall in love with a woodcock. ada felt that if, as things went on, the woodcock should become her woodcock, the bullet which reached his heart would certainly pierce her own bosom also. but such was the way of the world. edith had seemed to think that the man was entitled to have a lady of his own to love; and if so, ada seemed to think that the place would be one very well suited to herself. therefore she was anxious for the ball; and at the present moment thought only of the difficulties to be incurred by edith in discussing the matter with her father. "papa, captain clayton wants us to go to a ball at galway," it was thus that edith began her task. "wants you to go a ball! what has captain clayton to do with you two?" "nothing on earth;--at any rate not with me. here is his letter, which speaks for itself. he seems to think that we should show ourselves to everybody around, to let them know that we are not crushed by what such a one as pat carroll can do to us." "who says that we are crushed?" "it is the people who are crushed that generally say so of themselves. there would be nothing unusual under ordinary circumstances in your daughters going to a ball at galway." "that's as may be." "we can stay the night at mrs. d'arcy's, and she will be delighted to have us. if we never show ourselves it would be as though we acknowledged ourselves to be crushed. and to tell the truth, papa, i don't think it is quite fair to ada to keep her here always. she is very beautiful, and at the same time fond of society. she is doing her duty here bravely; there is nothing about the house that she will not put her hand to. she is better than any servant for the way she does her work. i think you ought to let her go; it is but for the one night." "and you?" asked the father. "i must go with her, i suppose, to keep her company." "and are not you fond of society?" "no;--not as she is. i like the rattle very well just for a few minutes." "and are not you beautiful?" he asked. "good gracious, no! don't be such a goose, papa." "to me you are quite as lovely as is ada." "because you are only a stupid, old papa," but she kissed him as she said it. "you have no right to expect to have two beauties in the family. if i were a beauty i should go away and leave you, as will ada. it's her destiny to be carried off by someone. why not by some of these gallant fellows at galway? it's my destiny to remain at home; and so you may know what you have got to expect." "if it should turn out to be so, there will be one immeasurable comfort to me in the midst of all my troubles." "it shall be so," said she, whispering into his ear. "but, papa, you will let us go to this ball in galway, will you not? ada has set her heart upon it." so the matter was settled. the answer to captain clayton, sent by edith, was as follows; but it was not sent till the boy had been allowed to stuff himself with buttered toast and tea, which, to such a boy, is the acme of all happiness. morony castle, th of may, . dear captain clayton, we will both come, of course, and are infinitely obliged to you for the trouble you have taken on our behalf. papa will not come, of course. frank will, no doubt; but he is out after a salmon in the hacketstown river. i hope he will get one, as we are badly off for provisions. if he cannot find a salmon, i hope he will find trout, or we shall have nothing for three days running. ada and i think we can manage a leg of mutton between us, as far as the cooking goes, but we haven't had a chance of trying our hands yet. frank, however, will write to the officers by post. we shall sleep the night at mrs. d'arcy's, and can get there very well by ourselves. all the same, we shall be delighted to see you, if you will come down to the boat. yours very truly, edith jones. i must tell you what ada said about our dresses, only pray don't tell any of the officers. of course we had to have a consultation about our frocks, because everything in the shops is boycotted for us. "oh," said ada, "there are the gauze dresses we wore at hacketstown _before the flood!_" only think of ada and i at a ball with the miss noahs, four or five thousand years ago. frank consented to go of course, but not without some little difficulty. he didn't think it was a time for balls. according to his view of things ginger should be no longer hot in the mouth. "but why not?" said edith. "if a ball at any time is a good thing, why should it be bad now? are we all to go into mourning, because mr. carroll has so decreed? for myself i don't care twopence for the ball. i don't think it is worth the ten shillings which it will cost. but i am all for showing that we don't care so much for mr. carroll." "carroll is in prison," said frank. "nor yet for terry lax, or tim brady, or terry carroll, or tony brady. the world is not to be turned away from its proper course by such a scum of men as that. of course you'll do as a brother should do, and come with us." to this frank assented, and on the next day went out for another salmon, thinking no more about the party at galway. but the party at galway was a matter of infinite trouble and infinite interest to the two girls. those dresses which had been put by from before the flood were brought forth, and ironed, and re-ribboned, and re-designed, as though the fate of heroes and heroines depended upon them. and it was clearly intended that the fate of one hero and of one heroine should depend on them, though nothing absolutely to that effect was said at present between the sisters. it was not said, but it was understood by both of them that it was so; and each understood what was in the heart of the other. "dear, dear edith," said ada. "let them boycott us as they will," said edith, "but my pet shall be as bright as any of them." there was a ribbon that had not been tossed, a false flower that had on it something of the bloom of newness. a faint offer was made by ada to abandon some of these prettinesses to her sister, but edith would have none of them. edith pooh-poohed the idea as though it were monstrous. "don't be a goose, ada," she said; "of course this is to be your night. what does it signify what i wear?" "oh, but it does;--just the same as for me. i don't see why you are not to be just as nice as myself." "that's not true, my dear." "why not true? there is quite as much depends on your good fortune as on mine. and then you are so much the cleverer of the two." then when the day for the ball drew near, there came to be some more serious conversation between them. "ada, love, you mean to enjoy yourself, don't you?" "if i can i will. when i go to these things i never know whether they will lead to enjoyment or the reverse. some little thing happens so often, and everything seems to go wrong." "they shouldn't go wrong with you, my pet." "why not with me as well as with others?" "because you are so beautiful to look at. you are made to be queen of a ball-room; not a london ball-room, where everything, i take it, is flash and faded, painted and stale, and worn out; but down here in the country, where there is some life among us, and where a girl may be supposed to be excited over her dancing. it is in such rooms as this that hearts are won and lost; a bid made for diamonds is all that is done in london." "i never was at a london ball," said ada. "nor i either; but one reads of them. i can fancy a man really caring for a girl down in galway. can you fancy a man caring for a girl?" "i don't know," said ada. "for yourself, now?" "i don't think anybody will ever care much for me." "oh, ada, what a fib. it is all very pretty, your mock modestly, but it is so untrue. a man not love you! why, i can fancy a man thinking that the gods could not allow him a greater grace than the privilege of taking you in his arms." "isn't anyone to take you in his arms, then?" "no, no one. i am not a thing to be looked at in that light. i mean eventually to take to women's rights, and to make myself generally odious. only i have promised to stick to papa, and i have got to do that first. you;--who will you stick to?" "i don't know," said ada. "if i were to suggest captain yorke clayton? if i were to suppose that he is the man who is to have the privilege?" "don't, edith." "he is my hero, and you are my pet, and i want to bring you two together. i want to have my share in the hero; and still to keep a share in my pet. is not that rational?" "i don't know that there is anything rational in it all," said ada. but still she went to bed well pleased that night. chapter xxv. the galway ball. when the th of may came, the three started off together for galway, happy in spite of their boycotting. the girls at least were happy, though frank was still somewhat sombre as he thought of the edict which rachel o'mahony had pronounced against him. when the boat arrived at the quay at galway, captain clayton, with one of the officers of the west bromwich, was there to meet it. "he is a wise man," whispered edith to ada, "he takes care to provide for number one." "i don't see that at all," said ada. "that brave little warrior, who is four feet and a half high, is intended for my escort. two is company and three is none. i quite agree as to that." then they left the boat, and edith so arranged the party that she was to walk between the small warrior and her brother, whereas ada followed with captain clayton. in such straits of circumstances a man always has to do what he is told. presence of mind and readiness is needful, but the readiness of a man is never equal to that of a woman. so they went off to mrs. d'arcy's house, and ada enjoyed all the little preliminary sweets of the captain's conversation. the words that were spoken all had reference to edith herself; but they came from the captain and were assuredly sweet. "and it's really true that you are boycotted?" mrs. d'arcy asked. "certainly it's true." "and what do they do to you? do all the servants leave you?" "unless there be any like peter who make up their minds to face the wrath of landleaguers. peter has lived with us a long time, and has to ask himself whether it will be best for him to stay or go." "and he stays? what a noble fellow," said mrs. d'arcy. "what would he do with himself if he didn't stay?" said edith. "i don't suppose they'd shoot him, and he gets plenty to eat. the girls who were in the house and the young men about the place had friends of their own living near them, so they thought it better to go. everybody of course does what is best for himself. and peter, though he has suited himself, is already making a favour of it. papa told him only yesterday that he might go himself if he pleased. only think, we had to send all the horses last week into galway to be shod;--and then they wouldn't do it, except one man who made a tremendous favour of it, and after doing it charged double." "but won't they sell you anything at tuam?" "not a ha'porth. we couldn't get so much as soap for house-washing, unless mrs. blake had stood by us and let us have her soap. ada and i have to do every bit of washing about the place. i do think well of peter because he insists on washing his own shirts and stockings. unfortunately we haven't got a mangle, and we have to iron the sheets if we want them to look at all nice. ada's sheets and mine, and florian's, are only just rough pressed. of course we get tea and those things down from dublin. only think of the way in which the tradespeople are ruining themselves. everything has to go to dublin to be sold: potatoes and cattle, and now butter. papa says that they won't pay for the carriage. when you come to think of it, this boycotting is the most ruinous invention on both sides. when poor florian declared that he would go to mass after he had first told the story about pat carroll, they swore they would boycott the chapel if he entered the door. not a single person would stay to receive the mass. so he wouldn't go. it was not long after that when he became afraid to show his face outside the hall-door." "and yet you can come here to this ball?" said mrs. d'arcy. "exactly so. i will go where i please till they boycott the very roads from under my feet. i expect to hear soon that they have boycotted ada and me, so that no young man shall come and marry us. of course, i don't understand such things, but it seems to me that the government should interfere to defend us." when the evening came, and the witching hour was there, ada and edith appeared at the barracks as bright as their second-hand finery could make them. they had awarded to them something of especial glory as being boycotted heroines, and were regarded with a certain amount of envy by the miss blakes, miss bodkins, miss lamberts, miss ffrenchs, and miss parsons of the neighbourhood. they had, none of them, as yet achieved the full honours of boycotting, though some of them were half-way to it. the miss ffrenchs told them how their father's sheep had been boycotted, the shepherd having been made to leave his place. the miss blakes had been boycotted because their brother had been refused a car. and the bodkins of ballytowngal were held to have been boycotted _en masse_ because of the doings at moytubber gorse. but none of them had been boycotted as had been the miss jones'; and therefore the miss jones' were the heroines of the evening. "i declare it is very nice," ada said to her sister that night, when they got home to mrs. d'arcy's, "because it got for us the pick of all the partners." "it got for you one partner, at any rate," said edith, "either the boycotting or something else." edith had determined that it should be so; or had determined at any rate that it should seem to be so. in her resolution that the hero of the day should fall in love with her sister, she had almost taught herself to think that the process had already taken place. it was so natural that the bravest man should fall in love with the fairest lady, that edith took it for granted that it already was so. she too in some sort was in love with her own sister. ada to her was so fair, so soft, so innocent, so feminine and so lovable, that her very heart was in the project,--and the project that ada should have the hero of the hour to herself. and yet she too had a heart of her own, and had told herself in so many words, that she herself would have loved the man,--had it been fitting that she should burden him with such a love. she had rejected the idea as unfitting, impossible, and almost unfeminine. there was nothing in her to attract the man. the idea had sprung up but for a moment, and had been cast out as being monstrous. there was ada, the very queen of beauty. and the gallant hero was languishing in her smiles. it was thus that her imagination carried her on, after the notion had once been entertained. at the ball edith did in fact dance with captain clayton quite as often as did ada herself, but she danced with him, she said, as the darling sister of his supposed bride. all her talk had been about ada,--because edith had so chosen the subject. but with ada the conversation had all been about edith, because the captain had selected the subject. we all know how a little party is made up on such occasions. though the party dance also with other people on occasions, they are there especially to dance with each other. an interloper or two now and again is very useful, so as to keep up appearances. the little warrior whom edith had ill-naturedly declared to be four feet and a half high, but who was in truth five feet and a half, made up the former. frank did not do much dancing, devoting himself to thinking of rachel o'mahony. the little man, who was a distinguished officer named captain butler, of the west bromwich, had a very good time of it, dancing with ada when captain clayton was not doing so. "the greatest brick i ever saw in my life!"--it was thus captain butler afterwards spoke of edith, "but ada is the girl for me, you know." had edith heard this, which she could not do, because she was then on the boat going back to morony castle, she would have informed captain butler that ada was not the girl for him; but captain clayton, who heard the announcement made, did not seem to be much disturbed by it. "it was a very nice party, mrs. d'arcy," said edith the next morning. "was there a supper?" "there was plenty to eat and drink, if you mean that, but we did not waste our time sitting down. i hate having to sit down opposite to a great ham when i am in the full tide of my emotions." "there were emotions then?" "of course there were. what's the good of a ball without them? fancy captain butler and no emotions, or captain clayton! ask ada if there were not. but as far as we were concerned, it was i who had the best of it. captain butler was my special man for the evening, and he had on a beautiful red jacket with gold buttons. you never saw anything so lovely. but captain clayton had just a simple black coat. that is so ugly, you know." "is captain clayton ada's special young man?" "most particularly special, is he not, ada?" "what nonsense you do talk, edith. he is not my special young man at all. i'm afraid he won't be any young woman's special young man very long, if he goes on as he does at present. do you hear what he did over at ardfry? there was some cattle to be seized for rent, and all the people on that side of the country were there. ever so many shots were fired, and poor hunter got wounded in his shoulder." "he just had his skin raised," said edith. "and captain clayton got terribly mauled in the crowd. but he wouldn't fire a pistol at any of them. he brought some ringleader away prisoner,--he and two policemen. but they got all the cattle, and the tenants had to buy them back and pay their rent. when we try to seize cattle at ballintubber they are always driven away to county mayo. i do think that captain clayton is a real hero." "of course he is, my dear; that's given up to him long ago,--and to you." in the afternoon they went home by boat, and frank made himself disagreeable by croaking. "upon my word," he said, "i think that this is hardly a fit time for giving balls." "ginger should not be hot in the mouth," said edith. "you may put it in what language you like, but that is about what i mean. the people who go to the balls cannot in truth afford it." "that's the officers' look out." "and they are here on a very sad occasion. everything is going to ruin in the country." "i won't be put down by pat carroll," said edith. "he shall not be able to boast to himself that he has changed the natural course of my life." "he has changed it altogether." "you know what i mean. i am not going to yield to him or to any of them. i mean to hold my own against it as far as i can do so. i'll go to church, and to balls, and i'll visit my friends, and i'll eat my dinner every day of my life just as though pat carroll didn't exist. he's in prison just at present, and therefore so far we have got the best of him." "but we can't sell a head of cattle without sending it up to dublin. and we can't find a man to take charge of it on the journey. we can't get a shilling of rent, and we hardly dare to walk about the place in the broad light of day lest we should be shot at. while things are in this condition it is no time for dancing at balls. i am so broken-hearted at the present moment that but for my father and for you i would cut the place and go to america." "taking rachel with you?" said edith. "rachel just now is as prosperous as we are the reverse. rachel would not go. it is all very well for rachel, as things are prosperous with her. but here we have the reverse of prosperity, and according to my feelings there should be no gaiety. do you ever realise to yourself what it is to think that your father is ruined?" "we ought not to have gone," said ada. "never say die," said edith, slapping her little hand down on the gunwale of the boat. "morony castle and ballintubber belong to papa, and i will never admit that he is ruined because a few dishonest tenants refuse to pay their rents for a time. a man such as pat carroll can do him an injury, but papa is big enough to rise above that in the long run. at any rate i will live as becomes papa's daughter, as long as he approves and i have the power." discussing these matters they reached the quay near morony castle, and edith as she jumped ashore felt something of triumph in her bosom. she had at any rate succeeded in her object. "i am sure we were right to go," she whispered to ada. their father received them with but very few words; nor had florian much to say as to the glories of the ball. his mind was devoted at present to the coming trial. and indeed, in a more open and energetic manner, so was the mind of captain clayton. "this will be the last holiday for me," he had said to edith at the ball, "before the great day comes off for patrick carroll, esq. it's all very well for a man once in a way, but there should not be too much of it." "you have not to complain deeply of yourself on that head." "i have had my share of fun in the world," he said; "but it grows less as i grow older. it is always so with a man as he gets into his work. i think my hair will grow grey very soon, if i do not succeed in having mr. carroll locked up for his life." "do you think they will convict him?" "i think they will? i do think they will. we have got one of the men who is ready to swear that he assisted him in pulling down the gates." "which of the men?" she asked. "i will tell you because i trust you as my very soul. his own brother, terry, is the man. pat, it seems, is a terrible tyrant among his own friends, and terry is willing to turn against him, on condition that a passage to america be provided for him. of course he is to have a free pardon for himself. we do want one man to corroborate your brother's evidence. your brother no doubt was not quite straight at first." "he lied," said edith. "when you and i talk about it together, we should tell the simple truth. we have pardoned him his lie;--but he lied." "we have now the one man necessary to confirm his testimony." "but he is the brother." "no doubt. but in such a case as this anything is fair to get at the truth. and we shall employ no falsehoods. this younger carroll was instigated by his brother to assist him in the deed. and he was seen by your brother to be one of those who assisted. it seems to me to be quite right." "it is very terrible," edith said. "yes; it is terrible. a brother will have to swear against a brother, and will be bribed to do it. i know what will be said to me very well. they have tried to shoot me down like a rat; but i mean to get the better of them. and when i shall have succeeded in removing mr. pat carroll from his present sphere of life, i shall have a second object of ambition before me. mr. lax is another gentleman whom i wish to remove. three times he has shot at me, but he has not hit me yet." from that time forth there had certainly been no more dances for captain clayton. his mind had been altogether devoted to his work, and amidst that work the trial of pat carroll had stood prominent. "he and i are equally eager, or at any rate equally anxious;" he had said to edith, speaking of her brother, when he had met her subsequent to the ball. "but the time is coming soon, and we shall know all about it in another six weeks." this was said in june, and the trial was to take place in august. chapter xxvi. lord castlewell. the spring and early summer had worn themselves away in london, and rachel o'mahony was still singing at the embankment theatre. she and her father were still living in cecil street. the glorious day of october, which had been fixed at last for the th, on which rachel was to appear on the covent garden boards, was yet still distant, and she was performing under mr. moss's behests at a weekly stipend of £ , to which there would be some addition when the last weeks of the season had come about, the end of july and beginning of august. but, alas! rachel hardly knew what she would do to support herself during the dead months from august to october. "fashionable people always go out of town, father," she said. "then let us be fashionable." "fashionable people go to scotland, but they won't take one in there without money. we shan't have £ left when our debts are paid. and £ would do nothing for us." "they've stopped me altogether," said mr. o'mahony. "at any rate they have stopped the money-making part of the business. they have threatened to take the man's license away, and therefore that place is shut up." "isn't that unjust, father?" "unjust! everything done in england as to ireland is unjust. they carried an act of parliament the other day, when in accordance with the ancient privileges of members it was within the power of a dozen stalwart irishmen to stop it. the dozen stalwart irishmen were there, but they were silenced by a brutal majority. the dozen irishmen were turned out of the house, one after the other, in direct opposition to the ancient privileges; and so a bill was passed robbing five million irishmen of their liberties. so gross an injustice was never before perpetrated--not even when the bribed members sold their country and effected the accursed union." "i know that was very bad, father, but the bribes were taken by irishmen. be that as it may, what are we to do with ourselves next autumn?" "the only thing for us is to seek for assistance in the united states." "they won't lend us £ ." "we must overrun this country by the force of true liberal opinion. the people themselves will rise when they have the americans to lead them. what is wanted now are the voices of true patriots loud enough to reach the people." "and £ ," said she, speaking into his ear, "to keep us alive from the middle of august to the end of october." "for myself, i have been invited to come into parliament. the county of cavan will be vacant." "is there a salary attached?" "one or two leading irish members are speaking of it," said mr. o'mahony, carried away by the grandeur of the idea, "but the amount has not been fixed yet. and they seem to think that it is wanted chiefly for the parliamentary session. i have not promised because i do not quite see my way. and to tell the truth, i am not sure that it is in parliament that an honest irishman will shine the best. what's the good when you can be silenced at a moment's notice by the word of some mock speaker, who upsets all the rules of his office to put a gag upon a dozen men. when america has come to understand what it is that the lawless tyrant did on that night when the irishmen were turned out of the house, will she not rise in her wrath, and declare that such things shall no longer be?" all this occurred in cecil street, and rachel, who well understood her father's wrath, allowed him to expend in words the anger which would last hardly longer than the sound of them. "but you won't be in parliament for county cavan before next august?" she asked. "i suppose not." "nor will the united states have risen in their wrath so as to have settled the entire question before that time?" "perhaps not," said mr. o'mahony. "and if they did i don't see what good it would do to us as to finding for us the money that we want." "i am so full of ireland's wrongs at this moment, and with the manner in which these policemen interfered with me, that i can hardly bring myself to think of your autumn plans." "what are yours?" she asked. "i suppose we should always have money enough to go to america. in america a man can at any rate open his mouth." "or a woman either. but according to what m. le gros says, in england they pay better at the present moment. mr. moss has offered to lend me the money; but for myself i would sooner go into an english workhouse than accept money from mr. moss which i had not earned." in truth, rachel had been very foolish with her money, spending it as though there were no end to the source from which it had come, and her father had not been more prudent. he was utterly reckless in regard to such considerations, and would simply declare that he was altogether indifferent to his dinner, or to the new hat he had proposed to buy for himself when the subject was brought under his notice. he had latterly become more eager than ever as to politics, and was supremely happy as long as he was at liberty to speak before any audience those angry words which had however been, unfortunately for him, declared to be treasonable. he had, till lately, been taught to understand that the house of commons was the only arena on which such permission would be freely granted,--and could be granted of course only to members of the house. therefore the idea had entered his head that it would suit him to become a member,--more especially as there had arisen a grand scheme of a salary for certain irish members of which he would be one. but even here the brutality of england had at last interfered, and men were not to be allowed to say what they pleased any longer even in the house of commons. therefore mr. o'mahony was much disturbed; and although he was anxious to quarrel with no one individually, not even the policemen who arrested him, he was full of indignant wrath against the tyranny of england generally. rachel, when she could get no good advice from her father with regard to her future funds, went back again to her singing. it was necessary, at any rate, that she should carry out her present arrangement with mr. moss, and she was sure at least of receiving from him the money which she earned. but, alas! she could not practise the economy which she knew to be necessary. the people at the theatre had talked her into hiring a one-horse open carriage in which she delighted to drive about, and in which, to tell the truth, her father delighted to accompany her. she had thought that she could allow herself this indulgence out of her £ a week. and though she paid for the indulgence monthly, that and their joint living nearly consumed the stipend. and now, as her father's advice did not get beyond the very doubtful salary which might accrue to him as the future member for the county cavan, her mind naturally turned itself to other sources. from m. le gros, or from m. le gros' employers, she was to receive £ for singing in the two months before christmas, with an assurance of a greatly increased though hitherto unfixed stipend afterwards. personally she as yet knew no one connected with her future theatrical home but m. le gros. of m. le gros all her thoughts had been favourable. should she ask m. le gros to lend her some small sum of money in advance for the uses of the autumn? mr. moss had made to her a fixed proposition on the subject which she had altogether declined. she had declined it with scorn as she was wont to do all favours proffered by mr. moss. mr. moss had still been gracious, and had smiled, and had ventured to express "a renewed hope," as he called it, that miss o'mahony would even yet condescend to look with regard on the sincere affection of her most humble servant. and then he had again expatiated on the immense success in theatrical life which would attend a partnership entered into between the skill and beauty and power of voice of miss o'mahony on the one side, and the energy, devotion, and capital of mr. moss on the other. "psha!" had been rachel's only reply; and so that interview had been brought to an end. but rachel, when she came to think of m. le gros, and the money she was desirous of borrowing, was afflicted by certain qualms. that she should have borrowed from mr. moss, considering the length of their acquaintance might not have been unnatural; but of m. le gros she knew nothing but his civility. nor had she any reason for supposing that m. le gros had money of his own at his disposal; nor did she know where m. le gros lived. she could go to covent garden and ask for him there; but that was all. so she dressed herself prettily--neatly, as she called it--and had herself driven to the theatre. there, as chance would have it, she found m. le gros standing under the portico with a gentleman whom she represented to herself as an elderly old buck. m. le gros saw her and came down into the street at once with his hat in his hand. "m. le gros," said she, "i want you to do me a great favour, but i have hardly the impudence to ask it. can you lend me some money this autumn--say £ ?" thereupon m. le gros' face fell, and his cheeks were elongated, and his eyes were very sorrowful. "ah, then, i see you can't," she said. "i will not put you to the pain of saying so. i ought not to have suggested it. my dealings with you have seemed to be so pleasant, and they have not been quite of the same nature down at 'the embankment.'" "my dear young lady--" "not another word; and i beg your pardon most heartily for having given you this moment's annoyance." "there is one of the lessees there," said m. le gros, pointing back to the gentleman on the top of the steps, "who has been to hear you and to look at you this two times--this three times at 'the embankment.' he do think you will become the grand singer of the age." "who is the judicious gentleman?" asked rachel, whispering to m. le gros out of the carriage. "he is lord castlewell. he is the eldest son of the marquis of beaulieu. he have--oh!--lots of money. he was saying--ah! i must not tell you what his lordship was saying of you because it will make you vain." "nothing that any lord can say of me will make me vain," said rachel, chucking up her head. then his lordship, thinking that he had been kept long enough standing on the top of the theatre steps, lifted his hat and came down to the carriage, the occupant of which he had recognised. "may i have the extreme honour of introducing mademoiselle o'mahony to lord castlewell?" and m. le gros again pulled off his hat as he made the introduction. miss o'mahony found that she had become mademoiselle as soon as she had drawn up her carriage at the front door of the genuine italian opera. "this is a pleasure indeed," said lord castlewell. "i am delighted--more than delighted, to find that my friend le gros has engaged the services of mademoiselle o'mahony for our theatre." "but our engagement does not commence quite yet, i am sorry to say," replied rachel. then she prepared herself to be driven away, not caring much for the combination of lord and lessee who stood in the street speaking to her. a lessee should be a lessee, she thought, and a lord a lord. "may i do myself the honour of waiting upon you some day at 'the embankment,'" said the lord, again pulling off his hat. "oh! certainly," said rachel; "i should be delighted to see you." then she was driven away, and did not know whether to be angry or not in having given lord castlewell so warm a welcome. as a mere stray lord there was no possible reason why he should call upon her; nor for her why she should receive him. though frank jones had been dismissed, and though she felt herself to be free to accept any eligible lover who might present himself, she still felt herself bound on his behalf to keep herself free from all elderly theatrical hangers-on, especially from such men when she heard that they were also lords. but as she was driven away, she took another glance at the lord, and thought that he did not look so old as when she had seen him at a greater distance. but she had failed altogether in her purpose of borrowing money from m. le gros. and for his sake she regretted much that the attempt had been made. she had already learned one or two details with reference to m. le gros. though his manners and appearance were so pleasant, he was only a subaltern about the theatre; and he was a subaltern whom this lord and lessee called simply le gros. and from the melancholy nature of his face when the application for money was made to him, she had learned that he was both good-natured and impecunious. of herself, in regard to the money, she thought very little at the present moment. there were still six weeks to run, and rachel's nature was such that she could not distress herself six weeks in advance of any misfortune. she was determined that she would not tell her father of her failure. as for him, he would not probably say a word further of their want of money till the time should come. he confined his prudence to keeping a sum in his pocket sufficient to take them back to new york. as the days went on which were to bring her engagement at "the embankment" to an end, rachel heard a further rumour about herself. rumours did spring up at "the embankment" to which she paid very little attention. she had heard the same sort of things said as to other ladies at the theatre, and took them all as a matter of course. had she been asked, she would have attributed them all to madame socani; because madame socani was the one person whom, next to mr. moss, she hated the most. the rumour in this case simply stated that she had already been married to mr. jones, and had separated from her husband. "why do they care about such a matter as that?" she said to the female from whom she heard the rumour. "it can't matter to me as a singer whether i have five husbands." "but it is so interesting," said the female, "when a lady has a husband and doesn't own him; or when she owns him and hasn't really got him; it adds a piquancy to life, especially to theatrical life, which does want these little assistances." then one evening lord castlewell did call upon her at "the embankment." her father was not with her, and she was constrained by the circumstances of the moment to see his lordship alone. "i do feel, you know, miss o'mahony," he said, thus coming back for the moment into everyday life, "that i am entitled to take an interest in you." "your lordship is very kind." "i suppose you never heard of me before?" "not a word, my lord. i'm an american girl, and i know very little about english lords." "i hope that you may come to know more. my special _métier_ in life brings me among the theatres. i am very fond of music,--and perhaps a little fond of beauty also." "i am glad you have the sense, my lord, to put music the first." "i don't know about that. in regard to you i cannot say which predominates." "you are at liberty at any rate to talk about the one, as you are bidding for it at your own theatre. as to the other, you will excuse me for saying that it is a matter between me and my friends." "among whom i trust before long i may be allowed to be counted." the little dialogue had been carried on with smiles and good humour, and rachel now did not choose to interfere with them. after all she was only a public singer, and as such was hardly entitled to the full consideration of a gentlewoman. it was thus that she argued with herself. nevertheless she had uttered her little reprimand and had intended him to take it as such. "you are coming to us, you know, after the holidays." "and will bring my voice with me, such as it is." "but not your smiles, you mean to say." "they are sure to come with me, for i am always laughing,--unless i am roused to terrible wrath. i am sure that will not be the case at covent garden." "i hope not. you will find that you have come among a set who are quite prepared to accept you as a friend." here she made a little curtsy. "and now i have to offer my sincere apologies for the little proposition i am about to make." it immediately occurred to her that m. le gros had betrayed her. he was a very civil spoken, affable, kind old man; but he had betrayed her. "m. le gros happened to mention that you were anxious to draw in advance for some portion of the salary coming to you for the next two months." m. le gros had at any rate betrayed her in the most courteous terms. "well, yes; m. le gros explained that the proposition was not _selon les règles_, and it does not matter the least in the world." "m. le gros has explained that? i did not know that m. le gros had explained anything." "well, then, he looked it," said rachel. "his looks must be wonderfully expressive. he did not look it to me at all. he simply told me, as one of the managers of the theatre, i was to let you have whatever money you wanted. and he did whisper to me,--may i tell you what he whispered?" "i suppose you may. he seems to me to be a very good-natured kind of man." "poor old le gros! a very good-natured man, i should say. he doesn't carry the house, that's all." "you do that." then she remembered that the man was a lord. "i ought to have said 'my lord,'" she said; "but i forgot. i hope you'll excuse me--my lord." "we are not very particular about that in theatrical matters; or, rather, i am particular with some and not with others. you'll learn all about it in process of time. m. le gros whispered that he thought there was not the pleasantest understanding in the world between you and the people here." "well, no; there is not,--my lord." "bother the lord,--just now." "with all my heart," said rachel, who could not avoid the little bit of fun which was here implied. "not but what the--the people here--would find me any amount of money i chose to ask for. there are people, you see, one does not wish to borrow money from. i take my salary here, but nothing more. the fact is, i have not only taken it, but spent it, and to tell the truth, i have not a shilling to amuse myself with during the dull season. mr. moss knows all about it, and has simply asked how much i wanted. 'nothing,' i replied, 'nothing at all; nothing at all.' and that's how i am situated." "no debts?" "not a dollar. beyond that i shouldn't have a dollar left to get out of london with." then she remembered herself,--that it was expedient that she should tell this man something about herself. "i have got a father, you know, and he has to be paid for as well as me. he is the sweetest, kindest, most generous father that a girl ever had, and he could make lots of money for himself, only the police won't let him." "what do the police do to him?" said lord castlewell. "he is not a burglar, you know, or anything of that kind." "he is an irish politician, isn't he?" "he is very much of a politician; but he is not an irishman." "irish name," suggested the lord. "irish name, yes; so are half the names in my country. my father comes from the united states. and he is strongly impressed with the necessity of putting down the horrid injustice with which the poor irish are treated by the monstrous tyranny of you english aristocrats. you are very nice to look at." "thank you, miss o'mahony." "but you are very bad to go. you are not the kind of horses i care to drive at all. thieves, traitors, murderers, liars." "goodness gracious me!" exclaimed the lord. "i don't say anything for myself, because i am only a singing girl, and understand nothing about politics. but these are the very lightest words which he has at his tongue's end when he talks about you. he is the most good-tempered fellow in the world, and you would like him very much. here is mr. moss." mr. moss had opened the door and had entered the room. the greeting between the two men was closely observed by rachel, who, though she was very imprudent in much that she did and much that she said, never allowed anything to pass by her unobserved. mr. moss, though he affected an intimacy with the lord, was beyond measure servile. lord castlewell accepted the intimacy without repudiating it, but accepted also the servility. "well, moss, how are you getting on in this little house?" "ah, my lord, you are going to rob us of our one attraction," and having bowed to the lord he turned round and bowed to the lady. "you have no right to keep such a treasure in a little place like this." "we can afford to pay for it, you know, my lord. m. le gros came here a little behind my back, and carried her off." "much to her advantage, i should say." "we can pay," said mr. moss. "to such a singer as mademoiselle o'mahony paying is not everything. an audience large enough, and sufficiently intelligent to appreciate her, is something more than mere money." "we have the most intelligent audience in all london," mr. moss said in defence of his own theatre. "no doubt," said the lord. he had, during this little intercourse of compliments, managed to write a word or two on a slip of paper, which he now handed to rachel--"will £ do?" this he put into her hand, and then left her, saying that he would do himself the honour of calling upon her again at her own lodgings, "where i shall hope," he said, "to make the acquaintance of the most good-tempered fellow in the world." then he took his leave. chapter xxvii. how funds were provided. mr. moss at this interview again pressed his loan of money upon poor rachel. "you cannot get on, my dear young lady, in this world without money. if you have spent your income hitherto, what do you mean to do till the end of november? at covent garden the salaries are all paid monthly." there was something so ineffably low and greasy in his tone of addressing her, that it was impossible to be surprised at the disgust which she expressed for him. "mr. moss, i am not your dear young lady," she said. "would that you were! we should be as happy as the day is long. there would be no money troubles then." she could not fail to make comparisons between him and the english nobleman who had just left her, which left the englishman infinitely superior; although, with the few thoughts she had given to him, she had already begun to doubt whether lord castlewell's morality stood very high. "what will you do for money for the next three months? you cannot do without money," said mr. moss. "i have already found a friend," said rachel most imprudently. "what! his lordship there?" "i am not bound to answer any such questions." "but i know; i can see the game is all up if it has come to that. i am a fellow-workman, and there have been, and perhaps will be, many relations between us. a hundred pounds advanced here or there must be brought into the accounts sooner or later. that is honest; that will bear daylight; no young lady need be ashamed of that; even if you were mrs. jones you need not be ashamed of such a transaction." "i am not mrs. jones," said rachel in great anger. "but if you were, mr. jones would have no ground of complaint, unless indeed on the score of extravagance. but a present from this lord!" "it is no present. it does not come from the lord; it comes from the funds of the theatre." "ha, ha, ha!" laughed mr. moss. "is that the little game with which he attempts to cajole you? how has he got his hand into the treasury of the theatre, so that he may be able to help you so conveniently? you have not got the money yet, i suppose?" "i have not got his money--which may be dangerous, or yours--which would certainly be more so. though from neither of you could the bare money hurt me, if it were taken with an innocent heart. from you it would be a distress, an annoyance, a blister. from him it would be simply a loan either from himself or from the theatre with which he is connected. i may be mistaken, but i have imagined that it would come from the theatre; i will ascertain, and if it be not so, i will decline the loan." "do you not know his character? nor his mode of living, nor his dealing with actresses? you will not at any rate get credit for such innocence when you tell the story. why;--he has come here to call upon you, and of course it is all over the theatre already that you are his mistress. i came in here to endeavour to save you; but i fear it is too late." "impudent scoundrel," said rachel, jumping up and glaring at him. "that is all very well, but i have endeavoured to save you. i would believe none of them when they told me that you would not be my wife because you were married to mr. jones. nor would i believe them when they have told me since that you were not fit to be the wife of anyone." rachel's hand went in among the folds of her dress, and returned with a dagger in it. words had been said to her now which she swore to herself were unbearable. "yes; you are in a passion now;" and as he said so, he contrived to get the round table with which the room was garnished between himself and her. "it is true," she said, "your words have been so base that i am no doubt angry." "but if you knew it, i am endeavouring to save you. imprudent as you have been i still wish to make you my wife." here rachel in her indignation spat upon the floor. "yes; i am anxious to make you an honest woman." "you can make no woman honest. it is altogether beyond your power." "it will be so when you have taken this lord's money." "i have not at any rate taken yours. it is that which would disgrace me. between this lord and me there has been no word that could do so." "will he make you his wife?" "wife! no. he is married for aught that i know. he has spoken to me no word except about my profession. nor shall you. cannot a woman sing without being wife to any man?" "ha, ha, yes indeed!" she understood the scorn intended to be thrown on her line of life by his words, and was wretched to think that he was getting the better of her in conversation. "i can sing and i need no husband." "it is common with the friends of the lord that they do not generally rank very high in their profession. i have endeavoured to save you from this kind of thing, and see the return that i get! you will, however, soon have left us, and you will then find that to fill first place at 'the embankment' is better than a second or a third at covent garden." during these hot words on both sides she had been standing at a pier-glass, arranging something in her dress intended to suit moss's fancy upon the stage,--moss who was about to enact her princely lover--and then she walked off without another word. she went through her part with all her usual vigour and charm, and so did he. elmira also was more pathetic than ever, as the night was supposed to be something special, because a royal duke and his young bride were in the stage box. the plaudits given would have been tremendous only that the building was so small, and the grand quartette became such a masterpiece that there was half a column concerning it in the musical corner of the next morning's _daily telephone_. "if that girl would only go as i'd have her," said mr. moss to the most confidential of his theatrical friends, "i'd make her mrs. moss to-morrow, and her fame should be blazoned all over the world before twelve months had gone as madame moussa." but rachel, though she was enabled so to overcome her rage as to remember only her theatrical passion when she was on the stage, spent the whole of the subsequent night in thinking over the difficulty into which she had brought herself by her imprudence. she understood to the full the meaning of all those innuendoes which mr. moss had provided for her; and she knew that though there was in them not a spark of truth as regarded herself, still they were so truth-like as to meet with acceptance, at any rate from all theatrical personages. she had gone to m. le gros for the money clearly as one of the theatrical company with which she was about to connect herself. m. le gros had, to her intelligence, distinctly though very courteously declined her request. it might be well that the company would accede to no such request; but m. le gros, in his questionable civility, had told the whole story to lord castlewell, who had immediately offered her a loan of £ out of his own pocket. it had not occurred to her in the moment in which she had first read the words in the presence of mahomet m. m. that such must necessarily be the case. was it probable that lord castlewell should on his own behalf recover from the treasury of the theatre the sum of £ ? and then the nature of this lord's character opened itself to her eyes in all the forms which mr. moss had intended that it should wear. a man did not lend a young lady £ without meaning to secure for himself some reward. and as she thought of it all she remembered the kind of language in which she had spoken of her father. she had described him as an american in words which might so probably give this noble old _roué_ a false impression as to his character. and yet she liked the noble old _roué_--liked him so infinitely better than she did mr. moss. m. le gros had betrayed her, or had, perhaps, said words leading to her betrayal; but still she greatly preferred m. le gros to mr. moss. she was safe as yet with this lord. not a sparkle of his gold had she received. no doubt the story about the money would be spread about from her own telling of it. people would believe it because she herself had said so. but it was still within her power to take care that it should not be true. she did what was usual on such occasions. she abused the ill-feeling of the world which by the malignity of its suspicions would not scruple to drag her into the depths of misfortune, forgetting probably that her estimation of others was the same as others of her. she did not bethink herself that had another young lady at another theatre accepted a loan from an unmarried lord of such a character, she would have thought ill of that young lady. the world ought to be perfectly innocent in regard to her because she believed herself to be innocent; and mr. moss in expressing the opinions of others, and exposing to her the position in which she had placed herself, had simply proved himself to be the blackest of human beings. but it was necessary that she should at once do something to whitewash her own character in her own esteem. this lord had declared that he himself would call, and she was at first minded to wait till he did so, and then to hand back to him the cheque which she believed that he would bring, and to assure him that under altered circumstances it would not be wanted. but she felt that it would best become her to write to him openly, and to explain the circumstances which had led to his offering the loan. "there is nothing like being straightforward," she said to herself, "and if he does not choose to believe me, that is his fault." so she took up her pen, and wrote quickly, to the following effect: my dear lord castlewell, i want to tell you that i do not wish to have the £ which you were good enough to say that you would lend me. indeed i cannot take it under any circumstances. i must explain to you all about it, if your lordship pleases. i had intended to ask m. le gros to get the theatre people to advance me some small sum on my future engagement, and i had not thought how impossible it was that they should do so, as of course i might die before i had sung a single note. i never dreamed of coming to you, whose lordship's name i had not even heard in my ignorance. then m. le gros spoke to you, and you came and made your proposition in the most good-natured way in the world. i was such a fool as not to see that the money must of course come from yourself. mr. moss has enlightened me, and has made me understand that no respectable young woman would accept a loan of money from you without blemish to her character. mr. moss, whom i do not in the least like, has been right in this. i should be very sorry if you should be taught to think evil of me before i go to your theatre; or indeed, if i do not go at all. i am not up to all these things, and i suppose i ought to have consulted my father the moment i got your little note. pray do not take any further notice of it. i am, very faithfully, your lordship's humble servant, rachel o'mahony. then there was added a postscript: "your note has just come and i return the cheque." as chance would have it the cheque had come just as rachel had finished her letter, and with the cheque there had been a short scrawl as follows: "i send the money as settled, and will call to-morrow." whatever may have been lord castlewell's general sins among actresses and actors, his feelings hitherto in regard to miss o'mahony had not done him discredit. he had already heard her name frequently when he had seen her in her little carriage before the steps of covent garden theatre, and had heard her sing at "the embankment." her voice and tone and feeling had enchanted him as he had wont to be enchanted by new singers of high quality, and he had been greatly struck by the brightness of her beauty. when m. le gros had told him of her little wants, he had perceived at once her innocence, and had determined to relieve her wants. then, when she had told him of her father, and had explained to him the kind of terms on which they lived together, he was sure that she was pure as snow. but she was very lovely, and he could not undertake to answer for what feelings might spring up in her bosom. now he had received this letter, and every word of it spoke to him in her favour. he took, therefore, a little trouble, and calling upon her the next morning at her lodgings, found her seated with mr. o'mahony. "father," she said, when the lord was ushered into the room, "this is lord castlewell. lord castlewell, this is my father." then she sat down, leaving the two to begin the conversation as they might best please. she had told her father nothing about the money, simply explaining that on the steps of the theatre she had met the lord, who was one of its proprietors. "lord castlewell," said mr. o'mahony, "i am very proud," then he bowed. "i know very little about stage affairs, but i am confident that my daughter will do her duty to the best of her ability." "not more so than i am," said lord castlewell, upon which mr. o'mahony bowed again. "you have heard about this little _contretemps_ about the money." "not a word," said mr. o'mahony, shaking his head. "nor of the terrible character which has been given you by your daughter?" "that i can well understand," said mr. o'mahony. "she says that you wish to abolish all the english aristocracy." "most of them," said mr. o'mahony. "peradventure ten shall be found honest, and i will not destroy them for ten's sake; but i doubt whether there be one." "i should be grieved to think that you were the judge." "and so should i," said mr. o'mahony. "it is so easy to utter curses when no power accompanies the utterances. the lord must have found it uncomfortable in regard to sodom. i can spit out all my fury against english vices and british greed without suffering one pang at my heart. what is this that you were saying about rachel and her money?" "she is in a little trouble about cash at the present moment." "not a doubt about it." "and i have offered to lend her a trifle--£ or so, just till she can work it off up at the theatre there." "then there is one of the ten at any rate," said mr. o'mahony. "meaning me?" asked the lord. "just so. lending us £ , when neither of us have a shilling in our pocket, is a very good deed. don't you think so, rachel?" "no," said rachel. "lord castlewell is not a fit person to lend me £ out of his pocket, and i will not have it." "i did not know," said mr. o'mahony. "you never know anything, you are such a dear, innocent old father." "there's an end of it then," said he, addressing himself to the lord. he did not look in the least annoyed because his daughter had refused to take the loan, nor had he shown the slightest feeling of any impropriety when there was a question as to her accepting it. "of course i cannot force it upon you," said lord castlewell. "no; a lord cannot do that, even in this country, where lords go for so much. but we are not a whit the less obliged to your lordship. there are proprieties and improprieties which i don't understand. rachel knows all about them. such a knowledge comes to a girl naturally, and she chooses either the one or the other, according to her nature. rachel is a dragon of propriety." "father, you are a goose," said rachel. "i am telling his lordship the truth. there is some reason why you should not take the money, and you won't take it. i think it very hard that i should not have been allowed to earn it." "why were you not allowed?" asked the lord. "lest the people should be persuaded to rise up against you lords,--which they very soon would do,--and will do. you are right in your generation. the people were paying twenty-five cents a night to come and hear me, and so i was informed that i must not speak to them any more. i had been silenced in galway before; but then i had spoken about your queen." "we can't endure that, you know." "so i learn. she's a holy of holies. but i promised to say nothing further about her, and i haven't. i was talking about your speaker of the house of commons." "that's nearly as bad," said lord castlewell, shaking his head. "a second-rate holy of holies. when i said that he ought to obey certain rules which had been laid down for his guidance, i was told to walk out. 'what may i talk about?' i asked. then the policeman told me 'the weather.' even an englishman is not stupid enough to pay twenty-five cents for that. i am only telling you this to explain why we are so impecunious." "the policeman won't prevent my lending you £ ." "won't he now? there's no knowing what a policeman can't do in this country. they are very good-natured, all the same." then lord castlewell turned to rachel, and asked her whether her suspicions would go so far as to interfere between him and her father. "it is because i am a pretty girl that you are going to do it," she said, frowning, "or because you pretend to think so." here the father broke out into a laugh, and the lord followed him. "you had better keep your money to yourself, my lord. you never can have used it with less chance of getting any return." this interview, however, was ended by the acceptance of a cheque from lord castlewell for £ , payable to the order of gerald o'mahony. chapter xxviii. what was not done with the funds. "she has taken his money all the same." this was said some weeks after the transaction as described in the last chapter, and was spoken by madame socani to mr. moss. "how do you know?" "i know very well. you are so infatuated by that young woman that you will believe nothing against her." "i am infatuated with her voice; i know what she is going to do in the world. old barytone told me that he had never heard such a voice from a woman's mouth since the days of malibran; and if there is a man who knows one voice from another, it is barytone. he can taste the richness of the instrument down to its lowest tinkling sound." "and you would marry such a one as she for her voice." "and she can act. ah! if you could have acted as she does, it might have been different." "she has got a husband just the same as me." "i don't believe it; but never mind, i would risk all that. and i will do it yet. if you will only keep your toe in your pump, we will have such a company as nothing that le gros can do will be able to cut us down." "and she is taking money from that lord." "they all take money from lords," he replied. "what does it matter? and she is as stout a piece of goods as ever you came across. she has given me more impudence in the last eight months than ever i took from any of them. and by jupiter i never so much as got a kiss from her." "a kiss!" said madame socani with great contempt. "and she has hit me a box on the cheek which i have had to put up with. she has always got a dagger about her somewhere, to give a fellow a prod in her passion." here mr. moss laughed or affected to laugh at the idea of the dagger. "i tell you that she would have it into a fellow in no time." "then why don't you leave her alone? a little wizened monkey like that!" it was thus that madame socani expressed her opinion of her rival. "a creature without an ounce of flesh on her bones. her voice won't last long. it never does with those little mean made apes. there was grisi and tietjens,--they had something of a body for a voice to come out of. and here is this girl that you think so much of, taking money hand over hand from the very first lord she comes across." "i don't believe a word of it," said the faithful moss. "you'll find that it is true. she will go away to some watering-place in the autumn, and he'll be after her. did you ever know him spare one of them? or one of them, poor little creatures, that wouldn't rise to his bait?" "she has got her father with her." "her father! what is the good of fathers? he'll take some of the money, that's all. i'll tell you what it is, moss, if you don't drop her you and i will be two." "with all my heart, madame socani," said moss. "i have not the slightest intention of dropping her. and as for you and me, we can get on very well apart." but madame socani, though she would be roused by jealousy to make this threat once a month, knew very well that she could not afford to sever herself from mr. moss; and she knew also that mr. moss was bound to show her some observance, or, at any rate, to find employment for her as long as she could sing. but mr. moss was anxious to find out whether any money arrangements did or did not exist between miss o'mahony and the lord, and was resolved to ask the question in a straightforward manner. he had already found out that his old pupil had no power of keeping a secret to herself when thus asked. she would sternly refuse to give any reply; but she would make her refusal in such a manner as to tell the whole truth. in fact, rachel, among her accomplishments, had not the power of telling a lie in such language as to make herself believed. it was not that she would scruple in the least to declare to mr. moss the very opposite to the truth in a matter in which he had, she thought, no business to be inquisitive; but when she did so she had no power to look the lie. you might say of her frequently that she was a downright liar. but of all human beings whom you could meet she was the least sly. "my dear child," the father used to say to her, "words to you are worth nothing, unless it be to sing them. you can make no impression with them in any other way." therefore it was that mr. moss felt that he could learn the truth from simply questioning his pupil. "miss o'mahony, may i say a few words to you?" so said mr. moss, having knocked at the door of rachel's sitting-room. he had some months ago fallen into the habit of announcing himself, when he had come to give her lessons, and would inform the servant that he would take up his own name. rachel had done what she could do to put an end to the practice, but it still prevailed. "certainly, mr. moss. was not the girl there to show you up?" "no doubt she was. but such ceremony between us is hardly necessary." "i should prefer to be warned of the coming of my master. i will see to that in future. such little ceremonies do have their uses." "shall i go down and make her say that i am here, and then come up again?" "it shall not be necessary, but you take a chair and begin!" then mr. moss considered how he had better do so. he knew well that the girl would not answer kindly to such a question as he was desirous of asking. and it might be that she would be very uncivil. he was by no means a coward, but he had a vivid recollection of the gleam of her dagger. he smiled, and she looked at him more suspiciously because of his smile. he was sitting on a sofa opposite to her as she sat on a music-stool which she had turned round, so as to face him, and he fancied that he could see her right hand hide itself among the folds of her dress. "is it about the theatre?" "well, it is;--and yet it isn't." "i wish it were something about the theatre. it always seems to come more natural between you and me." "i want you to tell me what you did at last about lord castlewell's money." "why am i to tell you what i did?" "for friendship." "i do not feel any." "that's an uncivil word to say, mademoiselle." "but it's true. you have no business to ask me about the lord's money, and i won't be questioned." "it will be so deleterious to you if you accept it." "i can take care of myself," she said, jumping off the chair. "i shall have left this place now in another month, and shall utterly disregard the words which anyone at your theatre may say of me. i shall not tell you whether the lord has lent me money or not." "i know he has." "very well. then leave the room. knowing as you do that i am living here with my own father, your interference is grossly impertinent." "your father is not going with you, i am afraid." she rushed at the bell and pulled it till the bell rope came down from the wire, but nobody answered the bell. "can it be possible that you should not be anxious to begin your new career under respectable auspices?" "i will not stand this. leave the room, sir. this apartment is my own." "miss o'mahony, you see my hand; with this i am ready to offer at once to place you in a position in which the world would look up to you." "you have done so before, mr. moss, and your doing so again is an insult. it would not be done to any young lady unless she were on the stage, and were thought on that account to be open to any man about the theatre to say what he pleased to her." "any gentleman is at liberty to make any lady an offer." "i have answered it. now leave the room." "i cannot do so until i have heard that you have not taken money from this reprobate." at the moment the door opened, and the reprobate entered the room. "your servant told me that mr. moss was here, and therefore i walked up at once," said the reprobate. "i am so much obliged to you," said rachel. "oh lord castlewell! i am so much obliged to you. he tells me in the first place that you are a reprobate." "never mind me," said the lord. "i don't mind what he says of you. he declares that my character will be gone for ever because you have lent my father some money." "so it will," said moss, who was not afraid to stand up to his guns. "and how if she had accepted your offer?" "no one would have thought of it. come, my lord, you know the difference. i am anxious only to save her." "it is to her father i have lent the money, who explained to me the somewhat cruel treatment he had received at the hands of the police. i think you are making an ass of yourself, mr. moss." "very well, my lord; very well," said mr. moss. "all the world no doubt will know that you have lent the money to the irish landleaguer because of your political sympathy with him, and will not think for a minute that you have been attracted by our pretty young friend here. it will not suspect that it is she who has paid for the loan!" "mr. moss, you are a brute," said the lord. "can't he be turned out of the room?" asked rachel. "well, yes; it is possible," said the lord, who slowly prepared to walk up and take some steps towards expelling mr. moss. "it shall not be necessary," said mahomet m. m. "you could not get me out, but there would be a terrible row in the house, which could not fail to be disagreeable to miss o'mahony. i leave her in your hands, and i do not think i could possibly leave her in worse. i have wished to make her an honest woman; what you want of her you can explain to herself." in saying this mr. moss walked downstairs and left the house, feeling, as he went, that he had got the better both of the lord and of the lady. with mr. moss there was a double motive, neither of which was very bright, but both of which he followed with considerable energy. he had at first been attracted by her good looks, which he had desired to make his own--at the cheapest price at which they might be had in the market. if marriage were necessary, so be it, but it might be that the young lady would not be so exigeant. it was probably the expression of some such feelings in the early days of their acquaintance which had made him so odious to her. then frank jones had come forward; and like any good honest girl, in a position so public, she had at once let the fact of mr. jones be made known, so as to protect her. but it had not protected her, and mr. moss had been doubly odious. then, by degrees, he had become aware of the value of her voice, and he perceived the charms that there were in what he pictured to himself as a professional partnership as well as a marriage. various ideas floated through his mind, down even to the creation of fresh names, grand married names, for his wife. and if she could be got to see it in the light he saw it, what a stroke of business they might do! he was aware that she expressed personal dislike to him; but he did not think much of that. he did not in the least understand the nature of such dislike as she exhibited. he thought himself to be a very good-looking man. he was one of a profession to which she also belonged. he had no idea that he was not a gentleman but that she was a lady. he did not know that there were such things. madame socani told him that this young woman was already married to mr. jones, but had left that gentleman because he had no money. he did not believe this; but in any case he would be willing to risk it. the peril would be hers and not his. it was his object to establish the partnership, and he did not even yet see any fatal impediment to it. this lord who had been trapped by her beauty, by that and by her theatrical standing, was an impediment, but could be removed. he had known lord castlewell to be in love with a dozen singers, partly because he thought himself to be a judge of music, and partly simply because he had liked their looks. the lord had now taken a fancy to miss o'mahony, and had begun by lending her money. that the father should take the money instead of the daughter, was quite natural to his thinking. but he might still succeed in looking after miss o'mahony, and rescuing the singer from the lord. by keeping a close watch on her he must make it impossible for the lord to hold her. therefore, when he went away, leaving the lord and the singer together, he thought that for the present he had got the better of both. "why did he tell you that i was a reprobate?" said the lord, when he found himself alone with the lady. "well, perhaps it was because you are one, my lord," said rachel, laughing. she would constantly remember herself, and tell herself that as long as she called him by his title, she was protecting herself from that familiarity which would be dangerous. "i hope you don't think so." "gentlemen generally are reprobates, i believe. it is not disgraceful for a gentleman to be a reprobate, but it is pleasant. the young women i daresay find it pleasant, but then it is disgraceful. i do not mean to disgrace myself, lord castlewell." "i am sure you will not." "i want you to be sure of it, quite sure. i am a singing girl; but i don't mean to be any man's mistress." he stared at her as she said this. "and i don't mean to be any man's wife, unless i downright love him. now you may keep out of my way, if you please. i daresay you are a reprobate, my lord; but with that i have got nothing to do. touching this money, i suppose father has not got it yet?" "i have sent it." "you are to get nothing for it, but simply to have it returned, without interest, as soon as i have earned it. you have only to say the word and i will take care that father shall send it you back again." lord castlewell felt that the girl was very unlike others whom he had known, and who had either rejected his offers with scorn or had accepted them with delight. this young lady did neither. she apparently accepted the proffered friendship, and simply desired him to carry his reprobate qualities elsewhere. there was a frankness about her which pleased him much, though it hardly tended to make him in love with her. one thing he did resolve on the spur of the moment, that he would never say a word to her which her father might not hear. it was quite a new sensation to him, this of simple friendship with a singer, with a singer whom he had met in the doubtful custody of mr. moss; but he did believe her to be a good girl,--a good girl who could speak out her mind freely; and as such he both respected and liked her. "of course i shan't take back the money till it becomes due. you'll have to work hard for it before i get it." "i shall be quite contented to do that, my lord." then the interview was over and his lordship left the room. but lord castlewell felt as he went home that this girl was worth more than other girls. she laughed at him for being a lord, but she could accept a favour from him, and then tell him to his face that he should do her no harm because she had accepted it. he had met some terrible rebuffs in his career, the memory of which had been unpleasant to him; and he had been greeted with many smiles, all of which had been insipid. what should he do with this girl, so as to make the best of her? the only thing that occurred to him was to marry her! and yet such a marriage would be altogether out of his line of life. chapter xxix. what was done with the funds. the £ was not spent in a manner of which lord castlewell would have altogether approved. about the end of august mr. o'mahony was summoned back to ireland, and was induced, at a meeting held at the rotunda, to give certain pledges which justified the advanced irish party in putting him forward as a new member for the county of cavan. the advanced irish party had no doubt been attracted by the eloquence he had exhibited both in galway and in london, and by the patriotic sentiments which he had displayed. he was known to be a republican, and to look for the formation of a republic to american aid. he had expressed most sincere scorn for everything english, and professed ideas as to irish property generally in regard to which he was altogether ignorant of their meaning. as he was a sincerely honest man, he did think that something good for his old country would be achieved by home rule; though how the home-rulers would set to work when home rule should be the law of the land, he had not the remotest conception. there were many reasons, therefore, why he should be a fit member for an irish county. but it must be admitted that he would not have been so unanimously selected had all the peculiarities of his mind been known. it might be probable that he would run riot under the lash of his leader, as others have done both before and since, when he should come to see all the wiles of that strategy which he would be called upon to support. and in such case the quarrel with him would be more internecine than with other foes, such as english members, scotch members, conservative irish members, and liberal irish members, not sworn to follow certain leaders. a recreant one out of twenty friends would be regarded with more bitter hatred than perhaps six hundred and thirty ordinary enemies. it might be, therefore, that a time of tribulation was in store for mr. o'mahony, but he did not consider these matters very deeply when the cheers rang loud in the hall of the rotunda; nor did he then reflect that he was about to spend in an injudicious manner the money which must be earned by rachel's future work. when rachel had completed her engagement with mr. moss, it had been intended that they should go down to ambleside and there spend lord castlewell's money in the humble innocent enjoyment of nature. there had at that moment been nothing decided as to the county of cavan. a pork-butcher possessed of some small means and unlimited impudence had put himself forward. but the twenty had managed to put him through his facings, and had found him to be very ignorant in his use of the queen's english. now of late there had come up a notion that the small party required to make up for the thinness of their members by the strength of their eloquence. practice makes perfect, and it is not to be wondered at therefore if a large proportion of the twenty had become fluent. but more were wanted, and of our friend o'mahony's fluency there could be no doubt. therefore he was sent for, and on the very day of his arrival he proved to the patriotic spirits of dublin that he was the man for cavan. three days afterwards he went down, and cavan obediently accepted its man. with her father went rachel, and was carried through the towns of virginia, bailyborough, and ballyjamesduff, in great triumph on a one-horse car. this occurred about the end of august, and lord castlewell's £ was very soon spent. she had not thought much about it, but had been quite willing to be the daughter of a member of parliament, if a constituency could be found willing to select her father. she did not think much of the duties of parliament, if they came within the reach of her father's ability. she did not in truth think that he could under any circumstances do half a day's work. she had known what it was to practise, and, having determined to succeed, she had worked as only a singer can work who determines that she will succeed. hour after hour she had gone on before the looking-glass, and even mr. moss had expressed his approval. but during the years that she had been so at work, she had never seen her father do anything. she knew that he talked what she called patriotic buncombe. it might be that he would become a very fitting member of parliament, but rachel had her doubt. she could see, however, that the £ quickly vanished during their triumphant journeyings on the one-horse car. everybody in county cavan seemed to know that there was £ and no more to be spent by the new member. there he was, however, member of parliament for the county of cavan, and his breast was filled with new aspirations. enmity, the bitterest enmity to everything english, was the one lesson taught him. but he himself had other feelings. what if he could talk over that speaker, and that prime minister, that government generally, and all the house of commons, and all the house of lords! why should not england go her way and ireland hers,--england have her monarchy and ireland her republic, but still with some kind of union between them, as to the nature of which mr. o'mahony had no fixed idea in his brain whatsoever. but he knew that he could talk, and he knew also that he must now talk on an arena for admission to which the public would not pay twenty-five cents or more. his breast was much disturbed by the consideration that for all the work which he proposed to do no wages were to be forthcoming. but while mr. o'mahony was being elected member of parliament for county cavan, things were going on very sadly in county galway. wednesday, the st of august, had been the day fixed for the trial of pat carroll; and the month of august was quickly wearing itself away. but during the month of august captain clayton found occasion more than once to come into the neighbourhood of headford. and though mr. jones was of an opinion that his presence there was adequately accounted for by the details of the coming trial, the two girls evidently thought that some other cause might be added to that which pat carroll had produced. it must be explained that at this period frank jones was absent from morony castle, looking out for emergency men who could be brought down to the neighbourhood of headford, in sufficient number to save the crop on mr. jones's farm. and with him was tom daly, who had some scheme in his own head with reference to his horses and his hounds. mr. persse and sir jasper lynch had been threatened with a wide system of boycotting, unless they would give up tom daly's animals. a decree had gone forth in the county, that nothing belonging to the hunt should be allowed to live within its precincts. all the bitterness and the cruelty and the horror arising from this order are beyond the limit of this story. but it may be well to explain that at the present moment frank jones was away from castle morony, working hard on his father's behalf. and so were the girls working hard--making the butter, and cooking the meat, and attending to the bedrooms. and peter was busy with them as their lieutenant. it might be thought that the present was no time for love-making, and that captain clayton could not have been in the mood. but it may be observed that at any period of special toil in a family, when infinitely more has to be done than at any other time, then love-making will go on with more than ordinary energy. edith was generally to be found with her hair tucked tight off her face and enveloped in a coarse dairymaid's apron, and ada, when she ran downstairs, would do so with a housemaid's dusting-brush at her girdle, and they were neither of them, when so attired, in the least afraid of encountering captain clayton as he would come out from their father's room. all the world knew that they were being boycotted, and very happy the girls were during the process. "poor papa" did not like it so well. poor papa thought of his banker's account, or rather of that bank at which there was, so to say, no longer any account. but the girls were light of heart, and in the pride of their youth. but, alas! they had both of them blundered frightfully. it was edith, edith the prudent, edith the wise, edith, who was supposed to know everything, who had first gone astray in her blundering, and had taken ada with her; but the story with its details must be told. "my pet," she said to her elder sister, as they were standing together at the kitchen dresser, "i know he means to speak to you to-day." "what nonsense, edith!" "it has to be done some day, you know. and he is just the man to come upon one in the time of one's dire distress. of course we haven't got a halfpenny now belonging to us. i was thinking only the other day how comfortable it is that we never go out of the house because we haven't the means to buy boots. now captain clayton is just the man to be doubly attracted by such penury." "i don't know why a man is to make an offer to a girl just because he finds her working like a housemaid." "i do. i can see it all. he is just the man to take you in his arms because he found you peeling potatoes." "i beg he will do nothing of the kind," said ada. "he has never said a word to me, or i to him, to justify such a proceeding. i should at once hit him over the head with my brush." "here he comes, and now we will see how far i understand such matters." "don't go, edith," said ada. "pray don't go. if you go i shall go with you. these things ought always to come naturally,--that is if they come at all." it did not "come" at that moment, for edith was so far mistaken that captain clayton, after saying a few words to the girls, passed on out of the back-door, intent on special business. "what a wretched individual he is," said edith. "fancy pinning one's character on the doings of such a man as that. however, he will be back again to dinner, and you will not be so hard upon him then with your dusting-brush." before dinner the captain did return, and found himself alone with edith in the kitchen. it was her turn on this occasion to send up whatever meal in the shape of dinner castle morony could afford. "there you have it, sir," she said, pointing to a boiled neck of mutton, which had been cut from the remains of a sheep sent in to supply the family wants. "i see," said he. "it will make a very good dinner,--or a very bad one, according to circumstances, as they may fall out before the dinner leaves the kitchen." "then they will have to fall out very quickly," said edith. but the colour had flown to her face, and in that moment she had learned to suspect the truth. and her mind flew back rapidly over all her doings and sayings for the last three months. if it was so, she could never forgive herself. if it was so, ada would never forgive her. if it was so, they two and captain yorke clayton must be separated for ever. "well; what is it?" she said, roughly. the joint of meat had fallen from her hands, and she looked up at captain clayton with all the anger she could bring into her face. "edith," he said, "you surely know that i love you." "i know nothing of the kind. there can be no reason why i should know it,--why i should guess it. it cannot be so without grievous wrong on your part." "what wrong?" "base wrong done to my sister," she answered. then she remembered that she had betrayed her sister, and she remembered too how much of the supposed love-making had been done by her own words, and not by any spoken by captain clayton. and there came upon her at that moment a remembrance also of that other moment in which she had acknowledged to herself that she had loved this man, and had told herself that the love was vain, and had sworn to herself that she would never stand in ada's way, and had promised to herself that all things should be happy to her as this man's sister-in-law. acting then on this idea merely because ada had been beautiful she had gone to work,--and this had come of it! in that minute that was allowed to her as the boiled mutton was cooling on the dresser beneath her hand, all this passed through her mind. "wrong done by me to ada!" said the captain. "i have said it; but if you are a gentleman you will forget it. i know that you are a gentleman,--a gallant man, such as few i think exist anywhere. captain clayton, there are but two of us. take the best; take the fairest; take the sweetest. let all this be as though it had never been spoken. i will be such a sister to you as no man ever won for himself. and ada will be as loving a wife as ever graced a man's home. let it be so, and i will bless every day of your life." "no," he said slowly, "i cannot let it be like that. i have learned to love you and you only, and i thought that you had known it." "never!" "i had thought so. it cannot be as you propose. i shall never speak of your sister to a living man. i shall never whisper a word of her regard even here in her own family. but i cannot change my heart as you propose. your sister is beautiful, and sweet, and good; but she is not the girl who has crept into my heart, and made a lasting home for herself there,--if the girl who has done so would but accept it. ada is not the girl whose brightness, whose bravery, whose wit and ready spirit have won me. these things go, i think, without any effort. i have known that there has been no attempt on your part; but the thing has been done and i had hoped that you were aware of it. it cannot now be undone. i cannot be passed on to another. here, here, here is what i want," and he put his two hands upon her shoulders. "there is no other girl in all ireland that can supply her place if she be lost to me." he had spoken very solemnly, and she had stood there in solemn mood listening to him. by degrees the conviction had come upon her that he was in earnest, and was not to be changed in his purpose by anything that she could say to him. she had blundered, had blundered awfully. she had thought that with a man beauty would be everything; but with this man beauty had been nothing; nor had good temper and a sense of duty availed anything. she rushed into the dining-room carrying the boiled mutton with her, and he followed. what should she do now? ada would yield--would give him up--would retire into the background, and would declare that edith should be made happy, but would never lift up her head again. and she--she herself--could also give him up, and would lift up her head again. she knew that she had a power of bearing sorrow, and going on with the work of the world, in spite of all troubles, which ada did not possess. it might, therefore, have all been settled, but that the man was stubborn, and would not be changed. "of course, he is a man," said edith to herself, as she put the mutton down. "of course he must have it all to please himself. of course he will be selfish." "i thought you were never coming with our morsel of dinner," said mr. jones. "here is the morsel of dinner; but i could have dished it in half the time if captain clayton had not been there." "of course i am the offender," said he, as he sat down. "and now i have forgotten to bring the potatoes." so he started off, and met florian at the door coming in with them. mr. jones carved the mutton, and captain clayton was helped first. in a boycotted house you will always find that the gentlemen are helped before the ladies. it is a part of the principle of boycotting that women shall subject themselves. captain clayton, after his first little stir about the potatoes, ate his dinner in perfect silence. that which had taken place upset him more completely than the rifles of two or three landleaguers. mr. jones was also silent. he was a man at the present moment nearly overwhelmed by his cares. and ada, too, was silent. as edith looked at her furtively she began to fear that her pet suspected something. there was a look of suffering in her face which edith could read, though it was not plain enough written there to be legible to others. her father and florian had no key by which to read it, and captain clayton never allowed his eyes to turn towards ada's face. but it was imperative on both that they should not all fall into some feeling of special sorrow through their silence. "it is just one week more," she said, "before you men must be at galway." "only one week," said florian. "it will be much better to have it over," said the father. "i do not think you need come back at all, but start at once from galway. your sisters can bring what things you want, and say good-bye at athenry." "my poor florian," said edith. "i shan't mind it so much when i get to england," said the boy. "i suppose i shall come home for the christmas holidays." "i don't know about that," said the father. "it will depend upon the state of the country." "you will come and meet him, ada?" asked edith. "i suppose so," said ada. and her sister knew from the tone of her voice that some evil was already suspected. there was nothing more said that night till edith and ada were together. mr. jones lingered with his daughters, and the captain took florian out about the orchard, thinking it well to make him used to whatever danger might come to him from being out of the house. "they will never come where they will be sure to be known," said the captain; "and known by various witnesses. and they won't come for the chance of a pop shot. i am getting to know their ways as well as though i had lived there all my life. they count on the acquittal of pat carroll as a certainty. whatever i may be, you are tolerably safe as long as that is the case." "they may shoot me in mistake for you," said the boy. "well, yes; that is so. let us go back to the house. but i don't think there would be any danger to-night anyway." then they returned, and found mr. jones alone in the dining-room. he was very melancholy in these days, as a man must be whom ruin stares in the face. edith had followed ada upstairs to the bedrooms, and had crept after her into that which had been prepared for captain clayton. she could see now by the lingering light of an august evening that a tear had fallen from each eye, and had slowly run down her sister's cheeks. "oh, ada, dear ada, what is troubling you?" "nothing,--much." "my girl, my beauty, my darling! much or little, what is it? cannot you tell me?" "he cares nothing for me," said ada, laying her hand upon the pillow, thus indicating the "he" whom she intended. edith answered not a word, but pressed her arm tight round her sister's waist. "it is so," said ada, turning round upon her sister as though to rebuke her. "you know that it is so." "my beauty, my own one," said edith, kissing her. "you know it is so. he has told you. it is not me that he loves; it is you. you are his chosen one. i am nothing to him,--nothing, nothing." then she flung herself down upon the bed which her own hands had prepared for him. it was all true. as the assertions had come from her one by one, edith had found herself unable to deny a tittle of what was said. "ada, if you knew my heart to you." "what good is it? why did you teach me to believe a falsehood?" "oh! you will kill me if you accuse me. i have been so true to you." then ada turned round upon the bed, and hid her face for a few minutes upon the pillow. "ada, have i not been true to you?" "but that you should have been so much mistaken;--you, who know everything." "i have not known him," said edith. "but you will," said ada. "you will be his wife." "never!" ejaculated the other. then slowly, ada got up from the bed and shook her hair from off her face and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. "it must be so," she said. "of course it must, as he wishes it. he must have all that he desires." "no, not so. he shall never have this." "yes, edith, he must and he shall. do you not know that you loved him before you ever bade me to do so? but why, oh why did you ever make that great mistake? and why was i so foolish as to have believed you? come," she said, "i must make his bed for him once again. he will be here soon now and we must be away." then she did obliterate the traces of her form which her figure had made upon the bed, and smoothed the pillow, and wiped away the mark of her tear which had fallen on it. "come, edith, come," said she, "let us go and understand each other. he knows, for you have told him, but no one else need know. he shall be your husband, and i will be his sister, and all shall be bright between you." "never," said edith. "never! he will never be married if he waits for me." "my dear one, you shall be his wife," said ada. such were the last words which passed between them on that night. chapter xxx. the road to ballyglunin. the days ran on for the trial of pat carroll, but edith did not again see captain clayton. there came tidings to morony castle of the new honours which mr. o'mahony had achieved. "i don't know that the country will be much the wiser for his services," said captain clayton. "he will go altogether with those wretched landleaguers." "he will be the best of the lot," said mr. jones. "it is saying very little for him," said captain clayton. "he is an honest man, and i take him to be the only honest man among them." "he won't remain a landleaguer long if he is honest. but what about his daughter?" "frank has seen her down in cavan, and declares that she is about to make any amount of money at the london theatres." "i take it they will find it quite a new thing to have a member of parliament among their number with an income," said clayton. "but i'll bet any man a new hat that there is a split between him and them before the next parliament is half over." this took place during one of the visits which captain clayton had made to morony castle in reference to the coming trial. florian had been already sent on to mr. blake's of carnlough, and was to be picked up there on that very afternoon by mr. jones, and driven to ballyglunin, so as to be taken from thence to the assize town by train. this was thought to be most expedient, as the boy would not be on the road for above half an hour. after captain clayton had gone, mr. jones asked after edith, and was told that she was away in headford. she had walked into town to call on mrs. armstrong, with a view of getting a few articles which mrs. armstrong had promised to buy for her. such was the story as given to mr. jones, and fully believed by him; but the reader may be permitted to think that the young lady was not anxious to meet the young gentleman. "ada," said mr. jones suddenly, "is there anything between edith and captain clayton?" "what makes you ask, papa?" "because peter has hinted it. i do not care to have such things told me of my own family by the servant." "yes, there is, papa," said ada boldly. "captain clayton is in love with edith." "this is no time for marrying or giving in marriage." ada made no reply, but thought that it must at the same time be a very good time for becoming engaged. it would have been so for her had such been her luck. but of herself she said nothing. she had made her statement openly and bravely to her sister, so that there should be no departing from it. mr. jones said nothing further at the moment, but before the girls had separated for the night ada had told edith what had occurred. at that time they were in the house alone together,--alone as regarded the family, though they still had the protection of peter. mr. jones had started on his journey to galway. "papa," said ada, "knows all about yorke." "knows what?" demanded edith. "that you and he are engaged together." "he knows more than i do, then. he knows more than i ever shall know. ada, you should not have said so. it will have to be all unsaid." "not at all, dear." "it will all have to be unsaid. have you been speaking to captain clayton on the subject?" "not a word. indeed it was not i who told papa. it was peter. peter said that there was something between you and him, and papa asked me. i told papa that he was in love with you. that was true at any rate. you won't deny that?" "i will deny anything that connects my name with that of captain yorke clayton." but ada had determined how that matter should arrange itself. since the blow had first fallen on her, she had had time to think of it,--and she had thought of it. edith had done her best for her (presuming that this brave captain was the best) and she in return would do her best for edith. no one knew the whole story but they two. they were to be to her the dearest friends of her future life, and she would not let the knowledge of such a story stand in her way or theirs. the train was to start from the ballyglunin station for athenry at . p.m. it would then have left tuam for athenry, where it would fall into the day mail-train from dublin to galway. it was something out of the way for mr. jones to call at carnlough; but carnlough was not three miles from ballyglunin, and mr. jones made his arrangements accordingly. he called at carnlough, and there took up the boy on his outside car. peter had come with him, so as to take back the car to morony castle. but peter had made himself of late somewhat disagreeable, and mr. jones had in truth been sulky. "look here, peter," he had said, speaking from one side of the car to the other, "if you are afraid to come to ballyglunin with me and master flory, say so, and get down." "i'm not afeared, mr. jones." "then don't say so. i don't believe you are afeared as you call it." "then why do you be talking at me like that, sir?" "i don't think you are a coward, but you are anxious to make the most of your services on my behalf. you are telling everyone that something special is due to you for staying in a boycotted house. it's a kind of service for which i am grateful, but i can't be grateful and pay too." "why do you talk to a poor boy in that way?" "so that the poor boy may understand me. you are willing, i believe, to stick to your old master,--from sheer good heart. but you like to talk about it. now i don't like to hear about it." after that peter drove on in silence till they came to carnlough. the car had been seen coming up the avenue, and mr. blake, with his wife and florian, were standing on the door-steps. "now do take care of the poor dear boy," said mrs. blake. "there are such dreadful stories told of horrible men about the country." "don't mention such nonsense, winifred," said her husband, "trying to frighten the boy. there isn't a human being between this and ballyglunin for whom i won't be responsible. till you come to a mile of the station it's all my own property." "but they can shoot--" then mrs. blake left the rest of her sentence unspoken, having been checked by her husband's eye. the boy, however, had heard it and trembled. "come along, florian," said the father. "get up along with peter." the attempt which he had made to live with his son on affectionate paternal relations had hardly been successful. the boy had been told so much of murderers that he had been made to fear. peter,--and other peters about the country,--had filled his mind with sad foreboding. and there had always been something timid, something almost unmanly in his nature. he had seemed to prefer to shrink and cower and be mysterious with the carrolls to coming forward boldly with such a man as yorke clayton. the girls had seen this, and had declared that he was no more than a boy; but his father had seen it and had made no such allowance. and now he saw that he trembled. but florian got up on the car, and peter drove them off to ballyglunin. carnlough was not above three irish miles from ballyglunin; and mr. jones started on the little journey without a misgiving. he sat alone on the near side of the car, and florian sat on the other, together with peter who was driving. the horse was a heavy, slow-going animal, rough and hairy in its coat, but trustworthy and an old servant. there had been a time when mr. jones kept a carriage, but that had been before the bad times had begun. the carriage horses had been sold after the flood,--as ada had called the memorable incident; and now there were but three cart horses at morony castle, of which this one animal alone was habitually driven in the car. the floods, indeed, had now retreated from the lands of ballintubber and the flood gates were mended; but there would be no crop of hay on all those eighty acres this year, and mr. jones was in no condition to replace his private stud. as he went along on this present journey he was thinking bitterly of the injury which had been done him. he had lost over two hundred tons of hay, and each ton of hay would have been worth three pounds ten shillings. he had been unable to get a sluice gate mended till men had been brought together from monaghan and parts of cavan to mend them for him, and he had even to send these men into limerick to buy the material, as not a piece of timber could be procured in galway for the use of a household so well boycotted as was morony castle. there had been also various calls on mr. jones from those relatives whose money had been left as mortgages on his property. and no rent had as yet come in, although various tenants had been necessarily evicted. every man's hand was against him; so that there was no money in his coffers. he who had chiefly sinned against him,--who was the first to sin,--was the sinner whom he was about to prosecute at galway. it must be supposed, therefore, that he was not in a good humour as he was driven along the road to ballyglunin. they had not yet passed the boundary fence between carnlough and the property of one of the numerous race of bodkins, when mr. jones saw a mask, which he supposed to be a mask worn by a man, through a hole in the wall just in front of him, but high above his head. and at the same moment he could see the muzzles of a double-barrelled rifle presented through the hole in the wall. what he saw he saw but for a few seconds; but he could see it plainly. he saw it so plainly as to be able afterwards to swear to a black mask, and to a double-barrelled gun. then a trigger was pulled, and one bullet--the second--went through the collar of his own coat, while the first had had a more fatal and truer aim. the father jumped up and turning round saw that his boy had fallen to the ground. "oh, my god!" said peter, and he stopped the horse suddenly. the place was one where the commencement had been made of a cutting in the road during the potato failure of ; so that the wall and the rifle which had been passed through it were about four or five feet above the car. mr. jones rushed up the elevation, and clambered, he did not know how, into the field. there he saw the back of a man speeding along from the wall, and in the man's hand there was a gun. mr. jones looked around but there was no one nigh him but peter, the old servant, and his dying boy. he could see, however, that the man who ran was short of stature. but though his rage had sufficed to carry him up from the road into the field, the idea that his son had been shot caused him to pause as he ran, and to return to the road. when he got there he found two girls about seventeen and eighteen years of age, one sitting on the road with florian's head on her lap, and the other kneeling and holding the boy's hands. "oh, yer honour! sorrow a taste in life do we know about it," said the kneeling girl. "not a sight did we see, or a sound did we hear," said the other, "only the going off of the blunderbuss. oh, wirra shure! oh, musha, musha! and it's dead he is, the darling boy." mr. jones came round and picked up poor florian and laid him on the car. the bullet had gone true to its mark and had buried itself in his brain. there was the end of poor florian jones and all his troubles. the father did not say a word, not even in reply to peter's wailings or to the girls' easy sorrow; but, taking the rein in his own hands, drove the car with the body on it back to carnlough. we can hardly analyse the father's mind as he went. not a tear came to his relief. nor during this half hour can he hardly have been said to sorrow. an intensity of wrath filled his breast. he had spent his time for many a long year in doing all in his power for those around him, and now they had brought him to this. they had robbed him of his boy's heart. they had taught his boy to be one of them, and to be untrue to his own people. and now, because he had yielded to better teachings, they had murdered him. they had taught his boy to be a coward; for even in his bereavement he remembered poor florian's failing. the accursed papist people were all cowards down to their backbones. so he said of them in his rage. there was not one of them who could look any peril in the face as did yorke clayton or his son frank. but they were terribly powerful in their wretched want of manliness. they could murder, and were protected in their bloodthirstiness one by another. he did not doubt but that those two girls who were wailing on the road knew well enough who was the murderer, but no one would tell in this accursed, unhallowed, godless country. the honour and honesty of one man did not, in these days, prompt another to abstain from vice. the only heroism left in the country was the heroism of mystery, of secret bloodshed and of hidden attacks. he had driven back methodically to carnlough gates, but he hesitated to carry his burden up to the hall-door. would it not be better for him at once to go home, and there to endure the suffering that was in store for him? but he remembered that it would behove him to take what steps might be possible for tracing the murderer. that by no steps could anything be done, he was sure; but still the attempt was necessary. he had, however, paused a minute or two at the open gate when he was rebuked by peter. "shure yer honour is going up to the house to get the constables to scour the counthry." "scour the country!" said the father. "all the country will turn out to defend the murderer of my boy." but he drove up to the front, and peter knocked at the door. "good heaven, jones!" said mr. blake, as he looked at the car and its occupant. the poor boy's head was supported on the pillow behind the driver's seat, on which no one sat. peter held him by both his feet, and mr. jones had his hand within his grasp. "so it is," said the father. "you know where they have cut the road just where your property meres with bodkin's. there was a man above there who had loop-holed the wall. i saw his face wearing a mask as plain as i can see yours. and he had a double-barrelled gun. he fired the two shots, and my boy was killed by the first." "they have struck you too on the collar of your coat." "i got into the field with the murderer, and i could have caught the man had i been younger. but what would have been the use? no jury would have found him guilty. what am i to do? oh, god! what am i to do?" mrs. blake and her daughter were now out upon the steps, and were filling the hall with their wailings. "tell me, blake, what had i better do?" then mr. blake decided that the body should remain there that night, and mr. jones also, and that the police should be sent for to do whatever might seem fitting to the policemen's mind. peter was sent off to morony castle with such a letter as miss blake was able to write to the two jones girls. the police came from tuam, but the result of their enquiries on that night need not be told here. chapter xxxi. the galway court house. there was a feeling very general in the county that the murder had been committed by the man named lax, who was known to have been in the neighbourhood lately, and was declared by his friends at headford to be now in galway, waiting for the trial of pat carroll. but there seemed to be a feeling about the country that florian jones had deserved his fate. he had, it was said, been untrue to his religion. he had given a solemn promise to father brosnan,--of what nature was not generally known,--and had broken it. "the bittherness of the orange feud was in his blood," said father brosnan. but neither did he explain the meaning of what he said, as none of the jones family had ever been orangemen. but the idea was common about tuam and headford that pat carroll was a martyr, and that florian had been persuaded to turn protestant in order that he might give false evidence against him. the reader, however, must understand that florian still professed the catholic religion at the moment of his death, and that all headford was aware that pat carroll had broken the sluice gate at ballintubber. after an interval of two days the trial was about to go on at galway in spite of the murder. it was quite true that by nothing could the breath of life be restored to florian jones. his evidence, such as it was, could now be taken only from his deposition. and such evidence was regarded as being very unfair both on one side and on the other. as given against pat carroll it was regarded as unfair, as being incapable of subjection to cross-examination. the boy's evidence had been extracted from him by his parents and by captain yorke clayton, in opposition to the statements which had been made scores of times by himself on the other side, and which, if true, would all tend to exonerate the prisoner. it had been the intention of mr. o'donnell, the senior counsel employed to defend carroll, to insist, with the greatest severity, on the lies told by the poor boy. it was this treatment which florian had especially feared. there could be no such treatment now; but mr. o'donnell would know well how to insist on the injustice of the deposition, in which no allusion would be made to the falsehood previously told. but on the other side it was said that the witness had been removed so that his evidence should not be given. they must now depend solely on the statement of terry carroll, pat's brother, and who also had lied terribly before he told the truth. and he, too, was condemned more bitterly, even by mr. jones and his friends, in that he was giving evidence against his brother, than had he continued to lie on his behalf. the circumstances being such as they were, it was felt to be almost impossible to secure the conviction of pat carroll for the offence he had committed. and yet there were certainly a dozen persons who had seen that offence committed in the light of day, and many other dozens who knew by whom the offence had been committed. and, indeed, the feeling had become common through the country that all the lawyers and judges in ireland,--the lawyers and judges that is who were opposed to the landleague,--could not secure a conviction of any kind against prisoners whom the landleague was bound to support. it had come to be whispered about, that there were men in the county of galway,--and men also in other counties,--too strong for the government, men who could beat the government on any point, men whom no jury could be brought to convict by any evidence; men who boasted of the possession of certain secret powers,--which generally meant murder. it came to be believed that these men were possessed of certain mysterious capabilities which the police could not handle, nor the magistrates touch. and the danger to be feared from these men arose chiefly from the belief in them which had become common. it was not that they could do anything special if left to their own devices, but that the crowds by whom they were surrounded trembled at their existence. the man living next to you, ignorant, and a roman catholic, inspired with some mysterious awe, would wish in his heart that the country was rid of such fire-brands. he knew well that the country, and he as part of the country, had more to get from law and order than from murder and misrule. but murder and misrule had so raised their heads for the present as to make themselves appear to him more powerful than law and order. mr. lax, and others like him, were keenly alive to the necessity of maintaining this belief in their mysterious power. the trial came on, having been delayed two days by the murder of poor florian jones. his body had, in the meantime, been taken home, and the only visitor received at morony castle had been yorke clayton. on his coming he had been at first closeted with mr. jones, and had then gone out and seen the two girls together. he had taken ada's hand first and then edith's, but he had held edith's the longer. the girls had known that it was so, but neither of them had said a word to rebuke him. "who was it?" asked ada. clayton shook his head and ground his teeth. "do you know, or have you an idea? you know so much about the country," said edith. "to you two, but to you only, i do know. he and i cannot exist together. the man's name is lax." it may be imagined that the trial was not commenced at galway without the expression of much sympathy for mr. jones and the family at morony castle. it is hard to explain the different feelings which existed, feelings exactly opposed to each other, but which still were both in their way general and true. he was "poor mr. jones," who had lost his son, and, worse still, his eighty acres of grass, and he was also "that fellow jones," that enemy to the landleague, whom it behoved all patriotic irishmen to get the better of and to conquer. florian had been murdered on the th of august, which was a tuesday, and the trial had been postponed until friday, the nd of september. it was understood that the boy was to be buried at headford, on saturday, the rd; but, nevertheless, the father was in the assize town on the friday. he was in the town, and at eleven o'clock he took his place in the crown court. he was a man who was still continually summoned as a grand juror, and as such had no difficulty in securing for himself a place. to the right of the judge sat the twelve jurors who had been summoned to try the case, and to the left was the grand jurors' box, in which mr. jones took his seat early in the day. and frank was also in the court, and had been stopped by no one when he accompanied his father into the grand jurors' box. but the court was crowded in a wonderful manner, so that they who understood the ways of criminal courts in ireland knew that something special was boded. as soon as mr. justice parry took his seat, it was seen that the court was much more than ordinarily filled, and was filled by men who did not make themselves amenable to the police. many were the instructions given by the judge who had been selected with a special view to this trial. judge parry was a roman catholic, who had sat in the house of commons as a strong liberal, had been attorney-general to a liberal government, and had been suspected of holding home-rule sentiments. but men, when they become judges, are apt to change their ideas. and judge parry was now known to be a firm man, whom nothing would turn from the execution of his duty. there had been many judge parrys in ireland, who have all gone the same gait, and have followed the same course when they have accepted the ermine. a man is at liberty to indulge what vagaries he pleases, as long as he is simply a member of parliament. but a judge is not at liberty. he now gave special instructions to the officers of the court to keep quiet and to preserve order. but the court was full, densely crowded; and the noise which arose from the crowd was only the noise as of people whispering loudly among themselves. the jury was quickly sworn and the trial was set on foot. pat carroll was made to stand up in the dock, and mr. jones looked at the face of the man who had been the first on his property to show his hostility to the idea of paying rent. he and lax had been great friends, and it was known that lax had sworn that in a short time not a shilling of rent should be paid in the county mayo. from that assurance all these troubles had come. then the attorney-general opened the case, and to tell the truth, he made a speech which though very eloquent, was longer than necessary. he spoke of the dreadful state of the country, a matter which he might have left to the judge, and almost burst into tears when he alluded to the condition of mr. jones, the gentleman who sat opposite to him. and he spoke at full length of the evidence of the poor boy whose deposition he held in his hand, which he told the jury he would read to them later on in the day. no doubt the lad had deceived his father since the offence had been committed. he had long declared that he knew nothing of the perpetrators. the boy had seemed to entertain in his mind certain ideas friendly to the landleague, and had made promises on behalf of landleaguers to which he had long adhered. but his father had at last succeeded, and the truth had been forthcoming. his lordship would instruct them how far the boy's deposition could be accepted as evidence, and how far it must fail. and so at last the attorney-general brought his eloquent speech to an end. and now there arose a murmuring sound in the court, and a stirring of feet and a moving of shoulders, louder than that which had been heard before. the judge, there on his bench, looking out from under his bushy eyebrows, could see that the people before him were all of one class. and he could see also that the half-dozen policemen who were kept close among the crowd, were so pressed as to be hardly masters of their own actions. he called out a word even from the bench in which there was something as to clearing the court; but no attempt to clear the court was made or was apparently possible. the first witness was summoned, and an attempt was made to bring him up through the dock into the witness-box. this witness was terry carroll, the brother of pat, and was known to be there that he might swear away his brother's liberty. his head no sooner appeared, as about to leave the dock, than the whole court was filled with a yell of hatred. there were two policemen standing between the two brothers, but pat only turned round and looked at the traitor with scorn. but the voices through the court sounded louder and more venomous as terry carroll stepped out of the dock among the policemen who were to make an avenue for him up to the witness-box. it was the last step he ever made. at that moment the flash of a pistol was seen in the court; of a pistol close at the man's ear, and terry carroll was a dead man. the pistol had touched his head as it had been fired, so that there had been no chance of escape. in this way was the other witness removed, who had been brought thither by the crown to give evidence as to the demolition of mr. jones's flood gates. and it was said afterwards,--for weeks afterwards,--that such should be the fate of all witnesses who appeared in the west of ireland to obey the behests of the crown. then was seen the reason why the special crowd had been gathered there, and of what nature were the men who had swarmed into court. clayton, who had been sitting at the end of the row of barristers, jumped up over the back of the bench and rushed in among the people, who now tried simply to hold their own places, and appeared neither to be anxious to go in or out. "tear an' ages, musther clayton, what are you after jumping on to a fellow that way." this was said by a brawny miletian, on to whose shoulders our friend had leaped, meaning to get down among the crowd. but the miletian had struck him hard, and would have knocked him down had there been room enough for him on which to fall. but clayton had minded the blow not at all, and had minded the judge as little, making his way in through the crowd over the dead body of terry carroll. he had been aware that lax was in the court, and had seated himself opposite to the place where the man had stood. but lax had moved himself during the attorney-general's speech, either with the view of avoiding the captain's eyes,--or, if he were to be the murderer, of finding the best place from which the deed could be done. if this had been his object, certainly the place had been well selected. it was afterwards stated, that though fifty people at the judge's end of the court had seen the pistol, no eyes had seen the face of him who held it. many faces had been seen, but nobody could connect a single face with the pistol. and it was proved also that the ball had entered the head just under the ear, with a slant upwards towards the brain, as though the weapon had been used by someone crouching towards the ground. clayton made his way out of court, followed by the faithful hunter, and was soon surrounded by half a score of policemen. hunter was left to watch the door of the court, because he was well acquainted with lax, and because should lax come across hunter, "god help mr. lax!" as clayton expressed himself. and others were sent by twos and threes through the city to catch this man if it were possible, or to obtain tidings respecting him. "a man cannot bury himself under the ground," said clayton; "we have always this pull upon them, that they cannot make themselves invisible." but in this case it almost did appear that mr. lax had the power. though pat carroll was not at once set at liberty, his trial was brought to an end. it was felt to be impossible to send the case to the jury when the only two witnesses belonging to the crown had been murdered. the prisoner was remanded, or sent back to gaol, so that the crown might look for more evidence if more might chance to be found, and everybody else connected in the matter was sent home. a dark gloom settled itself on galway, and men were heard to whisper among themselves that the queen's laws were no longer in force. and there was a rowdy readiness to oppose all force, the force of the police for instance, and the force of the military. there were men there who seemed to think that now had come the good time when they might knock anyone on the head at their leisure. it did not come quite to this, as the police were still combined, and their enemies were not so. but such men as captain clayton began to look as though they doubted what would become of it. "if he thinks he is big enough to catch a hold of terry lax and keep him, he'll precious soon find his mistake." this was said by con heffernan of captain clayton. chapter xxxii. mr. o'mahony as member of parliament. frank jones had travelled backwards and forwards between morony castle and the north more than once since these things were doing, and had met the new member for cavan together with rachel on the very evening on which poor florian had been murdered. it was not till the next morning that the news had become generally known. "i am sorry to hear, frank," said rachel, "that you are all doing so badly at morony castle." "badly enough." "are you fetching all these people down from here to do the work the men there ought to do? how are the men there to get their wages?" "that is the essence of boycotting," said frank. "the men there won't get their wages, and can only live by robbing the governor and men like him of their rents. and in that way they can't live long. everything will be disturbed and ruined." "it seems to me," said rachel, "that the whole country is coming to an end." "your father is member of parliament now, and of course he will set it all to rights." "he will at any rate do his best to do so," said rachel, "and will rob no man in the doing it. what do you mean to do with yourself?" "stick to the ship till it sinks, and then go down with it." "and your sisters?" "they are of the same way of thinking, i take it. they are not good at inventing any way of getting out of their troubles; but they know how to endure." "now, frank," said she, "shall i give you a bit of advice?" "oh yes! i like advice." "you wanted to kiss me just now." "that was natural at any rate." "no, it wasn't;--because you and i are two. when a young man and a young woman are two they shouldn't kiss any more. that is logic." "i don't know about logic." "at any rate it is something of the same sort. it is the kind of thing everybody believes in if they want to go right. you and i want to go right, don't we?" "i believe so." "of course we do," and she took hold of his arm and shook him. "it would break your heart if you didn't think i was going right, and why shouldn't i be as anxious about you? now for my piece of advice. i am going to make a lot of money." "i am glad to hear it." "come and share it with me. i would have shared yours if you had made a lot. you must call me madame de iona, or some such name as that. the name does not matter, but the money will be all there. won't it be grand to be able to help your father and your sisters! only you men are so beastly proud. isn't it honest money,--money that has come by singing?" "certainly it is." "and if the wife earns it instead of the husband;--isn't that honest? and then you know," she said, looking up into his face, "you can kiss me right away. isn't that an inducement?" the offer was an inducement, but the conversation only ended in a squabble. she rebuked him for his dishonesty, in taking the kiss without acceding to the penalty, and he declared that according to his view of the case, he could not become the fainéant husband of a rich opera singer. "and yet you would ask me to become the fainéante wife of a wealthy landowner. and because, under the stress of the times, you are not wealthy you choose to reject the girl altogether who has given you her heart. go away. you are no good. when a man stands up on his hind legs and pretends to be proud he never is any good." then mr. o'mahony came in and had a political discussion with frank jones. "yes," said the member of parliament, "i mean to put my shoulder to the wheel, and do the very best that can be done. i cannot believe but what a man in earnest will find out the truth. politics are not such a hopeless muddle but what some gleam of light may be made to shine through." "there are such things as leaders," said frank. then mr. o'mahony stood up and laid his hand upon his heart. "you remember what van artevelde said--'they shall murder me ere make me go the way that is not my way, for an inch.' i say the same." "what will mr. parnell do with such a follower?" "mr. parnell is also an honest man," cried mr. o'mahony. "two honest men looking for light together will never fall out. i at any rate have some little gift of utterance. perhaps i can persuade a man, or two men. at any rate i will try." "but how are we to get back to london, father?" said rachel. "i don't think it becomes an honest member of parliament to take money out of a common fund. you will have to remain here in pawn till i go and sing you out." but rachel had enough left of lord castlewell's money to carry them back to london, on condition that they did not stop on the road, and to this condition she was forced to bring her father. early on the following morning before they started the news reached cavan of poor florian's death. "oh god! my brother!" exclaimed frank; but it was all that he did say. he was a man who like his father had become embittered by the circumstances of the times. mr. jones had bought his property, now thirty years since, with what was then called a parliamentary title. he had paid hard money for it, and had induced his friends to lend their money to assist the purchase, for which he was responsible. much of the land he had been enabled to keep in his own hands, but on none of the tenants' had he raised the rent. now there had come forth a law, not from the hand of the landleaguers, but from the government, who, it was believed, would protect those who did their duty by the country. under this law commissioners were to be appointed,--or sub-commissioners,--men supposed to be not of great mark in the country, who were to reduce the rent according to their ideas of justice. if a man paid ten pounds,--or had engaged to pay ten,--let him take his pen and write down seven or eight as the sub-commissioner should decide. as the outside landlords, the friends of mr. jones, must have five pounds out of the original ten, that which was coming to mr. jones himself would be about halved. and the condition of mr. jones, under the system of boycotting which he was undergoing, was hard to endure. now frank was the eldest son, and the property of castle morony and ballintubber was entailed upon him. he was brought up in his early youth to feel that he was to fill that situation, which, of all others, is the most attractive. he was to have been the eldest son of a man of unembarrassed property. now he was offered to be taken to london as the travelling husband--or upper servant, as it might be--of an opera singer. then, while he was in this condition, there came to him the news that his brother had been murdered; and he must go home to give what assistance was in his power to his poor, ill-used sisters. it is not to be wondered at that he was embittered. he had been spending some hours of the last day in reading the clauses of the bill under which the sub-commissioners were to show him what mercy they might think right. as he left cavan the following morning, his curses were more deep against the government than against the landleague. mr. o'mahony and his daughter got back to cecil street in september in a very impecunious state. he soon began to understand that the position of member of parliament was more difficult and dangerous than that of a lecturer. the police had interfered with him; but the police had in truth done him no harm, nor had they wanted anything from him. but as member of parliament for cavan the attacks made on his purse were very numerous. and throughout september, when the glory of parliament was just newly settled upon his shoulders, sundry calls were made upon him for obedience which were distasteful to him. he was wanted over in ireland. mr. o'mahony was an outspoken, frank man, who did not at all like to be troubled with secrets. "i haven't got any money to come over to ireland just at present. they took what i had away from me in county cavan during the election. i don't suppose i shall have any to speak of till after christmas, and then it won't be much. if you have anything for a man to do in london it will be more within my reach." it was thus he wrote to some brother member of parliament who had summoned him to a grand meeting at the rotunda. he was wanted to address the people on the honesty of the principle of paying no rent. "for the matter of that," he wrote to another brother member, "i don't see the honesty. why are we to take the property from jack and give it to bill? bill would sell it and spend the money, and no good would then have been done to the country. i should have to argue the matter out with you or someone else before i could speak about it at the rotunda." then, there arose a doubt whether mr. o'mahony was the proper member for cavan. he settled himself down in cecil street and began to write a book about rent. when he began his book he hated rent from his very soul. the difficulty he saw was this: what should you do with the property when you took it away from the landlords? he quite saw his way to taking it away; if only a new order would come from heaven for the creation of a special set of farmers who should be wedded to their land by some celestial matrimony, and should clearly be in possession of it without the perpetration of any injustice. he did not quite see his way to this by his own lights, and therefore he went to the british museum. when a man wants to write a book full of unassailable facts, he always goes to the british museum. in this way mr. o'mahony purposed to spend his autumn instead of speaking at the rotunda, because it suited him to live in london rather than in dublin. cecil street in september is not the most cheerful place in the world. while rachel had been singing at "the embankment," with the occasional excitement of a quarrel with mr. moss, it had been all very well; but now while her father was studying statistics at the british museum, she had nothing to do but to practise her singing. "i mean to do something, you know, towards earning that £ which you have lent me." this she said to lord castlewell, who had come up to london to have his teeth looked after. this was the excuse he gave for being in london at this unfashionable season. "i have to sing from breakfast to dinner without stopping one minute, so you may go back to the dentist at once. i haven't time even to see what he has done." "i have to propose that you and your father shall come and dine with me down at richmond to-day. there is old mrs. peacock, who used to sing bouffe parts at the queen's theatre. she is a most respectable old party, and she shall come if you will let her." "for papa to flirt with?" said rachel. "not at all. with a party of four there is never any flirting. it is all solid sense. i want to have some serious conversation about that £ . mrs. peacock will be able to give me her opinion." "she won't be able to lend me the money?" "i'm afraid she isn't a good doctor for that disease. but you must dine somewhere, and do say you will come." but rachel was determined not to come,--at any rate not to say that she would come without consulting her father. so she explained that the member of parliament was hard at work at the british museum, writing a book against the payment of rents, and that she could not go without consulting him. but lord castlewell made that very easy. "i'll go and see," said he, "how a man looks when he is writing a book on such a subject; and i'll be back and tell you all about it. i'll drive you down in my phaeton,--of course if your father consents. if he wants to bring his book with him, the groom shall carry it in a box." "and what about mrs. peacock?" "there won't be any trouble about her, because she lives at richmond. you needn't be a bit afraid for your father's sake, because she is over sixty." then he started off, and came back in half an hour, saying that mr. o'mahony had expressed himself quite satisfied to do as he was told. "the deceit of the world, the flesh, and the devil, get the better of one on every side," said rachel, when she was left to herself. "who would have thought of the noble lord spinning off to the british museum on such an errand as that! but he will give papa a good dinner, and i shan't be any the worse. a man must be very bad before he can do a woman an injury if she is determined not to be injured." lord castlewell drove the two down to richmond, and very pleasant the drive was. the conversation consisted of quizzing mr. o'mahony about his book, as to which he was already beginning to be a little out of heart. but he bore the quizzing well, and was thoroughly good-humoured as he saw the lord and his daughter sitting on the front seat before him. "i am a landleaguing home-ruler, you know, my lord, of the most advanced description. the speaker has never turned me out of the house of commons, only because i have never sat there. your character will be lost for ever." lord castlewell declared that his character would be made for ever, as he had the great prima donna of the next season at his left hand. the dinner went off very pleasantly. old mrs. peacock declared that she had never known a prima donna before to be the daughter of a member of parliament. she felt that great honour was done to the profession. "why," said lord castlewell, "he is writing a book to prove that nobody should pay any rent!" "oh!" said mrs. peacock, "that would be terrible. a landlord wouldn't be a landlord if he didn't get any rent;--or hardly." then mr. o'mahony went to work to explain that a landlord was, of his very name and nature, an abomination before the lord. "and yet you want houses to live in," said lord castlewell. when they were in the middle of their dinners they were all surprised by the approach of mr. mahomet m. moss. he was dressed up to a degree of beauty which rachel thought that she had never seen equalled. his shirt-front was full of little worked holes. his studs were gold and turquoise, and those at his wrists were double studs, also gold and turquoise. the tie of his cravat was a thing marvellous to behold. his waistcoat was new for the occasion, and apparently all over marvellously fine needlework. it might, all the same, have been done by a sewing-machine. the breadth of the satin lappets of his dress-coat were most expansive. and his hair must have taken two artists the whole afternoon to accomplish. it was evident to see that he felt himself to be quite the lord's equal by the strength of his personal adornment. "well, yes," he said, "i have brought madame tacchi down here to show her what we can do in the way of a suburban dinner. madame tacchi is about to take the place which miss o'mahony has vacated at 'the embankment.' ah, my lord, you behaved very shabbily to us there." "if madame tacchi," said the lord, "can sing at all like miss o'mahony, we shall have her away very soon. is madame tacchi in sight, so that i can see her?" then mr. moss indicated the table at which the lady sat, and with the lady was madame socani. "they are a bad lot," said lord castlewell, as soon as moss had withdrawn. "i know them, and they are a bad lot, particularly that woman who is with them. it is a marvel to me how you got among them." lord castlewell had now become very intimate with the o'mahonys; and by what he said showed also his intimacy with mrs. peacock. "they are americans," said o'mahony. "and so are you," said the lord. "there can be good americans and bad americans. you don't mean to say that you think worse of an american than of an englishman." "i think higher of an englishman than of an american, and lower also. if i meet an american where a gentleman ought to be, i entertain a doubt; if i meet him where a labourer ought to be, i feel very confident. i suppose that the manager of a theatre ought to be a gentleman." "i don't quite understand it all," said mrs. peacock. "nor anybody else," said rachel. "father does fly so very high in the air when he talks about people." after that the lord drove miss o'mahony and her father back to cecil street, and they all agreed that they had had a very pleasant evening. end of vol. ii. charles dickens and evans, crystal palace press. * * * * * the landleaguers by anthony trollope in three volumes--vol. iii. london chatto & windus, piccadilly [all rights reserved] charles dickens and evans, crystal palace press. contents chapter xxxiii. captain clayton's love-making. xxxiv. lord castlewell's love-making. xxxv. mr. o'mahony's apology. xxxvi. rachel writes about her lovers. xxxvii. rachel is ill. xxxviii. lord castlewell is much troubled. xxxix. captain clayton's first triumph. xl. yorke clayton again makes love. xli. the state of ireland. xlii. lord castlewell's farewell. xliii. mr. moss is finally answered. xliv. frank jones comes back again. xlv. mr. robert morris. xlvi. cong. xlvii. kerrycullion. xlviii. the new aristocracy fails. xlix. the landleaguers. chapter xxxiii. captain clayton's love-making. the household at castle morony was very sad for some time after the trial. they had hardly begun to feel the death of florian while the excitement existed as they felt it afterwards. mr. jones, his father, seemed to regard the lost boy as though he had been his favourite child. it was not many months since he had refused to allow him to eat in his presence, and had been persuaded by such a stranger as was captain clayton, to treat him with some show of affection. when he had driven him into ballyglunin, he had been stern and harsh to him to the very last. and now he was obliterated with sorrow because he had been robbed of his florian. the two girls had sorrows of their own; though neither of them would permit her sorrow to create any quarrel between her and her sister. and frank, who since his return from the north had toiled like a labourer on the property--only doing double a labourer's work--had sorrow, too, of his own. it was understood that he had altogether separated himself from rachel o'mahony. the cause of his separation was singular in its nature. it was now november, and rachel had already achieved a singularly rapid success at covent garden. she still lived in cecil street, but there was no lack of money. indeed, her name had risen into such repute that some irish people began to think that her father was the proper man for cavan, simply because she was a great singer. it cannot be said, however, that this was the case among the men who were regarded as the leaders of the party, as they still doubted o'mahony's obedience. but money at any rate poured into rachel's lap, and with the money that which was quite as objectionable to poor frank. he had begun by asserting that he did not wish to live idle on the earnings of a singer; and, therefore, as the singer had said, "he and she were obliged to be two." as she explained to her father, she was badly treated. she was very anxious to be true to her lover; but she did not like living without some lover to whom she might be true. "you see, as i am placed i am exposed to the mosses. i do want to have a husband to protect me." then a lover had come forward. lord castlewell had absolutely professed to make her the future marchioness of beaulieu. of this there must be more hereafter; but frank heard of it, and tore his hair in despair. and there was another misery at castle morony. it reached mr. jones's ears that peter was anxious to give warning. it certainly was the case that peter was of great use to them, and that mr. jones had rebuked him more than once as having made a great favour of his services. the fact was that peter, if discharged, would hardly know where to look for another place where he could be equally at home and equally comfortable. and he was treated by the family generally with all that confidence which his faithfulness seemed to deserve. but he was nervous and ill at ease under his master's rebukes; and at last there came an event which seemed to harrow up his own soul, and instigated him to run away from county galway altogether. "miss edith, miss edith," he said, "come in here, thin, and see what i have got to show you." then, with an air of great mystery, he drew his young mistress into the pantry. "look at that now! was ever the like of that seen since the mortial world began?" then he took out from a dirty envelope a dirty sheet of paper, and exposed it to her eyes. on the top of it was a rude coffin. "don't it make yer hair stand on end, and yer very flesh creep, miss edith, to look at the likes o' that!" and below the coffin there was a ruder skull and two cross-bones. "them's intended for what i'm to be. i understand their language well enough. look here," and he turned the envelope round and showed that it was addressed to peter mcgrew, butler, morony castle. "they know me well enough all the country round." the letter was as follows: mr. peter mcgrew, if you're not out of that before the end of the month, but stay there doing things for them infernal blackguards, your goose is cooked. so now you know all about it. from yours, moonlight. edith attempted to laugh at this letter, but peter made her understand that it was no laughing matter. "i've a married darter in dublin who won't see her father shot down that way if she knows it." "you had better take it to papa, then, and give him warning," said edith. but this peter declined to do on the spur of the moment, seeming to be equally afraid of his master and of captain moonlight. "if i'd the captain here, he'd tell me what i ought to do." the captain was always captain clayton. "he is coming here to-morrow, and i will show him the letter," said edith. but she did not on that account scruple to tell her father at once. "he can go if he likes it," said mr. jones, and that was all that mr. jones said on the subject. this was the third visit that the captain had paid to morony castle since the terrible events of the late trial. and it must be understood that he had not spoken a word to either of the two girls since the moment in which he had ventured to squeeze edith's hand with a tighter grasp than he had given to her sister. they, between them, had discussed him and his character often; but had come to no understanding respecting him. ada had declared that edith should be his, and had in some degree recovered from the paroxysm of sorrow which had first oppressed her. but edith had refused altogether to look at the matter in that light. "it was quite out of the question," she said, "and so captain clayton would feel it. if you don't hold your tongue, ada," she said, "i shall think you're a brute." but ada had not held her tongue, and had declared that if no one else were to know it--no one but edith and the captain himself--she would not be made miserable by it. "what is it?" she said. "i thought him the best and he is the best. i thought that he thought that i was the best; and i wasn't. it shall be as i say." after this manner were the discussions held between them; but of these captain clayton heard never a word. when he came he would seem to be full of the flood gates, and of lax the murderer. he had two men with him now, hunter and another. but no further attempt was made to shoot him in the neighbourhood of headford. "lax finds it too hot," he said, "since that day in the court house, and has gone away for the present. i nearly know where he is; but there is no good catching him till i get some sort of evidence against him, and if i locked him up as a 'suspect,' he would become a martyr and a hero in the eyes of the whole party. the worst of it is that though twenty men swore that they had seen it, no galway jury would convict him." but nevertheless he was indefatigable in following up the murderer of poor florian. "as for the murder in the court house," he said, "i do believe that though it was done in the presence of an immense crowd no one actually saw it. i have the pistol, but what is that? the pistol was dropped on the floor of the court house." on this occasion edith brought him poor peter's letter. as it happened they two were then alone together. but she had taught herself not to expect any allusion to his love. "he is a stupid fellow," said the captain. "but he has been faithful. and you can't expect him to look at these things as you do." "of course he finds it to be a great compliment. to have a special letter addressed to him by some special captain moonlight is to bring him into the history of his country." "i suppose he will go." "then let him go. i would not on any account ask him to stay. if he comes to me i shall tell him simply that he is a fool. pat carroll's people want to bother your father, and he would be bothered if he were to lose his man-servant. there is no doubt of that. if peter desires to bother him let him go. then he has another idea that he wants to achieve a character for fidelity. he must choose between the two. but i wouldn't on any account ask him for a favour." then edith having heard the captain's advice was preparing to leave the room when captain clayton stopped her. "edith," he said. "well, captain clayton." "some months ago,--before these sad things had occurred,--i told you what i thought of you, and i asked you for a favour." "there was a mistake made between us all,--a mistake which does not admit of being put to rights. it was unfortunate, but those misfortunes will occur. there is no more to be said about it." "is the happiness of two people to be thus sacrificed, when nothing is done for the benefit of one?" "what two?" she asked brusquely. "you and i." "my happiness will not be sacrificed, captain clayton," she said. what right had he to tell that her happiness was in question? the woman spoke,--the essence of feminine self, putting itself forward to defend feminine rights generally against male assumption. could any man be justified in asserting that a woman loved him till she had told him so? it was evident no doubt,--so she told herself. it was true at least. as the word goes she worshipped the very ground he stood upon. he was her hero. she had been made to think and to feel that he was so by this mistake which had occurred between the three. she had known it before, but it was burned in upon her now. yet he should not be allowed to assume it. and the one thing necessary for her peace of mind in life would be that she should do her duty by ada. she had been the fool. she had instigated ada to believe this thing in which there was no truth. the loss of all ecstasy of happiness must be the penalty which she would pay. and yet she thought of him. must he pay a similar penalty for her blunder? surely this would be hard! surely this would be cruel! but then she did not believe that man ever paid such penalty as that of which she was thinking. he would have the work of his life. it would be the work of her life to remember what she might have been had she not been a fool. "if so," he said after a pause, "then there is an end of it all," and he looked at her as though he absolutely believed her words,--as though he had not known that her assertion had been mere feminine pretext! she could not endure that he at any rate should not know the sacrifice which she would have to make. but he was very hard to her. he would not even allow her the usual right of defending her sex by falsehood. "if so there is an end of it all," he repeated, holding out his hand as though to bid her farewell. she believed him, and gave him her hand. "good-bye, captain clayton," she said. "never again," he said to her very gruffly, but still with such a look across his eyes as irradiated his whole face. "this hand shall never again be your own to do as you please with it." "who says so?" and she struggled as though to pull her hand away, but he held her as though in truth her hand had gone from her for ever. "i say so, who am its legitimate owner. now i bid you tell me the truth, or rather i defy you to go on with the lie. do you not love me?" "it is a question which i shall not answer." "then," said he, "from a woman to a man it is answered. you cannot make me over to another. i will not be transferred." "i can do nothing with you, captain clayton, nor can you with me. i know you are very strong of course." then he loosened her hand, and as he did so ada came into the room. "i have asked her to be my wife," said the captain, putting his hand upon edith's arm. "let it be so," said ada. "i have nothing to say against it." "but i have," said edith. "i have much to say against it. we can all live without being married, i suppose. captain clayton has plenty to do without the trouble of a wife. and so have you and i. could we leave our father? and have we forgotten so soon poor florian? this is no time for marriages. only think, papa would not have the means to get us decent clothes. as far as i am concerned, captain clayton, let there be an end of all this." then she stalked out of the room. "ada, you are not angry with me," said captain clayton, coming up to her. "oh, no! how could i be angry?" "i have not time to do as other men do. i do not know that i ever said a word to her; and yet, god knows, that i have loved her dearly enough. she is hot tempered now, and there are feelings in her heart which fight against me. you will say a word in my favour?" "indeed, indeed i will." "there shall be nothing wrong between you and me. if she becomes my wife, you shall be my dearest sister. and i think she will at last. i know,--i do know that she loves me. poor florian is dead and gone. all his short troubles are over. we have still got our lives to lead. and why should we not lead them as may best suit us? she talks about your father's present want of money. i would be proud to marry your sister standing as she is now down in the kitchen. but if i did marry her i should have ample means to keep her as would become your father's daughter." then he took his leave and went back to galway. chapter xxxiv. lord castlewell's love-making. it was explained in the last chapter that frank jones was not in a happy condition because of the success of the lady whom he loved. rachel, as christmas drew nigh, was more and more talked about in london, and became more and more the darling of all musical people. she had been twelve months now on the london boards, and had fully justified the opinion expressed of her by messrs. moss and le gros. there were those who declared that she sang as no woman of her age had ever sung before. and there had got abroad about her certain stories, which were true enough in the main, but which were all the more curious because of their truth; and yet they were not true altogether. it was known that she was a daughter of a landleaguing member of parliament, and that she had been engaged to marry the son of a boycotted landlord. mr. jones' sorrows, and the death of his poor son, and the murder of the sinner who was to have been the witness at the trial of his brother, were all known and commented on in the london press; and so also was the peculiar vigour of mr. o'mahony's politics. nothing, it was said, could be severed more entirely than were mr. jones and mr. o'mahony. the enmity was so deep that all ideas of marriage were out of the question. it was, no doubt, true that the gentleman was penniless and the lady rolling in wealth; but this was a matter so grievous that so poor a thing as money could not be allowed to prevail. and then mr. moss was talked about as a dragon of iniquity,--which, indeed, was true enough,--and was represented as having caused contracts to be executed which would bind poor rachel to himself, both as to voice and beauty. but lord castlewell had seen her, and had heard her; and mr. moss, with all his abominations, was sent down to the bottom of the nethermost pit. the fortune of "the embankment" was made by the number of visitors who were sent there to see and to hear this wicked fiend; but it all redounded to the honour and glory of rachel. but rachel was to be seen a _fêted_ guest at all semi-musical houses. whispers about town were heard that that musical swell, lord castlewell, had been caught at last. and in the midst of all this, mr. o'mahony came in for his share of popularity. there was something so peculiar in the connection which bound a violent landleaguing member of parliament with the prima donna of the day. they were father and daughter, but they looked more like husband and wife, and it always seemed that rachel had her own way. mr. o'mahony had quite achieved a character for himself before the time had come in which he was enabled to open his mouth in the house of commons. and some people went so far as to declare that he was about to be the new leader of the party. it certainly was true that about this time lord castlewell did make an offer to rachel o'mahony. "that i should have come to this!" she said to the lord when the lord had expressed his wishes. "you deserve it all," said the gallant lord. "i think i do. but that you should have seen it,--that you should have come to understand that if i would be your wife i would sing every note out of my body,--to do you good if it were possible. how have you been enlightened so far as to see that this is the way in which you may best make yourself happy?" lord castlewell did not quite like this; but he knew that his wished-for bride was an unintelligible little person, to whom much must be yielded as to her own way. he had not given way to this idea before he had seen how well she had taken her place among the people with whom he lived. he was forty years old, and it was time that he should marry. his father was a very proud personage, to whom he never spoke much. he, however, would be of opinion that any bride whom his son might choose would be, by the very fact, raised to the top of the peerage. his mother was a religious woman, to whom any matrimony for her son would be an achievement. now, of the proposed bride he had learned all manner of good things. she had come out of mr. moss's furnace absolutely unscorched; so much unscorched as to scorn the idea of having been touched by the flames. she was thankful to lord castlewell for what he had done, and expressed her thanks in a manner that was not grateful to him. she was not in the least put about or confused, or indeed surprised, because the heir of a marquis had made an offer to her--a singing girl; but she let him understand that she quite thought that she had done a good thing. "it would be so much better for him than going on as he has gone," she said to her father. and lord castlewell knew very well what were her sentiments. it cannot be said that he repented of his offer. indeed he pressed her for an answer more than once or twice. but her conduct to him was certainly very aggravating. this matter of her marriage with an earl was an affair of great moment. indeed all london was alive with the subject. but she had not time to give him an answer because it was necessary that she should study a part for the theatre. this was hard upon an earl, and was made no better by the fact that the earl was forty. "no, my lord earl," she said laughing, "the time for that has not come yet. you must give me a few days to think of it." this she said when he expressed a not unnatural desire to give her a kiss. but though she apparently made light of the matter to him, and astonished even her father by her treatment of him, yet she thought of it with a very anxious mind. she was quite alive to the glories of the position offered to her, and was not at all alive to its inconveniences. people would assert that she had caught the lover who had intended her for other purposes. "that was of course out of the question," she said to herself. and she felt sure that she could make as good a countess as the best of them. with her father a member of parliament, and her husband an earl, she would have done very well with herself. she would have escaped from that brute moss, and would have been subjected to less that was disagreeable in the encounter than might have been expected. she must lose the public singing which was attractive to her, and must become the wife of an old man. it was thus in truth that she looked at the noble lord. "there would be an end," she said, "and for ever, of 'love's young dream.'" the dream had been very pleasant to her. she had thoroughly liked her frank. he was handsome, fresh, full of passion, and a little violent when his temper lay in that direction. but he had been generous, and she was sure of him that he had loved her thoroughly. after all, was not "love's young dream" the best? an answer was at any rate due to lord castlewell. but she made up her mind that before she could give the answer, she would write to frank himself. "my lord," she said very gravely to her suitor, "it has become my lot in life to be engaged to marry the son of that mr. jones of whom you have heard in the west of ireland." "i am aware of it," said lord castlewell gravely. "it has been necessary that i should tell you myself. now, i cannot say whether, in all honour, that engagement has been dissolved." "i thought there was no doubt about it," said the lord. "it is as i tell you. i must write to mr. jones. hearts cannot be wrenched asunder without some effort in the wrenching. for the great honour you have done me i am greatly thankful." "let all that pass," said the lord. "not so. it has to be spoken of. as i stand at present i have been repudiated by mr. jones." "do you mean to ask him to take you back again?" "i do not know how the letter will be worded, because it has not been yet written. my object is to tell him of the honour which lord castlewell proposes to me. and i have not thought it quite honest to your lordship to do this without acquainting you." then that interview was over, and lord castlewell went away no doubt disgusted. he had not intended to be treated in this way by a singing girl, when he proposed to make her his countess. but with the disgust there was a strengthened feeling of admiration for her conduct. she looked much more like the countess than the singing girl when she spoke to him. and there certainly never came a time in which he could tell her to go back and sing and marry mr. moss. therefore the few days necessary for an answer went by, and then she gave him her reply. "my lord," she said, "if you wish it still, it shall be so." the time for "love's young dream" had not gone by for lord castlewell. "i do wish it still," he said in a tone of renewed joy. "then you shall have all that you wish." thereupon she put her little hands on his arm, and leant her face against his breast. then there was a long embrace, but after the embrace she had a little speech to make. "you ought to know, lord castlewell, how much i think of you and your high position. a man, they say, trusts much of his honour into the hands of his wife. whatever you trust to me shall be guarded as my very soul. you shall be to me the one man whom i am bound to worship. i will worship you with all my heart, with all my body, with all my soul, and with all my strength. your wishes shall be my wishes. i only hope that an odd stray wish of mine may occasionally be yours." then she smiled so sweetly that as she looked up into his face he was more enamoured of her than ever. but now we must go back for a moment, and read the correspondence which took place between rachel o'mahony and frank jones. rachel's letter ran as follows: my dear frank, i am afraid i must trouble you once again with my affairs; though, indeed, after what last took place between us it ought not to be necessary. lord castlewell has proposed to make me his wife; and, to tell you the truth, looking forward into the world, i do not wish to throw over all its pleasures because your honour, whom i have loved, does not wish to accept the wages of a singing girl. but the place is open to you still,--the wages, and the singing girl, and all. write me a line, and say how it is to be. yours as you would have me to be, rachel o'mahony. this letter frank jones showed to no one. had he allowed it to be seen by his sister edith, she would probably have told him that no man ever received a sweeter love-letter from the girl whom he loved. "the place is open to you still,--the wages, the singing girl, and all." the girl had made nothing of this new and noble lover, except to assure his rival that he, the rival, should be postponed to him, the lover, if he, the lover, would write but one word to say that it should be so. but frank was bad at reading such words. he got it into his head that the girl had merely written to ask the permission of her former suitor to marry this new lordly lover, and, though he did love the girl, with a passion which the girl could never feel for the lord, he wrote back and refused the offer. my dear rachel, it is, i suppose, best as it is. we are sinking lower and lower daily. my father is beginning to feel that we shall never see another rent day at castle morony. it is not fitting that i should think of joining my fallen fortunes to yours, which are soaring so high. and poor florian is gone. we are at the present moment still struck to the ground because of florian. as for you, and the lord who admires you, you have my permission to become his wife. i have long heard that he is your declared admirer. you have before you a glorious future, and i shall always hear with satisfaction of your career. yours, with many memories of the past, francis jones. it was not a letter which would have put such a girl as rachel o'mahony into good heart unless she had in truth wished to get his agreement to her lordly marriage. "this twice i have thrown myself at his head and he has rejected me." then she abided lord castlewell's coming, and the scene between them took place as above described. the marriage was at once declared as a settled thing. "now, my dear, you must name the day," said lord castlewell, as full of joy as though he were going to marry a duke's daughter. "i have got to finish my engagement," said rachel; "i am bound down to the end of may. when june comes you shan't find a girl who will be in a greater hurry. do you think that i do not wish to become a countess?" he told her that he would contrive to get her engagement broken. "covent garden is not going to quarrel with me about my wife, i'm sure," he said. "ah! but my own one," said rachel, "we will do it all _selon les règles_. i am in a hurry, but we won't let the world know it. i, the future countess of castlewell; i, the future marchioness of beaulieu, will keep my terms and my allotted times like any candle-snuffer. what do you think moss will say?" "what can it signify what mr. moss may say?" "ah! but my own man, it does signify. mr. moss shall know that through it all i have done my duty. madame socani will tell lies, but she shall feel in her heart that she has once in her life come across a woman who, when she has signed a bit of paper, intends to remain true to the paper signed. and, my lord, there is still £ due to you from my father." "gammon!" said the lord. "i could pay it by a cheque on the bank, to be sure, but let us go on to the end of may. i want to see how all the young women will behave when they hear of it." and so some early day in june was fixed for the wedding. among others who heard of it were, of course, mr. moss and madame socani. they heard of it, but of course did not believe it. it was too bright to be believed. when madame socani was assured that rachel had taken the money,--she and her father between them,--she declared, with great apparent satisfaction, that rachel must be given up as lost. "as to that wicked old man, her father--" "he's not so very old," said moss. "she's no chicken, and he's old enough to be her father. that is, if he is her father. i have known that girl on the stage any day these ten years." "no, you've not; not yet five. i don't quite know how it is." and mr. moss endeavoured to think of it all in such a manner as to make it yet possible that he might marry her. what might not they two do together in the musical world? "you don't mean to say you'd take her yet?" said madame socani, with scorn. "when i take her you'll be glad enough to join us; that is, if we will have you." then madame socani ground her teeth together, and turned up her nose with redoubled scorn. but it was soon borne in upon mr. moss that the marriage was to be a marriage, and he was in truth very angry. he had been able to endure m. le gros' success in carrying away miss o'mahony from "the embankment." miss o'mahony might come back again under that or any other name. he--and she--had a musical future before them which might still be made to run in accordance with his wishes. then he had learned with sincere sorrow that she was throwing herself into the lord's hands, borrowing money of him. but there might be a way out of this which would still allow him to carry out his project. but now he heard that a real marriage was intended, and he was very angry. not even madame socani was more capable of spite than mr. moss, though he was better able to hide his rage. even now, when christmas-time had come, he would hardly believe the truth, and when the marriage was not instantly carried out, new hopes came to him--that lord castlewell would not at last make himself such a fool. he inquired here and there in the musical world and the theatrical world, and could not arrive at what he believed to be positive truth. then christmas passed by, and miss o'mahony recommenced her singing at covent garden. three times a week the house was filled, and at last a fourth night was added, for which the salary paid to rachel was very much increased. "i don't see that the salary matters very much," said lord castlewell, when the matter was discussed. "oh, but, my lord, it does matter!" she always called him my lord now, with a little emphasis laid on the "my." "they have made father a member of parliament, but he does not earn anything. what i can earn up to the last fatal day he shall have, if you will let me give it to him." they were very bright days for rachel, because she had all the triumph of success,--success gained by her own efforts. "i can never do as much as this when i am your countess," she said to her future lord. "i shall dwell in marble halls, as people say, but i shall never cram a house so full as to be able to see, when i look up from the stage, that there is not a place for another man's head; and when my throat gave way the other day i could read all the disappointment in the public papers. i shall become your wife, my lord." "i hope so." "and if you will love me i shall be very happy for long, long years." "i will love you." "but there will be no passion of ecstasy such as this. father says that home rule won't be passed because the people will be thinking of my singing. of course it is all vanity, but there is an enjoyment in it." but all this was wormwood to mr. moss. he had put out his hand so as to clutch this girl now two years since, understanding all her singing qualities, and then in truth loving her. she had taken a positive hatred to him, and had rejected him at every turn of her life. but he had not at all regarded that. he had managed to connect her with his theatre, and had perceived that her voice had become more and more sweet in its tones, and more and more rich in its melody. he had still hoped that he would make her his wife. madame socani's abominable proposal had come from an assurance on her part that he could have all that he wished for without paying so dear for it. there had doubtless been some whispering between them over the matter, but the order for the proposal had not come from him. madame socani had judged of rachel as she might have judged of herself. but all that had come to absolute failure. he felt now that he should be paying by no means too dear by marrying the girl. it would be a great triumph to marry her; but he was told that this absurd earl wished to triumph in the same manner. he set afloat all manner of reports, which, in truth, wounded lord castlewell sorely. lord castlewell had given her money, and had then failed in his object. so said mr. moss. lord castlewell had promised marriage, never intending it. lord castlewell had postponed the marriage because as the moment drew nearer he would not sacrifice himself. if the lady had a friend, it would be the friend's duty to cudgel the lord, so villainous had been the noble lord's conduct. but yet, in truth, who could have expected that the noble lord would have married the singing girl? was not his character known? did anybody in his senses expect that the noble lord would marry miss rachel o'mahony? "if i have a friend, is my friend to cudgel you, my lord?" she said, clinging on to his arm in her usual manner. "my friend is papa, who thinks that you are a very decent fellow, considering your misfortune in being a lord at all. i know where all these words come from;--it is mahomet m. moss. there is nothing for it but to live them down with absolute silence." "nothing," he replied. "they are a nuisance, but we can do nothing." but lord castlewell did in truth feel what was said about him. was he not going to pay too dearly for his whistle? no doubt rachel was all that she ought to be. she was honest, industrious, and high-spirited; and, according to his thinking, she sang more divinely than any woman of her time. and he so thought of her that he knew that she must be his countess or be nothing at all to him. to think of her in any other light would be an abomination to him. but yet, was it worth his while to make her marchioness of beaulieu? he could only get rid of his present engagement by some absolute change in his mode of life. for instance, he must shut himself up in a castle and devote himself entirely to a religious life. he must explain to her that circumstances would not admit his marrying, and must offer to pay her any sum of money that she or her father might think fit to name. if he wished to escape, this must be his way; but as he looked at her when she came off the stage, where he always attended her, he assured himself that he did not wish to escape. chapter xxxv. mr. o'mahony's apology. time went on and parliament met. mr. o'mahony went before the speaker's table and was sworn in. he was introduced by two brother landleaguers, and really did take his place with some enthusiasm. he wanted to speak on the first day, but was judiciously kept silent by his colleagues. he expressed an idea that, until ireland's wrongs had been redressed, there ought not to be a moment devoted to any other subject, and became very violent in his expressions of this opinion. but he was not long kept dumb. great things were expected from his powers of speech, and, though he had to be brought to silence ignominiously on three or four occasions, still, at last some power of speech was permitted to him. there were those among his own special brethren who greatly admired him and praised him; but with others of the same class there was a shaking of the head and many doubts. with the house generally, i fear, laughter prevailed rather than true admiration. mr. o'mahony, no doubt, could speak well in a debating society or a music hall. words came from his tongue sweeter than honey. but just at the beginning of the session, the speaker was bound to put a limit even to irish eloquence, and in this case was able to do so. as mr. o'mahony contrived to get upon his feet very frequently, either in asking a question or in endeavouring to animadvert on the answer given, there was something of a tussle between him and the authority in the chair. it did not take much above a week to make the speaker thoroughly tired of this new member, and threats were used towards him of a nature which his joint milesian and american nature could not stand. he was told of dreadful things which could be done to him. though as yet he could not be turned out of the house, for the state of the young session had not as yet admitted of that new mode of torture, still, he could be named. "let him name me. my name is mr. o'mahony." and mr. o'mahony was not a man who could be happy when he was quarrelling with all around him. he was soon worked into a violent passion, in which he made himself ridiculous, but when he had subsided, and the storm was past, he knew he had misbehaved, and was unhappy. and, as he was thoroughly honest, he could not be got to obey his leaders in everything. he wanted to abolish the irish landlords, but he was desirous of abolishing them after some special plan of his own, and could hardly be got to work efficiently in harness together with others. "don't you think your father is making an ass of himself,--just a little, you know?" this was said by lord castlewell to rachel when the session was not yet a fortnight old, and made rachel very unhappy. she did think that her father was making an ass of himself, but she did not like to be told of it. and much as she liked music herself, dear as was her own profession to her, still she felt that, to be a member of parliament, and to have achieved the power of making speeches there, was better than to run after opera singers. she loved the man who was going to marry her very well,--or rather, she intended to do so. he was not to her "love's young dream." but she intended that his lordship should become love's old reality. she felt that this would not become the case, if love's old reality were to tell her often that her father was an ass. lord castlewell's father was, she thought, making an ass of himself. she heard on different sides that he was a foolish, pompous old peer, who could hardly say bo to a goose; but it would not, she thought, become her to tell her future husband her own opinion on that matter. she saw no reason why he should be less reticent in his opinion as to her father. of course he was older, and perhaps she did not think of that as much as she ought to have done. she ought also to have remembered that he was an earl, and she but a singing girl, and that something was due to him for the honour he was doing her. but of this she would take no account. she was to be his wife, and a wife ought to be equal to the husband. such at least was her american view of the matter. in fact, her ideas on the matter ran as follows: my future husband is not entitled to call my father an ass because he is a lord, seeing that my father is a member of parliament. nor is he entitled to call him so because he is an ass, because the same thing is true of his own father. and thus there came to be discord in her mind. "i suppose all parliament people make asses of themselves sometimes, lords as well as commons. i don't see how a man is to go on talking for ever about laws and landleagues, and those sort of things without doing so. it is all bosh to me. and so i should think it must be to you, as you don't do it. but i do not think that father is worse than anybody else; and i think that his words are sometimes very beautiful." "why, my dear, there is not a man about london who is not laughing at him." "i saw in _the times_ the other day that he is considered a very true and a very honest man. of course, they said that he talked nonsense sometimes; but if you put the honesty against the nonsense, he will be as good as anybody else." "i don't think you understand, my dear. honesty is not what they want." "oh!" "but what they don't want especially is nonsense." "poor papa! but he doesn't mean to consult them as to what they want. his idea is that if everybody can be got to be honest this question may be settled among them. but it must be talked about, and he, at any rate, is eloquent. i have heard it said that there was not a more eloquent man in new york. i think he has got as many good gifts as anyone else." in this way there rose some bad feeling. lord castlewell did think that there was something wanting in the manner in which he was treated by his bride. he was sure that he loved her, but he was sure also that when a lord marries a singing girl he ought to expect some special observance. and the fact that the singing girl's father was a member of parliament was much less to him than to her. he, indeed, would have been glad to have the father abolished altogether. but she had become very proud of her father since he had become a member of parliament. her ideas of the british constitution were rather vague; but she thought that a member of parliament was at least as good as a lord who was not a peer. he had his wealth; but she was sure that he was too proud to think of that. just at this period, when the session was beginning, rachel began to doubt the wisdom of what she was doing. the lord was, in truth, good enough for her. he was nearly double her age, but she had determined to disregard that. he was plain, but that was of no moment. he had run after twenty different women, but she could condone all that, because he had come at last to run after her. for his wealth she cared nothing,--or less than nothing, because by remaining single she could command wealth of her own;--wealth which she could control herself, and keep at her own banker's, which she suspected would not be the case with lord castlewell's money. but she had found the necessity of someone to lean upon when frank jones had told her that he would not marry her, and she had feared mr. moss so much that she had begun to think that he would, in truth, frighten her into doing some horrible thing. as frank had deserted her, it would be better that she should marry somebody. lord castlewell had come, and she had felt that the fates were very good to her. she learned from the words of everybody around,--from her new friends at covent garden, and from her old enemies at "the embankment," and from her father himself, that she was the luckiest singing girl at this moment known in europe. "by g----, she'll get him!" such had been the exclamation made with horror by mr. moss, and the echo of it had found its way to her ears. the more mr. moss was annoyed, the greater ought to have been her delight. but,--but was she in truth delighted? as she came to think of the reality she asked herself what were the pleasures which were promised to her. did she not feel that a week spent with frank jones in some little cottage would be worth a twelvemonth of golden splendour in the "marble halls" which lord castlewell was supposed to own? and why had frank deserted her? simply because he would not come with her and share her money. frank, she told herself, was, in truth, a gallant fellow. she did love frank. she acknowledged so much to herself again and again. and yet she was about to marry lord castlewell, simply because her doing so would be the severest possible blow to her old enemy, mr. moss. then she asked herself what would be best for her. she had made for herself a great reputation, and she did not scruple to tell herself that this had come from her singing. she thought very much of her singing, but very little of her beauty. a sort of prettiness did belong to her; a tiny prettiness which had sufficed to catch frank jones. she had laughed about her prettiness and her littleness a score of times with ada and edith, and also with frank himself. there had been the three girls who had called themselves "beauty and the beast" and the "small young woman." the reader will understand that it had not been ada who had chosen those names; but then ada was not given to be witty. her prettiness, such as it was, had sufficed, and frank had loved her dearly. then had come her great triumph, and she knew not only that she could sing, but that the world had recognised her singing. "i am a great woman, as women go," she had said to herself. but her singing was to come to an end for ever and ever on the st of may next. she would be the countess of castlewell, and in process of time would be the marchioness of beaulieu. but she never again would be a great woman. she was selling all that for the marble halls. was she wise in what she was doing? she had lain awake one long morning striving to answer the question for herself. "if nobody else should come, of course i should be an ugly old maid," she said to herself; "but then frank might perhaps come again,--frank might come again,--if mr. moss did not intervene in the meantime." but at last she acknowledged to herself that she had given the lord a promise. she would keep her promise, but she could not bring herself to exult at the prospect. she must take care, however, that the lord should not triumph over her. the lord had called her father an ass. she certainly would say a rough word or two if he abused her father again. this was the time of the "suspects." mr. o'mahony had already taken an opportunity of expressing an opinion in the house of commons that every honest man, every patriotic man, every generous man, every man in fact who was worth his salt, was in ireland locked up as a "suspect," and in saying so managed to utter very bitter words indeed respecting him who had the locking up of these gentlemen. poor mr. o'mahony had no idea that he might have used with propriety as to this gentleman all the epithets of which he believed the "suspects" to be worthy; but instead of doing so he called him a "disreputable jailer." it is not pleasant to be called a disreputable jailer in the presence of all the best of one's fellow citizens, but the man so called in this instance only smiled. mr. o'mahony had certainly made himself ridiculous, and the whole house were loud in their clamours at the words used. but that did not suffice. the speaker reprimanded mr. o'mahony and desired him to recall the language and apologise for it. then there arose a loud debate, during which the member of the government who had been assailed declared that mr. o'mahony had not as yet been quite long enough in the house to learn the little details of parliamentary language; mr. o'mahony would no doubt soften down his eloquence in course of time. but the speaker would not be content with this, and was about to order the sinner to be carried away by the sergeant-at-arms, when a friend on his right and a friend on his left, and a friend behind him, all whispered into his ear how easy it is to apologise in the house of commons. "you needn't say he isn't a disreputable jailer, but only call him a distasteful warder;--anything will do." this came from the gentleman at mr. o'mahony's back, and the order for his immediate expulsion was ringing in his ears. he had been told that he was ridiculous, and could feel that it would be absurd to be carried somewhere into the dungeons. and the man whom he certainly detested at the present moment worse than any other scoundrel on the earth, had made a good-natured apology on his behalf. if he were carried away now, he could never come back again without a more serious apology. then, farewell to all power of attacking the jailer. he did as the man whispered into his ear, and begged to substitute "distasteful warder" for the words which had wounded so cruelly the feelings of the right honourable gentleman. then he looked round the house, showing that he thought that he had misbehaved himself. after that, during mr. o'mahony's career as a member of parliament, which lasted only for the session, he lost his self-respect altogether. he had been driven to withdraw the true wrath of his eloquence from him "at whose brow," as he told rachel the next morning, "he had hurled his words with a force that had been found to be intolerable." mr. o'mahony had undoubtedly made himself an ass again on this second, third, and perhaps tenth occasion. this was not the ass he had made himself on the occasion to which lord castlewell had referred. but yet he was a thoroughly honest, patriotic man, desirous only of the good of his country, and wishing for nothing for himself. is it not possible that as much may be said for others, who from day to day so violently excite our spleen, as to make us feel that special irishmen selected for special constituencies are not worthy to be ranked with men? you shall take the whole house of commons, indifferent as to the side on which they sit,--some six hundred and thirty out of the number,--and will find in conversation that the nature of the animal, the absurdity, the selfishness, the absence of all good qualifies, are taken for granted as matters admitting of no dispute. but here was mr. o'mahony, as hot a home-ruler and landleaguer as any of them, who was undoubtedly a gentleman,--though an american gentleman. can it be possible that we are wrong in our opinions respecting the others of the set? rachel heard it all the next day, and, living as she did among italians and french, and theatrical americans, and english swells, could not endeavour to make the apology which i have just made for the irish brigade generally. she knew that her father had made an ass of himself. all the asinine proportions of the affair had been so explained to her as to leave no doubt on her mind as to the matter. but the more she was sure of it, the more resolved she became that lord castlewell should not call her father an ass. she might do so,--and undoubtedly would after her own fashion,--but no such privilege should be allowed to him. "oh! father, father," she said to him the next morning, "don't you think you've made a goose of yourself?" "yes, i do." "then, don't do it any more." "yes, i shall. it isn't so very easy for a man not to make a goose of himself in that place. you've got to sit by and do nothing for a year or two. it is very difficult. a man cannot afford to waste his time in that manner. there is all ireland to be regenerated, and i have to learn the exact words which the prudery of the house of commons will admit. of course i have made a goose of myself; but the question is whether i did not make a knave of myself in apologising for language which was undoubtedly true. only think that a man so brutal, so entirely without feelings, without generosity, without any touch of sentiment, should be empowered by the queen of england to lock up, not only every irishman, but every american also, and to keep them there just as long as he pleases! and he revels in it. i do believe that he never eats a good breakfast unless half-a-dozen new 'suspects' are reported by the early police in the morning; and i am not to call such a man a 'disreputable jailer.' i may call him a 'distasteful warder.' it's a disgrace to a man to sit in such a house and in such company. of course i was a goose, but i was only a goose according to the practices of that special duck-pond." mr. o'mahony, as he said this, walked about angrily, with his hands in his breeches' pockets, and told himself that no honest man could draw the breath of life comfortably except in new york. "i don't know much about it, father," said rachel, "but i think you'd better cut and run. your twenty men will never do any good here. everybody hates them who has got any money, and their only friends are just men as mr. pat carroll, of ballintubber." then, later in the day, lord castlewell called to drive his bride in the park. he had so far overcome family objections as to have induced his sister, lady augusta montmorency, to accompany him. lady augusta had been already introduced to rachel, but had not been much prepossessed. lady augusta was very proud of her family, was a religious woman, and was anything but contented with her brother's manner of life. but it was no doubt better that he should marry rachel than not be married at all; and therefore lady augusta had allowed herself to be brought to accompany the singing girl upon this occasion. she was, in truth, an uncommonly good young woman; not beautiful, not clever, but most truly anxious for the welfare of her brother. it had been represented to her that her brother was over head and ears in love with the young lady, and looking at the matter all round, she had thought it best to move a little from her dignity so as to take her sister-in-law coldly by the hand. it need hardly be said that rachel did not like being taken coldly by the hand, and, with her general hot mode of expression, would have declared that she hated augusta montmorency. now, the two entered the room together, and rachel kissed lady augusta, while she gave only her hand to lord castlewell. but there was something in her manner on such occasions which was intended to show affection,--and did show it very plainly. in old days she could decline to kiss frank in a manner that would set frank all on fire. it was as much as to say--of course you've a right to it, but on this occasion i don't mean to give it to you. but lord castlewell was not imaginative, and did not think of all this. rachel had intended him to think of it. "oh, my goodness!" began the lord, "what a mess your father did make of it last night." and he frowned as he spoke. rachel, as an intended bride--about to be a bride in two or three months--did not like to be frowned at by the man who was to marry her. "that's as people may think, my lord," she said. "you don't mean to say that you don't think he did make a mess of it?" "of course he abused that horrid man. everybody is abusing him." "as for that, i'm not going to defend the man." for lord castlewell, though by no means a strong politician, was a tory, and unfortunately found himself agreeing with rachel in abusing the members of the government. "then why do you say that father made a mess of it?" "everybody is talking about it. he has made himself ridiculous before the whole town." "what! lord castlewell," exclaimed rachel. "i do believe your father is the best fellow going; but he ought not to touch politics. he made a great mistake in getting into the house. it is a source of misery to everyone connected with him." "or about to be connected with him," said lady augusta, who had not been appeased by the flavour of rachel's kiss. "there's time enough to think about it yet," said rachel. "no, there's not," said lord castlewell, who intended to express in rather a gallant manner his intention of going on with the marriage. "but i can assure you there is," said rachel, "ample time. there shall be no time for going on with it, if my father is to be abused. as it happens, you don't agree with my father in politics. i, as a woman, should have to call myself as belonging to your party, if we be ever married. i do not know what that party is, and care very little, as i am not a politician myself. and i suppose if we were married, you would take upon yourself to abuse my father for his politics, as he might abuse you. but while he is my father, and you are not my husband, i will not bear it. no, thank you, lady augusta, i will not drive out to-day. 'them's my sentiments,' as people say; and perhaps your brother had better think them over while there's time enough." so saying, she did pertinaciously refuse to be driven by the noble lord on that occasion. chapter xxxvi. rachel writes about her lovers. what a dear fellow is frank jones. that was rachel's first idea when lord castlewell left her. it was an idea she had driven from out of her mind with all the strength of which she was capable from the moment in which his lordship had been accepted. "he never shall be dear to me again," she had said, thinking of what would be due to her husband; and she had disturbed herself, not without some success, in expelling frank jones from her heart. it was not right that the future lady castlewell should be in love with frank jones. but now she could think about frank jones as she pleased. what a dear fellow is frank jones! now, it certainly was the case that lord castlewell was not a dear fellow at all. he was many degrees better than mr. moss, but for a dear fellow!--she only knew one. and she did tell herself now that the world could hardly be a happy world to her without one dear fellow,--at any rate, to think of. but he had positively refused to marry her! but yet she did not in the least doubt his love. "i'm a little bit of a thing," she said to herself; "but then he likes little bits of things. at any rate, he likes one." and then she had thought ever so often over the cause which had induced frank to leave her. "why shouldn't he take my money, since it is here to be taken? it is all a man's beastly pride!" but then again she contradicted the assertion to herself. it was a man's pride, but by no means beastly. "if i were a man," she went on saying, "i don't think i should like to pay for my coat and waistcoat with money which a woman had earned; and i should like it the less, because things at home, in my own house, were out of order." and then again she thought of it all. "i should be an idiot to do that. everybody would say so. what! to give up my whole career for a young man's love,--merely that i might have his arm round my waist? i to do it, who am the greatest singer of my day, and who can, if i please, be countess of castlewell to-morrow! that were losing the world for love, indeed! can any man's love be worth it? and i am going on to become such a singer as the world does not possess another like me. i know it. i feel it daily in the increasing sweetness of the music made. i see it in the wakeful eagerness of men's ears, waiting for some charm of sound,--some wonderful charm,--which they hardly dare to expect, but which always comes at last. i see it in the eyes of the women, who are hardly satisfied that another should be so great. it comes in the worship of the people about the theatre, who have to tell me that i am their god, and keep the strings of the sack from which money shall be poured forth upon them. i know it is coming, and yet i am to marry the stupid earl because i have promised him. and he thinks, too, that his reflected honours will be more to me than all the fame that i can earn for myself. to go down to his castle, and to be dumb for ever, and perhaps to be mother of some hideous little imp who shall be the coming marquis. everything to be abandoned for that,--even frank jones. but frank jones is not to be had! oh, frank jones, frank jones! if you could come and live in such a marble hall as i could provide for you! it should have all that we want, but nothing more. but it could not have that self-respect which it is a man's first duty in life to achieve." but the thought that she had arrived at was this,--that with all her best courtesy she would tell the earl of castlewell to look for a bride elsewhere. but she would do nothing in a hurry. the lord had been very civil to her, and she, on her part, would be as civil to the lord as circumstances admitted. and she had an idea in her mind that she could not at a moment's notice dismiss this lord and be as she was before. her engagement with the lord was known to all the musical world. the mosses and socanis spent their mornings, noons, and nights in talking about it,--as she well knew. and she was not quite sure that the lord had given her such a palpable cause for quarrelling as to justify her in throwing him over. and when she had as it were thrown him over in her mind, she began to think of other causes for regret. after all, it was something to be countess of castlewell. she felt that she could play the part well, in spite of all lady augusta's coldness. she would soon live the lady augusta down into a terrible mediocrity. and then again, there would be dreams of frank jones. frank jones had been utterly banished. but if an elderly gentleman is desirous that his future wife shall think of no frank jones, he had better not begin by calling the father of that young lady a ridiculous ass. she was much disturbed in mind, and resolved that she would seek counsel from her old correspondent, frank's sister. "dearest edith," she began, i know you will let me write to you in my troubles. i am in such a twitter of mind in consequence of my various lovers that i do not know where to turn; nor do i quite know whom i am to call lover number one. therefore, i write to you to ask advice. dear old frank used to be lover number one. of course i ought to call him now mr. francis jones, because another lover is really lover number one. i am engaged to marry, as you are well aware, no less a person than the earl of castlewell; and, if all things were to go prosperously with me, i should in a short time be the marchioness of beaulieu. did you ever think of the glory of being an absolutely live marchioness? it is so overwhelming as to be almost too much for me. i think that i should not cower before my position, but that i should, on the other hand, endeavour to soar so high that i should be consumed by my own flames. then there is lover number three--mr. moss--who, i do believe, loves me with the truest affection of them all. i have found him out at last. he wishes to be the legal owner of all the salaries which the singer of la beata may possibly earn; and he feels that, in spite of all that has come and gone, it is yet possible. of all the men who ever forgave, mr. moss is the most forgiving. now, which am i to take of these three? of course, if you are the honest girl i take you to be, you will write back word that one, at any rate, is not in the running. mr. francis jones has no longer the honour. but what if i am sure that he loves me; and what, again, if i am sure that he is the only one i love? let this be quite--quite--between ourselves. i am beginning to think that because of frank jones i cannot marry that gorgeous earl. what if frank jones has spoiled me altogether? would you wish to see me on this account delivered over to mr. mahomet moss as a donkey between two bundles of hay? tell me what you think of it. he won't take my money. but suppose i earn my money for another season or two? would not your irish brutalities be then over; and my father's eloquence, and the eccentricities of the other gentlemen? and would not your brother and your father have in some way settled their affairs? surely a little money won't then be amiss, though it may have come from the industry of a hard-worked young woman. of course i am asking for mercy, because i am absolutely devoted to a certain young man. you need not tell him that in so many words; but i do not see why i am to be ashamed of my devotion,--seeing that i was not ashamed of my engagement, and boasted of it to all the world. and i have done nothing since to be ashamed of. you have never told me a word of your young man; but the birds of the air are more communicative than some friends. a bird of the air has told me of you, and of ada also, and had made me understand that from ada has come all that sweetness which was to be expected from her. but from you has not come that compliance with your fate in life which circumstances have demanded. your affectionate friend, rachel o'mahony. it could not but be the case that edith should be gratified by the receipt of such a letter as this. frank was now at home, and was terribly down in the mouth. boycotting had lost all its novelty at morony castle. his sisters had begun to feel that it was a pleasant thing to have their butter made for them, and pleasant also not to be introduced to a leg of mutton till it appeared upon the table. frank, too, had become very tired of the work which fell to his lot, though he had been relieved in the heaviest labours of the farm by "emergency" men, who had been sent to him from various parts of ireland. but he was thoroughly depressed in heart, as also was his father. months had passed by since pat carroll had stood in the dock at galway ready for his trial. he was now, in march, still kept in galway jail under remand from the magistrates. a great clamour was made in the county upon the subject. florian's murder had stirred all those who were against the league to feel that the government should be supported. but there had been a mystery attached to that other murder, perpetrated in the court, which had acted strongly on the other side,--on behalf of the league. the murder of terry carroll at the moment in which he was about to give evidence,--false evidence, as the leaguers said,--against his brother was a great triumph to them. it was used as an argument why pat carroll should be no longer confined, while florian's death had been a reason why he never should be released at all. all this kept the memory of florian's death, and the constant thought of it, still fresh in the minds of them all at morony castle, together with the poverty which had fallen upon them, had made the two men weary of their misfortunes. under such misfortunes, when continued, men do become more weary than women. but edith thought there would be something in the constancy of rachel's love to cheer her brother, and therefore the letter made her contented if not happy. for herself, she said to herself no love could cheer her. captain clayton still hung about tuam and headford, but his presence in the neighbourhood was always to be attributed to the evidence of which he was in search as to florian's death. it seemed now with him that the one great object of his heart was the unravelling of that murder. "it was no mystery," as he said over and over again in edith's hearing. he knew very well who had fired the rifle. he could see, in his mind's eye, the slight form of the crouching wretch as he too surely took his aim from the temporary barricade. the passion had become so strong with him of bringing the man to justice that he almost felt, that between him and his god he could swear to having seen it. and yet he knew that it was not so. to have the hanging of that man would be to him a privilege only next to that of possessing edith jones. and he was a sanguine man, and did believe that in process of time both privileges would be vouchsafed to him. but edith was less sanguine. she could not admit to herself the possibility that there should be successful love between her and her hero. his presence there in the neighbourhood of her home was stained by constant references to her brother's blood. and then, though there was no chance for ada, ada's former hopes militated altogether against edith. "he had better go away and just leave us to ourselves," she said to herself. but yet neither was she nor was ada sunk so low in heart as her father and her brother. "frank," she said to her brother, "whom do you think this letter is from?" and she held up in her hand rachel's epistle. "i care not at all, unless it be from that most improbable of all creatures, a tenant coming to pay his rent." "nothing quite so beautiful as that." "or from someone who has evidence to give about some of these murders that are going on?"--a mr. morris from the other side of the lake, in county mayo, had just been killed, and the minds of men were now disturbed with this new horror.--"anybody can kill anybody who has a taste in that direction. what a country for a man with his family to pitch upon and live in! and that all this should have been kept under so long by policemen and right-thinking individuals, and then burst out like a subterranean fire all over the country, because the hope has been given them of getting their land for nothing! in order to indulge in wholesale robbery they are willing at a moment's notice to undertake wholesale murder." after listening to words such as these, edith found it impossible to introduce rachel's letter on the spur of the moment. chapter xxxvii. rachel is ill. rachel, before the end of march, received the following letter from her friend, but she received it in bed. the whole world of covent garden theatre had been thrown into panic-stricken dismay by the fact that miss o'mahony had something the matter with her throat. this was the second attack, the first having been so short as to have caused no trepidations in the world of music; but this was supposed to be sterner in its nature, and to have caused already great alarm. before march was over it was published to the world at large that miss o'mahony would not be able to sing during the forthcoming week. in this catastrophe her lordly lover was of course the most sedulous of attendants. in truth he was so, though when we last met him and his bride together he had made himself very disagreeable. rachel had then answered him in such language as to make her think it impossible that he should not quarrel with her; but still here he was, constant at her chamber door. whether his constancy was due to his position about the theatre or to his ardour as a lover, she did not know; but in either case it troubled her somewhat, and interfered with her renewed dreams about frank. then came the following letter from frank's sister: dear rachel, i am not very much surprised, though i was a little, that you should have accepted lord castlewell; but i had not quite known the ins and outs of it, not having been there to see. frank says that the separation had certainly come from him, because he could not bring himself to burden your prosperity with the heavy load of his misfortunes. poor fellow! they are very heavy. they would have made you both miserable for awhile, unless you could have agreed to postpone your marriage. why should it not have been postponed? but lord castlewell came in the way, and i supposed him naturally to be as beautiful and gracious as he is gorgeous and rich. but though you say nothing about him there does creep out from your letter some kind of idea that he is not quite so beautiful in your eyes as was poor frank. remember that poor frank has to wear two blue shirts a week and no more, in order to save the washing! how many does lord castlewell wear? how many will he wear when he is a marquis? but at any rate it does seem to be the case that you and the earl are not as happy together as your best friends could wish. we had understood that the earl was ready to expire for love at the sound of every note. has he slackened in his admiration so as to postpone his expiring to the close of every song? or why is it that frank should be allowed again to come up and trouble your dreams? you are so fond of joking that it is almost impossible for a poor steady-going, boycotted young woman to follow you to the end. of course i understand that what you say about mr. moss is altogether a joke. but then what you say about frank is, i am sure, not a joke. if you love him the best, as i am sure you do--so very much the best as to disregard the marble halls--i advise you, in the gentlest manner possible, to tell the marble halls that they are not wanted. it cannot be right to marry one man when you say that you love another as you do frank. of course he will wait if you like to wait. all i can say is, that no man loves a girl better than he loves you. we are very much down in the world at the present. we have literally no money. papa's relatives have given their money to him to invest, and he has laid it out on the property here. nobody was thought to have done so well as he till lately; but now they cannot get their interest, and, of course, they are impatient. commissioners have sat in the neighbourhood, and have reduced the rents all round. but they can't reduce what doesn't exist. there are tenants who i suppose will pay. pat carroll could certainly have done so. but then papa's share in the property will be reduced almost to nothing. he will not get above five shillings out of every twenty shillings of rent, such as it was supposed to be when he bought it. i don't understand all this, and i am sure i cannot make you do so. i have nothing to tell about my young man, as you call him, except that he cannot be mine. i fancy that girls are not fond of writing about their young men when they don't belong to them. frank, at any rate, is yours, if you will take him; and you can write about him with an open heart. i cannot do so. think of poor florian and his horrid death. is this a time for marriage,--if it were otherwise possible,--which it is not? god bless you, dear rachel. let me hear from you again soon. i have said nothing to frank as yet. i attempted it this morning, but was stopped. you can imagine that he, poor fellow, is not very happy.--yours very affectionately, edith jones. rachel read the letter on her sick bed, and as soon as it was read lord castlewell came to her. there was always a nurse there, but lord castlewell was supposed to be able to see the patient, and on one occasion had been accompanied by his sister. it was all done in the most proper form imaginable, much to rachel's disgust. incapable as she was in her present state of carrying on any argument, she was desirous of explaining to lord castlewell that he was not to hold himself as bound to marry her. "if you think that father is an ass, you had better say so outright, and let there be an end of it." she wished to speak to him after this fashion. but she could not say it in the presence of the nurse and of lady augusta. but lord castlewell's conduct to herself made her more anxious than ever to say something of the kind. he was very civil, even tender, in his inquiries, but he was awfully frigid. she could tell from his manner that that last speech of hers was rankling in his bosom as the frigid words fell from his lips. he was waiting for some recovery,--a partial recovery would be better than a whole one,--and then he would speak his mind. she wanted to speak her mind first, but she could hardly do so with her throat in its present condition. she had no other friend than her father, no other friend to take her part with her lovers. and she had, too, fallen into such a state that she could not say much to him. according to the orders of the physician, she was not to interest herself at all about anything. "i wonder whether the man was ever engaged to two or three lovers at once," she said to herself, alluding to the doctor. "he knows at any rate of lord castlewell, and does he think that i am not to trouble myself about him?" she had a tablet under her pillow, which she took out and wrote on it certain instructions. "dear father, c. and i quarrelled before i was ill at all, and now he comes here just as though nothing had happened. he said you made an ass of yourself in the house of commons. i won't have it, and mean to tell him so; but i can't talk. won't you tell him from me that i shall expect him to beg my pardon, and that i shall never hear anything of the kind again. it must come to this. your own r." this was handed to mr. o'mahony by rachel that very day before he went down to the house of commons. "but, my dear!" he said. rachel only shook her head. "i can hardly say all this about myself. i don't care twopence whether he thinks me an ass or not." "but i do," said rachel on the tablet. "he is an earl, and has wonderful privileges, as well as a great deal of money." "marble halls and impudence," said rachel on the tablet. then mr. o'mahony, feeling that he ought to leave her in peace, made her a promise, and went his way. at covent garden that evening he met the noble lord, having searched for him in vain at westminster. he was much more likely to find lord castlewell among the singers of the day, than with the peers; but of these things mr. o'mahony hardly understood all the particulars. "well, o'mahony, how is your charming daughter?" "my daughter is not inclined to be charming at all. i do hope she may be getting better, but at present she is bothering her head about you." "it is natural that she should think of me a little sometimes," said the flattered lord. "she has written me a message which she says that i am to deliver. now mind, i don't care about it the least in the world." here the lord looked very grave. "she says that you called me an ass. well, i am to you, and you're an ass to me. i am sure you won't take it as any insult, neither do i. she wants you to promise that you won't call me an ass any more. of course it would follow that i shouldn't be able to call you one. we should both be hampered, and the truth would suffer. but as she is ill, perhaps it would be better that you should say that you didn't mean it." but this was not at all lord castlewell's view of the matter. though he had been very glib with his tongue in calling o'mahony an ass, he did not at all like the compliment as paid back to him by his father-in-law. and there was something which he did not quite understand in the assertion that the truth would suffer. all the world was certain that mr. o'mahony was an ass. he had been turned out of the house of commons only yesterday for saying that the speaker was quite wrong, and sticking to it. there was not the slightest doubt in the world about it. but his lordship knew his gamut, which was all that he pretended to know, and never interfered with matters of which he was ignorant. he was treated with the greatest respect at covent garden, and nobody ever suspected him of being an ass. and then he had it in his mind to speak very seriously to rachel as soon as she might be well enough to hear him. "you have spoken to me in a manner, my dear, which i am sure you did not intend." he had all the words ready prepared on a bit of paper in his pocket-book. and he was by no means sure but that the little quarrel might even yet become permanent. he had discussed it frequently with lady augusta, and lady augusta rather wished that it might become permanent. and lord castlewell was not quite sure that he did not wish it also. the young lady had a way of speaking about her own people which was not to be borne. and now she had been guilty of the gross indecency of sending a message to him by her own father,--the very man whom he called an ass. and the man in return only laughed and called him an ass. but lord castlewell knew the proprieties of life. here was this--girl whom he had proposed to marry, a sad invalid at the moment. the doctor had, in fact, given him but a sad account of the case. "she has strained her voice continually till it threatens to leave her," said the doctor; "i do not say that it will be so, but it may. her best chance will be to abandon all professional exertions till next year." then the doctor told him that he had not as yet taken upon himself to hint anything of all this to miss o'mahony. lord castlewell was puzzled in the extreme. if the lady lost her voice and so became penniless and without a profession; and if he in such case were to throw her over, and leave her unmarried, what would the world say of him? would it be possible then to make the world understand that he had deserted her, not on account of her illness, but because she had not liked to hear her father called an ass. and had not rachel already begun the battle in a manner intended to show that she meant to be the victor? could it be possible that she herself was desirous of backing out. there was no knowing the extent of the impudence to which these americans would not go! no doubt she had, by the use of intemperate language on the occasion when she would not be driven out in the carriage, given him ample cause for a breach. to tell the truth, he had thought then that a breach would be expedient. but she had fallen ill, and it was incumbent on him to be tender and gentle. then, from her very sick bed, she had sent him this impudent message. and it had been delivered so impudently! "the truth would suffer!" he was sure that there was a meaning in the words intended to signify that he, lord castlewell, was and must be an ass at all times. then he asked himself whether he was an ass because he did not quite understand o'mahony's argument. why did the truth suffer? as to his being an ass,--o'mahony being an ass,--he was sure that there was no doubt about that. all the world said so. the house of commons knew it,--and the newspapers. he had been turned out of the house for saying the speaker was wrong, and not apologising for having uttered such words. and he, lord castlewell, had so expressed himself only to the woman who was about to be his wife. then she had had the incredible folly to tell her father, and the father had told him that under certain circumstances the "truth must suffer." he did not quite understand it, but was sure that mr. o'mahony had meant to say that they were two fools together. he was not at all ashamed of marrying a singing girl. it was the thing he would be sure to do. and he thought of some singing girls before his time, and of his time also, whom it would be an honour for such as him to marry. but he would degrade himself--so he felt--by the connection with an advanced landleaguing member of parliament. he looked round the lot of them, and he assured himself that there was not one from whose loins an english nobleman could choose a wife without disgrace. it was most unfortunate,--so he told himself. the man had not become member of parliament till quite the other day. he had not even opened his mouth in parliament till the engagement had been made. and now, among them all, this o'mahony was the biggest ass. and yet lord castlewell found himself quite unable to hold his own with the irish member when the irish member was brought to attack him. he certainly would have made rachel's conduct a fair excuse for breaking with her,--only that she was ill. if he could have known the state of rachel's mind there might have been an end to his troubles. she had now, at length, been made thoroughly wretched by hearing the truth from the doctor,--or what the doctor believed to be the truth. "miss o'mahony, i had better tell you, your voice has gone, at any rate for a year." "for a year!" the hoarse, angry, rusty whisper came forth from her, and in spite of its hoarseness and rustiness was audible enough. "i fear so. for heaven's sake don't talk; use your tablet." rachel drew the tablet from under her pillow and dashed it across the room. the doctor picked it up, and, with a kind smile and a little caressing motion of his hand, put it again back under the pillow. rachel buried her head amidst the bedclothes and sobbed bitterly. "try to make yourself happy in remembering how you have succeeded," said the doctor. "it won't be back just the same," she wrote on her tablet. "it is in god's hands," said the doctor. there came not another word from rachel, either by her tablet or by any struggle at speech. the doctor, having made what attempts at comfort he could, went his way. then her father, who had been in and out constantly, came to his daughter. he had not been present when she threw the tablet away, but he knew what the doctor had said to her. "my pet," he said. but she made no attempt to answer him. a year! at her time of life a year is an eternity. and then this doctor had only told her that her voice was in god's hands. she could talk to herself without any effort. "when they say that they always condemn you. when the doctor tells you that you are in god's hands he means the devil's." she had been so near the gods and goddesses, and now she was no more than any other poor woman. she might be less, as her face had begun to wither with her voice. she had all but succeeded; as for her face, as for the mere look of her, let it go. she told herself that she cared nothing for her appearance. what was lord castlewell to her,--what even was frank's love? to stand on the boards of the theatre and become conscious of the intense silence of the crowd before her,--so intense because the tone of her voice was the one thing desired by all the world. and then to open her mouth and to let the music go forth and to see the ears all erect, as she fancied she could, so that not a sound should be lost,--should not be harvested by the hungry hearers! that was to be a very god! as she told herself of all her regrets, there was not a passing sorrow given to lord castlewell. and what of the other man? "oh, frank, dear frank, you will know it all now. there need be no more taking money." but she did take some comfort at last in that promise of god's hands. when she had come, as it were, to the bitterest moment of her grief, she told herself that, though it might be even at the end of a whole year, there was something to be hoped. chapter xxxviii. lord castlewell is much troubled. when her father had been with her half-an-hour, and was beginning to think that he could escape and go down to the house,--and he had a rod in pickle for the speaker's back, such a rod that the speaker's back should be sore for the rest of the session--rachel began her lengthened conversation with him. in the last half-hour she had made up her mind as to what she would say. but the conversation was so long and intricate, being necessarily carried on by means of her tablet, that poor o'mahony's rod was losing all its pickle. "father, you must go and see lord castlewell at once." "i think, my dear, he understood me altogether when i saw him before, and he seemed to agree with me. i told him i didn't mind being called an ass, but that you were so absurd as to dislike it. in fact, i gave him to understand that we were three asses; but i don't think he'll say it again." "it isn't about that at all," said the tablet. "what else do you want?" then rachel went to work and wrote her demand with what deliberation she could assume. "you must go and tell him that i don't want to marry him at all. he has been very kind, and you mustn't tell him that he's an ass any more. but it won't do. he has proposed to marry me because he has wanted a singing girl; and i think i should have done for him,--only i can't sing." then the father replied, having put himself into such a position on the bed as to read the tablet while rachel was filling it: "but that'll all come right in a very short time." "it can't, and it won't. the doctor says a year; but he knows nothing about it, and says it's in god's hands. he means by that it's as bad as it can be." "but, my dear--" "i tell you it must be so." "but you are engaged. he would never be so base a man as to take your word at such a moment as this. of course he couldn't do it. if you had had small-pox, or anything horrible like that, he would not have been justified." "i'm as ugly as ever i can be," said the tablet, "and as poor a creature." then she stopped her pencil for a moment. "of course he's engaged to you. why, my dear, i'd have to cowhide him if he said a word of the kind." "oh, no!" said the tablet with frantic energy. "but you see if i wouldn't! you see if i don't! i suppose they think a lord isn't to be cowhided in this country. i guess i'll let 'em know the difference." "but i don't love him," said the tablet. "goodness gracious me!" "i don't. when he spoke of you in that way i began to think of it, and i found i hated him. i do hate him like poison, and i want you to tell him so." "that will be very disagreeable," said the father. "never mind the disagreeables. you tell him so. i tell you he won't be the worst pleased of the lot of us. he wanted a singer, and not a landleaguer's daughter; now he hasn't got the singer, but has got the landleaguer's daughter. and i'll tell you something else i want--" "what do you want?" asked the father, when her hand for a moment ceased to scrawl. "i want," she said, "frank jones. now you know all about it." then she hid her face beneath the bedclothes, and refused to write another word. he went on talking to her till he had forgotten the speaker and the rod in pickle. he besought her to think better of it; and if not that, just at present to postpone any action in the matter. he explained to her how very disagreeable it would be to him to have to go to the lord with such a message as she now proposed. but she only enhanced the vehemence of her order by shaking her head as her face lay buried in the pillow. "let it wait for one fortnight," said the father. "no!" said the girl, using her own voice for the effort. then the father slowly took himself off, and making his way to the house of commons, renewed his passion as he went, and had himself again turned out before he had been half-an-hour in the house. the earl was sitting alone after breakfast two or three days subsequently, thinking in truth of his difficulty with rachel. it had come to be manifest to him that he must marry the girl unless something terrible should occur to her. "she might die," he said to himself very sadly, trying to think of cases in which singers had died from neglected throats. and it did make him very sad. he could not think of the perishing of that magnificent treble without great grief; and, after his fashion, he did love her personally. he did not know that he could ever love anyone very much better. he had certainly thought that it would be a good thing that his father and mother and sister should go and live in foreign lands,--in order, in short, that they might never more be heard of to trouble him,--but he did not even contemplate their deaths, so sweet-minded was he. but in the first fury of his love he had thought how nice it would be to be left with his singing girl, and no one to trouble him. now there came across him an idea that something was due to the marquis of beaulieu,--something, that is, to his own future position; and what could he do with a singing girl for his wife who could not sing? he was unhappy as he thought of it all, and would ever and again, as he meditated, be stirred up to mild anger when he remembered that he had been told that "the truth would suffer." he had intended, at any rate, that his singing girl should be submissive and obedient while in his hands. but here had been an outbreak of passion! and here was this confounded o'mahony ready to make a fool of himself at a moment's notice before all the world. at that moment the door was opened and mr. o'mahony was shown into the room. "oh! dear," exclaimed the lord, "how do you do, mr. o'mahony? i hope i see you well." "pretty well. but upon my word, i don't know how to tell you what i've got to say." "has anything gone wrong with rachel?" "not with her illness,--which, however, does not seem to improve. the poor girl! but you'll say she's gone mad." "what do you mean by that?" "i really hardly know how i ought to break it. you must have learned by this time that rachel is a girl determined to have her own way." "well; well; well!" "and, upon my word, when i think of myself, i feel that i have nothing to do but what she bids me." "it's more than you do for the speaker, mr. o'mahony." "yes, it is; i admit that. but rachel, though she is inclined to be tyrannical, is not such a downright positive old blue-bottle nincompoop as that white-wigged king of kings. rachel is bad; but even you can't say that she is bad enough to be speaker of the house of commons. my belief is, that he'll come to be locked up yet." "we have all the highest opinion of him." "it's because you like to be sat upon. you don't want to be allowed to say bo to a goose. i have often heard in my own country--" "but you call yourself an irishman, mr. o'mahony." "never did so in my life. they called me so over there when they wanted to return me to hold my tongue in that house of torment; but i guess it will puzzle the best englishman going to find out whether i'm an american or an irishman. they did something over there to make me an american; but they did nothing to unmake me as an irishman. and there i am, member for cavan; and it will go hard with me if i don't break that speaker's heart before i've done with him. what! i ain't to say that he goes wrong when he never goes right by any chance?" "have you come here this morning, mr. o'mahony, to abuse the speaker?" "by no means. it was you who threw the speaker in my teeth." lord castlewell did acknowledge to himself his own imprudence. "i came here to tell you about my daughter, and upon my word i shall find it more difficult than anything i may have to say to the speaker. i have the most profound contempt for the speaker." "perhaps he returns it." "i don't believe he does, or he wouldn't make so much of me as to turn me out of the house. when a man finds it necessary to remove an enemy, let the cause be what it may, he cannot be said to despise that enemy. now, i wouldn't give a puff of breath to turn him out of the house. in truth, i despise him too much." "he is to be pitied," said the lord, with a gentle touch of irony. "i'll tell you what, lord castlewell--" "don't go on about the speaker, mr. o'mahony,--pray don't." "you always begin,--but i won't. i didn't come here to speak about him at all. and the chairman of committees is positively worse. you know there's a creature called chairman of committees?" "now, mr. o'mahony, i really must beg that you will fight your political battles anywhere but here. i'm not a politician. how is your charming daughter this morning?" "she is anything but charming. i hardly know what to make of her, but i find that i am always obliged to do what she tells me." there was another allusion to the speaker on the lord's tongue, but he restrained himself. "she has sent me here to say that she wants the marriage to be broken off." "good heavens!" "she does. she says that you intend to marry her because she's a singing girl;--and now she can't sing." "not exactly that," said the lord. "and she thinks she oughtn't to have accepted you at all,--that's the truth." the lord's face became very long. "i think myself that it was a little too hurried. i don't suppose you quite knew your own minds." "if miss o'mahony repents--" "well, miss o'mahony does repent. she has got something into her head that i can't quite explain. she thought that she'd do for a countess very well as long as she was on the boards of a theatre. but now that she's to be relegated to private life she begins to feel that she ought to look after someone about her own age." "oh, indeed! is this her message?" "well; yes. it is her message. i shouldn't in such a matter invent it all if she hadn't sent me. i don't know, now i think of it, that she did say anything about her own age. but yet she did," remarked mr. o'mahony, calling to mind the assertion made by rachel that she wanted frank jones. frank jones was about her own age, whereas the lord was as old as her father. "upon my word, i am much obliged to miss o'mahony." "she certainly has meant to be as courteous as she knows how," said mr. o'mahony. "perhaps on your side of the water they have different ideas of courtesy. the young lady sends me word that now she means to retire from the stage she finds i am too old for her." "not that at all," said mr. o'mahony. but he said it in an apologetic tone, as though admitting the truth. lord castlewell, as he sat there for a few moments, acknowledged to himself that rachel possessed certain traits of character which had something fine about them, from whatever side of the water she had come. he was a reasonable man, and he considered that there was a way made for him to escape from this trouble which was not to have been expected. had rachel been an english girl, or an italian, or a norwegian, he would hardly have been let off so easily. as he was an earl, and about to be a marquis, and as he was a rich man, such suitors are not generally given up in a hurry. this young lady had sent word to him that she had lost her voice permanently and was therefore obliged to surrender that high title, that noble name, and those golden hopes which had glistened before her eyes. no doubt he had offered to marry her because of her singing;--that is, he would not have so offered had she not have been a singer. but he could not have departed from his engagement simply because she had become dumb. he quite understood that mr. o'mahony would have been there with his cowhide, and though he was by no means a coward be did not wish to encounter the american member of the house of commons in all his rage. in fact, he had been governed in his previous ideas by a feeling of propriety; but propriety certainly did not demand him to marry a young lady who had sent to tell him that he was too old. and this irate member of the house of commons had come to bring him the message! "what am i expected to suggest now?" said lord castlewell, after awhile. "just your affectionate blessing, and you're very sorry," said mr. o'mahony, with a shrug. "that's the kind of thing, i should say." he couldn't send her his affectionate blessing, and he couldn't say he was very sorry. had the young lady been about to marry his son,--had there been such a son,--he could have blessed her; and he felt that his own personal dignity did not admit of an expression of sorrow. was he to let the young lady off altogether? there was something nearly akin,--very nearly akin,--to true love in his bosom as he thought of this. the girl was ill, and no doubt weak, and had been made miserable by the loss of her voice. the doctor had told him that her voice, for all singing purposes, had probably gone for ever. but her beauty remained;--had not so faded, at least, as to have given any token of permanent decay. and that peculiarly bright eye was there; and the wit of the words which had captivated him. the very smallness of her stature, with its perfect symmetry, had also gone far to enrapture him. no doubt, he was forty. he did not openly pretend even to be less. and where was the young lady, singer or no singer, who if disengaged, would reject the heir to a marquisate because he was forty? and he did not believe that rachel had sent him any message in which allusion was made to his age. that had been added by the stupid father, who was, without doubt, the biggest fool that either america or ireland had ever produced. now that the matter had been brought before him in such bald terms, he was by no means sure that he was desirous of accepting the girl's offer to release him. and the father evidently had no desire to catch him. he must acknowledge that mr. o'mahony was an honest fool. "it's very hard to know what i'm to say." here mr. o'mahony shook his head. "i think that, perhaps, i had better come and call upon her." "you mustn't speak a word! and, if you're to be considered as no longer engaged, perhaps there might be--you know--something--well, something of delicacy in the matter!" mr. o'mahony felt at the moment that he ought to protect the interests of frank jones. "i understand. at any rate i am not disposed to send her my blessing at present as a final step. an engagement to be married is a very serious step in life." but her father remembered that she had told him that she wanted frank jones. should he tell the lord the exact truth, and explain all about frank jones? it would be the honest thing to do. and yet he felt that his girl should have another chance. this lord was not much to his taste; but still, for a lord, he had his good points. "i think we had better leave it for the present," said the lord. "i feel that in the midst of all your eloquence i do not quite catch miss o'mahony's meaning." o'mahony felt that this lord was as bad a lord as any of them. he would like to force the lord to meet him at some debating club where there was no wretched speaker and there force him to give an answer on any of the burning questions which now excited the two countries. "very well. i will explain to rachel as soon as i can that the matter is still left in abeyance. of course we feel the honour done us by your lordship in not desiring to accept at once her decision. her condition is no doubt sad. but i suppose she may expect to hear once more from yourself in a short time." so mr. o'mahony took his leave, and as he went to cecil street endeavoured in his own mind to investigate the character of lord castlewell. that he was a fool there could be no doubt, a fool with whom he would not be forced to live in the constant intercourse of married life for any money that could be offered to him. he was a man who, without singing himself, cared for nothing but the second-hand life of a theatre. but then he, mr. o'mahony, was not a young woman, and was not expected to marry lord castlewell. but he had told himself over and over again that lord castlewell had been "caught." he was a great lord rolling in money, and rachel had "caught" him. he had not quite approved of rachel's conduct, but the lord had been fair game for a woman. what the deuce was he to think now of the lord who would not be let off? "i wonder whether it can be love for her," said he to himself; "such love as i used to feel." then he sighed heavily as he went home. chapter xxxix. captain clayton's first triumph. it was now april, and this april was a sad month in ireland. i do not know why the deaths of two such men as were then murdered should touch the heart with a deeper sorrow than is felt for the fate of others whose lot is lower in life; why the poor widow, who has lost her husband while doing his duty amidst outrages and unmanly revenges, is not to be so much thought of as the sweet lady who has been robbed of her all in the same fashion. but so it is with human nature. we know how a people will weep for their sovereign, and it was with such tears as that, with tears as sincere as those shed for the best of kings, that lord frederick cavendish and mr. burke were lamented. in april these two men had fallen, hacked to death in front of the viceregal lodge. by whom they were killed, as i write now, no one knows, and as regards lord frederick one can hardly guess the reason. he had come over to ireland on that very day, to take the place which his luckier predecessor had just vacated, and had as yet done no service, and excited no vengeance in ireland. he had only attended an opening pageant;--because with him had come a new lord lieutenant,--not new indeed to the office, but new in his return. an accident had brought the two together on the day, but lord frederick was altogether a stranger, and yet he had been selected. such had been his fate, and such also the fate of mr. burke, who, next to him in official rank, may possibly have been in truth the doomed one. they were both dealt with horribly on that april morning,--and all ireland was grieving. all ireland was repudiating the crime, and saying that this horror had surely been done by american hands. even the murderers native to ireland seemed to be thoroughly ashamed of this deed. it would be needless here to tell,--or to attempt to tell,--how one lord-lieutenant had made way for another, and one chief secretary for another chief secretary. it would be trying to do too much. in the pages of a novel the novelist can hardly do more than indicate the sources of the troubles which have fallen upon the country, and can hardly venture to deal with the names and characters of those who have been concerned. for myself, i do most cordially agree with the policy of him in whose place lord frederick had this day suffered,--as far as his conduct in ireland can be read from that which he did and from that which he spoke. as far as he had agreed with the government in their measure for interfering with the price paid for land in the country,--for putting up a new law devised by themselves in lieu of that time-honoured law by which property has ever been protected in england,--i disagree. of my disagreement no one will take notice;--but my story cannot be written without expressing it. but down at morony castle, mingled with their sorrows, there was a joy and a triumph; not loud indeed, not sounded with trumpets, not as yet perfect, not quite assured even in the mind of one man; but yet assuring in the mind of that man,--and indeed of one other,--almost to conviction. that man was captain yorke clayton, and that other man was only poor hunter, the wounded policeman. for such triumph as was theirs a victim is needed; and in this case the victim, the hoped-for victim, was mr. lax. nothing had ever been made out in regard to the murder of terry carroll in the court house at galway. irish mysteries are coming to be unriddled now, but there will be no unriddling of that. yorke clayton, together with hunter and all the police of county galway, could do nothing in regard to that mystery. they had struggled their very best, and, from the nature of the crime, had found themselves almost obliged to discover the perpetrator. the press of the two countries, the newspapers in other respects so hostile to each other, had united in declaring that the police were bound to know all about it. the police had determined to know nothing about it, because the government did not dare to bring forward such evidence. this was the irish landleague view; and though it contained an accusation against the government for having contrived the murder itself, it was all the better on that account. the english papers simply said that the galway police must be fast asleep. this man had been murdered when in the very hands of the officers of justice. the judge had seen the shots fired. the victim fell into the hands of four policemen. the pistol was found at his feet. it was done in daylight, and all galway was looking on. the kind of things that were said by one set of newspapers and another drove yorke clayton almost out of his wits. he had to maintain a show of good humour, and he did maintain it gallantly. "my hero is a hero still," whispered edith to her own pillow. but, in truth, nothing could be done as to that galway case. mr. lax was still in custody, and was advised by counsel not to give any account of himself at that time. it was indecent on the part of the prosecution that he should be asked to do so. so said the lawyers on his side, but it was clear that nobody in the court and nobody in galway could be got to say that he or she had seen him do it. and yet yorke clayton had himself seen the hip of the stooping man. "i suppose i couldn't swear to it," he said to himself; and it would be hard to see how he could swear to the man without forswearing himself. but while this lamentable failure was going on, success reached him from another side. he didn't care a straw what the newspapers said of him, so long as he could hang mr. lax. his triumph in that respect would drown all other failures. mr. lax was still in custody, and many insolent petitions had been made on his behalf in order that he might be set free. "did the crown intend to pretend that they had any shadow of evidence against him as to the shooting of terry carroll?" "no;--but there was another murder committed a day or two before. poor young florian jones had been murdered. even presuming that lax's hand cannot be seen visible in the matter of terry carroll, there is, we think, something to connect him with the other murder. the two, no doubt, were committed in the same interest. the crown is not prepared to allow lax to escape from its hands quite yet." then there were many words on the subject going on just at the time at which lax especially wanted his freedom, and at which, to tell the truth, yorke clayton was near the end of his tether in regard to poor florian. in the beginning of his inquiry as to the ballyglunin murder, he entertained an idea that lax, after firing the shot, had been seen by that wicked car-driver, who had boycotted mr. jones in his great need. the reader will probably have forgotten that mr. jones had required to be driven home to morony castle from ballyglunin station, and had been refused the accommodation by a wicked old landleaguer, who had joined the conspiracy formed in the neighbourhood against mr. jones. he had done so, either in fear of his neighbours, or else in a true patriot spirit--because he had gone without any supper, as had also his horses, on the occasion. the man's name was teddy mooney, the father of kit mooney who stopped the hunting at moytubber. and he certainly was patriotic. from day to day he went on refusing fares,--for the boycotted personages were after all more capable of paying fares than the boycotting hero of doing without them,--suffering much himself from want of victuals, and more on behalf of his poor animal. he saw his son kit more than once or twice in those days, and kit appeared to be the stancher patriot of the two. kit was a baker, and did earn wages; but he utterly refused to subsidise the patriotism of his father. "if ye can't do that for the ould counthry," said kit, "ye ain't half the man i took ye for." but he refused him a gallon of oats for his horse. it was not at once that the old man gave way. he went on boycotting individuals till he hadn't a pair of breeches left to sit upon, and the non-boycotted tradesmen of the little towns around declined to sit upon his car, because the poor horse, fed upon roadside grasses, refused to be urged into a trot. "tare and ages, man, what's the good of it? ain't we a-cutting the noses off our own faces, and that with the money so scarce that i haven't seen the sight of a half-crown this two weeks." it was thus that he declared his purpose of going back to the common unpatriotic ways of mankind, to an old pal, whom he had known all his days. he did do so, but found, alas! that his trade had perished in the meanwhile or forced itself into other channels. the result was that teddy mooney became very bitter in spirit, and was for a while an orangeman, and almost a protestant. the evil things that had been done to him were terrible to his spirit. he had been threatened with eviction from ten acres of ground because he couldn't pay his rent; or, as he said, because he had declined to drive a maid-servant to the house of another gentleman who was also boycotted. this had not been true, but it had served to embitter teddy mooney. and now, at last, he had determined to belong to the other side. when an irishman does make up his mind to serve the other side he is very much determined. there is but the meditation of two minutes between landleaguing and orangeism, between boycotting landlords and thorough devotion to the dear old landlord. when kit mooney had first laid down the law to his father, how he ought to assist in boycotting all the enemies of the landleague, no one saw his way clearer than did teddy mooney. "i wouldn't mind doing without a bit or a sup," he said, when his son explained to him that he might have to suffer a little for the cause. "not a bit or a sup when the ould counthry wants it." he had since had a few words with his son kit, and was now quite on the other side of the question. he was told that somebody had threatened to cut off his old mare's tail because he had driven phil d'arcy. since that he had become a martyr as well as an orangeman, and was disposed to go any length "for the gintl'men." this had come all about by degrees--had been coming about since poor florian's murder; and at last he wrote a letter to yorke clayton, or got someone else to write it: "yer honour,--it was lax as dropped master flory. divil a doubt about it. there's one as can tell more about it as is on the road from ballyglunin all round. this comes from a well-wisher to the ould cause. for muster clayton." when captain clayton received this he at once knew from whom it had come. the landleaguing car-driver, who had turned gentlemen's friend, was sufficiently well known to history to have been talked about. clayton, therefore, did not lose much time in going down to ballyglunin station and requiring to be driven yet once again from thence to carnlough. "and now, mr. teddy mooney," he said, after they had travelled together a mile or two from ballyglunin, and had come almost to the spot at which the poor boy had been shot, "tell me what you know about mr. lax's movements in this part of the world." he had never come there before since the fatal day without having three policemen with him, but now he was alone. such a man as teddy mooney would be most unwilling to open his mouth in the presence of two or more persons. "o lord, captain, how you come on a poor fellow all unawares!" "stop a moment, mr. mooney," and the car stopped. "whereabouts was it the young gentleman perished?" "them's the very shot-holes," said teddy, pointing up to the temporary embrasure, which had indeed been knocked down half a score of times since the murder, and had been as often replaced by the diligent care of mr. blake and captain clayton. "just so. they are the shot-holes. and which way did the murderer run?" teddy pointed with his whip away to the east, over the ground on which the man had made his escape. "and where did you first see him?" "see him!" ejaculated teddy. it became horrible to his imagination as he thought that he was about to tell of such a deed. "of course, we know you did see him; but i want to know the exact spot." "it was over there, nigh to widow dolan's cottage." "it wasn't the widow who saw him, i think?" "faix, it was the widow thin, with her own eyes. i hardly know'd him. and yet i did know him, for i'd seen him once travelling from ballinasloe with pat carroll. and lax is a man as when you've once seen him you've seen him for allays. but she knowed him well. her husband was one of the boys when the fenians were up. if he didn't go into the widow dolan's cabin my name's not teddy mooney." "and who else was there?" "there was no one else; but only her darter, a slip of a girl o' fifteen, come up while lax was there. i know she come up, because i saw her coming jist as i passed the door." captain clayton entered into very friendly relations with teddy mooney on that occasion, trying to make him understand, without any absolute promises, that all the luck and all the rewards,--in fact, all the bacon and oats,--lay on the dish to which mr. lax did not belong. under these influences teddy did become communicative--though he lied most awfully. that did not in the least shock captain clayton, who certainly would have believed nothing had the truth been told him without hesitation. at last it came out that the car-driver was sure as to the personality of lax,--had seen him again and again since he had first made his acquaintance in carroll's company, and could swear to having seen him in the widow's cabin. he knew also that the widow and her daughter were intimate with lax. he had not seen the shot fired. this he said in an assured tone, but captain clayton had known that before. he did not expect to find anyone who had seen the shot fired, except mr. jones and peter. as to peter he had his suspicions. mr. jones was certain that peter had told the truth in declaring that he had seen no one; but the captain had argued the matter out with him. "a fellow of that kind is in a very hard position. you must remember that for the truth itself he cares nothing. he finds a charm rather in the romantic beauty of a lie. lax is to him a lovely object, even though he be aware that he and lax be on different sides. and then he thoroughly believes in lax; thinks that lax possesses some mysterious power of knowing what is in his mind, and of punishing him for his enmity. all the want of evidence in this country comes from belief in the marvellous. the people think that their very thoughts are known to men who make their name conspicuous, and dare not say a word which they suppose that it is desired they shall withhold. in this case peter no doubt is on our side, and would gladly hang lax with his own hand if he were sure he would be safe. but lax is a mysterious tyrant, who in his imagination can slaughter him any day; whereas he knows that he shall encounter no harm from you. he and poor florian were sitting on the car with their backs turned to the embrasure; and peter's attention was given to the driving of the car,--so that there was no ground for thinking that he had seen the murderer. all the circumstances of the moment ran the other way. but still it was possible." and captain clayton was of opinion that peter was beginning to be moved from the determined know-nothingness of his primary evidence. he had seen the flash. and then, as his master had run up the bank, he didn't know whether he hadn't caught the flying figure of a man. "i had the poor boy's head on my knees, captain clayton; and how is a poor man to look much about him then?" in this condition stood captain clayton's mind in regard to peter, when he heard, for the first time, a word about the widow dolan and the widow dolan's daughter. the woman swore by all her gods that she knew nothing of lax. but then she had already fallen into the difficulty of having been selected as capable of giving evidence. it generally happens that no one first person will be found even to indicate others, so that there is no finding a beginning to the case. but when a witness has been indicated, the witness must speak. "the big blackguard!" exclaimed mrs. dolan, when she heard of the evil that had been brought her; "to have the imperence to mention my name!" it was felt, all the country through, to be an impertinence,--for anybody to drag anybody else into the mess of troubles which was sure to arise from an enforced connection with a law court. most unwillingly the circumstances were drawn from mrs. dolan, and with extreme difficulty also from that ingenious young lady her daughter. but, still, it was made to appear that lax had taken refuge in their cottage, and had gone down from thence to a little brook, where he effected the cleansing of his pistol. the young lady had done all in her power to keep her mother silent, but the mother had at last been tempted to speak of the weapon which lax had used. now there was no further question of letting lax go loose from prison! that very irate barrister, mr. o'donnell, who was accustomed to speak of all the landleague criminals as patriotic lambs,--whose lamb-like qualities were exceeded only by their patriotism,--did not dare to intimate such a wish any further. but he did urge, with all that benevolence for which he was conspicuous, that the trial should come on at that immediate spring assizes. a rumour had, however, already reached the ears of captain clayton, and others in his position, that a great alteration was to be effected in the law. this, together with mrs. dolan's evidence, might enable him to hang mr. lax. therefore the trial was postponed;--not, indeed, with outspoken reference as to the new measure, but with much confidence in its resources. it would be useless here to refer to that bill which was to have been passed for trying certain prisoners in ireland without the intervention of a jury, and of the alteration which took place in it empowering the government to alter the venue, and to submit such cases to a selected judge, to selected juries, to selected counties. the irish judges had remonstrated against the first measure, and the second was to be first tried, so that should it fail the judges might yet be called upon to act. such was the law under which criminals were tried in , and the first capital convictions were made under which the country began to breathe freely. but the tidings of the law had got abroad beforehand, and gave a hope of triumph to such men as captain clayton. let a man undertake what duty he will in life, if he be a good man he will desire success; and if he be a brave man he will long for victory. the presence of such a man as lax in the country was an eyesore to captain clayton, which it was his primary duty to remove. and it was a triumph to him now that the time had come in which he might remove him. three times had mr. lax fired at the captain's head, and three times had the captain escaped. "i think he has done with his guns and his pistols now," said captain clayton, in his triumph. chapter xl. yorke clayton again makes love. "i am not quite sure about peter yet," said clayton to mr. jones. "but if we could look into his very soul i am afraid he could not do much for us." "i never believed in peter as a witness," replied mr. jones. "i should like to know exactly what he did see;--whether it was a limb or a bit of his coat. but i think that young lady crept out and saw him cleaning his pistol. and i think that the old lady had a glimpse of the mask. i think that they can be made to say so." "i saw the mask myself, and the muzzle of the rifle;--and i saw the man running as plainly as i see you." "that will all be wanted, mr. jones. but i trust that we may have to summon you to dublin. as things are at present, if lax had been seen in broad daylight firing at the poor boy by a dozen farmers it would do no good in county galway. there is miss edith out there. she is awfully anxious about this wretch who destroyed her brother. i will go and tell her." so captain clayton rushed out, anxious for another cause for triumph. mr. jones had heard of his suit, and had heard also that the suit was made to edith and not to ada. "there is not one in a dozen who would have taken edith," said he to himself,--"unless it be one who saw her with my eyes." but yet he did not approve of the marriage. "they were poverty stricken," he said, and clayton went about from day to day with his life in his hand. "a brave man," he said to himself; "but singularly foolhardy,--unless it be that he wants to die." he had not been called upon for his consent, for edith had never yielded. she, too, had said that it was impossible. "if ada would have suited, it might have been possible, but not between yorke and me." they had both come now to call him by his christian name; and they to him were ada and edith; but with their father he had never quite reached the familiarity of a christian name. mr. jones had, in truth, been so saddened by the circumstances of the last two years that he could not endure the idea of marriages in his family. "of course, if you choose, my dear, you can do as you like," he used to say to edith. "but i don't choose." "what there are left of us should, i think, remain together. i suppose they cannot turn me out of this house. the prime minister will hardly bring in a bill that the estates bought this last hundred years shall belong to the owners of the next century. he can do so, of course, as things go now. there are no longer any lords to stop him, and the house of commons, who want their seats, will do anything he bids them. it's the first lieutenant who looks after ireland, who has ideas of justice with which the angels of light have certainly not filled his mind. that we should get nothing from our purchased property this century, and give it up in the course of the next, is in strict accordance with his thinking. we can depend upon nothing. my brother-in-law can, of course, sell me out any day, and would not stop for a moment. everybody has to get his own, except an irish landlord. but i think we should fare ill all together. your brother is behaving nobly, and i don't think we ought to desert him. of course you can do as you please." then the squire pottered on, wretched in heart; or, rather, down in the mouth, as we say, and gave his advice to his younger daughter, not, in truth, knowing how her heart stood. but a man, when he undertakes to advise another, should not be down in the mouth himself. _equam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem, non secus ac bonis_. if not, your thoughts will be too strongly coloured by your own misfortunes to allow of your advising others. all this edith knew,--except the latin. the meaning of it had been brought home to her by her own light. "poor papa is so hipped," she said to herself, "that he thinks that nobody will ever be happy again." but still she resolved that she would not marry yorke clayton. there had been a mistake, and she had made it,--a miserable blunder for which she was responsible. she did not quite analyse the matter in her own mind, or look into the thoughts of ada, or of yorke himself,--the hero of her pillow; but she continued to tell herself that the proper order of things would not admit it. ada, she knew, wished it. yorke longed for her, more strongly even than for lax, the murderer. for herself, when she would allow her thoughts to stray for a moment in that direction, all the bright azure tints of heaven were open to her. but she had made a mistake, and she did not deserve it. she had been a blind fool, and blind fools deserved no azure tints of heaven. if she could have had her own way she would still have married ada to yorke clayton. when ada told her that she had got over her foolish love, it was the mere babble of unselfishness. feel a passion for such a man as yorke clayton, look into the depth of his blue eyes, and fancy for herself a partnership with the spirit hidden away within, and then get over it! edith was guilty here of the folly of judging of her sister as herself. and as for yorke himself;--a man, she said, always satisfies himself with that which is lovely and beautiful. and with ada he would have such other gifts as so strong a man as yorke always desires in his wife. in temper she was perfect; in unselfishness she was excellent. in all those ways of giving aid, which some women possess and some not at all,--but which, when possessed, go so far to make the comfort of a house,--she was supreme. if a bedroom were untidy, her eye saw it at once. if a thing had to be done at the stroke of noon, she would remember that other things could not be done at the same time. if a man liked his egg half-boiled, she would bear it in her mind for ever. she would know the proper day for making this marmalade and that preserve; and she would never lose her good looks for a moment when she was doing these things. with her little dusting-brush at her girdle, no eyes that knew anything would ever take her for aught but a lady. she was just the wife for yorke clayton. so edith argued it in her own bosom, adding other wondrous mistakes to that first mistake she had made. in thinking of it all she counted herself for nothing, and made believe that she was ugly in all eyes. she would not allow the man to see as his fancy led him; and could not bring herself to think that if now the man should change his mind and offer his hand to ada, it would be impossible that ada should accept it. nor did she perceive that ada had not suffered as she had suffered. "i wanted to catch you just for one moment," said yorke clayton, running out so as to catch his prey. she had half wished to fly from him, and had half told herself that any such flight was foolish. "what is it, yorke?" she said. "i think,--i do think that i have at last got lax upon the hip." "you are so bloody-minded about lax." "what! are you going to turn round and be merciful?" he was her hero, and she certainly felt no mercy towards the murderer of her brother; no mercy towards him who she now thought had planned all the injury done to her father; no mercy towards him who had thrice fired at her beloved. this wretched man had struggled to get the blood of him who was all the world to her; and had been urged on to his black deeds by no thought, by no feeling, that was not in itself as vile as hell! lax was to her a viper so noxious as to be beyond the pale of all mercy. to crush him beneath the heel of her boot, so as to make an end of him, as of any other poisonous animal, was the best mercy to all other human beings. but she had said the word at the spur of the moment, because she had been instigated by her feelings to gainsay her hero, and to contradict him, so that he might think that he was no hero of hers. she looked at him for the moment, and said nothing, though he held her by the arm. "if you say i am to spare him, i will spare him." "no," she answered, "because of your duty." "have i followed this man simply as a duty? have i lain awake thinking of it till i have given to the pursuit such an amount of energy as no duty can require? thrice he has endeavoured to kill me, firing at me in the dark, getting at me from behind hedges, as no one who has anything of the spirit of man in his bosom will do when he strives to destroy his enemy. all that has been nothing. i am a policeman in search of him, and am the natural enemy of a murderer. of course in the ordinary way i would not have spared him; but the ordinary way would have sufficed. had he escaped me i could have laughed at all that. but he took that poor lad's life!" here he looked sadly into her face, and she could see that there was a tear within his eye. "that was much, but that was not all. that lad was your brother, him whom you so dearly loved. he shot down the poor child before his father's face, simply because he had said that he would tell the truth. when you wept, when you tore your hair, when you flung yourself in sorrow upon the body, i told myself that either he or i must die. and now you bid me be merciful." then the big tears dropped down his cheeks, and he began to wail himself,--hardly like a man. and what did edith do? she stood and looked at him for a few moments; then extricated herself from the hold he still had of her, and flung herself into his arms. he put down his face and kissed her forehead and her cheeks; but she put up her mouth and kissed his lips. not once or twice was that kiss given; but there they stood closely pressed to each other in a long embrace. "my hero," she said; "my hero." it had all come at last,--the double triumph; and there was, he felt, no happier man in all ireland than he. he thought, at least, that the double battle had been now won. but even yet it was not so. "captain clayton," she began. "why captain? why clayton?" "my brother yorke," and she pressed both his hands in hers. "you can understand that i have been carried away by my feelings, to thank you as a sister may thank a brother." "i will not have it," he exclaimed fiercely. "you are no sister, nor can i ever be your brother. you are my very own now, and for ever." and he rushed at her again as though to envelop her in his arms, and to crush her against his bosom. "no!" she exclaimed, avoiding him with the activity of a young fawn; "not again. i had to beg your pardon, and it was so i did it." "twenty times you have offended me, and twenty times you must repeat your forgiveness." "no, no, it must not be so. i was wrong to say that you were bloody-minded. i cannot tell why i said so. i would not for worlds have you altered in anything;--except," she said, "in your love for me." "but have you told me nothing?" "i have called you my hero,--and so you are." "nay, edith, it is more than that. it is not for me to remind you, but it is more than that." she stood there blushing before him, over her cheeks and up to her forehead; but yet did not turn away her face. "how am i to tell you why it is more than that? you cannot tell me," she replied. "but, edith--" "you cannot tell me. there are moments for some of us the feelings of which can never be whispered. you shall be my hero and my brother if you will; or my hero and my friend; or, if not that, my hero and my enemy." "never!" "no, my enemy you cannot be; for him who is about to revenge my brother's death no name less sweet than dearest friend will suffice. my hero and my dearest friend!" then she took him by the hand, and turned away from the walk, and, escaping by a narrow path, was seen no more till she met him at dinner with her father and her brother and her sister. "by god! she shall be mine!" said clayton. "she must be mine!" and then he went within, and, finding hunter, read the details of the evidence for the trial of mr. lax in dublin, as prepared by the proper officers in galway city. chapter xli. the state of ireland. it will be well that they who are interested only in the sensational incidents of our story to skip this chapter and go on to other parts of our tale which may be more in accordance with their taste. it is necessary that this one chapter shall be written in which the accidents that occurred in the lives of our three heroines shall be made subordinate to the political circumstances of the day. this chapter should have been introductory and initiative; but the facts as stated will suit better to the telling of my story if they be told here. there can be no doubt that ireland has been and still is in a most precarious condition, that life has been altogether unsafe there, and that property has been jeopardised in a degree unknown for many years in the british islands. it is, i think, the general opinion that these evils have been occasioned by the influx into ireland of a feeling which i will not call american, but which has been engendered in america by irish jealousy, and warmed into hatred by distance from english rule. as far as politics are regarded, ireland has been the vassal of england as poland has been of those masters under which she has been made to serve. she was subjected to much ill-usage, and though she has readily accepted the language, the civilisation, and the customs of england, and has in fact grown rich by adopting them, the memories of former hardships have clung to her, and have made her ready to receive willingly the teachings of those whose only object it has been to undermine the prestige of the british empire. in no respect has she more readily taken to her bosom english practices than in that of the letting and the hiring of land. in various countries, such as italy, russia, france, and the united states, systems have grown up different from that which has prevailed in england. whether the english system or any other may be the best is not now the question. but in answering that question it is material to know that ireland has accepted and, at any rate for two centuries, has followed that system. the landlord has been to his tenants a beneficent or, occasionally, a hard master, and the tenants have acknowledged themselves as dependent, generally with much affection, though not unfrequently with loud complaint. it has been the same in england. questions of tenant-right, of leases, and of the cruelty of evictions have from time to time cropped up in ireland. but rents were readily paid up to and ; though abatements were asked for,--as was the case also in england; and there were men ready to tell the irish from time to time, since the days of o'connell downwards, that they were ill-treated in being kept out of their "ould" properties by the rightful owners. then the american revolt, growing out of smith o'brien's logic and physical force, gave birth to fenianism. the true fenian i take to be one desirous of opposing british power, by using a fulcrum placed on american soil. smith o'brien's logic consisted in his assertion that if his country wished to hammer the british crown, they could only do it by using hammers. smith o'brien achieved little beyond his own exile;--but his words, acting upon his followers, produced fenianism. that died away, but the spirit remained in america; and when english tenants began to clamour for temporary abatements in their rent, the clamours were heard on the other side of the water, and assisted the views of those american-irish who had revivified ribandism and had given birth to the cry of home rule. during the time that this was going on, a long unflagging series of beneficial acts of parliament, and of consequently ameliorated circumstances, had befallen the country. i was told the other day by an irish judge, whose name stands conspicuous among those who are known for their wisdom and their patriotism, by a roman catholic judge too, that in studying the latter laws of the two countries, the laws affecting england and ireland in reference to each other, he knew no law by which england was specially favoured, though he knew various laws redounding to the benefit of ireland. when the cry for some relief to suffering ireland came up, at the time of the duchess of marlborough's fund, it was alleged in proof of ireland's poor condition that there was not work by which the labourers could earn wages. i have known ireland for more than forty years,--say from to . in we paid five shillings a week for the entire work of a man. as far as i can learn, we now pay, on an average, nine shillings for the same. the question is not whether five shillings was sufficient, or whether nine be insufficient, but that the normal increase through the country has been and can be proved to be such as is here declared. i will refer to the banks, which can now be found established in any little town, almost in any village, through the country. fifty years ago they were very much rarer. banks do not spring up without money to support them. the increase of wages,--and the banks also in an indirect manner,--have come from that decrease in the population which followed the potato famine of . the famine and its results were terrible while they lasted; but they left behind them an amended state of things. when man has failed to rule the world rightly, god will step in, and will cause famines, and plagues, and pestilence--even poverty itself--with his own right arm. but the cure was effected, and the country was on its road to a fair amount of prosperity, when the tocsin was sounded in america, and home rule became the cry. ireland has lain as it were between two rich countries. england, her near neighbour, abounds in coal and iron, and has by means of these possessions become rich among the nations. america, very much the more distant, has by her unexampled agricultural resources put herself in the way to equal england. it is necessary,--necessary at any rate for england's safety,--that ireland should belong to her. this is here stated as a fact, and i add my own opinion that it is equally necessary for ireland's welfare. but on this subject there has arisen a feud which is now being fought out by all the weapons of rebellion on one side, and on the other by the force of a dominating government, restrained, as it is found to be, by the self-imposed bonds of a democratic legislature. but there is the feud, and the battle, and the roaring of the cannons is heard afar off. i now purpose to describe in a very few words the nature of the warfare. it may be said that the existence of ireland as a province of england depends on the tenure of the land. if the land were to be taken altogether from the present owners, and divided in perpetuity among any possible number of tenants, so as to be the property of each tenant, without payment of any rent, all england's sense of justice would be outraged, the english power of governing would be destroyed, and all that could then be done by england would be to give a refuge to the present owners till the time should come for righting themselves, and they should be enabled to make some further attempt for the recovery of their possessions. this would probably arrive, if not sooner, from the annihilation of the new proprietors under the hands of their fellow-countrymen to whom none of the spoil had been awarded. but english statesmen,--a small portion, that is, of english statesmen,--have wished in their philanthropy to devise some measure which might satisfy the present tenants of the land, giving them a portion of the spoil; and might leave the landlords contented,--not indeed with their lot, which they would feel to be one of cruel deprivation, but with the feeling that something had at any rate been left to them. a compromise would be thus effected between the two classes whose interests have always been opposed to each other since the world began,--between the owners of property and those who have owned none. the statesmen in question have now come into power by means of their philanthropy, their undoubted genius, and great gifts of eloquence. they have almost talked the world out of its power of sober judgment. i hold that they have so succeeded in talking to the present house of commons. and when the house of commons has been so talked into any wise or foolish decision, the house of lords and the whole legislating machinery of the country is bound to follow. but how should their compromises be effected? it does not suit the present writer to name any individual statesman. he neither wishes to assist in raising a friend to the gods, or to lend his little aid in crushing an enemy. but to the liberal statesmen of the day, men in speaking well of whom--at a great distance--he has spent a long life, he is now bound to express himself as opposed. we all remember the manner after which the coercion bill of was passed. the hoarse shrieks with which a score of irish members ran out of the house crying "privilege," when their voices had been stopped by the salutary but certainly unconstitutional word of the speaker, is still ringing in our ears. then the government and the irish score were at daggers-drawn with each other. to sit for thirty-six hours endeavouring to pass a clause was then held by all men to be an odious bondage. but when these clauses had thus roughly been made to be the law, the sugar-plum was to follow by which all ireland was to be appeased. the second bill of was passed, which, with various additions, has given rise to judge o'hagan's land court. that, with its various sub-commissioners, is now engaged in settling at what rate land shall be let in ireland. that judge o'hagan and his fellow commissioners are well qualified to perform their task,--as well qualified, that is, by kindness, by legal knowledge and general sagacity as any men can be,--i have heard no one deny. in the performance of most difficult duties they have hitherto encountered no censure. but they have, i think, been taxed to perform duties beyond the reach of any mortal wisdom. they are expected to do that which all the world has hitherto failed in doing,--to do that against which the commonest proverbs of ancient and modern wisdom have raised their voice. there is no proverb more common than that of "_caveat emptor_." it is judge o'hagan's business to do for the poorer party in each bargain made between a landlord and a tenant that against which the above proverb warns him. the landlord has declared that the tenant shall not have the land unless he will pay £ a year for it. the tenant agrees. then comes judge o'hagan and tells the two contracting parties to take up their pens quickly and write down £ as the fair rent payable for the land. and it was with the object of doing this, of reducing every £ by some percentage, twenty per cent. or otherwise, that this commission was appointed. the government had taken upon itself to say that the greed of irish landlords had been too greedy, and the softness of irish tenants too soft, and that therefore parliament must interfere. parliament has interfered, and £ is to be written down for a term of years in lieu of £ , and the land is to become the possession of the tenant instead of the landlord as long as he may pay this reduced rent. in fact all the bonds which have bound the landlord to his land are to be annihilated. so also are the bonds which bind the tenant, who will sell the property so acquired when he shall have found that that for which he pays £ per annum shall have become worth £ in the market. it is useless to argue with the commissioners, or with the government, as to the inexpediency of such an attempt to alter the laws for governing the world, which have forced themselves on the world's acceptance. many such attempts have been made to alter these laws. the romans said that twelve per cent. should be the interest for money. a feeling long prevailed in england that legitimate interest should not exceed five per cent. it is now acknowledged that money is worth what it will fetch; and the interests of the young, the foolish, and the reckless, who are tempted to pay too much for it, are protected only by public opinion. the usurer is hated, and the hands of the honest men are against him. that suffices to give the borrower such protection as is needed. so it is with landlords and tenants. injury is no doubt done, and injustice is enabled to prevail here and there. but it is the lesser injury, the lesser injustice, which cannot be prevented in the long run by any attempt to escape the law of "_caveat emptor_." it is, however, vain to talk to benevolent commissioners, or to a government working by eloquence and guided by philanthropy, regardless of political economy. "would you have the heart," asks the benevolent commissioner, "to evict the poor man from his small holding on which he has lived all his life, where his only sympathies lie, and send him abroad to a distant land, where his solitary tie will be that of labour?" the benevolent commissioner thus expresses with great talk and with something also of the eloquence of his employers the feeling which prevails on that side of the question. but that which he deprecates is just what i could do; and having seen many irishmen both in america and in ireland, i know that the american irishman is the happiest man of the two. he eats more; and in much eating the happiness of mankind depends greatly. he is better clothed, better sheltered, and better instructed. though his women wail when he departs, he sends home money to fetch them. this may be for the profit of america. there are many who think that it must therefore be to the injury of england. the question now is whether the pathetic remonstrance of the tear-laden commissioner should be allowed to prevail. i say that the tenant who undertakes to pay for land that which the land will not enable him to pay had better go,--under whatever pressure. let us see how many details, how many improbabilities, will have to be met before the benevolence of the commissioner can be made to prevail. the reductions made on the rent average something between twenty and twenty-five per cent. let us take them at twenty. if a tenant has to be evicted for a demand of £ , will he be able to live in comfort if he pay only £ ? shall one tenant live in comfort on a farm, the rent of which has been reduced him from £ to £ , and another, the reduction having been from £ to £ ? in either case, if a tenant shall do well with two children, how shall he do with six or eight? a true teetotaller can certainly pay double the rent which may be extracted from a man who drinks. shall the normal tenant earn wages beyond what he gets from the land under his own tillage? shall the idle man be made equal to the industrious,--or can this be done, or should it be done, by any philanthropy? statesmen sitting together in a cabinet may resolve that they will set the world right by eloquence and benevolence combined; but the practices to which the world have been brought by long experience will avail more than eloquence and benevolence. statesmen may decree that land shall be let at a certain rate, and the decree will prevail for a time. it may prevail long enough to put out of gear the present affairs of the irish world with which these statesmen will have tampered. but the long experience will come back, and bargains will again be made between man and man, though the intervening injuries will be heartbreaking. but the benevolence of the government and its commissioners will not have gone far. the land law of has, as i now write, been at work for twelve months, and the results hitherto accomplished have been very small. it may be doubted whether a single reluctant tenant,--a single tenant who would have been unwilling to leave his holding,--has been preserved from american exile by having his £ or £ or £ of rent reduced to £ or £ or £ . the commissioners work slowly, having all the skill of the lawyers, on one side or the other, against them. it is piteous to see the hopelessness of three sub-commissioners in the midst of a crowd of irish attorneys. and the law, as it exists at present, can be made to act only on holdings possessed by tenants for one year. and the skill of the lawyers is used in proving on the part of the landlords that the land is held by firm leases, and cannot, therefore, be subjected to the law; and then by proving, on behalf of the tenants, that the existing leases are illegal, and should be broken. the possession of a lease, which used to be regarded as a safeguard and permanent blessing to the tenant, is now held to be cruelly detrimental to him, as preventing the lowering of his rent, and the immediate creation for him of a tenancy for ever. it is not to be supposed that the sub-commissioners can walk over the land and straightway reduce the rents, though the lands would certainly be subject to such reduction did not the law interfere. in a majority of cases,--a majority as far as all ireland is concerned,--a feeling of honesty does prevail between landlord and tenant, which makes them both willing to subject themselves to the new law without the interference of attorneys, and many are preparing themselves for such an arrangement. the landlord is willing to lose twenty per cent. in fear of something worse, and the tenant is willing to take it, hardly daring to hope for anything better. such is the best condition which the law has ventured to anticipate. but in either case this is to be done as tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. the landlord is anxious if possible to save for himself and those who may come after him something of the reality of his property, and the tenant feels that, though something of the nobility of property has been promised to him by the landleaguers, he may after all make the best bargain by so far submitting himself to his shorn landlord. but on estates where the commissioners are allowed their full swing, the whole nature of the property in the land will be altered. the present tenant, paying a tax of £ per annum which will be subjected to no reduction and on which no abatement can be made, in lieu of a £ rent, will be the owner. the small man will be infinitely more subject to disturbance than at present, because the tax must be paid. the landlord will feel no mercy for him, seeing that the bonds between them which demanded mercy have been abrogated. the extra £ or £ or £ will not enable the tenant to live the life of ease which he will have promised himself. if his interest has been made to be worth anything,--and it will be worth something, seeing that it has been worth something, and is saleable under its present condition,--it will be sold, and the emigration will continue. there are cruel cases at present. there will be cases not less cruel under the _régime_ which the new law is expected to produce. but the new law will be felt to have been unjust as having tampered with the rights of property, and having demanded from the owners of property its sale or other terms than those of mutual contract. but the time selected for the measure was most inappropriate. if good in itself, it was bad at the time it was passed. home rule coming across to us from america had taken the guise of rebellion. i have met gentlemen who, as home-rulers, have simply desired to obtain for their country an increase of power in the management of their own affairs. these men have been loyal and patriotic, and it might perhaps be well to meet their views. the channel no doubt does make a difference between liverpool and dublin. but the latter-day home-rulers, of whom i speak, brought their politics, their aspirations, and their money from new york, and boldly made use of the means which the british constitution afforded them to upset the british constitution as established in ireland. that they should not succeed in doing this is the determination of all, at any rate on this side of the channel. it is still, i believe, the desire of most thinking men on the irish side. but parliamentary votes are not given only to thinking men; and consequently a body of members has appeared in the house, energetic and now well trained, who have resolved by the clamour of their voices to put an end to the british power of governing the country. these members are but a minority among those whom ireland sends to parliament; but they have learned what a minority can effect by unbridled audacity. england is still writhing in her attempt to invent some mode of controlling them. but long before any such mode had been adopted,--had been adopted or even planned,--the government in brought out their plan for securing to the tenants fair rents, fixity of tenure, and freedom of sale. as to the first, it will, of course, be admitted by all men that rents should be fair, as also should be the price at which a horse is sold. it is, however, beyond the power of parliament to settle the terms which shall be fair. "_caveat emptor_" is the only rule by which fair rents may be reached. by fixity of tenure is meant such a holding of the land as shall enable the tenant to obtain an adequate return for his labour and his capital, and to this is added a romantic and consequently a most unjust idea that it may be well to settle this question on behalf of the tenant by granting him such a term as shall leave no doubt. let him have the land for ever as long as he will pay a stipulated sum, which shall be considerably less than the landlord's demand. that idea i call romantic, and therefore unjust. but, even though the beauty of the romance be held sufficient to atone for the injustice, this was not the poetical re-arrangement of all the circumstances of land tenure in ireland. freedom of sale is necessarily annexed to fixity of tenure. if a man is to have the possession of land in perpetuity, surely he should be allowed to sell it. whether he be allowed or not, he will contrive to do so. freedom of sale means, i take it, that the so-called landlord shall have no power of putting a veto on the transaction. we cannot here go into the whole question as it existed in ulster before ; but the freedom of sale intended is such, i think, as i have defined it. whether these concessions be good or bad, this was, at any rate, no time for granting them. they seem to me to amount to wholesale confiscation. but supposing me to be wrong in that, can i be wrong in thinking that a period of declared rebellion is not a time for concessions? when the land bill was passed the landleague was in full power; boycotting had become the recognised weapon of an illegal association; and the home-rulers of the day,--the party, that is, who represented the landleague,--were already in such possession of large portions of the country as to prevent the possibility of carrying out the laws. at this moment the government brought forward its romantic theory as to the manipulation of land, and, before that theory was at work, commenced its benevolent intentions by locking up all those who were supposed to be guilty of an intention to carry out the government project further than the government would carry it out itself. it is held, as a rule, in politics that coercion and concession cannot be applied together. ireland was in mutiny under the guidance of a mutinous party in the house of commons, and at that moment a commission was put in operation, under which it was the intention of the government to transfer the soil of the country at a reduced price to the very men among whom the mutineers are to be found. how do the tidings of such a commission operate upon the ears of irishmen at large? he is told that under the fear of the landleague his rent is to be reduced to an extent which is left to his imagination; and then, that he is to be freed altogether from the incubus of a landlord! he is, in fact, made to understand that his cherished landleague has become all-powerful. and yet he hears that odious men, whom he recognises only as tyrants, are filling the jails through the country with all his dearest friends. demanding concessions, and the continued increase of them, and having learned the way to seize upon them when they are not given, he will not stand coercion. abated rent soon becomes no rent. when it is left to the payer of the rent to decide on which system he will act, it is probable that the no-rent theory will prevail. so it was in . tenants were harassed by needy landlords, and when they were served with forms of ejectment the landlords were simply murdered, either in their own persons or in that of their servants. men finding their power, and beginning to learn how much might be exacted from a yielding government, hardly knew how to moderate their aspirations. when they found that the expected results did not come at once, they resorted to revenge. why should these tyrants keep them out from the good things which their american friends had promised them, and which were so close within their grasp? and their anger turned not only against their landlords, but against those who might seem in any way to be fighting on the landlords' side. did a neighbour occupy a field from which a landleaguing tenant had been evicted, let the tails of that neighbour's cattle be cut off, or the legs broken of his beasts of burden, or his sheep have their throats cut. or if the injured one have some scruples of conscience, let the oppressor simply be boycotted, and put out of all intercourse with his brother men. let no well-intentioned landleaguing neighbour buy from him a ton of hay, or sell to him a loaf of bread. but as a last resource, if all others fail, let the sinner be murdered. we all know, alas! in how many cases the sentence has been pronounced and the judgment given, and the punishment executed. such have been the results of the land law passed in . and under the curse so engendered the country is now labouring. it cannot be denied that the promoters of the land laws are weak, and that the disciples of the landleague are strong. in order that the truth of this may be seen and made apparent, the present story is told. chapter xlii. lord castlewell's farewell. poor mr. o'mahony had enemies on every side. there had come up lately a state of things which must be very common in political life. the hatreds which sound so real when you read the mere words, which look so true when you see their scornful attitudes, on which for the time you are inclined to pin your faith so implicitly, amount to nothing. the right honourable a. has to do business with the honourable b., and can best carry it on by loud expressions and strong arguments such as will be palatable to readers of newspapers; but they do not hate each other as the readers of the papers hate them, and are ready enough to come to terms, if coming to terms is required. each of them respects the other, though each of them is very careful to hide his respect. we can fancy that the right honourable a. and the honourable b. in their moments of confidential intercourse laugh in their joint sleeves at the antipathies of the public. in the present instance it was alleged that the right honourable a. and the honourable b. had come to some truce together, and had ceased for a while to hit each other hard knocks. such a truce was supposed to be a feather in the cap of the honourable b., as he was leader of a poor party of no more than twenty; and the right honourable a. had in this matter the whole house at his back. but for the nonce each had come off his high horse, and for the moment there was peace between them. but mr. o'mahony would have no peace. he understood nothing of compromises. he really believed that the right honourable gentleman was the fiend which the others had only called him. to him it was a compact with the very devil. now the leader of his party, knowing better what he was about, and understanding somewhat of the manner in which politics are at present carried on, felt himself embarrassed by the honesty of such a follower as mr. o'mahony. mr. o'mahony, when he was asked whether he wished to lead or was willing to serve, declared that he would neither lead nor serve. what he wanted was the "good of ireland." and he was sure that that was not to be obtained by friendship with her majesty's government. this was in itself very well, but he was soon informed that it was not as a free-lance that he had been elected member for cavan. "that is between me and my constituency," said mr. o'mahony, standing up with his head thrown back, and his right hand on his heart. but the constituency soon gave him to understand that he was not the man they had taken him to be. he, too, had begun to find that to spend his daughter's money in acting patriotism in the house of commons was not a fine _rôle_ in life. he earned nothing and he did nothing. unless he could bind himself hand and foot to his party he had not even a spark of delegated power. he was not allowed to speak when he desired, and was called upon to sit upon those weary benches hour after hour, and night after night, only pretending to effect those things which he and his brother members knew could not be done. he was not allowed to be wrathful with true indignation, not for a moment; but he was expected to be there from question time through the long watches of the night--taking, indeed, his turn for rest and food--always ready with some mock indignation by which his very soul was fretted; and no one paid him the slightest respect, though he was, indeed, by no means the least respectable of his party. he would have done true work had it been given him to do. but at the present moment his own party did not believe in him. there was no need at present for independent wrathful eloquence. there seldom is need in the house of commons for independent eloquence. the few men who have acquired for themselves at last the power of expressing it, not to empty benches, not amidst coughings and hootings, and loud conversation, have had to make their way to that point either by long efficient service or by great gifts of pachydermatousness. mr. o'mahony had never served anyone for an hour, and was as thin-skinned as a young girl; and, though his daughter had handed him all her money, so that he might draw upon it as he pleased, he told himself, and told her also, that his doing so was mean. "you're welcome to every dollar, father, only it doesn't seem to make you happy." "i should be happy to starve for the country, if starving would do anything." "i don't see that one ever does any good by starving as long as there is bread to eat. this isn't a romantic sort of thing, this payment of rents; but we ought to try and find out what a man really owes." "no man owes a cent to any landlord on behalf of rent." "but how is a man to get the land?" she said. "over in our country a rough pioneering fellow goes and buys it, and then he sells it, and of course the man who buys it hasn't to pay rent. but i cannot see how any fellow here can have a right to the land for nothing." then mr. o'mahony reminded his daughter that she was ill and should not exert herself. it was now far advanced in may, and mr. o'mahony had resolved to make one crushing eloquent speech in the house of commons and then to retire to the united states. but he had already learned that even this could not be effected without the overcoming of many difficulties. in himself, in his eloquence, in the supply of words, he trusted altogether; but there was the opportunity to be bought, and the speaker's eye to be found,--he regarded this speaker's eye as the most false of all luminaries,--and the empty benches to be encountered, and then drowsy reporters to be stirred up; and then on the next morning,--if any next morning should come for such a report,--there would not be a tithe of what he had spoken to be read by any man, and, in truth, very little of what he could speak would be worthy of reading. his words would be honest and indignant and fine-sounding, but the hearer would be sure to say, "what a fool is that mr. o'mahony!" at any rate, he understood so much of all this that he was determined to accept the chiltern hundreds and flee away as soon as his speech should be made. it was far advanced in may, and poor rachel was still very ill. she was so ill that all hope had abandoned her either as to her profession or as to either of her lovers. but there was some spirit in her still, as when she would discuss with her father her future projects. "let me go back," she said, "and sing little songs for children in that milder climate. the climate is mild down in the south, and there i may, perhaps, find some fragment of my voice." but he who was becoming so despondent both for himself and for his country, still had hopes as to his daughter. her engagement with lord castlewell was not even yet broken. lord castlewell had gone out of town at a most unusual period,--at a time when the theatres always knew him, and had been away on the exact day which had been fixed for their marriage. rachel had done all that lay in herself to disturb the marriage, but lord castlewell had held to it, urged by feelings which he had found it difficult to analyse. rachel had in her sickness determined to have done with him altogether, but latterly she had had no communication with him. she had spoken of him to her father as though he were a being simply to be forgotten. "he has gone away, and, as far as he is concerned, there is an end of me. it could not have finished better." but her mind still referred to frank jones, and from him she had received hardly a word of love. further words of love she could not send him. during her illness many letters, or little notes rather, had been written to castle morony on her behalf by her father, and to these there had come replies. frank was so anxious to hear of her well-doing. frank had not cared so much for her voice as for her general health. frank was so sorry to hear of her weakness. it had all been read to her, but as it had been read she had only shaken her head; and her father had not carried the dream on any further. to his thinking she was still engaged to the lord, and it would be better for her that she should marry the lord. the lord no doubt was a fool, and filled the most foolish place in the world,--that of a silly fainéant earl. but he would do no harm to his daughter, and the girl would learn to like the kind of life which would be hers. at present she was very, very ill, but still there was hope for recovery. by the treasury of the theatre she had been treated munificently. her engagement had been almost up to the day fixed for her marriage, and the money which would have become due to her under it had been paid in full. she had sent back the latter payments, but they had been returned to her with the affectionate respects of the managers. since she had put her foot upon these boards she had found herself to be popular with all around her. that, she had told herself, had been due to the lord who was to become her husband. but rachel had become, and was likely to become, the means of earning money for them, and they were grateful. to tell the truth, lord castlewell had had nothing to do with it. but gradually there came upon them the conviction that her voice was gone, and then the payment of the money ceased. she, and the doctor, and her father, had discussed it together, and they had agreed to settle that it must be so. "yes," said the girl, smiling, "it is bitter. all my hopes! and such hopes! it is as though i were dead, and yet were left alive. if it had been small-pox, or anything in that way, i could have borne it. but this thing, this terrible misfortune!" then she laughed, and then burst out sobbing with loud tears, and hid her face. "you will be married, and still be happy," said the doctor. "married! rubbish! so much you know about it. am i ever to get strong in my limbs again, so as to be able to cross the water and go back to my own country?" here the doctor assured her that she would be able to go back to her own country, if it were needed. "father," she said, as soon as the doctor had left her, "let there be an end to all this about lord castlewell. i will not marry him." "but, my dear!" "i will not marry him. there are two reasons why i should not. i do not love him, and he does not love me. there are two other reasons. i do not want to marry him, and he does not want to marry me." "but he says he does." "that is his goodness. he is very good. i do not know why a man should be so good who has had so bad a bringing up. think of me,--how good i ought to be, as compared with him. i haven't done anything naughty in all my life worse than tear my frock, or scold poor frank; and yet i find it harder to give him up, merely because of the grandeur, than he does to marry me, the poor singing girl, who can never sing again. no! my good looks are gone, such as they were. i can feel it, even with my fingers. you had better take me back to the states at once." "good-bye, rachel," said the lord, coming into her room the day but one after this. her father was not with her, as she had elected to be alone when she would bid her adieu to her intended husband. "this is very good of you to come to me." "of course i came." "because you were good. you need not have come unless you had wished it. i had so spoken to you as to justify you in staying away. my voice is gone, and i can only squeak at you in this broken treble." "your voice would not have mattered at all." "ah, but it has mattered to me. what made you want to marry me?" "your beauty quite as much as your voice," said the lord. "and that has gone too. everything i had has gone. it is melancholy! no, my lord," she said, interrupting him when he attempted to contradict her, "there is not a word more to be said about it. voice and beauty, such as it was, and the little wit, are all gone. i did believe in my voice myself, and therefore i felt myself fitting to marry you. i could have left a name behind me if my voice had remained. but, in truth, my lord, it was not fitting. i did not love you." "that, indeed!" "as far as i know myself, i did not love you. you have heard me speak of frank jones,--a man who can only wear two clean shirts a week because he has been so boycotted by those wretched irish as to be able to afford no more. i would take him with one shirt to-morrow, if i could get him. one does not know why one loves a person. of course he's handsome, and strong, and brave. i don't think that has done it, but i just got the fancy into my head, and there it is still. and he with his two shirts, working every day himself with his own hands to earn something for his father, would not marry me because i was a singing girl and took wages. he would not have another shirt to be washed with my money. oh, that the chance were given to me to go and wash it for him with my own hands!" lord castlewell sat through the interview somewhat distraught, as well he might be; but when it was over, and he had taken his leave and kissed her forehead, as he went home in his cab, he told himself that he had got through that little adventure very well. chapter xliii. mr. moss is finally answered. some days after the scene last recorded rachel was sitting in her bedroom, partly dressed, but she was, as she was wont to declare to her father, as weak as a cat with only one life. she had in the morning gone through a good deal of work. she had in the first place counted her money. she had something over £ at the bank, and she had always supplied her father with what he had wanted. she had told her future husband that she must sing one month in the year so as to earn what would be necessary for the support of the member of parliament, and singularly enough her father had yielded. but now the six hundred and odd pounds was all that was left to take them both back to the united states. "i think i shall be able to lecture there," mr. o'mahony had said. "wait till i express my opinion about queens, and lords, and the speaker! i think i shall be able to say a word or two about the speaker!--and the chairman of committees. a poor little creature who can hardly say bo to a goose unless he had got all the men to back him. i don't want to abuse the queen, because i believe she does her work like a lady; but if i don't lay it on hot on the speaker of the british house of commons, my name is not gerald o'mahony." "you forget your old enemy, the secretary." "him we used to call buckshot? i'm not so sure about him. at any rate he has had a downfall. when a man's had a downfall i don't care about lecturing against him. but i don't think it probable that the speaker will have a downfall, and then i can have my fling." rachel had dismissed her brougham, and she had written to edith jones. that, no doubt, had been the greatest effort of the morning. we need not give here the body of her letter, but it may be understood that she simply declared at length the nature of the prospect before her. there was not a word of frank jones in it. she had done that before, and frank jones had not responded. she intended to go with her father direct from liverpool to new york, and her letter was full chiefly of affectionate farewells. to edith and to ada and to their father there were a thousand written kisses sent. but there was not a kiss for frank. there was not a word for frank, so that any reader of the letter, knowing there was a frank in the family, would have missed the mention of him, and asked why it was so. it was very, very bitter to poor rachel this writing to morony castle without an allusion to the man; but, as she had said, he had been right not to come and live on her wages, and he certainly was right not to say a word as to their loss, when neither of them had wages on which to live. it would have suited in the united states, but she knew that it would not suit here in the old country, and therefore when the letter was written she was sitting worn-out, jaded and unhappy in her own bed-room. the lodging was still in cecil street, from which spot she and her father had determined not to move themselves till after the marriage, and had now resolved to remain there till rachel should be well enough for her journey to new york. as she sat there the servant, whom in her later richer days she had taken to herself, came to her and announced a visitor. mr. moss was in the sitting-room. "mr. moss here!" the girl declared that he was in the sitting-room, and in answer to further inquiries alleged that he was alone. how he had got there the girl could not say. probably somebody had received a small bribe. mr. o'mahony was not in,--nor was anybody in. rachel told the girl to be ready when she was ready to accompany her into the parlour, and thus resolving that she would see mr. moss she sent him a message to this effect. then she went to work and perfected her dressing very slowly. when she had completed the work she altered her purpose, and determined that she would see mr. moss alone. "you be in the little room close at hand," she said, "and have the door ajar, so that you can come to me if i call. i have no reason to suspect this man, and yet i do suspect him." so saying, she put on her best manners, as it might be those she had learned from the earl when he was to be her husband, and walked into the room. she had often told herself, since the old days, as she had now told the maid, that no real ground for suspicion existed; and yet she knew that she did suspect the man. rachel was pale and wan, and moved very slowly as though with haughty gesture. mr. moss, no doubt, had reason for knowing that the marriage with lord castlewell was at an end. the story had been told about among the theatres. lord castlewell did not mean to marry miss o'mahony; or else the other and stranger story, miss o'mahony did not mean to marry lord castlewell. though few believed that story, it was often told. theatrical people generally told it to one another as a poetical tale. the young lady had lost her voice and her beauty. the young lady was looking very old and could never sing again. it was absolutely impossible that in such circumstances she should decline to marry the lord if he were willing. but it was more than probable that he should decline to marry her. the theatrical world had been much astonished by lord castlewell's folly, and now rejoiced generally over his escape. but that he should still want to marry the young lady, and that she should refuse,--that was quite impossible. but mr. moss was somewhat different from the theatrical world in general. he kept himself to himself, and kept his opinion very much in the dark. madame socani spoke to him often about rachel, and expressed her loud opinion that lord castlewell had never been in earnest. and she was of opinion that rachel's voice had never had any staying property. madame socani had once belittled rachel's voice, and now her triumph was very great. in answer to all this mr. moss almost said nothing. once he did turn round and curse the woman violently, but that was all. then, when the news had, he thought, been made certain, either in one direction or the other, he came and called on the young lady. "well, mr. moss," said the young lady, with a smile that was intended to be most contemptible and gracious. "i have been so extremely sorry to hear of your illness, my dear young lady." her grandeur departed from her all at once. to be called this man's "dear young lady" was insufferable. and grandeur did not come easily to her, though wit and sarcasm did. "your dear young lady, as you please to call her, has had a bad time of it." "in memory of the old days i called you so, miss o'mahony. you and i used to be thrown much together." "you and i will never be thrown together again, as my singing is all over." "it may be so and it may not." "it is over, at any rate as far as the london theatres go,--as far as you and i go. "i hope not." "i tell you it is. i am going back to new york at once, and do not think i shall sing another note as long as i live. i'm going to learn to cook dishes for papa, and we mean to settle down together." "i hope not," he repeated. "very well; but at any rate i must say good-bye to you. i am very weak, and cannot do much in the talking line." then she got up and stood before him, as though determined to wish him good-bye. she was in truth weak, but she was minded to stand there till he should have gone. "my dear miss o'mahony, if you would sit down for a moment, i have a proposition to make to you. i think that it is one to which you may be induced to listen." then she did sit down, knowing that she would want the strength which rest would give her. the conversation with mr. moss might probably be prolonged. he also sat down at a little distance, and held his shining new hat dangling between his knees. it was part of her quarrel with him that he had always on a new hat. "your marriage with lord castlewell, i believe, is off." "just so." "and also your marriage with mr. jones?" "no doubt. all my marriages are off. i don't mean to be married at all. i tell you i'm going home to keep house for my father." "keep house for me," said mr. moss. "i would rather keep house for the devil," said rachel, rising from her chair in wrath. "vy?--vy?"--mr. moss was reduced by his eagerness and enthusiasm to his primitive mode of speaking--"vat is it that you shall want of a man but that he shall love you truly? i come here ready to marry you, and to take my chance in all things. you say your voice is gone. i am here ready to take the risk. lord castlewell will not have you, but i will take you." now he had risen from his chair, and was standing close to her; but she was so surprised at his manner and at his words that she did not answer him at all. "that lord cared for you not at all, but i care. that mr. jones, who was to have been your husband, he is gone; but i am not gone. mr. jones!" then he threw into his voice a tone of insufferable contempt. this rachel could not stand. "you shall not talk to me about mr. jones." "i talk to you as a man who means vat he is saying. i will marry you to-morrow." "i would sooner throw myself into that river," she said, pointing down to the thames. "you have nothing, if i understand right,--nothing! you have had a run for a few months, and have spent all your money. i have got £ , ! you have lost your voice,--i have got mine. you have no theatre,--i have one of my own. i am ready to take a house and furnish it just as you please. you are living here in these poor, wretched lodgings. why do i do that?" and he put up both his hands. "you never will do it," said rachel. "because i love you." then he threw away his new hat, and fell on his knees before her. "i will risk it all,--because i love you! if your voice comes back,--well! if it do not come back, you will be my wife, and i shall do my best to keep you like a lady." here rachel leant back in her chair, and shut her eyes. in truth she was weak, and was hardly able to carry on the battle after her old fashion. and she had to bethink herself whether the man was making this offer in true faith. if so, there was something noble in it; and, though she still hated the man, as a woman may hate her lover, she would in such case be bound not to insult him more than she could help. a softer feeling than usual came upon her, and she felt that he would be sufficiently punished if she could turn him instantly out of the room. she did not now feel disposed "to stick a knife into him," as she had told her father when describing mr. moss. but he was at her knees and the whole thing was abominable. "rachel, say the word, and be mine at once." "you do not understand how i hate you!" she exclaimed. "rachel, come to my arms!" then he got up, as though to clasp the girl in his embrace. she ran from him, and immediately called the girl whom she had desired to remain in the next room with the door open. but the door was not open, and the girl, though she was in the room, did not answer. probably the bribe which mr. moss had given was to her feeling rather larger than ordinary. "my darling, my charmer, my own one, come to my arms!" and he did succeed in getting his hand round on to rachel's waist, and getting his lips close to her head. she did save her face so that mr. moss could not kiss her, but she was knocked into a heap by his violence, and by her own weakness. he still had hold of her as she rose to her feet, and, though he had become acquainted with her weapon before, he certainly did not fear it now. a sick woman, who had just come from her bed, was not likely to have a dagger with her. when she got up she was still more in his power. she was astray, scrambling here and there, so as to be forced to guard against her own awkwardness. whatever may be the position in which a woman may find herself, whatever battle she may have to carry on, she has first to protect herself from unseemly attitudes. before she could do anything she had first to stand upon her legs, and gather her dress around her. "my own one, my life, come to me!" he exclaimed, again attempting to get her into his embrace. but he had the knife stuck into him. she had known that he would do it, and now he had done it. "you fool, you," she said; "it has been your own doing." he fell on the sofa, and clasped his side, where the weapon had struck him. she rang the bell violently, and, when the girl came, desired her to go at once for a surgeon. then she fainted. "i never was such a fool as to faint before," she told frank afterwards. "i never counted on fainting. if a girl faints, of course she loses all her chance. it was because i was ill. but poor mr. moss had the worst of it." rachel, from the moment in which she fainted, never saw mr. moss any more. madame socani came to visit her, and told her father, when she failed to see her, that mr. moss had only three days to live. rachel was again in bed, and could only lift up her hands in despair. but to her father, and to frank jones, she spoke with something like good humour. "i knew it would come," she said to her father. "there was something about his eye which told me that an attempt would be made. he would not believe of a woman that she could have a will of her own. by treating her like an animal he thought he would have his own way. i don't imagine he will treat me in that way again." and then she spoke of him to frank. "i suppose he does like me?" "he likes your singing,--at so much a month." "that's all done now. at any rate, he cannot but know that it is an extreme chance. he must fancy that he really likes me. a man has to be forgiven a good deal for that. but a man must be made to understand that if a woman won't have him, she won't! i think mr. moss understands it now." chapter xliv. frank jones comes back again. these last words had been spoken after the coming of frank jones, but something has to be said of the manner of his coming, and of the reasons which brought him, and something also which occurred before he came. it could not be that mr. moss should be wounded after so desperate a fashion and that not a word should be said about it. of what happened at the time of the wounding rachel knew nothing. she had been very brave and high in courage till the thing was done, but as soon as it was done she sent for the servant and fainted away. she knew nothing of what had occurred till she had been removed out of the room on one side, and he on the other. she did not hear, therefore, of the suggestion made by mr. moss that some vital part of him had been reached. he did bleed profusely, but under the aid of the doctor and mr. o'mahony, who was soon on the scene, he recovered himself more quickly than poor rachel, who was indeed somewhat neglected till the hero of the tragedy had been sent away. he behaved with sufficient courage at last, though he had begun by declaring that his days were numbered. at any rate he had said when he found the power of ordinary speech, "don't let a word be whispered about it to miss o'mahony; she isn't like other people." then he was taken back to his private lodging, and confided to the care of madame socani, where we will for the present leave him. soon after the occurrence,--a day or two after it,--frank jones appeared suddenly on the scene. of course it appeared that he had come to mourn the probable death of mr. moss. but he had in truth heard nothing of the fatal encounter till he had arrived in cecil street, and then could hardly make out what had occurred amidst the confused utterances. "frank jones!" she exclaimed. "father, what has brought him here?" and she blushed up over her face and head to the very roots of her hair. "come up, of course he must come up. when a man has come all the way from castle morony he must be allowed to come up. why should you wish to keep him down in the area?" then frank jones soon made his appearance within the chamber. it was midsummer, and rachel occupied a room in the lowest house in the street, looking right away upon the river, and her easy-chair had been brought up to the window at which she sat, and looked out on the tide of river life as it flowed by. she was covered at present with a dressing gown, as sweet and fresh as the morning air. on her head she wore a small net of the finest golden filigree, and her tiny feet were thrust into a pair of bright blue slippers bordered with swans-down. "am i to come back?" her obedient father had asked. but he had been told not to come back, not quite at present. "it is not that i want your absence," she had said, "but he may. he can tell me with less hesitation that he is going to set up a pig-killing establishment in south australia than he could probably you and me together." so the father simply slapped him on the back, and bade him walk upstairs till he would find no. on the second landing. "of course you have heard," he said, as frank was going, "of what she has been and done to mahomet m. moss?" "not a word," said frank. "what has she done?" "plunged a dagger into him," said mr. o'mahony,--in a manner which showed to frank that he was not much afraid of the consequences of the accident. "you go up and no doubt she will tell you all about it." then frank went up, and was soon admitted into rachel's room. "oh, frank!" she said, "how are you? what on earth has brought you here?" then he at once began to ask questions about poor moss, and rachel of course to answer them. "well, yes; how was i to help it? i told him from the time that i was a little girl, long before i knew you, that something of this kind would occur if he would not behave himself." "and he didn't?" asked frank, with some little pardonable curiosity. "no, he did not. whether he wanted me or my voice, thinking that it would come back again, i cannot tell, but he did want something. there was a woman who brought messages from him, and even she wanted something. then his ideas ran higher." "he meant to marry you," said frank. "i suppose he did,--at last. i am very much obliged to him, but it did not suit. then,--to make a short story of it, frank, i will tell you the whole truth. he took hold of me. i cannot bear to be taken hold of; you know that yourself." he could only remember how often he had sat with her down among the willows at the lake side with his arm round her waist, and she had never seemed to be impatient under the operation. "and though he has such a beautiful shiny hat he is horribly awkward. he nearly knocked me down and fell on me, by way of embracing me." frank thought that he had never been driven to such straits as that. "to be knocked down and trampled on by a beast like that! there are circumstances in which a girl must protect herself, when other circumstances have brought her into danger. in those days--yesterday, that is, or a week ago--i was a poor singing girl. i was at every man's disposal, and had to look after myself. there are so many white bears about, ready to eat you, if you do not look after yourself. he tried to eat me, and he was wounded. you do not blame me, frank." "no, indeed; not for that." "what do you blame me for?" "i cannot think you right," he answered with almost majestic sternness, "to have accepted the offer of lord castlewell." "you blame me for that." he nodded his head at her. "what would you have had me do?" "marry a man when you love him, but not when you don't." "oh, frank! i couldn't. how was i to marry a man when i loved him,--i who had been so treated? but, sir," she said, remembering herself, "you have no right to say i did not love lord castlewell. you have no business to inquire into that matter. nobody blames you, or can, or shall, in that affair,--not in my hearing. you behaved as gentlemen do behave; gentlemen who cannot act otherwise, because it is born in their bones and their flesh. i--i have not behaved quite so well. open confession is good for the soul. frank, i have not behaved quite so well. you may inquire about it. i did not love lord castlewell, and i told him so. he came to me when my singing was all gone, and generously renewed his offer. had i not known that in his heart of hearts he did not wish it,--that the two things were gone for which he had wooed me,--my voice, which was grand, and my prettiness, which was but a little thing, i should have taken his second offer, because it would be well to let him have what he wanted. it was not so; and therefore i sent him away, well pleased." "but why did you accept him?" "oh, frank! do not be too hard. how am i to tell you--you, of all men, what my reasons were? i was alone in the world; alone with such dangers before me as that which mr. moss brought with him. and then my profession had become a reality, and this lord would assist me. do all the girls refuse the lords who come and ask them?" then he stood close over her, and shook his head. "but i should have done so," she continued after a pause. "i recognise it now; and let there be an end of it. there is a something which does make a woman unfit for matrimony." and the tears coursed themselves down her wan cheeks. "now it has all been said that need be said, and let there be an end of it. i have talked too much about myself. what has brought you to london?" "just a young woman," he whispered slowly. a pang shot through her heart; and yet not quite a pang, for with it there was a rush of joy, which was not, however, perfect joy, because she felt that it must be disappointed. "bother your young woman," she said; "who cares for your young woman! how are you going on in galway?" "sadly enough, to tell the truth." "no rents?" he shook his head. "nothing but murders and floods?" "the same damnable old story running on from day to day." "and have the girls no servants yet?" "not a servant; except old peter, who is not quite as faithful as he should be." "and,--and what about that valiant gay young gentleman, captain clayton?" "everything goes amiss in love as well as war," said frank. "between the three of them, i hardly know what they want." "i think i know." "very likely. everything goes so astray with all of us, so that the wanting it is sufficient reason for not getting it." "is that all you have come to tell me?" "i suppose it is." "then you might have stayed away." "i may as well go, perhaps." "go? no! i am not so full of new friends that i can afford to throw away my old like that. of course you may not go, as you call it! do you suppose i do not care to hear about those girls whom i love,--pretty nearly with all my heart? why don't you tell me about them, and your father? you come here, but you talk of nothing but going. you ain't half nice." "can i come in yet?" this belonged to a voice behind the door, which was the property of mr. o'mahony. "not quite yet, father. mr. jones is telling me about them all at morony castle." "i should have thought i might have heard that," said mr. o'mahony. "the girls have special messages to send," said rachel. "i'll come back in another ten minutes," said mr. o'mahony. "i shall not wait longer than that." "only their love," said frank; upon which rachel looked as though she thought that frank jones was certainly an ass. "of course i want to hear their love," said rachel. "dear ada, and dear edith! why don't you tell me their love?" "my poor sick girl," he said, laying his hand upon her shoulder, and looking into her eyes. "never mind my sickness. i know i am as thin and as wan as an ogre. nevertheless, i care for their love." "rachel, do you care for mine?" "i haven't got it! oh, frank, why don't you speak to me? you have spoken a word, just a word, and all the blood is coming back to my veins already." "dearest, dearest, dearest rachel." "now you have spoken; now you have told me of your sisters and your father. now i know it all! now my father may come in." "do you love me, then?" "love you! that question you know to be unnecessary. love you! why i spend every day and every night in loving you! but, frank, you wouldn't have me when i was going to be rich. i ought not to have you now that i am to be poor." but by this time she was in his arms and he was kissing her, till, as she had said, the blood was once again running in her veins. "oh, frank, what a tyrant you are! did i not tell you to let poor father come into the room? you have said everything now. there cannot be another word to say. frank, frank, frank! i have found it out at last. i cannot live without you." "but how are you to live with me? there is no money." "bother money. wealth is sordid. washing stockings over a tub is the only life for me,--so long as i have you to come back to me." "and your health?" "i tell you it is done. i was merely sick of the jones complaint. oh, heavens! how i can hate people, and how i can love them!" then she threw herself on the sofa, absolutely worn out by the violence of her emotions. mr. o'mahony was commissioned, and sat down by his girl's side to comfort her. but she wanted no comforting. "so you and frank have made it up, have you?" said mr. o'mahony. "we have never quarrelled so far as i am concerned," said frank. "the moment i heard lord castlewell was dismissed, i came back." "yes," said she, raising herself half up on the sofa. "do you know his story, father? it is rather a nice story for a girl to hear of her own lover, and to feel that it is true. when i was about to make i don't know how many thousand dollars a year by my singing, he would not come and take his share of it. then i have to think of my own disgrace. but it enhances his glory. because he was gone, i brought myself to accept this lord." "now, rachel, you shall not exert yourself," said frank. "i will, sir," she replied, holding him by the hand. "i will tell my story. he had retreated from the stain, and the lord had come in his place. but he was here always," and she pressed his hand to her side. "he could not be got rid of. then i lost my voice, and was 'utterly dished,' as the theatrical people say. then the lord went,--behaving better than i did however,--and i was alone. oh, what bitter moments there came then,--long enough for the post to go to ireland and to return! and now he is here. once more at my feet again, old man, once more! and then he talks to me of money! what is money to me? i have got such a comforting portion that i care not at all for money." then she all but fainted once again, and frank and her father both knelt over her caressing her. it was a long time before frank left her, her father going in and out of the room as it pleased him the while. then he declared that he must go down to the house, assuring frank that one blackguard there was worse than another, but saying that he would see them to the end as long as his time lasted. rachel insisted that frank should go with him. "i am just getting up from my death-bed," she said, laughing, "and you want me to go on like any other man's young woman. i can think about you without talking to you." and so saying she dismissed him. on the next morning, when he came again, she discussed with him the future arrangement of his life and hers. "of course you must stay with your father," she said. "you do not want to marry me at once, i suppose. and of course it is impossible if you do. i shall go to the states with father as soon as this parliament affair is over. he is turned out of the house so often that he will be off before long for good and all. but there is the mail still running, and remember that what i say is true. i shall be ready and willing to be made mrs. frank jones as soon as you will come and fetch me, and will tell me that you are able to provide me just with a crust and a blanket in county galway. whatever little you will do with, i will do with less." then she sat upon his knee, and embraced him and kissed him, and swore to him that no other lord castlewell who came should interfere with his rights. "and as for mr. moss," she added, "i do not think that he will ever appear again to trouble your little game." chapter xlv. mr. robert morris. one morning, a little later in the summer, about the beginning of august, all galway were terrified by the tidings of another murder. mr. morris had been killed,--had been "dropped," as the language of the country now went, from behind a wall built by the roadside. it had been done at about five in the afternoon, in full daylight; and, as was surmised by the police, with the consciousness of many of the peasantry around. he had been walking along the road from cong to his own house, and had been "dropped," and left for dead by the roadside. dead, indeed, he was when found. not a word more would have been said about it, but for the intervention of the police, who were on the spot within three hours of the occurrence. a little girl had been coming into cong, and had told the news. the little girl was living at cong, and was supposed to be in no way connected with the murder. "it's some of them boys this side of clonbur," said one of the men of cong. no one thought it necessary after that to give any further explanation of the circumstances. mr. robert morris was somewhat of an oddity in his way; but he was a man who only a few months since was most unlikely to have fallen a victim to popular anger. he was about forty years of age, and had lived altogether at minas cottage, five or six miles from cong, as you pass up the head of lough corrib, on the road to maum. he was unmarried, and lived quite alone in a small house, trusting to the attentions of two old domestics and their daughter. he kept a horse and a car and a couple of cows and a few cocks and hens; but otherwise he lived alone. he was a man of property, and had, indeed, come from a family very long established in the county. people said of him that he had £ a year; but he would have been very glad to have seen the half of it paid to his agent; for mr. morris, of minas cottage, had his agent as well as any other gentleman. he was a magistrate for the two counties, galway and mayo, and attended sessions both at cong and at clonbur. but when there he did little but agree with some more active magistrate; and what else he did with himself no one could tell of him. but it was said in respect to him that he was a benevolent gentleman; and but a year or two since very many in the neighbourhood would have declared him to be especially the poor man's friend. with £ a year he could have done much; with half that income he could do something to assist them, and something he still did. he had his foibles, and fancies, but such as they were they did not tread on the corns of any of his poorer neighbours. he was proud of his birth, proud of his family, proud of having owned, either in his own hands or those of his forefathers, the same few acres,--and many more also, for his forefathers before him had terribly diminished the property. there was a story that his great great grandfather had lived in a palatial residence in county kilkenny. all this he would tell freely, and would remark that to such an extent had the family been reduced by the extravagance of his forefathers. "but the name and the blood they can never touch," he would remark. they would not ask as to his successor, because they valued him too highly, and because mr. morris would never have admitted that the time had come when it was too late to bring a bride home to the western halls of his forefathers. but the rumour went that minas cottage would go in the female line to a second cousin, who had married a cloth merchant in galway city, to whom nor to her husband did mr. morris ever speak. there might be something absurd in this, but there was nothing injurious to his neighbours, and nothing that would be likely to displease the poorer of them. but mr. morris had been made the subject of various requests from his tenants. they had long since wanted and had received a considerable abatement in their rent. hence had come the straitened limits of £ a year. they had then offered the "griffith's valuation." to explain the "griffith's valuation" a chapter must be written, and as no one would read the explanation if given here it shall be withheld. indeed, the whole circumstances of mr. morris's property were too intricate to require, or to admit, elucidation here. he was so driven that if he were to keep anything for himself he must do so by means of the sheriff's officer, and hence it had come to pass that he had been shot down like a mad dog by the roadside. county galway was tolerably well used to murders by this time, but yet seemed to be specially astonished by the assassination of mr. morris. the innocence of the man; for the dealings of the sheriff's officer were hardly known beyond the town land which was concerned! and then the taciturnity of the county side when the murder had been effected! it was not such a deed as was the slaughtering of poor florian jones, or the killing of terry carroll in the court house. they had been more startling, more alarming, more awful for the tradesmen, and such like, to talk of among themselves, but the feeling of mystery there had been connected with the secret capacity of one individual. everyone, in fact, knew that those murders had been done by lax. and all felt that for the doing of murders lax was irrepressible. but over there in the neighbourhood of clonbur, or in the village of cong, lax had never appeared. there was no one in the place to whom the police could attribute any lax-like properties. in that respect, the slaughtering of mr. morris had something in it more terrible even than those other murders. it seemed as though murder were becoming the ordinary popular mode by which the people should redress themselves,--as though the idea of murder had recommended itself easily to their intellects. and then they had quietly submitted--all of them--to taciturnity. they who were not concerned in the special case, the adjustment that is of mr. morris's rent, accepted his murder with perfect quiescence, as did those who were aggrieved. nobody had seen anything. nobody had heard anything. nobody had known anything. such were the only replies that were given to the police. if mr. morris, then why not another--and another--till the whole country would be depopulated? in mr. morris's case a landlord had been chosen; but in other localities agents and sheriffs' officers,--and even those keepers on a property which a gentleman is supposed to employ,--were falling to the right and to the left. but of mr. morris and his death nothing was heard. yorke clayton of course went down there, for this, too, was in his district, and hunter went with him, anxious, if possible, to learn something. they saw every tenant on the property; and, indeed, they were not over numerous. there was not one as to whom they could obtain evidence that he was ever ferocious by character. "they've got to think that they have the right to it all. the poor creatures are not so bad as them that is teaching them. if i think as the farm is my own, of course i don't like to be made to pay rent for it." that was the explanation of the circumstances, as given by mrs. davies, of the hotel at clonbur. and it was evident that she thought it to be sufficient. the meaning of it, according to captain clayton's reading, was this: "if you allow such doctrines to be preached abroad by members of parliament and landleague leaders,--to be preached as a doctrine fit for the people,--then you cannot be surprised if the people do as they are taught and hold their tongues afterwards." this mr. morris had been the first cousin of our poor old friend black tom daly. "good god!" he exclaimed, as soon as he read the news, sitting in his parlour at daly's bridge; "there is bob morris gone now." "bob morris, of minas cottage!" exclaimed peter bodkin, who had ridden over to give tom daly some comfort in his solitude, if it might be possible. "by george! yes; bob morris! did you know him?" "i don't think he ever came out hunting." "hunting, indeed! how should he, when he hadn't a horse that he could ride upon? and bob knew nothing of sport. the better for him, seeing the way that things are going now. no, he never was out hunting, poor fellow. but for downright innocence and kindness and gentleness of heart, there is no one left like him. and now they have murdered him! what is to be the end of it? there is persse telling me to hold on by the hounds, when i couldn't keep a hound in the kennels at ahaseragh if it were ever so." "times will mend," said peter. "and raheney gorse fired so as to drive every fox out of the country! persse is wrong, and i am wrong to stay at his bidding. the very nature of mankind has altered in the old country. there are not the same hearts within their bosoms. to burn a gorse over a fox's head! there is a damnable cruelty in it of which men were not guilty,--by g----! they were not capable,--a year or two ago. these ruffians from america have come and told them that they shall pay no rent, and their minds have been so filled with the picture that its magnificence has overcome them. they used to tell us that money is the root of all evil; it proves to be true now. the idea that they should pay no rent has been too much for them; and they have become fiends under the feelings which have been roused. only last year they were mourning over a poor fox like a christian,--a poor fox that had been caught in a trap,--and now they would not leave a fox in the country, because the gentlemen, they think, are fond of them. the gentlemen are their enemies, and therefore they will spite them. they will drive every gentleman out of the country, and where will they be then?" here tom daly sat quiet for a while, looking silent through the open window, while peter sat by him feeling the occasion to be too solemn for speech. after a while tom continued his ejaculations. "gladstone! gladstone! there are those who think that man to be great and good; but how can he be great and good if he lets loose such spirits among us? they tell me that he's a very amiable man in his own family, and goes to church regular; but he must be the most ignorant human being that ever took upon himself to make laws for a people. he can understand nothing about money, nothing about property, nothing about rents! i suppose he thinks it fair to take away one man's means and give them to another, simply because one is a gentleman and the other not! a fair rent! there's nothing i hate so much in my very soul as the idea of a fair rent. a fair rent means half that a man pays now; but in a few years' time it will mean again whatever the new landlord may choose to ask. and fixity of tenure! every man is to get what doesn't belong to him, and if a man has anything he's to be turned out; that is fixity of tenure. and freedom of sale! a man is to be allowed to sell what isn't his own. he thinks that when he has thrown half an eye over a country he can improve it by altering all the wisdom of ages. a man talks and talks, and others listen to him till they flatter him that another god almighty has been sent upon earth." it was thus that tom daly expressed himself as to the prime minister of the day; but tom was a benighted tory, and had thought nothing of these subjects till they were driven into his mind by the strange mortality of the foxes around him. poor mr. morris was buried, and there was an end of him. the cloth merchant's wife in galway got the property; and, as far as we can hear at present, is not likely to do as well with it as her husband is with his bales of goods. no man perhaps more insignificant than mr. robert morris could have departed. he did nothing, and his figure, as he walked about between cong and clonbur, could be well spared. but his murder had given rise to feelings through the country which were full of mischief and full of awe. he had lived most inoffensively, and yet he had gone simply because it had occurred to some poor ignorant tenant, who had held perhaps ten or fifteen acres of land, out of which he had lived upon the potatoes grown from two or three of them, that things would go better with him if he had not a landlord to hurry him for rent! then the tenant had turned in his mind the best means of putting his landlord out of the way, and had told himself that it was an easy thing to do. he had not, of his own, much capacity for the use of firearms; but he had four pound ten, which should have gone to the payment of his rent, and of this four pound ten, fifteen shillings secured the services of some handy man out of the next parish. he had heard the question of murder freely discussed among his neighbours, and by listening to others had learned the general opinion that there was no danger in it. so he came to a decision, and mr. morris was murdered. so far the question was solved between this tenant and this landlord; but each one of the neighbours, as he thought of it, felt himself bound to secrecy _pro bono publico_. there was a certain comfort in this, and poor bob morris's death seemed likely to be passed over with an easy freedom from suspicion. any man might be got rid of silently, and there need be no injurious results. but men among themselves began to talk somewhat too freely, and an awe grew among them as this man and that man were named as objectionable. and the men so named were not all landlords or even agents. this man was a sheriff's officer, and that a gamekeeper. the sheriffs' officers and gamekeepers were not all murdered, but they were named, and a feeling of terror crept cold round the hearts of those who heard the names. who was to be the keeper of the list and decide finally as to the victims? then suddenly a man went, and no one knew why he went. he was making a fence between two fields, and it was whispered that he had been cautioned not to make the fence. at any rate he had been stoned to death, and though there must have been three at least at the work, no one knew who had stoned him. men began to whisper among each other, and women also, and at last it was whispered to them that they had better not whisper at all. then they began to feel that not only was secrecy to be exacted from them, but they were not to be admitted to any participation in the secrecy. and with such of the gentry as were left there had grown up precautions which could not but fill the minds of the peasantry with a vague sense of fear. they went about with rifle in their hands, and were always accompanied by police. they had thick shutters made to their windows, and barred themselves within their houses. those who but a few months since had been the natural friends of the people, now appeared everywhere in arms against them. if it was necessary that there should be intercourse between them, that intercourse took place by means of a policeman. a further attempt at murder had been made in the neighbourhood, and was so talked of that it seemed that all kindly feeling had been severed. men began to creep about and keep out of the way lest they should be suspected; and, indeed, it was the fact that there was hardly an able-bodied man in three parishes to whom some suspicion did not attach itself. and thus the women would ask for fresh murders, and would feel disappointed when none were reported to them, craving, as it were, for blood. and all this had come to pass certainly within the space of two years! a sweeter-tempered people than had existed there had been found nowhere; nor a people more ignorant, and possessing less of the comforts of civilisation. but no evil was to be expected from them, no harm came from them--beyond a few simple lies, which were only harmful as acting upon their own character. as tom daly had said, these very men were not capable of it a few months ago. the tuition had come from america! that, no doubt, was true; but it had come by irish hearts and irish voices, by irish longings and irish ambition. nothing could be more false than to attribute the evil to america, unless that becomes american which has once touched american soil. but there does grow up in new york, or thereabouts, a mixture of irish poverty with american wealth, which calls itself "democrat," and forms as bad a composition as any that i know from which either to replenish or to create a people. a very little of it goes unfortunately a long way. it is like gin made of vitriol when mingled with water. a small modicum of gin, though it does not add much spirit to the water, will damnably defile a large quantity. and this gin has in it a something of flavour which will altogether deceive an uneducated palate. there is an alcoholic afflatus which mounts to the brain and surrounds the heart and permeates the veins, which for the moment is believed to be true gin. but it makes itself known in the morning, and after a few mornings tells its own tale too well. these "democrats" could never do us the mischief. they are not sufficient, either in intellect or in number; but there are men among us who have taught themselves to believe that the infuriated gin drinker is the true holder of a new gospel. chapter xlvi. cong. in those days captain clayton spent much of his time at cong, and frank jones was often with him. frank, however, had returned from london a much altered man. rachel had knocked under to him. it was thus that he spoke of it to himself. i do not think that she spoke of it to herself exactly in the same way. she knew her own constancy, and felt that she was to be rewarded. "nothing, i think, would ever have made me marry lord castlewell." it was thus she talked to her father while he was awaiting the period of his dismissal. "i dare say not," said he. "of course he is a poor weak creature. but he would have been very good to you, and there would have been an end to all your discomforts." rachel turned up her nose. an end to all her discomforts! her father knew nothing of what would comfort her and what would discomfort. she was utterly discomforted in that her voice was gone from her. she would lie and sob on her bed half the morning, and would feel herself to be inconsolable. then she would think of frank, and tell herself that there was some consolation in store even for her. had her voice been left to her she would have found it to be very difficult to escape from the castlewell difficulty. she would have escaped, she thought, though the heavens might have been brought down over her head. when the time had come for appearing at the altar, she would have got into the first train and disappeared, or have gone to bed and refused to leave it. she would have summoned frank at the last moment, and would submit to be called the worst behaved young woman that had ever appeared on the london boards. now she was saved from that; but,--but at what a cost! "i might have been the greatest woman of the day, and now i must be content to make his tea and toast." then she began to consider whether it was good that any girl should be the greatest woman of the day. "i don't suppose the queen has so much the best of it with a pack of troubles on her hands." but frank in the meantime had gone back to galway, and mr. robert morris had been murdered. soon after the death of mr. morris the man had been killed as he was mending the ditch, and captain clayton found that the tone of the people was varied in the answers which they made to his inquiries. they were astounded, and, as it were, struck dumb with surprise. nobody knew anything, nobody had heard anything, nobody had seen anything. they were as much in the dark about poor pat gilligan as they had been as to mr. robert morris. they spoke of pat as though he had been slaughtered by a direct blow from heaven; but they trembled, and were evidently uncomfortable. "that woman knows something about it," said hunter to his master, shaking his head. "no doubt she knows a good deal about it; but it is not because she knows that she is bewildered and bedevilled in her intellect. she is beginning to be afraid that the country is one in which even she herself cannot live in safety." and the men looked to be dumbfoundered and sheepfaced. they kept out of captain clayton's way, and answered him as little as possible. "what's the good of axing when ye knows that i knows nothing?" this was the answer of one man, and was a fair sample of the answers of many; but they were given in such a tone that clayton was beginning to think that the evil was about to work its own cure. "frank," he said one day when he was walking with his friend in the gloom of the evening, "this state of things is too horrible to endure." the faithful hunter followed them, and another policeman, for the captain was never allowed to stir two steps without the accompaniment of a brace of guards. "much too horrible to be endured," said frank. "my idea is that a man, in order to make the best of himself, should run away from it. life in the united states has no such horrors as these. though we're apt to say that all this comes from america, i don't see american hands in it." "you see american money." "american money in the shape of dollar bills; but they have all been sent by irish people. the united states is a large place, and there is room there, i think, for an honest man." "i'll never be frightened out of my own country," said clayton. "nor do i think there is occasion. these abominable reprobates are not going to prevail in the end." "they have prevailed with poor tom daly. he was a man who worked as hard as anyone to find amusement,--and employment too. he never wronged anyone. he was even so honest as to charge a fair price for his horses. and there he is, left high and dry, without a horse or a hound that he can venture to keep about his own place. and simply because the majority of the people have chosen that there shall be no more hunting; and they have proved themselves to be able to have their own way. it is impossible that poor daly should hunt if they will not permit him, and they carry their orders so far that he cannot even keep a hound in his kennels because they do not choose to allow it." "and this you think will be continued always?" asked clayton. "for all that i can see it may go on for ever. my father has had those water gates mended on the meadows though he could ill afford it. i have told him that they may go again to-morrow. there is no reason to judge that they should not do so. the only two men,--or the man, rather, and the boy,--who have been punished for the last attempt were those who endeavoured to tell of it. see what has come of that!" "all that is true." "will it not be better to go to america, to go to africa, to go to asia, or to russia even, than to live in a country like this, where the law can afford you no protection, and where the lawgivers only injure you?" "i know nothing about the lawgivers," said clayton, "but i have to say a word or two about the law. do you think this kind of thing is going to remain?" "it does remain, and every day becomes worse." "an evil will always become worse till it begins to die away. i think i see the end of things approaching. evil-doers are afraid of each other, and these poor fellows here live in mortal agony lest some lax of the moment should be turned loose at their own throats. i don't think that lax is an institution that will remain for ever in the country. this present lax we have fast locked up. law at present, at any rate, has so much of power that it is able to lock up a lax,--when it can catch him. as for this present man, i do hope that the law will find itself powerful enough to fasten a rope round his neck. no galway jury would find him guilty, and that is bad enough. but the lawgivers have done this for us, that we may try him before a dublin jury, and there are hopes. when lax has been well hung out of the world i can turn round and take a moment for my own happiness." yorke clayton, as he said this, was alluding to his love affair with edith jones. he had now conquered all the family with one exception. even the father had assented that it should be so, though tardily and with sundry misgivings. the one person was edith herself, and it had come to be acknowledged by all around her that she loved yorke clayton. as she herself never now denied it, it was admitted on all sides at morony castle that the captain was certainly the favoured lover. but edith still held out, and had gone so far as to tell the captain that he could not be allowed to come to the castle unless he would desist. "i never shall desist," he had replied. "as to that you may take my word." then edith had of course loved him so much the more. "i don't think this kind of thing will go on," he continued, still addressing frank jones. "the people are so fickle that they cannot be constant even to anything evil. it is quite on the cards that black tom daly should next year be the most popular master of hounds in all ireland, and that mr. kit mooney should not be allowed to show his face within reach of moytubber gorse on hunting mornings." "they'd have burned the gorse before they have come round to that state of feeling. look at raheeny." "it isn't so easy to destroy anything," said the philosophic clayton. "if the foxes are frightened out of raheeny or moytubber, they will go somewhere else. and even if poor tom daly were to run away from county galway, as you're talking of doing, the county would find another master." "not like tom daly," said frank jones, enthusiastically. "there are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught. tom daly is a first-class man, i admit; and he had no more obedient slave than myself when i used to get out hunting two or three days in the session. but he is a desponding man, and cannot look forward to better times. for myself, i own that my hopes are fixed. hang lax, and then the millennium!" "i will quite agree as to the hanging of lax," said frank; "but for any millennium, i want something more strong than irish feeling. you'll excuse me, old fellow." "oh, certainly! of course, i'm an irishman myself, and might have been a lax instead of a policeman, if chance had got hold of me in time. as it is, i've a sort of feeling that the policeman is going to have the best of it all through ireland." then there came a sudden sound as of a sharp thud, and yorke clayton fell as it were dead at frank jones's feet. this occurred at a corner of the road, from which a little boreen or lane ran up the side of the mountain between walls about three feet high. but here some benevolent enterprising gentleman, wishing to bring water through lower lough cong to lough corrib, had caused the beginnings of a canal to be built, which had, however, after the expenditure of large sums of money, come to nothing. but the ground, or rather rock, had so been moved and excavated as to make it practicable for some men engaged, as had been this man, to drop at once out of sight. hunter was at once upon his track, with the other policeman, both of whom fired at him. but as they acknowledged afterwards, they had barely seen the skirt of his coat in the gloom of the evening. the whole spot up and behind the corner of the road was so honeycombed by the works of the intended canal as to afford hiding-places and retreats for a score of murderers. here, as was afterwards ascertained, there was but one, and that one had apparently sufficed. frank jones had remained on the road with his friend, and had raised him in his arms when he fell. "they have done for me this time," clayton had said, but had said no more. he had in truth fainted, but frank jones, in his ignorance, had thought that he was dead. it turned out afterwards that the bullet had struck his ribs in the front of his body, and, having been turned by the bone, had passed round to his back, and had there buried itself in the flesh. it needs not that we dwell with any length on this part of our tale, but may say at once that the medical skill of cong sufficed to extract the bullet on the next morning. after a while one of the two policemen came back to the road, and assisted frank jones in carrying up poor clayton to the inn. hunter, though still maimed by his wound, stuck to the pursuit, assisted by two other policemen from cong, who soon appeared upon the scene. but the man escaped, and his flight was soon covered by the darkness of night. it had been eight o'clock before the party had left the inn, and had wandered with great imprudence further than they had intended. at least, so it was said after the occurrence; though, had nothing happened, they would have reached their homes before night had in truth set in. but men said of clayton that he had become so hardened by the practices of his life, and by the failure of all attempts hitherto made against him, that he had become incredulous of harm. "they have got me at last," he said to frank the next morning. "thank god it was not you instead of me. i have been thinking of it as i lay here in the night, and have blamed myself greatly. it is my business and not yours." and then again further on in the day he sent a message to edith. "tell her from me that it is all over now, but that had i lived she would have had to be my wife." but from that time forth he did in truth get better, though we in these pages can never again be allowed to see him as an active working man. it was his fault,--as the galway doctor said his egregious sin,--to spend the most of his time in lying on a couch out in the garden at morony castle, and talking of the fate of mr. lax. the remainder of his hours he devoted to the acceptance of little sick-room favours from his hostess,--i would say from his two hostesses, were it not that he soon came to terms with ada, under which ada was not to attend to him with any particular care. "if i could catch that fellow," he said to ada, alluding to the man who had intended to murder him, "i would have no harm done to him. he should be let free at once; for i could not possibly have got such an opportunity by any other means." but poor edith, the while, felt herself to be badly used. she and ada had often talked of the terrible perils to which yorke clayton was subjected, and, as the reader may remember, had discussed the propriety of a man so situated allowing himself to become familiar with any girl. but now captain clayton was declared to be safe by everybody. the doctors united in saying that his constitution would carry him through a cannon-ball. but edith felt that all the danger had fallen to her lot. in the meantime the search for the double murderers,--unless indeed one murderer had been busy in both cases--was carried vainly along. the horror of poor mr. morris's fate had almost disappeared under the awe occasioned by the attack on captain clayton. it was astonishing to see how entirely mr. morris, with all his family and his old acres, and with minas cottage,--which, to the knowledge of the entire population of cong, was his own peculiar property,--was lost to notice under the attack that had been made with so much audacity on captain yorke clayton. he, as one of four, all armed to the teeth, was attacked by one individual, and attacked successfully. there were those who said at first that the bars of galway jail must have been broken, and that lax the omnipotent, lax the omnipresent, had escaped. and it certainly was the case that many were in ignorance as to who the murderer had been. probably all were ignorant,--all of those who were in truth well acquainted with the person of mr. morris' murderer. and in the minds of the people generally the awe became greater than ever. to them it was evident that anybody could murder anybody; and evident also that it was permitted to them to do so by this new law which had sprung up of late in the country, almost enjoining them to exercise this peculiar mode of retaliation. the bravest thought that they were about to have their revenge against their old masters, and determined that the revenge should be a bloody one. but the more cowardly, and very much the more numerous on that account, feared that, poor as they were, they might be the victims. no man among them could be much poorer than pat gilligan, and he had been chosen as one to be murdered, for some reason known only to the murderer. a new and terrible aristocracy was growing up among them,--the aristocracy of hidden firearms. there was but little said among them, even by the husband to the wife, or by the father to the son; because the husband feared his wife, and the father his own child. there had been a feeling of old among them that they were being ground down by the old aristocracy. there must ever be such an idea on the part of those who do not have enough to eat in regard to their betters, who have more than plenty. it cannot be but that want should engender such feeling. but now the dread of the new aristocracy was becoming worse than that of the old. in the dull, dim minds of these poor people there arose, gradually indeed but quickly, a conviction that the new aristocracy might be worse even than the old; and that law, as administered by government, might be less tyrannical than the law of those who had no law to govern them. so the people sat silent at their hearths, or crawled miserably about their potato patches, speaking not at all of the life around them. when a week was over, tidings came to them that captain clayton, though he had been shot right through the body,--though the bullet had gone in at his breast and come out at his back, as the report went,--was still alive, and likely to live. "he's a-spending every hour of his blessed life a-making love to a young lady who is a-nursing him." this was the report brought up to cong by the steward of the lake steamer, and was received as a new miracle by the cong people. the fates had decreed that captain clayton should not fall by any bullet fired by lax, the landleaguer; for, though lax, the landleaguer, was himself fast in prison when the attempt was made, such became more than ever the creed of the people when it was understood that captain clayton, with his own flesh and blood, was at this moment making love to mr. jones's youngest daughter at morony castle. chapter xlvii. kerrycullion. captain clayton was thoroughly enjoying life, now perhaps, for the first time since he had had a bullet driven through his body. it had come to pass that everything, almost everything, was done for him by the hands of edith. and yet ada was willing to do everything that was required; but she declared always that what she did was of no avail. "unless you take it to him, you know he won't eat it," she would still say. no doubt this was absurd, because the sick man's appetite was very good, considering that a hole had been made from his front to his back within the last month. it was still september, the weather was as warm as summer, and he insisted on lying out in the garden with his rugs around him, and enjoying the service of all his slaves. but among his slaves edith was the one whom the other slaves found it most difficult to understand. "i will go on," she said to her father, "and do everything for him while he is an invalid. but, when he is well enough to be moved, either he or i must go out of this." her father simply said that he did not understand it; but then he was one of the other slaves. "edith," said the captain, one day, speaking from his rugs on the bank upon the lawn, "just say that one word, 'i yield.' it will have to be said sooner or later." "i will not say it, captain clayton," said edith with a firm voice. "so you have gone back to the captain," said he. "i will go back further than that, if you continue to annoy me. it shall be nothing but plain 'sir,' as hard as you please. you might as well let go my hand; you know that i do not take it away violently, because of your wound." "i know--i know--i know that a girl's hand is the sweetest thing in all creation if she likes you, and leaves it with you willingly." then there was a little pull, but it was only very little. "of course, i don't want to hurt you," said edith. "and, therefore, it feels as though you loved me. of course it does. your hand says one thing and your voice another. which way does your heart go?" "right against you," said edith. but she could not help blushing at the lie as she told it. "my conscience is altogether against you, and i advise you to attend more to that than to anything else." but still he held her hand, and still she let him hold it. at that moment hunter appeared upon the scene, and edith regained her hand. but had the captain held the hand, hunter would not have seen it. hunter was full of his own news; and, as he told it, very dreadful the story was. "there has been a murder worse than any that have happened yet, just the other side of the lake," and he pointed away to the mountains, and to that part of lough corrib which is just above cong. "another murder?" said edith. "oh, miss, no other murder ever told of had any horror in it equal to this! i don't know how the governor will keep himself quiet there, with such an affair as this to be looked after. there are six of them down,--or at any rate five." "when a doubt creeps in, one can always disbelieve as much as one pleases." "you can hardly disbelieve this, sir, as i have just heard the story from sergeant malcolm. there were six in the house, and five have been carried out dead. one has been taken to cong, and he is as good as dead. their names are kelly. an old man and an old woman, and another woman and three children. the old woman was very old, and the man appears to have been her son." "have they got nobody?" asked clayton. "it appears not, sir. but there is a rumour about the place that there were many of them in it." "looking after one another," said clayton, "so that none should escape his share of the guilt." "it may be so. but there were many in it, sir. i can't tell much of the circumstances, except the fact that there are the five bodies lying dead." and hunter, with some touch of dramatic effect and true pathos, pointed again to the mountains which he had indicated as the spot where this last murder was committed. it was soon settled among them that hunter should go off to the scene of action, cong, or wherever else his services might be required, and that he should take special care to keep his master acquainted with all details as they came to light. for us, we may give here the details as they did reach the captain's ears in the course of the next few days. hunter's story had only been too true. the six persons had been murdered, barring one child, who had been taken into cong in a state which was supposed hardly to admit of his prolonged life. the others, who now lay dead at a shebeen house in the neighbourhood, consisted of an old woman and her son, and his wife and a grown daughter, and a son. all these had been killed in various ways,--had been shot with rifles, and stoned with rocks, and made away with, after any fashion that might come most readily to the hands of brutes devoid of light, of mercy, of conscience, and apparently of fear. it must have been a terrible sight to see, for those who had first broken in upon the scene of desolation. in the course of the next morning it had become known to the police, and it was soon rumoured throughout england and ireland that there had been ten murderers engaged in the bloody fray. it must have been as captain clayton had surmised; one with another intent upon destroying that wretched family,--or perhaps only one among its number,--had insisted that others should accompany him. a man who had been one of their number was less likely to tell if he had a hand in it himself. and so there were ten of them. it might be that one among the number of the murdered had seen the murder of mr. morris, or of pat gilligan, or the attempted murder of captain clayton. and that one was not sure not to tell,--had perhaps shown by some sign and indication that to tell the truth about the deed was in his breast,--or in hers! some woman living there might have spoken such a word to a friend less cautious in that than were the neighbours in general. then we can hear, or fancy that we can hear, the muttered reasons of those who sought to rule amidst that bloody community. they were a family of the kellys,--these poor doomed creatures,--but amidst those who whispered together, amidst those who were forced to come into the whispering, there were many of the same family; or, at any rate, of the same name. for the kellys were a tribe who had been strong in the land for many years. though each of the ten feared to be of the bloody party, each did not like not to be of it, for so the power would have come out of their hands. they wished to be among the leading aristocrats, though still they feared. and thus they came together, dreading each other, hating each other at last; each aware that he was about to put his very life within the other's power, and each trying to think, as far as thoughts would come to his dim mind, that to him might come some possibility of escape by betraying his comrades. but a miracle had occurred,--that which must have seemed to be a miracle when they first heard it, and to the wretches themselves, when its fatal truth was made known to them. while in the dead of night they were carrying out this most inhuman massacre there were other eyes watching them; six other eyes were looking at them, and seeing what they did perhaps more plainly than they would see themselves! think of the scene! there were six persons doomed, and ten who had agreed to doom them; and three others looking on from behind a wall, so near as to enable them to see it all, under the fitful light of the stars! nineteen of them engaged round one small cabin, of whom five were to die that night;--and as to ten others, it cannot but be hoped that the whole ten may pay the penalty due to the offended feelings of an entire nation! it may be that it shall be proved that some among the ten had not struck a fatal blow. or it may fail to be proved that some among the ten have done so. it will go hard with any man to adjudge ten men to death for one deed of murder; and it is very hard for that one to remember always that the doom he is to give is the only means in our power to stop the downward path of crime among us. it may be that some among the ten shall be spared, and it may be that he or they who spare them shall have done right. but such was not the feeling of captain yorke clayton as he discussed the matter, day after day, with hunter, or with frank jones, upon the lawn at castle morony. "it would be the grandest sight to see,--ten of them hanging in a row." "the saddest sight the world could show," said frank. "sad enough, that the world should want it. but if you had been employed as i have for the last few years, you would not think it sad to have achieved it. if the judge and the jury will do their work as it should be done there will be an end to this kind of thing for many years to come. think of the country we are living in now! think of your father's condition, and of the injury which has been done to him and to your sisters, and to yourself. if that could be prevented and atoned for, and set right by the hanging in one row of ten such miscreants as those, would it not be a noble deed done? these ten are frightful to you because there are ten at once,--ten in the same village,--ten nearly of the same name! people would call it a bloody assize where so many are doomed. but they scruple to call the country bloody where so many are murdered day after day. it is the honest who are murdered; but would it not be well to rid the world of these ruffians? and, remember, that these ten would not have been ten, if some one or two had been dealt with for the first offence. and if the ten were now all spared, whose life would be safe in such a golgotha? i say that, to those who desire to have their country once more human, once more fit for an honest man to live in, these ten men hanging in a row will be a goodly sight." there must have been a feeling in the minds of these three men that some terrible step must be taken to put an end to the power of this aristocracy, before life in the country would be again possible. when they had come together to watch their friends and neighbours, and see what the ten were about to do, there must have been some determination in their hearts to tell the story of that which would be enacted. why should these ten have all the power in their own hands? why should these questions of life and death be remitted to them, to the exclusion of those other three? and if this family of kellys were doomed, why should there not be other families of other kellys,--why not their own families? and if kerrycullion were made to swim in blood,--for that was the name of the townland in which these kellys lived,--why not any other homestead round the place in which four or five victims may have hidden themselves? so the three, with mutual whisperings among themselves, with many fears and with much trembling, having obtained some tidings of what was to be done, agreed to follow and to see. it was whispered about that one of the family, the poor man's wife, probably, had seen the attack made upon poor pat gilligan, and may, or may not, have uttered some threat of vengeance; may have shown some sign that the murder ought to be made known to someone. was not pat gilligan her sister's husband's brother's child? and he was not one of the other, the rich aristocracy, against whom all men's hands were justly raised. some such word had probably passed the unfortunate woman's lips, and the ten men had risen against her. the ten men, each protecting each other, had sworn among themselves that so villainous a practice, so glaring an evil as this, of telling aught to the other aristocracy, must be brought to an end. but then the three interfered, and it was likely that the other, the rich aristocracy, should now know all about it. it was not to save the lives of those unfortunate women and children that they went. there would be danger in that. and though the women and children were, at any rate, their near neighbours, why should they attempt to interfere and incur manifest dangers on their account? but they would creep along and see, and then they could tell; or should they be disturbed in their employment, they could escape amidst the darkness of the night. there could be no escape for those poor wretches, stripped in their bed; none for that aged woman, who could not take herself away from among the guns and rocks of her pursuers; none for those poor children; none, indeed, for the father of the family, upon whom the ten would come in his lair. if his wife had threatened to tell, he must pay for his wife's garrulity. pat gilligan had suffered for some such offence, and it was but just that she and he and they should suffer also. but the three might have to suffer, also, in their turns, if they consented to subject themselves to so bloody an aristocracy. and therefore they stalked forth at night and went up to kerrycullion, at the heels of the other party, and saw it all. now, one after another, the six were killed, or all but killed, and then the three went back to their homes, resolved that they would have recourse to the other aristocracy. between galway and cong and kerrycullion, hunter was kept going in these days, so as to obtain always the latest information for his master. for, though the neighbourhood of morony castle was now supposed to be quiet, and though the captain was not at the moment on active service, hunter was still allowed to remain with him. and, indeed, captain clayton's opinion was esteemed so highly, that, though he could do nothing, he was in truth on active service. "they are sticking to their story, all through?" he asked hunter, or rather communicated the fact to hunter for his benefit. "oh, yes! sir; they stick to their story. there is no doubt about them now. they can't go back." "and that boy can talk now?" "yes, sir; he can talk a little." "and what he says agrees with the three men? there will be no more murders in that county, hunter, or in county galway either. when they have once learned to think it possible that one man may tell of another, there will be an end to that little game. but they must hang them of course." "oh, yes! sir," said hunter. "i'd hang them myself; the whole ten of them, rather than keep them waiting." "the trial is to be in dublin. before that day comes we shall find what they do about lax. i don't suppose they will want me; or if they did, for the matter of that, i could go myself as well as ever." "you could do nothing of the kind, captain clayton," said edith, who was sitting there. "it is absurd to hear you talk in such a way." "i don't suppose he could just go up to dublin, miss," said hunter. "not for life and death?" roared the sick man. "i suppose you could for life and death," said hunter,--with a little caution. "for his own death he could," said edith. "but it's the death of other people that he is thinking of now." "and you, what are you thinking of?" "to tell the truth, just at this moment i was thinking of yours. you are here under our keeping, and as long as you remain so, we are bound to do what we can to keep you from killing yourself; you ought to be in your bed." "tucked up all round,--and you ought to be giving me gruel." then hunter simpered and went away. he generally did go away when the love-scenes began. "you could give one something which would cure me instantly." "no, i could not! there are no such instant cures known in the medical world for a man who has had a hole right through him." "that bullet will certainly be immortal." "but you will not if you talk of going up to dublin." "edith, a kiss would cure me." "captain clayton, you are in circumstances which should prevent you from alluding to any such thing. i am here to nurse you, and i should not be insulted." "that is true," he said. "and if it be an insult to tell you what a kiss would do for me, i withdraw the word. but the feeling it would convey, that you had in truth given yourself to me, that you were really, really my own, would i think cure me, though a dozen bullets had gone through me." then when ada had come down, edith went to her bedroom, and kissed the pillow, instead of him. oh, if it might be granted to her to go to him, and frankly to confess, that she was all, all his own! and she felt, as days went on, she would have to yield, though honour still told her that she should never do so. chapter xlviii. the new aristocracy fails. from this moment the mystery of the new aristocracy began to fade away, and get itself abolished. men and women began to feel that there might be something worse in store for them than the old course of policemen, juries, and judges. it had seemed, at first, as though these evil things could be brought to an end, and silenced altogether as far as their blessed country was concerned. a time was coming in which everyone was to do as he pleased, without any fear that another should tell of him. though a man should be seen in the broad daylight cutting the tails off half a score of oxen it would be recognised in the neighbourhood as no more than a fair act of vengeance, and nothing should be told of the deed, let the policemen busy themselves as they might. and the beauty of the system consisted in the fact that the fear of telling was brought home to the minds of all men, women, and children. though it was certain that a woman had seen a cow's tail mangled, though it could be proved beyond all doubt that she was in the field when the deed was done, yet if she held her peace no punishment would await her. the policeman and the magistrate could do nothing to her. but thady o'leary, the man who had cut a cow's tail off, could certainly punish her. if nothing else were done she could be boycotted, or, in other words, not allowed to buy or sell the necessaries of life. or she could herself be murdered, as had happened to pat gilligan. the whole thing had seemed to run so smoothly! but now there had come, or would soon come, a change o'er the spirit of the dream. the murder of pat gilligan, though it had made one in the necessary sequence of events, one act in the course of the drama which, as a whole, had appeared to be so perfect, seemed to them all to have about it something terrible. no one knew what offence pat gilligan had given, or why he had been condemned. each man began to tremble as he thought that he too might be a pat gilligan, and each woman that she might be a mrs. kelly. it was better to go back to the police and the magistrates than this! i do not know that we need lean too heavily on the stupidity of the country's side in not having perceived that this would be so. the country's side is very slow in perceiving the course which things will take. these ten murderers had been brought together, each from fear of the others; and they must have felt that though they were ten,--a number so great when they considered the employment on which they were engaged as to cause horror to the minds of all of them,--the ten could not include all who should have been included. had the other three been taken in, if that were possible, how much better it would have been! but the desire for murder had not gone so far,--its beauty had not been so perfectly acknowledged as to make it even yet possible to comprise a whole parish in destroying one family. then the three had seen that the whole scheme, the mystery of the thing, the very plan upon which it was founded, must be broken down and thrown to the winds. and we can imagine that, when the idea first came upon the minds of those three, that the entire family of the kellys was to be sacrificed to stop the tongue of one talkative old woman, a horror must have fallen upon them as they recognised the duty which was incumbent on them. the duty of saving those six unfortunates they did not recognise. they could not screw themselves up to the necessary pitch of courage to enable them to enter in among loaded pistols and black-visaged murderers. the two women and the children had to die, though the three men were so close to them; so close as to have been certainly able to save them, or some of them, had they rushed into the cabin and created the confusion of another advent. to this they could not bring themselves, for are not the murderers armed? but an awful horror must have crept round their minds as they thought of the self-imposed task they had undertaken. they waited until the murders had been completed, and then they went back home and told the police. from this moment the mystery by which murders in county galway and elsewhere were for a short period protected was over in ireland. men have not seen, as yet, how much more lovely it is to tell frankly all that has been done, to give openly such evidence as a man may have to police magistrates and justices of the peace, than to keep anything wrapped within his own bosom. the charm of such outspoken truth does not reconcile itself at once to the untrained mind; but the fact of the loveliness does gradually creep in, and the hideous ugliness of the other venture. on the minds of those men of kerrycullion something of the ugliness and something of the loveliness must have made itself apparent. and when this had been done it was not probable that a return to the utter ugliness of the lie should be possible. whether the ten be hanged,--to the intense satisfaction of hunter and his master,--or some fewer number, such as may suffice the mitigated desire for revenge which at present is burning in the breasts of men, the thing will have been done, and the mystery with all its beauty will have passed away. at castle morony the beginning of the passing away of the mystery was hailed with great delight. it took place in this wise. a little girl who had been brought up there in the kitchen, and had reached the age of fifteen under the eyes of ada and edith,--a slip of a girl, whose feet our two girls had begun to trammel with shoes and stockings, and who was old enough to be proud of the finery though she could not bear the confinement,--had gone under the system of boycotting, when all the other servants had gone also. peter, who was very stern in his discipline to the younger people, had caught hold of her before she went, and had brought her to mr. jones, recommending that at any rate her dress should be stripped from her back, and her shoes and stockings from her feet. "if you war to wallop her, sir, into the bargain, it would be a good deed done," peter had said to his master. "why should i wallop her for leaving my service?" "she ain't guv' no notice," said the indignant peter. "and if i were to wallop you because you had taken it into your stupid head to leave me at a moment's notice, should i be justified in doing so?" "there is differences," said peter, drawing himself up. "you are stronger, you mean, and feemy carroll is weak. let her go her own gait as she pleases. how am i to take upon myself to say that she is not right to go? and for the shoes and stockings, let them go with her, and the dress also, if i am supposed to have any property in it. fancy a landleaguer in parliament asking an indignant question as to my detaining forcibly an unwilling female servant. let them all go; the sooner we learn to serve ourselves the better for us. i suppose you will go too before long." this had been unkind, and peter had made a speech in which he had said so. but the little affair had taken place in the beginning of the boycotting disarrangements, and mr. jones had been bitter in spirit. now the girls had shown how deftly they could do the work, and had begun to talk pleasantly how well they could manage to save the wages and the food. "it's my food you'll have to save, and my wages," said captain clayton. but this had been before he had a hole driven through him, and he was only awed by a frown. but now news was brought in that feemy had crept in at the back door. "drat her imperence," said peter, who brought in the news. "it's like her ways to come when she can't get a morsel of wholesome food elsewhere." then ada and edith had rushed off to lay hold of the delinquent, who had indeed left a feeling in the hearts of her mistresses of some love for her little foibles. "oh! feemy, so you've come back again," said ada, "and you've grown so big!" but feemy cowered and said not a word. "what have you been doing all the time?" said edith. "miss ada and i have had to clean out all the pots and all the pans, and all the gridirons, though for the matter of that there has been very little to cook on them." then ada asked the girl whether she intended to come back to her old place. "if i'm let," said the girl, bursting into tears. "where are the shoes and stockings?" said ada. but the girl only wept. "of course you shall come back, shoes or no shoes. i suppose times have been too hard with you at home to think much of shoes or stockings. since your poor cousin was shot in galway court-house,"--for feemy was a cousin of the tribe of carrolls,--"i fear it hasn't gone very well with you all." but to this feemy had only answered by renewed sobs. she had, however, from that moment taken up her residence as of yore in the old house, and had gone about her business just as though no boycotting edict had been pronounced against castle morony. and gradually the other servants had returned, falling back into their places almost without a word spoken. one boy, who had in former days looked after the cows, absolutely did come and drive them in to be milked one morning without saying a word. "and who are you, you young deevil?" said peter to him. "i'm just larry o'brien." "and what business have you here?" said peter. "how many months ago is it since last year you took yourself off without even a word said to man or woman? who wants you back again now, i wonder?" the boy, who had grown half-way to a man since he had taken his departure, made no further answer, but went on with the milking of his cows. and the old cook came back again from galway, though she came after the writing of a letter which must have taken her long to compose, and the saying of many words. "honoured miss," the letter went, "i've been at peter corcoran's doing work any time these twelve months. and glad i've been to find a hole to creep into. but peter corcoran's house isn't like castle morony, and so i've told him scores of times. but peter is one of them landleaguers, and is like to be bruk', horse, foot, and dragoons, bekaise he wouldn't serve the gentry. may the deevil go along with him, and with his pollytiks. sure you know, miss, they wouldn't let me stay at castle morony. wasn't one side in pollitiks the same as another to an old woman like me, who only wants to 'arn her bit and her sup? i don't care the vally of a tobacco-pipe for none of them now. so if the squire would take me back again, may god bless him for iver and iver, say i." then this letter was signed judy corcoran,--for she too was of the family of the corcorans,--and became the matter for many arrangements, in the course of which she once more was put into office as cook at castle morony. then edith wrote the following letter to her friend rachel, who still remained in london, partly because of her health and partly because her father had not yet quite settled his political affairs. but that shall be explained in another chapter. dearest rachel, here we are beginning to see daylight, after having been buried in cimmerian darkness for the best part of two years. i never thought how possible it would be to get along without servants to look after us, and how much of the pleasures of life might come without any of its comforts. ada and i for many months have made every bed that has been slept in in the house, till we have come to think that the making of beds is the proper employment for ladies. and every bit of food has been cooked by us, till that too has become ladylike in our eyes. and it has been done for papa, who has, i think, liked his bed and his dinner all the better, because they have passed through his daughters' hands. but, dear papa! i'm afraid he has not borne the cimmerian darkness as well as have we, who have been young enough to look forward to the return of something better. what am i to say to you about frank, who will not talk much of your perfections, though he is always thinking of them? i believe he writes to you constantly, though what he says, or of what nature it is, i can only guess. i presume he does not send many messages to lord castlewell, who, however, as far as i can see, has behaved beautifully. what more can a girl want than to have a lord to fall in love with her, and to give her up just as her inclination may declare itself? what i write for now, specially, is to add a word to what i presume frank may have said in one of his letters. papa says that neither you nor mr. o'mahony are to think of leaving this side of the water without coming down to castle morony. we have got a cook now, and a cow-boy. what more can you want? and old peter is here still, always talking about the infinite things which he has done for the jones family. joking apart, you must of course come and see us again once before you start for new york. is frank to go with you? that is a question to which we can get no answer at all from frank himself. in your last you asked me about my affairs. dear girl, i have no affairs. i am in such a position that it is impossible for me to have what you would call affairs. between you and frank everything is settled. between me and the man to whom you allude there is nothing settled,--except that there is no ground for settlement. he must go one way and i another. it is very sad, you will say. i, however, have done it for myself and i must bear the burden. yours always lovingly, edith. chapter xlix. it is not to be supposed that mr. jones succumbed altogether to the difficulties which circumstances had placed in his way. his feelings had been much hurt both by those who had chosen to call themselves his enemies and by his friends, and under such usage he became somewhat sullen. having suffered a grievous misfortune he had become violent with his children, and had been more severely hurt by the death of the poor boy who had been murdered than he had confessed. but he had still struggled on, saying but little to anybody till at last he had taken frank into his confidence, when frank had returned from london with his marriage engagement dissolved. and the re-engagement had not at all interfered with the renewed intimacy between frank and his father, because the girl was absolved from her singing. the father had feared that the son would go away from him, and lead an idle life, enjoying the luxuries which her rich salary would purchase. frank had shared his father's feelings in this respect, but still the squire had had his misgivings. all that was now set to rights by the absolute destruction of poor rachel's voice. poor mr. jones had indeed received comfort from other sources more material than this. his relatives had put their heads together, and had agreed to bear some part of the loss which had fallen upon the estate; not the loss, that is, from the submerged meadows, which was indeed mr. jones's own private concern, but from the injury done to him by the commissioners. indeed, as things went on, that injury appeared to be less extensive than had been imagined, though the injustice, as it struck mr. jones's mind, was not less egregious. where there was a shred of a lease the sub-commissioners were powerless, and though attempts had been made to break the leases they had failed; and men were beginning to say that the new law would be comparatively powerless because it would do so little. the advocates for the law pointed out that, taking the land of ireland all through, not five per cent.,--and again others not two per cent.,--would be affected by it. whether it had been worth while to disturb the sanctity of contracts for so small a result is another question; but our mr. jones certainly did feel the comfort that came to him from the fact. certain fragments of land had been reduced by the sub-commissioners after ponderous sittings, very beneficial to the lawyers, but which mr. jones had found to be grievously costly to him. he had thus agreed to other reductions without the lawyers, and felt those also to be very grievous, seeing that since he had purchased the property with a parliamentary title he had raised nothing. there was no satisfaction to him when he was told that a parliamentary title meant nothing, because a following parliament could undo what a preceding parliament had done. but as the arrangements went on he came to find that no large proportion of the estates would be affected, and that gradually the rents would be paid. they had not been paid as yet, but such he was told was the coming prospect. pat carroll had risen up as a great authority at ballintubber, and had refused to pay a shilling. he had also destroyed those eighty acres of meadow-land which had sat so near mr. jones's heart. it had been found impossible to punish him, but the impossibility was to be traced to that poor boy's delinquency. as the owner of the property turned it all over within his own bosom, he told himself that it was so. it was that that had grieved him most, that which still sat heavy on his heart. but the boy was gone, and pat carroll was in prison, and pat carroll's brother had been murdered in galway court-house. lax, too, was in prison, and yorke clayton swore by all his gods that he should be hanged. it was likely that he would be hanged, and yorke clayton might find his comfort in that. and now had come up this terrible affair at kerrycullion, from which it was probable that the whole mystery of the new aristocracy would be abandoned. mr. jones, as he thought of it all, whispered to himself that if he would still hold up his head, life might yet be possible at castle morony. "it will only be for myself,--only for myself and ada," he said, still mourning greatly over his fate. "and ada will go, too. the beauty of the flock will never be left to remain here with her father." but in truth his regrets were chiefly for edith. if that bloodthirsty captain would have made himself satisfied with ada, he might still have been happy. in these days he would walk down frequently to the meadows and see the work which the men were doing. he had greatly enlarged them, having borrowed money for the purpose from the government land commissioners, and was once again allowing new hopes to spring in his heart. though he was a man so silent, and appearing to be so apathetic, he was intent enough on his own purposes when they became clear before his eyes. from his first coming into this country his purport had been to do good, as far as the radius of his circle went, to all whom it included. the necessity of living was no doubt the same with him as with others,--and of living well. he must do something for himself and his children. but together with this was the desire, nearly equally strong, of being a benefactor to those around him. he had declared to himself when he bought the property that with this object would he settle himself down upon it, and he had not departed from it. he had brought up his children with this purpose; and they had learned to feel, one and all, that it was among the pleasures and the duties of their life. then had come pat carroll, and everything had been embittered for him. all ballintubber and all morony had seemed to turn against him. when he found that pat carroll was disposed to be hostile to him, he made the man a liberal offer to take himself off to america. but mr. jones, in those days, had heard nothing of lax, and was unaware that lax was a dominant spirit under whom he was doomed to suffer. "i did not know you so well then," said captain clayton to mr. jones, now some weeks hence, "or i could have told you that pat carroll is nobody. pat carroll is considered nobody, because he has not been to new york. mr. lax has travelled, and mr. lax is somebody. mr. lax settled himself in county mayo, and thus he allowed his influence to spread itself among us over here in county galway. mr. lax is a great man, but i rather think that he will have to be hanged in galway jail before a month has passed over his head." mr. jones usually took his son with him when he walked about among the meadows, and he again expressed his wishes to him as though frank hereafter were to have the management of everything. but on one occasion, towards the latter half of the afternoon, he went alone. there were different wooden barriers, having sluice gates passing between them, over which he would walk, and at present there were sheep on the upper meadows, on which the luxuriant grass had begun to grow in the early summer. he was looking at his sheep now, and thinking to himself that he could find a market for them in spite of all that the boycotters could do to prevent him. but in one corner, where the meadows ceased, and pat carroll's land began, he met an old man whom he had known well in former years, named con heffernan. it was absolutely the case that he, the landlord, did not at the present moment know who occupied pat carroll's land, though he did know that he had received no rent for the last three years. and he knew also that con heffernan was a friend of carroll's, or, as he believed, a distant cousin. and he knew also that con was supposed to have been one of those who had assisted at the destruction of the sluice gates. "well, con; how are you?" he said. "why thin, yer honour, i'm only puirly. it's bad times as is on us now, indeed and indeed." "whose fault is that?" said the squire. "not yer honour's. i will allys say that for your honour. you never did nothing to none of us." "you had land on the estate till some twelve months since, and then you were evicted for five gales of rent." "that's thrue, too, yer honour." "you ought to be a rich man now, seeing that you have got two-and-a-half years' rent in your pocket, and i ought to be poor, seeing that i've got none of it." "is it puir for yer honour, and is it rich for the like of me?" "what have you done with the money, con,--the five gales of rent?" "'deed, yer honour, and i don't be just knowing anything about it." "i suppose the landleaguers have had some of it." "i suppose they have, thin; the black divil run away with them for laaguers!" "have you quarrelled with the league, con?" "i have quarrelled with a'most of the things which is a-going at the present moment." "i'm sorry for that, as quarrels with old friends are always bad." "the laague, then, isn't any such old friend of mine. i niver heerd of the laague, not till nigh three years ago. what with faynians, and moonlighters, and home-rulers, and now with thim laaguers, they don't lave a por boy any pace." * * * * * postscript. in a preliminary note to the first volume i stated why this last-written novel of my father's was never completed. he had intended that yorke clayton should marry edith jones, that frank jones should marry rachel o'mahony, and that lax should be hanged for the murder of florian jones; but no other coming incident, or further unravelling of the story, is known. h. m. t. the end. charles dickens and evans, crystal palace press. * * * * * transcriber's note: obvious typographical errors have been corrected without comment. specific changes in wording of the text are listed below. volume i, chapter v, paragraph . the word "peasant" was changed to "present" in the sentence: in regard to ireland his theory was that the land should be taken from the present proprietors, and divided among the peasants who tilled it. volume i, chapter xiii, last paragraph. the word "evidence" was changed to "guilt" in the sentence: she could understand that it must be taken down in some form that would be presentable to a magistrate, and that evidence of the guilt of pat carroll and evidence as to the possible guilt of others must not be whispered simply into her own ears. volume i, chapter xiv, paragraph . the word "danger" was changed to "dangers" in the sentence: like the other letter it was cheerful, and high-spirited; but still it seemed to speak of impending dangers, which frank, though he could not understand them, thought that he could perceive. volume i, chapter xv, paragraph . the word "president" was changed too "resident" in the sentence: he had lately been appointed joint resident magistrate for galway, mayo, and roscommon, and had removed his residence to galway. volume ii, chapter xviii, paragraph . an em-dash was moved from after the word "shillings" to after the word "said" in the sentence: to tell the truth,--and as he had said,--to earn a few shillings was the object of his ambition. volume ii, chapter xxiv, paragraph . the word "daughter" was changed to the plural in the sentence: there would be nothing unusual under ordinary circumstances in your daughters going to a ball at galway. volume ii, chapter xxvi, paragraph . the word "thought" was changed to "said" in the sentence: "i ought to have said 'my lord,'" she said; "but i forgot. i hope you'll excuse me--my lord." also, a comma after "forgot" was changed to a full stop. volume ii, chapter xxvii, next-to-last paragraph. the word "is" was deleted from the sentence: there's [is] no knowing what a policeman can't do in this country. volume iii, chapter xxxvi, paragraph . the astute reader will forgive trollope, who was quite ill, for here calling pat carroll's brother jerry instead of terry, as he has been called up to now and will again be called later in the novel. the name has been changed back to terry in the sentence: the murder of terry carroll at the moment in which he was about to give evidence,--false evidence, as the leaguers said,--against his brother was a great triumph to them. volume iii, chapter xxxix, paragraph . "jerry" was changed to "terry" (_v.s._) in the sentence: nothing had ever been made out in regard to the murder of terry carroll in the court house at galway. volume iii, chapter xxxix, paragraph . "jerry" was changed to "terry" (_v.s._) in the sentence: "did the crown intend to pretend that they had any shadow of evidence against him as to the shooting of terry carroll?" volume iii, chapter xxxix, paragraph . "jerry" was changed to "terry" (_v.s._) in the sentence: even presuming that lax's hand cannot be seen visible in the matter of terry carroll, there is, we think, something to connect him with the other murder. volume iii, chapter xlviii, paragraph . the word "jail" was changed to "galway court-house" in the sentence beginning: since your poor cousin was shot in galway court-house . . . proofreading team the land-war in ireland a history for the times by james godkin author of 'ireland and her churches' late irish correspondent of 'the times' london macmillan and co. london: printed by spottiswoode and co., new-street square and parliament street preface. it would be difficult to name any subject so much discussed during the last half century as 'the condition of ireland.' there was an endless diversity of opinion; but in one thing all writers and speakers agreed: the condition was morbid. ireland was always sick, always under medical treatment, always subject to enquiries as to the nature of her maladies, and the remedies likely to effect a cure. the royal commissions and parliamentary committees that sat upon her case were innumerable, and their reports would fill a library. still the nature of the disease, or the complication of diseases, was a mystery. sundry 'boons' were prescribed, by way of experiment; but, though recommended as perfect cures, they did the patient no good. she was either very low and weak, or so dangerously strong and violent that she had to be put under restraint. whenever this crisis arrived, she arrested the special attention of the state doctors. consultations were held, and it was solemnly determined that something should be done. another effort should be made to discover the _fons malorum_, and dry it up if possible. a diseased nation, subject to paroxysms of insanity, and requiring , keepers, was a dangerous neighbour, as well as a serious financial burden. yet many contended that all such attempts were useless. it was like trying different kinds of soap to whiten the skin of a negro. the patient was incurable. her ailment was nothing but natural perversity, aggravated by religious delusions; and the root of her disorder could never be known till she was subjected to a _post mortem_ examination, for which it was hoped emigration, and the help of improving landlords, would soon afford an opportunity. in the meantime, the strait waistcoat must be put on, to keep the patient from doing mischief. but at length a great physician arose, who declared that this state of things should not continue; the honour, if not the safety, of england demanded that the treatment should be reversed. mr. gladstone understands the case of ireland, and he has courage to apply the proper remedies. yet the british public do not understand it so well; and he will need all the force of public opinion to sustain him and his cabinet in the work of national regeneration which they have undertaken. it is not enough for a good physician to examine the symptoms of his patient. he must have a full and faithful history of the case. he must know how the disease originated, and how it was treated. if injuries were inflicted, he must know under what circumstances, how they affected the nervous system, and whether there may not be surrounding influences which prevent the restoration of health, or some nuisance that poisons the atmosphere. such a history of the case of ireland the author has endeavoured to give in the following pages. it it is no perfunctory service. he resolved to do it years ago, when he finished his work on the irish church establishment, and it has been delayed only in consequence of illness and other engagements. he does not boast of any extraordinary qualifications for the work. but he claims the advantage of having studied the subject long and earnestly, as one in which he has been interested from his youth. he has written the history of the country more or less fully three times. during his thirty years' connexion with the press, it has been his duty to examine and discuss everything that appeared before the public upon irish questions, and it has always been his habit to bring the light of history to bear upon the topics of the day. twenty years ago he was an active member of the irish tenant league, which held great county meetings in most parts of the island; and was enthusiastically supported by the tenant farmers, adopting resolutions and petitions on the land question almost identical with those passed by similar meetings at the present time. then mr. sharman crawford was the only landlord who joined in the movement; now many of the largest proprietors take their stand on the tenant-right platform. and after a generation of sectarian division and religious dissension in ulster, stimulated by the landed gentry, for political purposes, the catholic priests and the presbyterian clergy have again united to advocate the demands of the people for the legal protection of their industry and their property. there is scarcely a county in ireland which the author of this volume has not traversed more than once, having always an eye to the condition of the population, their mode of living, and the relations of the different classes. during the past year, as special commissioner of the _irish times_, he went through the greater part of ulster, and portions of the south, in order to ascertain the feelings of the farmers and the working classes, on the great question which is about to engage the attention of parliament. the result of his historical studies and personal enquiries is this:--all the maladies of ireland, which perplex statesmen and economists, have arisen from injuries inflicted by england in the wars which she waged to get possession of the irish land. ireland has been irreconcilable, not because she was conquered by england, not even because she was persecuted, but because she was robbed of her inheritance. if england had done everything she has done against the irish nation, omitting the _confiscations_, the past would have been forgotten and condoned long ago, and the two nations would have been one people. even the religious wars resolve themselves into efforts to retain the land, or to recover the forfeited estates. and the banished chiefs never could have rallied the nation to arms, as they so often did against overwhelming odds, if the people had not been involved in the ruin of their lords. all that is really important in the history of the country for the last three centuries is, the fighting of the two nations for the possession of the soil. the reformation was in reality nothing but a special form of the land war. the oath of supremacy was simply a lever for evicting the owners of the land. the process was simple. the king demanded spiritual allegiance; refusal was high treason; the punishment of high treason was forfeiture of estates, with death or banishment to the recusants. any other law they might have obeyed, and retained their inheritance. this law fixed its iron grapples in the conscience, and made obedience impossible, without a degree of baseness that rendered life intolerable. hence protestantism was detested, not so much as a religion, as an instrument of spoliation. the agrarian wars were kept up from generation to generation, ireland always making desperate efforts to get back her inheritance, but always crushed to the earth, a victim of famine and the sword, by the power of england. the history of these wars, then, is the history of the case of the irish patient. its main facts are embodied in the general history of the country. but they have recently been brought out more distinctly by authors who have devoted years to the examination of the original state papers, in which the actors themselves described their exploits and recorded their motives and feelings with startling frankness. when a task of this kind has been performed by a capable and conscientious historian, it would be a work of supererogation for another enquirer to undergo the wearisome toil, even if he could. i have, therefore, for the purpose of my argument, freely availed myself of the materials given to the public by mr. froude, the rev. c.p. meehan, and mr. prendergast, not, however, without asking their permission, which was in each case most readily and kindly granted. the ancient state of ireland, and especially of ulster, is so little known in england, that i was glad to have the facts vouched for by so high an authority as mr. froude, and a writer so full of the instinctive pride of the dominant nation; the more so as i have often been obliged to dissent from his views, and to appeal against his judgments. beguiled by the beauty of his descriptions, i am afraid i have drawn too largely on his pages, in proving and illustrating my case; but i feel confident that no one will read these extracts without more eagerly desiring to possess the volumes of his great work from which they are taken. i have similar acknowledgments to make to father meehan and mr. prendergast, both of whom are preparing new editions of their most valuable works. the royal charters, and other documents connected with the plantation of ulster, are printed in the 'concise view of the irish society,' compiled from their records, and published by their authority in . whenever i have been indebted to other writers, i have acknowledged my obligation in the course of the work. in preparing it, i have had but one object constantly in view: to present to the public a careful collection and an impartial statement of facts on the state of ireland, for the right government of which the british people are now more than ever responsible. i shall be thankful if my labours should contribute in any measure, however humble, to the new conquest of ireland 'by justice' of which mr. bright has spoken. his language is suggestive. it is late (happily not 'too late') to commence the reign of justice. but the nation is not to be despised which requires nothing more than _that_ to win its heart, while its spirit could not be conquered by centuries of injustice. nor should it be forgotten by the people of england that some atonement is due for past wrongs, not the least of which is the vilification and distrust from which the irish people have suffered so much. 'the spirit of a man may sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?' some manifestation of christian magnanimity just now would greatly help the work of national reconciliation. the time is favourable. the government enjoys the prestige of an unparalleled success. the only prime minister that ever dared to do full justice to ireland, is the most powerful that england has had for nearly a century. he has in his cabinet the only chief secretary of ireland that ever thoroughly sympathised with the nation, not excepting lord morpeth; the great tribune of the english people, who has been one of the most eloquent advocates of ireland; an ex-viceroy who has pronounced it felony for the irish landlords to avail themselves of their legal rights, although he put down a rebellion which that felony mainly provoked; another ex-governor, who was one of the most earnest and conscientious that ever filled the viceregal throne, and who returned to parliament to be one of the ablest champions of the country he had ruled so well; not to mention other members of commanding ability, who are solemnly pledged to the policy of justice. in these facts there is great promise. he understands little of 'the signs of the times,' who does not see the dangers that hang on the non-fulfilment of this promise. j.g. london: _january _, . contents. i. introduction ii. the rule of the o'neills iii. shane o'neill, sovereign of ulster iv. exterminating wars v. an irish crusade vi. the last of the irish princes vii. government appeals to the people viii. the case of the fugitive earls ix. the confiscation of ulster x. the plantation of ulster xi. the rebellion of xii. the puritan plantation xiii. the penal code. a new system of land war xiv. ulster in the eighteenth century xv. poverty and coercion xvi. the famine xvii. tenant-right in ulster xviii. tenant-right in down xix. tenant-right in antrim xx. tenant-right in armagh xxi. fakney--mr. trench's 'realities' xxii. belfast and perpetuity xxiii. lease-breaking--geashill xxiv. the land system and the working classes xxv. conclusion--an appeal to englishmen xviii. tenant-right in down xix. tenant-right in antrim xx. tenant-right in armagh xxi. fakney--mr. trench's 'realities' xxii. belfast and perpetuity xxiii. lease-breaking--geashill xxiv. the land system and the working classes xxv. conclusion--an appeal to englishmen the land-war in ireland. chapter i. introduction. as the hour approaches when the legislature must deal with the irish land question, and settle it, like the irish church question, once for all, attempts are redoubled to frighten the public with the difficulties of the task. the alarmists conjure up gigantic apparitions more formidable than those which encountered bunyan's pilgrim. monstrous figures frown along the gloomy avenue that, leads up to the egyptian temple in which the divinity, property, dwells in mysterious darkness. to enter the sanctuary, we are solemnly assured, requires all the cardinal virtues in their highest state of development--the firmest faith, the most vivid hope, and the charity that never faileth. but this is not the only country that has had a land question to settle. almost every nation in europe has done for itself what england is now palled upon to do for ireland. in fact, it is a necessary process in the transition from feudalism to constitutional self-government. feudalism gave the land to a few whom it made princes and lords, having forcibly taken it from the many, whom it made subjects and serfs. the land is the natural basis of society. the normans made it the artificial basis of a class. society in nearly every other country has reverted back to its original foundations, and so remains firm and strong without dangerous rents or fissures. no doubt, the operation is difficult and critical. but what has been done once may be done again; and as it was england that kept irish society so long rocking on its smaller end, it is her duty now to lend all her strength to help to seat it on its own broad foundations. giving up the viceroy's dreams that the glorious mission of ireland was to be a kitchen garden, a dairy, a larder for england, we must come frankly to the conclusion that the national life of the irish people, without distinction of creed or party, increases in vigour with their intelligence, and is now invincible. let the imperial legislature put an end for ever to such an unnatural state of things--thus only can they secure the harmonious working and cordial union of the two nations united together in one state--thus only can they insure for the landlords themselves all the power and all the influence that can be retained by them in consistency with the industrial rights and political freedom of the cultivators of the soil. these now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless bondage, under grinding injustice. they are alleged to be full of discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the people who writhe under the system. their advocates affirm that their discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and that, owing to the connection of ireland with the united states, it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the fury of a mountain torrent, deeply discoloured by a republican element. it must be granted, i fear, that the celts of ireland feel pretty much as the britons felt under the ascendency of the saxons, and as the saxons in their turn felt under the ascendency of the normans. in the estimation of the christian britons, their saxon conquerors, even after the conversion of the latter, were 'an accursed race, the children of robbers and murderers, possessing the fruits of their fathers' crimes.' 'with them,' says dr. lingard, 'the saxon was no better than a pagan bearing the name of a christian. they refused to return his salutation, to join in prayer with him in the church, to sit with him at the same table, to abide with him under the same roof. the remnant of his meals and the food over which he had made the sign of the cross they threw to their dogs or swine; the cup out of which he had drunk they scoured with sand, as if it had contracted defilement from his lips.' it is not the celtic memory only that is tenacious of national wrong. the saxon was doomed to drink to the dregs the same bitter cup which he administered so unmercifully to the briton. his teutonic blood saved him from no humiliation or insult. the normans seized all the lands, all the castles, all the pleasant mansions, all the churches and monasteries. even the saxon saints were flung down out of their shrines and trampled in the dust under the iron heel of the christian conqueror. everything saxon was vile, and the word 'englishry' implied as much contempt and scorn as the word 'irishry' in a later age. in fact, the subjugated saxons gradually became infected with all the vices and addicted to all the social disorders that prevailed among the irish in the same age; only in ireland the anarchy endured much longer from the incompleteness of the conquest and the absence of the seat of supreme government, which kept the races longer separate and antagonistic. perhaps the most humiliating notice of the degrading effects of conquest on the noble saxon race to be found in history, is the language in which giraldus cambrensis, the reviler of the irish celt, contrasts them with his countrymen, the welsh. 'who dare,' he says, 'compare the english, the most degraded of all races under heaven, with the welsh? in their own country they are the serfs, the veriest slaves of the normans. in ours whom else have we for our herdsmen, shepherds, cobblers, skinners, cleaners of our dog kennels, ay, even of our privies, but englishmen? not to mention their original treachery to the britons, that hired by them to defend them they turned upon them in spite of their oaths and engagements, they are to this day given to treachery and murder.' the lying saxon was, according to this authority, a proverbial expression. the saxon writers lamented their miserable subjection in a monotonous wail for many generations. so late as the seventeenth century an english author speaks in terms of compassion of the disinherited and despoiled families who had sunk into the condition of artisans, peasants, and paupers. 'this,' says m. thierry, 'is the last sorrowful glance cast back through the mist of ages on that great event which established in england a race of kings, nobles, and warriors of foreign extraction. the reader must figure to himself, not a mere change of political rule, not the triumph of one of two competitors, but the intrusion of a nation into the bosom of another people which it came to destroy, and the scattered fragments of which it retained as an integral portion of the new system of society, in the _status_ merely of personal property, or, to use the stronger language of records and deeds, _a clothing of the soil_. he must not picture to himself on the one hand the king and despot; on the other simply his subjects, high and low, rich and poor, all inhabiting england, and consequently all english. he must bear in mind that there were two distinct nations--the old anglo-saxon race and the norman invaders, dwelling intermingled on the same soil; or, rather, he might contemplate two countries--the one possessed by the normans, wealthy and exonerated from public burdens, the other enslaved and oppressed with a land tax--the former full of spacious mansions, of walled towns, and moated castles--the latter occupied with thatched cabins, and ancient walls in a state of dilapidation. this peopled with the happy and the idle, with soldiers, courtiers, knights, and nobles--that with miserable men condemned to labour as peasants and artisans. on the one side he beholds luxury and insolence, on the other poverty and envy--not the envy of the poor at the sight of opulence and men born to opulence, but that malignant envy, although justice be on its side, which the despoiled cannot but entertain on looking upon the spoilers. lastly, to complete the picture, these two countries are in some sort interwoven with each other--they meet at every point, and yet they are more distinct, more completely separated, than if the ocean rolled between them.' does not this picture look very like ireland? to make it more like, let us imagine that the norman king had lived in paris, and kept a viceroy in london--that the english parliament were subordinate to the french parliament, composed exclusively of normans, and governed by norman undertakers for the benefit of the dominant state--that the whole of the english land was held by ten thousand norman proprietors, many of them absentees--that all the offices of the government, in every department, were in the hands of normans--that, differing in religion with the english nation, the french, being only a tenth of the population, had got possession of all the national churches and church property, while the poor natives supported a numerous hierarchy by voluntary contributions--that the anglo-norman parliament was bribed and coerced to abolish itself, forming a union of england with france, in which the english members were as one to six. imagine that in consequence of rebellions the land of england had been confiscated three or four times, after desolating wars and famines, so that all the native proprietors were expelled, and the land was parcelled out to french soldiers and adventurers on condition that the foreign 'planters' should assist in keeping down 'the mere english' by force of arms. imagine that the english, being crushed by a cruel penal code for a century, were allowed to reoccupy the soil as mere tenants-at-will, under the absolute power of their french landlords. if all this be imagined by english legislators and english writers, they will be better able to understand the irish land question, and to comprehend the nature of 'irish difficulties,' as well as the justice of feeble, insincere, and baffled statesmen in casting the blame of irish misery and disorder on the unruly and barbarous nature of irishmen. they will recollect that the aristocracy of ireland are the high-spirited descendants of conquerors, with the instinct of conquest still in their blood. the parliament which enacted the irish land laws was a parliament composed almost exclusively of men of this dominant race. they made all political power dependent on the ownership of land, thus creating for themselves a monopoly which it is not in human nature to surrender without a struggle. the possession of this monopoly, however, fully accounts for two things--the difficulty which the landlords feel in admitting the justice of the tenant's claims for the legal recognition of the value which his labour has added to the soil, and the extreme repugnance with which they regard any legislation on the subject. besides, the want of sympathy with the people, of earnestness and courage in meeting the realities of the case, is conspicuous in all attempts of the kind during the last half-century. those attempts have been evasive, feeble, abortive--concessions to the demand that _something_ must be done, but so managed that nothing should be done to weaken the power of the eight thousand proprietors over the mass of the nation dependent on the land for their existence. hence has arisen a great amount of jealousy, distrust, and irritability in the landlord class towards the tenantry and their advocates. the irish race, to adopt thierry's language, are full of 'malignant envy' towards the lords of the soil; not because they are rich, but because they have the people so completely in their power, so entirely at their mercy for all that man holds most dear. the tenants feel bitterly when they think that they have no legal right to live on their native land. they have read the history of our dreadful civil wars, famines, and confiscations. they know that by the old law of ireland, and by custom from times far beyond the reach of authentic history, the clans and tribes of the celtic people occupied certain districts with which their names are still associated, and that the land was inalienably theirs. rent or tribute they paid, indeed, to their princes, and if they failed the chiefs came with armed followers and helped themselves, driving away cows, sheep, and horses sufficient to meet their demand, or more if they were unscrupulous, which was 'distress' with a vengeance. but the eviction of the people even for non-payment of rent, and putting other people in their place, were things never heard of among the irish under their own rulers. the chief had his own mensal lands, as well as his tribute, and these he might forfeit. but as the clansmen could not control his acts, they could never see the justice of being punished for his misdeeds by the confiscation of their lands, and driven from the homes of their ancestors often made doubly sacred by religious associations. history, moreover, teaches them that, as a matter of fact, the government in the reign of james i.--and james himself in repeated proclamations--assured the people who occupied the lands of o'neill and o'donnell at the time of their flight that they would be protected in all their rights if they remained quiet and loyal, which they did. yet they were nearly all removed to make way for the english and scotch settlers. thus, historical investigators have been digging around the foundations of irish landlordism. they declare that those foundations were cemented with blood, and they point to the many wounds still open from which that blood issued so profusely. the facts of the conquest and confiscation were hinted at by the devon commissioners as accounting for the peculiar difficulties of the irish land question, and writers on it timidly allude to 'the historic past' as originating influences still powerful in alienating landlords and tenants, and fostering mutual distrust between them. but the time for evasion and timidity has passed. we must now honestly and courageously face the stern realities of this case. among these realities is a firm conviction in the minds of many landlords that they are in no sense trustees for the community, but that they have an absolute power over their estates--that they can, if they like, strip the land clean of its human clothing, and clothe it with sheep or cattle instead, or lay it bare and desolate, let it lapse into a wilderness, or sow it with salt. that is in reality the terrific power secured to them by the present land code, to be executed through the queen's writ and by the queen's troops--a power which could not stand a day if england did not sustain it by overwhelming military force. another of the realities of the question is the no less inveterate conviction in the tenants' mind that the absolute power of the landlord was originally a usurpation effected by the sword. right or wrong, they believe that the confiscations were the palpable violation of the natural rights of the people whom providence placed in this country. with bitter emphasis they assert that no set of men has any divine right to root a nation out of its own land. painful as this state of feeling is, there is no use in denying that it exists. here, then, is the deep radical difference that is to be removed. here are the two conflicting forces which are to be reconciled. this is the real irish land question. all other points are minor and of easy adjustment. the people say, and, i believe, sincerely, that they are willing to pay a fair rent, according to a public valuation--not a rent imposed arbitrarily by one of the interested parties, which might be raised so as to ruin the occupier. the feelings of these two parties often clash so violently, there is such instinctive distrust between them, the peace and prosperity of the country depend so much on their coming to terms and putting an end to their long-standing feud, that it is still more imperatively necessary than in the church question, that a third party, independent, impartial, and authoritative, should intervene and heal the breach. there was one phrase constantly ringing in the ears of the devon commissioners, and now, after nearly a generation has passed away, it is ringing in the ears of the nation louder than ever--'_the want of tenure_.' all the evidence went to show that the want of security paralysed industry and impeded social progress. it seems strange that any evidence should be thought necesary to prove that a man will not sow if he does not hope to reap, and that he will not build houses for strangers to enjoy. this would be taken as an axiom anywhere out of ireland. of all the people in europe, the irish have suffered most from the oppression of those who, from age to age, had power in the country. whoever fought or conquered, they were always the victims; and it is a singular fact that their sufferings are scarcely ever noticed by the contemporary annalists, even when those annalists were ecclesiastics. the extent to which they were slaughtered in the perpetual wars between the native chiefs, and in the wars between those chiefs and the english, is something awful to contemplate, not to speak of the wholesale destruction of life by the famines which those wars entailed. on several occasions the celtic race seemed very nearly extinct. the penal code, with all its malign influence, had one good effect. it subdued to a great extent the fighting propensities of the people, and fused the clans into one nation, purified by suffering. since that time, in spite of occasional visitations of calamity, they have been steadily rising in the social scale, and they are now better off than ever they were in their whole history. when we review the stages by which they have risen, we cannot but feel at times grieved and indignant at the opportunities for tranquillising and enriching the country which were lost through the ignorance, apathy, bigotry, and selfishness of the legislature. there was no end of commissions and select committees to inquire into the condition of the agricultural population, whenever parliament was roused by the prevalence of agrarian outrages. they reported, and there the matter ended. there were always insuperable difficulties when the natives were to be put in a better position. between and , for example, a commission reported four times on the condition of the irish bogs. they expressed their entire conviction of the practicability of cultivating with profit an immense extent of land lying waste. in , in , in , and in , select committees inquired into and reported on drainage, reclamation of bogs and marshes, on roads, fisheries, emigration, and other schemes for giving employment to the redundant population that had been encouraged to increase and multiply in the most reckless manner, while 'war prices' were obtained for agricultural produce, and the votes of the forty-shilling freeholders were wanted by the landlords. when, by the emancipation act in , the forty-shilling franchise was abolished, the peasant lost his political value. after the war, when the price of corn fell very low, and, consequently, tillage gave place to grazing, labourers became to the middleman an encumbrance and a nuisance that must be cleared off the land, just as weeds are plucked up and flung out to wither on the highway. then came lord devon's land commission, which inquired on the eve of the potato failure and the great famine. the irish population was now at its highest figure--between eight and nine millions. yet, though there had been three bad seasons, it was clearly proved at that time that by measures which a wise and willing legislature would have promptly passed, the whole surplus population could have been profitably employed. in this great land controversy, on which side lies the truth? is it the fault of the people, or the fault of the law, that the country is but half cultivated, while the best of the peasantry are emigrating with hostile feelings and purposes of vengeance towards england? as to the landlords, as a class, they use their powers with as much moderation and mercy as any other class of men in any country ever used power so vast and so little restrained. the best and most indulgent landlords, the most genial and generous, are unquestionably the old nobility, the descendants of the normans and saxons, those very conquerors of whom we have heard so much. the worst, the most harsh and exacting, are those who have purchased under the landed estates court--strangers to the people, who think only of the percentage on their capital. we had heard much of the necessity of capital to develope the resources of the land. the capital came, but the development consists in turning tillage lands into pasture, clearing out the labouring population and sending them to the poorhouse, or shipping them off at a few pounds per head to keep down the rates. and yet is it not possible to set all our peasantry to work at the profitable cultivation of their native land? is it not possible to establish by law what many landlords act upon as the rule of their estates--namely, the principle that no man is to be evicted so long as he pays a fair rent, and the other principle, that whenever he fails, he is entitled to the market value by public sale of all the property in his holding beyond that fair rent? the hereditary principle, rightly cherished among the landlords, so conservative in its influence, ought to be equally encouraged among the tenants. the man of industry, as well as the man of rank, should be able to feel that he is providing for his children, that his farm is at once a bank and an insurance office, in which all his minute daily deposits of toil and care and skill will be safe and productive. this is the way to enrich and strengthen the state, and to multiply guarantees against revolution--not by consolidation of farms and the abandonment of tillage, not by degrading small holders into day labourers, levelling the cottages and filling the workhouses. if the legislature were guided by the spirit that animates lord erne in his dealings with his tenantry, the land question would soon be settled to the satisfaction of all parties. 'i think,' said his lordship, 'as far as possible, every tenant on my estate may call his farm his castle, as long as he conducts himself honestly, quietly, and industriously; and, should he wish to leave in order to find a better landlord, i allow him to sell his farm, provided he pleases me in a tenant. therefore, if a man lays out money on his farm judiciously, he is certain to receive back the money, should he wish to go elsewhere.' he mentioned three cases of sale which occurred last year. one tenant sold a farm of seventy acres in bad order for l., another thirty acres for l., and a third the same number of acres in worse condition for l. the landlord lost nothing by these changes. his rent was paid up, and in each case he got a good tenant for a bad one. lord erne is a just man, and puts on no more than a fair rent. but all landlords are not just, as all tenants are not honest. even where tenant-right is admitted in name, it is obvious that the rent may be raised so high as to make the farm worth nothing in the market. to give to the tenant throughout the country generally the pleasant feeling that his farm is his castle, which he can make worth more money every day he rises, there must be a public letting valuation, and this the state could easily provide. and then there should be the right of sale to the highest solvent bidder. this might be one way of securing permanent tenure, or stimulating the industry and sustaining the thrift of the farmer. but the nature of the different tenures, and the effect of each in bracing up or relaxing the nerves of industry, will be the object of deliberation with the government and the legislature. it is said that, in the hands of small farmers, proprietorship leads to endless subdivision; that long leases generally cause bad husbandry; that tenants-at-will often feel themselves more secure and safe than a contract could make them; that families have lived on the same farm for generations without a scrape of a pen except the receipt for rent. on the other hand, there is the general cry of 'want of tenure;' there is the custom of serving notices to quit, sometimes for other reasons than non-payment of rent; there are occasional barbarities in the levelling of villages, and dragging the aged and the sick from the old roof-tree, the parting from which rends their heart-strings; and, above all, there is the feeling among the peasantry which makes them look without horror on the murder of a landlord or an agent who was a kind and benevolent neighbour; and, lastly, the paramount consideration for the legislature, that a large portion of the people are disaffected to the state, and ready to join its enemies, and this almost solely on account of the state of the law relating to land. hence the necessity of settling the question as speedily as possible, and the duty of all who have the means to contribute something towards that most desirable consummation, which seems to be all that is wanted to make irishmen of every class work together earnestly for the welfare of their country. it is admitted that no class of men in the world has improved more than the irish landlords during the last twenty years. let the legislature restore confidence between them and the people by taking away all ground for the suspicion that they wish to extirpate the celtic race. nor was this suspicion without cause, as the following history will too clearly prove. a very able english writer has said: 'the policy of all the successive swarms of settlers was to extirpate the native celtic race, but every effort made to break up the old framework of society failed, for the new-comers soon became blended with and undistinguishable from the mass of the people--being obliged to ally themselves with the native chieftains, rather than live hemmed in by a fiery ring of angry septs and exposed to perpetual war with everything around them. merged in the great celtic mass, they adopted irish manners and names, yet proscribed and insulted the native inhabitants as an inferior race. everything liberal towards them is intercepted in its progress. 'the past history of ulster is but a portion of scottish history inserted into that of ireland--a stone in the irish mosaic of an entirely different quality and colour from the pieces that surround it. 'thus it came to pass that, through the confiscation of their lands and the proscription of their religion, popery was worked by a most vehement process into the blood and brain of the irish nation.' it has been often said that the irish must be an inferior race, since they allowed themselves to be subjugated by some thousands of english invaders. but it should be recollected, first, that the conquest, commenced by henry ii. in the twelfth century, was not completed till the seventeenth century, when the king's writ ran for the first time through the province of ulster, the ancient kingdom of the o'neills; in the second place, the weakness of the celtic communities was not so much the fault of the men as of their institutions, brought with them from the east and clung to with wonderful tenacity. so long as they had boundless territory for their flocks and herds, and could always move on 'to pastures new,' they increased and multiplied, and allowed the sword and the battle-axe to rest, unless when a newly elected chief found it necessary to give his followers 'a hosting'--which means an expedition for plunder. down to the seventeenth century, after five hundred years' contact with the teutonic race, they were essentially the same people as they were when the ancient greeks and romans knew them. they are thus described by dr. mommsen in his 'history of rome:'--'such qualities--those of good soldiers and of bad citizens--explain the historical fact that the celts have shaken all states and have _founded none_. everywhere we find them ready to rove, or, in other words, to march, preferring movable property to landed estate, and gold to everything else; following the profession of arms as a system of organised pillage, or even as a trade for hire, and with such success that even the roman historian, sallust, acknowledges that the celts bore off the prize from the romans in feats of arms. they were the true 'soldiers of fortune' of antiquity, as pictures and descriptions represent them, with big but sinewy bodies, with shaggy hair and long moustaches--quite a contrast to the greeks and romans, who shaved the upper lip--in the variegated embroidered dresses which in combat were not unfrequently thrown off, with a broad gold ring round their neck, wearing no helmets and without missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance, all ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful in working in metals. everything was made subservient to ostentation--even wounds, which were often enlarged for the purpose of boasting a broader scar. usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every free man was followed by two attendants, likewise mounted. war-chariots were early in use, as they were among the libyans and hellenes in the earliest times. many a trait reminds us of the chivalry of the middle ages, particularly the custom of single combat, which was foreign to the greeks and romans. not only were they accustomed in war to challenge a single enemy to fight, after having previously insulted him by words and gestures; in peace also they fought with each other in splendid equipments, as for life or death. after such feats carousals followed in due course. in this way they led, whether under their own or a foreign banner, a restless soldier life, constantly occupied in fighting and in their so-called feats of heroism. they were dispersed from _ireland_ and spain to asia minor, but all their enterprises melted away like snow in spring, and they nowhere created a great state or developed a distinctive culture of their own.' such were the people who once almost terminated the existence of rome, and were afterwards with difficulty repulsed from greece, who became masters of the most fertile part of italy and of a fair province in the heart of asia minor, who, after their italian province had been subdued, inflicted disastrous blows on successive roman generals, and were only at last subjugated by cæsar himself in nine critical and sometimes most dangerous campaigns, b.c. . niebuhr observes that at that time the form of government was everywhere an hereditary monarchy, which, when cæsar went into gaul, had been swallowed up, as had the authority of the senate, in the anarchy of the nobles. their freedom was lawlessness; an inherent incapacity of living under the dominion of laws distinguishes them as barbarians from the greeks and italians. as individuals had to procure the protection of some magnate in order to live in safety, so the weaker tribes took shelter under the patronage of a more powerful one. for they were a disjointed multitude; and when any people had in this manner acquired an extensive sovereignty, they exercised it arbitrarily until its abuses became intolerable, or their subjects were urged by blind hatred of their power to fall off from them, and gather round some new centre. the sole bond of union was the druidical hierarchy which, at least in cæsar's time, was common to both nations. both of them paid obedience to its tribunal, which administered justice once a year--an institution which probably was not introduced till long after the age of migrations, when the expulsion of the vanquished had ceased to be regarded as the end of war, and which must have been fostered by the constant growth of lawlessness in particular states--being upheld by the _ban_, which excluded the contumacious from all intercourse in divine worship and in daily life with the faithful. the huge bodies, wild features, and long shaggy hair of the men, gave a ghastliness to their aspect. this, along with their fierce courage, their countless numbers, and the noise made by an enormous multitude of horns and trumpets, struck the armies arrayed against them with fear and amazement. if these, however, did not allow their terror to overpower them, the want of order, discipline, and perseverance would often enable an inferior number to vanquish a vast host of the barbarians. besides, they were but ill equipped. few of them wore any armour; their narrow shields, which were of the same height with their bodies, were weak and clumsy; they rushed upon their enemies with broad thin battle-swords of bad steel, which the first blow upon iron often notched and rendered useless. like true savages, they destroyed the inhabitants, the towns, and the agriculture of the countries they conquered. they cut off the heads of the slain, and tied them by the hair to the manes of their horses. if a skull belonged to a person of rank, they nailed it up in their houses and preserved it as an heirloom for their posterity, as the nobles in rude ages do stag-horns. towns were rare amongst them; the houses and the villages, which were very numerous, were mean, the furniture wretched--a heap of straw covered with skins served both for a bed and a seat. they did not cultivate corn save for a very limited consumption, for the main part of their food was the milk and the flesh of their cattle. these formed their wealth. gold, too, they had in abundance, derived partly from the sandy beds of their rivers, partly from some mines which these had led them to discover. it was worn in ornaments by every gaul of rank. in battle he bore gold chains on his arms and heavy gold collars round his neck, even when the upper part of his body was in other respects quite naked. for they often threw off their parti-coloured chequered cloaks, which shone with all the hues of the rainbow, like the picturesque dress of their kinspeople the highlanders, who have laid aside the trousers of the ancient gauls. their duels and gross revels are an image of the rudest part of the middle ages. their debauches were mostly committed with beer and mead; for vines and all the plants of southern regions were as yet total strangers to the north of the alps, where the climate in those ages was extremely severe; so that wine was rare, though of all the commodities imported it was the most greedily bought up. ulster was known in ancient times as one of the five irish 'kingdoms,' and remained unconquered by the english till the reign of james i., when the last prince of the great house of o'neill, then earl of tyrone, fled to the continent in company with o'donel, earl of tyrconnel, head of another very ancient sept. up to that period the men of ulster proudly regarded themselves as 'irish of the irish and catholic of the catholics.' the inhabitants were of mixed blood, but, as in the other provinces of the island, the great mass of the people, as well as the ruling classes, were of celtic origin. those whom ethnologists still recognise as aborigines, in parts of connaught and in some mountainous regions, an inferior race, are said to be the descendants of the firbolgs, or belgae, who formed the third immigration. they were followed and subdued by the tuatha de danans--men famed for their gigantic power and supernatural skill--a race of demigods, who still live in the national superstitions. the last of the ancient invasions was by the gael or celt, known as the milesians and scoti. the institutions and customs of this people were established over the whole island, and were so deeply rooted in the soil that their remnants to this day present the greatest obstacles to the settlement of the land question according to the english model, and on the principles of political economy, which run directly counter to irish instincts. it is truly wonderful how distinctly the present descendants of this race preserve the leading features of their primitive character. in france and england the celtic character was moulded by the power and discipline of the roman empire. to ireland this modifying influence never extended; and we find the ulster chiefs who fought for their territories with english viceroys years ago very little different from the men who followed brennus to the sack of home, and encountered the legions of julius cæsar on the plains of gaul. mr. prendergast observes, in the introduction to his 'cromwellian settlement' that when the companions of strongbow landed in the reign of henry ii. they found a country such as cæsar had found in gaul years before. a thousand years had passed over the island without producing the slightest social progress--'the inhabitants divided into tribes on the system of the clansmen and chiefs, without a common government, suddenly confederating, suddenly dissolving, with brehons, shaunahs, minstrels, bards, and harpers, in all unchanged, except that for their ancient druids they had got christian priests. had the irish remained honest pagans, ireland perhaps had remained unconquered still. round the coast strangers had built seaport towns, either traders from the carthaginian settlements in spain, or outcasts from their own country, like the greeks that built marseilles. at the time of the arrival of the french and flemish adventurers from wales, they were occupied by a mixed danish and french population, who supplied the irish with groceries, including the wines of poitou, the latter in such abundance that they had no need of vineyards.' if vineyards had been needed, we may be sure they would not have been planted, for the irish celts planted nothing. neither did they build, except in the simplest and rudest way, improving their architecture from age to age no more than the beaver or the bee. mr. prendergast is an able, honest, and frank writer; yet there is something amusingly celtic in the flourish with which he excuses the style of palaces in which the irish princes delighted to dwell. 'unlike england,' he says, 'then covered with castles on the heights, where the french gentlemen secured themselves and their families against the hatred of the churls and villains, as the english peasantry were called, the dwellings of the irish chiefs were of wattles or clay. it is for robbers and foreigners to take to rocks and precipices for security; for native rulers, there is no such fortress _as justice and humanity_.' this is very fine, but surely mr. prendergast cannot mean that the irish chiefs were distinguished by their justice and humanity. the following touch is still grander:--'the irish, like the wealthiest and highest of the present day, loved detached houses surrounded by fields and woods. towns and their walls they looked upon as tombs or sepulchres, &c.' as to fields, there were none, because the irish never made fences, their patches of cultivated land being divided by narrow strips of green sod. besides, they lived in villages, which were certainly surrounded by woods, because the woods were everywhere, and they furnished the inhabitants with fuel and shelter, as well as materials for building their huts. but further on this able author expresses himself much more in accordance with the truth of history, when he states that the 'irish enemy' was no _nation_ in the modern sense of the word, but a race divided into many nations or tribes, _separately_ defending their lands from the english barons in the immediate neighbourhood. there had been no ancient national government displaced, no dynasty overthrown; the irish had _no national flag_, nor any capital city as the metropolis of their common country, nor any common administration of law.' he might have added that they had no _mint_. there never was an irish king who had his face stamped on a coin of his realm. some stray pieces of money found their way into the country from abroad, but up to the close of the sixteenth century the rudest form of barter prevailed in ulster, and accounts were paid not in coins but in cows. even the mechanical arts which had flourished in the country before the arrival of the celts had gradually perished, and had disappeared at the time of the english invasion. any handy men could build a house of mud and wattles. masons, carpenters, smiths, painters, glaziers, &c., were not wanted by a people who despised stone buildings as prisons, and abhorred walled towns as sepulchres. spinning and weaving were arts cultivated by the women, each household providing materials for clothing, which was little used in warm weather, and thrown off when fighting or any other serious work was to be done. i should be sorry to disparage the celtic race, or any other race, by exaggerating their bad qualities or suppressing any reliable testimony to their merits. but with me the truth of history is sacred. both sides of every case should be fairly stated. nothing can be gained by striving to hide facts which may be known to every person who takes the trouble to study the subject. i write in the interest of the people--of the toiling masses; and i find that they were oppressed and degraded by the ruling classes long before the norman invader took the place of the celtic chief. and it is a curious fact that when the cromwellians turned the catholic population out of their homes and drove them into connaught, they were but following the example set them by the milesian lords of the soil centuries before. the late mr. darcy magee, a real lover of his country, in his irish history points out this fact. the normans found the population divided into two great classes--the free tribes, chiefly if not exclusively celtic, and the unfree tribes, consisting of the descendants of the subjugated races, or of clans once free, reduced to servitude by the sword, and the offspring of foreign mercenary soldiers. 'the unfree tribes,' says mr. darcy magee, 'have left no history. under the despotism of the milesian kings, it was high treason to record the actions of the conquered race, so that the irish belgae fared as badly in this respect at the hands of the milesian historians as the latter fared in after times from the chroniclers of the normans. we only know that such tribes were, and that their numbers and physical force more than once excited the apprehension of the children of the conquerors. one thing is certain--the jealous policy of the superior race never permitted them to reascend the plane of equality from which they had been hurled at the very commencement of the milesian ascendency.' mr. haverty, another catholic historian, learned, accurate, and candid, laments the oppression of the people by their native rulers. 'those who boasted descent from the scytho-spanish hero would have considered themselves degraded were they to devote themselves to any less honourable profession than those of soldiers, _ollavs_, or physicians; and hence the cultivation of the soil and the exercise of the mechanic arts were left almost exclusively to the _firbolgs_ and the _tuatha-de-danans_--the former people, in particular, being still very numerous, and forming the great mass of the population in the west. these were ground down by high rents and the exorbitant exactions of the dominant race, _in order to support their unbounded hospitality_ and defray the expenses of costly assemblies; but this oppression must have caused perpetual discontent, and the hard-working plebeians, as they were called, easily perceived that their masters were running headlong to destruction, and that it only required a bold effort to shake off their yoke.' then follows an account of a civil war, one of the leaders of the revolution being elected king at its termination. carbry reigned five years, during which time there was no rule or order, and the country was a prey to every misfortune. 'evil was the state of ireland during his reign; fruitless her corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; and fruitless her rivers; her cattle without milk; her fruit without plenty, for there used to be but one acorn on the oak.' dr. lynch, author of _cambrensis eversus_, expresses his astonishment at the great number of ancient irish kings, most of whom were cut off by a violent death, each hewing his way to the throne over the body of his predecessor. but upon applying his mind to the more profound consideration of the matter, he found nothing more wonderful in the phenomenon 'than that the human family should proceed from one man--the overflowing harvest from a few grains of seed, &c.' his learned translator, the rev. matthew kelly, of maynooth, sees proof of amendment in the fact that between and twelve irish kings died a natural death. this candid and judicious writer observes in a note--'it appears from the irish and english annals that there was perpetual war in ireland during more than years after the invasion. it could not be called a war of races, except perhaps during the first century, for english and irish are constantly found fighting under the same banner, according to the varying interests of the rival lords and princes of both nations. this was the case even from the commencement.'[ ] [footnote : vol. i. p. .] many persons have wondered at the success of small bands of english invaders. why did not the irish nation rise _en masse_, and drive them into the sea? the answer is easy. there was no irish nation. about half a million of people were scattered over the island in villages, divided into tribes generally at war with one another, each chief ready to accept foreign aid against his adversary--some, perhaps, hoping thereby to attain supremacy in their clans, and others, who were pretenders, burning to be avenged of those who had supplanted them. it was religion that first gave the irish race a common cause. in the very year of the english invasion ( ) there were no fewer than twenty predatory excursions or battles among the irish chiefs themselves, exclusive of contests with the invaders. hence the pope said--'_gens se interimit mutua cæde_.' the pope was right. the clergy exerted themselves to the utmost in trying to exorcise the demon of destruction and to arrest the work of extermination. not only the _bashall isa_, or 'the staff of jesus,' but many other relics were used with the most solemn rites, to impress the people with a sense of the wickedness of their clan-fights, and to induce them to keep the peace, but in vain. the king of connaught once broke a truce entered into under every possible sanction of this kind, trampling upon all, that he might get the king of meath into his clutches. hence the rev. mr. kelly is constrained to say--'it is now generally admitted by catholic writers that however great the efforts of the irish clergy to reform their distracted country in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the picture of anarchy drawn by pope adrian is hardly overcharged.' indeed, some catholic writers have confessed that the anarchy would never have been terminated except by foreign conquest establishing a strong central government. this, however, was not accomplished till after a struggle of centuries, during which, except in brief intervals, when a strong prince was able to protect his people, the national demoralisation grew worse and worse. an oxford priest, who kept a school at limerick, writing so late as of the irish nobles, says--'of late they spare neither churches nor hallowed places, but thence also they fill their hands with spoil--yea, and sometimes they set them on fire and kill the men that there lie hidden.' mr. froude, following the irish mss. in the rolls house, has presented graphic pictures of the disorders of the irishry in the reign of queen mary. 'the english garrison,' he says, 'harassed and pillaged the farmers of meath and dublin; the chiefs made forays upon each other, killing, robbing, and burning. when the war broke out between england and france, there were the usual conspiracies and uprisings of nationality; the young earl of kildare, in reward to the queen who had restored him to his rank, appearing as the natural leader of the patriots. ireland was thus happy in the gratification of all its natural tendencies. the brehon law readvanced upon the narrow limits to which, by the exertions of henry viii., the circuits of the judges had been extended. and with the brehon law came anarchy as its inseparable attendant.' the correctness of this view is too well attested by the records which the learned historian brings to light, adopting the quaint and expressive phraseology of the old writers whom he quotes. for example:-- 'the lords and gentiles of the irish pale that were not governed under the queen's laws were compelled to keep and maintain a great number of idle men of war to rule their people at home, and exact from their neighbours abroad--working everyone his own wilful will for a law--to the spoil of his country, and decay and waste of the common weal of the same. the idle men of war ate up altogether; the lord and his men took what they pleased, destroying their tenants, and themselves never the better. the common people, having nothing left to lose, became as idle and careless in their behaviour as the rest, stealing by day and robbing by night. yet it was a state of things which they seemed all equally to enjoy, and high and low alike were always ready to bury their own quarrels, to join against the queen and the english.' at the time when the crown passed to elizabeth the qualities of the people were thus described by a correspondent of the council, who presents the english view of the irishry at that time:-- 'the appearance and outward behaviour of the irish showeth them to be fruits of no good tree, for they exercise no virtue and refrain and forbear from no vice, but think it lawful to do every man what him listeth. they neither love nor dread god, nor yet hate the devil. they are worshippers of images and open idolaters. their common oath they swear is by books, bells, and other ornaments which they do use as holy religion. their chief and solemnest oath is by their lord or master's hand, which whoso forsweareth is sure to pay a fine or sustain a worse turn. the sabbath-day they rest from all honest exercises, and the week days they are not idle, but worse occupied. they do not honour their father and mother as much as they do reverence strangers. for every murder that they commit they do not so soon repent, for whose blood they once shed, they lightly never cease killing all that name. they do not so commonly commit adultery; not for that they profess or keep chastity, but for that they seldom or never marry, and therefore few of them are lawful heirs, by the law of the realm, to the lands they possess. they steal but from the strong, and take by violence from the poor and weak. they know not so well who is their neighbour as who they favour; with him they will witness in right and wrong. they covet not their neighbours' good, but command all that is their neighbours' as their own. thus they live and die, and there is none to teach them better. there are no ministers. ministers will not take pains where there is no living to be had, neither church nor parish, but all decayed. people will not come to inhabit where there is no defence of law.' after six years of _discipline and improvement_ sir henry sidney, in , described the state of the four shires, the irish inhabitants, and the english garrison, in the following terms:--'the _english pale_ is overwhelmed with vagabonds--stealth and spoil daily carried out of it--the people miserable--not two gentlemen in the whole of it able to lend l. they have neither horse nor armour, nor apparel, nor victual. the soldiers be so beggerlike as it would abhor a general to look on them; yet so insolent as to be intolerable to the people, so rooted in idleness as there is no hope by correction to amend them, yet so allied with the irish, i dare not trust them in a forte, or in any dangerous service.' a sort of 'special correspondent' or 'commissioner,' as we should call him now, furnished to cecil a detailed account of the social condition of the people, which of course he viewed with english eyes. he found existing among them a general organisation wherever the irish language was spoken--the remnants of a civilisation very ancient, but now fast tending to ruin. next to the chiefs were the priesthood, and after them came a kind of intellectual hierarchy, consisting of four classes of spiritual leaders and teachers, which were thus described. the first was called the brehon, or the judge. these judges took 'pawns' of both the parties, and then judged according to their own discretion. their property was neutral, and the irishmen would not prey upon them. they had great plenty of cattle, and they harboured many vagabonds and idle persons. they were the chief maintainers of rebels, but when the english army came to their neighbourhood they fled to the mountains and woods 'because they would not succour them with victuals and other necessaries.' the next sort was called _shankee_, who had also great plenty of cattle wherewith they succoured the rebels. they made the ignorant men of the country believe that they were descended from alexander the great, or darius, or cæsar, 'or some other notable prince, which made the ignorant people run mad, and care not what they did.' this, the correspondent remarked, 'was very hurtful to the realm.' not less hurtful were the third sort called _denisdan_, who not only maintained the rebels, but caused those that would be true to become rebellious--'thieves, extortioners, murderers, raveners, yea, and worse if it was possible.' these seem to have been the historians or chroniclers of the tribe. if they saw a young man, the descendant of an o' or a mac, with half a dozen followers, they forthwith made a rhyme about his father and his ancestors, numbering how many heads they had cut off, how many towns they had burned, how many virgins they had deflowered, how many notable murders they had done, comparing them to hannibal, or scipio, or hercules, or some other famous person--'wherewithal the poor fool runs mad, and thinks indeed it is so.' then he will gather a lot of rascals about him, and get a fortune-teller to prophesy how he is to speed. after these preliminaries he betakes himself with his followers at night to the side of a wood, where they lurk till morning. and when it is daylight, then will they go to the poor villages, not sparing to destroy young infants and aged people; and if a woman be ever so great with child, her will they kill, burning the houses and corn, and ransacking the poor cots; then will they drive away all the kine and plough-horses, with all the other cattle. then must they have a bagpipe blowing before them, and if any of the cattle fortune to wax weary or faint they will kill them rather than it should do the owner good; and if they go by any house of friars, or religious house, they will give them two or three beeves, and they will take them and pray for them, yea, and praise their doings, and say, 'his father was accustomed so to do, wherein he will rejoice.' the fourth class consisted of 'poets.' these men had great store of cattle, and 'used all the trade of the others with an addition of prophecies. they were maintainers of witches and other vile matters, to the blasphemy of god, and to the impoverishing of the commonwealth.' these four septs were divided in all places of the four quarters of ireland, and some of the islands beyond ireland, as aran, the land of the saints, innisbuffen, innisturk, innismain, and innisclare. these islands, he added, were under the rule of o'neill, and they were 'very pleasant and fertile, plenty of wood, water, and arable ground, pastures, and fish, and a very temperate air.' on this description mr. froude remarks in a note--'at present they are barren heaps of treeless moors and mountains. they yield nothing but scanty oat crops and potatoes, and though the seas are full of fish as ever, there are no hands to catch them. _the change is a singular commentary upon modern improvements_.' there were many branches belonging to the four septs, continues the credulous reporter, who was evidently imposed upon, like many of his countrymen in modern times with better means of information. for example, 'there was the branch of gogath, the glutton, of which one man would eat half a sheep at a sitting. there was another called the carrow, a gambler, who generally went about naked, carrying dice and cards, and he would play the hair off his head. then there was a set of women called goyng women, blasphemers of god, who ran from country to country, sowing sedition among the people.'[ ] [footnote : froude's history, of england, vol. viii. chap. vii.] mr. froude says that this 'picture of ireland' was given by some half anglicised, half protestantised celt, who wrote what he had seen around him, careless of political philosophy, or of fine phrases with which to embellish his diction. but if he was a celt, i think his description clearly proves that he must have been a celt of some other country than the one upon whose state he reports. judging from internal evidence, i should say that he could not be a native; for an irishman, even though a convert to anglicanism, and anxious to please his new masters, could scarcely betray so much ignorance of the history of his country, so much bigotry, such a want of candour and discrimination. if mr. froude's great work has any fault, it is his unconscious prejudice against ireland. he knows as well as anyone the working of the feudal system and the clan system in scotland in the same age. he knows with what treachery and cruelty murders were perpetrated by chiefs and lairds, pretenders and usurpers--how anarchy, violence, and barbarism reigned in that land; yet, when he is dealing with a similar state of things in ireland, he uniformly takes it as proof of an incurable national idiosyncrasy, and too often generalises from a few cases. for example, in speaking of shane o'neill, who killed his half-brother, matthew kelly, baron of dungannon, in order to secure the succession for himself, he says--'_they manage things strangely in ireland._ the old o'neill, instead of being irritated, saw in this exploit a proof of commendable energy. he at once took shane into favour, and, had he been able, would have given him his dead brother's rights.' chapter ii. the rule of the o'neills. shane o'neill was a man of extraordinary ability and tremendous energy, as the english found to their cost. he was guilty of atrocious deeds; but he had too many examples in those lawless times encouraging him to sacrifice the most sacred ties to his ambition. he resolved to seize the chieftainship by deposing his father and banishing him to the pale, where, after passing some years in captivity, he died. he was, no doubt, urged to do this, lest by some chance the son of the baron of dungannon should be adopted by england as the rightful heir, and made earl of tyrone. this title he spurned, and proclaimed himself the o'neill, the true representative of the ancient kings of ulster, to which office he was elected by his people, taking the usual oath with his foot upon the sacred stone. this was an open defiance of english power, and he prepared to abide the consequences. he thought the opportunity a favourable one to recover the supremacy of his ancestors over the o'donels. he accordingly mustered a numerous army, and marched into tyrconnel, where he was joined by hugh o'donel, brother of calvagh, the chief, with other disaffected persons of the same clan. o'donel had recourse to stratagem. having caused his cattle to be driven out of harm's way, he sent a spy into the enemy's camp, who mixed with the soldiers, and returning undiscovered, he undertook to guide o'donel's army to o'neill's tent, which was distinguished by a great watch-fire, and guarded by six galloglasses on one side and as many scots on the other. the camp, however, was taken by surprise in the dead of night, and o'neill's forces, careless or asleep, were slaughtered and routed without resistance. shane himself fled for his life, and, swimming across three rivers, succeeded in reaching his own territory. this occurred the year before he cast off his allegiance to england. he was required to appear before elizabeth in person to explain the grounds on which he had claimed the chieftainship. he consented, on condition that he got a safe-conduct and money for the expenses of his journey. at the same time he sent a long letter to the queen, complaining of the treatment he had received, and defending his pretensions. the letter is characteristic of the man and of the times. he said: 'the deputy has much ill-used me, your majesty; and now that i am going over to see you, i hope you will consider that i am but rude and uncivil, and do not know my duty to your highness, nor yet your majesty's laws, but am one brought up in wildness, far from all civility. yet have i a good will to the commonwealth of my country; and please your majesty to send over two commissioners that you can trust, that will take no bribes, nor otherwise be imposed on, to observe what i have done to improve the country, and hear what my accusers have to say; and then let them go into the pale, and hear what the people say of your soldiers, with their horses, and their dogs, and their concubines. within this year and a half, three hundred farmers are come from the english pale to live in my country, where they can be safe. 'please your majesty, your majesty's money here is not so good as your money in england, and will not pass current there. please your majesty to send me three thousand pounds in english money to pay my expenses in going over to you, and when i come back i will pay your deputy three thousand pounds irish, such as you are pleased to have current here. also i will ask your majesty to marry me to some gentlewoman of noble blood meet for my vocation. i will make ireland all that your majesty wishes for you. i am very sorry your majesty is put to such expense. if you will trust it to me, i will undertake that in three years you will have a revenue, where now you have continual loss.' shane suspected evil designs on the part of the english, and not without reason. the object of the summons to england was to detain him there with 'gentle talk' till sussex could return to his command with an english army powerful enough to subjugate ulster. for this purpose such preparations were made by the english government in men and money, 'that rebellion should have no chance; and,' says mr. froude, 'so careful was the secresy which was observed, to prevent shane from taking alarm, that a detachment of troops sent from portsmouth sailed with sealed orders, and neither men nor officers knew that ireland was their destination till they had rounded the land's end.' the english plans were well laid. kildare, whom elizabeth most feared, had accepted her invitation to go to london, and thus prevented any movement in the south, while o'donel was prepared to join the english army on its advance into ulster; and the scots, notwithstanding their predilection for mary stuart, were expected to act as argyle and his sister should direct. but shane had a genius for intrigue as well as elizabeth, and he was far more rapid than her generals in the execution of his plans. by a master-stroke of policy he disconcerted their arrangements. he had previously asked the earl of argyle to give him his daughter in marriage, in order that he might strengthen his alliance with the ulster scots. it is true that she had been already married to his rival, o'donel; but that was a small difficulty in his way. the knot was tied, but he had no hesitation in cutting it with his sword. 'the countess' was well educated for her time. she was also a protestant, and the government had hopes that her influence would be favourable to 'civility and the reformation' among the barbarians of the north. but whatever advantages the presence of the fair scottish missionary might bring, shane o'neill did not see why they should not be all his own, especially as he had managed somehow to produce a favourable impression on her heart. accordingly he made a dash into tyrconnel, and carried off both the lady and her husband to his stronghold, shane's castle, on the banks of lough neagh. her scotch guard, though fifteen hundred strong, had offered no resistance. o'donel was shut up in a prison, and his wife became the willing paramour of the captor. 'the affront to mcconnell was forgiven or atoned for by private arrangement, and the sister of the earl of argyle--an educated woman for her time, not unlearned in latin, speaking french and italian, counted sober, wise, and no less subtle--had betrayed herself and her husband. the o'neills, by this last manoeuvre, became supreme in ulster. deprived of their head, the o'donels sank into helplessness. the whole force of the province, such as it was, with the more serious addition of several thousand scotch marauders, was at shane's disposal, and thus provided, he thought himself safe in defying england to do its worst.'[ ] [footnote : froude, ibid.] meantime, sussex had arrived in dublin preceded by his english forces. he made a rapid preliminary movement to the north, and seized the cathedral of armagh, in order to make it a fortified depôt for his stores. he then fell back into meath, where he was joined by ormond with flying companies of galloglasses. soon after a singular attack was made on the english garrison at armagh. seeing a number of kernes scattered about the town, the officer in command sallied out upon them, when o'neill suddenly appeared, accompanied by the catholic archbishop, on a hill outside the walls. 'the english had but time to recover their defences when the whole irish army, led by a procession of monks, and every man carrying a fagot, came on to burn the cathedral over their heads. the monks sang a mass; the primate walked three times up and down the lines, willing the rebels to go forward, for god was on their side. shane swore a great oath not to turn his back while an englishman was alive; and with scream and yell his men came on. _fortunately there were no scots among them._ the english, though out-numbered ten to one, stood steady in the churchyard, and, after a sharp hand-to-hand fight, drove back the howling crowd. the irish retired into the friars' houses outside the cathedral close, set them on fire, and ran for their lives.' 'so far,' adds mr. froude, 'all was well. after this there was no more talk of treating, and by the th, sussex and ormond were themselves at armagh with a force--had there been skill to direct it--sufficient to have swept tyrone from border to border.' the english historian exults in the valour of the small garrison of his countrymen, well-disciplined and sheltered behind a strong wall, in resisting the assault of a howling multitude of mere irish, and he observes significantly, that 'fortunately there were no _scots_ among them.' but he is obliged immediately after to record an irish victory so signal that, according to the lord deputy himself, 'the fame of the english army so hardly gotten, was now vanished.' yet mr. froude does not, in this, lay the blame of defeat upon the _nationality_ of the vanquished. it is only the irish nation that is made the scape-goat in such cases. it was july, but the weather was wet, the rivers were high, ormond was ill, sussex would not leave his friend, and so the english army stayed in town doing nothing till the end of the month, when their failing provisions admonished them that an irish hosting would be desirable. o'neill, who seems to have been aware of the state of things, presented the appropriate temptation. spies brought the lord deputy word that in the direction of cavan there were herds of cows, which an active party might easily capture. these spies, with ardent professions of loyalty, offered to guide the english troops to the place where the booty would be found, their object being to draw them among bogs and rivers where they might be destroyed. the lord deputy did not think it necessary to accompany this host, which consisted of horse, men-at-arms, and some hundreds of the loyal irish of the pale. shane intended to attack them the first night while resting on their march. but they escaped by an alteration of the route. next morning they were marching on the open plain, miles from any shelter of hill or wood, when the irish chief, with less than half their number, pursued them, and fell upon the cavalry in the rear, with the cry, '_laundarg aboo_--the bloody hand--strike for o'neill!' the english cavalry commanded by wingfield, seized with terror, galloped into the ranks of their own men-at-arms, rode them down, and extricated themselves only to fly panic-stricken from the field to the crest of an adjoining hill. meantime, shane's troopers rode through the broken ranks, cutting down the footmen on all sides. the yells and cries were heard far off through the misty morning air. fitzwilliam, who had the chief command, was about a mile in advance at the head of another body of cavalry, when a horseman was observed by him, galloping wildly in the distance and waving his handkerchief as a signal. he returned instantly, followed by his men, and flung himself into the _mêleé_. shane receiving such a charge of those few men, and seeing more coming after, ran no farther risk, blew a recall note, and withdrew unpursued. fitzwilliam's courage alone prevented the army from being annihilated. out of english lay dead, and more were badly wounded. the survivors fell back to armagh 'so _dismayed_ as to be unfit for farther service.' pitiable were the lamentations of the lord deputy to cecil on this catastrophe. it was, said he, 'by cowardice the dreadfullest beginning that ever was seen in ireland. ah! mr. secretary, what unfortunate star hung over me that day to draw me, that never could be persuaded to be absent from the army at any time--to be then absent for a little disease of another man? _the rearward was the best and picked soldiers in all this land._ if i or any stout man had been that day with them, we had made an end of shane--which is now farther off than ever it was. never before durst scot or irishman look on englishmen in plain or wood since i was here; and now shane, in a plain three miles away from any wood, and where i would have asked of god to have had him, hath, with horse, and a few scots and galloglasse, _scarce half in numbers_, charged our whole army, and by the cowardice of one wretch whom i hold dear to me as my own brother, was like in one hour to have left not one man of that army alive, and after to have taken me and the rest at armagh. the fame of the english army, so hardly gotten, is now vanished, and i, wretched and dishonoured, by the vileness of other men's deeds.' this is real history that mr. froude has given us. it places the actors before us, enables us to discern their characters, tells us who they are and what they have done. it shows also the value and the necessity of documentary evidence for establishing the truth of history. how different from the vague, uncertain, shadowy representations derived from oral tradition, or mere reports, though contemporary, circulated from mouth to mouth, and exaggerated according to the interests of one party or the other. let us for illustration compare mr. froude's vivid picture of this battle, so disastrous to the english, with the account given of the same event by the annalists called the four masters. these writers had taken great pains to collect the most authentic records of the various irish tribes from the invasion by henry ii. to the period of which we are writing. they were intensely irish, and of course glad of any opportunity of recording events creditable to the valour of their countrymen. they lived in donegal, under the protection of o'donel, but they showed themselves quite willing to do full justice to his great rival o'neill. the presence of the lord deputy, the earl of ormond, and other great men at armagh, with a select english army, would naturally have roused their attention, and when that army was encountered and vanquished in the open field by the irish general, we should have expected that the details of such a glorious event would have been collected with the greatest care from the accounts of eye-witnesses. the bards and historiographers should have been on the alert to do justice to their country on so great an occasion. they were on the spot, they were beside the victors, and they had no excuse whatever for ignorance. yet here is the miserably cold, _jejune_, feeble, and imperfect record which we find in the annals of the four masters:--'the lord justice of ireland, namely thomas fitzwalter (sussex), marched into tyrone to take revenge for the capture of caloach o'donel, and also for his own quarrels with the country. he encamped with a great army at armagh, and constructed deep entrenchments and impregnable ramparts about the great church of armagh, which he intended to keep constantly guarded. o'neill, i.e. john, having received intelligence of this, sent a party of his faithful men and friends with caloach o'donel to guard and keep him from the lord justice, and they conveyed him from one island to another, in the recesses and sequestered places of tyrone. after some time the lord justice sent out from the camp at armagh, a number of his captains with men to take some prey and plunder in oriel. o'neill, having received private information and intelligence of those great troops marching into oriel, proceeded privately and silently to where they were, and came up to them after they had collected their prey; a battle ensued in which many were slain on both sides; and finally the preys were abandoned, and fell into the hands of their original possessors on that occasion.' that is the whole account of the most signal victory over the english that had crowned the arms of ulster during those wars! not a word of the disparity of the forces, or the flight of the english cavalry, or the slaughter of the englishmen-at-arms, or the humiliation and disabled condition of the garrison at armagh. equally unsatisfactory is the record of the subsequent march through tyrone by sussex, in the course of which his army slaughtered head of cattle, which they could not drive away. of this tremendous destruction of property the four masters do not say a word. such omissions often occur in their annals, even when dealing with contemporary events. uncritical as they were and extremely credulous, how can we trust the records which they give of remote ages? chapter iii. o'neill, sovereign of ulster. the moral atmosphere of elizabeth's court was not favourable to public virtue. strange to say at this time lord pembroke seemed to be the only nobleman connected with it whose patriotism could be depended on; and, according to cecil, there was not another person, 'no not one' who did not either wish well to shane o'neill, or so ill to the earl of sussex as 'rather to welcome the news than regret the english loss!' it would be difficult to find 'intriguing factiousness' baser than this even in barbarous ireland. the success of o'neill, however, had raised him high in the opinion of the queen, who proposed, through the earl of kildare, to leave him in possession of all his territories, and let him govern the irish 'according to irish ideas' if he would only become her vassal. sussex had returned to dublin with the remnant of his army, while fitzwilliam was dispatched to london to explain the disaster, bearing with him a petition from the irish council, that the troops who had been living in free quarters on the tenants of the pale should be recalled or disbanded. 'useless in the field and tyrannical to the farmer, they were a burden on the english exchequer, and answered no purpose but to make the english name detested.' to o'neill the queen sent a pardon, with a safe conduct to england, if he could be prevailed on to go. in the meantime shane sent a message to the lord deputy, demanding the removal of the garrison from armagh. one of his messengers, neill grey communicated secretly with lord sussex, affecting to dislike rebellion, and intimating that he might help the english to get rid of his master. the lord deputy, without the least scruple or apparent consciousness of the criminality or disgrace of the proceeding, actually proposed to this man that he should murder o'neill. this villanous purpose he avows in his letter to the queen. 'in fine,' said he, 'i breake with him to kill shane; and bound myself by my oath to see him have a hundred marcs of land by the year to him, and to his heirs, for his reward. he seemed desirous to serve your highness, and to have the land; but fearful to do it, doubting his own escape after with safety, which he confessed and promised to do by any means he might, escaping with his life. what he will do i know not, but i assure your highness he may do it without danger if he will. and if he will not do that he may in your service, there will be done _to him_ what others may. god send your highness a good end.' this english nobleman was, it seems, pious as well as honourable, and could mingle prayers with his plots for assassination. mr. froude suggests extenuating circumstances: 'lord sussex, it appears, regarded shane as a kind of wolf, whom having failed to capture in fair chase he might destroy by the first expedient that came to his hand.' and 'english honour, like english coin, lost something of its purity in the sister island.' of course; it was the irish atmosphere that did it all. but sussex was not singular in this mode of illustrating english honour. a greater than he, the chivalrous sir walter raleigh, wrote to a friend in munster, recommending the treacherous assassination of the earl of desmond, as perfectly justifiable. and this crime, for which an ignorant irishman would be hanged, was deliberately suggested by the illustrious knight whilst sitting quietly in his english study.[ ] but what perplexes the historian most of all is that the queen of england showed no resentment at the infamous proposal of sussex. 'it is most sadly certain, however, that sussex was continued in office, and inasmuch as it will be seen that he repeated the experiment a few months later, his letter could not have been received with any marked condemnation.' yet elizabeth was never in ireland. [footnote : see life of sir walter raleigh.] fitzwilliam, however, returned with reinforcements of troops from berwick, with which the deputy resolved to repair the credit of the english arms, and to set the irish an example of civilised warfare. how did he do this? dispatching provisions by sea to lough foyle, he succeeded this time in marching through tyrone, 'and in destroying on his way , cattle, which he was unable to carry away. he had left shane's cows to rot where he had killed them; and thus being without food, and sententiously and characteristically concluding that man by his policy might propose, but god at his will did dispose; lord sussex fell back by the upper waters of lough erne, sweeping the country before him.' when the irish peasantry saw the carcasses of their cattle rotting along the roads, while their children were famished for want of milk, they must have been most favourably impressed with the blessings of british rule! shane, instead of encountering the deputy on his own territory, amused himself burning villages in meath. neither of those rulers--those chief protectors of the people--seems to have been conscious that he was doing anything wrong in destroying the homes and the food of the wretched inhabitants, whom they alternately scourged. on the contrary, the extent of devastation which they were able to effect was supposed to put them in a better position for meeting together, and treating as honourable and gallant representatives of their respective nations. in accordance with the desire of the queen, shane, fresh from the work of destruction in the pale, was invited to a conference with kildare. they met at dundalk, and the irish chief consented to wait upon elizabeth in london, being allowed to name his own conditions. in doing so he implied 'that he was rather conferring a favour than receiving one, and that he was going to england as a victorious enemy permitting himself to be conciliated.' he demanded a safe-conduct so clearly worded that, whatever was the result of his visit, he should be free to return; he required 'a complete amnesty for his past misdeeds, and he stipulated that elizabeth should pay all expenses for himself and his retinue; the earls of ormond, desmond, and kildare must receive him in state at dundalk, and escort him to dublin; kildare must accompany him to england; and, most important of all, armagh cathedral must be evacuated. he did not anticipate treachery; and either he would persuade elizabeth to recognise him, and thus prove to the irish that rebellion was the surest road to prosperity and power, or, at worst, by venturing into england, and returning unscathed, he would show them that the government might be defied with more than impunity.'[ ] [footnote : froude.] these terms, so humiliating to english pride, were advocated in the council 'for certain secret respects;' and even sir william cecil was not ashamed to say, 'that, in shane's absence from ireland,' _something might be cavilled against him or his_, for non-observing the covenants on his side; and so the pact being infringed, the matter might be used as should be thought fit. with this understanding elizabeth wrote, making all the ignominious concessions demanded, save one, the evacuation of the cathedral. shane replied in lofty terms that, although for the earl of sussex he would not mollify one iota of his agreement, yet he would consent at the request of her majesty. 'thus,' says mr. froude, 'with the earl of kildare in attendance, a train of galloglasse, , l. in hand, and a second , l. awaiting for him in london, the champion of irish freedom sailed from dublin, and appeared on the second of january at the english court.' it is stated that cecil, pembroke, and bacon, received him privately on his arrival, instructed him how to behave in the royal presence, gave him the promised money, and endeavoured to impress upon him the enormity of his offences. but, to every appeal made to his conscience, shane answered by a counter appeal about money; , l. was a poor present from so great a queen; he was sure their honours would give him a few more hundreds. he agreed, however, to make a general confession of his sins in irish and english; and, thus tutored, elizabeth received him in state on january , , attended by the council, the peers, the foreign ambassadors, bishops, aldermen, dignitaries of all kinds, who gazed 'as if at the exhibition of some wild animal of the desert.' the scene is very graphically described by mr. froude: 'o'neill stalked in, his saffron mantle sweeping round and round him, his hair curling on his back, and clipped short below the eyes, which gleamed from under it with a grey lustre, frowning, fierce, and cruel. behind him followed his galloglasse, bare-headed and fair-haired, with shirts of mail which reached their knees, a wolf-skin flung across their shoulders, and short broad battle-axes in their hands. at the foot of the throne the chief paused, bent forward, threw himself on his face upon the ground, and then, rising upon his knees, spoke aloud in irish!' camden says he 'confessed his crime and rebellion with howling,' and mr. froude adds that, to his hearers, the sound of the words 'was as the howling of a dog.' he said:-- 'oh! my most dread sovereign lady and queen, like as i shane o'neill, your majesty's subject of your realm of ireland, have of long time desired to come into the presence of your majesty to acknowledge my humble and bounden subjection, so am i now here upon my knees by your gracious permission, and do most humbly acknowledge your majesty to be my sovereign lady and queen of england, france, and ireland; and i do confess that, for lack of civil education, i have offended your majesty and your laws, for the which i have required and obtained your majesty's pardon. and for that i most humbly, from the bottom of my heart, thank your majesty, and still do with all humbleness require the continuance of the same; and i faithfully promise here before almighty god and your majesty, and in presence of all these your nobles, that i intend, by god's grace, to live hereafter in the obedience of your majesty as a subject of your land of ireland. 'and because this my speech, being irish, is not well understanded, i have caused this my submission to be written in english and irish, and thereto have set my hand and seal; and to these gentlemen, my kinsmen and friends, i most humbly beseech your majesty to be merciful and gracious.' camden remarks that the bare-headed galloglasse, with long dishevelled hair, crocus-dyed shirts, wide sleeves, short jackets, shaggy cloaks, &c., were objects of great wonder to the londoners; while the hauteur of the irish prince excited the merriment of the courtiers, who styled him 'o'neill the great, cousin to st. patrick, friend to the queen of england, enemy to all the world besides.' notwithstanding shane's precautions with respect to the safe-conduct, english artifice outdid irish cunning. with all their horror of the jesuits, elizabeth's ministers in this case practised mental reservation. true, the government had promised to permit him to return to ireland, but then the time of his stay had not been specified. various pretexts were invented to detain him. he must be recognised as his father's heir; the cause must be pleaded before the english judges; the young baron of dungannon must come over and be heard on the other side. o'neill was told that he had been sent for, while cecil wrote privately to fitzwilliam to keep him safe in ireland. while the prince was thus humoured with vain excuses, he was occupied in pleading his own cause by flattering communications to the queen, 'whose fame was spoken of throughout the world.' he wished to study the wisdom of her government, that he might know better how to order himself in civil polity. he was most urgent that her majesty would give him 'some noble english lady for a wife, with augmentation of living suitable.' if she would give him his father's earldom, he would make her the undisputed sovereign of willing subjects in ulster; he would drive away all her enemies, save her from all further expense, and secure for her a great increase of revenue. he begged in the meantime, that he might be allowed to attend her favourite, lord robert cecil, in order to learn 'to ride after the english fashion, to run at the tilt, to hawk, to shoot, and use such other good exercises as the said good lord was most apt unto.' thus month after month passed away, and shane was still virtually a prisoner. 'at length,' says mr. froude, 'the false dealing produced its cruel fruit, the murder of the boy who was used as the pretext for the delay. sent for to england, yet prevented from obeying the command, the young baron of dungannon was waylaid at the beginning of april in a wood near carlingford by turlogh o'neill. he fled for his life, with the murderers behind him, till he reached the bank of a deep river, which he could not swim, and there he was killed.' this event brought matters to a crisis, and shane's cause was triumphant. by articles entered into between him and the queen it was agreed that he was to be constituted captain or governor of tyrone 'in the same manner as other captains of the said nation called o'nele's had rightfully executed that office in the time of king henry viii. and, moreover, he was to enjoy and have the name and title of o'nele, with the like authority as any other of his ancestors, with the service and homage of all the lords and captains called _urraughts_, and other nobles of the said nation of o'nele.' all this was upon the condition 'that he and his said nobles should truly and faithfully, from time to time, serve her majesty, and, where necessary, wage war against all her enemies in such manner as the lord lieutenant for the time being should direct.' the title of o'neill, however, was to be contingent on the decision of parliament as to the validity of the letters-patent of henry viii. should that decision be unfavourable, he was to enjoy his powers and prerogatives under the style and title of the earl of tyrone, with feudal jurisdiction over the northern counties. the pale was to be no shelter to any person whom he might demand as a malefactor. if any irish lord or chief did him wrong, and the deputy failed within twenty-one days to exact reparation, shane might raise an army and levy war on his private account. an exception was made on behalf of the loyal o'donel, whose cause was to be submitted to the arbitration of the irish earls. the 'indenture' between the queen and o'neill was signed by the high contracting parties, and bears date april , . the english historian indignantly remarks: 'a rebel subject treating as an equal with his sovereign for the terms on which he would remain in his allegiance was an inglorious spectacle; and the admission of shane's pretensions to sovereignty was one more evidence to the small ulster chiefs that no service was worse requited in ireland than fidelity to the english crown. the maguires, the o'reillys, the o'donels--all the clans who had stood by sussex in the preceding summer--were given over to their enemy bound hand and foot. but elizabeth was weary of the expense, and sick of efforts which were profitless as the cultivation of a quicksand. true it was that she was placing half ireland in the hands of an adulterous, murdering scoundrel, but the irish liked to have it so, and she forced herself to hope that he would restrain himself for the future within the bounds of decency.'[ ] [footnote : froude.] in that hope she was soon disappointed. shane with his galloglasse returned in glory, his purse lined with money and honour wreathed about his brows. he told the northern chiefs that he had gone to england not to lose but to win, and that they must henceforth submit to his authority, or feel his power. the o'donels, relying on english promises, dared to refuse allegiance to the o'neill, whereupon, without consulting the lord deputy, 'he called his men to arms and marched into tyrconnel, killing, robbing, and burning in the old style through farm and castle.' the irish historians, however, make excuses for o'neill, affirming that he was released from his obligations by the bad faith of the lord deputy. he it was who gave him a safe conduct to dublin, that he might take the oath of allegiance according to promise; but the document was so ingeniously worded that its meaning might be twisted so as to make him a prisoner. he was informed of this treachery, and, as mr. froude remarks, 'shane was too cunning a fish, and had been too lately in the meshes, to be caught again in so poor a snare.' a most attractive bait was provided by sussex in the person of his sister, who had been brought over to dublin, and who might be won by the great northern chief if he would only come up to the viceregal court to woo her. 'shane glanced at the tempting morsel with wistful eyes. had he trusted himself in the hands of sussex he would have had a short shrift for a blessing and a rough nuptial knot about his neck. at the last moment a little bird carried the tale to his ear. he had been advertized out of the pale that the lady was brought over only to entrap him, and if he came to the deputy he should never return.' he therefore excused himself by alleging that his duty to the queen forbade him to leave the province while it was in such a disturbed condition, the disturbance being caused chiefly by his own predatory excursions into the territories of the o'donels and maguires. shane took charge of the affairs of the church as well as of the state. the catholic primate refusing to acknowledge elizabeth as the head of the church, the see was declared vacant, and a _congé d'élire_ was sent down for the appointment of 'mr. adam loftus,' an englishman, who came over as the lord deputy's chaplain. the answer returned and reported by sussex to the queen was 'that the chapter there, whereof the greater part were shane o'neill's horsemen, were so sparkled and out of order that they could by no means be assembled for the election. in the meantime the lord deputy began to apprehend that o'neill aspired, not without some hope of success, to the sovereignty of the whole island. it was found that he was in correspondence with the pope, and the queen of scots, and the king of spain. no greater danger, wrote sussex, had ever been in ireland. he implored the queen not to trifle with it, declaring that he wished some abler general to take the command, not from any want of will, 'for he would spend his last penny and his last drop of blood for her majesty.' right and left shane was crushing the petty chiefs, who implored the protection of the government. maguire requested the deputy to write to him in english, not in latin, because the latter language was well known, and but few of the irish had any knowledge of the former, in which therefore the secrets of their correspondence would be more safe. here is a specimen of his english: 'i know well that within these four days the sayed shan will come to dystroy me contrey except your lordshypp will sette some remedy in the matter.' he did indeed go down into fermanagh with 'a great hoste.' as maguire refused to submit, shane 'bygan to wax mad, and to cawsse his men to bran all his corn and howsses.' he spared neither church nor sanctuary; three hundred women and children were piteously murdered, and maguire himself, clean banished, as he described it, took refuge with the remnant of his people in the islands on the lake, whither shane was making boats to pursue him. 'help me, your lordship,' the hunted wretch cried, in his despair, to sussex. 'ye are lyke to make hym the strongest man of all erlond, for every man wyll take an exampull by the gratte lostys; take hyd to yourself by thymes, for he is lyke to have all the power from this place thill he come to the wallys of gallway to rysse against you.'[ ] [footnote : wright's elizabeth, vol. i. p. .] it is the boast of the irish that when shane had subdued all his opponents, he ruled tyrone for some time with such order, 'that if a robbery was committed within his territory, he either caused the property to be restored, or reimbursed the loser out of his own treasury.'[ ] [footnote : haverty's history of ireland, p. .] the perplexity of the government in this critical emergency is vividly described by mr. froude: 'elizabeth knew not which way to turn. force, treachery, conciliation had been tried successively, and the irish problem was more hopeless than ever. in the dense darkness of the prospects of ulster there was a solitary gleam of light. grown insolent with prosperity, shane had been dealing too peremptorily with the scots; his countess, though compelled to live with him, and to be the mother of his children, had felt his brutality and repented of her folly, and perhaps attempted to escape. in the daytime, when he was abroad marauding, she was coupled like a hound to a page or a horse-boy, and only released at night when he returned to his evening orgies. the fierce campbells were not men to bear tamely these outrages from a drunken savage on the sister of their chief, and sussex conceived that if the scots, by any contrivance, were separated from shane, they might be used as a whip to scourge him.' at length sussex, determined to crush the arch-rebel, marched northward in april, , with a mixed force of english and irish, ill-armed, ill-supplied, dispirited and almost disloyal. the diary of the commander-in-chief is, perhaps, the funniest on record: 'april : the army arrived at armagh. april : the army marches back to newry to bring up stores and ammunition left behind. april : the army advances again to armagh, where it waits for galloglasse and kerne from the pale. april : the commander-in-chief answers a letter from james m'connell. april : the army goes upon shane's cattle, of which it takes enough to serve it, but would have taken more if it had had galloglasse.' next day it returns to armagh. there it waits three days for the galloglasse, and then sends back for them to dublin. on april , again writes m'connell, because he did not come according to promise. april : the army surveys the trough mountains. april : the pious commander winds up the glorious record in these words: 'to armagh with the spoil taken which would have been much more if we had had galloglasse, and because st. george even forced me, her majesty's lieutenant, to return to divine service that night. april : divine service.' subsequently his lordship's extreme piety caused him the loss of horses, which he naïvely confesses thus: 'being easter time, and he having travelled the week before, and easter day till night, thought fit to give easter monday to prayer, and in this time certain churls stole off with the horses.' to this mr. froude adds the pertinent remark: 'the piety which could neglect practical duty for the outward service of devotion, yet at the same time could make overtures to neil greg to assassinate his master, requires no very lenient consideration.' in connexion with the irish church disestablishment bill lord elcho proposed solomon's plan of settling the dispute of the two mother churches about ireland. he would cut the country in two, establishing protestantism in the north and catholicism in the south. when an experienced member of the house of commons makes such a proposition in this age, we should not be surprised that sir thomas cusack in the year proposed to queen elizabeth that ireland should be divided into four provinces, each with a separate president, either elected by the people or chosen in compliance with their wishes. o'neill was to have the north, the clanrickards the west, the o'briens or desmonds the south, and thus the english might be allowed the undisturbed enjoyment of the pale. this notable scheme for settling the irish question was actually adopted by the queen, and she wrote to sussex, stating that, as his expedition to the north had resulted only in giving fresh strength to the enemy, she 'had decided to come to an end of the war of ulster by agreement rather than by force.' to shane she was all compliance. he had but to prove himself a good subject, and he might have any pre-eminence which her majesty could grant without doing any other person wrong. 'if he desired to have a council established at armagh, he should himself be the president of that council; if he wished to drive the scots out of antrim, her own troops would assist in the expulsion; if he was offended with the garrison in the cathedral, she would gladly see peace maintained in a manner less expensive to herself. to the primacy he might name the person most agreeable to himself, and with the primacy, as a matter of course, even the form of maintaining the protestant church would be abandoned also. in return for these concessions the queen demanded only that shane, to save her honour, should sue for them as a favour instead of demanding them as a right. the rebel chief consented without difficulty to conditions which cost him nothing, and after an interview with cusack, o'neill wrote a formal apology to elizabeth, and promised for the future to be her majesty's true and faithful subject. indentures were drawn up on december , in which the ulster sovereignty was transferred to him in everything but the name, and the treaty required only elizabeth's signature, when a second dark effort was made to cut the knot of the irish difficulty.'[ ] [footnote : froude, vol. viii. p. .] this second 'dark effort' was nothing less than an attempt to murder o'neill by means of poison. he could not be conquered; he could not be out-manoeuvred; he could not be assassinated in the ordinary way. but the resources of dublin castle, and of english ingenuity, were not exhausted. the lord deputy was of course delighted with the reconciliation which had been effected with the ulster prince. what could be more natural than to send him a present of the choicest wine from the viceregal cellars? certainly few presents could be more agreeable. shane and his household quaffed the delicious beverage freely enough we may be sure, without the slightest suspicion that there was death in the cup. but the wine was mingled with poison. those who drank it were quickly at the point of death. o'neill might thank his good constitution for his recovery from an illness almost mortal. the crime was traced to an englishman named smith, who, if employed by lord sussex, did not betray the guilty secret. mr. froude admits that the suspicion cannot but cling to him that this second attempt at murder was not made without his connivance; 'nor,' he adds, 'can elizabeth herself be wholly acquitted of responsibility. she professed the loudest indignation, but she ventured no allusion to his previous communication with her, and no hint transpires of any previous displeasure when the proposal had been made openly to herself. the treachery of an english nobleman, the conduct of the inquiry, and the anomalous termination of it, would have been incredible even in ireland, were not the original correspondence extant, in which the facts are not denied.' o'neill of course complained loudly to the queen, whereupon she directed that a strict investigation should take place, in order that the guilty parties should be found out and punished, 'of what condition soever the same should be.' in writing to the lord deputy she assumed that smith had been committed to prison and would be brought to condign punishment. that person, after many denials, at length confessed his guilt, and said that his object was to rid his country of a dangerous enemy. this motive was so good in the eye of the government that it saved the life of the culprit. sir thomas cusack, writing to cecil, march , , says, 'i persuaded o'neill to forget the matter, whereby no more talk should grow of it; seeing there is no law to punish the offender other than by discretion and imprisonment, which o'neill would little regard except the party might be executed by death, and that the law doth not suffer. so as the matter be wisely pacified, it were well done to leave it.' shane was probably aware that smith was but an instrument, who would be readily sacrificed as a peace-offering. the sketch which mr. froude gives of ulster and its wild sovereign at this time is admirably picturesque. 'here then, for the present, the story will leave shane safely planted on the first step of his ambition, in all but the title, sole monarch of the north. he built himself a fort on an island in lough neagh, which he called _foogh-ni-gall_, or, hate of englishmen, and grew rich on the spoils of his enemies, the only strong man in ireland. he administered justice after a paternal fashion, permitting no robbers but himself; when wrong was done he compelled restitution, or at his own cost redeemed the harm "to the loser's contentation." two hundred pipes of wine were stored in his cellars; men-at-arms fed at his table, as it were his janissaries; and daily he feasted the beggars at his gate, saying, it was meet to serve christ first. half wolf, half fox, he lay couched in his castle of malepartuis, with his emissaries at rome, at paris, and at edinburgh. in the morning he was the subtle pretender to the irish throne; in the afternoon, when the wine was in him, he was a dissolute savage, revelling in sensuality with his unhappy countess, uncoupled from her horseboy to wait upon his pleasure. he broke loose from time to time to keep his hand in practice. at carlingford, for example, he swept off one day sheep and oxen, while his men violated sixty women in the town; but elizabeth looked away and endeavoured not to see. the english government had resolved to stir no sleeping dogs in ireland till a staff was provided to chastise them if they would bite. terence daniel, the dean of those rough-riding canons of armagh, was installed as primate; the earl of sussex was recalled to england; and the new archbishop, unable to contain his exultation at the blessed day which had dawned upon his country, wrote to cecil to say how the millennium had come at last, glory be to god!' as a picture of irish savage life this is very good. but the historian has presented a companion picture of english civilised life, which is not at all inferior. sir thomas wroth and sir nicholas arnold were sent over to reform the pale. they were stern englishmen, impatient of abuses among their own countrymen, and having no more sympathy for irishmen than for wolves. in the pale they found that peculation had grown into a custom; the most barefaced frauds had been converted by habit into rights: and a captain's commission was thought ill-handled if it did not yield, beyond the pay, l. a year. they received pay for each hundred men, when only sixty were on the roll. the soldiers, following the example of their leaders, robbed and ground the peasantry. in fact, the pale was 'a weltering sea of corruption--the captains out of credit, the soldiers mutinous, the english government hated; every man seeking his own, and none that which was christ's.' the purification of the pale was left to arnold, 'a hard, iron, pitiless man, careful of things and careless of phrases, untroubled with delicacy, and impervious to irish enchantments. the account books were dragged to light, where iniquity in high places was registered in inexorable figures. the hands of sir henry ratcliffe, the brother of sussex, were not found clean. arnold sent him to the castle with the rest of the offenders. deep, leading drains were cut through the corrupting mass. the shaking ground grew firm, and honest healthy human life was again made possible. with the provinces beyond the pale, arnold meddled little, save where, taking a rough view of the necessities of the case, he could help the irish chiefs to destroy each other.' to cecil, arnold wrote thus: 'i am with all the wild irish at the same point i am at with bears and ban-dogs; when i see them fight, so they fight earnestly indeed, and tug each other well, i care not who has the worst.' 'why not, indeed?' asks mr. froude; 'better so than hire assassins! cecil, with the modesty of genius, confessed his ignorance of the country, and his inability to judge; yet, in every opinion which he allowed himself to give, there was always a certain nobility of tone and sentiment.' nobility was scarcely necessary to induce a statesman to revolt against the policy of arnold. a little christianity, nay a slight touch of humanity, would have sufficed for that purpose. sussex was a nobleman, and considered himself, no doubt, a very godly man, but everyone must admit that, in all heroic qualities, he was incomparably beneath the uncultured shane o'neill, while in baseness and wickedness he was not far behind his northern foe, 'half wolf, half fox.' cecil, however, was a man of a very different stamp from sussex. evidently shocked at the prevailing english notions about the value of irish life, he wrote to arnold: 'you be of that opinion which many wise men are of, from which i do not dissent, being an englishman; but being, as i am, a christian man, i am not without some perplexity, to enjoy of such cruelties.' the work of reform, however, did not prove so easy a task. arnold's vigour was limited by his powers. the paymasters continued to cheat the government by false returns. the government allowed the pay to run in arrear, the soldiers revenged themselves by oppressing and plundering the people; and 'so came to pass this wonderful phenomenon, that _in o'neill's country_ alone in ireland--defended as it was from attacks from without, and enriched with the plunder of the pale--_were the peasantry prosperous, or life or property secure_.' this fact might suggest to the english historian that the evils of ireland do not all proceed from blood or race; and that the saxon may be placed in circumstances which make him as false, as dishonest, as lazy, as disordered, as worthless as the celt, and that even men of 'gentle blood' may become as base as their most plebeian servants. nor did zeal for religious reformation redeem the defects of the anglo-irish rulers. the protestant bishops were chiefly agitated by the vestment controversy. 'adam loftus, the titular primate, to whom,' says mr. froude, 'sacked villages, ravished women, and famine-stricken skeletons crawling about the fields, were matters of everyday indifference, shook with terror at the mention of a surplice.' robert daly wrote in anguish to cecil, in dismay at the countenance to 'papistry,' and at his own inability to prolong a persecution which he had happily commenced. an abortive 'devise for the better government of ireland' gives us some insight into the condition of the people. 'no poor persons should be _compelled_ any more to work or labour by the day, or otherwise, without meat, drink, wages, or some other allowance during the time of their labour; no earth tillers, nor any others inhabiting a dwelling, under any lord, should be distrained or punished, in body or goods, for the faults of their landlord; nor any honest man lose life or lands without fair trial by parliamentary attainder, according to the ancient laws of england and ireland.' surely it was no proof of incurable perversity of nature, that the irish peasantry were discontented and disaffected, under the horrid system of oppression and slavery here laid before the english government. as remedial measures, it was proposed that a true servant of god should be placed in every parish, from cape clear to the giant's causeway; that the children should be taught the new testament and the psalms in latin, 'that they, being infants, might savour of the same in age as an old cask doth;' that there should be a university for the education of the clergy, 'and such godly discipline among them that there should be no more pluralities, no more abuse of patronage, no more neglect, or idleness, or profligacy.' mr. froude's reflection upon this projected policy is highly characteristic:-- 'here was an ideal ireland painted on the retina of some worthy english minister; but the real ireland was still the old place. as it was in the days of brian boroihme and the danes, so it was in the days of shane o'neill and sir nicholas arnold; and the queen, who was to found all these fine institutions, cared chiefly to burden her exchequer no further in the vain effort _to drain the black irish morass_, fed as it was from the perennial fountains of irish nature.'[ ] [footnote : vol. viii. p. .] the queen, however, thought it more prudent to let shane have his way in ulster. to oblige him, she would remove the protestant primate, loftus, to dublin, and appoint his own nominee and friend, terence daniel. the pope had sent a third archbishop for the same see, named creagh; but, when passing through london, he was arrested, and incarcerated in the tower, 'where he lay in great misery, cold, and hunger, without a penny, without the means of getting his single shirt washed, and without gown or hose.' at last he made his escape by gliding over the walls into the thames. the events of made the english government more than ever anxious to come to terms with the chieftain 'whom they were powerless to crush.' since the defeat of the earl of sussex, continues mr. froude, 'shane's influence and strength had been steadily growing. his return unscathed from london, and the fierce attitude which he assumed on the instant of his reappearance in ulster, convinced the petty leaders that to resist him longer would only ensure their ruin. o'donel was an exile in england, and there remained unsubdued in the north only the scottish colonies of antrim, which were soon to follow with the rest. o'neill lay quiet through the winter. with the spring and the fine weather, when the rivers fell and the ground dried, he roused himself out of his lair, and with his galloglasse and kerne, and a few hundred harquebussmen, he dashed suddenly down upon the red-shanks, and broke them utterly to pieces. six or seven hundred were killed in the field, james m'connell and his brother, sorleyboy, were taken prisoners, and, for the moment, the whole colony was swept away. james m'connell, himself badly wounded in the action, died a few months later, and shane was left undisputed sovereign of ulster.' primate daniel announced to the queen this 'glorious victory over a malicious and dangerous people' who were gradually fastening on the country; and sir thomas cusack urged that now was the time to make o'neill a friend for ever, an advice which was backed up by the stern arnold. 'for what else could be done? the pale,' he pleaded, 'is poor and unable to defend itself. if he do fall out before the beginning of next summer, there is neither outlaw, rebel, murderer, thief, nor any lewd nor evil-disposed person--of whom god knoweth there is plenty swarming in every quarter among the wild irish, yea and in our own border too--which would not join to do what mischief they might.' but shane did not wait for further royal overtures. he saw that with the english government might was right, and that the justice of his cause shone out more brightly in proportion to the increase of his power. thus encouraged in his course of aggression and conquest, he seized the queen's castles of newry and dundrum. he then marched into connaught, demanding the tribute due of old time 'to them that were kings in that realm.' he exacted pledges of obedience from the western chiefs, and spoiled o'rourke's country, and returned to tyrone driving before him , head of cattle. while proceeding at this rate he wrote soothing and flattering words to the queen. it was for her majesty he was fighting; he was chastising her enemies and breaking stiff-necked chiefs into her yoke; and he begged that she would not credit any stories which his ill-willers might spread abroad against him. on the contrary he hoped she would determine his title and rule without delay, and grant him, in consideration of his good services, some augmentation of living in the pale. elizabeth, however, excused his conduct, saying 'we must allow something for his wild bringing-up, and not expect from him what we should expect from a perfect subject. if he mean well he shall have all his reasonable requests granted.' but there was among elizabeth's advisers a statesman who felt that this sort of policy would never do. sir henry sidney, on being requested to take charge of the government of ireland, urged the absolute necessity of a radical change. the power of o'neill, and such rulers as he, must be utterly broken, and that by force, at whatever cost. and this, he argued, would not only be sound policy but true economy. the condition of ireland was unexampled; free from foreign invasion, the sovereignty of the queen not denied, yet the revenue so mean and scanty that 'great yearly treasures were carried out of the realm of england to satisfy the stipends of the officers and soldiers required for the governance of the same.' he must have , l. or , l. to pay out-standing debts and put the army in proper condition. as for his own remuneration, the new viceroy, as he could expect nothing from the queen, would be content with permission to export six thousand kerseys and clothes, free of duty. sir henry sidney struck out the only line of policy by which the english government of ireland could be made successful or even possible. he said: 'to go to work by force will be chargeable, it is true; but if you will give the people justice and minister law among them, and exercise the sword of the sovereign, and put away the sword of the subject, _omnia hæc adjicientur vobis_--you shall drive the now man of war to be an husbandman, and he that now liveth like a lord to live like a servant, and the money now spent in buying armour, and horses, and waging of war, shall be bestowed in building of towns and houses. by ending these incessant wars ere they be aware, you shall bereave them both of force and beggary, and make them weak and wealthy. then you can convert the military service due from the lords into money; then you can take up the fisheries now left to the french and the spaniards; then you can open and work your mines, and the people will be able to grant you subsidies.'[ ] when the lord deputy arrived in ireland he found a state of things in the pale far worse than he could have imagined. it was 'as it were overwhelmed with vagabonds; plunder and spoils daily carried out of it; the people miserable; not two gentlemen in the whole of it able to lend l.; without horse, armour, apparel, or victual. the soldiers were worse than the people: so beggarlike as it would abhor a general to look on them; never a married wife among them, and therefore so allied with irishwomen that they betrayed secrets, and could not be trusted on dangerous service; so insolent as to be intolerable; so rooted in idleness as there was no hope by correction to amend them.' in munster a man might ride twenty or thirty miles and find no houses standing in a country which he had known as well inhabited as many counties in england. 'in ulster,' sidney wrote, 'there tyrannizeth the prince of pride; lucifer was never more puffed up with pride and ambition than that o'neill is; he is at present the only strong and rich man in ireland, and he is the dangerest man and most like to bring the whole estate of this land to subversion and subjugation either to him or to some foreign prince, that ever was in ireland.' he invited this lucifer to come into the pale to see him, and shane at first agreed to meet him at dundalk, but on second thoughts he politely declined, on the ground that the earl of sussex had twice attempted to assassinate him, and but for the earl of kildare would have put a lock upon his hands when he was passing through dublin to england. hence his 'timorous and mistrustful people' would not trust him any more in english hands. in fact o'neill despised any honours the queen could confer upon him. 'when the wine was in him he boasted that he was in blood and power better than the best of their earls, and he would give place to none but his cousin of kildare, because he was of his own house. they had made a wise earl of m'carthymore, but shane kept as good a man as he. whom was he to trust? sussex gave him a safe-conduct and then offered him the courtesy of a handlock. the queen had told him herself that, though he had got a safe-conduct to come and go, the document did not say when he was to go; and, in order to get away from london, he was obliged to agree to things against his honour and profit, and he would never perform them while he lived.' that treachery drove him into war. 'my ancestors,' he said, 'were kings of ulster; and ulster is mine, and shall be mine. o'donel shall never come into his country, nor bagenal into newry, nor kildare into dundrum, or lecale. they are now mine. with this sword i won them, with this sword i will keep them.' sidney, indignant at these pretensions, wrote thus to leicester: 'no atila nor yotila, no vandal nor goth that ever was, was more to be dreaded for over-running any part of christendom, than this man is for over-running and spoiling of ireland. if it be an angel of heaven that will say that ever o'neill will be a good subject till he be thoroughly chastised, believe him not, but think him a spirit of error. surely if the queen do not chastise him in ulster, he will chase all hers out of ireland. her majesty must make up her mind to the expense, and chastise this cannibal.' he therefore demanded money that he might pay the garrison and get rid of the idle, treacherous, incorrigible soldiers which were worse than none. ireland, he said, would be no small loss to the english crown. it was never so likely to be lost as then, and he would rather die than that it should be lost during his government. the queen, however, sent money with the greatest possible reluctance, and was strangely dissatisfied with this able and faithful servant, even when his measures were attended with signal success. [footnote : opinions of sir h. sidney, irish mss., rolls house; froude, p. .] in the meantime o'neill zealously espoused the cause of mary queen of scots. his friendship with argyle grew closer, and he proposed that it should be cemented by a marriage. 'the countess' was to be sent away, and shane was to be united to the widow of james m'connell, whom he had killed--who was another half-sister of argyle, and whose daughter he had married already and divorced. sidney wrote, that was said to be the earl's practice; and mr. froude, who has celebrated the virtues of henry viii., takes occasion from this facility of divorce to have another fling at 'irish nature.' he says:--'the irish chiefs, it seemed, three thousand years behind the world, retained the habits and the moralities of the greek princes in the tale of troy, when the bride of the slaughtered husband was the willing prize of the conqueror; and when only a rare andromache was found to envy the fate of a sister who had escaped the bed of some victorious lord.' after a brief and brilliant campaign, in which shane 'swept round by lough erne, swooped on the remaining cattle of maguire, and struck terror and admiration into the irishry,' he wrote a letter to charles ix. of france, inviting his co-operation in expelling the heretics, and bringing back the country to the holy roman see. the heretic saxons, he said, were the enemies of almighty god, the enemies of the holy church of rome, the king's enemies, and his. 'the time is come when we all are confederates in a common bond to drive the invader from our shores, and we now beseech your majesty to send us , well-armed men. if you will grant our request there will soon be no englishmen left alive among us, and we will be your majesty's subjects ever more.' this letter was intercepted, and is now preserved among the irish mss. sidney resolved to adopt a new plan of warfare. his campaigns would not be mere summer forays, mere inroads of devastation during the few dry weeks of august and september. he would wait till the harvest was gathered in, place troops in fortresses, and continue hostilities through the winter. he adopted this course because 'in the cold irish springs, the fields were bare, the cattle were lean, and the weather was so uncertain that neither man nor horse could bear it, whereas in august _food everywhere was abundant_, and the soldiers would have time to become hardened to their work.' they could winter somewhere on the bann; harry tyrone night and day without remission, and so break shane to the ground and ruin him. there was no time to be lost. maguire had come into dublin, reporting that his last cottage was in ashes, and his last cow driven over the hill into shane's country; while argyle, with the whole disposable force of the western isles, was expected to join him in summer. o'neill himself, after an abortive attempt to entrap sidney at dundalk, made a sudden attack on that town in july; but his men were beaten back, 'and eighteen heads were left behind to grin hideously over the gates.' he then returned to armagh and burned the cathedral to the ground, to prevent its being again occupied by an english garrison. he next sent a swift messenger to desmond, calling for a rising in munster. 'now was the time or never' to set upon the enemies of ireland. if desmond failed, or turned against his country, god would avenge it on him. but desmond's reply was an offer to the deputy 'to go against the rebel with all his power. the scots also held back.' shane offered them all antrim to join him, all the cattle in the country, and the release of sorleyboy from captivity; but antrim and its cattle they believed that they could recover for themselves, and james m'connell had left a brother allaster, who was watching with eager eyes for an opportunity to revenge the death of his kinsman, and the dishonour with which shane had stained his race. in the meantime troops and money came over from england, and on september , colonel randolph was at the head of an army in lough foyle; and the lord deputy took the field accompanied by kildare, the old o'donel, shane maguire, and o'dogherty. so that this war against o'neill was waged for the dispossessed irish chiefs as well as for england. armagh city they found a mere heap of blackened stones. marching without obstruction to ben brook, one of o'neill's best and largest houses, which they found 'utterly burned and razed to the ground,' thence they went on towards clogher, 'through pleasant fields, and villages so well inhabited as no irish county in the realm was like it.' the bishop of clogher was out with shane in the field. 'his well-fattened flock were devoured by sidney's men as by a flight of egyptian locusts.' 'there we stayed,' said sidney, 'to destroy the corn; we burned the country for miles compass, and we found by experience that now was the time of the year to do the rebel most harm.' but he says not a word of the harm he was doing to the poor innocent peasantry, whose industry had produced the crops, to the terrified women and children whom he was thus consigning to a horrible lingering death by famine. this was a strange commencement of his own programme to treat the people with justice. the lord deputy expected to meet randolph at lifford; but struck with the singular advantages presented by derry, then an island, for a military position, he pitched his tents there, and set the troops to work in erecting fortifications. nothing then stood on the site of the present city, save a decrepid and deserted monastery of augustine monks, which was said to have been built in the time of st. columba. sidney stayed a few days at derry, and then, leaving randolph with men, pioneers, and provisions for two months, he marched on to donegal. this was once a thriving town, inhabited by english colonists. at the time of sidney's arrival it was a pile of ruins, 'in the midst of which, like a wild beast's den, strewed round with mangled bones, rose the largest and strongest castle which he had seen in ireland. it was held by one of o'donel's kinsmen, to whom shane, to attach him to his cause, had given his sister to wife. at the appearance of the old chief with the english army, it was immediately surrendered. o'donel was at last rewarded for his fidelity and sufferings; and the whole tribe, with eager protestations of allegiance, gave sureties for their future loyalty.' sidney next directed his march to ballyshannon, and on by the coast of sligo. passing over the bogs and mountains of mayo, they came into roscommon, and then, 'leaving behind them as fruitful a country as was in england or ireland all utterly waste,' the army crossed the shannon at athlone, swimming 'for lack of a bridge.' the results of this progress are thus summed up by mr. froude. 'twenty castles had been taken as they went along and left in hands that could be trusted. in all that long and painful journey sidney was able to say that there had not died of sickness but three persons; men and horses were brought back in full health and strength, while her majesty's honour was re-established among the irishry, and grown to no small veneration--"an expedition comparable only to alexander's journey into bactria," wrote an admirer of sidney to cecil--revealing what to irish eyes appeared the magnitude of the difficulty, and forming a measure of the effect which it produced. the english deputy had bearded shane in his stronghold, burned his houses, pillaged his people, and had fastened a body of police in the midst of them, to keep them waking in the winter nights. he had penetrated the hitherto impregnable fortresses of mountain and morass; the irish who had been faithful to england were again in safe possession of their lands and homes. the weakest, maddest, and wildest celts were made aware that, when the english were once roused to effort, they could crush them as the lion crushes the jackal.'[ ] [footnote : vol. viii. p. .] o'neill had followed the lord deputy to lifford, and then marched on to the pale, expecting to retaliate upon the invaders with impunity. but he was encountered by warren st. leger, lost men, and was at first hunted back over the border. he again returned, however, with 'a main army,' burned several villages, and in a second fight with st. leger, compelled the english to retire, 'for lack of more aid;' but they held together in good order, and shane, with the derry garrison in his rear, durst not follow far from home in pursuit. 'before he could revenge himself on sidney, before he could stir against the scots, before he could strike a blow at o'donel, he must pluck out the barbed dart which was fastened in his unguarded side.' in order to accomplish this object, he hovered cautiously about the foyle, watching for an opportunity to attack the garrison. but randolph fell upon him by surprise, and after a short sharp action, the o'neills gave way. o'dogherty with his irish horse chased the flying crowd of his countrymen, killing every person he caught; and shane lost men, the bravest of his warriors. the english success was dearly bought, for randolph leading the pursuit, was struck by a random shot, and fell dead from his horse. before the irish chief could recover from this great disaster, sidney 'struck in again beyond dundalk, burning his farms and capturing his castles. the scots came in over the bann, wasting the country all along the river side. allaster m'connell, like some chief of sioux indians, sent to the captain of knockfergus an account of the cattle that he had driven, and _the wives and bairns_ that he had slain. like swarms of angry hornets, these avenging savages drove their stings in the now maddened and desperate shane on every point where they could fasten; while in december the old o'donel came out over the mountains from donegal, and paid back o'neill with interest for his stolen wife, his pillaged country, and his own long imprisonment and exile. the tide of fortune had turned too late for his own revenge: worn out with his long sufferings, he fell from his horse, at the head of his people, with the stroke of death upon him; but before he died, he called his kinsmen about him, and prayed them to be true to england and their queen, and hugh o'donel, who succeeded to his father's command, went straight to derry, and swore allegiance to the english crown. 'tyrone was now smitten in all its borders. magennis was the last powerful chief who still adhered to shane's fortunes; the last week in the year sidney carried fire and sword through his country, and left him not a hoof remaining. it was to no purpose that shane, bewildered by the rapidity with which disasters were piling themselves upon him, cried out now for pardon and peace; the deputy would not answer his letter, and nothing was talked of but his extirpation by war only.'[ ] [footnote : froude, p. .] the war, however, was interrupted by a singular calamity that befel the derry garrison. by the death of their commander left 'a headless people,' they suffered from want of food and clothing. they also became the prey of a mysterious disease, against which no precautions could guard, which no medicine could cure, and by which strong men were suddenly struck dead. by the middle of november 'the flux was reigning among them wonderfully;' many of the best men went away because there was none to stay them. the secret of the dreadful malady--something like the cholera--was discovered in the fact that the soldiers had built their sleeping quarters over the burial-ground of the abbey, 'and the clammy vapour had stolen into their lungs and poisoned them.' the officer who succeeded to the command applied the most effectual remedy. he led the men at once into the pure air of the enemies' country, and they returned after a few days driving before them horses and , cattle. he assured sidney, that with additional men, he could so hunt the rebel, that ere may was passed, he should not show his face in ulster. but the 'black death' returned after a brief respite; and, says mr. froude, in the reeking vapour of the charnel-house, it was indifferent whether its victims returned in triumph from a stricken field, or were cooped within their walls by hordes of savage enemies. by the middle of march there were left out of , but available to fight. reinforcements had been raised at liverpool, but they were countermanded when on the point of sailing. the english council was discussing the propriety of removing the colony to the bann, when accident finished the work which the plague had begun, and spared them the trouble of deliberation. the huts and sheds round the monastery had been huddled together for the convenience of fortification. at the end of april, probably after a drying east wind, a fire broke out in a blacksmith's forge, which spread irresistibly through the entire range of buildings. the flames at last reached the powder magazine: thirty men were blown to pieces by the explosion, and the rest, paralysed by this last addition to their misfortunes, made no more effort to extinguish the conflagration. st. loo, with all that remained of that ill-fated party, watched from their provision boats in the river the utter destruction of the settlement which had begun so happily, and then sailed drearily away to find a refuge in knockfergus. such was the fate of the first efforts for the building of londonderry; and below its later glories, as so often happens in this world, lay the bones of many a hundred gallant men who lost their lives in laying its foundations. elizabeth, who in the immediate pressure of calamity resumed at once her noble nature, 'perceiving the misfortune not to come of treason, but of god's ordinance,' bore it well; she was willing to do that should be wanting to repair the loss; and cecil was able to write cheerfully to sidney, telling him to make the best of the accident and let it stimulate him to fresh exertions.'[ ] [footnote : page .] in the meantime shane o'neill, hard pressed on every side, earnestly implored the cardinals of lorraine and guise, in the name of their great brother the duke, to bring the _fleur-de-lys_ to the rescue of ireland from the grasp of the ungodly english. 'help us,' he cried, blending _irish-like_ flattery with entreaty: 'when i was in england, i saw your noble brother, the marquis d'elboeuf, transfix two stags with a single arrow. if the most christian king will not help us, move the pope to help us. i alone in this land sustain his cause.' to propitiate his holiness, primate daniel was dismissed to the ranks of the army, and creagh received his crosier, and was taken into o'neill's household. 'all was done,' says the english historian, 'to deserve favour in earth and heaven, but all was useless. the pope sat silent or muttering his anathemas with bated breath. the guises had work enough on hand at home to heed the _irish wolf_, whom the english, having in vain attempted to trap or poison, were driving to bay with more lawful weapons.' his own people, divided and dispirited, began now to desert the failing cause. in may, by a concerted movement, the deputy with the light horse of the pale overran tyrone, and robbed the farmers of , cattle, while the o'donels mustered their forces for a great contest with shane, now struggling, almost hopelessly, to maintain his supremacy. the o'neills and o'donels met on the banks of the foyle near lifford. the former were superior in number, being about , men. after a brief fight 'the o'neills broke and fled; the enemy was behind them, the river was in front; and when the irish battle cries had died away over moor and mountain, but survived of those fierce troopers, who were to have cleared ireland for ever from the presence of the saxons. for the rest, the wolves were snarling over their bodies, and the seagulls whirling over them with scream and cry, as they floated down to their last resting-place beneath the quiet waters of lough foyle. shane's foster-brethren, faithful to the last, were all killed; he himself with half-a-dozen comrades rode for his life, pursued by the avenging furies. his first desperate intention was to throw himself at sidney's feet, _with a slave's collar upon his neck_; but his secretary, neil m'kevin, persuaded him that his cause was not yet absolutely without hope. sorleyboy was still a prisoner in the castle at lough neagh, the countess of argyle had remained with her ravisher through his shifting fortunes, had continued to bear him children, and notwithstanding his many infidelities, was still attached to him. m'kevin told him that for their sakes, or at their intercession, he might find shelter and perhaps help among the kindred of the m'connells.' acting on this advice, o'neill took his prisoner, 'the countess, his secretary, and fifty men to the camp of allaster m'connell, in the far extremity of antrim. he was received with dissembled gratulatory words.' for two days all went on well, and an alliance was talked of. but the vengeance of his hosts was with difficulty suppressed. the great chief who was now in their power, had slain their leaders in the field, had divorced james m'connell's daughter, had kept a high-born scottish lady as his mistress, and had asked argyle to give him for a wife m'connell's widow, who, to escape the dishonour, had remained in concealment at edinburgh. on the third evening, monday june , when the wine and the whiskey had gone freely round, and the blood in shane's veins had warmed, gilespie m'connell, who had watched him from the first with an ill-boding eye, turned round upon m'kevin, and asked scornfully, 'whether it was he who had bruited abroad that the lady his aunt did offer to come from scotland to ireland to marry with his master?' m'kevin meeting scorn with scorn said, that if his aunt was queen of scotland she might be proud to match with the o'neill. 'it is false,' the fierce scot shouted; 'my aunt is too honest a woman to match with her husband's murderer.' 'shane, who was perhaps drunk, heard the words, and forgetting where he was, flung back the lie in gilespie's throat. gilespie sprung to his feet, ran out of the tent, and raised the slogan of the isles. a hundred dirks flashed into the moonlight, and the irish, wherever they could be found, were struck down and stabbed. some two or three found their horses and escaped, all the rest were murdered; and shane himself, gashed with fifty wounds, was wrapped in a kern's old shirt, and flung into a pit, dug hastily among the ruined arches of glenarm. even there, what was left of him was not allowed to rest. four days later, piers, the captain of knockfergus, hacked the head from the body, and carried it on a spear's point through drogheda to dublin, where, staked upon a pike, it bleached on the battlements of the castle, a symbol to the irish world of the fate of celtic heroes.'[ ] [footnote : froude, p. , &c.] mr. froude might have added: celtic heroes struck down by celtic hands. no lord deputy could boast of a victory over shane o'neill in the field. irish traitors in english pay, irish clans moved by vengeance, did the work of england in the destruction of the great principality of the o'neills, and it was by _their_ swords, not by english valour, that sidney 'recovered ireland for the crown of elizabeth.' whatever may have been the faults of shane o'neill, and no doubt they were very great, though not to be judged of by the morality of the nineteenth century, his talents, his force of character, his courage and capacity as a general, deserved more favourable notice from mr. froude, who, in almost every sentence of his graphic and splendid descriptions, betrays an animosity to the celtic race, very strange in an author so enlightened, and evincing, with this exception, such generous sympathies. after so often reviling the great irish champion by comparing him to all sorts of wild beasts, the historian thus concludes:-- 'so died shane o'neill, one of those champions of irish nationality, who under varying features have repeated themselves in the history of that country with periodic regularity. at once a _drunken ruffian_, and a keen and fiery patriot, the representative in his birth of the line of the ancient kings, the ideal in his character of all which irishmen most admired, regardless in his actions of the laws of god and man, yet the devoted subject in his creed of the holy catholic church; with an eye which could see far beyond the limits of his own island, and a tongue which could touch the most passionate chords of the irish heart; the like of him has been seen many times in that island, and the like of him may be seen many times again till the ethiopian has changed his skin, and the leopard his spots. numbers of his letters remain, to the queen, to sussex, to sidney, to cecil, and to foreign princes; far-reaching, full of pleasant flattery and promises which cost him nothing, but showing true ability and insight. sinner though he was, he too in his turn was sinned against; in the stained page of irish misrule there is no second instance in which an english ruler stooped to treachery, or to the infamy of attempted assassination; and it is not to be forgotten that lord sussex, who has left under his own hand the evidence of his own baseness, continued a trusted and favoured councillor of elizabeth, while sidney, who fought shane and conquered him in the open field, found only suspicion and hard words.' chapter iv. exterminating wars. mr. froude's magnificent chapter on ireland, in the eleventh volume of his history, just published, ought to be studied by every member of the legislature before parliament meets. if a nation has a conscience, england must feel remorse for the deeds done in her name in ireland; and ought to make amends for them, if possible. the historian has well described the policy of queen elizabeth. she was at times disposed to forbearance, but 'she made impossible the obedience she enjoined. her deputies and her presidents, too short-sighted to rule with justice, were driven to cruelty in spite of themselves. it was easier to kill than to restrain. death was the only gaoler which their finances could support, while the irish in turn lay in wait to retaliate upon their oppressors, and atrocity begat atrocity in hopeless continuity.' whenever there was a failing in any enterprise, the queen conceived 'a great misliking of the whole matter;' but success covered a multitude of sins. when the irish were powerful, and the colony was in danger, she thought it 'a hard matter to subvert the customs of the people which they had enjoyed, to be ruled by the captains of their own nation. let the chiefs sue for pardon, and submit to her authority, and she would let them have their seignories, their captaincies, their body-guards, and all the rest of their dignities, with power of life and death over their people. but,' says mr. froude, 'it was the curse of the english rule that it never could adhere consistently to any definite principle. it threatened, and failed to execute its threats. it fell back on conciliation, and yet immediately, by some injustice or cruelty, made reliance on its good faith impossible.' essex seemed to understand well the nature and motive of the queen's professions, and he resolved to make some bold attempts to win back her favour. he had made a sudden attack on sir brian o'neill of clandeboye, with troops trained in the wars of the low countries, and in a week he brought him to abject submission, which he expressed by saying that 'he had gone wickedly astray, wandering in the wilderness like a blind beast.' but it was the misfortune of sir brian, or m'phelim, that he still held his own territory, which had been granted by the queen to essex. 'the attempt to deprive him had been relinquished. he had surrendered his lands, and the queen, at essex's own intercession, had reinstated him as tenant under the crown. it seems, however, as if essex had his eye still upon the property.' under such circumstances, it was easy to assume that o'neill was still playing false. so he resolved that he should not be able to do so any longer. 'he determined to make sure work with so fickle a people.' he returned to clandeboye, as if on a friendly visit. sir brian and lady o'neill received him with all hospitality. the irish annalists say that they gave him a banquet. they not only let him off safe, but they accompanied him to his castle at belfast. there he was very gracious. a high feast was held in the hall; and it was late in the night when the noble guest and his wife retired to their lodging outside the walls. when they were supposed to be asleep, a company of soldiers surrounded the house and prepared to break the door. 'the o'neills flew to arms. the cry rang through the village, and the people swarmed out to defend their chief; but surprised, half-armed, and outnumbered, they were overpowered and cut to pieces. two hundred men were killed. the four masters add that the women were slain. the chieftain's wife had female attendants with her, and no one was knowingly spared. the tide being out, a squadron of horse was sent at daybreak over the water into the "ardes," from which, in a few hours, they returned with , of sir brian's cattle, and with a drove of stud mares, of which the choicest were sent to fitzwilliam. sir brian himself, his brother, and lady o'neill, were carried as prisoners to dublin, where they were soon after executed.'[ ] [footnote : froude, vol. xi. p. .] essex did not miscalculate the probable effect of this exploit. it raised him high in the estimation of the anglo-irish of the pale. 'the taint of the country was upon him; he had made himself no better than themselves, and was the hero of the hour.' the effect of such conduct and such a spirit in the rulers, may be imagined. a few weeks later, sir edward fitton wrote: 'i may say of ireland, that it is quiet; but if universal oppression of the mean sort by the great; if murder, robberies, burnings make an ill commonwealth, then i cannot say we are in a good case ... public sentiment in dublin, however, was unanimous in its approbation. essex was the man who would cauterize the long-standing sores. there was a soldier in ireland at last who understood the work that was to be done, and the way to set about it. beloved by the soldiers, admirable alike for religion, nobility, and courtesy, altogether the queen's, and not bewitched by the factions of the realm, the governor of ulster had but to be armed with supreme power, and the long-wished-for conquest of ireland would be easily and instantly achieved.' these feelings were not unnatural to the party in dublin, now represented by the men who recently declared that they rejoiced in the election of a fenian convict in tipperary, and declared that they would vote for such a candidate in preference to a loyal man. but how did queen elizabeth receive the news of the treacherous and atrocious massacre at belfast? she was not displeased. 'her occasional disapprobation of severities of this kind,' says mr. froude, 'was confined to cases to which the attention of europe happened to be especially directed. she told essex that he was a great ornament of her nobility, she wished she had many as ready as he to spend their lives for the benefit of their country.' thus encouraged by his sovereign, and smarting under the reproach of cowardice cast on him by leicester, essex determined to render his name illustrious by a still more signal deed of heroism. after an unprovoked raid on the territories of o'neill in tyrone, carrying off cattle and slaughtering great numbers of innocent people whom his soldiers hunted down, he perpetrated another massacre, which is certainly one of the most infamous recorded in history. a great number of women and children, aged and sick persons, had fled from the horrors that reigned on the mainland, and taken refuge in the island of rathlin. the story of their tragic fate is admirably told by mr. froude:--'the situation and the difficulty of access had thus long marked rathlin as a place of refuge for scotch or irish fugitives, and, besides its natural strength, it was respected as a sanctuary, having been the abode at one time of st. columba. a mass of broken masonry, on a cliff overhanging the sea, is a remnant of the castle in which robert bruce watched the leap of the legendary spider. to this island, when essex entered antrim, m'connell and other scots had sent their wives and children, their aged and their sick, for safety. on his way through carrickfergus, when returning to dublin, the earl ascertained that they had not yet been brought back to their homes. the officer in command of the english garrison (it is painful to mention the name either of him, or of any man concerned in what ensued) was john norris, lord norris's second son, so famous afterwards in the low countries, grandson of sir henry norris, executed for adultery with anne boleyn. three small frigates were in the harbour. the summer had been hot and windless; the sea was smooth, there was a light and favourable air from the east; and essex directed norris to take a company of soldiers with him, cross over, and--' what? bring those women and children, those sick and aged folk, back to their homes? essex had made peace by treaty with the o'neill. he had killed or chased away every man that could disturb the peace; and an act of humanity like this would have had a most conciliatory effect, and ought to recommend the hero to the queen, who should be supposed to have the heart as well as the form of a woman. no; the order was, to go over '_and kill whatever he could find!_' mr. froude resumes: 'the run of the antrim coast was rapidly and quietly accomplished. before an alarm could be given, the english had landed, close to the ruins of the church which bears st. columba's name. bruce's castle was then standing, and was occupied by a score or two of scots, who were in charge of the women. but norris had brought cannon with him. the weak defences were speedily destroyed, and after a severe assault, in which several of the garrison were killed, the chief who was in command offered to surrender, if he and his people were allowed to return to scotland. the conditions were rejected. the scots yielded at discretion, and every living creature in the place, except the chief and his family (who were probably reserved for ransom), was immediately put to the sword. two hundred were killed in the castle. it was then discovered that several hundred more, chiefly mothers and their little ones, were hidden in the caves about the shore. there was no remorse, nor even the faintest shadow of perception that the occasion called for it. they were hunted out as if they had been seals or otters, and all destroyed. sorleyboy and other chiefs, essex coolly wrote, had sent their wives and children into the island, "which be all taken and executed to the number of six hundred. sorleyboy himself," he continued, "stood upon the mainland of the glynnes and saw the taking of the island, and was likely to have run mad for sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself, and saying that he there lost all that he ever had!" the impression left upon the mind by this horrible story, is increased by the composure with which even the news of it was received. "yellow-haired charley," wrote essex to the queen, "might tear himself for his pretty little ones and their _dam_," but in ireland itself the massacre was not specially distinguished in the general system of atrocity. essex described it himself as one of the exploits with which he was most satisfied; and elizabeth, in answer to his letters, bade him tell john norris, "the executioner of his well-designed enterprise, that she would not be unmindful of his services."' i have transcribed this narrative partly for the sake of the reflection with which mr. froude concludes. he says: 'but though passed over and unheeded at the time, and lying buried for three hundred years, the bloody stain comes back to the light again, not in myth or legend, but in the original account of the nobleman by whose command the deed was done; and when the history of england's dealings with ireland settles at last into its final shape, that hunt among the caves at rathlin will not be forgotten.'[ ] it was for services like these that essex got the barony of farney, in the county monaghan. he had mortgaged his english estates to the queen for , l.,and after his plundering expeditions in ireland he went home to pay his debts. [footnote : history of england, vol. xi. p. .] further on mr. froude has another reflection connected with the death of essex, supposed to have been poisoned, as his widow immediately after married leicester. he says: 'notwithstanding rathlin, essex was one of the noblest of living englishmen, and that such a man could have ordered such a deed, being totally unconscious of the horror of it, is not the least instructive feature in the dreadful story.' it is certainly a strange fact that nearly all the official murderers who ruled in ireland in those times were intensely religious, setting to their own class a most edifying example of piety. thus, from the first, protestantism was presented to the irish in close connexion with brutal inhumanity and remorseless cruelty. essex, when dying, was described by the bystanders as acting 'more like a divine preacher or heavenly prophet than a man.' his opinion of the religious character of his countrymen was most unfavourable. 'the gospel had been preached to them,' he said, 'but they were neither papists nor protestants--of no religion, but full of pride and iniquity. there was nothing but infidelity, infidelity, infidelity!--atheism, atheism!--no religion, no religion!' what such tiger-like slaughterers of women and children, such ruthless destroyers, could have meant by religion is a puzzle for philosophers. sidney reluctantly resumed the office of viceroy in . tirlogh o'neill congratulated the government on his appointment, 'wretched ireland needing not the sword, but sober, temperate, and humane administration.' though it was winter, the new deputy immediately commenced a progress through the provinces. going first to ulster, he saw sorleyboy, and gave him back rathlin. he paid a friendly visit to the o'neill, who gave him an assurance of his loyalty. leinster he found for the most part 'waste, burnt up and destroyed.' he proceeded by waterford to cork. he was received everywhere with acclamation. 'the wretched people,' says mr. froude, how truly!--'sanguine then, as ever, in the midst of sorrow, looked on his coming as the inauguration of a new and happier era.' so, in later times, they looked on the coming of chesterfield, and fitzwilliam, and anglesey. but the good angel was quickly chased away by the evil demon--invoked under the name of the 'protestant interest.' the munster and the connaught chiefs all thronged to sidney's levées, weary of disaffection, and willing to be loyal, if their religion were not interfered with, 'detesting their barbarous lives,'--promising rent and service for their lands. 'the past was wiped out. confiscation on the one hand, and rebellion on the other, were to be heard of no more. a clean page was turned.' even the catholic bishops were tractable, and the viceroy got 'good and honest juries in cork, and with their help twenty-four malefactors were honourably condemned and hanged.' enjoying an ovation as he passed on to limerick and galway, he found many grievances to be redressed--'plenty of burnings, rapes, murders, besides such spoil in goods and cattle as in number might be counted infinite, and in quantity innumerable.' sir william drury was appointed president of munster; and he was determined that in his case the magistrate should not bear the sword in vain. going round the counties as an itinerant judge, he gleaned the malefactors sidney had left, and hanged forty-three of them in cork. one he pressed to death for declining to plead to his indictment. two m'sweenys, from kerry, were drawn and quartered. at limerick he hanged forty-two, and at kilkenny thirty-six, among which he said were 'some good ones,' as a sportsman might say, bagging his game. he had a difficulty with 'a blackamoor and two witches,' against whom he found no statute of the realm, so he dispatched them 'by natural law.' although jeffreys, at the bloody assizes, did not come near drury, the latter found it necessary to apologise to the english government for the paucity of his victims, saying, 'i have chosen rather with the snail tenderly to creep, than with the hare swiftly to run.' with the government in ireland, as mr. froude has well remarked, 'the gallows is the only preacher of righteousness.' but the gallows was far too slow, as an instrument of reform and civilisation, for malby, president of connaught; and as modern evictors in that province and elsewhere have chosen christmas as the most appropriate season for pulling down dwellings, extinguishing domestic fires, and unhousing women and children, so malby chose the same blessed season for his 'improvements' in . it is such a model for dealing with the fenians and tenants on the tory plan, that i transcribe his own report, which mr. froude has found among the irish mss. 'at christmas,' he wrote, 'i marched into their territory, and finding courteous dealing with them had like to have cut my throat, i thought good to take another course; and so with determination _to consume them with fire and sword, sparing neither old nor young_, i entered their mountains. i burnt all their corn and houses, and committed to the sword all that could be found, where were slain at that time above sixty of their best men, and among them the best leaders they had. this was shan burke's country. then i burnt ulick burke's country. in like manner i assaulted a castle where the garrison surrendered. i put them to the misericordia of my soldiers. they were all slain. thence i went on, sparing none which came in my way, which cruelty did so amaze their followers, that they could not tell where to bestow themselves. shan burke made means to me to pardon him and forbear killing of his people. i would not hearken, but went on my way. the gentlemen of clanrickard came to me. i found it was but dallying to win time, so i left ulick as little corn and as few houses standing as i left his brother; and what people was found had as little favour as the other had. _it was all done in rain and frost and storm_, journeys in such weather bringing them the sooner to submission. they are humble enough now, and will yield to any terms we like to offer them.' and so malby and his soldiers enjoyed a merry christmas; and when walsingham read his letters, giving an account of his civilising progress, to the queen, she, too, must have enjoyed a fresh sensation, a new pleasure amidst the festivities and gallantries of her brilliant court. mr. froude has rendered a timely service in this christmas time to the coercionists, the martial law men, and the habeas corpus suspension men of our own day. he has shown them their principles at work and carried out with a vengeance, and with what results! he has admirably sketched the progress of english rule in ireland up to that time--a rule unchanged in principle to the present hour, though restrained in its operation by the spirit of the age. mr. froude says: 'when the people were quiet, there was the rope for the malefactors, and death by the natural law for those whom the law written could not touch. when they broke out, there was the blazing homestead, and death by the sword for all, not for the armed kerne only, but for the aged and infirm, the nursing mother and the baby at her breast. these, with ruined churches, and irish rogues for ministers,--these, and so far _only_ these were the symbols of the advance of english rule; yet even sidney could not order more and more severity, and the president of munster was lost in wonder at the detestation with which the english name was everywhere regarded. clanrickard was sent to dublin, and the deputy wished to hang him, but he dared not execute an earl without consulting his mistress, and elizabeth's leniency in ireland, as well as england, was alive and active towards the great, although it was dead towards the poor. she could hear without emotion of the massacres at rathlin or slievh broughty; but the blood of the nobles, who had betrayed their wretched followers into the rebellion for which they suffered, was for ever precious in her sight. she forbade sidney to touch him.'[ ] [footnote : vol. xi, p. .] next came the great desmond rebellion, by which munster was desolated. the pope had encouraged an expedition against the heretics in ireland, and some spanish forces joined in the enterprise. it was organised by an english ecclesiastic, named sanders, and an exiled geraldine, named fitzmaurice of kerry, both able and energetic men. the spaniards landed at dingle in . in a few days all kerry and limerick were up, and the woods between mallow and the shannon 'were swarming with howling kerne.' 'the rebellion,' wrote waterhouse, 'is the most perilous that ever began in ireland. nothing is to be looked for but a general revolt.' malby took the command against them, joined by one of the burkes, theobald, who when he saw fitzmaurice struck by a ball and staggering in his saddle, rode at him and cut him down. the papal standard was unfolded in this battle. malby then burnt the desmonds' country, killing all the human beings he met, up to the walls of askeaton. when opportunity offered, desmond retaliated by sacking and burning youghal. for two days the geraldines revelled in plunder; they violated the women and murdered all who could not escape. at length elizabeth was roused to the greatness of the danger, her parsimony was overcome. a larger force was drawn into ireland than had ever been assembled there for a century. ormond, the hereditary enemy of desmond, was appointed commander-in-chief; and burghley, writing to him in the name of the queen, concluded thus: 'so now i will merely say, butler aboo, against all that cry in the new language--papa aboo, and god send your hearts' desire to banish and vanquish those cankered desmonds!' the war now raged, and, as usual, the innocent people, the cultivators of the soil, were the first victims. 'we passed through the rebel countries,' wrote pelham, 'in two companies, burning with fire _all habitations, and executing the people_ wherever we found them.' mr. froude says: '_alone_ of all the english commanders he expressed remorse at the work.' well, if the creatures they destroyed were horses, dogs, or cats, we should expect a man of ordinary human feelings to be shocked at the wholesale butchery. but the beings slaughtered were men and women and children--christians found unarmed and defenceless in their dwellings. let the english imagine such a war carried on in kent or yorkshire, by irish invaders, killing in the name of the pope. the irish annalists say that pelham and ormond killed the blind and the aged, women and children, sick and idiots, sparing none. the english, as usual, had help from an irish chief in the work of destruction. ormond had in his train m'carthymore, 'who, believing desmond's day to be done, hoped, by making himself useful, to secure a share of the plunder.' dividing their forces, pelham marched on to dingle, 'destroying as he went, with ormond parallel to him on the opposite side of the bay, the two parties watching each other's course at night across the water by the flames of the burning cottages!' the fleet was waiting at dingle. there was a merry meeting of the officers. 'here,' says sir nicholas white, 'my lord justice and i gathered cockles for our supper.'[ ] the several hunting parties compared notes in the evening. sometimes the sport was bad. on one occasion pelham reported that his party had hanged a priest in the spanish dress. 'otherwise,' he says, 'we took small prey, and killed less people, though we reached many places in our travel!' at killarney they found the lakes full of salmon. in one of the islands there was an abbey, in another a parish church, in another a castle, 'out of which there came to them a fair lady, the rejected wife of lord fitzmaurice.' even the soldiers were struck with the singular loveliness of the scene. 'a fairer land,' one of them said, 'the sun did never shine upon--pity to see it lying waste in the hands of traitors.' mr. froude, who deals more justly by the irish in his last volumes, replies: 'yet it was by those traitors that the woods whose beauty they so admired had been planted and fostered. irish hands, unaided by english art or english wealth, had built muckross and innisfallen and aghadoe, and had raised the castles on whose walls the modern poet watched the splendour of the sunset.' [footnote : carew papers; froude, vol. xi. p. .] ormond was the arch-destroyer of his countrymen. in a report of his services he stated that in this one year , he had put to the sword 'forty-six captains and leaders, with notorious traitors and malefactors, _and above_ , other people.'[ ] in that year the great desmond wrote to philip of spain that he was a homeless wanderer. 'every town, castle, village, farm-house belonging to him or his people had been destroyed. there was no longer a roof standing in munster to shelter him.' hunted like a wolf through the mountains, he was at last found sleeping in a hut and killed. in vain his wife pleaded with ormond, and threw herself on his protection. even she was not spared. mr. froude gives an interesting account of desmond's last hours. he was hunted down into the mountains between tralee and the atlantic. m'sweeny had sheltered him and fed him through the summer, though a large price was set on his head; and when m'sweeny was gone, killed by an irish dagger, the earl's turn could not be distant. donell m'donell moriarty had been received to grace by ormond, and had promised to deserve his pardon. this man came to the captain of castlemayne, gave information of the hiding-place, a band was sent--half-a-dozen english soldiers and a few irish kerne, who stole in the darkness along the path which followed the stream--the door was dashed in, and the last earl of desmond was killed in his bed. [footnote : carew papers; froude, vol. xi. p. .] ormond had recourse to a horrible device to extinguish the embers of the rebellion. it was carrying out to a diabolical extent the policy of setting one irishman against another. if the terror-stricken wretches hoped for pardon, they must deserve it, by murdering their relations. accordingly sacks full of the heads of reputed rebels were brought in daily. yet concerning him mr. froude makes this singular remark: 'to ormond the irish were human beings with human rights. to the english they were _vermin, to be cleared from off the earth_ by any means that offered.' consequently, when it was proposed to make ormond viceroy, the pale was in a ferment. how could any man be fit to represent english power in dublin castle, who regarded the irish as human beings! not less curious is the testimony which the historian bears to the character of the english exterminators. he says, 'they were honourable, high-minded men, full of natural tenderness and gentleness, to every one with whom they were placed in _human relations_. the irish, unfortunately, they looked upon as savages who had refused peace and protection when it was offered to them, and were now therefore to be _rooted out and destroyed_.' a reformer in , however, suggested a milder policy. he recommended that 'all brehons, carraghs, bards, rhymers, friars, monks, jesuits, pardoners, nuns, and such-like should be executed by martial law, and that with this clean sweep the work of death might end, and a new era be ushered in with universities and schools, a fixed police, and agriculture, and good government.' when the english had destroyed all the houses and churches, burnt all the corn, and driven away all the cattle, they were disgusted at the savage state in which the remnant of the peasantry lived. a gentleman named andrew trollope gave expression to this feeling thus: 'the common people ate flesh if they could steal it, if not they lived on shamrock and carrion. they never served god or went to church; they had no religion and no manners, but were in all things more barbarous and beast-like than any other people. no governor shall do good here,' he said, 'except he show himself a tamerlane. if hell were open and all the evil spirits abroad, they could never be worse than these irish rogues--rather dogs, and worse than dogs, for dogs do but after their kind, and they degenerate from all humanity.'[ ] [footnote : froude, vol. xi. p. .] the population of ireland was then by slaughter and famine reduced to about , , one-eighth of the population of england; but far too many, in the estimation of their english rulers. brabason succeeded malby in connaught, and surpassed him in cruelty. the four masters say: 'neither the sanctuary of the saint, neither the wood nor the forest valley, the town nor the lawn, was a shelter from this captain and his people, till the whole territory was destroyed by him.' in the spring of st. leger wrote from cork: 'this country is so ruined as it is well near unpeopled by the murders and spoils done by the traitors on the one side, and by the killing and spoil done by the soldiers on the other side, together with the great mortality in town and country, which is such as the like hath never been seen. there has died by famine only not so few as , in this province in less than half a year, besides others that are hanged and killed.' at length the world began to cry shame on england; and lord burghley was obliged to admit that the english in ireland had outdone the spaniards in ferocious and blood-thirsty persecution. remonstrating with sir h. wallop, ancestor of lord portsmouth, he said that the 'flemings had not such cause to rebel against the oppression of the spaniards, as the irish against the tyranny of england.' wallop defended the government; the causes of the rebellion were not to be laid at the door of england at all. they were these, 'the great affection they generally bear to the popish religion, which agreeth with their humour, that having committed murder, incest, thefts, with all other execrable offences, by hearing a mass, confessing themselves to a priest, or obtaining the pope's pardon, they persuade themselves that they are forgiven, and, hearing mass on sunday or holyday, they think all the week after they may do what heinous offence soever and it is dispensed withal.' trollope said they had no religion. wallop said they had too much religion. but their nationality was worse than their creed. wallop adds, 'they also much hate our nation, partly through the general mislike or disdain one nation hath to be governed by another; partly that we are contrary to them in religion; and lastly, they seek to have the government among themselves.' the last was the worst of all. elizabeth wished to heal the wounds of the irish nation by appointing ormond lord deputy. he was a nobleman of norman descent. his family had been true to england for centuries. he had commanded her armies during this exterminating war, and, being a native of the country, he would be best fitted to carry on the work of conciliation after so much slaughter. but, says mr. froude, 'from every english officer serving in the country, every english settler, every bishop of the anglo-irish church, there rose one chorus of remonstrance and indignation; to them it appeared as a proposal now would appear in calcutta to make the nizam viceroy of india.'[ ] wallop wrote that if he were appointed, there would be 'no dwelling in the country for any englishman.' [footnote : ibid. p. .] the fear that a merciful policy might be adopted towards ireland sorely troubled wallop and archbishop loftus; but they were comforted by a great prize--an archbishop fell into their hands. dr. hurley refused to give information against others. walsingham suggested that he should be put to the torture. to him archbishop loftus wrote with unction. 'not finding that easy method of examination do any good, we made command to mr. waterhouse and mr. secretary fenton to put him to the torture, such as your honour advised us, which was to _toast his feet_ against the fire with hot boots.' he confessed something. they asked permission to execute him by martial law. the queen took a month to consider. she recommended an ordinary trial for high treason, and if the jury did not do its duty, they might take the shorter way. she wished for no more torture, but 'for what was past her majesty accepted in good part their careful travail, and greatly commended their doings.' the irish judges had repeatedly decided that there was no case against archbishop hurley; but on june , , loftus and wallop wrote to walsingham, 'we gave warrant to the knight-marshal to do execution upon him, which accordingly was performed, and thereby the realm rid of a most pestilent member.'[ ] [footnote : froude, vol. xi. p. .] this was the last act of these two lords justices. sir john perrot, the new viceroy, made a speech which sent a ray of hope athwart the national gloom. it was simply that the people might thenceforth expect a little justice and protection. he told the natives that 'as natural-born subjects of her majesty she loved them as her own people. he wished to be suppressed and universally abolished throughout the realm the name of a churle and the crushing of a churle; affirming that, however the former barbarous times had desired it and nourished it, yet he held it tyrannous both in name and manner, and therefore would extirpate it, and use in place of it the titles used in england, namely, husbandmen, franklins or yeomen.' 'this was so plausible,' wrote sir g. fenton, 'that it was carried throughout the whole realm, in less time than might be thought credible, if expressed.' the extirpation of the munster geraldines, in the right line, according to the theory of the 'undertakers' and the law of england in general, vested in the queen the , acres belonging to the late earl. proclamation was accordingly made throughout england, inviting 'younger brothers of good families' to undertake the plantation of desmond--each planter to obtain a certain scope of land, on condition of settling thereupon so many families--'none of the native irish to be admitted' under these conditions, sir christopher hatton took up , acres in waterford; sir walter raleigh , acres, partly in waterford and partly in cork; sir william harbart, or herbert, , acres in kerry; sir edward denny , in the same county; sir warren st. leger, and sir thomas norris, , acres each in cork; sir william courtney , acres in limerick; sir edward fitton , acres in tipperary and waterford, and edmund spenser , acres in cork, on the beautiful blackwater. the other notable undertakers were the hides, butchers, wirths, berkleys, trenchards, thorntons, bourchers, billingsleys, &c. some of these grants, especially raleigh's, fell in the next reign to richard boyle, the so-called '_great_ earl of cork '--probably the most pious hypocrite to be found in the long roll of the 'munster undertakers.' chapter v. an irish crusade. in , the lord deputy mountjoy, in obedience to instructions from the government in london, marched to the borders of ulster with a considerable force, to effect, if he could, the arrest of hugh o'neill, earl of tyrone, or to bring him to terms. since the defeat of the irish and spanish confederacy at kinsale, o'neill comforted himself with the assurance that philip iii. would send another expedition to ireland to retrieve the honour of his flag, and avenge the humiliation it had sustained, owing to the incompetency or treachery of don juan d'aquila. that the king was inclined to aid the irish there can be no question; 'for clement viii., then reigning in the vatican, pressed it upon him as a sacred duty, which he owed to his co-religionists in ireland, whose efforts to free themselves from elizabeth's tyranny, the pontiff pronounced to be a _crusade_ against the most implacable heretic of the day.'[ ] [footnote : fate and fortunes of the earls of tyrone and tyrconnell. by the rev. p.c. meehan, m.r.i.a.] if mr. meehan's authorities may be relied upon, queen elizabeth was, in intention at least, a murderer as well as a heretic. he states that while she was gasping on her cushions at richmond, gazing on the haggard features of death, and vainly striving to penetrate the opaque veil of the future, she commanded secretary cecil to charge mountjoy to entrap tyrone into a submission, on diminished rank as baron of dungannon, and with lessened territory; or if possible, to have his head, before engaging the royal word. it was to accomplish either of these objects, that mountjoy marched to the frontier of the north. 'among those employed to murder o'neill in cold blood, were sir geoffry fenton, lord dunsany, and _henry oge o'neill._ mountjoy bribed one walker, an englishman, and a ruffian calling himself richard combus, to make the attempt, but they all failed.'[ ] finding it impossible to procure the assassination of 'the sacred person of o'neill, who had so many eyes of jealousy about him,' he wrote to cecil from drogheda, that nothing prevented tyrone from making his submission but mistrust of his personal safety and guarantee for maintenance commensurate to his princely rank. the lords of elizabeth's privy council empowered mountjoy to treat with o'neill on these terms, and to give him the required securities. sir garret moore and sir william godolphin were entrusted with a commission to effect this object. but while the lord deputy, with a brilliant retinue, was feasting at mellifont, a monastery bestowed by henry viii. on an ancestor of sir garret moore, by whom it was transformed into a 'fair mansion,' half palace, half fortress, a courier arrived from england, announcing the death of the queen. nevertheless the negotiations were pressed on in her name, the fact of her decease being carefully concealed from the irish. tyrone had already sent his secretary, henry o'hagan, to announce to the lord deputy that he was about to come to his presence. accordingly on march , he surrendered himself to the two commissioners at tougher, within five miles of dungannon. on the following evening he reached mellifont, when, being admitted to the lord deputy's presence, 'he knelt, as was usual on such occasions;' and made penitent submission to her majesty. then, being invited to come nearer to the deputy, he repeated the ceremony, if we may credit fynes moryson, in the same humiliating attitude, thus:-- 'i, hugh o'neill, earl of tyrone, do absolutely submit myself to the queen's mercy, imploring her gracious commiseration, imploring her majesty to mitigate her just indignation against me. i do avow that the first motives of my rebellion were neither malice nor ambition; but that i was induced by fear of my life, to stand upon my guard. i do therefore most humbly sue her majesty, that she will vouchsafe to restore to me my former dignity and living. in which state of a subject, i vow to continue for ever hereafter loyal, in all true obedience to her royal person, crown, and prerogatives, and to be in all things as dutifully conformable thereunto as i or any other nobleman of this realm is bound by the duty of a subject to his sovereign, utterly renouncing the name and title of o'neill, or any other claim which hath not been granted to me by her majesty. i abjure all foreign power, and all dependency upon any other potentate but her majesty. i renounce all manner of dependency upon the king of spain, or treaty with him or any of his confederates, and shall be ready to serve her majesty against him or any of his forces or confederates. i do renounce all challenge or intermeddling with the uriaghts, or fostering with them or other neighbour lords or gentlemen outside my country, or exacting black-rents of any uriaghts or bordering lords. i resign all claim and title to any lands but such as shall now be granted to me by her majesty's letters patent. lastly, i will be content to be advised by her majesty's magistrates here, and will assist them in anything that may tend to the advancement of her service, and the peaceable government of this kingdom, the abolishing of barbarous customs, the clearing of difficult passes, wherein i will employ the labours of the people of my country in such places as i shall be directed by her majesty, or the lord deputy in her name; and i will endeavour for myself and the people of my country, to erect civil habitations such as shall be of greater effect to preserve us against thieves, and any force but the power of the state.' [footnote : see life and letters of florence m'carthy. by d. m'carthy, esq.] to this act of submission tyrone affixed his sign manual, and handed it to the deputy, who told him he must write to philip iii. of spain, to send home his son henry, who had gone with father m'cawell to complete his studies in salamanca. the deputy also insisted that he should reveal all his negotiations with the spanish court, or any other foreign sovereign with whom he maintained correspondence; and when the earl assured him that all these requirements should be duly discharged, the lord deputy in the queen's name promised him her majesty's pardon to himself and followers, to himself the restoration of his earldom and blood with new letters patent of all his lands, excepting the country possessed by henry oge o'neill, and the fews belonging to tirlough mac henry o'neill, both of whom had recently taken grants of their lands, to be holden immediately from the queen. it was further covenanted that tyrone should give acres of his land to the fort of charlmont, and more to that of mountjoy, as long as it pleased her majesty to garrison said forts. tyrone assented to all these conditions, and then received the accolade from the lord deputy, who, a few months before, had written to queen elizabeth, that he hoped to be able to send her that ghastliest of all trophies--her great rebel's head! on april , the lord deputy returned to dublin accompanied by the great vassal whom he fancied he had bound in inviolable loyalty to the english throne. to make assurance doubly sure, the day after james was proclaimed, tyrone repeated the absolute submission made at mellifont, the name of the sovereign only being changed. he also despatched a letter to the king of spain stating that he had held out as long as he could, in the vain hope of being succoured by him, and finally when deserted by his nearest kinsmen and followers, he was enforced as in duty bound to declare his allegiance to james i., in whose service and obedience he meant to live and die. the importance of this act of submission will appear from a manifesto issued by o'neill three years before, dated dungannon, november , , and subscribed 'o'neill.' this remarkable document has been published for the first time by father meehan. '_to the catholics of the towns in ireland._ 'using hitherto more than ordinary favour towards all my countrymen, who generally by profession are catholics, and that naturally i am inclined to affect [esteem] you, i have for these and other considerations abstained my forces from tempting to do you hindrance, and because i did expect that you would enter into consideration of the lamentable state of our poor country, most tyrannically oppressed, and of your own gentle consciences, in maintaining, relieving and helping the enemies of god and our country in wars infallibly tending to the promotion of heresy: but now seeing you are so obstinate in that which hereunto you continued of necessity, i must use severity against you (whom otherwise i most entirely love) in reclaiming you by compulsion. my tolerance and happy victories by god's particular favour doubtless obtained could work no alteration in your consciences, notwithstanding the great calamity and misery, whereunto you are most likely to fall by persevering in that damnable state in which hereunto you have lived. having commiseration on you i thought it good to forewarn you, requesting every of you to come and join with me against the enemies of god and our poor country. if the same you do not, i will use means to spoil you of all your goods, but according to the utmost of my power shall work what i may to dispossess you of all your lands, because you are the means whereby wars are maintained against the exaltation of the catholic faith. contrariwise, whosoever it shall be that shall join with me, upon my conscience, and as to the contrary i shall answer before god, i will employ myself to the utmost of my power in their defence and for the extirpation of heresy, the planting of the catholic religion, the delivery of our country of infinite murders, wicked and detestable policies by which this kingdom was hitherto governed, nourished in obscurity and ignorance, maintained in barbarity and incivility, and consequently of infinite evils which were too lamentable to be rehearsed. and seeing these are motives most laudable before any men of consideration, and before the almighty most meritorious, which is chiefly to be expected, i thought myself in conscience bound, seeing god hath given me some power to use all means for the reduction of this our poor afflicted country into the catholic faith, which can never be brought to any good pass without either your destruction or helping hand; hereby protesting that i neither seek your lands or goods, neither do i purpose to plant any in your places, if you will adjoin with me; but will extend what liberties and privileges that heretofore you have had if it shall stand in my power, giving you to understand upon my salvation that chiefly and principally i fight for the catholic faith to be planted throughout all our poor country, as well in cities as elsewhere, as manifestly might appear by that i rejected all other conditions proffered to me this not being granted. i have already by word of mouth protested, and do now hereby protest, that if i had to be king of ireland without having the catholic religion which before i mentioned, i would not the same accept. take your example by that most catholic country, france, whose subjects for defect of catholic faith did go against their most natural king, and maintained wars till he was constrained to profess the catholic religion, duly submitting himself to the apostolic see of rome, to the which doubtless we may bring our country, you putting your helping hand with me to the same. as for myself i protest before god and upon my salvation i have been proffered oftentimes such conditions as no man seeking his own private commodity could refuse; but i seeking the public utility of my native country will prosecute these wars until that generally religion be planted throughout all ireland. so i rest, praying the almighty to move your flinty hearts to prefer the commodity and profit of our country, before your own private ends.' as a crusader, the o'neill was a worthy disciple of the king of spain. the catholics of the south had no wish to engage in a religious war, but the northern chief aspiring to the sovereignty of the whole island, resolved to reclaim them by compulsion, seeing that his tolerance and happy victories had worked no change in their consciences, and they still persevered in that 'damnable state' in which they had lived. from his entire love and commiseration he forewarned them that if they did not come and join him against the enemies of god and 'our poor country,' he would not only despoil them of all their goods, but dispossess them of all their lands. the extirpation of heresy, the planting of the catholic religion, he declared could never be brought to any good pass without either the destruction or the help of the catholics in the towns of the south and west. he did not want their lands or goods, nor did he intend to plant others in their places _if they would adjoin with him_. pointing to the example of france, he vowed that he would prosecute those wars until the catholic religion should be planted throughout all ireland, praying that god would move their flinty hearts to join him in this pious and humane enterprise. in those times when religious wars had been raging on the continent, when the whole power of spain was persistently employed to exterminate protestants with fire and sword and every species of cruelty, it is not at all surprising that a chief like o'neill, leading such a wild warlike life in ulster, should persuade himself that he would be glorifying god and serving his country by destroying the catholic inhabitants of the towns, that is all the most civilised portion of the community, because they would not join him in robbing and killing the protestants. but it is not a little surprising that an enlightened, learned, and liberal catholic priest, writing in dublin in the year , should give his deliberate sanction to this unchristian and barbarous policy. yet father meehan writes: 'but no; not even the dint of that manifesto, _with the ring of true steel in its every line_, could strike a spark out of their hearts, for they were chalky.'[ ] [footnote : page .] it was very natural that the english government should act upon the same principle of intolerance, especially when they had the plea of state necessity. they did not yet go the length of exterminating catholicity by the means with which the o'neill threatened his peaceable and industrious co-religionists in the towns. all they required was that the catholics should cease to harbour their priests, and that they should attend the protestant churches. remarking upon the proclamation of chichester to this effect mr. meehan says:--'apart from the folly of the king, who had taken into his head that an entire nation should, at his bidding, apostatise from the creed of their forefathers, the publishing such a manifesto in dungannon, in donegal, and elsewhere was a bitter insult to the northern chieftains, whose wars were _crusades_,--the natural consequence of faith,--stimulated by the roman pontiffs, assisted by spain, then the most catholic kingdom in the world.' does not mr. meehan see that crusading is a game at which two can play? and if wars which were crusades were the natural consequence of the catholic faith, were stimulated by the roman pontiffs, and assisted by spain, for the purpose of destroying the power of england, everywhere as well as in ireland, and abolishing the reformation,--does it not follow as a necessary consequence that the english government must in sheer self-defence have waged a war of extermination against the catholic religion, and have regarded its priests as mortal enemies? no better plea for the english policy in ireland was ever offered by any protestant writer than this language, intended as a condemnation, by a very able priest in our own day. it was no doubt extreme folly for king james i. to expect that a nation, or a single individual, should apostatise at his bidding; but it was equal folly in the king of spain to expect protestants to apostatise at his bidding; and if possible still greater folly for o'neill to expect the catholic citizens of munster to join him in the bloody work of persecution. it was, then, the spanish policy stimulated by the sovereign pontiff that was the standing excuse of the cruel intolerance and rancorous religious animosity which have continued to distract irish society down to our own time. persecution is alien to the irish race. the malignant _virus_ imported from spain poisoned the national blood, maddened the national brain, and provoked the terrible system of retaliation that was embodied in the penal code, and which, surviving to our own time, still defends itself by the old plea--the intrusion of a foreign power attempting to overrule the government of the country. chapter vi. the last of the irish princes. the accession of james i. produced a delirium of joy in the catholics of the south. their bards had sung that the blood of the old celtic monarchs circulated in his veins, their clergy told them that as james vi. of scotland he had received supplies of money from the roman court, and above all clement viii. then reigning, had sent to congratulate him on his accession, having been solicited by him to favour his title to the crown of england, which the pope guaranteed to do on condition that james promised not to persecute the catholics. the consequence was that the inhabitants of the southern towns rose _en masse_ without waiting for authority, forced open the gates of the ancient churches, re-erected the altars and used them for the public celebration of worship. the lord deputy was startled by intelligence to this effect from waterford, limerick, cork, lismore, kilkenny, clonmel, wexford, &c. the cathedrals, churches, and oratories were seized by the people and clergy, father white, vicar-apostolic of waterford, being the leader in this movement, going about from city to city for the purpose of 'hallowing and purifying' the temples which protestantism had desecrated. the mayors of the cities were rebuked by mountjoy as seditious and mutinous in setting up 'the public exercise of the popish religion,' and he threatened to encamp speedily before waterford, 'to suppress insolences and see peace and obedience maintained.' the deputy kept his word, and on may , , he appeared before waterford at the head of , men, officered by sir r. wingfield, and others who had distinguished themselves during tyrone's war. 'there is among the family pictures at powerscourt,' says mr. meehan, 'a portrait of this distinguished old warrior, whose lineal descendant, the present noble lord, has always proved most generous to his catholic tenantry.' the reverend gentleman gives an amusing sketch of a theological encounter between the old warrior and father white and a dominican friar, who came forth to the camp under a safe-conduct, both wearing their clerical habits and preceded by a cross-bearer. the soldiers jeered at the sacred symbol, and called it an idol. father white indignantly resented the outrage, when sir richard wingfield threatened to put an end to the controversy by running his sword through the vicar-apostolic. 'the deputy however was a bookish man, at one period of his life inclined to catholicity, and he listened patiently to father white on the right of resisting or disobeying the natural prince; but when the latter quoted some passage thereanent in the works of st. augustine, mountjoy caused to be brought to him out of his tent the identical volume, and showed to the amazement of the bystanders, that the context explained away all the priest had asserted.' the noble theologian told father white that he was a traitor, worthy of condign punishment for bringing an idol into a christian camp and for opening the churches by the pope's authority. father white appeared in the camp a second time that day, making a most reasonable request. he fell on his knees before the deputy, begging liberty of conscience, free and open exercise of religion, protesting that the people would be ready to resist all foreign invasion were that granted; and finally beseeching that some of the ruined churches might be given to the catholics, who were ready to rebuild them, and pay for them a yearly rent into his majesty's exchequer. but the deputy was inexorable, and all he would grant was leave to wear clerical clothes, and celebrate mass in private houses. mountjoy entered waterford, received from the citizens the oath of allegiance, and made over the city churches to the small section of protestants. at the same time he sent despatches to other towns ordering the authorities to evict the roman catholics from the places of worship. and then proceeding to cork, and thence through cashel to dublin, he undid all that the clergy had done with respect to the churches, 'leaving perhaps to future statesmen,' writes father meehan, 'living above the atmosphere of effete prejudices, the duty of restoring to the catholics of ireland those grand old temples, which were never meant to accommodate a fragment of its people.'[ ] [footnote : page .] when mountjoy returned to dublin he found that he had been created lord lieutenant of ireland with two-thirds of the deputy's allowance, sir george carew, appointed deputy during his absence in england, receiving the other third together with his own pay as treasurer-at-war. mountjoy was also informed that the royal pardon had been granted to tyrone under the great seal, and that all other grants made to him by the lord deputy had been confirmed. the king concluded by requesting that he would induce tyrone to go with him to london, adding, 'as we think it very convenient for our service, and require you so to do; and if not that at least you bring his son.' along with these instructions came a protection for o'neill and his retinue. it was supposed that james felt grateful to the ulster chieftain for the services he had rendered him during the late queen's reign; and it is stated by craik that after the victory of the blackwater, he sent his secretary o'hagan to holyrood, to signify to his majesty that if he supplied him with money and munitions he would instantly march on dublin, proclaim him king of ireland, and set the crown upon his head. in compliance with the sovereign's request, mountjoy, with a brilliant suite, accompanied by tyrone and rory o'donel, embarked in may , and sailed for holyhead. but when they had sighted the coast of wales, the pinnace was driven back by adverse winds, and nearly wrecked in a fog at the skerries. they landed safe, however, at beaumaris, whence they rode rapidly to chester, where they stopped for the night, and were entertained by the mayor. the king's protection for the o'neill was not uncalled for. whenever he was recognised in city or hamlet, the populace, notwithstanding their respect for mountjoy, the hero of the hour, pursued the earl with bitter insults, and stoned him as he passed along. throughout the whole journey to london, the welsh and english women assailed him with their invectives. not unnaturally, for 'there was not one among them but could name some friend or kinsman whose bones lay buried far away in some wild pass or glen of ulster, where the object of their maledictions was more often victor than vanquished.'[ ] the king, however, gave the irish chiefs a gracious reception, having issued a proclamation that he had restored them to his favour, and that they should be 'of all men honourably received.' this excited intense disgust amongst english officers who had been engaged in the irish wars. thus sir john harrington, writing to a bishop, said: 'i have lived to see that damnable rebel, tyrone, brought to england, honoured and well liked. oh, what is there that does not prove the inconstancy of worldly matters! how i did labour after that knave's destruction! i adventured perils by sea and land, was near starving, eat horseflesh in munster, and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those who did hazard their lives to destroy him; and now doeth tyrone dare us old commanders with his presence and protection.' [footnote : father meehan.] in fact the favour of the king went to an excess fatal to its object, by conceding powers incompatible with his own sovereignty, leading to disorders and violence, and exciting jealousy and mortal enmity in those who were charged with the government in ireland. the lords of the privy council, with the king's consent, gave o'neill authority for martial law, 'to be executed upon any offenders that shall live under him, the better to keep them in obedience.' it was ordered that the king's garrisons should not meddle with him or his people. the king also invested o'donel with all the lands and rights of ancient time belonging to his house, excepting abbeys and other spiritual livings, the castle and town of ballyshannon, and , acres adjoining the fishing there. he also received the style and title of earl of tyrconnel, with remainder to his brother caffar, the heirs male apparent being created barons of donegal. he was formally installed in christ church cathedral on the th of september following, in presence of archbishop loftus and a number of high officials. tyrone, however, was dogged by spies while he was in london, and one atkinson swore informations to the effect that he was in the habit of entertaining a jesuit named archer, who was intriguing with the foreign enemies of england, and who was held by irish royalists for 'the most bloody and treacherous traitor, who could divert tyrone and all the rest from the king, and thrust them again into actual rebellion.' in the meantime, sir george carew was pursuing a policy in ireland which must of necessity involve the north in fresh troubles. in his letters to england, he complained that the country 'so swarmed with priests, jesuits, seminarists, friars, and romish bishops, that if speedy means were not used to free the kingdom of this wicked rabble, which laboured to draw the subjects' hearts from their due obedience to their prince, much mischief would burst forth in very short time. for,' he said, 'there are here so many of this wicked crew, that are able to disquiet four of the greatest kingdoms in christendom. it is high time they were banished from hence, and none to receive, or aid, or relieve them. let the judges and officers be sworn to the supremacy; let the lawyers go to the church and show conformity, or not plead at the bar; and then the rest by degrees will shortly follow.' carew was succeeded as deputy by sir arthur chichester, descended from a family of great antiquity in devon. he had served in ireland as governor of carrickfergus, admiral of lough neagh, and commander of the fort of mountjoy. father meehan describes him as malignant and cruel, with a physiognomy repulsive and petrifying; a puritan of the most rigid character, utterly devoid of sympathy, solely bent on his own aggrandisement, and seeking it through the plunder and persecution of the irish chieftains. that is the irish view of his character. how far he deserved it the reader will be able to judge by his acts. he was evidently a man of strong will, an able administrator and organiser; and he set himself at once, and earnestly, to the establishment of law and order in the conquered territories of the irish princes. he sent justices of assize throughout munster and connaught, reducing the 'countries or regions' into shire-ground, abolishing cuttings, cosheries, spendings, and other customary exactions of the chiefs, by which a complete revolution was effected. he issued a proclamation, by the king's order, commanding all the catholics, under penalties, to assist at the church of england service; proscribing priests, and other ecclesiastical persons ordained by authority from the see of home; forbidding parents to send their children to seminaries beyond the seas, or to keep as private tutors other than those licensed by the protestant archbishop or bishop. if any priest dared to celebrate mass, he was liable to a fine of marks, and a year's imprisonment; while to join the _romish_ church was to become a traitor, and to be subject to a like penalty. churchwardens were to make a monthly report of persons absent from church, and to whet the zeal of wardens and constables, for each conviction of offending parties, they were to have a reward of forty shillings, to be levied out of the recusant's estate and goods. catholics might escape these penalties by quitting the country, and taking the oath of abjuration, by which they bound themselves to abjure the land and realm of james, king of england, scotland, france, and ireland, to hasten towards a certain port by the most direct highway, to diligently seek a passage, and tarry there but one flood and ebb. according to one form, quoted by mr. meehan, the oath concluded thus: 'and, unless i can have it (a passage) in such a place, i will go every day into the sea up to my knees, essaying to pass over, so god me help and his holy judgment.' the deputy found some difficulty in bending the consciences of the dublin people to the will of the sovereign in matters of faith; but the said will was to be enforced _circa sacra_ at all hazards; so he summoned sixteen of the chief citizens and aldermen before the privy council, and censured them for their recusancy, imprisoned them in the castle during pleasure, inflicting upon six a fine of l. each, and upon three l. each. the king was delighted with this evangelical method of extending reformed religion in ireland. congratulating his deputy, he expressed a hope that many, by such means, would be brought to conformity in religion, who would hereafter 'give thanks to god for being drawn by so gentle a constraint to their own good.' the 'gentle constraint' was imposed in all directions. the privy council decreed that none but a member of the church of england could hold any office under the crown. the old catholic families of the pale humbly remonstrated, and their chief men were flung into prison. sir patrick barnwell, their agent, was sent to london by order of the king, and was forthwith committed to the tower for contempt. henry usher, then archbishop of armagh, carried out the system of exclusion in his own diocese, which included the territories of tyrone. all 'papists' were forbidden to assist at mass, on pain of forfeiture of their goods and imprisonment. in a like manner, the catholic worship was prohibited even in the residence of the earl of tyrconnel. he and tyrone strongly remonstrated against this violation of the royal word, that they and their people might have liberty for their worship in private houses. the answer was decided. his majesty had made up his mind to disallow liberty of worship, and his people, whether they liked it or not, should repair to their parish churches. in addition to this religious grievance, which excited the bitterest feelings of discontent, the two earls were subjected to the most irritating annoyances. they complained that their people were plundered by sheriffs, under-sheriffs, officers, and soldiers; and that even their domestic privacy was hourly violated, that their remonstrances were unheeded, and their attempts to obtain legal remedies were frustrated. at the same time their vassals were encouraged to repudiate their demands for tribute and rent. bishop montgomery of derry was a dangerous neighbour to o'neill. meeting him one day at dungannon, the earl said: 'my lord, you have two or three bishopricks, and yet you are not content with them, but seek the lands of my earldom.' 'my lord,' replied the bishop, 'your earldom is swollen so big with the lands of the church, that it will burst if it be not vented.' if he had confined his venting operations to the chiefs, and abstained from bleeding the poor people, it would have been better for protestantism. for we read that he sent bailiffs through the diocese of raphoe, to levy contributions for the church. 'for every cow and plough-horse, d.; as much out of every colt and calf, to be paid twice a year; and half-a-crown a quarter of every shoemaker, carpenter, smith, and weaver in the whole country; and d. a year for every married couple.' this bishop seems to have been greatly impressed with the 'commodities' of o'cahan's country, which he describes with much unction in a letter to the earl of salisbury. he said that the country was 'large, pleasant, and fruitful; twenty-four miles in length between lough foyle and the bann; and in breadth, from the sea-coast towards the lower parts of tyrone, miles.' he states that o'cahan was able to assist the earl of tyrone, during his war, with , foot and horse, the ablest men that ulster yielded; and, by the confession of gentlemen of the first plantation, had oftener put them to their defence than any enemy they had to do with, not suffering them to cut a bough or build a cabin without blows. when tyrone was driven to his fastness, glenconkeine, o'cahan sent him horse and foot, and yet made good his own country against the army lying round about him, adding, that his defection 'did undo the earl, who, as he had his country sure behind him, cared little for anything the army could do to him.' the bishop was, therefore, very anxious that tyrone should not have any estate in o'cahan's country, 'since he was of great power to offend or benefit the poor infant city of derry, its new bishop and people, cast out far from the heart and head into the remotest part of ireland, where life would be unsafe until the whole region was well settled with civil subjects. if this be not brought to pass, we may say: "_fuimus troes,--fuit ilium_."'[ ] [footnote : meehan, p. .] the defection of o'cahan was, no doubt, a very serious matter to o'neill. their case was referred for adjudication to the lord deputy, chichester, before whom they personally pleaded. their contradictory statements, and the eagerness of each for the support of a ruler whom they regarded as a common enemy, accounts for the facility with which their power was ultimately destroyed. they at the same time throw much light on the condition of ulster before the confiscation of james i., proving that it was by no means so poor and wild and barren a region as it is generally represented by modern writers. the two chiefs had a personal altercation at the council table, and o'neill so far lost his temper as to snatch a paper out of the hand of o'cahan. whereupon sir john davis remarked: 'i rest assured, in my own conceit, that i shall live to see ulster the best reformed province in this kingdom; and as for yourself, my lord, i hope to live to see you the best reformed subject in ireland.' to this the haughty chief replied with warmth, that he hoped 'the attorney-general would never see the day when injustice should be done him by transferring his lands to the crown, and thence to the bishop, who was intent on converting the whole territory into his own pocket.' acting under the advice of the bishop, o'cahan employed a skilful hand to draw up a statement of his case, which was presented on may , , in the form of 'the humble petition of donald ballagh o'cahan, chief of his name,' addressed to the lord deputy and council. he declared that for , years and upwards, he and his ancestors had been possessed of a country called 'o'cahan's country,' lying between the river bann and lough foyle, without paying any rent, or other acknowledgment thereof to o'neill, saving that his ancestors were wont to aid o'neill twice a year if he had need, with risings of horse and foot, for which o'cahan had in return o'neill's whole suit of apparel, the horse that he rode upon, and cows in winter. he also paid cows every year in the name of _cios'righ_, the king's rent, or the king's rent-cess. he alleged that queen elizabeth had granted him his country to be held immediately from her majesty at the accustomed rent, by virtue of which he enjoyed it for one whole year without paying, or being craved payment, of any rent or duty, until the earl of tyrone, on his return from england, alleged that he had got o'cahan's country by patent, from the king, who had made him vassal to tyrone and his heirs for ever, imposing the annual payment of cows, with the yearly rent of l. he had also claimed the fishing of the bann; he preyed yearly upon other parts of his country, and drew from him his best tenants. he therefore prayed for the protection of the lord deputy against these unjust demands and usurpations. on the rd of the same month, o'neill made a counter statement to the following effect: o'cahan had no estate in the territory that was by a corruption of speech called o'cahan's country; nor did he or any of his ancestors ever hold the said lands but as tenants at sufferance, servants and followers to the defendant and his ancestors. his grandfather con o'neill was seised in fee of those lands before he surrendered to henry viii., 'and received yearly, and had thereout, as much rents, cutting, spending and all other duties as of any other lands which he had in demesne,' within the province of ulster and territory of tyrone, and that after con's surrender the territories were all re-granted with the rents, customs, duties, &c. as before. he was ready to prove that the ancestors of o'cahan never enjoyed the premises at any time, but at the will and sufferance of o'neill and his ancestors. a few days after, he despatched a memorial to the king setting forth his grievances, in which he stated that there were so many that sought to deprive him of the greatest part of the residue of his territory that without his majesty's special consideration he should in the end have nothing to support his 'estate' or rank. for the lord bishop of derry, not content with the great living the king had bestowed upon him, sought to have the greater part of the earl's lands, to which none of his predecessors had ever laid claim. and he also set on others to question his titles which had never before before doubted. he therefore humbly besought the king to direct that new letters patent should be made out re-conveying to him and his heirs the lands in dispute, being, he said, 'such a favour as is appointed by your majesty to be extended to such of your subjects of this kingdom as should be suitors for the same, amongst whom i will during my life endeavour to deserve to be in the number of the most faithful, whereunto not only duty, but also your majesty's great bounty, hath ever obliged me.' this was dated at mellifont on may , . it does not appear that any answer was received to his appeals to the king, nor is it likely that it served his cause, for it is seldom safe to appeal from an agent or deputy to the supreme authority. the privy council in dublin, however, made a report confirming to some extent the claims put forth by tyrone. a jury had been appointed to inquire into the boundaries and limits of the lands granted by queen elizabeth, and they found that they extended from the river fuin to lough foyle, and from lough foyle by the sea-shore to the bann, and thence to the east of lough neagh. within these limits they found that there existed the territory called o'cahan's, glenconkeine and killetragh, which were not the lands of the o'neills, '_but held by tenants having estates in them equivalent to estates of freehold_.' the jury could not determine what rents the tenants of said lands were accustomed to pay, but they found generally that all lands within the limits of tyrone, except the lands of the church, rendered to o'neill bonnaght or free quarters for armed retainers, 'rising out, cutting and spending.' the parties, however, did not abide by the decision of the privy council, but kept up their contention in the courts of law. it was quite clear that matters could not remain long in that unsettled state, with so many adventurers thirsting for the possession of land, which was lying comparatively idle. it was thought desirable to appoint a president of ulster, as there had been a president of munster. the earl of tyrone applied to the king for the office, evidently fearing that if chichester were appointed, he must share the fate of the earl of desmond. on the other hand, it was felt that with his hereditary pretensions, impracticable temper, and vast influence with the people, it would be impossible to establish the english power on a permanent basis until he was got out of the way. this was not difficult, with unprincipled adventurers who were watching for opportunities to make their fortunes in those revolutionary times. among these was a person named st. lawrence, baron of howth. this man worked cunningly on the mind of the lord deputy, insinuating that o'neill was plotting treason and preparing for a spanish invasion. he even went so far as to write an anonymous letter, revealing an alleged plot of o'neill's to assassinate the lord deputy. it was addressed to sir william usher, clerk of the council, and the writer began by saying that it would show him, though far severed from him in religion, how near he came home to him in honesty. he was a catholic, and professed to reveal what he had heard among catholic gentlemen, 'after the strictest conditions of secresy.' the conspirators were, in the first place, to murder or poison the lord deputy when he came to drogheda, 'a place thought apt and secure to act the same.' they thought it well to begin with him, because his authority, wisdom, and valour stood only in the way of their first attempts. next after him they were to cut off sir oliver lambert, whom for his own judgment in the wars, his sudden resolution, and undertaking spirit, they would not suffer to live. these two lights thus put out, they would neither fear nor value any opposite in the kingdom. the small dispersed garrisons must either through hunger submit themselves to their mercy, or be penned up as sheep to the shambles. they held the castle of dublin for their own, neither manned nor victualled, and readily surprised. the towns were for them, the country with them, the great ones abroad prepared to answer the first alarm. the jesuits warranted from the pope and the catholic king would do their parts effectually, and spanish succours would not be wanting. these secrets greatly troubled the sensitive conscience of lord howth. from the time he was entrusted with them, he said, 'till i resolved to give you this caveat, my eyelids never closed, my heart was a fire, my soul suffered a thousand thousand torments; yet i could not, nor cannot persuade my conscience, in honesty, to betray my friends, or spill their bloods, when this timely warning may prevent the mischief.' in conclusion, he said, 'though i reverence the mass and the catholic religion equal with the devoutest of them, i will make the leaders of this dance know that i prefer my country's good before their busy and ambitious humours.' it is related of this twenty-second baron of howth, known as sir christopher st. lawrence, that having served in ulster under essex, and accompanied him in his flight to england, he proposed to murder lord grey de wilton, lest he should prejudice the queen's mind against her former favourite, if he got access to her presence before him; that he had commanded a regiment of infantry under mountjoy, and that when that regiment was disbanded, he became discontented, not having got either pension or employment; that having gone as a free lance to the low countries, and failed to advance himself there as he expected, through the interest of irish ecclesiastics, he returned to england, and skulked about the ante-chambers of lord salisbury, waiting upon providence, when he hit upon the happy idea of the revelations which he conveyed under the signature of' a.b.'[ ] [footnote : meehan, p. .] after some time he acknowledged the authorship of the letter privately, but refused to come forth publicly as an informer, nor was he able to produce any corroboration of the improbable story. ultimately, however, when pressed by chichester, he induced his friend baron devlin to swear an information to the same effect, revealing certain alleged conversations of o'neill. in the meantime st. lawrence cunningly worked upon the fears of the earl, giving him to understand that his ruin was determined on, and that he had better consult his safety, by leaving the country. it appears that he received intimations to the same effect from his correspondents in spain and in london. at all events, he lost heart, became silent, moody, and low-spirited, suspecting foul play on the part of the king, who was very urgent that he should be brought over to london, in which case tyrone was led to believe that he would certainly be sent to the tower, and probably lose his head. with such apprehensions, he came to the conclusion that it was idle to struggle any longer against the stream. he had for some weeks been engaged quietly making preparations for his flight. he had given directions to his steward to collect in advance one half of his michaelmas rents, leading the lord deputy to think that he did so either to provide funds for his journey to london, or to defray the expenses of his son's projected marriage with the daughter of lord argyle. meanwhile a vessel had been purchased by cu-connaught maguire, and bath, the captain of this vessel, assured the earl of tyrconnel, whom he met at ballyshannon, that he also would lose his life or liberty if he did not abandon the country with o'neill. on september , tyrone took leave of the lord deputy, and then spent a day and night at mellifont with his friend sir garret moore, who was specially dear to him as the fosterer of his son john. the earl took his leave with unusual emotion, and after giving his blessing according to the irish fashion to every member of his friend's household, he and his suite took horse and rode rapidly by dundalk, over the fews to armagh, where he rested a few hours, and then proceeded to creeve, one of his crannoges or island habitations, where he was joined by his wife and other members of his family. sir oliver lambert in a communication to the irish government, relating to the affairs of ulster, made some interesting allusions to o'neill. he states that he had apologised for having appealed to the king in the case between him and o'cahan, and said that he felt much grieved in being called upon so suddenly to go to england, when on account of his poverty he was not able to furnish himself as became him for such a journey and for such a presence. in all things else, said sir oliver, 'he seemed very moderate and reasonable, albeit he never gave over to be a general solicitor in all causes concerning his country and people however criminal.' he thought the earl had been much abused by persons who had cunningly terrified, and diverted him from going to the king; 'or else he had within him a thousand witnesses testifying that he was as deeply engaged in these secret treasons as any of the rest, whom they knew or suspected.' at all events he had received information on the previous day from his own brother sir cormac o'neill, from the primate, from sir toby caulfield and others, that the earl had taken shipping with his lady, the baron of dungannon, his eldest son, and two others of his children, john and brien, both under seven years old, the earl of tyrconnel, and his son and heir, an infant, not yet a year old, his brother caffar o'donel, and his son an infant two years old, 'with divers others of their nearest and trusted followers and servants, as well men as women, to the number of between thirty and forty persons.' the rev. mr. meehan gives graphic details of the flight of his two heroes. arrived at rathmullen they found maguire and captain bath laying stores of provisions on board the ship that had come into lough swilly under french colours. here they were joined by rory, earl of tyrconnel. at noon on friday they all went on board and lifted anchor, but kept close to the shore waiting for the boats' crews, who were procuring water and fuel; but they had to wait till long after sunset, when the boats came with only a small quantity of wood and water. according to a fatality which makes one irishman's extremity another irishman's opportunity, the foraging party was set upon by m'sweeny of fanad, who churlishly prevented them getting a sufficient supply of these necessaries. this barbarous conduct is accounted for by mr. meehan, from the fact, that this m'sweeny had recently taken a grant of his lands from the crown. at midnight, september , , they spread all sail and made for the open sea, intending, however, to land on the island of arran, off the coast of donegal, to provide themselves with more water and fuel. the entire number of souls on board this small vessel, says o'keenan in his narrative, was ninety-nine, having little sea store, and being otherwise miserably accommodated. unable to make the island of arran, owing to a gale then blowing off the land, and fearing to be crossed by the king's cruisers, they steered for the harbour of corunna in spain. but for thirteen days, continues o'keenan, 'the sea was angry, and the tempest left us no rest; and the only brief interval of calm we enjoyed, was when o'neill took from his neck a golden crucifix containing a relic of the true cross, and trailed it in the wake of the ship. at that moment, two poor merlins with wearied pinions sought refuge in the rigging of our vessel, and were captured for the noble ladies, who nursed them with tenderest affection.' after being tempest-tossed for three weeks, they dropped anchor in the harbour of quilleboeuf in france, having narrowly escaped shipwreck, their only remaining provisions being one gallon of beer and a cask of water. they proceeded to brussels and thence to louvain, where splendid accommodation was provided for them. in several of the cities through which they passed they received ovations, their countrymen clerical and military having prepared for their reception with the greatest zeal and devotion. the king of spain was of course friendly, but to avoid giving offence to king james he discouraged the stay of the exiles in his dominions, and they found their final resting-place at rome, where the two earls were placed upon the pope's civil list, which, however, they did not long continue to burden. tyrconnel fell a victim to the malaria, and died on july , . 'sorrowful it was,' say the four masters, 'to contemplate his early eclipse, for he was a generous and hospitable lord, to whom the patrimony of his ancestors seemed nothing for his feastings and spending.' his widow received a pension of l. a year out of his forfeited estates. o'neill survived his brother earl eight years, having made various attempts to induce the king of spain to aid him in the recovery of his patrimony. he died in , in the seventy-sixth year of his age. sir francis cottington, announcing the event from madrid, said, 'the earl of tyrone is dead at rome; by whose death this king saves ducats every month, for so much pension he had from here, well paid him. upon the news of his death, i observed that all the principal irish entertained in several parts of this kingdom are repaired unto this court.' chapter vii. government appeals to the people. the flight of the earls caused great consternation to the irish government. letters were immediately despatched to the local authorities at every port to have a sharp look out for the fugitives, and to send out vessels to intercept them, should they be driven back by bad weather to any part of the coast. at the same time the lord deputy sent a despatch to the government in london, deprecating censure for an occurrence so unexpected, and so much to be regretted, because of the possibility of its leading to an invasion by the spaniards. in other respects it was regarded by the principal members of the irish government, and especially by the officials in ulster, as a most fortunate occurrence. for example, sir oliver lambert, in his report to the lords of the council, already referred to, said:--'but now these things are fallen out thus, contrary to all expectation or likelihood, by the providence of god i hope, over this miserable people, for whose sake it may be he hath sent his majesty this rare and unlocked for occasion: whereby he may now at length, with good apprehension and prudent handling, repair an error which was committed in making these men proprietary lords of so large a territory, without regard of the poor freeholders' rights, or of his majesty's service, and the commonwealth's, that are so much interested in the honest liberty of that sort of men, which now, in time, i commend unto your lordships' grave consideration and wisdom, and will come to that which nearest concerns ourselves and the whole.' according to sir john davis, in his letter to the first minister, lord salisbury, tyrone could not be reconciled in his heart to the english government, because 'he ever lived like a free prince, or, rather, like an absolute tyrant, there. the law of england, and the ministers thereof, were shackles and handlocks unto him.' he states that _after the irish manner_, he made all the tenants of his land _villeins_. 'therefore to evict any part of that land from him was as grievous unto him as to pinch away the quick flesh from his body ... besides,' the attorney-general added, 'as for us that are here, we are glad to see the day wherein the countenance and majesty of the law, as civil government, hath banished tyrone out of ireland, which the best army in europe, and the expense of two millions of sterling pounds did not bring to pass. and we hope his majesty's happy government will work a greater miracle in this kingdom, than ever st. patrick did; for st. patrick did only banish the poisonous worms, but suffered the men full of poison to inhabit the land still; but his majesty's blessed genius will banish all that generation of vipers out of it, and make it, ere it be long, a right fortunate island.' again, sir geoffry fenton, writing to salisbury on the same subject, says, 'and now i am to put your lordship in mind what a door is open to the king, if the opportunity be taken, and well converted, not only to pull down for ever these two proud houses of o'neill and o'donel, but also to bring in colonies to plant both countries, to a great increasing of his majesty's revenues, and to establish and settle the countries perpetually in the crown; besides that many well-deserving servitors may be recompensed in the distribution; a matter to be taken to heart, for that it reaches somewhat to his majesty's conscience and honour to see these poor servitors relieved, whom time and the wars have spent, even unto their later years, and now, by this commodity, may be stayed and comforted without charges to his majesty.' this advice was quite in accordance with the views of the prime minister, who in a letter to chichester said, 'i do think it of great necessity that those countries be made the king's by this accident; that there be a mixture in the plantation, the _natives_ made his majesty's tenants of part, but the rest to be divided among those that will _inhabit_; and in no case any man is suffered to embrace more than is visible he can and will _manure_. that was an oversight in the plantation of munster, where , acres were commonly allotted to bankrupts and country gentlemen, that never knew the disposition of the irish; so as god forbid that those who have spent their blood in the service should not of all others be preferred.' it was because this idea of manuring, i.e. residence and cultivation, was carried out in ulster, that the plantation has proved so successful. but davis would allow but small space comparatively to the natives, whom he compared to weeds which, if too numerous, would choke the wheat. with him the old inhabitants were simply a nuisance from the highest to the lowest; and if there were no other way of getting rid of them, he would no doubt have adopted the plan recommended by lord bacon, who said, 'some of the chiefest of the irish families should be transported to england, and have recompense there for their possessions in ireland, till they were cleansed from their blood, incontinency, and theft, which were not the lapses of particular persons, but the very laws of the nation.' the lord deputy chichester, however, agreed thoroughly with his attorney-general, for he certainly made no more account of rooting out the 'mere irish' from their homes than if they were the most noxious kinds of weeds or vermin. 'if,' said he, writing to lord salisbury, 'i have observed anything during my stay in this kingdom, i may say it is not _lenity_ and good works that will reclaim the irish, but _an iron rod_, and severity of justice, for the restraint and punishment of those firebrands of sedition, _the priests_; nor can we think of any other remedy but to proclaim _them, and their relievers and harbourers, traitors_.' considering that those englishmen were professedly christian rulers, engaged in establishing the reformed religion, the accounts which they give with perfect coolness of their operations in this line, are among the most appalling passages to be met with in the world's history. for instance, the lord deputy writes: 'i have often said and written, it is _famine that must consume the irish_, as our _swords_ and other endeavours worked not that, speedy effect which is expected; _hunger_ would be a better, because a speedier, weapon to employ against them than the sword.' he spared no means of destruction, but combined all the most fearful scourges for the purpose of putting out of existence the race of people whom god in his anger subjected to his power. surely the spirit of cruelty, the genius of destruction, must have been incarnate in the man who wrote thus: 'i burned all along the lough (neagh) within four miles of dungannon, and killed people, sparing none, of what quality, age, or sex soever, besides _many burned to death_. we killed man, _woman and child_, horse, beast, and whatsoever we could find.' at the time of the flight of the earls, however, he was very anxious about the safety of the kingdom. he was aware that the people were universally discontented, he had but few troops in the country, and little or no money in the treasury, so that in case of a sudden invasion, it was quite possible that the maddened population would rise and act in their own way upon his own merciless policy of extermination. he therefore hastened to issue a proclamation for the purpose of reassuring the inhabitants of ulster, and persuading them that they would not suffer in any way by the desertion of their chiefs. in this proclamation, headed by 'the _lord deputy and counsell_,' it was stated that tyrone and tyrconnel and their companions had lately embarked themselves at lough swilly and had secretly and suddenly departed out of this realm without license or notice. the government was as yet uncertain about their purpose or destination. but inasmuch as the manner of their departure, considering the quality of their persons, might raise many doubts in the minds of his majesty's loving subjects in those parts, and especially the common sort of people inhabiting the counties of tyrone and tyrconnel, who might suppose they were in danger to suffer prejudice in their _lands_ and goods for the contempt or offence of the earls,--they were solemnly assured that they had nothing whatever to fear. the words of the proclamation on this point are: 'we do therefore in his majesty's name declare, proclaim, and publish that all and every his majesty's good and loyal subjects inhabiting those countries of tyrone and tyrconnel shall and may quietly and securely possess and enjoy all and singular _their lands and goods_ without the trouble or molestation of any of his majesty's officers or ministers or any other person or persons whatsoever as long as they disturb not his majesty's peace, but live as dutiful and obedient subjects. and forasmuch as the said earls to whom his majesty, reposing special trust in their loyalty, had committed the government of the said several countries are now undutifully departed, therefore his majesty doth graciously receive all and every of his said loyal subjects into his own immediate safeguard and protection, giving them full assurance to defend them and every of them by his kingly power from all violence or wrong, which any loose persons among themselves or any foreign force shall attempt against them. and to that end, we the lord deputy and council have made choice of certain commissioners as well irish as english, residing in the said several countries, not only to preserve the public peace there, but also to administer speedy and indifferent justice to all his majesty's loving subjects in those parts, which shall have any cause of complaint before them.' all governors, mayors, sheriffs, justices of peace, provost-marshals, bailiffs, constables, and all other his majesty's ministers whatsoever were strictly charged to use their utmost endeavours faithfully and diligently to keep the people in their duty and obedience to his majesty and the laws of the realm. the assurance thus given that the subjects and tenants of the absconding princes should securely possess and enjoy their lands and be protected from all oppression under the sceptre of king james would have been very satisfactory had the royal promise been realised, but conciliation was then absolutely necessary, for the lord deputy himself stated that 'the kingdom had not been in the like danger these hundred years, as we have but few friends and no means of getting more.' the foregoing proclamation was issued from rathfarnham on september . on november following, another proclamation of a general nature was published and widely circulated in order to justify the course the government adopted. according to this document it was known to all the world 'how infinitely' the fugitive earls had been obliged to the king for his singular grace and mercy in giving them free pardon for many heinous and execrable treasons, above all hope that they could in reason conceive, and also in restoring the one to his lands and honours justly forfeited, and in raising the other 'from a very mean estate to the degree and title of an earl, giving him withal large possessions for the support of that honour, before either of them had given any proof of loyalty, or merited the least favour.' even in the point of religion, which served as a cloak for all their treasons, they got no provocation or cause of grievance. for these and other causes it was announced that his majesty would seize and take into his hands all the lands and goods of the said fugitives. but he would, notwithstanding, extend such grace and favour to the loyal inhabitants of their territories that none of them should be 'impeached, troubled, or molested in _their own lands_, goods, or bodies, they continuing in their loyalty, _and yielding unto his majesty such rents and duties as shall be agreeable to justice and equity_.' this assurance was repeated again emphatically in these words: 'his most excellent majesty doth take all the good and loyal inhabitants of the said countries, together with their wives and children, land and goods, into his own immediate protection, to defend them in general against all rebellions and invasions, and to right them in all their wrongs and oppressions, offered or to be offered unto them by any person whatsoever, etc.' chapter viii. the case of the fugitive earls. before proceeding to notice the manner in which these promises of justice, equity, and protection to the occupiers of the land were fulfilled, it is well to record here the efforts made by king james and his ambassador to discredit the fugitive earls on the continent, and the case which they made out for themselves in the statement of wrongs and grievances which they addressed to the king soon after. there was great alarm in england when news arrived of the friendly reception accorded to the irish chiefs by the continental sovereigns through whose dominions they passed, and especially by the king of spain, who was suspected of intending another invasion of ireland. consequently the most active preparations were made to meet the danger. in every street of the metropolis drums were beating for recruits, and large detachments were sent in all possible haste to reinforce the irish garrisons. sir charles cornwallis was then english ambassador at madrid; and lest his diplomatic skill should not be up to the mark, james himself sent him special and minute instructions as to the manner in which he should handle the delicate subjects he had to bring before the spanish sovereign. there has been seldom a better illustration of the saying, that the use of speech is to conceal thought, than in the representations which the ambassador was instructed to make about irish affairs. indeed cornwallis had already shown that he scarcely needed to be tutored by his sovereign. in a preliminary despatch he had sent an account of his conversation with philip iii.'s secretary of state about the fugitive earls. he told him that though they had been guilty of rebellions and treasons they had not only been pardoned, but loaded with dignities such as few or none of the king's ancestors had ever bestowed on any of the irish nation. he had conferred upon them an absolute and, 'in a manner, unlimited government in their own countries, nothing wanting to their ambitions but the name of kings, and neither crossed in anything concerning their civil government, nor so much as in act or imagination molested, or in any sort questioned with, for their consciences and religion.' he thought therefore that they would never have fled in such a way, unless they had been drawn to spain by large promises in the hope of serving some future turns. the secretary listened to this insinuation with much impatience, and declared solemnly, laying his hand on his breast with an oath, that of the departure and intention of the earls there was no more knowledge given to the king or any of his state than to the ambassador himself. he added that there had been much consumption of spanish treasure by supporting strangers who had come from all parts. in particular they had a bitter taste of those who had come from james's dominions; and they would have suffered much more, 'if they had not made a resolute and determined stop to the running of that fountain and refused to give ear to many overtures.' the ambassador expressed his satisfaction at this assurance, and then endeavoured to show how unworthy those irish princes were of the least encouragement. their flight was the result of madness, they departed without any occasion of 'earthly distaste' or offence given them by their sovereign, whose position towards the irish was very different from that of the late queen. elizabeth had employed against their revolts and rebellions only her own subjects of england, who were not accustomed either to the diet of that savage country, or to the bogs, and other retreats which that wild people used. but now, the king his master, being possessed of scotland, had in that country, 'near adjoining to the north part of ireland, a people of their own fashion, diet, and disposition, that could walk their bogs as well as themselves, live with their food, and were so well practised and accustomed in their own country to the like, that they were as apt to pull them out of their dens and withdrawing places, as ferrets to draw rabbits out of their burrows.' moreover all other parts of ireland were now reduced to such obedience, and so civil a course, and so well planted with a mixture of english, that there was not a man that showed a forehead likely to give a frown against his majesty, or his government. cornwallis went on to plead the incomparable virtues of the king his master, among which liberality and magnificence were not the least. but if he had given largely, it was upon a good exchange, for he had sowed money, which of itself can do nothing, and had reaped hearts that can do all. as for the alleged number of 'groaning catholics,' he assured the secretary that there were hardly as many hundreds as the fugitives reckoned thousands. according to his report the minister heard him with great attention, and at the conclusion protested, that he joined with him in opinion that those fugitives were dangerous people and that the jesuits were turbulent and busy men. he assured him on the word of a caballero, that his majesty and council had fully determined never to receive or treat any more of those 'straying people;' as they had been put to great inconvenience and cost, how to deliver themselves from those irish vagabonds, and continual begging pretenders. this despatch, dated october , , was crossed on the way by one from the english minister salisbury, dated the th, giving the king's instructions 'concerning those men that are fled into spain.' cornwallis was directed not to make matters worse than they really were, because the end must be good, 'what insolencies soever the jesuits and pack of fugitives there might put on. king james knew that this remnant of the northern irish traitors had been as full of malice as flesh and blood could be, no way reformed by the grace received, but rather sucking poison out of the honey thereof.' he knew also that they had absolutely given commission to their priests and others to abandon their sovereign if spain would entertain their cause. but this he could not demonstrably prove _in foro judicii_, though clear _in foro conscientiæ_, and therefore punishment would savour of rigour. so long as things were in that state his majesty was obliged to suffer adders in his bosom, and give them means to gather strength to his own prejudice, whereas now the whole country which they had possessed would be made of great use both for strength and profit to the king. what follows should be given in his majesty's own words:-- 'those poor creatures who knew no kings but those petty lords, under the burden of whose tyranny they have ever groaned, do now with great applause desire to be protected by the immediate power, and to receive correction only from himself, so as if the council of spain shall conceive that they have now some great advantage over this state, where it shall appear what a party their king may have if he shall like to support it, there may be this answer: that those irish without the king of spain are poor worms upon earth; and that when the king of spain shall think it time to begin with ireland, the king my master is more like than queen elizabeth was, to find a wholesomer place of the king of spain's, where he would be loath to hear of the english, and to show the spaniards who shall be sent into ireland as fair a way as they were taught before. in which time the more you speak of the base, insulting, discoursing fugitives, the more proper it will be for you. in the meantime upon their departure, not a man hath moved, neither was there these thirty years more universal obedience than there is now. amongst the rest of their barbarous lies i doubt not but they will pretend protection for religion, and breach of promise with them; wherein you may safely protest this, that for any, of all those that are gone, there never was so much as an offer made to search their consciences.' not content with the labours of his ambassadors at the various continental courts, to damage the cause of the irish earls, the king issued a proclamation, which was widely dispersed abroad. his majesty said he thought it better to clear men's judgments concerning the fugitives, 'not in respect of any worth or value in these men's persons, being base and rude in their original,' but to prevent any breach of friendship with other princes. for this purpose he declared that tyrone and tyrconnel had not their creation or possessions in regard of any lineal or lawful descent from ancestors of blood or virtue, but were only conferred by the late queen and himself for some reasons of state. therefore, he judged it needless to seek for many arguments 'to confirm whatsoever should be said of these men's corruption and falsehood, whose heinous offences remained so fresh in memory since they declared themselves so very monsters in nature, as they did not only withdraw themselves from their personal obedience to their sovereign, but were content to sell over their native country, to those who stood at that time in the highest terms of hostility with the crowns of england and ireland.' 'yet,' adds the king, 'to make the absurdity and ingratitude of the allegation above mentioned so much the more clear to all men of equal judgment, we do hereby profess in word of a king that there was never so much as any shadow of molestation, nor purpose of proceeding in any degree against them for matter concerning religion:--such being their condition and profession, to think murder no fault, marriage of no use, nor any man worthy to be esteemed valiant that did not glory in rapine and oppression, as we should have thought it an unreasonable thing to trouble them for any different point in religion, before any man could perceive by their conversation that they made truly conscience of any religion. the king thought these declarations sufficient to disperse and to discredit all such untruths as these contemptible creatures, so full of infidelity and ingratitude, should discharge against him and his just and moderate proceedings, and which should procure unto them no better usage than they would wish should be afforded to any such pack of rebels born their subjects and bound unto them in so many and so great obligations.' such was the case of the english government presented to the world by the king and his ministers. let us now hear what the personages so heartily reviled by them had to say for themselves. the rev. c.p. meehan has brought to light the categorical narratives, which the earls dictated, and which had lain unpublished among the 'old historic rolls,' in the public record office, london. these documents are of great historic interest, as are many other state-papers now first published in his valuable work.[ ] o'neill's defence is headed, 'articles exhibited by the earl of tyrone to the king's most excellent majesty, declaring certain causes of discontent offered him, by which he took occasion to depart his country.' the statement is divided into twenty items, of which the following is the substance: it was proclaimed by public authority in his manor of dungannon, that none should hear mass upon pain of losing his goods and imprisonment, and that no ecclesiastical person should enjoy any cure or dignity without swearing the oath of supremacy and embracing the contrary religion, and those who refused so to do were actually deprived of their benefices and dignities, in proof of which the earl referred to the lord deputy's answer to his own petition, and to the lord primate of ireland, who put the persecuting decree into execution. the earl of devon, then lord-lieutenant, had taken from him the lands of his ancestors called the fews, in armagh, and given them to other persons. he was deprived of the annual tribute of sixty cows from sir cahir o'dogherty's country called inishowen, which tribute had never been brought into question till james's reign. the same lord-lieutenant had taken from him the fishings of the bann, which always belonged to his ancestors, and which he was forced to purchase again. portions of his territory had been taken 'under colour of church-lands, a thing never in any man's memory heard of before.' one robert leicester an attorney had got some more of the earl's land, which he transferred to captain leigh. 'so as any captain or clerk had wanted means, and had no other means or device to live, might bring the earl in trouble for some part or parcel of his living, falsely inventing the same, to be concealed or church-land.' the archbishop of armagh and the bishop of derry and clogher claimed the best part of the earl's whole estate, as appertaining to their bishoprics, 'which was never moved by any other predecessors before, other than that they had some _chiefry_ due to them, in most part of all his living, and would now have the whole land to themselves as their domain lands, not content with the benefit of their ancient registers, which the earl always offered, and was willing to give without further question. o'cahan, 'one of the chiefest and principalest of the earl's tenants, was set upon by certain of his majesty's privy council, as also by his highness's counsel-at-law, to withdraw himself and the lands called _iraght-i-cahan_ from the earl, being a great substance of his living;' and this although o'cahan had no right to the property except as his _tenant at will_, yielding and paying all such rents, dues, and reservations as the other tenants did. he complained that at the council table in dublin it was determined to take two-thirds of o'cahan's country from him; and he perceived by what sir john davis said, that they had determined to take the other third also. they further made claim in his majesty's behalf to four other parcels of the earl's land, which he named, being the substance of all that was left, and began their suit for the same in the court of exchequer. in fine he felt that he could not assure himself of anything by the letters patent he had from the king. whenever he had recourse to law his proceedings were frustrated by the government; so that he could not get the benefit of his majesty's laws, or the possession of his lands; 'and yet any man, of what degree soever, obtained the extremity of the law with favour against him, in any suit.' although the king had allowed him to be lieutenant of his country, yet he had no more command there than his boy; the worst man that belonged to the sheriff could command more than he, and that even in the earl's own house. if they wanted to arrest any one in the house they would not wait till he came out, but burst open the doors, and 'never do the earl so much honour in any respect as once to acquaint him therewith, or to send to himself for the party, though he had been within the house when they would attempt these things; and if any of the earl's officers would by his direction order or execute any matter betwixt his own tenants, with their own mutual consent, they would be driven not only to restore the same again, but also be first amerced by the sheriff, and after indicated as felons, and so brought to trial for their lives for the same; so as the earl in the end could scarce get any of his servants that would undertake to levy his rents.' according to law the sheriff should be a resident in the county, have property there, and be elected by the nobility and chief gentlemen belonging to it; but the law was set aside by the lord deputy, who appointed as sheriffs for the counties tyrone and armagh captain edmund leigh and one marmaduke whitechurch, dwelling in the county of louth, both being retainers, and very dear friends to the knight-marshal bagenal, who was the only man that urged the earl to his last troubles. of all these things 'the earl did eftsoons complain to the lord deputy, and could get no redress, but did rather fare the worse for his complaints, in respect they were so little regarded.' [footnote : page .] the earl understanding that earnest suit had been made to his majesty for the presidentship of ulster, made bold to write to the king, humbly beseeching him not to grant any such office to any person over himself, 'suspecting it would be his overthrow, as by plain experience he knew the like office to be the utter overthrow of others of his rank in other provinces within the realm of ireland.' he also wrote to the earl of salisbury, who replied that the earl was not to tie his majesty to place or displace officers at his (the earl's) pleasure in any of his majesty's kingdoms. this was not the earl's meaning, but it indicated to him pretty plainly that he had no favour to expect from that quarter. the office was intended for sir arthur chichester, and he much feared that it would be used for his destruction without his majesty's privity. therefore, seeing himself envied by those who should be his protectors, considering the misery sustained by others through the oppression of the like government, he resolved to sacrifice all rather than live under that yoke. the next item is very characteristic. the earl's nephew brian m'art happened to be in the house of turlough m'henry, having two men in his company. being in a merry humour, some dispute arose between him and a kinsman of his own, who 'gave the earl's nephew a blow of a club on the head, and tumbled him to the ground; whereupon, one of his men standing by and seeing his master down, did step up with the fellow and gave him some three or four stabs of a knife, having no other weapon, and the master himself, as it was said, gave him another, through which means the man came to his death. thereupon, the earl's nephew and his two men were taken and kept in prison till the next sessions holden in the county armagh, where his men were tried by a jury of four innocent and mere ignorant people, having little or no substance, most of them being bare soldiers and not fit, as well by the institution of law in matters of that kind as also through their own insufficiency, to be permitted or elected to the like charge; and the rest foster-brethren, followers, and very dear friends to the party slain, that would not spare to spend their lives and goods to revenge his death. yet all that notwithstanding were they allowed, and the trial of these two gentlemen committed to them, through which means, and the vigorous threatening and earnest enticements of the judges, they most shamefully condemned to die, and the jury in a manner forced to find the matter murder in each of them, and that, not so much for their own offences, as thinking to make it an evidence against the master, who was in prison in the castle of dublin, attending to be tried the last michaelmas term, whose death, were it right or wrong, was much desired by the lord deputy. again, the earl had given his daughter in marriage to o'cahan with a portion of goods. after they had lived together for eight years, o'cahan was induced to withdraw himself from the earl, and at the same time, by the procurement of his setters on, he turned off the earl's daughter, kept her fortune to himself, and married another. the father appealed to the lord deputy for justice in vain. he then took proceedings against o'cahan, at the assizes in dungannon. but the defendant produced a warrant from the lord deputy, forbidding the judges to entertain the question, as it was one for the lord bishop of derry. the bishop of derry, however, was the chief instigator of the divorce, and therefore no indifferent judge in the case. thus the earl's cause was frustrated, and he could get no manner of justice therein, no more than he obtained in many other weighty matters that concerned him. the next complaint is about outrages committed by one henry oge o'neill, one henry m'felemey and others, who at the instigation of the lord deputy, 'farther to trouble the earl,' went out as a wood-kerne to rob and spoil the earl and his nephew, and their tenants. they committed many murders, burnings, and other mischievous acts, and were always maintained and manifestly relieved amongst the deputy's tenants and their friends in clandeboye, to whom they openly sold the spoils. they went on so for the space of two years, and the earl could get no justice, till at length they murdered one of the deputy's own tenants. then he saw them prosecuted, and the result was, that the earl cut them all off within a quarter of a year after. but the lord deputy was not at all pleased with this. therefore he picked up 'a poor rascally knave' and brought him to dublin, where he persuaded him to accuse above threescore of the earl's tenants of relieving rebels with meat, although it was taken from them by force. for the rebels killed their cattle in the fields, and left them dead there, not being able to carry them away; burnt their houses, took what they could of their household stuff, killed and mangled themselves. 'yet were they, upon report of that poor knave, who was himself foremost in doing these mischiefs, all taken and brought to their trial by law, where they were, through their innocency, acquitted, to their no small cost; so as betwixt the professed enemy, and the private envy of our governors, seeking thereby to advance themselves, there was no way left for the poor subject to live.' one joice geverard, a dutchman, belonging to the deputy, was taken prisoner on his way from carrickfergus to toome, and he was compelled to pay to his captors a ransom of l. for this the lord deputy assessed l. on the county, and appointed one-half of it to be taken from o'neil's tenants, being of another county, and at least twelve miles distant from the scene of the outrage, perpetrated by a wood-kerne, 'and themselves being daily killed and spoiled by the said wood-kerne, and never no redress had to them.' several outrages and murders perpetrated by the soldiers are enumerated; but they were such as might have been expected in a state bordering on civil war, which was then the condition of the province. if, however, tyrone is to be believed, the rulers themselves set the example of disorder. sir henry folliott, governor of ballyshannon, in the second year of his majesty's reign, came with force of arms, and drove away cows from the earl's tenants, 'and killed a good gentleman, with many other poor men, women, and children; and besides that, there died of them above persons with very famine, for want of their goods; whereof the earl never had redress, although the said sir henry could show no reasonable cause for doing the same.' finally the earl saw that the lord deputy was very earnest to aggravate and search out matters against him, touching the staining of his honour and dignity, scheming to come upon him with some forged treason, and thereby to bereave him of both his life and living. the better to compass this he placed his 'whispering companion,' captain leigh, as sheriff in the county, 'so as to be lurking after the earl, to spy if he might have any hole in his coat.' seeing then that the lord deputy, who should be indifferent, not only to him but to the whole realm, having the rod in his own power, did seek his destruction, he esteemed it a strife against the stream for him to seek to live secure in that kingdom, and therefore of both evils he did choose the least, and thought it better rather to forego his country and lands, till he had further known his majesty's pleasure--to make an honourable escape with his life and liberty only, than by staying with dishonour and indignation to lose both life, liberty, and country, which much in very deed he feared. indeed the many abuses 'offered' him by sir john davis, 'a man more fit to be a stage player than a counsel,' and other inferior officers, might be sufficient causes to provoke any human creature, not only to forego a country, were it ever so dear to him, but also the whole world, to eschew the like government. and thus he concludes his appeal to his 'most dread sovereign:' 'and so referring himself, and the due consideration of these, and all other his causes, to your majesty's most royal and princely censure, as his only protector and defender, against all his adversaries, he most humbly taketh his leave, and will always, as in bounden duty, pray.' the earl of tyrconnel's statement contains no less than forty-four items under the following heading: 'a note, or brief collection of the several exactions, wrongs, and grievances, as well spiritual as temporal, wherewith the earl of tyrconnel particularly doth find himself grieved and abused by the king's law ministers in ireland, from the first year of his majesty's reign until this present year of : to be presented to the king's most excellent majesty.' _imprimis_, all the priests and religious persons dwelling within the said earl's territories were daily pursued and persecuted by his majesty's officers. sir arthur chichester told him, in the presence of divers noblemen and gentlemen, that he must resolve to go to church, or he would be forced to go. this was contrary to the toleration which had been till then enjoyed, and he resolved rather to abandon lands and living, yea, all the kingdoms of the earth, with the loss of his life, than to be forced utterly against his conscience to any such practice. when sir george carew was lord deputy, captain nicholas pynnar and captain basil brook, officers of the king's forces at lifford, plundered the earl's tenants there, taking from them cows, besides as many sheep and swine as they pleased. not satisfied with this spoil, they most tyrannically stripped persons of all their apparel. these outrages the earl complained of 'in humble wise' to the lord deputy, and could find no remedy; for the same year the garrisons of lough foyle, and ballyshannon took from the earl's tenants cows for the victualling of the soldiers; and although the english council wrote to the lord deputy, requiring him to pay for the cattle in english money, the payment was never made. when, in pursuance of a promise made to him by the lord deputy, he appeared before the king, to get new letters patent of his territories, &c., his property, in sligo, tyrawly, moylurg, dartry, sir cahir o'dogherty's country, and all sir nial o'donel's lands, were excepted and kept from him, together with the castle of ballyshannon and , acres of land, and the whole salmon-fishing of the river erne, worth l. a year, 'the same castle being one of the earl's chieftest mansion houses.' they also took from him , acres of his best land, and joined it to the garrison of lifford for the king's use, without any compensation. there were seven sheriffs sent into tyrconnel, by each of which there was taken out of every cow and plough-horse d., and as much out of every colt and calf twice a year, and half-a-crown a quarter of every shoemaker, carpenter, smith, and weaver in the whole country, and eight pence a year for every married couple.' sir nial o'donel was committed to prison by tyrconnel, for usurping the title of o'donel and taking his herds and tenants. 'he broke loose from prison and killed some of his majesty's subjects. for this the earl prosecuted him under a special warrant from the lord deputy; but notwithstanding all this, carew gave warrants to captains pynnar, brook, and bingley, to make reprisals upon the earl's tenants for the pretender's use. accordingly three english companies joining with nine score of sir nial's men, seized and carried away cows, mares, plough-horses, horses, besides food and drink to support the assailants for six weeks. they were guilty of many other extortions, the country being extremely poor after the wars, and of the earl's tenants were hindered from ploughing that season. a certain horse-boy, who was sentenced to be hanged for killing one cusack, was promised his life by sir george carew, if he accused tyrconnel as having employed him to commit the murder. the boy did make the accusation, which served no purpose 'but to accelerate his hanging.' thus betrayed, he declared at the gallows, and in the presence of persons, the sheriff of the county, and the portreve of trim, he retracted the false confession. a similar attempt was made with an englishman, who was kept a close prisoner without food, drink, or light, in order to get him to accuse the earl of cusack's murder. all such, with many other of the said carew's cruel and tyrannical proceedings, the earl showed to the council in england, which promised to give satisfaction by punishing the said carew, who at his arrival in england did rather obtain greater favours than any reprehension or check of his doings, so as the earl was constrained to take _patience_ for a full satisfaction of his wrongs. sir henry docwra, governor of derry, levied l. off tyrconnel's tenants for the building of a church in that city, but the money was applied by sir henry to his own use. carew ordered the troops under sir h. docwra, sir h. folliott, sir ralph constable, sir thomas roper, and captain doddington, to be quartered for three months upon tyrconnel's people, 'where they committed many rapes, and used many extortions, which the earl showed, and could neither get payment for their victuals nor obtain that they should be punished for their sundry rapes and extortions.' indeed there was never a garrison in tyrconnel that did not send at their pleasure private soldiers into the country to fetch, now three beeves, now four, as often as they liked, until they had taken all; and when the earl complained, carew seemed rather to flout him than any way to right him. sir h. folliott's company on one occasion took from his tenants thirty-eight plough-horses, which were never restored or paid for; at another time they took twenty-one, and again fourteen. this being done in the spring of the year the tenants were hindered from ploughing as before. during a whole year folliott took for the use of his own house, regularly every month, six beeves and six muttons, without any manner of payment. captain doddington and captain cole made free with the people's property in the same manner. 'all these injuries he laid in a very humble manner before the lord deputy, but instead of obtaining redress he was dismissed by him in a scoffing manner, and even a lawyer whom he employed was threatened by carew in the following terms:--that he and his posterity should smart for his doings until the seventh generation; so that all the earl's business was ever since left at random, and no lawyer dared plead in his cause.' tyrconnel killed some rebels, and captured their chief, whom his men carried to sir h. folliott to be executed. sir henry offered to spare his life if he could accuse the earl of any crime that might work his overthrow. he could not, and he was hanged. in order to settle a dispute between the earl and sir nial, the english _protégé_ and pretender to the chieftainship, twelve tenants of each were summoned to be examined by the king's officers in the neighbourhood. 'the earl's men were not examined, but locked up in a room; and the vice-governor, upon the false deposition of sir nial's men, directed warrants, and sent soldiers to the number of , to bring all the earl's tenants unto sir nial, to the number of persons, who paid half-a-crown a piece, and d. for every cow and garron, as a fee unto the captains, whereby they lost their ploughing for the space of twenty-eight days, the soldiers being in the country all the while. one captain henry vaughan, being sheriff in the year , got a warrant to levy l. to build a sessions house. he built the house of timber and wattles. it was not worth _l_, and it fell in three months. nevertheless he levied every penny of the money, and the people had to meet a similar demand the next year, to build another house. it was a rule with the governors of the local garrisons to offer his life to every convict about to be executed, and also a large reward, if he could accuse the earl of some detestable crime. no less than twenty-seven persons hanged in connaught and tyrone were offered pardon on this condition. he was at the same sessions called to the bar for hanging some wood-kerne, although he had authority from the king to execute martial law. shortly after, by the lord deputy's orders, the horse and foot soldiers under docwra and folliott were cessed upon the country, where they for four months remained, and paid nothing for their charges of horse-meat or man's meat.' in the year the lord deputy came to ballyshannon, where, being at supper, he demanded of the earl what right he had to the several territories he claimed. he replied that his ancestors had possessed them for , years, and that the duties, rents, and homages were duly paid during that time. whereupon the lord deputy said, 'the earl was unworthy to have them, he should never enjoy them, the state was sorry to have left so much in his possession, and he should take heed to himself or else the deputy would make his pate ache.' the matters in dispute between him and sir nial being referred on that occasion to the lord deputy, both parties having submitted their papers for examination, every case was decided against tyrconnel, all his challenges frustrated, l. damages imposed, and his papers burned; while sir nial's papers were privately given back to him. the result was that at the next sessions sir nial had the benefit of all his papers, his opponent having nothing to show to the contrary. the fishery of killybegs, worth l. a season, had belonged to tyrconnel's ancestors for , years. but it was taken from him without compensation, by sir henry folliott and the bishop of derry, with the ultimate sanction of the lord deputy, who confirmed the bishop in possession 'both for that season and for all times ensuing.' sir h. folliott on one occasion took away for his carriage the horses that served the earl's house with fuel and wood for fire, 'and the soldiers, scorning to feed the horses themselves, went into the earl's house, and forcibly took out one of his boys to lead them, and ran another in the thigh with a pike for refusing to go with him.' he had a number of tenants, who held their lands 'by lease of years for certain rents.' yet the lord deputy sent warrants to them, directing them to pay no rents, and requiring the governor of derry 'to raise the country from time to time, and resist and hinder the earl from taking up his rents.' to crown all, when tyrconnel made a journey into the pale to know the reason why he was debarred from his rents, he lodged on his way in the abbey of boyle. he had scarcely arrived there when the constable of the town, accompanied by twenty soldiers, and all the churls of the place, surrounded and set fire to the house where he lay, he having no company within but his page and two other serving men. 'but it befell, through the singular providence of almighty god, whose fatherly care he hath ever found vigilant over him, that he defended himself and his house against them all the whole night long, they using on the other side all their industry and might to fire it, and throwing in of stones and staves in the earl's face, and running their pikes at him and swords until they had wounded him, besides his other bruisings, with stones and staves in six places; they menacing to kill him, affirming that he was a traitor to the king, and that it was the best service that could be rendered to his majesty to kill him. and that all this is true, sir donough o'conor, who was taken prisoner by the same men, because he would not assist them in their _facinorous_ and wicked design of killing the earl, will justify; but in the morning the earl was rescued by the country folk, which conveyed him safely out of the town. and when the earl complained, and showed his wounds unto the lord deputy, he promised to hang the constable and ensign, but afterwards did not once deign so much as to examine the matter or call the delinquents to account, by reason whereof the earl doth verily persuade himself--which his surmise was afterwards confirmed in time, by the credible report of many--that some of the state were sorry for his escape, but specially sir oliver lambert, who had purposely drawn the plot of the earl's ruin.' [transcriber's note: marker for following footnote is missing in the original] [footnote: meehan's earls of tyrone and tyrconnel, pp. - .] chapter ix. the confiscation of ulster. sir toby caulfield, accompanied by the sheriffs of tyrone and tyrconnel, followed quickly the proclamation of the lord deputy to the people of ulster, and took possession of the houses, goods, and chattels of the fugitive earls. sir toby was further empowered to act as receiver over the estates, taking up the rents according to the irish usage until other arrangements could be made. his inventory of the effects of o'neill in the castle of dungannon is a curious document, showing that according to the ideas of those times in the matter of furniture 'man wants but little here below.' the following is a copy of the document taken from the memorandum roll of the exchequer by the late mr. ferguson. it is headed, '_the earl of tyrone's goods, viz._' the spelling is, however, modernised, and ordinary figures substituted for roman numerals. _the earl of tyrone's goods, viz._ £. s. d. small steers, at s. hogs, at s. d. long tables, s. long forms, s.; an old bedstead, s. an old trunk, s.; a long stool, d. hogsheads of salt, s. d.; all valued at a silk jacket vessels of butter, containing - / barrels iron spikes a powdering tub old chests a frying-pan and a dripping-pan pewter dishes a casket, d.; a comb and comb case, d. dozen of trenchers and a basket eighteen-bar ferris a box and drinking glasses a trunk ; a pair of red taffeta curtains ; other pair of green satin curtains a brass kettle 'a payer of covyrons' baskets with certain broken earthen dishes and some waste spices half a pound of white and blue starch a vessel with gallons of vinegar pewter dishes glass bottles stone jugs, whereof broken a little iron pot a great spit garrons at s. apiece stud mares, whereof [some] were claimed by nicholas weston, which were restored to him by warrant, l. s. being proved to be his own, and so remaineth with respect to rents, sir toby caulfield left a memorandum, stating that there was no certain portion of tyrone's land let to any of his tenants that paid him rent, and that such rents as he received were paid to him partly in money and partly in victuals, as oats, oatmeal, butter, hogs, and sheep. the money-rents were chargeable on all the cows, milch or in calf, which grazed on his lands, at the rate of a shilling a quarter each. the cows were to be numbered in may and november by the earl's officers, and 'so the rents were taken up at said rate for all the cows that were so numbered, except only the heads and principal men of the _creaghts_, as they enabled them to live better than the common multitude under them, whom they caused to pay the said rents, which amounted to about twelve hundred sterling irish a year. 'the butter and other provisions were usually paid by those styled horsemen--o'hagans, o'quins, the o'donnillys, o'devolins, and others.' these were a sort of middle men, and to some of them an allowance was made by the government. 'thus for example, loughlin o'hagan, formerly constable of the castle of dungannon, received in lieu thereof a portion of his brother henry's goods, and henry o'hagan's wife and her children had all her husband's goods, at the suit of her father sir g. o'ghy o'hanlon, who had made a surrender of all his lands to the crown.' the cattle were to be all numbered over the whole territory in one day, a duty which must have required a great number of men, and sharp men too; for, if the owners were dishonestly inclined, and were as active in that kind of work as the peasantry were during the anti-tithe war in our own time, the cattle could be driven off into the woods or on to the lands of a neighbouring lord. however, during the three years that caulfield was receiver, the rental amounted to , l. a year, a remarkable fact considering the enormous destruction of property that had taken place during the late wars, and the value of money at that time. a similar process was adopted with regard to the property of o'donel, and guards were placed in all the castles of the two chiefs. in order that their territories might pass into the king's possession by due form of law, the attorney-general, sir john davis, was instructed to draw up a bill of indictment for treason against the fugitive earls and their adherents. with this bill he proceeded to lifford, accompanied by a number of commissioners, clerks, sheriffs, and a strong detachment of horse and foot. at lifford, the county town of donegal, a jury was empanelled for the trial of o'donel, consisting of twenty-three irishmen and ten englishmen. of this jury sir cahir o'dogherty was foreman. he was the lord of inishowen, having the largest territories in the county next to the earl of tyrconnel. the bill being read in english and irish, evidence was given, wrote the attorney-general, 'that their guilty consciences, and fear of losing their heads, was the cause of their flight.' the jury, however, had exactly the same sort of difficulty that troubled the juries in our late fenian trials about finding the accused guilty of compassing the death of the sovereign. but sir john laboured to remove their scruples by explaining the legal technicality, and arguing that, 'whoso would take the king's crown from his head would likewise, if he could, take his head from his shoulders; and whoever would not suffer the king to reign, if it lay in his power, would not suffer the king to live.' the argument was successful with the jury. in all the conflicts between the two races, whether on the field of battle or in the courts of law, the work of england was zealously done by celtic agents, who became the eager accusers, the perfidious betrayers, and sometimes the voluntary assassins of men of their own name, kindred, and tribe. the commissioners next sat at strabane, a town within two or three miles of lifford, where a similar jury was empanelled for the county tyrone, to try o'neill. one of the counts against him was that he had treasonably taken upon him the name of o'neill. in proof of this a document was produced: 'o'neill bids m'tuin to pay l.' it was also alleged that he had committed a number of murders; but his victims, it was alleged, were criminals ordered for execution in virtue of the power of life and death with which he had been invested by the queen. he was found guilty, however; and henry oge o'neill, his kinsman, who was foreman of the jury, was complimented for his civility and loyalty, although he belonged to that class concerning which sir john afterwards wrote, 'it is as natural for an irish lord to be a thief as it is for the devil to be a liar, of whom it was written, he was a liar and a murderer from the beginning.' true bills having been found by the grand juries, proceedings were taken in the court of king's bench to have the fugitive earls and their followers attainted of high treason. the names were:--'hugh earl of tyrone, rory earl of tyrconnel, caffar o'donel, cu connaught maguire, donel oge o'donel, art oge, cormack o'neill, henry o'neill, henry hovenden, henry o'hagan, moriarty o'quinn, john bath, christopher plunket, john o'punty o'hagan, hugh o'galagher, carragh o'galagher, john and edmund m'davitt, maurie o'multully, donogh o'brien, m'mahon, george cashel, teigue o'keenen, and many other false traitors, who, by the instigation of the devil, did conspire and plot the destruction and death of the king, sir arthur chichester, &c.; and did also conspire to seize by force of arms the castles of athlone, ballyshannon, duncannon, co. wexford, lifford, co. donegal, and with that intent did sail away in a ship, to bring in an army composed of foreigners to invade the kingdom of ireland, to put the king to death, and to dispose him from the style, title, power, and government of the imperial crown.' the lord deputy and his officers, able, energetic, farseeing men, working together persistently for the accomplishment of a well-defined purpose, were drawing the great net of english law closer and closer around the heads of the irish clans, who struggled gallantly and wildly in its fatal meshes. the episode of sir cahir o'dogherty is a romance. on the death of sir john o'dogherty, the o'donel, in accordance with irish custom, caused his brother phelim oge to be inaugurated prince of inishowen, because cahir, his son, was then only thirteen years of age, too young to command the sept. but this arrangement did not please his foster brothers, the m'davitts, who proposed to sir henry docwra, governor of derry, that their youthful chief should be adopted as the queen's o'dogherty; and on this condition they promised that he and they would devote themselves to her majesty's service. the terms were gladly accepted. sir cahir was trained by docwra in martial exercises, in the arts of civility, and in english literature. he was an apt pupil. he grew up strong and comely; and he so distinguished himself before he was sixteen years of age in skirmishes with his father's allies, that sir henry wrote of him in the following terms: 'the country was overgrown with ancient oak and coppice. o'dogherty was with me, alighted when i did, kept me company in the greatest heat of the fight, behaved himself bravely, and with a great deal of love and affection; so much so, that i recommended him at my next meeting with the lord deputy mountjoy, for the honour of knighthood, which was accordingly conferred upon him.' the young knight went to london, was well received at court, and obtained a new grant of a large portion of the o'dogherty's country. he married a daughter of lord gormanstown, a catholic peer of the pale, distinguished for loyalty to the english throne, resided with his bride at his castle of elagh, or at burt, or buncranna, keeping princely state, not in the old irish fashion, but in the manner of an english nobleman of the period; hunting the red deer in his forest, hawking, or fishing in the teeming waters of lough foyle, lough swilly, and the atlantic, which poured their treasures around the promontory of which he was the lord. his intimate associates were officers and favourites of the king. docwra had given up the government of derry and retired to england. he was succeeded by sir george paulet, a man of violent temper. sir cahir had sold , acres of land, which was to be planted with english; and, in order to perfect the deed of sale, it was necessary to have the document signed before the governor of derry. it had been reported to the lord deputy that sir cahir, not content with his position, intended to leave the country, probably with the design of joining the fugitive earls in an attempt to destroy the english power in ireland. he was therefore summoned before the lord deputy; and lord gormanstown, thomas fitzwilliam of merrion, and himself, were obliged to give security that he should not quit ireland without due notice and express permission. this restraint had probably irritated his hot impetuous spirit, and made it difficult for him to exercise due self-control when he came in contact with the english governor of derry, with whom his relations were not improved by the suspicions now attaching to his loyalty. accordingly, while the legal forms of the transfer were being gone through, the young chief made a remark extremely offensive to paulet, which was resented by a blow in the face with his clenched fist. instead of returning the blow, young o'dogherty hurried away to consult the m'davitts, whose advice was that the insult he received must be avenged by blood. the affair having been immediately reported to the lord deputy, who apprehended that mischief would come of it, he sent a peremptory summons to sir cahir, requiring him to appear in dublin, 'to free himself of certain rumours and reports touching disloyal courses into which he had entered, contrary to his allegiance to the king, and threatening the overthrow of many of his majesty's subjects.' his two sureties were also written to, and required to 'bring in his body.' but o'dogherty utterly disregarded the lord deputy's order. taking counsel with nial garve o'donel, he resolved to seize culmore fort, castle doe, and other strong places; and then march on derry, and massacre the english settlers in the market square. towards the close of april, sir cahir invited captain harte, governor of culmore castle, on the banks of the foyle, about four miles from derry, with his wife and infant child, of which he was the godfather, to dine with him at his castle of elagh. the entertainment was sumptuous, and the pleasures of the table protracted to a late hour. after dinner the host took his guest into a private apartment, and told him that the blow he had received from paulet demanded a bloody revenge. harte remonstrated; o'dogherty's retainers rushed in, and, drawing their swords and skeines, declared that they would kill his wife and child in his presence, unless he delivered up the castle of culmore. the governor was terrified, but he refused to betray his trust. sir cahir, commanding the armed men to retire, locked the chamber door, and kept his guest imprisoned there for two hours, hoping that he would yield when he had time for reflection. but finding him still inflexible, o'dogherty grew furious, and vented his rage in loud and angry words. mrs. harte, hearing the altercation, and suspecting foul play, rushed into the room, and found sir cahir enforcing his appeal with a naked sword pointed at her husband's throat. she fell on the floor in a swoon. lady o'dogherty ran to her assistance, raised her up, and assured her that she knew nothing of her husband's rash design. the latter then thrust the whole party down-stairs, giving orders to his men to seize captain harte. meantime, lady harte fell on her knees, imploring mercy, but the only response was an oath that she and her husband and child should be instantly butchered if culmore were not surrendered. what followed shall be related in the words of father meehan: 'horrified by this menace, she consented to accompany him and his men to the fort, where they arrived about midnight. on giving the pass word the gate was thrown open by the warder, whose suspicions were lulled when lady harte told him that her husband had broken his arm and was then lying in sir cahir's house. the parley was short, and the followers of sir cahir, rushing in to the tower, fell on the sleeping garrison, slaughtered them in their beds, and then made their way to an upper apartment where lady harte's brother, recently come from england, was fast asleep. fearing that he might get a bloody blanket for his shroud, lady harte followed them into the room, and implored the young man to offer no resistance to the irish, who broke open trunks, presses and other furniture, and seized whatever valuables they could clutch. her thoughtfulness saved the lives of her children and her brother; for as soon as sir cahir had armed his followers with matchlocks and powder out of the magazine, he left a small detachment to garrison culmore, and then marched rapidly on derry, where he arrived about two o'clock in the morning. totally unprepared for such an irruption, the townsfolk were roused from their sleep by the bagpipes and war-shout of the clan o'dogherty, who rushed into the streets, and made their way to paulet's house, where sir cahir, still smarting under the indignity of the angry blow, satisfied his vow of vengeance by causing that unhappy gentleman to be hacked to death with the pikes and skeines of owen o'dogherty and others of his kindred. after plundering the houses of the more opulent inhabitants, seizing such arms as they could find, and reducing the young town to a heap of ashes, sir cahir led his followers to the palace of montgomery the bishop, who fortunately for himself was then absent in dublin. not finding him, they captured his wife, and sent her, under escort, to burt castle, whither lady o'dogherty, her sister-in-law and infant daughter, had gone without warders for their protection. it was on this occasion that phelim m'davitt got into montgomery's library and set fire to it, thus destroying hundreds of valuable volumes, printed and manuscript, a feat for which he is not censured--we are sorry to have to acknowledge it--by philip o'sullivan in his account of the fact. elated by this successful raid, sir cahir called off his followers and proceeded to beleaguer lifford, where there was a small garrison of english who could not be induced to surrender, although suffering severely from want of provisions. finding all his attempts to reduce the place ineffectual, he sent for the small force he had left in culmore to join the main body of his partisans, and then marched into m'swyne doe's country.' meantime news of these atrocities reached dublin, and the lord deputy immediately sent a force of , men, commanded by sir richard wingfield, sir thomas roper, and sir toby caulfield, with instructions to pursue the revolted irish into their fastnesses and deal with them summarily. he himself set out to act with the troops, and on reaching dundalk published a proclamation, in which he offered pardon to all who laid down their arms, or would use them in killing their associates. he took care, however, to except phelim m'davitt from all hope of mercy, consigning him to be dealt with by a military tribunal. the english force in the interval had made their way into o'dogherty's country, and coming before culmore, found it abandoned by the irish, who, unable to carry off the heavy guns, took the precaution of burying them in the sea. burt castle surrendered without a blow. wingfield immediately liberated the inmates, and sent bishop montgomery's wife to her husband, and lady o'dogherty, her infant daughter and sister-in-law, to dublin castle. as for sir cahir, instead of going to castle doe, he resolved to cross the path of the english on their march to that place, and coming up with them in the vicinity of kilmacrenan, he was shot dead by a soldier. the death of the young chieftain spread panic among his followers, most of whom flung away their arms, betook themselves to flight, and were unmercifully cut down. sir cahir's head was immediately struck off and sent to dublin, where it was struck upon a pole at the east gate of the city. o'dogherty's country was now confiscated, and the lord deputy, chichester, was rewarded with the greatest portion of his lands. but what was to be done with the people? in the first instance they were driven from the rich lowlands along the borders of lough foyle and lough swilly, and compelled to take refuge in the mountain fastnesses which stretched to a vast extent from moville westward along the atlantic coast. but could those 'idle kerne and swordsmen,' thus punished with loss of lands and home for the crimes of their chief, be safely trusted to remain anywhere in the neighbourhood of the new english settlers? sir john davis and sir toby caulfield thought of a plan by which they could get rid of the danger. the illustrious gustavus adolphus was then fighting the battles of protestantism against the house of austria. in his gallant efforts to sustain the cause of the reformation every true irish protestant sympathised, and none more than the members of the irish government. to what better use, then, could the 'loose irish kerne and swordsmen' of donegal be turned than to send them to fight in the army of the king of sweden? accordingly , of the able-bodied peasantry of inishown were shipped off for this service. sir toby caulfield, founder of the house of charlemont, was commissioned to muster the men and have them transported to their destination, being paid for their keep in the meantime. a portion of his account ran thus: 'for the dyett of of said soldiers for daies, during which tyme they were kept in prison in dungannon till they were sent away, at iiiid le peece per diem; allso for dyett of of said men kept in prison at armagh till they were sent away to swethen, at iiiid le peece per diem,' &c., &c. caulfield was well rewarded for these services; and captain sandford, married to the niece of the first earl of charlemont, obtained a large grant of land on the same score. this system of clearing out the righting men among the irish was continued till , when the lord deputy, falkland, wrote that sir george hamilton, a papist, then impressing soldiers in tyrone and antrim, was opposed by one o'cullinan, a priest, who was rash enough to advise the people to stay at home and have nothing to do with the danish wars. for this he was arrested, committed to dublin castle, tortured and then hanged. with regard to the immediate followers of o'dogherty in his insane course, many of the most prominent leaders were tried by court-martial and executed. others were found guilty by ordinary course of law. among these was o'hanlon, sir cahir's brother-in-law. pie was hanged at armagh; and his youthful wife was found by a soldier, 'stripped of her apparel, in a wood, where she perished of cold and hunger, being lately before delivered of a child.' m'davitt, the firebrand of the rebellion, was convicted and executed at derry. at dungannon shane, carragh o'cahan was found guilty by 'a jury of his _kinsmen_' and executed in the camp, his head being stuck upon the castle of that place--the castle from which his brother was mainly instrumental in driving its once potent lord into exile. at the same place a monk, who was a chief adviser of the arch-rebel, saved his life and liberty by tearing off his religious habit, and renouncing his allegiance to the pope. father meehan states that many of the clergy, secular and regular, of inishown might have saved their lives by taking the oath of supremacy. it was a terrible time in donegal. no day passed without the killing and taking of some of the dispersed rebels, one betraying another to get his own pardon, and the goods of the party betrayed, according to a proviso in the deputy's proclamation. among the informers was a noble lady, the mother of hugh roe o'donel and rory earl of tyronnel, who accused nial garve, her own son-in-law, of complicity in o'dogherty's revolt, for which she got a grant of some hundreds of acres in the neighbourhood of kilmacrenan. the insurgent leaders and the dangerous kerne having been effectually cleared off in various ways, the whole territory of inishown was overrun by the king's troops. the lord deputy, sir arthur chichester, with a numerous retinue, including the attorney-general, sheriffs, lawyers, provosts-martial, engineers, and 'geographers,' made a grand 'progress,' and penetrated for the first time the region which was to become the property of his family. it was a strange sight to the poor irish that were suffered to remain. 'as we passed through the glens and forests,' wrote sir john davis, 'the wild inhabitants did as much wonder to see the king's deputy as the ghosts in virgil did to see Ã�neas alive in hell.' in this exploring tour a thorough knowledge of the country was for the first time obtained, and the attorney-general could report that 'before michaelmas he would be ready to present to his majesty a perfect survey of six whole counties which he now hath in actual possession in the province of ulster, of greater extent of land than any prince in europe hath in his own hands to dispose of.' a vast field for plantation! but sir john davis cautioned the government against the mistakes that caused the failure of former settlements, saying, that if the number of the scotch and english who were to come to ireland did not much exceed that of the natives, the latter would quickly 'overgrow them, as weeds overgrow corn.' o'cahan, who was charged with complicity in o'dogherty's outbreak, or with being at least a sympathiser, had been arrested, and was kept, with nial garve, a close prisoner in dublin castle. an anonymous pamphleteer celebrated the victories that had been achieved by the lord deputy, giving to his work the title, 'the overthrow of an irish rebel,' having for its frontispiece a tower with portcullis, and the o'dogherty's head impaled in the central embrazure. the spirit of the narrative may be inferred from the following passage: 'as for tyrone and co., or tyrconnel, they are already fled from their coverts, and i hope they will never return; and for other false hearts, the chief of note is o'cahan, sir nial garve, and his two brothers, with others of their condition. they have holes provided for them in the castle of dublin, where i hope they are safe enough from breeding any cubs to disquiet and prey upon the flock of honest subjects.' o'cahan and his companion, however, tried to get out of the hole, although the lord deputy kept twenty men every night to guard the castle, in addition to the ordinary ward, and two or three of the guards lay in the same rooms with the prisoners. their horses had arrived in town, and all things were in readiness. but their escape was hindered by the fact that shane o'carolan, who had been acquitted of three indictments, cast himself out of a window at the top of the castle by the help of his mantle, which broke before he was half way down; and though he was presently discovered, yet he escaped about supper time. 'surely,' exclaimed the lord deputy, 'these men do go beyond all nations in the world for desperate escapes!' the prisoners were subsequently conveyed to the tower, where they remained many years closely confined, and where they ended their days. sir allen apsley, in , made a report of the prisoners then in his custody, in which he said, 'there is here sir nial garve o'donel, a man that was a good subject during the late queen's time, and did as great service to the state as any man of his nation. he has been a prisoner here about thirteen years. his offence is known specially to the lord chichester. naghtan, his son, was taken from oxford and committed with his father. i never heard any offence he did.' while o'cahan was in prison, commissioners sat in his mansion at limavaddy, including the primate usher, bishop montgomery of derry, and sir john davis. they decided that by the statute of elizabeth, which it was supposed had been cancelled by the king's pardon, all his territory had been granted to the earl of tyrone, and forfeited by his flight. it was, therefore, confiscated. although sundry royal and viceregal proclamations had assured the tenants that they would not be disturbed in their possessions, on account of the offences of their chiefs, it was now declared that all o'cahan's country belonged to the crown, and that neither he nor those who lived under him had any estate whatever in the lands. certain portions of the territory were set apart for the church, and handed over to bishop montgomery. 'of all the fair territory which once was his, donald balagh had not now as much as would afford him a last resting-place near the sculptured tomb of cooey-na-gall. o'cahan got no sympathy, and he deserved none; for he might have foreseen that the government to which he sold himself would cast him off as an outworn tool, when he could no longer subserve their wicked purposes.'[ ] 'thus were the o'cahans dispossessed by the colonists of derry, to whom their broad lands and teeming rivers were passed, _mayhap_ for ever. towards the close of the cromwellian war in ireland, the duchess of buckingham, passing through limavaddy, visited its ancient castle, then sadly dilapidated, and, entering one of the apartments, saw an aged woman wrapped in a blanket, and crouching over a peat fire, which filled the room with reeking smoke. after gazing at this pitiful spectacle, the duchess asked the miserable individual her name; when the latter, rising and drawing herself up to her full height, replied, "i am the wife of the o'cahan."'[father meehan dedicates his valuable work to the lord chancellor of ireland, the right hon. thomas o'hagan,--the first catholic chancellor since the revolution. descended from the o'hagans, who were hereditary justiciaries and secretaries to the o'neill, he is, by universal consent, one of the ablest and most accomplished judges that ever adorned the irish bench. his ancestors were involved in the fortunes of tyrone. how strange that the representative of the judicial and literary clan of ancient ulster should now be the head of the irish magistracy!] [footnote : meehan, p. .] chapter x. the plantation of ulster. in the account which the lord deputy gave of the flight of tyrone and tyrconnel, he referred to the mistake that had been committed in making these men proprietary lords of so large a territory, '_without regard to the poor freeholders' rights, or of his majesty's service, or the commonwealths, that are so much interested in the honest liberty of that sort of men_.' and he considered it a providential circumstance that the king had now an opportunity of repairing that error, and of relieving the natives from the exactions and tyranny of their former barbarous lords. how far this change was a benefit to the honest freeholders and the labouring classes may be seen from the reports of sir toby caulfield to the lord deputy, as to his dealings with those people. he complains of his ill success in the prosecution of the wood-kerne. he had done his best, and all had turned to nothing. when the news of the plantation came, he had no hope at all, for the people then said it would be many of their cases to become wood-kerne themselves out of necessity, 'no other means being left for them to keep being in this world than to live as long as they could by scrambling.' they hoped, however, that so much of the summer being spent before the commissioners came down, 'so great cruelty would not be showed as to remove them upon the edge of winter from their houses, and in the very season when they were employed in making their harvest. they held discourse among themselves, that if this course had been taken with them in war time, it had had some colour of justice; but being pardoned, and their land given them, and they having lived under law ever since, and being ready to submit themselves to the mercy of the law, for any offence they can be charged withal, since their pardoning, they conclude it to be the greatest cruelty that was ever inflicted upon any people.' it is no wonder that sir toby was obliged to add to his report this assurance: 'there is not a more discontented people in christendom.' it is difficult to conceive how any people in christendom could be contented, treated as they were, according to this account, which the officer of the government did not deny; for surely no people, in any christian country, were ever the victims of such flagrant injustice, inflicted by a government which promised to relieve them from the cruel exactions of their barbarous chiefs--a government, too, solemnly pledged to protect them in the unmolested enjoyment of their houses and lands. how little this policy tended to strengthen the government appears from a confession made about the same time by the lord deputy himself. he wrote: 'the hearts of the irish are against us: we have only a handful of men in entertainment so ill paid, that everyone is out of heart, and our resources so discredited, by borrowing and not repaying, that we cannot take up , l. in twenty days, if the safety of the kingdom depended upon it. the irish are hopeful of the return of the fugitives, or invasion from foreign parts.' but the safety of england, do what she might in the way of oppression, lay then, as it lay often since, and ever will lie, in the tendency to division, and the instability of the celtic character. the rev. mr. meehan, with all his zeal for irish nationality, admits this failing of the people with his usual candour. he says: 'these traits, so peculiar to the celtic character, have been justly stigmatised by a friendly and observant italian (the nuncio rinuccini) who, some thirty years after the period of which we are writing, tells us that the native irish were behind the rest of europe in the knowledge of those things that tended to their material improvement--indifferent agriculturists, living from hand to mouth--caring more for the sword than the plough--good catholics, though by nature barbarous--and placing their hopes of deliverance from english rule on foreign intervention. for this they were constantly straining their eyes towards france or spain, and, no matter whence the ally came, were ever ready to rise in revolt. one virtue, however--intensest love of country--more or less redeemed these vices, for so they deserve to be called; but to establish anything like strict military discipline or organisation among themselves, it must be avowed they had no aptitude.' this, says mr. meehan, 'to some extent, will account for the apathy of the northern catholics, while the undertakers were carrying on the gigantic eviction known as the plantation of ulster; for, since sir cahir o'dogherty's rebellion till , there was only one attempt to resist the intruders, an abortive raid on the city of derry, for which the meagre annals of that year tell us, six of the earl of tyrone's nearest kinsmen were put to death. withal the people of ulster were full of hope that o'neill would return with forces to evict the evicters, but the farther they advanced into this agreeable perspective, the more rapidly did its charms disappear. the proclamations against wood-kerne present a curious picture of these 'plantation' times. the lord deputy, in council, understood that 'many idle kerne, loose and masterless men, and other disordered persons, did range up and down in sundry parts of this kingdom, being armed with swords, targets, pikes, shot, head-pieces, horsemen's staves, and other warlike weapons, to the great terror of his majesty's well-disposed subjects, upon whom they had committed many extortions, murders, robberies, and other outrages. hence divers proclamations had been published in his majesty's name, commanding that no person of what condition soever, travelling on horseback, should presume to carry more arms than one sword or rapier and dagger; and that no person travelling on foot should carry any weapons at all. twenty days were allowed for giving the arms to the proper officers. if the proclamation was not obeyed within that time, the arms were to be seized for the king's use, and the bearers of them committed to prison. on july , , a commission was issued by the crown to make inquisition concerning the forfeited lands in ulster after the flight of the earls of tyrone and tyrconnel. the commissioners included the lord-deputy chichester, the archbishops of armagh and dublin, sir john davis, attorney-general; sir william parsons, surveyor-general, and several other public functionaries. this work done, king james, acting on the advice of his prime minister, the earl of salisbury, took measures for the plantation of ulster, a project earnestly recommended by statesmen connected with ireland, and for which the flight of o'neill and o'donel furnished the desired opportunity. the city of london was thought to be the best quarter to look to for funds to carry on the plantation. accordingly, lord salisbury had a conference with the lord mayor, humphry weld, sir john jolles, and sir w. cockaine, who were well acquainted with irish affairs. the result was the publication of 'motives and reasons to induce the city of london to undertake the plantation in the north of ireland.' the inducements were of the most tempting character. it is customary to speak of ulster, before the plantation, as something like a desert, out of which the planters created an eden. but the picture presented to the londoners was more like the land which the israelitish spies found beyond jordan--a land flowing with milk and honey. among 'the land commodities which the north of ireland produceth' were these:--the country was well watered generally by abundance of springs, brooks, and rivers. there was plenty of fuel--either wood, or 'good and wholesome turf.' the land yielded 'store of all necessary for man's sustenance, in such a measure as may not only maintain itself, but also furnish the city of london yearly with manifold provision, especially for their fleets--namely, with beef, pork, fish, rye, bere, peas, and beans.' it was not only fit for all sorts of husbandry, but it excelled for the breeding of mares and the increase of cattle; whence the londoners might expect 'plenty of butter, cheese, hides, and tallow,' while english sheep would breed abundantly there. it was also held to be good in many places for madder, hops, and woad. it afforded 'fells of all sorts in great quantity, red deer, foxes, sheep, lambs, rabbits, martins and squirrels,' &c. hemp and flax grew more naturally there than elsewhere, which, being well regarded, would give provision for canvas, cables, cording, besides thread, linen cloth, and all stuffs made of linen yarn, 'which are more fine and plentiful there than in all the rest of the kingdom.' then there were the best materials of all sorts for building, with 'the goodliest and largest timber, that might compare with any in his majesty's dominions;' and, moreover, the country was 'very plentiful in honey and wax.' the sea and the rivers vied with the land in the richness of their produce. 'the sea fishing of that coast was very plentiful of all manner of usual sea fish--there being yearly, after michaelmas, for taking of herrings, above seven or eight score sail of his majesty's subjects and strangers for lading, besides an infinite number of boats for fishing and killing.' the corporation were willing to undertake the work of plantation if the account given of its advantages should prove to be correct. with the caution of men of business, they wished to put the glowing representations of the government to the test of an investigation by agents of their own. so they sent over 'four wise, grave, and discreet citizens, to view the situation proposed for the new colony.' the men selected were john broad, goldsmith; robert treswell, painter-stainer; john rowley, draper; and john munns, mercer. on their return from their irish mission they presented a report to the court of common council, which was openly read. the report was favourable. a company was to be formed in london for conducting the plantation. corporations were to be founded in derry and coleraine, everything concerning the colony to be managed and performed in ireland by the advice and direction of the company in london. it was agreed between the privy council and the city that the sum of , l. should be levied, , l. for the intended plantation, and , l. 'for the clearing of private men's interest in the things demanded.' that houses should be built in derry, and room left for more. 'that , acres lying on the derry side, next adjacent to the wherry, should be laid thereunto--bog and barren mountain to be no part thereof, but to go as waste for the city; the same to be done by indifferent commissioners.' the royal charters and letters clearly set forth the objects of the plantation. james i., in the preamble of the charter to the town of coleraine, thus described his intentions in disposing of the forfeited lands to english undertakers: 'whereas there can be nothing more worthy of a king to perform than to establish the true religion of christ among men hitherto depraved and almost lost in superstition; to improve and cultivate by art and industry countries and lands uncultivated and almost desert, and not only to stock them with honest citizens and inhabitants, but also to strengthen them with good institutions and ordinances, whereby they might be more safely defended not only from the corruption of their morals but from their intestine and domestic plots and conspiracies, and also from foreign violence: and whereas the province of ulster in our realm of ireland, for many years past, hath grossly erred from the true religion of christ and divine grace, and hath abounded with superstition, insomuch that for a long time it hath not only been harassed, torn, and wasted by private and domestic broils but also by foreign arms: we therefore, deeply and heartily commiserating the wretched state of the said province, have esteemed it to be a work worthy of a christian prince, and of our royal office, to stir up and recal the same province from superstition, rebellion, calamity, and poverty, which heretofore have horribly raged therein, to religion, obedience, strength, and prosperity. and whereas our beloved and faithful subjects the mayor and commonalty and citizens of our city of london, burning with a flagrant zeal to promote such our pious intention in this behalf, have undertaken a considerable part of the said plantation in ulster, and are making progress therein'. king james, having heard very unsatisfactory reports of the progress of the plantation, wrote a letter to the lord deputy in , strongly complaining of the neglect of the 'londoners' to fulfil the obligations they had voluntarily undertaken. he had made 'liberal donations of great proportions of those lands to divers british undertakers and servitors, with favourable tenures and reservations for their better encouragement; but hitherto neither the safety of that country, nor the planting of religion and civility among those rude and barbarous people, which were the principal motives of that project, and which he expected as the only fruits and returns of his bounty, had been as yet any whit materially effected. he was not ignorant how much the real accomplishment of the plantation concerned the future peace and safety of that kingdom; but if there was no reason of state to press it forward, he would yet pursue and effect that object with the same earnestness, 'merely for the goodness and morality of it; esteeming the settling of religion, the introducing of civility, order, and government among a barbarous and unsubjected people, to be acts of piety and glory, and worthy also a christian prince to endeavour.' the king therefore ordered that there should be a strict inquiry into the work done, because 'the londoners pretended the expense of great sums of money in that service, and yet the outward appearance of it was very small.' the lord deputy was solemnly charged to give him a faithful account without care or fear to displease any of his subjects, english or scottish, of what quality soever.' sir josias bodley was the commissioner appointed for this purpose. he reported very unfavourably, in consequence of which his majesty called upon the irish society and the several companies to give him an account of their stewardship. he also wrote again to the lord deputy in . the language the king uses is remarkable, as proving the _trusteeship_ of the companies. referring to bodley's report he said:-- 'we have examined, viewed, and reviewed, with our own eye, every part thereof, and find greatly to our discontentment the slow progression of that plantation; some few only of our british undertakers, servitors, and natives having as yet proceeded effectually by the accomplishment of such things in all points as are required of them by the articles of the plantation; the rest, and by much the greatest part, having either done nothing at all, or so little, or, by reason of the slightness thereof, to so little purpose, that the work seems rather to us to be forgotten by them, and to perish under their hand, than any whit to be advanced by them; some having begun to build and not planted, others begun to plant and not built, and all of them, in general, retaining the irish still upon their lands, the avoiding of which was the fundamental reason of that plantation. we have made a collection of their names, as we found their endeavours and negligences noted in the service, which we will retain as a memorial with us, and they shall be sure to feel the effects of our favour and disfavour, as there shall be occasion. it is well known to you that if we had intended only (as it seems most of them over-greedily have done) our present profit, we might have converted those large territories to our escheated lands, to the great improvement of the revenue of our crown there; but we chose rather, for the safety of that country and the civilizing of that people, to part with the inheritance of them at extreme undervalues, and to make a plantation of them; and since we were merely induced thereunto out of reason of state, we think we may without any breach of justice make bold with their rights who have neglected their duties in a service of so much importance unto us, and by the same law and reason of state resume into our hands their lands who have failed to perform, according to our original intention, the articles of plantation, and bestow them upon some other men more active and worthy of them than themselves: and the time is long since expired within which they were bound to have finished to all purposes their plantation, so that we want not just provocation to proceed presently with all rigour against them.' he gave them a year to pull up their arrears of work, and in conclusion said to chichester: 'my lord, in this service i expect that zeal and uprightness from you, that you will spare no flesh, english or scottish; for no private man's worth is able to counterbalance the particular safety of a kingdom, which this plantation, well accomplished, will procure.' two or three years later, captain pynnar was sent to survey the lands that had been granted to the undertakers, and to report upon the improvements they had effected. a few notices from his report will give an idea of the state of ulster at the commencement of this great social revolution:-- armagh was one of the six counties confiscated by james i. the territory had belonged to the o'neills, the o'hanlons, the o'carrols, and m'kanes, whose people were all involved more or less in the fortunes of the earl of tyrone, who wielded sovereign power over this portion of ulster. the plantation scheme was said to be the work of the privy council of ireland, and submitted by them for the adoption of the english government. it was part of the plan that all the lands escheated in each county should be divided into four parts, whereof two should be subdivided into proportions consisting of about , acres a piece; a third part into proportions of , acres; and the fourth in proportions of , acres. every proportion was to be made into a parish, a church was to be erected on it, and the minister endowed with glebe land. if an incumbent of a parish of , acres he was to have sixty; if of , acres, ninety; and if , acres, he was to have acres; and the whole tithes and duties of every parish should be allotted to the incumbent as well as the glebe. the undertakers were to be of several sorts. st, english and scotch, who were to plant their proportions with english and scotch tenants; nd, servitors in ireland, who might take english or scotch tenants at their choice; rd, natives of the county, who were to be freeholders. with respect to the disposal of the natives, it was arranged that the same course should be adopted as in the county of tyrone, which was this: some were to be planted upon two of the small proportions, and upon the glebes; others upon the land of sir art o'neill's sons and sir henry oge o'neill's sons, 'and of such other irish as shall be thought fit to have any _freeholds_; some others upon the portions of such servitors as are not able to inhabit these lands with english or scotch tenants, especially of _such as best know how to rule and order the irish_. but the swordsmen (that is, the armed retainers or soldiers of the chiefs) are to be transplanted into such other parts of the kingdom as, by reason of the wastes therein, are fittest to receive them, namely, into connaught and some parts of munster, where they are to be dispersed, and not planted together in one place; and such swordsmen, who have not followers or cattle of their own, to be disposed of in his majesty's service.' this provision about planting the swordsmen, however, was not carried out. the whole county of armagh was found to contain , acres of arable and pasture land, which would make proportions. that county, as well as other parts of ancient ireland, was divided into ballyboes, or townlands, tracts of tillage land surrounding the native villages unenclosed, and held in _rundale_, having ranges of pasture for their cattle, which were herded in common, each owner being entitled to a certain number of 'collops' in proportion to his arable land. as these ballyboes were not of equal extent, the english made the division of land by acres, and erected boundary fences. the primate's share in this county was , acres. the glebes comprised , acres; the college of dublin got , , and the free school at armagh ; sir turlough m'henry possessed , acres, and , had been granted to sir henry oge o'neill. after these deductions, there were for the undertakers , acres, making in all forty-two proportions. number one in the survey is the estate of william brownlow, esq., which contained two proportions, making together , acres. pynar reported as follows: 'upon the proportion of ballenemony there is a strong stone house within a good island; and at dowcoran there is a very fair house of stone and brick, with good lyme, and hath a strong bawne of timber and earth with a pallizado about it. there is now laid in readiness both lyme and stone, to make a bawne thereof, the which is promised to be done this summer. he hath made a very fair town, consisting of forty-two houses, all which are inhabited with english families, and the streets all paved clean through; also two water-mills and a wind-mill, all for corn, and he hath store of arms in his house.' pynar found 'planted and estated' on this territory families altogether, who were able to furnish men with arms, there not being one irish family upon all the land. there was, however, a number of sub-tenants, which accounts for the fact that there was 'good store of tillage.' five of the english settlers were freeholders, having acres each; and there were leaseholders, whose farms varied in size from acres to ; six of them holding acres and upwards. this was the foundation of the flourishing town of lurgan. mr. obens had , acres obtained from william powell, the first patentee. he had built a bawne of sods with a pallizado of boards ditched about. within this there was a 'good fair house of brick and lyme,' and near it he had built four houses, inhabited by english families. there were twenty settlers, who with their under-tenants were able to furnish forty-six armed men. this was the beginning of portadown. the fourth lot was obtained from the first patentee by mr. cope, who had , acres. 'he built a bawne of lyme and stone feet square, feet high, with four flankers; and in three of them he had built very good lodgings, which were three stories high.' he erected two water-mills and one wind-mill, and near the bawne he had built fourteen houses of timber, which were inhabited by english families. this is now the rich district of lough gall. it should be observed here that, in all these crown grants, the patentees were charged crown rents only for the _arable_ lands conveyed by their title-deeds, bogs, wastes, mountain, and unreclaimed lands of every description being thrown in gratuitously; amounting probably to ten or fifteen times the quantity of demised ground set down in acres. lord lurgan's agent, mr. hancock, at the commencement of his evidence before the devon commission, stated that 'lord lurgan is owner of about , acres, with a population of , , under the census of '--that is, by means of original reclamation, drainage, and other works of agricultural improvement, mr. brownlow's , acres of the year , had silently grown up to , acres, and his hundred swordsmen, or pikemen, the representatives of families, with a few subordinates, had multiplied to , souls. now mr. hancock founds the tenant-right custom upon the fact that few, if any, of the 'patentees were wealthy;' we may therefore fairly presume that the _settlers built their own houses, and made their own improvements at their own expense_, contrary to the english practice.' as the population increased, and 'arable' land became valuable, bogs, wastes, and barren land were gradually reclaimed and cultivated, through the hard labour and at the cost of the occupying tenantry, until the possessions of his descendants have spread over ten times the area nominally demised by the crown to their progenitor. this process went on all over the province. sixteen years passed away, and in the opinion of the government the london companies and the irish society, instead of reforming as irish planters, went on from bad to worse. accordingly, in , charles i. found it necessary to bring them into the star chamber. in a letter to the lords justices he said:-- 'our father, of blessed memory, in his wisdom and singular care, both to fortify and preserve that country of ireland from foreign and inward forces, and also for the better establishment of true religion, justice, civility, and commerce, found it most necessary to erect british plantations there; and, to that end, ordained and published many politic and good orders, and for the encouragement of planters gave them large proportions and privileges. above the rest, his grace and favour was most enlarged to the londoners, who undertook the plantation of a considerable part of ulster, and were specially chosen for their ability and professed zeal to public works; and yet advertisements have been given from time to time, not only by private men, but by all succeeding deputies, and by commissioners sent from hence and chosen there, and being many of them of our council, that the _londoners for private lucre_ have broken and neglected both their general printed ordinances and other particular directions given by us and our council here, so as if they hall escape unpunished all others will be heartened to do the like, and in the end expose that our kingdom to former confusions and dangers; for prevention whereof we have, upon mature advice of our councillors for those causes, caused them to be questioned in our high court of star-chamber here, whence commission is now sent to examine witnesses, upon interrogatories, for discovery of the truth; and because we understand that the londoners heretofore prevailed with some, from whom we expected better service, that in the return of the last commission many things agreed under the hands of most commissioners were not accordingly certified: now that our service may not surfer by like partiality, we will and require you to have an especial eye to this business; and take care that this commission be faithfully executed, and that no practice or indirect means be used, either to delay the return or to frustrate the ends of truth in every interrogatory.' this proceeding on the part of the crown was ascribed to the influence of bishop bramhall, who had come over with lord strafford as his chaplain. the result was, that in the whole county of londonderry was sequestrated, and the rents levied for the king's use, the bishop of derry being appointed receiver and authorised to make leases. the lord chancellor, with the concurrence of the other judges, decreed that the letters patent should be surrendered and cancelled. this decree was duly executed. cromwell reinstated the companies in their possessions, and charles ii., instead of reversing the forfeiture, granted a new charter. this charter founded a system of protection and corporate exclusiveness, the most perfect perhaps that ever existed in the three kingdoms. he began by constituting londonderry a county, and derry city a corporation--to be called londonderry. he named the aldermen and burgesses, who were to hold their offices during their natural lives. he placed both the county and city under the control of 'the irish society,' which was then definitely formed. he appointed sir thomas adams first governor, and john saunders, deputy governor. he also appointed the twenty-four assistants, all citizens of london. he invested the society with full power 'to send orders and directions from, this kingdom of england into the said realm of ireland, by letters or otherwise, for the ordering, directing, and disposing of all and all manner of matters and things whatsoever of and concerning the same plantation, or the disposition or government thereof. the grant of property was most comprehensive:-- 'we also will, and, by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, do give, grant, and confirm to the said society of the governor and assistants [london] of the new plantation in ulster within the realm of ireland, and their successors: 'all that the city, fort, and town of derry, and all edifices and structures thereof, with the appurtenances, in the county of the city of derry aforesaid, in the province of ulster, in our realm of ireland; and also the whole island of derry, with the appurtenances, and all lands and the whole ground within the island of derry aforesaid, in the said county of the city of derry, otherwise londonderry, within the province of ulster, in our aforesaid realm of ireland. and also all those lands next adjacent to the said city or town of derry, lying and being on or towards the west part of the river of loughfoyle, containing by estimation four thousand acres, besides bog and barren mountains, which said bog and barren mountains may be had and used as waste to the same city belonging. and also all that portion and proportion of land by the general survey of all the lands in the aforesaid late county of coleraine, now londonderry, heretofore taken, called the great proportion of boughtbegg, lying and being in the barony or precinct of coleraine, now londonderry, within the province of ulster aforesaid, in our said realm of ireland; that is to say, all lands, tenements, and other hereditaments, called and known by the names, and situate, lying, and being in or within the several towns, villages, hamlets, places, balliboes, or parcels of land following, that is to say: hacketbegg, being two balliboes of land; aglakightagh, being two balliboes of land; altybryan, being one balliboe of land; bratbooly, being one balliboe of land; hackmoore, being one balliboe of land; tirecurrin, being one balliboe of land; edermale, being one balliboe of land; lennagorran, being one balliboe of land; knockmult, being one balliboe of land; boughtmore, being one balliboe of land; boughtbegg, being one balliboe of land, &c. 'we will also, and by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, do grant and confirm to the said society of the governor and assistants [london] of the new plantation in ulster, and their successors, that they and their successors, and also all their assigns, deputies, ministers, and servants shall and may have full liberty of fishing, hawking, and fowling in all the places, tenements, shores, and coasts aforesaid, at their will and pleasure. 'and that it shall and may be lawful to and for them and every of them to draw and dry their nets, and pack the fishes there taken upon any part of the shores and coasts aforesaid where they shall fish; and the salmons and other fishes there taken to take thence and carry away without any impediment, contradiction, or molestation of us or others whomsoever, wheresoever it shall happen to be done. 'and that in like manner they may have the several fishings and fowlings within the city of londonderry aforesaid, and in all lands and tenements before mentioned to be granted and confirmed to the said society of the governor and assistants [london] of the new plantation in ulster and their successors, and in the river and water of loughfoile, to the ebb of the sea, and in the river or water of bann to loughneagh.' the grants were made without any reservation in favour of the tenants or the old inhabitants, saving some portions of land given by letters patent by his grandfather to 'certain _irish gentlemen_ in the said county of londonderry, heretofore inhabiting and residing, and who were heretofore made freeholders, and their successors, under a small yearly rent,' which was to be paid to the irish society. even the irish gentlemen were not allowed to hold their ancient inheritance directly under the crown. i am informed that there is but one roman catholic landed gentleman now remaining in the whole province of ulster. the londoners had extraordinary privileges as traders. they had free quarters in every port throughout the kingdom, while they treated all but the members of their own body as 'foreigners.' they knew nothing of reciprocity:--'and further we will, and, by these presents for us, our heirs and successors, do grant and confirm to the said mayor and commonalty and citizens of our city of londonderry aforesaid, that all citizens of the said city of londonderry and liberty of the same (as much as in us is) be for ever quit and free, and all their things throughout all ireland, of all tolls, wharfage, murage, anchorage, beaconage, pavage, pontage, piccage, stallage, passage, and lestage, and of all other tolls and duties.' the 'foreigners,' including all his majesty's subjects but the favoured few within the walls of derry, were forbidden to buy or sell, or practise any trade in this sanctuary of freedom and head-centre of 'civility.' 'and that merchants and others which are not of the freedom of the city of londonderry aforesaid shall not sell by retail any wines or other wares whatsoever within the same city of londonderry, the suburbs, liberties, or franchises of the same, upon pain of forfeiture for the things so bought, or the value thereof, to the use of the mayor and commonalty and citizens of the city of londonderry aforesaid. and also that no person being a foreigner from the freedom of the city aforesaid shall use or exercise within the same city, liberties or suburbs of the same, any art, mystery, or manual occupation whatsoever, to make his gain and profit thereof, upon pain of forfeiture of forty shillings for every time wherein such person shall use or exercise within the said city of londonderry, liberties, and suburbs of the same, any art, mystery, or manual occupation as aforesaid.' foreigners were not allowed to buy from or sell to foreigners, and there was to be no market for the accommodation of the unprivileged inhabitants within seven miles of the city. similar exclusive privileges were conferred upon the corporation of coleraine. such was the system established by the city of london in its model communities in ireland--normal schools of freedom, fountains of civilising and christianising influences which were to reclaim and convert the barbarous and superstitious natives into loyal subjects and enlightened protestants! what the natives beheld in londonderry was, in fact, a royal organisation of selfishness, bigotry, and monopoly, of the most intensely exclusive and repulsive character. in one sense the londoners in derry showed that they peculiarly prized the blessings of civilisation, for they kept them all to themselves. the fountain was flowing in the most tempting manner before the thirsty irish, but let them dare to drink of it at their peril! a fine which no irishman was then able to pay must be the penalty for every attempt at civilisation! the representatives of derry and coleraine were not only elected without cost, but paid for their attendance in parliament. from the very beginning, the greatest possible care was taken to keep out the irish. the society, in , sent precepts to all the companies requiring each of them to send one or two artisans, with their families, into ulster, to settle there; and directions were also given, in order that derry might not in future be peopled with irish, that twelve christ's hospital and other poor children should be sent there as apprentices and servants, and the inhabitants were to be prohibited from taking irish apprentices. directions were also given to the companies, to repair the churches on their several proportions, and furnish the ministers with a bible, common-prayer book, and a communion cup. the trades which the society recommended as proper to introduce into ulster were, weavers of common cloth, fustians, and new stuffs, felt-makers and trimmers of hats, and hat-band makers, locksmiths and farriers, tanners and fellmongers, iron makers, glass-makers, pewterers, coast fishermen, turners, basket-makers, tallow-chandlers, dyers, and curriers. the christ's hospital children arrived safe, and became the precious seed of the 'prentice boys. in the following return was made of the total disbursements by the londoners in derry from january , , to this year:-- £ for - / houses at l. a house , for houses at l. a house , for the lord bishop's house for the walls and fortifications , for digging the ditch and filling earth for the rampire , for levelling earth to lay the rampire for building a faggot quay at the water-gate for two quays at the lime kilns for the building of the town house for the quays at the ferry for carriage and mounting the ordnance for arms for a guardhouse for the platforms for bulwarks for some work done at the old church for some work done at the town pike for sinking cellars, and sundry of the houses not done at first, at s. cellar, one with another for the building of lime kilns ______ , ______ sum total, as given in the commissioners' account , the exclusive and protective system utterly failed to accomplish its purpose in keeping out the irish. sir thomas phillips made a muster-roll in , in which he gives as the number of settlers in the city of derry capable of bearing arms. there are but two irish names in the list--ermine m'swine, and james doherty. the first, from his christian name, seemed to have been of mixed blood, the son of a judge, which would account for his orthodoxy. but his presence might have reminded the citizens unpleasantly of the irish battle-axes. never were greater pains taken to keep a community pure than within the sacred precincts of the derry walls; and never was protestantism more tenderly fostered by the state--so far as secular advantages could do it. the natives were treated as 'foreigners.' no trade was permitted except by the chartered british. they were free of tolls all over the land, and for their sake restrictions were placed on everybody that could in any way interfere with their worldly interests. so complete was the system of exclusion kept up by the english government and the london corporation, in this grand experiment for planting religion and civility among a barbarous people, that, so late as the year , the derry corporation considered itself nothing more or less than _a branch of the city of london_! in that year they sent an address to the irish society, to be presented through them to the queen. 'in this address they stated themselves to be a branch of the city of london. the secretary was ordered to wait upon the lord lieutenant of ireland with the address and entreat the favour of his lordship's advice concerning the presenting of the same to her majesty.' a few days after it was announced that the address had been graciously received, and published in the _gazette_. the irish were kept out of the enclosed part of the city till a late period. in the memory of the present generation there was no catholic house within the walls, and i believe it is not much longer since the catholic servants within the sacred enclosure were obliged to go outside at night to sleep among their kinsfolk. the english garrison did not multiply very fast. in there were only families in the city, of which five were families of soldiers liable to be removed. archbishop king stated that in the whole of the population of the parish, including the donegal part, was about . but the irrepressible irish increased and multiplied around the walls with alarming rapidity. the tide of native population rose steadily against the ramparts of exclusion, and could no more be kept back than the tide in the foyle. in the general census of there were no returns from derry. but in it was stated in a report by the deputation from the irish society, that the population amounted at that time to , persons. this must have included the suburbs. in the census of the city was found to have , inhabitants. the city and suburbs together contained , . the report of the commissioners of public instruction in made a startling disclosure as to the effect of the system of exclusion in this 'branch of the city of london.' in the parish of templemore (part of) there were-- members of the established church , presbyterians , roman catholics , the report of gave the roman catholics, , ; the presbyterians, , ; and the church only , . the figures now are--catholics , protestants of all denominations , majority of irish and catholics in this 'branch of the city of london' , this majority is about equal to the whole number which the exclusive system, with all its 'protection' and 'bounties,' could produce for the established church in the course of two centuries! if the irish had been admitted to the pale of english civilisation, and instructed in the industrial arts by the settlers, the results with respect to religion might have been very different. in the long run the church of rome has been the greatest gainer by coercion. derry has been a miniature representation of the establishment. the 'prentice boys, like their betters, must yield to the spirit of the age, and submit with the best grace they can to the rule of religious equality. the plantation was, however, wonderfully successful on the whole. in thirty years, towns, fortresses, factories, arose, pastures, ploughed up, were converted into broad corn-fields, orchards, gardens, hedges, &c. were planted. how did this happen? 'the answer is that it sprang from the security of tenure which the plantation settlement supplied. the landlords were in every case bound to make fixed estates to their tenants at the risk of sequestration and forfeiture. hence their power of selling their plantation rights and improvements. this is the origin of ulster tenant-right.' yet the work went on slowly enough in some districts. the viceroy, chichester, was not neglected in the distribution of the spoils. he not only got the o'dogherty's country, innishown, but a large tract in antrim, including the towns of carrickfergus and belfast. an english tourist travelling that way in gives a quaint description of the country in that transition period:-- on july he landed at carrickfergus, where he found that lord chichester had a stately house, 'or rather like a prince's palace.' in belfast, he said, my lord chichester had another _daintie_, stately palace, which, indeed, was the glory and beauty of the town. and there were also _daintie_ orchards, gardens, and walks planted. the bishop of dromore, to whom the town of dromore entirely belonged, lived there in a 'little timber house.' he was not given to hospitality, for though his chaplain was a manchester man, named leigh, he allowed his english visitor to stop at an inn over the way. 'this,' wrote the tourist, 'is a very dear house, d. ordinary for ourselves, d. for our servants, and we were overcharged in _beere_.' the way thence to newry was most difficult for a stranger to find out. 'therein he wandered, and, being lost, fell among the irish _touns_.' the irish houses were the poorest cabins he had seen, erected in the middle of fields and grounds which they farmed and rented. 'this,' he added, 'is a wild country, not inhabited, planted, nor enclosed.' he gave an irishman 'a groat' to bring him into the way, yet he led him, like a villein, directly out of the way, and so left him in the lurch. leaving belfast, this englishman said: 'near hereunto, mr. arthur hill, son and heir of sir moyses hill, hath a brave plantation, which he holds by lease, and which has still forty years to come. the plantation, it is said, doth yield him , l. per annum. many lancashire and cheshire men are here planted. they sit upon a rack-rent, and pay s. or s. for good ploughing land, which now is clothed with excellent good _corne_.' according to the down survey, made twenty-two years later, dromore had not improved: 'there are no buildings in this parish; only dromore, it being a market town, hath some old thatched houses and a ruined church standing in it. what other buildings are in the parish are nothing but removeable _creaghts_.' to the economist and the legislator, the most interesting portions of the state papers of the th and th centuries are, undoubtedly, those which tell us how the people lived, how they were employed, housed, and fed, what measure of happiness fell to their lot, and what were the causes that affected their welfare, that made them contented and loyal, or miserable and disaffected. contemporary authors, who deal with social phenomena, are also read with special interest for the same reason. they present pictures of society in their own time, and enable us to conceive the sort of life our forefathers led, and to estimate, at least in a rough way, what they did for posterity. harris was moved to write his 'history of down' by indignation at the misrepresentations of the english press of his day. they had the audacity to say that 'the irish people were uncivilised, rude, and barbarous; that they delighted in butter _tempered_ with oatmeal, and sometimes flesh without bread, which they ate raw, having first pressed the blood out of it; and drank down large draughts of usquebaugh for digestion, reserving their little corn for the horses; that their dress and habits were no less barbarous; that cattle was their chief wealth; that they counted it no infamy to commit robberies, and that in their view violence and murder were in no way displeasing to god; that the country was overgrown with woods, which abounded in wolves and other voracious animals,' &c. it was, no doubt, very provoking that such stories should be repeated years after the plantation of ulster, and harris undertook, with laudable patriotism, to show 'how far this description of ireland was removed from the truth, from the present state of only one county in the kingdom.' the information which the well-informed writer gives is most valuable, and very much to the purpose of our present inquiry. more than half the arable ground was then (in ) under tillage, affording great quantities of oats, some rye and wheat, and 'plenty of barley,' commonly called english or spring barley, making excellent malt liquor, which of late, by means of drying the grain with kilkenny coals, was exceedingly improved. the ale made in the county was distinguished for its fine colour and flavour. the people found the benefit of '_a sufficient tillage_, being not obliged to take up with the poor unwholesome diet which the commonalty of munster and connaught had been forced to in the late years of scarcity; and sickness and mortality were not near so great as in other provinces of the kingdom.' yet the county down seemed very unfavourable for tillage. the economists of our time, perhaps our viceroys too, would say it was only fit for bullocks and sheep. it was 'naturally coarse, and full of hills; the air was sharp and cold in winter, with earlier frosts than in the south, the soil inclined to _wood_, unless constantly ploughed and kept open, and the low grounds degenerated into morass or bog where the drains were neglected. yet, by the constant labour and industry of the inhabitants, the morass grounds had of late, by burning and proper management, produced surprisingly large crops of rye and oats. coarse lands, manured with lime, had answered the farmers' views in wheat, and yielded a great produce, and wherever marl was found there was great store of barley. the staple commodity of the county was linen, due care of which manufacture brought great wealth among the people. consequently the county was observed to be 'populous and flourishing, though it did not become amenable to the laws till the reign of queen elizabeth, nor fully till the reign of james i.' the english habit, language, and manners almost universally prevailed. 'irish,' says harris, 'can be heard only among the inferior rank of _irish papists_, and even that little diminishes every day, by the great desire the poor natives have that their children should be taught to read and write in the english tongue in the charter, or other english protestant schools, to which they willingly send them.' the author exults in the progress of protestantism. there were but two catholic gentlemen in the county who had estates, and their income was very moderate. when the priests were registered in there were but thirty in the county. in the books of the hearth-money collectors showed-- protestant families in the county down , catholic families , total protestants, reckoning five a family , total catholics , ______ protestant majority , our author, who was an excellent protestant of the th century type, with boundless faith in the moral influence of the charter schools, would be greatly distressed if he could have lived in these degenerate days, and seen the last religious census, which gives the following figures for the county of down:-- protestants of all denominations , catholics , _______ total population , the total number of souls in the county in the year was , . these figures show that the population was more than trebled in years, and that the catholics have increased nearly fourfold. the history of the hertfort estate illustrates every phase of the tenant-right question. it contains , acres, and comprises the barony of upper massereene, part of the barony of upper belfast, in the county of antrim, and part of the baronies of castlereagh and lower iveagh, in the county of down; consisting altogether of no less than townlands. it extends from dunmurry to lough neagh, a distance of about fourteen miles as the crow flies. when the devon commission made its inquiry, the population upon this estate amounted to about , . it contains mountain land, and the mountains are particularly wet, because, unlike the mountains in other parts of the country, the substratum is a stiff retentive clay. at that time there was not a spot of mountain or bog upon lord hertfort's estate that was not let by the acre. about one-third of the land is of first-rate quality; there are , or , acres of mountain, and about the same quantity of land of medium quality. in the early part of elizabeth's reign this property formed a section of the immense territory ruled over by the o'neills. one of these princes was called the captain of _kill-ultagh_. in those times, when might was right, this redoubtable chief levied heavy contributions on the settlers, partly in retaliation for aggressions and outrages perpetrated by the english upon his own people. the queen, with the view of effecting a reconciliation, requested the lord deputy, sir h. sidney, to pay the irish chief a visit. he did so, but his welcome was by no means gratifying. in fact, o'neill would not condescend to receive him at all. his reason for exhibiting a want of hospitality so un-irish was this:--he said his 'home had been pillaged, his lands swept of their cattle, and his vassals shot like wild animals.' the lord deputy, in his notes of the northern tour, written in october, , says:--'i came to kill-ultagh, which i found rich and plentiful, after the manner of these countries. but the captain was proud and insolent; he would not come to me, nor have i apt reason to visit him as i would. but he shall be paid for this before long; i will not remain in his debt.' the 'apt reason' for carrying out this threat soon occurred. tyrone had once more taken the field against the queen; the captain joined his relative; all his property was consequently forfeited, and handed over to sir fulke conway, a welsh soldier of some celebrity. sir fulke died in , and his brother, who was a favourite of charles i., succeeded to the estate, to which his royal patron added the lands of derryvolgie, thus making him lord of nearly , statute acres of the broad lands of down and antrim. the conways brought over a number of english and welsh families, who settled on the estate, and intermarrying with the natives, a race of sturdy yeomen soon sprang up. the conways were good landlords, and greatly beloved by the people. with the addition made to the property the king conferred upon the fortunate recipient of his bounty the title of baron. at the close of , lord conway began the erection of a castle (finished in ) on a picturesque mount overlooking the lagan, and commanding a view of the hills of down. during the struggles of the castle was burned down, together with the greater part of the town, which up to this time was called lisnagarvah, but thenceforth it received the name of lisburn. very little, however, had been done by the settlers when the outbreak occurred, for an english traveller in remarked that 'neither the town nor the country thereabouts was _planted_, being almost all woods and moorish.' about a month after the breaking out of the rebellion the king's forces, under sir george rawdon, obtained a signal victory over the irish commanded by sir phelim o'neill, sir con m'guinness, and general plunket. in the town obtained a charter of incorporation from charles ii., and sent two members to the irish parliament, the church being at the same time made the cathedral for down and connor. the conway estates passed to the seymours in this way. popham seymour, esq., was the son of sir edward seymour, fourth baronet, described by bishop burnet as 'the ablest man of his party, the first speaker of the house of commons that was not bred to the law; a graceful man, bold and quick, and of high birth, being the elder branch of the seymour family.' popham seymour inherited the estates of the earl of conway, who was his cousin, under a will dated august , , and assumed in consequence the surname of conway. this gentleman died unmarried, and was succeeded by his brother francis, who was raised to the peerage in by the title of baron conway, of kill-ultagh, county antrim. his eldest son, the second baron, was created viscount beauchamp and earl of hertfort in . in he was viceroy of ireland, and in he was created marquis of hertfort. the present peer, born in the year , is the fourth marquis, having succeeded his father in . lisburn is classic ground. it represents all sorts of historic interest. on this hill, now called the castle gardens, the captain of kill-ultagh mustered his galloglasse. here, amid the flames of the burning town, was fought a decisive battle between the english and the irish, one of the irish chiefs in that encounter being the ancestor of the restorer of st. patrick's cathedral. the battle lasted till near midnight, when the irish were put to flight, leaving behind them dead and wounded thrice the number of the entire garrison. here, on this mount, stood william iii. in june, . i saw in the church the monument of jeremy taylor, and the pulpit from which the most eloquent of bishops delivered his immortal sermons. i saw the tablet erected by his mother to the memory of nicholson, the young hero of delhi, and those of several other natives of lisburn who have contributed, by their genius and courage, to promote the fame and power of england. among the rest lieutenant dobbs, who was killed in an encounter with paul jones, the american pirate, in carrickfergus bay. i received a hospitable welcome from a loyal gentleman in the house which was the residence of general munroe, the hero of ' , and saw the spot in the square where he was hanged in view of his own windows. but i confess that none of the monuments of the past excited so much interest in my mind as the house of louis crommelin, the huguenot refugee, who founded the linen manufacture at lisburn. that house is now occupied by mr. hugh m'call, author of 'our staple manufactures,' who worthily represents the intelligence, the public spirit, and patriotism of the english and french settlers, with a dash of the irish ardour, a combination of elements which perhaps produces the best 'staple' of character. i stood upon the identical oak floor upon which old crommelin planned and worked, and in the grave-yard mr. m'call deciphered for me the almost obliterated inscriptions, recording the deaths of various members of the crommelin family. their leader, louis himself, died in july, , aged years. the revocation of the edict of nantes drove three quarters of a million of protestants out of france. a great number settled in london, where they established the arts of silk-weaving in spitalfields and of fancy jewellery in st. giles's. about , fled to ireland, of whom many settled in dublin, where they commenced the silk manufacture, and where one of them, la touche, opened the first banking establishment. wherever they settled they were missionaries of industry, and examples of perseverance and success in skilled labour, as well as integrity in commerce. many of those exiles settled in lisburn, and the colony was subsequently joined by louis crommelin, a native of armandcourt near st. quentin, where for several centuries his forefathers had carried on the flaxen manufacture on their own extensive possessions in the province of picardy. foreseeing the storm of persecution, the family had removed to holland, and, at the personal request of the prince of orange, louis came over to take charge of the colonies of his countrymen, which had been established in different parts of ireland. the linen trade had flourished in this country from the earliest times. linen formed, down to the reign of elizabeth, almost the only dress of the population, from the king down--saffron-coloured, and worn in immense flowing robes, occasionally wrapped in various forms round the body. lord stafford had exerted himself strenuously to improve the fabric by the forcible introduction of better looms; but little had been done in this direction till the huguenots came and brought their own looms, suited for the manufacture of fine fabrics. mark dupre, nicholas de la cherois, obre, rochet, bouchoir, st. clair, and others, whose ashes lie beside the lisburn cathedral and in the neighbouring churchyards, and many of whose descendants still survive among the gentry and manufacturers of down and antrim, were, with crommelin, the chief promoters of the linen trade which has wrought such wonders in the province of ulster. lord conway granted the lisburn colonists a site for a place of worship, which was known as the french church, and stood on the ground now occupied by the court-house in castle street. the government paid l. a year to their first minister, charles de la valade, who was succeeded by his relative, the rev. saumarez du bourdieu, distinguished as a divine and a historian. his father was chaplain to the famous schomberg, and when he fell from his horse mortally wounded the reverend gentleman carried him in his arms to the spot on which he died a short time after. talent was hereditary in this family, the rev. john du bourdieu, rector of annahilt, was author of the statistical surveys of down and antrim, published by the royal dublin society. referring to his ancestors he says that his father had been fifty-six years minister of the french church in lisburn. mr. m'call states that, for some time before his death in , he held the living of lambeg, the members of the french church having by that time merged into union with the congregation of the lisburn cathedral. a similar process took place in dublin, portarlington, and elsewhere, the descendants of the huguenots becoming zealous members of the established church. du bourdieu informs us that louis crommelin obtained a patent for carrying on and improving the linen manufacture, with a grant of l. per annum, as interest of , l., to be advanced by him as a capital for carrying on the same; l. per annum for his trouble; l. per annum for three assistants; and l. for the support of the chaplain. mr. m'call, in his book, copies the following note of payments made by the government from to :-- £ s. d. louis crommelin, as overseer of linen manufacture w. crommelin, salary and rent of kilkenny factory louis crommelin, to repay him for sums advanced to flax dressers and reed makers, and for services of french ministers , louis crommelin, for individual expenses and for sums paid thomas turner, of lurgan, for buying flax-seed and printing reports louis crommelin, three years' pension french minister's two years' pension _______________ total £ , it should be mentioned, that when the owner of lisburn, then earl of hertfort, held the office of lord lieutenant in , with his son, viscount beauchamp, as chief secretary, he rendered very valuable services to the linen trade, and was a liberal patron of the damask manufacture, which arrived at a degree of perfection hitherto unequalled, in the hands of mr. william coulson, founder of the great establishment of that name which still flourishes in lisburn, and from whom not only the court of st. james's but foreign courts also received their table linen. du bourdieu mentions that lisburn and lurgan were the great markets for cambrics--the name given to cloth of this description, which was then above five shillings a yard; under that price it was called lawn. in that neighbourhood cambric had been made which sold for l. s. d. a yard unbleached. the principal manufacturing establishments in addition to messrs. coulsons' are those of the messrs. richardson and co. and the messrs. barbour. lord dufferin has written the ablest defence of the irish landlords that has ever appeared. in that masterly work he says: 'but though a dealer in land and a payer of wages, i am above all things an irishman, and as an irishman i rejoice in any circumstance which tends to strengthen the independence of the tenant farmer, or to add to the comfort of the labourer's existence.' if titles and possessions implied the inheritance of religion and blood, lord dufferin ought indeed to be 'irish of the irish' as the men of ulster in the olden times proudly called themselves. on the railroad from belfast to bangor there is a station constructed with singular beauty, like the castellated entrance to a baronial hall, and on the elaborately chiselled stone we read 'clandeboye.' under the railway from graypoint on belfast lough runs a carriage-drive two miles long, to the famous seat of the o'neills, where his lordship's mansion is situated, enclosed among aged trees, remembrancers of the past. perhaps, there is no combination of names in the kingdom more suggestive of the barbaric power of the middle ages and the most refined culture of modern civilisation. the avenue, kept like a garden walk, with a flourishing plantation on each side, was cut through some of the best farms on the estate, and must have been a work of great expense. taking this in connection with other costly improvements, among which are several picturesque buildings for the residence of workmen--model lodging-houses resembling fancy villas at the seaside--we can understand how his lordship, within the last fifteen years, has paid away in wages of labour the immense sum of , l., at the rate of , l. a year. the abbot of bangor never gave employment like that. william o'donnon, the last of the line, was found in the thirty-second year of henry viii. to be possessed of thirty-one townlands in ards and upper clandeboye, the grange of earbeg in the county antrim, the two copeland islands, the tithes of the island of raghery, three rectories in antrim, three in down, and a townland in the isle of man. the abbey, some of the walls of which still remain, adjoining the parish church, was built early in the twelfth century. we are informed by archdall, that it had so gone to ruin in through the neglect of the abbot, that he was evicted by order of pope paul ii., who commanded that the friars of the third order of st. francis should immediately take possession of it, which was accordingly done, says wadding, by father nicholas of that order. the whole of the possessions were granted by james i. to james viscount clandeboye. bangor was one of the most celebrated schools in ireland when this island was said to have been 'the _quiet_ abode of learning and sanctity.' as to the quiet, i could never make out at what period it existed, nor how the 'thousands' of students at bangor could have been supported. the danes came occasionally up the lough and murdered the monks _en masse_, plundering the shrines. but the greatest scourges of the monasteries in down and elsewhere were, not the foreign pagans and pirates, but the professedly christian chiefs of their own country. it appears, therefore, that neither the irish clergy nor the people have much reason to regret the flight of the celtic princes and nobles, who were utterly unable to fulfil the duties of a government; and who did little or nothing but consume what the industry of the peasants, under unparalleled difficulties, produced. the people of clandeboye and dufferin might have been proud that their chief received l. a year as a tribute or blackmail from lecale, that he might abstain from visiting the settlers there with his galloglasse; but lord dufferin, the successor of the o'neill of clandeboye, spends among the peasantry of the present day , l. a year in wages. and how different is the lot of the people! not dwelling in wattled huts under the oaks of the primeval forest, but in neat slated houses, with whitewashed walls, looking so bright and pretty in the sunshine, like snowdrops in the distant landscape. on the hill between bangor and newtownards, lord dufferin has erected a beautiful tower, from which, reclining on his couch, he can see the country to an immense extent, from the mountains of antrim to the mountains of mourne, strangford lough, belfast lough, the antrim coast, and portpatrick at the other side of the channel, all spread out before him like a coloured map. chapter xi. the rebellion of . the rebellion of --generally called a 'massacre'--was undoubtedly a struggle on the part of the exiled nobles and clergy and the evicted peasants to get possession of their estates and farms, which had been occupied by the british settlers for nearly a generation. they might probably have continued to occupy them in peace, but for the fanaticism of the lords justices, sir john parsons and sir john borlace. it was reported and believed that, at a public entertainment in dublin, parsons declared that in twelve months no more catholics should be seen in that country. the english puritans and scottish covenanters were determined never to lay down their arms till they had made an end of popery. pym, the celebrated puritan leader, avowed that the policy of his party was not to leave a priest alive in the land. meantime, the irish chiefs were busy intriguing at rome, madrid, paris, and other continental capitals, clamouring for an invasion of ireland, to restore monarchy and catholicity--to expel the english planters from the forfeited lands. philip iii. of spain encouraged these aspirations. he had an irish legion under the command of henry o'neill, son of the fugitive earl of tyrone. it was reported that, in there were in the service of the archduchess, in the spanish netherlands alone, irish officers able to command companies, and fit to be colonels. there were many others at lisbon, florence, milan, and naples. they had in readiness , or , stand of arms laid up at antwerp, bought out of the deduction of their monthly pay. the banished ecclesiastics formed at every court a most efficient diplomatic corps, the chief of these intriguers being the celebrated luke wadding. religious wars were popular in those times, and the invasion of ireland would be like a crusade against heresy. but with the irish chiefs the ruling passion was to get possession of their homes and their lands. the most active spirit among these was roger, or rory o'moore, a man of high character, great ability, handsome person, and fascinating manners. with him were associated conor maguire, costelloe m'mahon, and thorlough o'neill, sir phelim o'neill, sir con magennis, colonel hugh m'mahon, and the rev. dr. heber m'mahon. o'moore visited the country, went through the several provinces, and, by communicating with the chiefs personally, organised the conspiracy to expel the british and recover the kingdom for charles ii. and the pope. the plan agreed upon by the confederates was this:--a rising when the harvest was gathered in; a simultaneous attack on all the english fortresses; the surprise of dublin castle, said to contain arms for , men; and to obtain for these objects all possible aid, in officers, men, and arms, from the continent. the rising took place on the night of october , . it might have been completely successful if the castle of dublin had been seized. it seemed an easy prey, for it was guarded only by a few pensioners and forty halberdiers, who would be quickly overpowered. but the plot was made known to the lords justices by an informer when on the eve of execution. sir phelim o'neill was one of those 'irish gentlemen' who, by royal favour, were permitted to retain some portions of their ancient patrimonies. at this time he was in possession of thirty-eight townlands in the barony of dungannon, county tyrone, containing , acres, then estimated to be worth , l. a-year, equal to some , l. of our money. charles boulton held by lease from the same chief acres, at a yearly rent of l. for sixty years, in consideration of a fine of , l. in this property yielded a profit rent of l. a year. three townlands in the same barony were claimed by george rawden of lisnagarvagh, as leased to him by sir phelim under the rent of l., estimated to be worth l. per annum. sir phelim might, therefore, have been content, so far as property was concerned. but, setting aside patriotism, religion, and ambition, it is likely enough that he distrusted the government, and feared the doom pronounced in dublin castle against all the gentlemen of his creed and race. at all events he put himself at the head of the insurrection in ulster. he and the officers under his command, on the night of the nd, surprised and captured the forts of charlemont and mountjoy. the towns of dungannon, newry, carrickmacross, castleblaney, tandragee fell into the hands of the insurgents, while the o'reillys and maguires overran cavan and fermanagh. sir conor magennis wrote from newry to the government officers in down: 'we are for our lives and liberties. we desire no blood to be shed; but, if you mean to shed our blood, be sure we shall be as ready as you for that purpose.' and sir phelim o'neill issued the following proclamation:-- 'these are to intimate and make known unto all persons whatsoever, in and through the whole country, the true intent and meaning of us whose names are hereunto subscribed: . that the first assembling of us is nowise intended against our sovereign lord the king, nor hurt of any of his subjects, either english or scotch; but only for the defence and libertie of ourselves and the irish natives of this kingdom. and we further declare that whatsoever hurt hitherto hath been done to any person shall be presently repaired; and we will that every person forthwith, after proclamation hereof, make their speedy repaire unto their own houses, under paine of death, that no further hurt be done unto any one under the like paine, and that this be proclaimed in all places. 'phelim o'neill. 'at dungannon, the rd october, .' it is easy for an insurgent chief to give such orders to a tumultuous mass of excited, vindictive, and drunken men, but not so easy to enforce them. the common notion among protestants, however, that a midnight massacre of all the protestant settlers was intended, or attempted, is certainly unfounded. though horrible outrages were committed on both sides, the number of them has been greatly exaggerated. mr. prendergast quotes some contemporary authorities, which seem to be decisive on this point. in the same year was published by 'g.s., minister of god's word in ireland,' 'a brief declaration of the barbarous and inhuman dealings of the northern irish rebels ...; written to excite the english nation to relieve our poor wives and children that have escaped the rebels' savage cruelties.' this author says, it was the intention of the irish to massacre all the english. on saturday they were to disarm them; on sunday to seize all their cattle and goods; on monday, at the watchword 'skeane,' they were to cut all the english throats. the former they executed; the third only (that is the massacre) they failed in. that the massacre rested hitherto in intention only is further evident from the proclamation of the lords justices of february , ; for, while offering large sums for the heads of the chief northern gentlemen in arms (sir phelim o'neill's name heading the list with a thousand pounds), the lords justices state that the massacre had failed. many thousands had been robbed and spoiled, dispossessed of house and lands, many murdered on the spot; but the chief part of their plots (so the proclamation states), and amongst them a universal massacre, had been disappointed. but, says mr. prendergast, after lord ormond and sir simon harcourt, with the english forces, in the month of april, , had burned the houses of the gentry in the pale, and committed slaughters of unarmed men, and the scotch forces, in the same month, after beating off sir phelim o'neill's army at newry, drowned and shot men, women, and priests, in that town, who had surrendered on condition of mercy, then it was that some of sir phelim o'neill's wild followers in revenge, and in fear of the advancing army, massacred their prisoners in some of the towns in tyrone. the subsequent cruelties were not on one side only, and were magnified to render the irish detestable, so as to make it impossible for the king to seek their aid without ruining his cause utterly in england. the story of the massacre, invented to serve the politics of the hour, has been since kept up for the purposes of interest. no inventions could be too monstrous that served to strengthen the possession of irish confiscated lands. 'a true relation of the proceedings of the scots and english forces in the north of ireland,' published in , states that on monday, may , the common soldiers, without direction from the general-major, took some eighteen of the irish women of the town [newry], stripped them naked, threw them into the river, and drowned them, shooting some in the water. more had suffered so, but that some of the common soldiers were made examples of. 'a levite's lamentation,' published at the same time, thus refers to those atrocities: 'mr. griffin, mr. bartly, mr. starkey, all of ardmagh, and murdered by these bloudsuckers on the sixth of may. for, about the fourth of may, as i take it, we put neare fourty of them to death upon the bridge of the newry, amongst which were two of the pope's pedlers, two seminary priests, in return of which they slaughtered many prisoners in their custody.' a curious illustration of the spirit of that age is given in the fact that an english officer threw up his commission in disgust, because the bishop of meath, in a sermon delivered in christ church, dublin, in , pleaded for mercy to irish women and children. the unfortunate settlers fled panic-stricken from their homes, leaving behind their goods, and, in many cases, their clothes; delicate women with little children, weary and footsore, hurried on to some place of refuge. in cavan they crowded the house of the illustrious bishop bedell, at kilmore. enniskillen, derry, lisburn, belfast, carrickfergus, with some isolated castles, were still held by the english garrisons, and in these the protestant fugitives found succour and protection. before their flight they were in such terror that, according to the rev. dr. maxwell, rector of tynan, for three nights no cock was heard to crow, no dog to bark. the city of london sent four ships to londonderry with all kinds of provisions, clothing, and accoutrements for several companies of foot, and abundance of ammunition. the twelve chief companies sent each two pieces of ordnance. no doubt these liberal and seasonable supplies contributed materially to keep the city from yielding to the insurgent forces by which it was besieged. meantime the government in dublin lost not a moment in taking the most effectual measures for crushing the rebellion. lord ormond, as lieutenant-general, had soon at his disposal , men, with a fine train of field artillery, provided by strafford for his campaign in the north of england. the king, who was in scotland, procured the dispatch of , men to ulster; and authorised lords chichester and clandeboye to raise regiments among their tenants. thus the 'scottish army' was increased to about , foot, with cavalry in proportion. the irish, on the other hand, were ill-provided with arms and ammunition. they were not even provided with pikes, for they had not time to make them. the military officers counted upon did not appear, though they had promised to be on the field at fourteen days' notice. rory o'moore, like 'meagher of the sword' in , had never seen service; and sir phelim o'neill, like smith o'brien, was only a civilian when he assumed the high-sounding title of 'lord general of the catholic army in ulster.' he also took the title of 'the o'neill.' the massacre of a large number of catholics by the carrickfergus garrison, driving them over the cliffs into the sea at the point of the bayonet, madly excited the irish thirst for blood. mr. darcy magee admits that, from this date forward till the arrival of owen roe o'neill, the war assumed a ferocity of character foreign to the nature of o'moore, o'reilly, and magennis. 'that sir phelim permitted, if he did not in his gusts of stormy passion instigate, those acts of cruelty which have stained his otherwise honourable conduct, is too true; but he stood alone among his confederates in that crime, and that crime stands alone in his character. brave to rashness and disinterested to excess, few rebel chiefs ever made a more heroic end out of a more deplorable beginning.' the same eulogy would equally apply to many of the english generals. cruelty was their only crime. the irish rulers of those times, if not taken by surprise, felt at the outbreak of open rebellion much as the army feels at the breaking out of a war, in some country where plenty of prize money can be won, where the looting will be rich and the promotion rapid. relying with confidence on the power of england and the force of discipline, they knew that the active defenders of the government would be victorious in the end, and that their rewards would be estates. the more rebellions, the more forfeited territory, the more opportunities to implicate, ruin, and despoil the principal men of the hated race. the most sober writer, dealing with such facts, cannot help stirring men's blood while recording the deeds of the heroes who founded the english system of government in ireland, and secured to themselves immense tracts of its most fertile soil. what then must be the effect of the eloquent and impassioned denunciations of such writers as mr. butt, mr. a.m. sullivan, and mr. john mitchell, not to speak of the 'national press'? yet the most fiery patriot utters nothing stronger on the english rule in ireland than what the irish may read in the works of the greatest statesmen and most profound thinkers in england. the evil is in the facts, and the facts cannot be suppressed because they are the roots of our present difficulties. mr. darcy magee, one of the most moderate of irish historians, writing far away from his native land, not long before he fell by the bullet of the assassin--a martyr to his loyalty--sketches the preliminaries of confiscation at the commencement of this civil war. in munster, their chief instruments were the aged earl of cork, still insatiable as ever for other men's possessions, and the president, st. leger: in leinster, sir charles coote. lord cork prepared , indictments against men of property in his province, which he sent to the speaker of the long parliament, with an urgent request that they might be returned to him, with authority to proceed against the parties named as outlaws. in leinster, , similar indictments were found in the course of two days by the free use of the rack with witnesses. sir john read, an officer of the king's bedchamber, and mr. barnwall of kilbrue, a gentleman of threescore and six, were among those who underwent the torture. when these were the proceedings of the tribunals in peaceable cities, we may imagine what must have been the excesses of the soldiery in the open country. in the south, sir william st. leger directed a series of murderous raids upon the peasantry of cork, which at length produced their natural effect. lord muskerry and other leading recusants, who had offered their services to maintain the peace of the province, were driven by an insulting refusal to combine for their own protection. the , indictments of lord cork soon swelled their ranks, and the capture of the ancient city of cashel, by philip o'dwyer, announced the insurrection of the south. waterford soon after opened its gates to colonel edmund butler; wexford declared for the catholic cause, and kilkenny surrendered to lord mountgarret. in wicklow, coote's troopers committed murders such as had not been equalled since the days of the pagan northmen. little children were carried aloft writhing on the pikes of these barbarians, whose worthy commander confessed that 'he liked such frolics.' neither age nor sex was spared, and an ecclesiastic was especially certain of instant death. fathers higgins and white of naas, in kildare, were given up by coote to these 'lambs,' though, each had been granted a safe-conduct by his superior officer, lord ormond. and these murders were taking place at the very time when the franciscans and jesuits of cashel were protecting dr. pullen, the protestant chancellor of that cathedral and other protestant prisoners; while also the castle of cloughouter, in cavan, the residence of bishop bedell, was crowded with protestant fugitives, all of whom were carefully guarded by the chivalrous philip o'reilly. in ulster, by the end of april, there were , troops, regulars and volunteers, in the garrison or in the field. newry was taken by monroe and chichester. magennis was obliged to abandon down, and mcmahon monaghan; sir phelim was driven to burn armagh and dungannon and to take his last stand at charlemont. in a severe action with sir robert and sir william stewart, he had displayed his usual courage with better than his usual fortune, which, perhaps, we may attribute to the presence with him of sir alexander mcdonnell, brother to lord antrim, the famous _colkitto_ of the irish and scottish wars. but the severest defeat which the confederates had was in the heart of leinster, at the hamlet of kilrush, within four miles of athy. lord ormond, returning from a second reinforcement of naas and other kildare forts, at the head, by english account, of , men, found on april the catholics of the midland counties, under lords mountgarrett, ikerrin, and dunboyne, sir morgan cavenagh, rory o'moore, and hugh o'byrne, drawn up, by his report , strong, to dispute his passage. with ormond were the lord dillon, lord brabazon, sir richard grenville, sir charles coote, and sir t. lucas. the combat was short but murderous. the confederates left men, including sir morgan cavenagh and some other officers, dead on the field; the remainder retreated in disorder, and ormond, with an inconsiderable diminution of numbers, returned in triumph to dublin. for this victory the long parliament, in a moment of enthusiasm, voted the lieutenant-general a jewel worth l. if any satisfaction could be derived from such an incident, the violent death of their most ruthless enemy, sir charles coote, might have afforded the catholics some consolation. that merciless soldier, after the combat at kilrush, had been employed in reinforcing birr and relieving the castle of geashill, which the lady letitia of offally held against the neighbouring tribe of o'dempsey. on his return from this service he made a foray against a catholic force, which had mustered in the neighbourhood of trim; here, on the night of the th of may, heading a sally of his troop, he fell by a musket shot--not without suspicion of being fired from his own ranks. his son and namesake, who imitated him in all things, was ennobled at the restoration by the title of the earl of mountrath. the long parliament would not trust the king with an army in ireland. they consequently took the work of subjugation into their own hands. having confiscated , , acres of irish land, they offered it as security to 'adventurers' who would advance money to meet the cost of the war. in february, , the house of commons received a petition 'of divers well affected' to it, offering to raise and maintain forces at their own charge 'against the rebels of ireland, and afterwards to receive their recompense out of the rebels' estates.' under the act 'for the speedy reducing of the rebels' the adventurers were to carry over a brigade of , foot and horse, and to have the right of appointing their own officers. and they were to have estates given to them at the following rates: , acres for l. in ulster, for l. in connaught, for l. in munster, and l. in leinster. the rates per acre were s., s., s., and s. in those provinces respectively. the nature of the war, and the spirit in which it was conducted, may be inferred from the sort of weapons issued from the military stores. these included scythes with handles and rings, reaping-hooks, whetstones, and rubstones. they were intended for cutting down the growing corn, that the people might be starved into submission, or forced to quit the country. the commissary of stores was ordered to issue bibles to the troops, one bible for every file, that they might learn from the old testament the sin and danger of sparing idolaters. the rebellion in ulster had almost collapsed before the end of the year. the tens of thousands who had rushed to the standard of sir p. o'neill were now reduced to a number of weak and disorganised collections of armed men taking shelter in the woods. the english garrisons scoured the neighbouring counties with little opposition, and where they met any they gave no quarter. sir william cole, ancestor of the earl of enniskillen, proudly boasted of his achievement in having , of the rebels famished to death within a circuit of a few miles of his garrison. lord enniskillen is an excellent landlord, but the descendants of the remnant of the natives on his estate do not forget how the family obtained its wealth and honours. the government, however, seemed to have good reason to congratulate itself that the war was over with the irish. to these sir phelim o'neill had shown that there is something in a name: but if the name does not represent real worth and fitness for the work undertaken, it is but a shadow. it was so in sir phelim's o'neill's case. though he had courage, he was a poor general. but another hero of the same name soon appeared to redeem the honour of his race, and to show what the right man can do. at a moment when the national cause seemed to be lost, when the celtic population in ulster were meditating a wholesale emigration to the scottish highlands--'a word of magic effect was whispered from the sea-coast to the interior.' colonel owen roe o'neill had arrived off donegal with a single ship, a single company of veterans, officers, and a quantity of ammunition. he landed at doe castle, proceeded to the fort of charlemont, met the heads of the clans at clones in monaghan, was elected general-in-chief of the catholic forces, and at once set about organising an army. the catholics of the whole kingdom had joined a confederation, which held its meetings at kilkenny. a general assembly was convened for october , . the peerage was represented by fourteen lords and eleven bishops. generals were appointed for each of the other provinces, preston for leinster, barry for munster, and burke for connaught. with the anglo-irish portion of the confederacy the war was catholic, and the object religious liberty. with them there was no antipathy or animosity to the english. there was the pope's nuncio and his party, thinking most of papal interests, and there was the national party, who had been, or were likely to be, made landless. the king, then at oxford, was importuned by the confederation on the one side and the puritans on the other; one petitioning for freedom of worship, the other for the suppression of popery. pending these appeals there was a long cessation between the irish belligerents. ormond had amused the confederates with negotiations for a permanent peace and settlement, from spring till midsummer, when charles, dissatisfied with these endless delays, dispatched to ireland a more hopeful ambassador. this was herbert, earl of glamorgan, one of the few catholics remaining among the english nobility, son and heir to the marquis of worcester, and son-in-law to henry o'brien, earl of thomond. of a family devoutly attached to the royal cause, to which it is said they had contributed not less than , l., glamorgan's religion, his rank, his irish connections, the intimate confidence of the king which he was known to possess, all marked out his embassy as one of the utmost importance. the earl arrived in dublin about august , and, after an interview with ormond, proceeded to kilkenny. on the th of that month, preliminary articles were agreed to and signed by the earl on behalf of the king, and by lords montgarrett and muskerry on behalf of the confederates. it was necessary, it seems, to get the concurrence of the viceroy to these terms, and accordingly the negotiators on both sides repaired to dublin. here ormond contrived to detain them ten long weeks in discussions on the articles relating to religion; it was the th of november when they returned to kilkenny, with a much modified treaty. on the next day, the th, the new papal nuncio, a prelate who, by his rank, his eloquence, and his imprudence, was destined to exercise a powerful influence on the catholic councils, made his public entry into that city. this personage was john baptist rinuccini, archbishop of fermo in the marches of ancona, which see he had preferred to the more exalted dignity of florence. from limerick, borne along on his litter, such was the feebleness of his health, he advanced by slow stages to kilkenny, escorted by a guard of honour, despatched on that duty by the supreme council. the pomp and splendour of his public entry into the catholic capital was a striking spectacle. the previous night he slept at a village three miles from the city, for which he set out early on the morning of november , escorted by his guard and a vast multitude of the people. five delegates from the supreme council accompanied him. a band of fifty students, mounted on horseback, met him on the way, and their leader, crowned with laurel, recited some congratulatory latin verses. at the city gate he left the litter and mounted a horse richly housed; here the procession of the clergy and the city guilds awaited him: at the market cross, a latin oration was delivered in his honour, to which he graciously replied in the same language. from the cross he was escorted to the cathedral, at the door of which he was received by the aged bishop, dr. david rothe. at the high altar he intonated the _te deum_, and gave the multitude the apostolic benediction. then he was conducted to his lodgings, where he was soon waited upon by lord muskerry and general preston, who brought him to kilkenny castle, where, in the great gallery, which elicited even a florentine's admiration, he was received in stately formality by the president of the council--lord mountgarrett. another latin oration on the nature of his embassy was delivered by the nuncio, responded to by heber, bishop of clogher, and so the ceremony of reception ended.[ ] [footnote : darcy magee, vol. ii. p. .] after a long time spent in negotiations, the celebrated glamorgan treaty was signed by ormond for the king, and lord muskerry and the other commissioners for the confederates. it conceded, in fact, all the most essential claims of the irish--equal rights as to property, in the army, in the universities, and at the bar; gave them seats in both houses and on the bench; authorised a special commission of oyer and terminer, composed wholly of confederates; and declared that 'the independency of the parliament of ireland on that of england' should be decided by declaration of both houses 'agreeably to the laws of the kingdom of ireland.' in short, this final form of glamorgan's treaty gave the irish catholics, in , all that was subsequently obtained, either for the church or the country, in , , or . 'though some conditions were omitted, to which rinuccini and a majority of the prelates attached importance, glamorgan's treaty was, upon the whole, a charter upon which a free church and a free people might well have stood, as the fundamental law of their religious and civil liberties.' general o'neill was greatly annoyed at these delays. political events in england swayed the destiny of ireland then as now. the poor vacillating, double-dealing king was delivered to the puritans, tried, and executed. but before cromwell came to smash the confederation and everything papal in ireland, the irish chief gladdened the hearts of his countrymen by the glorious victory of benburb, one of the most memorable in irish history. in a naturally strong position, the irish, for four hours, received and repulsed the various charges of the puritan horse. then as the sun began to descend, pouring its rays upon the enemy, o'neill led his whole force--five thousand men against eight--to the attack. one terrible onset swept away every trace of resistance. there were counted on the field , of the covenanters, and of the catholics but killed and wounded. lord ardes, and scottish officers, standards, , draught horses, and all the guns and tents, were captured. monroe fled to lisburn and thence to carrickfergus, where he shut himself up till he could obtain reinforcements. o'neill forwarded the captured colours to the nuncio at limerick, by whom they were solemnly placed in the choir of st. mary's cathedral, and afterwards, at the request of pope innocent, sent to rome. the _te deum_ was chanted in the confederate capital; penitential psalms were sung in the northern fortresses. 'the lord of hosts,' wrote monroe, 'has rubbed shame on our faces till once we are humbled.' o'neill emblazoned the cross and keys on his banner with the red hand of ulster, and openly resumed the title originally chosen by his adherents at clones, 'the catholic army.' the stage of irish politics now presented the most extraordinary complications political and military. the confederation was occupied with endless debates and dissensions. commanders changed positions so rapidly, the several causes for which men had been fighting became so confused in the unaccountable scene-shifting, giving glimpses now of the king, now of the commonwealth, and now of the pope, that no one knew what to do, or what was to be the end. the nuncio went home in disgust that his blessings and his curses, which he dispensed with equal liberality, had so little effect. at length appeared an actor who gave a terrible unity to the drama of irish politics. cromwell left london in july , 'in a coach drawn by six gallant flanders mares,' and made a grand progress to bristol. he landed at ring's end, near dublin, on august . he entered the city in procession and addressed the people from 'a convenient place,' accompanied by his son henry, blake, jones, ireton, ludlow, hardress, waller, and others. the history of cromwell's military exploits in ireland is well known. i pass on, therefore, to notice the effects of the war on the condition of the people. as usual, in such cases, the destruction of the crops and other provisions by the soldiers, brought evil to the conquerors as well as to their victims. there had been a fifteen years' war in ulster, when james i. ascended the throne, and it left the country waste and desolate. sir john davis, his attorney-general, asserted the unquestionable fact that perpetual war had been continued between the two nations for 'four hundred and odd years,' and had always for its object to 'root out the irish.' james was to put an end to this war, and, as we have seen, the lord deputy promised the people 'estates' in their holdings. the effect of this promise, as recorded by davis, is remarkable. 'he thus made it a year of jubilee to the poor inhabitants, because every man was to return to his own house, and be restored to his ancient possessions, and they all went home rejoicing.' poor people! they soon saw the folly of putting their trust in princes. now, after a seven years' war, the nation was again visited with famine, and the country converted into a wilderness. three-fourths of the cattle had been destroyed; and the commissioners for ireland reported to the council in england in , that four parts in five of the best and most fertile land in ireland lay waste and uninhabited, stating that they had encouraged the irish to till the land, promising them the enjoyment of the crops. they had also given orders 'for enforcing those that were removed to the mountains to return.' the soldiers were employed to till the lands round their posts. corn had to be imported to dublin from wales. so scarce was meat that a widow was obliged to petition the authorities for permission to kill a lamb; and she was 'permitted and lycensed to kill and dresse so much lambe as shall be necessary for her own eating, not exceeding three lambes for this whole year, notwithstanding any declaration of the said commissioners of parliament to the contrary.'[a] this privilege was granted to mrs. buckley in consideration of 'her old age and weakness of body.' in the irish revenue from all sources was only , l., while the cost of the army was , l. a sort of conditional amnesty was granted from necessity, pending the decision of parliament, and on may , , the leinster army of the irish surrendered on terms signed at kilkenny, which were adopted successively by the other principal armies between that time and the september following, when the ulster forces surrendered. by these kilkenny articles, all except those who were guilty of the first blood were received into protection on laying down their arms; those who should not be satisfied with the conclusions the parliament might come to concerning the irish nation, and should desire to transport themselves with their men to serve any foreign state in amity with the parliament, should have liberty to treat with their agents for that purpose. but the commissioners undertook faithfully to mediate with the parliament that they might enjoy such a remnant of their lands as might make their lives comfortable at home, or be enabled to emigrate. [footnote : prendergast, the cromwellian settlement, p. .] the cromwellian administration in ireland effected a revolution unparalleled in history. its proceedings have been well summarised by mr. darcy magee:-- the long parliament, still dragging out its days under the shadow of cromwell's great name, declared in its session of the rebellion in ireland 'subdued and ended,' and proceeded to legislate for that kingdom as a conquered country. on august they passed their act of settlement, the authorship of which was attributed to lord orrery, in this respect the worthy son of the first earl of cork. under this act there were four chief descriptions of persons whose status was thus settled: . all ecclesiastics and royalist proprietors were exempted from pardon of life or estate. . all royalist commissioned officers were condemned to banishment, and the forfeit of two-thirds of their property, one-third being retained for the support of their wives and children. . those who had not been in arms, but could be shown, by a parliamentary commission, to have manifested 'a constant, good affection' to the war, were to forfeit one-third of their estates, and receive 'an equivalent' for the remaining two-thirds west of the shannon. . all husbandmen and others of the inferior sort, 'not possessed of lands or goods exceeding the value of l.,' were to have a free pardon, on condition also of transporting themselves across the shannon. this last condition of the cromwellian settlement distinguished it, in our annals, from every other proscription of the native population formerly attempted. the great river of ireland, rising in the mountains of leitrim, nearly severs the five western counties from the rest of the kingdom. the province thus set apart, though one of the largest in superficial extent, had also the largest proportion of waste and water, mountain and moorland. the new inhabitants were there to congregate from all the other provinces before the first day of may, , under penalty of outlawry and all its consequences; and when there, they were not to appear within two miles of the shannon, or four miles of the sea. a rigorous passport system, to evade which was death without form of trial, completed this settlement, the design of which was to shut up the remaining catholic inhabitants from all intercourse with mankind, and all communion with the other inhabitants of their own country. a new survey of the whole kingdom was also ordered, under the direction of dr. william petty, the fortunate economist who founded the house of lansdowne. by him the surface of the kingdom was estimated at , , plantation acres, three of which were deducted for waste and water. of the remainder, above , , were in catholic hands, in ; , were church and college lands; and , , were in possession of the protestant settlers of the reigns of james and elizabeth. under the protectorate, , , acres were confiscated; this enormous spoil, two-thirds of the whole island, went to the soldiers and adventurers who had served against the irish, or had contributed to the military chest, since --except , acres given in 'exchange' to the banished in clare and connaught; and , , confirmed to 'innocent papists.' such was the complete uprooting of the ancient tenantry or clansmen from their original holdings, that, during the survey, orders of parliament were issued to bring back individuals from connaught to point out the boundaries of parishes in munster. it cannot be imputed among the sins so freely laid to the historical account of the native legislature, that an irish parliament had any share in sanctioning this universal spoliation. cromwell anticipated the union of the kingdoms by years, when he summoned, in , that assembly over which 'praise-god barebones' presided; members for ireland and scotland sat on the same benches with the commons of england. oliver's first deputy in the government of ireland was his son-in-law fleetwood, who had married the widow of ireton; but his real representative was his fourth son henry cromwell, commander-in-chief of the army. in , the title of lord deputy was transferred from fleetwood to henry, who united the supreme civil and military authority in his own person until the eve of the restoration, of which he became an active partisan. we may thus properly embrace the five years of the protectorate as a period of henry cromwell's administration. in the absence of a parliament, the government of ireland was vested in the deputy, the commander-in-chief, and four commissioners, ludlow, corbett, jones, and weaver. there was, moreover, a high court of justice, which perambulated the kingdom, and exercised an absolute authority over life and property greater than even strafford's court of star chamber had pretended to. over this court presided lord lowther, assisted by mr. justice donnellan, by cooke, solicitor to the parliament on the trial of king charles, and the regicide reynolds. by this court, sir phelim o'neill, viscount mayo, and colonels o'toole and bagnall were condemned and executed; children of both sexes were captured by thousands, and sold as slaves to the tobacco-planters of virginia and the west indies. sir william petty states that , boys and girls were sent to those islands. the number, of all ages, thus transported, was estimated at , souls. as to the 'swordsmen' who had been trained to fighting, petty, in his _political anatomy_, records that 'the chiefest and most eminentest of the nobility and many of the gentry had taken conditions from the king of spain, and had transported , of the most active, spirited men, most acquainted with the dangers and discipline of war.' the chief commissioners in dublin had despatched assistant commissioners to the provinces. the distribution which they made of the soil was nearly as complete as that of canaan among the israelites; and this was the model which the puritans had always before their minds. where a miserable residue of the population was required to till the land for its new owners, they were tolerated as the gibeonites had been by joshua. irish gentlemen who had obtained pardons were obliged to wear a distinctive mark on their dress on pain of death. persons of inferior rank were distinguished by a black spot on the right cheek. wanting this, their punishment was the branding-iron or the gallows. no vestige of the catholic religion was allowed to exist. catholic lawyers and schoolmasters were silenced. all ecclesiastics were slain like the priests of baal. three bishops and of the inferior clergy thus perished. the bedridden bishop of kilmore was the only native clergyman permitted to survive. if, in mountain recesses or caves, a few peasants were detected at mass, they were smoked out and shot. thus england got rid of a race concerning which mr. prendergast found this contemporary testimony in a ms. in trinity college library, dublin, dated :-- 'there lives not a people more hardy, active, and painful ... neither is there any will endure the miseries of warre, as famine, watching, heat, cold, wet, travel, and the like, so naturally and with such facility and courage that they do. the prince of orange's excellency uses often publiquely to deliver that the irish are souldiers the first day of their birth. the famous henry iv., late king of france, said there would prove no nation so resolute martial men as they, would they be ruly and not too headstrong. and sir john norris was wont to ascribe this particular to that nation above others, that he never beheld so few of any country as of irish that were idiots and cowards, which is very notable.' at the end of , the parliament made a division of the spoil among the conquerors and the adventurers; and, on september , an act was passed for the new planting of ireland by english. the government reserved for itself the towns, the church lands, and the tithes, the established church, hierarchy and all, having been utterly abolished. the four counties of dublin, kildare, carlow, and cork were also reserved. the amount due to the adventurers was , l. this they divided into three lots, of which , l. was to be satisfied in munster, , l. in leinster, and , l. in ulster, and the moiety of ten counties was charged with their payment--waterford, limerick, and tipperary, in munster; meath, westmeath, king's and queen's counties, in leinster; and antrim, down, and armagh, in ulster. but, as all was required by the adventurers act to be done by lot, a lottery was appointed to be held in grocers' hall, london, for july , , to begin at o'clock in the morning, when lots should be first drawn in which province each adventurer was to be satisfied, not exceeding the specified amounts in any province; lots were to be drawn, secondly, to ascertain in which of the ten counties each adventurer was to receive his land--the lots not to exceed in westmeath , l., in tipperary , l., in meath , l., in king's and queen's counties , l. each, in limerick , l., in waterford , l., in antrim, down, and armagh , l. each. and, as it was thought it would be a great encouragement to the adventurers (who were for the most part merchants and tradesmen), about to plant in so wild and dangerous a country, not yet subdued, to have soldier planters near them, these ten counties, when surveyed (which was directed to be done immediately, and returned to the committee for the lottery at grocers' hall), were to be divided, each county by baronies, into two moieties, as equally as might be, without dividing any barony. a lot was then to be drawn by the adventurers, and by some officer appointed by the lord general cromwell on behalf of the soldiery, to ascertain which baronies in the ten counties should be for the adventurers, and which for the soldiers. the rest of ireland, except connaught, was to be set out amongst the officers and soldiers for their arrears, amounting to , , l., and to satisfy debts of money or provisions due for supplies advanced to the army of the commonwealth amounting to , , l. connaught being by the parliament reserved and appointed for the habitation of the irish nation, all english and protestants having lands there, who should desire to remove out of connaught into the provinces inhabited by the english, were to receive estates in the english parts, of equal value, in exchange. the next thing was to clear out the remnant of the inhabitants, and the overture to this performance was the following merciful proclamation:-- 'the parliament of the commonwealth of england having by one act lately passed (entitled an act for the settling of ireland) declared that _it is not their intention to extirpate this whole nation_, but that mercy and pardon for life and estate be extended to all husbandmen, plowmen, labourers, artificers, and others of the inferior sort, in such manner as in and by the said act is set forth: for the better execution of the said act, and that timely notice may be given to all persons therein concerned, it is ordered that the governor and commissioners of revenue, or any two or more of them, within every precinct in this nation, do cause the said act of parliament with this present declaration to be published and proclaimed in their respective precincts _by beat of drumme and sound of trumpett_, on some markett day, within tenn days after the same shall come unto them within their respective precincts. 'dated at the castle of kilkenny, this th october, . 'edmund ludlow, miles corbet, 'john jones, r. weaver.' a letter from dublin, dated december , , four days before christmas, says the 'transplantation is now far advanced, the men being gone to prepare their new habitations in connaught. their wives and children and dependants have been, and are, packing away after them apace, and all are to be gone by the st of march next.' in another letter the writer _naïvely_ remarks, 'it is the nature of this people to be rebellious, and they have been so much the more disposed to it, having been highly exasperated to it by the transplanting work.' the temper of the settlers towards the natives may be inferred from a petition to the lord deputy and council of ireland, praying for the enforcement of the original order requiring the removal of all the irish nation into connaught, except boys of fourteen and girls of twelve. 'for we humbly conceive,' say the petitioners, 'that the proclamation for transplanting only the proprietors, and such as have been in arms, will neither answer the end of safety nor what else is aimed at thereby. for the first purpose of the transplantation is to prevent those of natural principles' (i.e. of natural affections) 'becoming one with these irish, as well in affinity as idolatry, as many thousands did who came over in elizabeth's time, many of which have had a deep hand in all the late murders and massacres. and shall we join in affinity,' they ask, 'with a people of these abominations? would not the lord be angry with us till he consumes us, having said--"the land which ye go to possess is an unclean land, because of the filthiness of the people who dwell therein. ye shall not, therefore, give your sons to their daughters, nor take their daughters to your sons," as it is in ezra ix. , , . "nay, ye shall surely root them out, lest they cause you to forsake the lord your god." deut. c. vii. &c.' in this way they hoped that 'honest men' would be encouraged to come and live amongst them, because the other three provinces (that is, all the island but connaught) would be free of 'tories,' when there was none left to harbour or relieve them. they would have made a clean sweep of munster, leinster, and ulster, so that 'the saints' might inherit the land without molestation. if any protestant friends of the irish objected to this thorough mode of effecting the work of irish regeneration, colonel lawrence 'doubted not but god would enable that authority yet in being to let out that dram of rebellious bloud, and cure that fit of sullenness their advocate speaks of.' the commissioners appointed to effect the transplantation were painfully conscious of their unworthiness to perform so holy a work, and were overwhelmed with a sense of their weakness in the midst of such tremendous difficulties, so that they were constrained to say: 'the child is now come to the birth, and much is desired and expected, but there is no strength to bring forth.' they therefore fasted and humbled themselves before the lord, inviting the officers of the army to join them in lifting up prayers, 'with strong crying and tears, to him to whom nothing is too strong, that his servants, whom he had called forth in this day to act in these great transactions, might be made faithful, and carried on by his own outstretched arm, against all opposition and difficulty, to do what was pleasing in his sight.' it is true they had this consolation, 'that the chiefest and eminentest of the nobility and many of the gentry had taken conditions from the king of spain, and had transported , of the most active, spirited men, most acquainted with the dangers and discipline of war.' the priests were all banished. the remaining part of the whole nation was scarce one-sixth of what they were at the beginning of the war, so great a devastation had god and man brought upon that land; and that handful of natives left were poor labourers, simple creatures, whose sole design was to live and maintain their families.' of course there were many exceptions to this rule. there were some of the upper classes remaining, described in the certificates which all the emigrants were obliged to procure, like sir nicholas comyn, of limerick, 'who was numb at one side of his body of a dead palsy, accompanied only by his lady, catherine comyn, aged thirty-five years, flaxen-haired, middle stature; and one maid servant, honor m'namara, aged twenty years, brown hair, middle stature, having no substance,' &c. from tipperary went forth james, lord dunboyne, with followers, and having cows, garrons, and swine. dame catherine morris, followers, cows, garrons, goats, swine. lady mary hamilton, of roscrea, with persons, cows, garrons, sheep, goats. pierce, lord viscount ikerrin, with persons, having acres of winter corn, cows, garrons, sheep, swine, &c. there were other noblemen, lords of the pale, descended from illustrious english ancestors, the fitzgeralds, the butlers, the plunkets, the barnwells, the dillons, the cheevers, the cusacks, &c., who petitioned, praying that their flight might not be in the winter, or alleging that their wives and children were sick, that their cattle were unfit to drive, or that they had crops to get in. to them dispensations were granted, provided the husbands and parents were in connaught building huts, &c., and that not more than one or two servants remained behind to look after the respective herds and flocks, and to attend to the gathering in and threshing of the corn. and some few, such as john talbot de malahide, got a pass for safe travelling from connaught to come back, in order to dispose of their corn and goods, giving security to return within the time limited. if they did not return they got this warning in the month of march--that the officers had resolved to fill the jails with them, 'by which this bloody people will know that they (the officers) are not degenerated from english principles. though i presume we should be very tender of hanging any except leading men, yet we shall make no scruple of sending them to the west indies,' &c. accordingly when the time came, all the remaining crops were seized and sold; there was a general arrest of all 'transplantable persons. all over the three provinces, men and women were hauled out of their beds in the dead hour of night to prison, till the jails were choked.' in order to further expedite the removal of the nobility and gentry, a court-martial sat in st. patrick's cathedral, and ordered the lingering delinquents, who shrunk from going to connaught, to be hanged, with a placard on the breast and back of each victim--'_for not transplanting.'_ scully's conduct at ballycohy, was universally execrated. but what did he attempt to do? just what the cromwellian officers did at the end of a horrid civil war years ago, with this difference in favour of cromwell, that scully did not purpose to 'transplant,' he would simply uproot, leaving the uprooted to perish on the highway. his conduct was as barbarous as that of the cromwellian officers. but what of scully? he is nothing. the all-important fact is, that, in playing a part worse than cromwellian, he, _acting according to english law, was supported by all the power of the state_; and if the men who defended their homes against his attack had been arrested and convicted, irish judges would have consigned them to the gallows; and they might, as in the cromwellian case, have ordered a placard to be put on their persons:-- 'for not transplanting!' in fact the cromwellian commissioners did nothing more than carry out fully the _principles_ of our present land code. nine-tenths of the soil of ireland are held by tenants at will. it is constantly argued in the leading organs of english opinion, that the power of the landlords to resume possession of their estates, and turn them into pastures, evicting all the tenants, is _essential_ to the rights of property. this has been said in connection with the great absentee proprietors. according to this theory of proprietorship, the only one recognised by law, lord lansdowne may legally spread desolation over a large part of kerry; lord fitzwilliam may send the ploughshare of ruin through the hearths of half the county wicklow; lord digby, in the king's county, may restore to the bog of allen vast tracts reclaimed during many generations by the labour of his tenants; and lord hertfort may convert into a wilderness the district which the descendants of the english settlers have converted into the garden of ulster. if any or all of those noblemen took a fancy, like colonel bernard of kinnitty or mr. allen pollok, to become graziers and cattle-jobbers on a gigantic scale, the government would be compelled to place the military power of the state at their disposal, to evict the whole population in the queen's name, to drive all the families away from their homes, to demolish their dwellings, and turn them adrift on the highway, without one shilling compensation. villages, schools, churches would all disappear from the landscape; and, when the grouse season arrived, the noble owner might bring over a party of english friends to see his '_improvements!_' the right of conquest so cruelly exercised by the cromwellians is in this year of grace _a legal right_; and its exercise is a mere question of expediency and discretion. there is not a landlord in ireland who may not be a scully if he wishes. it is not law or justice, it is not british power, that prevents the enactment of cromwellian scenes of desolation in every county of that unfortunate country. it is self-interest, with humanity, in the hearts of good men, and the dread of assassination in the hearts of bad men, that prevent at the present moment the immolation of the irish people to the moloch of territorial despotism. it is the effort to render impossible those human sacrifices, those holocausts of christian households, that the priests of feudal landlordism denounce so frantically with loud cries of '_confiscation_.' the 'graces' promised by charles i. in demonstrate the real wretchedness of the country to which they were deceitfully offered, and from which they were treacherously withdrawn. from them we learn that the government soldiers were a terror to more than the king's enemies, that the king's rents were collected at the sword's point, and that numerous monopolies and oppressive taxes impoverished the country. there was little security for estates in any part of ireland, and none at all for estates in connaught. no man could sue out livery for his lands without first taking the oath of the royal supremacy. the soldiers enjoyed an immunity in the perpetration of even capital crimes, for the civil power could not touch them. those who were married, or had their children baptized, by roman catholic priests, were liable to fine and censure. the protestant bishops and clergy were in great favour and had enormous privileges. the patentees of dissolved religious houses claimed exemption from various assessments. the ministers of the established church were entitled to the aid of the government in exacting reparation for clandestine exercises of spiritual jurisdiction by roman catholic priests, and actually appear to have kept private prisons of their own. they exacted tithes from roman catholics of everything titheable. the eels of the rivers and lakes, the fishes of the sea paid them toll. the dead furnished the mortuary fees to the 'alien church' in the shape of the best clothes which the wardrobe of the defunct afforded. the government of wentworth, better known as the earl of strafford, is highly praised by high churchmen and admirers of laud, but was execrated by the irish, who failed to appreciate the mercies of his star-chamber court, or to recognise the justice of his fining juries who returned disagreeable verdicts. the list of grievances, transmitted by the irish house of peers in to the english government, cannot be regarded as altogether visionary, for it was vouched by the names of lords, spiritual and temporal, whose attachment to the english interest was undoubted. the lord chancellor (loftus), the archbishop of dublin (bulkeley), the bishops of meath, clogher, and killala were no rebels, and yet they protested against the grievances inflicted on ireland by the tyranny of strafford. according to these contemporary witnesses, the irish nobles had been taxed beyond all proportion to the english nobles; irish peers had been sent to prison although not impeached of treason or any capital offence; the deputy had managed to keep all proxies of peers in the hands of his creatures, and thus to sway the upper house to his will; the trade of the kingdom had been destroyed; and the 'graces' of had been denied to the nation, or clogged by provisoes which rendered them a mockery. and yet, in the face of such evidence of misery and misgovernment, the archbishop of dublin asserted in a charge to his clergy, that 'all contemporary writers agree in describing the flourishing condition of the island, and its rapid advance in civilisation and wealth, when all its improvement was brought to an end by the catastrophe of the irish rebellion of '--the very year in which the irish houses of lords and commons agreed in depicting the condition of ireland as utterly miserable! but archbishop trench not only contradicts the authentic contemporary records, in picturing as halcyon days one of the most wretched periods of irish history, but also wrongfully represents one of the saddest episodes of that history. he reminded his clergy 'that the number of protestants who were massacred by the roman catholics during the rebellion was, by the most moderate estimate, set down as , .' his grace seems to have been unacquainted with the contemporary evidence collected by the protestant historian warner, who examined the depositions of , on which the story of the massacre was based, and found the estimate of those who perished in the so-called massacre to have been enormously exaggerated. he calculated the number of those killed, 'upon evidence collected within two years after the rebellion broke out,' at , , besides , said to have perished through bad usage. the parliament commissioners in dublin, writing in to the commissioners in england, say that, 'besides families, there were killed, hanged, burned, and drowned , . thus there were two estimates--one of , , the other of , --each of which was far lower than the estimate of , , which his grace calls 'the most moderate.' it turns out, moreover, that the argument based by archbishop trench on the false estimate of those said to have been massacred, is wholly worthless for the purpose intended by his grace. the disproportion of protestants to roman catholics, which appears by the census of , cannot be accounted for by the statistics of --be those statistics true or false. for the proportion of protestants to roman catholics was higher in --thirty years after the alleged massacre--than in . the protestants in , according to sir w. petty, numbered , , and the roman catholics , ; while in there were found in ireland only , , protestants of all denominations to , , roman catholics. it follows from these figures, as has been already remarked by dr. maziere brady, that there has been a relative decrease of protestants, as compared with roman catholics, of , persons. and this relative decrease was in no way affected--inasmuch as it took place since the year --by the alleged massacre of . chapter xii. the puritan plantation. it is a fearful thing to undertake the destruction of a nation by slaughter, starvation, and banishment. when we read of such enormities, perpetrated by some 'scourge of god,' in heathen lands and distant ages, we are horrified, and we thank providence that it is our lot to be born in a christian country. but what must the world think of our christianity when they read of the things that, in a most bible-reading age, englishmen did in ireland? the work of transplanting was slow, difficult, and intensely painful to the irish, for connaught was bleak, sterile, and desolate, and the weather was inclement. the natural protectors of many families had been killed or banished, and the women and children clung with frantic fondness to their old homes. but for the feelings of such afflicted ones the conquerors had no sympathy. on the contrary, they believed that god, angry at their lingering, sent his judgments as a punishment. mr. prendergast has published a number of letters, written at the time by the english authorities and others, from which some interesting matters may be gleaned. the town of cashel had got a dispensation to remain. 'but,' says the writer, 'the lord, who is a jealous god, and more knowing of, as well as jealous against their iniquity than we, by a fire on the rd inst. hath burned down the whole town in little less than a quarter of an hour, except a few houses that a few english lived in,' &c. in consequence of the delay, the irish began to break into 'torying' (plundering). 'the tories fly out and increase. what strange people, not to starve in peace.' to be inclined to plunder under such circumstances, with so gracious a government, must be held to be a proof of great natural depravity, as well as of a peculiar incapacity to respect, or even to understand, the rights of property. at length, however, the land was ready for the enjoyment of the officers and soldiers. on august , , the lord deputy, fleetwood, thus addressed one of the officers:-- 'sir,--in pursuance of his highness's command, the council here with myself and chief officers of the army having concluded about disbanding part of the army, in order to lessening the present charge, it is fit that your troope be one. and, accordingly, i desire you would march such as are willing to plant of them into the barony of shelmaliere, in the county of wexford, at or before the first day of september, where you shall be put into possession of your lands, for your arrears, according to the rates agreed on by the committee and agents. as also you shall have, upon the place wherein you are, so much money as shall answer the present three months' arrear due to you and your men, but to continue no longer the pay of the army than upon the muster of this august. the sooner you march your men the better; thereby you will be enabled to make provision for the winter.' after some sweetening hints that they will be perhaps paid hereafter as a militia he concludes:-- 'and great is your mercy, that after all your hardships and difficulties you may sit down, and, if the lord give his blessing, may reape some fruits of your past services. do not think it a blemish or underrating of your past services, that you are now disbanded; but look upon it as of the lord's appointing, and with cheerfulness submit thereunto; and the blessing of the lord be upon you all, and keep you in his fear, and give you hearts to observe your past experience of signal appearances. and that this fear may be seen in your hearts, and that you may be kept from the sins and pollutions which god hath so eminently witnessed against in those whose possessions you are to take up, is the desire of him who is 'your very affectionate friend, to love and serve you, 'charles fleetwood.' he congratulated them that, 'having by the blessing of god obtained their peace, they might sit down in the enjoyment of the enemies' fields and houses, which they planted not nor built not. they had no reason to repent their services, considering how great an issue god had given.' yet many refused to settle, and sold their debentures to their officers. what could they do with the farms? they had no horses or ploughs, no cattle to stock the land, no labourers to till it. above all, they had no women. flogging was the punishment for amours with irish girls, and marriage with the idolatrous race was forbidden under heavy penalties. hence the soldiers pretended that their wives were converted to protestantism. but this was to be tested by a strict examination of each as to the state of her soul, and the means by which she had been enlightened. if she did not stand the test, her husband was degraded in rank, and, if disbanded, he was liable to be sent to connaught with the fair seducer. the charms of the irish women, however, proved irresistible, and the hearts of the pious rulers were sorely troubled by this danger. 'in , amongst the first plans for paying the army their arrears in land, it was suggested there should be a law that any officers or soldiers marrying irishwomen should lose their commands, forfeit their arrears, and be made incapable of inheriting lands in ireland. no such provision, however, was introduced into the act, because it provided against this danger more effectually by ordering the women to transplant, together with the whole nation, to connaught. those in authority, however, ought never to have let the english officers and soldiers come in contact with the irishwomen, or should have ordered another army of young englishwomen over, if they did not intend this provision to be nugatory. planted in a wasted country, amongst the former owners and their families, with little to do but to make love, and no lips to make love to but irish, love or marriage must follow between them as necessarily as a geometrical conclusion follows from the premises. for there were but few who (in the language of a cromwellian patriot), ----'rather than turne from english principles, would sooner burne; and rather than marrie an irish wife, would batchellers remain for tearme of life.' about forty years after the cromwellian settlement, and just seven years after the battle of the boyne, the following was written: 'we cannot so much wonder at this [the quick "degenerating" of the english of ireland], when we consider how many there are of the children of oliver's soldiers in ireland who cannot speak one word of english. and (which is strange) the same may be said of some of the children of king william's soldiers who came but t'other day into the country. this misfortune is owing to the marrying irishwomen for want of english, who come not over in so great numbers as are requisite. 'tis sure that no englishman in ireland knows what his children may be as things are now; they cannot well live in the country without growing irish; for none take such care as sir jerome alexander [second justice of the common pleas in ireland from to his death in ], who left his estate to his daughter, but made the gift void if she married any irishman;' sir jerome including in this term 'any lord of ireland, any archbishop, bishop, prelate, any baronet, knight, esquire, or gentleman of irish extraction or descent, born and bred in ireland, or having his relations and means of subsistence there,' and expressly, of course, any 'papist.'--'true way to render ireland happy and secure; or, a discourse, wherein 'tis shown that 'tis the interest both of england and ireland to encourage foreign protestants to plant in ireland; in a letter to the hon. robert molesworth.'[ ] [footnote : cromwellian settlement, p. .] the impossibility of getting a sufficient number of settlers from england to cultivate the land, produce food, and render the estates worth holding, led to some fraudulent transactions for the benefit of the natives who were 'loath to leave.' the officers in various counties got general orders giving dispensations from the necessity of planting with english tenants, and liberty to take irish, provided they were not proprietors or swordsmen. but the proprietors who had established friendships with their conquerors secretly became tenants under them to parts of their former estates, ensuring thereby the connivance of their new landlords against their transplantation. on june , , the commissioners for the affairs of ireland (fleetwood, lord deputy, one of them), being then at limerick, discovered this fraud, and issued a peremptory order revoking all former dispensations for english proprietors to plant with irish tenants; and they enjoined upon the governor of limerick and all other officers the removing of the proprietors thus sheltered and their families into connaught, on or before that day three weeks. but, happily, says mr. prendergast, all penal laws against a nation are difficult of execution. the officers still connived with many of the poor irish gentry and sheltered them, which caused fleetwood, then commander of the parliament forces in ireland, upon his return to dublin, and within a fortnight after the prescribed limit for their removal was expired, to thunder forth from dublin castle a severe reprimand to all officers thus offending. their neglect to search for and apprehend the transplantable proprietors was denounced as a great dishonour and breach of discipline of the army; and their entertaining any of them as tenants was declared a hindrance to the planting of ireland with english protestants. 'i do therefore,' the order continued, 'hereby order and declare, that if any officer or soldier under my command shall offend by neglect of his duty in searching for and apprehending all such persons as by the declaration of november , , are to transplant themselves into connaught; or by entertaining them as tenants on his lands, or as servants under him, he shall be punished by the articles of war as negligent of his duty, according to the demerit of such his neglect.' the english parliament resolved to clear out the population of all the principal cities and seaport towns, though nearly all founded and inhabited by danes or english, and men of english descent. in order to raise funds for the war, the following towns were offered to english merchants for sale at the prices annexed:--limerick, with , acres contiguous, for , l., and a rent of l. payable to the state; waterford, with , acres contiguous, at the same rate; galway, with , acres, for , l., and a rent of l.; wexford, with , acres, for , l., and a rent of l. s. there were no bidders; but still the government adhered to its determination to clear out the irish, and supply their place with a new english population. artisans were excepted, but strictly limited in number, each case being particularly described and registered, while dispensations were granted to certain useful persons, on the petition of the settlers who needed their services. on july in the same year, the governor of clonmel was authorised to grant dispensations to forty-three persons in a list annexed, or as many of them as he should think fit, being artificers and workmen, to stay for such time as he might judge convenient, the whole time not to exceed march , . on june , , the governor of dublin was authorised to grant licences to such inhabitants to continue in the city (notwithstanding the declaration for all irish to quit) as he should judge convenient, the licences to contain the name, age, colour of hair, countenance, and stature of every such person; and the licence not to exceed twenty days, and the cause of their stay to be inserted in each licence. petitions went up from the old native inhabitants of limerick; from the fishermen of limerick; from the mayor and inhabitants of cashel, who were all ordered to transplant; but, notwithstanding these orders, many of them still clung about the towns, sheltered by the english, who found the benefit of their services. the deserted cities of course fell speedily into ruins. lord inchiquin, president of munster, put many artisans, menial servants, grooms, &c. in the houses, to take care of them in cork; still about , good houses in that city, and as many in youghal, out of which the owners had been driven, were destroyed by the soldiers, who used the timber for fuel. the council addressed the following letter to secretary thurloe:-- 'dublin castle, march , . 'right honourable,--the council, having lately taken into their most serious consideration what may be most for the security of this country, and the encouragement of the english to come over and plant here, did think fitt that all popish recusants, as wel proprietors as others, whose habitations are in any port-towns, walled-towns, or garrisons, and who did not before the th of september (being the time mentioned in the act of for the encouragement of adventurers and soldiers), and ever since profess the protestant religion, should remove themselves and their families out of all such places, and two miles at the least distant therefrom, before the th of may next; and being desirous that the english people may take notice, that by this means there will be both security and conveniency of habitation for such as shall be willing to come over as planters, they have commanded me to send you the enclosed declaration, and to desire you that you will take some course, whereby it may be made known unto the people for their encouragement to come over and plant in this country. 'your humble servant, 'thomas herbert, clerk of the council.' on july , , the inhabitants of galway were commanded to quit the town for ever by the st of november following, the owners of houses getting compensation at eight years' purchase. 'on october , this order was executed. all the inhabitants, except the sick and bedrid, were at once banished, to provide accommodation for english protestants, whose integrity to the state should entitle them to be trusted in a place of such importance; and sir charles coote, on november , received the thanks of the government for clearing the town, with a request that he would remove the sick and bedrid as soon as the season might permit, and take care that the houses while empty were not spoiled by the soldiery. the town was thus made ready for the english. there was a large debt of , l., due to liverpool for their loss and suffering for the good cause. the eminent deservings and losses of the city of gloucester also had induced the parliament to order them , l., to be satisfied in forfeited lands in ireland. the commissioners of ireland now offered forfeited houses in galway, rated at ten years' purchase, to the inhabitants of liverpool and gloucester, to satisfy their respective debts, and they were both to arrange about the planting of it with english protestants. to induce them to accept the proposal, the commissioners enlarged upon the advantages of galway. it lay open for trade with spain, the straits, the west indies, and other places; no town or port in the three nations, london excepted, was more considerable. it had many noble uniform buildings of marble, though many of the houses had become ruinous by reason of the war, and the waste done by the impoverished english dwelling there. no irish were permitted to live in the city, nor within three miles of it. if it were only properly inhabited by english, it might have a more hopeful gain by trade than when it was in the hands of the irish that lived there. there never was a better opportunity of undertaking a plantation and settling manufacturers there than the present, and they suggested that it might become another derry.'[ ] [footnote : the cromwellian settlement.] some writers, sickened with the state of things in ireland, and impatient of the inaction of our rulers, and of the tedious forms of constitutional government, have exclaimed: 'oh for one day of oliver cromwell!' well, ireland had him and his worthy officers for many years. they had opportunities, which never can be hoped for again, of rooting out the irish and their religion. '_thorough_' was their word. they dared everything, and shrunk from no consequences. they found dublin full of catholics; and on june , , mr. john hewson had the felicity of making the following report on the state of religion in the irish metropolis:-- 'mr. winter, a godly man, came with the commissioners, and they flock to hear him with great desire; besides, there is in dublin, since january last, about papists forsaken their priests and the masse, and attends the public ordinances, i having appointed mr. chambers, a minister, to instruct them at his own house once a week. they all repaire to him with much affection, and desireth satisfaction. and though dublin hath formerly swarmed with papists, i know none (now) there but one, who is a chirurgeon, and a peaceable man. it is much hoped the glad tidings of salvation will be acceptable in ireland, and that this savage people may see the salvation of god.' political economists tell us that when population is greatly thinned by war, or pestilence, or famine, nature hastens to fill up the void by the extraordinary fecundity of those who remain. the irish must have multiplied very fast in connaught during the commonwealth; and the mixture of saxon and celtic blood resulting from the union of the cromwellian soldiers with the daughters of the land must have produced a numerous as well as a very vigorous breed in wexford, kilkenny, tipperary, waterford, cork, east and west meath, king's and queen's counties, and tyrone. but these were not 'wholly a right seed.' this was to be found only in the union of english with english, newly arrived from the land of the free. the more precious this seed was, the more care there should be in bringing it into the field. this matter constituted one of the great difficulties of the plantation. there were plenty of irish midwives: they might have been affectionate and careful, possibly skilful; but if they had any good quality, the council could not see it. on the contrary, it gave them credit for many bad qualities, the worst of all being their idolatry and disloyalty. it was really dreadful to think of english mothers and their infants being at the mercy of irish nurses. consequently, after much deliberation, and 'laying the matter before the lord' in prayer, it was resolved to bring over a state nurse from england, and to her special care were to be entrusted all the _accouchements_ in the city of dublin. endowed with such a monopoly, it was natural enough that she should be an object of envy and dislike to those midwives whom she had supplanted. she was therefore annoyed and insulted while passing through the streets. to put a stop to these outrages, a proclamation was issued from dublin castle for her special protection, which began thus:-- _by the commissioners of parliament for the affairs of ireland_. 'whereas we are informed by divers persons of repute and godliness, that mrs. jane preswick hath, through the blessing of god, been very successful within dublin and parts about, through the carefull and skillfull discharge of her midwife's duty, and instrumental to helpe sundry poore women who needed her helpe, which bathe abounded to the comfourte and preservation of many english women, who (being come into a strange country) had otherwise been destitute of due helpe, and necessitated to expose their lives to the mercy of irish midwives, ignorant in the profession, and bearing little good will to any of the english nation, which being duly considered, we thought fitt to evidence this our acceptance thereof, and willingness that a person so eminently qualified for publique good and so well reported of for piety and knowledge in her art should receive encouragement and protection,' &c. cromwell and his ministers did not hesitate about applying heroic remedies for what they conceived to be grievances. the irish parliament was abolished, like the irish churches, the irish cities, and everything else that could be called irish, except the thing for which they fought--_the land_, which was to be irish no more. the new england which the protector established in the island of saints was represented, like scotland, in the united parliament at westminster--which first assembled in . in that parliament, major morgan represented the county of wicklow. in speaking against some proposed taxation for ireland, he said, among other things, the country was under very heavy charges for rewards paid for the destruction of three beasts--the wolf, the priest, and the tory. 'we have three beasts to destroy,' he said, 'that lay burdens upon us. the first is a wolf, on whom we lay l. a head if a dog, and l. if a bitch. the second beast is a priest, on whose head we lay l.; if he be eminent, more. the third beast is a tory, on whose head, if he be a public tory, we lay l.; and s. on a private tory. your army cannot catch them: the irish bring them in; brothers and cousins cut one another's throats.' in may, , the council issued the following printed declaration. 'upon serious consideration had of the great multitudes of poore swarming in all parts of this nacion, occasioned by the devastation of the country, and by the habits of licentiousness and idleness which the generality of the people have acquired in the time of this rebellion; insomuch that frequently some are found feeding on carrion and weeds,--some starved in the highways, and many times poor children who have lost their parents, or have been deserted by them, are found exposed to and some of them fed upon _by ravening wolves and other beasts and birds of prey._' no wonder the wolves multiplied and became very bold, when they fed upon such dainty fare as irish children! by what infatuation, by what diabolical fanaticism were those rulers persuaded that they were doing god a service, or discharging the functions of a government, in carrying out such a policy, and consigning human beings to such a fate! by a printed declaration of june , , published july , ,[ ] the commanders of the various districts were to appoint days and times for hunting the wolf; and persons destroying wolves and bringing their heads to the commissioners of the revenue of the precinct were to receive for the head of a bitch wolf, _l_; of a dog wolf, _l_; for the head of every cub that preyed by himself, s.; and for the head of every sucking cub, _s_: the assessments on several counties to reimburse the treasury for these advances became, as appears from major morgan's speech, a serious charge. in corroboration it appears that in march, , there was due from the precinct of galway l. s. d. for rewards paid on this account. but the most curious evidence of their numbers is that lands lying only nine miles north of dublin were leased by the state in the year , under conditions of keeping a hunting establishment with a pack of wolf hounds for killing the wolves, part of the rent to be discounted in wolves' heads, at the rate in the declaration of june , . under this lease captain edward piers was to have all the state lands in the barony of dunboyne in the county of meath, valued at l. s. d., at a rent greater by l. a year than they then yielded in rent and contribution, for five years from may following, on the terms of maintaining at dublin and dunboyne three wolf-dogs, two english mastiffs, a pack of hounds of sixteen couple (three whereof to hunt the wolf only), a knowing huntsman, and two men and one boy. captain piers was to bring to the commissioners of revenue at dublin a stipulated number of wolf-heads in the first year and a diminishing number every year; but for every wolf-head whereby he fell short of the stipulated number, l. was to be defalked from his salary.[ ] [footnote : a/ , p. . republished th july, .--'book of printed declarations of the commissioners for the affairs of ireland.' british museum.] [footnote : cromwellian settlement, p. .] twenty pounds was paid for the discovery of a priest, the second 'burdensome beast,' and to harbour him was death. again i avail myself of the researches of mr. prendergast, to give a few orders on this subject. '_august_ , .--ordered, on the petition of roger begs, priest, now prisoner in dublin, setting forth his miserable condition by being nine months in prison, and desiring liberty to go among his friends into the country for some relief; that he be released upon giving sufficient security that within four months he do transport himself to foreign parts, beyond the seas, never to return, and that during that time he do not exercise any part of his priestly functions, nor move from where he shall choose to reside my above five miles, without permission. ordered, same date, on the petition of william shiel, priest, that the said william shiel being old, lame, and weak, and not able to travel without crutches, he be permitted to reside in connaught where the governor of athlone shall see fitting, provided, however, he do not remove one mile beyond the appointed place without licence, nor use his priestly function.' at first the place of transportation was spain. thus:--'_february_ , . ordered that the governor of dublin take effectual course whereby the priests now in the several prisons of dublin be forthwith shipped with the party going for spain; and that they be delivered to the officers on shipboard for that purpose: care to be taken that, under the colour of exportation, they be not permitted to go into the country.' '_may_ , .--upon reading the petition of the popish priests now in the jails of dublin; ordered, that the governor of dublin take security of such persons as shall undertake the transportation of them, that they shall with the first opportunity be shipped for some parts in amity with the commonwealth, provided the five pounds for each of the said priests due to the persons that took them, pursuant to the tenor of a declaration dated january , , be first paid or secured.' the commissioners give reasons for this policy, which are identical with what we hear constantly repeated at the present day in ireland and england and in most of the newspapers conducted by protestants. for two centuries the burden of all comments on irish affairs is 'the country would be happy but for priests and agitators.' 'hang or banish the priests!' cry some very amiable and respectable persons, 'and then we shall have peace.' 'we can make nothing of those priests,' says the improving landlord, or agent, 'they will not look us straight in the face.' on december , , in a letter from the commissioners to the governor of barbadoes, advising him of the approach of a ship with a cargo of proprietors deprived of their lands, and then seized for not transplanting, or banished for having no visible means of support, they add that amongst them were three priests; and the commissioners particularly desire they may be so employed as they may not return again where that sort of people are able to do much mischief, having so great an influence over the popish irish, and alienating their affections from the present government. 'yet these penalties did not daunt them, or prevent their recourse to ireland. in consequence of the great increase of priests towards the close of the year , a general arrest by the justices of the peace was ordered, under which, in april, , the prisons in every part of ireland seem to have been filled to overflowing. on may , the governors of the respective precincts were ordered to send them with sufficient guards from garrison to garrison to carrickfergus, to be there put on board such ship as should sail with the first opportunity for the barbadoes. one may imagine the pains of this toilsome journey by the petition of one of them. paul cashin, an aged priest, apprehended at maryborough, and sent to philipstown on the way to carrickfergus, there fell desperately sick, and, being also extremely aged, was in danger of perishing in restraint for want of friends and means of relief. on august , , the commissioners, having ascertained the truth of his petition, ordered him sixpence a day during his sickness; and (in answer probably to this poor prisoner's prayer to be spared from transportation) their order directed that it should be continued to him in his travel thence (after his recovery) to carrickfergus, in order to his transportation to the barbadoes.' at carrickfergus the horrors of approaching exile seem to have shaken the firmness of some of them; for on september , , colonel cooper, who had the charge of the prison, reporting that several would under their hands renounce the pope's supremacy, and frequent the protestant meetings and no other, he was directed to dispense with the transportation, if they could give good protestant security for the sincerity of their professions. as for the third beast--the tory, the following extract gives an idea of the class to which he belonged, or, rather, from which he sprang. 'and whereas the children, grandchildren, brothers, nephews, uncles, and next pretended heirs of the persons attainted, do remain in the provinces of leinster, ulster, and munster, having little or no visible estates or subsistence, but living only and coshering upon the common sort of people who were tenants to or followers of the respective ancestors of such persons, waiting an opportunity, as may justly be supposed, to massacre and destroy the english who, as adventurers or souldiers, or their tenants, are set down to plant upon the several lands and estates of the persons so attainted,' they are to transplant or be transported to the english plantations in america.'[ ] [footnote : act for attainder of the rebels in ireland, passed . scobell's 'acts and ordinances.'] no wonder that mr. prendergast exclaims:-- 'but how must the feelings of national hatred have been heightened, by seeing every where crowds of such unfortunates, their brothers, cousins, kinsmen, and by beholding the whole country given up a prey to hungry insolent soldiers and adventurers from england, mocking their wrongs, and triumphing in their own irresistible power!' every possible mode of repression that has been devised at the present time as a remedy for ribbonism was then tried with unflinching determination. john symonds, an english settler, was murdered near the garrison town of timolin, in the county kildare. all the irish inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood were immediately transported to connaught as a punishment for the crime. a few months after two more settlers were murdered at lackagh. 'all the irish in the townland of lackagh were seized; four of them by sentence of court-martial were hanged for the murder, or for not preventing it; and all the rest, thirty-seven in number, including two priests, were on november delivered to the captain of the "wexford" frigate, to take to waterford, there to be handed over to mr. norton, a bristol merchant, to be sold as bond slaves to the sugar-planters in the barbadoes. among these were mrs. margery fitzgerald, of the age of fourscore years, and her husband, mr. henry fitzgerald of lackagh; although (as it afterwards appeared) the tories had by their frequent robberies much infested that gentleman and his tenants--discovery that seems to have been made only after the king's restoration.' the penalties against the tories themselves were to allow them no quarter when caught, and to set a price upon their heads. the ordinary price for the head of a tory was s.; for leaders of tories, or distinguished men, it varied from l. to l. 'but,' continues mr. prendergast, 'a more effective way of suppressing tories seems to have been to induce them, as already mentioned, to betray or murder one another--a measure continued after the restoration, during the absence of parliaments, by acts and orders of state, and re-enacted by the first parliament summoned after the revolution, when in that and the following reigns almost every provision of the rule of the parliament of england in ireland was re-enacted by the parliaments of ireland, composed of the soldiers and adventurers of cromwell's day, or new english and scotch capitalists. in any tory killing two other tories proclaimed and on their keeping was entitled to pardon--a measure which put such distrust and alarm among their bands on finding one of their number so killed, that it became difficult to kill a second. therefore, in , it was declared sufficient qualification for pardon for a tory to kill one of his fellow-tories. this law was continued in for twenty-one years, and only expired in . tory-hunting and tory-murdering thus became common pursuits. no wonder, therefore, after so lengthened an existence, to find traces of the tories in our household words. few, however, are now aware that the well-known irish nursery rhymes have so truly historical a foundation:-- 'ho! brother teig, what is your story?' 'i went to the wood and shot a tory:' 'i went to the wood, and shot another;' 'was it the same, or was it his brother?' 'i hunted him in, and i hunted him out, three times through the bog, and about and about; till out of a bush i spied his head, so i levelled my gun and shot him dead.' after the war of , the tories received fresh accessions, and, a great part of the kingdom being left waste and desolate, they betook themselves to these wilds, and greatly discouraged the replanting of the kingdom by their frequent murders of the new scotch and english planters; the irish 'choosing rather' (so runs the language of the act) 'to suffer strangers to be robbed and despoiled, than to apprehend or convict the offenders.' in order, therefore, for the better encouragement of strangers to plant and inhabit the kingdom, any persons presented as tories, by the gentlemen of a county, and proclaimed as such by the lord lieutenant, might be shot as outlaws and traitors; and any persons harbouring them were to be guilty of high treason.[ ] rewards were offered for the taking or killing of them; and the inhabitants of the barony, of the ancient native race, were to make satisfaction for all robberies and spoils. if persons were maimed or dismembered by tories, they were to be compensated by l.; and the families of persons murdered were to receive l.' [footnote : the cromwellian settlement, p. , &c.] the restoration at length brought relief and enlargement to the imprisoned irish nation. they rushed across the shannon to see their old homes; they returned to the desolated cities, full of hope that the king for whom they had suffered so much would reward their loyalty, by giving them back their inheritances--the 'just satisfaction' promised at breda to those who had been unfairly deprived of their estates. the ulster presbyterians also counted on his gratitude for their devotion to his cause, notwithstanding the wrongs inflicted on them by strafford and the bishops in the name of his father. but they were equally doomed to disappointment. coote and broghill reigned in dublin castle as lords justices. the first parliament assembled in dublin for twenty years, contained an overwhelming majority of undertakers, adventurers, and puritan representatives of boroughs, from which all the catholic electors had been excluded. 'the protestant interest,' a phrase of tremendous potency in the subsequent history of ireland, counted members against catholics in the commons, and in the lords against peers. a court was established under an act of parliament in dublin, to try the claims of 'nocent' and 'innocent' proprietors. the judges, who were englishmen, declared in their first session that were innocent to nocent. the protestant interest was alarmed; and, through the influence of ormond, then lord lieutenant, the duration of the court was limited, and when it was compelled to close its labours, only out of , cases had been decided. if the proportions of nocent and innocent were the same, an immense number of innocent persons were deprived of their property. in , fifteen years after the restoration, the english settlers were in possession of , , acres, while the old owners retained , , acres. by an act passed in , it was declared that no papist, who had not already been adjudged innocent, should ever be entitled to claim any lands or settlements.' any movement on the part of the roman catholics during this reign, and indeed, ever since, always raised an alarm of the 'protestant interest' in danger. while the panic lasted the catholics were subjected to cruel restrictions and privations. thus ormond, by proclamation, prohibited catholics from entering the castle of dublin, or any other fortress; from holding fairs or markets within the walls of fortified towns, and from carrying arms to such places. by another proclamation, he ordered all the _relatives_ of known 'tories' to be arrested and banished the kingdom, within fourteen days, unless such tories were killed or surrendered within that time. there was one tory for whose arrest all ordinary means failed. this was the celebrated redmond o'hanlon, still one of the most popular heroes with the irish peasantry. he was known on the continent as count o'hanlon, and was the brother of the owner of tandragee, now the pretty irish seat of the duke of manchester. as no one would betray this outlaw, who levied heavy contributions from the settlers in ulster, it was alleged and believed that the viceroy hired a relative to shoot him. 'count o'hanlon,' says mr. d. magee, 'a gentleman of ancient lineage, as accomplished as orrery, or ossory, was indeed an outlaw to the code then in force; but the stain of his cowardly assassination must for ever blot the princely escutcheon of james, duke of ormond.'[ ] [footnote : see 'the tory war of ulster,' by john p. prendergast, author of 'the cromwellian settlement.' this pamphlet abounds in the most curious information, collected from judicial records, descriptive of ireland from the restoration to the revolution--a.d. - .] chapter xiii. the penal code, a new system of land-war. the accession of james ii. was well calculated to have an intoxicating effect on the irish race. he was a catholic, he undertook to effect a counter-reformation. he would restore the national hierarchy to the position from which it had been dragged down and trampled under the feet of the cromwellians. he would give back to the irish gentry and nobility their estates; and to effect this glorious revolution, he relied upon the faith and valour of the irish. the protestant militia were disarmed, a catholic army was formed; the corporations were thrown open to catholics. dublin and other corporations, which refused to surrender their exclusive charters, were summarily deprived of their privileges; catholic mayors and sheriffs, escorted by troops, went in state to their places of worship. the protestant chancellor was dismissed to make way for a catholic, baron rice. the plate of trinity college was seized as public property. the protestants, thoroughly alarmed by these arbitrary proceedings, fled to england in thousands. many went to holland and joined the army of the prince of orange. dreadful stories were circulated of an intended invasion of england by wild irish regiments under tyrconnel. there was a rumour of another massacre of the english, and of the proposed repeal of the act of settlement. protestants who could not cross the channel fled to enniskillen and to derry, which closed its gates and prepared for its memorable siege. james, who had fled to france, plucked up courage to go to ireland, and make a stand there in defence of his crown. his progress from kinsale to dublin was an ovation. fifteen royal chaplains scattered blessings around him; gaelic songs and dances amused him; he was flattered in latin orations, and conducted to his capital under triumphal arches. in dublin the trades turned out with new banners; two harpers played at the gate by which he entered; the clergy in their robes chanted as they went: and forty young girls, dressed in white, danced the ancient _rinka_, scattering flowers on the newly sanded streets. tyrconnell, now a duke, the judges, the mayor and the corporation, completed the procession, which moved beneath arches of evergreens, and windows hung with 'tapestry and cloth of arras.' the recorder delivered to his majesty the keys of the city, and the catholic primate, dominick maguire, waited in his robes to conduct him to the royal chapel, where the _te deum_ was sung. on that day the green flag floated from the main tower of the castle, bearing the motto, 'now or never--now and for ever.' the followers of james, according to grattan, 'though papists, were not slaves. they wrung a constitution from king james before they accompanied him to the field.' a constitution wrung from such a man was not worth much. his parliament passed an act for establishing liberty of conscience, and ordering every man to pay tithes to his own clergy only, with some other measures of relief. but he began to play the despot very soon. the commons voted him the large subsidy of , l. he doubled the amount by his own mere motion. he established a bank, and by his own authority decreed a bank monopoly. he debased the coinage, and fixed the prices of merchandise by his own will. he appointed a provost and librarian in trinity college without the consent of the senate, and attempted to force fellows and scholars on the university contrary to the statutes. the events which followed are well known to all readers of english history. our concern is with their effects on the land question. one of the measures passed by this parliament was an act repealing the act of settlement. but, soon after the revolution, measures were taken to render that settlement firmer than ever. a commission was appointed to enquire into the forfeited estates; and the consequence was that , , acres were declared escheated to the crown. in king william, in his speech, read to the irish parliament, assured them that he was intent upon the firm settlement of ireland upon a protestant basis. he kept his word, for when he died there did not remain in the hands of catholics one-sixth of the land which their grandfathers held, even after the passing of the act of settlement. the acts passed for securing the protestant interest formed the series known as the penal code, which was in force for the whole of the eighteenth century. it answered its purpose effectually; it reduced the nation to a state of poverty, degradation, and slavishness of spirit unparalleled in the history of christendom, while it made the small dominant class a prodigy of political and religious tyranny. never was an aristocracy, as a body, more hardened in selfishness, more insolent in spirit; never was a church more negligent of duty, more intensely and ostentatiously secular. both church and state reeked with corruption. the plan adopted for degrading the catholics, and reducing all to one plebeian level, was most ingenious. the ingenuity indeed may be said to be satanic, for it debased its victims morally as well as socially and physically. it worked by means of treachery, covetousness, perfidy, and the perversion of all natural affections. the trail of the serpent was over the whole system. for example, when the last duke of ormond arrived as lord lieutenant in , the commons waited on him with a bill 'for discouraging the further growth of popery,' which became law, having met his decided approval. this act provided that if the son of a catholic became a protestant, the father should be incapable of selling or mortgaging his estate, or disposing of any portion of it by will. if a child ever so young professed to be a protestant, it was to be taken from its parents, and placed under the guardianship of the nearest protestant relation. the sixth clause renders papists incapable of purchasing any manors, tenements, hereditaments, or any rents or profits arising out of the same, or of holding any lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for any term exceeding thirty-one years. and with respect even to such limited leases, it further enacts, that if a papist should hold a farm producing a profit greater than _one-third of the amount of the rent_, his right to such should immediately cease, and pass over entirely to the first protestant who should discover the rate of profit. the seventh clause prohibits papists from succeeding to the properties or estates of their protestant relations. by the tenth clause, the estate of a papist, not having a protestant heir, is ordered to be gavelled, or divided in equal shares between _all_ his children. the sixteenth and twenty-fourth clauses impose the oath of abjuration, and the sacramental test, as a qualification for office, and for voting at elections. the twenty-third clause deprives the catholics of limerick and galway of the protection secured to them by the articles of the treaty of limerick. the twenty-fifth clause vests in the crown all advowsons possessed by papists. a further act was passed, in , imposing additional penalties. the first clause declares that no papist shall be capable of holding an annuity for life. the third provides, that the child of a papist, on conforming, shall at once receive an annuity from his father; and that the chancellor shall compel the father to discover, upon oath, the full value of his estate, real and personal, and thereupon make an order for the support of such conforming child or children, and for securing such a share of the property, after the father's death, as the court shall think fit. the fourteenth and fifteenth clauses secure jointures to popish wives who shall conform. the sixteenth prohibits a papist from teaching, even as assistant to a protestant master. the eighteenth gives a salary of l. per annum to popish priests who shall conform. the twentieth provides rewards for the discovery of popish prelates, priests, and teachers, according to the following whimsical scale:--for discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other person, exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction, l.; for discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular clergyman, not registered, l.; and for discovering each popish schoolmaster or usher, l. in judging the irish peasantry, we should try to estimate the effects of such a system on any people for more than a century. it will account for the farmer's habit of concealing his prosperity, and keeping up the appearance of poverty, even if he had not reason for it in the felonious spirit of appropriation still subsisting under legal sanction. we are too apt to place to the account of race or religion the results of malignant or blundering legislation. we are not without examples of such results in england itself. in the winter of - , a very startling state of things was presented. in a period of great general prosperity, that portion of england in which the poor laws had their most extensive operation, and in which by much the largest expenditure of poor-rates had been made, was the scene of daily riot and nightly incendiarism. there were ninety-three parishes in four counties, of which the population was , , and the poor-law expenditure , l., or s. d. per head; and there were eighty parishes in three other counties, the population of which was , , and the poor-law expenditure , l., or s. d. a head. in the counties in which the poor-law expenditure was large, the industry and skill of the labourers were passing away, the connection between the master and servant had become precarious, the unmarried were defrauded of their fair earnings, and riots and incendiarism prevailed. in the counties where the expenditure was comparatively small, there was scarcely any instance of disorder; mutual attachment existed between the workman and his employer; the intelligence, skill, and good conduct of the labourers were unimpaired, or increased. this striking social contrast was only a specimen of what prevailed throughout large districts, and generally throughout the south and north of england, and it proved that, either through the inherent vice of the system, or gross mal-administration in the southern counties, the poor-law had the most demoralising effect upon the working classes, while it was rapidly eating up the capital upon which the employment of labour depended. this fact was placed beyond question by a commission of enquiry, which was composed of individuals distinguished by their interest in the subject, and their intimate knowledge of its principles and details. its labours were continued incessantly for two years. witnesses most competent to give information were summoned from different parts of the country. the commissioners had before them documentary evidence of every kind calculated to throw light on the subject. they personally visited localities, and examined the actual operation of the system on the spot; and when they could not go themselves, they called to their aid assistant commissioners, some of whom extended their enquiries into scotland, guernsey, france, and flanders; while they also collected a vast mass of interesting evidence from our ambassadors and diplomatic agents in different countries of europe and america. it was upon the report of this commission of enquiry that the act was founded for the amendment and better administration of the laws relating to the poor in england and wales ( and william iv., cap. ). a more solid foundation for a legislative enactment could scarcely be found. the importance of the subject fully warranted all the expense and labour by which it was obtained. one of the most astounding facts established by the enquiry was the wide-spread demoralisation which had developed itself in certain districts. home had lost its sanctity. the ties that bind parents and children were loosened, and natural affection gave place to intense selfishness, which often manifested itself in the most brutal manner. workmen grew lazy and dishonest. young women lost the virtue which is not only the point of honour with their sex, but the chief support of all other virtues. not only women of the working classes, but in some cases even substantial farmers' daughters, and sometimes those who were themselves the actual owners of property, had their illegitimate children as charges on the parish, regularly deducting the cost of their maintenance from their poor-rate, neither they nor their relatives feeling that to do so was any disgrace. the system must have been fearfully vicious that produced such depravation of moral feeling, and such a shocking want of self-respect. dr. burn has given a graphic sketch of the duties of an overseer under the old poor-law system in england. 'his office is to keep an extraordinary watch to prevent people from coming to inhabit without certificates; to fly to the justices to remove them. not to let anyone have a farm of l. a year. to warn the parishioners, if they would have servants, to hire them by the month, the week, or the day, rather than by any way that can give them a settlement; or if they do hire them for a year, then to endeavour to pick a quarrel with them before the year's end, and so to get rid of them. to maintain their poor as cheaply as they possibly can, and not to lay out twopence in prospect of any future good, but only to serve the present necessity. to bargain with some sturdy person to take them by the lump, who yet is not intended to take them, but to hang over them _in terrorem_, if they shall complain to the justices for want of maintenance. to send them out into the country a begging. to bind out poor children apprentices, no matter to whom, or to what trade; but to take special care that the master live in another parish. to move heaven and earth if any dispute happen about a settlement; and, in that particular, to invert the general rule, and stick at no expense. to pull down cottages: _to drive out as many inhabitants, and admit as few, as they possibly can; that is, to depopulate the parish, in order to lessen the poor's-rate_. to be generous, indeed, sometimes, in giving a portion with the mother of a bastard child to the reputed father, on condition that he will marry her, or with a poor widow, _always provided that the husband_ be settled elsewhere; or if a poor man with a large family happen to be industrious, they will charitably assist him in taking a farm in some neighbouring parish, and give him l. to pay his first year's rent with, that they may thus for ever get rid of him and his progeny.' the effect of this system was actually to depopulate many parishes. the author of a pamphlet on the subject, mr. alcock, stated that the gentlemen were led by this system to adopt all sorts of expedients to hinder the poor from marrying, to discharge servants in their last quarter, to evict small tenants, and pull down cottages; so that several parishes were in a manner depopulated, while england complained of a want of useful hands for agriculture, manufactories, for the land and sea service. 'when the minister marries a couple,' he said, 'he rightly prays that they may be fruitful in the procreation of children; but most of the parishioners pray for the very contrary, and perhaps complain of him for marrying persons, that, should they have a family of children, might likewise become chargeable.' arthur young also described the operation of the law in his time, in clearing off the people, and causing universally 'an open war against cottages.' gentlemen bought them up whenever they had an opportunity, and immediately levelled them with the ground, lest they should become 'nests of beggars' brats.' the removal of a cottage often drove the industrious labourer from a parish where he could earn s. a week, to one where he could earn but s. as many as thirty or forty families were sent off by removals in one day. thus, as among the scotch labourers of the present day, marriage was discouraged; the peasantry were cleared off the land, and increasing immorality was the necessary consequence. there was another change in the old system, by which the interests of the influential classes were made to run in favour of the 'beggars' nests,' which were soon at a premium. the labourer was to be paid, not for the value of his labour, but according to the number of his family; the prices of provisions being fixed by authority, and the guardians making up the difference between what the wages would buy and what the family required. the allowance scales issued from time to time were framed on the principle that every labourer should have a gallon loaf of standard wheaten bread weekly for every member of his family, and one over. the effect of this was, that a man with six children, who got s. a week wages, required nine gallon loaves, or s. d. a week, so that he had a pension of s. d. over his wages. another man, with a wife and five children, so idle and disorderly that no one would employ him, was entitled to eight gallon loaves for their maintenance, so that he had s. a week to support him. the increase of allowance according to the number of children acted as a direct bounty upon marriage. the report of the committee of the house of commons on labourers' wages, printed in , describes the effect of this allowance system in paralysing the industry of the poor. 'it is obvious,' remarked the committee, 'that a disinclination to work must be the consequence of so vicious a system. he whose subsistence is secure without work, and who cannot obtain more than a mere sufficiency by the hardest work, will naturally be an idle and careless labourer. frequently the work done by four or five such labourers does not amount to what might easily be performed by a single labourer at task work. a surplus population is encouraged: men who receive but a small pittance know that they have only to marry and that pittance will be increased proportionally to the number of their children. when complaining of their allowance, they frequently say, "we will marry, and then you must maintain us." this system secures subsistence to all; to the idle as well as the industrious; to the profligate as well as the sober; and, as far as human interests are concerned, all inducements to obtain a good character are taken away. the effects have corresponded with the cause: able-bodied men are found slovenly at their work, and dissolute in their hours of relaxation; a father is negligent of his children, the children do not think it necessary to contribute to the support of their parents; the employer and employed are engaged in personal quarrels; and the pauper, always relieved, is always discontented. crime advances with increasing boldness; and the parts of the country where this system prevails are, in spite of our gaols and our laws, filled with poachers and thieves.' mr. hodges, chairman of the west kent quarter sessions, in his evidence before the emigration committee, said, 'formerly, working people usually stayed in service till they were twenty-five, thirty, and thirty-five years of age, before they married; whereas they now married frequently under age. formerly, these persons had saved l. and l. before they married, and they were never burdensome to the parish; now, they have not saved a shilling before their marriage, and become immediately burdensome.' the farmers were not so discontented with this allowance system as might be supposed, because a great part of the burden was cast upon other shoulders. the tax was laid indiscrimately upon all fixed property; so that the occupiers of villas, shopkeepers, merchants, and others who did not employ labourers, had to pay a portion of the wages for those that did. the farmers were in this way led to encourage a system which fraudently imposed a heavy burden upon others, and which, by degrading the labourers, and multiplying their numbers beyond the real demand for them, must, if allowed to run its full course, have ultimately overspread the whole country with the most abject poverty and wretchedness. there was another interest created which tended to increase the evil. in the counties of suffolk, sussex, kent, and generally through all the south of england, relief was given in the shape of house accommodation, or free dwellings for the poor. the parish officers were in the habit of paying the rent of the cottages; the rent was therefore high and sure, and consequently persons who had small pieces of ground were induced to cover them with those buildings. on this subject mr. hodges, the gentleman already referred to, remarks: 'i cannot forbear urging again that any measure having for its object the relief of the parishes from their over population, must of necessity become perfectly useless, unless the act of parliament contains some regulations with respect to the erecting and maintaining of cottages. i am quite satisfied that the erecting of cottages has been a most serious evil throughout the country. the getting of the cottage tempts young people of seventeen and eighteen years of age, and even younger, to marry. it is notorious that almost numberless cottages have been built by persons speculating on the parish rates for their rents.' the evils of this system had reached their height in the years - . that was a time when the public mind was bent upon reforms of all sorts, without waiting for the admission from the tories that the grievances of which the nation complained were 'proved abuses.' the reformers were determined no longer to tolerate the state of things, in which the discontent of the labouring classes was proportioned to the money disbursed in poor-rates, or in voluntary charities; in which the young were trained in idleness, ignorance, and vice--the able-bodied maintained in sluggish and sensual indolence--the aged and more respectable exposed to all the misery incident to dwelling in such society as that of a large workhouse without discipline or classification--the whole body of inmates subsisting on food far exceeding both in kind and amount, not merely the diet of the independent labourer, but that of the majority of the persons who contributed to their support. the farmer paid s. in the pound in poor-rates, and was in addition compelled to employ supernumerary labourers not required on his farm, at a cost of from l. to l. a year; the labourer had no need to hasten himself to seek work, or to please his master, or to put a restraint upon his temper, having all the slave's security for support, without the slave's liability to punishment. the parish paid parents for nursing their little children, and children for supporting their aged parents, thereby destroying in both parties all feelings of natural affection and all sense of christian duty. i hope i shall be excused in giving, from a former work of my own, these home illustrations to prove that bad laws can degrade and demoralize a people in a comparatively short time, in spite of race and creed and public opinion; and that, where class interests are involved, the most sacred rights of humanity are trampled in the mire of corruption. even now the pauperism resulting of necessity from the large-farm system is degrading the english people, and threatening to rot away the foundations of society. on this subject i am glad to find a complete corroboration of my own conclusions in a work by one of the ablest and most enlightened christian ministers in england, the rev. dr. rigg. he says:-- 'notwithstanding a basis of manly, honest, and often generous qualities, the common character of all the uneducated and unelevated classes of the english labouring population includes, as marked and obvious features, improvidence, distrust of their superiors, discontent at their social position, and a predominant passion for gross animal gratification. of this general character we regard the rude, heavy, unhopeful english peasant, who knows no indulgence or relaxation but that of the ale-house, and lives equally without content and without ambition, as affording the fundamental type, which, like all other things english, possesses a marked individuality. it differs decidedly from the irish type of peasant degradation. something of this may be due to the effect of race. the kelt and the saxon may be expected to differ. yet we think but little stress is to be laid upon this. there is, probably, much more keltic blood in the southern and western counties of england, and, also, more saxon blood in some of the southern and even western parts of ireland, than has been generally supposed. we apprehend that a saxon population, under the same conditions as the southern and western irish peasantry, would have grown up into very much the same sort of people as the irish have been; while a keltic population, exposed to the same influences, through successive generations, as the midland and southern peasantry of england, would not have been essentially different at the present day from the actual cultivators of the soil. 'the irish peasant is poorer and yet more reckless than the englishman; but he is not so sullen or so spiritless. his body is not so muscular or so strongly-set as that of the anglo-saxon husbandman, on whose frame the hard and unintermitted toil of thirty generations has stamped its unmistakable impress, and, correspondently, he is a less persevering and less vigorous labourer; but, as a general rule, his stature is taller and his step far more free and elastic than that of the sturdy but slow and stunted labourer of our southern counties. there are wild mountainous districts of the west, indeed, in which the lowest type of the irish peasantry is found, that must be taken as exceptions to our general statement; and as many from those regions cross the channel to tramp through england in the complex character of mendicant labourers, no doubt some have received from them an impression as to the irish peasantry very different from what our observations are intended to convey. but no one can have travelled through the south of ireland without having noticed what we state. the tipperary and kilkenny peasantry are proverbially tall; connemara has been famed for its "giants," and many of both sexes throughout the south, are, spite of their rags, fine figures, and graceful in their movements. while looking at them, we have ceased to wonder at what has been regarded as no better than the arch-agitator's blarney, when he spoke of the irish as the "finest pisantry in the world;" and we have even felt saddened as we mentally contrasted with what we saw before us the bearing and appearance of our own southern labourers. for the tattered irish peasant, living in a mud hovel, is, after all, a gentleman in his bearing; whereas there is generally either a cringing servility or a sullen doggedness in the demeanour of the south saxon labourer. the irishman is, besides, far more intelligent and ready-witted than the saxon husbandman. the fact is that the irishman, if underfed, has not been overworked. his life has not been one of unceasing and oppressive labour. nor has his condition been one of perpetual servitude. with all his poverty, he has been, to a considerable extent, his own master. half-starved, or satisfying his appetite on light and innutritious fare,--far worse housed and clad than the poorest english labourer, often, indeed, almost half-naked,--oppressed by middle-men, exactors of rack-rent; with all this the irish cottier has been, from father to son, and from generation to generation, _a tenant, and not merely a day labourer_.'[ ] [footnote : 'essays for the times, on ecclesiastical and social subjects,' by james h. rigg, d.d. london, .] chapter xiv. ulster in the eighteenth century. let us, then, endeavour to get rid of the pernicious delusions about race and religion in dealing with this irish land question. identity of race and substantial agreement in religion did not prevent the ulster landlords from uprooting their tenants when they fancied it was their interest to banish them--to substitute grazing for tillage, and cattle for a most industrious and orderly peasantry. the letters of primate boulter contain much valuable information on the state of ulster in the last century, and furnish apt illustrations of the land question, which, i fancy, will be new and startling to many readers. boulter was lord primate of ireland from to . he was thirteen times one of the lords justices. as an englishman and a good churchman, he took care of the english interests and of the establishment. the letters were written in confidence to sir robert walpole and other ministers of state, and were evidently not intended for publication. an address 'to the reader' from some friend, states truly that they give among other things an impartial account of 'the distressed state of the kingdom for want of _tillage_, the vast sums of money sent out of the nation for corn, flour, &c., the dismal calamities thereon, the want of trade and the regulation of the english and other coins, to the very great distress of all the manufacturers,' &c. they show that he was a man of sound judgment, public-spirited, and very moderate and impartial for the times in which he lived. his evidence with regard to the relations of landlord and tenant in ulster is exceedingly valuable at the present moment. lord dufferin could not have read the letters when he wrote his book; otherwise i should think his apology for the landlords of the last century would have been considerably modified. primate boulter repeatedly complained to walpole, the duke of newcastle, and other ministers, that the ulster farmers were deserting the country in large numbers, emigrating to the united states, then british colonies, to the west indies, or to any country where they hoped to get the means of living, in many cases binding themselves to work for a number of years _as slaves_ in payment of their passage out. the desire to quit the country of their birth is described by the primate as a mania. writing to the archbishop of canterbury in he says:--'we are under great trouble here about a frenzy that has taken hold of very great numbers to leave this country for the west indies, and we are endeavouring to learn what may be the reasons of it, and the proper remedies.' two or three weeks later he reported to the duke of newcastle that for several years past some agents from the colonies in america, and several masters of ships, had gone about the country 'and deluded the people with stories of great plenty and estates to be had for going for in those parts of the world.' during the previous summer more than , men, women, and children had been shipped for the west indies. of these, not more than one in ten were men of substance. the rest hired themselves for their passage, or contracted with masters of ships for four years' servitude, 'selling themselves as servants for their subsistence.' the whole north was in a ferment, people every day engaging one another to go next year to the west indies. 'the humour,' says the primate, 'has spread like a contagious distemper, and the people will hardly hear anybody that tries to cure them of their madness. the worst is that it affects only _protestants_, and reigns chiefly in the north, which is the seat of our linen manufacture.' as the protestant people, the descendants of the english and scotch who had settled in the country in the full assurance that they were building homes for their posterity, were thus deserting those homes in such multitudes, their pastors sent a memorial to the lord lieutenant, setting forth the grievances which they believed to be the cause of the desertion. on this memorial the primate wrote comments to the english government, and, in doing so, he stated some astounding facts as to the treatment of the people by their landlords. he was a cautious man, thoroughly acquainted with the facts, and writing under a sense of great responsibility. in order to understand some of those facts, we should bear in mind that the landlords had laid down large portions of their estates in pasture, to avoid the payment of tithes, and that this burden was thrown entirely upon the tenants who tilled the land. now, let my readers mark what the primate states as to their condition. he says:--'if a landlord takes too great a portion of the profits of a farm for his share by way of rent (as the tithe will light on the tenant's share), the tenant will be impoverished; but then it is not the tithe, but the increased rent that undoes the farmer. and, indeed, in this country, where i fear the tenant hardly ever has more than one-third of the profits he makes of his farm for his share, and too often but a _fourth_, or, perhaps, a _fifth part_, as the tenant's share is charged with the tithe, his case is, no doubt, hard, but it is plain from what side the hardship arises.' what the gentlemen wanted to be at, according to the primate, was, that they might go on raising their rents, and that the clergy should receive their old payments. he admits, however, that the tenants were sometimes cited to the ecclesiastical courts, and if they failed to appear there, they stood excommunicated; and he adds, 'possibly when a writ _de excommunicato capiendo_ is taken out, and they find they have l. or l. to pay, _they run away_, for the greatest part of the occupiers of the land here are so poor, that an extraordinary stroke of l. or l. falling on them is certain ruin to them.' he further states that, to his own knowledge, many of the clergy had chosen rather to lose their 'small dues' than to be at a certain great expense in getting them, 'and at an uncertainty whether the farmer would not at last _run away without paying anything_.' such was the condition of the protestants of ulster during the era of the penal code; and it is a curious fact that it was the presbyterians and not the catholics that were forced by the exactions of the protestant landlords and the clergy to run away from the country which their forefathers had been brought over to civilize. but there was another fact connected with the condition of ulster which i dare say will be almost incredible to many readers. the tenantry, so cruelly rack-rented and impoverished, were reduced by two or three bad seasons to a state bordering upon famine. there was little or no corn in the province. the primate set on foot a subscription in dublin, to which he himself contributed very liberally. the object was to buy food to supply the necessities of the north, and to put a stop to 'the great desertion' they had been threatened with. he hoped that the landlords would 'do _their_ part by remitting some arrears, or making some abatement of their rents.' as many of the tenants had eaten the oats they should have sowed their lands with, he expected the landlords would have the good sense to furnish them with seed; if not, a great deal of land would lie waste that year. and where were the provisions got? partly in munster, where corn was very cheap and abundant. but the people of cork, limerick, waterford, and clonmel objected to have their provisions sent away, although they were in some places 'as cheap again as in the north; but where dearest, at least one-third part cheaper.' riotous mobs broke open the store-houses and cellars, setting what price they pleased upon the provisions. and, what between those riots and the prevalence of easterly winds, three weeks elapsed before the , l. worth of oats, oatmeal, and potatoes could be got down to relieve the famishing people of the north, which then seemed black enough, even to its own inhabitants. hence the humane primate was obliged to write: 'the humour of going to america still continues, and the scarcity of provisions certainly makes many quit us. there are now seven ships at belfast that are carrying off , passengers thither, and if we knew how to stop them, as most of them can neither get victuals nor work at home, it would be cruel to do it.' the presbyterian clergy suffered greatly from the impoverishment of their people. several of them who had been receiving a stipend of l. a year, had their incomes reduced to less than l. in their distress they appealed to the primate, and, staunch churchman as he was, they found in him a kind and earnest advocate. writing to sir robert walpole, on march , , he pleaded for the restoration of l. a year, which had been given to the non-conforming clergy of ireland from the privy purse, in addition to the , l. royal bounty, which, it appears, had been suspended for two years, owing to the death of the late king. 'they are sensible,' said his grace, 'there is nothing due to them, nor do they make any such claim; but as the calamities of this kingdom are at present very great, and by the desertion of many of their people to america, and the poverty of the greatest part of the rest, their contributions, particularly in the north, are very much fallen off, it would be a great instance of his majesty's goodness if he would consider their present distress.' in our own days a presbyterian minister would be considered to deserve well of his country if he emigrated to america, and took with him as many of the people as he could induce to forsake their native land. but what was the great plea which primate boulter urged on the english minister on behalf of the presbyterian clergy of his day? it was, that they had exerted their influence to prevent emigration. 'it is,' he said, 'but doing them justice to affirm that they are very well affected to his majesty and his royal family, and by the best enquiries i could make, do their best endeavours to keep their congregations from deserting the country, not more than one or two of the younger ministers having anyways encouraged the humour now prevailing here. and his majesty's goodness in giving them some extraordinary relief on this occasion of their present great distress would undoubtedly make them _more active to retain their people here_. i cannot help mentioning on this occasion that, what with scarceness of corn in the north, _and the loss of all credit there_, and by the numbers that go, or talk of going, to america, and with the disturbances in the south, this kingdom is at present in a deplorable condition.' in a statement previously made to the bishop of london, the irish primate earnestly solicited his correspondent to use his influence to prevent the irish landlords from passing a law to strip the established clergy of their rights with respect to the tithe of agistment. they had entered into a general combination, and formed a stock purse to resist the payment of tithe, except by the poor tenants who tilled the soil, a remarkable contrast to the zeal of the landlords of our own time in defending church property against 'spoliation' by the imperial legislature, and to the liberality with which many of them are now contributing to the sustentation fund. how shall we account for the change? is it that the landlords of the present day are more righteous than their grandfathers? or is it that the same principle of self-interest which led the proprietors of past times to grind the tenantry and rob the church, now operates in forms more consistent with piety and humanity, and by its subtle influence illustrates the maxim of the poet-- self-love and social is the same. however that may be, the primate contented himself in this letter with a defence of the church, in which he admitted matters of real grievance, merely alluding to other grievances, 'such as raising the rents unreasonably, the oppression by justices of the peace, seneschals, and other officers in the country.' from the pictures of the times he presents we should not be surprised at his statement to the duke of newcastle, that the people who went to america made great complaints of the oppressions they suffered, and said that those oppressions were one reason of their going. when he went on his visitation, in , he 'met all the roads full of whole families that had left their homes to beg abroad,' having consumed their stock of potatoes two months before the usual time. during the previous year many hundreds had perished of famine. what was the cause of this misery, this desolating process going on over the plains of ulster? the archbishop accounts for it by stating that many persons had let large tracts of land, from , to , acres, which were stocked with cattle, and had no other inhabitants on their land than so many cottiers as were necessary to look after their sheep and black cattle, '_so that, in some of the finest counties, in many places there is neither house nor cornfield to be seen in ten or fifteen miles' travelling_, and daily in some counties many gentlemen, as their leases fall into their hands, tie up their tenants from tillage; and this is one of the main causes why so many venture to go into foreign service at the hazard of their lives if taken, because they cannot get land to till at home.' my readers should remember that the industrious, law-abiding, bible-loving, god-fearing people, who were thus driven by oppression from the fair fields of ulster, which they had cultivated, and the dwellings which they had erected, to make way for sheep and cattle--because it was supposed by the landlords that sheep and cattle paid better--were the descendants of british settlers who came to the country under a royal guarantee _of freeholds and permanent tenures_. let them picture to their minds this fine race of honest, godly people, rack-rented, crushed, evicted, heart-broken--men, women, and children--protestants, saxons, cast out to perish as the refuse of the earth, by a set of landed proprietors of their own race and creed; and learn from this most instructive fact that, if any body of men has the power of making laws to promote its own interest, no instincts of humanity, no dictates of religion, no restraints of conscience can be relied upon to keep them from acting with ruthless barbarity, and doing more to ruin their country than a foreign invader could accomplish by letting loose upon it his brutal soldiers. how much more earnestly would boulter have pleaded with the prime minister of england on behalf of the wretched people of ulster if he could have foreseen that ere long those presbyterian emigrants, with the sense of injustice and cruel wrong burning in their hearts, would be found fighting under the banner of american independence--the bravest and fiercest soldiers of freedom which the british troops encountered in the american war. history is continually repeating itself, yet how vainly are its lessons taught! the same legal power of extermination is still possessed by the irish landlords after sixty-nine years of imperial legislation. our hardy, industrious people, naturally as well disposed to royalty as any people in the world, are still crowding emigrant ships in all our ports, deserting their country with the same bitter feelings that animated the ulster men a century ago, hating our government with a mortal hatred, and ready to fight against it under a foreign flag! we have no primate boulter now in the protestant hierarchy to plead the cause of an unprotected tenantry; but we have the press, which can concentrate upon the subject the irresistible force of public opinion. as a churchman, primate boulter naturally regarded the land question in its bearings on the interests of the establishment. writing to sir robert walpole in he said that he had in vain represented to the landlords that, by destroying the tithe of agistment, they naturally discouraged tillage, lessened the number of people, and raised the price of provisions. by running into cattle they caused the young men to enlist in foreign service for bread, there being no employment for them at home, 'where two or three hands can look after some hundreds of acres stocked with cattle.' and by this means, said the primate, 'a great part of our churches are neglected; in many places five, six, or seven parishes bestowed on one incumbent, who, perhaps, with all his tithes, scarce gets l. a year.' but there was at that time a member of the irish house of commons who was capable of taking a more enlarged view of the irish question. this was mr. arthur dobbs, who belonged to an old and honourable ulster family--the author of a book on the 'north-west passage to india,' and of a very valuable work on the 'trade of great britain and ireland.' he was intimately acquainted with the working of the irish land system, for he had been many years agent of the hertfort estate, one of the largest in ireland. there is among boulter's letters an introduction of mr. dobbs to sir robert walpole, recommending him as a person of good sense, who had applied himself to the improvement of trade, and to the making of our colonies in america of more advantage than they had hitherto been. he was afterwards made governor of north carolina. i have mentioned these facts in the hope of securing the attention of landlords and statesmen to the following passage from his book accounting for the deplorable condition of the province of ulster at that time, and the emigration of its industrious and wealth-producing inhabitants. in my humble opinion it furnishes irresistible arguments in favour of a measure which should settle the irish land question in such a manner that it would speak to the people of ireland in the words of holy writ: 'and they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. they shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat.' mr. dobbs says:-- 'how can a tenant improve his land when he is convinced that, after all his care and toil, his improvements will be overrated, and he will be obliged to shift for himself? let us place ourselves in his situation and see if we should think it reasonable to improve for another, if those improvements would be the very cause of our being removed from the enjoyment of them. i believe we should not. industry and improvements go very heavily on when we think we are not to have the property in either. what can be expected, then, from covenants to improve and plant, when the person to do it knows he is to have _no property in them_? there will be no concern or care taken to preserve them, and they will run to ruin as fast as made or planted. what was it induced so many of the commonalty lately to go to america but high rents, bad seasons, and want of good tenures, or a permanent property in their land? this kept them poor and low, and they scarce had sufficient credit to procure necessaries to subsist or till their ground. they never had anything to store, all was from hand to mouth; so one or two bad crops broke them. others found their stock dwindling and decaying visibly, and so removed before all was gone, while they had as much left as would pay their passage, and had little more than what would carry them to the american shore. 'this, it may be allowed, was the occasion of the poor farmers going who had their rents lately raised. but it may be objected that was not the reason why rich farmers went, and those who had several years in beneficial leases still unexpired, who sold their bargains and removed with their effects. but it is plain they all went for the same reason; for these last, from _daily examples before them_, saw the present occupiers dispossessed of their lands at the expiration of their leases, and no preference given to them; so they expected it would soon be their own case, to avoid which, and make the most of the years still unexpired, they sold, and carried their assets with them to procure a settlement in a country where they had reason to expect a permanent property.' it is a curious fact that sentiments very similar were published by one of cromwell's officers about a century before. the plea which he put forth for the irish tenant in the dedication of his work on ireland to the protector, has been repeated ever since by the tenants, but repeated in vain: captain bligh, the officer alluded to, said: 'the first prejudice is, that if a tenant be at ever so great pains or cost for the improvement of his land, he doth thereby but occasion a greater rack-rent upon himself, or else invests his landlord with his cost and labour _gratis_, or at least lies at his landlord's mercy for requital; which occasions a neglect of all good husbandry, to his own, the land, the landlord, and the commonwealth's suffering.' now, this, i humbly conceive, might be removed, if there were a law enacted, by which every landlord should be obliged either to give him reasonable allowance for his clear improvement, or else suffer him _or his_ to enjoy it so much longer or till he hath had a proportionable requital.' but although primate boulter protested against the conduct of the landlords--all episcopalians--who were ruining the church as well as the country, the established clergy, as a body, were always on the side of the oppressors. the test act placed the presbyterians, like the papists, in the position of an inferior race. 'in the city of londonderry alone, which presbyterian valour had defended, ten out of twelve aldermen, and twenty out of twenty-four burgesses, were thrust out of the corporation by that act, which placed an odious mark of infamy upon at least one-half the inhabitants of the kingdom.' presbyterians could not legally keep a common school. the _edinburgh review_ says: 'all the settlements, from first to last, had the effect of making the cause of the church and the cause of the landlords really one. during the worst days of landlord oppression it never identified itself with the interests of the people, but uniformly sustained the power and privileges of the landlords.' it was vain to expect justice from the irish parliament. the people of ireland never were governed exclusively, or at all, by her own sovereign, her own lords, and her own commons. ireland was 'in the custody of england,' just as much before the union as during the last sixty-seven years. even during the few brief years of her spasmodic 'independence,' the mass of the nation formed no part of the 'commons of ireland.' it was still, as it always had been, a sham parliament--a body representing the colonial aristocracy--acting as undertakers for the government of england, for whose interest exclusively this island was to be ruled. provided this result was secured, it did not matter much, at the other side of the channel, how the irish people were treated. indeed, they were not recognised as the people of ireland, or any part thereof. even philosophic liberals, like lord charlemont, were shocked at the idea of a papist getting into the irish house of commons; and the volunteer system was shattered by this insane animosity of the ruling race against the subject nation. the antipathy was as strong as the antipathy between the whites and the negroes in the west indies and the united states. hence the remorseless spirit in which atrocities were perpetrated in . mr. daunt has shown that a large proportion of the irish house of lords consisted of men who were english to all intents and purposes--many of them by birth, and many by residence, and, no doubt, they always came over with reluctance to what lord chancellor clare called 'our damnable country.' it may be that in some years after the abolition of the establishment--after some experience of the _régime_ of religious equality--the two races in this island will learn to act together so harmoniously as to give a fair promise that they could be safely trusted with self-legislation. but the '_self_' must be one body animated by one spirit; not two bodies, chained together, irritated by the contact, fiercely struggling against one another, eternally reproaching one another about the mutual wrongs of the past, and not unfrequently coming to blows, like implacable duellists shut up in a small room, each determined to kill or be killed. if england were to let go her hold even now, something like this would be the irish 'situation.' the abiding force of this antipathy, in the full light of christianity, is awful. in his 'life, letters, and speeches of lord plunket,' the hon. david plunket states that, when his grandfather entered the irish parliament, 'the english government had nearly abandoned the _sham_ of treating the irish parliament as an independent legislature; the treasury benches were filled with placemen and pensioners. all efforts tending to reform of parliament or concession to the catholics had been given up as useless. grattan and some of his immediate followers had seceded from an assembly too degraded to appreciate their motives, or to be influenced by their example; and whatever remained of independence in the house of commons ministers still laboured to bring under their control. scarcely thirty votes appeared in opposition on the most important divisions, while government could at any time readily whip a majority of .' according to a government return made in , by pitt's direction, nomination seats were divided between some proprietors. lord shannon returned no less than members, and the great family of ponsonby returned ; lord hillsborough, , the duke of leinster, , and the castle itself . eighty-six seats were _let out_ by the owners, in consideration of titles, offices, and pensions. no less than seats were occupied by placemen, by gentlemen who had promises of pensions, by gentlemen who stood out for higher prices from government. the regular opposition appears to have been limited to votes, of which belonged to whig nominees, and the rest to the popular party. it is, then, easy to account for the state of public feeling which mr. plunket, with these facts and figures before him, so well describes. he says truly that if it were possible to appeal to the country under these circumstances, the people would not have responded. 'gloomy and desperate, they had lost all confidence in their parliament, and looked to other quarters for deliverance from the _intolerable tyranny_ under which they suffered. there can be no doubt that this anarchy and disgrace were in a great degree the result of a misgovernment, ancient and recent, _which seems to have been always adopted with a view to bring out strongly the worst elements of the irish character_; but it was at that time said, and no doubt believed by the opposition, that the ministry of the day had deliberately planned and accomplished the disorganisation of the irish people and their parliament, in order to enable them to carry out their favourite project of the union.' mr. plunket, after describing the classes of 'representatives' that his grandfather had to deal with in the irish house of commons, further says: 'it is true that this corrupt assembly cannot fairly be looked upon as the mirror of national character and national honour. the members of the majority who voted for the union _were not_ the representatives of the people, _but the hired servants of the minister, for the parliament had been packed for the purpose_.' towards the close of the century, however, the french revolution, the american war, and the volunteer movement, had begun to cause some faint stirring of national life in the inert mass of the roman catholic population, which the penal code had '_dis-boned_.' up to this time they were not even thought of in the calculations of politicians. according to dean swift, papists counted no more in politics than the women and children. macaulay uses a still more contemptuous comparison to express the estimate in which they were held in those times, saying, that their lords and masters would as soon have consulted their poultry and swine on any political question. nevertheless, during the excitement of the volunteer movement, some of the poor celts began to raise their heads, and presumed to put the question to the most liberal portion of the ruling race--'are we not men? have not we also some rights?' the appeal was responded to in the irish parliament, and in the elective franchise was conceded to roman catholics. it was the first concession, and the least that could be granted. but the bare proposal excited the utmost indignation in the tory party, and especially in the dublin corporation, where the orange spirit was rampant. that body adopted an address to the protestants of ireland, which bears a remarkable resemblance in its spirit and style to addresses lately issued by protestant defence associations. both speak in the kindest terms of their roman catholic fellow-subjects, disclaim all intention of depriving them of any advantages they enjoy under our glorious constitution, declaring that their objects are purely _defensive_, and that they want merely to guard that constitution against the aggressions of the papacy quite as much for the sake of roman catholics as for the sake of protestants. 'countrymen and friends,' said the dublin tories, seventy-five years ago, 'the firm and manly support which we received from you when we stood forward in defence of the protestant ascendancy, deserves our warmest thanks. we hoped that the sense of the protestants of ireland, declared upon that occasion, would have convinced our roman catholic fellow-subjects that the pursuit of political power was for them a vain pursuit; for, though the liberal and enlightened mind of the protestant receives pleasure at seeing the catholic exercise his religion with freedom, enjoy his property in security, and possess the highest degree of personal liberty, yet, experience has taught us that, without the ruin of the protestant establishment, the catholic cannot be allowed the smallest influence in the state.' those men were as thoroughly convinced as their descendants, who protest against concession to-day, that all our protestant institutions would go to perdition, if papists, although then mere serfs, were allowed to vote for members of parliament. they were equally puzzled to know why roman catholics were discontented, or what more their masters could reasonably do for them to add to the enviable happiness of their lot. 'we entreat you,' the dublin corporation said to their protestant brethren throughout the country--'we entreat you to join with us in using every honest means of persuading the roman catholics to rest content with the most perfect toleration of their religion, the fullest security of their property, and the most complete personal liberty; but, by no means, now or hereafter, to attempt any interference in the government of the kingdom, as such interference would be incompatible with the protestant ascendancy, which we have resolved with our lives and fortunes to maintain.' lest any doubt should exist as to what they meant by 'protestant ascendancy,' they expressly defined it. they resolved that it consisted in a protestant king of ireland; a protestant parliament, protestant electors and government; protestant benches of justice; a protestant hierarchy; the army and the revenue, through all their branches and details, protestant; and this system supported by a connection with the protestant realm of britain. the power of the political franchise to elevate a degraded people, to convert slaves into men, is exhibited before the eyes of the present generation in the southern states of america; even where differences of race and colour are most marked, and where the strongest natural antipathies are to be overcome. we may judge from this what must have been the effect of this concession on the irish celts. the forty-shilling freeholders very soon became objects of consideration with their landlords, who were anxious to extend their political influence in their respective counties, for the representation of which the great proprietors had many a fierce contest. the abolition of this franchise by the emancipation act made that measure a grievance instead of a relief to the peasantry, for the landlords were now as anxious to get rid of the small holders as they had been to increase them so long as they served their political purpose. it was one of the great drawbacks which deprived emancipation of the healing effect it would otherwise have produced. if--as pitt intended--that measure had formed part of the union arrangements; if the forty-shilling freeholders had been spared, and the priesthood had been endowed, we should never have had an agitation for repeal or even for the separation of the church from the state. pitt's plan of the union included the abolition of protestant ascendancy. edmund burke, in one of his letters on ireland, said: 'a word has been lately struck in the mint of the castle of dublin. thence it was conveyed to the tholsel, or city hall, where having passed the touch of the corporation, so respectably stamped and vouched, it soon became current in parliament, and was carried back by the speaker of the house of commons, in great pomp, as an offering of homage from whence it came. that word is ascendancy. the word is not absolutely new.' he then gives its various meanings, and first shows what it does _not_ signify in the new sense. not influence obtained by love or reverence, or by superior management and dexterity; not an authority derived from wisdom or virtue, promoting the happiness and freedom of the roman catholic people; not by flattering them, or by a skilful adaptation to their humours and passions. it means nothing of all these. burke then shows what it does mean. 'new ascendancy is old mastership. it is neither more nor less than the resolution of one sect of people in ireland to consider themselves the sole citizens in the commonwealth, and to keep a dominion over the rest, by reducing them to absolute slavery under a military power; and thus fortified in their power, to divide the public estate, which is the result of general contribution, as a military booty, solely among themselves. this ascendancy, by being a _protestant_ ascendancy, does not better it, from a combination of a note or two more in this anti-harmonic scale. by the use that is frequently made of the term, and the policy that is grafted on it, the name protestant becomes nothing more or better than the name of a persecuting faction, with a relation of some sort of theological hostility to others, but without any sort of ascertained tenets of its own, upon the ground of which it persecutes other men; for the patrons of this protestant ascendancy neither do nor can, by anything positive, define or describe what they mean by the word protestant.... the whole is nothing but pure and perfect malice. it is indeed a perfection in that kind, belonging to beings of a higher order than man, and to them we ought to leave it.... let three millions of people but abandon all that they and their ancestors have been taught to believe sacred, and to forswear it publicly in terms the most degrading, and nothing more is required of them.... the word _protestant_ is the charm that locks up in a dungeon of servitude three millions of people. every thoughtful reader of the debates in parliament on the state of ireland, must have been struck with the difference of opinion between the liberals and the conservatives, as to the facts of the case. a still more violent difference was presented in the british parliament, in the year , when there were great debates in both houses on the subject, and when the facts were still more glaring, one of them being that the reign of terror established by the irish government prevented the press from reporting the maddening atrocities which the ruling faction was daily perpetrating against the mass of the king's subjects. the debate arose in the lords, on a motion by lord moira for an address to the king on the state of ireland. he described the horrors of which he had been recently a witness, but softened the recital, lest he should shock his hearers too much. orange loyalty was then licensed and let loose upon the defenceless roman catholic population in ulster. lord gosford's description of the scenes of desolation in his own county, armagh, is well known. he did what he could to prevent the burning of roman catholic houses, and the personal injuries inflicted upon the unfortunate inhabitants, while their orange neighbours chased them out of the country, giving them cromwell's alternative. but his mercy injured his reputation, and he felt obliged to protest solemnly that he was a loyal man, and that he wished to uphold protestant ascendancy in ireland as much as any of his accusers. he only asked that the poor catholic should be allowed to live in peace. in the debate referred to, lord moira declared that ninety-one householders had been banished from one of his own estates; and many of them wounded in their persons. the discontent, he said, was not confined to one sect. he ascribed the state of things to the recall of lord fitzwilliam, which crushed the hopes of the catholics, and gave unbounded licence to the yeomanry, who were empowered to act with a vigour beyond the law; to turn out, banish, or kill the king's subjects, on mere suspicion, often prompted by private malice, and having no better warrant than anonymous information. but for all this the irish parliament and the new reactionary viceroy freely granted acts of indemnity. according to earl fitzwilliam 'whole parishes, baronies, and even counties, were declared to be out of the king's peace.' mr. fox brought forward a similar motion in the house of commons, pleading the cause of justice and humanity in a noble speech, and boldly affirming principles of government for ireland, which mr. gladstone, mr. chichester fortescue, and mr. bright are now endeavouring to have carried out by the imperial parliament after seventy years of concession, extorted by three rebellions. mr. fox expressed his abhorrence of 'the truly diabolical maxim' of '_divide el impera_,' by which the government of ireland was conducted. he hoped that the discontent which threatened the separation of ireland would be dissipated without the necessity of war. 'but now,' he said, 'the extremity of rigour has been tried--the severity of despotism has been let loose--and the government is driven to that state when the laws are not to be put into execution, but to be superseded.' the motion was seconded by sir francis burdett, who said: 'whoever has seen ireland, has seen a country where the fields are desolated, and the prisons overflowing with the victims of oppression--has seen the shocking contrast between a profligate, extravagant government, and an enslaved and impoverished people.' the motion was rejected by a majority of . lord moira made a last and an almost despairing appeal on november , in the same year. in his speech he said: 'i have seen in that country a marked distinction made between the english and the irish. i have seen troops that have been sent full of this prejudice, that every inhabitant of that kingdom is a rebel to the british government. i have seen the most wanton insults practised upon men of all ranks and conditions. i have seen the most grievous oppression exercised, in consequence of a presumption that the person who was the unfortunate object of such oppression was in hostility to the government; and yet that has been done in a part of the country as quiet and as free from disturbance as the city of london. he who states these things should be prepared with proofs. i am prepared with them.' he then went into a number of horrifying details, and concluded as follows: 'you say that the irish are insensible to the benefits of the british constitution, and you withhold all these benefits from them. you goad them with harsh and cruel punishments, and a general infliction of insult is thrown upon the kingdom. i have seen, my lords, a conquered country held by military force; _but never did i see in any conquered country such a tone of insult as has been adopted by great britain towards ireland_. i have made a last effort. i acquit my conscience; i have done my duty.' in subsequent debates, the following sentiments were uttered by the leading whig statesmen of the day: 'the treatment of ireland,' said mr. fox, 'was such as to harrow up the soul. it was shocking to think that a nation of brothers was thus to be trampled on like the most remote colony of conquered strangers.... the irish people have been scourged by the iron hand of oppression, and subjected to the horrors of military execution, and are now in a situation too dreadful for the mind to contemplate without dismay. after the inhuman dragooning and horrible executions, the recital of which makes the blood run cold--after so much military cruelty, not in one, but in almost every part of the country--is it possible for this administration to procure unanimity in ireland?' on march , , the duke of bedford moved an address to the king, asking him to change his ministers, and alluding to the state of ireland, as it was before the breaking out of the rebellion. he said: 'were i to enter into a detail of the atrocities which have been committed in ireland, the picture would appal the stoutest heart. it could be proved that the most shocking cruelties have been perpetrated; but what could be expected if men kept in strict discipline were all at once allowed to give loose to their fury and their passions?' lord holland was persuaded that his majesty's ministers could not tranquillise ireland even by conciliation. 'how could they conciliate whose concessions are always known to be the concessions of weakness and of fear, and who never granted to the irish--the most generous people upon earth,--anything without a struggle or resistance?' lord william russell, in june following, said: 'a man's loyalty was to be estimated by the desire he testified to imbrue his hands in his brother's blood.' sheridan asked: 'after being betrayed, duped, insulted--disappointed in their dearest hopes, and again thrown into the hands of the rulers they detested and despised, was it impossible they should feel emotions of indignation? the struggle is not one of partial disaffection, but it is a contest between the people and the government.' mr. tierney said: 'it was certain the people were in arms against the government, nor was it easy to conceive how--having been scourged, burnt, and massacred--they could have any other feeling than aversion to that government.' every motion on the subject in both houses was rejected by overwhelming majorities. so little impression did the reports of the appalling facts which were of daily occurrence in ireland make upon that tory government, that the speeches of ministers read exactly like the speeches of mr. disraeli, mr. hardy, lord mayo, and mr. warren, in the past session. lord grenville, the home secretary, professed the most profound respect for the independence of the irish parliament, and he could not think of interfering in the least with its privileges, however the empire might suffer from its excesses. 'the motion of lord moira was not only unnecessary, it was highly mischievous.' he dwelt on the improved state of ireland, and the tranquillity of the people. if there were partial excesses on the part of the military, they were unavoidable, and could only be deplored. 'he was unable to discern what should alienate the affections of ireland. for the whole space of thirty years his majesty's government had been distinguished by the same uniform tenderness of regard, by the same undeviating adherence to the mild principles of a conciliatory system.... if any cruelties had been practised, they must have been resisted by a high-spirited people. were there no courts of justice? the conduct of the lord lieutenant was highly commendable. the system recommended by lord moira would only tend to villify the irish government.' then came the fatal announcement which sounded the death-knell of thousands of the irish people, and caused the destruction of millions' worth of property. the home secretary said: 'the contrary system must, therefore, be persevered in; and to the spirited exertions of the british military should we owe the preservation of irish laws, of irish property, and of irish lives!' to this the marquis of downshire added 'that he was not afraid of the effects of coercion. every concession had been made that could be made towards ireland. every catholic was as free as the safety of the state would admit. were the catholics to have an equal share in the government with the protestants, the government and the country would be lost.' i will conclude by quoting the remarks of mr. fox, referred to above: 'if you do not allay their discontent, there is no way but force to keep them in obedience. can you convince them by the musket that their principles are false? can you prove to them by the bayonet that their pretensions are unjust? can you demonstrate to them by martial law that they enjoy the blessings of a free constitution? no, it is said, but they may be deterred from the prosecution of the objects which you have determined to refuse. but on what is this founded? on the history of ireland itself? no; for the history of ireland proves that, though repeatedly subdued, it could not be kept in awe by force; and the late examples will prove the effect which severity may be expected to produce.... i would therefore concede; and if i found i had not conceded enough, i would concede more. i know of no way of governing mankind, but by conciliating them.... my wish is that the whole people of ireland should have the same principles, the same system, the same operation of government. ... i would have the whole irish government regulated by irish notions and irish prejudices; and i firmly believe, according to an irish expression, the more she is under irish government, the more she will be bound to english interests. ... i say, therefore, try conciliation, but do not have recourse to arms.' he warned and implored in vain. the union had been determined on; and it was thought that it could be effected only after the prostration of civil war, into which, therefore, the unfortunate people were goaded. chapter xv. poverty and coercion. we are now in the nineteenth century, without any relief for the irish peasantry. the rebellion of ' , so cruelly crushed, left an abiding sense of terror in the hearts of the roman catholic population. their condition was one of almost hopeless prostration. the union was effected without the promised relief from their religious disabilities which was to be one of its essential conditions. the established church was secured, the rights of property were secured, but there was no security for the mass of the people. domestic politics were almost forgotten in the gigantic struggle with napoleon, which exhausted the energies of the empire. any signs of political life that showed themselves in ireland were connected with catholic emancipation, and the visit of george iv., in , held forth promises of relief which excited unbounded joy. the king loved his irish subjects, and would never miss an opportunity of realising the good wishes for their happiness which he had so often and so fervently expressed to his whig friends, when he was prince regent. o'connell's agitation commenced soon after, and in nine years after the royal visit emancipation was extorted by the dread of civil war, frankly avowed by the duke of wellington and sir robert peel. but this boon left the masses nearly where they had been, only more conscious of their power, and more determined to use it, in the removal of their grievances. lord redesdale, writing to lord eldon in , said:--'in england the machine goes on almost of itself, and therefore a bad driver may manage it tolerably well. it is not so in ireland. the country requires great exertion to bring it into a state of order and submission to law. the whole population--high and low, rich and poor, catholic and protestant--must all be brought to obedience to law; all must be taught to look up to the law for protection. the gentry are ready enough to attend grand juries, to obtain presentments for their own benefit, but they desert the quarter-sessions of the peace. the first act of a constable in arresting must not be to knock down the prisoner; and many, many reforms must be made, which only can be effected by a judicious and able government _on the spot_. ireland, in its present state, cannot be governed in england. if insubordination compels you to give, how are you to retain by law what you propose to maintain while insubordination remains? it can only be by establishing completely the empire of the law.' sir archibald alison ascribed the unhappy relations of classes in ireland to what he calls 'the atrocious system of confiscation, which, in conformity with feudal usages, the victors introduced on every occasion of rebellion against their authority.' sir george nicholls has shown, in his valuable history of the irish poor law, that as early as the parliament assembled at kilkenny resolved that none should keep irish, or kern, in time of peace to live upon the poor of the country; 'but those which will have them shall keep them at their own charges, so that the free tenants and farmers be not charged with them.' and years afterwards, the parliament assembled in dublin declared that divers of the english were in the habit of maintaining sundry thieves, robbers, and rebels, and that they were to be adjudged traitors for so doing, and suffer accordingly. in , this class of depredators had increased very much, and by their 'thefts and manslaughters caused the land to fall into decay, poverty wasting it every day more and more; whereupon it was ordained that it should be lawful for every liege man to kill or take notorious thieves, and thieves found robbing, spoiling, or breaking houses; and that every man that kills or takes any such thieves shall have one penny of every plough, and one farthing of every cottage within the barony where the manslaughter is done, for every thief.' these extracts show a very barbarous state of society, but sir george nicholls remarks that at the same period the condition of england and scotland was very similar, save only that that of ireland was aggravated by the civil conflicts between the colonists and the natives. there were some efforts made in ireland, by various enactments, to put down this evil, and to provide employment for the large numbers that were disposed to prey upon the industry of their neighbours, by robbery, beggary, and destruction of property. but while there was a legal provision made for the poor in england, there was none in ireland, where the people were, _en masse_, deprived of the means of self-support by the action of the government. hence, so late as the year , the poor-law commissioners reported to the following effect:-- it appeared that in great britain the agricultural families constituted little more than a fourth, whilst in ireland they constituted about two-thirds, of the whole population; that there were in great britain, in , , , agricultural labourers; in ireland, , , , although the cultivated land of great britain amounted to about , , acres and that of ireland only to about , , . so that there were in ireland about five agricultural labourers for every two that there were for the same quantity of land in great britain. it further appeared that the agricultural progress of great britain was more than four times that of ireland; in which agricultural wages varied from sixpence to one shilling a day; the average of the country being about eightpence-halfpenny; and that the earnings of the labourers came, on an average of the whole class, to from two shillings to two and sixpence a week or thereabouts for the year round. thus circumstanced, the commissioners observed, 'it is impossible for the able-bodied in general to provide against sickness or the temporary absence of employment, or against old age, or the destitution of their widows and children in the contingent event of their own premature decease. a great portion of them are, it is said, insufficiently provided with the commonest necessaries of life. their habitations are wretched hovels, several of a family sleep together on straw, or upon the bare ground, sometimes with a blanket, sometimes even without so much to cover them; their food commonly consists of dry potatoes, and with these they are at times so scantily supplied as to be obliged to stint themselves to one spare meal in the day. there are even instances of persons being driven by hunger to seek sustenance in wild herbs. they sometimes get a herring or a little milk, but they never get meat except at christmas, easter, and shrovetide. some go in search of employment to great britain, during the harvest; others wander through ireland with the same view. the wives and children of many are occasionally obliged to beg; but they do so reluctantly and with shame, and in general go to a distance from home, that they may not be known. mendicity, too, is the sole resource of the aged and impotent of the poorer classes in general, when children or relatives are unable to support them. to it, therefore, crowds are driven for the means of existence, and the knowledge that such is the fact leads to an indiscriminate giving of alms, which encourages idleness, imposture, and general crime.' such was the wretched condition of the great body of the labouring classes in ireland; 'and with these facts before us,' the commissioners say, 'we cannot hesitate to state that we consider remedial measures requisite to ameliorate the condition of the irish poor. what those measures should be is a question complicated, and involving considerations of the deepest importance to the whole body of the people, both in ireland and great britain.' sir george nicholls, who had been an english poor-law commissioner, was sent over to ireland to make preliminary enquiries. he found that the irish peasantry had generally an appearance of apathy and depression, seen in their mode of living, their habitations, their dress and conduct; they seemed to have no pride, no emulation, to be heedless of the present and careless of the future. they did not strive to improve their appearance or add to their comforts: their cabins were slovenly, smoky, dirty, almost without furniture, or any article of convenience or common decency. the woman and her children were seen seated on the floor, surrounded by pigs and poultry: the man lounging at the door, which could be approached only through mud and filth: the former too slatternly to sweep the dirt and offal from the door, the latter too lazy to make a dry footway, though the materials were close at hand. if the mother were asked why she did not keep herself and her children clean with a stream of water running near the cabin, her answer invariably was--sure, how can we help it? we are so poor.' the husband made the same reply, while smoking his pipe at the fire or basking in the sunshine. sir george nicholls rightly concluded that poverty was not the sole cause of this state of things. he found them also remarkable for their desultory and reckless habits. though their crops were rotting in the fields from excessive wet, and every moment of sunshine should be taken advantage of, yet if there was a market, a fair, or a funeral, a horse-race, a fight, or a wedding, forgetting everything else, they would hurry off to the scene of excitement. working for wages was rare and uncertain, and hence arose a disregard of the value of time, a desultory, sauntering habit, without industry or steadiness of application. 'such,' he proceeds, 'is too generally the character and such the habits of the irish peasantry; and it may not be uninstructive to mark the resemblance which these bear to the character and habits of the english peasantry in the pauperised districts, under the abuses of the old poor law. mendicancy and indiscriminate almsgiving have produced in ireland results similar to what indiscriminate relief produced in england--the like reckless disregard of the future, the like idle and disorderly conduct, and the same proneness to outrage having then characterised the english pauper labourer which are now too generally the characteristics of the irish peasant. an abuse of a good law caused the evil in the one case, and a removal of that abuse is now rapidly effecting a remedy. in the other case the evil appears to have arisen rather from the want than the abuse of a law; but the corrective for both will, i believe, be found to be essentially the same.' the expectation that such a neglected people, made wretched by bad land laws, should be loyal, was surely unreasonable. for them, it might be said, there was no government, no protection, no encouragement. there could not be more tempting materials for agitators to work upon. lord cloncurry vividly sketches the state of things resulting from the want of principle and earnestness among politicians in dealing with irish questions at that time. 'from the union up to the year , the type of british colonial government was the order of the day. the protestants were upheld as a superior caste, and paid in power and official emoluments for their services in the army of occupation. during the second viceroyalty of lord anglesea, an effort was made by him to evoke the energies of the whole nation for its own regeneration. that effort was defeated by the conjoint influence of the cowardice of the english cabinet, the petulance of mr. stanley, and the unseasonable violence and selfishness of the lately emancipated popular leaders. upon lord anglesea's recall the modern whig model of statemanship was set up and followed: popular grievances were allowed to remain unredressed; the discontent and violence engendered by those grievances were used from time to time for party purposes; the people were hung and bayoneted when their roused passions exceeded the due measure of factious requirement; and the state patronage was employed to stimulate and to reward a staff of demagogues, by whom the masses were alternately excited to madness, and betrayed, according to the necessities of the english factions. when russells and greys were out or in danger, there were free promises of equal laws and privileges and franchises for oppressed ireland; the minister expectant or trembling for his place, spoke loudly of justice and compensation, of fraternity and freedom. to these key-notes the place-hunting demagogue pitched his brawling. his talk was of pike-making, and sword-fleshing, and monster marching. the simple people were goaded into a madness, the end whereof was for them suspension of the habeas corpus act, the hulks, and the gallows; for their stimulators, silk gowns and commissionerships and seats on the bench. under this treatment the public mind became debauched; the lower classes, forced to bear the charges of agitation, as well as to suffer its penalties, lost all faith in their social future; they saw not and looked not beyond the momentary excitement of a procession or a monster meeting.' sir robert peel, when introducing the emancipation bill, had to confess the utter failure of the coercive policy which had been so persistently pursued. he showed that ireland had been governed, since the union, almost invariably by coercive acts. there was always some political organisation antagonistic to the british government. the catholic association had just been suppressed; but another would soon spring out of its ashes, if the catholic question were not settled. mr. o'connell had boasted that he could drive a coach-and-six through the former act for its suppression; and lord eldon had engaged to drive 'the meanest conveyance, even a donkey cart, through the act of .' the new member for oxford (sir robert inglis) also stated that twenty-three counties in ireland were prepared to follow the example of clare. 'what will you do,' asked sir robert peel, 'with that power, that tremendous power, which the elective franchise, exercised under the control of religion, at this moment confers upon the roman catholics? what will you do with the thirty or forty seats that will be claimed in ireland by the persevering efforts of the agitators, directed by the catholic association, and carried out by the agency of every priest and bishop in ireland?' if parliament began to recede there could be no limit to the retrogression. such a course would produce a reaction, violent in proportion to the hopes that had been excited. fresh rigours would become necessary; the re-enactment of the penal code would not be sufficient. they must abolish trial by jury, or, at least, incapacitate catholics from sitting on juries. , , of protestants must have a complete monopoly of power and privilege in a country which contained , , of catholics, who were in most of the country four to one--in some districts twenty to one--of the protestants. true, there were difficulties in the way of a settlement. 'but,' asked sir robert peel, 'what great measure, which has stamped its name upon the era, has ever been carried without difficulty? at the present moment there is a loud cry in the english press for the suspension of the habeas corpus act, and for the old remedy, coercion. those who raise the cry would do well to read mr. shiel's speech at the clare election in . he said:-- 'we have put a great engine into action, and applied the entire force of that powerful machinery which the law has placed under our control. we are masters of the passions of the people, and we have employed our dominion with a terrible effect. but, sir, do you, or does any man here, imagine that we could have acquired this formidable ability to sunder the strongest ties by which the different classes of society are fastened, unless we found the materials of excitement in the state of society itself? do you think that daniel o'connell has himself, and by the single powers of his own mind, unaided by any external co-operation, brought the country to this great crisis of agitation? mr. o'connell, with all his talent for excitation, would have been utterly powerless and incapable, unless he had been allied with a great conspirator against the public peace; and i will tell you who that confederate is--it is the law of the land itself that has been mr. o'connell's main associate, and that ought to be denounced as the mighty agitator of ireland. the rod of oppression is the wand of this enchanter, and the book of his spells is the penal code? break the wand of this political prospero, and take from him the volume of his magic, and he will evoke the spirits which are now under his control no longer. but why should i have recourse to illustration, which may be accounted fantastical, in order to elucidate what is in itself so plain and obvious? protestant gentlemen, who do me the honour to listen to me, look, i pray you, a little dispassionately at the real causes of the events which have taken place amongst you.... in no other country, except in this, would such a revolution have been effected. wherefore? because in no other country are the people divided by the law from their superiors, and cast into the hands of a set of men who are supplied with the means of national excitement by the system of government under which we live. surely, no man can believe that such an anomalous body as the catholic association could exist excepting in a community that has been alienated from the state by the state itself. the discontent and the resentment of , , of the population have generated that domestic government which sways public opinion, and uses the national passions as the instruments of its will. it would be utterly impossible, if there were no exasperating distinctions amongst us, to create any artificial causes of discontent. let men declaim for a century, and if they have no real grievance their harangues will be empty sound and idle air. but when what they tell the people is true--when they are sustained by substantial facts, effects are produced of which what has taken place at this election is only an example. the whole body of the people having been previously excited, the moment any incident such as this election occurs, all the popular passions start simultaneously up, and bear down every obstacle before them. do not, therefore, be surprised that the peasantry should throw off their allegiance when they are under the operation of emotions which it would be wonderful if they could resist. the feeling by which they are actuated would make them not only vote against their landlord, but would make them scale the batteries of a fortress, and mount the breach; and, gentlemen, give me leave to ask you whether, after due reflection upon the motives by which your vassals (for so they are accounted) are governed, you will be disposed to exercise any measure of severity in their regard?' the greatest warrior of the age rebuked the men who cried in that day that the sword should be the arbiter of the irish question; and sir robert peel, in his own vindication of the emancipation act, said:-- 'i well know that there are those upon whom such considerations as these to which i have been adverting will make but a faint impression. their answer to all such appeals is the short, in their opinion the conclusive, declaration--" the protestant constitution in church and state must be maintained at all hazards, and by any means; the maintenance of it is a question of principle, and every concession or compromise is the sacrifice of principle to a low and vulgar expediency." this is easily said; but how was ireland to be governed? how was the protestant constitution in church and state to be maintained in that part of the empire? again i can anticipate the reply--"by the overwhelming sense of the people of great britain; by the application, if necessary, of physical force for the maintenance of authority; by the employment of the organised strength of government, the police and the military, to enforce obedience to the law." i deliberately affirm that a minister of the crown, responsible at the time of which i am speaking for the public peace and the public welfare, would have grossly and scandalously neglected his duty if he had failed to consider whether it might not be possible that the fever of political and religious excitement which was quickening the pulse and fluttering the bosom of the whole catholic population--which had inspired the serf of clare with the resolution and energy of a free man--which had, in the twinkling of an eye, made all considerations of personal gratitude, ancient family connection, local preferences, the fear of worldly injury, the hope of worldly advantage, subordinate to the all-absorbing sense of religious obligation and public duty--whether, i say, it might not be possible that the contagion of that feverish excitement might spread beyond the barriers which, under ordinary circumstances, the habits of military obedience and the strictness of military discipline opposed to all such external influences.' the officer who commanded the military force in clare during the election, testified, as the result of his observation there, that, even in the constabulary and the army, the sympathies of a common cause, political and religious, could not be altogether repressed, and that implicit reliance could not long be placed on the effect of discipline and the duty of obedience. on july , lord anglesea wrote as follows:-- 'we hear occasionally of the catholic soldiers being ill-disposed, and entirely under the influence of the priests. one regiment of infantry is said to be divided into orange and catholic factions. it is certain that, on july , the guard at the castle had orange lilies about them.' on july , the viceroy wrote another letter, from which the following is an extract:--'the priests are using very inflammatory language, and are certainly working upon the catholics of the army. i think it important that the depôts of irish recruits should be gradually removed, under the appearance of being required to join their regiments, and that whatever regiments are sent here should be those of scotland, or, at all events, of men not recruited from the south of ireland. i desired sir john byng to convey this opinion to lord hill.' emancipation was carried, and the people were disaffected still. and why should they not be disaffected still? emancipation had done nothing for them. the farmers were still at the mercy of the landlords, whose pride they humbled at the hustings of clare and waterford. they were still tormented by the tithe-proctor seizing the tenth of all that their labour produced on the land. the labourers were still wretched, deprived of the forty-shilling freehold, which protected them from the horrors of eviction and of transportation in a floating hell across the atlantic. i well remember the celebrated anti-tithe war in , as well as the system by which it was provoked, and i can bear witness to the accuracy of the following description of the tithe-proctor by henry grattan. he said:-- 'the use of the tithe-farmer is to get from the parishioners what the parson would be ashamed to demand, and so enable the parson to absent himself from his duty. the powers of the tithe-farmer are summary laws and ecclesiastical courts; his livelihood is extortion; his rank in society is generally the lowest; and his occupation is to pounce on the poor in the name of the lord! he is a species of wolf left by the shepherd to take care of the flock in his absence.' a single tithe-proctor had on one occasion processed , persons for tithes, nearly all of the lower order of farmers or peasants, the expense of each process being about s. they had heard of opinions delivered in parliament, on the platform, and from the press by protestant statesmen of the highest consideration, that it was a cruel oppression to extort in that manner from the majority of the tillers of the soil the tenth of its produce, in order to support the clergy of another church, who, in many cases, had no flocks, or only a few followers, who were well able to pay for their own religious instruction. the system would be intolerable even were the state clergy the pastors of the majority; but as the proportion between the protestants and the roman catholics was in many parts as one to ten, and in some as one to twenty, the injustice necessarily involved in the mode of levying the impost was aggravated a hundredfold. it would be scarcely possible to devise any mode of levying an impost more exasperating, which came home to the bosoms of men with more irritating, humiliating, and maddening power, and which violated more recklessly men's natural sense of justice. if a plan were devised for the purpose of driving men into insurrection, nothing could be more effectual than the tithe-proctor system. besides, it tended directly to the impoverishment of the country, retarding agricultural improvement and limiting production. if a man kept all his land in pasture, he escaped the impost; but the moment he tilled it, he was subjected to a tax of ten per cent. on the gross produce. the valuation being made by the tithe-proctor--a man whose interest it was to defraud both the tenant and the parson--the consequence was, that the gentry and the large farmers, to a great extent, evaded the tax, and left the small occupiers to bear nearly the whole burden; they even avoided mowing the meadows in some cases, because then they should pay tithe for the hay. there was besides a tax called church cess, levied by protestants in vestry meetings upon roman catholics for cleaning the church, ringing the bell, washing the minister's surplice, purchasing bread and wine for the communion, and paying the salary of the parish clerk. this tax was felt to be a direct and flagrant violation of the rights of conscience, and of the principles of the british constitution; and against it there was a determined opposition, which manifested itself in tumultuous and violent assemblages at the parish churches all over the country on easter monday, when the rector or his curate, as chairman of the meeting, came into angry collision with flocks who disowned him, and denounced him as a tyrant, a persecutor, and a robber. but the tithe impost was the one most grievously felt, and at last the peasantry resolved to resist it by force. nothing could be more violent than the contrasts presented at this time in the social life of ireland. on the one side there was a rapid succession of atrocities and tragedies fearful to contemplate: the bailiffs, constabulary, and military driving away cattle, sheep, pigs, and geese to be sold by public auction, to pay the minister who had no congregation to whom he could preach the gospel; the cattle-prisons or 'pounds' surrounded by high walls, but uncovered, wet and dirty, crowded with all sorts of animals, cold and starved, and uttering doleful sounds; the driving away of the animals in the night from one farm to another to avoid seizures; the auctions without bidders, in the midst of groaning and jeering multitudes; the slaughter of policemen, and in some instances of clergymen, with fiendish expressions of hatred and yells of triumph; the mingling of fierce passions with the strongest natural affections; the exultation in murder as if it were a glorious deed of war; the roman catholic press and platform almost justifying those deeds of outrage and blood; the mass of the roman catholic population sustaining this insurrection against the law with their support and sympathy and prayers, as if it were a holy war, in which the victims were martyrs. on the other side were presented pictures which excited the deepest interest of the protestant community throughout the united kingdom. we behold the clergyman and his family in the glebe-house, lately the abode of plenty, comfort, and elegance, a model of domestic happiness and gentlemanly life; but the income of the rector fell off, till he was bereft of nearly all his means. in order to procure the necessaries of life for his family, he was obliged to part with the cows that gave milk for his household, the horse and car, which were necessary in the remote place where his glebe-house was situated, and everything that could be spared, till at length he was obliged to make his greatest sacrifice, and to send his books--the dear and valued companions of his life--to dublin, to be sold by auction. his boys could no longer be respectably clad, his wife and daughters were obliged to part with their jewellery and all their superfluities. there was no longer wine or medicine, that the mother was accustomed to dispense kindly and liberally to the poor around her, in their sickness and sorrow, without distinction of creed. the glebe, which once presented an aspect of so much comfort and ease and affluence, now looked bare and desolate and void of life. but for the contributions of christian friends at a distance, many of those once happy little centres of christian civilisation--those well-springs of consolation to the afflicted--must have been abandoned to the overwhelming sand of desolation swept upon them by the hurricane of the anti-tithe agitation. during this desperate struggle, force was employed on several occasions with fatal effect. at newtownbarry, in the county of wexford, some cattle were impounded by a tithe-proctor. the peasantry assembled in large numbers to rescue them, when they came into collision with the yeomanry, who fired, killing twelve persons. it was a market day, and a placard was posted on the walls: 'there will be an end of church plunder; your pot, blanket, and pig will not hereafter be sold by auction to support in luxury, idleness, and ease persons who endeavour to make it appear that it is essential to the peace and prosperity of the country and your eternal salvation, while the most of you are starving. attend to an auction of your neighbours' cattle.' at carrickshock there was a fearful tragedy. a number of writs against defaulters were issued by the court of exchequer, and entrusted to the care of process-servers, who, guarded by a strong body of police, proceeded on their mission with secrecy and dispatch. bonfires along the surrounding hills, however, and shrill whistles soon convinced them that the people were not unprepared for their visitors. but the yeomanry pushed boldly on. suddenly an immense assemblage of peasantry, armed with scythes and pitchforks, poured down upon them. a terrible hand-to-hand struggle ensued, and in the course of a few moments eighteen of the police, including the commanding officer, were slaughtered. the remainder consulted safety and fled, marking the course of their retreat by the blood that trickled from their wounds. a coroner's jury pronounced this deed of death as 'wilful murder' against some persons unknown. a large government reward was offered, but it failed to produce a single conviction. at castlepollard, in westmeath, on the occasion of an attempted rescue, the chief constable was knocked down. the police fired, and nine or ten persons were killed. one of the most lamentable of these conflicts occurred at gurtroe, near rathcormac, in the county of cork. archdeacon ryder brought a number of the military to recover the tithes of a farm belonging to a widow named ryan. the assembled people resisted, the military were ordered to fire, eight persons were killed and thirteen wounded; and among the killed was the widow's son. these disorders appealed with irresistible force to the government and the legislature, to put an end to a system fraught with so much evil, and threatening the utter disruption of society in ireland. in the first place, something must be done to meet the wants of the destitute clergy and their families. accordingly, lord stanley brought in a bill, in may , authorising the lord lieutenant of ireland to advance , l. as a fund for the payment of the clergy, who were unable to collect their tithes for the year . this measure was designed to meet the present necessity, and was only a preliminary to the promised settlement of the tithe question. it was therefore passed quickly through both houses, and became law on june . but the money thus advanced was not placed on the consolidated fund. the government took upon itself the collection of the arrears of tithes for that one year. it was a maxim with lord stanley that the people should be made to respect the law; that they should not be allowed to trample upon it with impunity. the odious task thus assumed, produced a state of unparalleled excitement. the people were driven to frenzy, instead of being frightened by the chief secretary becoming tithe-collector-general, and the army being employed in its collection. they knew that the king's speech had recommended the settlement of the tithe question. they had heard of the evidence of bishop doyle and other champions, exposing what they believed to be the iniquity of the tithe system. they had seen the condemnation of it in the testimony of the protestant archbishop of dublin, who declared his conviction that it could not be collected except at the point of the bayonet, and by keeping up a chronic war between the government and the roman catholic people. they had been told that parliamentary committees had recommended the complete extinction of tithes, and their commutation into a rent-charge. their own leaders had everywhere resolved:-- 'that it was a glaring wrong to compel an impoverished catholic people to support in pampered luxury the richest clergy in the world--a clergy from whom, the catholics do not experience even the return of common gratitude--a clergy who, in times past, opposed to the last the political freedom of the irish people, and at the present day are opposed to reform and a liberal scheme of education for their countrymen. the ministers of the god of charity should not, by misapplication of all the tithes to their own private uses, thus deprive the poor of their patrimony; nor should ministers of peace adhere with such desperate tenacity to a system fraught with dissension, hatred, and ill-will.' the first proceeding of the government to recover the tithes, under the act of june , was therefore the signal for general war. bonfires blazed upon the hills, the rallying sounds of horns were heard along the valleys, and the mustering tread of thousands upon the roads, hurrying to the scene of a seizure or an auction. it was a bloody campaign; there was considerable loss of life, and the church and the government thus became more obnoxious to the people than ever. lord stanley being the commander-in-chief on one side, and mr. o'connell on the other, the contest was embittered by their personal antipathies. it was found that the amount of the arrears for the year was , l., and that the whole amount which the government was able to levy, after putting forth its strength in every possible way, was , l., the cost of collection being , l., so the government was not able to raise as much money as would pay the expenses of the campaign. this was how lord stanley illustrated his favourite sentiment that the people should be made to respect the law. but the liberal party among the protestants fully sympathised with the anti-tithe recusants. of course the government did not persevere in prosecutions from which no parties but the lawyers reaped any advantage; consequently, all processes under the existing law were abandoned. it was found that, after paying to the clergy the arrears of and , and what would be due in , about a million sterling would be required, and this sum was provided by an issue of exchequer bills. the reimbursement of the advance was to be effected by a land tax. together with these temporary arrangements to meet the exigency of the case, for the payment of the clergy and the pacification of ireland, an act was passed to render tithe composition in ireland compulsory and permanent. but ireland was not yet pacified.[ ] [footnote : the foregoing sketch of the tithe war was written by the author seven years ago for cassell's _history of england_, from which it is now extracted.] chapter xvi. the famine. it had often been predicted by writers on the state of ireland, that, owing to the rottenness at the foundation of the social fabric, it would come down with a crash some day. the facts reported by the census commissioners of showed that this consummation could not be far off. out of a population of , , , there were , , above the age of five years who could neither read nor write; while nearly three millions and a half lived in mud cabins, badly thatched with straw, having each but one room, and often without either a window or a chimney. these figures indicate a mass of ignorance and poverty, which could not be contemplated without alarm, and the subject was, therefore, constantly pressed upon the attention of parliament. as usual in cases of difficulty, the government, feeling that something should be done, and not knowing what to do, appointed in a commission to enquire into the relations between landlords and tenants, and the condition of the working classes. at the head of this commission was the earl of devon, a benevolent nobleman, whose sympathies were on the side of the people. captain kennedy, the secretary to the commissioners, published a digest of the report of the evidence, which presented the facts in a readable form, and was the means of diffusing a large amount of authentic information on the state of ireland. the commissioners travelled through the country, held courts of enquiry, and examined witnesses of all classes. as the result of their extensive intercourse with the farming classes, and their own observations, they were enabled to state that in almost every part of ireland unequivocal symptoms of improvement, in spite of many embarrassing and counteracting circumstances, continually presented themselves to the view, and that there existed a very general and increasing spirit and desire for the promotion of such improvement, from which the most beneficial results might fairly be expected. indeed, speaking of the country generally, they add: 'with some exceptions, which are unfortunately too notorious, we believe that at no former period did so active a spirit of improvement prevail; nor could well directed measures for the attainment of that object have been proposed with a better prospect of success than at the present moment.' but this improvement produced no sensible effect upon the condition of the labouring people. however brightly the sun of prosperity might gild the eminences of society, the darkness of misery and despair settled upon the masses below. the commissioners proceed: 'a reference to the evidence of most of the witnesses will show that the agricultural labourer of ireland continues to suffer the greatest privations and hardships; that he continues to depend upon casual and precarious employment for subsistence; that he is still badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for his labour. our personal experience and observation during our enquiry have afforded us a melancholy confirmation of these statements; and we cannot forbear expressing our strong sense of the patient endurance which the labouring classes have generally exhibited under sufferings greater, we believe, than the people of any other country in europe have to sustain.' it was deeply felt that the well-being of the whole united kingdom depended upon the removal of the causes of this misery and degradation; for if the irish people were not elevated, the english working classes must be brought down to their level. the facility of travelling afforded by railways and steam-boats caused such constant intercourse between england and ireland, that irish ignorance, beggary, and disease, with all their contagion, physical and moral, would be found intermingling with the british population. it would be impossible to prevent the half-starved irish peasantry from crossing the channel, and seeking employment, even at low wages, and forming a pestiferous irish quarter in every town and city. the question, then, was felt to be one whose settlement would brook no further delay. it was found that the potato was almost the only food of the irish millions, and that it formed their chief means of obtaining the other necessaries of life. a large portion of this crop was grown under the system, to which the poorest of the peasantry were obliged to have recourse, notwithstanding the minute subdivision of land. there were in , , farms in ireland exceeding one acre in extent. nearly one half of these were under five acres each. the number of proprietors in fee was estimated at , --a smaller number, in proportion to the extent of territory, than in any other country of western europe except spain. in connaught, several proprietors had , acres each, the proportion of small farms being greater there than in the rest of ireland. the total number of farms in the province was , , and of these , consisted of from one to five acres. if all the proprietors were resident among their tenantry, and were in a position to encourage their industry and care for their welfare, matters would not have been so bad; but most of the large landowners were absentees. it frequently happened that the large estates were held in strict limitation, and they were nearly all heavily encumbered. the owners preferred living in england or on the continent, having let their lands on long leases, or in perpetuity to 'middlemen,' who sublet them for as high rents as they could get. their tenants again sublet, so that it frequently happened that two, three, or four landlords intervened between the proprietor and the occupying tenant, each deriving an interest from the land. the head landlord, therefore, though ever so well disposed, had no power whatever to help the occupying tenants generally, and of those who had the power very few felt disposed. there were extensive districts without a single resident proprietor. for a few weeks after the blight of the potato crop in the cottiers and small farmers managed to eke out a subsistence by the sale of their pigs and any little effects they had. but pigs, fowl, furniture, and clothing soon went, one after another, to satisfy the cravings of hunger. the better class of farmers lived upon their corn and cattle; but they were obliged to dismiss their servants, and this numerous class became the first victims of starvation; for when they were turned off, they were refused admission by their relations, who had not the means of feeding them. tailors, shoemakers, and other artisans who worked for the lower orders, lost their employment, and became destitute also. while the means of support failed upon every side, and food rose to such enormous prices that everything that could possibly be eaten was economised, so that the starving dogs were drowned from compassion, the famine steadily advanced from the west and south to the east and north, till it involved the whole population in its crushing grasp. it was painfully interesting to mark the progress of the visitation, even in those parts of the country where its ravages were least felt. the small farmer had only his corn, designed for rent and seed: he was obliged to take it to the mill to ward off starvation. the children of the poor, placed on short allowance, were suffering fearfully from hunger. mothers, heart-broken and worn down to skeletons, were seen on certain days proceeding in groups to some distant depôt, where indian meal was to be had at reduced prices, but still double that of the ordinary market. as they returned to their children, with their little bags on their heads, a faint joy lit up their famine-stricken features. when the visitors entered a village their first question was: 'how many deaths?' '_the hunger is upon us_,' was everywhere the cry; and involuntarily they found themselves regarding this hunger as they would an epidemic, looking upon starvation as a disease. in fact, as they passed along, their wonder was, not that the people died, but that they lived; and mr. w.g. forster, in his report, said: 'i have no doubt whatever, that in any other country the mortality would have been far greater; and that many lives have been prolonged, perhaps saved, by the long apprenticeship to want in which the irish peasant has been trained, and by that lovely, touching charity which prompts him to share his scanty meal with his starving neighbour. but the springs of this charity must be rapidly dried up. like a scourge of locusts, _the hunger_ daily sweeps over fresh districts, eating up all before it. one class after another is falling into the same abyss of ruin.'[ ] [footnote : transactions during the famine in ireland, appendix iii.] the same benevolent gentleman describes the domestic scenes he saw in connaught, where the poor celts were carried off in thousands:-- 'we entered a cabin. stretched in one dark corner, scarcely visible from the smoke and rags that covered them, were three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly; their little limbs, on removing a portion of the covering, perfectly emaciated; eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stage of actual starvation. crouched over the turf embers was another form, wild and all but naked, scarcely human in appearance. it stirred not nor noticed us. on some straw, soddened upon the ground, moaning piteously, was a shrivelled old woman, imploring us to give her something, baring her limbs partly to show how the skin hung loose from her bones, as soon as she attracted our attention. above her, on something like a ledge, was a young woman with sunken cheeks, a mother, i have no doubt, who scarcely raised her eyes in answer to our enquiries; but pressed her hand upon her forehead, with a look of unutterable anguish and despair. many cases were widows, whose husbands had been recently taken off by the fever, and thus their only pittance obtained from the public works was entirely cut off. in many the husbands or sons were prostrate under that horrid disease--the result of long-continued famine and low living--in which first the limbs and then the body swell most frightfully, and finally burst. we entered upwards of fifty of these tenements. the scene was invariably the same, differing in little but the manner of the sufferers, or of the groups occupying the several corners within. the whole number was often not to be distinguished, until the eye having adapted itself to the darkness, they were pointed out, or were heard, or some filthy bundle of rags and straw was seen to move. perhaps the poor children presented the most piteous and heart-rending spectacle. many were too weak to stand, their little limbs attenuated, except where the frightful swellings had taken the place of previous emaciation. every infantile expression had entirely departed; and, in some reason and intelligence had evidently flown. many were remnants of families, crowded together in one cabin; orphaned little relatives taken in by the equally destitute, and even strangers--for these poor people are kind to each other, even to the end. in one cabin was a sister, just dying, lying beside her little brother, just dead. i have worse than this to relate; but it is useless to multiply details, and they are, in fact, unfit.' in december, , father mathew wrote to mr. trevelyan, then secretary of the treasury, that men, women, and children were gradually wasting away. they filled their stomachs with cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops, &c., to appease the cravings of hunger. there were then more than , half-starved wretches from the country begging in the streets of cork. when utterly exhausted, they crawled to the workhouse to die. the average of deaths in that union was then over a hundred a week. from december , in , to the middle of april, in , the number of human beings that died in the cork workhouse was , ! and in the third week of the following month the free interments in the mathew cemetery had risen to --as many as sixty-seven having been buried in one day. the destruction of human life in other workhouses of ireland kept pace with the appalling mortality in the cork workhouse. according to official returns, it had reached in april the weekly average of twenty-five per , inmates; the actual number of deaths being , for the week ending april , and , in the following week. yet the number of inmates in the irish workhouses was but , on april . the size of the unions was a great impediment to the working of the poor law. they were three times the extent of the corresponding divisions in england. in munster and connaught, where there was the greatest amount of destitution, and the least amount of local agency available for its relief, the unions were much larger than in the more favoured provinces of ulster and leinster. the union of ballina comprised a region of upwards of half a million acres, and within its desert tracts the famine assumed its most appalling form, the workhouse being more than forty miles distant from some of the sufferers. as a measure of precaution, the government had secretly imported and stored a large quantity of indian corn, as a cheap substitute for the potato, which would have served the purpose much better had the people been instructed in the best modes of cooking it. it was placed in commissariat, along depôts the western coast of the island, where the people were not likely to be supplied on reasonable terms through the ordinary channels of trade. the public works consisted principally of roads, on which, the men were employed as a sort of supplement to the poor law. half the cost was a free grant from the treasury, and the other half was charged upon the barony in which the works were undertaken. the expense incurred under the 'labour rate act, and viet. c. ,' amounted to , , l. it was almost universally admitted, when the pressure was over, that the system of public works adopted was a great mistake; and it seems wonderful that such grievous blunders could have been made with so many able statesmen and political economists at the head of affairs and in the service of the government. the public works undertaken consisted in the breaking up of good roads to level hills and fill hollows, and the opening of new roads in places where they were not required--works which the people felt to be useless, and at which they laboured only under strong compulsion, being obliged to walk to them in all weathers for miles, in order to earn the price of a breakfast of indian meal. had the labour thus comparatively wasted been devoted to the draining, sub-soiling, and fencing of the farms, connected with a comprehensive system of arterial drainage, immense and lasting benefit to the country would have been the result, especially as works so well calculated to ameliorate the soil, and guard against the moisture of the climate, might have been connected with a system of instruction in agricultural matters of which the peasantry stood so much in need, and to the removal of the gross ignorance which had so largely contributed to bring about the famine. as it was, enormous sums were wasted. much needless hardship was inflicted on the starving people in compelling them to work in frost and rain when they were scarcely able to walk, and, after all the vast outlay, very few traces of it remained in permanent improvements on the face of the country. the system of government relief works failed chiefly through the same difficulty which impeded every mode of relief, whether public or private--namely, the want of machinery to work it. it was impossible suddenly to procure an efficient staff of officers for an undertaking of such enormous magnitude--the employment of a whole people. the overseers were necessarily selected in haste; many of them were corrupt, and encouraged the misconduct of the labourers. in many cases the relief committees, unable to prevent maladministration, yielded to the torrent of corruption, and individual members only sought to benefit their own dependants. the people everywhere flocked to the public works; labourers, cottiers, artisans, fishermen, farmers, men, women, and children--all, whether destitute or not, sought for a share of the public money. in such a crowd, it was almost impossible to discriminate properly. they congregated in masses on the roads, idling under the name of work, the really destitute often unheeded and unrelieved because they had no friend to recommend them. all the ordinary employments were neglected; there was no fishing, no gathering of sea-weed, no collecting of manure. the men who had employment feared to lose it by absenting themselves for any other object; those unemployed spent their time in seeking to obtain it. the whole industry of the country seemed to be engaged in road-making. it became absolutely necessary to put an end to it, or the cultivation of the land would be neglected. works undertaken on the spur of the moment, not because they were needful, but merely to employ the people, were in many cases ill chosen, and the execution equally defective. the labourers, desirous to protract their employment, were only anxious to give as little labour as possible, in which their overlookers or gangers in many cases heartily agreed. the favouritism, the intimidation, the wholesale jobbing practised in many cases were shockingly demoralising. in order to induce the people to attend to their ordinary spring work, and put in the crops, it was found necessary to adopt the plan of distributing free rations. on march , therefore, a reduction of twenty per cent. of the numbers employed on the works took place, and the process of reduction went on until the new system of gratuitous relief was brought into full operation. the authority under which this was administered was called the 'temporary relief act,' which came into full operation in the month of july, when the destitution was at its height, and three millions of people received their daily rations. sir john burgoyne truly describes this as 'the grandest attempt ever made to grapple with famine over a whole country.' never in the history of the world were so many persons fed in such a manner by the public bounty. it was a most anxious time--a time of tremendous labour and responsibility to those who had the direction of this vast machinery. a member of the board of works thus describes the feeling which no doubt pervaded most of those that were officially connected with the administration of relief: 'i hope never to see such a winter and spring again. i can truly say, in looking back upon it even now, that it appears to me not a succession of weeks and days, but one long continuous day, with occasional intervals of night-mare sleep. rest one could never have, when one felt that in every minute lost a score of men might die.' mr. trevelyan was then secretary of the treasury, and it was well that a man so enlightened, energetic, and benevolent occupied the post at such a time. he was indefatigable in his efforts to mitigate the calamity, and he wrote an interesting account of 'the irish crisis' in the _edinburgh review_. having presented the dark side of the picture in faithfully recording the abuses that had prevailed, it is right to give mr. trevelyan's testimony as to the conduct of the relief committees during this supreme hour of the nation's agony. 'it is a fact very honourable to ireland that among upwards of , local bodies to whom advances were made under this act, there is not one to which, so far as the government is informed, any suspicion of embezzlement attaches.' the following statement of the numbers receiving rations, and the total expenditure under the act in each of the four provinces, compared with the amount of population, and the annual value assessed for poor-rate, may serve to illustrate the comparative means and destitution of each province:-- -------------------------------------------------------------------- | | population | valuation | greatest | total | | | | | number of |expenditure | | | | | rations given | | | | | | out | | |---------|-------------|------------|----------------|------------| | | | £ | | £ | |ulster | , , | , , | , | , | |leinster | , , | , , | , | , | |munster | , , | , , | , , | , | |counaught| , , | , , | , | , | | |-------------|------------|----------------|------------| | | , , | , , | , , | , , | -------------------------------------------------------------------- private benevolence did wonders in this crisis. the british association raised and distributed , l. the queen's letter, ordering collections in the english churches, produced , l. but the bounty of the united states of america transcended everything. the supplies sent across the atlantic were on a scale unparalleled in the history of the world. meetings were held in philadelphia, washington, new york, and other cities, in quick succession, presided over by the first men in the country. all through the states the citizens evinced an intense interest, and a noble generosity worthy of the great republic. the railway companies carried free of charge all packages marked 'ireland.' public carriers undertook the gratuitous delivery of packages intended for the relief of irish distress. storage to any extent was offered on the same terms. ships of war, without their guns, came to the irish shores on a mission of peace and mercy, freighted with food for british subjects. cargo after cargo followed in rapid succession, until nearly separate shipments had arrived, our government having consented to pay the freight of all donations of food forwarded from america, which amounted in the whole to , l. the quantity of american food consigned to the care of the society of friends was nearly , tons, the value of which was about , l. in addition to all this, the americans remitted to the friends' committee , l. in money. they also sent packages of clothing, the precise value of which could not be ascertained. there was a very large amount of remittances sent to ireland, during the famine, by the irish in the united states. unfortunately, there are no records of those remittances prior to ; but since that time we are enabled to ascertain a large portion of them, though not the whole, and their amount is something astonishing. the following statement of sums remitted by emigrants in america to their families in ireland, was printed by order of parliament:--during the years , , l.; , , l.; , , l. , , l. the arrival of the american ships naturally excited great interest at the various ports. 'on monday, april ,' writes mr. maguire, 'a noble sight might be witnessed in cork harbour--the sun shining its welcome on the entrance of the unarmed war-ship jamieson, sailing in under a cloud of snowy canvas, her great hold laden with bread-stuffs for the starving people of ireland. it was a sight that brought tears to many an eye, and prayers of gratitude to many a heart. it was one of those things which one nation remembers of another long after the day of sorrow has passed. upon the warm and generous people to whom america literally broke bread and sent life, this act of fraternal charity, so gracefully and impressively offered, naturally produced a profound and lasting impression, the influence of which is felt at this moment.' the clergy, protestant and roman catholic, almost the only resident gentry in several of the destitute districts, worked together on the committees with commendable zeal, diligence, and unanimity. among the roman catholic clergy, father mathew was at that time by far the most influential and popular. the masses of the peasantry regarded him as almost an inspired apostle. during the famine months, he exerted himself with wonderful energy and prudence, first, in his correspondence with different members of the government, earnestly recommending and urging the speedy adoption of measures of relief; and next, in commending those measures to the people, dissuading the hungry from acts of violence, and preaching submission and resignation under that heavy dispensation of providence. of this there are ample proofs in the letters published by mr. maguire, m.p. 'it is not to harrow your feelings, dear mr. trevelyan,' he wrote, 'i tell this tale of woe. no; but to excite your sympathy in behalf of our miserable peasantry. it is rumoured that the capitalists in the corn and flour trade are endeavouring to induce the government not to protect the people from famine, but to leave them at their mercy. i consider this a cruel and unjustifiable interference. i am so unhappy at the prospect before us, and so horror-struck by the apprehension of our destitute people falling into the ruthless hands of the corn and flour traders, that i risk becoming troublesome, rather than not lay my humble opinions before you.' again: 'i hail with delight the humane, the admirable measures for relief announced by my lord john russell; they have given universal satisfaction. but of what avail will all this be, unless the wise precautions of government will enable the toiling workman, after exhausting his vigour during a long day to earn a shilling, to purchase with that shilling a sufficiency of daily food for his generally large and helpless family?' father mathew earnestly pleaded for out-door relief, in preference to the workhouse, foreseeing the danger of sundering the domestic bonds, which operate so powerfully as moral restraints in ireland. the beautiful picture which he drew of the irish peasant's home in his native land was not too highly coloured, as applied to the great majority of the people:--'the bonds of blood and affinity, dissoluble by death alone, associate in the cabins of the irish peasantry, not only the husband, wife, and children, but the aged parents and the married couple and their destitute relatives, even to the third and fourth degree of kindred. god forbid that political economists should dissolve these ties! should violate these beautiful charities of nature and the gospel! i have often found my heart throb with delight when i beheld three or four generations seated around the humble board and blazing hearth; and i offered a silent prayer to the great father of all that the gloomy gates of the workhouse should never separate those whom such tender social chains so fondly link together.' the following is a tabular view of the whole amount of voluntary contributions during the irish famine, which deserves a permanent record for the credit of our common humanity:-- £ s. d. £ s. d. local contributions officially reported in , local contributions officially reported in , british relief association, total received , say five-sixths for ireland , general central relief committee, college green , less received from british relief association , _____________ , irish relief association, sackville street , relief committee of the society of friends, london , central relief committee of the society of friends, dublin , less received from committee of the society of friends in london, and interest , _____________ , indian relief fund , national club, london , wesleyan methodist relief fund, london , irish evangelical society, london , baptists' relief fund, london , ladies' irish clothing society, london , less received from british association, &c. , _____________ , ladies' relief association for ireland , less received from irish relief association and for sales of manufactures , _____________ , ladies' industrial society for encouragement of labour among the peasantry , less received from irish relief association , _____________ belfast ladies' association for the relief of irish distress , belfast ladies' industrial association for connaught , there were also two collections in belfast for general purposes, the amount of which exceeded , chapter xvii. tenant-right in ulster. the earl of granard has taken a leading part in the movement for the settling of the land question, having presided at two great meetings in the counties in which he has large estates, wexford and longford, supported on each occasion by influential landlords. he was the first of his class to propose that the question should be settled on the basis of tenant-right, by legalising and extending the ulster custom. a reference to this custom has been frequently made recently, in discussions on the platform and in the press. i have studied the history of that province with care; and i have during the year gone through several of its counties with the special object of inquiring how the tenant-right operates, and whether, and to what extent, it affords the requisite security to the cultivators of the soil; and it may be of some service that i should give here the result of my enquiries. of the six counties confiscated and planted in ulster, londonderry, as i have already remarked, was allotted to the london companies. the aspect of their estates, is on the whole, very pleasing. in the midst of each there is a small town, built in the form of a square, with a market-house and a town-hall in the centre, and streets running off at each side. there are almost invariably three substantial and handsome places of worship--the parish church, always best and most prominent, the presbyterian meeting-house, and the catholic chapel, with nice manses for the ministers, all built wholly or in part by grants from the companies. complaints were constantly made against the irish society for its neglect of its trust, for refusing to give proper building leases, and for wasting the funds placed at its disposal for public purposes. the details are curious and interesting, throwing much light on the social history of the times. the whole subject of its duties and responsibilities, and of its anomalous powers, was fully discussed at a meeting of the principal citizens, most of them strongly conservative, on the th of may, . there had been a discussion on the subject in the house of commons, in which lord claud hamilton, then member for the borough, distinguished himself. mr. maguire brought the society before parliament in an able speech. the legislature, as well as the public, were then preoccupied with the church question. but, doubtless, the maiden city will make her voice heard next session, and insist on being released from a guardian who always acted the part of a stepmother. the irish society has been before three parliamentary tribunals, the commissioners of municipal corporations for england and wales, the royal commission of enquiry into the state of the corporation of london, and the irish municipal commissioners. the english commissioners say:--'we do not know of any pretext or argument for continuing this municipal supremacy of the irish society. a control of this kind maintained at the present day by the municipality of one town in england over another town in ireland, appears to us so indefensible in principle, that our opinion would not have been changed, even if it were found that hitherto it has been conducted with discretion and forbearance.' the irish commissioners affirmed 'that the irish society in their original institution were created for the purpose of forwarding the interests and objects of the plantation, and not for mere private gain; and that of the large income which they receive from their possessions in londonderry, a very inadequate and disproportionate share is applied for the public purposes, or other objects connected with the local interests of the districts from which the revenues of the society are drawn.' the corporation of derry cannot put a bye-law in force till it receives the approval of the irish society. and what is this tribunal whose fiat must stamp the decision of the derry corporation before it can operate in the smallest matter within the municipal boundary? the members are london traders, totally ignorant of ireland. they are elected for two years, so that they must go out by the time they acquire any information about their trust, to make way for another batch equally ignorant. having everything to learn during their term of office, if they have time or capacity to learn anything about the matter, they must submit to the guidance of the governor, who is elected virtually, though not formally, for life; and the members of the derry corporation believe him to be the autocrat of the society. mr. james p. hamilton, now the assistant-barrister for sligo, at the great meeting of the citizens of derry already mentioned, pronounced the governors to be 'the most ignorant, the most incompetent, and the most careless governors that ever were inflicted on a people.' mr. hamilton quoted from the answer of the corporation of london in to the privy council, which required them to convey , acres to the citizens of derry. the corporation replied that they had allotted , acres for the use of the mayor and other civil officers. that was either true or false. if true, by what right did they recall the grant, and re-possess themselves of those lands? by the articles they were bound to make quays, which were not made. they were bound to give bog and mountain for the city common, which they never gave. the corporation had a tract called the sheriffs mountain, but the city was robbed of it by her cruel stepmother, the irish society. the society was bound to give acres for a free school, and if this had been done derry might have had a rich foundation, rivalling westminster or the charter school. mr. hamilton, conservative as he is, with the heart of a true irishman, indignantly asks, 'why is this national grievance and insult continued for the profit of no one? their very name is an insult and a mockery--_the governor and assistants, london, of the new plantation in ulster_! what do they govern? they don't govern us in any sense of the word. they merely hold our property in a dead grip, without any profit to themselves, and to our great disadvantage.' the city is overwhelmed with debt--debt for the new quays, debt for the new bridge, debt for the public works of the corporation, which has struggled to improve the city under the incubus of this alien power, contending with debt, want of tenure, and other difficulties, which would all have been avoided if the city had the lands which these londoners hold in their possession and use as their own pleasure dictates, half the revenues being spent in the management. mr. william hazlett, a magistrate of derry, one of its ablest and most respected citizens, stated that from to the expenses of management were per cent. the royal commissioners set it down thus--total expenditure, , l.; management, , l. the law expenses were, during the same period, , l. 'this item of itself,' says mr. hazlett, 'must be considered an intolerable grievance, for it was laid out for the oppression of the people who should have benefited by the funds so squandered in opposing the very parties who supplied the money, with which they were themselves harassed. if a tenant applies for a lease, and the society consents to grant one, it is so hampered with obstructive clauses that his solicitor objects to his signing it, and says that from its nature it could not be made a negotiable instrument on which to raise money. the tenant remonstrates, but the reply of the city is--"that is our form of lease; you must comply with it or want!" if you go to law with them, they may take you into chancery, and fight you with your own money.' mr. hazlett gave a remarkable illustration of this, which shows the spirit in which this body thinks proper to fulfil its duties as steward of this property. the devon land commission recommended that leases of lives renewable for ever should be converted into fee-farm grants, which would be a valuable boon to the tenant without any loss to the owner. a bill founded on the recommendation was introduced to parliament. did the enlightened and liberal irish society hail with satisfaction this wise measure of reform? on the contrary, the governor went out of his way to oppose it. having striven in vain, with all the vast influence of the corporation, to have the bill thrown out, he endeavoured to get the society exempted from its operation. when, in spite of his efforts, the bill became law, the governor utterly refused to act on it, and brought the matter before the master of the rolls and the house of lords. from these renewable leases the society had an income of about , l. yearly. and what amount did they demand--these moderate and discreet gentleman, 'the governor and assistants, london, of the new plantation of ulster'--for their interest in the renewable leases? not less than , l., or about years' purchase. in the year , when the city of derry was fast hastening to decay under this london government, the society was induced by an increase of per cent. on the rent, to grant those renewable leases. 'and but for the granting of those leases,' said mr. hazlett, 'we should have no standing-ground in this city, nor should we even have the right to meet in this hall as we do to-day.' other striking facts illustrating the paternal nature of this foreign government of the 'new plantation' were produced by mr. thomas chambers, a solicitor who had defended the rev. j.m. staples in a suit brought by the society, and which cost them , l. of the public money to win, after dragging the reverend gentleman from one court to another, regardless of expense. originally, as we have seen, the city got a grant of , acres for the support of the corporation; but actually received only , , valued then at l., a year. this land was forfeited and transferred to the bishop in the reign of charles i. ultimately the bishop gave up the land and the fishery, for which the see received, and still receives, l. a year. the society got, hold of the , acres, and refused to give them back to the city, which, with the alienation of the sheriff's mountain, and the raising of the city rents (in ) from l. to l. a year, left it , l. a year worse than it had been previously. the result of this policy of a body which was established for promoting 'civility' in ireland, was, that the credit of the corporation went down rapidly. executions were lodged against them, and all their property in quays, markets, &c. was swept away, the bridge being saved only by the intervention of a special act of parliament. in , however, the society granted the corporation an allowance of l. when the reformed corporation came in, and found that they were so far emancipated from the thraldom of the london governor that they could go before parliament themselves, the society was constrained to increase its dole to , l. a year. mr. isaac colhoun, at the meeting referred to, produced from the accounts of the society for the previous year, published in the local papers, the following items:-- £ s. d. amount of the present increased income , ________________ incidental expenses as per general agents' account for - / law expenses salaries to general agent, deputy, vice-admiral, surveyor, and others pension to general agent visitation expenses, surveying expenses salary of clerk and porter's wages coal, gas, printing, stationery, advertisements salary to secretary and assistant governor, and 'assistants' for attendance at meetings ________________ , here, then, is a trust fund amounting to about , l. a year, and the trustees actually spend one-third in its management! and what is its management? what do they do with the money? mr. pitt skipton, d.l., a landed proprietor, who has nothing to gain or lose by the irish society, asks, 'where is our money laid out now? not on the estate of the irish society, but on the estates of the church and private individuals--on those of owners like myself who give their tenants perpetuity, because it is their interest to do so. we should wish to see the funds of the society so expended that we could see some memorial of them. but where is there in derry any monument wholly erected by the society which they were not specially forced to put up by charter, with the exception of a paltry piece of freestone within one of the bastions bearing their own arms.' let us only imagine what the corporation of derry could do in local improvements with this , l. a year, which is really their own property, or even with the , l. a-year squandered upon themselves by the trustees! some of these worthy london merchants, it seems, play the _rôle_ of irish landlords when travelling on the continent, on the strength of this derry estate, or their _assistantship_ in its management. 'i object,' says mr. j.p. hamilton, 'if i take a little run in the summer vacation to paris or brussels, to meet a greasy-looking gentleman from whitechapel or the minories, turned out sleek and shining from moses', and to be told by him that he has a large property in _hireland_, in a place called derry, and that his tenantry are an industrious, thriving set of fellows, quite remarkable for their intelligence, but that it is all owing to his excellent management of his property and his liberality.' mr. hazlett presented a still funnier picture of the irish 'visitations' of the members of the society, with their wives and daughters every summer. gentlemen in london regard it as a fine lark to get elected to serve in the irish society, as that includes a summer trip to ireland free of expense, with the jolliest entertainment. one gentleman, being asked by another whether he was ever in ireland, answered--'no, but i intend to get on the irish society next year and then i'll have a trip. what kind of people are they over there? do they all speak irish?' 'oh, no; they are a very decent, civilised people.' 'oh, i'm glad they don't speak irish; for none of us do, of course; but my daughter can speak french.' 'they had a great siege one time over there?' 'oh, yes; the derry people are proud of the siege.' 'ah, yes, i see; happened in the reign of king john, i believe.' but the heaviest charge laid at the door of the irish society is its persistent refusal to grant proper tenures for building. by this, even more than their reckless squandering of the revenues of a fine estate, which is not their own, they have obstructed the improvement of the city. they might possibly be compelled to refund the wasted property of their ward, but they could never compensate for stunting and crippling her as they have done. fortunately, there is a standard by which we are able to measure this iniquity with tolerable accuracy. dr. william brown, of derry, testified that it was the universal conviction of the people of derry, of all classes and denominations, that, by the mismanagement of their trust, the irish society had converted the crown grant from the blessing it was intended to be, and which it would have been under a just administration, into something more akin to a curse. for anything that saps the self-reliant and independent spirit of a community must always be a curse. within the last hundred years belfast was not in advance of derry in population, in trade, in capital, or in any other element constituting or conducing to prosperity. its river was not so navigable, and by no means so well adapted to foreign, especially transatlantic trade. the country surrounding it was not superior in soil, nor the inhabitants in intelligence and enterprise. it had no estate, as derry had, granted by the crown to assist in the development of civilisation, education, and commerce. its prospects, then, were inferior to those of derry. but belfast had the one thing, most needful of all, that derry had not. it had equitable building tenures. and of this one advantage, look at the result! 'belfast is now seven times the size of derry; and is in possession of a trade and a trade capital which derry can never hope to emulate, while smothered by the stick-in-the-mud policy of that miserable anachronism the irish society.' the london companies which have estates in the county derry claimed to be entitled to all the surplus revenue after the cost of management was deducted. this was the question raised by the celebrated 'skinners' case,' ultimately decided by the house of lords. the effect of the decision was, that the society was a trustee, not for the companies but for the public objects defined in the charter and the 'articles of agreement.' lord langdale's language on the subject is perfectly clear and explicit. he declared that the irish society have not, 'collectively or individually,' any beneficial interest in the estates. in a sense they are trustees. they have important duties to perform; but their powers and duties have all reference to the _plantation_, whose object was purely public and political. adverting to this judgment, it is not derry alone that is interested in the abolition of the irish society. its objects 'affected the general welfare of ireland and the whole realm.' the city of london, in its corporate capacity, had no beneficial interest in the estates. 'the money which it had advanced was early repaid, and the power which remained, or which was considered to remain, was, like that of the society, an entrusted power for the benefit of the plantation and those interested in it. the irish society seems to have been little, if anything, more than the representative or instrument of the city for the purposes of the plantation.' i subjoin the text of the concluding part of the judgment in the _skinners' case_, the report of which fills a very bulky volume:-- lord langdale said: 'the mistaken views which the society may have subsequently taken of its own situation and duties (and i think that such mistaken views have several times been taken) do not vary the conclusion to be deduced from the charter and the circumstances contemporary with the grant of the first charter. i am of opinion that the powers granted to the society and the trusts reposed in them were in part of a general and public nature, independent of the private benefit of the companies of london, and were intended by the crown to benefit ireland and the city of london, by connecting the city of londonderry and the town of coleraine and a considerable irish district with the city of london, and to promote the general purposes of the plantation, not only by securing the performance of the conditions imposed on ordinary undertakers, but also by the exercise of powers and the performance of trusts not within the scope of those conditions. the charter of charles ii. expressly recites that the property not actually divided was retained for the general operation of the plantation.' chapter xviii. tenant-right in down. if there are sermons in stones i ought to have learned something from the ruins of the castle built by sir arthur hill, the founder of the house of downshire, in which they show the chamber occupied by william iii. while his army was encamped at blaris moor. this was once a royal fort, and among the most interesting memorials of the past are the primitive gates, long laid aside from duty, the timber gradually mouldering away from the huge nails, which once added to their massive strength. hillsborough was incorporated by charles ii., and sent two members to parliament. the hills rose rapidly in rank and influence. in , trevor hill, esq., was created viscount of hillsborough and baron hill. in , wills, the second viscount, was made earl of hillsborough, and in he became marquis of downshire. hillsborough is the most perfect picture of a feudal establishment that i know. on one side of the little, quiet, tradeless town are the ruins of the old castle, with its park and its fine ancestral trees, through the thick foliage of which pierces the spire of the church, lofty and beautiful. on the other side, and quite close to the town, is 'the new castle'--an immense building of cut stone, in the greek style, two storeys high, shut in by high walls from the view of the townsfolk. then there is the small market-square, with the court-house in the centre, the hotel at the top, and other buildings of a better class on the opposite side. from the hill, which is crowned by these buildings, descend small streets, in which dwell the inhabitants, all more or less dependent on the lord of the manor, all cared for by him, and many of them pensioned when disabled by age or infirmity. there is a monument erected to the memory of the late marquis's father on a hill to the south of the town. the view from this point is glorious. belfast lies a little beyond, enveloped in the smoke emitted from its numerous tall chimneys. to the left is the range of the antrim highlands, continued along the coast of the lough towards carrickfergus, and from which the cave hill stands out in bold relief, looking down on the numerous pretty villas with which the taste of wealthy manufacturers and merchants has adorned those pleasant suburbs. westward towards lough neagh, swelling gradually--southward towards armagh, and round to newry, the whole surface of the country gently undulating, presents a vast picture of quiet beauty, fertility, and plenty that can be rivalled only in england. the tall crowded stocks along the ridges of the corn-fields attested the abundance of the crops--the rich greenness and warmth of the landscape showing how well the ground has been drained, manured, and cultivated. the neat, white-walled houses gleaming amidst the verdure of sheltering trees and trimmed hedges tell the thoughtful observer that the people who dwell in this land belong to it, are rooted in it, and ply their industry under the happy feeling that, so far as their old landlords are concerned, their lot is one of 'quietness and assurance for ever.' nowhere--even on the high ranges about newry, where the population is far too dense, where the patchwork cultivation creeps up the mountain side, and the hand of industry snatches a precarious return from a poor, cold, ungrateful soil, amidst desolating tempests and blighting fogs--not even there did i notice the least trace of evictions or clearances. no black remnant of a wall tells that where sheep now browze and lambs frisk there was once a fireside, where the family affections were cherished, and a home where happy children played in the sunshine. this is the field of capital and enterprise; here we have an aristocracy of wealth, chiefs of industry, each of whom maintains an army of 'hands' more numerous than the swordsmen of shane o'neill when he reigned in his castle yonder on the banks of lough neagh. but here also is the aristocracy of rank--lords of ancient lineage, descended from heroes--men who have left magnificent monuments of their creative genius. they have not only founded great houses, but they have laid deep and broad the foundations of a social system to whose strength and beauty every age has been adding something, and which now wants only one topmost stone to make it perfect. i read on the monument to lord downshire the expressive motto of the downshire family--_per deum et ferrum obtinui._ no family ever made better use of the power thus obtained. the inscription states that the third marquis was 'alike distinguished for patriotism, rectitude of principle, and honesty of purpose. upholding his station with becoming dignity, he was also mindful of the wants of others, and practised his duties with benevolence and humility, which won the regard of every virtuous mind, adding lustre to his exalted rank.' although these words were engraved upon a monument by the friends and admirers of their object, they are perfectly true, and they would be equally true of the late marquis. lord downshire is esteemed as the best of landlords. he charges per cent. less for his land than it is worth--than the tenants would be able to pay. tenant-right on his property sells for an enormous amount. he never evicts a tenant, nor even threatens to evict those who vote against him. what he has done for the contentment and prosperity of his tenants, with so much honour and happiness to himself, other landlords may do with like results. the late lord, his father, and his grandfather pursued the same course. they let their lands at a low valuation. they encouraged improvements--they allowed the free enjoyment of tenant-right; but they refused to allow sub-letting or subdivision of the land. they consolidated farms only when tenants, unable to retain small, worn-out holdings, wished to sell their tenant-right and depart. the consequence is that there is great competition for land on the downshire estates. the tenant-right sells easily for l. to l. an irish acre, the rent being on an average about s. if a tenant is not able to pay his way, he is let run on in arrears perhaps for two or three years. then he feels the necessity of selling; but the arrears are deducted, and also debts that he may owe to his neighbours, before he departs with the proceeds in his pocket. the late marquis seems to have been almost idolised by the tenants. on or off the estate, in town or country, i have heard nothing of him but praise of the warmest and most unqualified kind; and, what is more remarkable, his late agent, mr. filgate, was universally respected for his fairness in the discharge of his duties. the way in which i heard this spoken of by the people convinces me that there is nothing that wins their confidence so much as strict impartiality, and justice, calmly, kindly, but firmly administered. the people to whom i spoke laid stress on the fact that mr. filgate listened quietly to the statements of both sides, carefully enquired into the merits of each, and decided accordingly. there was no favouritism, they said, no partiality; no hasty decision in a fit of anger, or passion, or impatience; no refusal to listen to reason. i observed to one of the tenants, 'you admit that the rents are much lower than on other estates, much lower than the value of the lands, and that during the last twenty years the tenant-right has increased in value. suppose, then, that the marquis should raise the rents, say twenty-five per cent., what would be the consequence? would they pay the increase willingly?' 'willingly!' he exclaimed, 'no, there would be rebellion! the late lord could do anything with the people; he could raise the country. but you see when they bought the tenant-right they believed they could never be robbed of the value for which they paid by raising the rent.' what can be better than the social picture which harris presents of the state of society here years ago? 'the inhabitants are warm and well clad at church, fairs, and markets. tillage and the linen manufacture keep them in constant employment; a busy and laborious life prevents excess and breaches of the laws, which in no part of the kingdom are more reverenced. the people are regular in their attendance on public worship. few breaches of the peace, felonies, burglaries, or murders come before the judges at the assizes; convictions for capital offences seldom happen. men travel securely by day, and are afraid of little disturbance at night to keep them on their guard. every man sits down securely under his vine and his figtree, and enjoys with comfort the fruit of his honest labours.' he ascribes in the main this prosperity to what he calls '_the spirit of tillage_.' until that spirit arose in ulster, the irish had to send to america for their daily bread, 'which,' he says, 'to the astonishment of all europe, has been often our weakness.' viewing the whole social condition of the county, he exclaims, 'such are the happy effects of a well-peopled country, _extensive tillage, the linen manufacture, and the protestant religion_.' in the first year of the present century, the dublin society (not yet 'royal') employed 'land commissioners' to enquire into the condition of agriculture in the several counties of ireland. the rev. john dubourdieu, rector of annahilt, in this county, was their commissioner for down and antrim. he states that the rent was then on an average s. the _irish_ acre (three equal to five english), allowing for the mountains and bogs, which he computed at , acres. the rental of the county he sets down at , l. the net annual value of property assessed under the tenement valuation act is now , l. this is considerably under the letting value, it is supposed, per cent. if this be so, the county yields to the proprietors a revenue of about , , l. a year. if we add the value of the tenant-right, and of the fixtures of all sorts--houses, mills, roads, bridges--as well as the movable property and stock, we may get some idea of the enormous aggregate of wealth which the labour of man has created on this strip of wild wooded hills, swampy plains, and bogs. now, what has effected this marvellous change? the tenants, with one voice, exclaim, 'our labour, our capital, our skill, our care, and self-denial. it was we that cleared away the woods which it was so difficult to eradicate. it was we who drained away the bogs and morasses, and by the help of lime and marl converted them into rich land. it was we that built the dwelling-houses and offices. it was we that made the fences, and planted the hedge-rows and orchards. it was we that paid for the making of the roads and bridges. the landlords gave us the wild country to work upon; we have done the rest. our industry enabled them to build their stately mansions, and we have continued to pay to them their princely revenues. our forefathers came with them as settlers, that they might "plant" the country with a loyal and industrious race of people, and they came on the assurance that they and their children's children were to remain for ever rooted where they were planted. they did their duty faithfully and well by the land, by the landlords, and by the government. where the children that inherited their rights failed, their interest in their farms has been purchased dearly by others of the same race who have taken their places. by what right, then, can they be turned out?' it is not possible, if it were desirable, to introduce the 'high farming system' in this county. but if possible, would it be desirable? in the eye of a scientific agriculturist it might be better that all those comfortable farm-houses, with the innumerable fences crossing the landscape in every possible form, making all sorts of mathematical figures, presenting the appearance of an immense variegated patchwork--were levelled and removed so that the plough and all the modern machinery might range unobstructed over hill and vale. but assuredly it would not seem better to the philanthropist, the christian, or the statesman. to the chancellor of the exchequer it would make the most serious difference; for a few herds and ploughmen would consume but a very small portion indeed of the excisable articles now used by the tenant farmers of this county. i have taken some notes on the diet of this people which may be instructive. at the beginning of the present century the small farmers were generally weavers. there was an obvious incompatibility in the two occupations, and the farms were neglected. gradually this evil has been corrected, especially since the famine. the weavers have become cottiers, and the farmers have devoted themselves to their agricultural operations exclusively with the more energy since railroads have so facilitated the quick sale of produce, particularly that sort of produce which enables the occupiers to supply the markets with the smaller necessaries of life, and with which large farmers would not trouble themselves. daily labourers working from a.m., to p.m. in large fields with machinery cannot do the hundreds of little matters which the family of the small holder attends to every hour of the day, often in the night--and which give work to women and children as well as the men--work of the most healthful character and most free from demoralizing influences. on a farm of fifteen to thirty acres there is constant employment of a profitable kind for the members of a household, including women and children. the effect of good drainage is that farming operations can be carried on through winter, in preparing the ground and putting in wheat and other crops early to supply the markets, when prices are high. oats, barley, potatoes, flax, turnips claim attention in turn, and then come the weeding and thinning, the turf-making, the hay-making, and all the harvest operations. it is by the ceaseless activity of small farmers in watching over their pigs, poultry, lambs, &c., that the markets are kept so regularly supplied, and that towns grow up and prosper. if down and antrim had been divided into farms of thousands of acres each, like lincolnshire, what would belfast have become? little more than a port for the shipping of live stock to liverpool and glasgow. before the famine, the food of the small farmers was generally potatoes and milk three times a day, with a bit of meat occasionally. but salt herrings were the main reliance for giving a flavour to the potato, often 'wet' and bad. after the failure of the potatoes, their place was supplied by oatmeal in the form of 'stirabout.' indian meal was subsequently found cheaper and more wholesome. but of late years the diet of the farmers in these parts has undergone a complete revolution. there is such brisk demand for butter, eggs, potatoes, and other things that used to be consumed by the family, that they have got into the habit of taking tea, with cakes and other home-made bread twice, or even three times, a day. the demand for tea is, therefore, enormous. there is one grocer's establishment in belfast which has been able to produce a mixture that suits the taste of the people, and the quantity of tea sold by it is a ton a day. this is the business of but one out of many houses in belfast. then there is the brisk trade in such towns as newtownards, lisburn, ballymena, &c. in pastoral districts the towns languish, the people pine in poverty, and the workhouses are in request. in a financial point of view, therefore, it is manifestly the interest of the state to encourage 'the spirit of tillage.' it is thus that most will be got out of the ground, that most revenue will be raised, and that the other elements of national power will be most fully developed. how can this encouragement be most effectually given? security for the farmer is essential--of what nature should the security be? the phrase 'unexhausted improvements' is often used. but should the legislature contemplate, or make provision for the exhaustion of improvements? is the improving tenant to be told that his remedy is to retrograde--to undo what he has done--to take out of the land all the good he has put in it, and reduce it to the comparative sterility in which he, or those whom he represents, first received it? should not the policy of the legislature rather be to keep up improvements of the soil, and its productive power at the highest possible point, and make it the interest of the occupier never to relax in his exertions? the rower will not put forth all his strength unless he believes he will win. in other races, though many start, only one or two can receive the prize. in this race of agricultural improvement all competitors might win ample rewards. but will they put forth all their energies--is it in human nature that they should--was it ever done by any people, if the prizes are to be seized, enjoyed, and flaunted before their eyes by others, who may be strangers, and who never helped them by their sympathy in their toilsome course of training and self-denial? it is because the landlords of the county down have been so often in the same boat with their tenants, and with so much good faith, generous feeling, and cordial sympathy encouraged their exertions, and secured to them their just rewards, that this great county presents to the world such a splendid example of what industry, skill, and capital can accomplish. is it not possible to extend the same advantages through the whole island without wronging the landlord or degrading the tenant? the stranger is at first surprised to see so large a town as newtownards, with its handsome square, its town-hall, its wide, regular streets, its numerous places of worship, and a population of , , in a place without visible factories, and without communication with the sea, within eight miles of belfast, and three miles of bangor, which, though a seaport, is but one-fourth of the size. but although there are no great mills sending forth volumes of smoke, newtownards is really a manufacturing town. those clean, regular streets, with their two-storey houses, uniform as a district in the east of london, are inhabited by weavers. in each house there is one loom at least, in most two or three, and in some as many as six. the manufacture of woollen and cotton goods of finer qualities than can be produced by the power-loom is carried on extensively. i saw one man working at a piece of plaid of six colours, a colour on every shuttle, with the help of his wife, who assisted in winding, he was able to earn only s. a week by very diligent work from early morning till night. there is a general complaint of the depression of trade at present. agents, chiefly from glasgow houses, living in the town, supply the yarn and pay the wages. i was struck with the number of public-houses in all the leading streets. how far they are supported by the weavers i cannot say, but whether or not they can dispense with the glass, they must have their tobacco, and when this luxury is deducted, and a shilling a week for the rent of the cottage, it is hard to understand how a family of six or eight can be supported on the weekly wages. the trade of muslin embroidery once flourished here, and in the pretty little neighbouring town of comber; but it has so fallen off that now the best hands, plying the needle unceasingly during the long, long day, can earn only three or four shillings a week. before the invention of machinery for flax-spinning, the manufacture of fine thread by hand-labour was a most profitable employment. wonders were wrought in this way by female fingers. the author of 'our staple manufactures' states that in , out of a pound and a half of flax, costing s., a woman produced yarn of the value of l. s. d. miss m'quillan, of comber, spun hanks out of one pound of flax, splitting the fibre with her needles to give this degree of fineness. but alas! what a change to the cottage hearth! the song of the wheel's no more-- the song that gladdened with guileless mirth the hearths and homes of the poor! but here, and in all the small towns about, they have still the weaving, and it is carried on to a considerable extent by persons who hold a few acres of land, throwing aside the shuttle while putting in the crops and doing the harvest work. thus combining the two pursuits, these poor people are able, by extraordinary industry, to earn their daily bread; but they can do little more. the weavers, as a class, appear to be feeble and faded specimens of humanity, remarkably quiet, intelligent, and well-disposed--a law-abiding people, who shrink from violence and outrage, no matter what may be their grievances. it is cruel to load them too heavily with the burdens of life, and yet i am afraid it is sometimes done, even in this county, unnecessarily and wantonly. what i have said of the downshire and londonderry estates, holds good with respect to the estates of the other large proprietors, such as lord roden, the kindest of landlords, almost idolised, even by his catholic tenants; lord annesley; the trustees of lord kilmurray; sir thomas bateson, and others. but i am sorry to learn that even the great county down has a share of the two classes which supply the worst species of irish landlords--absentees who live extravagantly in england, and merchants who have purchased estates to make as large a percentage as possible out of the investment. it is chiefly, but not wholly, on the estates of these proprietors that cases of injustice and oppression are found. in the first class it is the agent that the tenants have to deal with; and whether he be humane or not matters little to them, for, whatever may be his feelings, the utmost penny must be exacted to keep up the expensive establishments of the landlord in england, to meet the cost of a new building, or the debt incurred by gambling on the turf and elsewhere. every transaction of the kind brings a fresh demand on the agent, and even if he be not unscrupulous or cruel, he must put on the screw, and get the money at all hazards. i have been assured that it is quite usual, on such estates, to find the tenantry paying the highest rent compatible with the maintenance of bare life. there is in the county of down a great number of small holders thus struggling for existence. as a specimen let us take the following case:--a man holds a dozen acres of land, for which he pays l. s. per acre. he labours as no slave could be made to work, in the summer time from five o'clock in the morning till six in the evening. he can hardly scrape together a pound beyond the rent and taxes. if a bad season comes, he is at starvation point: he falls into arrears with the landlord, and he is forced by the bailiff to sell off his small stock to pay the rent. without the excuse of pecuniary difficulties, the merchant landlord is not a whit less exacting, or more merciful. he looks upon the tenants as he would on so many head of cattle, and his sole consideration is what is the highest penny he can make out of them. not far from belfast lived a farmer who cultivated a few acres. sickness and the support of a widowed sister's family forced him into arrears of rent. ejectment proceedings were taken, and one day when he returned to his house, he found his furniture thrown out on the road, the sister and family evicted, and the door locked. he was offered as much money as would take him to america, but he would not be allowed to sell the tenant-right. here is another case illustrative of the manner in which that right is sometimes dealt with:--a respectable man purchased a farm at l. an acre. it was very poor land, much of it unfit for cultivation. immediately on getting possession a surveyor came and added two acres to the former measurement. the incoming tenant was at the same time informed that the rent was raised to an extent that caused the possession to be a dead loss. on threatening to throw up the concern, some reduction was made, which brought the rent as close as possible to the full letting value. i have been told by a well-informed gentleman, whose veracity i cannot doubt, that it is quite common in the county of down (and indeed i have been told the same thing in other counties) to find an _improving_ tenant paying l. to l. an acre for land, which he has at his own expense brought up to a good state of cultivation, while the adjoining land of his lazy neighbour--originally of equal value--yields only s. to s. an acre. the obvious tendency of this unjust and impolitic course on the part of landlords and agents, is to discourage improvements, to dishearten the industrious, and to fill the country with thriftless, desponding, and miserable occupiers, living from hand to mouth. there are circumstances under which even selfish men will toil hard, though others should share with them the benefit of their labours; but if they feel that this partnership in the profits of their industry is the result of a system of legalised injustice, which enables unscrupulous men to appropriate at will the whole of the profits, their moral sense so revolts against that system that they resolve to do as little as they possibly can. the consequence of these painful relations of landlord and tenant, even in this comparatively happy county, is a perceptible degeneracy in the manhood of the people. talk to an old inhabitant, who has been an attentive observer of his times, and he will tell you that the vigorous and energetic, the intelligent and enterprising, are departing to more favoured lands, and that this process has produced a marked deterioration in the population within his memory. he can distinctly recollect when there were more than double the present number of strong farmers in the country about belfast. he declares that, with many exceptions of course, the land is getting into the hands of a second or third class of farmers, who are little more than servants to the small landlords. even where there are leases, such intelligent observers affirm that they are so over-ridden with conditions that the farmer has no liberty or security to make any great improvements. were it otherwise he would not think a thirty-one years' lease sufficient for the building of a stone house, that would be as good at the end of a hundred years as at the end of thirty. all the information that i can gather from thoughtful men, who are really anxious for a change that would benefit the landlords as well as themselves, points to the remedy which lord granard has suggested, as the most simple, feasible, and satisfactory--the legalisation and extension of the tenant-right custom. they rejoice that such landlords now proclaim the injustice which the tenant class have so long bitterly felt--namely, the presumption of law that all the improvements and buildings on the farm belong to the lord of the soil, although the notorious fact is that they are all the work of the tenant. and here i will take the opportunity of remarking that the legislature were guilty of strange oversight, or deliberate injustice, in the passing of the incumbered estates act. taking advantage of an overwhelming national calamity, they forced numbers of gentlemen into a ruinous sale of their patrimonial estates, in order that men of capital might get possession of them. but they made no provision whatever for the protection of the tenants, or of the property which those tenants had created on these estates. many of those were tenants at will, who built and planted in perfect and well-grounded reliance on the honour and integrity of their old landlords. but in the advertisements for the sale of property under the landed estates court, it was regularly mentioned as an inducement to purchasers of the scully type that the tenants had no leases. the result of this combination of circumstances bearing against the cultivators of the soil--the chief producers of national wealth--is a deep, resentful sense of injustice pervading this class, and having for its immediate objects the landlords and their agents. the tenants don't speak out their feelings, because they dare not. they fear that to offend the _office_ in word or deed is to expose themselves and their children to the infliction of a fine in the shape of increased rent, perhaps at the rate of five or ten shillings an acre in perpetuity. one unfortunate effect of the distrust thus generated, is that when enlightened landlords, full of the spirit of improvement, like lord dufferin and lord lurgan, endeavour, from the most unselfish and patriotic motives, to make changes in the tenures and customs on their estates, they have to encounter an adverse current of popular opinion and feeling, which is really too strong to be effectually resisted. for example: in order to correct the evils resulting from the undue competition for land among the tenants, they limit the amount per acre which the outgoing tenant is permitted to receive; but the limitation is futile, because the tenants understand one another, and do what they believe to be right behind the landlord's back. the market price is, say, l. an acre. the landlord allows l.; the balance finds its way secretly into the pocket of the outgoing tenant before he gives up possession. as a gentleman expressed it to me emphatically, 'the outgoing tenant _must_ be satisfied, and he _is_ satisfied.' public opinion in his own class demands it; and on no other terms would it be considered lucky to take possession of the vacant farm. chapter xix. tenant-right in antrim. i find from the antrim survey, published in , that at that time leases were general on the hertfort estate. there were then about , farmers who held by that tenure, each holding, on an average, twenty english acres, but many farms contained acres or more. mr. hugh m'call, of lisburn, the able author of 'our staple manufactures,' gives the following estimates of the rental. in , it was , l.; in , it was , l.; and for , his estimate is , l. taking the estimate given by dean stannus, as l. or l. an acre, the tenant-right of the estate is worth , l. at the very least, probably , l. is the more correct figure. this vast amount of property created by the industry and capital of the tenants, is held at the will of an absentee landlord, who has on several occasions betrayed an utter want of sympathy with the people who lie thus at his mercy. there are tenant farmers on the estate who hold as much as to acres, with handsome houses built by themselves, whose interest, under the custom, should amount to , l. and , l. respectively, which might be legally swept away by a six months' notice to quit. the owners of this property might be regarded as very independent, but in reality, unless the spirit of martyrdom has raised them above the ordinary feelings of human nature, they will take care to be very humble and submissive towards lord hertfort's agents. if words were the same as deeds, if professions were always consistent with practice, the tenants would certainly have nothing to fear; for great pains have been taken from time to time, both by the landlord and agent, to inspire them with unbounded confidence. in the year , the tenants presented an address to lord hertfort, in which they said:--'it is a proud fact, worthy to be recorded, that the tenant-right of the honest and industrious man on your lordship's estate is a certain and valuable tenure to him, so long as he continues to pay his rent.' to this his lordship replied in the following terms:--'i am happy to find that the encouragement i have given to the improvement of the land generally has been found effectual, and i trust that the advantage to the tenant of the improved system of agriculture will be found to increase; and i beg to assure you that with me the right of the improving tenant shall continue to be as scrupulously respected as it has been hitherto by my ancestors. your kindness alone, independent of the natural interest which i must ever feel as to everything connected with this neighbourhood, affords a powerful inducement to my coming among you, and i hope to have the pleasure of often repeating my visit.' twenty-four years have since elapsed, and during all that time the marquis has never indulged himself in a repetition of the exquisite pleasure he then enjoyed. at a banquet given in his honour on that occasion, he used the following language, which was, no doubt, published in the _times_, and read with great interest in london and paris:--'this is one of the most delightful days i ever spent. trust me, i have your happiness and welfare at heart, and it shall ever be my endeavour to promote the one and contribute to the other.' the parting scene on this occasion must have been very touching; for, in tearing himself away, his lordship said: 'i have now come to the concluding toast. it is, "merry have we met, and merry may we _soon_ meet again!"' the tenants could scarcely doubt the genuineness of their landlord's feelings, for on the same occasion dean stannus said: 'i feel myself perfectly justified in using the term "a good landlord;" because his lordship's express wish to me often was, "i hope you will always keep me in such a position that i may be considered the friend of my tenants."' but as he did not return to them, a most respectable deputation waited upon him in london in the year , to present a memorial praying for a reduction of rent on account of the potato blight and other local calamities which had befallen the tenantry. the memorialists respectfully showed 'that under the encouraging auspices of the hertfort family, and on the faith of that just and equitable understanding which has always existed on this estate--that _no advantage would be taken of the tenant's improvements in adjusting the letting value of land_, they had invested large sums of money in buildings and other improvements on their farms, and that this, under the name of tenant-right, was a species of sunk capital that was formerly considered a safe repository for accumulated savings, which could be turned to account at any time of difficulty by its sale, or as a security for temporary advances.' in his reply, lord hertfort said, 'i seek not to disturb any interest, much less do i wish to interfere by any plan or arrangement of mine with the tenant-right which my tenants have hitherto enjoyed, and which it is my anxious wish to preserve to them.' the faith and hope inspired by these assurances of the landlord were repeatedly encouraged and strengthened by the public declarations of his very reverend agent, dean stannus. at a meeting of the killultagh and derryvolgie farming society, in , he stated that he had great pleasure in subscribing to almost everything said by mr. m'call. he had taken great pains to convince the late lord hertfort that tenant-right was one of the greatest possible boons, _as well to the landlords themselves_ as to the tenants. so advantageous did he regard it to the interest of lord hertfort and the tenants, that if it were not preserved he would not continue agent to the estate. tenant-right was his security for the marquis of hertfort's rent, and he would not ask a tenant to relinquish a single rood of land without paying him at the rate of l. to l. an acre for it. firmly believing in the statements thus emphatically and solemnly made to them from time to time, that on this estate tenant-right was as good as a lease, the tenants went on building houses, and making permanent improvements in lisburn and elsewhere, depending on this security. and, indeed, the value of such security could scarcely be presented under more favourable circumstances. the absentee landlord receiving such a princely revenue, and absorbed in his parisian pursuits, seemed to leave everything to his agent. the agent was rector of the parish of lisburn, a dignitary of the church, a gentleman of the highest social position, with many excellent points in his character, and pledged before the world, again and again, to respect rigidly and scrupulously the enormous property which a confiding tenantry had invested in this estate. if, under these circumstances, the security of tenant-right fails, where else can it be trusted? if it be proved, by open and public proceedings, that on the hertfort estate, the distinctly recognised property of the tenant is liable to be seized and wrested from him by the agent, it is clear to demonstration that such property absolutely requires the protection of law. this proof, i am sorry to say, is forthcoming. let my readers reflect for a moment on what might have been done for lisburn and the surrounding country if the marquis of hertfort had rebuilt his castle and resided among his people. what an impulse to improvement of every kind, what employment for tradesmen of every class, what business for shops might have resulted from the local expenditure of , l. or , l. a year! what public buildings would have been erected--how local institutions would have flourished! the proverb that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' does not apply to the relations of landlord and tenant. but there is another proverb that applies well--'out of sight, out of mind.' of this i shall now give two or three illustrations. some years ago, it was discovered that no lease of the catholic chapel at lisburn could be found, and in the recollection of the oldest member of the congregation no rent had been paid. kent, however, was now demanded, and the parish priest agreed to pay a nominal amount, which places the congregation at the mercy of the office. ground was asked some time ago to build a presbyterian church, but it was absolutely refused. a sum of money was subscribed to build a literary institute, but, though a sort of promise was given for ground to build it on, it was never granted, and the project fell through. lord hertfort spends no portion of his vast income where it is earned. his estate is like a farm to which the produce is never returned in the shape of manure, but is all carted off and applied to the enrichment of a farm elsewhere. one might suppose that where such an exhausting process has been going on for so long a time an effort would be made at some sort of compensation, especially at periods of calamity. yet, when the weavers on his estate were starving, owing to the cotton famine during the american war, his lordship never replied to the repeated applications made to him for help to save alive those honest producers of his wealth. the noble example of lord derby and other proprietors in lancashire failed to kindle in his heart a spark of humanity, not to speak of generous emulation. the sum of , l. was raised in lisburn, and by friends in great britain and america, which was expended in saving the people from going _en masse_ to the workhouse. behold a contrast! while the great peer, whose family inherited a vast estate for which they never paid a shilling, was deaf to the cries of famishing christians, whom he was bound by every tie to commiserate and relieve, an american citizen, who owed nothing to ireland but his birth--mr. a.t. stewart, of new york--sent a ship loaded with provisions, which cost him , l. of his own money, to be distributed amongst lord hertfort's starving tenants, and on the return of the ship he took out as many emigrants as he could accommodate, free of charge. the tourist in ireland is charmed with the appearance of lisburn--the rich and nicely cultivated town parks, the fields white as snow with linen of the finest quality, the busy mills, the old trees, the clean streets, the look of comfort in the population, the pretty villas in the country about. mrs. s.c. hall says that there is, probably, no town in ireland where the happy effects of english taste and industry are more conspicuous than at lisburn. 'from drumbridge and the banks of the lagan on one side, to the shores of lough neagh on the other, the people are almost exclusively the descendants of english settlers. those in the immediate neighbourhood of the town were mostly welsh, but great numbers arrived from the northern english shires, and from the neighbourhood of the bristol channel. the english language is perhaps spoken more purely by the populace of this district than by the same class in any other part of ireland. the neatness of the cottages, and the good taste displayed in many of the farms, are little, if at all, inferior to aught that we find in england, and the tourist who visits lough neagh, passing through ballinderry, will consider it to have been justly designated _the garden of the north._ the multitude of pretty little villages, scattered over the landscape, each announcing itself by the tapering tower of a church, would almost beguile the traveller into believing that he was passing through a rural district in one of the midland counties of england.' we have seen that after general conway got this land, it was described by an english traveller as still uninhabited--'all woods and moor.' who made it the garden of the north? the british settlers and their descendants. and why did they transform this wilderness into fruitful fields? because they had permanent tenures and fair rents. the rental years ago was , l. per annum. allow that money was three times as valuable then as it is now, and the rental would have been about , l. it is now nearly six times that amount. by what means was the revenue of the landlord increased? was it by any expenditure of his own? did any portion of the capital annually abstracted from the estate return to it, to fructify and increase its value? did the landlord drain the swamps, reclaim the moors, build the dwellings and farmhouses, make the fences, and plant the orchards? he did nothing of the kind. nor was it agricultural industry alone that increased his revenue. he owes much of the beauty, fertility, and richness of his estate to the linen manufacture, to those weavers to the cries of distress from whose famishing children a few years ago the most noble marquis resolutely turned a deaf ear. but, passing from historical matters to the immediate purpose of our enquiry, let it suffice to remark that from lisburn as a centre the linen trade in all its branches--flax growing, scutching, spinning, weaving and bleaching--spread over the whole of the hertfort estate, giving profitable employment to the tenants, circulating money, enabling them to build and improve and work the estate into the rich and beautiful garden described by mrs. hall;--all this work of improvement has been carried on, all or nearly all the costly investments on the land have been made, without leases and in dependence on tenant-right. we have seen what efforts were made by landlord and agent to strengthen the faith of the tenants in this security. we have seen also from the historical facts i have adduced the sort of people that constitute the population of the borough of lisburn. if ever there was a population that could be safely entrusted with the free exercise of the franchise it is the population of this town--so enlightened, so loyal, so independent in means, such admirable producers of national wealth, so naturally attached to british connection. yet for generations lisburn has been a pocket borough, and the nominee of the landlord, often a total stranger, was returned as a matter of course. the marquis sent to his agent a _congé d'élire_, and that was as imperative as a similar order to a dean and chapter to elect a bishop. in the gentleman whom the lisburn electors were ordered to return was mr. inglis, the lord advocate of scotland. they, however, felt that the time was come when the borough should be opened, and they should be at liberty to exercise their constitutional rights. a meeting of the inhabitants was therefore held, at which mr. r. smith was nominated as the popular candidate. the contest was not political; it was simply the independence of the borough against the _office_. dean stannus, as agent to an absentee landlord, was the most powerful personage in the place, virtually the lord of the manor. before the election that gentleman published a letter in a belfast paper contradicting a statement that had appeared to the effect that lord hertfort took little interest in the approaching contest, in which letter he said: 'i have the best reason for knowing that his lordship views with intense interest what is passing here, and that he is most anxious for the return of mr. inglis, feeling that the election of such a representative (which i am now enabled to say is _certain_) will do much credit to the borough of lisburn, and that this _unmeaning_ contest will, at all events, among its other effects, prove to his lordship whom he may regard as his _true_ friends in his future relations with this town.' notwithstanding this warning, so significantly emphasized, the candidate whom the voters selected as their real representative was returned. now no one can blame the marquis or his agent for wishing that the choice had fallen upon mr. inglis. so far as politics were concerned, the contest _was_ unmeaning; but so far as the rights of the people and the loyal working of the british constitution were concerned, the contest was full of meaning, and if the landlord and his agent respected the constitution more than their own personal power they would have frankly acquiesced in the result, feeling that this protestant and conservative constituency had conscientiously done its duty to the state. but who could have imagined, after all the solemnly recorded pledges i have quoted, that they would have instantly resolved to punish the independent exercise of the franchise by inflicting an enormous and crushing fine amounting to nothing less than the whole tenant-right property of every adverse voter who had not a lease! immediately after the election 'notices to quit' were served upon every one of them. in consequence of this outrageous proceeding a public meeting was held, at which a letter from john millar, esq., a most respectable and wealthy man (who was unable to attend) was read by the secretary. he said: 'i have at various times purchased places held from year to year, relying on the custom of the country, and on the declared determination of the landlord and his agent to respect such customary rights of property, for the continued possession of it. i have besides taken under the same landlord several fields as town parks, which were in very bad order. these fields i have drained and very much improved. i have always punctually paid the rent charged for the several holdings, and, i think i may venture to say, performed all the duties of a good tenant. at the last election, however, i exercised my right as a citizen of a free country, by giving my votes at hillsborough and lisburn in favour of the tenant-right candidates, without reference to the desires or orders of those who have no legal or constitutional right to control the use of my franchise. i have since received from the office a notice to quit, desiring me to give up possession of all my holdings, as tenant from year to year, in the counties of down and antrim, without any intimation that i shall receive compensation, and without being able to obtain any explanation of this conduct towards me except by popular rumour.' at the same meeting mr. hugh m'call said that he had looked over some documents and found that the individuals in lisburn who had received notices to quit held property to the value of , l., property raised by themselves, or purchased by them with the sanction of the landlord. in one case the agent himself went into the premises where buildings were being erected, and suggested some changes. in fact the improvements were carried out under his inspection as an architect. yet he served upon that gentleman a notice to quit. some of the tenants paid the penalty for their votes by surrendering their holdings; others contested the right of eviction on technical points, and succeeded at the quarter sessions. one of the points was, as already mentioned, that a dean and rector could not be legally a land agent at the same time. it was, indeed, a very ugly fact that the rector of the parish should be thus officially engaged, not only in nullifying the political rights of his own protestant parishioners, but in destroying their tenant-right, evicting them from their holdings, which _they_ believed to be legal robbery and oppression, accompanied by such flagrant breach of faith as tended to destroy all confidence between man and man, and thus to dissolve the strongest bonds of society. sad work for a dignitary of the church to be engaged in! in april, , there was another contested election. on that occasion the marquis wrote to a gentleman in lisburn that he would not interfere 'directly or indirectly to influence anybody.' nevertheless, notices to quit, signed by mr. walter l. stannus, assistant and successor to his father, were extensively served upon tenants-at-will, though it was afterwards alleged that they were only served as matters of form. but what, then, did they mean? they meant that those who had voted against the office had, _ipso facto, forfeited their tenant-right property._ many other incidents in the management of the estate have been constantly occurring more recently, tending to show that the most valuable properties created by the tenants-at-will are at the mercy of the landlord, and that tenant-right, so called, is not regarded by him as a matter of _right_ at all, but merely as a _favour_, to be granted to those who are dutiful and submissive to the office in all matters, political and social. for instance, one farmer was refused permission to sell his tenant-right till he consented to sink l. or l. in the shares of the lisburn and antrim railway, so that, as he believed, he was obliged to throw away his money in order to get his right. the enormous power of an office which can deal with property amounting to more than half a million sterling, in such an arbitrary manner, necessarily generates a spirit of wanton and capricious despotism, except where the mind is very well regulated and the heart severely disciplined by christian duty. of this i feel bound to give the following illustration, which i would not do if the fact had not been made public, and if i had not the best evidence that it is undeniable. george beattie, jun., a grocer's assistant in lisburn, possessed a beautiful greyhound which he left in charge of george beattie, sen., his uncle, on departing for america. this uncle possessed a farm on the hertfort estate, the tenant-right of which he wanted to sell. having applied to mr. stannus for permission, the answer he received was that he would not be allowed to sell until the head of the greyhound was brought to the office. the tenant remonstrated and offered to send the dog away off the estate to relatives, but to no effect. he was obliged to kill the greyhound, and to send its head in a bag to lord hertfort's office. it was a great triumph for the agent. what a pretty sensational story he had to tell the young ladies in the refined circles in which he moves. how edifying the recital must have been to the peasantry around him! how it must have exalted their ideas of the civilising influence of land agency. 'it is quite a common thing,' says a gentleman well acquainted with the estate, 'when a tenant becomes insolvent, that his tenant-right is sold and employed to pay those of his creditors who may be in favour. i know a lady who made application to have a claim against a small farmer registered in the office, which was done, and she now possesses the security of the man's tenant-right for her money.' the case of the late captain bolton is the last illustration i shall give in connection with this estate. captain bolton resided in lisburn, and he was one of the most respected of its inhabitants. he was the owner of four houses in that town, a property which he acquired in this way:--the site of two of them was obtained by the late james hogg, in lieu of freehold property surrendered. on this ground, his son, captain bolton's uncle, built the two houses entirely at his own expense. two other houses, immediately adjoining, came into the market, and he purchased the out-going tenant's 'good-will' for a sum of about l. these houses were thatched, and in very bad condition. he repaired them and slated them, and thus formed a nice uniform block of four workers' houses. captain bolton inherited these from his uncle and retained uninterrupted possession till , when he voted for johnston smyth at the election of that date. immediately afterwards he received a notice to quit, an ejectment was brought in due time, the case was dismissed at the quarter sessions, an appeal was lodged, but it was again dismissed at the assizes. undaunted by these two defeats, the persistent agent served another notice to quit. the captain was a man of peace, whose nerves could not stand such perpetual worrying by litigation, and he was so disgusted with the whole affair that he tied up the keys, and sent them to lord hertfort's office. in his ledger that day he made the following entry:--'plundered, this th december , by our worthy agent to the marquis, because i voted for smyth and the independence of the borough.--j.b.' the houses remained in the hands of the agent till the next election, when captain bolton voted for mr. hogg, the office candidate. the conscientious old gentleman--as good a conservative as dean stannus--voted from principle in both cases and not to please the agent or anyone else. the agent, however, thought proper to regard it as a penitent act, and as the tenant had ceased to be naughty, and had, it was assumed, shown proper deference to his political superiors, he received his houses back again, retaining the possession of them till his death. the profit rent of the houses is l. a year. either this rent belonged to captain bolton or to lord hertfort. if to captain bolton, by what right did dean stannus take it from him and give it to the landlord? if to the landlord, by what right did dean stannus take it from lord hertfort and give it to captain bolton? however, the latter gentleman having no doubt whatever, first or last, that the property was his own, bequeathed the houses to trustees for the support of a school which he had established in lisburn. the school, it appears, had been placed in connection with the church education society, and as it did not go on to his satisfaction, he placed it in connection with the national board of education, having appointed as his trustees john campbell, esq., m.d., william coulson, esq., and the rev. w.j. clarke, presbyterian minister, all of lisburn. dr. campbell died soon after, and mr. coulson refused to act, so that the burden of the trust fell upon mr. clarke, who felt it to be his duty to carry it out to the best of his ability. dean stannus, however, was greatly dissatisfied with the last will and testament of captain bolton. yet the dying man had no reason to anticipate that his affectionate pastor would labour with all his might to abolish the trust. dean stannus paid the captain a visit on his deathbed, and while administering the consolations of religion he seemed moved even to tears. to a friend who subsequently expressed doubt, the simple-minded old christian said: 'i will trust the dean that he will do nothing in opposition to my will. he was here a few days ago and wept over me. he loves me, and will carry out my wishes.' the captain died in april, . he was scarcely cold in his grave when the agent of lord hertfort took proceedings to eject his trustees, and deprive the schools of the property bequeathed for their support. not content with this, he took proceedings to get possession of the schoolhouse also, deeming it a sufficient reason for this appropriation of another man's property, this setting aside of a will, this abolition of a trust, that, in his opinion, the schools ought to be under the patronage of the rector, and in connection with the church education society. he had a perfect right to think and say this, and it might be his conscientious conviction that the property would be thus better employed; but he ought to know that the end does not sanctify the means; that he had no right to substitute his own will for that of captain bolton, and that he had no right to take advantage of the absence of an act of parliament to possess himself of the rightful property of other people. unfortunately, too, he was a judge in his own case, and he did not find it easy to separate the rector of the parish from the agent of the estate. it is a significant fact that when his son, mr. stannus, handed his power of attorney to mr. otway, the assistant-barrister, that gentleman refused to look at it, saying, 'i have seen it one hundred times;' and the rev. mr. clarke, while waiting in the court for the case to come on, observed that all the ejectment processes were at the suit of the marquis of hertfort. the school-house was built by mr. bolton, at his own expense twenty-eight years ago, and he maintained it till his death. the rev. w.j. clarke, the acting trustee, bravely defended his trust and fought the battle of tenant-right in the courts till driven out by the sheriff. he was then called on to perform the same duty with regard to the school-house. he has done it faithfully and well, and deserves the sympathy of all the friends of freedom, justice, and fair dealing. 'i shall never accept a trust,' he says, in a letter to the _northern whig_--'i shall never accept a trust, and permit any man, whether nobleman, agent, or bailiff, to alienate that trust, without appealing to the laws of my country; and if the one-sidedness of such laws shall enable dean and mr. stannus to confiscate this property, and turn it from the purpose to which benevolence designed it, then, having defended it to the last, i shall retire from the field satisfied that i have done my duty to the memory of the dead and the educational interests of the living.' nor can we be surprised at the strong language that he uses when he says: 'the history of the case rivals, for blackness of persecution, anything that has happened in the north of ireland for many years. but such a course of conduct only recoils on the heads of those who are guilty of it, and it shall be so in this case. the marquis of hertfort will not live always, and the power of public opinion may be able to reach his successor, and be felt even in lisburn.' dean stannus, in his evidence before the devon commission, stated that only a small portion of the estate was held by lease. the leases were obtained in a curious way. in a system of fining commenced. if a tenant wanted a lease he was required to pay in cash a fine of l. an acre, which was equal to an addition of ten shillings an acre to the rent for twenty years, not counting the interest on the money thus sunk in the land. yet, such was the desire of the tenants to have a better security than the tenant-right custom, always acknowledged on the estate, that 'every man who had money took advantage of it.' mr. gregg, the seneschal of the manor, gave an illustration of the working of this fining system. a tenant sold his farm of fourteen acres for l., eight of the fourteen acres being held at will. the person who bought the farm was obliged to take a lease of the eight acres, and to pay a proportional fine in addition to the sum paid for the tenant-right. dean stannus said 'he would wish to see the tenant-right upheld upon the estate of lord hertfort, as it always had been. it is that,' he said, 'which has kept up the properties in the north over the properties in other parts of ireland. it is a security for the rent in the first instance, and reconciles the tenants to much of what are called grievances. if you go into a minute calculation of what they have expended, they are not more than paid for their expenditure.' it transpired in the course of the examination that a man who had purchased tenant-right, and paid a fine of l. an acre on getting a lease, would have to pay a similar fine over again when getting the lease renewed. the result of these heavy advances was that the middle-class farmers lived in constant pecuniary difficulties. they were obliged to borrow money at six per cent. to pay the rent, but they borrowed it under circumstances which made it nearly per cent., for it was lent by dealers in oatmeal and other things, from whom they were obliged to purchase large quantities of goods at such a high rate that they sold them again at a sacrifice of per cent. mr. joshua lamb, another witness, stated that the effect of the fining system had been to draw away a great deal of the accumulated capital out of the hands of the tenantry, as well as their anticipated savings for years to come, by which the carrying out of improved methods of agriculture was prevented. still, the existence of a lease for years doubled the value of the tenant-right. this witness made a remarkable statement. with respect to this custom he said: the 'effect of this arrangement, when duly observed, is to prevent all disputes, quarrels, burnings, and destruction of property, so common in those parts of ireland where this practice does not prevail. indeed, so fully are farmers aware of this, that very few, except the most reckless, would venture on taking a farm without obtaining the outgoing tenant's "good-will." such a proceeding as taking land "over a man's head," as it is termed, is regarded here as not merely dishonourable, but as little better than robbery, and as such held in the greatest detestation.' he added that the justice of this arrangement was obvious--'because all the buildings, planting, and other improvements, being entirely at the tenant's expense, he has a certain amount of capital sunk in the property, for which, if he parts with the place, he expects to be repaid by the sale of the tenant-right. he knew no case in the county in which the tenant, or those from whom he purchased, had made no improvements.' the first marquis occasionally visited the estate, and was proud of the troops of yeomanry and cavalry which had been raised from his tenantry. the second marquis, who died in , was only once in that part of ireland. the third marquis--he of prince regent notoriety--never set foot on the property; and the present, who has been reigning over townlands for nearly thirty years, has never been among his subjects except during a solitary visit of three weeks in october, , when, it is said, he came to qualify for his ribbon (k.g.) that he might be able to say to the prime minister that he was a resident landlord. he has resided almost entirely in paris, cultivating the friendship of napoleon instead of the welfare of the people who pay him a revenue of , l. a year. bagatelle, his paris residence, has, it is said, absorbed irish rents in its 'improvements', till it has been made worth three quarters of a million sterling. if the residence cost so much, fancy may try to conceive the amount of hard-earned money squandered on the luxuries and pleasures of which it is the temple--the most elysian spot in the elysian fields. the following curious narrative appeared in a belfast newspaper, and was founded on a speech made by dean stannus at a public meeting. the venerable dean of ross and his son, mr. w.t. stannus, had been deputed to go to paris to wait on lord hertfort, and urge him to assist in the expense of finishing the antrim junction railway. the dean is in his eighty-first year; fifty-one years of his life have been spent in the management of the hertfort estate, and whatever difference of opinion may exist as to his arrangements with the tenantry, every one who knows anything of the affair must admit that there never existed a more faithful representative of a landowner. on arriving in paris he found the marquis ill, so much so that neither the dean nor his son could get an interview. for three days the venerable gentleman danced attendance on his chief, and on monday the fourth attempt was made, the dean sent up his name, and had a reply that 'the marquis was too ill to see anyone.' next day, however, the marquis condescended to receive his agent, and the subject of the railway was introduced. the dean told him that lord erne had given , l. towards the railway projects on his property--that lords lucan, annesley, and lifford had contributed largely, and that lord downshire had been exceedingly liberal in promoting lines on his estate. but all was vain. the noble absentee, who drains about , l. a year from his irish property, and who often pays , l. for a picture, refused to lend , l. to aid in finishing a railway, which runs for three-fourths of the mileage through his own estate. during the interview mr. w.t. stannus urged on the marquis that the investment would be the best that could be made, as preference shares paying five per cent. would be allocated to him as security for the amount. all arguments and entreaties, however, were lost on the noble invalid. even the appeal of the old gentleman who, for more than half a century, had managed the estate so advantageously for the successive owners of that splendid property, was made in vain. 'you never refused me anything before,' urged the dean, 'and i go away in very bad spirits.' what a wonderful history lies in this episode of irish landlordism. here is an unmarried nobleman whose income from investments in british and french securities is said to exceed , l. a year, besides the immense revenue of his english and irish estates, and yet he refuses to part with , l. towards aiding in the construction of a railway on his own property. chapter xx. tenant-right in armagh. among the undertakers in the county of armagh were the two achesons, henry and archibald, ancestors of lord gosford, who founded market hill, richard houlston, john heron, william stanbowe, francis sacheverell, john dillon, john hamilton, sir john davis, lord moore, henry boucher, anthony smith, lieutenant poyntz, and henry m'shane o'neill. in connection with each of these settlements pynar uses the phrase, 'i find planted and estated.' what he means is more fully explained in his reference to the precinct of fews, allotted to scottish undertakers, where henry acheson had obtained , acres. the surveyor says: 'i find a great number of tenants on this land: but not any that have any estates but by promise, and yet they have been many years upon the land. there are nominated to me two freeholders and seventeen leaseholders, all which were with me, and took the oath of supremacy, and petitioned unto me that they might have their leases, the which mr. acheson seemed to be willing to perform it unto them presently. these are able to make thirty men with arms. here is great store of tillage.' the whole of the reports indicate that the crown required of the undertakers two things. first, that they should themselves reside on the land, that they should build strong houses, fortified with bawns, and keep a certain number of armed men for the defence of the settlement. secondly, that the english and scotch settlers who were expected to reclaim the land and build houses, were to have 'estates' in their farms, either as freeholders or lessees. the grants were made to the undertakers on these conditions--they should be resident, and they should have around them a number of independent yeomanry to defend the king when called upon to do so. everything connected with the plantation gives the idea of permanent tenures for the settlers. a curious fact is mentioned about sir john davis, who had been so active in bringing about the plantation. he obtained a grant for acres. 'upon this,' says pynar, 'there is nothing at all built, nor so much as an english tenant on the land.' it seems his tenants were all of the class for whose extirpation he pleaded, as weeds that would choke the saxon crop. henry m'shane o'neill got , acres at camlagh, 'but he being lately dead, it was in the hands of sir toby caulfield, who intended to do something upon it, for as yet there was nothing built.' sir toby was the ancestor of the earl of charlemont, always one of the best landlords in ulster. it is gratifying to find that both the undertakers and the original tenants are still fairly represented--a considerable number of the former having founded noble houses, and the latter having multiplied and enriched the land to such an extent that, though the population is dense and the farms are generally very small, they are the most prosperous and contented population in the kingdom. leases were common in this county at the close of the last century, but the terms were short--twenty-one years and one life. some had leases for thirty-one years or three lives, and there were some perpetuities. land was then so valuable that when a small estate came into the market--large estates hardly ever did--they brought from twenty-five to thirty years' purchase. the large tracts of church land, which are now among the richest and most desirable in the country, presented at the close of the last century, a melancholy contrast to the farms that surrounded them. the reason is given by sir charles coote. it is most instructive and suggestive at the present time. he says, 'it is very discouraging for a wealthy farmer to have anything to do with church lands, as his improvements cannot even be secured to him during his own life, or the life of his landlord, but he may at any time be deprived of the fruits of his industry, by the incumbent changing his living, as his interest then terminates.' this evil was remedied first by making the leases renewable, on the payment of fines, and, in our own time, an act was passed enabling the tenants to convert their leaseholds into perpetuities. the consequence is, that the church lands now present some of the finest features in the social landscape, occupied by a class of resident gentry, an essential link, in any well-organised society, between the people and the great proprietors. the board of trinity college felt so strongly the necessity of giving fixed tenures, if permanent improvements were to be effected on their estates, that, without waiting for a general measure of land reform, they obtained, in , a private act of parliament giving them power to grant leases for ninety-nine years. 'the legislature,' says dr. hancock, 'thus gave partial effect in the case of one institution to the recommendation which the land occupation commissioners intended to apply to all estates in the hands of public boards in ireland.' armagh was always free from middlemen. the landlord got what sir charles coote calls a rack rent from the occupying tenant, and it was his interest to divide rather than consolidate farms, because the linen trade enabled the small holder to give a high rent, while the custom of tenant-right furnished an unfailing security for its payment. the country, when seen from an elevation, is one continuous patchwork of corn, potatoes, clover, and other artificial grasses. wonders are wrought in the way of productiveness by rotation of crops and house-feeding. cattle are not only fattened much more rapidly than on the richest grazing land, but large quantities of the best manure are produced by the practice of house-feeding. the more northern portions of the county, bordering on down and lough neagh, and along the banks of the rivers bann and blackwater, are naturally rich, and have been improved to the highest degree by ages of skilful cultivation. but other parts, particularly the barony of fews, embracing the high lands stretching to the newry mountains, and bordering on the county monaghan, were, about the close of the last century, nearly all covered with heather, and absolutely waste. sir charles coote remarked, in , that it had been then undergoing reclamation. within the last fifteen years the land had doubled in value, and was set at the average rate of s. an acre. mr. tickell, referring to this county, remarked that the scotch and english settlers chiefly occupied the lowland districts, and that the natives retired to this poor region, retaining their old language and habits; and he was occasionally obliged to swear interpreters where witnesses or parties came from the fews, which were 'very wild, and very unlike other parts of the county of armagh.' now let us see what the industry of the people has done in that wild district. the farms are very small, say from three to ten english acres. they have been so well drained, cleared, sub-soiled, and manured, that the occupier is able to support on one acre as many cattle as on three acres when grazed; while affording profitable employment to the women and children. great labour has been bestowed in taking down crooked and broad fences. every foot of ground is cultivated with the greatest care, and in the mountain districts, patches of land among rocks, inaccessible to horses, are tilled by the hand. in many cases in the less exposed districts, two crops in the year are obtained from the same ground, viz., winter tares followed by turnips or cabbages, and rape followed by tares, potatoes, turnips, or cabbages. these crops are succeeded by grain or flax the next year, with which clover is sown for mowing and stall-feeding, yielding two or three cuttings. the green crops are so timed as to give a full supply for house-feeding throughout the year. nothing is neglected by those skilful and thrifty farmers; the county is famous for orchards, and when i was in the city of armagh, last autumn, i saw in the market square almost as many loads of apples as of potatoes. the connection of large grazing farms with pauperism, as cause and effect, has not received sufficient attention from the friends of social progress. i resolved last year to test this matter by a comparison. we have at present no check upon the legally enforced depopulation of this country except the _interest_ of the landlords, or what they imagine to be their interest. it is well that the question should be determined whether it is really for the benefit of the owners of the land that they should clear it of christians and occupy it with cattle--in other words, whether christians or cattle will pay more rent and taxes. i omit all higher considerations, because some of the most philanthropic and enlightened defenders of the present land system have defended it on this low ground. in order to make the test complete and unexceptionable, i have selected a comparatively poor district for tillage, and one of the richest i could find for grazing, giving all possible natural advantages to scullyism. but the test would not be fair unless the occupiers of the poorer land had a tolerably secure tenure so long as they paid the highest rent that a reasonable agent could impose. i thought also that possible objections would be obviated if the tenantry were destitute of 'the fostering care of a resident landlord.' therefore, instead of selecting the tenants of lord downshire, or lord roden, or lord dufferin, i have fixed upon the tenants of lord kilmorey, because he and the producers of the rents which he enjoys have never seen one another in the flesh, and they have never received one word of encouragement or instruction from him in the whole course of their lives. accordingly, with the union of kilkeel, which comprises the mourne district, i have compared the union of trim, which comprises some of the richest grazing land in ireland. travellers have noted that population always grows thick on rich lands, while it is sparse on poor lands. no one requires to be told the reason of this. the unions of kilkeel and trim have populations very nearly equal--viz., kilkeel, , ; trim, , . the total arable land in kilkeel is , statute acres, giving / acres on an average for each person, and acres for each holding. trim contains , statute acres, giving acres to each person, and to each holding. in mourne the area of land under crops is , acres (nearly half), giving one acre of tillage to each inhabitant, and acres to each holding of acres. in trim the area under crops is , acres, giving acres for each inhabitant, and for each holding of acres. the significance of these figures is shown by the government valuation in . the valuation of mourne union is , l., the average for each person being l. and for each holding l. the valuation of trim is , l., allowing l. for each person and l. for each holding. in other words, the capability of the land of trim to support population is as five to two when compared with mourne; but whereas in mourne / acres support one person, in trim it takes acres to support one person--about double the quantity. as the value of the land in meath is more than double what it is in mourne, each acre in meath ought to maintain its man. that is, if meath were cultivated like down, its population ought to be _five times as large as it is_! but this is not the whole case. the mourne population may be too large. with so many families crowded on such a small tract of poor land, the union must be overwhelmed with pauperism. if so, the case for tenant-right and tillage would fall to the ground, and scullyism would be triumphant. let us see, then, how stands this essential fact. the number of paupers in the workhouse and receiving outdoor relief in the union of trim, in , was , . this large amount of pauperism is not peculiar to trim. it belongs to other unions of this rich grazing district, which so fully realises the late lord carlisle's ideal of irish prosperity. navan union has , paupers, and kells has , . now, the population of trim and mourne being nearly the same, and trim being twice as rich as mourne, and not half as thickly peopled, it follows that mourne ought to have at least four times as many paupers as trim--that is, it ought to have , . but it actually has only persons receiving relief in and out of the workhouse! consequently, scullyism and grazing produce nearly twenty times the amount of poverty and misery produced by tenant-right and tillage. i have not overlooked the difference of race and religion. on the contrary, they were uppermost in my mind when rambling among the nice, clean, comfortable, orderly homesteads of mourne, reminding me strongly of forth and bargy in the county wexford. i said to the owner and driver of my car, who is a roman catholic, 'do the roman catholics here keep their houses and farms in as nice order as the presbyterians?' he answered, 'why should they not? are they not the same flesh and blood?' according to the census of , the roman catholics greatly outnumber the protestants in this union. the exact figures are:-- total population of mourne union , protestants of all denominations , roman catholics , the result of this comparison may perhaps make a better impression on the reader's mind if cast in the form of tables, as given on succeeding page. table headings: col a. population in col b. no. of holdings in col c. total area (in stat. acres) col d. area under crops, (in stat. acres) col e. valuation in (in £) col f. no. in workhouse and receiving out-door relief col g. protestants of all denominations col h. roman catholics ------------------------------------------------------------------------- tenant-right and tillage. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- names of unions | a. | b. | c. | d. | e. | f. | g. | h. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- kilkeel | , | , | , | , | , | | , | , average for each| | | | | | | | person | | | - / | | | | | average for each| | | | | | | | holding | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- large farms and grazing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- trim | , | , | , | , | , | , | , | , average for each| | | | | | | | person | | | | | | | | average for each| | | | | | | | person | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- in kilkeel union there were , acres of flax in , which at l. an acre would produce , l., considerably more than the rental of the entire district. trim, in that year, produced only acres of flax. what everyone wants to know now is this--whether any measure can be devised that will satisfy the cultivators of the soil without wronging the landlords, or militating against the interests of the state. a measure that will not satisfy the tenants and put an end to their discontent, would be manifestly useless. it would be but adding to the numerous legislative abortions that have gone before it. a man engaged in such enquiries as this, is to ascertain what will satisfy the people. it is for the legislature to determine whether it can be rightly or safely granted. i have, therefore, directed my attention to this point in particular, and i have ascertained beyond question, from the best possible sources of information, that nothing will satisfy the people of this country but what they do not hesitate to name with the most determined emphasis--'fixity of tenure.' whether they are protestants or catholics, orangemen or liberals, presbyterians or churchmen, this is their unanimous demand, the cry in which they all join to a man. every case in which tenant-right is disregarded, or in which, while admitted nominally, an attempt is made to evade it, or to fritter it away, excites the bitterest feeling, in which the whole community sympathises. they deny, however, that the existing tenant-right is a sufficient security:-- because it depends on the option of the landlord, and cannot be enforced by law. because even the best disposed landlord may be influenced to alter his policy by the advice of an agent, by the influence of his family, or by the state of his finances. because a good landlord, who knows the tenants and cares for them, may be succeeded by a son who is a 'fast young man,' addicted to the turf and overwhelmed in debt, while the estate gets into the hands of usurers. because in such a case the law affords no protection to the property of the tenant, which his family may have been accumulating on the land since the first of them came over from england or scotland, and settled around their commander, after helping by their swords to conquer the country, and preserve it to the crown of england. because it is not in human nature to avoid encroaching on the rights and property of others, if it can be done at will--done legally, and done under the pretext that it is necessary for 'improvement,' and will be a benefit even to those who are despoiled. because the custom is no protection to a man's political rights as a british subject. no tenant farmer can vote against his landlord in obedience to his conscience without the risk of ruining his family. the greater his interest in the land, the larger his investments, the heavier his stake; the greater his accumulations in his bank--the farm--the greater will be his dependence, the more complete his political bondage. he has the more to lose. therefore, if a conservative, he must vote for a radical or a catholic, who would pull down the church establishment; or if a catholic, he must vote for a 'no-popery' candidate, who ignores tenant-right, and against a liberal statesman, whose life has been devoted to the interests of the country. it appears to me that the difficulty of settling this question is much aggravated by the importation of opinions from the united states hostile to the aristocracy; and as this source of discontent and distrust is likely to increase every year, the sooner the settlement is effected the better. what is the use of scolding and reviling the tenant's advocates? will that weaken one iota the tremendous force of social discontent--the bitter sense of legal injustice, with which the legislature must deal? and will the legislature deal with it more effectually by shutting its eyes to facts? chapter xxi. farney--mr. trench's 'realities.' when the six ulster counties were confiscated, and the natives were all deprived of their rights in the soil, the people of the county cavan resolved to appeal for justice to the english courts in dublin. the crown was defended by sir john davis. he argued that the irish could have no legal rights, no property in the land, because they did not enclose it with fences, or plant orchards. true, they had boundary marks for their tillage ground; but they followed the eastern custom in not building ditches or walls around their farms. they did not plant orchards, because they had too many trees already that grew without planting. the woods were common property, and the apples, if they had any, would be common property too, like the nuts and the acorns. the irish were obliged to submit to the terms imposed by the conquerors, glad in their destitution to be permitted to occupy their own lands as tenants at will. the english undertakers, as we have seen, were bound to deal differently with the english settlers; but their obligations resolved themselves into promises of freeholds and leases which were seldom granted, so that many persons threw up their farms in despair, and returned to their own country. in the border county of monaghan, we have a good illustration of the manner in which the natives struggled to live under their new masters. the successors of some of those masters have in modern times taken a strange fancy to the study of irish antiquities. among these is evelyn p. shirley, esq., who has published 'some account of the territory or dominion of farney.' the account is interesting, and, taken in connection with the sequel given to the public by his agent, mr. w. steuart trench, it furnishes an instructive chapter in the history of the land war. the whole barony of farney was granted by queen elizabeth to walter earl of essex in the year , in reward for the massacres already recorded. it was then an almost unenclosed plain, consisting chiefly of coarse pasturage, interspersed with low alder-scrub. when the primitive woods were cut down for fuel, charcoal, or other purposes, the stumps remained in the ground, and from these fresh shoots sprang up thickly. the clearing out of these stumps was difficult and laborious; but it had to be done before anything, but food for goats, could be got out of the land. this was 'the m'mahons' country,' and the tribe was not wholly subdued till , when the power of the ulster chiefs was finally broken. the lord deputy, the chancellor, and the lord chief justice passed through farney on their way to hold assizes for the first time in derry and donegal. they were protected by a guard of 'seven score foot, and fifty or three score horse, which,' wrote sir john davis, 'is an argument of a good time and a confident deputy; for in former times (when the state enjoyed the best peace and security) no lord deputy did ever venture himself into those parts, without an army of or men.' at this time lord essex had leased the barony of farney to evor m'mahon for a yearly rent of l. payable in dublin. after fourteen years the same territory was let to brian m'mahon for , l. in the year , the property yielded a yearly rent of l. s. d. paid by thirty-eight tenants. a map then taken gives the several townlands and denominations nearly as they are at present. robert earl of essex, dying in , his estates devolved on his sisters, lady frances and lady dorothy devereux, the former of whom married sir w. seymour, afterwards marquis of hertfort, and the latter sir henry shirley, bart., ancestor of the present proprietor of half the barony. ultimately the other half became the property of the marquis of bath. at the division in , each moiety was valued at l. s. - / d. gradually as the lands were reclaimed by the tenants, the rental rose. in the bath estate produced , l., and the shirley estate , l. the total of , l. per annum, from this once wild and barren tract, was paid by middlemen. the natives had not been rooted out, and during the eighteenth century these sub-tenants multiplied rapidly. according to the census in the population of the barony exceeded , souls, and they contributed by their industry, to the two absentee proprietors, the enormous annual revenue of , l., towards the production of which it does not appear that either of them, or any person for them, ever invested a shilling. mr. s. trench was amazed to find 'more than one human being for every irish acre of land in the barony, and nearly one human being for every l. valuation per annum of the land.' the two estates join in the town of carrickmacross. when mr. trench arrived there, march , , to commence his duties as mr. shirley's agent, he learned that the sudden death of the late agent in the court-house of monaghan had been celebrated that night by fires on almost every hill on the estate, 'and over a district of upwards of , acres there was scarcely a mile without a bonfire blazing in manifestation of joy at his decease.' mr. trench says, the tenants considered themselves ground down to the last point by the late agent. as he relates the circumstances, the people would seem to be a very savage race; and he gives other more startling illustrations to the same effect as he proceeds. but here, as elsewhere, he does not state all the facts, while those he does state are most artistically dressed up for sensational effect, mr. trench himself being always the hero, always acting magnificently, appearing at the right place and at the right moment to prevent some tremendous calamity, otherwise inevitable, and by some mysterious personal influence subduing lawless masses, so that by a sudden impulse, their murderous rage is converted into admiration, if not adoration. like the hearers of herod or of st. paul, when he flung the viper off his hand, they are ready to cry out, 'he is a god, and not a man.' of course he, as a christian gentleman, was always 'greatly shocked,' when these poor wretches offered him petitions on their knees. still he relates every case of the kind with extraordinary unction, and with a picturesqueness of situation and detail so stagey that it should make mr. boucicault's mouth water, and excite the envy of miss braddon. not even she can exceed the author of 'realities of irish life,' in prolonging painful suspense, in piling up the agony, in accumulating horrors, in throwing strong lights on one side of the picture and casting deep shade on the other. it is with the greatest reluctance that i thus allude to the work of mr. trench. i do so from a sense of duty, because i believe it is one of the most misleading books on ireland published for many years. it has made false impressions on the public mind in england, which will seriously interfere with a proper settlement of the land question. the mischief would not be so great if the author did not take so much pains to represent his stories as realities 'essentially characteristic of the country.' it is very difficult to account for the exaggeration and embellishment in which he has permitted himself to indulge, with so many professions of conscientious regard for truth. they must have arisen from the habit of reciting the adventures to his friends during a quarter of a century, naturally laying stress on the most sensational passages, while the facts less in keeping with startling effects dropped out of his memory. very few of the actors in the scenes he describes now survive. those who do, and who might have a more accurate memory, are either so lauded that it would be ungrateful of them to contradict--or so artfully discredited as 'virulent' and base that people would not be likely to believe them if their recollections were different. there is one peculiarity about mr. trench's dialogues. there were never any witnesses present. he always took the wild irishman, on whom he operated so magically, into his private office; or into a private room in the house of the 'subject;' or into a cell alone, if secrets were to be extracted from a ribbonman in gaol. even conversations with the gentler sex, who knelt before him as if he were a bishop, were not permitted to reach the ear of his chief clerk. on some matters, however, others have spoken since his book appeared. he is very precise about the trial for an agrarian murder in monaghan, giving details from his own actual observation. mr. butt, q.c., who was engaged in the case, has published a letter, stating that mr. trench was quite mistaken in his account. it seems strange that he did not refresh his memory by looking at a report of the trial in some newspaper file. mr. trench 'adds his testimony to the fact that ireland is not altogether unmanageable,' that 'justice fully and firmly administered is always appreciated in the end.' and at the conclusion of his volume he says:-- 'we can scarcely shut our eyes to the fact that the circumstances and feelings which have led to the terrible crime of murder in ireland, are usually very different from those which have led to murder elsewhere. the reader of the english newspaper is shocked at the list of children murdered by professional assassins, of wives murdered by their husbands, of men murdered for their gold. in ireland that dreadful crime may almost invariably be traced to a wild feeling of revenge for the national wrongs, to which so many of her sons believe that she has been subjected for centuries.' there is a mistake here. no murders are committed in ireland for 'national wrongs.' the author has gathered together, as in a chamber of horrors, all the cases of assassination that occurred during the years of distress, provoked by the extensive _evictions_ which succeeded the _famine_, and by the infliction of great hardships on tenants who, in consequence of that dreadful calamity, had fallen into arrears. people who had been industrious, peaceable, and well-conducted were thus driven to desperation; and hence the young men formed lawless combinations and committed atrocious murders. but every one of these murders was agrarian, not national. they were committed in the prosecution of _a war_, not against the government, but against the landlords and their agents and instruments. it was a war _pro aris et focis_, waged against local tyrants, and waged in the only way possible to the belligerents who fought for home and family. mr. trench always paints the people who sympathise with their champions as naturally wild, lawless, and savage. if he happens to be in good humour with them, he makes them ridiculous. his son, mr. townsend trench, who did the illustrations for the work, pictures the peasantry as gorillas, always flourishing shillelaghs, and grinning horribly. with rare exceptions, they appear as an inferior race, while the ruling class, and the trenches in particular, appear throughout the book as demigods, 'lords of the creation,' formed by nature to be the masters and guides and managers of such a silly, helpless people. nowhere is any censure pronounced upon a landlord, or an agent, with one exception, and this was the immediate predecessor of mr. trench at kenmare. to his gross neglect in allowing god to send so many human beings into the world, he ascribes the chaos of misery and pauperism, which he--a heaven-born agent--had to reduce to order and beauty. but there were other causes of the 'poetic turbulence' which he so gloriously quelled, that he might have brought to light, had he thought proper, for the information of english readers. he might have shown--for the evidence was before him in the report of the devon commission--with what hard toil and constant self-denial, amidst what domestic privations and difficulties, mr. shirley's tenants struggled to scrape up for him his , l. a year, and how bitterly they must have felt when the landlord sent an order to add one-third to their rack-rent. i will supply mr. trench's lack of service, and quote the evidence of one of those honest and worthy men, given before the devon commissioners. peter mohun, farmer, a tenant on the shirley estate, gave the following evidence:-- 'what family have you?--i am married, and have two daughters, and my wife, and a servant boy. 'what rent do you pay?--sometime ago i paid l. s. d. i was doing well at that time; and then my rent was raised to l. s. d., and sometimes l., and one year l. s. d. 'how do you account for the difference?--i do not know; perhaps by the bog rent. we had the bog free before, and we were doing well; and then we were cut down from the bog, and we were raised from l. s. d. to l. we are beaten down now quite. 'what does the county-cess come to?--sometimes we pay s. - / d. an acre, and oftener s. - / d., the half-year. 'have you paid your rent pretty punctually?--yes, i have done my best so far to pay the rent. 'how much do you owe now?--i believe i shall pay the rent directly after may; i am clear till may. i cannot pay it till harvest comes round. 'how do you get the money to pay the rent?--when i had my land cheap, and myself a youth, i was a good workman, and did work by the loom, and i would be mowing in the summer season, and earn a good deal, and make a little store for me, which has stood by me. i buy some oats and make meal of it, and i make money in that way. it was not by my land i was paying my rent, but from other sources. 'how much wheat have you now?--half an acre, rather above. 'how much oats have you?--half a rood. 'how much potato land shall you have?--three and a half roods besides the garden. 'have you any clover?--very near a rood of clover. 'what is the smallest quantity of land that you think a man who has no other means of support can subsist and pay rent upon?--i was paying rent well myself when i had three acres, when i was paying l. s. d. 'you weave a little?--yes, but very little; but there was a good price for the barrel of wheat, and for pigs, and so i made a little store. but as for any man to support himself out of a small farm, at the high price of land, and the price of labour that is going, it is impossible. 'what is the smallest farm upon which a man can support himself at the present rate of rent, taking a man with five or six children?--that is a hard question. 'supposing a man to pay s. an acre, and to have two acres, and to be obliged to live out of the farm, do you think he could do it and pay rent?--he could not; his land must be very good. unless he lived near a town, and had cheap land, it would be impossible. but a man with five acres, at a moderate rent, he could support his family upon it. 'what should you earn at weaving?--i only weave for my own family. i weave my own shirt. 'do your family ever spin any wool and weave it?--yes. 'do you live upon the shirley estate?--yes. 'how much bog do you require to keep your house in fuel?--half a rood, if it was good; but it is bad bog ground, red mossy turf, white and light; it requires more than the black turf. 'what do you pay for half a rood of turf?--it is s. d. for a rood--that is, s. d. for half a rood. there is s. d. paid for bad bog. 'do you pay anything for the ticket of leave to cut?--yes, i do; i have not a ticket unless i pay d. for it. 'that is over and above the s. d.?--yes. 'did you ever pay more than s. d. for the bog in the late agent's time?--he took the good bog off us; we were paying s. d. for it. they left us to the bad bog, and we do not pay so high for that. 'was the good bog dearer or cheaper than the bad bog at s. d.?--half a rood of the good bog was worth half an acre or an acre of the other. the bad bog smokes so we have often to leave the house: we cannot stay in it unless there is a good draught in the chimney.' the rev. thomas smollan, p.p., has published a letter to the earl of dunraven, a catholic peer, to whom mr. trench has dedicated his book. in this letter the parish priest of farney says:-- 'in pages and mr. trench tells his readers that on the very night the news of the late agent's sudden death, in the county courthouse of monaghan, reached carrickmacross, "fires blazed on almost every hill on the shirley estate, and over a district of more than , acres there was scarcely a mile without a bonfire blazing in manifestation of joy at his decease." this paragraph, my lord, taken by itself and unexplained in any way, would at once imply that the people were inhuman, almost savages, whom mr. trench was sent to tame--that they were insensible to the agent's sudden death, a death so sudden that it would make an enemy almost relent. mr. trench assigns no cause for this strange proceeding except what we read in page , and what he learned from the chief clerk, viz., "that the people were much excited, that they were ground down to the last point by the late agent, and they were threatening to rise in rebellion against him," &c. one would think that mr. trench having learned so much on such authority, would have set to work to try and find out the cause of the discontent and apply a remedy. he does not say in his book that he did so, but seems still unable to understand this to him incomprehensible proceeding. however, i am of opinion that mr. trench knew the whole of it, if not then at all events before "the realities" saw the light, for in a speech of his, when lord bath visited farney (page ), he said, "a dog could not bark on the estate without it coming to his knowledge." and therefore i say that a man so inquisitive as to find out the barking of a dog on the bath estate, who had so many sources of information close at hand, could not have been long without knowing the causes of the "excitement, threatened rebellion, bonfires, &c., on the shirley estate," if he had only wished for the information. either he knew the cause of all this when he wrote his book, or he did not. if he did, i say he was bound in fair play to tell it to the public; if he did not know it his self-laudation in his speech goes for nought. but, my lord, with your permission, i will inform your lordship, mr. trench, and the public, as to some of the causes of so remarkable an occurrence, which could not pass unobserved by mr. trench. at the memorable election of , evelyn john shirley, esq., and colonel leslie, father of the present m.p., contested the county of monaghan, and the former brought all his influence to bear on his tenants to vote for himself (shirley) and leslie, who coalesced against the late lord rossmore. the electors said "they would give one vote for their landlord, and the other they would give for their religion and their country;" the consequence was, shirley and westenra were returned, and leslie was beaten. up to this time mr. shirley was a good landlord, and admitted tenant-right to the fullest extent on the property, but after that election he never showed the same friendly feelings towards the people. soon after the election mr. humphrey evatt, the agent, died, and was succeeded in the agency by mr. sandy mitchell, who very soon set about surveying and revaluing the estate, of course at the instance of his master, evelyn john shirley, esq. he performed the work of revaluation, &c., and the result was that the rents were increased by one-third and in some cases more. the bog, too, which up to this time was free to the tenants, was taken from them and doled out to them in small patches of from twenty-five to forty perches each, at from l. to l. per acre. at the instance of the then parish priest, president reilly, mr. shirley gave l. per year to a few schools on his property, without interfering in any way with the religious principles of the catholics attending these schools; but the then agent insisted on having the authorised version of the bible, without note or comment, read in those schools by the catholic children. the bishop, the most rev. dr. kernan, could not tolerate such a barefaced attempt at proselytism, and insisted on the children being withdrawn from the schools. for obeying their bishop in this, the catholic parents were treated most unsparingly. i have before me just now a most remarkable instance of the length to which this gentleman carried his proselytising propensities, which i will mention. in the vestry, or sacristy, attached to corduff chapel, was a school taught by a man named rush, altogether independent of the schools aided by mr. shirley, and by largely subsidising the teacher, the then agent actually introduced his proselytism into that school too. the priests and people tried legal means to get rid of the teacher, but without success, and in the end the people came by night and knocked down the sacristy, so that in the morning when the teacher came he had no house to shelter him. the catholics were then without a school, and in order to provide the means of education for them the rev. f. keone, administrator, under the most rev. dr. kernan, applied for aid to the commissioners of national education, and obtained it; but where was he to procure building materials? the then agent, in his zeal for "converting" catholics, having issued an order forbidding the supplying of them from any part of the shirley estate, which extends over an area of fifteen miles by ten, father keone went on the next sunday to the neighbouring chapels outside the shirley estate, told his grievances, and on the next day the people came with their horses and carts and left sand, lime, and stones in sufficient quantities to build the house inside the chapel-yard. the priest and people thought it necessary to "thatch" their old chapel, and, though strange it may seem, the agent actually served an ejectment process on the father of the two boys who assisted the priest to make the collection at the chapel door for so absolutely necessary a work. i may add, this man owed no rent. lastly, the then agent was in the habit of arranging matrimonial alliances, pointing out this girl as a suitable match for that boy, and the boy must marry the girl or give up his farm. these facts being true, my lord, and more which i might state, but that i have trespassed too much already on your lordship's time, i ask you, my lord dunraven--i ask any impartial man, irishman or englishman--for whom mr. trench wrote his "book," is it strange or wonderful that the catholic people, so treated, would rejoice--would have bonfires on the hill tops at their deliverance from such conduct? i flatter myself that you, my lord--that the learned reading public--that the english people would sympathise with any people so treated for conscience' sake; and having pronounced the sentence of condemnation against mr. trench for not having noticed these facts, that you will direct your name to be erased from the "book." i have the honour to remain, my lord, with the most profound respect, your lordship's faithful servant.' 'thomas smollan, p.p. 'clones, feb. , .' the electors of monaghan, in their simplicity, thought they were fairly exercising the rights conferred by the constitution when they gave one vote for the landlord, and one for their religion and their country, thus securing the return of one liberal. but mr. shirley soon taught them that the blessings of our glorious constitution belong not to the tenant, but to the landlord; and so he punished their mistake by adding one-third to their rent, and depriving them of proper fuel. not content with this, he carried the war into their chapels and schools, and punished them for their religion. these facts may help to explain the scenes which mr. trench describes so poetically. the persecuting agent died suddenly in the court-house. the landlord and a new agent, mr. trench, arrived at carrickmacross; and the tenants presented a petition, imploring him to remove the new and intolerable burden that had been put on their shoulders. they were told to come back for an answer on the following monday:-- '"monday! monday!" was shouted on all sides. the most frenzied excitement ensued. hats were thrown in the air, sticks were flourished on all sides, and the men actually danced with wild delight. after a little time, however, the crowd cleared away, and the news flew like wildfire over the town and country, that the whole tenantry were told to come in on monday next, that they might know the amount of the reduction to be granted, and have all their grievances removed!' mr. shirley quickly repented having given the invitation, and sent out a circular countermanding it, and requesting the tenants to stay at home. on monday, however, a vast excited mass assembled to hear his _ultimatum_, which was announced by the new agent. 'he would not reduce their rents. they might give up their lands if they pleased; but they had little or no cause of complaint.' they insisted on his mounting a chair and making a speech. he softened the message as well as he could. when he had done there was a dead silence. in describing what follows mr. trench surpasses the wildest romancers in piling up the agony. i copy the description that the reader may see the difference between romance and history. 'there was a dead silence when i stopped speaking. it was broken by a stentorian voice. '"then you won't reduce our rents?" '"i have already given you mr. shirley's answer upon that point," said i. "stranger as i am, it is impossible for me to form any opinion as to whether they are too high or not." '"_down on your knees, boys!_" shouted the same voice; "we will ask him once more upon our knees!" and to my horror and amazement the vast crowd, almost all at least who were in my immediate vicinity, dropped suddenly on their knees, and another dead silence ensued. 'it was a dreadful spectacle. their hats were on their heads, and their sticks in their hands, some leaning upon them as they knelt, others balancing and grasping them. it was fearful to see the attitude of supplication, due only to a higher power, thus mingled with a wild defiance. '"_we ask you upon our knees, for god's sake, to get us a reduction of our rents!_" again the same voice cried aloud. 'i was greatly shocked. i instantly got down off the chair. i entreated them to rise. i told them that i was distressed beyond measure, but that i had given them the only message i was authorised to give; and quite overcome by such a scene, i endeavoured to move again across the crowded space from the office, in order to enter the house, and report proceedings to mr. shirley, intending to request that he would himself appear and address his excited tenantry. 'the moment i moved towards the door, the vast crowd leaped again to their feet; i was instantly surrounded, hustled, and prevented from getting near it. i bore this good-humouredly, and the door being quite close to me, i had no doubt they would ultimately let me in. but whilst this scene was going on, a shout was raised by those who were at a distance up the road leading to the town, and who had not heard what had been said. "bring him up--bring him up, and let us see him!" in a moment i was seized, and though i resisted to my utmost, i was dragged up the narrow road which led from shirley house to the town. i was kicked and beaten, and pushed and bruised, my hat knocked off, and my clothes torn; and in this state i was dragged into the main street of carrickmacross. 'here a scene of the wildest excitement took place, some cried one thing--some another. i was beaten again, my clothes torn off my back, and sticks whirled over my head. four or five policemen met me as i was being dragged along, but they might as well have attempted to stop the rushing of an atlantic wave, as to stern the crowd that had assembled around me; _and they only looked on and let me pass_.' if the sub-inspector, who was present, and his men acted in this manner, i venture to say it is the only instance in the whole history of the force in which the royal irish constabulary were guilty of such a cowardly neglect of duty. however, not only the police, but the best part of the crowd deserted this strange gentleman, and he was 'left in the hands of the vilest and most furious of the mob.' where was mr. shirley? where were the clergy and the respectable inhabitants of the town? the mob dragged him along towards loughfea castle--a mile and a half--whither they heard mr. shirley had fled, still beating, kicking, and strangling their victim, without any object; for how could they serve their cause by killing an agent who had never injured them? and how easy it was to kill him if they wished! but here comes the climax; he asked the murderous multitude to let him stop a few moments to breathe--he then proceeds: 'i shall never forget that moment. i was then about a mile from the town on the broad and open road leading to loughfea castle. i turned and looked around me, thinking my last hour was come, and anxious to see if there was one kind face, one countenance, i had ever seen before, who could at least tell my friends how i had died. but i looked in vain. the hills were crowded with people. the long line of road was one mass of human beings, whilst those immediately around me, mad with excitement, seemed only to thirst for my blood. 'having got a few moments' breathing-time, and seeing all appeal to be vain, i turned again on my way, determined, however, to hold out to the last, as i felt that to fall or to faint must be certain death. just then i became conscious of an able hand and a stout heart beside me, and i heard a whisper in my ear: "they are determined to have your blood, but hold up, they shall have mine first." the speaker grasped my arm firmly under his own, and walked on steadily by my side. 'by this time i was _completely naked with the exception of my trousers_. my coat, even my shirt, had been torn off, and i walked on, still beaten and ill-treated, like a man to execution; my head bare, and _without any clothes from my waist upwards_. to increase the misery of my situation, i found that my friend had been beaten and dragged away in spite of himself, and again i was left alone in the hands of those merciless men. i felt also i could now go no further, and that a last effort must be made before my senses left me from exhaustion. stopping therefore once more, i asked to be led towards a high bank at the roadside, and leaning against this i turned and faced those whom i now believed would soon become my murderers. '"i can go no further," said i; "what have you brought me here for? what do you want me to do?" again the same voice which i had first heard at the office, though i could not identify the speaker from the shouting and confusion around me, cried aloud, "we want a reduction of our rents, will you promise to get us that?" 'there are times of instant danger, when it is said that the whole of a man's past life rushes before him in the spaces of a single moment. if ever there be such a time, this was such to me. i stood there, exhausted, without one friendly face on which to rest, and surrounded by _the worst of ten thousand men who seemed determined to have a victim_. i knew and felt all this. so i said very quietly, as a last effort to save my life, and hoping they would name something i could promise to ask, '"and what reduction will you be content with?" 'again the same voice replied, '"we will never pay more than one-half our present rents." '"then," said i, "there ends the matter, _i never will promise that_." 'there was a pause, and a dead silence. i stood _naked and bareheaded before them_. they stood opposite to me, with their sticks clenched in their hands, ready to strike. i looked at them, and they at me. they hesitated; _no one would strike me first_. i saw that they wavered, and instinctively, in a moment i _felt_ that i had won. this sudden revulsion of feeling--though i was still externally motionless--sent the blood throbbing to my temples with a rush that became almost oppressive. but the strange pause continued--when at length a shout was raised from the old stentorian voice again, "stand off, boys--for your lives! no one shall harm him--he is a good man after all!" and in a moment i was surrounded by a new set of faces, who dashed furiously towards me. they raised me on their shoulders, swept my old enemies away from me, procured me some water to drink, and carried me, now completely overcome, exhausted, and almost fainting, into the demesne of loughfea. 'here again these suddenly converted friends desired me to get up on a chair, and speak to the crowd now assembled before the castle. i did so. a reaction for the moment had taken place within me, and i felt some return of strength. 'i told the people i had never injured them. that it was a shame, and a disgrace of which i had not believed any irishman to be capable, to treat a stranger as they had dealt with me that day. that in my own country i could have as many to fight for me as were now against me, and in short i abused them right heartily and soundly. they bore it without a murmur. my new friends cheered me vociferously, and i was carried, now quite unable to walk, into the castle of loughfea. mr. shirley's architect here appeared upon the scene, and perceiving that the people were much exasperated at not finding mr. shirley at the castle, and that some of the most violent were disposed in consequence to make a fresh attack upon me as i was being carried exhausted inside the gates, he promised to speak to mr. shirley in their favour, and in some degree calmed their feelings. the excitement was past. mr. shirley had not been there, and the people at last quietly dispersed. 'in the evening i was conveyed in a covered carriage to carrickmacross, blackened with bruises, stiff and sore, and scarcely able to stand--musing over the strange transactions which had happened that day--and wrapped in a countryman's frieze coat which had been borrowed to cover _my nakedness_.'[ ] [footnote : realities of irish life, chap. v.] when the reader recovers his breath after this. i will ask him to turn to the history of this transaction--bad enough in itself--and see what fancy and art can do in dressing up a skeleton so that it becomes 'beautiful for ever.' mr. trench himself shall be the historian, writing to the authorities when the occurrences were all fresh in his mind. the narrative was handed in to the devon commissioners as his _sworn evidence_: '_william steuart trench, esq., agent._ 'have there been any agrarian outrages, and in what have they originated?--there have been none, except _during a late short period of peculiar local excitement_. 'will you state the particulars of that excitement, and what then occurred?--i think my best mode of doing so will be by handing in the copy of a letter which i addressed to a local magistrate for the information of government.--[_the witness read the following letter_:--] 'dear sir--in reply to your communication, enclosing a letter from mr. lucas, requesting that i should give a statement of the particulars which occurred to me in carrickmacross, on monday last, i beg leave to lay before you the facts, as follows:-- 'mr. shirley has recently appointed me to the agency over his monaghan estate. we both arrived here on thursday, the th of march, and on the following morning we went together into the office; and having remained there about an hour, we were much surprised, on our return, to find an immense mass of people outside the door, who immediately presented a petition to mr. shirley, requesting a reduction of rent. 'mr. shirley declined giving an immediate answer to such an unexpected request; but having read the petition, he told them he would give an answer to it on the monday following. by saturday, however, he had arrived at a full conclusion upon the point, and, anxious to avoid any unpleasant altercation with his tenants, he thought it advisable to let his determination be known as soon as possible; and accordingly, on saturday, he issued and circulated a printed notice, stating the determination at which he had arrived, and declining any further communications upon the subject. i enclose a copy of the notice. 'notwithstanding this notice, the people came in on monday in immense numbers; and at about o'clock in the forenoon, the upper part of the street opposite to shirley house, where we were residing, was filled with dense masses of men. i then thought it my duty to go out, and repeat to them in my capacity as agent, the determination at which their landlord had arrived. i did so in the mildest terms. i told them i had been able to go over only a part of the estate; but that from what i had seen, i was of opinion that a better system of farming and of general management of their land, was in my judgment much more required than a reduction of the rent. that i knew mr. shirley had the kindest feeling towards them, and that i was myself quite prepared and willing to render them any assistance--to go to every man's farm, if possible, and to assist them by my counsel and advice. but that as mr. shirley had come to a determination to make no present reduction in his rental, i did expect that all who were able to pay their rents would come in and do so; that the utmost leniency would be extended towards those who could not pay; but that my duty was plain, and if those who really were able to pay, refused to come forward and do so, that i had no alternative left but to take advantage of the power which the law afforded for the recovery of the rent--and this i was fully prepared and determined to do, if driven to that unpleasant necessity. i also made some further observations, of less importance; but my manner towards them was quiet and calm, and i expressed myself most anxious to do everything in my power to promote their welfare and comfort. '_i then attempted to return to the house, across the street; but the mob closed in upon me, and prevented my doing so_, _and with much violence dragged me up into the town, where i was repeatedly struck and kicked, and nearly strangled, and my coat torn to pieces._ '_the mob continued thus to ill-treat me for about a mile along the road to lough fea, mr. shirley's residence, repeatedly kicking me, especially when i showed symptoms of exhaustion, and pressing their hands violently upon my throat, till i was almost overcome by fatigue, heat and pain._ '_all this appeared to be done for the purpose of forcing me to promise to induce mr. shirley to lower the rents to s. per acre (upwards of fifty per cent.). this i refused to do. they then brought me on to lough fea, where they thought mr. shirley was; and upon not finding him, they appeared much exasperated. mr. shirley's architect then appeared, and by promising to speak to mr. shirley in their favour, and by requesting them to send a deputation, instead of coming in a manner like the present, he induced them to desist from further injury to me._ 'believe me, dear sir, very truly yours, '(signed) 'william steuart trench. 'carrickmacross, april , . 'what has been the general demeanour of the people towards you since that time?--though they resisted my measures for the recovery of the rent, _to myself they have been perfectly civil; nor have i received any personal insult or unpleasantness, arising from the above cause since that period._ 'how long did this kind of combination exist?--for about six months.' setting aside the embellishments, let us note one or two differences as to facts. in the book the suddenly converted friends placed him on a chair and asked him to make a speech before the castle door. he did so, and there is a grand statuesque picture of the hero, naked to the waist, and standing on the chair as lofty pedestal. in the torn coat the artist could never have made him look like apollo. even the shirt would have been too commonplace; so off went the shirt. three or four times attention is directed to the fact of the nakedness by the hero himself, while the pencil of the filial illustrator has rendered him immortal in this primitive costume. in his speech he 'abused them heartily and soundly.' yet they cheered him vociferously, and then carried him into the castle, where he could get nothing to cover his nakedness but a countryman's frieze coat. it was when he had been cheered vociferously, and kindly carried in, that mr. shirley's architect appeared on the scene. mr. trench has not been just to that gentleman, for he really came to his rescue, and perhaps saved his life, by giving the people the only sensible advice they got that day. in his sworn statement, made twenty-five years ago, mr. trench said: 'mr. shirley's architect then appeared, and by promising to speak to mr. shirley in their favour, and by requesting them to send a deputation, instead of coming in a manner like the present, _he induced them to desist from further injury to me._' if we had contemporary accounts of all the other romantic scenes which have fascinated so many readers, the 'realities' would lose much of their gilding. indeed, in most cases the internal evidence is sufficient to convince us that the sensationalist has been laying on his colours pretty heavily. in the sketch of the farney rent campaign, however, i am willing to accept mr. trench as a faithful historian. it is a most suggestive narrative, because it shows what mischief could be done by driving the agricultural population to desperation. a general strike against the payment of rent would convulse society. if the war which raged in farney had spread all over the island, the landlords would be in serious difficulty. the british army might then have become rent collectors, as they had been tithe collectors in .' mr. shirley resolved, after much deliberation, to enforce his legal rights to the utmost. the bailiff was sent to warn the backward tenants to come in with the rent, and he everywhere received the same answer--'we will pay no rent till our grievances are redressed.' now all the missiles of the law were showered on the recusants--notices to quit, _latitats_, processes for arrears, &c. grippers, process-servers, keepers, drivers, were in full requisition. the grippers were to arrest all tenants against whom decrees had been obtained at the quarter-sessions; the keepers were employed to watch the crops that had been seized; and the drivers were to bring the cattle, sheep, horses, or pigs to pound. these constituted the landlord's army, having the police as a reserve, and the military if necessary. on the other hand, the tenants organised a body called the 'molly maguires'--stout young men dressed up in women's clothes, their faces disguised and besmeared in the most fantastic manner. these men waylaid and maltreated the officers of the law so severely, that in a short time no money could induce a gripper, process-server, driver or bailiff to show his nose on the estate. in this dilemma, mr. shirley, as commander-in-chief, ordered his lieutenant and his subordinates to go forth, with a body of police, and drive in all the cattle they could seize on the lands of the defaulting tenants. the expedition started one fine morning, led on by the mounted bailiff, a fat man, trembling like a hare at the thought of encountering the 'molly maguires.' mr. trench's description of this foray is very graphic:--'no sooner had this formidable party appeared upon the roads in the open country, than the people rushed to the tops of the numerous hills with which the district abounds; and as we moved forward, they ran from one hill to another shouting and cheering with wild defiant cries, and keeping a line parallel to that in which our party was travelling. 'the object of our expedition was clearly understood by the people; and the exact position of our company was indicated to those in the lowlands by the movements of the parties on the hills; and accordingly, as we advanced, every beast belonging to every tenant who owed rent was housed or locked up, or driven somewhere away. thus, as we had no legal right to break open any door, or take any cattle out of any house, but only to seize those we might find in the open fields and upon the lands of the defaulting tenants, we soon perceived (as we might have known before we started) that we were likely to return without success. the bailiff declared with a sigh, "that not a hoof nor a horn was left in the whole country-side." 'at length when about to return home, without having secured any booty whatever, we came unexpectedly upon a poor little heifer calf, browsing quietly on the long grass beside a hedge. the bailiff having ascertained that she was grazing on the land of a tenant who was a defaulter, we seized upon the unhappy little beast, and drove it ingloriously home to the pound at carrickmacross, a distance of about two miles, amidst the jeers and laughter of the populace, at the result of our formidable day's driving.' thus baffled, mr. shirley resolved to try another move. he applied to the authorities in dublin for an order for 'substitution of service.' that is, instead of delivering the legal notices at the houses of the parties, which was impracticable, they were to be posted up on the chapel-door. to effect this object, a large police force was necessary, and it was accompanied by a stipendiary magistrate. 'as soon as the party came near the chapel grounds a shout of defiance was raised by the peasantry, who began to crowd into the chapel yard, and with uplifted sticks and threatening gestures swore that they would never allow the walls of the chapel to be desecrated by such a notice. the bailiff, a most respectable and temperate man, did his utmost to pacify the excited mob. he reasoned with them as best he could; and assured them that no desecration was intended--that he was only carrying out the law, which required that the notice should be posted on the chapel walls. but his voice had no more power than if he had spoken to a storm of wind; they leaped and danced madly about, whirling their sticks over their heads, and shouting that they would never allow him to touch the sacred edifice. 'the stipendiary magistrate now ordered him to do his duty, and that he would be protected in doing it by the police, and he, trembling with fear, as well he might, at length approached with the notice in his hand to post it in due form. no sooner had he approached towards the chapel than a volley of stones sent him staggering back, though none actually struck him. the police were now ordered to advance. they did so amidst another shower of stones. the storm of missiles still continuing and several of the police having been struck and injured, they were at length ordered to fire. they aimed low, and directing their fire straight into the crowd of stone-throwers, they soon checked the vigour of the assault--six or seven men fell under the volley and rolled upon the ground. there was a short pause, a dead silence ensued--but it was only for a moment, and before the police could recover themselves and load again, a furious rush was made upon them by the enraged populace. stones were seen flying as thick as hail; and finally the police, apprehending that they must be annihilated if they remained, ran to their cars, which were waiting at a little distance, and drove into carrickmacross as fast as the horses could gallop, accompanied by the stipendiary magistrate! 'the field thus quickly won, remained in the possession of the insurgents. one of the rioters was killed upon the spot--shot through the body. the others who fell were only slightly injured; one had his ear taken off, another was wounded in the finger, another shot in the arm.' this was 'the battle of magheracloon.' mr. trench wisely recommended a cessation of hostilities till the harvest was gathered in, promising the landlord that he would then by quiet means, acting on the tenants individually and privately, induce them to pay their rents. he succeeded, but as mr. shirley declined to adopt his plans for the better management of the estate, he resigned. he came back, however, after some years, as agent to the marquess of bath--a post which he occupies still, being manager-in-chief at the same time of the large estates of the marquess of lansdowne, in kerry, and lord digby, in the king's county. in all these undertakings, ably assisted by his sons and his nephew, he has been pre-eminently successful. if the farney men had been driven off in , or swept away by the famine, it would have been said that their fate was inevitable, nothing could be made of them. they were by nature prone to disorder and rebellion. well, lord bath visited his estate in . on that occasion a banquet was given to the tenants, at which mr. trench made an eloquent speech. referring to the outbreak in , he said: 'and yet never, my lord, never even in the worst of times, did i bate one jot of heart or hope in the noble people of farney, never for one moment did i doubt their loyalty to their queen, their loyalty to their country, their respect for their landlord, and above all, that they would be true and loyal to themselves.' so much for the incurable perversity of the celtic race, for the 'black morass of irish nature' that can never be drained! the people of farney got justice, and they were contented and orderly. they got security, and they were industrious and thriving. they got protection under the constitution, and they were loyal. densely peopled as the estate is, the agent could not coax one of them to emigrate; and after his former experience at farney, he did not venture on eviction, though, no doubt, he would gladly repeat the kenmare experiment in thinning the masses with which he has had to deal. mr. horsman, a prophet of the same school of economists, says that providence sent the famine to relieve the landlords, by carrying away a third of the population, and he seems to think it desirable that another third should be got rid of somehow. chapter xxii. belfast and perpetuity. belfast, not being blessed with a cathedral like armagh and derry, is not called a 'city.' it is only a 'town;' but it is the capital of ulster, and surpasses all other places in ireland in the rapidity of its progress and in its prosperity. it can boast but little of its antiquity. there is probably not a house in the borough more than years old. the place is first noticed by history in , merely as the site of a fort of the o'neills, which was destroyed by john de courcy. it was only a poor village at the time of bruce's invasion, in , though spencer erroneously calls it 'a very good town.' it was so insignificant in that holinshed does not mention it among the towns and havens of down and antrim. whatever town existed there had been destroyed by the earl of kildare when lord-deputy. in it was repaired and garrisoned, and shortly after it was granted by the crown to hugh o'neill of clandeboye. in the castle, with a large portion of territory adjoining it, was bestowed upon sir thomas smith and his son. the latter was assassinated by the 'wicked, barbarous, and uncivil people;' and the former, not being able to fulfil the conditions of his tenure, the district reverted with the whole earldom of ulster to the crown in the reign of james i. belfast was then surrounded by extensive forests, abounding in fine timber for building. the best specimen--perhaps the only one in the kingdom--of a forest like what covered the country at that time, still exists at shane's castle, the magnificent demesne of lord o'neill, where may be seen enormous oaks decaying with age, under whose shade probably the famous shane marshalled his galloglasse. in the castle and manor of belfast were granted to sir arthur chichester, lord-deputy, ancestor of the marquis of donegal, who did so much to effect the final conquest of ulster. he may be said to be the founder of the town. from the estates of his family, in devonshire, and from scotland, many families came over and made a strong settlement here. ultimately it became a corporation sending two members to the irish parliament. the chief magistrate was called 'the sovereign;' and the first who held the office was thomas pottinger, ancestor of the celebrated sir henry pottinger. in the population was , ; in , it was , ; in , it was , ; in , it had increased to , ; in , it amounted to , ; and the last census shows it to be , . about , houses are built annually in the borough, and the present population is estimated at , . the rateable property is more than , l. the sum of , l. has been spent on the harbour improvements, to which is to be added , l. for building new docks. i remember the quays when they were small, irregular, inconvenient, dirty, and when the channel worked its doubtful course through shifting masses of liquid mud, at low water. now there are quays which extend in a line about a mile, covered with spacious sheds for the protection of the goods being shipped and unshipped. there are docks of all sorts, and great shipbuilding establishments standing on ground created out of the floating chaos of mud. 'year by year,' as one of its poets has said, 'belfast is changing its aspect and overstepping its former boundaries, climbing the hill-side, skirting the river margin, and even invading the sea's ancient domain. 'ambition's mistress of the fertile land, shuts out the ocean and usurps the strand.' among the 'usurpations' is queen's island, a beautiful people's park, standing in the midst of the lough. the people of belfast have effected all these vast improvements from their own resources, without a shilling from the lord of the soil, without any help from government, except a loan of , l. from the board of works. belfast is the 'linen capital' of the empire, as manchester is the 'cotton capital.' the linen trade was fostered in its infancy there by strafford, and encouraged by william iii., as a set-off against the abolition of the woollen trade. the first spinning of flax by steam power was commenced in , by the messrs. mulholland, who employ , hands, principally females. mills have sprung up in every direction, and it is estimated that they give employment to , persons. to supply the consumption of flax, in addition to the home produce, about , tons are imported every year. linen is the staple manufacture; but industrial arts of every kind flourish, with all the usual manifestations of wealth. we have seen in a former chapter that the people of londonderry, vexed that the maiden city has been left so far behind her younger sister, ascribe the difference to the fact that the belfast manufacturers were favoured with long building tenures. we hear it said often that the marquis of donegal gave his tenants perpetuity leases, implying that he acted very liberally in doing so. if, however, you speak to persons acquainted with the local history, they will ascribe this advantage to 'lord donegal's necessities.' if you ask an explanation of this phrase, you will be told that towards the end of last century, and later, lord donegal was obliged to adopt extraordinary methods for raising money, and that the perpetuity leases in question were purchased, and at a very high rate too. you will further learn that the tenants were compelled to take the leases, and pay heavy fines for them in lump sums, and that if unable to produce the money they were evicted, and their farms were given to others who were able to pay. it is alleged that his agent got leases in blank, ready to be filled up when the cash was forthcoming, and that all the cash did not reach the landlord's hands. at any rate, attempts have been made to break some of the leases. there has been long pending litigation on the subject. whatever may be the defects of title on the part of the landlord, the tenant must suffer. dr. hancock alludes to this fact in his first report. referring to sir john romilly's leasing powers bill, he says:-- 'the details of these bills it is not necessary now to refer to; but there was one principle provided for in them which has been neglected in subsequent measures. in the ordinary course of business a tenant does not investigate his landlord's title; the cost of doing so would be nearly always too great; besides, the landlord would not think of consenting to the investigation on every occasion of granting a lease. it follows from this that it is a great hardship, if a flaw should be discovered in a landlord's title, that leases granted before the tenants had any notice of the litigation should be bad. take the case of the estate which the late duke of wellington and mr. leslie recovered from lord dungannon after he had been for years in possession; or the case which is now pending for so many years between the marquis of donegal and viscount templemore. is it not a great hardship that leases which tenants took, trusting in the title of lord dungannon or viscount templemore, who were then visible owners of great estates, should afterwards turn out to be worthless on some point of law in title-deeds which they never had the opportunity of seeing; and which may be so subtle as to take courts of law years to decide?' dr. hancock says the principle that in such cases the tenant should be protected, was neglected in subsequent measures. now, what must the tenants think of legislation that subjects them to be robbed of their dearly-bought leases because of flaws, frauds or blunders with which they could have nothing to do? the leases granted to the tenants of lord donegal, however, in belfast and the neighbourhood were generally valid, and to these perpetuities we must undoubtedly ascribe the existence of a middle class of remarkable independence of character, and the accumulation of capital for manufactures and commerce. had lord donegal been able to hold the town in a state of tutelage and dependence--had he been an 'improving landlord' of the modern type, with an agent like mr. trench, so vigilant and curious that a dog could not bark on the estate without his knowledge and consent, belfast might have been far behind derry to-day--as stationary as bangor, hillsborough, antrim, or randalstown. under such paternal care as mr. trench bestows upon tenants, with his omnipresent surveillance, there could be no manly self-reliance, no freedom of speech or action, no enterprise. the agent would take care that no interests should grow up on the estate, which his chief could not control or knock down. it is not likely that lord donegal would have suffered the landscape to be spoiled, the atmosphere of the deer park and gardens to be darkened and tainted by the smoke of factory chimneys, which could add nothing to his rental, while crowding around him the race which his great progenitor did so much to extirpate. so belfast may well be thankful that the marquis of donegal, for some generations, could not afford to be 'an improving landlord,' fond of paternal intermeddling with other people's affairs, playing the part of providence to an inferior race. but there is one memorable fact connected with those perpetuity leases which applies more immediately to our purpose. the tenants who were evicted to make way for the men who had money to advance to the lord of the soil, feeling themselves seriously aggrieved, formed the first of the more modern agrarian combinations under the title of 'the hearts of oak;' which continued for a long time to disturb the peace in antrim and down. the farms being extensively turned into pasture by the landlords and large graziers, there was no employment for the houseless wanderers, no provision of any kind for their support. they consequently had no respect for the rights of property, in the vindication of which their homes had been demolished and their families sacrificed, because they were not able to purchase fixity of tenure. it was, however, very fortunate for belfast that the landlord was obliged to sell it; that the head of the great house founded by the conqueror of ulster, enriched with territory so vast, should have been under the necessity of giving a perpetual property in the soil to some of the sons of industry. by that simple concession he did more to advance the prosperity of the town, than could have been accomplished by centuries of fostering care, under the shadow of feudalism. belfast shows, on a grand scale, what might be done on many an estate in ireland, in many a town and village where the people are pining away in hopeless misery, if the iron bonds of primogeniture and entail which now cramp landed property were struck off. the greek philosopher declared that if he had a standing-place he could move the earth. give to capital the ground of perpetuity of tenure, whereon to plant its machinery, and it will soon lift this island from the slough of despond. then may it be said more truly than grattan said it in , that ireland had got nearer to the sun. chapter xxiii. lease-breaking--geashill. the history of the manor of geashill in the king's county furnishes another instructive illustration of the land question and of the effect upon the people of the system of management, under the new school of agents, of which mr. steuart trench may be regarded as the brightest ornament, if not the apostle. the epoch was favourable for his mission, and he was the man for the epoch; he had been quietly training himself for the restoration of disordered estates, and the critical emergencies of the times thrust him into the front rank of social reformers. when he describes the wonderful revolutions wrought by his instrumentality, the whirlwinds on which he rode, the storms which he directed and quelled, the chaos out of which he evoked order, he assumes that the hurricane and the chaos were the normal state of things. a mysterious pestilence had blighted the principal food of the people for two or three years, and brought on a desolating famine. millions perished by that visitation chiefly because the legislature had persistently refused up to that period to make any provision for the irish poor such as it had made centuries before for the english poor, and because no care had been taken to distribute the population over the waste lands which their labour would have reclaimed and fertilized; or to improve their position, so that they might not be wholly dependent on one sort of food, and that the most precarious and perishable. mr. sadler, in his work on population, had proved that, even in the case of ireland before the famine, there was really no 'surplus population;' that if the resources of the country had been developed by a wise government, sympathising with the people, the text which he adopted would have been applicable there: 'dwell in the land, and verily ye shall be fed.' there was hasty legislation to meet the emergency, but in all the haste, the heartless economists found time to devise clauses and provisions, by means of which, when the small farmers had consumed all their stock to keep their families alive, they were compelled to relinquish their holdings in order to get food for their famishing children. they must submit to the workhouse test, they must not hold more than a quarter of an acre of land, if they would get relief. under the dire instigation of hunger, in the stupor and recklessness of their misery, they accepted any terms the landlords chose to impose, and so whole villages disappeared from the landscape, swept off with the besom of destruction. the political economists (all the new school of land-agents are rigid political economists), taught by their prophet malthus, ascribed the famine and every other social evil to surplus population, and to the incurably lazy and thriftless habits of the celtic race. according to them the potato blight had only hastened an inevitable catastrophe. therefore they set to work with all their agencies and all their might to get rid of the too prolific race, and to supplant the native cultivators by british settlers and wealthy graziers. this has been done ever since by a quiet and gradual process, steadily, systematically, inexorably, propelled by many powerful tendencies of the age, and checked only by assassination. what are the agrarian outrages which have become so terribly rife of late, but the desperate struggles of a doomed race to break the instruments which pluck them out of their native soil? a generation of instruction in the national schools and a generation of intercourse with the free citizens of the united states, who call no man 'master' under heaven--have taught them that it is an enormous iniquity to sacrifice humanity to property, to make the happiness, the freedom, the very existence of human beings, secondary to the arbitrary power and self-interest of a small class called landlords. they regard the 'improving landlord' system as nothing but a legal and civilised continuation of the barbarous policy of extermination by fire and sword which we have seen pursued so ruthlessly in the seventeenth century. it is still the land-war, conducted according to modern tactics, aiming with deadly effect at the same object, the slow but sure destruction of a nuisance called the 'celtic race.' this may be a delusion on their part; but it is the deep-rooted conviction of priests and people, and hence the utter inadequacy of any enactment which will not render such a policy impossible, by making the tenure of the occupiers independent of the will of the landlords. until such time the peasantry will continue to offer a bloody resistance to the legal attempts to crush them out of the country. in this self-defensive war, they cannot cope with the armed power of england in the open field; and they are driven upon the criminal resource of the oppressed in all ages and all lands--secret combination and assassination. for this crime they feel no remorse; first, because it is _war_--just as the soldier feels no remorse for killing the enemy in a battle; and, secondly, because their conquerors, and the successors of those conquerors, have taught them too well by repeated examples the terrible lesson of making light of human life. poor ignorant creatures, they cannot see that, while the most illustrious noblemen in england won applause and honours by shooting down irish women and children like seals or otters, the survivors of the murdered people should be execrated as cruel, barbarous, and infamous for shooting the men that pull down the rooftrees over the heads of their helpless families and trample upon their household gods. these convictions of theirs are very revolting to our feelings, but they are facts; and as facts the legislature must deal with them. if there be a people, otherwise singularly free from crime, who regard the assassination of the members of a certain class with indifference, or approbation, the phenomenon is one which political philosophy ought to be able to explain, and one which cannot be got rid of by suspending the constitution and bringing railing accusations against the nation. mr. trench speaks with something like contempt or pity of 'good landlords,' a class which he contradistinguishes from 'improving landlords.' but it should be remembered that by this last phrase he always means agents of the trench stamp. for he observes that the landlord himself cannot possibly do much more than authorize his agent to do what he thinks best; and it is rather an advantage that the proprietor should be an absentee, otherwise his good nature might prompt him to interrupt the work of improvement. now there is this to be said of the good landlords, who may be counted by hundreds, and who are found in all the counties of ireland. their estates are free from the 'poetic turbulence' in which mr. trench is the 'stormy petrel.' they preserved their tenants through the years of famine, and have them still on their estates. nor should the fact be omitted that among those good landlords, who abhor the idea of evicting their tenants, are to be found the lineal descendants of some of the most cruel exterminators of the seventeenth century. their goodness has completely obliterated, among their people, the bitter memories of the past. the present race of celts would die for the men whose ancestors shot down their forefathers as vermin. but the improving landlords run their ploughshares through the ashes of old animosities, turning up embers which the winds of agitation blow into flames. we seldom hear of ribbonism till the improving agent comes upon the scene, warring against natural rights, warring against the natural affections, warring against humanity, warring against the soul. these remarks bring us to the case of the barony of geashill, the estate of lord digby, to which mr. trench became agent in . lord digby desired to obtain his services, but he did not communicate his desire to mr. trench himself, though nothing would seem easier. it was first conveyed by lieut.-general porter, the confidential friend of lord digby, and next by mr. brewster, afterwards lord chancellor of ireland. when the police received a notice that the new landlord of geashill would certainly meet with a 'bloody death' if he persisted in his threatened dealings with the tenants, there was no more time for diplomatic delicacy in approaching mr. trench. the landlord's extremity is mr. trench's opportunity. when leases are to be broken, when independent rights are to be extinguished, or 'contracted away,' when an overcrowded estate is to be thinned at the least possible cost to the owner, when a rebellious tenantry are to be subdued, and ribbonmen are to be banished or hanged, mr. trench is the man to do the work of improvement. he admits that he never had before him an uglier job than this at geashill, and he had the worst apprehensions as to the danger of the enterprise. it was nothing less than to break leases, which had been granted from time to time by the late lord digby during the sixty years that he had enjoyed the property. the value of these leases was , l., for the terms unexpired after his death. among those leaseholders were the descendants of english settlers, gentlemen farmers, one of them a magistrate, and a number of substantial yeomen, the sort of men the country so much wanted to form an independent middle class. but to an 'improving landlord,' the existence of such a class on his estate is intolerable. at all hazards they must be made tenants-at-will, and brought completely under his control. they had built houses and planted trees; they had reclaimed the deep bog and converted it into good arable land. they had employed the peasantry, and given them plots of ground, and, more than all, they had allowed a number of families to squat on bits of bog by the roadside, where they lived as well as they could; working when there was a demand for labour, cutting turf and selling it in the neighbouring town of tullamore, and perhaps carrying on some little dealings. at all events they had survived the famine; and there they were in with their huts standing on their 'estates,' for they had paid no rent for twenty years, and they had as good a title in law as lord digby himself. mr. trench seems to have been horrified at not finding the names of these householders in the rent-books of the estate! the idea!--that there should be within the four corners of the king's county, even on the bog of allen, a number of natives holding land, without a landlord! it was monstrous. but as they could not be evicted for non-title, they were all severally tempted by the offer of money, in sums varying from l. to l. each, to sell their freeholds to the landlord. pity they were not preserved as a remnant of the antediluvian period, ere the ancient tenures were merged in floods of blood. like a bit of primitive forest, they would be more interesting to some minds than the finest modern plantation. it was not so easy to deal with the leaseholders. to what extent they had improved their farms before they got the leases, mr. trench does not say. but as the absentee landlord had done nothing, and spent nothing, whatever increase to the value had been made was undoubtedly the work of the tenants; and after the leases were obtained, they would naturally feel more confidence in the investment of their savings in the land. however that may be, a professional man, employed by lord digby, estimated the value over and above the reserved rent at , l., which sum the new landlord proposed to put into his own pocket, by increasing the rent one-third. the plea for this sweeping confiscation was, that the late lord digby, cousin to the present, had only a life interest in the irish estate, and therefore, the leases were all illegal and worthless. accordingly the new lord commenced proceedings to evict the whole of the tenantry for non-title. they were astounded. they held meetings; they deliberated; they appealed to the landlord; they appealed to the executors of the late peer, who had large estates in england, and died worth a million sterling in the funds, all of which he willed away from the heir of his title and irish estates. says mr. trench:-- 'it may readily be supposed that circumstances so peculiar as these created considerable anxiety in the district. the tenantry, _many_ of them large and respectable land-holders, now learned, for the first time, that their leases were good for nothing in law. they had been duly 'signed, sealed, and delivered' to them under a full belief on their part that the contract was not only just and honourable, but also perfectly legal; and their feelings may be imagined when they found that they were suddenly threatened with a total loss of the property which they had always looked upon as secure.'[ ] [footnote : 'realities of irish life,' p. .] pending the ejectment proceedings, they were knocked about from post to pillar, without getting any satisfaction. the landlord referred them to the executors, although he knew well they had no legal claim on them whatever, and that to legal claims only could they pay any attention. the executors again referred them to their landlord, who was determined to break the leases, come what would. now, if the irish law regulating the relations of landlord and tenant were based upon justice and equity, the wrong done by the late earl, if any, was a wrong for which the tenants should in no way be held responsible. the wrong was done to the heir-at-law. to him, and not to the tenants, compensation should have been made by the executors. and after all, it was really to him that the money was advanced to buy up the leases, in order to save him from assassination, for the tenants had no legal claim upon them. the natural, proper, and honest course, then, for the landlord, was to have kept the , l. as compensation to himself for the mistake of his predecessor, and to let the leases stand. if he considered the peace of the country, if he wished to inspire in the minds of the people respect for the rights of property, or confidence in the government, he would not have adopted the desperate course of breaking contracts, kindling the flames of agitation, and planting ribbon lodges all over a district hitherto peaceful and tranquil. but he was bent on crushing the independent yeomanry into the abject condition of tenants-at-will. to carry out this purpose, mr. trench was indispensable. he knew how to tame the wild irish. and mr. trench was equal to the occasion. he went to reside a few weeks at tullamore, to reconnoitre the enemy's position. he writes as if this was the first time he made acquaintance with the estate. but his own residence was in the queen's county, not far off; and there is good reason to believe that he knew all about geashill long before; and all about every estate belonging to an english absentee in the four provinces; for he had, growing up around him, a young generation of land-agents, trained in all the arts of modern management, and one of the ablest of these, his son, mr. t.w. trench, became his partner in this agency. mr. trench's tactics are not new, though he excels all men in their skilful application. his plan, adopted on all occasions, is to divide and conquer. violent measures being dangerous and contrary to his own feelings, he trusts to diplomacy, dealing with individuals, taken separately into a private room, where his irresistible personal fascination invariably brings matters to a satisfactory issue. in this case, he went over to the english executors, and persuaded them to advance the , l. to be distributed among the tenants, under the guarantee of lord digby that this sum would cover all possible claims. thus provided with funds, he summoned the tenants, not all, but ten of the most influential, to meet him at geashill. he left this meeting, purposely, to the last day and the last hour, as a piece of generalship. he says:-- 'they appeared puzzled and anxious, and very uncertain what to do. at length one of them proposed that they should do nothing until they had had an opportunity of consulting the remainder of the leaseholders, of whom there were upwards of upon the estate. '"no," replied i, "you must come to a decision now; there is a messenger at the door on horseback, to ride to the telegraph station at portarlington to stop the english witnesses coming over. this must be done within an hour, or they will start for ireland, and _then_ it will be out of my power to stop the lawsuit. you must determine _now_, each man for himself, or the lawsuit must go on." '"will you state the amount of money you will give to each of us?" asked one of the party. '"certainly," replied i, "if you will _each come separately with me into another room_." 'they did so. i named to each an amount something less than the sum set down by the notary, partly as a reserve, lest any tenants holding under these leaseholders should afterwards require to be paid, and partly lest it might be supposed we were yielding to a legal claim already granted. after a little consideration, they all severally signed the consent for judgment.' the other leaseholders followed. the leases were all surrendered, and the holders became tenants-at-will. i had the pleasure of meeting one of the most influential of them a short time ago at geashill--a fine tall, patriarchal-looking gentleman, the representative of one of the english settlers. he was waiting about humbly and patiently for an opportunity of speaking to the young agent, who is as courteous and kind as he is efficient. but i could not help reflecting how different would be the bearing of the tenant if he had been still in possession of his lease! his dwelling-house was not as grand as the stylish villa which the landlord has erected beside it. but every stick and stone about the place were his own property. so also were the old timber trees, which his ancestors planted. but now every stick and stone and tree belong to lord digby, and as such the agent exhibits them to visitors--the buildings, the gardens, the trees, the hedges, the rich pasture fields, all having such a look of comfort and independence. i asked, 'did you ever know a place like this old home of yours to have been made by a tenant-at-will?' he answered in the negative. the tenant on an 'improved estate' must be very careful about his speech. an agent has a hundred eyes and a hundred ears. people who seek 'favours' at the office, find it useful to be spies upon their neighbours, to detect violations of the 'rules of the estate.' it is mainly through the spy-system that mr. steuart trench, according to his own avowal, won most of his victories over refractory tenants. for example, on this estate he had a woman acting as a spy at the meetings of the ribbonmen; and he boasted that a dog could not bark at farney without his knowledge. i refer to this matter here again for the purpose of saying that i cannot regard as an improvement of the country a system which establishes a despot on every estate, which degrades the tenant into a day-labourer, which--land being limited and scarce--substitutes the old, barbarous, pastoral system for tillage, which banishes the poor and enslaves the rich. lord digby levelled cottages, gardens, farms, manured the land, got an enormous crop, which in one year paid all the expenses; and then laid out the land in vast tracts of pasture, for which he gets from s. to s. an acre. that is improvement for _him_, but not for the people, not for the country, not for the state, not for the queen. it may crush ribbonism. but for every ribbonman crushed, a hundred fenians spring up; and disaffection becomes not a mere local plague, but an endemic. mr. trench gives a significant hint to other landlords to follow the example of lord digby, assuring them that it will '_pay_.' a still more flagrant case of lease-breaking occurred some years ago in the county of galway. dr. hancock has put the facts of this case before the government in his recent report:-- 'the plaintiff was the rev. dr. o'fay, parish priest of craughwell, in the county of galway, and the defendant the landlord on whose estate the priest resided. about ten years ago the priest was induced to take a farm that had been held by a former parish priest; the previous proprietor, the father of the defendant, promising a lease for three lives, or thirty-one years. after the priest entered into possession the landlord ascertained that he could not fulfil his promise. 'as he did not possess such a power under the terms of the estate settlement, he offered, instead, a lease for the priest's own life, and l. to aid in building a house. the priest continued in possession of the farm, and paid the rent agreed on, thus, as he alleged, accepting the arrangement proposed. he was on excellent terms with the landlord, and expended l. in permanent improvements, and did not ask for the l. which the landlord had promised. in the landlord died, and his son, the defendant, succeeded to the property. he gave notice to all his yearly tenants of an intention to raise their rents. the priest claimed to have a promise of a lease, and the agent of the property, during the landlord's absence abroad, admitted this claim, and did not raise the rent. the landlord said he had no notice of his father's promise; he, however, allowed the priest to remain in possession, and the priest expended l. in buildings, on the faith that he would not be disturbed. a dispute subsequently arose about trespass, and the fences on the boundary between the priest's farm and some land in the possession of the landlord. the landlord served notice to quit, and brought an ejectment. after some delay judgment was given in his favour, subject to an application to the court of chancery to compel him to fulfil his father's promise of a lease.' the master of the rolls thus characterised the law which justifies the robbery of the tenants by unscrupulous and vindictive landlords:-- 'even if the rev. dr. o'fay had no claim except as tenant from year to year, i have no hesitation in stating that, although in point of law on the authorities i have referred to, and particularly the case of felling _v._ armitage, the petitioner's suit could not be sustained, _yet noticing can be more repugnant to the principles of natural justice than that a landlord should look on at a great expenditure carried on by a tenant from year to year, without warning the tenant of his intention to turn him out of possession_. the defendant's offer to allow dr. o'fay to remove the buildings was a mockery. _i have no jurisdiction to administer equity in the natural sense of that term, or i should have no difficulty whatever in making a decree against the defendant._ i am bound to administer an artificial system, established by the decisions of eminent judges, such as lord eldon and sir william grant, and _being so bound, i regret much that i must administer injustice in this case, and dismiss the petition_, but i shall dismiss it without costs. _i should be very glad for the sake of justice that my decision should be reversed by the court of appeal._' lest it might be supposed that this was the opinion of a single judge, we find in the court of appeal equally strong views stated:--it was thrown out that it was a case for amicable settlement, but the respondent's counsel assured the court that his client 'had resolved to spend his fortune, if necessary, in resisting the claim of the rev. dr. o'fay.' lord justice blackburne pronounced this to be a very irrational determination, although he had to decide that the claim could not be sustained in law or equity. lord chancellor napier, in concluding his judgment, said:-- 'i think i am not overstepping my duty in suggesting to the respondent, that, under all the circumstances of this case, he will best maintain the character and honour of a british officer, satisfy the exigencies of justice, and uphold the rights of property, by making _such an arrangement_ with dr. o'fay, as to the possession of this farm, _as may leave him the full benefit of an expenditure made in good faith, and with the reasonable expectation of having the full benefit of it sufficiently secured by an undisturbed possession_.' it is a favourite theory with the new school of agents and improving landlords, that long leases cause bad cultivation; in other words, that industry prospers best where there is no security that you can reap what you have sown, except the honour of a man whose interest it is to appropriate the fruits of your labours, which he can _legally_ do. now, in every class and profession, there are failures,--persons that are good for nothing, indolent, improvident, and thriftless. if such a man has a long lease at a low rent, he may be overwhelmed in debt, and leave his land in very bad condition. others may imitate their aristocratic superiors in their contempt for labour and their habits of expenditure, and so get into a state of hopeless poverty on a good estate. if there are cases where industrious sober men are the worse for having an old lease, it should be remembered that the most insecure of all tenures is a lease dependent on a single bad life, which may drop at any hour. but there are other causes of the facts urged against long tenures, for which the legislature is responsible, not the unimproving tenant. dr. hancock explains this point very satisfactorily:-- 'instances of bad cultivation and neglect of improvements, where long leases exist, are sometimes brought forward to show the inutility of tenure as a security for capital, and the strange economic theory is propounded that a precarious interest is more favourable to the investment of capital than a secure one. as well might the state of landed property in ireland before the incumbered estates court was established be adduced as an argument against property in land. the remedy, however, which the legislature applied to incumbered estates of large proprietors was not to destroy property in land, but simply to secure its prompt, cheap, and effectual transfer to solvent hands. 'for tenants' interests under leases where the value is small, and where the interests have become complicated, the landed estates court is too expensive, and so these interests remain often for years untransferred, in the hands of some one who has a very limited and often uncertain interest in them. such a leaseholder is deterred from making improvements by the state of the law which deprives him of the entire value of his improvements if anyone should disturb him under a prior charge or claim, however obscure or unknown, affecting his interest. the remedy is to be found in an extension of the principle of the record of title act to the local registry of small leasehold interests, and in the providing for the local sale of such interests in a cheap manner, with an absolute title.' chapter xxiv. the land system and the working classes. we have been told over and over again that the business of ireland, and all its improvements, requiring education and integrity, are carried on 'by the protestants, by whose intelligence, and labour, mental and bodily, its prosperity, such as it is, has been produced.' this assertion has been made with great confidence, by many writers and speakers. it is a gross exaggeration, and absurd as it is gross. i say nothing of the unseemly egotism of a dominant caste, thus parading its own merits, flaunting its plumes, strutting and crowing over the common folk--of this pharisaic spirit of the ascendant protestant, standing close to the altar, reciting to god and the world the number of his resplendent virtues, and scornfully contrasting his excellent moral condition with the degraded catholic--the vile publican and sinner, overwhelmed with enormous guilt. these monopolising pharisees, who laboured at such a rate to assert their natural superiority, as the favourites of heaven, and members of the sovereign's church, over a race which england enabled them to subjugate and impoverish, have found no trumpeter so loud as master fitzgibbon, a chancery judge. in the same spirit the last census has been analysed by one of the ablest defenders of the irish establishment, the rev. dr. hume, of liverpool, in order to prove that everything good in ireland has been done by the protestants, and everything bad by the catholics. but he does not state fairly the conditions of the race. he does not state that one of the competitors had been master for centuries, well-fed, well-trained, possessed of all advantages which give strength, skill, courage, and confidence, while the other was ill-fed, untrained, enfeebled, and _over-weighted_, having to work out of himself the slavish spirit which oppression had produced, and to gain, by extra efforts, the skill which the law had forbidden him to acquire. nevertheless the catholics have acquired skill, and the extent to which the empire is dependent on their knowledge of the industrial arts is much greater than many people suppose. of the farming class in ireland, per cent. are roman catholics. but we are indebted to the obnoxious race in other respects than as producers of food. from the classification of occupations and professions, we learn that the roman catholics bear the following proportions to the protestants of all denominations. persons employed in the manufacture of: roman catholics. skin clothing . per cent. woollen do. . " flax do. . " cotton do. . " straw do. . " silk do. . " miscellaneous do. . " in producing furniture . " in unclassed industrial employments . " in amusements . " in architecture . " in making machinery . " in conveyance and travelling . " in literature and education . " in charity and benevolence . " in health . " in science and art . " in justice and government . " in banking and agency . " there are other suggestive figures in the census, bearing on this question. while three-fourths of the farmers are catholics, three-fourths of the land-agents are protestants, who, as a rule, have an unconquerable antipathy to the catholic clergy, as the only obstacle to their absolute power over the tenants, with whom they find it hard to sympathise. of farm labourers and domestic servants, nine out of ten belong to the race supposed by some to be incapable of virtue and loyalty. again, of the whole british army of all ranks, per cent. are irishmen, and of these irish soldiers, per cent. are catholics. more than three-fourths of the magistrates are protestants; and they bear about the same proportion on the grand juries. according to the theory and practice of the constitution, all power, legislative and administrative, must be based on the ownership of land. the rate-payers have a voice indeed, but it is generally nothing but an echo of the landlord's voice; what else can it be when they are tenants-at-will, depending on the mercy of the proprietor for the means of existence? in county offices, the protestants have an overwhelming majority. it is the same in all the offices filled by government patronage, except the judges of the superior courts. there catholics are in the majority, because they had obtained seats in the house of commons. on the boards of guardians the mass of the poor might expect that a majority of guardians would be prompted by national and religious feeling to sympathise with them, so that they would find in the master and matron, the doctor and the relieving officer, something like the natural tenderness which a common kindred and creed inspire. but half the guardians are _ex-officio_ members, as magistrates; nearly all landlords and protestants. they have in addition 'property votes,' and 'residence votes;' so that, with their influence over the elections, they are generally able to pack the board; and in that case the officials are almost invariably protestants and conservatives. i know a union in which three-fourths of the rate-payers are roman catholics; and yet, with the utmost efforts of the priests, they were not able to elect a single catholic guardian. to meet the landlord pressure, some of the rate-payers were required to sign their voting papers in presence of their pastors, yet so terrible was that pressure that they afterwards took them to the agent's office, and, to make assurance doubly sure, tore them up before his face. i have been told by a priest, that such is the mortal dread of eviction, or of a permanent fine in the form of increased rent, that he had known tenants who, when produced in the witness-box, denied on oath acts of oppression of which they had been bitterly complaining to himself, and which he well knew to be facts. thus the land-war rages at every board of guardians, in every dispensary, in every grand jury room, at every petty sessions, in every county court, in every public institution throughout the kingdom. the land-agent is the commanding officer, his office is a garrison, dominating the surrounding district. he is able, in most cases, to defy the confessional and the altar; because he wields an engine of terror generally more powerful over the mind of the peasantry than the terrors of the world to come. armed with the 'rules of the estate' and with a notice to quit, the agent may have almost anything he demands, short of possession of the farm and the home of the tenant. the notice to quit is like a death warrant to the family. it makes every member of it tremble and agonise, from the grey-headed grandfather and grandmother, to the bright little children, who read the advent of some impending calamity in the gloomy countenances and bitter words of their parents. the passion for the possession of land is the chord on which the agent plays, and at his touch it vibrates with 'the deepest notes of woe.' by the agent of an improving landlord it is generally touched so cunningly, that its most exquisite torture cannot easily be proved to be a grievance. he presents an alternative to the tenant; he does less than the law allows. he could strike a mortal blow, but he lends a helping hand. resistance entails ruin; compliance secures friendship. give up the old _status_, and accept a new one: cease to stand upon _right_, consent to hang upon _mercy_, and all may be well. passing a cottage by the road-side, one of the kindest and best of those agents said to me, 'see with what infatuation these people cling to their old places! there is a man in that dilapidated cabin, with only one acre of ground. it is an eyesore. i have offered him a nice new slated cottage with ten acres, within a short distance, and he obstinately refuses to quit.' why did he refuse? i suppose, because the place was _his own_. the house was probably built by his father; it is the house in which he was born, endeared to him, no doubt, by many powerful associations, little appreciated by those who never condescend to read the 'simple annals of the poor.' he felt, that if, like his neighbours, he moved into a house built by the landlord, he would cease to be a free man, and would pass under the yoke of a _master._ i was with some visitors in one of the new cottages. the wife of the cottier with smiles assented to all that was said as to the neatness and comfort of the place. i thought the smiles were forced. i was last in going out, and i heard her heave a heavy sigh. perhaps she longed for the old home and its freedom, envying the lot of the sturdy peasant to whom i have alluded. poor fellow! he must give way at last. but his proud manhood is the stuff of which hampdens are made. i have devoted much time and attention to personal enquiries from town to town, from village to village, and from house to house, seeking corroborative evidence from men of all ranks and professions, on the effect of the _improved land system_ on the working classes, and i will here faithfully record as briefly as possible the result of my enquiries. i must premise a few words as to the principles of the system which is called 'english.' . there is the principle of _contract_, by which alone any tenant is to be permitted to occupy land. there is to be no foothold in the island, from the centre all round to the sea, from the top of the highest mountain to the shore at low-water-mark, for any irishman in his native land, unless he obtains it by contract from a landlord and pays for it. . there is the principle of _compensation_ for unexhausted improvements at the rate of five or six per cent. on the outlay, provided the improvements have been made with the knowledge and consent of the landlord. a certain number of years is held to be sufficient to recoup the tenant for his outlay. if he is removed before that time he is entitled to the balance of his invested capital; just as if the relation were strictly commercial, and as if he had no further claim than his percentage. if the landlord makes the improvement--which he prefers doing, on the new system--he requires the tenant to pay at the rate of four to six per cent. in the form of rent--a clear gain to the landlord, who can borrow money on much lower terms, and can hardly invest his capital so profitably or so safely elsewhere. . _absenteeism_ is no disadvantage or loss to the country. this principle is in great favour with the agents. there is no theme on which they are so eloquent or so argumentative. in the absence of the landlord the agent is all-powerful. what the irish lord deputy was to the tudors and stuarts, the irish agent now is to the great absentee proprietor residing in london or paris. he will undertake to demonstrate that the west-end of london would be just as prosperous if the queen and her court resided constantly at balmoral or killarney; if the parliament met alternately in edinburgh and dublin, and if the government offices were all at liverpool. with the blessing of absenteeism, houses in london would be built as fast, and would bring as high rents; trade would be as brisk, artizans of all sorts as well paid, life as happy, and the londoners as well content. the irish, however, have, in their ignorance of political economy, conceived the idea, that if the millions sterling sent annually out of the country to london were spent among those by whose labour the money is made, there would be more employment for all sorts of tradesmen, more business for the shopkeepers, more opportunities of advancement for the farmers' sons, more houses built, more trees planted, more land reclaimed, more factories established, more money stirring, more wealth, more life, more enjoyment, an immense increase of national prosperity. the agents say that this is all a delusion. . the next principle of the new agents is this--and to carry it out is the aim of all their improvements--that their mission is to produce the greatest amount of rent from the smallest number of tenants. . to reduce the population by _emigration_ or other means until there is barely a sufficient number of labourers to attend the agricultural machines, and herd the cattle. . to discourage _marriage_ in every possible way, and to diminish pauperism till there shall be no further use of the workhouses but to serve as lying-in hospitals for the thrifty spinsters, as they do in cumberland and westmoreland--where the arrangement seems the most natural thing in the world. it is certainly not an unnatural consequence of the practice of men and women sleeping in the same apartment. now let us see the working of this new system in ireland; for it is at work more or less extensively in all the four provinces. the rules of the estate, when rigidly enforced, as they generally are by the improving agents, tend steadily, powerfully, to break down the small farmers. they are disappearing by thousands every year. some take their chance across the atlantic. others fall into the condition of labourers, and may earn s. a day on the estate. this will last for awhile until the land is drained, manured, and turned into permanent pasture. then their occupation is gone. there is nothing more for them to do. there is no place for them, no room, no support in their native land. the grass will grow without their labour, and the bullocks will fatten without their care. we are constantly hearing of the immense rise in wages since the famine. well, they are nominally higher, but in the old times the labourer could get more for d. or d. than he can now get for s. d. or s. fuel is now three times as dear as it was, because the 'rules of the estate' will not allow the tenants to sell turf even on the verge of extensive bogs. milk, which was formerly abundant and very cheap, is scarcely to be had at all now in the country towns and villages, because the land is devoted to feeding sheep and 'dry cattle.' under the old system, the cottiers in the small towns and villages, as well as on the roads in the country, were enabled to keep pigs. the pig paid the rent, and made manure which was put out on the ground of some neighbouring farmer, hired as 'conacre.' the crop of potatoes thus obtained was a great help in the winter months, when employment was rarely to be had. this practice still prevails in ulster. the farmer puts in the crop for the manure, the cottier paying the farmer's rent-- s. to s. a rood, or whatever it may be. with this help the family get over the winter, and feed the pig, without which help, they say, it would be impossible to exist, even with constant employment at a shilling a day. but on the estates of improving landlords in the other provinces, the rules forbid the tenant to give the use of any ground for conacre. he must not, on pain of eviction, take manure for such a purpose, though it would help to enrich his land for the ensuing year. the evicted cottiers and small farmers are forced to go to towns and villages, shut up in unwholesome rooms. when they have been thus so far got rid of, the most ingenious devices are resorted to in order to render it impossible for them to live. by the 'rules of the estate,' the supply of necessaries is cut off on every side. without fuel, without milk, without potatoes, unless bought at a high rate for ready money, how are they to live? the strong members of the poor man's family emigrate or go to service; the weak ones and the young children pine away in a state of semi-starvation, preferring that to the best fare in the hated workhouse. the people are fully sensible of the causes of these privations. they know that they have been forced into this condition by the landlords and their improving agents, induced in some cases by the temptation of a few pounds to surrender their little holdings. the lord lieutenant of the king's county has thus cleared an immense district, and has himself become a grazier and a cattle-dealer on a monster scale, attending the markets in person, and driving hard bargains with the farmers and jobbers. by such means the population of that county has been reduced one-third in the last twenty years. the moral aspect of this new system is worthy of consideration. it is thus presented by archdeacon redmond of arklow, one of the most moderate and respected parish-priests in ireland. when lately presenting an address to lord granard from his wexford tenantry, he said:-- 'i have always heard the house of forbes eulogised for its advocacy of civil and religious liberty, and the name of grogan morgan has become a household word through this county as one of the best landlords in ireland. he never broke down a rooftree during or since the terrible famine. under his fostering care they have all tided over the calamitous time, and are happy and prosperous in their homes. he did not think his estate overcrowded, nor did he avail himself of the mysterious destruction of the fruits of the earth, to clear off beings made in god's image, and to drive them to the poorhouse, the fever-shed, or the emigrant ship, to whiten the bottom of the sea with their bones, or to face the moral and physical perils of the transatlantic cities. he did not read his bible, like satan, backwards, nor did he turn out the son of god in the person of his poor. hence his name is in benediction, and his estates are more prosperous than the estates of those who forget god in their worldly wisdom, and would seem to have no belief in a judgment to come. what a happiness it is, my lord and lady granard, for you to have such a heritage, and to know that you live in the hearts of your tenantry, who would spill the last drop of their blood to shield you and your dear children from hurt and harm!' let it not be supposed that such sentiments are peculiar to the catholic clergy, or that their causes exist only in the south and west. the rev. dr. drew, a rector in the county down, an orange chaplain, a veteran champion of protestantism and toryism, but an honourable and humane man, wrote the following letter last autumn:-- if the magnificent lecture of mr. butt had done nothing more than elicit this letter from dr. drew, it would have been much. but will not the thoughts of many hearts be revealed in the same manner? what a number of plain-speaking drews we shall have denouncing tyranny when their consciences are relieved from the incubus of the establishment! _to isaac butt, esq., ll.d._ 'my dear butt--if every other man in the world entertained doubts of my sincerity, you, at least, would give me credit for honesty and just intentions. i write to you accordingly, because my mind has been stirred to its inmost depths by the perusal of your address in my native city of limerick. i do not regard the subject of your address as a political one. it ought to be regarded solely as a question of humanity, justice, common sense, and common honesty. i wish my lot had never been cast in rural places. as a clergyman i hear what neither landlords nor agents ever hear. i see the depression of the people; their sighs and groans are before me. they are brought so low as often to praise and glorify those who, in their secret hearts, are the objects of abhorrence. all this came out gradually before me. nor did i feel as i ought to feel in their behalf until, in my own person and purse, i became the victim of a system of tyranny which cries from earth to heaven for relief. were i to narrate my own story it would startle many of the protestants of ireland. there are good landlords--never a better than the late lord downshire, or the living and beloved lord roden. but there are too many of another state of feeling and action. there are estates in the north where the screw is never withdrawn from its circuitous and oppressive work. tenant-right is an unfortunate and delusive affair, simply because it is almost invariably used to the landlord's advantage. here we have an election in prospect, and in many counties no farmer will be permitted to think or act for himself. what right any one man has to demand the surrender of another's vote, i never could see. it is an act of sheer felony--a perfect "stand-and-deliver" affair. to hear a man slavishly and timorously say, "i must give my votes as the landlord wishes," is an admission that the legislature, which bestowed the right of voting on the tenant, should not see him robbed of his right, or subsequently scourged or banished from house and land, because he disregarded a landlord's nod, or the menace of a land agent. at no little hazard of losing the friendship of some who are high and good and kind, i write as i now do.--yours, my dear butt, very sincerely, 'thomas drew. 'dundrum, clough, county down, september , .' some resident landlords employ a considerable number of labourers, to each of whom they give an excellent cottage, an acre of land, and the grass of a cow, with work all the year round at seven shillings a week. the tenants are most comfortable and most grateful, while the praise of those landlords is in the mouths of the peasantry all round the country. but these considerate landlords are in a minority. as a rule, on the estates where the improvement system is going on, where farms are being consolidated, and grazing supersedes tillage, an iron pressure weighs upon the labouring classes, crushing them out of the country. it is a cold, hard, calculating, far-reaching system of inhumanity, which makes the peasant afraid to harbour his own flesh and blood. it compels the grandmother to shut the door in the face of the poor homeless orphan, lest the improving agent should hear of the act of sheltering him from the pitiless storm, not more pitiless than the agent himself. the system of terrorism established by the threats of eviction de-humanizes a people remarkable for their hospitality to the poor. mr. thomas crosbie, of cork, a gentleman whom i believe to be as truthful and honourable as any agent in ireland, gives appalling illustrations of this in his account of 'the lansdowne estates,' published in . mr. trench has given the english public several pretty little romances about these estates; but he omitted some realities that ought to have impressed themselves upon his memory as deeply as any of his adventures. mr. crosbie found that the 'rules of the estate,' which were rigidly enforced, forbid tenants to build houses for their labourers, 'the consequence of which was that men and women servants, no matter how great the number, must live under one roof.' the rules forbid marriage without the agent's permission. a young couple got married, and were chased away to america; and 'the two fathers-in-law were not merely warned; they were punished for harbouring their son and daughter, by a fine of a gale of rent.' it was a rule 'that no stranger be lodged or harboured in any house upon the estate, lest he should become sick or idle, or in some way chargeable upon the poor-rates.' 'several were warned and punished for giving lodging to a brother-in-law, a daughter,' &c. 'a poor widow got her daughter married without the necessary permission; she was served with a notice to quit, which was withdrawn on the payment of three gales of rent.' mr. crosbie gives a number of cases of the kind. the following are the most remarkable. a tenant, timothy sullivan, of derrynabrack, occasionally gave lodging to his sister-in-law, whilst her husband was seeking for work. he was afraid to lodge both or either; 'but the poor woman was in low fever, and approaching her confinement. even under such circumstances his terror was so great that he removed her to a temporary shed on jeremiah sullivan's land, where she gave birth to a child. she remained there for some time. when "the office" heard of it, jeremiah sullivan was sent for and compelled to pay a gale of rent (as fine), and to throw down the shed. thus driven out, and with every tenant on the estate afraid to afford her a refuge, the miserable woman went about two miles up the mountain, and, sick as she was, and so situated, took shelter in a dry _cavern_, in which she lived for several days. but her presence even there was a crime, and a mulct of another gale of rent was levied off jeremiah sullivan. thus, within three weeks he was compelled to pay two gales of l. s. d. each. it was declared also that the mountain being the joint property of jeremiah sullivan, timothy sullivan, and thady sullivan, timothy sullivan was a participator in the crime, and should be fined a gale of rent. the third, it appears, escaped.' 's.g.o.' narrated another horrifying case in the _times_, at the period of its occurrence, in . abridged, it runs thus:--'an order had gone forth on the estate (a common order in ireland) that no tenant was to admit any lodger into his house. this was a general order. it appears, however, that sometimes special orders were given; and one was promulgated that denis shea should not be harboured. this boy had no father living. he had lived with a grandmother, who had been turned out of her holding for harbouring him. he had stolen a shilling, a hen--done such things as a neglected twelve-year-old famishing child will do. one night he came to his aunt donoghue, who lodged with casey. the latter told the aunt and uncle not to allow him into the house, as the agent's drivers had given orders about him. the aunt beat him away with a pitchfork, the uncle tied his hands with cord behind his back. the poor child crawls to the door of a neighbour, and tries to get in. the uncle is called to take him away, and he does so. he yet returns with hands still tied behind, having been severely beaten. the child seeks refuge in other cabins; but all were forbidden to shelter him. he is brought back by some neighbours in the night, who try to force the sinking child in upon his relation. there is a struggle at the door. the child was heard asking some one to put him upright. in the morning there is blood upon the threshold. the child is stiff dead--a corpse, with its arms tied; around it every mark of a last fearful struggle for shelter--food--the common rights of humanity.' chief baron pigot tried the case, and gave a statement of the facts in his charge which mr. trench ought to have quoted, as a faithful recorder of 'realities.' 'on the western estate, that of cahirciveen, there was some difference in the rules. if a son or daughter married, the father was obliged to retire with an allowance of 'a cow's grass' or grazing for his support. 'only the newly married person will be left on the land, or any portion of it, even though the farm should contain acres, or even though there should be two farms. this arbitrary regulation operates injuriously in point of morality, and keeps the land uncultivated. the people have to go to nedeen, a distance of forty or fifty miles, to get leave to marry.'[ ] [footnote : see the 'north british review,' no. ci. p. .] the kenmare tenantry have recovered from the fearful shock of the famine, after thousands of deaths from hunger, and thousands shipped off to america at l. s. a head. mr. trench's son, mr. townshend trench, the pictorial illustrator of his father's book, is the acting agent, and an eloquent propagandist of his father's principles. the young marquis paid a visit to his tenantry in , and he was almost worshipped. it is gratifying to know that in a speech on that occasion he promised to see and judge for himself. 'i feel,' he said, 'that my visit to kenmare has taught me a valuable lesson. as you all know, i was called to my present position at a very young age, and i felt when i came in for my property that i had much to learn; and that is the reason why i was so anxious to travel through the country, and study the desires and comfort of the people. that will afford me occupation for many a year to come, and it will afford me an occupation not only interesting but pleasing. nothing will do me a more hearty pleasure than to see the marks of civilisation and progress in kenmare--and not alone in kenmare, but in the whole country; and i shall hail every manifestation of improvement with delight.' lord lansdowne's system is beautiful, but it is unfinished. let him 'crown the edifice with _liberty_.' he possesses a giant's power, and he uses it like an angel. when he comes to trouble the waters, the multitude gathers around the fountain to be healed. but his visits are, like angels' visits, few and far between. many of the sick and impotent folk, after long waiting, are not able to get near till the miracle-worker has departed. an absentee landlord, be he ever so good, must delegate his power to an agent. agents have good memories, and their servants, the bailiffs, are good lookers-on. there is a hierarchy in the heaven of landlordism--the under-bailiff, the head-bailiff, the chief-clerk in the office, the sub-agent, the head-agent. all these must be submissively approached and anxiously propitiated before the petitioner's prayers can reach the ears of jove himself, seated aloft on his remote olympian throne. he may be, and for the most part really is--if he belongs to the old stock of aristocratic divinities--generous and gracious, incapable of meanness, baseness, or cruelty. but the tenant has to do, not with the absentee divinity, but with his priest--not with the good spirit, but his medium; and this go-between is not always noble, or disinterested, or unexacting. to him power may be new--a small portion of it may intoxicate him, like alcohol on an empty stomach. he was not born to an inheritance of sycophancy; it comes like an _afflatus_ upon him, and it turns his head. it creates an appetite, like strong drink, which grows into a disease. this appetite is as capricious as it is insatiable. hence, the chief characteristic of landlord power, as felt by the tenant, is _arbitrariness_. the agent may make any rule he pleases, and as many exceptions to every rule as he pleases. he may allow rents to run in arrear; he may suddenly come down upon the defaulter with 'a fell swoop;' he may require the rents to be paid up to the day; he may, without reason assigned, call in 'the hanging gale;' he may abate or increase the rents at will; he may inflict fines for delay or give notices to quit for the sole purpose of bringing in fees to his friend or relative, the solicitor. but whatever he may choose to do, the tenant has nothing for it but to submit; and he must submit with a good grace. woe to him if the agony of his spirit is revealed in the working of his features, or in an audible groan! most of the poor fellows do submit, till their hearts are broken--till the hot iron has entered their souls and seared their consciences. when the _slave_ is thus finished, the agent and his journeymen are satisfied with their handiwork; their 'honours' can then count on any sort of services they may choose to exact--may bid defiance to the priest and the agitator, and boast of an orderly and deserving tenantry devoted to the best of landlords, who is their natural protector. it would be wicked to interfere with these amicable persons. why talk about leases? the tenants will not have them; they don't want security or independence by contract. so most of the agents report--but not all. there are noble exceptions which relieve the gloomy picture. there is certainly one disadvantage connected with a settlement of the land question which would abolish the arbitrary power of proprietors and their agents--it would put an end to the romance of irish landlordism. the edgeworths, the morgans, the banims, the carletons, and the levers would then be deprived of the best materials for their fictions. the fine old family, over-reached and ruined by a dishonest agent; the cruelly evicted farmer, with his wife and children fever-stricken, and his bedridden mother cast out on the roadside on christmas eve, exposed to the pelting of the hailstorm, while their home was unroofed and its walls levelled by the crowbar brigade; the once comfortable but now homeless father making his way to london, and trying day after day to present a petition in person to his landlord, repulsed from the gate of the great house, and laughed at for his frieze and brogue by pampered flunkeys. then he travels on foot to his lordship's country-seat, scores or hundreds of miles--is taken up, and brought before the magistrates as 'an irish rogue and vagabond.' at length he meets his lordship accidentally, and reveals to him the system of iniquity that prevails on his irish estate at castle squander: next we have the sudden and unexpected appearance of the god of the soil at his agent's office, sternly demanding an account of his stewardship. he gives ready audience to his tenants, and fires with indignation at bitter complaints from the parents of ruined daughters. investigation is followed by the ignominious eviction of the tyrannical and roguish agent and his accomplices, a disgorging of their ill-gotten wealth, compensation to plundered and outraged tenants, the liberal distribution of poetical justice right and left. many other agents have followed mr. trench's example in forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from hospitality and charity. an ejectment was lately obtained at the quarter sessions in a southern county against a widow who had married without leave, or married a different person from the one the agent selected. but it is supposed that the threat of assassination prevented a recourse to extremities in this and other cases. for the people seem with one consent to have made a desperate stand against this cruel tyranny. a landlord said to me, 'no one in this part of the country would _presume_ to evict a tenant now from fear of assassination. _that_ is the tenant's security.' the wretched outcasts, whom 'improvement' has swept off the estates, are crowded into cities and towns, without employment, without food. feeling bitterly their degradation and misery, and taught to blame the government, they become demoralized and desperately disaffected. from these fermenting masses issues the avenging scourge of fenianism--'the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and slayeth at noonday.' for my part, i cannot understand the meaning of improving a country by disinheriting and banishing its inhabitants. i do not understand men who say the population is too dense, and yet give to one family a tract of land large enough to support ten families, turning out the nine to make room for the one. a great deal has been said about the evils of small farms. but the most disturbed and impoverished parts of ireland are those in which the farms are largest; while the two most prosperous and best ordered counties--armagh and wexford--are the counties in which small farms most abound. i call a reluctant witness, master fitzgibbon, to testify that when the irish tenant, be his holding ever so small, gets common justice and is not subjected to caprice, he gives no trouble. that gentleman informs us that there are estates of all magnitudes, from l. to , l. a-year, under the control and management of the court of chancery; the total rents of these amount to , l. a-year payable by , tenants. these estates are in all parts of ireland, not only in all the provinces, but in all the counties, without exception; and, according to master fitzgibbon, they fairly represent the tenantry of the whole country. he has of the estates under his own jurisdiction, and the rents of these amount to , l., paid by , tenants. he has now been ten years in the office, during which 'the rents have been paid without murmuring or complaints worth noticing.' 'the pressure of legal remedies for these rents has been very little used; the number of evictions absolutely trifling; and of between and receivers, who collect these rents, _not one has ever been assailed_, or interfered with, or threatened in the discharge of his duty, as far as i have been able to discover; and i am the person to whom the receiver should apply for redress if anything of the kind occurred. it is very well known that my ears are open to any just complaint from any tenant, and yet i am very seldom appealed to, considering the great number of tenants; and whenever a complaint is well-founded, it is promptly and effectually redressed, at scarcely any expense of costs. i believe the other three masters would make substantially a similar report to this in respect of the estates under their jurisdiction.' master fitzgibbon proceeds to state that 'on one estate there are , tenants, paying , l.,--being an average of l. a-year. this estate has been sold, and three of the lots fetched over years' purchase of the yearly profit rents. the fourth lot is held by small cottiers, at rents which average only l., and this lot fetched years' purchase. this estate has been under a receiver for three years, and there has never been one complaint from a tenant. what is stated of this estate may be said of every one of them in all the four provinces.' he adds: 'clamour, agitation, or violence of any kind i have never had to deal with amongst the tenantry of any one of these estates since i came into office.' another witness of larger views, and free from unhappy prejudices against the majority of his countrymen--mr. marcus keane, agent to the marquis of conyngham--in a letter to colonel vandeleur, m.p., lately gave the result of his experience for thirty years as agent of several large estates, and as a landlord, on the irish land question. i submit his suggestions to my readers, as eminently worthy of the consideration of statesmen at the present time:-- 'the outline of measures submitted for your consideration combines the very unusual recommendation of meeting, on the one hand, with the approbation of some good landlords of the higher class (who, like yourself, have long been practically acknowledging the just claims of tenants), and, at the same time, of satisfying the claims of many of the warmest advocates of the tenant class. it is calculated to protect the farmers from selfish landlords, whose conduct has tended much to produce the serious disaffection that now prevails. 'i need not burthen you with a lengthened recital of the facts which render such legislation absolutely necessary to the tranquillity of society. in outline, however, they may be briefly stated-- '_first_--the great mass of irish tenantry have no better title to their holdings than the will of their landlords. '_second_--education is daily rendering the tenant class more impatient of the condition of dependence which their want of title necessitates. '_third_--every good tenant must improve his land more or less, in order to live in comparative comfort. '_fourth_--the rentals of ireland are steadily following the improvements of the tenants. some landlords suffer a considerable margin to exist between the actual value and the rent paid; while others lose no opportunity of forcing the rents to the highest amount that circumstances permit. '_fifth_--although good tenants must improve in order to live comfortably, their improvements are not one-fourth of what the condition of the country invites, and are far below what they would be if the occupiers were afforded equitable security. '_sixth_--trade, manufactures, and industrial occupations require local accumulations of surplus capital in order to their prosperity; and such accumulations are hindered by the general want of security of tenure. society at large is therefore deeply interested in the protection of the tenant class. '_seventh_--the increased expense of the governmental establishments, civil and military, which irish disaffection entails, renders it a matter of imperial importance that the irish land question should be satisfactorily settled. 'irish rentals have, in some counties, increased more than tenfold since the beginning of the eighteenth century.' the next witness shall be a landlord, one of the best and noblest of his class. at a tenant-right meeting of the county longford, the earl of granard said:--'the proposition commences by asserting that which has been acknowledged by successive administrations--that the present state of the land laws of ireland is highly unsatisfactory. the necessity for their reform has been urged upon parliament since the days of o'connell up to the present time. the want of reform upon the most vital question which affects the prosperity of ireland has been the fruitful source of agrarian disturbance, of poverty and of misfortune in every county in ireland. to take an example near home,--what rendered ballinamuck a by-word for deeds of violence? why, that system which permitted a landlord to treat the people of that district with high-handed injustice. and why is that district now amongst the most peaceable in the county? because it is now administered by its proprietor in a spirit of justice and fair play, and because that proprietor recognises the fact that property has its duties as well as its rights. i believe that similar results are to be obtained everywhere that the warm-hearted and kindly people of this country are treated with justice. in his evidence before mr. maguire's committee, mr. curling, the excellent agent of an equally excellent landlord--lord devon--speaking of his property in limerick, said that the most warm-hearted and grateful people he had ever met with were the irish. he was asked, "grateful for what?" and he replied, "even for fair play." that is to say, they were grateful for that which in every country save this would have been theirs by law. and it is to a people thus described by, mind you, not an irishman, but an english gentleman--to a people, i believe, the most religious and affectionate in europe, that the simple act of justice, of repealing unjust statutes, has been refused. i say it advisedly, that to the system of land laws, which we hope to alter--which at least we are here to protest against--are to be attributed those fearful agrarian outrages which disgrace the fair fame of our country. a celebrated minister of police in france, whenever he heard of a conspiracy, used to ask who was the woman, believing that there was always one mixed up with such organisations, and in a similar spirit, whenever i hear of an outrage in ireland, i am always inclined to enquire, "who is the landlord?" for i do not hear of such things occurring on estates where justice and fair play are the rule and not the exception. but brighter days are now in store for us. we have at the head of affairs the most earnest, the most conscientious minister that has ever sat on the treasury bench. he has promised to redress your grievances, and having as his able lieutenants mr. bright, who has ever a kindly word for ireland, and lord kimberley, whose first act after giving up the lord-lieutenancy was to say to the house of lords that until the church and land questions were settled there would be neither peace nor contentment in the land--he must be successful. as to what we want there can be no doubt. the five points of the irish charter are--fixity of tenure at reasonable rents; recognition of right of occupancy as distinct from right of ownership; standard valuation for letting purposes; retrospective compensation for years; and arbitration courts in cases of dispute between owner and occupier.' i cannot better express the conclusion of the whole matter than in the words of a writer in the _pall mall gazette_, who thoroughly understands the question. nothing can be more truthful and accurate than the way in which he puts the tenants' case:-- '"morally," they say, "we are part-owners. we have a moral right to live here. if a great landlord considered that he could make more of his estate by clearing it of its inhabitants, and accordingly proceeded to do so, he would do a cruel act. what we wish is to see our moral rights converted into legal rights. if you ask us precisely what it is that we wish, we reply that we wish to be able to live in moderate comfort in our native land, and to be able to make our plans upon the assumption that we shall not be interfered with. it is not for us ignorant peasants to draw an act of parliament upon this subject, or to say how our views are to be reconciled with your english law, which, on other accounts, we by no means love. you, the english government, must find out for yourselves how to do that. what we want is to be secure and live in reasonable comfort, and we shall never be at rest, and we will never leave you at peace, till this is arranged in some way or other." we do not say whether this feeling is right or wrong, we do not say how it is to be dealt with, but we do say that it is as intelligible, not to say as natural, a feeling as ever entered into human hearts, and we say, moreover, that it would be very difficult to exaggerate either its generality, its force, its extent, or the degree to which it has been excited by recent events. we are deeply convinced that to persist in regarding the relation between landlord and tenant as one of contract merely, to repeat again and again in every possible form that all that the irish peasants have a right to say is that they have made a hard bargain with their landlords which they wish the legislature to modify, is to shut our eyes to the feelings of the people, feelings which it will be difficult and also dangerous to disregard. the very gist and point of the whole claim of the tenants is that their moral right (as they regard it) is as sacred, and ought to be as much protected by law, as the landlords' legal right, and that it is a distinct grievance to a man to be prevented from living in ireland on that particular piece of land on which he was born and bred, and which was occupied by his ancestors before him.' the whole drift of this history bears on this point. the policy of the past must be reversed. the tenants must be rooted in the soil instead of being rooted out. 'improvement' must include the people as well as the land, and agents must no longer be permitted to arrogate to themselves the functions of divine providence. '_naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret._' one of the best pamphlets on the irish land question is by mr. william m'combie, of aberdeen. a practical farmer himself, his sagacity has penetrated the vitals of the subject. his observations, while travelling through the country last year, afford a remarkable corroboration of the conclusions at which i have arrived. of the new method of 'regenerating ireland,' he says:-- 'in it the resources of the soil--to get the most possible out of it by the most summary process--is the great object; the people are of little or no account, save as they can be made use of to accomplish this object. but, indeed, it is not alone by the promoters of the grand culture that the people have been disregarded, but by irish landlords, generally, of both classes. by the improving landlords--who are generally recent purchasers--they are regarded merely as labourers; by the leave-alone landlords as rent-producers. the one class have ejected the occupiers, the other have applied, harder and harder, the screw, until the "good landlord"--the landlord almost worshipped in ireland at this hour--is the landlord who neither evicts his tenants nor raises their rents. the consequences are inevitable, and, over a large portion of the island, they are patent to every eye--they obtrude themselves everywhere. the people are poor; they are despondent, broken-spirited. in the south of ireland decay is written on every town. in the poorer parts you may see every fifth or sixth house tenantless, roofless, allowed from year to year to moulder and moulder away, unremoved, unrepaired.... to make room for these large-scale operations, evictions must go on, and as the process proceeds the numbers must be augmented of those who are unfit to work for hire and unable to leave the country. the poor must be made poorer; many now self-supporting made dependent. pauperism must spread, and the burden of poor rates be vastly increased. if the greatest good of the greatest number be the fundamental principle of good government, this is not the direction in which the state should seek to accomplish the regeneration of ireland. the development of the resources of the land ought to be made compatible with the improvement of the condition of the people.' chapter xxv. conclusion--an appeal to englishmen. the difficulty of understanding the case of ireland is proverbial. its most enlightened friends in england and scotland are often charged with 'gross ignorance of the country.' they might excuse themselves by answering, that when they seek instruction from irishmen, one native instructor is sure to contradict the other. yet there must be some point of view from which all sides of the irish question can be seen, some light in which the colours are not confused, the picture is not exaggerated, the features are not distorted. every nation has its idiosyncrasy, proceeding from race, religion, laws, institutions, climate, and other circumstances; and this idiosyncrasy may be the key of its history. in ireland three or four nationalities are bound together in one body politic; and it is the conflict of their several idiosyncrasies which perplexes statesmen, and constitutes the main difficulty of the irish problem. the blood of different races is mingled, and no doubt greatly modified by ages of intercourse. but _religion_ is an abiding force. the establishment of religious equality in ireland is a glorious achievement, enough in itself to immortalise any statesman. it is a far greater revolution than was effected by the emancipation act, and more to the credit of the chief actor; because, while mr. gladstone did spontaneously what he firmly believed to be right in principle. sir robert peel did, from necessity, what he as firmly believed was wrong in principle. but no reasonable man expected that the disestablishment of the church would settle all irish questions; in fact, it but clears the way for the settlement of some of the most important and urgent. it makes it possible for irishmen of every creed to speak in one voice to the government. their respective clergy, hitherto so intent on ecclesiastical claims and pretensions, will no longer pass by on the other side, but turn samaritans to their bleeding country, fallen among the thieves of bigotry and faction. there are many high protestants--indeed, i may say all, except the aristocracy--who, while firmly believing in the vital importance of the union of the three kingdoms, earnestly wishing that union to be real and perpetual, cannot help expressing their conviction that ireland has been greatly wronged by england--wronged by the legislature, by the government, and most of all by the crown. in no country in the world has loyalty existed under greater difficulties, in none has it been so ill requited, in none has so much been done as if of set purpose to starve it to death. in the reign of elizabeth the capricious will of a despotic sovereign was exerted to crush the national religion, while the greatest military exploits of her ablest viceroys consisted of predatory excursions, in which they slaughtered or carried away the horses and cattle, burned the crops and houses, and laid the country waste and desolate, in order to create famines for the wholesale destruction of the population, thus spoiled and killed as a punishment for the treason of their chiefs, over whom they had no control. in the reigns of james i. and charles i. there was a disposition among the remnant of the people-- to fly from petty tyrants to the throne. but the stuarts appealed to irish loyalty merely for the support of their dynasty, and william iii. laid the laurels won on the banks of the boyne upon the altar of english monopoly. in the reigns of anne and the three georges, law was made to do the work of the sword, and the catholics of ireland, constituting the mass of the nation, knew their sovereign only as the head of an alien power, cruel and unrelenting in its oppression. they were required to love a german prince whom they had never seen. he called himself the father of his subjects; and he had millions of subjects on the other side of a narrow channel, whom he never knew, and never cared to know. when at length the dominant nation relented, and wished to strike the penal chains from the hands of her sister, the king forbade the act of mercy, pleading his conscience and his oath as a bar to justice and to freedom, but yielding at last to english state necessity, and robbing concession of its grace, of all its power to conciliate. from the battle of the boyne to catholic emancipation, the king of ireland had never set foot on irish soil, except in the case of george iv., whose visit was little better than a melodramatic exhibition, repaid by copious libations of flattery, which however failed to melt his bigotry, or to persuade him to redeem his solemn promises and pledges, until, nine years later, he was compelled to yield by the fear of impending civil war. ireland may get from her sister, england, everything but that for which the heart yearns--affection--that which alone 'can minister to a mind diseased, can pluck from the memory its rooted sorrow, and rase out the written troubles from the brain.' that is just what ireland needs above all things. she wants to be kept from brooding morbidly over the dismal past, and to be induced to apply herself in a cheerful spirit to the business of life. the prescriptions of state physicians cannot fully reach the root of the disease. say that it is a sentimental malady--a delusion. what is gained by saying _that_, if the sentiment or the delusion makes life wretched, unfits for business, produces suicidal propensities, and renders _keepers_ necessary? in theory, ireland is one with england; in practice, she is hourly made to feel the reverse. _the times_, and all the journals which express the instincts of the dominant nation, constantly speak of the irish people as '_the subjects of england_, whom englishmen have a right to control. they are the subjects of the queen only in a secondary sense--_as_ the queen of england, and reigning over them through england. every sovereign, from queen elizabeth to queen victoria, was sovereign of ireland merely in this subordinate sense, even when there was an irish parliament. the king of _ireland_ could speak to his irish parliament only as he was advised by his english ministers; and their advice was invariably prompted by english interests. her king was not _hers_ in the true sense. his _heart_ and his company were wholly given to another, to whose pride, power, and splendour she was made to minister. that state of things still continues in effect, and while it lasts ireland can never be contented. her heart will always be disquieted within her. something bitter will ever be bubbling up from the bottom of that troubled fountain. nor let it be supposed that this is due to a peculiar idiosyncrasy in ireland--to some unhappy congenital malformation, or some original taint in the blood. it has been often asked whether england would have submitted to similar treatment from ireland if their relations were reversed. englishmen have not answered that question because they cannot understand it. they find it difficult to apply the divine maxim, 'do as you would be done by.' in their dealings with other nations. but they can scarcely conceive its application to their dealings with ireland, any more than the american planter could have conceived the duty of fraternizing with his negroes. if we draw from this fact the logical inference, we shall be at a loss to discern whether the celt or the saxon suffers more from the moral perversity of his nature. the truth is, both are perverted by their unnatural relations, which are a standing outrage on the spirit of christianity. the emperor of austria long laboured to govern one nation through another and for another, in right of conquest, and we know the result in italy and hungary. lombardy, though well cultivated and materially prosperous, could never be reconciled to austrian rule. even the nobility could not be tempted to appear at court. venetia was more passionately and desperately hostile, and was consequently crushed by military repression, till the country was turned into a wilderness, and the capital once so famous for its commerce and splendour, became one of the most melancholy scenes of ruin and desolation to be found in the world. the austrians, and those who sympathised with austria as the great conservative power of the continent, ascribed all this to the perversity of the italian nature, and to the influence of agitators and conspirators. austria was bountiful to her italian subjects, and would be more lenient if she could, but their vices of character and innate propensity to rebellion, rendered necessary a system of coercion. hence the prisons were full of political offenders; the soldier and the executioner were constantly employed in maintaining law and order. all the emperor wanted was that his italian provinces should be so thoroughly amalgamated with austria, as to form one firmly united empire, and that the inhabitants should be content with their position as _austrian_ subjects, ruled by austrian officials. but this was precisely what they could not or would not be. 'they smiled at the drawn dagger and defied its point.' they would sacrifice their lives, but they would not sacrifice their nationality at the bidding of an alien power. this illustrates the force of the national sentiment, and the tremendous magnitude of the calamities to which its persistent violation leads. but the case of hungary is still more apposite as an illustration of the english policy in ireland. the hungarians had an ancient constitution and parliament of their own. the emperor of austria was their legitimate king, wearing the crown of hungary. in this capacity the hungarians were willing to yield to him the most devoted loyalty. but he wanted to weld his empire into a compact unity, and to centralise all political power at vienna, so that austria should be the head and heart of the system, and the other provinces her hands and her feet. hungary resisted, and revolted. the result was a desolating civil war, in which she was triumphant, till the czar came to the rescue of his brother despot, and poured his legions in overwhelming numbers into the devoted country. hungary was now at the feet of her sovereign, and austria, the dominant state, tried to be conciliatory, in order to bring about the desired amalgamation and consolidation of the empire. she did so, with every apparent prospect of success, and it was generally considered throughout europe that there was an end of the hungarian kingdom. but hungarian nationality survived, and still resisted austrian centralisation. the hungarians struggled for its recognition constitutionally, manfully, with admirable self-control, moderation, and wisdom, until at length they achieved a peaceful victory. their sovereign reigns over them as king of hungary; he and the empress dwell among them, without austrian guards. their children are born among them, and they are proud to call them natives of hungary. the hungarians, as subjects of _austria_, were discontented, miserable, incurably disaffected. as subjects of their own king (though he is also emperor of austria) they are intensely loyal. they are prosperous and happy, because they are free. and though they have their distinctions of race and religion, they are united. the magyars of hungary correspond very nearly to the protestants of ireland. though a minority, their energy, their education, their natural talent for organisation and government, their love of freedom, their frank recognition of the rights of conscience, enable them to lead without inspiring jealousy, just as the protestants of ireland were enabled to lead in , notwithstanding the existence of protestant ascendancy. religious equality is not a cause of tranquillity in itself. it tranquillises simply because it implies the absence of irritation. it takes a festering thorn out of the side of the unestablished community--a thorn which inflames the blood of every one of its members. let worldly interest, political power, and social precedence cease to be connected with the profession of religion, and religious differences would cease to produce animosity and intolerance. if the magyars had been the hungarian party of protestant ascendancy, and if the protestant interest had also been the austrian interest; if the mission of the magyars had been to act as a garrison, to keep down the roman catholic majority, their cause could never have triumphed till protestant ascendancy should be abolished. but hungarian protestantism did not need such support, although the pope has as much authority in hungary as in ireland. of course the cases of hungary and ireland are in many respects dissimilar. but they are alike in this: their respective histories establish the great fact that the most benevolent of sovereigns, and the wisest of legislatures, can never produce contentment or loyalty in a kingdom which is ruled _through_ and _for_ another kingdom. we can easily understand that when the light of royalty shines upon a country _through a conquering nation still dominant_, the medium is of necessity dense, cold, refracting, and discolouring. of this the best illustration is derived from the relations between austria and hungary, now so happily adjusted to the unspeakable advantage of both nations. austrian rule was unsympathetic, harsh, insolent, domineering, based upon the arrogant assumption that the hungarians were incapable of managing their own affairs without the guidance of austrian wisdom and the support of austrian steadiness. but the hungarians, united among themselves, putting their trust, not in boastful, vapouring, and self-seeking agitators, but in honest, truthful, high-minded, and capable statesmen, persevered in a course of firm, but temperate and constitutional, national self-assertion, until the austrians were compelled to put away from them their supercilious airs of natural superiority, and to concede the principle of international equality and the right of self-government. what sickens the reader of irish history most of all is the anarchy of the old clan system, the everlasting alternation of outrages and avenging reprisals. one faction, when it felt strong and had a favourable opportunity, made a sudden raid upon another faction, taken at a disadvantage, plundering and killing with reckless fury. the outraged party treasured up its anger till it had power to retaliate, and then glutted its vengeance without mercy in the same way. when this fatal propensity to mutual destruction was restrained by law, it broke out from time to time in other ways. what was wanted to cure it effectually was a strong, steady, central government, such as england enjoys herself. but the very system which is most calculated to foster factiousness is the one which has reigned for centuries in dublin castle. the british sovereign knows no party, and, whatever other sovereigns have done, queen victoria has never forgotten this constitutional principle. but the irish lord-lieutenant is always a party-man, and is always surrounded by party-men. they were whigs or tories, liberals or conservatives, often extreme in their views and violent in their temper. the vice of the old clan system was its tendency to unsettle, to undo, to upset, to smash and destroy. instead of counteracting that vice (which still lingers in the national blood), by a fixed, unchanging system of administration, based on principles of unswerving rectitude, which knows no distinction of party, no favouritism, england ruled by the alternate sway of factions. _the times_, referring to the debate on the irish church, remarked that the viceroyalty was more and more 'a mere ornament.' it is really nothing more. the viceroy has no actual power, and if he has statesmanship, it is felt to be out of place. he can scarcely give public expression to his sentiments on any political questions without offending one party or the other, whereas the estate of the realm which he represents is neutral and ought to keep strictly to neutral ground. as to the effect of the office in degrading the national spirit among the nobility and gentry, we could not have a better illustration than the fact that the amiable lord carlisle was accustomed, at the meeting of the royal dublin society, to tell its members that the true aim, interest, glory, and destiny of ireland was to be a pasture and a dairy for england,--a compliment which seemed to have been gratefully accepted, or was at all events allowed to pass. but even as an 'ornament' the viceregal system is a failure. the viceroy with his family ought to be the head of society in ireland, just as the queen is in england. the royal family are the same to all parties and classes, showing no partiality on the ground of politics, but smiling with equal favour and recognition upon all. in ireland, however, a liberal lord lieutenant is generally shunned by the conservative portion of the aristocracy, which forms the great majority of the class. on the other hand the conservatives flock in large numbers to the court of a tory viceroy, while liberals stand aloof. instead therefore of being a centre of union to all sections of the best society, and bringing them together, so that they may know one another, and enjoy the advantages due to their rank, the viceregal court operates as a source of jealousy and division. so that, looking at the institution as a mere ornament of society, as a centre of fashionable life and refining influences, facilitating intercourse between ranks and classes, bringing the owners of land and the men of commerce more in harmony, it is not worth preserving. on the other hand it produces some of the worst features of conventionalism. it cultivates flunkeyism and servility, while operating as a restraint upon the manly expression of opinion. it fosters a spirit of spurious aristocracy, which shows itself in contempt for men who prefer honest industry to place-hunting and insolvent gentility. but while i thus speak of the viceregal court as at present constituted, i still maintain that, like hungary, this country is so peculiarly situated, and is animated by so strong a spirit of nationality, that it ought to have a court of its own, and a sovereign of its own. the case of hungary shows how easily this great boon might be granted, and how gratifying the results would be to all the parties concerned. the queen ought to reside in ireland for some portion of the year. a suitable palace should be provided for the royal family. the prince of wales, during her majesty's reign, ought to be the permanent viceroy, with the necessary addition to his income. the office would afford an excellent training for his duties as king. the attraction of the princess of wales would make the irish court very brilliant. it would afford the opportunity of contact with real royalty, not the shadowy sort of thing we have had--reflected through viceroys very few of whom were ever _en rapport_ with the irish nation. not one of them could so speak to the people as to elicit a spark of enthusiasm. of course they could not have the true ring of royalty, for royalty was not in them. but they could not play the part well. one simple sentence from the queen or the prince of wales, or even from prince arthur, would be worth all the theatrical pomp they could display in a generation. those noblemen had no natural connection with the kingdom, fitting them to take the first place in it. they were not hereditary chiefs. they were not elected by the people. they were mere 'casual' chief-governors; and they formed no ties with the nation that could not be broken as easily as the spider's thread. the _hereditary principle_ has immense force in ireland. the landlords are now seeking to weaken it; or rather they are ignoring it altogether, and substituting the commercial principle in dealing with their tenants, preferring not the most devoted adherents of the family, but the man with most money. but i warn them that they are doing so at the peril of their order. a prince who was _heir presumptive to the throne as viceroy_, and who, when he ascended the throne, should be crowned king of _ireland_, as well as king of great britain, crowned in his own irish palace, and on the _lia fail_ or stone of destiny, preserved at westminster, would save many a million to the british exchequer, for it would be no longer necessary to support a large army of occupation to keep the country. if the throne of queen victoria stood in dublin, there is not a fenian in ireland who would not die in its defence. standing in westminster it is doubtful whether its attraction is sufficient to retain the hearts even of orangemen. there, it is the _english_ throne. so the _englishman_ regards it with instinctive jealousy. he feels it is his own; but, say what we may, the irish loyalist, when he approaches it, is made to feel, by a thousand signs, that he is a stranger and an intruder. he returns to his own bereaved country with a sad heart, and a bitter spirit. can he be _anglicised_? put this question to an english philosopher, and he will answer with mr. froude--'can the ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?' we can bridge the channel with fast steamers; but who will bridge the gulf, hitherto impassable, which separates the english dives from the irish lazarus? 'we have,' said canning, 'for many years been erecting a mound--not to assist or improve, but to thwart nature; we have raised it high above the waters, and it has stood there, frowning hostility and effecting separation. in the course of time, however, the necessities of man, and the silent workings of nature, have conspired to break down this mighty structure, till there remains of it only a narrow isthmus, standing between two kindred seas, which, mounting, viewed each other from afar, and longed to meet. what then, shall be our conduct? shall we attempt to repair the breaches, and fortify the ruins? a hopeless and ungracious undertaking! or shall we leave them to moulder away by time and accident--a sure but distant and thankless consummation; or, shall we not rather cut away at once the isthmus that remains, allow free course to the current which has been artificially impeded, and float upon the mingling waves the ark of our glorious constitution?' much has been done since canning's time to remove the narrow isthmus. emancipation cut deep into it. the disestablishment of the irish church submerged an immense portion of it. if mr. gladstone's land bill be equally effective, a breach will be made through which the two kindred seas will meet, and, in their commingling flux and reflux, will quickly sweep away all minor obstacles to their perfect union. a just settlement of the land question will reconcile the two races, and close the war of seven centuries. that is the rock against which the two nationalities have rushed in foaming breakers, lashed into fury by the storms of faction and bigotry. remove the obstruction, and the world would hear no more the roaring of the waters. then would float peacefully upon the commingling waves the ark of our common constitution, in which there would be neither saxon nor celt, neither english nor irish, neither protestant nor catholic, but one united, free, and mighty people. then might the emperor of the french mark the epoch with the announcement--'england has done justice to ireland!' london: printed by spottiswoode and co., new-street square and parliament street none generously made available by the bibliothèque nationale de france (http://www.bnf.fr/) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustration. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through the bibliothèque nationale de france and can be seen at http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/visualiseur?nompage=webccacat&lan=fr&adr= . . . &interne=false&o= &notice= & smithsonian institution--bureau of ethnology. j. w. powell, director. cessions of land by indian tribes to the united states: illustrated by those in the state of indiana by c. c. royce. first annual report of the bureau of ethnology to the secretary of the smithsonian institution, - , government printing office, washington, , pages - [illustration: map of the state of indiana] character of the indian title. the social and political relations that have existed and still continue between the government of the united states and the several indian tribes occupying territory within its geographical limits are, in many respects, peculiar. the unprecedentedly rapid increase and expansion of the white population of the country, bringing into action corresponding necessities for the acquisition and subjection of additional territory, have maintained a constant straggle between civilization and barbarism. involved as a factor in this social conflict, was the legal title to the land occupied by indians. the questions raised were whether in law or equity the indians were vested with any stronger title than that of mere tenants at will, subject to be dispossessed at the pleasure or convenience of their more civilized white neighbors, and, if so, what was the nature and extent of such stronger title? these questions have been discussed and adjudicated from time to time by the executive and judicial authorities of civilized nations ever since the discovery of america. the discovery of this continent, with its supposed marvelous wealth of precious metals and commercial woods, gave fresh impetus to the ambition and cupidity of european monarchs. spain, france, holland, and england each sought to rival the other in the magnitude and value of their discoveries. as the primary object of each of these european potentates was the same, and it was likely to lead to much conflict of jurisdiction, the necessity of some general rule became apparent, whereby their respective claims might be acknowledged and adjudicated without resort to the arbitrament of arms. out of this necessity grew the rule which became a part of the recognized law of nations, and which gave the preference of title to the monarch whose vessels should be the first to discover, rather than to the one who should first enter upon the possession of new lands. the exclusion under this rule of all other claimants gave to the discovering nation the sole right of acquiring the soil from the natives and of planting settlements thereon. this was a right asserted by all the commercial nations of europe, and fully recognized in their dealings with each other; and the assertion, of such a right necessarily carried with it a modified denial of the indian title to the land discovered. it recognized in them nothing but a possessory title, involving a right of occupancy and enjoyment until such time as the european sovereign should purchase it from them. the ultimate fee was held to reside in such sovereign, whereby the natives were inhibited from alienating in any manner their right of possession to any but that sovereign or his subjects. the recognition of these principles seems to have been complete, as is evidenced by the history of america from its discovery to the present day. france, england, portugal, and holland recognized them unqualifiedly, and even catholic spain did not predicate her title solely upon the grant of the holy see. no one of these countries was more zealous in her maintenance of these doctrines than england. in king henry vii commissioned john and sebastian cabot to proceed upon a voyage of discovery and to take possession of such countries as they might find which were then unknown to christian people, in the name of the king of england. the results of their voyages in the next and succeeding years laid the foundation for the claim of england to the territory of that portion of north america which subsequently formed the nucleus of our present possessions. the policy of the united states since the adoption of the federal constitution has in this particular followed the precedent established by the mother country. in the treaty of peace between great britain and the united states following the revolutionary war, the former not only relinquished the right of government, but renounced and yielded to the united states all pretensions and claims whatsoever to all the country south and west of the great northern rivers and lakes as far as the mississippi. in the period between the conclusion of this treaty and the year it was undoubtedly the opinion of congress that the relinquishment of territory thus made by great britain, without so much as a saving clause guaranteeing the indian right of occupancy, carried with it an absolute and unqualified fee-simple title unembarrassed by any intermediate estate or tenancy. in the treaties held with the indians during this period--notably those of fort stanwix, with the six nations, in , and fort finney, with the shawnees, in --they had been required to acknowledge the united states as the sole and absolute sovereign of all the territory ceded by great britain. this claim, though unintelligible to the savages in its legal aspects, was practically understood by them to be fatal to their independence and territorial rights. although in a certain degree the border tribes had been defeated in their conflicts with the united states, they still retained sufficient strength and resources to render them formidable antagonists, especially when the numbers and disposition of their adjoining and more remote allies were taken into consideration. the breadth, and boldness of the territorial claims thus asserted by the united states were not long in producing their natural effect. the active and sagacious brant succeeded in reviving his favorite project of an alliance between the six nations and the northwestern tribes. he experienced but little trouble in convening a formidable assemblage of indians at huron village, opposite detroit, where they held council together from november to december , . these councils resulted in the presentation of an address to congress, wherein they expressed an earnest desire for peace, but firmly insisted that all treaties carried on with the united states should be with the general voice of the whole confederacy in the most open manner; that the united states should prevent surveyors and others from crossing the ohio river; and they proposed a general treaty early in the spring of . this address purported to represent the five nations, hurons, ottawas, twichtwees, shawanese, chippewas, cherokees, delawares, pottawatomies, and the wabash confederates, and was signed with the totem of each tribe. such a remonstrance, considering the weakness of the government under the old articles of confederation, and the exhausted condition immediately following the revolution, produced a profound sensation in congress. that body passed an act providing for the negotiation of a treaty or treaties, and making an appropriation for the purchase and extinguishment of the indian claim to certain lands. these preparations and appropriations resulted in two treaties made at fort harmar, january , , one with the six nations, and the other with the wiandot, delaware, ottawa, chippewa, pottawatima, and sac nations, wherein the indian title of occupancy is clearly acknowledged. that the government so understood and recognized this principle as entering into the text of those treaties is evidenced by a communication bearing date june , , from general knox, then secretary of war, to president washington, and which was communicated by the latter on the same day to congress, in which it is declared that-- the indians, being the prior occupants, possess the right of soil. it cannot be taken from them, unless by their free consent, or by right of conquest in case of a just war. to dispossess them on any other principle would be a gross violation of the fundamental laws of nature, and of that distributive justice which is the glory of a nation. the principle thus outlined and approved by the administration of president washington, although more than once questioned by interested parties, has almost, if not quite, invariably been sustained by the legal tribunals of the country, at least by the courts of final resort; and the decisions of the supreme court of the united states bear consistent testimony to its legal soundness. several times has this question in different forms appeared before the latter tribunal for adjudication, and in each case has the indian right been recognized and protected. in , , and , chief justice marshall successively delivered the opinion of the court in important cases involving the indian status and rights. in the second of these cases (the cherokee nation _vs_. the state of georgia) it was maintained that the cherokees were a state and had uniformly been treated as such since the settlement of the country; that the numerous treaties made with them by the united states recognized them as a people capable of maintaining the relations of peace and war; of being responsible in their political character for any violation of their engagements, or for any aggression committed on the citizens of the united states by any individual of their community; that the condition of the indians in their relations to the united states is perhaps unlike that of any other two peoples on the globe; that, in general, nations not owing a common allegiance are foreign to each other, but that the relation of the indians to the united states is marked by peculiar and cardinal distinctions which exist nowhere else; that the indians were acknowledged to have an unquestionable right to the lands they occupied until that right should be extinguished by a voluntary cession to our government; that it might well be doubted whether those tribes which reside within the acknowledged boundaries of the united states could with strict accuracy be denominated foreign nations, but that they might more correctly perhaps be denominated domestic dependent nations; that they occupied a territory to which we asserted a title independent of their will, but which only took effect in point of possession when their right of possession ceased. the government of the united states having thus been committed in all of its departments to the recognition of the principle of the indian right of possession, it becomes not only a subject of interest to the student of history, but of practical value to the official records of the government, that a carefully compiled work should exhibit the boundaries of the several tracts of country which have been acquired from time to time, within the present limits of the united states, by cession or relinquishment from the various indian tribes, either through the medium of friendly negotiations and just compensation, or as the result of military conquest. such a work, if accurate, would form the basis of any complete history of the indian tribes in their relations to, and influence upon the growth and diffusion of our population and civilization. such a contribution to the historical collections of the country should comprise: st. a series of maps of the several states and territories, on a scale ranging from ten to sixteen miles to an inch, grouped in atlas form, upon which should be delineated in colors the boundary lines of the various tracts of country ceded to the united states from time to time by the different indian tribes. d. an accompanying historical text, not only reciting the substance of the material provisions of the several treaties, but giving a history of the causes leading to them,, as exhibited in contemporaneous official correspondence and other trustworthy data. d. a chronologic list of treaties with the various indian tribes, exhibiting the names of tribes, the date, place where, and person by whom negotiated. th. an alphabetic list of all rivers, lakes, mountains, villages, and other objects or places mentioned in such treaties, together with their location and the names by which they are at present known. th. an alphabetic list of the principal rivers, lakes, mountains, and other topographic features in the united states, showing not only their present names but also the various names by which they have from time to time been known since the discovery of america, giving in each case the date and the authority therefor. indian boundaries. the most difficult and laborious feature of the work is that involved under the first of these five subdivisions. the ordinary reader in following the treaty provisions, in which the boundaries of the various cessions are so specifically and minutely laid down, would anticipate but little difficulty in tracing those boundaries upon the modern map. in this he would find himself sadly at fault. in nearly all of the treaties concluded half a century or more ago, wherein cessions of land were made, occur the names of boundary points which are not to be found on any modern map, and which have never been known to people of the present generation living in the vicinity. in many of the older treaties this is the case with a large proportion of the boundary points mentioned. the identification and exact location of these points thus becomes at once a source of much laborious research. not unfrequently weeks and even months of time have been consumed, thousands of old maps and many volumes of books examined, and a voluminous correspondence conducted with local historical societies or old settlers, in the effort to ascertain the location of a single boundary point. to illustrate this difficulty, the case of "hawkins' line" may be cited, a boundary line mentioned in the cession by the cherokees by treaty of october , . an examination of more than four thousand old and modern maps and the scanning of more than fifty volumes failed to show its location or to give even the slightest clue to it. a somewhat extended correspondence with numerous persons in tennessee, including the veteran annalist, ramsey, also failed to secure the desired information. it was not until months of time had been consumed and probable sources of information had been almost completely exhausted that, through the persevering inquiries of hon. john m. lea, of nashville, tenn., in conjunction with the present writer's own investigations, the line was satisfactorily identified as being the boundary line mentioned in the cherokee treaty of july , , and described as extending from the north carolina boundary "north to a point from which a line is to be extended to the river clinch that shall pass the holston at the ridge which divides the waters running into little river from those running into the tennessee." it gained the title of "hawkins' line" from the fact that a man named hawkins surveyed it. that this is not an isolated case, and as an illustration of the number and frequency of changes in local geographical names in this country, it may be remarked that in twenty treaties concluded by the federal government with the various indian tribes prior to the year , in an aggregate of one hundred and twenty objects and places therein recited, seventy-three of them are wholly ignored in the latest edition of colton's atlas; and this proportion will hold with but little diminution in the treaties negotiated during the twenty years immediately succeeding that date. another and most perplexing question has been the adjustment of the conflicting claims of different tribes of indians to the same territory. in the earlier days of the federal period, when the entire country west of the alleghanies was occupied or controlled by numerous contiguous tribes, whose methods of subsistence involved more or less of nomadic habit, and who possessed large tracts of country then of no greater value than merely to supply the immediate physical wants of the hunter and fisherman, it was not essential to such tribes that a careful line of demarkation should define the limits of their respective territorial claims and jurisdiction. when, however, by reason of treaty negotiations with the united states, with a view to the sale to the latter of a specific area of territory within clearly-defined boundaries, it became essential for the tribe with whom the treaty was being negotiated to make assertion and exhibit satisfactory proof of its possessory title to the country it proposed to sell, much controversy often arose with other adjoining tribes, who claimed all or a portion of the proposed cession. these conflicting claims were sometimes based upon ancient and immemorial occupancy, sometimes upon early or more recent conquest, and sometimes upon a sort of wholesale squatter-sovereignty title whereby a whole tribe, in the course of a sudden and perhaps forced migration, would settle down upon an unoccupied portion of the territory of some less numerous tribe, and by sheer intimidation maintain such occupancy. in its various purchases from the indians, the government of the united states, in seeking to quiet these conflicting territorial claims, have not unfrequently been compelled to accept from two, and even three, different tribes separate relinquishments of their respective rights, titles, and claims to the same section of country. under such circumstances it can readily be seen, what difficulties would attend a clear exhibition upon a single map of these various coincident and overlapping strips of territory. the state of illinois affords an excellent illustration. the conflicting cessions in that state may be briefly enumerated as follows: . the cession at the mouth of chicago river, by treaty of august , , was also included within the limits of a subsequent cession made by treaty of august , , with the ottawas, chippewas, and pottawatomies. . the cession at the mouth of the illinois river, by treaty of , was overlapped by the kaskaskia cession of , again by the sac and fox cession of , and a third time by the kickapoo cession of . . the cession at "old peoria fort, or village," by treaty of , was also overlapped in like manner with the last preceding one. . the cessions of at fort massac and at great salt spring are within the subsequent cession by the kaskaskias of . . the cession of august , , by the kaskaskias, as ratified and enlarged by the kaskaskias and peorias september , , overlaps the several sessions by previous treaty of at the mouth of the illinois river, at great salt spring, at fort massac, and at old peoria fort, and is in turn overlapped by subsequent cessions of july , and august , , by the kickapoos and by the pottawatomie cession of october , . . the sac and fox cession of november , (partly in missouri and wisconsin) overlaps the cessions of at the mouth of the illinois river and at old peoria fort. it is overlapped by two chippewa, ottawa, and pottawatomie cessions of july , , the winnebago cessions of august , , and september , , and by the chippewa, ottawa, and pottawatomie cession of september , . . the piankeshaw cession of december , , is overlapped by the kickapoo cession of . . the ottawa, chippewa, and pottawatomie cession of august , , overlaps the cession of around chicago. . the cession of october , , by the pottawatomies (partly in indiana), is overlapped by the subsequent cession of , by the kickapoos. . the combined cessions of july , and august , , by the kickapoos (partly in indiana), overlap the cessions of at the mouth of the illinois river and at old fort peoria; also the kaskaskia and peoria cessions of and , the piankeshaw cession of , and the pottawatomie cession of october , , and are overlapped by the subsequent pottawatomie cession of october , . . two cessions were made by the chippewas, ottawas and pottawatomies by treaty of july , (partly located in wisconsin), one of which is entirely and the other largely within the limits of the country previously ceded by the sacs and foxes, november , . . the winnebago cession of august , (which is partly in wisconsin), is also wholly within the limits of the aforesaid sac and fox cession of . . cession by the winnebagoes september , , which is mostly in the state of wisconsin and which was also within the limits of the sac and fox cession of . . pottawatomie cession of october , , which overlaps the kaskaskia and peoria cession of august , , as confirmed and enlarged september , , and also the kickapoo cession by treaties of july and august , . from this it will be seen that almost the entire country comprising the present state of illinois was the subject of controversy in the matter of original ownership, and that the united states, in order fully to extinguish the indian claim thereto, actually bought it twice, and some portions of it three times. it is proper, however, to add in this connection that where the government at the date of a purchase from one tribe was aware of an existing claim to the same region by another tribe, it had the effect of diminishing the price paid. original and secondary cessions. another difficulty that has arisen, and one which, in order to avoid confusion, will necessitate the duplication in the atlas of the maps of several states, is the attempt to show not only original, but also secondary cessions of land. the policy followed by the united states for many years in negotiating treaties with the tribes east of the mississippi river included the purchase of their former possessions and their removal west of that river to reservations set apart for them within the limits of country purchased for that purpose from its original owners, and which were in turn retroceded to the united states by its secondary owners. this has been largely the case in missouri, arkansas, kansas, nebraska, and indian territory. the present state of kansas, for instance, was for the most part the inheritance of the kansas and osage tribes. it was purchased from them by the provisions of the treaties of june , , with the osage, and june , , with the kansas tribe, they, however, reserving in each case a tract sufficiently large for their own use and occupancy. these and subsequent cessions of these two tribes must be shown upon a map of "original cessions." after securing these large concessions from the kansas and osages, the government, in pursuance of the policy above alluded to, sought to secure the removal of the remnant of ohio, indiana, and illinois tribes to this region by granting them, in part consideration for their eastern possessions, reservations therein of size and location suitable to their wishes and necessities. in this way homes were provided for the wyandots, delawares, shawnees, pottawatomies, sacs and foxes of the mississippi, kickapoos, the confederated kaskaskias, peorias, piankeshaws, and weas, the ottawas of blanchard's fork and roche de boeuf, and the chippewas and munsees. a few years of occupation again found the advancing white settlements encroaching upon their domain, with the usual accompanying demand for more land. cessions, first; of a portion and finally of the remnant, of these reservations followed, coupled with the removal of the indians to indian territory. these several reservations and cessions must be indicated upon a map of "secondary cessions." object illustration is much, more striking and effective than mere verbal description. in order, therefore, to secure to the reader the clearest possible understanding of the subject, there is herewith presented as an illustration a map of the state of indiana, upon which is delineated the boundaries of the different tracts of land within that state ceded to the united states from time to time by treaty with the various indian tribes. the cessions are as follows: no. . a tract lying east of a line running from opposite the mouth of kentucky river, in a northerly direction, to fort recovery, in ohio, and which forms a small portion of the western end of the cession made by the first paragraph of article , treaty of august , , with the wyandots, delawares, miamis, and nine other tribes. its boundaries are indicated by scarlet lines. the bulk of the cession is in ohio. no. . six miles square at confluence of saint mary's and saint joseph's rivers, including fort wayne; also ceded by treaty of august , , and bounded on the map by scarlet lines. no. . two miles square on the wabash, at the end of the portage of the miami of the lake; also ceded by treaty of august , , and bounded on the map by scarlet lines. no. . six miles square at outatenon, or old wea towns, on the wabash; also ceded by treaty of august , , and bounded on the map by scarlet lines. this tract was subsequently retroceded to the indians by article , treaty of september , , and finally included within the pottawatomie session of october , , and the miami cession of october , . no. . clarke's grant on the ohio river; stipulated in deed from virginia to the united states in to be granted to general george rogers clarke and his soldiers. this tract was specially excepted from the limits of the indian country by treaty of august , , and is bounded on the map by scarlet lines. no. . "post of vincennes and adjacent country, to which the indian title has been extinguished." this tract was specially excluded from the limits of the indian country by treaty of august , . doubt having arisen as to its proper boundaries, they were specifically defined by treaty of june , . it is known as the "vincennes tract"; is partly in illinois, and is bounded on the map by scarlet lines. no. . tract ceded by the treaties of august , , with the delawares, and august , , with the piankeshaws. in the southern part of the state, and bounded on the map by green lines. no. . cession by the treaty of august , , with the miamis, eel rivers, and weas, in the southeastern part of the state, and designated by blue lines. no. . cession by treaty of september , , with the miami, eel river, delaware, and pottawatomie tribes, adjoining "vincennes tract" (no. ) on the north, and designated by yellow lines. this cession was concurred in by the weas in the treaty of october , . no. . cession by the same treaty of september , ; in the southeastern portion of the state; bounded on the map by yellow lines. no. . cession also by the treaty of september , ; marked by crimson lines, and partly in illinois. this cession was conditional upon the consent of the kickapoos, which was obtained by the treaty with them of december , . no. . cession by the kickapoos, december , , which was subsequently reaffirmed by them june , . it was also assented to by the weas october , , and by the miamis october , . it is partly in illinois, and is bounded on the map by green lines. the kickapoos also assented to the cession no. by the miamis _et al._, of september , . no. . cession by the wyandots, september , . this is mostly in ohio, and is bounded on the map by yellow lines. no. . cession by the pottawatomies, october , ; partly in illinois, and is denoted by brown lines. a subsequent treaty of august , , with the kickapoos, cedes a tract of country (no. ) which overlaps this cession, the overlap being indicated by a dotted blue line. by the treaty of october , , the weas ceded all the land claimed by them in ohio, indiana, and illinois, except a small reserve on the wabash river. their claim was of a general and indefinite character, and is fully covered by more definite cessions by other tribes. by the treaty of october , , the delawares ceded all their claim to land in indiana. this claim, which they held in joint tenancy with the miamis, was located on the waters of white river, and it is included within the tract marked , ceded by the miamis october , . no. . cession by the miamis, october , ; bounded on the map by purple lines. its general boundaries cover all of central indiana and a small portion of western ohio, but within its limits were included the wea reservation of (no. ), and six tracts of different dimensions were reserved for the future use of the miamis [nos. , ( and ), ( , , , and ), , and ]. the miamis also assented to the kickapoo cession of december , (no. ). the kickapoos in turn, by treaty of july , , relinquished all claim to country southeast of the wabash, which was an indefinite tract, and is covered by the foregoing miami cession of . no. . cession by the kickapoos, august , . this cession is bounded on the map by blue lines, and is largely in illinois. it overlaps the pottawatomie cession of october , (no. ), the overlap being indicated by a dotted blue line. it is inborn overlapped by the pottawatomie cession (no. ) of october , . no. . cession by the weas, august , , of the tract reserved by them october , . it is on the wabash river, in the western part of the state, and is indicated by blue lines. it is within the general limits of the miami cession (no. ) of october , . no. . cession of august , , by the ottowas, chippewas, and pottawatomies, indicated by green lines, and mostly in michigan. no. . cession by the pottawatomies, by first clause of first article of the treaty of october , . it lies north of wabash river, and is bounded on the map by blue lines. this and an indefinite extent of adjoining country was also claimed by the miamis, who ceded their claim thereto october , , with the exception of sundry small reservations, four of which [nos. , , , and ] were partially or entirely within the general limits of the pottawatomie. no. . cession by the last clause of the first article of the pottawatomie treaty of october , ; in the northwest corner of the state, and bounded on the map by scarlet lines. as above stated, the miamis, by treaty of october , , ceded all their claim to land in indiana lying north and west of the wabash and miami (maumee) rivers, except six small tribal, and a number of individual reserves and grants. these six tribal, reserves were numbers , , , , , and , the first four of which, as above remarked, were either partially or entirely within the pottawatomie cession by the first clause of the first article of the treaty of october , , and the other two within the pottawatomie cession of october , . no. . cession by the eel river miamis, february , , bounded on the map by green lines. this tract is within the general limits of the miami cession (no. ) of , and was reserved therefrom. no. . cession by the second clause of the first article of the pottawatomie treaty of september , , designated by brown lines. no. . cession by the pottawatomies, october , , is in the northwest portion of the state, and is indicated by yellow lines. near the southwest corner it overlaps the kickapoo cession (no. ) of august , . within the general limits of this cession seven tracts were reserved for different bands of the tribe, which will be found on the map numbered as follows: , , , (two reserves), , and . no. . cession by the pottawatomies of indiana and michigan, october , , which in terms is a relinquishment of their claim to any remaining lands in the states of indiana and illinois, and in the territory of michigan south of grand river. the cession thus made in indiana is bounded on the map by scarlet lines. within the general limits of this cession, however, they reserved for the use of various bands of the tribe eleven tracts of different areas, and which are numbered as follows: , , , , (two reserves), (two reserves), , , and . nos. to , inclusive. cession of october , , by the miamis, of eight small tracts previously reserved to them, all bounded on the map by green lines. these are located as follows: no. . tract of thirty-six sections at flat belly's village, reserved by treaty of ; in townships and north, ranges and east. no. . tract of five miles in length on the wabash, extending back to eel river, reserved by treaty of ; in townships and north, ranges and east. no. . tract of ten sections at raccoon's village, reserved by the treaty of ; in townships and north, ranges and east. no. . tract of ten sections on mud creek, reserved by the treaty of ; in township north, range east. the treaty of october , , with the pottawatomies, established a reserve of sixteen sections for the bands of ash-kum and wee-si-o-nas (no. ), and one of five sections for the band of wee-sau (no. ), which overlapped and included nearly all the territory comprised in the mud creek reserve. no. . tract of two miles square on salamanie river, at the mouth of at-che-pong-quawe creek, reserved by the treaty of ; in township north, ranges and east. no. . a portion of the tract opposite the mouth of aboutte river, reserved by the treaty of ; in townships and north, ranges , , and east. no. . a portion of the tract known as the "big reserve," established by the treaty of ; in townships to , inclusive, ranges and east. no. . tract of ten sections at the forks of the wabash, reserved by the treaty of . this cession provides for the relinquishment of the indian title and the issuance of a patent to john b. richardville therefor. in township north, ranges and east. no. . cession of december , , by com-o-za's band of pottawatomies, of a tract of two sections reserved for them on the tippecanoe river by the treaty of october , . no. . cession of december , , by mau-ke-kose's (muck-rose) band of pottawatomies, of six sections reserved to them by the treaty of october , ; in township north, range east, and bounded on the map by crimson lines. no. . cession of december , , by the pottawatomies, of two sections reserved by the treaty of october , , to include their mills on the tippecanoe river. no. . cession of december , , by mota's band of pottawatomies, of four sections reserved for them by the treaty of october , ; in townships and north, range east, indicated by blue lines. no. . cession of march , , by mes-quaw-buck's band of pottawatomies, of four sections reserved to them by the treaty of october , ; in township north, range east, indicated by crimson lines. no. . cession of march , , by che-case's band of pottawatomies, of four sections reserved for them by the treaty of october , ; in townships and north, ranges and east, bounded on the map by yellow lines. no. . cession of april , , by aub-ba-naub-bee's band of pottawatomies, of thirty-six sections reserved for them, by the treaty of october , . in townships and north, ranges and east, bounded on the map by blue lines. no. . cession of april , , by the bands of o-kaw-mause, kee-waw-nee, nee-boash, and ma-che-saw (mat-chis-jaw), of ten sections reserved to them by the pottawatomie treaty of october , . no. . cession of april , , by the bands of nas-waw-kee (nees-waugh-gee) and quash-quaw, of three sections reserved for them by the treaty of october , ; in township north, range east, bounded on the map by scarlet lines. no. . cession of august , , by the bands of pee-pin-ah-waw, mack-kah-tah-mo-may, and no-taw-kah (pottawatomies), of twenty-two sections reserved for them and the band of menom-i-nee (the latter of which does not seem to be mentioned in the treaty of cession), by treaty of october , ; in township north, ranges and east, bounded on the map by green lines. no. . cession of september , , by the bands of to-i-sas brother me-mot-way, and che-quaw-ka-ko, of ten sections reserved for them by the pottawatomie treaty of october , , and cession of september , , by ma-sac's band of pottawatomies, of four sections reserved for them by the treaty of october , ; in township north, range east, bounded on the map by crimson lines. nos. to , inclusive. cessions of september , , by various bands of pottawatomies, of lands reserved for them by the treaty of (being all of their remaining lands in indiana), as follows: no. . four sections each for the bands of kin-kash and men-o-quet; in township north, ranges and east, bounded on the map by crimson lines. no. . ten sections for the band of che-chaw-kose; in township north, range east, designated by scarlet lines. no. . sixteen sections for the bands of ash-kum and wee-si-o-nas; in townships and north, range east, bounded on the map by a dotted black line, and overlapping no. . no. . five sections for the band of wee-sau; in township north, range east, adjoining no. , bounded on the map by a dotted black line, and overlapping nos. and . a cession for the second time is also made by this treaty of the four sections reserved for the band of mota (no. ), by the treaty of october , . nos. to , inclusive. cessions of november , , by the miamis, as follows: no. . a portion of the "big reserve," in townships , , and north, ranges , , , , , and east, bounded on the map by crimson lines, within the limits of which is reserved a tract for the band of me-to-sin-ia, numbered . no. . the reservation by the treaty of , on the wabash river, below the forks thereof; in townships and north, ranges and east, bounded on the map by scarlet lines. no. . the remainder of the tract reserved by the treaty of , opposite the mouth of abouette river; in townships and north, ranges , , and east, denoted by crimson lines. no. . the reserve by the treaty of at the mouth of flat rock creek; in township north, ranges and east, bounded on the map by crimson lines. no. . the reserve at seek's village by the treaty of ; in townships and north, ranges and east, marked by yellow lines. no. . cession of november , , of the residue of the "big reserve" (except the grant to me-to-sin-ia's band no. ); in townships to north, ranges to east, designated by yellow lines. no. . by the miami treaty of november , , a reserve of ten miles square was made (out of the general cession) for the band of me-to-sin-ia. by the treaty of november , , the united states agreed to convey this tract to me-shing-go-me-sia, son of me-to-sin-ia, in trust for the band. by act of congress approved june , , this reserve was partitioned among the members of the band, in number, and patents issued to each of them for his or her share. it is in townships and north, ranges and east, and is bounded on the map by green lines. this ended all indian tribal title to lands within the state of indiana. * * * * * the results to accrue from the researches contemplated under the d, d, th, and th subdivisions of the work suggested have already been outlined with sufficient clearness, and need not be farther elaborated here. a source of much delay in the collection of facts essential to the completion of the work is the apparent indifference of librarians and others in responding to letters of inquiry. some, however, have entered most zealously and intelligently into the work of searching musty records and interviewing the traditional "oldest inhabitant" for light on these dark spots. thanks are especially due in this regard to hon. john m. lea, nashville, tenn.; william harden, librarian state historical society, savannah, ga.; k.a. linderfelt, librarian public library, milwaukee, wis.; dr. john a. rice, merton, wis.; hon. john wentworth, chicago, ill.; a. cheesebrough and hon. j.n. campbell, of detroit, mich.; d.s. durrie, librarian state historical society, madison, wis.; h.m. robinson, milwaukee, wis.; andrew jackson, sault ste. marie, mich.; a.w. rush, palmyra, mo.; h.c. campbell, centreville, mich., and others. index atlas showing cessions of land boundaries, indian cabot, john , sebastian cessions of land, xxvii by the indians, in indiana original and secondary council, indian, at huron village hawkins line (boundary) illinois, purchase of land for indians in indian title, character of indiana, cession of land by the indians land cessions lea, john m original and secondary cessions possession, right of purchases of land from indians in illinois title, indian, character of inheres in discoverer treaties at fort harmar the history of landholding in england. by joseph fisher, f.r.h.s. "much food is in the tillage of the poor, but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment."--prov. : . "of all arts, tillage or agriculture is doubtless the most useful and necessary, as being the source whence the nation derives its subsistence. the cultivation of the soil causes it to produce an infinite increase. it forms the surest resource and the most solid fund of riches and commerce for a nation that enjoys a happy climate.... the cultivation of the soil deserves the attention of the government, not only on account of the invaluable advantages that flow from it, but from its being an obligation imposed by nature on mankind."--vattel. introduction. this work is an expansion of a paper read at the meeting of the royal historical society in may, , and will be published in the volume of the transactions of that body. but as it is an expensive work, and only accessible to the fellows of that society, and as the subject is one which is now engaging a good deal of public consideration, i have thought it desirable to place it within the reach of those who may not have access to the larger and more expensive work. i am aware that much might be added to the information it contains, and i possess materials which would have more than doubled its size, but i have endeavored to seize upon the salient points, and to express my views as concisely as possible. i have also preferred giving the exact words of important acts of parliament to any description of their objects. if this little essay adds any information upon a subject of much public interest, and contributes to the just settlement of a very important question, i shall consider my labor has not been in vain. joseph fisher. waterford, november , . i do not propose to enter upon the system of landholding in scotland or ireland, which appears to me to bear the stamp of the celtic origin of the people, and which was preserved in ireland long after it had disappeared in other european countries formerly inhabited by the celts. that ancient race may be regarded as the original settlers of a large portion of the european continent, and its land system possesses a remarkable affinity to that of the slavonic, the hindoo, and even the new zealand races. it was originally patriarchal, and then tribal, and was communistic in its character. i do not pretend to great originality in my views. my efforts have been to collect the scattered rays of light, and to bring them to bear upon one interesting topic. the present is the child of the past. the ideas of bygone races affect the practices of living people. we form but parts of a whole; we are influenced by those who preceded us, and we shall influence those who come after us. men cannot disassociate themselves either from the past or the future. in looking at this question there is, i think, a vast difference which has not been sufficiently recognized. it is the broad distinction between the system arising out of the original occupation of land, and that proceeding out of the necessities of conquest; perhaps i should add a third--the complex system proceeding from an amalgamation, or from the existence of both systems in the same nation. some countries have been so repeatedly swept over by the tide of conquest that but little of the aboriginal ideas or systems have survived the flood. others have submitted to a change of governors and preserved their customary laws; while in some there has been such a fusion of the two systems that we cannot decide which of the ingredients was the older, except by a process of analysis and a comparison of the several products of the alembic with the recognized institutions of the class of original or of invading peoples. efforts have been made, and not with very great success, to define the principle which governed the more ancient races with regard to the possession of land. while unoccupied or unappropriated, it was common to every settler. it existed for the use of the whole human race. the process by which that which was common to all became the possession of the individual has not been clearly stated. the earlier settlers were either individuals, families, tribes, or nations. in some cases they were nomadic, and used the natural products without taking possession of the land; in others they occupied districts differently defined. the individual was the unit of the family, the patriarch of the tribe. the commune was formed to afford mutual protection. each sept or tribe in the early enjoyment of the products of the district it selected was governed by its own customary laws. the cohesion of these tribes into states was a slow process; the adoption of a general system of government still slower. the disintegration of the tribal system, and dissolution of the commune, was not evolved out of the original elements of the system itself, but was the effect of conquest; and, as far as i can discover, the appropriation to individuals of land which was common to all, was mainly brought about by conquest, and was guided by impulse rather than regulated by principle. mr. locke thinks that an individual became sole owner of a part of the common heritage by mixing his labor with the land, in fencing it, making wells, or building; and he illustrates his position by the appropriation of wild animals, which are common to all sportsmen, but become the property of him who captures or kills them. this acute thinker seems to me to have fallen into a mistake by confounding land with labor. the improvements were the property of the man who made them, but it by no means follows that the expenditure of labor on land gave any greater right than to the labor itself or its representative. it may not be out of place here to allude to the use of the word property with reference to land; property--from proprium, my own--is something pertaining to man. i have a property in myself. i have the right to be free. all that proceeds from myself, my thoughts, my writings, my works, are property; but no man made land, and therefore it is not property. this incorrect application of the word is the more striking in england, where the largest title a man can have is "tenancy in fee," and a tenant holds but does not own. sir william blackstone places the possession of land upon a different principle. he says that, as society became formed, its instinct was to preserve the peace; and as a man who had taken possession of land could not be disturbed without using force, each man continued to enjoy the use of that which he had taken out of the common stock; but, he adds, that right only lasted as long as the man lived. death put him out of possession, and he could not give to another that which he ceased to possess himself. vattel (book i., chap, vii.) tells us that "the whole earth is destined to feed its inhabitants; but this it would be incapable of doing if it were uncultivated. every nation is then obliged by the law of nature to cultivate the land that has fallen to its share, and it has no right to enlarge its boundaries or have recourse to the assistance of other nations, but in proportion as the land in its possession is incapable of furnishing it with necessaries." he adds (chap. xx.), "when a nation in a body takes possession of a country, everything that is not divided among its members remains common to the whole nation, and is called public property." an ancient irish tract, which forms part of the senchus mor, and is supposed to be a portion of the brehon code, and traceable to the time of st. patrick, speaks of land in a poetically symbolic, but actually realistic manner, and says, "land is perpetual man." all the ingredients of our physical frame come from the soil. the food we require and enjoy, the clothing which enwraps us, the fire which warms us, all save the vital spark that constitutes life, is of the land, hence it is "perpetual man." selden ("titles of honor," p. ), when treating of the title "king of kings," refers to the eastern custom of homage, which consisted not in offering the person, but the elements which composed the person, earth and water--"the perpetual man" of the brehons--to the conqueror. he says: "so that both titles, those of king of kings and great king, were common to those emperors of the two first empires; as also (if we believe the story of judith) that ceremonies of receiving an acknowledgment of regal supremacy (which, by the way, i note here, because it was as homage received by kings in that time from such princes or people as should acknowledge themselves under their subjection) by acceptance upon their demand of earth and water. this demand is often spoken of as used by the persian, and a special example of it is in darius' letters to induthyr, king of the scythians, when he first invites him to the field; but if he would not, then bringing to your sovereign as gifts earth and water, come to a parley. and one of xerxes' ambassadors that came to demand earth and water from the state of lacedaemon, to satisfy him, was thrust into a well and earth cast upon him." the earlier races seem to me, either by reasoning or by instinct, to have arrived at the conclusion that every man was, in right of his being, entitled to food; that food was a product of the land, and therefore every man was entitled to the possession of land, otherwise his life depended upon the will of another. the romans acted on a different principle, which was "the spoil to the victors." he who could not defend and retain his possessions became the slave of the conqueror, all the rights of the vanquished passed to the victor, who took and enjoyed as ample rights to land as those naturally possessed by the aborigines. the system of landholding varies in different countries, and we cannot discover any idea of abstract right underlying the various differing systems; they are the outcome of law, the will of the sovereign power, which is liable to change with circumstances. the word law appears to be used to express two distinct sentiments; one, the will of the sovereign power, which being accompanied with a penalty, bears on its face the idea that it may be broken by the individual who pays the penalty: "thou shalt not eat of the fruit of the tree, for on the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die," was a law. all laws, whether emanating from an absolute monarch or from the representatives of the majority of a state, are mere expressions of the will of the sovereign power, which may be exacted by force. the second use of the word law is a record of our experience--e.g., we see the tides ebb and flow, and conclude it is done in obedience to the will of a sovereign power; but the word in that sense does not imply any violation or any punishment. a distinction must also be drawn between laws and codes; the former existed before the latter. the lex non scripta prevailed before letters were invented. every command of the decalogue was issued, and punishment followed for its breach, before the existence of the engraved tables. the brehon code, the justinian code, the draconian code, were compilations of existing laws; and the same may be said of the common or customary law of england, of france, and of germany. i am aware that recent analytical writers have sought to associate law with force, and to hold that law is a command, and must have behind it sufficient force to compel submission. these writers find at the outset of their examination, that customary law, the "lex non scripta," existed before force, and that the nomination to sovereign power was the outcome of the more ancient customary law. these laws appear based upon the idea of common good, and to have been supported by the "posse comitatus" before standing armies or state constabularies were formed. vattel says (book i., chap. ii.), "it is evident that men form a political society, and submit to laws solely for their own advantage and safety. the sovereign authority is then established only for the common good of all the citizens. the sovereign thus clothed with the public authority, with everything that constitutes the moral personality of the nation, of course becomes bound by the moral obligations of that nation and invested with its rights." it appears evident, that customary law was the will of small communities, when they were sovereign; that the cohesion of such communities was a confirmation of such customs of each, that the election of a monarch or a parliament was a recognition of these customs, and that the moral and material force or power of the sovereign was the outcome of existing laws, and a confirmation thereof. the application of the united force of the nation could be rightfully directed to the requirements of ancient, though unwritten customary law, and it could only be displaced by legislation, in which those concerned took part. the duty of the sovereign (which in the united kingdom means the crown and the two branches of the legislature) with regard to land, is thus described by vattel: "of all arts, tillage or agriculture is doubtless the most useful and necessary, as being the source whence the nation derives its subsistence. the cultivation of the soil causes it to produce an infinite increase. it forms the surest resource, and the most solid fund of riches and commerce for a nation that enjoys a happy climate. the sovereign ought to neglect no means of rendering the land under his jurisdiction as well cultivated as possible.... notwithstanding the introduction of private property among the citizens, the nation has still the right to take the most effectual measures to cause the aggregate soil of the country to produce the greatest and most advantageous revenue possible. the cultivation of the soil deserves the attention of the government, not only on account of the invaluable advantages that flow from it, but from its being an obligation imposed by nature on mankind." sir henry maine thinks that there are traces in england of the commune or mark system in the village communities which are believed to have existed, but these traces are very faint. the subsequent changes were inherent in, and developed by, the various conquests that swept over england; even that ancient class of holdings called "borough english," are a development of a war-like system, under which each son, as he came to manhood, entered upon the wars, and left the patrimonial lands to the youngest son. the system of gavel-kind which prevailed in the kingdom of kent, survived the accession of william of normandy, and was partially effaced in the reign of henry vii. it was not the aboriginal or communistic system, but one of its many successors. the various systems may have run one into the other, but i think there are sufficiently distinct features to place them in the following order: st. the aboriginal. d. the roman, population about , , . d. the scandinavian under the anglo-saxon and danish kings--a.d. to a.d. . the population in was , , . th. the norman, from a.d. to a.d. . the population in the latter year was , , . th. the plantagenet, from to ; in the latter the population was , , . th. the tudor, to , when the population was , , . th. the stuarts, to , the population having risen to , , . th. the present, from . down to the soil supported the population; now about one half lives upon food produced in other countries. in the population was , , . each of these periods has its own characteristic, but as i must compress my remarks, you must excuse my passing rapidly from one to the other. i. the aborigines. the aboriginal period is wrapped in darkness, and i cannot with certainty say whether the system that prevailed was celtic and tribal. an old french customary, in a ms. treating upon the antiquity of tenures, says: "the first english king divided the land into four parts. he gave one part to the arch flamens to pray for him and his posterity. a second part he gave to the earls and nobility, to do him knight's service. a third part he divided among husbandmen, to hold of him in socage. the fourth he gave to mechanical persons to hold in burgage." the terms used apply to a much more recent period and more modern ideas. caesar tells us "that the island of britain abounds in cattle, and the greatest part of those within the country never sow their land, but live on flesh and milk. the sea-coasts are inhabited by colonies from belgium, which, having established themselves in britain, began to cultivate the soil." diodorus siculus says, "the britons, when they have reaped their corn, by cutting the ears from the stubble, lay them up for preservation in subterranean caves or granaries. from thence, they say, in very ancient times, they used to take a certain quantity of ears out every day, and having dried and bruised the grains, made a kind of food for their immediate use." jeffrey of monmouth relates that one of the laws of dunwalls molnutus, who is said to have reigned b.c. , enacted that the ploughs of the husbandmen, as well as the temples of the gods, should be sanctuaries to such criminals as fled to them for protection. tacitus states that the britons were not a free people, but were under subjection to many different kings. dr. henry, quoting tacitus, says, "in the ancient german and british nation the whole riches of the people consisted in their flocks and herds; the laws of succession were few and simple: a man's cattle, at death, were equally divided among his sons; or, if he had no sons, his daughters; or if he had no children, among his nearest relations. these nations seem to have had no idea of the rights of primogeniture, or that the eldest son had any title to a larger share of his father's effects than the youngest." the population of england was scanty, and did not probably exceed a million of inhabitants. they were split up into a vast number of petty chieftainries or kingdoms; there was no cohesion, no means of communication between them; there was no sovereign power which could call out and combine the whole strength of the nation. no single chieftain could oppose to the romans a greater force than that of one of its legions, and when a footing was obtained in the island, the war became one of detail; it was a provincial rather that a national contest. the brave, though untrained and ill-disciplined warriors, fell before the romans, just as the red man of north america was vanquished by the english settlers. ii. the roman. the romans acted with regard to all conquered nations upon the maxim, "to the victors the spoils." britain was no exception. the romans were the first to discover or create an estate of uses in land, as distinct from an estate of possession. the more ancient nations, the jews and the greeks, never recognized the estate of uses, though there is some indication of it in the relation established by joseph in egypt, when, during the years of famine, he purchased for pharaoh the lands of the people. the romans having seized upon lands in italy belonging to conquered nations, considered them public lands, and rented them to the soldiery, thus retaining for the state the estate in the lands, but giving the occupier an estate of uses. the rent of these public lands was fixed at one tenth of the produce, and this was termed usufruct--the use of the fruits. the british chiefs, who submitted to the romans, were subjected to a tribute or rent in corn; it varied, according to circumstances, from one fifth to one twentieth of the produce. the grower was bound to deliver it at the prescribed places. this was felt to be a great hardship, as they were often obliged to carry the grain great distances, or pay a bribe to be excused. this oppressive law was altered by julius agricola. the romans patronized agriculture--cato says, "when the romans designed to bestow the highest praise on a good man, they used to say he understood agriculture well, and is an excellent husbandman, for this was esteemed the greatest and most honorable character." their system produced a great alteration in britain, and converted it into the most plentiful province of the empire; it produced sufficient corn for its own inhabitants, for the roman legions, and also afforded a great surplus, which was sent up the rhine. the emperor julian built new granaries in germany, in which he stored the corn brought from britain. agriculture had greatly improved in england under the romans. the romans do not appear to have established in england any military tenures of land, such as those they created along the danube and the rhine; nor do they appear to have taken possession of the land; the tax they imposed upon it, though paid in kind, was more of the nature of a tribute than a rent. though some of the best of the soldiers in the roman legions were britons, yet their rule completely enervated the aboriginal inhabitants--they were left without leaders, without cohesion. their land was held by permission of the conquerors. the wall erected at so much labor in the north of england proved a less effectual barrier against the incursions of the picts and scots than the living barrier of armed men which, at a later period, successfully repelled their invasions. the roman rule affords another example that material prosperity cannot secure the liberties of a people, that they must be armed and prepared to repel by force any aggression upon their liberty or their estates. "who will be free, themselves must strike the blow." the prosperous "britons," who were left by the romans in possession of the island, were but feeble representatives of those who, under caractacus and boadicea, did not shrink from combat with the legions of caesar. uninured to arms, and accustomed to obedience, they looked for a fresh master, and sunk into servitude and serfdom, from which they never emerged. yet under the romans they had thriven and increased in material wealth; the island abounded in numerous flocks and herds; and agriculture, which was encouraged by the romans, flourished. this wealth was by one of the temptations to the invaders, who seized not only upon the movable wealth of the natives, but also upon the land, and divided it among themselves. the warlike portion of the aboriginal inhabitants appear to have joined the cymri and retired westward. their system of landholding was non-feudal, inasmuch as each man's land was divided among all his sons. one of the laws of hoel dha, king of wales in the tenth century, decreed "that the youngest son shall have an equal share of the estate with the eldest son, and that when the brothers have divided their father's estate among them, the youngest son shall have the best house with all the office houses; the implements of husbandry, his father's kettle, his axe for cutting wood, and his knife; these three last things the father cannot give away by gift, nor leave by his last will to any but his youngest son, and if they are pledged they shall be redeemed." it may not be out of place here to say that this custom continued to exist in wales; and on its conquest edward i. ordained, "whereas the custom is otherwise in wales than england concerning succession to an inheritance, inasmuch as the inheritance is partible among the heirs-male, and from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary hath been partible, our lord the king will not have such custom abrogated, but willeth that inheritance shall remain partible among like heirs as it was wont to be, with this exception that bastards shall from henceforth not inherit, and also have portions with the lawful heirs; and if it shall happen that any inheritance should hereafter, upon failure of heirs-male, descend to females, the lawful heirs of their ancestors last served thereof. we will, of our especial grace, that the same women shall have their portions thereof, although this be contrary to the custom of wales before used." the land system of wales, so recognized and regulated by edward i., remained unchanged until the reign of the first tudor monarch. its existence raises the presumption that the aboriginal system of landholding in england gave each son a share of his father's land, and if so, it did not correspond with the germanic system described by caesar, nor with the tribal system of the celts in ireland, nor with the feudal system subsequently introduced. the polity of the romans, which endured in gaul, spain, and italy, and tinged the laws and usages of these countries after they had been occupied by the goths, totally disappeared in england; and even christianity, which partially prevailed under the romans, was submerged beneath the flood of invasion. save the material evidence of the footprints of "the masters of the world" in the roman roads, roman wall, and some other structures, there is no trace of the romans in england. their polity, laws, and language alike vanished, and did not reappear for centuries, when their laws and language were reimported. i should not be disposed to estimate the population of england and wales, at the retirement of the romans, at more than , , . they were like a flock of sheep without masters, and, deprived of the watch-dogs which over-awed and protected them, fell an easy prey to the invaders. iii. the scandinavians. the roman legions and the outlying semi-military settlements along the rhine and the danube, forming a cordon reaching from the german ocean to the black sea, kept back the tide of barbarians, but the volume of force accumulated behind the barrier, and at length it poured in an overwhelming and destructive tide over the fair and fertile provinces whose weak and effeminate people offered but a feeble resistance to the robust armies of the north. the romans, under the instruction of caesar and tacitus, had a faint idea of the usages of the people inhabiting the verge that lay around the roman dominions, but they had no knowledge of the influences that prevailed in "the womb of nations," as central europe appeared to the latins, who saw emerging therefrom hosts of warriors, bearing with them their wives, their children, and their portable effects, determined to win a settlement amid the fertile regions owned and improved by the romans. these incursions were not colonization in the sense in which rome understood it; they were the migrations of a people, and were as full, as complete, and as extensive as the israelitish invasion of canaan--they were more destructive of property, but less fatal to life. these migratory hosts left a desert behind them, and they either gained a settlement or perished. the roman colonies preserved their connection with the parent stem, and invoked aid when in need; but the barbarian hosts had no home, no reserves. other races, moving with similar intent, settled on the land they had vacated. these brought their own social arrangements, and it is very difficult to connect the land system established by the aborigines with the system which, after a lapse of some hundreds of years, was found to prevail in another tribe or nation which had occupied the region that had been vacated. neither caesar nor tacitus gives us any idea of the habits or usages of the people who lived north of the belgae. they had no notion of scandinavia nor of sclavonia. the walhalla of the north, with its terrific deities, was unknown to them; and i am disposed to think that we shall look in vain among the customs of the teutons for the basis from whence came the polity established in england by the invaders of the fifth century. the anglo-saxons came from a region north of the elbe, which we call schleswig--holstein. they were kindred to the norwegians and the danes, and of the family of the sea robbers; they were not teutons, for the teutons were not and are not sailors. the belgae colonized part of the coast--i.e., the settlers maintained a connection with the mainland; but the angles, the saxons, and the jutes did not colonize, they migrated; they left no trace of their occupancy in the lands they vacated. each separate invasion was the settlement of a district; each leader aspired to sovereignty, and was supreme in his own domains; each claimed descent from woden, and, like romulus or alexander, sought affinity with the gods. each member of the heptarchy was independent of, and owed no allegiance to, the other members; and marriage or conquest united them ultimately into one kingdom. the primary institutions were moulded by time and circumstance, and the state of things in the eleventh century was as different from that of the fifth as those of our own time differ from the rule of richard ii. yet one was as much an outgrowth of its predecessor as the other. attempts have been made, with considerable ingenuity, to connect races with each other by peculiar characteristics, but human society has the same necessities, and we find great similarity in various divisions of society. at all times, and in all nations, society resolved itself into the upper, middle, and lower classes. rome had its nobles, plebeians, and slaves; germany its edhilingi, frilingi, and lazzi; england its eaorls, thanes, and ceorls. it would be equally cogent to argue that, because rome had three classes and england had three classes, the latter was derived from the former, as to conclude that, because germany had three classes, therefore english institutions were teutonic. if the invasion of the fifth century were teutonic we should look for similar nomenclature, but there is as great a dissimilarity between the english and german names of the classes as between the former and those of rome. the germanic mark system has no counterpart in the land system introduced into england by the anglo-saxons. if village communities existed in england, it must have been before the invasion of the romans. the german system, as described by caesar, was suited to nomads--to races on the wing, who gave to no individual possession for more than a year, that there might be no home ties. the mark system is of a later date, and was evidently the arrangement of other races who permanently settled themselves upon the lands vacated by the older nations. and i may suggest whether, as these lands were originally inhabited by the celts, the conquerors did not adopt the system of the conquered. even in the nomenclature of feudalism, introduced into england in the fifth century, we are driven back to scandinavia for an explanation. the word feudal as applied to land has a norwegian origin, from which country came rollo, the progenitor of william the norman. pontoppidan ("history of norway," p. ) says "the odhall, right of norway, and the udall, right of finland, came from the words 'odh,' which signifies proprietors, and 'all,' which means totum. a transposition of these syllables makes all odh, or allodium, which means absolute property. fee, which means stipend or pay, united with oth, thus forming fee-oth or feodum, denoting stipendiary property. wacterus states that the word allode, allodium, which applies to land in germany, is composed of an and lot--i.e., land obtained by lot. i therefore venture the opinion that the settlement of england in the fifth and sixth centuries was not teutonic or germanic, but scandinavian. the lands won by the swords of all were the common property of all; they were the lands of the people, folc-land; they were distributed by lot at the folc-gemot; they were odh-all lands; they were not held of any superior nor was there any service save that imposed by the common danger. the chieftains were elected and obeyed, because they represented the entire people. hereditary right seems to have been unknown. the essence of feudalism was a life estate, the land reverted either to the sovereign or to the people upon the death of the occupant. at a later period the monarch claimed the power of confiscating land, and of giving it away by charter or deed; and hence arose the distinction between folc-land and boc-land (the land of the book or charter), a distinction somewhat similar to the freehold and copyhold tenures of the present day. king alfred the great bequeathed "his boc-land to his nearest relative; and if any of them have children it is more agreeable to me that it go to those born on the male side." he adds, "my grandfather bequeathed his land on the spear side, not on the spindle side; therefore if i have given what he acquired to any on the female side, let my kinsman make compensation." the several ranks were thus defined by athelstane: " st. it was whilom in the laws of the english that the people went by ranks, and these were the counsellors of the nation, of worship worthy each according to his condition--'eorl,' 'ceorl,' 'thegur,' and 'theodia.' " d. if a ceorl thrived, so that he had fully five hides ( acres) of land, church and kitchen, bell-house and back gatescal, and special duty in the king's hall, then he was thenceforth of thane-right worthy. " d. and if a thane thrived so that he served the king, and on his summons rode among his household, if he then had a thane who him followed, who to the king utward five hides, had, and in the king's hall served his lord, and thence, with his errand, went to the king, he might thenceforth, with his fore oath, his lord represent at various needs, and his and his plant lawfully conduct wheresoever he ought. " th. and he who so prosperous a vicegerent had not, swore for himself according to his right or it forfeited. " th. and if a 'thane' thrived so that he became an eorl, then was he thenceforth of eorl-right worthy. " th. and if a merchant thrived so that he fared thrice over the wide sea by his own means (or vessels), then was he thenceforth of thane-right worthy." the oath of fealty, as prescribed by the law of edward and guthrum, was very similar to that used at a later period, and ran thus: "thus shall a man swear fealty: by the lord, before whom this relic is holy, i will be faithful and true, and love all that he loves, and shun all that he shuns, according to god's law, and according to the world's principles, and never by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do aught of what is loathful to him, on condition that he me keep, as i am willing to deserve, and all that fulfil, that our agreement was, when i to him submitted and chose his will." the odh-all (noble) land was divided into two classes: the in-lands, which were farmed by slaves under bailiffs, and the out-lands, which were let to ceorls either for one year or for a term. the rents were usually paid in kind, and were a fixed proportion of the produce. ina, king of the west saxons, fixed the rent of ten hides ( acres), in the beginning of the eighth century, as follows: casks honey, casks strong ale, casks small ale, loaves bread, oxen, wedders, geese, hens, chickens, cheeses, cask butter, salmon, lbs. forage, and eels. in the reign of edgar the peaceable (tenth century), land was sold for about four shillings of the then currency per acre. the abbot of ely bought an estate about this time, which was paid for at the rate of four sheep or one horse for each acre. the freemen (liberi homines) were a very numerous class, and all were trained in the use of arms. their folc-land was held under the penalty of forfeiture if they did not take the field, whenever required for the defence of the country. in addition, a tax, called danegeld, was levied at a rate varying from two shillings to seven shillings per hide of land ( acres); and in , each owner of a large estate, hides, was called on to furnish a ship for the navy. selden ("laws and government of england," p. ) thus describes the freemen among the saxons, previous to the conquest: "the next and most considerable degree of all the people is that of the freemen, anciently called frilingi, [footnote: this is a teutonic, not an anglo-saxon term; the anglo-saxon word is thane.] or free-born, or such as are born free from all yoke of arbitrary power, and from all law of compulsion, other than what is made by their voluntary consent, for all freemen have votes in the making and executing of the general laws of the kingdom. in the first, they differed from the gauls, of whom it is noted that the commons are never called to council, nor are much better than servants. in the second, they differ from many free people, and are a degree more excellent, being adjoined to the lords in judicature, both by advice and power (consilium et authoritates adsunt), and therefore those that were elected to that work were called comites ex plebe, and made one rank of freemen for wisdom superior to the rest. another degree of these were beholden for their riches, and were called custodes pagani, an honorable title belonging to military service, and these were such as had obtained an estate of such value as that their ordinary arms were a helmet, a coat of mail, and a gilt sword. the rest of the freemen were contented with the name of ceorls, and had as sure a title to their own liberties as the custodes pagani or the country gentlemen had." land was liable to be seized upon for treason and forfeited; but even after the monarchs had assumed the functions of the folc-gemot, they were not allowed to give land away without the approval of the great men; charters were consented to and witnessed in council. "there is scarcely a charter extant," says chief baron gilbert, "that is not proof of this right." the grant of baldred, king of kent, of the manor of malling, in sussex, was annulled because it was given without the consent of the council. the subsequent gift thereof, by egbert and athelwolf, was made with the concurrence and assent of the great men. the kings' charters of escheated lands, to which they had succeeded by a personal right, usually declared "that it might be known that what they gave was their own." discussions have at various times taken place upon the question, "was the land-system of this period feudal?" it engaged the attention of the irish court of king's bench, in the reign of charles i., and was raised in this way: james i. had issued "a commission of defective titles." any irish owner, upon surrendering his land to the king, got a patent which reconvened it on him. wentworth (lord stafford) wished to settle connaught, as ulster had been settled in the preceding reign, and, to accomplish it, tried to break the titles granted under "the commission of defective titles." lord dillon's case, which is still quoted as an authority, was tried. the plea for the crown alleged that the honor of the monarch stood before his profit, and as the commissioners were only authorized to issue patents to hold in capite, whereas they had given title "to hold in capite, by knights' service out of dublin castle," the grant was bad. in the course of the argument, the existence of feudal tenures, before the landing of william of normandy, was discussed, and sir henry spelman's views, as expressed in the glossary, were considered. the court unanimously decided that feudalism existed in england under the anglo-saxons, and it affirmed that sir henry spelman was wrong. this decision led sir henry spelman to write his "treatise on feuds," which was published after his death, in which he reasserted the opinion that feudalism was introduced into england at the norman invasion. this decision must, however, be accepted with a limitation; i think there was no separate order of nobility under the anglo-saxon rule. the king had his councillors, but there appears to have been no order between him and the folc-gemot. the earls and the thanes met with the people, but did not form a separate body. the thanes were country gentleman, not senators. the outcome of the heptarchy was the earls or ealdermen; this was the only order of nobility among the saxons; they corresponded to the position of lieutenants of counties, and were appointed for life. in there were nine such officers; in there were but six. harold's earldom, at the former date, comprised norfolk, suffolk, essex, and middlesex; and godwin's took in the whole south coast from sandwich to the land's end, and included kent, sussex, hampshire, wilts, devonshire, and cornwall. upon the death of godwin, harold resigned his earldom, and took that of godwin, the bounds being slightly varied. harold retained his earldom after he became king, but on his death it was seized upon by the conqueror, and divided among his followers. the crown relied upon the liberi homines or freemen. the country was not studded with castles filled with armed men. the house of the thane was an unfortified structure, and while the laws relating to land were, in my view, essentially feudal, the government was different from that to which we apply the term feudalism, which appears to imply baronial castles, armed men, and an oppressed people. i venture to suggest to some modern writers that further inquiry will show them that folc-land was not confined to commonages, or unallotted portions, but that at the beginning it comprised all the land of the kingdom, and that the occupant did not enjoy it as owner-in-severalty; he had a good title against his fellow subjects, but he held under the folc-gemot, and was subject to conditions. the consolidation of the sovereignty, the extension of laws of forfeiture, the assumption by the kings of the rights of the popular assemblies, all tended to the formation of a second set of titles, and boc-land became an object of ambition. the same individual appears to have held land by both titles, and to have had greater powers over the latter than over the former. many of those who have written on the subject seem to me to have failed to grasp either the object or the genius of feudalism. it was the device of conquerors to maintain their possessions, and is not to be found among nations, the original occupiers of the land, nor in the conquests of states which maintained standing armies. the invading hosts elected their chieftain, they and he had only a life use of the conquests. upon the death of one leader another was elected, so upon the death of the allottee of a piece of land it reverted to the state. the genius of feudalism was life ownership and non-partition. hence the oath of fealty was a personal obligation, and investiture was needful before the new feudee took possession. the state, as represented by the king or chieftain, while allowing the claim of the family, exercised its right to select the individual. all the lands were considered beneficia, a word which now means a charge upon land, to compensate for duties rendered to the state. under this system, the feudatory was a commander, his residence a barrack, his tenants soldiers; it was his duty to keep down the aborigines, and to prevent invasion. he could neither sell, give, nor bequeath his land. he received the surplus revenue as payment for personal service, and thus enjoyed his benefice. judged in this way, i think the feudal system existed before the norman conquest. slavery and serfdom undoubtedly prevailed. the country prospered under the scandinavians; and, from the great abundance of corn, william of poitiers calls england "the store-house of ceres." iv. the normans. the invasion of william of normandy led to results which have been represented by some writers as having been the most momentous in english history. i do not wish in any way to depreciate their views, but it seems to me not to have been so disastrous to existing institutions, as the scandinavian invasion, which completely submerged all former usages. no trace of roman occupation survived the advent of the anglo-saxons; the population was reduced to and remained in the position of serfs, whereas the norman invasion preserved the existing institutions of the nation, and subsequent changes were an outgrowth thereof. when edward the confessor, the last descendant of cedric, was on his deathbed, he declared harold to be his successor, but william of normandy claimed the throne under a previous will of the same monarch. he asked for the assistance of his own nobles and people in the enterprise, but they refused at first, on the ground that their feudal compact only required them to join in the defence of their country, and did not coerce them into affording him aid in a completely new enterprise; and it was only by promising to compensate them out of the spoils that he could secure their co-operation. a list of the number of ships supplied by each norman chieftain appears in lord lyttleton's "history of henry iii." vol. i., appendix. i need hardly remind you that the settlers in normandy were from norway, or that they had been expelled from their native land in consequence of their efforts to subvert its institutions, and to make the descent of land hereditary, instead of being divisible among all the sons of the former owner. nor need i relate how they won and held the fair provinces of northern france--whether as a fief of the french crown or not, is an open question. but i should wish you to bear in mind their affinity to the anglo-saxons, to the danes, and to the norwegians, the family of sea robbers, whose ravages extended along the coasts of europe as far south as gibraltar, and, as some allege, along the mediterranean. some questions have been raised as to the means of transport of the saxons, the jutes, and the angles, but they were fully as extensive as those by which rollo invaded france or william invaded england. william strengthened his claim to the throne by his military success, and by a form of election, for which there were many previous precedents. those who called upon him to ascend it alleged "that they had always been ruled by legal power, and desired to follow in that respect the example of their ancestors, and they knew of no one more worthy than himself to hold the reins of government." his alleged title to the crown, sanctioned by success and confirmed by election, enabled him, in conformity with existing institutions, to seize upon the lands of harold and his adherents, and to grant them as rewards to his followers. such confiscation and gifts were entirely in accord with existing usages, and the great alteration which took place in the principal fiefs was more a change of persons than of law. a large body of the aboriginal people had been, and continued to be, serfs or villeins; while the mass of the freemen (liberi homines) remained in possession of their holdings. it may not be out of place here to say a few words about this important class, which is in reality the backbone of the british constitution; it was the mainstay of the anglo-saxon monarchy; it lost its influence during the civil wars of the plantagenets, but reasserted its power under cromwell. dr. robertson thus draws the line between them and the vassals: "in the same manner liber homo is commonly opposed to vassus or vassalus, the former denoting an allodial proprietor, the latter one who held of a superior. these freemen were under an obligation to serve the state, and this duty was considered so sacred that freemen were prohibited from entering into holy orders, unless they obtained the consent of the sovereign." de lolme, chap. i., sec. , says: "the liber homo, or freeman, has existed in this country from the earliest periods, as well as of authentic as of traditionary history, entitled to that station in society as one of his constitutional rights, as being descended from free parents in contradistinction to 'villains,' which should be borne in remembrance, because the term 'freeman' has been, in modern times, perverted from its constitutional signification without any statutable authority." the liberi homines are so described in the doomsday book. they were the only men of honor, faith, trust, and reputation in the kingdom; and from among such of these as were not barons, the knights did choose jurymen, served on juries themselves, bare offices, and dispatched country business. many of the liberi homines held of the king in capite, and several were freeholders of other persons in military service. their rights were recognized and guarded by the th william i.; [footnote: "lv.--de chartilari seu feudorum jure et ingenuorum immunitate. volumus etiam ac firmiter praecipimus et concedimus ut omnes liberi homines totius monarchiae regni nostri praedicti habeant et teneant terras suas et possessiones suas bene et in pace, liberi ab omni, exactione iniusta et ab omni tallagio: ita quod nihil ab eis exigatur vel capiatur nisi servicium suum liberum quod de iure nobis facere debent et facere tenentur et prout statutum est eis et illis a nobis datum et concessum iure haereditario imperpetuum per commune consilium totius regni nostri praeicti."] it is entitled: "concerning cheutilar or feudal rights, and the immunity of freemen. "we will also, and strictly, enjoin and concede that all freemen (liberi homines) of our whole kingdom aforesaid, have and hold their land and possessions well and in peace, free from every unjust exaction and from tallage, so that nothing be exacted or taken from them except their free service, which of right they ought to do to us and are bound to do, and according as it was appointed (statutum) to them, and given to them by us, and conceded by hereditary right for ever, by the common council (folc-gemot} of our whole realm aforesaid." these freemen were not created by the norman conquest, they existed prior thereto; and the laws, of which this is one, are declared to be the laws of edward the confessor, which william re-enacted. selden, in "the laws and government of england," p. , speaks of this law as the first magna charta. he says: "lastly, the one law of the kings, which may be called the first magna charta in the norman times ( william i.), by which the king reserved to himself, from the freemen of this kingdom, nothing but their free service, in the conclusion saith that their lands were thus granted to them in inheritance of the king by the common council (folc-gemot) of the whole kingdom; and so asserts, in one sentence, the liberty of the freemen, and of the representative body of the kingdom." he further adds: "the freedom of an englishman consisteth of three particulars: first, in ownership; second, in voting any law, whereby ownership is maintained; and, thirdly, in having an influence upon the judiciary power that must apply the law. now the english, under the normans, enjoyed all this freedom with each man's own particular, besides what they had in bodies aggregate. this was the meaning of the normans, and they published the same to the world in a fundamental law, whereby is granted that all freemen shall have and hold their lands and possessions in hereditary right for ever; and by this they being secured from forfeiture, they are further saved from all wrong by the same law, which provideth that they shall hold them well or quietly, and in peace, free from all unjust tax, and from all tallage, so as nothing shall be exacted nor taken but their free service, which, by right, they are bound to perform." this is expounded in the law of henry i., cap. , to mean that no tribute or tax shall be taken but what was due in the confessor's time, and edward ii. was sworn to observe the laws of the confessor. the nation was not immediately settled. rebellions arose either from the oppression of the invaders or the restlessness of the conquered; and, as each outburst was put down by force, there were new lands to be distributed among the adherents of the monarch; ultimately there were about chief tenants holding in capite, but the nation was divided into , knights' fees, of which the church held , . the king retained in his own hands manors, besides a great number of forests, parks, chases, farms, and houses, in all parts of the kingdom; and his followers received very large holdings. among the saxon families who retained their land was one named shobington in bucks. hearing that the norman lord was coming to whom the estate had been gifted by the king, the head of the house armed his servants and tenants, preparing to do battle for his rights; he cast up works, which remain to this day in grassy mounds, marking the sward of the park, and established himself behind them to await the despoiler's onset. it was the period when hundreds of herds of wild cattle roamed the forest lands of britain, and, failing horses, the shobingtons collected a number of bulls, rode forth on them, and routed the normans, unused to such cavalry. william heard of the defeat, and conceived a respect for the brave man who had caused it; he sent a herald with a safe conduct to the chief, shobington, desiring to speak with him. not many days after, came to court eight stalwart men riding upon bulls, the father and seven sons. "if thou wilt leave me my lands, o king," said the old man, "i will serve thee faithfully as i did the dead harold." whereupon the conqueror confirmed him in his ownership, and named the family bullstrode, instead of shobington. sir martin wright, in his "treatise on tenures," published in , p. , remarks: "though it is true that the possessions of the normans were of a sudden very great, and that they received most of them from the hands of william i., yet it does not follow that the king took all the lands of england out of the hands of their several owners, claiming them as his spoils of war, or as a parcel of a conquered country; but, on the contrary, it appears pretty plain from the history of those times that the king either had or pretended title to the crown, and that his title, real or pretended, was established by the death of harold, which amounted to an unquestionable judgment in his favor. he did not therefore treat his opposers as enemies, but as traitors, agreeably to the known laws of the kingdom which subjected traitors not only to the loss of life but of all their possessions." he adds (p. ): "as william i. did not claim to possess himself of the lands of england as the spoils of conquest, so neither did he tyrannically and arbitrarily subject them to feudal dependence; but, as the fedual law was at that time the prevailing law of europe, william i., who had always governed by this policy, might probably recommend it to our ancestors as the most obvious and ready way to put them upon a footing with their neighbors, and to secure the nation against any future attempts from them. we accordingly find among the laws of william i. a law enacting feudal law itself, not eo nomine, but in effect, inasmuch as it requires from all persons the same engagements to, and introduces the same dependence upon, the king as supreme lord of all the lands of england, as were supposed to be due to a supreme lord by the feudal law. the law i mean is the lii. law of william i." this view is adopted by sir william blackstone, who writes (vol. ii., p. ): "from the prodicious slaughter of the english nobility at the battle of hastings, and the fruitless insurrection of those who survived, such numerous forfeitures had accrued that he (william) was able to reward his norman followers with very large and extensive possessions, which gave a handle to monkish historians, and such as have implicitly followed them to represent him as having by the right of the sword, seized upon all the lands of england, and dealt them out again to his own favorites--a supposition grounded upon a mistaken sense of the word conquest, which in its feudal acceptation signifies no more than acquisition, and this has led many hasty writers into a strange historical mistake, and one which, upon the slightest examination, will be found to be most untrue. "we learn from a saxon chronicle (a.d. ), that in the nineteenth year of king william's reign, an invasion was apprehended from denmark; and the military constitution of the saxons being then laid aside, and no other introduced in its stead, the kingdom was wholly defenceless; which occasioned the king to bring over a large army of normans and britons who were quartered upon, and greatly oppressed, the people. this apparent weakness, together with the grievances occasioned by a foreign force, might co-operate with the king's remonstrance, and better incline the nobility to listen to his proposals for putting them in a position of defence. for, as soon as the danger was over, the king held a great council to inquire into the state of the nation, the immediate consequence of which was the compiling of the great survey called the doomsday book, which was finished the next year; and in the end of that very year ( ) the king was attended by all his nobility at sarum, where the principal landholders submitted their lands to the yoke of military tenure, and became the king's vassals, and did homage and fealty to his person." mr. henry hallam writes: "one innovation made by william upon the feudal law is very deserving of attention. by the leading principle of feuds, an oath of fealty was due from the vassal to the lord of whom he immediately held the land, and no other. the king of france long after this period had no feudal, and scarcely any royal, authority over the tenants of his own vassals; but william received at salisbury, in , the fealty of all landholders in england, both those who held in chief and their tenants, thus breaking in upon the feudal compact in its most essential attribute--the exclusive dependence of a vassal upon his lord; and this may be reckoned among the several causes which prevented the continental notions of independence upon the crown from ever taking root among the english aristocracy." a more recent writer, mr. freeman ("history of the norman conquest," published in , vol. iv., p. ), repeats the same idea, though not exactly in the same words. after describing the assemblage which encamped in the plains around salisbury, he says: "in this great meeting a decree was passed, which is one of the most memorable pieces of legislation in the whole history of england. in other lands where military tenure existed, it was beginning to be held that he who plighted his faith to a lord, who was the man of the king, was the man of that lord only, and did not become the man of the king himself. it was beginning to be held that if such a man followed his immediate lord to battle against the common sovereign, the lord might draw on himself the guilt of treason, but the men that followed him would be guiltless. william himself would have been amazed if any vassal of his had refused to draw his sword in a war with france on the score of duty toward an over-lord. but in england, at all events, william was determined to be full king over the whole land, to be immediate sovereign and immediate lord of every man. a statute was passed that every freeman in the realm should take the oath of fealty to king william." mr. freeman quotes stubbs's "select charters," p. , as his authority. stubbs gives the text of that charter, with ten others. he says: "these charters are from 'textus roffensis,' a manuscript written during the reign of henry i.; it contains the sum and substance of all the legal enactments made by the conqueror independent of his confirmation of the earlier laws." it is as follows: "statuimus etiam ut omnis liber homo feodere et sacramento affirmet, quod intra et extra angliam willelmo regi fideles esse volunt, terras et honorem illius omni fidelitate cum eo servare et eum contra inimicos defendere." it will be perceived that mr. hallam reads liber homo as "vassal." mr. freeman reads them as "freeman," while the older authority, sir martin wright, says: "i have translated the words liberi homines, 'owners of land,' because the sense agrees best with the tenor of the law." the views of writers of so much eminence as sir martin wright, sir william blackstone, mr. henry hallam, and mr. freeman, are entitled to the greatest respect and consideration, and it is with much diffidence i venture to differ from them. the three older writers appear to have had before them the lii of william i., the latter the alleged charter found in the "textus roffensis;" but as they are almost identical in expression, i treat the latter as a copy of the former, and i do not think it bears out the interpretation sought to be put upon it--that it altered either the feudalism of england, or the relation of the vassal to his lord; and it must be borne in mind that not only did william derive his title to the crown from edward the confessor, but he preserved the apparent continuity, and re-enacted the laws of his predecessor. wilkins' "laws of the anglo-saxons and normans," republished in by the record commissioners, gives the following introduction: "here begin the laws of edward, the glorious king of england. "after the fourth year of the succession to the kingdom of william of this land, that is england, he ordered all the english noble and wise men and acquainted with the law, through the whole country, to be summoned before his council of barons, in order to be acquainted with their customs, having therefore selected from all the counties twelve, they were sworn solemnly to proceed as diligently as they might to write their laws and customs, nothing omitting, nothing adding, and nothing changing." then follow the laws, thirty-nine in number, thus showing the continuity of system, and proving that william imposed upon his norman followers the laws of the anglo-saxons. they do not include the lii. william i., to which i shall refer hereafter. i may, however, observe that the demonstration at salisbury was not of a legislative character; and that it was held in conformity with anglo-saxon usages. if, according to stubbs, the ordinance was a charter, it would proceed from the king alone. the idea involved in the statements of sir martin wright, mr. hallam, and mr. freeman, that the vassal of a lord was then called on to swear allegiance to the king, and that it altered the feudal bond in england, is not supported by the oath of vassalage. in swearing fealty, the vassal knelt, placed his hands between those of his lord's, and swore: "i become your man from this day forward, of life and limb, and of earthly worship, and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear you faith for the tenements at that i claim to hold of you, saving the faith that i owe unto our sovereign lord the king." this shows that it was unnecessary to call vassals to salisbury to swear allegiance. the assemblage was of the same nature and character as previous meetings. it was composed of the liberi homines, the freemen, described by the learned john selden (ante, p. ), and by dr. robertson and de lolme (ante, pp. , ). but there is evidence of a much stronger character, which of itself refutes the views of these writers, and shows that the norman system, at least during the reign of william i., was a continuation of that existing previous to his succession to the throne; and that the meeting at salisbury, so graphically portrayed, did not effect that radical change in the position of english landholders which has been stated. i refer to the works of eadmerus; he was a monk of canterbury who was appointed bishop of st. andrews, and declined or resigned the appointment because the king of scotland refused to allow his consecration by the archbishop of canterbury. his history includes the reigns of william i., william ii., and henry i., from to , and he gives, at page , the laws of edward the confessor, which william i. gave to england; they number seventy-one, including the lii. law quoted by sir martin wright. the introduction to these laws is in latin and norman-french, and is as follows: "these are the laws and customs which king william granted to the whole people of england after he had conquered the land, and they are those which king edward his predecessor observed before him." [footnote: the laws of william are given in a work entitled "eadmeri monachi cantuariensis historia novorum," etc. it includes the reigns of william i. and ii., and henry i., from to , and is edited by john selden. page has the following: "hae sunt leges et consuetudines quas willielmus rex concessit universo populo angliae post subactam terram. eaedum sunt quas edwardus rex cognatus ejus obscruauit ante eum. "ces sont les leis et les custums que le rui people de engleterre apres le conquest de le terre. ice les meismes que le rui edward sun cosin tuit devant lui. "lii. "de fide et obsequio erga regnum. "statuimus etiam ut omnes liiben homines foedere et sacramento affirment quod intra et extra universum regnum anglias (quod olim vocabatur regnum britanniae) willielmo suo domino fideles esse volunt, terras et honores illins fidelitate ubique servare cum eo et contra inimicos et alienigonas defendere."] this simple statement gets rid of the theory of sir martin wright, of sir william blackstone, of mr. hallam, and of mr. freeman, that william introduced a new system, and that he did so either as a new feudal law or as an amendment upon the existing feudalism. the lii. law, quoted by wright, is as follows: "we have decreed that all free men should affirm on oath, that both within and without the whole kingdom of england (which is called britain) they desire to be faithful to william their lord, and everywhere preserve unto him his land and honors with fidelity, and defend them against all enemies and strangers." eadmerus, who wrote in the reign of henry i., gives the lii. william i. as a confirmatory law. the charter given by stubbs is a contraction of the law given by eadmerus. the former uses the words omnes liberi homines; the latter, the words omnis liberi homo. those interested can compare them, as i shall give the text of each side by side. since the paper was read, i have met with the following passage in stubbs's "constitutional history of england," vol. i., p. : "it has been maintained that a formal and definitive act, forming the initial point of the feudalization of england, is to be found in a clause of the laws, as they are called, of the conqueror, which directs that every freeman shall affirm, by covenant and oath, that 'he will be faithful to king william within england and without, will join him in preserving his land with all fidelity, and defend him against his enemies.' but this injunction is little more than the demand of the oath of allegiance taken to the anglo-saxon kings, and is here required not of every feudal dependant of the king, but of every freeman or freeholder whatsoever. in that famous council of salisbury, a. d, , which was summoned immediately after the making of the doomsday survey, we learn, from the 'chronicle,' that there came to the king 'all his witan and all the landholders of substance in england, whose vassals soever they were, and they all submitted to him and became his men, and swore oaths of allegiance that they would be faithful to him against all others.' in the act has been seen the formal acceptance and date of the introduction of feudalism, but it has a very different meaning. the oath described is the oath of allegiance, combined with the act of homage, and obtained from all landowners whoever their feudal lord might be. it is a measure of precaution taken against the disintegrating power of feudalism, providing a direct tie between the sovereign and all freeholders which no inferior relations existing between them and the mesne lords would justify them in breaking." i have already quoted from another of stubbs's works, "select charters," the charter which he appears to have discovered bearing upon this transaction, and now copy the note, giving the authorities quoted by stubbs, with reference to the above passage. he appears to have overlooked the complete narration of the alleged laws of william i., given by eadmerus, to which i have referred. the note is as follows: "ll. william i., , below note; see hovenden, ii., pref. p. , seq., where i have attempted to prove the spuriousness of the document called the charter of william i., printed in the ancient 'laws' ed. thorpe, p. . the way in which the regulation of the conqueror here referred to has been misunderstood and misused is curious. lambarde, in the 'archaionomia,' p. , printed the false charter in which this genuine article is incorporated as an appendiz to the french version of the conqueror's laws, numbering the clauses to ; from lambarde, the whole thing was transferred by wilkins into his collection of anglo-saxon laws. blackstone's 'commentary,' ii. , suggested that perhaps the very law (which introduced feudal tenures) thus made at the council of salisbury is that which is still extant and couched in these remarkable words, i. e., the injunction in question referred to by wilkins, p. ellis, in the introduction to 'doomsday,' i. , quotes blackstone, but adds a reference to wilkins without verifying blackstone's quotation from his collection of laws, substituting for that work the concilia, in which the law does not occur. many modern writers have followed him in referring the enactment of the article to the council of salisbury. it is well to give here the text of both passages; that in the laws runs thus: 'statuimus etiam ut omnis liber homo foedere et sacremento affirmet, quod intra et extra angliam willelmo regi fideles esse volunt, terras et honorem illius omni fidelitate eum eo servare et ante eum contra inimicos defendere' (select charters, p. ). the homage done at salisbury is described by florence thus: 'nec multo post mandavit ut archiepiscopi episcopi, abbates, comitas et barones et vicecomitas cum suis militibus die kalendarum augustarem sibi occurent saresberiae quo cum venissent milites eorem sibi fidelitatem contra omnes homines jurare coegit.' the 'chronicle' is a little more full: 'thaee him comon to his witan and ealle tha landsittende men the ahtes waeron ofer eall engleland waeron thaes mannes men the hi waeron and ealle hi bugon to him and waeron his men, and him hold athas sworon thaet he woldon ongean ealle other men him holde beon.'" mr. stubbs had, in degree, adopted the view at which i had arrived, that the law or charter of william i. was an injunction to enforce the oath of allegiance, previously ordered by the laws of edward the confessor, to be taken by all freemen, and that it did not relate to vassals, or alter the existing feudalism. as the subject possesses considerable interest for the general reader as well as the learned historian, i think it well to place the two authorities side by side, that the text may be compared: lii. william i., as given by eadments. "de fide et obsequio erga regnum. "statuimus etiam ut omnes liberi homines foedere et sacramento affirment quod intra et extra univereum regnum anglise (quod olim vocabatur regnum britanniae) wilhielmo suo domino fideles ease volunt, terras et honores ilius fidelitate ubique servare cum eo et contra inimicos et alienigenas defendere." charter from textus roffensis, given by mr. stubbs. "statuimus etiam ut omnis liber homo feodere et sacramento affirmet, quod intra et extra angliam. willelmo regi fideles ease volunt, terras et honorem illius omni fidelitate cum eo servare et ante eum contra inimicos defendere." i think the documents i have quoted show that sir martin wright, sir william blackstone, and messrs. hallam and freeman, labored under a mistake in supposing that william had introduced or imposed a new feudal law, or that the vassals of a lord swore allegiance to the king. the introduction to the laws of william i. shows that it was not a new enactment, or a norman custom introduced into england, and the law itself proves that it relates to freemen, and not to vassals. the misapprehension of these authors may have arisen in this way: william i. had two distinct sets of subjects. the normans, who had taken the oath of allegiance on obtaining investiture, and whose retinue included vassals; and the anglo-saxons, among whom vassalage was unknown, who were freeman (liberi homines) as distinguished from serfs. the former comprised those in possesion of odhal (noble) land, whether held from the crown or its tenants. it was quite unnecessary to convoke the normans and their vassals, while the assemblage of the saxons--omnes liberi homines--was not only to conformity with the laws of edward the confessor, but was specially needful when a foreigner had possesed himself of the throne. i have perhaps dwelt to long upon this point, but the error to which i have referred has been adopted as if it was an unquestioned fact, and has passed into our school-books and become part of the education given to the young, and therefore it required some examination. i believe that a very large portion of the land in england did not change hands at that period, nor was the position of either serfs or villeins changed. the great alteration lay in the increase in the quantity of boc-land. much of the folc-land was forfeited and seized upon, and as the king claimed the right to give it away, it was called terra regis. the charter granted by king william to alan fergent, duke of bretagne, of the lands and towns, and the rest of the inheritance of edwin, earl of yorkshire, runs thus: "ego guilielmus cognomine bastardus, rex anglise do et concede tibi nepoti meo alano brittanias comiti et hseredibus tuis imperpetuum omnes villas et terras qua nuper fuerent comitis edwini in eborashina cum feodis militise et aliis libertatibus et consuetudinibus ita libere et honorifice sicut idem edwinus eadem tenuit. "data obsidione coram civitate eboraci." this charter does not create a different title, but gives the lands as held by the former possessor. the monarch assumed the function of the fole-gemot, but the principle remained--the feudee only became tenant for life. each estate reverted to the crown on the death of him who held it; but, previous to acquiring possession, the new tenant had to cease to be his own "man," and became the "man" of his superior. this act was called "homage," and was followed by "investiture." in a.d. , prince henry refused to trust himself with his father till his homage had been renewed and accepted, for it bound the superior to protect the inferior. the process is thus described by de lolme (chap, ii., sec. ): "on the death of the ancestor, lands holden by 'knight's service' and by 'grand sergeantcy' were, upon inquisition finding the tenure and the death of the ancestor, seized into the king's hands. if the heir appeared by the inquisition to be within the age of twenty-one years, the king retained the lands till the heir attained the age of twenty-one, for his own profit, maintaining and educating the heir according to his rank. if the heir appeared by the inquisition to have attained twenty-one, he was entitled to demand livery of the lands by the king's officers on paying a relief and doing fealty and homage. the minor heir attaining twenty-one, and proving his age, was entitled to livery of his lands, on doing fealty and homage, without paying any relief." the idea involved is, that the lands were held, and not owned, and that the proprietary right lay in the nation, as represented by the king. if we adopt the poetic idea of the brehon code, that "land is perpetual man," then homage for land was not a degrading institution. but it is repugnant to our ideas to think that any man can, on any ground, or for any consideration, part with his manhood, and become by homage the "man" of another. the norman chieftains claimed to be peers of the monarch, and to sit in the councils of the nation, as barons-by-tenure and not by patent. this was a decided innovation upon the usages of the anglo-saxons, and ultimately converted the parliament, the folc-gemot, into two branches. those who accompanied the king stood in the same position as the companions of romulus, they were the patricians; those subsequently called to the councils of the sovereign by patent corresponded with the roman nobiles. no such patents were issued by any of the norman monarchs. but the insolence of the norman nobles led to the attempt made by the successors of the conqueror to revive the saxon earldoms as a counterpoise. the weakness of stephen enabled the greater fudges to fortify their castles, and they set up claims against the crown, which aggravated the discord that arose in subsequent reigns. the "saxon chronicles," p. , thus describes the oppressions of the nobles, and the state of england in the reign of stephen: "they grievously oppressed the poor people with building castles, and when they were built, filled them with wicked men, or rather devils, who seized both men and women who they imagined had any money, threw them into prison, and put them to more cruel tortures than the martyrs ever endured; they suffocated some in mud, and suspended others by the feet, or the head, or the thumbs, kindling fires below them. they squeezed the heads of some with knotted cords till they pierced their brains, while they threw others into dungeons swarming with serpents, snakes, and toads." the nation was mapped out, and the owners' names inscribed in the doomsday book. there were no unoccupied lands, and had the possessors been loyal and prudent, the sovereign would have had no lands, save his own private domains, to give away, nor would the industrious have been able to become tenants-in-fee. the alterations which have taken place in the possession of land since the composition of the book of doom, have been owing to the disloyalty or extravagance of the descendants of those then found in possession. notwithstanding the vast loss of life in the contests following upon the invasion, the population of england increased from , , in , when william landed, to , , in , when the great-grandson of the conqueror ascended the throne, and the first of the plantagenets ruled in england. v. the plantagenets. whatever doubts may exist as to the influence of the norman conquest upon the mass of the people--the freemen, the ceorls, and the serfs--there can be no doubt that its effect upon the higher classes was very great. it added to the existing feudalism--the system of baronage, with its concomitants of castellated residences filled with armed men. it led to frequent contests between neighboring lords, in which the liberty and rights of the freemen were imperilled. it also eventuated in the formation of a distinct order-the peerage--and for a time the constitutional influence of the assembled people, the folc-gemot, was overborne. the principal norman chieftains were barons in their own country, and they retained that position in england, but their holdings in both were feudal, not hereditary. when the crown, originally elective, became hereditary, the barons sought to have their possessions governed by the same rule, to remove them from the class of terraregis (folc-land), and to convert them into chartered land. being gifts from the monarch, he had the right to direct the descent, and all charters which gave land to a man and his heirs, made each of them only a tenant for life; the possessor was bound to hand over the estate undivided to the heir, and he could neither give, sell, nor bequeath it. the land was beneficia, just as appointments in the church, and reverted, as they do, to the patron to be re-granted. they were held upon military service, and the major barons, adopting the saxon title earl, claimed to be peers of the monarch, and were called to the councils of the state as barons-by-tenure. in reply to a quo warranto, issued to the earl of surrey, in the reign of edward i., he asserted that his ancestors had assisted william in gaining england, and were equally entitled to a share of the spoils. "it was," said he, "by their swords that his ancestors had obtained their lands, and that by his he would maintain his rights." the same monarch required the earls of hereford and norfolk to go over with his army to guienne, and they replied, "the tenure of our lands does not require us to do so, unless the king went in person." the king insisted; the earls were firm. "by god, sir earl," said edward to hereford, "you shall go or hang." "by god, sir king," replied the earl, "i will neither go nor hang." the king submitted and forgave his warmth. the struggle between the nobles and the crown commenced, and was continued, under varying circumstances. each of the barons had a large retinue of armed men under his own command, and the crown was liable to be overborne by a union of ambitious nobles. at one time the monarch had to face them at runnymede and yield to their demands; at another he was able to restrain them with a strong hand. the church and the barons, when acting in union, proved too strong for the sovereign, and he had to secure the alliance of one of these parties to defeat the views of the other. the barons abused their power over the freemen, and sought to establish the rule "that every man must have a lord," thus reducing them to a state of vassalage. king john separated the barons into two classes--major and minor; the former should have at least thirteen knights' fees and a third part; the latter remained country gentlemen. the th henry iii., cap. and , was passed to secure the rights of freemen, who were disturbed by the great lords, and gave them an appeal to the king's courts of assize. bracton, an eminent lawyer who wrote in the time of henry iii., says: "the king hath superiors--viz., god and the law by which he is made king; also his court--viz., his earls and barons. earls are the king's associates, and he that hath an associate hath a master; and therefore, if the king be unbridled, or (which is all one) without law, they ought to bridle him, unless they will be unbridled as the king, and then the commons may cry, lord jesus, pity us," etc. an eminent lawyer, time of edward i., writes: "although the king ought to have no equal in the land, yet because the king and his commissioners can be both judge and party, the king ought by right to have companions, to hear and determine in parliament all writs and plaints of wrongs done by the king, the queen, or their children." these views found expression in the coronation oath. edward ii. was forced to swear: "will you grant and keep, and by your oath confirm to the people of england the laws and customs to them, granted by the ancient kings of england, your righteous and godly predecessors; and especially to the clergy and people, by the glorious king st. edward, your predecessor?" the king's answer--"i do them grant and promise." "do you grant to hold and keep the laws and rightful customs which the commonalty of your realm shall have chosen, and to maintain and enforce them to the honor of god after your power?" the king's answer--"i this do grant and promise." i shall not dwell upon the event most frequently quoted with reference to the era of the plantagenets--i mean king john's "magna charta." it was more social than territorial, and tended to limit the power of the crown, and to increase that of the barons. the plantagenets had not begun to call commons to the house of lords. the issue of writs was confined to those who were barons-by-tenure, the patricians of the norman period. the creation of nobles was the invention of a later age. the baron feasted in his hall, while the slave grovelled in his cabin. bracton, the famous lawyer of the time of henry iii., says: "all the goods a slave acquired belonged to his master, who could take them from him whenever he pleased," therefore a man could not purchase his own freedom. "in the same year, ," says the annals of dunstable, "we sold our slave by birth, william fyke, and all his family, and received one mark from the buyer." the only hope for the slave was, to try and get into one of the walled towns, when he became free. until the wars of the roses, these serfs were greatly harassed by their owners. in the reign of edward i., efforts were made to prevent the alienation of land by those who received it from the norman sovereigns. the statute of mortmain was passed to restrain the giving of lands to the church, the statute de donis to prevent alienation to laymen. the former declares: "that whereas religious men had entered into the fees of other men, without license and will of the chief lord, and sometimes appropriating and buying, and sometimes receiving them of gift of others, whereby the services that are due of such fee, and which, in the beginning, were provided for the defence of the realm, are wrongfully withdrawn, and the chief lord do lose the escheats of the same (the primer seizin on each life that dropped); it therefore enacts: that any such lands were forfeited to the lord of the fee; and if he did not take it within twelve months, it should be forfeited to the king, who shall enfeoff other therein by certain services to be done for us for the defence of the realm." another act, the th edward i., cap. , provides: "that alienation by the tenant in courtesy was void, and the heir was entitled to succeed to his mother's property, notwithstanding the act of his father." the th edward i., cap. , enacts: "that if the abbot, priors, and keepers of hospitals, and other religious houses, aliened their land they should be seized upon by the king." the th edward i., cap. , de donis conditionalitiis, provided: "that tenements given to a man, and the heirs of his body, should, at all events, go to the issue, if there were any; or, if there were none, should revert to the donor." but while the fiefs of the crown were forbidden to alien their lands, the freemen, whose lands were odhal (noble) and of saxon descent, the inheritance of which was guaranteed to them by william i. (ante, p. ), were empowered to sell their estates by the statute called quia emptores ( edward i.). it enacts: "that from henceforth it shall be lawful to every freemen to sell, at his own pleasure, his lands and tenements, or part of them: so that the feoffee shall hold the same lands and tenements of the chief lord of the fee by such customs as his feoffee held before." the scope of these laws was altered in the reign of edward iii. that monarch, in view of his intended invasion of france, secured the adhesion of the landowners, by giving them power to raise money upon and alien their estates. the permission was as follows, edward iii., cap. : "whereas divers people of the realm complain themselves to be grieved because that lands and tenements which be holden of the king in chief, and aliened without license, have been seized into the king's hand, and holden as forfeit: ( .) the king shall not hold them as forfeit in such case, but will and grant from henceforth of such lands and tenements so aliened, there shall be reasonable fine taken in chancery by due process." edward iii., cap. : "whereas divers have complained that they be grieved by reason of purchasing of lands and tenements, which have been holden of the king's progenitors that now is, as of honors; and the same lands have been taken into the king's hands, as though they had been holden in chief of the king as of his crown: ( .) the king will that from henceforth no man be grieved by any such purchase." de lolme, chap. iii., sec. , remarks on these laws that they took from the king all power of preventing alienation or of purchase. they left him the reversionary right on the failure of heirs. these changes in the relative power of the sovereign and the nobles took place to enable edward to enter upon the conquest of france; but that monarch, conferred a power upon the barons, which was used to the detriment of his descendants, and led to the dethronement of the plantagenets. the line of demarcation between the two sets of titles, those derived through the anglo-saxon laws and those derived through the grants of the norman sovereigns, was gradually being effaced. the people looked back to the laws of edward the confessor, and forced them upon edward ii. but after passing the laws which prevented nobles from selling, and empowering freemen to do so, edward iii. found it needful to assert his claims to the entire land of england, and enacted in the twenty-fourth year of his reign: "that the king is the universal lord and original proprietor of all land in his kingdom; that no man doth or can possess, any part of it but what has mediately or immediately been derived as a gift from him to be held on feodal service." those who obtained gifts of land, only held or had the use of them; the ownership rested in the crown. feodal service, the maintenance of armed men, and the bringing them into the field, was the rent paid. the wealth which came into england after the conquest of france influenced all classes, but none more than the family of the king. his own example seems to have affected his descendants. the invasion of france and the captivity of its king reappear in the invasion of england by henry iv., and the capture and dethronement of richard ii. the prosperity of england during the reign of edward had passed away in that of his grandson. very great distress pervaded the land, and it led to efforts to get rid of villeinage. the st richard ii. recites: "that grievous complaints had been made to the lords and commons, that villeins and land tenants daily withdraw into cities and towns, and a special commission was appointed to hear the case, and decide thereon." the complaint was renewed, and appears in act richard ii., cap. : "whereas divers villeins and serfs, as well of the great lords as of other people, as well spiritual as temporal, do fly within the cities, towns, and places entfranched, as the city of london, and other like, and do feign divers suits against their lords, to the intent to make them free by the answer of the lords, it is accorded and assented that the lords and others shall not be forebound of their villeins, because of the answer of the lords." serfdom or slavery may have existed previous to the anglo-saxon invasion, but i am disposed to think that the saxon, the jutes, and the angles reduced the inhabitants of the lands which they conquered, into serfdom. the history of that period shows that men, women, and children were constantly sold, and that there were established markets. one at bristol, which was frequented by irish buyers, was put down, owing to the remonstrance of the bishop. after the norman invasion the name of villein, a person attached to the villa, was given to the serfs. the village was their residence. occasional instances of enfranchisement took place; the word signified being made free, and at that time every freeman was entitled to a vote. the word enfranchise has latterly come to bear a different meaning, and to apply solely to the possession of a vote, but it originally meant the elevation of a serf into the condition of a freeman. the act of enfranchisement was a public ceremony usually performed at the church door. the last act of ownership performed by the master was the piercing of the right ear with an awl. many serfs fled into the towns, where they were enfranchised and became freemen. the disaffection of the common people increased; they were borne down with oppression. they struggled against their masters, and tried to secure their personal liberty, and the freedom of their land. the population rose in masses in the reign of richard ii., and demanded-- st. the total abolition of slavery for themselves and their children forever; d. the reduction of the rent of good land to d. per acre; d. the right of buying and selling, like other men, in markets and fairs; th. the pardon of all offences. the monarch acted upon insidious advice; he spoke them fair at first, to gain time, but did not fulfil his promises. ultimately the people gained part of their demands. to limit or defeat them, an act was passed, fixing the wages of laborers to d. per day, with meat and drink, or d. per day, without meat and drink, and others in proportion; but with the proviso, that if any one refused to serve or labor on these terms, every justice was at liberty to send him to jail, there to remain until he gave security to serve and labor as by law required. a subsequent act prevents their being employed by the week, or paid for holidays. previous to this period, the major barons and great lords tilled their land by serfs, and had very large flocks and herds of cattle. on the death of the bishop of winchester, , his executors delivered to bishop wykeham, his successor in the see, the following: draught horses, head of cattle, wedders, ewes, and lambs. tillage was neglected; and in there was a severe dearth; wheat sold at a price equal to l per quarter, the brewing of ale was discontinued by proclamation, in order "to prevent those of middle rank from perishing for want of food." the dissensions among the descendants of edward iii. as to the right to the crown aided the nobles in their efforts to make their estates hereditary, and the civil wars which afflicted the nation tended to promote that object. kings were crowned and discrowned at the will of the nobles, who compelled the freemen to part with their small estates. the oligarchy dictated to the crown, and oppressed and kept down the freemen. the nobles allied themselves with the serfs, who were manumitted that they might serve as soldiers in the conflicting armies. from the conquest to the time of richard ii., only barons-by-tenure, the descendants of the companions of the conqueror, were invited by writ to parliament. that monarch made an innovation, and invited others who were not barons-by-tenure. the first dukedom was created the th of edward iii., and the first viscount the th henry vi. edward iv. seized upon the lands granted by former kings, and gave them to his own followers, and thus created a feeling of uneasiness in the minds of the nobility, and paved the way for the events which were accomplished by a succeeding dynasty. the decision in the taltarum case opened the question of succession; and edward's efforts to put down retainers was the precursor of the tudor policy. we have a picture of the state of society in the reign of edward iv. in the paston memoirs, written by margaret paston. her husband, john paston, was heir to sir john fastolf. he was bound by the will to establish in caister castle, fastolf s own mansion, a college of religious men to pray for his benefactor's soul. but in those days might was right, and the duke of norfolk, fancying that he should like the house for himself, quietly took possession of it. at that time, edward was just seated on the throne, and edward had just been reported to paston to have said in reference to another suit, that "he would be your good lord therein as he would to the poorest man in england. he would hold with you in your right; and as for favor, he will not be understood that he shall show favor more to one man to another, not to one in england." this was a true expression of the king's intentions. but either he was changeable in his moods, or during these early years he was hardly settled enough on the throne always to be able to carry out his wishes. this time, however, in some way or another, the great duke was reduced to submission, and caister was restored to paston. in a new claimant appeared; and claimants, though as troublesome in the fifteenth as the nineteenth century, proceeded in a different fashion. this time it was the duke of suffolk, who asserted a right to the manor of drayton in his own name, and who had bought up the assumed rights of another person to the manor of hellesdon. john paston was away, and his wife had to bear the brunt. an attempt to levy rent at drayton was followed by a threat from the duke's men, that if her servants "ventured to take any further distresses at drayton, even if it were but of the value of a pin, they would take the value of an ox in hellesdon." paston and the duke alike professed to be under the law. but each was anxious to retain that possession which in those days seems really to have been nine points of the law. the duke got hold of drayton, while hellesdon was held for paston. one day paston's men made a raid upon drayton, and carried off seventy-seven head of cattle. another day the duke's bailiff came to hellesdon with men to see if the place were assailable. two servants of paston, attempting to keep a court at drayton in their master's name, were carried off by force. at last the duke mustered his retainers and marched against hellesdon. the garrison, too weak to resist, at once surrendered. "the duke's men took possession, and set john paston's own tenants to work, very much against their wills, to destroy the mansion and break down the walls of the lodge, while they themselves ransacked the church, turned out the parson, and spoiled the images. they also pillaged very completely every house in the village. as for john paston's own place, they stripped it completely bare; and whatever there was of lead, brass, pewter, iron, doors or gates, or other things that they could not conveniently carry off, they hacked and hewed them to pieces. the duke rode through hellesdon to drayton the following day, while his men were still busy completing the wreck of destruction by the demolition of the lodge. the wreck of the building, with the rents they made in its walls, is visible even now" (introd. xxxv.). the meaning of all this is evident. we have before us a state of society in which the anarchical element is predominant. but it is not pure anarchy. the nobles were determined to reduce the middle classes to vassalage. the reign of the plantagenets witnessed the elevation of the nobility. the descendants of the norman barons menaced, and sometimes proved too powerful for the crown. in such reigns as those of edward i., edward iii., and henry vi., the barons triumphed. the power wielded by the first edward fell from the feeble grasp of his son and successor. the beneficent rule of edward iii. was followed by the anarchy of richard ii. success led to excess. the triumphant party thinned the ranks of its opponents, and in turn experienced the same fate. the fierce struggle of the red and white roses weakened each. guy, earl of warwick, "the king-maker," sank overpowered on the field of tewkesbury, and with him perished many of the most powerful of the nobles. the jealousy of richard iii. swept away his own friends, and the bloody contest on bosworth field destroyed the flower of the nobility. the sun of the plantagenets went down, leaving the country weak and impoverished, from a contest in which the barons sought to establish their own power, to the detriment alike of the crown and the freemen. the latter might have exclaimed: "till half a patriot, half a coward, grown, we fly from meaner tyrants to the throne." the long contest terminated in the defeat alike of the crown and the nobles, but the nation suffered severely from the struggle. the rule of this family proved fatal to the interest of a most important class, whose rights were jealously guarded by the normans. the liberi homines, the freemen, who were odhal occupiers, holding in capite from the sovereign, nearly disappeared in the wars of the roses. monarchs who owed their crown to the favor of the nobles were too weak to uphold the rights of those who held directly from the crown, and who, in their isolation, were almost powerless. the term freeman, originally one of the noblest in the land, disappeared in relation to urban tenures, and was applied solely to the personal rights of civic burghers; instead thereof arose the term freeholder from free hold, which was originally a grant free from all rent, and only burdened with military service. the term was subsequently applied to land held for leases for lives as contradistinguished from leases for years, the latter being deemed base tenures, and insufficient to qualify a man to vote; the theory being that no man was free whose tenure could be disturbed during his life. though the liberi homines or freemen were, as a class, overborne in this struggle, and reduced to vassalage, yet their descendants were able, under the leadership of cromwell, to regain some of the rights and influence of which they had been despoiled under the plantagenets. fortescue, lord chief-justice to henry vi., thus describes the condition of the english people: "they drunk no water, unless it be that some for devotion, and upon a rule of penance, do abstain from other drink. they eat plentifully of all kinds of flesh and fish. they wear woollen cloth in all their apparel. they have abundance of bed covering in their houses, and all other woollen stuff. they have great store of all implements of household. they are plentifully furnished with all instruments of husbandry, and all other things that are requisite to the accomplishment of a great and wealthy life, according to their estates and degrees." this flattering picture is not supported by the existing disaffection and the repeated applications for redress from the serfs and the smaller farmers, and the simple fact that the population had increased under the normans--a period of years--from , , to , , , while under the plantagenets--a period of years--it only increased to , , , the addition to the population in that period being only , . the average increase in the former period was nearly , per annum, while in the latter it did not much exceed per annum. this goes far to prove the evil from civil wars, and the oppression of the oligarchy. vi. the tudors the protracted struggle of the plantagenets left the nation in a state of exhaustion. the nobles had absorbed the lands of the freemen, and had thus broken the backbone of society. they had then entered upon a contest with the crown to increase their own power; and to effect their selfish objects, setup puppets, and ranged under conflicting banners, but the nemesis followed. the wars of the roses destroyed their own power, and weakened their influence, by sweeping away the heads of the principal families. the ambition of the nobles failed of its object, when "the last of the barons" lay gory in his blood on the field of tewkesbury. the wars were, however, productive of one national benefit, in virtually ending the state of serfdom to which the aborigines were reduced by the scandinavian invasion. the exhaustion of the nation prepared the way to changes of a most radical character, and the reigns of the tudors are characterized by greater innovations and more striking alterations than even those which followed the accession of the normans. henry of richmond came out of the field of bostworth a vistor, and ascended the throne of a nation whose leading nobles had been swept away. the sword had vied with the axe. henry vii. was prudent and cunning; and in the absence of any preponderating oligarchical influence, planted the heel of the sovereign upon the necks of the nobles. he succeeded where the plantagenets had failed. his accession became the advent of a series of measures which altered most materially the system of landholding. the wars of the roses showed that the power of the nobles was too great for the comfort of the monarch. the decision in taltarum's case, in the reign of edward iv., affected the entire system of entail. land, partly freed from restrictions, passed into other hands. but henry went further. he destroyed their physical influence by ridigly putting down retainer; and in one of his tours, while partaking of the hospitality of the earl of oxford, he fined him l , for having greeted him with of his tenants in livery. the rigid enforcement of the laws passed against retainers in former reigns, but now made more penal, strengthened the king and reduced the power of the nobles. their estates were relieved of a most onerous charge, and the lands freed from the burden of supporting the army of the state. henry vii. had thus a large fund to give away; the rent of the land granted in knights' service virtually consisted of two separate funds--one part went to the feudee, as officer or commmandant, the other to the soldiery or vassals. the latter part belonged to the state. had henry applied it to the reestablishment of the class of freemen (liberi homines), as was recently done by the emperor of russia when he abolished serfdom, he would have created a power on which the crown and the constitution could rely. this might have been done by converting the holdings of the men-at-arms into allodial estates, held direct from the crown. such an arrangement would have left the income of the feudee unimpaired, as it would only have applied the fund that had been paid to the men-at-arms to this purpose; and by creating out of that land a number of small estates held direct from the crown, the misery that arose from the eviction and destruction of a most meritorious class, would have been avoided. vagrancy, with its great evils, would have been prevented, and the passing of the poor laws would have been unnecessary. unfortunately henry and his counsellors did not appreciate the consequence of the suppression of retainers and liveries. by the course he adopted to secure the influence of the crown, he compensated the nobles, but destroyed the agricultural middle class. this change had an important and, in some respects, a most injurious effect upon the condition of the nation, and led to enactments of a very extraordinary character, which i must submit in detail, inasmuch as i prefer giving the ipsissima verba of the statute-book to any statement of my own. to make the laws intelligible, i would remind you that the successful efforts of the nobles had, during the three centuries of plantagenet rule, nearly obliterated the liberi homines (whose rights the norman conqueror had sedulously guarded), and had reduced them to a state of vassalage. they held the lands of their lord at his will, and paid their rent by military service. when retainers were put down, and rent or knights' service was no longer paid with armed men, their occupation was gone. they were unfit for the mere routine of husbandry, and unprovided with funds for working their farms. the policy of the nobles was changed. it was no longer their object to maintain small farmsteads, each supplying its quota of armed men to the retinue of the lord; and it was their interest to obtain money rents. then commenced a struggle of the most fearful character. the nobles cleared their lands, pulled down the houses, and displaced the people. vagrancy, on a most unparalleled scale, took place. henry vii., to check this cruel, unexpected, and harsh outcome of his own policy, resorted to legislation, which proved nearly ineffectual. as early as the fourth year of his reign these efforts commenced with an enactment (cap. ) for keeping up houses and encouraging husbandry; it is very quaint, and is as follows: "the king, our sovereign lord, having singular pleasure above all things to avoid such enormities and mischiefs as be hurtful and prejudicial to the commonwealth of this his land and his subjects of the same, remembereth that, among other things, great inconvenience daily doth increase by dissolution, and pulling down, and wilful waste of houses and towns within this his realm, and laying to pasture lands, which continually have been in tilth, whereby idleness, the ground and beginning of all mischief, daily do increase; for where, in some towns persons were occupied, and lived by those lawful labors, now there be occupied two or three herdsmen, and the residue full of idleness. the husbandry, which is one of the greatest commodities of the realm, is greatly decayed. churches destroyed, the service of god withdrawn, the bodies there buried not prayed for, the patrons and curates wronged, the defence of the land against outward enemies feebled and impaired, to the great displeasure of god, the subversion of the policy and good rule of this land, if remedy be not hastily therefor purveyed: wherefore, the king, our sovereign lord, by the assent and advice, etc., etc., ordereth, enacteth, and establisheth that no person, what estate, degree, or condition he be, that hath any house or houses, that at any time within the past three years hath been, or that now is, or heretofore shall be, let to farm with twenty acres of land at least, or more, laying in tillage or husbandry; that the owners of any such house shall be bound to keep, sustain, and maintain houses and buildings, upon the said grounds and land, convenient and necessary for maintaining and upholding said tillage and husbandry; and if any such owner or owners of house or house and land take, keep, and occupy any such house or house and land in his or their own hands, that the owner of the said authority be bound in likewise to maintain houses and buildings upon the said ground and land, convenient and necessary for maintaining and upholding the said tillage and husbandry. on their default, the king, or the other lord of the fee, shall receive half of the profits, and apply the same in repairing the houses; but shall not gain the freehold thereby." this act was preceded by one with reference to the isle of wight, henry vii., cap. , passed the same session, which recites that it is so near france that it is desirable to keep it in a state of defence. it provides that no person shall have more than one farm, and enacts: "for remedy, it is ordered and enacted that no manner of person, of what estate, degree, or condition soever, shall take any farm more than one, whereof the yearly rent shall not exceed ten marks; and if any several leases afore this time have been made to any person or persons of divers and sundry farmholds whereof the yearly value shall exceed that sum, then the said person or persons shall choose one farm, hold at his pleasure, and the remnant of the leases shall be void." mr. froude remarks (history, p. ), "an act, tyrannical in form, was singularly justified by its consequences. the farm-houses were rebuilt, the land reploughed, the island repeopled; and in , when the french army of , men attempted to effect a landing at st. helens, they were defeated and driven back by the militia, and a few levies transported from hampshire and the surrounding counties." lord bacon, in his "history of the reign of henry vii., says: "enclosures, at that time, began to be more frequent, whereby arable land (which could not be manured without people and families) was turned into pasture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen; and tenancies for years, lives, and at will (whereupon much of the yeomanry lived) were turned into demesnes. this bred a decay of people and (by consequence) a decay of towns, churches, tithes, and the like. the king, likewise, knew full well, and in nowise forgot, that there ensued withal upon this a decay and diminution of subsidies and taxes; for the more gentlemen, ever the lower books of subsidies. in remedying of this inconvenience, the king's wisdom was admirable, and the parliaments at that time. enclosures they would not forbid, for that had been to forbid the improvement of the patrimony of the kingdom; nor tillage they would not compel, for that was to strive with nature and utility; but they took a course to take away depopulating enclosures and depopulating pasturage, and yet not by that name, or by any imperious express prohibition, but by consequence. the ordinance was, that all houses of husbandry, that were used with twenty acres of ground and upward, should be maintained and kept up for ever, together with a competent proportion of land to be used and occupied with them; and in nowise to be severed from them, as by another statute made afterward in his successor's time, was more fully declared: this, upon forfeiture to be taken, not by way of popular action, but by seizure of the land itself, by the king and lords of the fee, as to half the profits, till the houses and land were restored. by this means the houses being kept up, did of necessity enforce a dweller; and the proportion of the land for occupation being kept up, did of necessity enforce that dweller not to be a beggar or cottager, but a man of some substance, that might keep hinds and servants, and set the plough a-going. this did wonderfully concern the might and mannerhood of the kingdom, to have farms, as it were, of a standard sufficient to maintain an able body out of penury, and did, in effect, amortise a great part of the lands of the kingdom unto the hold and occupation of the yeomanry or middle people, of a condition between gentlemen and cottagers or peasants. now, how much this did advance the military power of the kingdom, is apparent by the true principles of war, and the examples of other kingdoms. for it hath been held by the general opinion of men of best judgment in the wars (howsoever some few have varied, and that it may receive some distinction of case), that the principal strength of an army consisteth in the infantry or foot. and to make good infantry, it requireth men bred, not in a servile or indigent fashion, but in some free and plentiful manner. therefore, if a state run most to noblemen and gentlemen, and that the husbandman and ploughman be but as their workfolks and laborers, or else mere cottagers (which are but housed beggars), you may have a good cavalry, but never good stable bands of foot; like to coppice woods, that if you leave in them standing too thick, they will run to bushes and briars, and have little clean underwood. and this is to be seen in france and italy, and some other parts abroad, where in effect all is nobles or peasantry. i speak of people out of towns, and no middle people; and therefore no good forces of foot: insomuch as they are enforced to employ mercenary bands of switzers and the like for their battalions of foot, whereby also it comes to pass, that those nations have much people and few soldiers. whereas the king saw that contrariwise it would follow, that england, though much less in territory, yet should have infinitely more soldiers of their native forces than those other nations have. thus did the king secretly sow hydra's teeth; whereupon (according to the poet's fiction) should rise up armed men for the service of this kingdom." the enactment above quoted was followed by others in that reign of a similar character, but it would appear they were not successful. the evil grew apace. houses were pulled down, farms went out of tillage. the people, evicted from their farms, and having neither occupation nor means of living, were idle, and suffering. succeeding sovereigns strove also to check this disorder? and statute after statute was passed. among them are the th henry viii., cap. . it recites: "that great inconveniency did daily increase by dissolution, pulling down, and destruction of houses, and laying to pasture, lands which customarily had been manured and occupied with tillage and husbandry, whereby idleness doth increase; for where, in some town-lands, hundreds of persons and their ancestors, time out of mind, were daily occupied with sowing of corn and graynes, breeding of cattle, and other increase of husbandry, that now the said persons and their progeny are disunited and decreased. it further recites the evil consequences resulting from this state of things, and provides that all these buildings and habitations shall be re-edificed and repaired within one year; and all tillage lands turned into pasture shall be again restored into tillage; and in default, half the value of the lands and houses forfeited to the king, or lord of the fee, until they were re-edificed. on failure of the next lord, the lord above him might seize." this act did not produce that increased tilth which was anticipated. farmers' attention was turned to sheepbreeding; and in order to supply the deficiency of cattle, an act was passed in the st henry viii., to enforce the rearing of calves; and every farmer was, under a penalty of s. d. (about l of our currency), compelled to rear all his calves for a period of three years; and in the th henry viii. the act was further continued for two years. the culture of flax and hemp was also encouraged by legislation. the th henry viii., cap. , requires every person occupying land apt for tillage, to sow a quarter of an acre of flax or hemp for every sixty acres of land, under a penalty of s. d. the profit which arose from sheep-farming led to the depasturage of the land; and in order to check it, an act, henry viii., cap. , was passed. it commences thus: "forasmuch as divers and sundry persons of the king's subjects of this realm, to whom god of his goodness hath disposed great plenty and abundance of movable substance, now of late, within few years, have daily studied, practised, and invented ways and means how they might gather and accumulate together into few hands, as well great multitude of farms, as great plenty of cattle and in especial sheep, putting such lands as they can get to pasture and not to tillage: whereby they have not only pulled down churches and towns, and enhanced the old rates of the rents of possessions of this realm, or else brought it to such excessive fines that no poor man is able to meddle with it, but have also raised and enhanced the prices of all manner of corn, cattle, wool, pigs, geese, hens, chickens, eggs, and such commodities almost double above the prices which hath been accustomed, by reason whereof a marvellous multitude of the poor people of this realm be not able to provide meat, drink, and clothes necessary for themselves, their wives, and children, but be so discouraged with misery and poverty, that they fall daily to theft, robbery, and other inconveniences, or pitifully die for hunger and cold; and it is thought by the king's humble and loving subjects, that one of the greatest occasions that moveth those greedy and covetous people so to accumulate and keep in their hands such great portions and parts of the lands of this realm from the occupying of the poor husbandmen, and so use it in pasture and not in tillage, is the great profit that cometh of sheep, which be now come into a few persons' hands, in respect of the whole number of the king's subjects, so that some have , , some , , some , , some , some , and some more or less, by which a good sheep for victual, which was accustomed to be sold for s. d. or s. at most, is now sold for s., s., or s. at the least; and a stone of clothing wool, that in some shire of this realm was accustomed to be sold from d. to d, is now sold for s. or s. d. at the least; and in some counties, where it has been sold for s. d. to s. d., or s. at the most, it is now s. or s. d. at the least, and so arreysed in every part of the realm, which things thus used to be principally to the high displeasure of almighty god, to the decay of the hospitality of this realm, to the diminishing king's people, and the let of the cloth making, whereby many poor people hath been accustomed to be set on work; and in conclusion, if remedy be not found, it may turn to the utter destruction and dissolution of this realm which god defend." it was enacted that no person shall have or keep on lands not their own inheritance more than sheep, under a penalty of s. d. per annum for each sheep; lambs under a year old not to be counted; and that no person shall occupy two farms. further measures appeared needful to prevent the evil; and the th henry viii., cap. , states that the th henry vii., cap. , for keeping houses in repair, and for the tillage of the land, had been enforced on lands holden of the king, but neglected by other lords. it, therefore, enacted that the king shall have the moiety of the profits of lands converted from tillage to pasture, since the passing of the th henry vii., until a proper house is built, and the land returned to tillage; and in default of the immediate lord taking the profits as under that act, the king might take the same. this act extended to the counties of lincoln, nottingham, leicester, warwick, rutland, northampton, bedford, buckingham, oxford, berkshire, isle of wight, hertford, and cambridge. the simple fact was, that those who had formerly paid the rent of their land by service as soldiers were without the capital or means of paying rent in money; they were evicted and became vagrants. henry viii. took a short course with these vagrants, and it is asserted upon apparently good authority that in the course of his reign, thirty-six years, he hanged no less than , persons for vagrancy, or at the rate of per annum. the executions in the reign of his daughter, queen elizabeth, had fallen to from to per annum. henry viii., cap. , gave powers of bequest with regard to land; as it explains the change it effected, i quote it: "that all persons holding land in socage not having any lands holden by knight service of the king in chief, be empowered to devise and dispose of all such socage lands, and in like case, persons holding socage lands of the king in chief, and also of others, and not having the lands holden by knight service, saving to the king, all his right, title, and interest for primer seizin, reliefs, fines for alienations, etc. persons holding lands of the king by knight's service in chief were authorized to devise two third parts thereof, saving to the king wardship, primer seizin, of the third paid, and fines for alienation of the whole lands. persons holding lands by knight's service in chief, and also other lands by knight's service, or otherwise may in like manner devise two third part thereof, saving to the king wardship of the third, and fines for alienation of the whole. persons holding land of others than the king by knight's service, and also holding socage lands, may devise two third parts of the former and the whole of the latter, saving to the lord his wardship of the third part. persons holding lands of the king by knight's service but not in chief, or so holding of the king and others, and also holding socage lands, may in like manner devise two thirds of the former and the whole of the latter, saving to the king the wardship of the third part, and also to the lords; and the king or the other lords were empowered to seize the one third part in case of any deficiency." the th and th henry viii., cap. , was passed to remove some doubts which had arisen as to the former statute; it enacts: "that the words estates of inheritance should only mean estates in fee-simple only, and empowers persons seized of any lands, etc., in fee-simple solely, or in co-partnery (not having any lands holden of knight's service), to devise the whole, except corporations. persons seized in fee-simple of land holden of the king by knight's service may give or devise two thirds thereof, and of his other lands, except corporation, such two thirds to be ascertained by the divisor or by commission out of the court of ward and liveries. the king was empowered to take his third land descended to the heir in the first place, the devise in gift remaining good for the two thirds; and if the land described were insufficient to answer such third, the deficiency should be made up out of the two thirds." "the next attack," remarks sir william blackstone, vol. ii., p. , "which they suffered in order of time was by the statute henry viii., c. , whereby certain leases made by tenants in tail, which do not tend to prejudice the issue, were allowed to be good in law and to bind the issue in tail. but they received a more violent blow the same session of parliament by the construction put upon the statute of fines by the statute henry viii., cap. , which declares a fine duly levied by tenant in tail to be a complete bar to him and his heirs and all other persons claiming under such entail. this was evidently agreeable to the intention of henry vii., whose policy was (before common recovery had obtained their full strength and authority) to lay the road as open as possible to the alienation of landed property, in order to weaken the overgrown power of his nobles. but as they, from the opposite reasons, were not easily brought to consent to such a provision, it was therefore couched in his act under covert and obscure expressions; and the judges, though willing to construe that statute as favorably as possible for the defeating of entailed estates, yet hesitated at giving fines so extensive a power by mere implication when the statute de donis had expressly declared that they should not be a bar to estates-tail. but the statute of henry viii., when the doctrine of alienation was better received, and the will of the prince more implicitly obeyed than before, avowed and established that intention." fitzherbert, one of the judges of the common pleas in the reign of henry viii., wrote a work on surveying and husbandry. it contains directions for draining, clearing, and inclosing a farm, and for enriching the soil and reducing it to tillage. fallowing before wheat was practised, and when a field was exhausted by grain it was allowed to rest. hollingshed estimated the usual return as to bushels of wheat per acre; prices varied very greatly, and famine was of frequent recurrence. leases began to be granted, but they were not effectual to protect the tenant from the entry of purchasers nor against the operation of fictitious recoveries. in the succeeding reigns the efforts to encourage tillage and prevent the clearing of the farms were renewed, and among the enactments passed were the following: edward vi., cap. , for the better maintenance of tillage and increase of corn within the realm, enacts: "that there should be, in the year , as much land, or more, put wholly in tillage as had been at any time since the st henry viii., under a penalty of s. per acre to the king; and in order to secure this, it appoints commissioners, who were bound to ascertain by inquests what land was in tillage and had been converted from tillage into pasture. the commission issued precepts to the sheriffs, who summoned jurors, and the inquests were to be returned, certified, to the court of exchequer. any prosecution for penalties should take place within three years, and the act continues for ten years." and philip and mary, cap. , recites the former acts of henry vii., cap. , etc,, which it enforces. it enacts: "that as some doubts had arisen as to the interpretation of the words twenty acres of land, the act should apply to houses with twenty acres of land, according to the measurement of the ancient statute; and it appoints commissioners to inquire as to all houses pulled down and all land converted from pasture into tillage since the th henry vii. the commissioners were to take security by recognizance from offenders, and to re-edify the houses and re-convert the land into tillage, and to assess the tenants for life toward the repairs. the amount expended under order of the commissioners was made recoverable against the estate, and the occupiers were made liable to their orders; and they had power to commit persons refusing to give security to carry out the act." and philip and mary, cap. , was passed to provide for the increase of milch cattle, and it enacts: "that one milch-cow shall be kept and calf reared for every sixty sheep and ten oxen during the following seven years." the d elizabeth, cap. , confirms the previously quoted acts of henry vii., cap. ; henry viii., cap. ; henry viii., cap. ; henry viii., cap. ; and it enacts: "that all farm-houses belonging to suppressed monasteries should be kept up, and that all lands which had been in tillage for four years successively at any time since the th henry viii., should be kept in tillage under a penalty of s. per acre, which was payable to the heir in reversion, or in case he did not levy it, to the crown." elizabeth, cap. , went further; and in order to provide allotments for the cottagers, many of whom were dispossessed from their land, it provided: "for avoiding the great inconvenience which is found by experience to grow by the erecting and building of great number of cottages, which daily more and more increased in many parts of the realm, it was enacted that no person should build a cottage for habitation or dwelling, nor convert any building into a cottage, without assigning and laying thereto four acres of land, being his own freehold and inheritance, lying near the cottage, under a penalty of l ; and for upholding any such cottages, there was a penalty imposed of s. a month, exception being made as to any city, town, corporation, ancient borough, or market town; and no person was permitted to allow more than one family to reside in each cottage, under a penalty of s. per month." the th elizabeth, cap. , was passed to enforce the observance of these conditions. it provides: "that all lands which had been in tillage shall be restored thereto within three years, except in cases where they were worn out by too much tillage, in which case they might be grazed with sheep; but in order to prevent the deterioriation of the land, it was enacted that the quantity of beeves or muttons sold off the land should not exceed that which was consumed in the mansion-house." in these various enactments of the tudor monarchs we may trace the anxious desire of these sovereigns to repair the mistake of henry vii., and to prevent the depopulation of england. a similar mistake has been made in ireland since , under which the homes of the peasantry have been prostrated, the land thrown out of tillage, and the people driven from their native land. mr. froude has the following remarks upon this legislation: "statesmen (temp. elizabeth) did not care for the accumulation of capital. they desired to see the physical well-being of all classes of the commonwealth maintained in the highest degree which the producing power of the country admitted. this was their object, and they were supported in it by a powerful and efficient majority of the nation. at one time parliament interfered to protect employers against laborers, but it was equally determined that employers should not be allowed to abuse their opportunities; and this directly appears from the th and th elizabeth, by which, on the most trifling appearance of a diminution of the currency, it was declared that the laboring man could no longer live on the wages assigned to him by the act of henry viii.; and a sliding scale was instituted, by which, for the future, wages should be adjusted to the price of food. the same conclusion may be gathered also indirectly fom the acts interfering imperiously with the rights of property where a disposition showed itself to exercise them selfishly. "the city merchants, as i have said, were becoming landowners, and some of them attempted to apply their rules of trade to the management of landed estates. while wages were rated so high, it answered better as a speculation to convert arable land into pasture, but the law immediately stepped in to prevent a proceeding which it regarded as petty treason to the state. self-protection is the first law of life, and the country, relying for its defence on an able-bodied population, evenly distributed, ready at any moment to be called into action, either against foreign invasion or civil disturbance, it could not permit the owners of land to pursue, for their own benefit, a course of action which threatened to weaken its garrisons. it is not often that we are able to test the wisdom of legislation by specific results so clearly as in the present instance. the first attempts of the kind which i have described were made in the isle of wight early in the reign of henry vii. lying so directly exposed to attacks by france, the isle of wight was a place which it was peculiarly important to keep in a state of defence, and the th henry vii., cap. , was passed to prevent the depopulation of the isle of wight, occasioned by the system of large farms." the city merchants alluded to by froude seem to have remembered that from the times of athelwolf, the possession of a certain quantity of land, with gatehouse, church, and kitchen, converted the ceorl (churl) into a thane. it is difficult to estimate the effect which the tudor policy had upon the landholding of england. under the feudal system, the land was held in trust and burdened with the support of the soldiery. henry vii., in order to weaken the power of the nobles, put an end to their maintaining independent soldiery. thus landlords' incomes increased, though their material power was curtailed. it would not have been difficult at this time to have loaded these properties with annual payments equal to the cost of the soldiers which they were bound to maintain, or to have given each of them a farm under the crown, and strict justice would have prevented the landowners from putting into their pockets those revenues which, according to the grants and patents of the conqueror and his successors, were specially devoted to the maintenance of the army. land was released from the conditions with which it was burdened when granted. this was not done by direct legislation but by its being the policy of the crown to prevent "king-makers" arising from among the nobility. the dread of warwick influenced henry. he inaugurated a policy which transferred the support of the army from the lands, which should solely have borne it, to the general revenue of the country. thus he relieved one class at the expense of the nation. yet, when henry was about to wage war on the continent, he called all his subjects to accompany him, under pain of forfeiture of their lands; and he did not omit levying the accustomed feudal charge for knighting his eldest son and for marrying his eldest daughter. the acts to prevent the landholder from oppressing the occupier, and those for the encouragement of tillage, failed. the new idea of property in land, which then obtained, proved too powerful to be altered by legislation. another change in the system of landholding took place in those reigns. lord cromwell, who succeeded cardinal wolsey as minister to henry viii., had land in kent, and he obtained the passing of an act ( henry viii., cap. ) which took his land and that of other owners therein named, out of the custom of gavelkind (gave-all-kind), which had existed in kent from before the norman conquest, and enacted that they should descend according to common law in like manner as lands held by knight's service. the suppression of the religious houses gave the crown the control of a vast quantity of land. it had, with the consent of the crown, been devoted to religion by former owners. the descendants of the donors were equitably entitled to the land, as it ceased to be applied to the trust for which it was given, but the power of the crown was too great, and their claims were refused. had these estates been applied to purposes of religion or education they would have formed a valuable fund for the improvement of the people; but the land itself, as well as the portion of tithes belonging to the religious houses, was conferred upon favorites, and some of the wealthiest nobles of the present day trace their rise and importance to the rewards obtained by their ancestors out of the spoils of these charities. the importance of the measures of the tudors upon the system of land-holding can hardly be exaggerated. an impulse of self-defence led them to lessen the physical force of the oligarchy by relieving the land from the support of the army, and enabling them to convert to their own use the income previously applied to the defence of the realm. this was a bribe, but it brought its own punishment. the eviction of the working farmers, the demolition of their dwellings, the depopulation of the country, were evils of most serious magnitude; and the supplement of the measures which produced such deplorable results was found in the permanent establishment of a taxation for the support of the poor. yet the nation reeled under the depletion produced by previous mistaken legislation, and all classes have been injured by the transfer of the support of the army from the land held by the nobles to the income of the people. side by side, with the measures passed, to prevent the clearing of the land, arose the system of poor laws. previous to the reformation the poor were principally relieved at the religious houses. the destruction of small farms, and the eviction of such masses of the people, which commenced in the reign of henry vii., overpowered the resources of these establishments; their suppression in the reigns of henry viii. and elizabeth aggravated the evil. the indiscriminate and wholesale execution of the poor vagrants by the former monarch only partially removed the evil, and the statute-book is loaded with acts for the relief of the destitute poor. the first efforts were collections in the churches; but voluntary alms proving insufficient, the powers of the churchwardens were extended, and they were directed and authorized to assess the parishioners according to their means, and thus arose a system which, though benevolent in its object, is a slur upon our social arrangements. land, the only source of food, is rightly charged with the support of the destitute. the necessity for such aid arose originally from their being evicted therefrom. the charge should fall exclusively upon the rent receivers, and in no case should the tiller of the soil have to pay this charge either directly or indirectly. it is continued by the inadequacy of wages, and the improvidence engendered by a social system which arose out of injustice, and produced its own penalty. legislation with regard to the poor commenced contemporaneous with the laws against the eviction of the small farmers. i have already recited some of the laws to preserve small holdings; i now pass to the acts meant to compel landholders to provide for those whom they had dispossessed. in the act henry viii., cap. , was passed; it recites: "whereas in all places through the realm of england, vagabonds and beggars have of long time increased, and daily do increase, in great and excessive numbers by the occasion of idleness, the mother and root of all vices, [footnote: see henry vii., cap, , ante, p. , where the same expression occurs, showing that it was throwing the land out of tilth that occasioned pauperism.] whereby hath insurged and sprung, and daily insurgeth and springeth, continual thefts, murders, and other heinous offences and great enormities, to the high displeasure of god, the inquietation and damage of the king and people, and to the marvellous disturbance of the commonweal of the realm." it enacts that justices may give license to impotent persons to beg within certain limits, and, if found begging out of their limits, they shall be set in the stocks. beggars without license to be whipped or set in the stocks. all persons able to labor, who shall beg or be vagrant, shall be whipped and sent to the place of their birth. parishes to be fined for neglect of the constables. henry viii., cap. , continued this act to the end of the ensuing parliament. edward vi., cap. , recites the increase of idle vagabonds, and enacts that all persons loitering or wandering shall be marked with a v, and adjudged a slave for two years, and afterward running away shall become a felon. impotent persons were to be removed to the place where they had resided for three years, and allowed to beg. a weekly collection was to be made in the churches every sunday and holiday after reading the gospel of the day, the amount to be applied to the relief of bedridden poor. and edward vi., cap. , directs the parson, vicar, curate, and church-wardens, to appoint two collectors to distribute weekly to the poor. the people were exhorted by the clergy to contribute; and, if they refuse, then, upon the certificate of the parson, vicar, or curate, to the bishop of the diocese, he shall send for them and induce him or them to charitable ways. and philip and mary, cap. , re-enacts the former, and requires the collectors to account quarterly; and where the poor are too numerous for relief, they were licensed by a justice of the peace to beg. elizabeth, cap. , confirms and renews the former acts, and compels collectors to serve under a penalty of l . persons refusing to contribute their alms shall be exhorted, and, if they obstinately refuse, shall be bound by the bishop to appear at the next general quarter session, and they may be imprisoned if they refuse to be bound. the th elizabeth, cap. , requires the justices of the peace to register all aged and impotent poor born or for three years resident in the parish, and to settle them in convenient habitations, and ascertain the weekly charge, and assess the amount on the inhabitants, and yearly appoint collectors to receive and distribute the assessment, and also an overseer of the poor. this act was to continue for seven years. the th elizabeth, cap. , provides for the employment of the poor. stores of wool, hemp, flax, iron, etc., to be provided in cities and towns, and the poor set to work. it empowered persons possessed of land in free socage to give or devise same for the maintenance of the poor. the th elizabeth, cap. , and the d elizabeth, cap. , extended these acts, and made the assessment compulsory. i shall ask you to compare the date of these several laws for the relief of the destitute poor with the dates of the enactments against evictions. you will find they run side by side. [footnote: the following tables of the acts passed against eviction, and enacting the support of the poor, show that they were contemporaneous: against evictions. henry vii., cap. . henry viii, cap. . henry viii, henry viii, cap. . henry viii, cap. . henry viii, cap. . edward vi., cap. . and philip and mary, cap. . and philip and mary, cap. . elizabeth, cap. . elizabeth, cap. . elizabeth, cap. . enacting poor laws. henry viii., cap. . henry viii., cap. . edward vi., cap. . and edward vi., cap. . and philip and mary, cap. . elizabeth, cap. . elizabeth, cap. . elizabeth, cap. . elizabeth, cap. . elizabeth, cap. .] i have perhaps gone at too great length into detail; but i think i could not give a proper picture of the alteration in the system of landholding or its effects without tracing from the statute-book the black records of these important changes. the suppression of monasteries tended greatly to increase the sufferings of the poor, but i doubt if even these institutions could have met the enormous pressure which arose from the wholesale evictions of the people. the laws of henry vii and henry viii., enforcing the tillage of the land, preceded the suppression of religious houses, and the act of the latter monarch allowing the poor to beg was passed before any steps were taken to close the convents. that measure was no doubt injurious to the poor, but the main evil arose from other causes. the lands of these houses, when no longer applicable to the purpose for which they were given, should have reverted to the heirs of the donors, or have been applied to other religious or educational purposes. the bestowal of them upon favorites, to the detriment alike of the state, the church, the poor, and the ignorant, was an abuse of great magnitude, the effect of which is still felt. the reigns of the tudors are marked with three events affecting the land--viz.: st. relieving it of the support of the army; d. burdening of it with the support of the poor; d. applying the monastic lands to private uses. the abolition of retainers, while it relieved the land of the nobles from the principal charge thereon, did not entirely abolish knight's service. the monarch was entitled to the care of all minors, to aids on the marriage or knighthood of the eldest son, to primerseizin or a year's rent upon the death of each tenant of the crown. these fees were considerable, and were under the care of the court of ward and liveries. the artisan class had, however, grown in wealth, and they were greatly strengthened by the removal from france of large numbers of workmen in consequence of the revocation of the edict of nantes. these prosperous tradespeople became landowners by purchase, and thus tended to replace the liberi homines, or freemen, who had been destroyed under the wars of the nobles, which effaced the landmarks of english society. the liberated serfs attained the position of paid farm-laborers; had the policy of elizabeth, who enacted that each of their cottages should have an allotment of four acres of land, been carried out, it would have been most beneficial to the state. the reign of this family embraced one hundred and eighteen years, during which the increase of the population was about twenty-five per cent. when henry vii. ascended the throne in it was , , , and on the death of queen elizabeth in it had reached , , , the average increase being about per annum. the changes effected in the condition of the farmers' class left the mass of the people in a far worse state at the close than at the commencement of their rule. vii. the stuarts. the accession of the stuarts to the throne of england took place under peculiar circumstances. the nation had just passed through two very serious struggles--one political, the other religious. the land which had been in the possession of religious communities, instead of being retained by the state for educational or religious purposes, had been given to favorites. a new class of ownership had been created--the lay impropriators of tithes. the suppression of retainers converted land into a quasi property. the extension to land of the powers of bequest gave the possessors greater facilities for disposing thereof. it was relieved from the principal feudal burden, military service, but remained essentially feudal as far as tenure was concerned. men were no longer furnished to the state as payment of the knight's fee; they were cleared off the land, to make room for sheep and oxen, england being in that respect about two hundred years in advance of ireland, though without the outlet of emigration. vagrancy and its attendant evils led to the poor law. james i. and his ministers tried to grapple with the altered circumstances, and strove to substitute and equitable crown rent or money payment for the existing and variable claims which were collected by the court of ward and livery. the knight's fee then consisted of twelve plough-lands, a more modern name for "a hide of land." the class burdened with knight's service, or payments in lieu thereof, comprised temporal and spiritual lords, barons, knights, and esquires. the knight's fee was subject to aids, which were paid to the crown upon the marriage of the king's son or daughter. upon the death of the possessor, the crown received primer-seizen a year's rent. if the successor was an infant, the crown under the name of wardship, took the rents of the estates. if the ward was a female, a fine was levied if she did not accept the husband chosen by the crown. fines on alienation were also levied, and the estates, though sold, became escheated, and reverted to the crown upon the failure of issue. these various fines kept alive the principle that the lands belonged to the crown as representative of the nation; but, as they varied in amount, james i. proposed to compound with the tenants-in-fee, and to convert them into fixed annual payments. the nobles refused, and the scheme was abandoned. in the succeeding reign, the attempt to stretch royal power beyond its due limits led to resistance by force, but it was no longer a mere war of nobles; their power had been destroyed by henry vii. the stuarts had to fight the people, with a paid army, and the commons, having the purse of the nation, opposed force to force. the contest eventuated in a military protectorship. many of the principal tenants-in-fee fled the country to save their lives. their lands were confiscated and given away; thus the crown rights were weakened, and charles ii. was forced to recognize many of the titles given by cromwell; he did not dare to face the convulsion which must follow an expulsion of the novo homo in posession of the estates of more ancient families; but legislation went further--it abolished all the remaining feudal charges. the commons appear to have assented to this change, from a desire to lessen the private income of the sovereign, and thus to make him more dependent upon parliament, this was done by the th charles ii., cap. . it enacts: "that the court of ward and liveries, primer seizin, etc., and all fines for alienation, tenures by knight's service, and tenures in capite, be done away with and turned into fee and common socage, and discharged of homage, escuage, aids, and reliefs. all future tenures created by the king to be in free and common socage, reserving rents to the crown and also fines on alienation. it enables fathers to dispose of their children's share during their minority, and gives the custody of the personal estate to the guardians of such child, and imposes in lieu of the revenues raised in the court of ward and liveries, duties upon beer and ale." the land was relieved of its legitimate charge, and a tax on beer and ale imposed instead! the landlords were relieved at the expense of the people. the statute which accomplished this change is described by blackstone as "a greater acquisition to the civil property of this kingdom than even magna charta itself, since that only pruned the luxuriances that had grown out of military tenures, and thereby preserved them in vigor; but the statute of king charles extirpated the whole, and demolished both root and branches." the efforts of james ii. to rule contrary to the wish of the nation, led to his expulsion from the throne, and showed that, in case of future disputes as to the succession, the army, like the praetorian guards of rome, had the election of the monarch. the red and white roses of the plantagenets reappeared under the altered names of whig and tory; but it was proved that the decision of a leading soldier like the duke of marlborough would decide the army, and that it would govern the nation; fortunately the decision was a wise one, and was ratified by parliament: thus force governed law, and the decision of the army influenced the senate. william iii. succeeded, as an elected monarch, under the bill of rights. this remarkable document contains no provision, securing the tenants-in-fee in their estates; and i have not met with any treatise dealing with the legal effects of the eviction of james ii. all patents were covenants between the king and his heirs, and the patentees and their heirs. the expulsion of the sovereign virtually destroyed the title; and an elected king, who did not succeed as heir, was not bound by the patents of his predecessors, nor was william asked, by the bill of rights, to recognize any of the existing titles. this anomalous state of things was met in degree by the statute of prescriptions, but even this did not entirely cure the defect in the titles to the principal estates in the kingdom. the english tenants in decapitating one landlord and expelling another, appear to have destroyed their titles, and then endeavored to renew them by prescriptive right; but i shall not pursue this topic further, though it may have a very definite bearing upon the question of landholding. it may not be uninteresting to allude rather briefly to the state of england at the close of the seventeenth century. geoffrey king, who wrote in , gives the first reliable statistics about the state of the country. he estimated the number of houses at , , , and the average at four to each house, making the population , , . he says there was but seven acres of land for each person, but that england was six times better peopled than the known world, and twice better than europe. he calculated the total income at l , , , of which the yearly rent of land was l , , . the income was equal to l , s. d. per head, and the expense l , s. d.; the yearly increase, s. d. per head, or l , , per annum. he estimated the annual income of temporal peers at l per annum, spiritual peers at l , of baronets at l , and of knights at l . he estimated the area at , , acres (recent surveys make it , , ). he estimated the arable land at , , acres, and pasture and meadow at , , , a total of , , . the area under all kinds of crops and permanent pasture was, in , , , acres; therefore about five and a half million acres have been reclaimed and added to the arable land. as the particulars of his estimate may prove interesting, i append them in a note. [footnote--geoffrey king thus classifies the land of england and wales: acres. value/acre rent arable land, , , l l , , pasture and meadow, , , , , woods and coppices, , , , forests, parks, and covers, , , , moors, mountains, and barren lands, , , , houses, homesteads, gardens, orchards,) , , (the land, , churches, and churchyards, ) (the buildings, , , rivers, lakes, meres, and ponds, , , roadways and waste lands, , ---------- ------- ---------- , , l l , , he estimates the live stock thus: value without the skin beeves, stirks, and calves, , , l l , , sheep and lambs, , , , , swine and pigs, , , , , deer, fawns, goats and kids, , , , horses, , , , , value of skins, , , ----------- l , , the annual produce he estimated as follows: acres rent produce grain, , , l , , l , , hemp, flax, etc., , , , , , butter, cheese, and milk, ) ( , , wool, ) ( , , horses bred, ) ( , flesh meat, )- , , , , -( , , tallow and hides, ) ( , hay consumed, ) ( , , timber, ) ( , , ---------- ----------- ----------- total , , l , , l , , ] he places the rent of the corn land at about one third of the produce, and that of pasture land at rather more. the price of meat per lb. was: beef and / d.; mutton, and / d.; pork, d.; venison, d.; hares, d.; rabbits, d. the weight of flesh-meat consumed was , , lbs., it being lbs. oz. for each person, or and / oz. daily. i shall have occasion to contrast these figures with those lately published when i come to deal with the present; but a great difference has arisen from the alteration in price, which is owing to the increase in the quantity of the precious metals. the reign of the last sovereign of this unfortunate race was distinguished by the first measures to inclose the commons and convert them into private property, with which i shall deal hereafter. the changes effected in the land laws of england during the reigns of the stuarts, a period of years, were very important. the act of charles ii. which abolished the court of ward and liveries, appeared to be an abandonment of the rights of the people, as asserted in the person of the crown; and this alteration also seemed to give color of right to the claim which is set up of property in land, but the following law of edward iii. never was repealed: "that the king is the universal lord and original proprietor of all land in his kingdom, and that no man doth or can possess any part of it but what has mediately or immediately been derived as a gift from him to be held on feodal service." no lawyer will assert for any english subject a higher title than tenancy-in-fee, which bears the impress of holding and denies the assertion of ownership. the power of the nobles, the tenants-in-fee, was strengthened by an act passed in the reign of william and mary, which altered the relation of landlord and tenant. previous thereto, the landlord had the power of distraint, but he merely held the goods he seized to compel the tenant to perform personal service. it would be impossible for a tenant to pay his rent if his stock or implements were sold off the land. as the tudor policy of money payments extended, the greed for pelf led to an alteration in the law, and the act of william and mary allowed the landlord to sell the goods he had distrained. the tenant remained in possession of the land without the means of tilling it, which was opposed to public policy. this power of distraint was, however, confined to holdings in which there were leases by which the tenant covenanted to allow the landlord to distrain his stock and goods in default of payment of rent. the legislation of the stuarts was invariably favorable to the possessor of land and adverse to the rights of the people. the government during the closing reigns was oligarchical, so much so, that william iii., annoyed at the restriction put upon his kingly power, threatened to resign the crown and retire to holland; but the aristocracy were unwilling to relax their claims, and they secured by legislation the rights they appeared to have lost by the deposition of the sovereign. the population had increased from , , in to , , in , being an average increase of less than per annum. viii. the house of hanover. the first sovereign of the house of hanover ascended the throne not by right of descent but by election; the legitimate heir was set aside, and a distant branch of the family was chosen, and the succession fixed by act of parliament; but it is held by jurists that every parliament is sovereign and has the power of repealing any act of any former parliament. the beneficial rule of some of the latter monarchs of this family has endeared them to the people, but the doctrine of reigning by divine right, the favorite idea of the stuarts, is nullified, when the monarch ascends the throne by statute law and not by succession or descent. the age of chivalry passed away when the puritans defeated the cavaliers. the establishment of standing armies and the creation of a national debt, went to show that money, not knighthood or knight's service, gave force to law. the possession of wealth and of rent gave back to their possessors even larger powers than those wrested from them by the first tudor king. the maxim that "what was attached to the freehold belonged to the freehold," gave the landlords even greater powers than those held by the sword, and of which they were despoiled. though nominally forbidden to take part in the election of the representatives of the commons, yet they virtually had the power, the creation of freehold, the substance and material of electoral right; and consequently both houses of parliament were essentially landlord, and the laws, for the century which succeeded the ascension of george i., are marked with the assertion of landlord right which is tenant wrong. among the exhibitions of this influence is an act passed in the reign of george ii., which extended the power of distraint for rent, and the right to sell the goods seized--to all tenancies. previous legislation confined this privilege solely to cases in which there were leases, wherein the tenant, by written contract, gave the landlord power to seize in case of non-payment of rent, but there was no legal authority to sell until it was given by an act passed in the reign of william iii. the act of george ii. presumed that there was such a contract in all cases of parole letting or tenancy-at-will, and extended the landlord's powers to such tenancies. it is an anomaly to find that in the freest country in the world such an arbitrary power is confided to individuals, or that the landlord-creditor has the precedence over all other creditors, and can, by his own act, and without either trial or evidence, issue a warrant that has all the force of the solemn judgment of a court of law; and it certainly appears unjust to seize a crop, the seed for which is due to one man, and the manure to another, and apply it to pay the rent. but landlordism, intrusted with legislative power, took effectual means to preserve its own prerogative, and the form of law was used by parliaments, in which landlord influence was paramount, to pass enactments which were enforced by the whole power of the state, and sustained individual or class rights. the effect of this measure was most unfortunate; it encouraged the letting of lands to tenants-at-will or tenants from year to year, who could not, under existing laws, obtain the franchise or power to vote--they were not freemen, they were little better than serfs. they were tillers of the soil, rent-payers who could be removed at the will of another. they were not even freeholders, and had no political power--no voice in the affairs of the nation. the landlords in parliament gave themselves, individually by law, all the powers which a tenant gave them by contract, while they had no corresponding liability, and, therefore, it was their interest to refrain from giving leases, and to make their tenantry as dependent on them as if they were mere serfs. this law was especially unfortunate, and had a positive and very great effect upon the condition of the farming class and upon the nation, and people came to think that landlords could do as they liked with their land, and that the tenants must be creeping, humble, and servile. an effort to remedy this evil was made in , when the occupiers, if rented or rated at the small amount named, became voters. this gave the power to the holding, not to the man, and the landlord could by simple eviction deprive the man of his vote; hence the tenants-at-will were driven to the hustings like sheep--they could not, and dare not, refuse to vote as the landlord ordered. the lords of the manor, with a landlord parliament, asserted their claims to the commonages, and these lands belonging to the people, were gradually inclosed, and became the possession of individuals. the inclosing of commonages commenced in the reign of queen anne, and was continued in the reigns of all the sovereigns of the house of hanover. the first inclosure act was passed in ; in the following thirty years the average number of inclosure bills was about three each year; in the following fifty years there were nearly forty each year; and in the forty years of the nineteenth century it was nearly fifty per annum. the inclosures in each reign were as follows: acts. acres. queen anne, , george i., , george ii., , george iii., , , george iv., , william iv., , ---- --------- total, , , these lands belonged to the people, and might have been applied to relieve the poor. had they been allotted in small farms, they might have been made the means of support of from , to , , families, and they would have afforded employment and sustenance to all the poor, and thus rendered compulsory taxation under the poor-law system unnecessary; but the landlords seized on them and made the tenantry pay the poor-rate. the british poor law is a slur upon its boasted civilization. the unequal distribution of land and of wealth leads to great riches and great poverty. intense light produces deep shade. nowhere else but in wealthy england do god's creatures die of starvation, wanting food, while others are rich beyond comparison. the soil which affords sustenance for the people is rightly charged with the cost of feeding those who lack the necessaries of life, but the same object would be better achieved in a different way. poor-rates are now a charge upon a man's entire estate, and it would be much better for society if land to an amount equivalent to the charge were taken from the estate and assigned to the poor. if a man is charged with l a year poor-rate, it would make no real difference to him, while it would make a vast difference to the poor to take land to that value, put the poor to work tilling it, allowing them to enjoy the produce. any expense should be paid direct by the landlord, which would leave the charge upon the land, and exempt the improvements of the tenant, which represent his labor, free. the evil has intensified in magnitude, and a permanent army of paupers numbering at the minimum , persons, but increasing at some periods to upward of , , , has to be provided for; the cost, about l , , a year, is paid, not by landlords but by tenants, in addition to the various charities founded by benevolent persons. there are two classes relieved under this system, and which ought to be differently dealt with--the sick and the young. hospitals for the former and schools for the latter ought to take the place of the workhouse. it is difficult to fancy a worse place for educating the young than the workhouse, and it would tend to lessen the evil were the children of the poor trained and educated in separate establishments from those for the reception of paupers. pauperism is the concomitant of large holdings of land and insecurity of tenure. the necessity of such a provision arose, as i have previously shown, from the wholesale eviction of large numbers of the occupiers of land; and, as the means of supplying the need came from the land, the expense should, like tithes, have fallen exclusively upon land. the poor-rates are, however, also levied upon houses and buildings, which represent labor. the owner of land is the people, as represented by the crown, and the charges thereon next in succession to the claims of the state are the church and the poor. the continental wars at the close of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth century had some effect upon the system of tillage; they materially enhanced the price of agricultural produce--rents were raised, and the national debt was contracted, which remains a burden on the nation. the most important change, however, arose from scientific and mechanical discoveries--the application of heat to the production of motive power. as long as water, which is a non-exhaustive source of motion, was used, the people were scattered over the land; or if segregation took place, it was in the neighborhood of running streams. the application of steam to the propulsion of machinery, and the discovery of engines capable of competing with the human hand, led to the substitution of machine-made fabrics for clothing, in place of homespun articles of domestic manufacture. this led to the employment of farm-laborers in procuring coals, to the removal of many from the rural into the urban districts, to the destruction of the principal employment of the family during the winter evenings, and consequently effected a great revolution in the social system. many small freeholds were sold, the owners thinking they could more rapidly acquire wealth by using the money representing their occupancy, in trade. thus the large estates became larger, and the smaller ones were absorbed, while the appearance of greater wealth from exchanging subterranean substances for money, or its representative, gave rise to ostentatious display. the rural population gradually diminished, while the civic population increased. the effect upon the system of landholding was triplicate. first, there was a diminution in the amount of labor applicable to the cultivation of land; second, there was a decrease in the amount of manure applied to the production of food; and lastly, there was an increase in the demand for land as a source of investment, by those who, having made money in trade, sought that social position which follows the possession of broad acres. thus the descendants of the feudal aristocracy were pushed aside by the modern plutocracy. this state of things had a double effect. food is the result of two essential ingredients--land and labor. the diminution in the amount of labor applied to the soil, consequent upon the removal of the laborers from the land, lessened the quantity of food; while the consumption of that food in cities and towns, and the waste of the fertile ingredients which should be restored to the soil, tended to exhaust the land, and led to vast importations of foreign and the manufacture of mineral manures. i shall not detain you by a discussion of this aspect of the question, which is of very great moment, consequent upon the removal of large numbers of people from rural to urban districts; but i may be excused in saying that agricultural chemistry shows that the soil--"perpetual man"--contains the ingredients needful to support human life, and feeding those animals meant for man's use. these ingredients are seized upon by the roots of plants and converted into aliment. if they are consumed where grown, and the refuse restored to the soil, its fertility is preserved; nay, more, the effect of tillage is to increase its productive power. it is impossible to exhaust land, no matter how heavy the crops that are grown, if the produce is, after consumption, restored to the soil. i have shown you how, in the reign of queen elizabeth, a man was not allowed to sell meat off his land unless he brought to, and consumed on it, the same weight of other meat. this was true agricultural and chemical economy. but when the people were removed from country to town, when the produce grown in the former was consumed in the latter, and the refuse which contained the elements of fertility was not restored to the soil, but swept away by the river, a process of exhaustion took place, which has been met in degree by the use of imported and artificial manures. the sewage question is taken up mainly with reference to the health of towns, but it deserves consideration in another aspect--its influence upon the production of food in the nation. an exhaustive process upon the fertility of the globe has been set on foot. the accumulations of vegetable mould in the primeval forests have been converted into grain, and sent to england, leaving permanent barrenness in what should be prolific plains; and the deposits of the chincha and ichaboe islands have been imported in myriads of tons, to replace in our own land the resources of which it is bereft by the civic consumption of rural produce. these conjoined operations were accelerated by the alteration in the british corn laws in , which placed the english farmer, who tried to preserve his land in a state of fertility, in competition with foreign grain--growers, who, having access to boundless fields of virgin soil, grow grain year after year until, having exhausted the fertile element, they leave it in a barren condition, and resort to other parts. a competition under such circumstances resembles that of two men of equal income, one of who appears wealthy by spending a portion of his capital, the other parsimonious by living within his means. of course, the latter has to debar himself of many enjoyments. the british farmer has lessened the produce of grain, and consequently of meat; and the nation has become dependent upon foreigners for meat, cheese, and butter, as well as for bread. this is hardly the place to discuss a question of agriculture, but scientific farmers know that there is a rotation of crops, [footnote: the agricultural returns of the united kingdom show that and / per cent of the arable land was under pasture, per cent under grain, per cent under green crops and bare fallow, and per cent under clover. the rotation would, therefore, be somewhat in this fashion: nearly one fourth of the land in tillage is under a manured crop or fallow, one fourth under wheat, one fourth under clover, and one fourth under barley, oats, etc., the succession being, first year, the manured crop; next year, wheat; third year, clover; fourth, barley or oats; and so on.] and that as one is diminished the others lessen. the quantity under tillage is a multiple of the area under grain. a diminution in corn is followed by a decrease of the extent under turnips and under clover; the former directly affects man, the latter the meat-affording animals. a decrease in the breadth under tillage means an addition to the pasture land, which in this climate only produces meat during the warm portions of the year. i must, however, not dwell upon this topic, but whatever leads to a diminution in the labor applied to the land lessens the production of food, and dear meat may only be the supplement to cheap corn. i shall probably be met with the hackneyed cry, the question is entirely one of price. each farmer and each landlord will ask himself, does it pay to grow grain? and in reply to any such inquiry, i would refer to the annual returns. i find that in the five years, to , wheat ranged from s. d. to s. d.; the average for the entire period being s. d. per quarter. in the five years from to it ranged from s. d. to s. d., the average for the five years being s. d. per quarter. the reduction in price has only been d. per quarter, or less than one half per cent. i venture to think that there are higher considerations than mere profit to individuals, and that, as the lands belong to the whole state as represented by the crown, and as they are held in trust to produce food for the people, that trust should be enforced. the average consumption of grain by each person is about a quarter (eight bushels) per annum. in the population of the united kingdom was , , . the average import of foreign grain was about , , quarters, therefore twenty-four millions were fed on the domestic produce. in the population was , , , and the average importation of grain , , quarters; therefore only eleven and a half millions were supported by home produce. here we are met with the startling fact that our own soil is not now supplying grain to even one half the number of people to whom it gave bread in . this is a serious aspect of the question, and one that should lead to examination, whether the development of the system of landholding, the absorptions of small farms and the creation of large ones, is really beneficial to the state, or tends to increase the supply of food. the area under grain in england in was , , . in it was , , acres, the diminution having been , , acres. the average yield would probably be four quarters per acre, and therefore the decrease amounted to the enormous quantity of eight million quarters, worth l , , , which had to be imported from other countries, to fill up the void, and feed , , of the population; and if a war took place, england may, like rome, be starved into peace. an idea prevails that a diminution in the extent under grain implies an increase in the production of meat. the best answer to that fallacy lies in the great increase in the price of meat. if the supply had increased the price would fall, but the converse has taken place. a comparison of the figures given by geoffrey king, in the reign of william iii., with those supplied by the board of trade in the reign of queen victoria, illustrates this phase of the landholding question, and shows whether the "enlightened policy" of the nineteenth century tends to encourage the fulfilment of the trust which applies to land--the production of food. the land of england and wales in and was classified as follows: . . acres. acres. under grain, , , , , pastures and meadows, , , , , flax, hemp, and madder, , , --------- green crops, --------- , , bare fallow, --------- , clover --------- , , orchards, , , , woods, coppices, etc, , , , , forests, parks, and commons, , , | moors, mountains, and bare land, , , |- , , waste, water, and road, , , | ----------- ----------- , , , , the estimate of may be corrected by lessing the quantity of waste land, and thus bringing the total to correspond with the extent ascertained by actual survey, but it shows a decrease in the extent under grain of nearly two million acres, and an increase in the area applicable to cattle of nearly , , acres; yet there is a decrease in the number of cattle, though an increase in sheep. the returns are as follows: . . . cattle , , , . , , sheep , , , , , , pigs , , (not given) , , the former shows that in there were ten million acres under grain, the latter only eight million acres. two million acres were added for cattle feeding. the former shows that the pasture land was ten million acres, and that green crops and clover were unknown. the latter that there were twelve million acres under pasture, and, in addition, that there were nearly three million acres of green crop and three million acres of clover. the addition to the cattle-feeding land was eight million acres; yet the number of cattle in was , , , and in , , , . of sheep, in , there were , , , and in , , , . the population had increased fourfold, and it is no marvel that meat is dear. it is the interest of agriculturists to keep down the quantity and keep up the price. the diminution in the area under corn was not met by a corresponding increase in live stock--in other words, the decrease of land under grain is not, per se, followed by an increase of meat. if the area under grain were increased, it would be preceded by an increase in the growth of turnips, and followed by a greater growth of clover; and these cattle-feeding products would materially add to the meat supply. a most important change in the system of landholding was effected by the spread of railways. it was brought about by the influence of the trading as opposed to the landlord class. in their inception they did not appear likely to effect any great alteration in the land laws. the shareholders had no compulsory power of purchase, hence enormous sums were paid for the land required; but as the system extended, parliament asserted the ownership of the nation, over land in the possession of the individual. acting on the idea that no man was more than a tenant, the state took the land from the occupier, as well as the tenant-in-fee, and gave it, not at their own price, but an assessed value, to the partners in a railway who traded for their mutual benefit, yet as they offered to convey travellers and goods at a quicker rate than on the ordinary roads, the state enabled them to acquire land by compulsion. a general act, the land clauses act, was passed in , which gives privileges with regard to the acquisition of land to the promoters of such works as railways, docks, canals, etc. numbers of acts are passed every session which assert the right of the state over the land, and transfer it from one man, or set of men, to another. it seems to me that the principle is clear, and rests upon the assertion of the state's ownership of the land; but it has often struck me to ask, why is this application of state rights limited to land required for these objects? why not apply to the land at each side of the railway, the principle which governs that under the railway itself? i consider the production of food the primary trust upon the land, that rapid transit over it is a secondary object; and as all experience shows that the division of land into small estates leads to a more perfect system of tillage, i think it would be of vast importance to the entire nation if all tenants who were, say, five years in possession were made "promoters" under the land clauses act, and thus be enabled to purchase the fee of their holdings in the same manner as a body of railway proprietors. it would be most useful to the state to increase the number of tenants-in-fee--to re-create the ancient freemen, the liberi homines--and i think it can be done without requiring the aid either of a new principle or new machinery, by simply placing the farmer-in-possession on the same footing as the railway shareholder. i give at foot the draft of a bill i prepared in for this object. [footnote: a bill to encourage the outlay of money upon land fob agricultural purposes. whereas it is expedient to encourage the occupiers of land to expend money thereon, in building, drainage, and other similar improvements; and whereas the existing laws do not give the tenants or occupiers any sufficient security for such outlay: be it enacted by the queen's most excellent majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons in parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same: . that all outlay upon land for the purpose of rendering it more productive, and all outlay upon buildings for the accommodation of those engaged in tilling or working the same, or for domestic animals of any sort, be, and the same is hereby deemed to be, an outlay of a public nature. . that the clauses of "the land clauses consolidation act ," "with respect to the purchase of lands by agreement," and "with respect to the purchase and taking of lands otherwise than by agreement," and "with respect to the purchase money or compensation coming to parties having limited interests, or prevented from treating or not making title," shall be, and they are hereby incorporated with this act. . that every tenant or occupier who has for the past five years been in possession of any land, tenements, or hereditaments, shall be considered "a promoter of the undertaking within the meaning of the said recited act, and shall be entitled to purchase the lands which he has so occupied, 'either by agreement' 'or otherwise than by agreement,' as provided in the said recited act." then follow some details which it is unnecessary to recite here.] the th william i. secured to freemen the inheritance of their lands, and they were not able to sell them until the act quia emptores of edward i. was passed. the tendency of persons to spend the representative value of their lands and sell them was checked by the mosaic law, which did not allow any man to despoil his children of their inheritance. the possessor could only mortgage them until the year of jubilee--the fiftieth year. in switzerland and belgium, where the nobles did not entirely get rid of the freemen, the lands continued to be held in small estates. in switzerland there are seventy-four proprietors for every hundred families, and in belgium the average size of the estate is three and a half hectares--about eight acres. these small ownerships are not detrimental to the state. on the contrary, they tend to its security and well-being. i have treated on this subject in my work, "the food supplies of western europe." these small estates existed in england at the norman conquest, and their perpetual continuance was the object of the law of william i., to which i have referred. their disappearance was due to the greed of the nobles during the reign of the plantagenets, and they were not replaced by the tudors, who neglected to restore the men-at-arms to the position they occupied under the laws of edward the confessor and william i. the establishment of two estates in land; one the ownership, the other the use, may be traced to the payment of rent, to the roman commonwealth, for the ager publicus. under the feudal system the rent was of two classes--personal service or money; the latter was considered base tenure. the legislation of the tudors abolished the payment of rent by personal service, and made all rent payable in money or in kind. the land had been burdened with the sole support of the army. it was then freed from this charge, and a tax was levied upon the community. some writers have sought to define rent as the difference between fertile lands and those that are so unproductive as barely to pay the cost of tillage. this far-fetched idea is contradicted by the circumstance that for centuries rent was paid by labor--the personal service of the vassal--and it is now part of the annual produce of the soil inasmuch as land will be unproductive without seed and labor, or being pastured by tame animals, the representative of labor in taming and tending them. rent is usually the labor or the fruits of the labor of the occupant. in some cases it is income derived from the labors of others. a broad distinction exists between the rent of land, which is a portion of the fruits or its equivalent in money, and that of improvements and houses, which is an exchange of the labor of the occupant given as payment for that employed in effecting improvements or erecting houses. the latter described as messuages were valued in at six millions per annum; in they were nearly fifeteen millions; now they are valued at eighty millions. [footnote--a parliamentary return gives the following information as to the value of lands and messuages in and : - . - . lands, l , , l , , messuages, , , , , the increase in the value of land is hardly equal to the reduction in the value of gold, while the increase in messuages shows the enormous expenditure of labor.] the increase represents a sum considerably more than double the national debt of great britain, and under the system of leases the improvements will pass from the industrial to the landlord class. it seems to me to be a mistake in legislation to encourage a system by which these two funds merge into one, and that hands the income arising from the expenditure of the working classes over to the tenants-in-fee without an equivalent. this proceeds from a straining of the maxim that "what is attached to the freehold belongs to the freehold," and was made law when both houses of parliament were essentially landlord. that maxim is only partially true: corn is as much attached to the freehold as a tree; yet one is cut without hindrance and the other is prevented. potatoes, turnips, and such tubers, are only obtained by disturbing the freehold. this maxim was at one time so strained that it applied to fixtures, but recent legislation and modern discussions have limited the rights of the landlord class and been favorable to the occupier, and i look forward to such alterations in our laws as will secure to the man who expends his labor or earnings in improvements, an estate in perpetuo therein, as i think no length of user of that which is a man's own--his labor or earnings--should hand over his representative improvements to any other person. i agree with those writers who maintain that it is prejudicial to the state that the rent fund should be enjoyed by a comparatively small number of persons, and think it would be advantageous to distribute it, by increasing the number of tenants-in-fee. natural laws forbid middlemen, who do nothing to make the land productive, and yet subsist upon the labor of the farmer, and receive as rent part of the produce of his toil. the land belongs to the state, and should only be subject to taxes, either by personal service, such as serving in the militia or yeomanry, or by money payments to the state. land does not represent capital, but the improvements upon it do. a man does not purchase land. he buys the right of possession. in any transfer of land there is no locking up of capital, because one man receives exactly the amount the other expends. the individual may lock up his funds, but the nation does not. capital is not money. i quote a definition from a previous work of mine, "the case of ireland," p. : "capital stock properly signifies the means of subsistence for man, and for the animals subservient to his use while engaged in the process of production. the jurisconsults of former times expressed the idea by the words res fungibiles, by which they meant consumable commodities, or those things which are consumed in their use for the supply of man's animal wants, as contradistinguished from unconsumable commodities, which latter writers, by an extension of the term, in a figurative sense, have called fixed capital." all the money in the bank of england will not make a single four-pound loaf. capital, as represented by consumable commodities, is the product of labor applied to land, or the natural fruits of the land itself. the land does not become either more or less productive by reason of the transfer from one person to another; it is the withdrawal of labor that affects its productiveness. wages are a portion of the value of the products of a joint combination of employer and employed. the former advances from time to time as wages to the latter, the estimated portion of the increase arising from their combined operations to which he may be entitled. this may be either in food or in money. the food of the world for one year is the yield at harvest; it is the capital stock upon which mankind exist while engaged in the operations for producing food, clothing, and other requisites for the use of mankind, until nature again replenishes this store. money cannot produce food; it is useful in measuring the distribution of that which already exists. the grants of the crown were a fee or reward for service rendered; the donee became tenant-in-fee; being a reward, it was restricted to a man and his heirs-male or his heirs-general; in default of heirs-male or heirs-general, the land reverted to the crown, which was the donor. a sale to third parties does not affect this phase of the question, inasmuch as it is a principle of british law that no man can convey to another a greater estate in land than that which he possesses himself; and if the seller only held the land as tenant-in-fee for his own life and that of his heirs, he could not give a purchaser that which belonged to the crown, the reversion on default of heirs (see statute de donis, edward i., ante, p. ). this right of the sovereign, or rather of the people, has not been asserted to the full extent. many noble families have become extinct, yet the lands have not been claimed, as they should have been, for the nation. i should not complete my review of the subject without referring to what are called the laws of primogeniture. i fail to discover any such law. on the contrary, i find that the descent of most of the land of england is under the law of contract--by deed or bequest--and that it is only in case of intestacy that the courts intervene to give it to the next heir. this arises more from the construction the judges put upon the wishes of the deceased, than upon positive enactment. when a man who has the right of bequeathing his estate among his descendants does not exercise that power, it is considered that he wishes the estate to go undivided to the next heir. in america the converse takes place: a man can leave all his land to one; and, if he fails to do so, it is divided. the laws relating to contracts or settlements allow land to be settled by deed upon the children of a living person, but it is more frequently upon the grandchildren. they acquire the power of sale, which is by the contract denied to their parents. a man gives to his grandchild that which he denies to his son. this cumbrous process works disadvantageously, and it might very properly be altered by restricting the power of settlement or bequest to living persons, and not allowing it to extend to those who are unborn. it is not a little curious to note how the ideas of mankind, after having been diverted for centuries, return to their original channels. the system of landholding in the most ancient races was communal. that word, and its derivative, communism, has latterly had a bad odor. yet all the most important public works are communal. all joint-stock companies, whether for banking, trading, or extensive works, are communes. they hold property in common, and merge individual in general rights. the possession of land by communes or companies is gradually extending, and it is by no means improbable that the ideas which governed very remote times may, like the communal joint-stock system, be applied more extensively to landholding. it may not be unwise to review the grounds that we have been going over, and to glance at the salient points. the aboriginal inhabitants of this island enjoyed the same rights as those in other countries, of possessing themselves of land unowned and unoccupied. the romans conquered, and claimed all the rights the natives possessed, and levied a tribute for the use of the lands. upon the retirement of the romans, after an occupancy of about six hundred years, the lands reverted to the aborigines, but they, being unable to defend themselves, invited the saxons, the jutes, and the angles, who reduced them to serfdom, and seized upon the land; they acted as if it belonged to the body of the conquerors, it was allotted to individuals by the folc-gemot or assembly of the people, and a race of liberi homines or freemen arose, who paid no rent, but performed service to the state; during their sway of about six hundred years the institutions changed, and the monarch, as representing the people, claimed the right of granting the possession of land seized for treason by boc or charter. the norman invasion found a large body of the saxon landholders in armed opposition to william, and when they were defeated, he seized upon their land and gave it to his followers, and then arose the term terra regis, "the land of the king," instead of the term folc-land, "the land of the people;" but a large portion of the realm remained in the hands of the liberi homines or freemen. the norman barons gave possession of part of their lands to their followers, hence arose the vassals who paid rent to their lord by personal service, while the freemen held by service to the crown. in the wars of the plantagenets the freemen seem to have disappeared, and vassalage was substituted, the principal vassals being freeholders. the descendants of the aborigines regained their freedom. the possession of land was only given for life, and it was preceded by homage to the crown, or fealty to the lord, investiture following the ceremony. the tudor sovereigns abolished livery and retainers, but did not secure the rights of the men-at-arms or replace them in their position of freemen. the chief lords converted the payment of rent by service into payment in money; this led to wholesale evictions, and necessitated the establishment of the poor laws, the stuarts surrendered the remaining charges upon land: but on the death of one sovereign, and the expulsion of another, the validity of patents from the crown became doubtful. the present system of landholding is the outcome of the tudor ideas. but the crown has never abandoned the claim asserted in the statute of edward i., that all land belongs to the sovereign as representing the people, and that individuals hold but do not own it; and upon this sound and legal principle the state takes land from one and gives it to another, compensating for the loss arising from being dispossessed. i have now concluded my brief sketch of the facts which seemed to me most important in tracing the history of landholding in england, and laid before you not only the most vital changes, but also the principles which underlay them; and i shall have failed in conveying the ideas of my own mind if i have not shown you that at least from the scandinavian or anglo-saxon invasion, the ownership of land rested either in the people, or the crown as representing the people: that individual proprietorship of land is not only unknown, but repugnant to the principles of the british constitution; that the largest estate a subject can have is tenancy-in-fee, and that it is a holding and not an owning of the soil; and i cannot conceal from you the conviction which has impressed my mind, after much study and some personal examination of the state of proprietary occupants on the continent, that the best interests of the nation, both socially, morally, and materially, will be promoted by a very large increase in the number of tenants-in-fee; which can be attained by the extension of principles of legistration now in active operation. all that is necessary is to extend the provisions of the land clauses act, which apply to railways and such objects, to tenants in possession; to make them "promoters" under that act; to treat their outlay for the improvement of the soil and the greater production of food as a public outlay; and thus to restore to england a class which corresponds with the peasent proprietors of the continent--the freeman or liberi homines of anglo-saxon times, whose rights were solemnly guaranteed by the th william i., and whose existence would be the glory of the country and the safeguard of its institution. none proofreading team. [illustration: manner of instructing the indians.] indian nullification of the unconstitutional laws of massachusetts. relative to the marshpee tribe: or, the pretended riot explained, by william apes, an indian and preacher of the gospel . entered according to act of congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five, by william apes, in the clerk's office of the district court of massachusetts. to the white people of massachusetts * * * * * the red children of the soil of america address themselves to the descendants of the pale men who came across the big waters to seek among them a refuge from tyranny and persecution. we say to each and every one of you that the great spirit who is the friend of the indian as well as of the white man, has raised up among you a brother of our own and has sent him to us that he might show us all the secret contrivances of the pale faces to deceive and defraud us. for this, many of our white brethren hate him, and revile him, and say all manner of evil of him; falsely calling him an impostor. know, all men, that our brother apes is not such a man as they say. white men are the only persons who have imposed on us, and we say that we love our red brother, the rev. william apes, who preaches to us, and have all the confidence in him that we can put in any man, knowing him to be a devout christian, of sound mind, of firm purpose, and worthy to be trusted by reason of his truth. we have never seen any reason to think otherwise. we send this forth to the world in love and friendship with all men, and especially with our brother apes, for whose benefit it is intended. signed by the three selectmen of the marshpee tribe, at the council house, in marshpee. israel amos, isaac coombs, ezra attaquin. _march_, , . boston, october , , _to whom it may concern_. the undersigned was a native of the county of barnstable, and was brought up near the marshpee indiana. he always regarded them as a people grievously oppressed by the whites, and borne down by laws which made them poor and enriched other men upon their property. in fact the marshpee indians, to whom our laws have denied all rights of property, have a higher title to their lands than the whites have, for our forefathers claimed the soil of this state by the _consent of the indians_, whose title they thus admitted was better than their own. for a long time the indians had been disaffected, but no one was energetic enough among them to combine them in taking measures for their rights. every time they had petitioned the legislature, the laws, by the management of the interested whites, had been made more severe against them. daniel amos, i believe, was the first one among them, who conceived the plan of freeing his tribe from slavery. william apes, an indian preacher, of the pequod tribe, regularly ordained as a minister, came among these indians, to preach. they invited him to assist them in getting their liberty. he had the talent they most stood in need of. he accordingly went forward, and the indians declared that no man should take their wood off their plantation. apes and a number of other indians quietly unloaded a load of wood, which a mr. sampson was carting off. for this, he and some others were indicted for a riot, upon grounds extremely doubtful in law, to say the least. every person on the jury, who said he thought the indians ought to have their liberty, was set aside. the three indians were convicted, and apes was imprisoned thirty days. it was in this stage of the business, after the conviction, that i became the counsel of the indians, and carried their claims to the legislature, where they finally prevailed. the persons concerned in the riot, as it was called, and imprisoned for it, i think were as justifiable in what they did, as our fathers were, who threw the tea overboard; and to the energetic movements of william apes, daniel amos and others, it was owing that an impression was made on the legislature, which induced them to do partial justice toward this long oppressed race. the imprisonment of those men, in such a cause, i consider an honour to them, and no disgrace; no more than the confinement of our fathers, in the jersey prison-ship. benjamin f. hallett, _counsel for the marshpee indian_. introduction. * * * * * the writer hopes that the public will give him credit for an intention to adhere rigidly to the truth, in presenting his views of the late difficulties of the marshpee tribe, as it is as much his wish as his intention to do justice to all his brethren, without distinction of colour. yet he is sensible that he cannot write truly on this subject without attracting the worst wishes of those who are enemies to liberty, or would reserve it exclusively to themselves. could he speak without incurring such enmity, he would be most happy to do so; but he is fully aware that he cannot even touch this matter without exposing himself to certain calumny. this has been his portion whenever he has attempted to plead the cause of his ignorant and ever-oppressed red brethren. nevertheless, he will endeavour to speak independently, as if all men were his friends, and ready to greet him with thundering applause; and he would do so if their voices were to pronounce on him a sentence of everlasting disgrace. he writes not in the expectation of gathering wealth, or augmenting the number of his friends. but he has not the least doubt that all men who have regard to truth and integrity, will do justice to the uprightness of his intentions. (heaven be praised! there are some such men in the world.) he is equally sure that the evidence contained in this little work will be satisfactory, as to all the points he wishes to establish, to all who are open to conviction. it is true that the author of this book is a member of the marshpee tribe, not by birth, but by adoption. how he has become one of that unfortunate people, and why he concerns himself about their affairs, will now be explained to the satisfaction of the reader. he wishes to say in the first place, that the causes of the prevalent prejudice against his race have been his study from his childhood upwards. that their colour should be a reason to treat one portion of the human race with insult and abuse has always seemed to him strange; believing that god has given to all men an equal right to possess and occupy the earth, and to enjoy the fruits thereof, without any such distinction. he has seen the beasts of the field drive each other out of their pastures, because they had the power to do so; and he knew that the white man had that power over the indian which knowledge and superior strength give; but it has also occurred to him that indians are men, not brutes, as the treatment they usually receive would lead us to think. nevertheless, being bred to look upon indians with dislike and detestation, it is not to be wondered that the whites regard them as on a footing with the brutes that perish. doubtless there are many who think it granting us poor natives a great privilege to treat us with equal humanity. the author has often been told seriously, by sober persons, that his fellows were a link between the whites and the brute creation, an inferior race of men to whom the almighty had less regard than to their neighbours, and whom he had driven from their possessions to make room for a race more favoured. some have gone so far as to bid him remove and give place to that pure and excellent people who have ever despised his brethren and evil entreated them, both by precept and example. assumption of this kind never convinced william apes of its own justice. he is still the same unbelieving indian that he ever was. nay, more, he is not satisfied that the learned and professedly religious men who have thus addressed him, were more exclusively the favourites of his creator than himself, though two of them at least have been hailed as among the first orators of the day, and spoke with an eloquence that might have moved stocks and stones. one of them dwells in new york and the other in boston. as it would avail him little to bespeak the favour of the world in behalf of their opinions by mentioning their names, he will proceed with the matter in hand, viz. the troubles of the marshpee people, and his own trial. indian nullification, &c. it being my desire, as well as my duty as a preacher of the gospel, to do as much good as in me lay to my red brethren, i occasionally paid them a visit, announcing and explaining to them the word of life, when opportunity offered. i knew that no people on earth were more neglected; yet whenever i attempted to supply their spiritual wants, i was opposed and obstructed by the whites around them, as was the practice of those who dwelt about my native tribe, (the pequods,) in groton, conn. of which more will be said in another place. being on a tour among my brethren in may, , i was often asked why i did not visit my brethren of marshpee, of whom i had often heard. some said that they were well provided, and had a missionary, named fish, who took care of their lands and protected them against the fraud of such of their neighbours as were devoid of principle. others asserted that they were much abused. these things i heard in and about scituate and kingston, where i had preached. some of those who spoke thus, were connected with the missionary. the light thus obtained upon the subject being uncertain, i resolved to visit the people of marshpee, and judge for myself. accordingly i repaired to plymouth, where i held forth on the civil and religious rights of the indians, in dr. kendall's church, and was treated with christian kindness by the worthy pastor and his people. dr. kendall gave me a letter of introduction to mr. fish, at marshpee. being unacquainted with the way, i strayed a little from it, and found a number of good congregationalists of the old school, who invited me to tarry and preach to them in the evening, which i did, to their acceptance; for they and their pastor desired me to remain and preach on the sabbath, which, however, i could not consistently do. i proceeded thence to sandwich, where i made my mission known to mr. cobb, the orthodox preacher, who appeared to be pleased. mr. cobb said that he had agreed to exchange with mr. fish, on the sabbath following, but as it was inconvenient for him to do so, he would give me a line to him. with this furtherance i set forward, and arrived at mr. fish's house before sunset, informing those i met on the way that i intended to preach on the next day, and desiring them to advise others accordingly. when i made my business known to mr. fish, he treated me with proper kindness, and invited me to preach for him. when i awoke in the morning, i did not forget to return thanks to god for his fatherly protection during the night, and for preserving me in health and strength, to go through the duties of the day. i expected to meet some hundreds of the tribe, and to hear from their lips the sweet song of salvation which should prepare their minds for the words of life, to be delivered by one of the humblest servants of god. i hoped that grace might be given to me to say something to my poor brethren that might be for their advantage in time and eternity; after which i thought i should see their faces no more. i looked to see them thronging around their missionary in crowds, and waited for this agreeable sight with great anxiety. the time appointed for the service was half past ten. when it arrived, we got into our carriages and proceeded to the meeting-house, which was about two miles and a half distant. the sacred edifice stood in the midst of a noble forest, and seemed to be about a hundred years old; circumstances which did not render its appearance less interesting. hard by was an indian burial ground, overgrown with pines, in which the graves were all ranged north and south. a delightful brook, fed by some of the sweetest springs in massachusetts, murmured beside it. after pleasing my eyes with this charming landscape, i turned to meet my indian brethren and give them the hand of friendship; but i was greatly disappointed in the appearance of those who advanced. all the indians i had ever seen were of a reddish color, sometimes approaching a yellow; but now, look to what quarter i would, most of those who were coming were pale faces, and, in my disappointment, it seemed to me that the hue of death sat upon their countenances. it seemed very strange to me that my brethren should have changed their natural color, and become in every respect like white men. recovering a little from my astonishment, i entered the house with the missionary. it had the appearance of some ancient monument set upon a hill-top, for a landmark to generations yet unborn. could solomon's temple have been set beside it, i think no one would have drawn an architectural comparison. beautiful as this place was, we had little time to admire it; something more solemn demanded our attention. we were to prepare ourselves for a temple more splendid than ever was built by hands. when the congregation were seated, i arose and gave out the psalm. i now cast my eyes at the gallery, that i might see how the songsters who were tuning their harps appeared; but, with one exception, paleness was upon all their faces. i must do these _indians_ the justice to say that they performed their parts very well. looking below, something new caught my attention. upon two seats, reserved along the sides of the temple for some of the privileged, were seated a few of those to whom the words of the saviour, as well as his scourge of small cords, might be properly applied, "it is written that my house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves;" for these pale men were certainly stealing from the indians their portion in the gospel, by leaving their own houses of worship and crowding them out of theirs. the law, perhaps, allowed them to do so. after singing and prayer, i preached one of my humble sermons, after which i attended a sabbath school, in which a solitary red child might be seen here and there. by what i saw, i judged that the whites were much favored, while the little red children were virtually bidden to stand aside. i understood that the books that were sent to them had been given to the white scholars. after a slight refreshment, the duty of worship was resumed; and i discovered that plain dealing was disagreeable to my white auditory. i inquired where _the indians_ were; to which mr. fish replied, that they were at a place called marshpee, and that there was a person called _blind joe_, who tried to preach to them, which was the cause of their absence. though the said joe was one of them, he had done them more harm than good. i asked why he did not invite blind joe, and get him to preach for him a part of the time. he answered, that that could not be; that joe was not qualified to preach and instruct. i replied that he could not, perhaps, be sure of that, and that if he had followed the course i had mentioned, it would at least have been the means of uniting the people, which would of itself have been great good. it was then concluded to have a meeting at marshpee; and, in the afternoon of the next day, i paid the people of that place a visit in their meeting-house. i addressed them upon temperance and education, subjects which i thought very needful to be discussed, and plainly told them what i had heard from their missionary, viz: that it was their general disposition to be idle, not to hoe the corn-fields they had planted, to take no care of their hay after mowing it, and to lie drunken under their fences. i admonished them of the evil of these their ways, and advised them to consider any white man who sold them rum their enemy, and to place no confidence in him. i told them that such a person deserved to have his own rum thrown into his face. i endeavored to show them how much more useful they might be to themselves and the world if they would but try to educate themselves, and of the respect they would gain by it. then, addressing the throne of grace, i besought the lord to have mercy on them and relieve them from the oppressions under which they laboured. here mr. fish cautioned me not to say any thing about oppression, that being, he said, the very thing that made them discontented. they thought themselves oppressed, he observed, but such was not the case. they had already quite liberty enough. i suggested to him the propriety of granting them the privileges enjoyed by the whites about them; but he said that that would never do, as they would immediately part with all their lands. i told him that, if their improvement was his aim, he ought to go among them and inquire into their affairs; to which he replied that he did go at times, but did not say much to them about their worldly concerns. he asked me if i thought it proper to preach about such things. i answered that i thought it proper to do good in any way; that a variety was not amiss, and that such a course would convince his flock that he had their welfare at heart. i had now appointed to meet my brethren on wednesday evening following, when i expected to bid them farewell forever; and in the mean while i had obtained a letter of introduction to mr. pratt, of great marshes. there i gave the audience a word in season, upon the subject of indian degradation, which did not appear to please them much. i then visited barnstable, and finding no resting place there for the sole of my foot, i journeyed as far as hyannis, where i was entertained with hospitality and kindness. on the evening of the fourteenth day, i again preached on the soul-harrowing theme of indian degradation; and my discourse was generally well received; though it gave much offence to some illiberal minds, as truth always will, when it speaks in condemnation. i now turned my face toward marshpee, to preach the word there. i had made up my mind to depart early on the morrow, and therefore, that i might hear of their concerns, and how they fared from their own mouths, i intended to commence my labours early in the day. i had not the least intention of staying with my brethren, because i saw that they had been taught to be sectarians, rather than christians, to love their own sect and to hate others, which was contrary to the convictions of my own experience as well as to the doctrine of jesus christ. what ensued led me to look farther into their case. the lecture i had delivered in the meeting-house, had wrought well, and a small pamphlet that contained a sketch of the history of the indians of new england had had a good effect. as i was reading from it, an individual among the assembly took occasion to clap his hands, and with a loud shout, to cry, "truth, truth!" this gave rise to a general conversation, and it was truly heart-rending to me to hear what my kindred people had suffered at the hands of the whites. having partook of some refreshment, we again met to worship god in the school-house; where i believe that the spirit of the lord was revealed to us. then, wishing to know more of their grievances, real or supposed, and upon their invitation, i appointed several meetings; for i was requested to hear their whole story, and to help them. i therefore appointed the twenty-first of may, , to attend a council to be called by my brethren. in the mean while i went to falmouth, nine miles distant, where i held forth upon the civil and religious rights of the indians. some, who apparently thought that charity was due to themselves, but not to the red men, did not relish the discourse; but such as knew that all men have rights and feelings, and wished those of others to be respected as well as their own, spoke favourably of it. of this number was mr. woodbury, the minister, who thought it would do good. i then returned to marshpee, to attend the council. the meeting was held in the school-room. business commenced at about nine in the morning, and continued through the day. the first that arose to speak was an indian, ebenezer attaquin by name. tears flowed freely down his time-furrowed cheeks, while he addressed us in a manner alike candid and affectionate. the house was well filled. after listening patiently to the tale of their distresses, i counselled them to apply for redress to the governor and council. they answered, that they had done so; but _had never been able to obtain a hearing_. the white agents had always thrown every obstacle in their way. i then addressed them in a speech which they all listened to with profound attention. i began by saying that, though i was a stranger among them, i did not doubt but that i might do them some good, and be instrumental in procuring the discharge of the overseers, and an alteration of the existing laws. as, however, i was not a son of their particular tribe, if they wished me to assist them, it would be necessary for them to give me a right to act in their behalf, by adopting me; as then our rights and interests would become identical. they must be aware that all the evil reports calumny could invent, would be put in circulation against me by the whites interested, and that no means to set them against me would be neglected. (had the inspiration of isaiah spoken these words, they could not have been more fully accomplished, as is known to the whites of barnstable county, as well as the indians.) mr. ebenezer attaquin, being one of the prayer leaders, replied first, and said, "if we get this man to stand by us, we must stand by him, and if we forsake him after he undertakes for us, god will forsake us also." mr. ezra attaquin wished to know if i could not come and dwell with them, as so i could do them more good than if abiding at a distance. mr. ebenezer attaquin said in reply, that if such a chance should be offered to a white man, he would be very glad to accept it. i now inquired what provision could be made for me, if i should consent to their wishes. they answered that their means were small, but that they would provide a house for me to live in, and do what they could for my support. i said that, knowing their poverty, i did not expect much, and gave them to understand that i could dig, and fish, and chop wood, and was willing to do what i could for myself. the subject of religious instruction was then discussed, and the inquiry was made, what should be done with their poor, blind brother, (who was then absent among another sect.) i answered that i was very willing, to unite my labours with his, as there was plenty of work for both of us; and that had i but half a loaf of bread, i would gladly divide it with him. it was then agreed that we should unite, and journey together on the road toward heaven. the case of mr. fish was next laid before the council, and complaints were made, that he had neglected his duty; that he did not appear to care for the welfare of the tribe, temporal or spiritual; that he had never visited some of the brethren at all, and others only once in five or seven years; that but eight or ten attended his preaching; that his congregation was composed of white people, to whom his visits were mostly confined, and that it seemed that all he appeared to care for was to get a living, and make as much as he could out of the indians, who could not see any reason to think him their friend. it was, therefore, agreed to discharge him, and three papers were draughted accordingly. one was a petition to the governor and council, a second to the corporation of harvard college; the first complaining against the overseers, and the laws relating to the tribe; and the second against the missionary set over them by harvard college and the overseers. the third document was a statement of my adoption into the tribe, and was signed by all present, and subsequently by others, who were not present, but were equally desirious of securing their rights. it was as follows, _to all whom it may concern, from the beginning of the world up to this time, and forever more_. be it known, that we, the marshpees, now assembled in the presence of god, do hereby agree to adopt the rev. william apes, of the pequod tribe, as one of ours. he, and his wife, and his two children, and those of his descendants, forever, are to be considered as belonging to the marshpee tribe of indians. and we solemly avow this, in the presence of god, and of one another, and do hereby attach our names to the same, that he may take his seat with us and aid us in our affairs. done at the council house in marshpee, and by the authority of the same, may st, . ebenezer attaquin, _president_. israel amos, _secretary_. to this instrument there are about a hundred signatures, which were affixed to the other papers above mentioned also. the resolutions which were sent to the two bodies were these: _resolved_, that we, as a tribe, will rule ourselves, and have the constitutionso; for all men are born free and equal, says the constitutien of the country. _resolved_, that we will not permit any white man to come upon our plantation, to cut or carry off wood or hay, or any other article, without our permission, after the st of july next. _resolved_, that we will put said resolutions in force after that date, (july next,) with the penalty of binding and throwing them from the plantation, if they will not stay away without. these resolutions were adopted by the tribe, and put in force, as will be seen hereafter. it was hoped that, though the whites had done all they could to extinguish all sense of right among the indians, they would now see that they had feelings as well as other men. the petition to the corporation of harvard set forth the general dissatisfaction of the tribe with the missionary sent them by that honorable body, according to the intended application of the williams fund. the money was no more intended for mr. fish than for any other clergyman; neither had the indians given him a call. they thought it right to let his employers know that he had not done his duty, because he not only received between five and six hundred dollars from the college, but had possession of five or six hundred acres of the tribe's best woodland, without their consent or approbation, and converted them to his own exclusive use, pretending that his claim and right to the same was better than that of the owners themselves. not liking this, the indians solicited his discharge. the document runs thus: to our white brethren at harvard college and trustees of the williams fund, that is under the care of that body, for the important use of converting the poor heathen in new england, and who, we understand, by means of that fund, have placed among us the rev. phineas fish. we thought it very likely that you would like to know if we, as a people, respected his person and labors, and whether the money was benefiting the indians or not. we think it our duty to let you know all about it, and we do say, as the voice of one, with but few exceptions, that we as a tribe, for a long time, have had no desire to hear mr. fish preach, (which is about ten years) and do say sincerely that we, as a body, wish to have him discharged, not because we have anything against his moral character, but we believe his labors would be more useful somewhere else, and for these reasons, st. we, as a people, have not been benefited by his preaching; for our moral character has not been built up, and there has been no improvement in our intellectual powers, and we know of no indian that has been converted by his preaching. d. we seldom see him upon our plantation to visit us, as a people. his visits are as follows--to one house, one visit in one year--to another, two visits in five years--to another one in seven--and to many, none at all. (we would here remark that mr. fish has not improved, but rather lost ground; for history informs us that such was the anxiety of the whites, that it was thought best to visit the indians twice in one year, and preach to them, so as to save them.) d. we think that twenty years are long enough for one trial. another reason is that you and the people think that we are benefited by that fund, or money paid to him for preaching to the indians--and we are not. white people are his visitors and hearers. we would remark here that we have no objection to worship with our white neighbors, provided they come as they ought to come, and not as thieves and robbers, and we would ask all the world if the marshpee indians have not been robbed of their rights. we wonder how the good citizens of boston, or any town would like to have the indians send them a preacher and force him into the pulpit and then send other indians to crowd the whites out of their own meeting house and not pay one cent for it. do you think the white men would like it? we trow, not; and we hope others will consider, while they read our distressing tale. it will be perceived that we have no objection if hundreds of other nations visit our meeting house. we only want fair play; for we have had foul play enough. th. we do not believe but that we have as good a right to the table of the lord as others. we are kept back to the last, merely because our skins are not so white as the whites', and we know of no scriptures that justify him in so doing. (the writer would here observe, that he wonders any person guilty of a dark skin will submit to such unchristian usage, especially as the minister is as willing to shear his black sheep as his white ones. this being the case, ought he not to pay as much regard to them? should he turn them loose to shift for themselves, at the risk of losing them?) th. we never were consulted as to his settlement over us, as a people. we never gave our vote or voice, as a tribe, and we fully believe that we are capable of choosing for ourselves and have the right to do so, and we would now say to you, that we have made choice of the rev. wm. apes, of the pequod tribe, and have adopted him as one of ours, and shall hear him preach, in preference to the missionary, and we should like to have him aided, if you can do it. if not, we cannot help it--he is ours--he is ours. perhaps you have heard of the oppression of the cherokees and lamented over them much, and thought the georgians were hard and cruel creatures; but did you ever hear of the poor, oppressed and degraded marshpee indians in massachusetts, and lament over them? if not, you hear now, and we have made choice of the rev. wm. apes to relieve us, and we hope that you will assist him. and if the above complaints and reasons, and the following resolutions, will be satisfactory, we shall be glad, and rejoice that you comply with our request. _resolved_, that we will rule our own tribe and make choice of whom we please for our preacher. _resolved_, that we will have our own meeting house, and place in the pulpit whom we please to preach to us. _resolved_, that we will publish this to the world; if the above reasons and resolutions are not adhered to, and the rev. mr. fish discharged. the foregoing addresses and resolutions were adopted by a vote of the tribe, almost unanimous. done at the council house at marshpee, may the st, . ebenezer attaquin, _president_. israel amos, _secretary_. the hon. josiah quincy, president of the college, promised to attend to this matter, said that he had long been satisfied that the money from the williams fund had not been applied to the object for which it was intended, and hinted at an intention to send no more to mr. fish till he should be better informed concerning the matter. (we understood that he actually did retain the money, though he never found leisure to make the inquiry alluded to.) he said that, had it been in the summer, he would have gone himself to the place. summer has passed away, and we have seen no mr. quincy yet. we have heard that he was requested by several gentlemen to come and investigate our affairs, but we suppose he thinks that the poor marshpees cannot have been wronged. however, as nothing has been done, we think it is time that the public should be made aware of our views and intentions. leaving marshpee for new bedford, i preached at several places on my way, and delivered lectures on indian affairs. many of the advocates of oppression became clamorous, on hearing the truth from a simple indian's lips, and a strong excitement took place in that quarter. some feared that an insurrection might break out among the colored people, in which blood might be shed. some called me an imposter, and others approved of my proceedings, especially the quakers, whom i ever found benevolent and ready to help us. their generous good will toward colored people of all races is well known. i feel bound to say, too, that there were others of the highest respectability in those parts who were anxious that their red brethren should obtain their rights and redress of their grievances. when the time i had fixed for my return to my friends at marshpee arrived, i turned thitherward, and reached the place on the sixth of june. here i met the blind preacher, whom i had never before seen. he bade me welcome, and cordially agreed to join me in my labors, saying that god had listened to his prayers. he had for several years prayed for an assistant, and now consented to labor in conjunction with me for the spiritual and temporal advantage of our brethren. we went through the plantation together. on the sabbath there was a large meeting, and the assistance of god enabled me to preach to them, after which we set forth, as a delegation to the governor and council in boston. we stopped at several towns by the way, to discharge our duties, as christian ministers, and were kindly and hospitably received by the teachers. when we arrived in boston, we communicated our business to a certain doctor, who lived in roxbury. he did not think so favorably of it as we had expected; but, nevertheless, agreed to lay it before the board of trustees, which we presume he did, as he is a man of truth. we told him that we asked for justice, not money, and said that we wished the marshpee indians to avoid the meeting-house, if it did not belong to them. with this we left him, and have never heard from him from that day to this. he is gone where his deeds done in the flesh will receive their just reward; which i hope is a crown of blessedness and glory. we did not find the governor in boston; but were advised to wait on mr. armstrong, the lieut. governor. we showed him our petition and resolutions, which he said, would avail us nothing, unless enforced. we answered that they would be enforced, at the appointed time. he then suggested that we might have been instigated to the measures in question by some of our enemies; probably meaning some of our unprincipled white neighbors. we replied that ill usage had been our only instigation, and that no one had interfered in the matter. he advised us to deliver our petition to the secretary of state, to be submitted to the council at their next session; which we did. this done, we called on one of the tribe who was engaged in the coasting business, and had done much to teach the indians, and to bring them to a right knowledge of their degraded condition. he said that he would willingly relinquish his business, and join in the efforts of his brethren to shake off the yoke which galled them; and thereupon it was resolved to hold a convention on the twenty-fifth of june, for the purpose of organizing a new government. he desired to be there, and his name is daniel amos. i now set out for essex, where my family was living, accompanied by the blind preacher. i put my wife and little ones on board a small vessel, bound for boston, while i and my blind brother returned thither by land. we all arrived safely, and soon after embarked for barnstable, where we arrived on the eighteenth of june, and landed at a spot about twelve miles distant from the hospitable indians. here we found ourselves breathing a new atmosphere. the people were very little prepossessed in our favor, and we certainly owe them small thanks on the score of hospitality. we succeeded in obtaining the shelter of an old stable for two nights, by paying two dollars. we applied to one individual for accommodations during that time, for one of our party who was sick, but were refused. he said he had no room. if any white man should come to marshpee and ask hospitality for a night or two, i do not believe that one of the whole tribe would turn him from his door, savages though they be. does not he better deserve the name who took from us two dollars for sleeping in his stable? this usage made me think that in this part of new england prejudice was strong against the poor children of the woods, and that any aid we might receive must come from the more hospitable indians, among whom we arrived on the twenty-first, and rested till the twenty-fifth. we regarded ourselves, in some sort, as a tribe of israelites suffering under the rod of despotic pharaohs; for thus far, our cries and remonstrances had been of no avail. we were compelled to make our bricks without straw. we now, in our synagogue, for the first time, concerted the form of a government, suited to the spirit and capacity of free born sons of the forest; after the pattern set us by our white brethren. there was but one exception, viz. that _all_ who dwelt in our precincts were to be held free and equal, _in truth_, as well as in letter. several officers, twelve in all, were elected to give effect to this novelty of a government; the chief of whom were daniel amos, president, and israel amos, secretary. having thus organized ourselves, we gave notice to the former board of overseers, and the public at large, of our intentions. this was the form of our proclamation: notice. _marshpee plantation, june th, _. having heretofore been distressed, and degraded, and robbed daily, we have taken measures to put a stop to these things.--and having made choice of our own town officers to act instead of the whites, and having acquainted the governor of our affairs and resolutions, he has nothing against our putting them in force.[ ] and now we would say to our white friends, we are wanting nothing but our rights betwixt man and man. and now, rest assured that said resolutions will be enforced after the first day of july, . done at the national assembly of the marshpee tribe, and by the authority of the same. daniel amos, _president_. israel amos, _secretary_. hereupon the missionary and agents and all who put faith in them, combined together to work our destruction, as is well known to all men. we then proceeded to discharge all the officers appointed by the governor and council, firmly believing that each and every one of the existing laws concerning the poor israelites of marshpee was founded on wrong and misconception. we also forwarded a letter and resolution to gideon hawley, to the effect that we were dissatisfied with his proceedings with regard to our affairs and with those of the other officers, that we desired their stay among us no longer, that we were seeking our rights and meant to have them, and we therefore demanded of them all a final settlement, and warned them not to violate our regulations. the resolution was as follows: _resolved_, that we will no longer accede to your terms after the first day of july next, . done by the authority of the marshpee tribe. daniel amos, _president_. israel amos, _secretary_. we also proceeded to discharge the missionary, telling him that he and the white people had occupied our meeting house long enough, and that we now wanted it for our own use. we likewise gave him notice that we had complained against him to the authorities at harvard. those who had, as we think unlawfully, ruled us hitherto, now awoke in astonishment, and bestirred themselves in defence of their temporal interests. mr. hawley was despatched to the governor at worcester, to whom he represented the state of affairs in colors which we cannot acknowledge to have been faithful. he stated that the indians were in open rebellion, and that blood was likely to be shed. it was reported and believed among us that he said we had armed ourselves, and were prepared to carry all before us with tomahawk and scalping knife; that death and destruction, and all the horrors of a savage war, were impending; that of the white inhabitants some were already dead, and the rest dreadfully alarmed! an awful picture indeed. however, several weeks previous to this the governor and council had been apprised of what was going forward, and had authorised one of the council to visit the tribe, in order to hold counsel, and if possible, restore peace among them. but the first of july arrived before he came, and we did even as we had pledged ourselves to do, having in view no other end than the assertion and resumption of our rights. two of the whites, indeed, proved themselves enemies to the indians, by holding themselves in readiness to break up the new government, and daring them to carry it into effect. they were brothers, and one of them has since gone to his reward. their name was sampson. they came, in defiance of our resolutions, to take away our wood, in carts. as i was walking in the woods, i discovered them in the act of removing our property, and called to him who was the owner of the teams to come near me. he complied, and appeared much agitated as he approached. i mildly stated to him the views and intentions of the tribe, saying that it was not their design to wrong or harm any man in the least, and that we wished them to desist till we should have had a settlement with the overseers, after which every thing should be placed upon a proper footing. i begged them to desist, for the sake of peace; but it was to no purpose. they said that they knew what they were about, and were resolved to load their teams. i answered, that the men who owned the wood were resolved to carry their resolutions into force; and asked if they had not seen the notification we had posted up. one of them replied that he had seen, but had not taken much notice of it. i again told them that the owners of the wood were at hand, and by the time one of the teams was laden, the indians came up. i then asked william sampson, who was a member of the missionary's church, if he would, even then, unload his team and wait till things were more quiet; to which he replied that he would not. i then, having previously cautioned the indians to do no bodily injury to any man, unless in their own defence, but to stand for their rights, and nothing else, desired them to unload the teams, which they did very promptly. one of the sampsons, who was a justice of the peace, forbade them, and threatened to prosecute them for thus protecting their own property, which had no other effect than to incite them to work more diligently. when they had done, i told the justice, that he had, perhaps, better encourage others to carry away what did not belong to them, and desired the teamsters to depart. they said they would, seeing that it was useless to attempt to load the carts. throughout this transaction the indians uttered neither a threat nor an unkind word, but the white men used very bitter language at being thus, for the first time, hindered from taking, away what had always been as a lawful spoil to them hitherto. the defeated sampsons hurried off to get the aid of legal might to overcome right, and were wise enough to trouble the indians no further. the tribe were thus left in peaceable possession of all their property. mr. fiske stated in his report of the case, that we wanted possession of the mission house; but in this he was mistaken. no such thing was intended or even mentioned among us, though it is true that the meeting-house and the two school houses, and all the land, excepting that on which mr. fiske's house stood, were in our hands. the indians now made it part of their business to watch their property; being determined to disappoint the rapacity of the whites. they soon learned that the governor had sent an envoy to deal with them, and the news cheered their hearts not a little; for they earnestly wished for peace and quietness. a verbal message was brought, desiring us to meet him. we replied by asking why the agent did not come to us, if the governor had sent him for that purpose, instead of going to a tavern and calling on us to come to him there. i now suppose that this proceeding on his part was not so much his fault as that of one ezra crocker, who received twenty dollars _per annum_ for entertaining the indians in his house, and who not unfrequently thrust them out of doors. nevertheless, we sent the agent an answer in writing, to the following effect. _to the honorable agent sent by the governor to inquire into our affairs_. dear sir, we are much gratified to see that the governor has noticed us so much as to inquire into our affairs. your request could not be attended to yesterday; our people being very busy in the affairs of the day; but we will meet you with pleasure this morning at nine o'clock, at our meeting-house, there being no other place where we should like to see you for an interview. daniel amos, _president. july th_, . at the time appointed, we met the counsellor, and he appeared to enjoy himself very well among us. when the meeting had been called to order, it was observed that the overseers were not present, and it was proposed to send for them, that they might have fair play and hear of what faults they were accused. they came, accompanied by the high sheriff of barnstable county, the hon. j. reed of yarmouth, and several other whites, who were invited to take seats among us. the excitement which pervaded cape cod had brought these people to our council, and they now heard such preaching in our meeting-house as they had never heard there before; the bitter complainings of the indians of the wrongs they had suffered. every charge was separately investigated by our people, who gave the entire day to the work. the white persons present seemed very uneasy; often getting up, going out and returning, as if apprehensive of some danger. the ground work of their fears, if they had any, was this: three of our people, who had been out in the morning, hunting deer, had brought their guns into the meeting house, and this circumstance was thought, or pretended to be thought by a few of our neighbors to portend violence and murder. also the counsellor had brought a letter from the governor, indicating that he had been led, by wrong reports, to believe that something of the kind was likely to take place.[ ] this letter was read to the people, and was to them as a provocation and a stimulus. they thought it grievous that the governor should think they had put him in mind of his oath of office, to secure the commonwealth from danger, and given him cause to call out perhaps fifty or sixty thousand militia; especially when the great strength and power of the marshpee tribe was considered. to this supposed great demonstration of military power they might, possibly, have opposed a hundred fighting men and fifteen or twenty rusty guns. but it is written, "one shall chase a thousand, and two shall put ten thousand to flight;" so there might have been some reason for persons who believe the bible to fear us. who can say that little marshpee might not have discomfitted great massachusetts. nevertheless, the birth place of american freedom was spared so great a disgrace; for the governor, very wisely, remained at home. toward the close of the day mr. fiske desired the hon. mr. reed to explain to the indians the laws, as they then stood, and the consequences of violating them. he told us that merely declaring a law to be oppressive could not abrogate it; and that it would become us, as good citizens whom the government was disposed to treat well, to wait for the session of the legislature, and then apply for relief.[ ] "he went fully," says one reporter, whose name it may be well to omit, "into the situation of the tribe, in a very forcible and feeling manner, warning them against the rash measures they had already taken or adopted." mr. fiske then pathetically stated his opinions concerning the awful consequences which would result from a violation of the laws, and spoke much at large of the parental feeling of government for the remnant of a once mighty and distinguished race. wm. apes replied that the laws ought to be altered without delay; that it was perfectly manifest that they were unconstitutional, and that, even if they were not so, there was nothing in them to authorize the white inhabitants to act as they had done. being very anxious to learn what amount of good his brethren might expect, he spoke with an energy that alarmed some of the whites present considerably. the hon. mr. reed questioned him as to his right to interfere. he replied that he had obtained it by the adoption of the tribe. mr. reed, if i correctly understood him, answered that the indians had no right to do such an act; no power to confer such a privilege. i replied, that if the plantation belonged to them, they undoubtedly had a right to give me leave to dwell upon it. many other things he said of which i could not see the reasonableness and propriety, and therefore we could not come to an agreement. while these things were being done and said, as i have reason to believe, a warrant for my apprehension was put into the hands of the high sheriff, who, it appeared to me, was not very desirous to execute it. he approached me, and with some agitation, told me i must go with him to catuiot; and added, that if i did not accompany him peaceably, he would have out the whole county of barnstable. i was not conscious of giving any cause for this perturbation of mind, but i suppose others saw my conduct in a different light. it is admitted by all that nothing was done contrary to good order, though i admit, that if i had refused to obey the warrant, the sheriff would not have been able to enforce it. the fact is i was in no wise unwilling to go with him, or to have my conduct brought to the test of investigation, or to give all the satisfaction that might be required, had it appeared that i had done wrong. i was also very desirous to have the truth appear, viz. that it was not the intention or wish of the marshpees to do violence or shed blood. the sheriff told me that i should not suffer any injury or injustice, and that i should have a hearing in the presence of my friend, mr. fiske. i went with him very quietly. the excitement ran very high, and almost all cotuet was present at my examination. if wishes could have availed, i doubt not that i should have been ruined forever. i was arraigned on three charges: for riot, assault, and trespass; and pleaded not guilty. the messrs. sampsons, four in number, were called, and testified as follows, that on the first day of july, between eight and nine, a.m. they were carting wood from the marshpee plantation, that they were hailed by wm. apes, and forbidden by him to take any wood away until a settlement with the overseers should have been had; that the said apes threatened them that he would call his men if they persisted, who would "_cut up a shine with them_,"[ ] (the sampsons.) they all agreed, however, that no unchristian temper was manifested, and no indecorous language used. they admitted that they had no fear for their personal safety, and that no harm was done to any of the persons concerned, save unloading their teams, and ordering them to depart. now if i had taken any neighbors' wood without his leave, and he had thrown it out of my cart, and told me to go away, and had given me no farther molestation, i should think i had gotten off very easily. if a poor indian wishes to get into a jail or penitentiary, that is just the course i would advise him to pursue. i leave it to the reader to say who were the persons aggrieved and injured, and that had the right to complain of trespass. it was thought proper, by those who had the power so to do, to bind me over to appear and take my trial before the court of common pleas, at the next session, in the sum of two hundred dollars, and sureties for the like amount were also required. compliance was not difficult. i had only to send for lemuel ewer, esq. of south sandwich, who had, in former times, been the treasurer of the tribe, knew their wrongs, and was their friend. it was well for me that there was one man who knew on which side the right lay, and had the courage to support it, for i verily believe that no other person would have dared to become my bondsman. i owe mr. ewer the justice further to say that he has done much to advance the interests of the marshpee tribe, by giving information respecting them to the legislative body, for which we cannot easily show our gratitude. the cotueters now waxed exceedingly wroth at what mr. ewer had done. truth had been shot into their hearts, and if i should say that they bellowed like mad bulls, and spouted like whales, gored mortally by the harpoon, i do not think the figure of speech would be too strong. mr. crocker, the contractor or agent, for our wood, felt himself especially aggrieved that i had gotten bail, and was let loose upon the plantation, to hinder him in his business. his life, he thought, would be in danger. there was a great deal of loose talk and a pretty considerable uproar. while i was waiting for mr. ewer, to bail me, i had some conversation with the hon. j.j. fiske, who expressed himself concerned about the indians, and thought that something ought to be done. i said to him that my object was to get them righted, and allowed that i might possibly have gone too fast and far. in this i am now satisfied that i was mistaken. i believe that neither i nor any of my brethren went fast enough. i think there is no white man, christian or infidel, who would have shown half so much forbearance as we did in the like circumstances. mr. fiske said he would do all he could for me, and i have no doubt that he did so. it was very proper in him to endeavor to quiet the whites. the indians were already quiet, and had no disposition to be otherwise. nevertheless, it seemed to be the common opinion that the imprisonment of apes would frighten the rest of the tribe, and cause them to forego their efforts to recover their rights. had this been the case, they might have carted a few more good suppers and dinners out of our woods, and have eaten them on their town meeting days, for two or three days together, twice in the year, and have thrown the bones and crusts to the poor, old and ignorant, among the natives, as they had done, year after year. the missionary, as usual, might have helped them to devour the spoil, and have seen his flock degraded and abused, before his eyes. much was also said about the pains that had been taken to educate the marshpees, and it was averred, that, instead of going to the schools opened for them, they preferred going about the country picking berries, and basket making. mr. crocker said he had been at great pains to induce the indians to go to school. let him who has been prejudiced against the marshpees, by such argument, look at the legislative act of , section , for the regulation of the plantation, prohibiting the instruction of the marshpees, in reading and writing, under pain of death. who, then, dared to teach them? mr. hawley, the former missionary, spent fifty or sixty years in marshpee. he is mentioned in the history of berkshire county, as a schoolmaster, for the mohawks, onedias and tuscaroras, in , and nothing more is known of him, up to his arrival in marshpee. thither he came to teach, in a.d. , and there he staid till his death. what his care to educate the tribe was, may be judged from the facts that he _did not teach one_ indian to read during his residence among them, as i am informed by those who knew him. he had probably imbibed the opinion that the natives were incapable of being taught, and therefore spared himself trouble that he thought would be of no use. nevertheless, he was willing to preach to them, and had a good portion of their land set off for his support. truth obliges me to say that not one indian was converted during the fifty years of his ministry. the neighbouring whites were the sole recipients of the good resulting from his labors, if there was any. speaking on this subject, the rev. cotton mather smith says that the arrangements for managing indian schools were never thoroughly made; admirable as was the general plan, and much as it promised. i think i may safely vouch for the truth and honesty of the reverend gentleman's admission. mr. fish succeeded mr. hawley, in , and was confirmed in his office by the authorities at harvard, and the white overseers at marshpee. the arrangement was sanctioned by the general court, in ; contrary to law, as we think. surely it takes two sides to make a bargain, and the consent of the indians was never asked or obtained. both of the divines mentioned above were willing to have the use of the property of the marshpees; i fear, under a mere pretext of doing them good; and, therefore, that they and the overseers might have a support from the plantation, the owners were constantly proclaimed to be savages. i wonder what the whites would say, should the indians take possession of any part of their property. many and many a red man has been butchered for a less wrong than the marshpees complain of. neither of the reverend gentlemen set up schools, and when the marshpee children were put out to service, it was with the express understanding, as their parents all agree, that they should not be schooled. many of those who held them in servitude, used them more like dogs than human beings, feeding them scantily, lodging them hard, and clothing them with rags. such i believe has always been the case about indian reservations. i had a sister who was slavishly used and half starved; and i have not forgotten, nor can i ever forget, the abuse i received myself. to keep indian children from hearing the gospel preached in a land of gospel privileges, in order that they might do work unbefitting the sabbath at home, has been the practice, almost without an exception, wherever i have had opportunity to observe. i think that the indians ought to keep the twenty-fifth of december[ ], and the fourth of july, as days of fasting and lamentation, and dress themselves, and their houses, and their cattle, in mourning weeds, and pray to heaven for deliverance from their oppressions; for surely there is no joy in those days for the man of color. let the reader judge from what has been stated, what good the marshpee indians have derived from their two missionaries. i say boldly, none at all. on the contrary, they have been in the way of the good that would have been done by others. i say also that all the religious advantages the indians have enjoyed, have come from other ministers, and members of other churches. i am equally sure that the money paid for our use, from the williams fund, has been a curse, and not a blessing to us. had some good christian minister come to the tribe with half the sum, there is no doubt that god would have made him an instrument to raise up a respectable christian society; whereas the fund has only served to build up the missionaries and the whites about the plantation. i am glad that it has done even this good; though it be to our enemies; for i am not of a spirit to envy the prosperity of others; i rejoice in it. but i sincerely think it is wrong in the whites to take the gospel from the indians, as they do in marshpee, by occupying their meeting-house, and receiving the benefit of the missionary fund. i mean that the people about cotuet and marshpee go to our house, and fill it, to our exclusion, without any charge; while the indians are enforced by the laws which deprive them of the use of their own lands, to pay a heavy tax, from which they derive no benefit. is not depriving them of all means of mental culture the worst of all robberies? can it be wondered, that the indians become more and more degraded? i presume all honest people will regret that such has been the case. it will be seen that both the missionaries and their white followers, imbibed all the prejudices of the day, and by disseminating them, hindered others from doing us good. this is no excuse, however, for the government of this commonwealth, whose duty it was to see that its red children were not abused in this way. we greatly fear that our white fathers did not much care about their colored children in marshpee. at any rate, it may be some satisfaction to the philanthropists in the country to know how liberal they have been to their poor dependants. to begin--the indians owe nothing to the commonwealth of massachusetts, or to the inhabitants of new england generally, for religious instruction, excepting a single appropriation of four hundred dollars, made in or , for repairing their meeting-house. four hundred dollars more were appropriated in , for the purposes of erecting two school houses; but not one cent for a teacher.[ ] the way the marshpees have supported a school hitherto, has been this. some of them have lived abroad among the whites, and have learned to read and write, with perhaps some small smattering of arithmetic. on returning to the tribe, they have taught others what they knew themselves; receiving pay from those who had the means, and teaching the rest gratuitously. at the same time they have been compelled to support a preacher whom they did not wish to hear, and to pay, in one way or other, to the amount of four hundred dollars _per annum_ to white officers, for doing them injury and not good. thus then, in one hundred and forty years they have paid fifty-six thousand dollars to the whites, out of their own funds, in obedience to the laws of the commonwealth. in return, the whites have given them one thousand in labor and money. truly the commonwealth must make haste, or it will hardly be able to pay us the interest of our money. the principal we never expect to get. thus, though it is manifest that we have cost the government absolutely much less than nothing, we have been called state paupers, and as such treated. those are strange paupers who maintain themselves, and pay large sums to others into the bargain. heigho! it is a fine thing to be an indian. one might almost as well be a slave. to return to the proceedings of the court at cotuet: when supper time was past, the cotueter's were anxious to draw something out of me, by questioning. they said they knew more about the matter than i did; that i had gotten myself into difficulty, and that mr. fish was a good man, and had gained twenty members over to his church in twenty-five years. they might have added that these were infants, who became members merely by undergoing the rite of baptism. perhaps they were very good members, when they grew up--perhaps not. mr. fish, alluding to the charge that but eight or ten of the indians heard him preach, stated, in his memorial to the legislature, that more than twice ten were upon his sabbath school list. that might be true; but it was no answer to the charge. there may well have been on his list the names of so many persons, who attended neither his meeting nor his school. nor had he denied the statements of the indians in the least. i said to the gentlemen who were rejoicing over my supposed downfall, that i was glad they had taken me into custody, as it would lead to an investigation of the whole ground in dispute. mr. ewer presently arrived; his bail was accepted, and i and my friends returned home. on the seventh of july, i was again visited by the hon. j.j. fiske, who conversed freely with me on our religious affairs. he said it would be better for us to turn congregationalists, as then we should probably be able to get assistance from the fund, i replied, that i cared little by what name i was called; for i was no sectarian, but could unite in the worship of god with all good christians. it seemed to be the opinion of the hon. j.j. fiske, that it was wrong for the rev. mr. fish to receive the salary he did, without attending to the concerns of the indians. on the sixth, the head men of the tribe held a meeting, and agreed to rescind the former meetings until the session of the legislature, as the commissioner had fairly stated that whatever could be done for us, would be done by that honourable body. we could do no less than accept a promise coming from so high an authority, and await the leisure of our father, the legislature, though he had neglected us and suffered us to be abused. who could say but that he would uplift his voice and weep aloud, on hearing the story of our wrongs, as joseph and his brethren did when they recognized each other. and indeed, though our tender parent proved a little hard-hearted at first, by and by there was a little relenting toward his poor suffering babes of the woods, as will be seen in the proper place. the following notice was drawn up accordingly: whereas, certain resolutions have been made by us, the marshpee indians, in reference to our plantation, we do hereby solemnly declare, upon the security of the governor's counsel,[ ] that we shall be righted; and that there shall be a change of government, if necessary, and that the governor has pledged himself to do right, and that the property sold for money or otherwise disposed of, shall be refunded to us again, and that justice shall be done. now, in consideration thereof, we do hereby guaranty to our white neighbours that they shall not be molested in their lawful concerns upon our plantation, provided that no white man meddles or interferes in any way whatever in our lawful affairs; and that you may understand that it is so, we say the resolutions are revoked, and we will wait with pleasure the sitting of the legislature. done by order of the marshpee tribe, july , . daniel amos, _president_. israel amos, _secretary_. soon after this, the commissioner departed, and i saw him no more till the sitting of the general court. about this time our affairs got into the public prints, and it was reported through the whole land that there were hostile movements among the indians at cape cod, or buzzard's bay. all the editors were very willing to speak on the favorite topic of indian wrongs; but very few of them said any thing about redress. on this head they were either silent or against us. here and there was found one liberal and independent enough to speak in our behalf. some of these articles shall be given, that it may be seen who were for or against our rights and privileges. it will be proper to state in the first place, however, that from july , to the sitting of the court of common pleas, in september, there was little disturbance upon the plantation. we thought, from what we heard among the whites that they were inclined to spare no pains to frighten us; but we listened patiently and remained quiet, according to our promise. in august, we had a four-day meeting, which was the means of much good. twelve indians were redeemed from sin, and during the eighteen months that i have known them, the power of god has been manifested in the conversion of some thirty. god forbid that i should glorify myself; i only mention the circumstance to show that the marshpees are not incapable of improvement, as their enemies would have the world suppose. but, under these circumstances, is it not natural for the indians to think that their missionaries have cared less for saving their souls than for filling their own pockets, and that their thousands have been expended on them to very small purpose? i do think that the result of this meeting was in no wise pleasing to our white enemies. at harvest time the reapers cut their grain and carried it to their granaries. but they were under the control of their task masters. a dispute arose. a woman whose husband was absent, doing business upon the great waters, claimed a portion of the grain, while the overseers maintained that it belonged to them. she applied for assistance to one of the true proprietors, who, in the presence of five or six men who were with the overseer's team, unloaded it, and placed the grain where it ought to have been. i was present and happened to smile at this novel proceeding, which, i suppose was the cause of a prosecution that presently took place for trespass. my horse had bitten off five or six rye heads in a rye field, for which enormity his owner was obliged to pay ten dollars, though the actual damage was not to the value of six cents. i will not retort the petty malice which prompted this mean act of revenge, by mentioning names. i now proceed to mark out the state of public feeling, by some extracts from the newspapers. the following is from the new bedford press, of june , : marshpee indians. the remnants of that race of men who once owned and inhabited the forests and prairies of the old colony that have new given place to large and populous villages and the busy hum of _civilized_ man, are, it would seem, somewhat dissatisfied with the manner in which they are governed by the state authority. communications illustrative of the condition of the _marshpee indians_ in the county of barnstable, have been forwarded to us by the agent of the tribe, by which it appears that they have been abused. intelligence from other quarters comes fraught with bitter complaint, and there can be no manner of doubt that too ample room remains for the improvement of their condition. the communications at hand advise the indians to stand out for their right to appoint their own overseers, and do all business now especially done by the state. that they ought to be allowed this privilege, (if _privilege_ it may be called,) there is no question; but there is a question, whether this is the first important step to be taken. by a list of names which accompanies our advices, it appears that very few are able to write their own names, their mark being affixed instead; and in addition to this, we are informed that there are many who cannot even read. with this view of their condition the correct and efficient course to be pursued would seem to be that of sending _education missionaries_ among them, that in contending for their rights, of which they say they are deprived, they may be enabled to act understandingly. this may serve to show that the marshpees had long been dissatisfied with their government, and that very many complaints had been made; which will be illustrated by extracts from divers petitions, in another page. the next refers to the marshpee trials, and is signed in a manner signifying that the writer speaks advisedly, and from knowledge. _from the barnstable journal of july , _. mr. apes was arrested at the marshpee plantation on the th, by order of the executive, and required to give bond for his good behaviour. mr. apes now says, that this statement is not correct; that the governor has ordered no such thing, and that he never was requested in all his life to give bond for his behavior. much has been said in and out of the papers about the indians in marshpee. all that the indians want in marshpee is to enjoy their rights without molestation. they have hurt or harmed no one. they have only been searching out their rights, and in so doing, exposed and uncovered, have thrown aside the mantle of deception, that honest men might behold and see for themselves their wrongs. the indians could spread columns before the world which would cause the hearts of good men to be sad, and recoil at the conduct of their white brothers. all that mr. a. wishes is, that people would tell the truth. a beholder. with regard to this article, i have to say that it speaks the truth. if an honest white man could look into our private affairs and know what wrongs we have suffered, it would change his complexion to a hue redder than the indian's. but the crimes committed against our race cannot be enumerated here below. they will each and all, however, be judged at the bar of god, and it must be the comfort of the poor and oppressed, who cry for justice and find it not, that there is one who sees and knows, and will do right. the next is from the boston daily advocate, of july . rev. mr. apes, who has been conspicuous in the marshpee nullification, has, we learn, been taken and committed to jail in barnstable county; upon what process, we are not informed, but we trust, for the honor of the state, that while our mouths are yet full of bitterness against georgian violence, upon the indians, we shall not imitate their example. how true it is that men see the faults of others, rather than their own. if the good people of massachusetts were as ready to do right as to have the georgians do right, the marshpee indians might, perhaps, send a representative to the legislature. i hope the remark will give no offence. the next is from the same print, of july , . the marshpee affairs, we are gratified to learn, are more quiet than they have been. the indians took forcible possession of the meeting-house the other day, and have retained it ever since, but no farther act has been committed on their part. they notified mr. fish that they had dismissed him from their parish, and also formally gave notice to the overseers that their offices were at an end. hon. j.j. fiske, of the executive council, has visited the indians, by request of the governor, and has, we learn, discharged the duty in a highly conciliatory and discreet manner. the indians would not at first consent to see him, but being satisfied of the disposition of the executive to listen to their grievances, they met mr. fiske alone in the meeting-house, where, by their special request, the overseers also appeared. the sheriff of the county, hon. john reed, and others, were also present. about one hundred of the indians appeared, many of them armed with guns. they were perfectly under the command of apes, but all of them conducted with propriety, and seemed peaceably disposed. mr. fiske heard their complaints for one day. their demands were to have the overseers removed, and the books and funds, now in the hands of the treasurer, transferred to them; and in fact to be left to the entire management of their affairs. it was explained to them that the governor had no power to do this, if he were so disposed. that he could only change their overseers, and lay their complaints before the legislature, who alone could alter the laws now governing the plantation. to this, apes would not agree, insisting that they should be relieved of the guardianship of the state, and that the governor could do it at once. he was questioned as to his own right to be on the plantation, to which he does not belong, and finding all argument useless with him, apes was arrested in the assembly, (where he was acting as moderator,) upon a warrant for assault and trespass, in unloading the teams of mr. sampson. the indians were perfectly quiet, and apes having been bound over for his appearance to take his trial, in the sum of $ , he was immediately bailed by mr. ewer, a justice of the peace, and was not committed to jail, as has been represented. after his arrest, he expressed some contrition, and admitted he had gone too far. the ultimate understanding appears to be with the indians, that they will offer no further resistance, but wait patiently for a redress of grievances, until the meeting of the legislature, when they confidently expect to have their guardianship removed. as an evidence of their peaceable disposition, "president" amos, at the request of mr. fiske, gave up the key of the meeting-house, for rev mr. fish to occupy the pulpit, and asked as a favor, that the indians might occupy it half the time. the result of the mission of mr. fiske, is therefore very favorable, and if a similar course is pursued hereafter, there will be no further difficulty with the tribe. they should be treated with all possible lenity and kindness, for the honor of the commonwealth. the indians would not consent to see mr. fiske at first, because they did not like to meet their enemies off their own ground, and i presume they would not have consented to do so to this day. as to the counsellor's meeting us alone, it was the especial direction of the governor that he should hear the parties separately, because, supposing the government to be oppressive, it seemed to him that the indians would be afraid to speak plainly in presence of their masters, or proffer their complaints. the indians wished to do nothing in a corner; but rather to proceed with an open and manly spirit, that should show that they were unjustly accounted abject and willing slaves. as to my opinion of the powers of the governor, i have already admitted that i was in error; for i am not a man skilled in legal subtleties. my reason for pressing our claims so strongly was, to make the way easy for my brethren, till something could be done for them. the indians were requested to give up their own meeting-house to a gentleman who did not come at their request, and to gather other people into it to suit his convenience. the indians asked for their own house for only half the time, and even this was denied them. the law not bearing out their petition, they could only obtain it by force, and, finding this to be the case, they forbore. the question is, how can a man do good among a people who do not respect him or desire his presence, and who refuse to hear him preach? yet harvard college has forced such an one on the marshpees against their will, right or wrong. i heard a white lady observe, that mr. fish was not a preacher for every one; as though he was not fit to preach to any but us poor ignorant indians. nevertheless, if any people need a talented, enterprising preacher, we are the very ones. some may suppose mr. fish to be a unitarian. he was, when he was first settled at marshpee; but his opinions underwent a change soon after, and he became what is commonly called an orthordox congregationalist. in order to be a good one, he ought to make one more change--a change of inclination, to force himself on poor indians. one who has such an inclination cannot be a good member of any sect, or an honor to it. such a person can be no ornament to any ecclesiastical body. i would not have it inferred from this that a breath of reproach is in my mind, or in those of my brethren against any denomination of christians. we love all who love the lord jesus in sincerity. i expressed no contrition because i thought i had acted morally wrong, or had asked any thing more than was right; but because i had mistaken the _law_, which in this case was a very different thing from justice. the next article is from the barnstable journal, of july . it will serve to show that though the matter had been perfectly explained to the inhabitants of barnstable county; yet it contained some of our worst enemies as well as best friends. our enemies were those in office, and those under their influence. the majority believed the indians to be wronged, and ought to have had redress; and these were unable to act in our behalf. those who did act were either our enemies or persons who had no minds of their own, and were led by them in all they did. many of them did, nevertheless, sympathise with the indians, and pitied them when cast into prison, for all men can appreciate the blessing of liberty. marshpee indians. messrs. editors, we observed in one of your late papers, some editorial remarks which breathed a spirit of candor and good will towards us, and not of ridicule and sarcasm, like that of your neighbor, the patriot. now messrs. editors, as our situation is but little understood, and the minds of the people much agitated, we feel a desire to lay before them some of the causes of the late excitement. we have long been under guardians, placed in authority over us, without our having any voice in the selection, and, as we believe, not constitutional. will the good people of massachusetts revert back to the days of their fathers, when they were under the galling yoke of the mother country? when they petitioned the government for a redress of grievances, but in vain? at length they were determined to try some other method; and when some english ships came to boston, laden with tea, they mustered their forces, unloaded and threw it into the dock, and thereby laid the foundation of their future independence, although it was in a terrible war, that your fathers sealed with their blood a covenant made with liberty. and now we ask the good people of massachusetts, the boasted cradle of independence, whom we have petitioned for a redress of wrongs, more grievous than what your fathers had to bear, and our petitioning was as fruitless as theirs, and there was no other alternative but like theirs, to take our stand, and as we have on our plantation but one harbor, and no english ships of tea, for a substitute, we unloaded two wagons loaded with our wood, without a wish to injure the owners of the wagons. and now, good people of massachusetts, when your fathers dared to unfurl the banners of freedom amidst the hostile fleets and armies of great britain, it was then that marshpee furnished them with some of her bravest men to fight your battles. yes, by the side of your fathers they fought and bled, and now their blood cries to you from the ground to restore that liberty so unjustly taken from us by their sons. marshpee. the next article is from the boston daily advocate. in the editorial remarks will be discerned the noble spirit of independence and love of right which are prominent characteristics of mr. hallett's character, and which induced him, throughout the controversy, to lend the aid of his columns to the poor and oppressed descendants of the people who welcomed his forefathers to their shores. he is not ungrateful for the kindness showed them in a time so remote. i think it my duty to say of him, that he has been fruitful of good works in behalf of all the oppressed. we indians have tried his integrity and have found it sound metal. he gave us the aid of his extensive learning and undeniable talent, and carried our cause before the legislature with no other end in view than the good of the commonwealth and of the marshpee tribe, and a strong desire to wipe from the character of his native state the foul blot of our continued wrongs. he never asked where his pay was to come from; but exposed the iniquities which had been transacted in the affairs of the marshpee people, without hesitation, fear or favor, a course he has steadily pursued to this day. we acknowledge his doings as acts of pure benevolence toward us, and we say that the sons of the pilgrim fathers may well be proud of such a brother. had others been only a little like him, we should have had no reason to complain; and we recommend him as an example, to all who may hereafter have dealings with indians. let them do as he has done, and they will be honored as he is. to be sure, it is no great matter to be loved and honored by poor indians; but the good will of even a dog is better than his ill will. the rich man fared sumptuously every day, while the poor one was lying at his gate, feeding on the crumbs that fell from his table, and the dogs only had compassion on him. they both died; and we read that god sent a convoy of angels to bring the poor man safe home. the rich man doubtless had a splendid funeral; but we do not hear that he had any favor from his maker. o, ye who despise indians, merely because they are poor, ignorant, and copper-colored; do you not think that god will have respect unto them? the marshpee indians. we have received a genuine communication from one of the marshpee indians, and as we verily believe that tribe is in many respects wronged by the whites, and neglected by their legal guardians, the legislature, we are desirous of giving them a hearing, that justice may be done them, if it be a possible matter to get such a thing as justice and good faith from white men toward indians. undoubtedly some of their supposed grievances are imaginary and much exaggerated, but others are real, and tend greatly to depress them. we have had an overflow of sensibility in this quarter toward the cherokees, and there is now an opportunity of showing to the world whether the people of massachusetts can exercise more justice and less cupidity toward their own indians than the georgians have toward the cherokees. we earnestly exhort the marshpeeians to abstain from all acts of violence, and to rely with full confidence upon the next legislature for redress. that body has heretofore treated their claims too lightly, but there is a growing disposition to hear and relieve their grievances. a memorial from the tribe, setting forth the wrongs of which they complain, would unquestionably receive prompt attention. the laws by which they are exposed to the cupidity of their white neighbors, are extremely defective, and require a thorough reform. our correspondent, who we believe speaks the sentiments of the tribe, shall be heard for himself, and we hold our columns free to publish any facts, on either side of this question, which may be offered to the public. "marshpee, aug. , . mr. hallett, _dear sir_--with regret i say that your white brethren still think it a privilege to impose upon us here. the men upon our plantation were gathering their rye harvest, and the poor women whose husbands were at sea, who had let out their land, confidently expected to have their share, but it was taken from them by unjust men, and not so much as a spear of it left to sustain them, or even the promise of help or aid in any way; it was not taken for debt and no one knows for what. the overseers have now become displeased, and choose at this time to use their great power. i hope we shall not have to call upon the state to protect us, but if we are imposed upon in this manner, we believe we shall. and while we are willing to be still and peaceable, we think that those of our white friends, with the light they possess, ought to show as much of the spirit of kindness as poor ignorant indians. the legislature has bound the poor indians as they have. the indians would propose one thing. we have some white men here who will smuggle rum, and sell it to the indians, and as they have no license, they ought to be stopped. we are happy to say that many of our indians are temperate, but we wish them all to be, and we want some way to have a stop put to these things, for these white men are ten times worse than any of the indians. i might name a fuller, a chadwick, and a richardson; we really wish that the honorable legislature would place guardians over them, to keep them from wasting our property in this way. while i was absent, there was a man that sued me for trespass, and tried the case without my information. what kind of law is this? i had the liberty of baiting my horse in a field. a man had rye in a field he did not hire, but took it upon shares. my horse got in his rye, but six cents would pay all the damage. but the action is not damage, but trespass, and that done unknown to me. it is impossible to give you the details of wrongs imposed upon the indians. we are to be accused by our enemies, tried by them, and condemned by them. we can get redress no where, unless we trouble the government all the while, and that we are delicate to do. now we believe that some of these things published abroad would do good, and we should have more peace. yours, most obediently." we have received another communication from marshpee, upon the same subject. "having seen several articles in your paper, relating to the marshpee tribe, we perceive that your paper is free, not muzzled. marshpee indians speak for themselves. it is not to be doubted but that the public would like to hear the indians speak for themselves. it has been represented that the indians were troublesome, and war-like movements were among us. if to make an inquiry into our rights by us, is war-like, so it is. otherwise than this we know nothing about it, and we know of none that has a disposition to shed blood. it is true that the day the hon. j.j. fiske, of the governor's council, was present with us, in a council at the meeting-house, the indians, three in number, were out in the morning, hunting deer, and when they came to the meeting-house, they had their business to attend to, and could not conveniently go four or five miles to put up their muskets, neither did we see the propriety of their so doing. we believe that a just man would not have trembled at an old rusty musket. we are hard to believe, that any people, served as we have been here, would more kindly submit to it, than we have. we think now we have submitted long enough, and we thought it no crime to look, or ask after our rights. but we found our white neighbors had thrown their chains of interest around our principal stock, so much so that we began to think they soon would drag both interest and principal all away. and no wonder they began to cry out, when they saw that the indians were likely to unhook their chains, and break their hold. we believe white men had more war in their hearts than any of the indians. we are willing to hint a few things. we thought white men would do well, that they were trusty. we doubt not but what they be among themselves; but we scarcely believe that they care much for the poor indians, any further than what they can get out of them. it is true we have land in marshpee. we can stay upon it; but we have had to pay one dollar per cord, to the overseers, for our own wood, and take it or carry it just where these men said. our meadows were taken from us and rented out to white people, our pastures also. about twelve hundred cords of our wood has been cut the last year, and we judge the minister has cut one hundred and fifty cords for his share. and in a word, they did as they pleased. the poor could get a pound of meat, or a half peck of corn, and one quart of molasses for two weeks. much might be said, but we forbear. it is true that we have had a preacher, but we do not believe that he cares any thing about us. neither had we any hand in his settlement over us. to be sure, he likes to stay with us, but we think it is because he gets so much good pay. but five or six adult persons attend his preaching, there being _not one indian male_ belonging to his church. this gentleman has cut much wood, to the dissatisfaction of the indians; and it is true they have passed resolutions that they will not hear him preach. yet he wants to stay with us. interest men tremble and threaten, but we fear not, and sincerely hope they will soon tremble before god, and prepare to meet their judge, who will do right, and who will have no regard for skins or color. think of the indians. we turn from this judicious and liberal article, to one that is less favorable. it is from the barnstable journal, of august , . the indians. we learn from south sandwich that the indians, constituting the marshpee tribe, intend to petition at the sitting of the next legislature, for a redress of grievances, and a revision of the code of laws by which they are governed. the recent revolt among them, and the measures adopted to make known their situation and treatment, by themselves, and by those who have avowed their friendship toward them, (its validity time will determine,) gave rise to considerable excitement. an inquiry into the state of affairs was instituted, which terminated, as far as we have been able to learn, to the satisfaction of those employed in the investigation, that some of the evils under which they are labouring are real, and rendered so by the laws of the commonwealth, but many imaginary. we do not doubt that the state of society among them is low and degraded, comparatively speaking, but what contributes to keep them in this situation we are unable to say, unless it be, that the plantation has been a resort of the vagrant, the indolent, and those whom refined society would not allow among them. if this is the case, and we believe it has been, something should be done, either among the indians, or by the legislature, to remedy the evil. we have understood also, that certain individuals, located contiguous to the plantation, retail ardent spirits to them in quantities as large as they are able to pay for. if this be the fact, such men should be ferreted out, and in justice to the indians, to the community about them, and to the laws of the land, they should be made to suffer, by being exhibited to public derision, and by the penalty of the act prohibiting the retail of spirits. if they have not the power, and no one feels willing to go forward in shutting up these poisonous springs, give them the power, and if they do not exercise it, let them suffer. mr. apes is among them, and attended the "four days meeting," held during the present month, which we are told was managed with good order and regularity. the writer here says that the indians are vile and degraded; and admits that they can be improved. he gives no explanation of the causes of their degradation. if the reader will take the trouble to examine the laws regarding the marshpees, he will see those causes of the inevitable and melancholy effect, and, i am sure, will come to the conclusion that any people living under them must necessarily be degraded. the journal, however, does us the small justice to admit, that we are not so degraded but that we can hold a meeting of four days duration, with propriety and moderation. what, then, might we not do, were proper pains taken to educate us. the next two extracts are from the boston advocate of september and , . the marshpee indians. we are mortified for the honor of the state, to learn from barnstable county, that the court of common pleas and sessions there, (judge cummins,) have tried and convicted william apes and six indiana of the marshpee tribe, upon charges connected with the efforts of the indiana to obtain justice from their white masters. apes is very popular with the indians, and this persecution of him, which at least was unnecessary, will inflame them the more. the papers say the conviction was for _riot_. this cannot be, for there was no riot, and no riot act read. apes and his associates prevented a man from carrying wood off the plantation. they were, perhaps, wrong in doing so, but the law which takes this wood from the indian proprietors, is as unjust and unconstitutional as the georgia laws, that take the gold mines from the cherokees. could the question of property have been tried, the act of stopping their own wood, by the indians, could not have been made even trespass, much less riot. it is said that apes and the rest were indicted under some obsolete law, making it a misdemeanor to conspire against the laws. we have looked for such an act, but cannot find it in the statute book. at any rate, law or no law, the indians were indicted and convicted. they were tried by their opponents, and it would be impossible to get justice done them in barnstable county. an impartial jury could not be found there. it is the interest of too many to keep the indians degraded. we think the conviction of these indians is an act of cruelty and oppression, disgraceful to the commonwealth. the marshpee indians are wronged and oppressed by our laws, nearly as much as ever the cherokees were by the georgians. but it is useless to call for the exercise of philanthropy at _home_. it is all expended _abroad_. an attempt was made to indict some of the white harpies, who are selling rum to the indians, without license. those men got clear, and are still suffered to prey on the poor indians; but to stop a load of wood, which in reality belonged to the indians themselves, was an outrage which the court were ready enough to punish! is it creditable to let the _white_ spiders break through the laws, while we catch and crush the poor indian flies? the indians. william apes and the marshpee indians, who were tried before the court of common pleas, in barnstable county, were ably defended by mr. sumner, of this city. apes was sentenced by judge cummings, to thirty days imprisonment in the common jail. one other was sentenced to ten days imprisonment, and the rest were not tried. when the sentence was pronounced, several indians who were present, gave indications of strong excitement at what they conceive to be a tyrannical persecution. it is much to be feared, that this unnecessary and apparently vindictive course, pursued by the overseers and their friends, after the indians had become quiet, and resolved to wait patiently for redress from the legislature, will inflame them to acts of violence, and give the whites, who wish to oppress them, further advantages over them. we have visited the greater part of the tribe recently, in their own dwellings, and we know how strongly and unanimously they feel upon the subject of what they really believe to be, their slavery to the overseers. if, therefore, the course we have pursued, and mean to pursue, in laying their claims to justice before the public, entitles us to be listened to as a friend, we beg them to abstain from all acts which violate even the unjust and hard laws by which they are now held in bondage. resistance will furnish their enemies with the strongest weapons against them, and discourage their friends. let them endure patiently, till the next legislature meets, and if there is any virtue or honesty in our public men, the rights of the marshpee indians will be secured. in our last article we said that it was impossible for the indians to have an impartial jury in barnstable. we did not mean that this arose from all the whites being opposed to the indians. they have many friends in barnstable county, who think them deeply injured, and who have no interest in keeping them degraded, in order to enjoy the privileges which too many whites now have, at the expense of the tribe. we alluded to the influences that would be used upon the jury, as in the case of apes, where we learn, that three individuals, favorable to the indians, but having formed no opinion in that case, were excluded from the regular jury. one of them was set aside, for saying he thought the indians ought to be free. we are still at a loss to know under what law these indians were found guilty of riot, in preventing their own wood from being carried off their own land. where are all our cherokee philanthropists, at this time? the injustice of the proceedings of the barnstable court of common pleas and sessions, is here fitly exposed. in empanelling the jury, it is certain that no name of one favorably inclined toward the indians was selected, and there are many who do not scruple to say, that it was the determination of the court to condemn them, right or wrong. nevertheless, it appeared from the evidence brought, that no fear or alarm whatever had been occasioned to the complainants; and that all they had to complain of was having been hindered from taking away the marshpees' wood. it may not be amiss to say here, that when the honorable judge said he thought it would be well to postpone the case till the next session, the district attorney, mr. warren, replied that he did not think it would be proper, because such a course would involve the commonwealth in extra expense. i should like to ask what thanks are due to the learned gentleman from the commonwealth, for subjecting it to continued reproach and disgrace for the sake of a few dollars. or, can it be that there is no disgrace in persisting in wrong toward indians? let those who think so, think so still; but there are many who think otherwise, and there is one above who knows that they think rightly. when the witnesses and the pleadings had been heard, the jury retired, for the sake of decency, and presently returned with a verdict of _guilty_. i thought that his honor appeared to be pleased with it. the judgment was suspended about two hours, when the court again sat, and the matter was called up. there was not a little said concerning the case. messrs. reed, sumner, holmes and nye, of yarmouth, boston, rochester, and sandwich, all professional men, were opposed to the course pursued by the court, and thought that an exposition of the law to us and reprimand would be productive of a better effect, than imprisonment, or other severe punishment, which they justly believed would do no good whatever. their judgment has since been confirmed by public opinion, and by the acts of the legislature. since this affair took place, i have been kindly informed by a gentleman of barnstable, that my punishment was not half severe enough. i replied that, in my mind, it was no punishment at all; and i am yet to learn what punishment can dismay a man conscious of his own innocence. lightning, tempest and battle, wreck, pain, buffeting and torture have small terror to a pure conscience. the body they may afflict, but the mind is beyond their power. the gentleman above mentioned, and one other, have frequently said to the marshpees, "if you will only get rid of apes, and drive him off the plantation, we will be your friends." this has been their continued cry since i began to use my poor endeavors to get the indians righted; and if it is not now universally believed that it is impossible to benefit and befriend the indians while i am among them, it is not because they have spared any pains to propagate the doctrine. one would think, to hear these gentlemen talk, that they have a strong desire to benefit the marshpees; and the question naturally arises, what steps they would take to this end, if they had the power. if we are to judge of the future by experience of the past, we may reasonably suppose that they would profit the tribe, by getting possession of their property, and making their own advantage of it. the taunton gazette found fault with the government of the commonwealth, for having placed the marshpees under its laws contrary to their wish and consent, and denies its right so to do. this may be considered as in some degree indicative of the feeling of the good people of taunton; and there are many other towns in massachusetts where a kindly feeling is entertained for our persecuted race. we believe the wish to relieve us from bondage is general throughout the state, and we earnestly hope that a few designing men will not be able to accomplish their selfish ends, contrary to the will of a majority of the people. the next article is from the boston advocate, of december , . temperance among the indians at marshpee. the indians met upon the th of october to take into consideration the cause of temperance, and to investigate the evils that king alcohol has practised upon us, by infusing into our heads fancied riches, fame, honor, and grandeur, making us the sovereigns of the whole earth. but having been so often deceived, beat, abused and tyrannized over, and withal cheated, and robbed, and defrauded by this tyrant, and to cap the climax, almost deprived of our senses, burnt and nearly frozen to death, and all our expectations cut off as to the comforts of life, it was agreed upon, (after an appropriate address from the rev. william apes, setting forth the evils of intemperance and its awful effects in wasting away our race, like the early dew, before the morning sun,) by our most influential people to attack this mighty champion, and if possible, overcome him, and shut him up in prison, and set a seal upon him, that he shall deceive our nation no more. accordingly a temperance society was formed, and the following officers were elected: rev. william apes, president; rev. joseph amos, vice president; dea. i. coombs, and thomas hush, recording secretaries; dea. c. hinson, corresponding secretary; executive committee, oakes coombs, joseph tobey, frank hicks. forty-two of the tribe united in the pledge of temperance. nov. . we met again, and the president again addressed the meeting, much to the satisfaction of the people. after which many others gave spirited addresses, setting forth the evils of intemperance, in a most pathetic manner. it has caused a wonderful effect, and our brethren are enlisting to take hold and shut up our great enemy in prison, and choke him to death by total abstinence. friends of temperance help. the society passed the following resolutions: _resolved_, that we will not countenance the use of ardent spirits among us, in any way whatever; and that we will do all in our power to suppress it. that we will not buy it ourselves, nor suffer it to be in our houses, unless ordered by a physician. _resolved_, that this society shall meet monthly, to regulate itself, and if any one is found to break their pledge, the same shall be excluded, without speedy repentance. _voted_, that the above be printed. sixty-one is found upon our list. christopher hinson, _cor. sec'y_. _marshpee, nov. _. it appears from this that indians can be temperate, and have a disposition and desire to benefit themselves. it shows, too, that they are capable of organizing societies, and taking care of their own concerns, as well, to say the least, as any equal number of persons in the commonwealth; for they certainly feel more strongly interested for themselves than others can be for them. it will be seen that little was done concerning our tribe, from the session of the court at barnstable up to the meeting of the legislature, though the opposition to us had wealth, talent and power in its ranks. clergymen, lawyers, physicians, counsellors, governor, senators, and representatives were arrayed against us; and we marshpees account all who opposed our freedom, as tories, hostile to the constitution, and the liberties of the country. this is our sincere opinion of them, and it is to us a thing inexplicable that his excellency, the then governor, should have seen fit to place himself at their head.[ ] we desire to thank our maker that they found themselves in the minority of the people, and fell in the esteem of christian and benevolent persons who heard of their conduct. we thank the majority of the controllers of public affairs, that they had more sense than to think of holding the rightful lords of the soil in bondage any longer, for the gratification of selfish and unjust men. honorable is it to massachusetts that there are enough good and upright men in authority, to counteract the measures of those of a different character, and remedy the evils they may occasion. i shall now proceed to present to my brethren, an indian's appeal to them, and the laws framed by the legislature for the oppression and moral and political destruction of the marshpees in by-gone days. my comments thereupon will be omitted, because, should i say all the subject suggests, it would swell my book to a bulk that would be wearisome to the reader. an indian's appeal to the white men of massachusetts. as our brethren, the white men of massachusetts, have recently manifested much sympathy for the red men of the cherokee nation, who have suffered much from their white brethren; as it is contended in this state, that our red brethren, the cherokees, should be an independent people, having the privileges of the white men; we, the red men of the marshpee tribe, consider it a favorable time to speak. we are not free. we wish to be so, as much as the red men of georgia. how will the white man of massachusetts ask favor for the red men of the south, while the poor marshpee red men, his near neighbors, sigh in bondage? will not your white brothers of georgia tell you to look at home, and clear your own borders of oppression, before you trouble them? will you think of this? what would be benevolence in georgia, the red man thinks would be so in massachusetts. you plead for the cherokees, will you not raise your voice for the red man of marshpee? our overseers are not kind; they speak, you hear them. when we speak for ourselves, our voice is so feeble it is not heard. you think the men you give us do us good, and that all is right. brothers, you are deceived; they do us no good. we do them good. they like the place where you have put them. brothers, our fathers of this state meet soon to make laws; will you help us to enable them to hear the voice of the red man? _marshpee, dec. , _. this appeal was published in several of the public prints, in order to make our dissatisfaction manifest. the next extract is from the boston advocate, and shows what opposition was made to the reading of our petition in the house of representatives. the article says all that can be said for itself.[ ] petition of the marshpee tribe of indians. yesterday morning, in the house, mr. cushing of dorchester, presented the petition of the proprietors and inhabitants of the marshpee plantation, signed by males and females on the plantation, and in behalf of males and females, who are absent from the plantation, and say they will not return to live under the present laws, in all : praying for the privilege to manage their own property; for the abolition of the overseership, that they may be incorporated as the town of marshpee, with the right to make municipal regulations; that one or more magistrates may be appointed among them; and for a repeal of the existing laws relating to their tribe, with the exception of the law preventing their selling their lands, which they pray may be retained; and for a redress of grievances. [the memorial sets forth in detail, the complaints of the tribe, and was drawn up among themselves, without assistance. it is represented here by deacon coombs, daniel amos, and william apes, all of them well informed indians, who are deputed by the tribe, and were present in the house yesterday.] mr. cushing moved that the petition be read and referred to a special committee, to be joined by the senate. mr. swift of nantucket, said there was a statement to be made from the governor and council, on the subject of the difficulties with the indians, and he hoped the petition would be laid on the table without being read. mr. allen of pembroke, hoped the motion to read the petition would not prevail. we should have in a few days a statement from the governor and council, and he hoped nothing would be done until that was received, to prejudice the house. mr. cushing of dorchester, was not aware that any objections could be made to the reading of the petition, which he considered as a matter of course; nor could he see how a knowledge of the matter could prejudice the house. he presumed the house would not take upon itself to refuse to hear the petition of the humblest individual, and he did not fear that they could not control their minds so far as to be ready to give a fair hearing to the other side. the intimation that some document was to come from another source, did not go at all to show that the petition ought not to be read. whether the statement which gentlemen said was to be made, was in aid or explanation of the petition did not appear, but the subject was before the house, and ought to receive the attention due to it. mr. lucas of plymouth, said (as far as we could hear him) that the difficulty in the marshpee tribe had been caused by an itinerant preacher, who went there and urged them to declare their independence. they proceeded to extremities, and the governor and council sent a commissioner to examine the affair, and he made a report to the council, and until that was heard, he hoped nothing would be heard from the indians. it ought first to come before the house. the petition originated no doubt, from the itinerant preacher, who had been pouring into their ears discontent until they had a riot, and the rioters were prosecuted with the preacher among them, and he was convicted and imprisoned. whether any of the petitioners were among those rioters or not, he did not know. mr. allen of pembroke, said he had not heard the gentleman from plymouth. it was not his wish to prevent the petitioners being heard at a proper time, but he thought the house ought to hear the other side, before any course was taken. mr. robinson of marblehead, hoped that the attempt would not be persisted in, to withhold from these indians the common indulgence of having their petition read. mr. loring of hingham, understood that this was the same petition which went before the governor and council, [mr. l. was misinformed; it is a different petition,] and as it was very long, it would take up time unnecessarily to read it. he hoped it would be laid on the table. mr. allen of worcester, thought those who opposed the reading were in fact increasing the importance of the petition by that course. if the house should refuse to hear it read, a course he did not remember had ever been adopted toward any respectful petition, from any quarter, it would become a subject of much more speculation than if it took the ordinary course. mr. h. lincoln of boston, was surprised to hear an objection raised to the reading of this petition. it was due to the character of the house, and to our native brethren the petitioners, whose agents were here on the floor, that they should be heard, and heard patiently. he hoped that out of respect to ourselves, and from justice to the petitioners, their petition would find every favor, which in justice ought to be extended to it. mr. swift of nantucket, again urged that the petition ought not to be read, until the report from the governor and council was first heard. mr. chapman.--the petitioners have a constitutional right to be heard. i know not of what value that provision is which gives a right to petition, if the house can refuse to hear the petition. they do not ask for action, but to be heard. it can be read and laid on the table. so long as i hold a seat in this house, my hand shall be raised to give a hearing to the humblest individual who presents a petition for redress of grievances. mr. loring of hingham hoped the idea could not be entertained that they wished to throw this subject out of the house. he wanted the whole subject should be brought up, and not that this petition should go in first. it was not his wish to prevent the petitioners being heard. the speaker put the question, shall the petition be read? and it was carried in the affirmative, nearly every hand in the house being raised. in the negative we saw but five hands. the petition was then read by the speaker. mr. roberts of salem moved that it be laid on the table and printed for the use of the house, as there must be a future action of the house upon it. the motion was carried without objection. the attempt to prevent the petition of the marshpee indians from being read, was repelled in the house with an unanimity which shows the value the representatives place upon the right of petitioning. the poor indians are without advice or counsel to aid them, for they have no means to fee lawyers, but they will evidently find firm friends in the house ready to do them justice. this is no party question. it involves the honor of the state. let all be done for them that can be wisely done in a spirit of paternal kindness. let it not be shown that our sympathy for indians extends only to those at the south, but has no feeling for our own. * * * * * [_from the same_.] the marshpee indians. the laws which regulate this remnant of a once powerful tribe of indians, are not familiar to many, and it is one great defect in the present system, that these laws are so difficult of access, and so complex that the indians neither know nor comprehend them; and it cannot be expected that they should live contentedly under oppressive regulations which they do not understand. should any new laws be passed, they ought to be as simple as possible, and be distributed for the use of the indians. by the act of , ch. , vol. of laws, page , new provisions were made, the previous act of , ch. , being found insufficient "to protect them and their property against the arts and designs of those who may be disposed to take advantage of their weakness." the wisdom of the whites, at that time, invented the following provisions for that purpose: section . a board of five overseers was established, (afterwards reduced to three,) two to be inhabitants of barnstable county, and three from an adjoining county. (now two are inhabitants of barnstable and one of plymouth county.) these overseers were vested with full power to regulate the police of the plantation; to establish rules for managing the affairs, interests and concerns of the indians and inhabitants. they may improve and lease the lands of the indians, and their _tenements_; regulate their streams, ponds and fisheries; mete out lots for their particular improvement; control and regulate absolutely, their bargains, contracts, wages, and other dealings, take care of their poor, and bind out their children to suitable persons. the overseers are directed to hold stated meetings, elect a moderator, secretary and treasurer, and may appoint and remove guardians over any of the indians, to act under the the overseers, and to carry their regulations into effect, the guardians to give bonds to the overseers. by section , the overseers or the guardians they appoint have power to demand and receive all property or wages owing to said proprietors or any of them, by any person, and may sue in their own names for its recovery, or for any trespass, fraud or injury done to their lands or them. they may settle all accounts and controversies between the indians or any white person, for voyages or any services done by them, and may bind the children of poor proprietors by indenture, to suitable persons. sect. . no lease, covenant, bond or bargain, or contract in writing, is of any validity unless approved by the overseer or guardian; and no indian proprietor can be sued for any goods sold, services done, &c. or for money, unless the account is first approved by the overseers. [this, it is said, enables the overseers to sanction the accounts of those who sell to the indians upon the expectation of obtaining the favor of the overseers, and opens a door for connivance.] sect. . the overseers are to keep a fair account of all monies, wages, &c. they receive, and all proceeds of the plantation, and shall distribute to the proprietors their respective shares and dues, after deducting reasonable expense of conducting their business, _paying their just debts_, (of which the overseers are made the judges,) and providing for the sick and indigent, from the common profits, and reserving such sums as can be spared conveniently, for the support of religious instruction, and schooling children. the accounts to be laid before the governor annually. the governor and council appoint the overseers and displace them at pleasure. sect. . the indian proprietors are prohibited giving any one liberty to cut wood, timber or hay, to milk pine trees, carry off any ore or grain, or to plant or improve any land or tenement, and no such liberty, unless approved by the overseers, shall bar an action on the part of the overseers to recover. the lands shall not be taken in execution for debt, and an indian committed for debt may take the poor debtor's oath, his being a _proprietor_ to the contrary notwithstanding. the last act relating to this tribe, was passed feb. , , chap. , d vol. of laws, page . it provides that no person thereafter shall be a proprietor of the plantation, except a child or lineal descendant of some proprietor, and in no other way shall this _right_, as it is called, be acquired. other inhabitants are called members of the tribe. the overseers are to keep a record of names, or census, of all who are proprietors, and all who are residents or members of the tribe, a return of which is to be made to the governor the last of december. the overseers, in addition to all former power, are invested with all the powers and duties of guardians of the indians, whenever such office of guardian shall be vacant. [a very blind provision, by the way, which it may be as difficult for white men as for indians to understand.] any person selling ardent spirits to an indian, without a permit in writing from the overseer, from some agent of theirs, or from a respectable physician, may be fined not more than fifty dollars, on conviction; and it shall be the duty of the overseer to give information for prosecuting such offenders. the overseers may bind out to service, for three years at a time, any proprietor or member of the tribe, who in their judgment has become an habitual drunkard and idler, and they may apply his earnings to his own support, his family's, or the proprietors generally, as they think proper. all real estate acquired or purchased by the industry of the proprietors and members, (meaning of course without the limits of the plantation,) shall be their sole property and estate, and may be held or conveyed by deed, will, or otherwise. if any indian or other person shall cut or take away any wood, timber, or other property, on any lands _belonging_ to the proprietors or members, which is not set off; or if any person not a proprietor or member, shall do the same on lands that have been set off, or commit any other trespass, they shall be fined not over $ , or imprisoned not over two years. the indians are declared competent witnesses to prove the trespass. no indian or other person is to cut wood without a permit in writing, signed by two overseers, expressing the quantity to be cut, at what time and for what purpose; and the permit must be recorded in their proceedings before any wood or timber shall be cut. [of this provision, the indians greatly complain, because it gives them no more privilege in cutting their own wood than a stranger has, and because under it, as they say, the overseers oblige them to pay a dollar or more a cord for all the wood they are permitted to cut, which leaves them little or no profit, and compels the industrious to labour merely for the support of the idle, while the white men, who have their teams, vessels, &c. can buy their permits and cut down the wood of the plantation in great quantities, at much greater profit than the indian can do, who has nothing but his axe, and must pay these white men a dollar or more for carting his wood, and a dollar or more to the overseers, thus leaving him not enough to encourage industry.] all accounts of the overseers are to be annually examined by the court of common pleas for barnstable, and a copy sent by the overseers to the governor. any action commenced by the overseers, does not abate by their death, but may be prosecuted by the survivors. all fines, &c. under the act, are to be recovered before courts in barnstable county, one half to the informer, and the other to the state. these are all the provisions of the law of , and these are the provisions under which the tribe is governed. as i suppose my reader can understand these laws, and is capable of judging of their propriety, i shall say but little on this subject, i will ask him how, if he values his own liberty, he would or could rest quiet under such laws. i ask the inhabitants of new england generally, how their fathers bore laws, much less oppressive, when imposed upon them by a foreign government. it will be at once seen that the third section takes from us the rights and privileges of citizens _in toto_, and that we are not allowed to govern our own property, wives and children. a board of overseers are placed over us to keep our accounts, and give debt and credit, as may seem good unto them. at one time, it was the practice of the overseers, when the indians hired themselves to their neighbors, to receive their wages, and dispose of them at their own discretion. sometimes an indian bound on a whaling voyage would earn four or five hundred dollars, and the shipmaster would account to the overseers for the whole sum. the indian would get some small part of his due, in order to encourage him to go again, and gain more for his white masters, to support themselves and educate their children with. and this is but a specimen of the systematic course taken to degrade the tribe from generation to generation. i could tell of one of our masters who has not only supported himself and family out of the proceeds of our lands and labors, but has educated a son at college, at our expense. it is true that if any indian elected to leave the plantation, he might settle and accumulate property elsewhere, and be free; but if he dared to return home with his property, it was taken out of his hands by the board of overseers, according to the unjust law. his property had no more protection from their rapacity than the rest of the plantation. in the name of heaven, (with due reverence,) i ask, what people could improve under laws which gave such temptation and facility to plunder? i think such experiments as our government have made ought to be seldom tried. if the government of massachusetts do not see fit to believe me, i would fain propose to them a test of the soundness of my reasoning. let them put our white neighbors in barnstable county under the guardianship of a board of overseers, and give them no privileges other than have been allowed to the poor, despised indians. let them inflict upon the said whites a preacher whom they neither love nor respect, and do not wish to hear. let them, in short, be treated just as the marshpee tribe have been, i think there will soon be a declension of morals and population. we shall see if they will be able to build up a town in such circumstances. any enterprising men who may be among them will soon seek another home and society, which it is not in the power of the indians to do, on account of their color. could they have been received and treated by the world as other people are, there would not be so many living in marshpee as there are by half. the laws were calculated to drive the tribe from their possessions, and annihilate them, as a people; and i presume they would work the same effect upon any other people; for human nature is the same under skins of all colors. degradation is degradation, all the world over. if the white man desired the welfare of his red brethren, why did he not give them schools? why has not the state done something to supply us with teachers and places of instruction? i trow, all the schooling the marshpee people have ever had, they have gotten themselves. there was not even a house on the plantation for the accommodation of a teacher, till i arrived among them. we have now a house respectable enough for even a white teacher to lodge in comfortably, and we are in strong hopes that we shall one day soon be able to provide for our own wants, if the whites will only permit us to do so, as they never have done yet. if they can but be convinced that we are human beings, i trust they will be our hindrance no longer. i beg the reader's patience and attention to a few general remarks. it is a sorrowful truth that, heretofore, all legislation regarding the affairs of indians, has had a direct tendency to degrade them, to drive them from their homes, and the graves of their fathers, and to give their lands as a spoil to the general government, or to the several states. in new england, especially, it can be proved that indian lands have been taken to support schools for the whites, and the preaching of the gospel to them. had the property so taken been applied to the benefit of its true owners, they would not and could not have been so ignorant and degraded a race as they now are; only forty-four of whom, out of four or five hundred, can write their names. from what i have been able to learn from the public prints and other sources, the amount annually derived to the american people, from indian lands is not far from six millions, a tax of which they have almost the sole benefit. in the mean while, we daily see the indian driven farther and farther by inhuman legislation and wars, and all to enrich a people who call themselves christians, and are governed by laws derived from the moral and pious puritans. i say that, from the year of our lord , to the present day, the conduct of the whites toward the indians has been one continued system of robbery. i suppose many of my readers have heard of the late robbery at barnegat, and are ready to say, that the like has never been known in this country, and seldom in any other. now, though two-thirds of the inhabitants, not excluding their magistrates, have been proved to be thieves, i ask, was their conduct worse, or even so bad as that constantly practised by the american people toward the indians? i say no; and what makes the robbery of my wronged race more grievous is, that it is sanctioned by legal enactments. why is it more iniquitous to plunder a stranded ship than to rob, and perhaps murder, an indian tribe? it is my private opinion that king solomon was not far wrong when he said, "bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." he might have said with equal propriety, "in the way he should _not_ go." i am sorry that the puritans knew no better than to bring up their children to hate and oppress indians. i must own, however, that the children are growing something better than their fathers were, and i wish that the children of barnegat had had better parents. the next matter i shall offer is in two more articles from the boston advocate. the first is by the editor. the indians. the arms of the state of massachusetts, which appear at the head of all official acts, and upon the seals of office, are an indian with his bow and arrows. over his head is an arm holding the sword of justice. is this sword designed to protect or oppress the indians? the legislature now have the opportunity to answer this question, and as they answer, will be the record in history. the principal community of indians in this state, the marshpee tribe, have presented their complaints before the legislature. though an unwise attempt was made by some few of the representatives from the neighborhood of the indians, to prevent the reading of their petition, it was received with marked kindness by the house, and ordered to be printed, a favor which the indians did not think of asking. there is evidently a disposition in the house to prove that our sympathies are not confined merely to the georgia indians, for political effect. mr. hallett, i perceive that your paper has spoken a good word now and then for the native indians of massachusetts. there is no class of human beings in this state, who have more need of a candid and humane advocate. i do not know much about the remnants of a once noble and hospitable race, and yet i know enough to make me grieve for them, and ashamed of the state. for about two hundred years, the laws have prohibited indians from selling their lands to whites, within this commonwealth. this restriction, designed originally to protect the natives against fraud, has, upon the whole, had an unfavorable effect upon their happiness. if they had been at liberty to dispose of their land and depart with the proceeds, or even without the proceeds, to seek some new location, they would in all probability have been happier. nor have these prohibitory laws had even the poor effect to protect them from the rapacity of their white neighbors. these have contrived to clip the corners of those simple people, and to get hold of their pleasant and fertile vallies in a very surprising manner, considering the strictness of the law. but the great ground of complaint is, that no native indian, or descendant, is allowed by us _to be a man, or to make himself a man_, whatever may be his disposition and capacity. they are all kept in a state of vassalage, under officers, appointed sometimes by the governor, and sometimes by the legislature. the spot of his own ground, which he may cultivate, is annually rented out to the indian by an overseer; and provisions are doled out to the tribe according to the discretion of _"guardians," "trustees,"_ &c. their accounts are presented to the governor and council, who allow, and the treasurer of the commonwealth pays them as a matter of course. i dare not say whether those accounts are in all cases correct, or not. if they are, we ought to be thankful to the honesty of the trustees, &c. not to the wisdom of the legislature in providing checks upon fraud. but the effect upon the _indians_ is the great question. this is decidedly bad. they are treated more like dogs than men. a state of tutelage, extending from the cradle to the grave; a state of utter dependence, breaks down every manly attribute, and makes of human creatures, designed to walk erect, creeping things. but there is another very great evil, if i am rightly informed, which calls loudly for the interposition of the legislature. the marshpee and other indian communities in this state, are not included within the jurisdiction of any incorporated town. the consequence is, that they are without police, except what the trustees and other officers appointed by them, exercise. these officers never live among them; and the consequence is, that the indian grounds are so many _alsatias_, where the vagrant, the dissipated, and the felonious do congregate. nor is this the fault of the native. it is the fault of their state; which, while it has demolished indian customs, has set up no regular administration of municipal laws in their stead. thus i am informed, that at gayhead, spirituous liquors are retailed without license, and that _it is considered_ that there is no power which can reach the abuse. there are many industrious and worthy people among these natives, who are anxious for improvement, and to promote the education and improvement of their people, but a degrading personal dependence on the one hand, and the absence of nearly all incentives and all power to do good on the other, keeps them down. the _paupers_ among these natives, who are at some seasons of the year a majority or nearly all of them, are supported by the state, and there must be a great opportunity and temptation to the agents of the government to wrong these poor people. the agents always have the ear of the government, or rather they _are_ the government. the indians have nobody to speak for them. they are kept too poor to pay counsel. i think it is not too much to say that almost any degree of injustice, short of murder, might be done them without any likelihood of their obtaining redress. why should not this odious, and brutifying system be put an end to? why should not the remaining indians in this commonwealth be placed upon the same footing as to rights of property, as to civil privileges and duties, as other men? why should they not _vote_, maintain schools, (they have volunteered to do this in some instances,) and use as they please that which is their own? if the contiguous towns object to having them added to their corporations, let them be incorporated by themselves; let them choose their officers, establish a police; maintain fences and take up stray cattle. i believe the indians desire such a change. i believe they have gone as far as they are allowed to introduce it. but they are fettered and ground to the earth. i am informed that many of the stoutest _whalers_ are produced among our small indian tribes. i am also informed, that they are defrauded by the whites of a great part of their wages, which would otherwise amount to large sums. if some respectable men could be trained up and fostered among these people, their intelligence and influence would be invaluable to educate, protect and guide their seafaring brethren. under such auspices, they would, after the years of peril, return and settle down with snug independence, be a blessing to their brethren, and respectable in the sight of all. now they are so knocked about, so cheated, preyed upon and brutalized, that they think of nothing, and _hope_ nothing, but sensual gratifications; and in consequence, die prematurely, or live worse than to die. the christian philanthropists of massachusetts little know the extent of evil, which there is in this respect. i entreat them, i entreat the constituted authorities, to look to it. william penn. i use these pieces chiefly because they partly correspond in truth and spirit with what i have already said. let our friends but read the laws, and they will see what the sword of the commonwealth is intended for. in the second article there is a grievous mistake. it says that the government has assisted us. the marshpee indians have always paid their full share of taxes, and very great ones they have been. they have defrayed the expense of two town meetings a year, and one of two of the white men whose presence was necessary, lived twenty-five miles off. the meetings lasted three or four days at a time, during which, these men lived upon the best, at our cost, and charged us three dollars a day, and twenty-five cents a mile, travelling expenses, going and coming into the bargain. this amounts to thirty-five dollars a trip; and as there were, as has already been said, two visitations a year, it appears that we have paid seventy dollars a year to bring one visitor, whose absence would have been much more agreeable to us than his presence. extend this calculation to the number of seven persons, and the other expenses of our misgovernment, and perhaps some other expenditures not mentioned, and see what a sum our tax will amount to. the next article is from the boston advocate of december , . the marshpee indians. it was stated in the barnstable journal the other day, and has been copied into other papers, that the marshpee indians were generally satisfied with their situation, and desired no change, and that the excitement, produced principally by mr. apes, had subsided. we had no doubt this statement was incorrect, because we had personally visited most of the tribe, in their houses and wigwams, in august last, and found but one settled feeling of wrong and oppression pervading the whole; not a new impulse depending upon mr. apes or any other man, but the result of the unjust laws which have ruled them like a complete despotism. the overseers are not so much to blame as the laws. we doubt not they have acted honestly; but, in the spirit of the laws, they have almost unavoidably exercised a stern control over the property and persons of the tribe. in fact the laws, as they now stand, almost permit the overseers, with impunity, to sell the indians for slaves. they can bind them out as they please, do as they please with their contracts, expel them from the plantation almost at will, and in fact use them nearly as slaves. we do not think they have intentionally done wrong to the indians, but the whole system of government is wrong; and hence the unalterable dislike the indians have to their overseers. no better men could be appointed, that we know of; but the best men must play the tyrant, if they execute the present laws, designed as they are to _oppress_, and not to protect the poor indians. we have known these indians, from our youth up. they live near our native home. the first pleasure we ever derived from the exercise of benevolence, was in satisfying the calls of their women and children for bread, at our father's door, and we always found them kind hearted to those who were kind to them. we have often met with them to worship in their rural meeting-house, and have again and again explored with the angling rod, the romantic stream, abounding with the nimble trout, which courses through their plantation. for those reasons, and these alone, we felt it our duty to give them an opportunity to be heard through the columns of our paper, while all others were closed to them, or cold to their complaints. if we can do them any good, we shall have a full reward in the act itself. we have it already in the simple tribute of gratitude, which they have unexpectedly bestowed upon our poor services. they have sent us a communication, which is signed by the best men in the tribe. we know most of these names, and they belong to the most sensible and most industrious to be found on the plantation. will other papers publish this simple appeal to the justice of the white men? it is useless to say after this, that the indians of marshpee are content with their condition. something must be done for them. marshpee indians. "mr. hallett, it has been stated in some of the papers that the marshpee indians are generally satisfied with their situation, and the conduct of the overseers, and want no change. it is also said that the most industrious men on the plantation are opposed to petitioning the legislature to give them the management of their own property; and they would all have been quiet, if it had not been for mr. apes. now we know something of our own rights without being told by mr. apes, or any one. we have confidence in mr. apes, and have seen no reason to doubt that he means well; but our dissatisfaction with the laws and the overseers was the same as it is now, long before mr. apes came among us, and he will have our confidence no longer than while we are satisfied he does right. if he does wrong, we shall oppose him as soon as any man, but so long as he honestly aids us in seeking for our rights, we shall be in his favor. he is only one of us, and has no more authority over the tribe than any other member of it. he has been adopted into the tribe, according to the indian custom; and as long as he deserves our confidence, we shall regard him as a friend. but it is unfair to attempt to prejudice the public against us, while we are petitioning for our rights. it is not true that the indians are satisfied. the legislature ought not to be deceived by such stories from interested men. there is a universal dissatisfaction with our condition, and unless something is done to relieve us, the whole tribe must suffer, and they will feel as if they must give up all hope of improving their condition. we wish you to publish this with our names, that the public may not be deceived. daniel b. amos, james hush, ezra attaquin, christopher hinson, aaron keeter, joseph pocknet, nicholas pocknet, david wilbur, william x[note: sideways x] jones, (his mark,) isaac x[note: sideways x] simons, " oaks a. coombs, isaac coombs, james lowes, george cannada, richard simon, daniel x[note: sideways x] pocknet, (his mark,) peter x[note: sideways x] squib, " joseph x[note: sideways x] squib, " jacob x[note: sideways x] pocknet, " israel amos, david mingo. n.b. there could be a host of names procured, but we think here are enough to satisfy the whole earth that we are _not_ satisfied to remain in bondage. we also feel very grateful for the patriotic and benevolent course that the worthy editor, mr. hallett, has pursued, in laying our claims and oppression before the public, especially as he has done it without asking the least compensation. we rejoice to find such friends, for we believe them to be christians, and impartial philanthropists. gentlemen and ladies of other papers are not forgotten. the indian's heart swells with gratitude to them for noticing us; and we wish that editors who are friends to our rights, would please notice the above. done at a regular meeting at marshpee, dec. , . daniel b. amos, _sec'y. marshpee, dec. , _." i quote these articles only because they serve to show that there was a disposition prevalent among the editorial fraternity, to prejudice the people at large against the rights and liberties of the indians. after our petition had been presented, our delegates obtained admission into the hall of the representatives, where they were privileged to tell their own story. our enemies endeavored to hinder them even of this, though without success; and thankful are we that they did not succeed. it will be seen from the following, that the delegation were not unmindful of their duty. the address of the marshpee indians at boylston hall, last evening, was listened to with great attention, by a crowded house, and with approbation, too, if we may judge from the repeated marks of applause. the address at the state house last friday evening was also attended by an overflowing house. we were unable to get in, and cannot, therefore, say what effect was produced by it. the next is from the liberator of jan. , . the marshpee indians. this is a small tribe, comprising four or five hundred persons, residing at the head of cape cod, in barnstable county. they have long been under the guardianship of the state, treated as paupers, and subjected to the control of a board of overseers. a memorial from them was presented to the legislature last week, (written entirely by one of their number,) in which they set forth the grievances which are imposed upon them, the injustice and impolicy of the laws affecting their tribe, the arbitrary and capricious conduct of the overseers, and the manner in which they are defrauded of the fruits of their labor; and earnestly beseech the legislature to grant them the same liberty of action as is enjoyed by their white brethren, that they may manage their own concerns, and be directly amenable to the laws of the state, and not to their present overseers. a delegation from this tribe is now in this city, consisting of deacon coombs, daniel amos, and william apes. the use of the hall of the house of representatives having been granted to them, they made a public statement of their situation and wants to a crowded audience on friday evening last, principally composed of members of the house; and were listened to most respectfully and attentively. deacon coombs first addressed the assembly, in a brief but somewhat indefinite speech; the purport of which was, that, although by taking side with the overseers, he might have advanced his own interests, he nevertheless chose to suffer with his people, and to plead in their behalf. their condition was growing more and more intolerable; excessive exactions were imposed upon them; their industry was crippled by taxation; they wished to have the overseers discharged. daniel amos next addressed the meeting. he said he was aware of his ignorance; but although his words might be few, and his language broken, he as deeply sympathized with his suffering constituents, as any of his tribe. he gave a short sketch of his life, by which it appeared that he went at an early period on a whaling voyage, and received some bodily injury which incapacitated him from hard labor for a long time. he sought his native home, and soon experienced the severity of those laws, which, though enacted seemingly to protect the tribe, are retarding their improvement, and oppressing their spirits. the present difficulties were not of recent origin. he stated, with commendable pride, that he had never been struck for ill-behaviour, nor imprisoned for crime or debt; nor was he ashamed to show his face again in any place he had visited; and he had been round a large portion of the globe. the memorial before the legislature had been read to the tribe; some parts had been omitted at their request; and nothing had been sent but by their unanimous consent. after vindicating the character of mr. apes, and enumerating some of the complaints of the tribe. he was followed by william apes, who, in a fearless, comprehensive and eloquent speech, endeavored to prove that, under such laws and such overseers, no people could rise from their degradation. he illustrated the manner in which extortions were made from the poor indians, and plainly declared that they wanted their rights as men and as freemen. although comparatively ignorant, yet they knew enough to manage their own concerns more equitably and economically than they were then managed; and notwithstanding the difficulties under which they labored, their moral condition was improving. there was not so much intemperance among them as formerly; many of the tribe were shrewd, intelligent and respectable men; and all that was necessary to raise up the entire mass from their low estate, was the removal of those fetters and restrictions which now bind them to the dust. mr. apes described the cause and the extent of the disturbance which took place last summer, and which resulted in his imprisonment. the head and front of their offending was in going into the woods, and unloading a cart, and causing it to be sent away empty. the reason for that procedure was, that they wished no more wood to be cut until an investigation of their rights had been made. they used no violence; uttered no oaths; made no throats; and took no weapons of defence. every thing was done quietly, but firmly. mr. apes wished to know from whence the right to tax them without their consent, and at pleasure, and subject them to the arbitrary control of a board of overseers, was derived? he knew not himself; but he feared it was from the color of their skin. he concluded by making a forcible appeal to the justice and humanity of the legislature, and expressing his confidence that the prayer of the memorialists would not be made in vain. in several instances, the speakers made some dextrous and pointed thrusts at the whites, for their treatment of the sons of the forest since the time of the pilgrims, which were received with applause by the audience. they were all careful in their references to the conduct of the overseers; they wished to say as little about them as possible; but they wanted their removal forthwith. this is the first time our attention has been seriously called to the situation of this tribe. it is a case not to be treated with contempt, or disposed of hastily. it involves the rights, the interests, and the happiness of a large number of that race which has been nearly exterminated by the neglect, the oppression, and the cruelty of a superior number of foreign invaders. in the enslavement of two millions of american people in the southern states, the tyranny of this nation assumes a gigantic form. the magnitude of the crime elevates the indignation of the soul. such august villainy and stupendous iniquity soar above disgust, and mount up to astonishment. a conflagration like that of moscow, is full of sublimity, though dreadful in its effects; but the burning of a solitary hut makes the incendiary despicable by the meanness of the act. in the present case, this state is guilty of a series of petty impositions upon a feeble band, which excite not so much indignation as disgust. they may be, and doubtless are, the blunders of legislation; the philanthropy of proscriptive ignorance; the atoning injuries of prejudice, rather than deliberate oppression. no matter who are the overseers, (we know them not,) nor how faithfully they have executed the laws. the complaint is principally against the state; incidentally against them. they may succeed, perhaps, in vindicating their own conduct; but the state is to be judged out of the statute book, by the laws now in force for the regulation of the tribe. fearing, in the plenitude of its benevolence, that the indians would never rise to be men, the commonwealth has, in the perfection of its wisdom, given them over to absolute pauperism. believing they were incapable of self-government as free citizens, it has placed them under a guardianship which is sure to keep them in the chains of a servile dependance. deprecating partial and occasional injustice to them on the part of individuals, it has shrewdly deemed it lawful to plunder them by wholesale, continually. lamenting that the current of vitality is not strong enough to give them muscular vigor and robust health, it has fastened upon them leeches to fatten on their blood. assuming that they would be too indolent to labor if they had all the fruits of their industry, it has taken away all motives for superior exertions, by keeping back a portion of their wages. dreading lest they should run too fast, and too far, in an unfettered state, it has loaded them with chains so effectually as to prevent their running at all. these are some of the excellencies of that paternal guardianship, under which they now groan, and from which they desire the legislature to grant them deliverance. we are proud to see this spontaneous, earnest, upward movement of our red brethren. it is not to be stigmatized as turbulent, but applauded as meritorious. it is sedition, it is true; but only the sedition of freedom against oppression; of justice against fraud; of humanity against cruelty. it is the intellect opposed to darkness; the soul opposed to degradation. it is an earnest of better things to come, provided the struggling spirit be set free. let this tribe have at least a fair trial. while they remain as paupers, they will feel like paupers; be regarded like paupers; be degraded like paupers. we protest against this unnatural order of things; and now that the case has come under our cognizance, we shall not abandon it hastily. we are aware that another, and probably an opposite view of this case is to be laid before the public, on the part of a commissioner delegated by the governor and council, to inquire into the difficulties which have arisen between the tribe and the overseers. we shall wait to get a glimpse of it before we pass judgment upon it. whatever may be alleged either against the indians or against those who hold a supervision over them, or whatever may be said in favor of them both; we have felt authorized to make the foregoing remarks, upon an examination of the laws enacted for the government of these discordant parties. an augmentation, diminution, or change of the board of overseers, will not remedy the evil. it lies elsewhere; in the absolute prostration of the petitioners by a blind legislation. they are not, and do not aspire to be an independent government, but citizens of massachusetts. fortunately, there is a soul for freedom in the present legislature. a more independent house of representatives has never been elected by the people. the cries of the indians have reached their ears, and we trust affected their hearts. they will abolish a needless and unjust protectorate. the limb, which is now disjointed and bleeding, will be united to the body politic. what belongs to the red man shall hereafter in truth be his; and, thirsting for knowledge and aspiring to be free, every fetter shall be broken and his soul made glad. about this time the opposition of our enemies increased to a flood. yet we remained undismayed; for we knew that we had the right on our side. so we endured the shots of their sharp shooters against us patiently. the following, from the boston courier of january , , will show to what i allude. late in the month of june last, an extraordinary proceeding was had by the marshpee tribe of indians, residing on their plantation in barnstable county, under the protection and guardianship of this commonwealth. excited, as it has since appeared, by the turbulent spirit of a stranger and intruder, they assembled in what they termed a town meeting, and adopted resolutions declaring their independence of the government of massachusetts, abjuring the authority of the laws, and proclaiming that after the first day of july then next, they should assume the management of their own affairs; and, _that "they would not permit any white man from that day, to come upon their plantation to cut or carry off any wood, hay, or other article, without their permission, under the penalty of being bound and thrown from the plantation."_ to allay the excitement which had been created among these misguided people, and to ascertain and remove, as far and as speedily as possible, any just cause of complaint, the most prompt measures were adopted by the executive. a discreet and confidential agent was despatched to the plantation with instructions to make thorough examination into their grievances, real or supposed, and to become acquainted with their condition, and what their interest and comfort required. he was especially charged to represent to them the parental feelings and regard of the government of the commonwealth towards them; to assure the head men, that, if the overseers appointed by the state, had been unjust or unkind, they should forthwith be removed, and others appointed in their stead, and the wrongs sustained at their hand amply redressed, but that the guardianship, originally imposed for their security against the frauds and wicked devices of unprincipled white men, and continued under frequent assurances, _by the indians themselves_, of its necessity, could not be suspended by the authority of the governor and council. that this rested with the legislature, to which, after careful investigation of their complaints, a proper representation would be made by the executive. he was also directed to caution them against heeding the counsels of those who would excite them to disquiet in their present situation, and to admonish them, that disorder and resistance to any rightful authority would meet with immediate and exemplary correction, through the civil tribunals. on reaching the plantation, the agent found these deluded people in a state of open rebellion against the government of the state, having with force, seized upon the meeting-house, rescued from the overseers a portion of property in their possession, chosen officers of their own, and threatened violence to all who should attempt to interfere with them, in the measures of _self-government_ which they had assumed. these threatenings and outrages had already created great alarm among the white inhabitants in the neighborhood, and induced to apprehensions of more serious consequences. through the firmness and prudence of the agent, sustained by the advice and good offices of several intelligent citizens of the county, the leader in the sedition was arrested for a breach of the peace, and delivered over to the civil authority. an inquiry into the conduct of the overseers subsequently conducted by the agent in the presence of the head men, and the conciliatory, and friendly explanations offered to the tribe, of their relations to the government of the state, resulted in inducing them to rescind their former violent resolves, and restored quiet to the plantation. a minute and interesting report by the gentleman to whom this delicate service was assigned, embracing an historical account of the tribe, and describing their present condition, character and numbers, with the situation, value, and improvement of their property, and the manner in which the guardianship constituted by law has been exercised over them, accompanies this communication. the indians have received an assurance, that the attention of the legislature shall be invited to their complaints, and the report will not fail to assist in the deliberations to which the subject may give occasion. does it not appear from, this, and from his message, that the ex-governor is a man of pure republican principles? he seems to consider the marshpees as strangers, and thinks they ought to be driven to the wilds of the far west; in humble imitation of that wise, learned, and humane politician, andrew jackson, l.l.d. i do consider that neither i nor any of my brethren enjoy any political rights; and i desire that i and they may be treated like men, and not like children. if any among us are capable of discharging the duties of office, i wish them to be made eligible, and i wish for the right of suffrage which other men exercise, though not for the purpose of pleasing any party by our votes. i never did so, and i never will. o, that all men of color thought and felt as i do on this subject. i believe that governor lincoln had no regard whatever for our rights and liberties; but as he did not get his ends answered, i shall leave him to his conscience. the following from mr. hallett, of the advocate, fully explains his message: the marshpee indians. the current seems to be setting very strong against extending any relief to our red brethren. governor lincoln's ex-message has served to turn back all the kind feelings that were beginning to expand toward the marshpee tribe, and force and intimidation are to be substituted for kindness and mercy. we cannot but think that massachusetts will be dishonored by pursuing the stern course recommended by ex-governor lincoln, who seems, by one of his letters to mr. fiske, to have contemplated almost with pleasure, the prospect of superintending in person, military movements against a handful of indians, who could not have mustered twenty muskets on the plantation. we see now how unjust we have been to the georgians in their treatment of the cherokees, and if we persist in oppressing the marshpee indians, let us hasten to _unresolve_ all the glowing resolves we made in favor of the georgia indians. if governor lincoln is right in his unkind denunciation of the poor marshpee indians, then was not governor troop of georgia right, in his messages and measures against the cherokees? if the court at barnstable was right in imprisoning the indians for attempting to get their rights, as they understood them, and made their ignorance of the law no excuse, were not the courts of georgia justifiable in their condemnation of the cherokees, for violations of laws enforced against the will of the helpless indians? oh, it was glorious to be generous, and magnanimous and philanthropic toward the cherokees, and to weep over the barbarities of georgia, because that could be turned to account against general jackson; but when it comes home to our own bosoms, when a little handful of red men in our own state, come and ask us for permission to manage their own property, under reasonable restrictions, and presume to resolve that all men are free and equal, without regard to complexion; governor lincoln denounces it as _sedition_, the legislature are exhorted to turn a deaf ear, and the indians are left to their choice between submission to tyrannical laws, or having the militia called out to shoot them. how glorious this will read in history! the next is from the barnstable patriot, of february , , of a different character. marshpee indians. mr. editor, william apes, deacon coombs, and daniel amos, are now in boston, where they are much caressed, by the good citizens, and are styled the "_marshpee deputation_;" and we see in the boston papers notices that the "marshpee deputation will be present at the tremont theatre, by invitation."[ ] that the marshpee deputation will address the public upon the subject of their grievances, in the "_representative hall_," "in boylston hall," &c. and we learn at their "_talk_," in the representative hall, they drew a large audience, and that audience was so indiscreet, (not to say indecorous or riotous,) as to cheer and applaud apes in his ribaldry, misrepresentation and nonsense. really, it looks to us, as if there was much misunderstanding upon the subject of the marshpee difficulties. if there is any thing wrong we would have it put right; but how does the case appear. at the time of apes' coming among them, they were quiet and peaceable, and their condition, mentally, morally and pecuniarily improving. at this time, and when this is the condition and situation of the indians, comes this intruder, this disturber, this riotous and mischief-making indian, from the pequot tribe, in connecticut. he goes among the inhabitants of marshpee, and by all the arts of a talented, educated, wily, unprincipled indian, professing with all, to be an apostle of christianity; he stirs them up to sedition, riot, _treason_! instigates them to declare their independence of the laws of massachusetts, and to _arm themselves_ to defend it. we need not follow, minutely, the transactions which rapidly succeeded this state of things. we will merely remark that, in that time of rebellion, prompt, efficient, but mild measures were taken by the executive, to quell the disturbances, and restore good faith. an agent was sent by the governor, to inquire into the cause, and if possible, to remove it. that agent found it to be his duty to arrest apes, (that _pious_ interloper,) as a riotous and seditious person, and bind him over for trial, at the common pleas court. he was there tried; and, in our opinion, never was there a fairer trial. he was convicted; and, in our opinion, never was there a more just conviction, or a milder sentence. after the performance of his sentence, apes is again at work stirring up new movements. and having strung together a list of _imaginary_ grievances, and false allegations, and affixed a great number of names, without the knowledge or consent of many of the individuals, he goes to the legislature, with two of his ignorant, deluded followers, pretending to be "_the marshpee deputation_," and asks redress and relief. we would be the last to object to their receiving redress and relief; and we doubt not they will obtain, at the hands of the legislature, all they ought to have. but who is the "_marshpee deputation_," that is showing off to such advantage in the city? it is william apes, the convicted rioter, who was the whole cause of the disgraceful sedition at marshpee the last summer; who is a hypocritical _missionary_, from a tribe in connecticut; whose acquaintance with the marshpeeans is of _less than a year's_ standing. and he is endeavoring to enlist public sympathy in _his_ favor, _in advance_, by lecturing in the hall of representatives, upon that pathetic and soul-stiring theme, indian degradation and oppression; vilifying and abusing the irreproachable pastor of the plantation, mr. fish; stigmatizing and calumniating the court and jury who tried and convicted him, and flinging his sarcasms and sneers upon the attorney and jury who indicted him. and for _all this_, he is receiving the _applause_ of an audience, who _must be_ ignorant of _his_ character; and blinded by the pretences of this impostor. and as far as that audience is composed of legislators, their conduct, in permitting apes to enlist their passions and feelings in his favor, pending a legislative investigation of the subject, is reprehensible. but, there is no fear that the matter will not be set right. that the investigation by the intelligent agent last summer, (mr. fiske,) and the investigation now going on by a committee of the legislature, will show the true character of apes, and point out the real wants and grievances of the indians; and that the remedy will be applied, to the satisfaction of the indians and the discomfiture of that renegade impostor and hypocritical interloper and disturber, apes, there is little doubt; that _such_ may be the result, is the sincere wish of the true friends of the indians. the spirit in which this unrighteous piece is written, speaks for itself, and is its own antidote. however, it is just what we might expect from a liberal paper of the liberal town of barnstable. so one gang of partizans call it. deliver us from a "patriot," who would set his face against all good, and destroy the people themselves. these writers, if there be more than one of them, seem to have some idea of piety and religion. i therefore advise them to pluck the motes out of their own eyes, that they may see clearly enough to make better marks with their pens. the editor and his correspondents, (if he did not write the article himself,) have rendered themselves liable to a suit for defamation; but i think it best to let them go. i will not touch pitch. the discomfited, hypocritical impostor, renegade and interloper will forgive, and pray for them. he will not render evil for evil, though sorely provoked. nevertheless, i feel bound to say to these excellent friends of the marshpees, who wished them to remain crushed under the burthen of hard laws forever and ever, that they will go down to their graves in the disappointment, which, perhaps, will cause them to weep away their lives. i should be sorry to hear of that, and exhort them to dry their tears, or suffer a poor indian to wipe them away. notwithstanding all that was said and done by the opposition, the marshpee deputation left the field of battle with a song of triumph and rejoicing in their mouths, as will presently be seen. i shall give a brief sketch of the proceedings of one of the most enlightened committees that ever was drafted from a legislative body. every thing was done to sour their minds against the indians that could be done, but they were of the excellent of the earth, just and impartial. the committee was composed of messrs. barton and strong, of the senate, and messrs. dwight of stockbridge, fuller of springfield, and lewis of pepperell, of the house. benjamin f. hallett, esq. appeared as counsel for the indians. lemuel ewer, esq. of south sandwich, was a witness, and the only white one who was in favor of the indians. the indian witnesses were deacon coombs, daniel b. amos, ebenezer attaquin, joseph b. amos, and william apes. on the other side appeared kilburn whitman, esq. of pembroke, as counsel for the overseers; messrs. j.j. fiske of wrentham, and elijah swift of falmouth, both of the governor's council; the rev. phineas fish, the marshpee missionary, sent by harvard college; judge marston, nathaniel hinckley and charles marston, all of barnstable; gideon hawley of south sandwich, judge whitman of boston, and two indians, nathan pocknet and william amos, by name. it was a notable piece of policy on the part of the overseers, to make a few friends among the indians, in order to use them for their own purposes. thus do pigeon trappers use to set up a decoy. when the bird flutters, the flock settle round him, the net is sprung, and they are in fast hands. judge whitman, however, could not make his two decoy birds flutter to his satisfaction, and so he got no chance to spring his net. he had just told the indians that they might as well think to move the rock of gibraltar from its base, as to heave the heavy load of guardianship from their shoulders; and, when he first came before the committee, he said he did not care a snap of his finger about the matter, one way or the other. but he altered his mind before he got through the business, and began to say that he should be ruined if the bill passed for the relief of the indians, and was, moreover, sure that apes would reign, king of marshpee. the old gentleman, indeed, made several perilous thrusts at me in his plea; but, when he came to cross-examination, he was so pleased with the correctness of my testimony, that he had nothing more to say to me. i shall now leave him, to attend to his friend judge marston. this gentleman swore in court that he thought indians an inferior race of men; and, of course, were incapable of managing their own affairs. the testimony of the two decoy pigeons was, that they had liberty enough; more than they knew what to do with. they showed plainly enough that they knew nothing of the law they lived under. the testimony of the rev. mr. fish was more directly against us. some may think i do wrong to mention this gentleman's name so often. but why, when a man comes forward on a public occasion, should his name be kept out of sight, though he be a clergyman. i should think he would like to make his flock respected and respectable in his speech, which he well knew they never could be under the then existing laws. is it more than a fair inference that it was self-interest that made him do otherwise, that he might be able to continue in possession of his strong hold? if he had said to the indians, like an honest man, "i know i have no right to what is yours, and will willingly relinquish what i hold of it," i do not doubt that the indians would have given him a house, and a life estate in a farm; and perhaps have conveyed it to him in fee simple, if he had behaved well. such a course would have won him the love and esteem of the indians, and his blind obstinacy was certainly the surest means he could have taken to gain their ill will. he may think slightly of their good opinion, and i think, from his whole course of conduct, that we are as dogs in his sight. i presume he could not die in peace if he thought he was to be buried beside our graves. it is the general fault of those who go on missions, that they cannot sacrifice the pride of their hearts, in order to do good. it seems to have been usually the object to seat the indians between two stools, in order that they might fall to the ground, by breaking up their government and forms of society, without giving them any others in their place. it does not appear to be the aim of the missionaries to improve the indians by making citizens of them. hence, in most cases, anarchy and confusion are the results. nothing has more effectually contributed to the decay of several tribes than the course pursued by their missionaries. let us look back to the first of them for proofs. from the days of elliott, to the year , have they made one citizen? the latter date marks the first instance of such an experiment. is it not strange that free men should thus have been held in bondage more than two hundred years, and that setting them at liberty at this late day, should be called _an experiment_ now? i would not be understood to say, however, that the rev. mr. fish's mission is any criterion to judge others by. no doubt, many of them have done much good; but i greatly doubt that any missionary has ever thought of making the indian or african his equal. as soon as we begin to talk about equal rights, the cry of amalgamation is set up, as if men of color could not enjoy their natural rights without any necessity for intermarriage between the sons and daughters of the two races. strange, strange indeed! does it follow that the indian or the african must go to the judge on his bench, or to the governor, senator, or indeed any other man, to ask for a help-meet, because his name may be found on the voter's list, or in the jury boxes? i promise all concerned, that we marshpees have less inclination to seek their daughters than they have to seek ours. should the worst come to the worst, does the proud white think that a dark skin is less honorable in the sight of god than his own beautiful hide? all are alike, the sheep of his pasture and the workmanship of his hands. to say they are not alike to him, is an insult to his justice. who shall dare to call that in question? were i permitted to express an opinion, it would be that it is more honorable in the two races, to intermarry than to act as too many of them do. my advice to the white man is, to let the colored race alone. it will considerably diminish the annual amount of sin committed. or else let them even _marry_ our daughters, and no more ado about amalgamation. we desire none of their connection in that way. all we ask of them is peace and our rights. we can find wives enough without asking any favors of them. we have some wild flowers among us as fair, as blooming, and quite as pure as any they can show. but enough has been said on this subject, which i should not have mentioned at all, but that it has been rung in my ears by almost every white lecturer i ever had the misfortune to meet. i will now entreat the reader's attention to the very able plea of mr. hallett, upon our petition and remonstrances. the following are his remarks after the law which gave us our liberty was passed by his exertions in our cause: i will now briefly consider the "documents, relating to the marshpee indians," which have been presented and printed, this session, by the two houses. the first is a memorial, signed by seventy-nine males and ninety-two females, of the plantation. of the seventy-nine males, sixty-two are proprietors, and forty-four write their own names. they are all united in wishing to have a change of the laws, and a removal of the overseership, but desire that their land may not be sold without the mutual consent of the indians and the general court. this memorial represents, . that no particular pains has been taken to instruct them. . that they are insignificant because they have had no opportunities. . that no enlightened or respectable indian, wants overseers. . that their rulers and the minister have been put over them, without their consent. . that the minister, (mr. fish,) has not a male member in his church of the proprietors, and they believe twenty years would have been long enough for him to have secured their confidence. . that the laws which govern them and take away their property, are unconstitutional. . that the whites have had three times more benefit of the meeting-house and the minister, than they have had. . that the business meetings for the tribe, have been held off the plantation, at an expense to them. . that their fishery has been neglected and the whites derived the most benefit from it. [the overseers admit that the herring fishery has not been regulated for fifty years, although in , it appears it was deemed a highly important interest, and in , the commissioners reported that it ought to be regulated for the benefit of the indians to the exclusion of the whites.] . that the laws discourage their people, who leave the plantation on that account. . that men out of the tribe are paid for doing what those in it are capable of doing for the plantation. . that the whites derive more benefit than themselves, from their hay, wood and timber. . that the influence of the whites has been against them, in their petitions for the past years. . that they believe they have been wronged out of their property. . that they want the overseers discharged, that they may have a chance to take care of themselves. . that very many of their people are sober and industrious, and able and willing to do, if they had the privilege. all these statements will be found abundantly proved. this memorial comes directly from the indians. it was drawn up among them without the aid of a single white man. they applied to me to prepare it for them. they happened to select me, as their counsel, simply because i was born and brought up within a few miles from their plantation, and had known their people from my infancy. i told them to present their grievances in their own way, and they have done so. not a line of the memorial was written for them. on the other side, opposite to their memorial for self-government, is the remonstrance of _nathan pocknet_ and forty-nine others, the same nathan pocknet, who in petitioned for the removal of the overseership. this remonstrance was not prepared by the indians. it came wholly from the rev. mr. fish, and the overseers. it speaks of the "unprecedented impudence" of the indians, and mentions a "_traverse jury_." no one who signed it, had any voice in preparing it. it shows ignorance of the memorial of the tribe, by supposing they ask for liberty to sell their lands; and ignorance of the law, by saying that the overseers have not power to remove nuisances from the plantation. this remonstrance is signed by fifty persons, sixteen males and thirty-four females; seventeen can write. of the signers, _ten_ belong to nathan pocknet's family. ten of the males are proprietors, of whom two are minors, and one a person non compos. of the non-proprietors, one is a convict, recently released from state prison, who has no right on the plantation. two of the proprietors, who signed this remonstrance, (john speen and isaac wickham,) have since certified that they understood it to be the petition for mr. fish, to retain his salary, but that they are entirely opposed to having overseers and to the present laws. thus it is shown that out of the whole plantation of proprietors, but _five_ men could be induced, by all the influence of the minister and the overseer, to sign in favor of having the present laws continued, and but _eleven_ men out of the whole population of . the signers to the memorial for a change of the laws are a majority of all the men, women and children belonging to the plantation, at home and abroad. another document against the indians who ask for their liberty, is the memorial of the rev. phineas fish, the missionary. of the unassuming piety, the excellent character, and the sound learning of that reverend gentleman, i cannot speak in too warm terms. i respect him as a man, and honor him as a devoted minister of the gospel. but he is not adapted to the cultivation of the field in which his labors have been cast. until i read this memorial, i should not have believed that a severe expression could have escaped him. i regret the spirit of that memorial, and in its comparison with that of the indians, i must say it loses in style, in dignity and in christian temper. in this memorial, mr. fish urges upon the legislature the continuance of the laws of guardianship as they now are, and especially the continuance of the benefits he derives from the property of the plantation. what are the reasons he gives for this. do they not look exclusively to his own benefit, without regard to the wishes of the indians? he states, as the result of his ministry, twenty members of the tribe added to his church in _twenty-two_ years. this single fact proves that his ministry has failed of producing any effect at all proportioned to the cost it has been to the indians. not from want of zeal or ability, perhaps, but from want of adaptation. if not, why have other preachers been so much more successful than the missionary. there never has been a time that this church was not controlled by the whites. mr. fish now has but five colored members of his church, and sixteen whites. of the five colored persons, but one is a male, and he has recently signed a paper saying he has been deceived by mr. fish's petition, which he signed, and that he does not now wish his stay any longer among them. on the other hand, "blind jo," as he is called, a native indian, blind from his birth, now years of age, has educated himself by his ear and his memory, has been regularly ordained as a baptist minister, in full fellowship with that denomination, and has had a little church organized since . the baptist denomination has existed on the plantation, for forty years, but has received no encouragement. blind jo has never been taken by the hand by the missionary or the overseers. the indians were even refused the use of _their_ meeting-house, for the ordination of their blind minister, and he was ordained in a private dwelling. though not possessing the eloquence of the blind preacher, so touchingly described in the glowing and chaste letters of wirt's british spy, yet there is much to admire in the simple piety and sound doctrines of "blind jo;" and he will find a way to the hearts of his hearers, which the learned divine cannot explore. there is another denomination on the plantation, organized as "the free and united church," of which william apes is the pastor. this denomination mr. fish charges with an attempt to _usurp_ the parsonage, wood-land and the meeting-house; he denounces, as a "_flagrant act_," the attempt of the indians to obtain the use of _their own meeting-house_, and appeals to the sympathies of the whole civilized community to maintain _by law_ the congregational worship, which, he says, "is the most ancient form of religious worship there!" "why should congregational worship be excluded to make room for others?" asks the rev. mr. fish. "where will be the end of vicissitude on the adoption of such a principle, and how is it possible, amid the action of rival _factions_, for pure religion to be promoted." [pages , , , of mr. fish's memorial. senate, no. .] is this language for a christian minister to address to the legislature of massachusetts? to petition for an established church in marshpee? can he ever have read the third article of the bill of rights, as amended? what has been the result of those "rival factions," in marshpee? blind jo and william apes, have _forty-seven_ indian members of their churches, (fourteen males,) in good standing, collected together in three years. the missionary has baptized but twenty in twenty-two years. the indian preachers have also established a total abstinence temperance society, without any aid from the missionary, and there are already sixty members of it, who, from all the evidence in the case, there is no reason to doubt, live up to their profession. i do not say this to detract from the good the missionary has done; i doubt not he has done much good, and earnestly desired to do more; but when he denounces to the legislature other religious denominations, as _usurpers_ and "_rival factions_," it is but reasonable that a comparison should be drawn between the fruit of his labors and that of those he so severely condemns. i confess, i am struck with surprise, at the following remarks, in the memorial of the rev. mr. fish. speaking of the complaint of the indians respecting their meeting-house, that it is not fit for respectable people to meet in, being worn out; he says, "as it was built by a _white_ missionary society, and repaired at the expense of the _white_ legislature of the state, perhaps the _whites_ may think themselves entitled to some wear of it, and being no way fit for '_respectable_ people,' the church and congregation hope they may the more readily be left unmolested in their accustomed use of it." [page .] again he says of the complaints of the indians, that they were forbidden to have preaching in their school-houses. "the school-houses, built by the munificence of the state, began to be occupied for _meeting-houses_, soon after their erection, and have been more or less occupied _in this fashion_! ever since; and your memorialist desires to affirm that _in this perversion_ of your _liberal purpose_, he had no share whatever!" is this possible? can it be a _perversion_ of buildings erected for the mental and moral improvement of the indians, that religious meetings should be held there, by ministers whom the indians prefer to the missionary? the inequality in the appropriations for religious instruction, is remarked upon by the commissioner, hon. mr. fiske, who says in his report that if the present appropriations are to be restricted to a congregationalist minister, some further provision, in accordance with religious freedom, ought to be made for the baptist part of the colored people. [page . no. .] i regret too, the unkind allusion in the rev. mr. fish's memorial to deacon coombs, the oldest of the marshpee delegation, formerly his deacon, and the last proprietor to leave him. he says the deacon "once walked worthy of his holy calling." does he mean to insinuate he does not walk worthily now? i wish you, gentlemen, to examine deacon coombs, who is present, to inquire into his manner of life, and see if you can find a christian with a white skin, whose heart is purer, and whose walk is more upright, than this same deacon coombs. in point of character and intelligence, he would compare advantageously with a majority of the selectmen in the commonwealth. with the religious concerns of marshpee, i have no wish to interfere. i only seek to repel intimations that may operate against their prayer for the liberties secured by the constitution. neither do i stand here to defend mr. apes, who is charged with being the leader of the "sedition." i only ask you to look at the historical evidence of the existence of discontent with the laws, ever since , and ask if mr. apes has been the author of this discontent. let me remind you also, of the fable of the huntsman and the lion, when the former boasted of the superiority of man, and to prove it pointed to a statue of one of the old heroes, standing upon a prostrate lion. the reply of the noble beast was, "there are no _carvers_ among the lions; if there were, for one man standing upon a lion, you would have twenty men torn to pieces by lions." gentlemen, by depressing the indians, our laws have taken care that they should have no _carvers_. the whites have done all the _carving_ for them, and have always placed them _undermost_. can we blame them, then, that when they found an educated indian, with indian sympathies and feelings, they employed him, to present their complaints, and to enable them to seek redress? look at this circumstance, fairly, and i think you will find in it the origin of all the prejudice against william apes, which may be traced to those of the whites who are opposed to any change in the present government of marshpee. if aught can be shown against him, i hope it will be produced here in proof, that the indians may not be deceived. if no other proof is produced, except his zeal in securing freedom for the indians, are you not to conclude that it cannot be done. but his individual character has nothing to do with the merits of the question, though i here pronounce it unimpeached. i will allude to but one other suggestion in the memorial of the rev. mr. fish, [page .] to show the necessity of continuing the present laws, he says, "already do we witness the force of example in the visible increase of crime. but a few weeks since, a peaceable family was fired in upon, during their midnight repose; while i have been writing, another has been committed to prison for a high misdemeanor." now what are the facts, upon which this grave allegation against the whole tribe is founded. true, a ball was fired into a house on the plantation, but without any possible connection with the assertion of their rights by the indians, and to this day it is not known whether it was a white man or an indian who did it. the "high misdemeanor," was a quarrel between jerry squib, an indian, and john jones, a white man. squib accused jones of cheating him in a bargain, when intoxicated, and beat him for it. the law took up the indian for the assault, and let the white man go for the fraud. respecting then, as we all do, the personal character of the missionary, can you answer his prayer, to continue the present government, in order to protect him in the reception of his present income from the lands of the indians? are the interests of a whole people to be sacrificed to one man? what says the bill of rights? "government is instituted for the common good, for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the _people_, and not for the _profit_, honor or _private interest_ of any _one_ man, family, or class of men." i have now only to consider the report of the commissioner, mr. fiske, who visited marshpee in july last. the impartiality, candor and good sense of that report, are highly honorable to that gentleman. deriving his first impressions from the overseers and the whites, and instructed as he was with strong prepossessions against the indians, as rebels to the state, the manner in which he discharged that duty, deserves a high encomium. he has my thanks for it, as a friend of the indians. as far as the knowledge of the facts enabled the commissioner to go, in the time allowed him, the conclusions of that report, substantiate all the positions taken in defence of the rights of the indians. the commissioner was instructed by the then governor lincoln, to inform the indians that the government had no other object than their best good; "let them be convinced that their grievances will be inquired into, and a _generous_ and _paternal_ regard be had to their condition." they were so convinced, and they come here now, for a redemption of this pledge. but his excellency seems to have been strangely impressed with the idea of suppressing some rebellion, or another shay's insurrection. mr. hawley, one of the overseers, had visited the governor, at worcester, and because a few indians had quietly unloaded a wood-cart, the calling out of the militia seems to have been seriously contemplated by the following order, issued to the commissioner, by the governor, dated july . "should there be reason to fear the insufficiency of the _posse comitatus_, i will be present personally, to direct any military requisitions." think of that, gentlemen of the committee! figure to yourselves his excellency, at the head of the boston and worcester brigades, ten thousand strong, marching to marshpee, to suppress an insurrection, when scarce twenty old muskets could have been mustered on the whole plantation? with the utmost respect for his excellency, i could not refrain on reading this "order of the day," from exclaiming, as lord thurlow did, when a breathless messenger informed him that a rebellion had broken out in the isle of man--"pshaw--a tempest in a tea pot." let us not, however, because the indians are weak and in-offensive, be less regardful of their rights. you will gather from the report of mr. fiske, conclusive evidence of the long continued and deep rooted dissatisfaction of the indians with the laws of guardianship, that they never abandoned the ground that all men were born free and equal, and they ought to have the right to rule and govern themselves; that by a proper exercise of self-government, and the management of their own pecuniary affairs, they had it in their power to elevate themselves much above their present state of degradation, and that by a presentation of new motives for moral and mental improvement, they might be enabled, in a little time, to assume a much higher rank on the scale of human existence. and that the legislature would consider their case, was the humble and earnest request of the natives. is not the conclusion then, from all the facts in the case, that the system of laws persisted in since , have failed as acts of paternal care? that the true policy now is to try acts of kindness and encouragement, and that the question of rightful control over the property or persons of the indians beyond the general operation of the laws, being clearly against the whites; but one consideration remains on which the legislature can hesitate: the danger, that they will squander their property. of the improbability of such a result, mr. fiske informs you in his report, [page .] he found nearly all the families comfortably and decently clad, nearly all occupying framed houses, and a few dwelling in huts or wigwams. more than thirty of them were in possession of a cow or swine, and many of them tilled a few acres of land, around their dwellings. several pairs of oxen, and some horses are owned on the plantation, and the commons are covered with an excellent growth of wood, of ready access to market. confine the cutting of this wood to the natives, as they desire, and they never can waste this valuable inheritance. mr. fiske also says in his report, [page ,] "that it is hardly possible to find a place more favorable for gaining a subsistence without labor, than marshpee." the advantages of its location, the resources from the woods and streams, on one side, and the bays and the sea on the other, are accurately described, as being abundant, with the exception of the _lobsters_, which mr. fiske says are found there. the commissioner is incorrect in that particular, unless he adopts the learned theory of sir joseph banks, that _fleas_ are a species of lobster! is there, then, any danger in giving the indians an opportunity to try a liberal experiment for self-government? they ask you for a grant of the liberties of the constitution; to be incorporated and to have a government useful to them as a people. they ask for the appointment of magistrates among them, and they ask too for an _attorney_ to advise with; but my advice to them is, to have as little as possible to do with attornies. a revision of their laws affecting property by the governor and council, would be a much better security for them than an attorney, and this they all agree to. is there any thing unreasonable in their requests? can you censure other states for severity to the indians within their limits, if you do not exercise an enlightened liberality toward the indians of massachusetts? give them then substantially, the advantages which they ask in the basis of an act which i now submit to the committee with their approval of its provisions. can you, gentlemen, can the legislature, resist the simple appeal of their memorial? "give us a chance for our lives, in acting for ourselves. o! white man! white man! the blood of our fathers, spilt in the revolutionary war, cries from the ground of our native soil, to break the chains of oppression and let our children go free." the correctness of mr. hallett's opinions are demonstrated in the following article. other editors speak ill enough of gen. jackson's treatment of the southern indians. why do they not also speak ill of all the head men and great chiefs who have evil entreated the people of marshpee. i think governor lincoln manifested as bitter and tyrannical a spirit as old hickory ever could, for the life of him. often and often have our tribe been promised the liberty their fathers fought, and bled, and died for; and even now we have but a small share of it. it is some comfort, however, that the people of massachusetts are becoming gradually more christianized. [from the daily advocate.] the marshpee indians. the daily advertiser remarks that the indian tribes have been sacrificed by the policy of gen. jackson. this is very true, and we join with the advertiser in reprehending the course pursued by the president toward the cherokees. if georgia, under her _union_ nullifier, governor lumpkin, is permitted to set the process of the supreme court at defiance, it will be a foul dishonor upon the country. but while we condemn the conduct of general jackson toward the southern indians, what shall we say of the treatment of our own poor defenceless indians, the marshpee tribe, in our own state? the legislature of last year, with a becoming sense of justice, restored to the marshpee indians a _portion_ of their rights, which had been wrested from them, most wrongfully, for a period of _seventy-four_ years. the state of massachusetts, in the exercise of a most unjust and arbitrary power, had, until that time, deprived the indians of all civil rights, and placed their property at the mercy of designing men, who had used it for their own benefit, and despoiled the native owners of the soil to which they hold a better title than the whites hold to any land in the commonwealth. these indians fought and bled side by side, with our fathers, in the struggle for liberty; but the whites were no sooner free themselves, than they enslaved the poor indians. one single fact will show the devotion of the marshpee indians to the cause of liberty, in return for which they and their descendants were placed under a despotic guardianship, and their property wrested from them to enrich the whites. in the secretary's office, of this state, will be found a muster roll, containing a "return of men enlisted in the first regiment of continental troops, in the county of barnstable, for three years and during the war, in col. bradford's regiment," commencing in . among these volunteers for that terrible service, are the following names of marshpee indians, proprietors of marshpee, viz. francis webquish, samuel moses, demps squibs, mark negro, tom cæsar, joseph ashur, james keeter, joseph keeter, jacob keeter, daniel pocknit, job rimmon, george shawn, castel barnet, joshua pognit, james rimmon, david hatch, james nocake, abel hoswitt, elisha keeter, john pearce, john mapix, amos babcock, hosea pognit, daniel pocknit, church ashur, gideon tumpum. in all twenty-six men. the whole regiment, drawn from the whole county of barnstable, mustered but men, nearly _one-fifth_ of whom were volunteers from the little indian plantation of marshpee, which then did not contain over one hundred male heads of families! no white town in the county furnished any thing like this proportion of the volunteers. the indian soldiers fought through the war; and as far as we have been able to ascertain the fact, from documents or tradition, all but one, fell martyrs to liberty, in the struggle for independence. there is but one indian now living, who receives the reward of his services as a revolutionary soldier, old isaac wickham, and he was not in bradford's regiment. parson holly, in a memorial to the legislature in , states that most of the women in marshpee, had lost their husbands in the war. at that time there were _seventy_ widows on the plantation. but from that day, until the year , the marshpee indians were enslaved by the laws of massachusetts, and deprived of every civil right which belongs to man. white overseers had power to tear their children from them and bind them out where they pleased. they could also sell the services of any adult indian on the plantation they chose to call idle, for three years at a time, and send him where they pleased, renewing the lease every three years, and thus, make him a slave for life. it was with the greatest effort this monstrous injustice was in some degree remedied last winter, by getting the facts before the legislature, in spite of a most determined opposition from those who had fattened for years on the spoils of poor marshpee. in all but one thing, a reasonable law was made for the indians. that one thing was giving the governor power to appoint a commissioner over the indians for three years. this was protested against by the friends of the indians, but in vain; and they were assured that this appointment would be safe in the hands of the governor. they hoped so, and assented; but no sooner was the law passed, than the enemies of the indians induced the governor to appoint as the commissioner, the person whom of all others they least wished to have, a former overseer, against whom there were strong prejudices. the indians remonstrated, and besought, but in vain. the commissioner was appointed, and to all appeals to make a different appointment, a deaf ear has been turned. it seems as if a deliberate design had been formed somewhere, to defeat all the legislature has done for the benefit of this oppressed people. the consequences have been precisely what the indians and their friends feared. party divisions have grown up among them, arising out of the want of confidence in their commissioner. he is found always on the side of their greatest trouble; the minister who unjustly holds almost acres of the best land in the plantation, wrongfully given to him by an unlawful and arbitrary act of the state, which, in violation of the constitution, appropriates the property of the indians to pay a man they dislike, for preaching a doctrine they will not listen to, to a _white_ congregation, while the native preachers, whom the indians prefer, are left without a cent, and deprived of the meeting-house, built by english liberality for the use of the indians. the dissatisfaction has gone on increasing. the accounts with the former overseers remain unadjusted to the satisfaction of the selectmen. the indians have no adviser near them in whom they can confide; those who hold the power, appear regardless of their wishes or their welfare; no pains is taken by the authorities to punish the wretches who continue to sell rum to those who will buy it; and though the indians are still struggling to advance in improvement, every obstacle is thrown in their way that men can devise, whose intent it is to get them back to a state of vassalage, that they may get hold of their property. all this, we are satisfied, from personal inspection, is owing to the injudicious appointment made by gov. davis, of a commissioner, and yet the governor unfortunately seems indisposed to listen to any application for a remedy to the existing evils. the presses around us, who are so eloquent in denouncing the president for his conduct towards the southern indians, say not a word in behalf of our own indians, whose fathers poured out their blood for out independence. is this right, and ought the indians to be sacrificed to the advantage a single man derives from holding an office of very trifling profit? let us look at home, before we complain of the treatment of the indians at the south. the following; extract refers to the act passed to incorporate the marshpee district, after so much trouble and expense to the indians. i should suppose the people of massachusetts would have been glad to have done us this justice, without making so much difficulty, if they had been aware of the true state of facts. the marshpee act restoring the rights of self-government, in part, to the marshpee indians, of which our legislation has deprived them for one hundred and forty years, passed the senate of massachusetts yesterday, to the honor of that body, without a single dissenting vote. too much praise cannot be given to mr. senator barton, for the persevering and high-minded manner in which he has prepared and sustained this act. with two or three exceptions, but which, perhaps, may not be indispensable to the success of the measure, it is all the indians or their friends should desire, under existing circumstances. the clause reserving the right of repeal, is probably the most unfortunate provision in the act, as it may tend to disquiet the indians, and to give the commissioner a sort of threatening control, that will add too much to his power, and may endanger all the benefits of the seventh section. this provision was not introduced by the committee, but was opposed by messrs. barton and strong, as wholly unnecessary. [_daily advocate_. * * * * * small matter. in the resolve allowing fees to the marshpee indians, who have attended as witnesses this session, the high-minded senator hedge of plymouth, succeeded in excluding the name of william apes, as it passed the senate; but the house, on motion of col. thayer, inserted the name of mr. apes, allowing him his fees, the same as the others. mr. hedge made a great effort to induce the senate to non-concur, but even his lucid and _liberal_ eloquence failed of its _noble_ intent, and the senate concurred by a vote of to . mr. hedge must be sadly disappointed that he could not have saved the state twenty-three dollars, by his manly efforts to injure the character of a poor indian. mr. hedge, we dare say, is a descendant from the pilgrims, whom the indians protected at plymouth rock! he knows how to be _grateful_! [_daily advocate_. it appears that i, william apes, have been much persecuted and abused, merely for desiring the welfare of myself and brethren, and because i would not suffer myself to be trodden under foot by people no better than myself, as i can see. in connection with this, i say i was never arraigned before any court, to the injury of my reputation, save once, at marshpee, for a pretended riot. an attempt to blast a man merely for insisting on his rights, and no more, is a blot on the character of him who undertakes it, and not upon the person attempted to be injured; let him be great or small in the world's eyes. i can safely say that no charge that has ever been brought against me, written or verbal, has ever been made good by evidence in any civil or ecclesiastical court. many things have been said to my disparagement in the public prints. much was said to the general court, as that i was a gambler in lotteries, and had begged money from the indians to buy tickets with. this calumny took its rise from certain articles printed in the boston gazette, written, as i have good reason to believe, by one reynolds, a proper authority. he has been an inmate of the state prison, in windsor, vermont, once for a term of two years, and again for fourteen, as in part appears by the following certificate of a responsible person. concord, n.h. june , . _to all whom it may concern_. this may certify, that _john reynolds_, once an inmate of vermont state prison, and since a professed episcopal methodist, and also a licensed local preacher in windsor, conn. came to this place about june, , recommended by brother j. robbins, as a man worthy of our patronage; and of course i employed him to supply for me in ware and hopkinton, (both in n.h.) in which places he was for a short time, apparently useful. but the time shortly arrived when it appeared that he was pursuing a course that rendered him worthy of censure. i therefore commenced measures to put him down from preaching; but before i could get fully prepared for him, he was gone out of my reach. i would however observe, he wrote me a line from portsmouth, enclosing his license, also stating his withdrawal from us; and thus evaded trial. we have, therefore, never considered him worthy of a place in any christian church since he left hopkinton, in may, . and i feel authorized to state, that he does not deserve the confidence of any respectable body of people. e.w. stickney, circuit preacher, in the methodist episcopal church. his wrath was enkindled and waxed hot against me, because i thought him scarce honorable enough for a high priest, and could not enter into fellowship with him. i opposed his ordination as an elder of our church, because i thought it dishonor to sit by his side; and he therefore tried to make me look as black as himself, by publishing things he was enabled to concoct by the aid of certain of my enemies in new york. they wrote one or two letters derogatory to my character, the substance of which reynolds took the liberty to publish. for this i complained of him to the grand jury in boston, and he was indicted. the following is the indictment: the jurors for the commonwealth of massachusetts, on their oath present, that john reynolds of boston, clerk, being a person regardless of the morality, integrity, innocence and piety, which ministers of the gospel ought to possess and sustain, and maliciously devising and intending to traduce, vilify and bring into contempt and detestation one william apes, who was on the day hereinafter mentioned, and still is a resident of boston aforesaid, and duly elected and appointed a minister of the gospel and missionary, by a certain denomination of christians denominated as belonging to the methodist protestant church; and also unlawfully and maliciously intending to insinuate and cause it to be believed, that the said william apes was a deceiver and impostor, and guilty of crimes and offences, and of buying lottery tickets, and misappropriating monies collected by him from religious persons for charitable purposes, and for building a meeting-house among certain persons called indians. on the thirteenth day of august now last past, at boston aforesaid, in the county of suffolk aforesaid, unlawfully, maliciously, and deliberately did compose, print and publish, and did cause and procure to be composed, printed and published in a certain newspaper, called the "daily commercial gazette," of and concerning him the said william apes, and of and concerning his said profession and business, an unlawful and malicious libel, according to the purport and effect, and in substance as follows, that is to say, containing therein among other things, the false, malicious, defamatory and libellous words and matter following, of and concerning said william apes, to wit: _convinced at an early period of my_ (meaning his the said reynolds) _acquaintance with william apes_, (meaning the aforesaid william apes,) _that he_ (meaning said william,) _was not what he_ (meaning said william,) _professed to be; but was deceiving and imposing upon the benevolent and christian public_, (meaning that said william apes was a deceiver and impostor,) _i_ (meaning said reynolds,) _took all prudent means to have him_ (meaning said william,) _exposed, and stopped in his_ (meaning said william,) _race of guilt_, (meaning that said william had been guilty of immorality, dishonesty, irreligion, offences and crimes;) _these men_, (meaning one joseph snelling and one norris,) _were earnestly importuned to investigate his_ (meaning said william,) _conduct, and enforce the discipline_ (meaning the discipline of the church,) _upon him_ (meaning said william,) _for crimes committed since his_ (meaning said william's) _arrival in this city_, (meaning said city of boston, thereby meaning that said william apes had been guilty of crimes in said boston,) _though well acquainted with facts, which are violently presumtive of his_ (meaning said william's) _being a deceiver, his_ (meaning said william's) _friends stand by him_, (meaning said william's) _and will not give him_ (meaning said william,) _up, though black as hell_, (meaning that said william was a deceiver, and of a wicked and black character.) _when i am informed that he_ (meaning said william) _is ordained_, (meaning as a minister of the gospel,) _that he_ (meaning said william,) _is by permission of the brethren travelling, and permitted to collect money to build the house aforesaid_, (meaning the aforesaid meeting-house,) _for his_ (meaning said william's,) _indian brethren to worship god in, i shudder not so much because he_ (meaning said william,) _is purchasing lottery tickets_, (meaning that said william was purchasing lottery tickets, and had spent some of the aforesaid money for that purpose,) _but because i know of his_ (meaning said william's) _pledge to the citizens of new york and elsewhere_, to the great injury, scandal, and disgrace of the said william apes, and against the peace and dignity of the commonwealth aforesaid. samuel d. parker, attorney of said commonwealth, within the county of suffolk. parker h. peirce, foreman of the grand jury. a true copy.--attest, thomas w. phillips, clerk of the municipal court of the city of boston. subsequently, i entered civil actions against two others, for the same offence, and had them held to bail in the sum of fifteen hundred dollars, with sureties. this soon made them feel very sore. they had put it in my power to punish them very severely for giving rein to their malignant passions, and they asked mercy. i granted it, in order to show them that i wanted nothing but right, and not revenge; and that they might know that an indian's character was as dearly valued by him as theirs by them. would they ever have thus yielded to an indian, if they had not been compelled? i presume it will satisfy the world that there was no truth in their stories, to read their confessions, which are as follows: _extract from a letter written by david ayres, to elder t.f. norris, dated new orleans, april , _. "i have arrived here this day, and expected to have found letters here from you, and some of my other brethren respecting apes' suit. i never volunteered in this business, but was led into it by others, and it is truly a hard case that i must have all this trouble on their account." _extract of a letter written by david ayers to william apes, dated july , _. "i am, and always have been your friend, and i never expected that any things i wrote about you, would find their way into the public papers. i am for peace, and surely i have had trouble enough. i never designed to injure you, and when all were your enemies, i was your warm friend." _extract from a letter written by g. thomas to rev. thomas f. norris, dated new york, july , _. "william apes might by some be said to be an excepted case; but when this is fairly explained and understood, this would not be the fact. my good friends of boston, and my active little brother ayres, are to blame for this, and not me. i had no malice against him, i never had done other than wish him well, and done what i hoped would turn out for the best; but knowing he was liable to error (as) others, and the case being placed in such colors to me, i awoke up; and being pressed to give what i did in detail as i thought, all for the good of the cause and suffering innocence; but i am sorry i ever was troubled at all on the subject; i thought that brother reynolds was a fine catch; but time i acknowledge is a sure tell-tale. and by the by, they have caught me, and eventually, unless apes will stop proceedings, i must bear all the burthen. reynolds has got his neck out of the halter, and ayres is away south, and may never return; and poor me must be at all the trouble and cost, if even the suit should go in my favor. can i think that apes will press it? no. i think he has not lost all human milk out of his breast, and will dismiss the suit; and, as to my share of the cost, if i was able, that should be no obstacle. if he will stop it all, if my friends do not settle it, i will agree to, as soon as i am able." * * * * * i hereby certify, that i have copied the foregoing passages from the letters purporting to be from david ayres and g. thomas, respectively, as above mentioned, and that said passages are correct extracts from said letters. i further certify, that, as the attorney of said william apes, i acted for him in the suits brought by him against said thomas and ayres for libel, that while said suits were pending, said apes manifested a forgiving and forbearing disposition, and wished the suits not to be pressed any further than was necessary to show the falsehood of the statements of said ayres and thomas, and contradict them; and, that he expressed himself willing to settle with them upon their paying the cost, and acknowledging their error, in consequence of which, by direction from him, after he had perused said letters, i accordingly discharged both suits, the bail of said thomas and ayres paying the costs, which amounted to fifty dollars. i further certify, that during my acquaintance with said apes, which commenced as i think, in march last, i have seen nothing in his character or conduct, to justify the reports spread about him, by said thomas and ayres; but on the contrary, he has appeared to me to be an honest and well disposed man. henry w. kinsman, no. , court street. _boston, november , _. i, the subscriber, fully concur in the above statement. james d. yates, elder of the methodist protestant church. the original confession of reynolds being lost, i trust that the following certificate will satisfy the reader that it has actually had existence. _to whom it may concern_. this is to certify that i have repeatedly seen, and in one instance, copied a paper of confession and _retraction_ of slanders, which the writer stated he had uttered, and published in papers of the day, against william apes, the preacher to the marshpee tribe of indians, signed, john reynolds, and countersigned as witness, by william parker, esq. the copy taken of the above mentioned confession by the subscriber, was sent to the rev. t.r. witsil, albany, n.y. thomas f. norris, president of the protestant methodist conference, mass. attest, james d. yates. _boston, may , _. nevertheless, lest this should not be sufficient, i am prepared to defend myself by written certificates of my character and standing among the whites and natives, (the pequod tribe,) in groton. they are as follows: we the undersigned, native indians of the pequod tribe, having employed rev. william apes as our agent, to assist us, and to collect subscriptions and monies towards erecting a house to worship in, do hereby certify, that we are satisfied with his agency; and that we anticipated that he would deduct therefrom, all necessary expenses, for himself and family, during the time he was employed in the agency, as we had no means of making him any other remuneration. by permission, frederick x[note: sideways x] toby, lucretia george, by permission, mary x[note: sideways x] george, by permission, lucy x[note: sideways x] orchard, william apes, by permission, margaret x[note: sideways x] george. i, pardon p. braton of groton, in the county of new london, and state of connecticut, of lawful age, do depose and say, that i was present when the above signers attached their names to the above certificate, by them subscribed, and am knowing to their having full knowledge of the facts therein contained; and further the deponent saith not pardon p. braton. _groton, dec. , _. county of new london, ss.--groton, dec. , . personally appeared, pardon p. braton, and made solemn oath to the truth of the above deposition, by him subscribed. before me, william m. williams, _justice of the peace_. groton, indian town, conn. this may certify, that we, the subscribers, native indians of the pequod tribe, do affirm by our signatures to this instrument, that william apes, senior, went by our request as delegate, in behalf of our tribe, to new york annual conference, of the methodist protestant church, april , . the above done at a meeting of the pequods, oct. , . william apes, jr. minister of the gospel, and missionary to that tribe. as witness our hands, in behalf of our brethren, by permission, mary x[note: sideways x] george, by permission, lucy x[note: sideways x] orchard, william apes, by permission, margaret x[note: sideways x] george. i, pardon p. braton of groton, new london county, state of connecticut, do depose and say, that i am acquainted with the pequod tribe of indians empowering william apes, sen. as their delegate to the new york conference, as is above stated; and further the deponent saith not. pardon p. braton. _groton, dec. , _. new london county, ss.--groton, dec. , . personally appeared, pardon p. braton, and made solemn oath to the truth of the above deposition, by him subscribed. before me, william m. williams, _justice of the peace_. _to all whom it may concern_. this may certify, that we, the undersigners, are acquainted with william apes and his tribe, of pequod, and that we live in the neighborhood with them, and know all their proceedings as to their public affairs, and that mr. apes, as far as we know, has acted honest and uprightly; and that he has done his duty to his indian brethren, as far as he could consistently. and that he has duly made known his accounts, and appropriated the monies that was in contemplation for the indian meeting-house, for the pequod tribe; and we also certify that said monies shall be duly appropriated. dated north groton, conn, aug. , . jonas latham, asa a. gore, john irish, william m. williams. [footnote : here we were a little mistaken, not knowing in our ignorance, that we were making the lieut. governor commander in chief, and using his name to nullify the existing laws. nevertheless, our mistake was not greater than many that have been made to pass current by the sophistry of the whites, and we acted in accordance with the spirit of the constitution, unless that instrument be a device of utter deception.] [footnote : "in respect to the measures you may deem advisable, let them be confined in their adoption to an application of the _civil power_. if there is resistance, the sheriff will, with your advice, call out the _posse comitatus_, and should there be reason to fear the inefficiency of this resort, i will be present personally, to direct any _military_ requisitions," &c.] [footnote : surely it was either insult or wrong to call the marshpees citizens, for such they never were, from the declaration of independence up to the session of the legislature in .] [footnote : i do not recollect uttering this expression, and it is not one that i am in the habit of using. it surprised me much, too, that the sampsons should all swear alike, when it was impossible that they could have heard alike. if i used the word _shine_, it must have been in speaking to mr. william sampson, in a low tone, about fifty yards from the others.] [footnote : christmas.] [footnote : by an act of the legislature in april last, , _one hundred dollars_ is hereafter to be appropriated annually, from the school fund, for the public schools in marshpee. for this liberal act the marshpees are indebted to the representations made to the committee on education by their counsel, b.f. hallett, esq. this is an evidence of the paternal care of the legislature, for which we can never be too grateful.] [footnote : meaning envoy.] [footnote : his excellency levi lincoln, who proposed to raise a regiment to exterminate our tribe, if we did not submit to the overseers.] [footnote : the counsel for the indians, b.f. hallett, esq. could not find a member of the house from barnstable county, who would present the petition. the indians will not forget that they owed this act of justice to mr. cushing of dorchester.] [footnote : mr. apes did not attend.] an inquiry into the education and religious instruction of the marshpee indians. on the subject of the means taken to educate the indians, i will say a few words in addition to what has already been said, because we wish to show that we can be grateful when we have favors bestowed on us. up to , the state had done nothing for education in marshpee, except build us two school-houses in . last winter the subject came up in the legislature of distributing the school fund of the state among the towns. a bill was reported to the house, in which marshpee was made a school district and entitled to receive a dividend according to its population by the united states census. now this was meant well, and we feel obliged to the committee who thought so much of us as this; but had the law passed in that shape, it would have done us no good, because we have no united states census. the people of marshpee, nor the selectmen knew nothing of this law to distribute the school fund, and our pretended missionary, mr. fish, never interested himself in such matters; but our good friend mr. hallett, at boston, thought of us, and laid our claims before the committee, by two petitions which he got from the selectmen and from himself, and the commissioner. we are told that the chairman of the school committee, hon. a.h. everett, took much interest in getting a liberal allowance for education in marshpee. he was once before a warm friend to the cherokees, and his conduct now proved that he was sincere. he presented the petitions and proposed a law which would give us one hundred dollars a year forever, for public schools in marshpee, which was the largest sum that had been asked for by our friend mr. h. a number of gentlemen spoke in favor of this allowance, and all showed that a spirit of kindness as well as justice toward the long oppressed red men, begins to warm the hearts of those who make our laws, and rule over us. we trust we are thankful to god for so turning the hearts of men toward us. the bill passed the house and also the senate, without any objection, and it is now a law of the state of massachusetts, that the marshpee indians shall have one hundred dollars every year, paid out of the school fund, to help them educate their children. our proportion as a district, according to what other towns receive, would have been but fifteen dollars. by the aid of our friends, and particularly of our counsel, (mr. h.) who first proposed it, we shall now receive one hundred dollars a year; and i trust the indians will best show their gratitude by the pains they will take to send their children to good schools, and by their raising as much more money as they can, to get good instructers; and give the rising generation all the advantages which the children of the whites enjoy in schooling. this will be one of the best means to raise them to an equality, and teach them to put away from their mouths forever, the enemy which the white man, when he wanted to cheat and subdue our race, first got them to put therein, to steal away their brains, well knowing that their lands would follow. the following are the petitions presented to the legislature, which will give some light on the history of marshpee. to the honorable general court: the undersigned are selectmen and school committee of the district of marshpee. we understand your honors are going to make a distribution of the school fund. now we pray leave to say that the state, as the guardians of the marshpee indians, took our property into their possession, so that we could not use a dollar of it, and so held it for sixty years. we could make no contract with a school-master, and during that time, till , we had no school house in marshpee, and scarcely any schools. we began to have schools about five years ago, but still want means to employ competent white teachers to instruct our children. our fathers often petitioned the legislature to give them schools, but none were given till , when the state generously built us two school-houses. we also beg leave to remind your honors that our fathers shed their blood for liberty, and we their children have had but little benefit from it. when a continental regiment of four hundred men were raised in barnstable county, in , twenty-seven marshpee indians enlisted for the whole war. they fought through the war, and not one survives. after the war our fathers had sixty widows left on the plantation, whose husbands had died or been slain. we have but one man living who draws a pension, and not a widow. we pray you, therefore, to allow to marshpee, out of the school fund, a larger amount in proportion than is allowed to other towns and districts who have had better means of education, and to allow us a certain sum per year--and as in duty bound, will ever pray. ezra attaquin, : selectmen and school isaac coombs, : committee of marshpee israel amos, : district. * * * * * to the honorable, the senate and house of representatives in general court assembled: the undersigned beg leave to represent in aid of the petition of the selectmen and school committee of the district of marshpee, praying for a specific appropriation from the school fund for the support of public schools in said district, that we are acquainted with the facts set forth in said petition, and believe that the cause of education could no where be more promoted in any district in the commonwealth than by making a specific annual allowance to said marshpee district. the legislature have made a specific annual appropriation of fifty dollars to the indians on martha's vineyard for public schools, and the undersigned are of opinion, that an annual appropriation of double that amount, would be no more than a fair relative proportion for the district of marshpee. it is highly important that the district should be able to employ competent white teachers, until they can find a sufficient number of good teachers among themselves, which cannot be expected until they have enjoyed greater means of education than heretofore. the undersigned therefore pray that the petition of said selectmen may be granted, by giving a specific annual allowance to said district. benj. f. hallett, counsel for the marshpee indians. charles marston, commissioner of marshpee. here it will be seen that the missionary for the indians on martha's vineyard, did not go to sleep over his flock, or run after others and neglect what ought to be his own fold, as did the missionary, mr. fish, whom harvard college sent to the marshpees, and pays for preaching to white men. mr. bayley, the white missionary on the vineyard, as i understand, took pains to send a petition to boston, and he got fifty dollars a year for our brethren there, of which we are glad. from all we can judge of mr. fish, we should have sooner expected that instead of trying to help our schools, he would opposed our getting any thing for schools, as he also opposed our getting our liberty. he has done nothing for us, about our schools, and even tried to set the indians against their counsel, mr. hallett, by pretending he had lost his influence. when mr. fish does as much for our liberty, and for our schools, as mr. hallett has done, we will listen to his advice. mr. bayley, the missionary on the vineyard, we understand has but two hundred dollars a year from harvard college, while mr. fish, at marshpee, has between four and five hundred, and wrongly uses as his own about five hundred acres of the best land on the plantation belonging to the indians. the legislature in , took this land from the indians, without any right to do so, as we think, and thus compel them, against the constitution, to pay out of their property a minister they never will hear preach. is this religious liberty for the indians? mr. fish is now cutting perhaps, cords of wood, justly belonging to the indians, when there is scarce five who will go and hear him preach in the meeting-house, erected by the british society for propagating the gospel among the indians, and given to the indians, but in which mr. fish now preaches to the whites, (having but one colored male member of his church,[ ]) and keeps the key of it, for fear that its lawful owners, the indians, should go in it, without his leave. he will not let them have it for holding a camp meeting, or for any religious purpose. last august we invited mr. hallett to come and address us on temperance, and to explain to us the laws. we appointed to meet at the meeting-house, as the most central place. mr. fish at first refused to let the indians go into their own meeting-house, and the people began to assemble under the trees, when it was proposed for the selectmen to go and ask for the key, that they might see if mr. fish would refuse it. at this moment, a white man who had been there some time, and had tried to pick a quarrel with mr. hallett and the indians,[ ] said he was sent by mr. fish with the key, and would let the people in, if they would promise to come out when _he_ told them to. mr. hallett declined going in on such terms, and proposed to hold the meeting under the trees. this shamed the messenger of mr. fish, and he opened the door, and the people went in, where mr. hallett addressed them. while the indians were thus gratified in meeting their friends, and in hearing good advice from mr. hallett, on temperance and their affairs, mr. fish's messenger interrupted the speaker, in a very abrupt and indecent manner, and tried to bring on a quarrel and break up the meeting. captain george lovell, always a friend to the indians, tried to keep mr. crocker still, and mr. hallett declined having any controversy, yet the man persisted in his abuse, until he broke up the meeting. had it been thought best, this insulting ambassador would have been put out of the house as a common brawler and disturber; but mr. hallett forbore to have any controversy with him. he afterwards met the indians in their school-houses, and delivered two addresses without interruption from the emissaries of mr. fish. this is a sample of the way the indians have been treated about their own meeting-house. in some of the old petitions, the indians speak of this meeting-house as _our_ meeting-house, and it was built for them, without a dollar from the white men of this country, except when the legislature, at the petition of the indians, repaired it in . and now, no indian can go inside of it, but by the permission of mr. fish, whom they will not hear preach. it seems that the indians are not to have the benefit of any thing given to them. it must all go to the whites. the whites have our meeting-house, and make marshpee pay about one-third the support of a minister they will not hear preach. the other two-thirds comes from a fund. in , a pious man named williams, died in england, and in his will he said, "i give the remainder of my estate to be paid yearly to the college of cambridge, in new england, or to such as are usually employed to manage the blessed work of _converting the poor indians_ there, to promote which, i design this part of my gift." this was the trust of a dying man, given to harvard college, that great and honorable literary institution. and how do they fulfil the solemn trust? they have been and still are paying about five hundred dollars a year to a missionary for preaching to the whites. this missionary, by his own statement, [see mr. hallett's argument,] shows he has added to his church _twenty_ members from the tribe of over three hundred persons, in _twenty-two years_. is not this more expensive in proportion to the good done, than any heathen mission on record? mr. fish has now been preaching in marshpee _twenty-four years_. in that time he has received from the williams fund, given solely to convert the poor indians, about five hundred dollars a year, as nigh as can be ascertained, which is twelve thousand dollars for persuading twenty colored persons to join his church. this is six hundred dollars for every member added to his church, and if his other pay is added, it amounts to nine hundred dollars for each member. besides this, mr. fish has derived an income, we think not much, if any, short of two hundred and fifty dollars a year, from the wood-land, pasturage, marshes, meeting-house, house lot, &c. which he has wrongfully held and used of the property of the indians. add this to his pay from harvard college, and he has had eighteen thousand dollars, of money that belonged to the indians, and which, if it had been laid up for a fund, would have supplied missionaries for all the indians in new england, according to the will of the pious mr. williams. we respect the president and trustees of harvard college. they are honorable men and mean to do right, but i ask them to look at this statement, then to read the will of mr. williams, and laying their hands upon their heart, to ask in the presence of the god of the indian as well as the white man, whether they have done unto the indians of new england and their children, as they would that the indians should do unto them and their children? we are told that we might bring a suit in equity, or in some way, to compel the trustees of the williams fund, to distribute it as the pious donor meant, not for the conversion of the whites, even to the taking away from the indians of their meeting-house and lands, but for "the blessed work of converting the poor indians," as mr. williams says in his will. but it is hard for indians to contend in the courts of white men, against white men. we can have none of our people to decide such questions, and what could we do against all the power and influence of the corporation of harvard college? if the president and fellows of harvard college prefer to deal unjustly by the poor indians, and violate the trust of mr. williams, by giving the funds to the whites instead of the poor indians, they must submit to the wrong, we suppose, for there are none strong enough to help them. they can take the money from the indians, but cannot compel them to hear a preacher they dislike. some people may say that william apes wants to get what mr. fish has, but all he asks is, that harvard college and the state will not support an _established religion_ in marshpee, but leave the indians free to choose for themselves. mr. williams did not give his property to the marshpee indians, more than to any others. it was designed for all the indians in new england, and we cannot see what right harvard college has to give it all for the whites near marshpee and the indians on martha's vineyard. if they are afraid that blind joseph or william apes, the indian preachers, should have any of this money, if it is withdrawn from mr. fish, let them take it, and send a missionary among the marshpee indians they like. or let them employ a man, some elliot, if they can find one, to visit all the indians in new england, to find out their condition and spiritual wants, and try to relieve them. this would be doing some good with money that is now only used to disturb the indians, to take from them their meeting-house, to create divisions among them, and turn what the pious williams meant for a blessing into a curse to the indians. what would the pious williams say to harvard college, could he visit marshpee on a sabbath? he might go to the meeting-house built for the indians, by the society in england, of which i believe he was a principal member. he would find a while man in the pulpit, white singers loading the worship, and the body of the church occupied by seventy or a hundred white persons, of the neighboring villages, scarcely one of whom lives on the plantation. among these he would see four, five, six, or possibly ten persons with colored skins; not but one male among them, belonging to the church. he would probably think he had made a mistake, and that he was in a white town, and not among the indians. he might then go to the house of blind joseph, (the colored baptist preacher,) or to the school-house in marshpee, and he would there find twenty, thirty, or forty indians, all engaged in the solemn worship of god, united and happy, with a little church, growing in grace. he might then visit the other school-house, at the neck, where he would find william apes, an indian, preaching to fifty, sixty, or seventy, and sometimes an hundred indians, all uniting in fervent devotion. after the sermon, he would hear a word of exhortation from several of the colored brethren and sisters, in their broken way, but which often touches the heart of the indian, more than all the learning that harvard college can bestow. he would hear the indians singing praises to god, and making melody in their hearts if not in their voices. what would he say then, when told that harvard college had paid twelve thousand dollars of his funds for converting the poor indians, to the white minister, who had made twenty members in twenty-four years, while the two indian preachers, with forty-seven members to their churches, added in three years, were like st. paul, laboring with their own hands for a subsistence? all the indians ask of harvard is, take away your pretended gift. do not force upon us a minister we do not like, and who creates divisions among us. let us have our meeting-house and our land, and we will be content to worship god without the help of the white man. this meeting-house might as well be in india as in marshpee, for all the benefit the indians have of it. it is kept locked all the time, with the key in mr. fish's possession. it is seen that he would not let the baptist church of indians have it to ordain their beloved pastor, blind joseph in, and we see how it was granted to the indians, when they wanted it for mr. hallett to address them last summer. not only were we forbidden the use of the meeting-house, but even the land which the legislature unconstitutionally as we think, took from the indians to give to mr. fish, is considered by him too holy to be defiled by the indians, who are its true owners. last summer, sometime in july, my church desired to have a camp-meeting, of which we had had one before, attended, as we believe, with a great blessing. we selected a spot some distance from the meeting-house, in a grove, beside the river; but though not in sight of the meeting-house, it was on the ground which mr. fish thinks has been set apart for his sole use. after the notice was given of the camp-meeting, i received from mr. fish the following note, which is here recorded, as an evidence of the christian spirit with which a church in marshpee consisting of thirty-five members, who were indians, was treated and molested in their worship, by the missionary harvard college has paid so liberally to "convert the poor indians," and who had but five indians in his church, not one being a male member. marshpee, july , . mr. wm. apes, _sir_,--perceiving by a notice in the "barnstable journal," of last week, that you have appointed a camp-meeting, to commence on the th inst. and to be holden on the parsonage, and in the vicinity of the meeting-house, _this is to forbid the proceeding altogether_! you have no pretence for such a measure; and if you persist in your purpose to hold such meeting, either near the _meeting-house_, or on _any part of the parsonage allotment_, you must consider yourself _responsible for the consequences_. i am &c. phineas fish. rev. william apes. soon after this, the selectmen, one of whom was a member of my church, applied to mr. fish respecting holding the camp-meeting on the parsonage. the place selected could not have disturbed mr. fish, any more than people passing in carriages in the main road. we had no meeting-house, our school-houses would not hold the people, and we had no other means but to erect our tents and worship god in the open air. a pious family of whites from nantucket, came on the ground, and began erecting their tent. mr. fish came there in person and ordered them off. the man told him that he had his family there, and had no other shelter for the night but his tent, which he should not remove, but would do so the next day, if he found that he was trespassing on any man's rights. but he added, if mr. fish turned him off, he would publish his conduct to the world. mr. fish's interference to break up our religious meeting, created much talk, and finally he wrote the following letter to the selectmen; after which we went on and had our meeting, in a quiet, orderly and peaceful manner, and we believe it was a season of grace, in which the lord blessed us. _to the selectmen of marshpee_. on mature thought, and in compliance with your particular request, i consent to your holding the camp-meeting, which is this day commenced, on the spot near the river, where the first tent was erected. i consent, (i say,) on the following conditions, viz: that you undertake that no damage come upon the parsonage property, either wood land, or meeting-house; that no attempt be made to occupy the meeting-house; that there be no attempt on the sabbath, or any other day, to interrupt the customary worship at the meeting-house, and, _that peace, order, and quietude_ be maintained during the time of the camp-meeting. it is also distinctly understood, that this license is of _special favor_, and _not conceded as your right_, and no way to be taken as a ground for similar requests in future, or for encouraging any future acts of annoyance, vexation, or infringement of the quiet possession of the privileges, secured to me by the _laws_. and that should any damage be done in any way as aforesaid, you will consider yourselves responsible to the proper authorities. with my best wishes for your welfare, your friend, phineas fish. _marshpee, july , _. the reader may now ask, how came mr. fish in possession of this property, which he claims to hold by the laws? i am at liberty to publish here, the following views of the law and the facts in the case, drawn up by legal counsel whom the selectmen have consulted. and here i take my leave. opinion as to the title rev. phineas fish has to the parsonage, so called, in marshpee. the first act of the general court which interfered with the right of the indians to sell their own lands, all of which they owned in common in marshpee plantation, (including what is now called the parsonage,) was in , which provides that no person shall _buy_ land of any indian without license of the general court. in , this was extended to grants for term of years. in , the indians were put under guardianship. in , an act was passed specially to protect the indians in the enjoyment of their lands. [col. laws, page ,] it also shows why the restriction in the sale of their lands was adopted. "whereas, the government of the late colonies of the massachusetts bay and new plymouth, to the intent the native indians might not be injured or defeated of their just rights and possessions, or be imposed on and abused in selling and disposing of their lands, and thereby deprive themselves of such places as were suitable for their settlement", did inhibit the purchase of land without consent of the general court, notwithstanding which, sundry persons have made purchases, &c.; therefore, all such purchases of lands were vacated, with the exception of towns, or persons who had obtained lands from the indians, and also by virtue of a grant or title made or derived by or from the general court. all leases of land from indians for any term or terms of years to be void, unless license was obtained for such lease from the county court of sessions. _provided_, nevertheless, that nothing in this act shall be held or deemed in any wise to hinder, defeat or make void any bargain, sale or lease of land, made by an indian to another indian or indians. . this is the first act which took from the indians their civil capacity to make contracts. it says, "whereas, notwithstanding the care taken and provided (by the former act,) a great wrong and injury happens to said indians, natives of this country, by reason of their being drawn in by small gifts, or small debts, when they are in drink, and out of capacity to trade, to sign unreasonable bills or bonds for debts which are soon sued, and great charge brought upon them, when they have no way to pay the same, but by servitude"; therefore no contract whatever shall be recovered against any indian native, unless entered into before two justices of the peace in the county, both to be present when the contract is executed by the indian. the act of , recognizes the rights of indians to employ persons to build houses on _their own lands_. their own lands then were the commons, including the parsonage. in , marshpee was incorporated as a district, including the land now called the parsonage. "_be it enacted_, &c. that all the lands _belonging_ to the indians and mulattos in mashpee be erected into a district, by the name of mashpee." the proprietors are empowered to meet "in the public meeting house," [the one now claimed by mr. fish,] to elect a moderator, five overseers, two to be englishmen, a town clerk and treasurer, being englishmen, two wardens, and one or more constables. the majority of the overseers had the sole power to regulate the fishery, to lease such lands and fisheries as are held in common, not exceeding for two years, and to allot to the indians their upland and meadows. this act was to continue for three years and no longer. it does not appear ever to have been revived. the revolutionary war intervened, and there is no act after , until the act of , after the revolutionary war, which last act put the indians and their lands under strict guardianship. in this interval between and , the only transaction on which mr. fish can found any claim to the parsonage look place. there was then either no law existing, which could empower any person to sequester and set apart the lands of the indians, or the law of , (if that of had expired,) was revived, by which the guardianship again attached to the indians. the indians, it is believed, continued to choose their own overseers, under the charter of , after it had expired, and without any authority to do so. it was the only government they had during the troubles of the revolution. we now come to the first evidence of any thing relating to the parsonage land being set apart from the common land. this was in , and the following is the deed from the records of barnstable county, and the only deed relating to this property. deed of marshpee parsonage. _know all men by these presents_, that we, lot nye, matthias amos, moses pognet, selectmen, and israel halfday, joseph amos and eben dives, of the district of marshpee, _for the support of the gospel in said marshpee in all future generations, according to the discipline and worship of the church in this place, which is congregational_, do allot, lay out, and _sequester_ forever, a certain tract of land, being four hundred acres more or less, lying within the plantation of marshpee, and _being indian property_, which is to lay as a parsonage forever and to be _improved and used for the sole purpose aforesaid_; and the said tract or parcel of land for the said parsonage, is situated on the east side of marshpee river, and bounded as follows, viz: beginning at a certain spring of fresh water which issues from the head a small lagoon on the east side of marshpee river aforesaid, and runs into said river a small distance below, and south of the spot where negro scipio and his wife jemimai had their house, which is now removed, and from thence running due east into the land until it comes to the great road which leads into marshpee neck, so called, and from thence northwardly bearing eastward as the said road runs, until it comes to the great road, which is the common road from barnstable to falmouth, and then bounded by the last mentioned road northwardly, and running westwardly until it comes to ashir's road, then crossing falmouth road and running in ashir's path till it comes to marshpee river aforesaid, and then upon the said river southwardly, and on the east side, until it comes to the first station, leaving quokin, and phillis his wife, quiet in their possessions; which tract of land, (except mary richards' fields and plantation,) which is within the said boundaries, and wood for mary's own use, and fencing stuff for her fences as they now stand, with all the appurtinances and privileges thereunto belonging, shall be forever for the important purpose of propagating the gospel in marshpee, without any let, hindrance or molestation. in confirmation whereof, we have hereunto set our hands and seals, this seventh day of january, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three. . lot nye, matthias x[note: sideways x] amos, his mark. moses x[note: sideways x] pognet, " n.b. before the insealing the premises, reserve was made by the signers of this instrument, for the heirs of mary richards, that they forever be allowed her in her life time, and abraham natumpum and his heirs, be allowed severally to enjoy and possess scipio's cleared spot of land, and fencing stuff for the same. israel x[note: sideways x] halfday, his mark. joseph x[note: sideways x] amos, " eben x[note: sideways x] dives, " in possession of: gideon hawley : simon fish. received november , , and is recorded in the th book of records, for the county of barnstable, folio , and compared. attest, ebenezer bacon, _register_. lot nye was a white man, a great indian speculator. the other five were indians, two calling themselves selectmen. now what power had these men in , to sequester four hundred acres of the common land of the indians, for any purpose? if they were selectmen, and had any power, that power was expressly limited by the act of , to leasing lands for a term not exceeding two years. here they undertook to make a perpetual grant, a sort of dedication of the property to a certain purpose. if they could dispose of one acre so, they might with equal propriety, have disposed of the whole plantation. the indians were all tenants in common, and no dedication or transfer of the common land could be made, without a legal partition, or the consent of every individual tenant. if the pretended selectmen acted for the indians, they could only do so by power of attorney to act for all the tenants in common. there is no other possible legal way, by which land, the fee of which is owned by tenants in common, can be transferred, either in fee or in occupancy out of their possession forever. but besides, no act of the indians was then valid unless confirmed by the general court. this deed, therefore, of , was void at the time. it seems nothing was done with it, until , _seventeen years_ after, when it was recorded in the barnstable county registry of deeds, at whose instigation does not appear. now in , when this deed was recorded, the indians were legally minors, and could do no act, and make no contract. all the power their selectmen had in , was taken away. they were under five overseers, who had power to improve and _lease_ the lands of the indians and their tenements, but no power to sell, sequester or dedicate any part of them. the overseers had no power to take a dollar from the indians, for religious worship. while this was the condition of the indians under the law of , (which continued in full force, with an additional act in , till the new law of ,) the deed was recorded, in , _seventeen years_ after it was made by persons who had no power at all to make such a deed. the professed object was to set apart acres, of the common land, lying in marshpee, "_and being indian_ _property_," for a parsonage, forever. the clear title then was in the indians as tenants in common, for the deed so declares it, in . the parsonage was their property then. how has it ever been conveyed out of their hands? the purpose for which this land was to be used, as sequestered by lot nye, &c. was for the sole purpose aforesaid, viz. "for the support of the gospel in marshpee in all future generations, according to the discipline and worship of the church in this place, which is congregational." and this property, says the deed, "shall be forever for the important purpose of propagating the gospel in marshpee, without any let, hindrance or molestation." this, then was the design of the original signers of this deed, who had no right to sign such a deed at all. their object was to promote the gospel in marshpee, but how has it turned out? the property has been used for twenty-four years, to pay a minister who preaches to the whites, and whom the indians with very few exceptions, will not hear. is not this a gross perversion of the design of the donors, even if they had any power to have made this grant? no lawyer will pretend that the grant was not void, under this deed alone. there was no grantee, no legal consideration, and no power to convey. the deed remained on record, until , when the following act was passed by the legislature, attempting to confirm a deed made years before, by men who had no power to make such deed. commonwealth of massachusetts, _house of representatives, june_ , . on the representation of the overseers of the indian plantation of marshpee, in the county of barnstable, stating in behalf of said indians, that it would be conducive to their interests, that a certain grant and allotment of lands therein described, _formerly owned by said indians_, for the support of the gospel ministry among them, should be confirmed and rendered valid. _resolved_, that a certain grant or allotment of land made by lot nye, matthias amos, moses pognet, isaac halfday, joseph amos, and eben dives, of the district of marshpee, in the county of barnstable, as appears by their deed by them, and by them signed, sealed and executed, on the seventh day of january, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three, and recorded in the registry of deeds, in and for said county of barnstable, in the fifty-fifth book thereof, and th folio of said book, said land being acres more or less, according to said deed, be and the same hereby is confirmed and rendered valid to all intents and purposes by them in their said deed expressed, and the said tract of land shall be and remain forever as a parsonage, for the use and benefit of a congregational gospel minister, as expressed and declared in their said deed. sent up for concurrence. timothy bigelow, _speaker_. _in senate, june_ , , read and concurred. h.g. otis, _president_. approved, c. gore. june , , [true copy.] now, if the deed was not valid in , without the concurrent action of the general court, it could not be made valid by an act of the general court years afterwards. besides, the land had been in possession of the indians, by virtue of their title, more than twenty years, after the making of the pretended deed. the power of the grantors, if they ever had any power, had long expired, and marshpee was governed by new laws. we might as well hold that an act passed by the house of representatives in , could be made valid by a concurrence of the senate, in . it is plain, therefore, that unless the general court had power without the consent of the indians, to sequester this land in , the setting of it apart from the common land, is wholly void, and an act of mere arbitrary power. but the general court never assumed the power to convey any land for any purpose, belonging to the indians without their consent. where and how was their consent given to this act of ? they were minors in law, and could give no such consent. their overseers could give none for them, for their power only extended to alloting laws to the indians, and _leasing_ them. the pretence, therefore, that this was done at the request of the overseers, gives no strength to the act. let another fact be remarked. the original sequestration in , was to promote the gospel in marshpee. the general court profess to confirm and render valid the deed of lot nye and others, but they say that this four hundred acres "shall remain forever as a parsonage for the use and benefit of a congregational gospel minister, _as expressed in their said deed_." now no such thing is expressed in their deed. there is not a word about a congregational _minister_; only "for the support of the gospel, according to the discipline and worship of the church in this place, which is congregational." the general court, therefore, gave a construction to the deed, which the deed never warranted. the whole proceeding must be illegal and void. the fee still remains in the indians, and no power existed to take it from them without their whole consent as tenants in common, which they have never given, and could not give, because they were in law minors. mr. fish was sent to marshpee as a minister, and ordained in . the indians, as a society, never invited him to come, or settled him. they never gave him possession of the land or meeting-house. they were then minors in law, and could give no consent. the white overseers and harvard college, were the only powers that undertook to give mr. fish possession of the property of the indians. it is true, he has held it twenty years, but the statute of quiet possession does not run against minors. the indians were declared minors, and could bring no action in court. this is the true history of the parsonage and meeting-house now wrongfully held by mr. fish. have not the indians a right to their own property? has the legislature and harvard college, a right to establish a religion by law in marshpee, and take the property of the indians to support a minister they will not hear? where did the general-court get any power to give away the property of the indians, any more than the lands of white men, held in common? they cannot take the property of the indians to support a private individual. was it then a public use? but the constitution says "no part of the property of any individual, can with justice be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of the representative body of the people, and whenever the public exigencies require that the property of any individual should be appropriated to public uses, he shall receive a reasonable compensation therefor." apply this to the act of the general court, by which mr. fish holds four hundred acres of the common lands of the indians, against their consent, and for which they never received a dollar, and answer. is not the constitution violated, every day he is suffered to remain on the plantation, against their consent, subsisting on the property of the poor indians, not to benefit them, but to preach to the whites? look at this subject also, in connexion with religious freedom. the old article of the constitution, gave the legislature power to _require_ the towns to provide for public worship at their own expense, where they neglected to make such provisions themselves; but it also provided that the towns, &c. "shall at all times have the exclusive right of electing their public teachers, and of contracting with them for their support and maintenance." this right the indians have never had in regard to mr. fish, nor did they neglect to support worship, and if they did, the legislature had no power to take their property and set it apart, but might impose a tax or a fine. but what says the amended article on this subject of religious freedom? "the several religious societies of this commonwealth, (the indian as well as the white man,) whether corporate or unincorporate, shall ever have the right to elect their pastors or religious teachers, to contract with them for their support, to raise money for the erecting and repairing houses of public worship, for the maintenance of religious instruction, and all religious sects and denominations, demeaning themselves peaceably, and as good citizens, shall be equally under the protection of the law." are the indians at marshpee, protected in the same manner the whites are, in their religious freedom? the indians think not, and with good reason; and yet they cannot get redress. they have warned mr. fish to leave their property; they have dismissed him as their minister, if he ever were such, and have forbidden his using their meeting-house, or carrying off their wood. but he persists in holding and using their property, as they say wrongfully, and even prohibits their having a religious meeting in the woods, without his consent. he is, it is stated, at this time employing men to cut and cart wood off the plantation, for his support, and it is supposed he will thus take of the property really belonging to the indians, about two hundred cords of wood the present year. now if this land belongs in common to the marshpee indians, as they contend it does, mr. fish and the white men he employs, (and it is understood he employs no others,) violate the law of , and are liable to indictment. that law says, "that no person other than proprietors or inhabitants of said district, shall ever cut wood [upon the common lands,] or transport the same therefrom. and every person offending against this provision, shall be liable to indictment therefor, and upon conviction, shall pay a fine of not less than fifty, nor more than one hundred dollars, to the use of said district." in this mode, by indicting the white men employed by mr. fish, to cut and carry off wood, the question could be tried, which is simply whether the fee of the parsonage is in the indians, or whether it is in mr. fish, who never had any deed of it in any way. the parsonage was common land in . has it been legally changed since in its title, is the question. but even in this matter, as we are informed, the courts of justice which are open to white men, are closed to the poor indians. at the last session of the court in barnstable, the selectmen of marshpee complained against the white men employed by mr. fish, for cutting wood on their common lands. the district attorney on ascertaining that the wood was taken from the parsonage, so called, undertook to decide the whole question, before it went to the court, as it is stated to us, and without any examination as to mr. fish's title, refused to act upon the complaint. had the indictment been found, the question could have gone to the supreme court, and been there settled. the indians now must either submit to be wronged until some prosecuting officer will hear their complaints, or they must apply for an injunction, to stop mr. fish cutting any more of their wood. these are believed to be substantially the facts and the law, in this case. they are left with a candid public to consider, and to form their opinion on, if they cannot be shown to be unfounded. it should be understood that the committee who reported the act of , giving the new law to the indians, did not decide any question touching the parsonage. they treated all the plantation as lands owned in common. it has been said that the chairman of the committee, mr. barton, had given an opinion that mr. fish was entitled to hold the property. this is incorrect. to obviate such an impression, mr. hallett, the counsel for the indians, wrote to mr. barton, and received the following reply, which will fully explain the position in which the question was left by the legislature. in the views expressed by mr. barton, mr. hallett fully concurs. too much praise cannot be given to mr. barton for the zeal, patience and ability with which he discharged the duties of chairman of the committee. worcester, july , . dear sir, i last evening received your favor of the th ult. the committee of the legislature, who had in charge the marshpee business, intentionally avoided expressing any opinion in regard to the tenure by which mr. fish held the parsonage. in our report we merely adverted to the facts, that in , lot nye, and several indians granted acres of the common land, "to be forever for the important purpose of propagating the gospel in marshpee." there were no grantees named in the deed. in , the general court confirmed this grant of a parsonage, "to be held forever for a congregational gospel minister." we found mr. fish in possession of the parsonage, _as such a minister_. but whether by virtue of said grant, and his settlement at marshpee he could hold the parsonage, _as a sole corporation_, we regarded it as a question of purely a judicial character, and one with which it was "not _expedient_," and might we not have added _proper_, "for the legislature to interfere." if mr. fish has rights under these grants, and by virtue of his settlement, i know you will agree with me, that the legislature can do nothing to divest him of them. and if he had no such right, we were not disposed to create them. i am entirely satisfied with the course which the committee took in relation to the parsonage; and the circumstance that questions are now agitated in relation to it, show that in one particular, at least, the committee acted judiciously. we left the parsonage precisely as we found it; leaving to another branch of the government the appropriate responsibility of settling all questions growing out of the grant of , the confirmation of , and the settlement of mr. fish. could we by legislation settle those questions, it might have been our duty to do so, for the sake of the harmony of the district. but it seems to me that any such attempt would have had a tendency to create new difficulties, rather than to diminish old ones. a word in regard to my advice to mr. fish. i received a letter from mr. fish some time since, in which he expressed some apprehensions that an attempt would be made by the natives to take possession of the meeting-house, parsonage, &c. his letter enclosed rather a singular communication, signed by the selectmen of marshpee. i did not keep a copy of my answer to mr. fish, but recollect distinctly the substance of it. i alluded to the authority of the legislature in the premises as i have above. that they intended to leave the parsonage as they found it, without undertaking to limit or modify the effect of former acts. that the appropriate mode for the natives to ascertain their rights to, or to obtain possession of, the parsonage, &c. was by resorting to the courts. that any forcible attempt by single individuals to obtain possession of the meeting-house, &c. would be a trespass; that if numbers combined for that purpose, it would constitute a riot. i take it i hazarded no professional reputation by giving these opinions. for you very well know, that they would be correct, mr. fish being in peaceable possession of the premises, whether he were so by seisin or disseisin, by right or by wrong. i hope, my dear sir, that our experiment in regard to the affairs of our marshpee friends may yet succeed. if not, i think we may console ourselves as one of old did: that if rome must fall, we are innocent. i am, very respectfully yours, j. barton. the legislature having thus left the question, to be decided by the courts, if mr. fish insists on holding the parsonage, the inquiry must arise on legal principles, how was mr. fish settled in marshpee, and by what right does he, as a sole corporation, or otherwise, hold the parsonage, as an allotment set apart forever for the support of a congregational minister, in marshpee? harvard college in which he was then, or had been a tutor, sent him there as a missionary under the williams fund. the legislature took no part whatever in the settlement. the overseers permitted him to take possession of the meeting-house and the parsonage land, so called, and it is understood that they consented he should cut the annual growth of the wood off the parsonage. but even admitting that the overseers could so dispose of the property of the indians, for promoting a particular religious worship in marshpee, (which is explicitly denied,) could they convey any thing to mr. fish beyond the period of their own existence? by the law establishing the overseers, they had no power beyond leasing land for two years. how then, could the overseers grant for life to mr. fish the improvement of the parsonage and meeting-house? they might have given it to him from year to year, while they were in office, but on the abolition of the overseers, in , and a restoration of civil rights to the owners of the fee of the parsonage, the marshpee proprietors, how could mr. fish continue to hold the parsonage against their will? was it by virtue of his settlement, so that he now claims the land as a sole corporation? but a minister cannot be settled or constituted a sole corporation, without a parish to settle him. "a minister of a parish seized of lands in its _right_ as parsonage lands, is _a sole corporation_, and on a vacancy, the parish is entitled to the profits;" d dane's abrg. . mass. rep. . mr. fish is not seized of a parsonage in right of any parish or religious society, and therefore he cannot be a sole corporation. in point of fact, there was no legal parish in marshpee, when mr. fish went there and took possession, under the overseers, and not in right of the parish. a parish or precinct as the law then was, must be a corporation entitled and required to support public worship, and having all the powers and privileges necessary for that purpose. (see th mass. rep. .) and where there has been no parish as such created in a town, the town itself will be considered a parish. ( mass. rep. .) marshpee was not a town. the marshpee indians were minors in law, and there was no legal parish to settle a minister, or to hold a parsonage, and no one to make contracts as such. harvard college had no power to settle a minister in marshpee, nor had the overseers any such power. their supervision was temporal and not ecclesiastical. besides, the actual congregational society which subsisted in marshpee, when mr. fish was sent there, in , was composed of a majority of _whites_. mr. fish himself testified before the committee, that the church at marshpee, in , consisted of sixteen whites and but five colored persons. the church members were a majority of whites, so that even had the church voted to settle mr. fish, it would have been a vote of white men having no interest in the premises, and not of indian proprietors. mr. fish admits that the church passed no vote. it was asserted by one of the old overseers, mr. hawley, that five indians called on him, after mr. fish had preached there, and personally expressed a wish to have him stay with them, but there was no official act, and no vote of the church or society, and no assent of the proprietors of marshpee in any form. who were the congregational church, and who the society in marshpee, in ? a regularly gathered congregational church, is composed of several persons associated by covenant or agreement of church fellowship, ( th mass. .) and a church cannot exist for any legal purposes, except as connected with a congregation or some regularly constituted religious society. ( mass. .) where there are no special powers given to the church by the legislature, the church cannot contract with or settle a minister, but that power resides wholly in the parish, of which the members of the church, who _are inhabitants_, are a part. ( mass. reports, . burr vs. first parish in sandwich.) we have seen that there was no legal parish in marshpee, in , and therefore the congregational church, if there were such then, had no power to settle mr. fish, even had they done so, which they did not. a parish may elect a public teacher, and contract to support him, without the consent of the church, if he be ordained by a council invited by the parish; but in mr. fish's case, he was ordained by the request and under the direction of the president and corporation of harvard college, the trustees of the williams fund, with the assent of the overseers. there is then no ground whatever for assuming that mr. fish ever was settled legally over a congregational parish in marshpee, so as to establish him a sole corporation, to hold the lands belonging to the proprietors of marshpee, under the dedication deed of . if that deed and the subsequent act of , conveyed any thing, the conveyance was for the use of the inhabitants as a parsonage, there being no parish in marshpee, distinct from the plantation. in such case, it would be held to be a grant to marshpee, (that is the town,) for the use of its ministers, ( mass. .) the grant, therefore, could it be regarded as such, was to the whole proprietors of marshpee, and they must first settle a minister before he could claim the use of the grant as a minister of the parish. neither has mr. fish, even if he had been legally settled, any just right, under the deed of , to take the whole parsonage, because that deed states the principal object of the sequestration of the land to be, for the important purpose of promoting the gospel in marshpee, and merely referred to the only worship then known there, which was congregational. when mr. fish went there in , there was a baptist church, and they objected to his taking possession of the parsonage. there is a case in point in the th mass. rep. , which decides, that where the original proprietors of a township appropriated a lot of land for a parsonage, and at the same time voted that they would endeavor that a congregational minister should be settled in the township, such vote ought not to be construed to limit the benefit of the parsonage to a minister of the congregational order, and that if the inhabitants of the parish should become christians of any other protestant sect, they would be entitled to the land, and that a congregational society, incorporated as a full parish would have no right to the parsonage. neither can a parish convey a parsonage to a minister to be held by him in his personal right. by this decision, the baptist or methodist church in marshpee have as good claim to the parsonage as mr. fish has. the dedication, or whatever it may be called, of marshpee parsonage, was made by lot nye, &c. in , and confirmed in , by the general court. mr. fish did not become a minister in marshpee, until . whoever settled him there, for the indians did not, made no stipulation as to the income of the parsonage, which could bind the plantation. the society only, could make such stipulation, and they did not act in the premises. the overseers could make no stipulation either to bind the parish or the proprietors, because their power only extended to giving a lease of land not exceeding two years. in the case of thompson vs. the catholic-congregational society in rehoboth, ( th pickering, ,) it was settled that where there was a ministerial fund in a parish, and the society settled a minister stipulating to pay him a salary, without taking any notice of the income of the fund, he must be considered as accepting the salary as a full compensation, and the society are entitled to the fund. harvard college settled mr. fish in marshpee, and agreed to pay him about five hundred dollars, or two-thirds the proceeds of the williams fund. the society to which mr. fish was sent to preach, took no notice of the parsonage, nor did the proprietors of marshpee, hence mr. fish cannot hold the proceeds of the parsonage by right of succession, or by stipulation, either from the society or the marshpee proprietors, and therefore the proprietors of marshpee are entitled to the parsonage. there is one other consideration that might legally deprive mr. fish of his rights in the parsonage, even if he acquired any by the transaction in , which is denied. when he went to marshpee, and first preached there, he was of the unitarian faith, and so continued some time. subsequently, (and most undoubtedly from high conscientious motives,) he became orthodox in his creed, and has remained so ever since. [this fact has been named by the president of harvard college, as one reason why the williams fund has continued to be diverted from its proper use; the delicacy harvard college felt at dismissing mr. fish, lest it should be ascribed to persecution, for his change of sentiments from unitarian to orthodox.] but if mr. fish claims to hold the parsonage by the "_laws_," he must be governed by the decision of the court in the celebrated case of burr, vs. the first parish in sandwich. mr. burr was settled an unitarian, and became orthodox, and this the supreme court decided was just cause for the parish to dismiss him. chief justice parsons, said in that case, that "according to the almost immemorial usage of congregational churches, before the parish settle a minister, he preaches with them as a candidate for settlement, with the intent of declaring his religious faith, and if he is afterwards settled, it is understood that the greater part of the parish and church agree in his religious sentiments and opinions. if afterwards the minister adopts a new system of divinity, the parish retaining their former religious belief, so that the minister would not have been settled on his present system, in our opinion the parish have good cause to complain." on this ground the court decided that mr. burr had forfeited his settlement. the principle is the same applied to the relation mr. fish holds to the marshpee indians. he was placed over them by others, and the indians are now compelled either to lose all the benefits of their own parsonage, or to hear a man in whose doctrines they do not believe, and whom they cannot consent to take as their spiritual teacher. upon a full investigation into this branch of the inquiry, there seems to be no legal or equitable ground, on which mr. fish can claim to hold the parsonage and meeting-house against the proprietors, and he must therefore, be regarded as a trespasser, liable to be ejected, and the men he employs to cut and cart wood from the plantation, are liable to indictment under the new law of . the invalidity of title, is however, a still stronger ground against mr. fish's right of adverse occupancy, which he now holds, and a case in principle precisely like this, has been decided by the supreme court of massachusetts. it occurred in , before there was a reporter of the supreme court. hon john davis, united states district judge, was counsel for the indians, and samuel dexter, for the defendant. it was tried on a demurrer, before the supreme court in barnstable, upon an action of ejectment, proprietors of marshpee, vs. ebenezer crocker. judge paine delivered the opinion of the court in favor of the indians. judge benjamin whitman of boston, was also, we believe, concerned in the cause. the substance of the case, as stated by judge davis and judge whitman, was thus: ebenezer crocker of cotuet, had furnished an indian woman, (known as the indian queen,) with supplies for many years. she occupied and claimed in severalty as her own, a valuable tract of about acres of land on the marshpee plantation, called the neck, of which tract she gave a deed in fee, some time before her death, to said crocker, in consideration of the support he had given her. the consideration at that time, was not very greatly disproportioned to the value of the land. after her death, she having left no heirs, the grantee, mr. crocker, who was an influential member of the general court, petitioned that body and procured a full confirmation of the deed to him, in the same manner the general court in , confirmed the parsonage deed of , except that there was not so long a time intervening between mr. crocker's receiving the deed from the indian queen in her life time, and its full confirmation by the general court after her death. this took place previous to the law of , putting the indians under guardianship, when either the law of or the charter of , was in force.[ ] when the white overseers came in, in , they found crocker in possession of this land, under the above title, and they employed judge john davis, as counsel, to vacate the deed and the act of the general court. judge davis brought an action of ejectment against crocker, (not in the name of the overseers,) but in the name of the proprietors of marshpee, whose property he claimed, was as tenants in common, on the ground that the old queen, though she occupied it in severalty during her life, could not, as one tenant in common, convey the interest of her co-tenants in common. it was tried in the supreme court, and the deed was set aside, for insufficiency of title. this insufficiency of title vitiated the conveyance on the ground that the old queen had no power to convey when she made the deed, and that the general court had no power to make good, by a resolve, a title originally invalid. crocker also set up the claim of quiet possession, for thirty years, which it was supposed would secure the title; but the court decided that this gave no title, and the land was restored to the indians, and now forms a portion of their common land. mr. crocker of course, lost all he had furnished to the old queen, and in this respect, his case was harder than it would be, were mr. fish dispossessed of the parsonage, after enjoying it for twenty-four years, without any title thereto. it would he difficult for any lawyer to show why crocker's deed confirmed by the general court, should have been set aside in , and lot nye's deed, of the parsonage, be held valid in . on referring to my minutes of the trial of the petition of the indians, for their liberty, in , before a committee of the legislature, i find the following facts stated by rev. phineas fish, who was a witness before that committee. they will throw some light on the subject of inquiry. _rev. phineas fish_, sworn. testifies that he was ordained at marshpee in . was invited there by the overseers of marshpee. there were five persons of color belonging to the church, and sixteen whites. at the ordination, a white man rose up and protested against it. he said all were not satisfied. it was not a vote of the indians by which he was settled, and no vote of the church was taken. five indians had expressed a wish that he would remain. he received two-thirds of the williams fund, from harvard college. it had varied from to dollars. received about dollars per year from the wood-land of the parsonage. has built a dwelling house, and made improvements on an acre and a half of land of the plantation, of which he holds a deed from the overseers, confirmed by a resolve of the general court. _mr. gideon hawley_ testified that the meeting-house was built by the funds of the english society for propagating the gospel, before , when his father was sent as a missionary to the indians, by the london missionary society. in , five hundred dollars were granted on petition of the indians, as a donation by the legislature, to repair the church for the marshpee indians. after mr. fish had preached in marshpee, indians came to mr. hawley and expressed a wish he would stay with them. there was no vote and no record. before his father came to marshpee, in , bryant, an indian preacher, used to preach to the indians, in the meeting-house. the missionary, (mr. hawley,) received one hundred dollars annually, from harvard college, of the williams fund. in , the indians gave the missionary, mr. hawley, two hundred acres of land, which witness inherits. [the validity of this title is not disputed.] _hon. charles marston_, (one of the overseers,) testified that mr. fish had a sunday school, principally composed of white children. he did not recollect ever seeing more than eight colored children in it. there were more whites. the overseers paid the school mistress seven and sixpence a week, and she board herself. to an indian, who kept school in winter, were paid twelve and nineteen dollars a month. the whites who attend mr. fish's meeting, never pay any thing to him or the church. when the tax was required in parishes, many whites got rid of their tax by attending mr. fish's meeting. there was always twice as many whites as blacks in the society. last summer, ( ,) he counted eighteen colored persons, and twice that number of whites. mr. dwight, one of the committee, asked, if so many whites being there, did not tend to discourage the indians from being interested in the meeting? mr. marston thought it might. _deacon isaac coombs_, who had been twenty years a deacon in mr. fish's church, changed his sentiments, and was baptized by immersion. he testified before the committee of the legislature, that when he told mr. fish he had been baptized again, mr. fish said, "that was rank poison, and that he should expect some dreadful judgment would befal me." deacon coombs, who is sixty years old, testified also, that the meeting-house was built for the use of the indians. no one could remember when it was built. there was but one colored male church member, when mr. fish came to marshpee, in . he further stated to the committee that his family got discouraged going to mr. fish's meeting, from the preference he gave to the whites. he did not come to see his family, and lost his influence by taking part with the guardians against the indians. there was a difficulty in mr. fish's meeting about the singing. the colored people were put back, and the whites took the lead. mr. fish has or acres of pasture, east of the river, besides the parsonage. * * * * * i have thus given my views of the law and the facts, touching the parsonage in marshpee, in order that the indians and their selectmen who have desired legal advice on the subject, may fully understand their rights. i am confident they will never attempt to obtain those rights, except in a legal and peaceable way. the courts at barnstable, it is said, are closed to them, in the way pointed out by the law, the district attorney refusing to prosecute the men who cut wood on the parsonage. i invite the attention of that acute and learned officer, charles h. warren, esq. to the points made in this opinion, well assured that if it can be refuted by any professional gentleman, it can be done by him. if he cannot do so, i hope he will permit the title of the parsonage to be brought before the court, under an indictment for cutting wood contrary to the act of . i regret the necessity of presenting arguments to dispossess mr. fish of what he doubtless supposes be lawfully holds; but i am looking for the rights and the property of the indians, and am not at liberty to consult personal feelings, that would certainly induce me to favor the rev. mr. fish, as soon as any man in his situation. i think it as important to him as to the indians, that the title to the parsonage should be settled, for there will be feuds, and divisions, and strifes, as long as that property remains as it now is, wrongfully taken and withheld from the indians, to support an "established church," in marshpee. with this view i have proposed to mr. fish, in behalf of the indians, to make up an amicable suit, before the supreme court, and obtain their opinion, and the parties be governed by it. the indians are ready to submit it to such an arbitration. mr. fish declines. the only other remedy is an injunction in chancery, to stop the cutting of wood. the indians are not well able to bear the expense, at present, or this course would be taken to recover their property. until some legal decision is had, mr. fish cannot but see, from an examination of the legal grounds set forth herein, that there are strong reasons for regarding him as holding in his possession that which rightfully belongs to another. the public will not be satisfied, until the rights of the indians are fully secured. i have always been desirous that mr. fish should not be disturbed in his house lot, and for my own part, it would give me pleasure, should the indians, immediately, on getting legal possession of their own parsonage, unanimously invite him to settle over them. but so long as he withholds from them their property, it cannot be expected that they should receive him as their spiritual teacher. it is in direct violation of the constitution and of religious freedom. benjamin f. hallett, _counsel for the marshpee indians. boston, may, , _. the selectmen of marshpee district, are at liberty to make such use of the foregoing, as they think proper. [footnote : he is not an indian, nor an original proprietor.] [footnote : this was mr. alvin crocker, who had formerly enjoyed more benefits from the plantation, than he does under the new law.] [footnote : in june, , the governor and council appointed thomas smith, isaac hinckley and gideon hawley, "pursuant to an act empowering them to appoint certain persons to have the inspection of the plantation of marshpee."] concluding observations. if, in the course of this little volume, i have been obliged to use language that seems harsh, i beg my readers to remember that it was in defence of the character of the people under my spiritual charge and of my own. the marshpees have been reviled and misrepresented in the public prints, as much more indolent, ignorant, and degraded than they really are, and it was necessary, for their future welfare, as it depends in no small degree upon the good opinion of their white brethren, to state the real truth of the case, which could not be done in gentle terms. the causes which have retarded our improvement could not be explained without naming the individuals who have been the willing instruments to enforce them. for troubling my readers with so much of my own affairs, i have this excuse. i have been assailed by the vilest calumnies; represented as an exciter of sedition, a hypocrite and a gambler. these slanders, though disproved, still continue to circulate. though an indian, i am at least a man, with all the feelings proper to humanity, and my reputation is dear to me; and i conceive it to be my duty to the children i shall leave behind me, as well as to myself, not to leave them the inheritance of a blasted name. in so doing, i humbly presume to think, i have not exceeded the moderation, proper for a christian man to use. william apes. loewenstein, m.d. the kellys and the o'kellys by anthony trollope contents i. the trial ii. the two heiresses iii. morrison's hotel iv. the dunmore inn v. a loving brother vi. the escape vii. mr barry lynch makes a morning call viii. mr martin kelly returns to dunmore ix. mr daly, the attorney x. dot blake's advice xi. the earl of cashel xii. fanny wyndham xiii. father and son xiv. the countess xv. handicap lodge xvi. brien boru xvii. martin kelly's courtship xviii. an attorney's office in connaught xix. mr daly visits the dunmore inn xx. very liberal xxi. lord ballindine at home xxii. the hunt xxiii. dr colligan xxiv. anty lynch's bed-side; scene the first xxv. anty lynch's bed-side; scene the second xxvi. love's ambassador xxvii. mr lynch's last resource xxviii. fanny wyndham rebels xxix. the countess of cashell in trouble xxx. lord kilcullen obeys his father xxxi. the two friends xxxii. how lord kilcullen fares in his wooing xxxiii. lord kilcullen makes another visit to the book-room xxxiv. the doctor makes a clean breast of it xxxv. mr lynch bids farewell to dunmore xxxvi. mr armstrong visits grey abbey on a delicate mission xxxvii. veni; vidi; vici xxxviii. wait till i tell you xxxix. it never rains but it pours xl. conclusion i. the trial during the first two months of the year , the greatest possible excitement existed in dublin respecting the state trials, in which mr o'connell, [ ] his son, the editors of three different repeal newspapers, tom steele, the rev. mr tierney--a priest who had taken a somewhat prominent part in the repeal movement--and mr ray, the secretary to the repeal association, were indicted for conspiracy. those who only read of the proceedings in papers, which gave them as a mere portion of the news of the day, or learned what was going on in dublin by chance conversation, can have no idea of the absorbing interest which the whole affair created in ireland, but more especially in the metropolis. every one felt strongly, on one side or on the other. every one had brought the matter home to his own bosom, and looked to the result of the trial with individual interest and suspense. [footnote : the historical events described here form a backdrop to the novel. daniel o'connell ( - ) came from a wealthy irish catholic family. he was educated in the law, which he practiced most successfully, and developed a passion for religious and political liberty. in , together with lalor sheil and thomas wyse, he organized the catholic association, whose major goal was catholic emancipation. this was achieved by act of parliament the following year. o'connell served in parliament in the 's and was active in the passage of bills emancipating the jews and outlawing slavery. in he formed the repeal association, whose goal was repeal of the act of union which joined ireland to great britain. in , after serving a year as lord mayor of dublin, o'connell challenged the british government by announcing that he intended to achieve repeal within a year. though he openly opposed violence, prime minister peel's government considered him a threat and arrested o'connell and his associates in on trumped-up charges of conspiracy, sedition, and unlawfule assembly. they were tried in , and all but one were convicted, although the conviction was later overturned in the house of lords. o'connell did serve some time in jail and was considered a martyr to the cause of irish independence.] even at this short interval irishmen can now see how completely they put judgment aside, and allowed feeling and passion to predominate in the matter. many of the hottest protestants, of the staunchest foes to o'connell, now believe that his absolute imprisonment was not to be desired, and that whether he were acquitted or convicted, the government would have sufficiently shown, by instituting his trial, its determination to put down proceedings of which they did not approve. on the other hand, that class of men who then styled themselves repealers are now aware that the continued imprisonment of their leader--the persecution, as they believed it to be, of "the liberator" [ ]--would have been the one thing most certain to have sustained his influence, and to have given fresh force to their agitation. nothing ever so strengthened the love of the irish for, and the obedience of the irish to o'connell, as his imprisonment; nothing ever so weakened his power over them as his unexpected enfranchisement [ ]. the country shouted for joy when he was set free, and expended all its enthusiasm in the effort. [footnote : the irish often referred to daniel o'connell as "the liberator."] [footnote : enfranchisement--being set free. this is a political observation by trollope.] at the time, however, to which i am now referring, each party felt the most intense interest in the struggle, and the most eager desire for success. every repealer, and every anti-repealer in dublin felt that it was a contest, in which he himself was, to a certain extent, individually engaged. all the tactics of the opposed armies, down to the minutest legal details, were eagerly and passionately canvassed in every circle. ladies, who had before probably never heard of "panels" in forensic phraseology, now spoke enthusiastically on the subject; and those on one side expressed themselves indignant at the fraudulent omission of certain names from the lists of jurors; while those on the other were capable of proving the legality of choosing the jury from the names which were given, and stated most positively that the omissions were accidental. "the traversers" [ ] were in everybody's mouth--a term heretofore confined to law courts, and lawyers' rooms. the attorney-general, the commander-in-chief of the government forces, was most virulently assailed; every legal step which he took was scrutinised and abused; every measure which he used was base enough of itself to hand down his name to everlasting infamy. such were the tenets of the repealers. and o'connell and his counsel, their base artifices, falsehoods, delays, and unprofessional proceedings, were declared by the saxon party to be equally abominable. [footnote : traversers--trollope repeatedly refers to the defendants as "traversers." the term probably comes from the legal term "to traverse," which is to deny the charges against one in a common law proceeding. thus, the traversers would have been those who pled innocent.] the whole irish bar seemed, for the time, to have laid aside the habitual _sang froid_ [ ] and indifference of lawyers, and to have employed their hearts as well as their heads on behalf of the different parties by whom they were engaged. the very jurors themselves for a time became famous or infamous, according to the opinions of those by whom their position was discussed. their names and additions were published and republished; they were declared to be men who would stand by their country and do their duty without fear or favour--so said the protestants. by the roman catholics, they were looked on as perjurors determined to stick to the government with blind indifference to their oaths. their names are now, for the most part, forgotten, though so little time has elapsed since they appeared so frequently before the public. [footnote : sang froid--(french) coolness in a trying situation, lack of excitability] every day's proceedings gave rise to new hopes and fears. the evidence rested chiefly on the reports of certain short-hand writers, who had been employed to attend repeal meetings, and their examinations and cross-examinations were read, re-read, and scanned with the minutest care. then, the various and long speeches of the different counsel, who, day after day, continued to address the jury; the heat of one, the weary legal technicalities of another, the perspicuity of a third, and the splendid forensic eloquence of a fourth, were criticised, depreciated and admired. it seemed as though the chief lawyers of the day were standing an examination, and were candidates for some high honour, which each was striving to secure. the dublin papers were full of the trial; no other subject, could, at the time, either interest or amuse. i doubt whether any affair of the kind was ever, to use the phrase of the trade, so well and perfectly reported. the speeches appeared word for word the same in the columns of newspapers of different politics. for four-fifths of the contents of the paper it would have been the same to you whether you were reading the evening mail, or the freeman. every word that was uttered in the court was of importance to every one in dublin; and half-an-hour's delay in ascertaining, to the minutest shade, what had taken place in court during any period, was accounted a sad misfortune. the press round the four courts [ ], every morning before the doors were open, was very great: and except by the favoured few who were able to obtain seats, it was only with extreme difficulty and perseverance, that an entrance into the body of the court could be obtained. [footnote : the four courts was a landmark courthouse in dublin named for the four divisions of the irish judicial system: common pleas, chancery, exchequer, and king's bench.] it was on the eleventh morning of the proceedings, on the day on which the defence of the traversers was to be commenced, that two young men, who had been standing for a couple of hours in front of the doors of the court, were still waiting there, with what patience was left to them, after having been pressed and jostled for so long a time. richard lalor sheil, however, was to address the jury on behalf of mr john o'connell--and every one in dublin knew that that was a treat not to be lost. the two young men, too, were violent repealers. the elder of them was a three-year-old denizen of dublin, who knew the names of the contributors to the "nation", who had constantly listened to the indignation and enthusiasm of o'connell, smith o'brien, and o'neill daunt, in their addresses from the rostrum of the conciliation hall [ ]; who had drank much porter at jude's, who had eaten many oysters at burton bindon's, who had seen and contributed to many rows in the abbey street theatre; who, during his life in dublin, had done many things which he ought not to have done, and had probably made as many omissions of things which it had behoved him to do. he had that knowledge of the persons of his fellow-citizens, which appears to be so much more general in dublin than in any other large town; he could tell you the name and trade of every one he met in the streets, and was a judge of the character and talents of all whose employments partook, in any degree, of a public nature. his name was kelly; and, as his calling was that of an attorney's clerk, his knowledge of character would be peculiarly valuable in the scene at which he and his companion were so anxious to be present. [footnote : conciliation hall, dublin, was built in as a meeting place for o'connell's repeal association.] the younger of the two brothers, for such they were, was a somewhat different character. though perhaps a more enthusiastic repealer than his brother, he was not so well versed in the details of repeal tactics, or in the strength and weakness of the repeal ranks. he was a young farmer, of the better class, from the county mayo, where he held three or four hundred wretchedly bad acres under lord ballindine, and one or two other small farms, under different landlords. he was a good-looking young fellow, about twenty-five years of age, with that mixture of cunning and frankness in his bright eye, which is so common among those of his class in ireland, but more especially so in connaught. the mother of these two young men kept an inn in the small town of dunmore, and though from the appearance of the place, one would be led to suppose that there could not be in dunmore much of that kind of traffic which innkeepers love, mrs kelly was accounted a warm, comfortable woman. her husband had left her for a better world some ten years since, with six children; and the widow, instead of making continual use, as her chief support, of that common wail of being a poor, lone woman, had put her shoulders to the wheel, and had earned comfortably, by sheer industry, that which so many of her class, when similarly situated, are willing to owe to compassion. she held on the farm, which her husband rented from lord ballindine, till her eldest son was able to take it. he, however, was now a gauger [ ] in the north of ireland. her second son was the attorney's clerk; and the farm had descended to martin, the younger, whom we have left jostling and jostled at one of the great doors of the four courts, and whom we must still leave there for a short time, while a few more of the circumstances of his family are narrated. [footnote : gauger--a british revenue officer often engaged in the collection of duties on distilled spirits.] mrs kelly had, after her husband's death, added a small grocer's establishment to her inn. people wondered where she had found the means of supplying her shop: some said that old mick kelly must have had money when he died, though it was odd how a man who drank so much could ever have kept a shilling by him. others remarked how easy it was to get credit in these days, and expressed a hope that the wholesale dealer in pill lane might be none the worse. however this might be, the widow kelly kept her station firmly and constantly behind her counter, wore her weeds and her warm, black, stuff dress decently and becomingly, and never asked anything of anybody. at the time of which we are writing, her two elder sons had left her, and gone forth to make their own way, and take the burden of the world on their own shoulders. martin still lived with his mother, though his farm lay four miles distant, on the road to ballindine, and in another county--for dunmore is in county galway, and the lands of toneroe, as martin's farm was called, were in the county mayo. one of her three daughters had lately been married to a shop-keeper in tuam, and rumour said that he had got £ with her; and pat daly was not the man to have taken a wife for nothing. the other two girls, meg and jane, still remained under their mother's wing, and though it was to be presumed that they would soon fly abroad, with the same comfortable plumage which had enabled their sister to find so warm a nest, they were obliged, while sharing their mother's home, to share also her labours, and were not allowed to be too proud to cut off pennyworths of tobacco, and mix dandies of punch for such of their customers as still preferred the indulgence of their throats to the blessing of father mathew. mrs. kelly kept two ordinary in-door servants to assist in the work of the house; one, an antiquated female named sally, who was more devoted to her tea-pot than ever was any bacchanalian to his glass. were there four different teas in the inn in one evening, she would have drained the pot after each, though she burst in the effort. sally was, in all, an honest woman, and certainly a religious one;--she never neglected her devotional duties, confessed with most scrupulous accuracy the various peccadillos of which she might consider herself guilty; and it was thought, with reason, by those who knew her best, that all the extra prayers she said,--and they were very many,--were in atonement for commissions of continual petty larceny with regard to sugar. on this subject did her old mistress quarrel with her, her young mistress ridicule her; of this sin did her fellow-servant accuse her; and, doubtless, for this sin did her priest continually reprove her; but in vain. though she would not own it, there was always sugar in her pocket, and though she declared that she usually drank her tea unsweetened, those who had come upon her unawares had seen her extracting the pinches of moist brown saccharine from the huge slit in her petticoat, and could not believe her. kate, the other servant, was a red-legged lass, who washed the potatoes, fed the pigs, and ate her food nobody knew when or where. kates, particularly irish kates, are pretty by prescription; but mrs. kelly's kate had been excepted, and was certainly a most positive exception. poor kate was very ugly. her hair had that appearance of having been dressed by the turkey-cock, which is sometimes presented by the heads of young women in her situation; her mouth extended nearly from ear to ear; her neck and throat, which were always nearly bare, presented no feminine charms to view; and her short coarse petticoat showed her red legs nearly to the knee; for, except on sundays, she knew not the use of shoes and stockings. but though kate was ungainly and ugly, she was useful, and grateful--very fond of the whole family, and particularly attached to the two young ladies, in whose behalf she doubtless performed many a service, acceptable enough to them, but of which, had she known of them, the widow would have been but little likely to approve. such was mrs. kelly's household at the time that her son martin left connaught to pay a short visit to the metropolis, during the period of o'connell's trial. but, although martin was a staunch repealer, and had gone as far as galway, and athlone, to be present at the monster repeal meetings which had been held there, it was not political anxiety alone which led him to dublin. his landlord; the young lord ballindine, was there; and, though martin could not exactly be said to act as his lordship's agent--for lord ballindine had, unfortunately, a legal agent, with whose services his pecuniary embarrassments did not allow him to dispense--he was a kind of confidential tenant, and his attendance had been requested. martin, moreover, had a somewhat important piece of business of his own in hand, which he expected would tend greatly to his own advantage; and, although he had fully made up his mind to carry it out if possible, he wanted, in conducting it, a little of his brother's legal advice, and, above all, his landlord's sanction. this business was nothing less than an intended elopement with an heiress belonging to a rank somewhat higher than that in which martin kelly might be supposed to look, with propriety, for his bride; but martin was a handsome fellow, not much burdened with natural modesty, and he had, as he supposed, managed to engage the affections of anastasia lynch, a lady resident near dunmore. all particulars respecting martin's intended--the amount of her fortune--her birth and parentage--her age and attractions--shall, in due time, be made known; or rather, perhaps, be suffered to make themselves known. in the mean time we will return to the two brothers, who are still anxiously waiting to effect an entrance into the august presence of the law. martin had already told his brother of his matrimonial speculations, and had received certain hints from that learned youth as to the proper means of getting correct information as to the amount of the lady's wealth,--her power to dispose of it by her own deed,--and certain other particulars always interesting to gentlemen who seek money and love at the same time. john did not quite approve of the plan; there might have been a shade of envy at his brother's good fortune; there might be some doubt as to his brother's power of carrying the affair through successfully; but, though he had not encouraged him, he gave him the information he wanted, and was as willing to talk over the matter as martin could desire. as they were standing in the crowd, their conversation ran partly on repeal and o'connell, and partly on matrimony and anty lynch, as the lady was usually called by those who knew her best. "tear and 'ouns misther lord chief justice!" exclaimed martin, "and are ye niver going to opin them big doors?" "and what'd be the good of his opening them yet," answered john, "when a bigger man than himself an't there? dan and the other boys isn't in it yet, and sure all the twelve judges couldn't get on a peg without them." "well, dan, my darling!" said the other, "you're thought more of here this day than the lot of 'em, though the place in a manner belongs to them, and you're only a prisoner." "faix and that's what he's not, martin; no more than yourself, nor so likely, may-be. he's the traverser, as i told you before, and that's not being a prisoner. if he were a prisoner, how did he manage to tell us all what he did at the hall yesterday?" "av' he's not a prisoner, he's the next-door to it; it's not of his own free will and pleasure he'd come here to listen to all the lies them thundhering saxon ruffians choose to say about him." "and why not? why wouldn't he come here and vindicate himself? when you hear sheil by and by, you'll see then whether they think themselves likely to be prisoners! no--no; they never will be, av' there's a ghost of a conscience left in one of them protesthant raps, that they've picked so carefully out of all dublin to make jurors of. they can't convict 'em! i heard ford, the night before last, offer four to one that they didn't find the lot guilty; and he knows what he's about, and isn't the man to thrust a protestant half as far as he'd see him." "isn't tom steele a protesthant himself, john?" "well, i believe he is. so's gray, and more of 'em too; but there's a difference between them and the downright murdhering tory set. poor tom doesn't throuble the church much; but you'll be all for protesthants now, martin, when you've your new brother-in-law. barry used to be one of your raal out-and-outers!" "it's little, i'm thinking, i and barry'll be having to do together, unless it be about the brads; and the law about them now, thank god, makes no differ for roman and protesthant. anty's as good a catholic as ever breathed, and so was her mother before her; and when she's mrs kelly, as i mane to make her, master barry may shell out the cash and go to heaven his own way for me." "it ain't the family then, you're fond of, martin! and i wondher at that, considering how old sim loved us all." "niver mind sim, john! he's dead and gone; and av' he niver did a good deed before, he did one when he didn't lave all his cash to that precious son of his, barry lynch." "you're prepared for squalls with barry, i suppose?" "he'll have all the squalling on his own side, i'm thinking, john. i don't mane to squall, for one. i don't see why i need, with £ a-year in my pocket, and a good wife to the fore." "the £ a-year's good enough, av' you touch it, certainly," said the man of law, thinking of his own insufficient guinea a-week, "and you must look to have some throuble yet afore you do that. but as to the wife--why, the less said the better--eh, martin? "av' it's not asking too much, might i throuble you, sir, to set anywhere else but on my shouldher?" this was addressed to a very fat citizen, who was wheezing behind martin, and who, to escape suffocation in the crowd, was endeavouring to raise himself on his neighbour's shoulders. "and why the less said the better?--i wish yourself may never have a worse." "i wish i mayn't, martin, as far as the cash goes; and a man like me might look a long time in dublin before he got a quarter of the money. but you must own anty's no great beauty, and she's not over young, either." "av' she's no beauty, she's not downright ugly, like many a girl that gets a good husband; and av' she's not over young, she's not over old. she's not so much older than myself, after all. it's only because her own people have always made nothing of her; that's what has made everybody else do the same." "why, martin, i know she's ten years older than barry, and barry's older than you!" "one year; and anty's not full ten years older than him. besides, what's ten years between man and wife?" "not much, when it's on the right side. but it's the wrong side with you, martin!" "well, john, now, by virtue of your oath, as you chaps say, wouldn't you marry a woman twice her age, av' she'd half the money?--begad you would, and leap at it!" "perhaps i would. i'd a deal sooner have a woman eighty than forty. there'd be some chance then of having the money after the throuble was over! anty's neither ould enough nor young enough." "she's not forty, any way; and won't be yet for five years and more; and, as i hope for glory, john--though i know you won't believe me--i wouldn't marry her av' she'd all sim lynch's ill-gotten property, instead of only half, av' i wasn't really fond of her, and av' i didn't think i'd make her a good husband." "you didn't tell mother what you're afther, did you?" "sorrow a word! but she's so 'cute she partly guesses; and i think meg let slip something. the girls and anty are thick as thiefs since old sim died; though they couldn't be at the house much since barry came home, and anty daren't for her life come down to the shop." "did mother say anything about the schame?" "faix, not much; but what she did say, didn't show she'd much mind for it. since sim lynch tried to get toneroe from her, when father died, she'd never a good word for any of them. not but what she's always a civil look for anty, when she sees her." "there's not much fear she'll look black on the wife, when you bring the money home with her. but where'll you live, martin? the little shop at dunmore'll be no place for mrs kelly, when there's a lady of the name with £ a-year of her own." "'deed then, john, and that's what i don't know. may-be i'll build up the ould house at toneroe; some of the o'kellys themselves lived there, years ago." "i believe they did; but it was years ago, and very many years ago, too, since they lived there. why you'd have to pull it all down, before you began to build it up!" "may-be i'd build a new house, out and out. av' i got three new lifes in the laise, i'd do that; and the lord wouldn't be refusing me, av' i asked him." "bother the lord, martin; why you'd be asking anything of any lord, and you with £ a-year of your own? give up toneroe, and go and live at dunmore house at once." "what! along with barry--when i and anty's married? the biggest house in county galway wouldn't hould the three of us." "you don't think barry lynch'll stay at dunmore afther you've married his sisther?" "and why not?" "why not! don't you know barry thinks himself one of the raal gentry now? any ways, he wishes others to think so. why, he'd even himself to lord ballindine av' he could! didn't old sim send him to the same english school with the lord on purpose?--tho' little he got by it, by all accounts! and d'you think he'll remain in dunmore, to be brother-in-law to the son of the woman that keeps the little grocer's shop in the village?--not he! he'll soon be out of dunmore when he hears what his sister's afther doing, and you'll have dunmore house to yourselves then, av' you like it." "i'd sooner live at toneroe, and that's the truth; and i'd not give up the farm av' she'd double the money! but, john, faith, here's the judges at last. hark, to the boys screeching!" "they'd not screech that way for the judges, my boy. it's the traversers--that's dan and the rest of 'em. they're coming into court. thank god, they'll soon be at work now!" "and will they come through this way? faith, av' they do, they'll have as hard work to get in, as they'll have to get out by and by." "they'll not come this way--there's another way in for them: tho' they are traversers now, they didn't dare but let them go in at the same door as the judges themselves." "hurrah, dan! more power to you! three cheers for the traversers, and repale for ever! success to every mother's son of you, my darlings! you'll be free yet, in spite of john jason rigby and the rest of 'em! the prison isn't yet built that'd hould ye, nor won't be! long life to you, sheil--sure you're a right honourable repaler now, in spite of greenwich hospital and the board of trade! more power, gavan duffy; you're the boy that'll settle 'em at last! three cheers more for the lord mayor, god bless him! well, yer reverence, mr tierney!--never mind, they could come to no good when they'd be parsecuting the likes of you! bravo, tom--hurrah for tom steele!" such, and such like, were the exclamations which greeted the traversers, and their _cortège_, as they drew up to the front of the four courts. dan o'connell was in the lord mayor's state carriage, accompanied by that high official; and came up to stand his trial for conspiracy and sedition, in just such a manner as he might be presumed to proceed to take the chair at some popular municipal assembly; and this was just the thing qualified to please those who were on his own side, and mortify the feelings of the party so bitterly opposed to him. there was a bravado in it, and an apparent contempt, not of the law so much as of the existing authorities of the law, which was well qualified to have this double effect. and now the outer doors of the court were opened, and the crowd--at least as many as were able to effect an entrance--rushed in. martin and john kelly were among those nearest to the door, and, in reward of their long patience, got sufficiently into the body of the court to be in a position to see, when standing on tiptoe, the noses of three of the four judges, and the wigs of four of the numerous counsel employed. the court was so filled by those who had a place there by right, or influence enough to assume that they had so, that it was impossible to obtain a more favourable situation. but this of itself was a great deal--quite sufficient to justify martin in detailing to his connaught friends every particular of the whole trial. they would probably be able to hear everything; they could positively see three of the judges, and if those two big policemen, with high hats, could by any possibility be got to remove themselves, it was very probable that they would be able to see sheil's back, when he stood up. john soon began to show off his forensic knowledge. he gave a near guess at the names of the four counsel whose heads were visible, merely from the different shades and shapes of their wigs. then he particularised the inferior angels of that busy elysium. "that's ford--that's gartlan--that's peirce mahony," he exclaimed, as the different attorneys for the traversers, furiously busy with their huge bags, fidgetted about rapidly, or stood up in their seats, telegraphing others in different parts of the court. "there's old kemmis," as they caught a glimpse of the crown agent; "he's the boy that doctored the jury list. fancy, a jury chosen out of all dublin, and not one catholic! as if that could be fair!" and then he named the different judges. "look at that big-headed, pig-faced fellow on the right--that's pennefather! he's the blackest sheep of the lot--and the head of them! he's a thoroughbred tory, and as fit to be a judge as i am to be a general. that queer little fellow, with the long chin, he's burton--he's a hundred if he's a day--he was fifty when he was called, seventy when they benched him, and i'm sure he's a judge thirty years! but he's the sharpest chap of the whole twelve, and no end of a boy afther the girls. if you only saw him walking in his robes--i'm sure he's not three feet high! that next, with the skinny neck, he's crampton--he's one of father mathews lads, an out and out teetotaller, and he looks it; he's a desperate cross fellow, sometimes! the other one, you can't see, he's perrin. there, he's leaning over--you can just catch the side of his face--he's perrin. it's he'll acquit the traversers av' anything does--he's a fair fellow, is perrin, and not a red-hot thorough-going tory like the rest of 'em." here john was obliged to give over the instruction of his brother, being enjoined so to do by one of the heavy-hatted policemen in his front, who enforced his commands for silence, with a backward shove of his wooden truncheon, which came with rather unnecessary violence against the pit of john's stomach. the fear of being turned out made him for the nonce refrain from that vengeance of abuse which his education as a dublin jackeen well qualified him to inflict. but he put down the man's face in his retentive memory, and made up his mind to pay him off. and now the business of the day commenced. after some official delays and arrangements sheil arose, and began his speech in defence of john o'connell. it would be out of place here to give either his words or his arguments; besides, they have probably before this been read by all who would care to read them. when he commenced, his voice appeared, to those who were not accustomed to hear him, weak, piping, and most unfit for a popular orator; but this effect was soon lost in the elegance of his language and the energy of his manner; and, before he had been ten minutes on his legs, the disagreeable tone was forgotten, though it was sounding in the eager ears of every one in the court. his speech was certainly brilliant, effective, and eloquent; but it satisfied none that heard him, though it pleased all. it was neither a defence of the general conduct and politics of the party, such as o'connell himself attempted in his own case, nor did it contain a chain of legal arguments to prove that john o'connell, individually, had not been guilty of conspiracy, such as others of the counsel employed subsequently in favour of their own clients. sheil's speech was one of those numerous anomalies with which this singular trial was crowded; and which, together, showed the great difficulty of coming to a legal decision on a political question, in a criminal court. of this, the present day gave two specimens, which will not be forgotten; when a privy councillor, a member of a former government, whilst defending his client as a barrister, proposed in court a new form of legislation for ireland, equally distant from that adopted by government, and that sought to be established by him whom he was defending; and when the traverser on his trial rejected the defence of his counsel, and declared aloud in court, that he would not, by his silence, appear to agree in the suggestions then made. this spirit of turning the court into a political debating arena extended to all present. in spite of the vast efforts made by them all, only one of the barristers employed has added much to his legal reputation by the occasion. imputations were made, such as i presume were never before uttered by one lawyer against another in a court of law. an attorney-general sent a challenge from his very seat of office; and though that challenge was read in court, it was passed over by four judges with hardly a reprimand. if any seditious speech was ever made by o'connell, that which he made in his defence was especially so, and he was, without check, allowed to use his position as a traverser at the bar, as a rostrum from which to fulminate more thoroughly and publicly than ever, those doctrines for uttering which he was then being tried; and, to crown it all, even the silent dignity of the bench was forgotten, and the lawyers pleading against the crown were unhappily alluded to by the chief justice as the "gentlemen on the _other_ side." martin and john patiently and enduringly remained standing the whole day, till four o'clock; and then the latter had to effect his escape, in order to keep an appointment which he had made to meet lord ballindine. as they walked along the quays they both discussed the proceedings of the day, and both expressed themselves positively certain of the result of the trial, and of the complete triumph of o'connell and his party. to these pleasant certainties martin added his conviction, that repeal must soon follow so decided a victory, and that the hopes of ireland would be realised before the close of . john was neither so sanguine nor so enthusiastic; it was the battle, rather than the thing battled for, that was dear to him; the strife, rather than the result. he felt that it would be dull times in dublin, when they should have no usurping government to abuse, no saxon parliament to upbraid, no english laws to ridicule, and no established church to curse. the only thing which could reconcile him to immediate repeal, would be the probability of having then to contend for the election of an irish sovereign, and the possible dear delight which might follow, of ireland going to war with england, in a national and becoming manner. discussing these important measures, they reached the dublin brother's lodgings, and martin turned in to wash his face and hands, and put on clean boots, before he presented himself to his landlord and patron, the young lord ballindine. ii. the two heiresses francis john mountmorris o'kelly, lord viscount ballindine, was twenty-four years of age when he came into possession of the ballindine property, and succeeded to an irish peerage as the third viscount; and he is now twenty-six, at this time of o'connell's trial. the head of the family had for many years back been styled "the o'kelly", and had enjoyed much more local influence under that denomination than their descendants had possessed, since they had obtained a more substantial though not a more respected title. the o'kellys had possessed large tracts of not very good land, chiefly in county roscommon, but partly in mayo and galway. their property had extended from dunmore nearly to roscommon, and again on the other side to castlerea and ballyhaunis. but this had been in their palmy days, long, long ago. when the government, in consideration of past services, in the year , converted "the o'kelly" into viscount ballindine, the family property consisted of the greater portion of the land lying between the villages of dunmore and ballindine. their old residence, which the peer still kept up, was called kelly's court, and is situated in that corner of county roscommnon which runs up between mayo and galway. the first lord lived long enough to regret his change of title, and to lament the increased expenditure with which he had thought it necessary to accompany his more elevated rank. his son succeeded, and showed in his character much more of the new-fangled viscount than of the ancient o'kelly. his whole long life was passed in hovering about the english court. from the time of his father's death, he never once put his foot in ireland. he had been appointed, at different times from his youth upwards, page, gentleman in waiting, usher of the black rod, deputy groom of the stole, chief equerry to the princess royal, (which appointment only lasted till the princess was five years old), lord gold stick, keeper of the royal robes; till, at last, he had culminated for ten halcyon years in a lord of the bedchamber. in the latter portion of his life he had grown too old for this, and it was reported at ballindine, dunmore, and kelly's court,--with how much truth i don't know,--that, since her majesty's accession, he had been joined with the spinster sister of a scotch marquis, and an antiquated english countess, in the custody of the laces belonging to the queen dowager. this nobleman, publicly useful as his life had no doubt been, had done little for his own tenants, or his own property. on his father's death, he had succeeded to about three thousand a-year, and he left about one; and he would have spent or mortgaged this, had he not, on his marriage, put it beyond his own power to do so. it was not only by thriftless extravagance that he thus destroyed a property which, with care, and without extortion, would have doubled its value in the thirty-five years during which it was in his hands; but he had been afraid to come to ireland, and had been duped by his agent. when he came to the title, simeon lynch had been recommended to him as a fit person to manage his property, and look after his interests; and simeon had managed it well in that manner most conducive to the prosperity of the person he loved best in the world; and that was himself. when large tracts of land fell out of lease, sim had represented that tenants could not be found--that the land was not worth cultivating--that the country was in a state which prevented the possibility of letting; and, ultimately put himself into possession, with a lease for ever, at a rent varying from half a crown to five shillings an acre. the courtier lord had one son, of whom he made a soldier, but who never rose to a higher rank than that of captain. about a dozen years before the date of my story, the honourable captain o'kelly, after numerous quarrels with the right honourable lord of the bedchamber, had, at last, come to some family settlement with him; and, having obtained the power of managing the property himself, came over to live at his paternal residence of kelly's court. a very sorry kind of court he found it,--neglected, dirty, and out of repair. one of the first retainers whom he met was jack kelly, the family fool. jack was not such a fool as those who, of yore, were valued appendages to noble english establishments. he resembled them in nothing but his occasional wit. he was a dirty, barefooted, unshorn, ragged ruffian, who ate potatoes in the kitchen of the court, and had never done a day's work in his life. such as he was, however, he was presented to captain o'kelly, as "his honour the masther's fool." "so, you're my fool, jack, are ye?" said the captain. "faix, i war the lord's fool ance; but i'll no be anybody's fool but sim lynch's, now. i and the lord are both sim's fools now. not but i'm the first of the two, for i'd never be fool enough to give away all my land, av' my father'd been wise enough to lave me any." captain o'kelly soon found out the manner in which the agent had managed his father's affairs. simeon lynch was dismissed, and proceedings at common law were taken against him, to break such of the leases as were thought, by clever attorneys, to have the ghost of a flaw in them. money was borrowed from a dublin house, for the purpose of carrying on the suit, paying off debts, and making kelly's court habitable; and the estate was put into their hands. simeon lynch built himself a large staring house at dunmore, defended his leases, set up for a country gentleman on his own account, and sent his only son, barry, to eton,--merely because young o'kelly was also there, and he was determined to show, that he was as rich and ambitious as the lord's family, whom he had done so much to ruin. kelly's court was restored to such respectability as could ever belong to so ugly a place. it was a large red stone mansion, standing in a demesne of very poor ground, ungifted by nature with any beauty, and but little assisted by cultivation or improvement. a belt of bald-looking firs ran round the demesne inside the dilapidated wall; but this was hardly sufficient to relieve the barren aspect of the locality. fine trees there were none, and the race of o'kellys had never been great gardeners. captain o'kelly was a man of more practical sense, or of better education, than most of his family, and he did do a good deal to humanise the place. he planted, tilled, manured, and improved; he imported rose-trees and strawberry-plants, and civilised kelly's court a little. but his reign was not long. he died about five years after he had begun his career as a country gentleman, leaving a widow and two daughters in ireland; a son at school at eton; and an expensive lawsuit, with numerous ramifications, all unsettled. francis, the son, went to eton and oxford, was presented at court by his grandfather, and came hack to ireland at twenty-two, to idle away his time till the old lord should die. till this occurred, he could neither call himself the master of the place, nor touch the rents. in the meantime, the lawsuits were dropped, both parties having seriously injured their resources, without either of them obtaining any benefit. barry lynch was recalled from his english education, where he had not shown off to any great credit; and both he and his father were obliged to sit down prepared to make the best show they could on eight hundred pounds a-year, and to wage an underhand internecine war with the o'kellys. simeon and his son, however, did not live altogether alone. anastasia lynch was barry's sister, and older than him by about ten years. their mother had been a roman catholic, whereas sim was a protestant; and, in consequence, the daughter had been brought up in the mother's, and the son in the father's religion. when this mother died, simeon, no doubt out of respect to the memory of the departed, tried hard to induce his daughter to prove her religious zeal, and enter a nunnery; but this, anty, though in most things a docile creature, absolutely refused to do. her father advised, implored, and threatened; but in vain; and the poor girl became a great thorn in the side of both father and son. she had neither beauty, talent, nor attraction, to get her a husband; and her father was determined not to encumber his already diminished property with such a fortune as would make her on that ground acceptable to any respectable suitor. poor anty led a miserable life, associating neither with superiors nor inferiors, and her own position was not sufficiently declared to enable her to have any equals. she was slighted by her father and the servants, and bullied by her brother; and was only just enabled, by humble, unpresuming disposition, to carry on her tedious life from year to year without grumbling. in the meantime, the _ci-devant_ [ ] black rod, gold stick, royal equerry, and lord of the bedchamber, was called away from his robes and his finery, to give an account of the manner in which he had renounced the pomps and vanities of this wicked world; and frank became lord ballindine, with, as i have before said, an honourable mother, two sisters, a large red house, and a thousand a-year. he was not at all a man after the pattern of his grandfather, but he appeared as little likely to redeem the old family acres. he seemed to be a reviving chip of the old block of the o'kellys. during the two years he had been living at kelly's court as frank o'kelly, he had won the hearts of all the tenants--of all those who would have been tenants if the property had not been sold, and who still looked up to him as their "raal young masther"--and of the whole country round. the "thrue dhrop of the ould blood", was in his veins; and, whatever faults he might have, he wasn't likely to waste his time and his cash with furs, laces, and hangings. [footnote : ci-devant--(french) former, previous] this was a great comfort to the neighbourhood, which had learned heartily to despise the name of lord ballindine; and frank was encouraged in shooting, hunting, racing--in preparing to be a thorough irish gentleman, and in determining to make good the prophecies of his friends, that he would be, at last, one more "raal o'kelly to brighten the counthry." and if he could have continued to be frank o'kelly, or even "the o'kelly", he would probably have done well enough, for he was fond of his mother and sisters, and he might have continued to hunt, shoot, and farm on his remaining property without further encroaching on it. but the title was sure to be his ruin. when he felt himself to be a lord, he could not be content with the simple life of a country gentleman; or, at any rate, without taking the lead in the country. so, as soon as the old man was buried, he bought a pack of harriers, and despatched a couple of race-horses to the skilful hands of old jack igoe, the curragh trainer. frank was a very handsome fellow, full six feet high, with black hair, and jet-black silky whiskers, meeting under his chin;--the men said he dyed them, and the women declared he did not. i am inclined, myself, to think he must have done so, they were so very black. he had an eye like a hawk, round, bright, and bold; a mouth and chin almost too well formed for a man; and that kind of broad forehead which conveys rather the idea of a generous, kind, open-hearted disposition, than of a deep mind or a commanding intellect. frank was a very handsome fellow, and he knew it; and when he commenced so many ill-authorised expenses immediately on his grandfather's death, he consoled himself with the idea, that with his person and rank, he would soon be able, by some happy matrimonial speculation, to make up for what he wanted in wealth. and he had not been long his own master, before he met with the lady to whom he destined the honour of doing so. he had, however, not properly considered his own disposition, when he determined upon looking out for great wealth; and on disregarding other qualifications in his bride, so that he obtained that in sufficient quantity. he absolutely fell in love with fanny wyndham, though her twenty thousand pounds was felt by him to be hardly enough to excuse him in doing so,--certainly not enough to make his doing so an accomplishment of his prudential resolutions. what would twenty thousand pounds do towards clearing the o'kelly property, and establishing himself in a manner and style fitting for a lord ballindine! however, he did propose to her, was accepted, and the match, after many difficulties, was acceded to by the lady's guardian, the earl of cashel. it was stipulated, however, that the marriage should not take place till the lady was of age; and at the time of the bargain, she wanted twelve months of that period of universal discretion. lord cashel had added, in his prosy, sensible, aristocratic lecture on the subject to lord ballindine, that he trusted that, during the interval, considering their united limited income, his lordship would see the wisdom of giving up his hounds, or at any rate of withdrawing from the turf. frank pooh-poohed at the hounds, said that horses cost nothing in connaught, and dogs less, and that he could not well do there without them; but promised to turn in his mind what lord cashel had said about the turf; and, at last, went so far as to say that when a good opportunity offered of backing out, he would part with finn m'coul and granuell--as the two nags at igoe's were patriotically denominated. they continued, however, appearing in the curragh lists in lord ballindine's name, as a part of igoe's string; and running for queen's whips, wellingtons and madrids, sometimes with good and sometimes with indifferent success. while their noble owner, when staying at grey abbey, lord cashel's magnificent seat near kilcullen, spent too much of his time (at least so thought the earl and fanny wyndham) in seeing them get their gallops, and in lecturing the grooms, and being lectured by mr igoe. nothing more, however, could be done; and it was trusted that when the day of the wedding should come, he would be found minus the animals. what, however, was lord cashel's surprise, when, after an absence of two months from grey abbey, lord ballindine declared, in the earl's presence, with an air of ill-assumed carelessness, that he had been elected one of the stewards of the curragh, in the room of walter blake, esq., who had retired in rotation from that honourable office! the next morning the earl's chagrin was woefully increased by his hearing that that very valuable and promising derby colt, brien boru, now two years old, by sir hercules out of eloisa, had been added to his lordship's lot. lord cashel felt that he could not interfere, further than by remarking that it appeared his young friend was determined to leave the turf with éclat; and fanny wyndham could only be silent and reserved for one evening. this occurred about four months before the commencement of my tale, and about five before the period fixed for the marriage; but, at the time at which lord ballindine will be introduced in person to the reader, he had certainly made no improvement in his manner of going on. he had, during this period, received from lord cashel a letter intimating to him that his lordship thought some further postponement advisable; that it was as well not to fix any day; and that, though his lordship would always be welcome at grey abbey, when his personal attendance was not required at the curragh, it was better that no correspondence by letter should at present be carried on between him and miss wyndham; and that miss wyndham herself perfectly agreed in the propriety of these suggestions. now grey abbey was only about eight miles distant from the curragh, and lord ballindine had at one time been in the habit of staying at his friend's mansion, during the period of his attendance at the race-course; but since lord cashel had shown an entire absence of interest in the doings of finn m'coul, and fanny had ceased to ask after granuell's cough, he had discontinued doing so, and had spent much of his time at his friend walter blake's residence at the curragh. now, handicap lodge offered much more dangerous quarters for him than did grey abbey. in the meantime, his friends in connaught were delighted at the prospect of his bringing home a bride. fanny's twenty thousand were magnified to fifty, and the capabilities even of fifty were greatly exaggerated; besides, the connection was so good a one, so exactly the thing for the o'kellys! lord cashel was one of the first resident noblemen in ireland, a representative peer, a wealthy man, and possessed of great influence; not unlikely to be a cabinet minister if the whigs came in, and able to shower down into connaught a degree of patronage, such as had never yet warmed that poor unfriended region. and fanny wyndham was not only his lordship's ward, but his favourite niece also! the match was, in every way, a good one, and greatly pleasing to all the kellys, whether with an o or without, for "shure they were all the one family." old simeon lynch and his son barry did not participate in the general joy. they had calculated that their neighbour was on the high road to ruin, and that he would soon have nothing but his coronet left. they could not, therefore, bear the idea of his making so eligible a match. they had, moreover, had domestic dissensions to disturb the peace of dunmore house. simeon had insisted on barry's taking a farm into his own hands, and looking after it. barry had declared his inability to do so, and had nearly petrified the old man by expressing a wish to go to paris. then, barry's debts had showered in, and simeon had pledged himself not to pay them. simeon had threatened to disinherit barry; and barry had called his father a d----d obstinate old fool. these quarrels had got to the ears of the neighbours, and it was being calculated that, in the end, barry would get the best of the battle; when, one morning, the war was brought to an end by a fit of apoplexy, and the old man was found dead in his chair. and then a terrible blow fell upon the son; for a recent will was found in the old man's desk, dividing his property equally, and without any other specification, between barry and anty. this was a dreadful blow to barry. he consulted with his friend molloy, the attorney of tuam, as to the validity of the document and the power of breaking it; but in vain. it was properly attested, though drawn up in the old man's own hand-writing; and his sister, whom he looked upon but as little better than a head main-servant, had not only an equal right to all the property, but was equally mistress of the house, the money at the bank, the wine in the cellar, and the very horses in the stable. this was a hard blow; but barry was obliged to bear it. at first, he showed his ill-humour plainly enough in his treatment of his sister; but he soon saw that this was folly, and that, though her quiet disposition prevented her from resenting it, such conduct would drive her to marry some needy man. then he began, with an ill grace, to try what coaxing would do. he kept, however, a sharp watch on all her actions; and on once hearing that, in his absence, the two kelly girls from the hotel had been seen walking with her, he gave her a long lecture on what was due to her own dignity, and the memory of her departed parents. he made many overtures to her as to the division of the property; but, easy and humble as anty was, she was careful enough to put her name to nothing that could injure her rights. they had divided the money at the banker's, and she had once rather startled barry by asking him for his moiety towards paying the butcher's bill; and his dismay was completed shortly afterwards by being informed, by a steady old gentleman in dunmore, whom he did not like a bit too well, that he had been appointed by miss lynch to manage her business and receive her rents. as soon as it could be decently done, after his father's burial, barry took himself off to dublin, to consult his friends there as to what he should do; but he soon returned, determined to put a bold face on it, and come to some understanding with his sister. he first proposed to her to go and live in dublin, but she said she preferred dunmore. he then talked of selling the house, and to this she agreed. he next tried to borrow money for the payment of his debts; on which she referred him to the steady old man. though apparently docile and obedient, she would not put herself in his hands, nor would her agent allow him to take any unfair advantage of her. whilst this was going on, our friend martin kelly had set his eye upon the prize, and, by means of his sister's intimacy with anty, and his own good looks, had succeeded in obtaining from her half a promise to become his wife. anty had but little innate respect for gentry; and, though she feared her brother's displeasure, she felt no degradation at the idea of uniting herself to a man in martin kelly's rank. she could not, however, be brought to tell her brother openly, and declare her determination; and martin had, at length, come to the conclusion that he must carry her off, before delay and unforeseen changes might either alter her mind, or enable her brother to entice her out of the country. thus matters stood at dunmore when martin kelly started for dublin, and at the time when he was about to wait on his patron at morrison's hotel. both martin and lord ballindine (and they were related in some distant degree, at least so always said the kellys, and i never knew that the o'kellys denied it)--both the young men were, at the time, anxious to get married, and both with the same somewhat mercenary views; and i have fatigued the reader with the long history of past affairs, in order to imbue him, if possible, with some interest in the ways and means which they both adopted to accomplish their objects. iii. morrison's hotel at about five o'clock on the evening of the day of sheil's speech, lord ballindine and his friend, walter blake, were lounging on different sofas in a room at morrison's hotel, before they went up to dress for dinner. walter blake was an effeminate-looking, slight-made man, about thirty or thirty-three years of age; good looking, and gentlemanlike, but presenting quite a contrast in his appearance to his friend lord ballindine. he had a cold quiet grey eye, and a thin lip; and, though he was in reality a much cleverer, he was a much less engaging man. yet blake could be very amusing; but he rather laughed at people than with them, and when there were more than two in company, he would usually be found making a butt of one. nevertheless, his society was greatly sought after. on matters connected with racing, his word was infallible. he rode boldly, and always rode good horses; and, though he was anything but rich, he managed to keep up a comfortable snuggery at the curragh, and to drink the very best claret that dublin could procure. walter blake was a finished gambler, and thus it was, that with about six hundred a year, he managed to live on equal terms with the richest around him. his father, laurence blake of castleblakeney, in county galway, was a very embarrassed man, of good property, strictly entailed, and, when walter came of age, he and his father, who could never be happy in the same house, though possessing in most things similar tastes, had made such a disposition of the estate, as gave the father a clear though narrowed income, and enabled the son at once to start into the world, without waiting for his father's death; though, by so doing, he greatly lessened the property which he must otherwise have inherited. blake was a thorough gambler, and knew well how to make the most of the numerous chances which the turf afforded him. he had a large stud of horses, to the training and working of which he attended almost as closely as the person whom he paid for doing so. but it was in the betting-ring that he was most formidable. it was said, in kildare street, that no one at tattersall's could beat him at a book. he had latterly been trying a wider field than the curragh supplied him and had, on one or two occasions, run a horse in england with such success, as had placed him, at any rate, quite at the top of the irish sporting tree. he was commonly called "dot blake", in consequence of his having told one of his friends that the cause of his, the friend's, losing so much money on the turf, was, that he did not mind "the dot and carry on" part of the business; meaning thereby, that he did not attend to the necessary calculations. for a short time after giving this piece of friendly caution, he had been nick-named, "dot and carry on"; but that was too long to last, and he had now for some years been known to every sporting man in ireland as "dot" blake. this man was at present lord ballindine's most intimate friend, and he could hardly have selected a more dangerous one. they were now going down together to handicap lodge, though there was nothing to be done in the way of racing for months to come. yet blake knew his business too well to suppose that his presence was necessary only when the horses were running; and he easily persuaded his friend that it was equally important that he should go and see that it was all right with the derby colt. they were talking almost in the dark, on these all-absorbing topics, when the waiter knocked at the door and informed them that a young man named kelly wished to see lord ballindine. "show him up," said frank. "a tenant of mine, dot; one of the respectable few of that cattle, indeed, almost the only one that i've got; a sort of subagent, and a fifteenth cousin, to boot, i believe. i am going to put him to the best use i know for such respectable fellows, and that is, to get him to borrow money for me." "and he'll charge you twice as much for it, and make three times as much bother about it, as the fellows in the next street who have your title-deeds. when i want lawyer's business done, i go to a lawyer; and when i want to borrow money, i go to my own man of business; he makes it his business to find money, and he daren't rob me more than is decent, fitting, and customary, because he has a character to lose." "those fellows at guinness's make such a fuss about everything; and i don't put my nose into that little back room, but what every word i say, by some means or other, finds its way down to grey abbey." "well, frank, you know your own affairs best; but i don't think you'll make money by being afraid of your agent; or your wife's guardian, if she is to be your wife." "afraid, man? i'm as much afraid of lord cashel as you are. i don't think i've shown myself much afraid; but i don't choose to make him my guardian, just when he's ceasing to be hers; nor do i wish, just now, to break with grey abbey altogether." "do you mean to go over there from the curragh next week?" "i don't think i shall. they don't like me a bit too well, when i've the smell of the stables on me." "there it is, again, frank! what is it to you what lord cashel likes? if you wish to see miss wyndham, and if the heavy-pated old don doesn't mean to close his doors against you, what business has he to inquire where you came from? i suppose he doesn't like me a bit too well; but you're not weak enough to be afraid to say that you've been at handicap lodge?" "the truth is, dot, i don't think i'll go to grey abbey at all, till fanny's of age. she only wants a month of it now; and then i can meet lord cashel in a business way, as one man should meet another." "i can't for the life of me," said blake, "make out what it is that has set that old fellow so strong against horses. he won the oaks twice himself, and that not so very long ago; and his own son, kilcullen, is deeper a good deal on the turf than i am, and, by a long chalk less likely to pull through, as i take it. but here's the connaught man on the stairs,--i could swear to galway by the tread of his foot!"--and martin knocked at the door, and walked in. "well, kelly," said lord ballindine, "how does dublin agree with you?" and, "i hope i see your lordship well, my lord?" said martin. "how are they all at dunmore and kelly's court?" "why thin, they're all well, my lord, except sim lynch--and he's dead. but your lordship'll have heard that." "what, old simeon lynch dead!" said blake, "well then, there's promotion. peter mahon, that was the agent at castleblakeney, is now the biggest rogue alive in connaught." "don't swear to that," said lord ballindine. "there's some of sim's breed still left at dunmore. it wouldn't be easy to beat barry, would it, kelly?" "why then, i don't know; i wouldn't like to be saying against the gentleman's friend that he spoke of; and doubtless his honour knows him well, or he wouldn't say so much of him." "indeed i do," said blake. "i never give a man a good character till i know he deserves it. well, frank, i'll go and dress, and leave you and mr. kelly to your business," and he left the room. "i'm sorry to hear you speak so hard agin mr. barry, my lord," began martin. "may-be he mayn't be so bad. not but that he's a cross-grained piece of timber to dale with." "and why should you be sorry i'd speak against him? there's not more friendship, i suppose, between you and barry lynch now, than there used to be?" "why, not exactly frindship, my lord; but i've my rasons why i'd wish you not to belittle the lynches. your lordship might forgive them all, now the old man's dead." "forgive them!--indeed i can, and easily. i don't know i ever did any of them an injury, except when i thrashed barry at eton, for calling himself the son of a gentleman. but what makes you stick up for them? you're not going to marry the daughter, are you?" martin blushed up to his forehead as his landlord thus hit the nail on the head; but, as it was dark, his blushes couldn't be seen. so, after dangling his hat about for a minute, and standing first on one foot, and then on the other, he took courage, and answered. "well, mr. frank, that is, your lordship, i mane--i b'lieve i might do worse." "body and soul, man!" exclaimed the other, jumping from his recumbent position on the sofa, "you don't mean to tell me you're going to marry anty lynch?" "in course not," answered martin; "av' your lordship objects." "object, man!--how the devil can i object? why, she's six hundred a year, hasn't she?" "about four, my lord, i think's nearest the mark." "four hundred a year! and i don't suppose you owe a penny in the world!" "not much unless the last gale [ ] to your lordship and we never pay that till next may." [footnote : gale--rent payment. gale day was the day on which rent was due.] "and so you're going to marry anty lynch!" again repeated frank, as though he couldn't bring himself to realise the idea; "and now, martin, tell me all about it,--how the devil you managed it--when it's to come off--and how you and barry mean to hit it off together when you're brothers. i suppose i'll lose a good tenant any way?" "not av' i'm a good one, you won't, with my consent, my lord." "ah! but it'll be anty's consent, now, you know. she mayn't like toneroe. but tell me all about it. what put it into your head?" "why, my lord, you run away so fast; one can't tell you anything. i didn't say i was going to marry her--at laist, not for certain;--i only said i might do worse." "well then; are you going to marry her, or rather, is she going to marry you, or is she not?" "why, i don't know. i'll tell your lordship just how it is. you know when old sim died, my lord?" "of course i do. why, i was at kelly's court at the time." "so you were, my lord; i was forgetting. but you went away again immediately, and didn't hear how barry tried to come round his sisther, when he heard how the will went; and how he tried to break the will and to chouse her out of the money." "why, this is the very man you wouldn't let me call a rogue, a minute or two ago!" "ah, my lord! that was just before sthrangers; besides, it's no use calling one's own people bad names. not that he belongs to me yet, and may-be never will. but, between you and i, he is a rogue, and his father's son every inch of him." "well, martin, i'll remember. i'll not abuse him when he's your brother-in-law. but how did you get round the sister?--that's the question." "well, my lord, i'll tell you. you know there was always a kind of frindship between anty and the girls at home, and they set her up to going to old moylan--he that receives the rents on young barron's property, away at strype. moylan's uncle to flaherty, that married mother's sister. well, she went to him--he's a kind of office at dunmore, my lord." "oh, i know him and his office! he knows the value of a name at the back of a bit of paper, as well as any one." "may-be he does, my lord; but he's an honest old fellow, is moylan, and manages a little for mother." "oh, of course he's honest, martin, because he belongs to you. you know barry's to be an honest chap, then." "and that's what he niver will be the longest day he lives! but, however, moylan got her to sign all the papers; and, when barry was out, he went and took an inventhory to the house, and made out everything square and right, and you may be sure barry'd have to get up very 'arly before he'd come round him. well, after a little, the ould chap came to me one morning, and asked me all manner of questions--whether i knew anty lynch? whether we didn't used to be great friends? and a lot more. i never minded him much; for though i and anty used to speak, and she'd dhrank tay on the sly with us two or three times before her father's death, i'd never thought much about her." "nor wouldn't now, martin, eh? if it wasn't for the old man's will." "in course i wouldn't, my lord. i won't be denying it. but, on the other hand, i wouldn't marry her now for all her money, av' i didn't mane to trate her well. well, my lord, after beating about the bush for a long time, the ould thief popped it out, and told me that he thought anty'd be all the betther for a husband; and that, av' i was wanting a wife, he b'lieved i might suit myself now. well, i thought of it a little, and tould him i'd take the hint. the next day he comes to me again, all the way down to toneroe, where i was walking the big grass-field by myself, and began saying that, as he was anty's agent, of course he wouldn't see her wronged. 'quite right, mr. moylan,' says i; 'and, as i mane to be her husband, i won't see her wronged neither.' 'ah! but,' says he, 'i mane that i must see her property properly settled.' 'why not?' says i, 'and isn't the best way for her to marry? and then, you know, no one can schame her out of it. there's lots of them schamers about now,' says i. 'that's thrue for you,' says he, 'and they're not far to look for,'--and that was thrue, too, my lord, for he and i were both schaming about poor anty's money at that moment. 'well,' says he, afther walking on a little, quite quiet, 'av' you war to marry her.'--'oh, i've made up my mind about that, mr. moylan,' says i. 'well, av' it should come to pass that you do marry her--of course you'd expect to have the money settled on herself?' 'in course i would, when i die,' says i. 'no, but,' says he, 'at once: wouldn't it be enough for you to have a warm roof over your head, and a leg of mutton on the table every day, and no work to do for it?' and so, my lord, it came out that the money was to be settled on herself, and that he was to be her agent." "well, martin, after that, i think you needn't go to sim lynch, or barry, for the biggest rogues in connaught--to be settling the poor girl's money between you that way!" "well, but listen, my lord. i gave in to the ould man; that is, i made no objection to his schame. but i was determined, av' i ever did marry anty lynch, that i would be agent and owner too, myself, as long as i lived; though in course it was but right that they should settle it so that av' i died first, the poor crature shouldn't be out of her money. but i didn't let on to him about all that; for, av' he was angered, the ould fool might perhaps spoil the game; and i knew av' anty married me at all, it'd be for liking; and av' iver i got on the soft side of her, i'd soon be able to manage matthers as i plazed, and ould moylan'd soon find his best game'd be to go asy." "upon my soul, martin, i think you seem to have been the sharpest rogue of the two! is there an honest man in connaught at all, i wonder?" "i can't say rightly, just at present, my lord; but there'll be two, plaze god, when i and your lordship are there." "thank ye, kelly, for the compliment, and especially for the good company. but let me hear how on earth you ever got face enough to go up and ask anty lynch to marry you." "oh!--a little soft sawther did it! i wasn't long in putting my com'ether on her when i once began. well, my lord, from that day out--from afther moylan's visit, you know--i began really to think of it. i'm sure the ould robber meant to have asked for a wapping sum of money down, for his good will in the bargain; but when he saw me he got afeard." "he was another honest man, just now!" "only among sthrangers, my lord. i b'lieve he's a far-off cousin of your own, and i wouldn't like to spake ill of the blood." "god forbid! but go on, kelly." "well, so, from that out, i began to think of it in arnest. the lord forgive me! but my first thoughts was how i'd like to pull down barry lynch; and my second that i'd not demane myself by marrying the sisther of such an out-and-out ruffian, and that it wouldn't become me to live on the money that'd been got by chating your lordship's grandfather." "my lordship's grandfather ought to have looked after that himself. if those are all your scruples they needn't stick in your throat much." "i said as much as that to myself, too. so i soon went to work. i was rather shy about it at first; but the girls helped me. they put it into her head, i think, before i mentioned it at all. however, by degrees, i asked her plump, whether she'd any mind to be mrs. kelly? and, though she didn't say 'yes,' she didn't say 'no.'" "but how the devil, man, did you manage to get at her? i'm told barry watches her like a dragon, ever since he read his father's will." "he couldn't watch her so close, but what she could make her way down to mother's shop now and again. or, for the matter of that, but what i could make my way up to the house." "that's true, for what need she mind barry, now? she may marry whom she pleases, and needn't tell him, unless she likes, until the priest has his book ready." "ah, my lord! but there's the rub. she is afraid of barry; and though she didn't say so, she won't agree to tell him, or to let me tell him, or just to let the priest walk into the house without telling him. she's fond of barry, though, for the life of me, i can't see what there is in him for anybody to be fond of. he and his father led her the divil's own life mewed up there, because she wouldn't be a nun. but still is both fond and afraid of him; and, though i don't think she'll marry anybody else--at laist not yet awhile, i don't think she'll ever get courage to marry me--at any rate, not in the ordinary way." "why then, martin, you must do something extraordinary, i suppose." "that's just it, my lord; and what i wanted was, to ask your lordship's advice and sanction, like." "sanction! why i shouldn't think you'd want anybody's sanction for marrying a wife with four hundred a-year. but, if that's anything to you, i can assure you i approve of it." "thank you, my lord. that's kind." "to tell the truth," continued lord ballindine, "i've a little of your own first feeling. i'd be glad of it, if it were only for the rise it would take out of my schoolfellow, barry. not but that i think you're a deal too good to be his brother-in-law. and you know, kelly, or ought to know, that i'd be heartily glad of anything for your own welfare. so, i'd advise you to hammer away while the iron's hot, as the saying is." "that's just what i'm coming to. what'd your lordship advise me to do?" "advise you? why, you must know best yourself how the matter stands. talk her over, and make her tell barry." "divil a tell, my lord, in her. she wouldn't do it in a month of sundays." "then do you tell him, at once. i suppose you're not afraid of him?" "she'd niver come to the scratch, av' i did. he'd bully the life out of her, or get her out of the counthry some way." "then wait till his back's turned for a month or so. when he's out, let the priest walk in, and do the matter quietly that way." "well, i thought of that myself, my lord; but he's as wary as a weazel, and i'm afeard he smells something in the wind. there's that blackguard moylan, too, he'd be telling barry--and would, when he came to find things weren't to be settled as he intended." "then you must carry her off, and marry her up here, or in galway or down in connemara, or over at liverpool, or any where you please." "now you've hit it, my lord. that's just what i'm thinking myself. unless i take her off gretna green fashion, i'll never get her." "then why do you want my advice, if you've made up your mind to that? i think you're quite right; and what's more, i think you ought to lose no time in doing it. will she go, do you think?" "why, with a little talking, i think she will." "then what are you losing your time for, man? hurry down, and off with her! i think dublin's probably your best ground." "then you think, my lord, i'd betther do it at once?" "of course, i do! what is there to delay you?" "why, you see, my lord, the poor girl's as good as got no friends, and i wouldn't like it to be thought in the counthry, i'd taken her at a disadvantage. it's thrue enough in one way, i'm marrying her for the money; that is, in course, i wouldn't marry her without it. and i tould her, out open, before her face, and before the girls, that, av' she'd ten times as much, i wouldn't marry her unless i was to be masther, as long as i lived, of everything in my own house, like another man; and i think she liked me the betther for it. but, for all that, i wouldn't like to catch her up without having something fair done by the property." "the lawyers, martin, can manage that, afterwards. when she's once mrs kelly, you can do what you like about the fortune." "that's thrue, my lord. but i wouldn't like the bad name i'd get through the counthry av' i whisked her off without letting her settle anything. they'd be saying i robbed her, whether i did or no: and when a thing's once said, it's difficult to unsay it. the like of me, my lord, can't do things like you noblemen and gentry. besides, mother'd never forgive me. they think, down there, that poor anty's simple like; tho' she's cute enough, av' they knew her. i wouldn't, for all the money, wish it should be said that martin kelly ran off with a fool, and robbed her. barry 'd be making her out a dale more simple than she is; and, altogether, my lord, i wouldn't like it." "well, martin, perhaps you're right. at any rate you're on the right side. what is it then you think of doing?" "why, i was thinking, my lord, av' i could get some lawyer here to draw up a deed, just settling all anty's property on herself when i die, and on her children, av' she has any,--so that i couldn't spend it you know; she could sign it, and so could i, before we started; and then i'd feel she'd been traited as well as tho' she'd all the friends in connaught to her back." "and a great deal better, probably. well, martin, i'm no lawyer, but i should think there'd not be much difficulty about that. any attorney could do it." "but i'd look so quare, my lord, walking into a sthranger's room and explaining what i wanted--all about the running away and everything. to be sure there's my brother john's people; they're attorneys; but it's about robberies, and hanging, and such things they're most engaged; and i was thinking, av' your lordship wouldn't think it too much throuble to give me a line to your own people; or, may-be, you'd say a word to them explaining what i want. it'd be the greatest favour in life." "i'll tell you what i'll do, kelly. i'll go with you, to-morrow, to mr blake's lawyers--that's my friend that was sitting here--and i've no doubt we'll get the matter settled. the guinnesses, you know, do all my business, and they're not lawyers." "long life to your lordship, and that's just like yourself! i knew you'd stick by me. and shall i call on you to-morrow, my lord? and at what time?" "wait! here's mr blake. i'll ask him, and you might as well meet me there. grey and forrest's the name; it's in clare street, i think." here mr blake again entered the room. "what!" said he; "isn't your business over yet, ballindine? i suppose i'm _de trop_ then. only mind, dinner's ordered for half past six, and it's that now, and you're not dressed yet!" "you're not _de trop_, and i was just wanting you. we're all friends here, kelly, you know; and you needn't mind my telling mr blake. here's this fellow going to elope with an heiress from connaught, and he wants a decently honest lawyer first." "i should have thought," said blake, "that an indecently dishonest clergyman would have suited him better under those circumstances." "may-be he'll want that, too, and i've no doubt you can recommend one. but at present he wants a lawyer; and, as i have none of my own, i think forrest would serve his turn." "i've always found mr forrest ready to do anything in the way of his profession--for money." "no, but--he'd draw up a deed, wouldn't he, blake? it's a sort of a marriage settlement." "oh, he's quite at home at that work! he drew up five, for my five sisters, and thereby ruined my father's property, and my prospects." "well, he'd see me to-morrow, wouldn't he?" said lord ballindine. "of course he would. but mind, we're to be off early. we ought to be at the curragh, by three." "i suppose i could see him at ten?" said his lordship. it was then settled that blake should write a line to the lawyer, informing him that lord ballindine wished to see him, at his office, at ten o'clock the next morning; it was also agreed that martin should meet him there at that hour; and kelly took his leave, much relieved on the subject nearest his heart. "well, frank," said blake, as soon as the door was closed, "and have you got the money you wanted?" "indeed i've not, then." "and why not? if your protégé is going to elope with an heiress, he ought to have money at command." "and so he will, and it'll be a great temptation to me to know where i can get it so easily. but he was telling me all about this woman before i thought of my own concerns--and i didn't like to be talking to him of what i wanted myself, when he'd been asking a favour of me. it would be too much like looking for payment." "there, you're wrong; fair barter is the truest and honestest system, all the world over.--'ca me, ca thee,' as the scotch call it, is the best system to go by. i never do, or ask, _a favour_; that is, for whatever i do, i expect a return; and for whatever i get, i intend to make one." "i'll get the money from guinness. after all, that'll be the best, and as you say, the cheapest." "there you're right. his business is to lend money, and he'll lend it you as long as you've means to repay it; and i'm sure no connaught man will do more--that is, if i know them." "i suppose he will, but heaven only knows how long that'll be!" and the young lord threw himself back on the sofa, as if he thought a little meditation would do him good. however, very little seemed to do for him, for he soon roused himself, and said, "i wonder how the devil, dot, you do without borrowing? my income's larger than yours, bad as it is; i've only three horses in training, and you've, i suppose, above a dozen; and, take the year through, i don't entertain half the fellows at kelly's court that you do at handicap lodge; and yet, i never hear of your borrowing money." "there's many reasons for that. in the first place, i haven't an estate; in the second, i haven't a mother; in the third, i haven't a pack of hounds; in the fourth, i haven't a title; and, in the fifth, no one would lend me money, if i asked it." "as for the estate, it's devilish little i spend on it; as for my mother, she has her own jointure; as for the hounds, they eat my own potatoes; and as for the title, i don't support it. but i haven't your luck, dot. you'd never want for money, though the mint broke." "very likely i mayn't when it does; but i'm likely to be poor enough till that happy accident occurs. but, as far as luck goes, you've had more than me; you won nearly as much, in stakes, as i did, last autumn, and your stable expenses weren't much above a quarter what mine were. but, the truth is, i manage better; i know where my money goes to, and you don't; i work hard, and you don't; i spend my money on what's necessary to my style of living, you spend yours on what's not necessary. what the deuce have the fellows in mayo and roscommon done for you, that you should mount two or three rascals, twice a-week, to show them sport, when you're not there yourself two months in the season? i suppose you don't keep the horses and men for nothing, if you do the dogs; and i much doubt whether they're not the dearest part of the bargain." "of course they cost something; but it's the only thing i can do for the country; and there were always hounds at kelly's court till my grandfather got the property, and they looked upon him as no better than an old woman, because he gave them up. besides, i suppose i shall be living at kelly's court soon, altogether, and i could never get on then without hounds. it's bad enough, as it is." "i haven't a doubt in the world it's bad enough. i know what castleblakeney is. but i doubt your living there. i've no doubt you'll try; that is, if you _do_ marry miss wyndham; but she'll be sick of it in three months, and you in six, and you'll go and live at paris, florence, or naples, and there'll be another end of the o'kellys, for thirty or forty years, as far as ireland's concerned. you'll never do for a poor country lord; you're not sufficiently proud, or stingy. you'd do very well as a country gentleman, and you'd make a decent nobleman with such a fortune as lord cashel's. but your game, if you lived on your own property, would be a very difficult one, and one for which you've neither tact nor temper." "well, i hope i'll never live out of ireland. though i mayn't have tact to make one thousand go as far as five, i've sense enough to see that a poor absentee landlord is a great curse to his country; and that's what i hope i never shall be." "my dear lord ballindine; all poor men are curses, to themselves or some one else." "a poor absentee's the worst of all. he leaves nothing behind, and can leave nothing. he wants all he has for himself; and, if he doesn't give his neighbours the profit which must arise somewhere, from his own consumption, he can give nothing. a rich man can afford to leave three or four thousand a year behind him, in the way of wages for labour." "my gracious, frank! you should put all that in a pamphlet, and not inflict it on a poor devil waiting for his dinner. at present, give your profit to morrison, and come and consume some mock-turtle; and i'll tell you what sheil's going to do for us all." lord ballindine did as he was bid, and left the room to prepare for dinner. by the time that he had eaten his soup, and drank a glass of wine, he had got rid of the fit of blue devils which the thoughts of his poverty had brought on, and he spent the rest of the evening comfortably enough, listening to his friend's comical version of shell's speech; receiving instruction from that great master of the art as to the manner in which he should treat his derby colt, and being flattered into the belief that he would be a prominent favourite for that great race. when they had finished their wine, they sauntered into the kildare street club. blake was soon busy with his little betting-book, and lord ballindine followed his example. brien boru was, before long, in great demand. blake took fifty to one, and then talked the horse up till he ended by giving twenty-five. he was soon ranked the first of the irish lot; and the success of the hibernians had made them very sanguine of late. lord ballindine found himself the centre of a little sporting circle, as being the man with the crack nag of the day. he was talked of, courted, and appealed to; and, i regret to say, that before he left the club he was again nearly forgetting kelly's court and miss wyndham, had altogether got rid of his patriotic notions as to the propriety of living on his own estate, had determined forthwith to send brien boru over to scott's english stables; and then, went to bed, and dreamed that he was a winner of the derby, and was preparing for the glories of newmarket with five or six thousand pounds in his pocket. martin kelly dined with his brother at jude's, and spent his evening equally unreasonably; at least, it may be supposed so from the fact that at one o'clock in the morning he was to be seen standing on one of the tables at burton bindon's oyster-house, with a pewter pot, full of porter, in his hand, and insisting that every one in the room should drink the health of anty lynch, whom, on that occasion, he swore to be the prettiest and the youngest girl in connaught. it was lucky he was so intoxicated, that no one could understand him; and that his hearers were so drunk that they could understand nothing; as, otherwise, the publicity of his admiration might have had the effect of preventing the accomplishment of his design. he managed, however, to meet his patron the next morning at the lawyer's, though his eyes were very red, and his cheeks pale; and, after being there for some half hour, left the office, with the assurance that, whenever he and the lady might please to call there, they should find a deed prepared for their signature, which would adjust the property in the manner required. that afternoon lord ballindine left dublin, with his friend, to make instant arrangements for the exportation of brien boru; and, at two o'clock the next day, martin left, by the boat, for ballinaslie, having evinced his patriotism by paying a year's subscription in advance to the "nation" newspaper, and with his mind fully made up to bring anty away to dublin with as little delay as possible. iv. the dunmore inn anty lynch was not the prettiest, or the youngest girl in connaught; nor would martin have affirmed her to be so, unless he had been very much inebriated indeed. however young she might have been once, she was never pretty; but, in all ireland, there was not a more single-hearted, simple-minded young woman. i do not use the word simple as foolish; for, though uneducated, she was not foolish. but she was unaffected, honest, humble, and true, entertaining a very lowly idea of her own value, and unelated by her newly acquired wealth. she had been so little thought of all her life by others, that she had never learned to think much of herself; she had had but few acquaintances, and no friends, and had spent her life, hitherto, so quietly and silently, that her apparent apathy was attributable rather to want of subjects of excitement, than to any sluggishness of disposition. her mother had died early; and, since then, the only case in which anty had been called on to exercise her own judgment, was in refusing to comply with her father's wish that she should become a nun. on this subject, though often pressed, she had remained positive, always pleading that she felt no call to the sacred duties which would be required, and innocently assuring her father, that, if allowed to remain at home, she would cause him no trouble, and but little expense. so she had remained at home, and had inured herself to bear without grumbling, or thinking that she had cause for grumbling, the petulance of her father, and the more cruel harshness and ill-humour of her brother. in all the family schemes of aggrandisement she had been set aside, and barry had been intended by the father as the scion on whom all the family honours were to fall. his education had been expensive, his allowance liberal, and his whims permitted; while anty was never better dressed than a decent english servant, and had been taught nothing save the lessons she had learnt from her mother, who died when she was but thirteen. mrs lynch had died before the commencement of sim's palmy days. they had seen no company in her time,--for they were then only rising people; and, since that, the great friends to whom sim, in his wealth, had attached himself, and with whom alone he intended that barry should associate, were all of the masculine gender. he gave bachelor dinner-parties to hard-drinking young men, for whom anty was well contented to cook; and when they--as they often, from the effect of their potations, were perforce obliged to do--stayed the night at dunmore house, anty never showed herself in the breakfast parlour, but boiled the eggs, made the tea, and took her own breakfast in the kitchen. it was not wonderful, therefore, that no one proposed for anty; and, though all who knew the lynches, knew that sim had a daughter, it was very generally given out that she was not so wise as her neighbours; and the father and brother took no pains to deny the rumour. the inhabitants of the village knew better; the lynches were very generally disliked, and the shameful way "miss anty was trated," was often discussed in the little shops; and many of the townspeople were ready to aver that, "simple or no, anty lynch was the best of the breed, out-and-out." matters stood thus at dunmore, when the quarrel before alluded to, occurred, and when sim made his will, dividing his property and died before destroying it, as he doubtless would have done, when his passion was over. great was the surprise of every one concerned, and of many who were not at all concerned, when it was ascertained that anty lynch was an heiress, and that she was now possessed of four hundred pounds a-year in her own right; but the passion of her brother, it would be impossible to describe. he soon, however, found that it was too literally true, and that no direct means were at hand, by which he could deprive his sister of her patrimony. the lawyer, when he informed anty of her fortune and present station, made her understand that she had an equal right with her brother in everything in the house; and though, at first, she tacitly acquiesced in his management, she was not at all simple enough to be ignorant of the rights of possession, or weak enough to relinquish them. barry soon made up his mind that, as she had and must have the property, all he could now do was to take care that it should revert to him as her heir; and the measure of most importance in effecting this, would be to take care that she did not marry. in his first passion, after his father's death, he had been rough and cruel to her; but he soon changed his conduct, and endeavoured to flatter her into docility at one moment, and to frighten her into obedience in the next. he soon received another blow which was also a severe one. moylan, the old man who proposed the match to martin, called on him, and showed him that anty had appointed him her agent, and had executed the necessary legal documents for the purpose. upon this subject he argued for a long time with his sister,--pointing out to her that the old man would surely rob her--offering to act as her agent himself--recommending others as more honest and fitting--and, lastly, telling her that she was an obstinate fool, who would soon be robbed of every penny she had, and that she would die in a workhouse at last. but anty, though she dreaded her brother, was firm. wonderful as it may appear, she even loved him. she begged him not to quarrel with her,--promised to do everything to oblige him, and answered his wrath with gentleness; but it was of no avail. barry knew that her agent was a plotter--that he would plot against his influence--though he little guessed then what would be the first step moylan would take, or how likely it would be, if really acted on, to lead to his sister's comfort and happiness. after this, barry passed two months of great misery and vexation. he could not make up his mind what to do, or what final steps to take, either about the property, his sister, or himself. at first, he thought of frightening moylan and his sister, by pretending that he would prove anty to be of weak mind, and not fit to manage her own affairs, and that he would indict the old man for conspiracy; but he felt that moylan was not a man to be frightened by such bugbears. then, he made up his mind to turn all he had into money, to leave his sister to the dogs, or any one who might choose to rob her, and go and live abroad. then he thought, if his sister should die, what a pity it would be, he should lose it all, and how he should blame himself, if she were to die soon after having married some low adventurer; and he reflected; how probable such a thing would be--how likely that such a man would soon get rid of her; and then his mind began to dwell on her death, and to wish for it. he found himself constantly thinking of it, and ruminating on it, and determining that it was the only event which could set him right. his own debts would swallow up half his present property; and how could he bring himself to live on the pitiful remainder, when that stupid idiot, as he called her to himself, had three times more than she could possibly want? morning after morning, he walked about the small grounds round the house, with his hat over his eyes, and his hands tossing about the money in his pockets, thinking of this,--cursing his father, and longing--almost praying for his sister's death. then he would have his horse, and flog the poor beast along the roads without going anywhere, or having any object in view, but always turning the same thing over and over in his mind. and, after dinner, he would sit, by the hour, over the fire, drinking, longing for his sister's money, and calculating the probabilities of his ever possessing it. he began to imagine all the circumstances which might lead to her death; he thought of all the ways in which persons situated as she was, might, and often did, die. he reflected, without knowing that he was doing so, on the probability of robbers breaking into the house, if she were left alone in it, and of their murdering her; he thought of silly women setting their own clothes on fire--of their falling out of window--drowning themselves--of their perishing in a hundred possible but improbable ways. it was after he had been drinking a while, that these ideas became most vivid before his eyes, and seemed like golden dreams, the accomplishment of which he could hardly wish for. and, at last, as the fumes of the spirit gave him courage, other and more horrible images would rise to his imagination, and the drops of sweat would stand on his brow as he would invent schemes by which, were he so inclined, he could accelerate, without detection, the event for which he so ardently longed. with such thoughts would he turn into bed; and though in the morning he would try to dispel the ideas in which he had indulged overnight, they still left their impression on his mind;--they added bitterness to his hatred--and made him look on himself as a man injured by his father and sister, and think that he owed it to himself to redress his injuries by some extraordinary means. it was whilst barry lynch was giving way to such thoughts as these, and vainly endeavouring to make up his mind as to what he would do, that martin made his offer to anty. to tell the truth, it was martin's sister meg who had made the first overture; and, as anty had not rejected it with any great disdain, but had rather shown a disposition to talk about it as a thing just possible, martin had repeated it in person, and had reiterated it, till anty had at last taught herself to look upon it as a likely and desirable circumstance. martin had behaved openly and honourably with regard to the money part of the business; telling his contemplated bride that it was, of course, her fortune which had first induced him to think of her; but adding, that he would also value her and love her for herself, if she would allow him. he described to her the sort of settlement he should propose, and ended by recommending an early day for the wedding. anty had sense enough to be pleased at his straightforward and honest manner; and, though she did not say much to himself, she said a great deal in his praise to meg, which all found its way to martin's ears. but still, he could not get over the difficulty which he had described to lord ballindine. anty wanted to wait till her brother should go out of the country, and martin was afraid that he would not go; and things were in this state when he started for dublin. the village of dunmore has nothing about it which can especially recommend it to the reader. it has none of those beauties of nature which have taught irishmen to consider their country as the "first flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea". it is a dirty, ragged little town, standing in a very poor part of the country, with nothing about it to induce the traveller to go out of his beaten track. it is on no high road, and is blessed with no adventitious circumstances to add to its prosperity. it was once the property of the o'kellys; but, in those times the landed proprietors thought but little of the towns; and now it is parcelled out among different owners, some of whom would think it folly to throw away a penny on the place, and others of whom have not a penny to throw away. it consists of a big street, two little streets, and a few very little lanes. there is a court-house, where the barrister sits twice a year; a barrack, once inhabited by soldiers, but now given up to the police; a large slated chapel, not quite finished; a few shops for soft goods; half a dozen shebeen-houses [ ], ruined by father mathew; a score of dirty cabins offering "lodging and enthertainment", as announced on the window-shutters; mrs. kelly's inn and grocery-shop; and, last though not least, simeon lynch's new, staring house, built just at the edge of the town, on the road to roscommon, which is dignified with the name of dunmore house. the people of most influence in the village were mrs. kelly of the inn, and her two sworn friends, the parish priest and his curate. the former, father geoghegan, lived about three miles out of dunmore, near toneroe; and his curate, father pat connel, inhabited one of the small houses in the place, very little better in appearance than those which offered accommodation to travellers and trampers. [footnote : shebeen-houses--unlicensed drinking houses, where un-taxed ("moonshine") liquor was often served] such was, and is, the town of dunmore in the county of galway; and i must beg the reader to presume himself to be present there with me on the morning on which the two young kellys went to hear sheil's speech. at about ten o'clock, the widow kelly and her daughters were busy in the shop, which occupied the most important part of the ground-floor of the inn. it was a long, scrambling, ugly-looking house. next to the shop, and opening out of it, was a large drinking-room, furnished with narrow benches and rickety tables; and here the more humble of mrs. kelly's guests regaled themselves. on the other side of this, was the hall, or passage of the house; and, next to that again, a large, dingy, dark kitchen, over which sally reigned with her teapot dynasty, and in which were always congregated a parcel of ragged old men, boys, and noisy women, pretending to be busy, but usually doing but little good, and attracted by the warmth of the big fire, and the hopes of some scraps of food and drink. "for the widow kelly--god bless her! was a thrue christhian, and didn't begrudge the poor--more power to her--like some upstarts who might live to be in want yet, glory be to the almighty!" the difference of the english and irish character is nowhere more plainly discerned than in their respective kitchens. with the former, this apartment is probably the cleanest, and certainly the most orderly, in the house. it is rarely intruded into by those unconnected, in some way, with its business. everything it contains is under the vigilant eye of its chief occupant, who would imagine it quite impossible to carry on her business, whether of an humble or important nature, if her apparatus was subjected to the hands of the unauthorised. an irish kitchen is devoted to hospitality in every sense of the word. its doors are open to almost all loungers and idlers; and the chances are that billy bawn, the cripple, or judy molloy, the deaf old hag, are more likely to know where to find the required utensil than the cook herself. it is usually a temple dedicated to the goddess of disorder; and, too often joined with her, is the potent deity of dirt. it is not that things are out of their place, for they have no place. it isn't that the floor is not scoured, for you cannot scour dry mud into anything but wet mud. it isn't that the chairs and tables look filthy, for there are none. it isn't that the pots, and plates, and pans don't shine, for you see none to shine. all you see is a grimy, black ceiling, an uneven clay floor, a small darkened window, one or two unearthly-looking recesses, a heap of potatoes in the corner, a pile of turf against the wall, two pigs and a dog under the single dresser, three or four chickens on the window-sill, an old cock moaning on the top of a rickety press, and a crowd of ragged garments, squatting, standing, kneeling, and crouching, round the fire, from which issues a babel of strange tongues, not one word of which is at first intelligible to ears unaccustomed to such eloquence. and yet, out of these unfathomable, unintelligible dens, proceed in due time dinners, of which the appearance of them gives no promise. such a kitchen was mrs. kelly's; and yet, it was well known and attested by those who had often tried the experiment, that a man need think it no misfortune to have to get his dinner, his punch, and his bed, at the widow's. above stairs were two sitting-rooms and a colony of bed-rooms, occupied indiscriminately by the family, or by such customers as might require them. if you came back to dine at the inn, after a day's shooting on the bogs, you would probably find miss jane's work-box on the table, or miss meg's album on the sofa; and, when a little accustomed to sojourn at such places, you would feel no surprise at discovering their dresses turned inside out, and hanging on the pegs in your bed-room; or at seeing their side-combs and black pins in the drawer of your dressing-table. on the morning in question, the widow and her daughters were engaged in the shop, putting up pen'norths of sugar, cutting bits of tobacco, tying bundles of dip candles, attending to chance customers, and preparing for the more busy hours of the day. it was evident that something had occurred at the inn, which had ruffled the even tenor of its way. the widow was peculiarly gloomy. though fond of her children, she was an autocrat in her house, and accustomed, as autocrats usually are, to scold a good deal; and now she was using her tongue pretty freely. it wasn't the girls, however, she was rating, for they could answer for themselves;--and did, when they thought it necessary. but now, they were demure, conscious, and quiet. mrs. kelly was denouncing one of the reputed sins of the province to which she belonged, and describing the horrors of "schaming." "them underhand ways," she declared, "niver come to no good. av' it's thrue what father connel's afther telling me, there'll harum come of it before it's done and over. schaming, schaming, and schaming for iver! the back of my hand to such doings! i wish the tongue had been out of moylan's mouth, the ould rogue, before he put the thing in his head. av' he wanted the young woman, and she was willing, why not take her in a dacent way, and have done with it. i'm sure she's ould enough. but what does he want with a wife like her?--making innimies for himself. i suppose he'll be sitting up for a gentleman now--bad cess to them for gentry; not but that he's as good a right as some, and a dale more than others, who are ashamed to put their hand to a turn of work. i hate such huggery muggery work up in a corner. it's half your own doing; and a nice piece of work it'll be, when he's got an ould wife and a dozen lawsuits!--when he finds his farm gone, and his pockets empty; for it'll be a dale asier for him to be getting the wife than the money--when he's got every body's abuse, and nothing else, by his bargain!" it was very apparent that martin's secret had not been well kept, and that the fact of his intended marriage with anty lynch was soon likely to be known to all dunmore. the truth was, that moylan had begun to think himself overreached in the matter--to be afraid that, by the very measure he had himself proposed, he would lose all share in the great prize he had put in martin's way, and that he should himself be the means of excluding his own finger from the pie. it appeared to him that if he allowed this, his own folly would only be equalled by the young man's ingratitude; and he determined therefore, if possible, to prevent the match. whereupon he told the matter as a secret, to those whom he knew would set it moving. in a very short space of time it reached the ears of father connel; and he lost none in stepping down to learn the truth of so important a piece of luck to one of his parishioners, and to congratulate the widow. here, however, he was out in his reckoning, for she declared she did not believe it,--that it wasn't, and couldn't be true; and it was only after his departure that she succeeded in extracting the truth from her daughters. the news, however, quickly reached the kitchen and its lazy crowd; and the inn door and its constant loungers; and was readily and gladly credited in both places. crone after crone, and cripple after cripple, hurried into the shop, to congratulate the angry widow on "masther martin's luck; and warn't he worthy of it, the handsome jewel--and wouldn't he look the gintleman, every inch of him?" and sally expatiated greatly on it in the kitchen, and drank both their healths in an extra pot of tea, and kate grinned her delight, and jack the ostler, who took care of martin's horse, boasted loudly of it in the street, declaring that "it was a good thing enough for anty lynch, with all her money, to get a husband at all out of the kellys, for the divil a know any one knowed in the counthry where the lynchs come from; but every one knowed who the kellys wor--and martin wasn't that far from the lord himself." there was great commotion, during the whole day, at the inn. some said martin had gone to town to buy furniture; others, that he had done so to prove the will. one suggested that he'd surely have to fight barry, and another prayed that "if he did, he might kill the blackguard, and have all the fortin to himself, out and out, god bless him!" v. a loving brother the great news was not long before it reached the ears of one not disposed to receive the information with much satisfaction, and this was barry lynch, the proposed bride's amiable brother. the medium through which he first heard it was not one likely to add to his good humour. jacky, the fool, had for many years been attached to the kelly's court family; that is to say, he had attached himself to it, by getting his food in the kitchen, and calling himself the lord's fool. but, latterly, he had quarrelled with kelly's court, and had insisted on being sim lynch's fool, much to the chagrin of that old man; and, since his death, he had nearly maddened barry by following him through the street, and being continually found at the house-door when he went out. jack's attendance was certainly dictated by affection rather than any mercenary views, for he never got a scrap out of the dunmore house kitchen, or a halfpenny from his new patron. but still, he was barry's fool; and, like other fools, a desperate annoyance to his master. on the day in question, as young mr. lynch was riding out of the gate, about three in the afternoon, there, as usual, was jack. "now yer honour, mr. barry, darling, shure you won't forget jacky to-day. you'll not forget your own fool, mr. barry?" barry did not condescend to answer this customary appeal, but only looked at the poor ragged fellow as though he'd like to flog the life out of him. "shure your honour, mr. barry, isn't this the time then to open yer honour's hand, when miss anty, god bless her, is afther making sich a great match for the family?--glory be to god!" "what d'ye mean, you ruffian?" "isn't the kellys great people intirely, mr. barry? and won't it be a great thing for miss anty, to be sib to a lord? shure yer honour'd not be refusing me this blessed day." "what the d---- are you saying about miss lynch?" said barry, his attention somewhat arrested by the mention of his sister's name. "isn't she going to be married then, to the dacentest fellow in dunmore? martin kelly, god bless him! ah! there'll be fine times at dunmore, then. he's not the boy to rattle a poor divil out of the kitchen into the cold winther night! the kellys was always the right sort for the poor." barry was frightened in earnest, now. it struck him at once that jack couldn't have made the story out of his own head; and the idea that there was any truth in it, nearly knocked him off his horse. he rode on, however, trying to appear to be regardless of what had been said to him; and, as he trotted off, he heard the fool's parting salutation. "and will yer honour be forgething me afther the news i've brought yer? well, hard as ye are, misther barry, i've hot yer now, any way." and, in truth, jack had hit him hard. of all things that could happen to him, this would be about the worst. he had often thought, with dread, of his sister's marrying, and of his thus being forced to divide everything--all his spoil, with some confounded stranger. but for her to marry a shopkeeper's son, in the very village in which he lived, was more than he could bear. he could never hold up his head in the county again. and then, he thought of his debts, and tried to calculate whether he might get over to france without paying them, and be able to carry his share of the property with him; and so he went on, pursuing his wretched, uneasy, solitary ride, sometimes sauntering along at a snail's pace, and then again spurring the poor brute, and endeavouring to bring his mind to some settled plan. but, whenever he did so, the idea of his sister's death was the only one which seemed to present either comfort or happiness. he made up his mind, at last, to put a bold face on the matter; to find out from anty herself whether there was any truth in the story; and, if there should be,--for he felt confident she would not be able to deceive him,--to frighten her and the whole party of the kellys out of what he considered a damnable conspiracy to rob him of his father's property, he got off his horse, and stalked into the house. on inquiry, he found that anty was in her own room. he was sorry she was not out; for, to tell the truth, he was rather anxious to put off the meeting, as he did not feel himself quite up to the mark, and was ashamed of seeming afraid of her. he went into the stable, and abused the groom; into the kitchen, and swore at the maid; and then into the garden. it was a nasty, cold, february day, and he walked up and down the damp muddy walks till he was too tired and cold to walk longer, and then turned into the parlour, and remained with his back to the fire, till the man came in to lay the cloth, thinking on the one subject that occupied all his mind--occasionally grinding his teeth, and heaping curses on his father and sister, who, together, had inflicted such grievous, such unexpected injuries upon him. if, at this moment, there was a soul in all ireland over whom satan had full dominion--if there was a breast unoccupied by one good thought--if there was a heart wishing, a brain conceiving, and organs ready to execute all that was evil, from the worst motives, they were to be found in that miserable creature, as he stood there urging himself on to hate those whom he should have loved--cursing those who were nearest to him--fearing her, whom he had ill-treated all his life--and striving to pluck up courage to take such measures as might entirely quell her. money was to him the only source of gratification. he had looked forward, when a boy, to his manhood, as a period when he might indulge, unrestrained, in pleasures which money would buy; and, when a man, to his father's death, as a time when those means would be at his full command. he had neither ambition, nor affection, in his nature; his father had taught him nothing but the excellence of money, and, having fully imbued him with this, had cut him off from the use of it. he was glad when he found that dinner was at hand, and that he could not now see his sister until after he had fortified himself with drink. anty rarely, if ever, dined with him; so he sat down, and swallowed his solitary meal. he did not eat much, but he gulped down three or four glasses of wine; and, immediately on having done so, he desired the servant, with a curse, to bring him hot water and sugar, and not to keep him waiting all night for a tumbler of punch, as he did usually. before the man had got into the kitchen, he rang the bell again; and when the servant returned breathless, with the steaming jug, he threatened to turn him out of the house at once, if he was not quicker in obeying the orders given him. he then made a tumbler of punch, filling the glass half full of spirits, and drinking it so hot as to scald his throat; and when that was done he again rang the bell, and desired the servant to tell miss anty that he wanted to speak to her. when the door was shut, he mixed more drink, to support his courage during the interview, and made up his mind that nothing should daunt him from preventing the marriage, in one way or another. when anty opened the door, he was again standing with his back to the fire, his hands in his pockets, the flaps of his coat hanging over his arms, his shoulders against the mantel-piece, and his foot on the chair on which he had been sitting. his face was red, and his eyes were somewhat blood-shot; he had always a surly look, though, from his black hair, and large bushy whiskers, many people would have called him good looking; but now there was a scowl in his restless eyes, which frightened anty when she saw it; and the thick drops of perspiration on his forehead did not add benignity to his face. "were you wanting me, barry?" said anty, who was the first to speak. "what do you stand there for, with the door open?" replied her brother, "d' you think i want the servants to hear what i've got to say?" "'deed i don't know," said anty, shutting the door; "but they'll hear just as well now av' they wish, for they'll come to the kay-hole." "will they, by g----!" said barry, and he rushed to the door, which he banged open; finding no victim outside on whom to exercise his wrath--"let me catch 'em!" and he returned to his position by the fire. anty had sat down on a sofa that stood by the wall opposite the fireplace, and barry remained for a minute, thinking how he'd open the campaign. at last he began: "anty, look you here, now. what scheme have you got in your head?--you'd better let me know, at once." "what schame, barry?" "well--what schame, if you like that better." "i've no schame in my head, that i know of--at laist--" and then anty blushed. it would evidently be easy enough to make the poor girl tell her own secret. "well, go on--at laist--" "i don't know what you mane, barry. av' you're going to be badgering me again, i'll go away." "it's evident you're going to do something you're ashamed of, when you're afraid to sit still, and answer a common question. but you must answer me. i'm your brother, and have a right to know. what's this you're going to do?' he didn't like to ask her at once whether she was going to get married. it might not be true, and then he would only be putting the idea into her head. 'well,--why don't you answer me? what is it you're going to do?" "is it about the property you mane, barry?" "what a d----d hypocrite you are! as if you didn't know what i mean! as for the property, i tell you there'll be little left the way you're going on. and as to that, i'll tell you what i'm going to do; so, mind, i warn you beforehand. you're not able--that is, you're too foolish and weak-headed to manage it yourself; and i mean, as your guardian, to put it into the hands of those that shall manage it for you. i'm not going to see you robbed and duped, and myself destroyed by such fellows as moylan, and a crew of huxtering blackguards down in dunmore. and now, tell me at once, what's this i hear about you and the kellys?" "what kellys?" said anty, blushing deeply, and half beside herself with fear--for barry's face was very red, and full of fierce anger, and his rough words frightened her. "what kellys! did you ever hear of martin kelly? d----d young robber that he is!" anty blushed still deeper--rose a little way from the sofa, and then sat down again. "look you here, anty--i'll have the truth out of you. i'm not going to be bamboozled by such an idiot as you. you got an old man, when he was dying, to make a will that has robbed me of what was my own, and now you think you'll play your own low game; but you're mistaken! you've lived long enough without a husband to do without one now; and i can tell you i'm not going to see my property carried off by such a low, paltry blackguard as martin kelly." "how can he take your property, barry?" sobbed forth the poor creature, who was, by this time, far gone in tears. "then the long and the short of it is, he shan't have what you call yours. tell me, at once, will you--is it true, that you've promised to marry him?" anty replied nothing, but continued sobbing violently. "cease your nonsense, you blubbering fool! a precious creature you are to take on yourself to marry any man! are you going to answer me, anty?" and he walked away from the fire, and came and stood opposite to her as she sat upon the sofa. "are you going to answer me or not?" he continued, stamping on the floor. "i'll not stop here--and be trated this way--barry--i'm sure--i do all i--i can for you--and you're always--bullying me because father divided the property." and anty continued sobbing more violently than ever. "i won't stop in the room any more," and she got up to go to the door. barry, however, rushed before her, and prevented her. he turned the lock, and put the key in his pocket; and then he caught her arm, as she attempted to get to the bell, and dragged her back to the sofa. "you're not off so easy as that, i can tell you. why, d' you think you're to marry whom you please, without even telling me of it? what d'you think the world would say of me, if i were to let such an idiot as you be caught up by the first sharper that tried to rob you of your money? now, look here," and he sat down beside her, and laid his hand violently on her arm, as he spoke, "you don't go out of this room, alive, until you've given me your solemn promise, and sworn on the cross, that you'll never marry without my consent; and you'll give me that in writing, too." anty at first turned very pale when she felt his heavy hand on her arm, and saw his red, glaring eyes so near her own. but when he said she shouldn't leave the room alive, she jumped from the sofa, and shrieked, at the top of her shrill voice,--"oh, barry! you'll not murdher me! shure you wouldn't murdher your own sisther!" barry was rather frightened at the noise, and, moreover, the word "murder" quelled him. but when he found, after a moment's pause, that the servants had not heard, or had not heeded his sister, he determined to carry on his game, now that he had proceeded so far. he took, however, a long drink out of his tumbler, to give him fresh courage, and then returned to the charge. "who talked of murdering you? but, if you bellow in that way, i'll gag you. it's a great deal i'm asking, indeed--that, when i'm your only guardian, my advice should be asked for before you throw away your money on a low ruffian. you're more fit for a mad-house than to be any man's wife; and, by heaven, that's where i'll put you, if you don't give me the promise i ask! will you swear you'll marry no one without my leave?" poor anty shook with fear as she sate, with her eyes fixed on her brother's face. he was nearly drunk now, and she felt that he was so,--and he looked so hot and so fierce--so red and cruel, that she was all but paralysed. nevertheless, she mustered strength to say, "let me go, now, barry, and, to-morrow, i'll tell you everything--indeed i will--and i'll thry to do all you'd have me; indeed, and indeed, i will! only do let me go now, for you've frighted me." "you're likely to be more frighted yet, as you call it! and be tramping along the roads, i suppose, with martin kelly, before the morning. no! i'll have an answer from you, any way. i've a right to that!" "oh, barry!--what is it you want?--pray let me go--pray, pray, for the love of the blessed jesus, let me go." "i'll tell you where you'll go, and that's into ballinasloe mad-house! now, mark me--so help me--i'll set off with you this night, and have you there in the morning--as an idiot as you are, if you won't make the promise i'm telling you!" by this time anty's presence of mind had clean left her. indeed, all the faculties of her reason had vanished; and, as she saw her brother's scowling face so near her own, and heard him threatening to drag her to a mad-house, she put her hands before her eyes, and made one rush to escape from him--to the door--to the window--anywhere to get out of his reach. barry was quite drunk now. had he not been so, even he would hardly have done what he then did. as she endeavoured to rush by him, he raised his fist, and struck her on the face, with all his force. the blow fell upon her hands, as they were crossed over her face; but the force of the blow knocked her down, and she fell upon the floor, senseless, striking the back of her head against the table. "confound her," muttered the brute, between his teeth, as she fell, "for an obstinate, pig-headed fool! what the d----l shall i do now? anty, get up!--get up, will you!--what ails you?"--and then again to himself, "the d----l seize her! what am i to do now?" and he succeeded in dragging her on to the sofa. the man-servant and the cook although up to this point, they had considered it would be ill manners to interrupt the brother and sister in their family interview, were nevertheless at the door; and though they could see nothing, and did not succeed in hearing much, were not the less fully aware that the conversation was of a somewhat stormy nature on the part of the brother. when they heard the noise which followed the blow, though not exactly knowing what had happened, they became frightened, and began to think something terrible was being done. "go in, terry, avich," whispered the woman,--"knock, man, and go in--shure he's murdhering her!" "what 'ud he do to me thin, av' he'd strick a woman, and she his own flesh and blood! he'll not murdher her--but, faix, he's afther doing something now! knock, biddy, knock, i say, and screech out that you're afther wanting miss anty." the woman had more courage than the man--or else more compassion, for, without further parleying, she rapped her knuckles loudly against the door, and, as she did so, terry sneaked away to the kitchen. barry had just succeeded in raising his sister to the sofa as he heard the knock. "who's that?" he called out loudly; "what do you want?" "plaze yer honer, miss anty's wanting in the kitchen." "she's busy, and can't come at present; she'll be there directly." "is she ill at all, mr. barry? god bless you, spake, miss anty; in god's name, spake thin. ah! mr. barry, thin, shure she'd spake av' she were able." "go away, you fool! your mistress'll be out in a minute." then, after a moment's consideration, he went and unlocked the door, "or--go in, and see what she wants. she's fainted, i think." barry lynch walked out of the room, and into the garden before the house, to think over what he had done, and what he'd better do for the future, leaving anty to the care of the frightened woman. she soon came to herself, and, excepting that her head was bruised in the fall, was not much hurt. the blow, falling on her hands, had neither cut nor marked her; but she was for a long time so flurried that she did not know where she was, and, in answer to all biddy's tender inquiries as to the cause of her fall, and anathemas as to the master's bad temper, merely said that "she'd get to bed, for her head ached so, she didn't know where she was." to bed accordingly she went; and glad she was to have escaped alive from that drunken face, which had glared on her for the last half hour. after wandering about round the house and through the grounds, for above an hour, barry returned, half sobered, to the room; but, in his present state of mind, he could not go to bed sober. he ordered more hot water, and again sat down alone to drink, and drown the remorse he was beginning to feel for what he had done--or rather, not remorse, but the feeling of fear that every one would know how he had treated anty, and that they would side with her against him. whichever way he looked, all was misery and disappointment to him, and his only hope, for the present, was in drink. there he sat, for a long time, with his eyes fixed on the turf, till it was all burnt out, trying to get fresh courage from the spirits he swallowed, and swearing to himself that he would not be beat by a woman. about one o'clock he seized one of the candles, and staggered up to bed. as he passed his sister's door, he opened it and went in. she was fast asleep; her shoes were off, and the bed-clothes were thrown over her, but she was not undressed. he slowly shut the door, and stood, for some moments, looking at her; then, walking to the bed, he took her shoulder, and shook it as gently as his drunkenness would let him. this did not wake her, so he put the candle down on the table, close beside the bed, and, steadying himself against the bedstead, he shook her again and again. "anty", he whispered, "anty"; and, at last, she opened her eyes. directly she saw his face, she closed them again, and buried her own in the clothes; however, he saw that she was awake, and, bending his head, he muttered, loud enough for her to hear, but in a thick, harsh, hurried, drunken voice, "anty--d'ye hear? if you marry that man, i'll have your life!" and then, leaving the candle behind him, he staggered off into his own room in the dark. vi. the escape in vain, after that, did anty try to sleep; turn which way she would, she saw the bloodshot eyes and horrid drunken face of her cruel brother. for a long time she lay, trembling and anxious; fearing she knew not what, and trying to compose herself--trying to make herself think that she had no present cause for fear; but in vain. if she heard a noise, she thought it was her brother's footstep, and when the house was perfectly silent and still, she feared the very silence itself. at last, she crept out of bed, and, taking the candle left by her brother, which had now burned down to the socket, stepped softly down the stairs, to the place where the two maid-servants slept, and, having awakened them, she made biddy return with her and keep her company for the remainder of the night. she did not quite tell the good-natured girl all that had passed; she did not own that her brother had threatened to send her to a madhouse, or that he had sworn to have her life; but she said enough to show that he had shamefully ill-treated her, and to convince biddy that wherever her mistress might find a home, it would be very unadvisable that she and barry should continue to live under the same roof. early in the morning, "long afore the break o' day," as the song says, biddy got up from her hard bed on the floor of her mistress' room, and, seeing that anty was at last asleep, started to carry into immediate execution the counsels she had given during the night. as she passed the head of the stairs, she heard the loud snore of barry, in his drunken slumber; and, wishing that he might sleep as sound for ever and ever, she crept down to her own domicile, and awakened her comrade. "whist, judy--whist, darlint! up wid ye, and let me out." "and what'd you be doing out now?" yawned judy. "an arrand of the misthress;--shure, he used her disperate. faix, it's a wondher he didn't murther her outright!" "and where are ye going now?" "jist down to dunmore--to the kellys then, avich. asy now; i'll be telling you all bye and bye. she must be out of this intirely." "is't miss anty? where'd she be going thin out of this?" "divil a matther where! he'd murther her, the ruffian 'av he cotched her another night in his dhrunkenness. we must git her out before he sleeps hisself right. but hurry now, i'll be telling you all when i'm back again." the two crept off to the back door together, and, judy having opened it, biddy sallied out, on her important and good-natured mission. it was still dark, though the morning was beginning to break, as she stood, panting, at the front door of the inn. she tried to get in at the back, but the yard gates were fastened; and jack, the ostler, did not seem to be about yet. so she gave a timid, modest knock, with the iron knocker, on the front door. a pause, and then a second knock, a little louder; another pause, and then a third; and then, as no one came, she remembered the importance of her message, and gave such a rap as a man might do, who badly wanted a glass of hot drink after travelling the whole night. the servants had good or hardy consciences, for they slept soundly; but the widow kelly, in her little bed-room behind the shop, well knew the sound of that knocker, and, hurrying on her slippers and her gown, she got to the door, and asked who was there. "is that sally, ma'am?" said biddy, well knowing the widow's voice. "no, it's not. what is it you're wanting?" "is it kate thin, ma'am?" "no, it's not kate. who are you, i say; and what d'you want?" "i'm biddy, plaze ma'am--from lynch's, and i'm wanting to spake to yerself, ma'am--about miss anty. she's very bad intirely, ma'am." "what ails her;--and why d'you come here? why don't you go to doctor colligan, av' she's ill; and not come knocking here?" "it ain't bad that way, miss anty is, ma'am. av' you'd just be good enough to open the door, i'd tell you in no time." it would, i am sure, be doing injustice to mrs kelly to say that her curiosity was stronger than her charity; they both, however, no doubt had their effect, and the door was speedily opened. "oh, ma'am!" commenced biddy, "sich terrible doings up at the house! miss anty's almost kilt!" "come out of the cowld, girl, in to the kitchen fire," said the widow, who didn't like the february blast, to which biddy, in her anxiety, had been quite indifferent; and the careful widow again bolted the door, and followed the woman into certainly the warmest place in dunmore, for the turf fire in the inn kitchen was burning day and night. "and now, tell me what is it ails miss anty? she war well enough yesterday, i think, and i heard more of her then than i wished." biddy now pulled her cloak from off her head, settled it over her shoulders, and prepared for telling a good substantial story. "oh, misthress kelly, ma'am, there's been disperate doings last night up at the house. we were all hearing, in the morn yesterday, as how miss anty and mr martin, god bless him!--were to make a match of it,--as why wouldn't they, ma'am? for wouldn't mr martin make her a tidy, dacent, good husband?" "well, well, biddy--don't mind mr martin; he'll be betther without a wife for one while, and he needn't be quarrelling for one when he wants her. what ails miss anty?" "shure i'm telling you, ma'am; howsomever, whether its thrue or no about mr martin, we were all hearing it yestherday; and the masther, he war afther hearing it too, for he come into his dinner as black as tunder; and terry says he dhrunk the whole of a bottle of wine, and then he called for the sperrits, and swilled away at them till he was nigh dhrunk. well, wid that, ma'am, he sent for miss anty, and the moment she comes in, he locks to the door, and pulls her to the sofa, and swears outright that he'll murdher her av' she don't swear, by the blessed mary and the cross, that she'll niver dhrame of marrying no one." "who tould you all this, biddy? was it herself?" "why, thin, partly herself it war who tould me, ma'am, and partly--; you see, when mr barry war in his tantrums and dhrunken like, i didn't like to be laving miss anty alone wid him, and nobody nigh, so i and terry betook ourselves nigh the door, and, partly heard what was going on; that's the thruth on it, mrs kelly; and, afther a dale of rampaging and scolding, may i niver see glory av' he didn't up wid his clenched fist, strik her in the face, and knock her down--all for one as 'av she wor a dhrunken blackguard at a fair!" "you didn't see that, biddy?" "no, ma'am--i didn't see it; how could i, through the door?--but i heerd it, plain enough. i heerd the poor cratur fall for dead amongst the tables and chairs--i did, mrs kelly--and i heerd the big blow smash agin her poor head, and down she wint--why wouldn't she? and he, the born ruffian, her own brother, the big blackguard, stricking at her wid all his force! well, wid that ma'am, i rushed into the room--at laist, i didn't rush in--for how could i, and the door locked?--but i knocked agin and agin, for i war afeard he would be murthering her out and out. so, i calls out, as loud as i could, as how miss anty war wanting in the kitchen: and wid that he come to the door, and unlocks it as bould as brass, and rushes out into the garden, saying as how miss anty war afther fainting. well, in course i goes in to her, where he had dragged her upon the sofa, and, thrue enough, she war faint indeed." "and, did she tell you, biddy, that her own brother had trated her that way?" "wait, mrs kelly, ma'am, till i tell yer how it all happened. when she comed to herself--and she warn't long coming round--she didn't say much, nor did i; for i didn't just like then to be saying much agin the masther, for who could know where his ears were?--perish his sowl, the blackguard!" "don't be cursing, biddy." "no, ma'am; only he must be cursed, sooner or later. well, when she comed to herself, she begged av' me to help her to bed, and she went up to her room, and laid herself down, and i thought to myself that at any rate it was all over for that night. when she war gone, the masther he soon come back into the house, and begun calling for the sperrits again, like mad; and terry said that when he tuk the biling wather into the room, mr barry war just like the divil--as he's painted, only for his ears. after that terry wint to bed; and i and judy weren't long afther him, for we didn't care to be sitting up alone wid him, and he mad dhrunk. so we turned in, and we were in bed maybe two hours or so, and fast enough, when down come the misthress--as pale as a sheet, wid a candle in her hand, and begged me, for dear life, to come up into her room to her, and so i did, in coorse. and then she tould me all--and, not contint with what he'd done down stairs, but the dhrunken ruffian must come up into her bed-room and swear the most dreadfullest things to her you iver heerd, mrs kelly. the words he war afther using, and the things he said, war most horrid; and miss anty wouldn't for her dear life, nor for all the money in dunmore, stop another night, nor another day in the house wid him." "but, is she much hurt, biddy?" "oh! her head's cut, dreadful, where she fell, ma'am: and he shuck the very life out of her poor carcase; so he did, mrs kelly, the ruffian!" "don't be cursing, i tell you, girl. and what is it your misthress is wishing to do now? did she tell you to come to me?" "no, ma'am; she didn't exactly tell me--only as she war saying that she wouldn't for anything be staying in the house with mr barry; and as she didn't seem to be knowing where she'd be going, and av' she be raally going to be married to mr martin--" "drat mr martin, you fool! did she tell you she wanted to come here?". "she didn't quite say as much as that. to tell the thruth, thin, it wor i that said it, and she didn't unsay it; so, wid that, i thought i'd come down here the first thing, and av' you, mrs kelly, wor thinking it right, we'd get her out of the house before the masther's stirring." the widow was a prudent woman, and she stood, for some time, considering; for she felt that, if she held out her hand to anty now, she must stick to her through and through in the battle which there would be between her and her brother; and there might be more plague than profit in that. but then, again, she was not at all so indifferent as she had appeared to be, to her favourite son's marrying four hundred a-year. she was angry at his thinking of such a thing without consulting her; she feared the legal difficulties he must encounter; and she didn't like the thoughts of its being said that her son had married an old fool, and cozened her out of her money. but still, four hundred a-year was a great thing; and anty was a good-tempered tractable young woman, of the right religion, and would not make a bad wife; and, on reconsideration, mrs kelly thought the thing wasn't to be sneezed at. then, again, she hated barry, and, having a high spirit, felt indignant that he should think of preventing her son from marrying his sister, if the two of them chose to do it; and she knew she'd be able, and willing enough, too, to tell him a bit of her mind, if there should be occasion. and lastly, and most powerfully of all, the woman's feeling came in to overcome her prudential scruples, and to open her heart and her house to a poor, kindly, innocent creature, ill-treated as anty lynch had been. she was making up her mind what to do, and determining to give battle royal to barry and all his satellites, on behalf of anty, when biddy interrupted her by saying,-- "i hope i warn't wrong, ma'am, in coming down and throubling you so arly? i thought maybe you'd be glad to befrind miss anty--seeing she and miss meg, and miss jane, is so frindly." "no, biddy;--for a wondher, you're right, this morning. mr barry won't be stirring yet?" "divil a stir, ma'am! the dhrunkenness won't be off him yet this long while. and will i go up, and be bringing miss anty down, ma'am?" "wait a while. sit to the fire there, and warm your shins. you're a good girl. i'll go and get on my shoes and stockings, and my cloak, and bonnet. i must go up wid you myself, and ask yer misthress down, as she should be asked. they'll be telling lies on her 'av she don't lave the house dacently, as she ought." "more power to you thin, mrs kelly, this blessed morning, for a kind good woman as you are, god bless you!" whimpered forth biddy, who, now that she had obtained her request, began to cry, and to stuff the corner of her petticoat into her eyes. "whist, you fool--whist," said the widow. "go and get up sally--you know where she sleeps--and tell her to put down a fire in the little parlour upstairs, and to get a cup of tay ready, and to have miss meg up. your misthress'll be the better of a quiet sleep afther the night she's had, and it'll be betther for her jist popping into miss meg's bed than getting between a pair of cowld sheets." these preparations met with biddy's entire approval, for she reiterated her blessings on the widow, as she went to announce all the news to sally and kate, while mrs kelly made such preparations as were fitting for a walk, at that early hour, up to dunmore house. they were not long before they were under weigh, but they did not reach the house quite so quickly as biddy had left it. mrs kelly had to pick her way in the half light, and observed that "she'd never been up to the house since old simeon lynch built it, and when the stones were laying for it, she didn't think she ever would; but one never knowed what changes might happen in this world." they were soon in the house, for judy was up to let them in; and though she stared when she saw mrs kelly, she merely curtsied, and said nothing. the girl went upstairs first, with the candle, and mrs kelly followed, very gently, on tiptoe. she need not have been so careful to avoid waking barry, for, had a drove of oxen been driven upstairs, it would not have roused him. however, up she crept,--her thick shoes creaking on every stair,--and stood outside the door, while biddy went in to break the news of her arrival. anty was still asleep, but it did not take much to rouse her; and she trembled in her bed, when, on her asking what was the matter, mrs kelly popped her bonnet inside the door, and said, "it's only me, my dear. mrs kelly, you know, from the inn," and then she very cautiously insinuated the rest of her body into the room, as though she thought that barry was asleep under the bed, and she was afraid of treading on one of his stray fingers. "it's only me, my dear. biddy's been down to me, like a good girl; and i tell you what--this is no place for you, just at present, miss anty; not till such time as things is settled a little. so i'm thinking you'd betther be slipping down wid me to the inn there, before your brother's up. there's nobody in it, not a sowl, only meg, and jane, and me, and we'll make you snug enough between us, never fear." "do, miss anty, dear do, darling," added biddy. "it'll be a dale betther for you than waiting here to be batthered and bruised, and, perhaps, murthered out and out." "hush, biddy--don't be saying such things," said the widow, who had a great idea of carrying on the war on her own premises, but who felt seriously afraid of barry now that she was in his house, "don't be saying such things, to frighthen her. but you'll be asier there than here," she continued, to anty; "and there's nothin like having things asy. so, get up alanna [ ], and we'll have you warm and snug down there in no time." [footnote : alanna--my child] anty did not want much persuading. she was soon induced to get up and dress herself, to put on her cloak and bonnet, and hurry off with the widow, before the people of dunmore should be up to look at her going through the town to the inn; while biddy was left to pack up such things as were necessary for her mistress' use, and enjoined to hurry down with them to the inn as quick as she could; for, as the widow said, "there war no use in letting every idle bosthoon [ ] in the place see her crossing with a lot of baggage, and set them all asking the where and the why and the wherefore; though, for the matther of that, they'd all hear it soon enough." [footnote : bosthoon--a worthless fellow] to tell the truth, mrs kelly's courage waned from the moment of her leaving her own door, and it did not return till she felt herself within it again. indeed, as she was leaving the gate of dunmore house, with anty on her arm, she was already beginning to repent what she was doing; for there were idlers about, and she felt ashamed of carrying off the young heiress. but these feelings vanished the moment she had crossed her own sill. when she had once got anty home, it was all right. the widow kelly seldom went out into the world; she seldom went anywhere except to mass; and, when out, she was a very modest and retiring old lady; but she could face the devil, if necessary, across her own counter. and so anty was rescued, for a while, from her brother's persecution. this happened on the morning on which martin and lord ballindine met together at the lawyer's, when the deeds were prepared which young kelly's genuine honesty made him think necessary before he eloped with old sim lynch's heiress. he would have been rather surprised to hear, at that moment, that his mother had been before him, and carried off his bride elect to the inn! anty was soon domesticated. the widow, very properly, wouldn't let her friends, meg and jane, ask her any questions at present. sally had made, on the occasion, a pot of tea sufficient to supply the morning wants of half a regiment, and had fully determined that it should not be wasted. the kelly girls were both up, and ready to do anything for their friend; so they got her to take a little of sally's specific, and put her into a warm bed to sleep, quiet and secure from any interruption. while her guest was sleeping, the widow made up her mind that her best and safest course, for the present, would be, as she expressed it to her daughter, meg, "to keep her toe in her pump, and say nothing to nobody." "anty can just stay quiet and asy," she continued, "till we see what master barry manes to be afther; he'll find it difficult enough to move her out of this, i'm thinking, and i doubt his trying. as to money matthers, i'll neither meddle nor make, nor will you, mind; so listen to that, girls; and as to moylan, he's a dacent quiet poor man--but it's bad thrusting any one. av' he's her agent, however, i s'pose he'll look afther the estate; only, barry'll be smashing the things up there at the house yonder in his anger and dhrunken fits, and it's a pity the poor girl's property should go to rack. but he's such a born divil, she's lucky to be out of his clutches alive; though, thank the almighty, that put a good roof over the lone widow this day, he can't clutch her here. wouldn't i like to see him come to the door and ax for her! and he can't smash the acres, nor the money they say mulholland has, at tuam; and faix, av' he does any harm up there at the house, shure enough anty can make him pay for--it every pot and pan of it--out of his share, and she'll do it, too--av' she's said by me. but mind, i'll neither meddle nor make; neither do you, and then we're safe, and anty too. and martin'll be here soon--i wondher what good dublin'll do him?--they might have the repale without him, i suppose?--and when he's here, why, av' he's minded to marry her, and she's plased, why, father geoghegan may come down, and do it before the whole counthry, and who's ashamed? but there'll be no huggery-muggery, and schaming; that is, av' they're said by me. faix, i'd like to know who she's to be afeared of, and she undher this roof! i s'pose martin ain't fool enough to care for what such a fellow as barry lynch can do or say--and he with all the kellys to back him; as shure they would, and why not, from the lord down? not that i recommend the match; i think martin a dale betther off as he is, for he's wanting nothing, and he's his own industhry--and, maybe, a handful of money besides. but, as for being afeard--i niver heard yet that a kelly need be afeard of a lynch in dunmore." in this manner did mrs kelly express the various thoughts that ran through her head, as she considered anty's affairs; and if we could analyse the good lady's mind, we should probably find that the result of her reflections was a pleasing assurance that she could exercise the christian virtues of charity and hospitality towards anty, and, at the same time, secure her son's wishes and welfare, without subjecting her own name to any obloquy, or putting herself to any loss or inconvenience. she determined to put no questions to anty, nor even to allude to her brother, unless spoken to on the subject; but, at the same time, she stoutly resolved to come to no terms with barry, and to defy him to the utmost, should he attempt to invade her in her own territories. after a sound sleep anty got up, much strengthened and refreshed, and found the two kelly girls ready to condole with, or congratulate her, according to her mood and spirits. in spite of their mother's caution, they were quite prepared for gossiping, as soon as anty showed the slightest inclination that way; and, though she at first was afraid to talk about her brother, and was even, from kindly feeling, unwilling to do so, the luxury of such an opportunity of unrestrained confidence overcame her; and, before the three had been sitting together for a couple of hours, she had described the whole interview, as well as the last drunken midnight visit of barry's to her own bed-room, which, to her imagination, was the most horrible of all the horrors of the night. poor anty. she cried vehemently that morning--more in sorrow for her brother, than in remembrance of her own fears, as she told her friends how he had threatened to shut her up in a mad-house, and then to murder her, unless she promised him not to marry; and when she described how brutally he had struck her, and how, afterwards, he had crept to her room, with his red eyes and swollen face, in the dead of the night, and, placing his hot mouth close to her ears, had dreadfully sworn that she should die, if she thought of martin kelly as her husband, she trembled as though she was in an ague fit. the girls said all they could to comfort her, and they succeeded in a great degree; but they could not bring her to talk of martin. she shuddered whenever his name was mentioned, and they began to fear that barry's threat would have the intended effect, and frighten her from the match. however, they kindly talked of other things--of how impossible it was that she should go back to dunmore house, and how comfortable and snug they would make her at the inn, till she got a home for herself; of what she should do, and of all their little household plans together; till anty, when she could forget her brother's threats for a time, seemed to be more comfortable and happy than she had been for years. in vain did the widow that morning repeatedly invoke meg and jane, first one and then the other, to assist in her commercial labours. in vain were sally and kate commissioned to bring them down. if, on some urgent behest, one of them darted down to mix a dandy of punch, or weigh a pound of sugar, when the widow was imperatively employed elsewhere, she was upstairs again, before her mother could look about her; and, at last, mrs kelly was obliged to content herself with the reflection that girls would be girls, and that it was "nathural and right they shouldn't wish to lave anty alone the first morning, and she sthrange to the place." at five o'clock, the widow, as was her custom, went up to her dinner; and meg was then obliged to come down and mind the shop, till her sister, having dined, should come down and relieve guard. she had only just ensconced herself behind the counter, when who should walk into the shop but barry lynch. had meg seen an ogre, or the enemy of all mankind himself, she could not, at the moment, have been more frightened; and she stood staring at him, as if the sudden loss of the power of motion alone prevented her from running away. "i want to see mrs kelly," said barry; "d'ye hear? i want to see your mother; go and tell her." but we must go back, and see how mr lynch had managed to get up, and pass his morning. vii. mr barry lynch makes a morning call it was noon before barry first opened his eyes, and discovered the reality of the headache which the night's miserable and solitary debauch had entailed on him. for, in spite of the oft-repeated assurance that there is not a headache in a hogshead of it, whiskey punch will sicken one, as well as more expensive and more fashionable potent drinks. barry was very sick when he first awoke; and very miserable, too; for vague recollections of what he had done, and doubtful fears of what he might have done, crowded on him. a drunken man always feels more anxiety about what he has not done in his drunkenness, than about what he has; and so it was with barry. he remembered having used rough language with his sister, but he could not remember how far he had gone. he remembered striking her, and he knew that the servant had come in; but he could not remember how, or with what he had struck her, or whether he had done so more than once, or whether she had been much hurt. he could not even think whether he had seen her since or not; he remembered being in the garden after she had fallen, and drinking again after that, but nothing further. surely, he could not have killed her? he could not even have hurt her very much, or he would have heard of it before this. if anything serious had happened, the servants would have taken care that he should have heard enough about it ere now. then he began to think what o'clock it could be, and that it must be late, for his watch was run down; the general fate of drunkards, who are doomed to utter ignorance of the hour at which they wake to the consciousness of their miserable disgrace. he feared to ring the bell for the servant; he was afraid to ask the particulars of last night's work; so he turned on his pillow, and tried to sleep again. but in vain. if he closed his eyes, anty was before them, and he was dreaming, half awake, that he was trying to stifle her, and that she was escaping, to tell all the world of his brutality and cruelty. this happened over and over again; for when he dozed but for a minute, the same thing re-occurred, as vividly as before, and made even his waking consciousness preferable to the visions of his disturbed slumbers. so, at last, he roused himself, and endeavoured to think what he should do. whilst he was sitting up in his bed, and reflecting that he must undress himself before he could dress himself--for he had tumbled into bed with most of his clothes on--terry's red head appeared at the door, showing an anxiety, on the part of its owner, to see if "the masther" was awake, but to take no step to bring about such a state, if, luckily, he still slept. "what's the time, terry?" said lynch, frightened, by his own state, into rather more courtesy than he usually displayed to those dependent on him. "well then, i b'lieve it's past one, yer honer." "the d----l it is! i've such a headache. i was screwed last night; eh, terry?" "i b'lieve yer war, yer honer." "what o'clock was it when i went to bed?" "well then, i don't rightly know, mr barry; it wasn't only about ten when i tuk in the last hot wather, and i didn't see yer honer afther that." "well; tell miss anty to make me a cup of tea, and do you bring it up here." this was a feeler. if anything was the matter with anty, terry would be sure to tell him now; but he only said, "yis, yer honer," and retreated. barry now comforted himself with the reflection that there was no great harm done, and that though, certainly, there had been some row between him and anty, it would probably blow over; and then, also, he began to reflect that, perhaps, what he had said and done, would frighten her out of her match with kelly. in the meantime. terry went into the kitchen, with the news that "masther was awake, and axing for tay." biddy had considered herself entitled to remain all the morning at the inn, having, in a manner, earned a right to be idle for that day, by her activity during the night; and the other girl had endeavoured to enjoy the same luxury, for she had been found once or twice during the morning, ensconced in the kitchen, under sally's wing; but mrs kelly had hunted her back, to go and wait on her master, giving her to understand that she would not receive the whole household. "and ye're afther telling him where miss anty's gone, terry?" inquired the injured fair one. "divil a tell for me thin,--shure, he may find it out hisself, widout my telling him." "faix, it's he'll be mad thin, when he finds she's taken up with the likes of the widdy kelly!" "and ain't she betther there, nor being murthered up here? he'd be killing her out and out some night." "well, but terry, he's not so bad as all that; there's worse than him, and ain't it rasonable he shouldn't be quiet and asy, and she taking up with the likes of martin kelly?" "may be so; but wouldn't she be a dale happier with martin than up here wid him? any ways it don't do angering him, so, get him the tay, judy." it was soon found that this was easier said than done, for anty, in her confusion, had taken away the keys in her pocket, and there was no tea to be had. the bell was now rung, and, as barry had gradually re-assured himself, rung violently; and terry, when he arrived distracted at the bed-room door, was angrily asked by his thirsty master why the tea didn't appear? the truth was now obliged to come out, or at any rate, part of it: so terry answered, that miss anty was out, and had the keys with her. miss anty was so rarely out, that barry instantly trembled again. had she gone to a magistrate, to swear against him? had she run away from him? had she gone off with martin? "where the d----l's she gone, terry?" said he, in his extremity. "faix, yer honour, thin, i'm not rightly knowing; but i hear tell she's down at the widow kelly's." "who told you, you fool?" "well thin, yer honer, it war judy." "and where's judy?" and it ended in judy's being produced, and the two of them, at length, explained to their master, that the widow had come up early in the morning and fetched her away; and judy swore "that not a know she knowed how it had come about, or what had induced the widow to come, or miss anty to go, or anything about it; only, for shure, miss anty was down there, snug enough, with miss jane and miss meg; and the widdy war in her tantrums, and wouldn't let ony dacent person inside the house-door--barring biddy. and that wor all she knowed av' she wor on the book." the secret was now out. anty had left him, and put herself under the protection of martin kelly's mother; had absolutely defied him, after all his threats of the preceding night. what should he do now! all his hatred for her returned again, all his anxious wishes that she might be somehow removed from his path, as an obnoxious stumbling-block. a few minutes ago, he was afraid he had murdered her, and he now almost wished that he had done so. he finished dressing himself, and then sat down in the parlour, which had been the scene of his last night's brutality, to concoct fresh schemes for the persecution of his sister. in the meantime, terry rushed down to the inn, demanding the keys, and giving mrs kelly a fearful history of his master's anger. this she very wisely refrained from retailing, but, having procured the keys, gave them to the messenger, merely informing him, that "thanks to god's kind protection, miss anty was tolerably well over the last night's work, and he might tell his master so." this message terry thought it wisest to suppress, so he took the breakfast up in silence, and his master asked no more questions. he was very sick and pale, and could eat nothing; but he drank a quantity of tea, and a couple of glasses of brandy-and-water, and then he felt better, and again began to think what measures he should take, what scheme he could concoct, for stopping this horrid marriage, and making his sister obedient to his wishes. "confound her," he said, almost aloud, as he thought, with bitter vexation of spirit, of her unincumbered moiety of the property, "confound them all!" grinding his teeth, and meaning by the "all" to include with anty his father, and every one who might have assisted his father in making the odious will, as well as his own attorney in tuam, who wouldn't find out some legal expedient by which he could set it aside. and then, as he thought of the shameful persecution of which he was the victim, he kicked the fender with impotent violence, and, as the noise of the falling fire irons added to his passion, he reiterated his kicks till the unoffending piece of furniture was smashed; and then with manly indignation he turned away to the window. but breaking the furniture, though it was what the widow predicted of him, wouldn't in any way mend matters, or assist him in getting out of his difficulties. what was he to do? he couldn't live on £ a-year; he couldn't remain in dunmore, to be known by every one as martin kelly's brother-in-law; he couldn't endure the thoughts of dividing the property with such "a low-born huxtering blackguard", as he called him over and over again. he couldn't stay there, to be beaten by him in the course of legal proceedings, or to give him up amicable possession of what ought to have been--what should have been his--what he looked upon as his own. he came back, and sat down again over the fire, contemplating the debris of the fender, and turning all these miserable circumstances over in his mind. after remaining there till five o'clock, and having fortified himself with sundry glasses of wine, he formed his resolution. he would make one struggle more; he would first go down to the widow, and claim his sister, as a poor simple young woman, inveigled away from her natural guardian; and, if this were unsuccessful, as he felt pretty sure it would be, he would take proceedings to prove her a lunatic. if he failed, he might still delay, and finally put off the marriage; and he was sure he could get some attorney to put him in the way of doing it, and to undertake the work for him. his late father's attorney had been a fool, in not breaking the will, or at any rate trying it, and he would go to daly. young daly, he knew, was a sharp fellow, and wanted practice, and this would just suit him. and then, if at last he found that nothing could be done by this means, if his sister and the property _must_ go from him, he would compromise the matter with the bridegroom, he would meet him half way, and, raising what money he could on his share of the estate, give leg bail to his creditors, and go to some place abroad, where tidings of dunmore would never reach him. what did it matter what people said? he should never hear it. he would make over the whole property to kelly, on getting a good life income out of it. martin was a prudent fellow, and would jump at such a plan. as he thought of this, he even began to wish that it was done; he pictured to himself the easy pleasures, the card-tables, the billiard-rooms, and cafés of some calais or boulogne; pleasures which he had never known, but which had been so glowingly described to him; and he got almost cheerful again as he felt that, in any way, there might be bright days yet in store for him. he would, however, still make the last effort for the whole stake. it would be time enough to give in, and make the best of a _pis aller_ [ ], when he was forced to do so. if beaten, he would make use of martin kelly; but he would first try if he couldn't prove him to be a swindling adventurer, and his sister to be an idiot. [footnote : pis aller--(french) last resort] much satisfied at having come to this salutary resolution, he took up his hat, and set out for the widow's, in order to put into operation the first part of the scheme. he rather wished it over, as he knew that mrs kelly was no coward, and had a strong tongue in her head. however, it must be done, and the sooner the better. he first of all looked at himself in his glass, to see that his appearance was sufficiently haughty and indignant, and, as he flattered himself, like that of a gentleman singularly out of his element in such a village as dunmore; and then, having ordered his dinner to be ready on his return, he proceeded on his voyage for the recovery of his dear sister. entering the shop, he communicated his wishes to meg, in the manner before described; and, while she was gone on her errand, he remained alone there, lashing his boot, in the most approved, but, still, in a very common-place manner. "oh, mother!" said meg, rushing into the room where her mother, and jane, and anty, were at dinner, "there's barry lynch down in the shop, wanting you." "oh my!" said jane. "now sit still, anty dear, and he can't come near you. shure, he'll niver be afther coming upstairs, will he, meg?" anty, who had begun to feel quite happy in her new quarters, and among her kind friends, turned pale, and dropped her knife and fork. "what'll i do, mrs kelly?" she said, as she saw the old lady complacently get up. "you're not going to give me up? you'll not go to him?" "faith i will thin, my dear," replied the widow; "never fear else--i'll go to him, or any one else that sends to me in a dacent manner. may-be it's wanting tay in the shop he is. i'll go to him immediately. but, as for giving you up, i mane you to stay here, till you've a proper home of your own; and barry lynch has more in him than i think, av' he makes me alter my mind. set down quiet, meg, and get your dinner." and the widow got up, and proceeded to the shop. the girls were all in commotion. one went to the door at the top of the stairs, to overhear as much as possible of what was to take place; and the other clasped anty's hand, to re-assure her, having first thrown open the door of one of the bed-rooms, that she might have a place of retreat in the event of the enemy succeeding in pushing his way upstairs. "your humble sarvant, mr lynch," said the widow, entering the shop and immediately taking up a position of strength in her accustomed place behind the counter. "were you wanting me, this evening?" and she took up the knife with which she cut penn'orths of tobacco for her customers, and hitting the counter with its wooden handle looked as hard as copper, and as bold as brass. "yes, mrs kelly," said barry, with as much dignity as he could muster, "i do want to speak to you. my sister has foolishly left her home this morning, and my servants tell me she is under your roof. is this true?" "is it anty? indeed she is thin: ating her dinner, upstairs, this very moment;" and she rapped the counter again, and looked her foe in the face. "then, with your leave, mrs kelly, i'll step up, and speak to her. i suppose she's alone?" "indeed she ain't thin, for she's the two girls ating wid her, and myself too, barring that i'm just come down at your bidding. no; we're not so bad as that, to lave her all alone; and as for your seeing her, mr lynch, i don't think she's exactly wishing it at present; so, av' you've a message, i'll take it." "you don't mean to say that miss lynch--my sister--is in this inn, and that you intend to prevent my seeing her? you'd better take care what you're doing, mrs kelly. i don't want to say anything harsh at present, but you'd better take care what you're about with me and my family, or you'll find yourself in a scrape that you little bargain for." "i'll take care of myself, mr barry; never fear for me, darling; and, what's more, i'll take care of your sister, too. and, to give you a bit of my mind--she'll want my care, i'm thinking, while you're in the counthry." "i've not come here to listen to impertinence, mrs kelly, and i will not do so. in fact, it is very unwillingly that i came into this house at all." "oh, pray lave it thin, pray lave it! we can do without you." "perhaps you will have the civility to listen to me. it is very unwillingly, i say, that i have come here at all; but my sister, who is, unfortunately, not able to judge for herself, is here. how she came here i don't pretend to say--" "oh, she walked," said the widow, interrupting him; "she walked, quiet and asy, out of your door, and into mine. but that's a lie, for it was out of her own. she didn't come through the kay-hole, nor yet out of the window." "i'm saying nothing about how she came here, but here she is, poor creature!" "poor crature, indeed! she was like to be a poor crature, av' she stayed up there much longer." "here she is, i say, and i consider it my duty to look after her. you cannot but be aware, mrs kelly, that this is not a fit place for miss lynch. you must be aware that a road-side public-house, however decent, or a village shop, however respectable, is not the proper place for my sister; and, though i may not yet be legally her guardian, i am her brother, and am in charge of her property, and i insist on seeing her. it will be at your peril if you prevent me." "have you done, now, misther barry?" "that's what i've got to say; and i think you've sense enough to see the folly--not to speak of the danger, of preventing me from seeing my sister." "that's your say, misther lynch; and now, listen to mine. av' miss anty was wishing to see you, you'd be welcome upstairs, for her sake; but she ain't, so there's an end of that; for not a foot will you put inside this, unless you're intending to force your way, and i don't think you'll be for trying that. and as to bearing the danger, why, i'll do my best; and, for all the harm you're likely to do me--that's by fair manes,--i don't think i'll be axing any one to help me out of it. so, good bye t' ye, av' you've no further commands, for i didn't yet well finish the bit i was ating." "and you mean to say, mrs kelly, you'll take upon yourself to prevent my seeing my sister?" "indeed i do; unless she was wishing it, as well as yourself; and no mistake." "and you'll do that, knowing, as you do, that the unfortunate young woman is of weak mind, and unable to judge for herself, and that i'm her brother, and her only living relative and guardian?" "all blathershin, masther barry," said the uncourteous widow, dropping the knife from her hand, and smacking her fingers: "as for wake mind, it's sthrong enough to take good care of herself and her money too, now she's once out of dunmore house. there many waker than anty lynch, though few have had worse tratement to make them so. as for guardian, i'm thinking it's long since she was of age, and, av' her father didn't think she wanted one, when he made his will, you needn't bother yourself about it, now she's no one to plaze only herself. and as for brother, masther barry, why didn't you think of that before you struck her, like a brute, as you are--before you got dhrunk, like a baste, and then threatened to murdher her? why didn't you think about brother and sisther before you thried to rob the poor _wake_ crature, as you call her; and when you found she wasn't quite wake enough, as you call it, swore to have her life, av' she wouldn't act at your bidding? that's being a brother and a guardian, is it, masther barry? talk to me of danger, you ruffian," continued the widow, with her back now thoroughly up; "you'd betther look to yourself, or i know who'll be in most danger. av' it wasn't the throuble it'd be to anty,--and, god knows, she's had throubles enough, i'd have had her before the magisthrates before this, to tell of what was done last night up at the house, yonder. but mind, she can do it yet, and, av' you don't take yourself very asy, she shall. danger, indeed! a robber and ruffian like you, to talk of danger to me--and his _dear_ sisther, too, and aftimer trying his best, last night, to murdher her!" these last words, with a long drawl on the word _dear_, were addressed rather to the crowd, whom the widow's loud voice had attracted into the open shop, than to barry, who stood, during this tirade, half stupefied with rage, and half frightened, at the open attack made on him with reference to his ill-treatment of anty. however, he couldn't pull in his horns now, and he was obliged, in self-defence, to brazen it out. "very well, mrs kelly--you shall pay for this impudence, and that dearly. you've invented these lies, as a pretext for getting my sister and her property into your hands!" "lies!" screamed the widow; "av' you say lies to me agin, in this house, i'll smash the bones of ye myself, with the broom-handle. lies, indeed! and from you, barry lynch, the biggest liar in all connaught--not to talk of robber and ruffian! you'd betther take yourself out of that, fair and asy, while you're let. you'll find you'll have the worst of it, av' you come rampaging here wid me, my man;" and she turned round to the listening crowd for sympathy, which those who dared were not slow in giving her. "and that's thrue for you, mrs kelly, ma'am," exclaimed one. "it's a shame for him to come storming here, agin a lone widdy, so it is," said a virago, who seemed well able, like the widow herself, to take her own part. "who iver knew any good of a lynch--barring miss anty herself?" argued a third. "the kellys is always too good for the likes of them," put in a fourth, presuming that the intended marriage was the subject immediately in discourse. "faix, mr martin's too good for the best of 'em," declared another. "niver mind mr martin, boys," said the widow, who wasn't well pleased to have her son's name mentioned in the affair--"it's no business of his, one way or another; he ain't in dunmore, nor yet nigh it. miss anty lynch has come to me for protection; and, by the blessed virgin, she shall have it, as long as my name's mary kelly, and i ain't like to change it; so that's the long and short of it, barry lynch. so you may go and get dhrunk agin as soon as you plaze, and bate and bang terry rooney, or judy smith; only i think either on 'em's more than a match for you." "then i tell you, mrs kelly," replied barry, who was hardly able to get in a word, "that you'll hear more about it. steps are now being taken to prove miss lynch a lunatic, as every one here knows she unfortunately is; and, as sure as you stand there, you'll have to answer for detaining her; and you're much mistaken if you think you'll get hold of her property, even though she were to marry your son, for, i warn you, she's not her own mistress, or able to be so." "drat your impudence, you low-born ruffian," answered his opponent; "who cares for her money? it's not come to that yet, that a kelly is wanting to schame money out of a lynch." "i've nothing more to say, since you insist on keeping possession of my sister," and barry turned to the door. "but you'll be indicted for conspiracy, so you'd better be prepared." "conspiracy, is it?" said one of mrs kelly's admirers; "maybe, ma'am, he'll get you put in along with dan and father tierney, god bless them! it's conspiracy they're afore the judges for." barry now took himself off, before hearing the last of the widow's final peal of thunder. "get out wid you! you're no good, and never will be. an' it wasn't for the young woman upstairs, i'd have the coat off your back, and your face well mauled, before i let you out of the shop!" and so ended the interview, in which the anxious brother can hardly be said to have been triumphant, or successful. the widow, on the other hand, seemed to feel that she had acquitted herself well, and that she had taken the orphan's part, like a woman, a christian, and a mother; and merely saying, with a kind of inward chuckle, "come to me, indeed, with his roguery! he's got the wrong pig by the ear!" she walked off, to join the more timid trio upstairs, one of whom was speedily sent down, to see that business did not go astray. and then she gave a long account of the interview to anty and meg, which was hardly necessary, as they had heard most of what had passed. the widow however was not to know that, and she was very voluble in her description of barry's insolence, and of the dreadfully abusive things he had said to her--how he had given her the lie, and called her out of her name. she did not, however, seem to be aware that she had, herself, said a word which was more than necessarily violent; and assured anty over and over again, that, out of respect to her feelings, and because the man was, after all, her brother, she had refrained from doing and saying what she would have done and said, had she been treated in such a manner by anybody else. she seemed, however, in spite of the ill-treatment which she had undergone, to be in a serene and happy state of mind. she shook anty's two hands in hers, and told her to make herself "snug and asy where she was, like a dear girl, and to fret for nothing, for no one could hurt or harum her, and she undher mary kelly's roof." then she wiped her face in her apron, set to at her dinner; and even went so far as to drink a glass of porter, a thing she hadn't done, except on a sunday, since her eldest daughter's marriage. barry lynch sneaked up the town, like a beaten dog. he felt that the widow had had the best of it, and he also felt that every one in dunmore was against him. it was however only what he had expected, and calculated upon; and what should he care for the dunmore people? they wouldn't rise up and kill him, nor would they be likely even to injure him. let them hate on, he would follow his own plan. as he came near the house gate, there was sitting, as usual, jacky, the fool. "well, yer honer, masther barry," said jacky, "don't forget your poor fool this blessed morning!" "away with you! if i see you there again, i'll have you in bridewell, you blackguard." "ah, you're joking, masther barry. you wouldn't like to be afther doing that. so yer honer's been down to the widdy's? that's well; it's a fine thing to see you on good terms, since you're soon like to be so sib. well, there an't no betther fellow, from this to galway, than martin kelly, that's one comfort, masther barry." barry looked round for something wherewith to avenge himself for this, but jacky was out of his reach; so he merely muttered some customary but inaudible curses, and turned into the house. he immediately took pen, ink, and paper, and, writing the following note dispatched it to tuam, by terry, mounted for the occasion, and directed on no account to return without an answer. if mr daly wasn't at home, he was to wait for his return; that is, if he was expected home that night. dunmore house, feb. . my dear sir, i wish to consult you on legal business, which will _bear no delay_. the subject is of considerable importance, and i am induced to think it will be more ably handled by you than by mr blake, my father's man of business. there is a bed at your service at dunmore house, and i shall be glad to see you to dinner to-morrow. i am, dear sir, your faithful servant, barry lynch. p.s.--you had better not mention in tuam that you are coming to me,--not that my business is one that i intend to keep secret. j. daly, esq., solicitor, tuam. in about two hours' time, terry had put the above into the hands of the person for whom it was intended, and in two more he had brought back an answer, saying that mr daly would be at dunmore house to dinner on the following day. and terry, on his journey there and back, did not forget to tell everyone he saw, from whom he came, and to whom he was going. viii. mr martin kelly returns to dunmore we will now return to martin kelly. i have before said that as soon as he had completed his legal business,--namely, his instructions for the settlement of anty lynch's property, respecting which he and lord ballindine had been together to the lawyer's in clare street,--he started for home, by the ballinasloe canal-boat, and reached that famous depôt of the fleecy tribe without adventure. i will not attempt to describe the tedium of that horrid voyage, for it has been often described before; and to martin, who was in no ways fastidious, it was not so unendurable as it must always be to those who have been accustomed to more rapid movement. nor yet will i attempt to put on record the miserable resources of those, who, doomed to a twenty hours' sojourn in one of these floating prisons, vainly endeavour to occupy or amuse their minds. but i will advise any, who from ill-contrived arrangements, or unforeseen misfortune, [ ] may find themselves on board the ballinasloe canal-boat, to entertain no such vain dream. the _vis inertiæ_ [ ] of patient endurance, is the only weapon of any use in attempting to overcome the lengthened ennui of this most tedious transit. reading is out of the question. i have tried it myself, and seen others try it, but in vain. the sense of the motion, almost imperceptible, but still perceptible; the noises above you; the smells around you; the diversified crowd, of which you are a part; at one moment the heat this crowd creates; at the next, the draught which a window just opened behind your ears lets in on you; the fumes of punch; the snores of the man under the table; the noisy anger of his neighbour, who reviles the attendant sylph; the would-be witticisms of a third, who makes continual amorous overtures to the same overtasked damsel, notwithstanding the publicity of his situation; the loud complaints of the old lady near the door, who cannot obtain the gratuitous kindness of a glass of water; and the baby-soothing lullabies of the young one, who is suckling her infant under your elbow. these things alike prevent one from reading, sleeping, or thinking. all one can do is to wait till the long night gradually wears itself away, and reflect that, time and the hour run through the longest day [ ]. [footnote : of course it will be remembered that this was written before railways in ireland had been constructed. (original footnote by trollope)] [footnote : vis inertiae--(latin) the power of inertia] [footnote : _macbeth_, act i, sc. : "come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day."] i hardly know why a journey in one of these boats should be much more intolerable than travelling either outside or inside a coach; for, either in or on the coach, one has less room for motion, and less opportunity of employment. i believe the misery of the canal-boat chiefly consists in a pre-conceived and erroneous idea of its capabilities. one prepares oneself for occupation--an attempt is made to achieve actual comfort--and both end in disappointment; the limbs become weary with endeavouring to fix themselves in a position of repose, and the mind is fatigued more by the search after, than the want of, occupation. martin, however, made no complaints, and felt no misery. he made great play at the eternal half-boiled leg of mutton, floating in a bloody sea of grease and gravy, which always comes on the table three hours after the departure from porto bello. he, and others equally gifted with the _dura ilia messorum_ [ ], swallowed huge collops [ ] of the raw animal, and vast heaps of yellow turnips, till the pity with which a stranger would at first be inclined to contemplate the consumer of such unsavoury food, is transferred to the victim who has to provide the meal at two shillings a head. neither love nor drink--and martin had, on the previous day, been much troubled with both--had affected his appetite; and he ate out his money with the true persevering prudence of a connaught man, who firmly determines not to be done. [footnote : dura ilia messorum--(latin) the strong intestines of reapers--a quotation from horace's _epodes_ iii. trollope was an accomplished latin scholar and later wrote a _life of cicero_. his books are full of quotations from many roman writers.] [footnote : collops--portions of food or slices of meat] he was equally diligent at breakfast; and, at last, reached ballinasloe, at ten o'clock the morning after he had left dublin, in a flourishing condition. from thence he travelled, by bianconi's car, as far as tuam, and when there he went at once to the hotel, to get a hack car to take him home to dunmore. in the hotel yard he found a car already prepared for a journey; and, on giving his order for a similar vehicle for his own use, was informed, by the disinterested ostler, that the horse then being harnessed, was to take mr daly, the attorney, to tuam, [ ] and that probably that gentleman would not object to join him, martin, in the conveyance. martin, thinking it preferable to pay fourpence rather than sixpence a mile for his jaunt, acquiesced in this arrangement, and, as he had a sort of speaking acquaintance with mr daly, whom he rightly imagined would not despise the economy which actuated himself, he had his carpet-bag put into the well of the car, and, placing himself on it, he proceeded to the attorney's door. [footnote : the text says "tuam," but the destination is really dunmore.] he soon made the necessary explanation to mr daly, who made no objection to the proposal; and he also throwing a somewhat diminutive carpet-bag into the same well, placed himself alongside of our friend, and they proceeded on their journey, with the most amicable feelings towards each other. they little guessed, either the one or the other, as they commenced talking on the now all-absorbing subject of the great trial, that they were going to dunmore for the express object--though not with the expressed purpose, of opposing each other--that daly was to be employed to suggest any legal means for robbing martin of a wife, and anty of her property; and that martin was going home with the fixed determination of effecting a wedding, to prevent which his companion was, in consideration of liberal payment, to use all his ingenuity and energy. when they had discussed o'connel and his companions, and their chances of liberation for four or five miles, and when martin had warmly expressed his assurance that no jury could convict the saviours of their country, and daly had given utterance to his legal opinion that saltpetre couldn't save them from two years in newgate, martin asked his companion whether he was going beyond dunmore that night? "no, indeed, then," replied daly; "i have a client there now--a thing i never had in that part of the country before yesterday." "we'll have you at the inn, then, i suppose, mr daly?" "faith, you won't, for i shall dine on velvet. my new client is one of the right sort, that can feed as well as fee a lawyer. i've got my dinner, and bed tonight, whatever else i may get." "there's not many of that sort in dunmore thin; any way, there weren't when i left it, a week since. whose house are you going to, mr daly, av' it's not impertinent asking?" "barry lynch's." "barry lynch's!" re-echoed martin; "the divil you are! i wonder what's in the wind with him now. i thought blake always did his business?" "the devil a know i know, so i can't tell you; and if i did, i shouldn't, you may be sure. but a man that's just come to his property always wants a lawyer; and many a one, besides barry lynch, ain't satisfied without two." "well, any way, i wish you joy of your new client. i'm not over fond of him myself, i'll own; but then there were always rasons why he and i shouldn't pull well together. barry's always been a dale too high for me, since he was at school with the young lord. well, good evening, mr daly. never mind time car coming down the street, as you're at your friend's gate," and martin took his bag on his arm, and walked down to the inn. though martin couldn't guess, as he walked quickly down the street, what barry lynch could want with young daly, who was beginning to be known as a clever, though not over-scrupulous practitioner, he felt a presentiment that it must have some reference to anty and himself, and this made him rather uncomfortable. could barry have heard of his engagement? had anty repented of her bargain, during his short absence? had that old reptile moylan, played him false, and spoilt his game? "that must be it," said martin to himself, "and it's odd but i'll be even with the schamer, yet; only she's so asy frightened!--av' she'd the laist pluck in life, it's little i'd care for moylan or barry either." this little soliloquy brought him to the inn door. some of the tribe of loungers who were always hanging about the door, and whom in her hatred of idleness the widow would one day rout from the place, and, in her charity, feed the next, had seen martin coming down the street, and had given intelligence in the kitchen. as he walked in, therefore, at the open door, meg and jane were ready to receive him in the passage. their looks were big with some important news. martin soon saw that they had something to tell. "well, girls," he said, as he chucked his bag and coat to sally, "for heaven's sake get me something to ate, for i'm starved. what's the news at dunmore?" "it's you should have the news thin," said one, "and you just from dublin." "there's lots of news there, then; i'll tell you when i've got my dinner. how's the ould lady?" and he stepped on, as if to pass by them, upstairs. "stop a moment, martin," said meg; "don't be in a hurry; there's some one there." "who's there? is it a stranger?" "why, then, it is, and it isn't," said jane. "but you don't ask afther the young lady!" said her sister. "may i be hanged thin, av' i know what the two of ye are afther! is there people in both the rooms? come, girls, av' ye've anything to tell, why don't you out wid it and have done? i suppose i can go into the bed-room, at any rate?" "aisy, martin, and i'll tell you. anty's in the parlour." "in the parlour upstairs?" said he; "the deuce she is! and what brought her here? did she quarrel with barry, meg?" added he, in a whisper. "indeed she did, out and out," said meg. "oh, he used her horrible!" said jane. "he'll hear all about that by and by," said meg. "come up and see her now, martin." "but does mother know she's here?" "why, it was she brought her here! she fetched her down from the house, yesterday, before we was up." thus assured that anty had not been smuggled upstairs, her lover, or suitor as he might perhaps be more confidently called, proceeded to visit her. if he wished her to believe that his first impulse, on hearing of her being in the house, had been to throw himself at her feet, it would have been well that this conversation should have been carried on out of her hearing. but anty was not an exigent mistress, and was perfectly contented that as much of her recent history as possible should be explained before martin presented himself. martin went slowly upstairs, and paused a moment at the door, as if he was a little afraid of commencing the interview; he looked round to his sisters, and made a sign to them to come in with him, and then, quickly pushing open the unfastened door, walked briskly up to anty and shook hands with her. "i hope you're very well, anty," said he; "seeing you here is what i didn't expect, but i'm very glad you've come down." "thank ye, martin," replied she; "it was very good of your mother, fetching me. she's been the best friend i've had many a day." "begad, it's a fine thing to see you and the ould lady pull so well together. it was yesterday you came here?" "yesterday morning. i was so glad to come! i don't know what they'd been saying to barry; but the night before last he got drinking, and then he was very bad to me, and tried to frighten me, and so, you see, i come down to your mother till we could be friends again." anty's apology for being at the inn, was perhaps unnecessary; but, with the feeling so natural to a woman, she was half afraid that martin would fancy she had run after him, and she therefore thought it as well to tell him that it was only a temporary measure. poor anty! at the moment she said so, she trembled at the very idea of putting herself again in her brother's power. "frinds, indeed!" said meg; "how can you iver be frinds with the like of him? what nonsense you talk, anty! why, martin, he was like to murdher her!--he raised his fist to her, and knocked her down--and, afther that, swore to her he'd kill her outright av' she wouldn't sware that she'd niver--" "whist, meg! how can you go on that way?" said anty, interrupting her, and blushing. "i'll not stop in the room; don't you know he was dhrunk when he done all that?" "and won't he be dhrunk again, anty?" suggested jane. "shure he will: he'll be dhrunk always, now he's once begun," replied meg, who, of all the family was the most anxious to push her brother's suit; and who, though really fond of her friend, thought the present opportunity a great deal too good to be thrown away, and could not bear the idea of anty's even thinking of being reconciled to her brother. "won't he be always dhrunk now?" she continued; "and ain't we all frinds here? and why shouldn't you let me tell martin all? afther all's said and done, isn't he the best frind you've got?"--here anty blushed very red, and to tell the truth, so did martin too--"well so he is, and unless you tell him what's happened, how's he to know what to advise; and, to tell the truth, wouldn't you sooner do what he says than any one else?" "i'm sure i'm very much obliged to mr martin"--it had been plain martin before meg's appeal; "but your mother knows what's best for me, and i'll do whatever she says. av' it hadn't been for her, i don't know where i'd be now." "but you needn't quarrel with martin because you're frinds with mother," answered meg. "nonsense, meg," said jane, "anty's not going to quarrel with him. you hurry her too much." martin looked rather stupid all this time, but he plucked up courage and said, "who's going to quarrel? i'm shure, anty, you and i won't; but, whatever it is barry did to you, i hope you won't go back there again, now you're once here. but did he railly sthrike you in arnest?" "he did, and knocked her down," said jane. "but won't you get your brother his dinner?" said anty; "he must be very hungry, afther his ride--and won't you see your mother afther your journey, mr martin? i'm shure she's expecting you." this, for the present, put an end to the conversation; the girls went to get something for their brother to eat, and he descended into the lower regions to pay his filial respects to his mother. a considerable time passed before martin returned to the meal the three young women had provided for him, during which he was in close consultation with the widow. in the first place, she began upbraiding him for his folly in wishing to marry an old maid for her money; she then taxed him with villany, for trying to cheat anty out of her property; and when he defended himself from that charge by telling her what he had done about the settlement, she asked him how much he had to pay the rogue of a lawyer for that "gander's job". she then proceeded to point out all the difficulties which lay in the way of a marriage between him, martin, and her, anty; and showed how mad it was for either of them to think about it. from that, she got into a narrative of barry's conduct, and anty's sufferings, neither of which lost anything in the telling; and having by this time gossiped herself into a good humour, she proceeded to show how, through her means and assistance, the marriage might take place if he was still bent upon it. she eschewed all running away, and would hear of no clandestine proceedings. they should be married in the face of day, as the kellys ought, with all their friends round them. "they'd have no huggery-muggery work, up in a corner; not they indeed! why should they?--for fear of barry lynch?--who cared for a dhrunken blackguard like that?--not she indeed! who ever heard of a kelly being afraid of a lynch?--they'd ax him to come and see his sister married, and av' he didn't like it, he might do the other thing." and so, the widow got quite eloquent on the glories of the wedding, and the enormities of her son's future brother-in-law, who had, she assured martin, come down and abused her horribly, in her own shop, before all the town, because she allowed anty to stay in the house. she then proceeded to the consequences of the marriage, and expressed her hope that when martin got all that ready money he would "do something for his poor sisthers--for heaven knew they war like to be bad enough off, for all she'd be able to do for them!" from this she got to martin's own future mode of life, suggesting a "small snug cottage on the farm, just big enough for them two, and, may-be, a slip of a girl servant, and not to be taring and tatthering away, as av' money had no eend; and, afther all," she added, "there war nothing like industhry; and who know'd whether that born villain, barry, mightn't yet get sich a hoult of the money, that there'd be no getting it out of his fist?" and she then depicted, in most pathetic language, what would be the misery of herself and all the kellys if martin, flushed with his prosperity, were to give up the farm at toneroe, and afterwards find that he had been robbed of his expected property, and that he had no support for himself and his young bride. on this subject martin considerably comforted her by assuring her that he had no thoughts of abandoning toneroe, although he did not go so far as to acquiesce in the very small cottage; and he moreover expressed his thorough confidence that he would neither be led himself, nor lead anty, into the imprudence of a marriage, until he had well satisfied himself that the property was safe. the widow was well pleased to find, from martin's prudent resolves, that he was her own son, and that she needn't blush for him; and then they parted, she to her shop, and he to his dinner: not however, before he had promised her to give up all ideas of a clandestine marriage, and to permit himself to be united to his wife in the face of day, as became a kelly. the evening passed over quietly and snugly at the inn. martin had not much difficulty in persuading his three companions to take a glass of punch each out of his tumbler, and less in getting them to take a second, and, before they went to bed, he and anty were again intimate. and, as he was sitting next her for a couple of hours on the little sofa opposite the fire, it is more than probable that he got his arm round her waist--a comfortable position, which seemed in no way to shock the decorum of either meg or jane. ix. mr daly, the attorney we must now see how things went on in the enemy's camp. the attorney drove up to the door of dunmore house on his car, and was shown into the drawing-room, where he met barry lynch. the two young men were acquainted, though not intimate with each other, and they bowed, and then shook hands; and barry told the attorney that he was welcome to dunmore house, and the attorney made another bow, rubbed his hands before the fire and said it was a very cold evening; and barry said it was 'nation cold for that time of the year; which, considering that they were now in the middle of february, showed that barry was rather abroad, and didn't exactly know what to say. he remained for about a minute, silent before the fire, and then asked daly if he'd like to see his room; and, the attorney acquiescing, he led him up to it, and left him there. the truth was, that, as the time of the man's visit had drawn nearer, barry had become more and more embarrassed; and now that the attorney had absolutely come, his employer felt himself unable to explain the business before dinner. "these fellows are so confoundedly sharp--i shall never be up to him till i get a tumbler of punch on board," said he to himself, comforting himself with the reflection; "besides, i'm never well able for anything till i get a little warmed. we'll get along like a house on fire when we've got the hot water between us." the true meaning of all which was, that he hadn't the courage to make known his villanous schemes respecting his sister till he was half drunk; and, in order the earlier to bring about this necessary and now daily consummation, he sneaked downstairs and took a solitary glass of brandy to fortify himself for entertaining the attorney. the dinner was dull enough; for, of course, as long as the man was in the room there was no talking on business, and, in his present frame of mind barry was not likely to be an agreeable companion. the attorney ate his dinner as if it was a part of the fee, received in payment of the work he was to do, and with a determination to make the most of it. at last, the dishes disappeared, and with them terry rooney; who, however, like a faithful servant, felt too strong an interest in his master's affairs to be very far absent when matters of importance were likely to be discussed. "and now, mr daly," said lynch, "we can be snug here, without interruption, for an hour or two. you'll find that whiskey old and good, i think; but, if you prefer wine, that port on the table came from barton's, in sackville street." "thank ye; if i take anything, it'll be a glass of punch. but as we've business to talk of, may-be i'd better keep my head clear." "my head's never so clear then, as when i've done my second tumbler. i'm never so sure of what i'm about as when i'm a little warmed; 'but,' says you, 'because my head's strong, it's no reason another's shouldn't be weak:' but do as you like; liberty hall here now, mr daly; that is, as far as i'm concerned. you knew my father, i believe, mr daly?" "well then, mr lynch, i didn't exactly know him; but living so near him, and he having so much business in the county, and myself having a little, i believe i've been in company with him, odd times." "he was a queer man: wasn't he, mr daly?" "was he, then? i dare say. i didn't know much about him. i'll take the sugar from you, mr lynch; i believe i might as well mix a drop, as the night's cold." "that's right. i thought you weren't the fellow to sit with an empty glass before you. but, as i was saying before, the old boy was a queer hand; that is, latterly--for the last year or so. of course you know all about his will?" "faith then, not much. i heard he left a will, dividing the property between you and miss lynch." "he did! just at the last moment, when the breath wasn't much more than left in him, he signed a will, making away half the estate, just as you say, to my sister. blake could have broke the will, only he was so d---- pig-headed and stupid. it's too late now, i suppose?" "why, i could hardly answer that, you know, as i never heard the circumstances; but i was given to understand that blake consulted mcmahon; and that mcmahon wouldn't take up the case, as there was nothing he could put before the chancellor. mind i'm only repeating what people said in tuam, and about there. of course, i couldn't think of advising till i knew the particulars. was it on this subject, mr lynch, you were good enough to send for me?" "not at all, mr daly. i look upon that as done and gone; bad luck to blake and mcmahon, both. the truth is, between you and me, daly--i don't mind telling you; as i hope now you will become my man of business, and it's only fair you should know all about it--the truth is, blake was more interested on the other side, and he was determined the case shouldn't go before the chancellor. but, when my father signed that will, it was just after one of those fits he had lately; that could be proved, and he didn't know what he was doing, from adam! he didn't know what was in the will, nor, that he was signing a will at all; so help me, he didn't. however, that's over. it wasn't to talk about that that i sent for you; only, sorrow seize the rogue that made the old man rob me! it wasn't anty herself, poor creature; she knew nothing about it; it was those who meant to get hold of my money, through her, that did it. poor anty! heaven knows she wasn't up to such a dodge as that!" "well, mr lynch, of course i know nothing of the absolute facts; but from what i hear, i think it's as well to let the will alone. the chancellor won't put a will aside in a hurry; it's always a difficult job--would cost an immense sum of money, which should, any way, come out of the property; and, after all, the chances are ten to one you'd be beat." "perhaps you're right, now; though i'm sure, had the matter been properly taken up at first--had you seen the whole case at the first start, the thing could have been done. i'm sure you would have said so; but that's over now; it's another business i want you for. but you don't drink your punch!--and it's dry work talking, without wetting one's whistle," and barry carried out his own recommendation. "i'm doing very well, thank ye, mr lynch. and what is it i can do for you?" "that's what i'm coming to. you know that, by the will, my sister anty gets from four to five hundred a year?" "i didn't know the amount; but i believe she has half whatever there is." "exactly: half the land, half the cash, half the house, half everything, except the debts! and those were contracted in my name, and i must pay them all. isn't that hard, mr daly?" "i didn't know your father had debts." "oh, but he had--debts which ought to have been his; though, as i said, they stand in my name, and i must pay them." "and, i suppose, what you now want is to saddle the debts on the entire property? if you can really prove that the debts were incurred for your father's benefit, i should think you might do that. but has your sister refused to pay the half? they can't be heavy. won't miss lynch agree to pay the half herself?" this last lie of barry's--for, to give the devil his due, old sim hadn't owed one penny for the last twenty years--was only a bright invention of the moment, thrown off by our injured hero to aggravate the hardships of his case; but he was determined to make the most of it. "not heavy?--faith, they _are_ heavy, and d----d heavy too, mr daly!--what'll take two hundred a-year out of my miserable share of the property; divil a less. oh! there's never any knowing how a man'll cut up till he's gone." "that's true; but how could your father owe such a sum as that, and no one know it? why, that must be four or five thousand pounds?" "about five, i believe." "and you've put your name to them, isn't that it?" "something like it. you know, he and lord ballindine, years ago, were fighting about the leases we held under the old lord; and then, the old man wanted ready money, and borrowed it in dublin; and, some years since--that is, about three years ago,--sooner than see any of the property sold, i took up the debt myself. you know, it was all as good as my own then; and now, confound it! i must pay the whole out of the miserable thing that's left me under this infernal will. but it wasn't even about that i sent for you; only, i must explain exactly how matters are, before i come to the real point." "but your father's name must be joined with yours in the debt; and, if so, you can come upon the entire property for the payment. there's no difficulty about that; your sister, of course, must pay the half." "it's not so, my dear fellow. i can't explain the thing exactly, but it's i that owe the money, and i must pay it. but it's no good talking of that. well, you see, anty that's my sister, has this property all in her own hands. but you don't drink your punch," and barry mixed his third tumbler. "of course she has; and, surely she won't refuse to pay half the claims on the estate?" "never mind the claims!" answered barry, who began to fear that he had pushed his little invention a thought too far. "i tell you, i must stand to them; you don't suppose i'd ask her to pay a penny as a favour? no; i'm a little too proud for that. besides, it'd be no use, not the least; and that's what i'm coming to. you see, anty's got this money, and--you know, don't you, mr daly, poor anty's not just like other people?" "no," said mr daly--"i didn't. i can't say i know much about miss lynch. i never had the pleasure of seeing her." "but did you never hear she wasn't quite right?" "indeed, i never did, then." "well that's odd; but we never had it much talked about, poor creature. indeed, there was no necessity for people to know much about it, for she never gave any trouble; and, to tell the truth, as long as she was kept quiet, she never gave us occasion to think much about it. but, confound them for rogues--those who have got hold of her now, have quite upset her." "but what is it ails your sister, mr lynch?" "to have it out, at once, then--she's not right in her upper story. mind, i don't mean she's a downright lunatic; but she's cracked, poor thing, and quite unable to judge for herself, in money-matters, and such like; and, though she might have done very well, poor thing, and passed without notice, if she'd been left quiet, as was always intended, i'm afraid now, unless she's well managed, she'd end her life in the ballinasloe asylum." the attorney made no answer to this, although barry paused, to allow him to do so. daly was too sharp, and knew his employer's character too well to believe all he said, and he now began to fancy that he saw what the affectionate brother was after. "well, daly," continued barry, after a minute's pause; "after the old man died, we went on quiet enough for some time. i was up in dublin mostly, about that confounded loan, and poor anty was left here by herself; and what should she do, but take up with a low huxter's family in the town here." "that's bad," said the attorney. "was there an unmarried young man among them at all?" "faith there was so; as great a blackguard as there is in connaught." "and miss lynch is going to marry him?" "that's just it, daly; that's what we must prevent. you know, for the sake of the family, i couldn't let it go on. then, poor creature, she'd be plundered and ill-treated--she'd be a downright idiot in no time; and, you know, daly, the property'd go to the devil; and where'd i be then?" daly couldn't help thinking that, in all probability, his kind host would not be long in following the property; but he did not say so. he merely asked the name of the "blackguard" whom miss anty meant to marry? "wait till i tell you the whole of it. the first thing i heard was, that anty had made a low ruffian, named moylan, her agent." "i know him; she couldn't have done much worse. well?" "she made him her agent without speaking to me, or telling me a word about it; and i couldn't make out what had put it into her head, till i heard that this old rogue was a kind of cousin to some people living here, named kelly." "what, the widow, that keeps the inn?" "the very same! confound her, for an impertinent scheming old hag, as she is. well; that's the house that anty was always going to; drinking tea with the daughters, and walking with the son--an infernal young farmer, that lives with them, the worst of the whole set." "what, martin kelly?--there's worse fellows than him, mr lynch." "i'll be hanged if i know them, then; but if there are, i don't choose my poor sister--only one remove from an idiot, and hardly that--to be carried off from her mother's house, and married to such a fellow as that. why, it's all the same infernal plot; it's the same people that got the old man to sign the will, when he was past his senses!" "begad, they must have been clever to do that! how the deuce could they have got the will drawn?" "i tell you, they _did_ do it!" answered barry, whose courage was now somewhat raised by the whiskey. "that's neither here nor there, but they did it; and, when the old fool was dead, they got this moylan made anty's agent: and then, the hag of a mother comes up here, before daylight, and bribes the servant, and carries her off down to her filthy den, which she calls an inn; and when i call to see my sister, i get nothing but insolence and abuse." "and when did this happen? when did miss lynch leave the house?" "yesterday morning, about four o'clock." "she went down of her own accord, though?" "d----l a bit. the old hag came up here, and filched her out of her bed." "but she couldn't have taken your sister away, unless she had wished to go." "of course she wished it; but a silly creature like her can't be let to do all she wishes.. she wishes to get a husband, and doesn't care what sort of a one she gets; but you don't suppose an old maid--forty years old, who has always been too stupid and foolish ever to be seen or spoken to, should be allowed to throw away four hundred a-year, on the first robber that tries to cheat her? you don't mean to say there isn't a law to prevent that?" "i don't know how you'll prevent it, mr lynch. she's her own mistress." "what the d----l! do you mean to say there's nothing to prevent an idiot like that from marrying?" "if she _was_ an idiot! but i think you'll find your sister has sense enough to marry whom she pleases." "i tell you she _is_ an idiot; not raving, mind; but everybody knows she was never fit to manage anything." "who'd prove it!" "why, i would. divil a doubt of it! i could prove that she never could, all her life." "ah, my dear sir! you couldn't do it; nor could i advise you to try--that is, unless there were plenty more who could swear positively that she was out of her mind. would the servants swear that? could you yourself, now, positively swear that she was out of her mind?" "why--she never had any mind to be out of." "unless you are very sure she is, and, for a considerable time back, has been, a confirmed lunatic, you'd be very wrong--very ill-advised, i mean, mr lynch, to try that game at all. things would come out which you wouldn't like; and your motives would be--would be--" seen through at once, the attorney was on the point of saying, but he stopped himself, and finished by the words "called in question". "and i'm to sit here, then, and see that young blackguard kelly, run off with what ought to be my own, and my sister into the bargain? i'm blessed if i do! if you can't put me in the way of stopping it, i'll find those that can." "you're getting too much in a hurry, mr lynch. is your sister at the inn now?" "to be sure she is." "and she is engaged to this young man?" "she is." "why, then, she might be married to him to-morrow, for anything you know." "she might, if he was here. but they tell me he's away, in dublin." "if they told you so to-day, they told you wrong: he came into dunmore, from tuam, on the same car with myself, this very afternoon." "what, martin kelly? then he'll be off with her this night, while we're sitting here!" and barry jumped up, as if to rush out, and prevent the immediate consummation of his worst fears. "stop a moment, mr lynch," said the more prudent and more sober lawyer. "if they were off, you couldn't follow them; and, if you did follow and find them, you couldn't prevent their being married, if such were their wish, and they had a priest ready to do it. take my advice; remain quiet where you are, and let's talk the matter over. as for taking out a commission 'de lunatico', as we call it, you'll find you couldn't do it. miss lynch may be a little weak or so in the upper story, but she's not a lunatic; and you couldn't make her so, if you had half dunmore to back you, because she'd be brought before the commissioners herself, and that, you know, would soon settle the question. but you might still prevent the marriage, for a time, at any rate--at least, i think so; and, after that, you must trust to the chapter of accidents." "so help me, that's all i want! if i got her once up here again, and was sure the thing was off, for a month or so, let me alone, then, for bringing her to reason!" as daly watched his comrade's reddening face, and saw the malicious gleam of his eyes as he declared how easily he'd manage the affair, if poor anty was once more in the house, his heart misgave him, even though he was a sharp attorney, at the idea of assisting such a cruel brute in his cruelty; and, for a moment, he had determined to throw up the matter. barry was so unprincipled, and so wickedly malicious in his want of principle, that he disgusted even daly. but, on second thoughts, the lawyer remembered that if he didn't do the job, another would; and, quieting his not very violent qualms of conscience with the idea that, though employed by the brother, he might also, to a certain extent, protect the sister, he proceeded to give his advice as to the course which would be most likely to keep the property out of the hands of the kellys. he explained to barry that, as anty had left her own home in company with martin's mother, and as she now was a guest at the widow's, it was unlikely that any immediate clandestine marriage should be resorted to; that their most likely course would be to brazen the matter out, and have the wedding solemnised without any secrecy, and without any especial notice to him, barry. that, on the next morning, a legal notice should be prepared in tuam, and served on the widow, informing her that it was his intention to indict her for conspiracy, in enticing away from her own home his sister anty, for the purpose of obtaining possession of her property, she being of weak mind, and not able properly to manage her own affairs; that a copy of this notice should also be sent to martin, warning him that he would be included in the indictment if he took any proceedings with regard to miss lynch; and that a further copy should, if possible, be put into the hands of miss lynch herself. "you may be sure that'll frighten them," continued daly; "and then, you know, when we see what sort of fight they make, we'll be able to judge whether we ought to go on and prosecute or not. i think the widow'll be very shy of meddling, when she finds you're in earnest. and you see, mr lynch," he went on, dropping his voice, "if you _do_ go into court, as i don't think you will, you'll go with clean hands, as you ought to do. nobody can say anything against you for trying to prevent your sister from marrying a man so much younger than herself, and so much inferior in station and fortune; you won't seem to gain anything by it, and that's everything with a jury; and then, you know, if it comes out that miss lynch's mind is rather touched, it's an additional reason why you should protect her from intriguing and interested schemers. don't you see?" barry did see, or fancied he saw, that he had now got the kellys in a dead fix, and anty back into his own hands again; and his self-confidence having been fully roused by his potations, he was tolerably happy, and talked very loudly of the manner in which he would punish those low-bred huxters, who had presumed to interfere with him in the management of his family. towards the latter end of the evening, he became even more confidential, and showed the cloven foot, if possible, more undisguisedly than he had hitherto done. he spoke of the impossibility of allowing four hundred a year to be carried off from him, and suggested to daly that his sister would soon drop off,--that there would then be a nice thing left, and that he, daly, should have the agency, and if he pleased, the use of dunmore house. as for himself, he had no idea of mewing himself up in such a hole as that; but, before he went, he'd take care to drive that villain, moylan, out of the place. "the cursed villany of those kellys, to go and palm such a robber as that off on his sister, by way of an agent!" to all this, daly paid but little attention, for he saw that his host was drunk. but when moylan's name was mentioned, he began to think that it might be as well either to include him in the threatened indictment, or else, which would be better still, to buy him over to their side, as they might probably learn from him what martin's plans really were. barry was, however, too tipsy to pay much attention to this, or to understand any deep-laid plans. so the two retired to their beds, barry determined, as he declared to the attorney in his drunken friendship, to have it out of anty, when he caught her; and daly promising to go to tuam early in the morning, have the notices prepared and served, and come back in the evening to dine and sleep, and have, if possible, an interview with mr moylan. as he undressed, he reflected that, during his short professional career, he had been thrown into the society of many unmitigated rogues of every description; but that his new friend, barry lynch, though he might not equal them in energy of villany and courage to do serious evil, beat them all hollow in selfishness, and utter brutal want of feeling, conscience, and principle. x. dot blake's advice in hour or two after martin kelly had left porto bello in the ballinasloe fly-boat, our other hero, lord ballindine, and his friend dot blake, started from morrison's hotel, with post horses, for handicap lodge; and, as they travelled in blake's very comfortable barouche, they reached their destination in time for a late dinner, without either adventure or discomfort. here they remained for some days, fully occupied with the education of their horses, the attention necessary to the engagements for which they were to run, and with their betting-books. lord ballindine's horse, brien boru, was destined to give the saxons a dressing at epsom, and put no one knows how many thousands into his owner's hands, by winning the derby; and arrangements had already been made for sending him over to john scott, the english trainer, at an expense, which, if the horse should by chance fail to be successful, would be of very serious consequence to his lordship. but lord ballindine had made up his mind, or rather, blake had made it up for him, and the thing was to be done; the risk was to be run, and the preparations--the sweats and the gallops, the physicking, feeding, and coddling, kept frank tolerably well employed; though the whole process would have gone on quite as well, had he been absent. it was not so, however, with dot blake. the turf, to him, was not an expensive pleasure, but a very serious business, and one which, to give him his due, he well understood. he himself, regulated the work, both of his horses and his men, and saw that both did what was allotted to them. he took very good care that he was never charged a guinea, where a guinea was not necessary; and that he got a guinea's worth for every guinea he laid out. in fact, he trained his own horses, and was thus able to assure himself that his interests were never made subservient to those of others who kept horses in the same stables. dot was in his glory, and in his element on the curragh, and he was never quite happy anywhere else. this, however, was not the case with his companion. for a couple of days the excitement attending brien boru was sufficient to fill lord ballindine's mind; but after that, he could not help recurring to other things. he was much in want of money, and had been civilly told by his agent's managing clerk, before he left town, that there was some difficulty in the way of his immediately getting the sum required. this annoyed him, for he could not carry on the game without money. and then, again, he was unhappy to be so near fanny wyndham, from day to day, without seeing her. he was truly and earnestly attached to her, and miserable at the threat which had been all but made by her guardian, that the match should be broken off. it was true that he had made up his mind not to go to grey abbey, as long as he remained at handicap lodge, and, having made the resolution, he thought he was wise in keeping it; but still, he continually felt that she must be aware that he was in the neighbourhood, and could not but be hurt at his apparent indifference. and then he knew that her guardian would make use of his present employment--his sojourn at such a den of sporting characters as his friend blake's habitation--and his continued absence from grey abbey though known to be in its vicinity, as additional arguments for inducing his ward to declare the engagement at an end. these troubles annoyed him, and though he daily stood by and saw brien boru go through his manoeuvres, he was discontented and fidgety. he had been at handicap lodge about a fortnight, and was beginning to feel anything but happy. his horse was to go over in another week, money was not plentiful with him, and tradesmen were becoming obdurate and persevering. his host, blake, was not a soothing or a comfortable friend, under these circumstances: he gave him a good deal of practical advice, but he could not sympathise with him. blake was a sharp, hard, sensible man, who reduced everything to pounds shillings and pence. lord ballindine was a man of feeling, and for the time, at least, a man of pleasure; and, though they were, or thought themselves friends, they did not pull well together; in fact, they bored each other terribly. one morning, lord ballindine was riding out from the training-ground, when he met, if not an old, at any rate an intimate acquaintance, named tierney. mr or, as he was commonly called, mat tierney, was a bachelor, about sixty years of age, who usually inhabited a lodge near the curragh; and who kept a horse or two on the turf, more for the sake of the standing which it gave him in the society he liked best, than from any intense love of the sport. he was a fat, jolly fellow, always laughing, and usually in a good humour; he was very fond of what he considered the world; and the world, at least that part of it which knew him, returned the compliment. "well, my lord," said he, after a few minutes of got-up enthusiasm respecting brien boru, "i congratulate you, sincerely." "what about?" said lord ballindine. "why, i find you've got a first-rate horse, and i hear you've got rid of a first-rate lady. you're very lucky, no doubt, in both; but i think fortune has stood to you most, in the latter." lord ballindine was petrified: he did not know what to reply. he was aware that his engagement with miss wyndham was so public that tierney could allude to no other lady; but he could not conceive how any one could have heard that his intended marriage was broken off--at any rate how he could have heard it spoken of so publicly, as to induce him to mention it in that sort of way, to himself. his first impulse was to be very indignant; but he felt that no one would dream of quarrelling with mat tierney; so he said, as soon as he was able to collect his thoughts sufficiently, "i was not aware of the second piece of luck, mr tierney. pray who is the lady?" "why, miss wyndham," said mat, himself a little astonished at lord ballindine's tone. "i'm sure, mr tierney," said frank, "you would say nothing, particularly in connection with a lady's name, which you intended either to be impertinent, or injurious. were it not that i am quite certain of this, i must own that what you have just said would appear to be both." "my dear lord," said the other, surprised and grieved, "i beg ten thousand pardons, if i have unintentionally said anything, which you feel to be either. but, surely, if i am not wrong in asking, the match between you and miss wyndham is broken off?" "may i ask you, mr tierney, who told you so?" "certainly--lord kilcullen; and, as he is miss wyndham's cousin, and lord cashel's son, i could not but think the report authentic." this overset frank still more thoroughly. lord kilcullen would never have spread the report publicly unless he had been authorised to do so by lord cashel. frank and lord kilcullen had never been intimate; and the former was aware that the other had always been averse to the proposed marriage; but still, he would never have openly declared that the marriage was broken off, had he not had some authority for saying so. "as you seem somewhat surprised," continued mat, seeing that lord ballindine remained silent, and apparently at a loss for what he ought to say, "perhaps i ought to tell you, that lord kilcullen mentioned it last night very publicly--at a dinner-party, as an absolute fact. indeed, from his manner, i thought he wished it to be generally made known. i presumed, therefore, that it had been mutually agreed between you, that the event was not to come off--that the match was not to be run; and, with my peculiar views, you know, on the subject of matrimony, i thought it a fair point for congratulation. if lord kilcullen had misled me, i heartily beg to apologise; and at the same time, by giving you my authority, to show you that i could not intend anything impertinent. if it suits you, you are quite at liberty to tell lord kilcullen all i have told you; and, if you wish me to contradict the report, which i must own i have spread, i will do so." frank felt that he could not be angry with mat tierney; he therefore thanked him for his open explanation, and, merely muttering something about private affairs not being worthy of public interest, rode off towards handicap lodge. it appeared very plain to him that the grey abbey family must have discarded him--that fanny wyndham, lord and lady cashel, and the whole set, must have made up their minds to drop him altogether; otherwise, one of the family would not have openly declared the match at an end. and yet he was at a loss to conceive how they could have done so--how even lord cashel could have reconciled it to himself to do so, without the common-place courtesy of writing to him on the subject. and then, when he thought of her, "his own fanny," as he had so often called her, he was still more bewildered: she, with whom he had sat for so many sweet hours talking of the impossibility of their ever forgetting, deserting, or even slighting each other; she, who had been so entirely devoted to him--so much more than engaged to him--could she have lent her name to such a heartless mode of breaking her faith? "if i had merely proposed for her through her guardian," thought frank, to himself--"if i had got lord cashel to make the engagement, as many men do, i should not be surprised; but after all that has passed between us--after all her vows, and all her--" and then lord ballindine struck his horse with his heel, and made a cut at the air with his whip, as he remembered certain passages more binding even than promises, warmer even than vows, which seemed to make him as miserable now as they had made him happy at the time of their occurrence. "i would not believe it," he continued, meditating, "if twenty kilcullens said it, or if fifty mat tierneys swore to it!" and then he rode on towards the lodge, in a state of mind for which i am quite unable to account, if his disbelief in fanny wyndham's constancy was really as strong as he had declared it to be. and, as he rode, many unusual thoughts--for, hitherto, frank had not been a very deep-thinking man--crowded his mind, as to the baseness, falsehood, and iniquity of the human race, especially of rich cautious old peers who had beautiful wards in their power. by the time he had reached the lodge, he had determined that he must now do something, and that, as he was quite unable to come to any satisfactory conclusion on his own unassisted judgment, he must consult blake, who, by the bye, was nearly as sick of fanny wyndham as he would have been had he himself been the person engaged to marry her. as he rode round to the yard, he saw his friend standing at the door of one of the stables, with a cigar in his mouth. "well, frank, how does brien go to-day? not that he'll ever be the thing till he gets to the other side of the water. they'll never be able to bring a horse out as he should be, on the curragh, till they've regular trained gallops. the slightest frost in spring, or sun in summer, and the ground's so hard, you might as well gallop your horse down the pavement of grafton street." "confound the horse," answered frank; "come here, dot, a minute. i want to speak to you." "what the d----l's the matter?--he's not lame, is he?" "who?--what?--brien boru? not that i know of. i wish the brute had never been foaled." "and why so? what crotchet have you got in your head now? something wrong about fanny, i suppose?" "why, did you hear anything?" "nothing but what you've told me." "i've just seen mat tierney, and he told me that kilcullen had declared, at a large dinner-party, yesterday, that the match between me and his cousin was finally broken off." "you wouldn't believe what mat tierney would say? mat was only taking a rise out of you." "not at all: he was not only speaking seriously, but he told me what i'm very sure was the truth, as far as lord kilcullen was concerned. i mean, i'm sure kilcullen said it, and in the most public manner he could; and now, the question is, what had i better do?" "there's no doubt as to what you'd better do; the question is what you'd rather do?" "but what had i _better_ do? call on kilcullen for an explanation?" "that's the last thing to think of. no; but declare what he reports to be the truth; return miss wyndham the lock of hair you have in your desk, and next your heart, or wherever you keep it; write her a pretty note, and conclude by saying that the 'adriatic's free to wed another'. that's what i should do." "it's very odd, blake, that you won't speak seriously to a man for a moment. you've as much heart in you as one of your own horses. i wish i'd never come to this cursed lodge of yours. i'd be all right then." "as for my heart, frank, if i have as much as my horses, i ought to be contented--for race-horses are usually considered to have a good deal; as for my cursed lodge, i can assure you i have endeavoured, and, if you will allow me, i will still endeavour, to make it as agreeable to you as i am able; and as to my speaking seriously, upon my word, i never spoke more so. you asked me what i thought you had better do--and i began by telling you there would be a great difference between that and what you'd rather do." "but, in heaven's name, why would you have me break off with miss wyndham, when every one knows i'm engaged to her; and when you know that i wish to marry her?" "firstly, to prevent her breaking off with you--though i fear there's hardly time for that; and secondly, in consequence--as the newspapers say, of incompatibility of temper." "why, you don't even know her!" "but i know you, and i know what your joint income would be, and i know that there would be great incompatibility between you, as lord ballindine, with a wife and family--and fifteen hundred a year, or so. but mind, i'm only telling you what i think you'd better do." "well, i shan't do that. if i was once settled down, i could live as well on fifteen hundred a year as any country gentleman in ireland. it's only the interference of lord cashel that makes me determined not to pull in till i am married. if he had let me have my own way, i shouldn't, by this time, have had a horse in the world, except one or two hunters or so, down in the country." "well, frank, if you're determined to get yourself married, i'll give you the best advice in my power as to the means of doing it. isn't that what you want?" "i want to know what you think i ought to do, just at this minute." "with matrimony as the winning-post?" "you know i wish to marry fanny wyndham." "and the sooner the better--is that it?" "of course. she'll be of age now, in a few days," replied lord ballindine. "then i advise you to order a new blue coat, and to buy a wedding-ring." "confusion!" cried frank, stamping his foot; and turning away in a passion; and then he took up his hat, to rush out of the room, in which the latter part of the conversation had taken place. "stop a minute, frank," said blake, "and don't be in a passion. what i said was only meant to show you how easy i think it is for you to marry miss wyndham if you choose." "easy! and every soul at grey abbey turned against me, in consequence of my owning that brute of a horse! i'll go over there at once, and i'll show lord cashel that at any rate he shall not treat me like a child. as for kilcullen, if he interferes with me or my name in any way, i'll--" "you'll what?--thrash him?" "indeed, i'd like nothing better!" "and then shoot him--be tried by your peers--and perhaps hung; is that it?" "oh, that's nonsense. i don't wish to fight any one, but i am not going to be insulted." "i don't think you are: i don't think there's the least chance of kilcullen insulting you; he has too much worldly wisdom. but to come back to miss wyndham: if you really mean to marry her, and if, as i believe, she is really fond of you, lord cashel and all the family can't prevent it. she is probably angry that you have not been over there; he is probably irate at your staying here, and, not unlikely, has made use of her own anger to make her think that she has quarrelled with you; and hence kilcullen's report." "and what shall i do now?" "nothing to-day, but eat your dinner, and drink your wine. ride over to-morrow, see lord cashel, and tell him--but do it quite coolly, if you can--exactly what you have heard, and how you have heard it, and beg him to assure lord kilcullen that he is mistaken in his notion that the match is off; and beg also that the report may not be repeated. do this; and do it as if you were lord cashel's equal, not as if you were his son, or his servant. if you are collected and steady with him for ten minutes, you'll soon find that he will become bothered and unsteady." "that's very easy to say here, but it's not so easy to do there. you don't know him as i do: he's so sedate, and so slow, and so dull--especially sitting alone, as he does of a morning, in that large, dingy, uncomfortable, dusty-looking book-room of his. he measures his words like senna and salts, and their tone is as disagreeable." "then do you drop out yours like prussic acid, and you'll beat him at his own game. those are all externals, my dear fellow. when a man knows he has nothing within his head to trust to,--when he has neither sense nor genius, he puts on a wig, ties up his neck in a white choker, sits in a big chair, and frightens the world with his silence. remember, if you were not a baby, he would not be a bugbear." "and should i not ask to see fanny?" "by all means. don't leave grey abbey without seeing and making your peace with miss wyndham. that'll be easy with you, because it's your _métier_. i own that with myself it would be the most difficult part of the morning's work. but don't ask to see her as a favour. when you've done with the lord (and don't let your conference be very long)--when you've done with the lord, tell him you'll say a word to the lady; and, whatever may have been his pre-determination, you'll find that, if you're cool, he'll be bothered, and he won't know how to refuse; and if he doesn't prevent you, i'm sure miss wyndham won't." "and if he asks about these wretched horses of mine?" "don't let him talk more about your affairs than you can help; but, if he presses you--and he won't if you play your game well--tell him that you're quite aware your income won't allow you to keep up an establishment at the curragh after you're married." "but about brien boru, and the derby?" "brien boru! you might as well talk to him about your washing-bills! don't go into particulars--stick to generals. he'll never ask you those questions unless he sees you shiver and shake like a half-whipped school-boy." after a great deal of confabulation, in which dot blake often repeated his opinion of lord ballindine's folly in not rejoicing at an opportunity of breaking off the match, it was determined that frank should ride over the next morning, and do exactly what his friend proposed. if, however, one might judge from his apparent dread of the interview with lord cashel, there was but little chance of his conducting it with the coolness or assurance insisted on by dot. the probability was, that when the time did come, he would, as blake said, shiver and shake like a half-whipped school-boy. "and what will you do when you're married, frank?" said blake; "for i'm beginning to think the symptoms are strong, and you'll hardly get out of it now." "do! why, i suppose i'll do much the same as others--have two children, and live happy ever afterwards." "i dare say you're right about the two children, only you might say two dozen; but as to the living happy, that's more problematical. what do you mean to eat and drink?" "eggs--potatoes and bacon--buttermilk, and potheen [ ]. it's odd if i can't get plenty of them in mayo, if i've nothing better." [footnote : pootheen--illegal (untaxed) whiskey, "moonshine"] "i suppose you will, frank; but bacon won't go down well after venison; and a course of claret is a bad preparative for potheen punch. you're not the man to live, with a family, on a small income, and what the d----l you'll do i don't know. you'll fortify kelly's court--that'll be the first step." "is it against the repealers?" "faith, no; you'll join them, of course: but against the sub-sheriff, and his officers--an army much more likely to crown their enterprises with success." "you seem to forget, dot, that, after all, i'm marrying a girl with quite as large a fortune as i had any right to expect." "the limit to your expectations was only in your own modesty; the less you had a right--in the common parlance--to expect, the more you wanted, and the more you ought to have looked for. say that miss wyndham's fortune clears a thousand a year of your property, you would never be able to get along on what you'd have. no; i'll tell you what you'll do. you'll shut up kelly's court, raise the rents, take a moderate house in london; and lord cashel, when his party are in, will get you made a court stick of, and you'll lead just such a life as your grandfather. if it's not very glorious, at any rate it's a useful kind of life. i hope miss wyndham will like it. you'll have to christen your children ernest and albert, and that sort of thing; that's the worst of it; and you'll never be let to sit down, and that's a bore. but you've strong legs. it would never do for me. i could never stand out a long tragedy in drury lane, with my neck in a stiff white choker, and my toes screwed into tight dress boots. i'd sooner be a porter myself, for he can go to bed when the day's over." "you're very witty, dot; but you know i'm the last man in ireland, not excepting yourself, to put up with that kind of thing. whatever i may have to live on, i shall live in my own country, and on my own property." "very well; if you won't be a gold stick, there's the other alternative: fortify kelly's court, and prepare for the sheriff's officers. of the two, there's certainly more fun in it; and you can go out with the harriers on a sunday afternoon, and live like a 'ra'al o'kelly of the ould times';--only the punch'll kill you in about ten years." "go on, dot, go on. you want to provoke me, but you won't. i wonder whether you'd bear it as well, if i told you you'd die a broken-down black-leg, without a friend or a shilling to bless you." "i don't think i should, because i should know that you were threatening me with a fate which my conduct and line of life would not warrant any one in expecting." "upon my word, then, i think there's quite as much chance of that as there is of my getting shut up by bailiffs in kelly's court, and dying drunk. i'll bet you fifty pounds i've a better account at my bankers than you have in ten years." "faith, i'll not take it. it'll be hard work getting fifty pounds out of you, then! in the meantime, come and play a game of billiards before dinner." to this lord ballindine consented, and they adjourned to the billiard-room; but, before they commenced playing, blake declared that if the names of lord cashel or miss wyndham were mentioned again that evening, he should retreat to his own room, and spend the hours by himself; so, for the rest of that day, lord ballindine was again driven back upon brien boru and the derby for conversation, as dot was too close about his own stable to talk much of his own horses and their performances, except when he was doing so with an eye to business. xi. the earl of cashel about two o'clock on the following morning, lord ballindine set off for grey abbey, on horseback, dressed with something more than ordinary care, and with a considerable palpitation about his heart. he hardly knew, himself, what or whom he feared, but he knew that he was afraid of something. he had a cold, sinking sensation within him, and he felt absolutely certain that he should be signally defeated in his present mission. he had plenty of what is usually called courage; had his friend recommended him instantly to call out lord kilcullen and shoot him, and afterwards any number of other young men who might express a thought in opposition to his claim on miss wyndham's hand, he would have set about it with the greatest readiness and aptitude; but he knew he could not baffle the appalling solemnity of lord cashel, in his own study. frank was not so very weak a man as he would appear to be when in the society of blake. he unfortunately allowed blake to think for him in many things, and he found a convenience in having some one to tell him what to do; but he was, in most respects, a better, and in some, even a wiser man than his friend. he often felt that the kind of life he was leading--contracting debts which he could not pay, and spending his time in pursuits which were not really congenial to him, was unsatisfactory and discreditable: and it was this very feeling, and the inability to defend that which he knew to be wrong and foolish, which made him so certain that he would not be able successfully to persist in his claim to miss wyndham's hand in opposition to the trite and well-weighed objections, which he knew her guardian would put forward. he consoled himself, however, with thinking that, at any rate, they could not prevent his seeing her; and he was quite sanguine as to her forgiveness, if he but got a fair opportunity of asking it. and when that was obtained, why should the care for any one? fanny would be of age, and her own mistress, in a few days, and all the solemn earls in england, and ireland too, could not then prevent her marrying whom and when she liked. he thought a great deal on all his friend had said to his future poverty; but then, his ideas and blake's were very different about life. blake's idea of happiness was, the concentrating of every thing into a focus for his own enjoyment; whereas he, frank, had only had recourse to dissipation and extravagance, because he had nothing to make home pleasant to him. if he once had fanny wyndham installed as lady ballindine, at kelly's court, he was sure he could do his duty as a country gentleman, and live on his income, be it what it might, not only without grumbling, but without wishing for anything more. he was fond of his country, his name, and his countrymen: he was fully convinced of his folly in buying race-horses, and in allowing himself to be dragged on the turf: he would sell brien boru, and the other two irish chieftains, for what they would fetch, and show fanny and her guardian that he was in earnest in his intention of reforming. blake might laugh at him if he liked; but he would not stay to be laughed at. he felt that handicap lodge was no place for him; and besides, why should he bear dot's disagreeable sarcasms? it was not the part of a real friend to say such cutting things as he continually did. after all, lord cashel would be a safer friend, or, at any rate, adviser; and, instead of trying to defeat him by coolness or insolence, he would at once tell him of all his intentions, explain to him exactly how matters stood, and prove his good resolutions by offering to take whatever steps the earl might recommend about the horses. this final determination made him easier in this mind, and, as he entered the gates of grey abbey park, he was tolerably comfortable, trusting to his own good resolutions, and the effect which he felt certain the expression of them must have on lord cashel. grey abbey is one of the largest but by no means one of the most picturesque demesnes in ireland. it is situated in the county of kildare, about two miles from the little town of kilcullen, in a flat, uninteresting, and not very fertile country. the park itself is extensive and tolerably well wooded, but it wants water and undulation, and is deficient of any object of attraction, except that of size and not very magnificent timber. i suppose, years ago, there was an abbey here, or near the spot, but there is now no vestige of it remaining. in a corner of the demesne there are standing the remains of one of those strong, square, ugly castles, which, two centuries since, were the real habitations of the landed proprietors of the country, and many of which have been inhabited even to a much later date. they now afford the strongest record of the apparently miserable state of life which even the favoured of the land then endured, and of the numberless domestic comforts which years and skill have given us, apt as we are to look back with fond regret to the happy, by-gone days of past periods. this old castle, now used as a cow-shed, is the only record of antiquity at grey abbey; and yet the ancient family of the greys have lived there for centuries. the first of them who possessed property in ireland, obtained in the reign of henry ii, grants of immense tracts of land, stretching through wicklow, kildare, and the queen's and king's counties; and, although his descendants have been unable to retain, through the various successive convulsions which have taken place in the interior of ireland since that time, anything like an eighth of what the family once pretended to claim, the earl of cashel, their present representative, has enough left to enable him to consider himself a very great man. the present mansion, built on the site of that in which the family had lived till about seventy years since, is, like the grounds, large, commodious, and uninteresting. it is built of stone, which appears as if it had been plastered over, is three stories high, and the windows are all of the same size, and at regular intervals. the body of the house looks like a huge, square, dutch old lady, and the two wings might be taken for her two equally fat, square, dutch daughters. inside, the furniture is good, strong, and plain. there are plenty of drawing-rooms, sitting-rooms, bed-rooms, and offices; a small gallery of very indifferent paintings, and a kitchen, with an excellent kitchen-range, and patent boilers of every shape. considering the nature of the attractions, it is somewhat strange that lord cashel should have considered it necessary to make it generally known that the park might be seen any day between the hours of nine and six, and the house, on tuesdays and fridays between the hours of eleven and four. yet such is the case, and the strangeness of this proceeding on his part is a good deal diminished by the fact that persons, either induced by lord cashel's good nature, or thinking that any big house must be worth seeing, very frequently pay half-a-crown to the housekeeper for the privilege of being dragged through every room in the mansion. there is a bed there, in which the regent slept when in ireland, and a room which was tenanted by lord normanby, when lord lieutenant. there is, moreover, a satin counterpane, which was made by the lord's aunt, and a snuff-box which was given to the lord's grandfather by frederick the great. these are the lions of the place, and the gratification experienced by those who see them is, no doubt, great; but i doubt if it equals the annoyance and misery to which they are subjected in being obliged to pass one unopened door--that of the private room of lady selina, the only daughter of the earl at present unmarried. it contains only a bed, and the usual instruments of a lady's toilet; but lady selina does not choose to have it shown, and it has become invested, in the eyes of the visitors, with no ordinary mystery. many a petitionary whisper is addressed to the housekeeper on the subject, but in vain; and, consequently, the public too often leave grey abbey dissatisfied. as lord ballindine rode through the gates, and up the long approach to the house, he was so satisfied of the wisdom of his own final resolution, and of the successful termination of his embassy under such circumstances, that he felt relieved of the uncomfortable sensation of fear which had oppressed him; and it was only when the six-foot high, powdered servant told him, with a very solemn face, that the earl was alone in the book-room--the odious room he hated so much--that he began again to feel a little misgiving. however, there was nothing left for him now, so he gave up his horse to the groom, and followed the sober-faced servant into the book-room. lord cashel was a man about sixty-three, with considerable external dignity of appearance, though without any personal advantage, either in face, figure, or manner. he had been an earl, with a large income, for thirty years; and in that time he had learned to look collected, even when his ideas were confused; to keep his eye steady, and to make a few words go a long way. he had never been intemperate, and was, therefore, strong and hale for his years,--he had not done many glaringly foolish things, and, therefore, had a character for wisdom and judgment. he had run away with no man's wife, and, since his marriage, had seduced no man's daughter; he was, therefore, considered a moral man. he was not so deeply in debt as to have his affairs known to every one; and hence was thought prudent. and, as he lived in his own house, with his own wife, paid his servants and labourers their wages regularly, and nodded in church for two hours every sunday, he was thought a good man. such were his virtues; and by these negative qualities--this _vis inertiæ_, he had acquired, and maintained, a considerable influence in the country. when lord ballindine's name was announced, he slowly rose, and, just touching the tip of frank's fingers, by way of shaking hands with him, hoped he had the pleasure of seeing him well. the viscount hoped the same of the earl--and of the ladies. this included the countess and lady selina, as well as fanny, and was, therefore, not a particular question; but, having hoped this, and the earl remaining silent, he got confused, turned red, hummed and hawed a little, sat down, and then, endeavouring to drown his confusion in volubility, began talking quickly about his anxiety to make final arrangements concerning matters, which, of course, he had most deeply at heart; and, at last, ran himself fairly aground, from not knowing whether, under the present circumstances, he ought to speak of his affianced to her guardian as "fanny", or "miss wyndham". when he had quite done, and was dead silent, and had paused sufficiently long to assure the earl that he was going to say nothing further just at present, the great man commenced his answer. "this is a painful subject, my lord--most peculiarly painful at the present time; but, surely, after all that has passed--but especially after what has _not_ passed"--lord cashel thought this was a dead hit--"you cannot consider your engagement with miss wyndham to be still in force?" "good gracious!--and why not, my lord? i am ready to do anything her friends--in fact i came solely, this morning, to consult yourself, about--i'm sure fanny herself can't conceive the engagement to be broken off. of course, if miss wyndham wishes it--but i can't believe--i can't believe--if it's about the horses, lord cashel, upon my word, i'm ready to sell them to-day." this was not very dignified in poor frank, and to tell the truth, he was completely bothered. lord cashel looked so more than ordinarily glum; had he been going to put on a black cap and pass sentence of death, or disinherit his eldest son, he could not have looked more stern or more important. frank's lack of dignity added to his, and made him feel immeasurably superior to any little difficulty which another person might have felt in making the communication he was going to make. he was really quite in a solemn good humour. lord ballindine's confusion was so flattering. "i can assure you, my lord, miss wyndham calls for no such sacrifice, nor do i. there was a time when, as her guardian, i ventured to hint--and i own i was taking a liberty, a fruitless liberty, in doing so--that i thought your remaining on the turf was hardly prudent. but i can assure you, with all kindly feeling--with no approach to animosity--that i will not offend in a similar way again. i hear, by mere rumour, that you have extended your operations to the other kingdom. i hope i have not been the means of inducing you to do so; but, advice, if not complied with, often gives a bias in an opposite direction. with regard to miss wyndham, i must express--and i really had thought it was unnecessary to do so, though it was certainly my intention, as it was miss wyndham's wish, that i should have written to you formally on the subject--but your own conduct--excuse me, lord ballindine--your own evident indifference, and continued, i fear i must call it, dissipation--and your, as i considered, unfortunate selection of acquaintance, combined with the necessary diminution of that attachment which i presume miss wyndham once felt for you--necessary, inasmuch as it was, as far as i understand, never of a sufficiently ardent nature to outlive the slights--indeed, my lord, i don't wish to offend you, or hurt your feelings--but, i must say, the slights which it encountered--." here the earl felt that his sentence was a little confused, but the viscount looked more so; and, therefore, not at all abashed by the want of a finish to his original proposition, he continued glibly enough: "in short, in considering all the features of the case, i thought the proposed marriage a most imprudent one; and, on questioning miss wyndham as to her feelings, i was, i must own, gratified to learn that she agreed with me; indeed, she conceived that your conduct gave ample proof, my lord, of your readiness to be absolved from your engagement; pardon me a moment, my lord--as i said before, i still deemed it incumbent on me, and on my ward, that i, as her guardian, should give you an absolute and written explanation of her feelings:--that would have been done yesterday, and this most unpleasant meeting would have been spared to both of us, but for the unexpected--did you hear of the occurrence which has happened in miss wyndham's family, my lord?" "occurrence? no, lord cashel; i did not hear of any especial occurrence." there had been a peculiarly solemn air about lord cashel during the whole of the interview, which deepened into quite funereal gloom as he asked the last question; but he was so uniformly solemn, that this had not struck lord ballindine. besides, an appearance of solemnity agreed so well with lord cashel's cast of features and tone of voice, that a visage more lengthened, and a speech somewhat slower than usual, served only to show him off as so much the more clearly identified by his own characteristics. thus a man who always wears a green coat does not become remarkable by a new green coat; he is only so much the more than ever, the man in the green coat. lord ballindine, therefore, answered the question without the appearance of that surprise which lord cashel expected he would feel, if he had really not yet heard of the occurrence about to be related to him. the earl, therefore, made up his mind, as indeed he had nearly done before, that frank knew well what was going to be told him, though it suited his purpose to conceal his knowledge. he could not, however, give his young brother nobleman the lie; and he was, therefore, constrained to tell his tale, as if to one to whom it was unknown. he was determined, however, though he could not speak out plainly, to let frank see that he was not deceived by his hypocrisy, and that he, lord cashel, was well aware, not only that the event about to be told had been known at handicap lodge, but that the viscount's present visit to grey abbey had arisen out of that knowledge. lord ballindine, up to this moment, was perfectly ignorant of this event, and it is only doing justice to him to say that, had he heard of it, it would at least have induced him to postpone his visit for some time. lord cashel paused for a few moments, looking at frank in a most diplomatic manner, and then proceeded to unfold his budget. "i am much surprised that you should not have heard of it. the distressing news reached grey abbey yesterday, and must have been well known in different circles in dublin yesterday morning. considering the great intercourse between dublin and the curragh, i wonder you can have been left so long in ignorance of a circumstance so likely to be widely discussed, and which at one time might have so strongly affected your own interests." lord cashel again paused, and looked hard at frank. he flattered himself that he was reading his thoughts; but he looked as if he had detected a spot on the other's collar, and wanted to see whether it was ink or soot. lord ballindine was, however, confounded. when the earl spoke of "a circumstance so likely to be widely discussed", mat tierney's conversation recurred to him, and lord kilcullen's public declaration that fanny wyndham's match was off.--it was certainly odd for lord cashel to call this an occurrence in miss wyndham's family, but then, he had a round-about way of saying everything. "i say," continued the earl, after a short pause, "that i cannot but be surprised that an event of so much importance, of so painful a nature, and, doubtless, already so publicly known, should not before this have reached the ears of one to whom, i presume, miss wyndham's name was not always wholly indifferent. but, as you have not heard it, my lord, i will communicate it to you," and again he paused, as though expecting another assurance of lord ballindine's ignorance. "why, my lord," said frank, "i did hear a rumour, which surprised me very much, but i could not suppose it to be true. to tell the truth, it was very much in consequence of what i heard that i came to grey abbey to-day." it was now lord cashel's turn to be confounded. first, to deny that he had heard anything about it--and then immediately to own that he had heard it, and had been induced to renew his visits to grey abbey in consequence! just what he, in his wisdom, had suspected was the case. but how could lord ballindine have the face to own it? i must, however, tell the reader the event of which frank was ignorant, and which, it appears, lord cashel is determined not to communicate to him. fanny wyndham's father had held a governorship, or some golden appointment in the golden days of india, and consequently had died rich. he left eighty thousand pounds to his son, who was younger than fanny, and twenty to his daughter. his son had lately been put into the guards, but he was not long spared to enjoy his sword and his uniform. he died, and his death had put his sister in possession of his money; and lord cashel thought that, though frank might slight twenty thousand pounds, he would be too glad to be allowed to remain the accepted admirer of a hundred thousand. "i thought you must have heard it, my lord," resumed the senior, as soon as he had collected his shreds of dignity, which frank's open avowal had somewhat scattered, "i felt certain you must have heard it, and you will, i am sure, perceive that this is no time for you--excuse me if i use a word which may appear harsh--it is no time for any one, not intimately connected with miss wyndham by ties of family, to intrude upon her sorrow." frank was completely bothered. he thought that if she were so sorrowful, if she grieved so deeply at the match being broken off, that was just the reason why he should see her. after all, it was rather flattering to himself to hear of her sorrows; dear fanny! was she so grieved that she was forced to part from him? "but, lord cashel," he said, "i am ready to do whatever you please. i'll take any steps you'll advise. but i really cannot see why i'm to be told that the engagement between me and miss wyndham is off, without hearing any reason from herself. i'll make any sacrifice you please, or she requires; i'm sure she was attached to me, and she cannot have overcome that affection so soon." "i have already said that we require--miss wyndham requires--no sacrifice from you. the time for sacrifice is past; and i do not think her affection was of such a nature as will long prey on her spirits." "my affection for her is, i can assure you--" "pray excuse me--but i think this is hardly the time either to talk of, or to show, your affection. had it been proved to be of a lasting, i fear i must say, a sincere nature, it would now have been most valued. i will leave yourself to say whether this was the case." "and so you mean to say, lord cashel, that i cannot see miss wyndham?" "assuredly, lord ballindine. and i must own, that i hardly appreciate your delicacy in asking to do so at the present moment." there was something very hard in this. the match was to be broken off without any notice to him; and when he requested, at any rate, to hear this decision from the mouth of the only person competent to make it, he was told that it was indelicate for him to wish to do so. this put his back up. "well, my lord," he said with some spirit, "miss wyndham is at present your ward, and in your house, and i am obliged to postpone the exercise of the right, to which, at least, i am entitled, of hearing her decision from her own mouth. i cannot think that she expects i should be satisfied with such an answer as i have now received. i shall write to her this evening, and shall expect at any rate the courtesy of an answer from herself." "my advice to my ward will be, not to write to you; at any rate for the present. i presume, my lord, you cannot doubt my word that miss wyndham chooses to be released from an engagement, which i must say your own conduct renders it highly inexpedient for her to keep." "i don't doubt your word, of course, lord cashel; but such being the case, i think miss wyndham might at least tell me so herself." "i should have thought, lord ballindine, that you would have felt that the sudden news of a dearly loved brother's death, was more than sufficient to excuse miss wyndham from undergoing an interview which, even under ordinary circumstances, would be of very doubtful expediency." "her brother's death! good gracious! is harry wyndham dead!" frank was so truly surprised--so effectually startled by the news, which he now for the first time heard, that, had his companion possessed any real knowledge of human nature, he would at once have seen that his astonishment was not affected. but he had none, and, therefore, went on blundering in his own pompous manner. "yes, my lord, he is dead. i understood you to say that you had already heard it; and, unless my ears deceived me, you explained that his demise was the immediate cause of your present visit. i cannot, however, go so far as to say that i think you have exercised a sound discretion in the matter. in expressing such an opinion, however, i am far from wishing to utter anything which may be irritating or offensive to your feelings." "upon my word then, i never heard a word about it till this moment! poor harry! and is fanny much cut up?" "miss wyndham is much afflicted." "i wouldn't for worlds annoy her, or press on her at such a moment. pray tell her, lord cashel, how deeply i feel her sorrows: pray tell her this, with my kindest--best compliments." this termination was very cold--but so was lord cashel's face. his lordship had also risen from his chair; and frank saw it was intended that the interview should end. but he would now have been glad to stay. he wanted to ask a hundred questions;--how the poor lad had died? whether he had been long ill?--whether it had been expected? but he saw that he must go; so he rose and putting out his hand which lord cashel just touched, he said, "good bye, my lord. i trust, after a few months are gone by, you may see reason to alter the opinion you have expressed respecting your ward. should i not hear from you before then, i shall again do myself the honour of calling at grey abbey; but i will write to miss wyndham before i do so." lord cashel had the honour of wishing lord ballindine a very good morning, and of bowing him to the door; and so the interview ended. xii. fanny wyndham when lord cashel had seen frank over the mat which lay outside his study door, and that there was a six foot servitor to open any other door through which he might have to pass, he returned to his seat, and, drawing his chair close to the fire, began to speculate on fanny and her discarded lover. he was very well satisfied with himself, and with his own judgment and firmness in the late conversation. it was very evident that frank had heard of harry wyndham's death, and of fanny's great accession of wealth; that he had immediately determined that the heiress was no longer to be neglected, and that he ought to strike while the iron was hot: hence his visit to grey abbey. his pretended ignorance of the young man's death, when he found he could not see miss wyndham, was a ruse; but an old bird like lord cashel was not to be caught with chaff. and then, how indelicate of him to come and press his suit immediately after news of so distressing a nature had reached miss wyndham! how very impolitic, thought lord cashel, to show such a hurry to take possession of the fortune!--how completely he had destroyed his own game. and then, other thoughts passed through his mind. his ward had now one hundred thousand pounds clear, which was, certainly, a great deal of ready money. lord cashel had no younger sons; but his heir, lord kilcullen, was an expensive man, and owed, he did not exactly know, and was always afraid to ask, how much. he must marry soon, or he would be sure to go to the devil. he had been living with actresses and opera-dancers quite long enough for his own respectability; and, if he ever intended to be such a pattern to the country as his father, it was now time for him to settle down. and lord cashel bethought himself that if he could persuade his son to marry fanny wyndham and pay his debts with her fortune--(surely he couldn't owe more than a hundred thousand pounds?)--he would be able to give them a very handsome allowance to live on. to do lord cashel justice, we must say that he had fully determined that it was his duty to break off the match between frank and his ward, before he heard of the accident which had so enriched her. and fanny herself, feeling slighted and neglected--knowing how near to her her lover was, and that nevertheless he never came to see her--hearing his name constantly mentioned in connection merely with horses and jockeys--had been induced to express her acquiescence in her guardian's views, and to throw poor frank overboard. in all this the earl had been actuated by no mercenary views, as far as his own immediate family was concerned. he had truly and justly thought that lord ballindine, with his limited fortune and dissipated habits, was a bad match for his ward; and he had, consequently, done his best to break the engagement. there could, therefore, he thought, be nothing unfair in his taking advantage of the prudence which he had exercised on her behalf. he did not know, when he was persuading her to renounce lord ballindine, that, at that moment, her young, rich, and only brother, was lying at the point of death. he had not done it for his own sake, or lord kilcullen's; there could, therefore, be nothing unjust or ungenerous in their turning to their own account the two losses, that of her lover and her brother, which had fallen on miss wyndham at the same time. if he, as her guardian, would have been wrong to allow lord ballindine to squander her twenty thousands, he would be so much the more wrong to let him make ducks and drakes of five times as much. in this manner he quieted his conscience as to his premeditated absorption of his ward's fortune. it was true that lord kilcullen was a heartless roué, whereas lord ballindine was only a thoughtless rake; but then, lord kilcullen would be an earl, and a peer of parliament, and lord ballindine was only an irish viscount. it was true that, in spite of her present anger, fanny dearly loved lord ballindine, and was dearly loved by him; and that lord kilcullen was not a man to love or be loved; but then, the kelly's court rents--what were they to the grey abbey rents? not a twentieth part of them! and, above all, lord kilcullen's vices were filtered through the cleansing medium of his father's partiality, and lord ballindine's faults were magnified by the cautious scruples of fanny's guardian. the old man settled, therefore, in his own mind, that fanny should be his dear daughter, and the only difficulty he expected to encounter was with his hopeful son. it did not occur to him that fanny might object, or that she could be other than pleased with the arrangement. he determined, however, to wait a little before the tidings of her future destiny should be conveyed to her, although no time was to be lost in talking over the matter with lord kilcullen. in the meantime, it would be necessary for him to tell fanny of lord ballindine's visit; and the wily peer was glad to think that she could not but be further disgusted at the hurry which her former lover had shown to renew his protestations of affection, as soon as the tidings of her wealth had reached him. however, he would say nothing on that head: he would merely tell her that lord ballindine had called, had asked to see her, and had been informed of her determination to see him no more. he sat, for a considerable time, musing over the fire, and strengthening his resolution; and then he stalked and strutted into the drawing-room, where the ladies were sitting, to make his communication to miss wyndham. miss wyndham, and her cousin, lady selina grey, the only unmarried daughter left on the earl's hands, were together. lady selina was not in her _première jeunesse_ [ ], and, in manner, face, and disposition, was something like her father: she was not, therefore, very charming; but his faults were softened down in her; and what was pretence in him, was, to a certain degree, real in her. she had a most exaggerated conception of her own station and dignity, and of what was due to her, and expected from her. because her rank enabled her to walk out of a room before other women, she fancied herself better than them, and entitled to be thought better. she was plain, red-haired, and in no ways attractive; but she had refused the offer of a respectable country gentleman, because he was only a country gentleman, and then flattered herself that she owned the continuance of her maiden condition to her high station, which made her a fit match only for the most exalted magnates of the land. but she was true, industrious, and charitable; she worked hard to bring her acquirements to that pitch which she considered necessary to render her fit for her position; she truly loved her family, and tried hard to love her neighbours, in which she might have succeeded but for the immeasurable height from which she looked down on them. she listened, complacently, to all those serious cautions against pride, which her religion taught her, and considered that she was obeying its warnings, when she spoke condescendingly to those around her. she thought that condescension was humility, and that her self-exaltation was not pride, but a proper feeling of her own and her family's dignity. [footnote : première jeunesse--(french) prime of youth] fanny wyndham was a very different creature. she, too, was proud, but her pride was of another, if not of a less innocent cast; she was proud of her own position; but it was as fanny wyndham, not as lord cashel's niece, or anybody's daughter. she had been brought out in the fashionable world, and liked, and was liked by, it; but she felt that she owed the character which three years had given her, to herself, and not to those around her. she stood as high as lady selina, though on very different grounds. any undue familiarity would have been quite as impossible with one as with the other. lady selina chilled intruders to a distance; fanny wyndham's light burned with so warm a flame, that butterflies were afraid to trust their wings within its reach. she was neither so well read, nor so thoughtful on what she did read, as her friend; but she could turn what she learned to more account, for the benefit of others. the one, in fact, could please, and the other could not. fanny wyndham was above the usual height; but she did not look tall, for her figure was well-formed and round, and her bust full. she had dark-brown hair, which was never curled, but worn in plain braids, fastened at the back of her head, together with the long rich folds which were collected there under a simple comb. her forehead was high, and beautifully formed, and when she spoke, showed the animation of her character. her eyes were full and round, of a hazel colour, bright and soft when she was pleased, but full of pride and displeasure when her temper was ruffled, or her dignity offended. her nose was slightly _retroussé_ [ ], but not so much so as to give to her that pertness, of which it is usually the index. the line of her cheeks and chin was very lovely: it was this which encouraged her to comb back that luxuriant hair, and which gave the greatest charm to her face. her mouth was large, too large for a beauty, and therefore she was not a regular beauty; but, were she talking to you, and willing to please you, you could hardly wish it to be less. i cannot describe the shade of her complexion, but it was rich and glowing; and, though she was not a brunette, i believe that in painting her portrait, an artist would have mixed more brown than other colours. [footnote : retroussé--(french) turned-up] at the time of which i am now speaking, she was sitting, or rather lying, on a sofa, with her face turned towards her cousin, but her eyes fixed on vacancy. as might have been expected, she was thinking of her brother, and his sudden death; but other subjects crowded with that into her mind, and another figure shared with him her thoughts. she had been induced to give her guardian an unqualified permission to reject, in her name, any further intercourse with frank; and though she had doubtless been induced to do so by the distressing consciousness that she had been slighted by him, she had cheated herself into the belief that prudence had induced her to do so. she felt that she was not fitted to be a poor man's wife, and that lord ballindine was as ill suited for matrimonial poverty. she had, therefore, induced herself to give him up; may-be she was afraid that if she delayed doing so, she might herself be given up. now, however, the case was altered; though she sincerely grieved for her brother, she could not but recollect the difference which his death made in her own position; she was now a great heiress, and, were she to marry lord ballindine, if she did not make him a rich man, she would, at any rate, free him from all embarrassment. besides, could she give him up now? now that she was rich? he would first hear of her brother's death and her wealth, and then would immediately be told that she had resolved to reject him. could she bear that she should be subjected to the construction which would fairly be put upon her conduct, if she acted in this manner? and then, again, she felt that she loved him; and she did love him, more dearly than she was herself aware. she began to repent of her easy submission to her guardian's advice, and to think how she could best unsay what she had already said. she had lost her brother; could she afford also to lose her lover? she had had none she could really love but those two. and the tears again came to her eyes, and lady selina saw her, for the twentieth time that morning, turn her face to the back of the sofa, and heard her sob. lady selina was sitting at one of the windows, over her carpet-work frame. she had talked a great deal of sound sense to fanny that morning, about her brother, and now prepared to talk some more. preparatory to this, she threw back her long red curls from her face, and wiped her red nose, for it was february. "fanny, you should occupy yourself, indeed you should, my dear. it's no use your attempting your embroidery, for your mind would still wander to him that is no more. you should read; indeed you should. do go on with gibbon. i'll fetch it for you, only tell me where you were." "i could not read, selina; i could not think about what i read, more than about the work." "but you should try, fanny,--the very attempt would be work to your mind: besides, you would be doing your duty. could all your tears bring him back to you? can all your sorrow again restore him to his friends? no! and you have great consolation, fanny, in reflecting that your remembrance of your brother is mixed with no alloy. he had not lived to be contaminated by the heartless vices of that portion of the world into which he would probably have been thrown; he had not become dissipated--extravagant--and sensual. this should be a great consolation to you." it might be thought that lady selina was making sarcastic allusions to her own brother and to fanny's lover; but she meant nothing of the kind. her remarks were intended to be sensible, true, and consolatory; and they at any rate did no harm, for fanny was thinking of something else before she had half finished her speech. they had both again been silent for a short time, when the door opened, and in came the earl. his usual pomposity of demeanour was somewhat softened by a lachrymose air, which, in respect to his ward's grief, he put on as he turned the handle of the door; and he walked somewhat more gently than usual into the room. "well, fanny, how are you now?" he said, as he crept up to her. "you shouldn't brood over these sad thoughts. your poor brother has gone to a better world; we shall always think of him as one who had felt no sorrow, and been guilty of but few faults. he died before he had wasted his fortune and health, as he might have done:--this will always be a consolation." it was singular how nearly alike were the platitudes of the daughter and the father. the young man had not injured his name, or character, in the world, and had left his money behind him: and, therefore, his death was less grievous! fanny did not answer, but she sat upright on the sofa as he came up to her--and he then sat down beside her. "perhaps i'm wrong, fanny, to speak to you on other subjects so soon after the sad event of which we heard last night; but, on the whole, i think it better to do so. it is good for you to rouse yourself, to exert yourself to think of other things; besides it will be a comfort to you to know that i have already done, what i am sure you strongly wished to have executed at once." it was not necessary for the guardian to say anything further to induce his ward to listen. she knew that he was going to speak about lord ballindine, and she was all attention. "i shall not trouble, you, fanny, by speaking to you now, i hope?" "no;" said fanny, with her heart palpitating. "if it's anything i ought to hear, it will be no trouble to me." "why, my dear, i do think you ought to know, without loss of time that lord ballindine has been with me this morning." fanny blushed up to her hair--not with shame, but with emotion as to what was coming next. "i have had a long conversation with him," continued the earl, "in the book-room, and i think i have convinced him that it is for your mutual happiness"--he paused, for he couldn't condescend to tell a lie; but in his glib, speechifying manner, he was nearly falling into one--"mutual happiness" was such an appropriate prudential phrase that he could not resist the temptation; but he corrected himself--"at least, i think i have convinced him that it is impossible that he should any longer look upon miss wyndham as his future wife." lord cashel paused for some mark of approbation. fanny saw that she was expected to speak, and, therefore, asked whether lord ballindine was still in the house. she listened tremulously for his answer; for she felt that if her lover were to be rejected, he had a right, after what had passed between them, to expect that she should, in person, express her resolution to him. and yet, if she had to see him now, could she reject him? could she tell him that all the vows that had been made between them were to be as nothing? no! she could only fall on his shoulder, and weep in his arms. but lord cashel had managed better than that. "no, fanny; neither he nor i, at the present moment, could expect you--could reasonably expect you, to subject yourself to anything so painful as an interview must now have been. lord ballindine has left the house--i hope, for the last time--at least, for many months." these words fell cold upon fanny's ears, "did he leave any--any message for me?" "nothing of any moment; nothing which it can avail to communicate to you: he expressed his grief for your brother's death, and desired i should tell you how grieved he was that you should be so afflicted." "poor harry!" sobbed fanny, for it was a relief to cry again, though her tears were more for her lover than her brother. "poor harry! they were very fond of each other. i'm sure he must have been sorry--i'm sure he'd feel it"--and she paused, and sobbed again--"he had heard of harry's death, then?" when she said this, she had in her mind none of the dirty suspicion that had actuated lord cashel; but he guessed at her feelings by his own, and answered accordingly. "at first i understood him to say he had; but then, he seemed to wish to express that he had not. my impression, i own, is, that he must have heard of it; the sad news must have reached him." fanny still did not understand the earl. the idea of her lover coming after her money immediately on her obtaining possession of it, never entered her mind; she thought of her wealth as far as it might have affected him, but did not dream of its altering his conduct towards her. "and did he seem unhappy about it?" she continued. "i am sure it would make him very unhappy. he could not have loved harry better if he had been his brother," and then she blushed again through her tears, as she remembered that she had intended that they should be brothers. lord cashel did not say anything more on this head; he was fully convinced that lord ballindine only looked on the young man's death as a windfall which he might turn to his own advantage; but he thought it would be a little too strong to say so outright, just at present. "it will be a comfort for you to know that this matter is now settled," continued the earl, "and that no one can attach the slightest blame to you in the matter. lord ballindine has shown himself so very imprudent, so very unfit, in every way, for the honour you once intended him, that no other line of conduct was open to you than that which you have wisely pursued." this treading on the fallen was too much for fanny. "i have no right either to speak or to think ill of him," said she, through her tears; "and if any one is ill-treated in the matter it is he. but did he not ask to see me?" "surely, fanny, you would not, at the present moment, have wished to see him!" "oh, no; it is a great relief, under all the circumstances, not having to do so. but was he contented? i should be glad that he were satisfied--that he shouldn't think i had treated him harshly, or rudely. did he appear as if he wished to see me again?" "why, he certainly did ask for a last interview--which, anticipating your wishes, i have refused." "but was he satisfied? did he appear to think that he had been badly treated?" "rejected lovers," answered the earl with a stately smile, "seldom express much satisfaction with the terms of their rejection; but i cannot say that lord ballindine testified any strong emotion." he rose from the sofa as he said this, and then, intending to clinch the nail, added as he went to the door--"to tell the truth, fanny, i think lord ballindine is much more eager for an alliance with your fair self now, than he was a few days back, when he could never find a moment's time to leave his horses, and his friend mr blake, either to see his intended wife, or to pay lady cashel the usual courtesy of a morning visit." he then opened the door, and, again closing it, added--"i think, however, fanny, that what has now passed between us will secure you from any further annoyance from him." lord cashel, in this last speech, had greatly overshot his mark; his object had been to make the separation between his ward and her lover permanent; and, hitherto, he had successfully appealed to her pride and her judgment. fanny had felt lord cashel to be right, when he told her that she was neglected, and that frank was dissipated, and in debt. she knew she should be unhappy as the wife of a poor nobleman, and she felt that it would break her proud heart to be jilted herself. she had, therefore, though unwillingly, still entirely agreed with her, guardian as to the expediency of breaking off, the match; and, had lord cashel been judicious, he might have confirmed her in this resolution; but his last thunderbolt, which had been intended to crush lord ballindine, had completely recoiled upon himself. fanny now instantly understood the allusion, and, raising her face, which was again resting on her hands, looked at him with an indignant glance through her tears. lord cashel, however, had left the room without observing the indignation expressed in fanny's eyes; but she was indignant; she knew frank well enough to be sure that he had come to grey abbey that morning with no such base motives as those ascribed to him. he might have heard of harry's death, and come there to express his sorrow, and offer that consolation which she felt she could accept from him sooner than from any living creature:--or, he might have been ignorant of it altogether; but that he should come there to press his suit because her brother was dead--immediately after his death--was not only impossible; but the person who could say it was possible, must be false and untrue to her. her uncle could not have believed it himself: he had basely pretended to believe it, that he might widen the breach which he had made. fanny was alone, in the drawing-room--for her cousin had left it as soon as her father began to talk about lord ballindine, and she sat there glowering through her tears for a long time. had lord ballindine been able to know all her thoughts at this moment, he would have felt little doubt as to the ultimate success of his suit. xiii. father and son lord cashel firmly believed, when he left the room, that he had shown great tact in discovering frank's mercenary schemes, and in laying them open before fanny; and that she had firmly and finally made up her mind to have nothing more to do with him. he had not long been re-seated in his customary chair in the book-room, before he began to feel a certain degree of horror at the young lord's baseness, and to think how worthily he had executed his duty as a guardian, in saving miss wyndham from so sordid a suitor. from thinking of his duties as a guardian, his mind, not unnaturally, recurred to those which were incumbent on him as a father, and here nothing disturbed his serenity. it is true that, from an appreciation of the lustre which would reflect back upon himself from allowing his son to become a decidedly fashionable young man, he had encouraged him in extravagance, dissipation, and heartless worldliness; he had brought him up to be supercilious, expensive, unprincipled, and useless. but then, he was gentlemanlike, dignified, and sought after; and now, the father reflected, with satisfaction, that, if he could accomplish his well-conceived scheme, he would pay his son's debts with his ward's fortune, and, at the same time, tie him down to some degree of propriety and decorum, by a wife. lord kilcullen, when about to marry, would be obliged to cashier his opera-dancers and their expensive crews; and, though he might not leave the turf altogether, when married he would gradually be drawn out of turf society, and would doubtless become a good steady family nobleman, like his father. why, he--lord cashel himself--wise, prudent, and respectable as he was--example as he knew himself to be to all peers, english, irish, and scotch,--had had his horses, and his indiscretions, when he was young. and then he stroked the calves of his legs, and smiled grimly; for the memory of his juvenile vices was pleasant to him. lord cashel thought, as he continued to reflect on the matter, that lord ballindine was certainly a sordid schemer; but that his son was a young man of whom he had just reason to be proud, and who was worthy of a wife in the shape of a hundred thousand pounds. and then, he congratulated himself on being the most anxious of guardians and the best of fathers; and, with these comfortable reflections, the worthy peer strutted off, through his ample doors, up his lofty stairs, and away through his long corridors, to dress for dinner. you might have heard his boots creaking till he got inside his dressing-room, but you must have owned that they did so with a most dignified cadence. it was pleasant enough, certainly, planning all these things; but there would be some little trouble in executing them. in the first place, lord kilcullen--though a very good son, on the whole, as the father frequently remarked to himself--was a little fond of having a will of his own, and may-be, might object to dispense with his dancing-girls. and though there was, unfortunately, but little doubt that the money was indispensably necessary to him, it was just possible that he might insist on having the cash without his cousin. however, the proposal must be made, and, as the operations necessary to perfect the marriage would cause some delay, and the money would certainly be wanted as soon as possible, no time was to be lost. lord kilcullen was, accordingly, summoned to grey abbey; and, as he presumed his attendance was required for the purpose of talking over some method of raising the wind, he obeyed the summons.--i should rather have said of raising a storm, for no gentle puff would serve to waft him through his present necessities. down he came, to the great delight of his mother, who thought him by far the finest young man of the day, though he usually slighted, snubbed, and ridiculed her--and of his sister, who always hailed with dignified joy the return of the eldest scion of her proud family to the ancestral roof. the earl was also glad to find that no previous engagement detained him; that is, that he so far sacrificed his own comfort as to leave tattersall's and the _figuranti_ of the opera-house, to come all the way to grey abbey, in the county of kildare. but, though the earl was glad to see his son, he was still a little consternated: the business interview could not be postponed, as it was not to be supposed that lord kilcullen would stay long at grey abbey during the london season; and the father had yet hardly sufficiently crammed himself for the occasion. besides, the pressure from without must have been very strong to have produced so immediate a compliance with a behest not uttered in a very peremptory manner, or, generally speaking, to a very obedient child. on the morning after his arrival, the earl was a little uneasy in his chair during breakfast. it was rather a sombre meal, for fanny had by no means recovered her spirits, nor did she appear to be in the way to do so. the countess tried to chat a little to her son, but he hardly answered her; and lady selina, though she was often profound, was never amusing. lord cashel made sundry attempts at general conversation, but as often failed. it was, at last, however, over; and the father requested the son to come with him into the book-room. when the fire was poked, and the chairs were drawn together over the rug, there were no further preliminaries which could be decently introduced, and the earl was therefore forced to commence. "well, kilcullen, i'm glad you're come to grey abbey. i'm afraid, however, we shan't induce you to stay with us long, so it's as well perhaps to settle our business at once. you would, however, greatly oblige your mother, and i'm sure i need not add, myself, if you could make your arrangements so as to stay with us till after easter. we could then return together." "till after easter, my lord! i should be in the hue and cry before that time, if i was so long absent from my accustomed haunts. besides i should only put out your own arrangements, or rather, those of lady cashel. there would probably be no room for me in the family coach.". "the family coach won't go, lord kilcullen. i am sorry to say, that the state of my affairs at present renders it advisable that the family should remain at grey abbey this season. i shall attend my parliamentary duties alone." this was intended as a hit the first at the prodigal son, but kilcullen was too crafty to allow it to tell. he merely bowed his head, and opened his eyes, to betoken his surprise at such a decision, and remained quiet. "indeed," continued lord cashel, "i did not even intend to have gone myself, but the unexpected death of harry wyndham renders it necessary. i must put fanny's affairs in a right train. poor harry!--did you see much of him during his illness?" "why, no--i can't say i did. i'm not a very good hand at doctoring or nursing. i saw him once since he got his commission, glittering with his gold lace like a new weather-cock on a town hall. he hadn't time to polish the shine off." "his death will make a great difference, as far as fanny is concerned--eh?" "indeed it will: her fortune now is considerable;--a deuced pretty thing, remembering that it's all ready money, and that she can touch it the moment she's of age. she's entirely off with ballindine, isn't she?" "oh, entirely," said the earl, with considerable self-complacency; "that affair is entirely over." "i've stated so everywhere publicly; but i dare say, she'll give him her money, nevertheless. she's not the girl to give over a man, if she's really fond of him." "but, my dear kilcullen, she has authorised me to give him a final answer, and i have done so. after that, you know, it would be quite impossible for her to--to--" "you'll see;--she'll marry lord ballindine. had harry lived, it might have been different; but now she's got all her brother's money, she'll think it a point of honour to marry her poor lover. besides, her staying this year in the country will be in his favour: she'll see no one here--and she'll want something to think of. i understand he has altogether thrown himself into blake's hands--the keenest fellow in ireland, with as much mercy as a foxhound. he's a positive fool, is ballindine." "i'm afraid he is--i'm afraid he is. and you may be sure i'm too fond of fanny--that is, i have too much regard for the trust reposed in me, to allow her to throw herself away upon him." "that's all very well; but what can you do?" "why, not allow him to see her; and i've another plan in my head for her." "ah!--but the thing is to put the plan into _her_ head. i'd be sorry to hear of a fine girl like fanny wyndham breaking her heart in a half-ruined barrack in connaught, without money to pay a schoolmaster to teach her children to spell. but i've too many troubles of my own to think of just at present, to care much about hers;" and the son and heir got up, and stood with his back to the fire, and put his arms under his coat-laps. "upon my soul, my lord, i never was so hard up in my life!" lord cashel now prepared himself for action. the first shot was fired, and he must go on with the battle. "so i hear, kilcullen; and yet, during the last four years, you've had nearly double your allowance; and, before that, i paid every farthing you owed. within the last five years, you've had nearly forty thousand pounds! supposing you'd had younger brothers, lord kilcullen--supposing that i had had six or eight sons instead of only one; what would you have done? how then would you have paid your debts?" "fate having exempted me and your lordship from so severe a curse, i have never turned my mind to reflect what i might have done under such an infliction." "or, supposing i had chosen, myself, to indulge in those expensive habits, which would have absorbed my income, and left me unable to do more for you, than many other noblemen in my position do for their sons--do you ever reflect how impossible it would then have been for me to have helped you out of your difficulties?" "i feel as truly grateful for your self-denial in this respect, as i do in that of my non-begotten brethren." lord cashel saw that he was laughed at, and he looked angry; but he did not want to quarrel with his son, so he continued: "jervis writes me word that it is absolutely necessary that thirty thousand pounds should be paid for you at once; or, that your remaining in london--or, in fact, in the country at all, is quite out of the question." "indeed, my lord, i'm afraid jervis is right." "thirty thousand pounds! are you aware what your income is?" "why, hardly. i know jervis takes care that i never see much of it." "do you mean that you don't receive it?" "oh, i do not at all doubt its accurate payment. i mean to say, that i don't often have the satisfaction of seeing much of it at the right side of my banker's book." "thirty thousand pounds! and will that sum set you completely free in the world?" "i am sorry to say it will not--nor nearly." "then, lord kilcullen," said the earl, with most severe, but still most courteous dignity, "may i trouble you to be good enough to tell me what, at the present moment, you do owe?" "i'm afraid i could not do so with any accuracy; but it is more than double the sum you have named." "do you mean, that you have no schedule of your debts?--no means of acquainting me with the amount? how can you expect that i can assist you, when you think it too much trouble to make yourself thoroughly acquainted with the state of your own affairs?" "a list could certainly be made out, if i had any prospect of being able to settle the amount. if your lordship can undertake to do so at once, i will undertake to hand you a correct list of the sums due, before i leave grey abbey. i presume you would not require to know exactly to whom all the items were owing." this effrontery was too much, and lord cashel was very near to losing his temper. "upon my honour, kilcullen, you're cool, very cool. you come upon me to pay, heaven knows how many thousands--more money, i know, than i'm able to raise; and you condescendingly tell me that you will trouble yourself so far as to let me know how much money i am to give you--but that i am not to know what is done with it! no; if i am to pay your debts again, i will do it through jervis." "pray remember," replied lord kilcullen, not at all disturbed from his equanimity, "that i have not proposed that you should pay my debts without knowing where the money went; and also that i have not yet asked you to pay them at all." "who, then, do you expect will pay them? i can assure you i should be glad to be relieved from the honour." "i merely said that i had not yet made any proposition respecting them. of course, i expect your assistance. failing you, i have no resource but the jews. i should regret to put the property into their hands; especially as, hitherto, i have not raised money on post obits [ ]." [footnote : post obit--a loan that need not be repaid until the death of a specified individual, usually someone from whom the borrower expected to inherit enough to repay the loan] "at any rate, i'm glad of that," said the father, willing to admit any excuse for returning to his good humour. "that would be ruin; and i hope that anything short of that may be--may be--may be done something with." the expression was not dignified, and it pained the earl to make it; but it was expressive, and he didn't wish at once to say that he had a proposal for paying off his son's debts. "but now, kilcullen, tell me fairly, in round figures, what do you think you owe?--as near as you can guess, without going to pen and paper, you know?" "well, my lord, if you will allow me, i will make a proposition to you. if you will hand over to mr jervis fifty thousand pounds, for him to pay such claims as have already been made upon him as your agent, and such other debts as i may have sent in to him: and if you will give myself thirty thousand, to pay such debts as i do not choose to have paid by an agent, i will undertake to have everything settled." "eighty thousand pounds in four years! why, kilcullen, what have you done with it?--where has it gone? you have five thousand a-year, no house to keep up, no property to support, no tenants to satisfy, no rates to pay--five thousand a-year for your own personal expenses--and, in four years, you have got eighty thousand in debt! the property never can stand that, you know. it never can stand at that rate. why, kilcullen, what have you done with it?" "mr crockford has a portion of it, and john scott has some of it. a great deal of it is scattered rather widely--so widely that it would be difficult now to trace it. but, my lord, it has gone. i won't deny that the greater portion of it has been lost at play, or on the turf. i trust i may, in future, be more fortunate and more cautious." "i trust so. i trust so, indeed. eighty thousand pounds! and do you think i can raise such a sum as that at a week's warning?" "indeed, i have no doubt as to your being able to do so: it may be another question whether you are willing." "i am not--i am not able," said the libelled father. "as you know well enough, the incumbrances on the property take more than a quarter of my income." "there can, nevertheless, be no doubt of your being able to have the money, and that at once, if you chose to go into the market for it. i have no doubt but that mr jervis could get it for you at once at five per cent." "four thousand a-year gone for ever from the property!--and what security am i to have that the same sacrifice will not be again incurred, after another lapse of four years?" "you can have no security, my lord, against my being in debt. you can, however, have every security that you will not again pay my debts, in your own resolution. i trust, however, that i have some experience to prevent my again falling into so disagreeable a predicament. i think i have heard your lordship say that you incurred some unnecessary expenses yourself in london, before your marriage!" "i wish, kilcullen, that you had never exceeded your income more than i did mine. but it is no use talking any further on this subject. i cannot, and i will not--i cannot in justice either to myself or to you, borrow this money for you; nor, if i could, should i think it right to do so." "then what the devil's the use of talking about it so long?" said the dutiful son, hastily jumping up from the chair in which he had again sat down. "did you bring me down to grey abbey merely to tell me that you knew of my difficulties, and that you could do nothing to assist me?" "now, don't put yourself into a passion--pray don't!" said the father, a little frightened by the sudden ebullition. "if you'll sit down, and listen to me, i'll tell you what i propose. i did not send for you here without intending to point out to you some method of extricating yourself from your present pecuniary embarrassment; and, if you have any wish to give up your course, of--i must say, reckless profusion, and commence that upright and distinguished career, which i still hope to see you take, you will, i think, own that my plan is both a safer and a more expedient one than that which you have proposed. it is quite time for you now to abandon the expensive follies of youth; and,"--lord cashel was getting into a delightfully dignified tone, and felt himself prepared for a good burst of common-place eloquence; but his son looked impatient, and as he could not take such liberty with him as he could with lord ballindine, he came to the point at once, and ended abruptly by saying, "and get married." "for the purpose of allowing my wife to pay my debts?" "why, not exactly that; but as, of course, you could not marry any woman but a woman with a large fortune, that would follow as a matter of consequence." "your lordship proposes the fortune not as the first object of my affection, but merely as a corollary. but, perhaps, it will be as well that you should finish your proposition, before i make any remarks on the subject." and lord kilcullen, sat down, with a well-feigned look of listless indifference. "well, kilcullen, i have latterly been thinking much about you, and so has your poor mother. she is very uneasy that you should still--still be unmarried; and jervis has written to me very strongly. you see it is quite necessary that something should be done--or we shall both be ruined. now, if i did raise this sum--and i really could not do it--i don't think i could manage it, just at present; but, even if i did, it would only be encouraging you to go on just in the same way again. now, if you were to marry, your whole course of life would be altered, and you would become, at the same time, more respectable and more happy." "that would depend a good deal upon circumstances, i should think." "oh! i am sure you would. you are just the same sort of fellow i was when at your age, and i was much happier after i was married, so i know it. now, you see, your cousin has a hundred thousand pounds; in fact something more than that." "what?--fanny! poor ballindine! so that's the way with him is it! when i was contradicting the rumour of his marriage with fanny, i little thought that i was to be his rival! at any rate, i shall have to shoot him first." "you might, at any rate, confine yourself to sense, lord kilcullen, when i am taking so much pains to talk sensibly to you, on a subject which, i presume, cannot but interest you." "indeed, my lord, i'm all attention; and i do intend to talk sensibly when i say that i think you are proposing to treat ballindine very ill. the world will think well of your turning him adrift on the score of the match being an imprudent one; but it won't speak so leniently of you if you expel him, as soon as your ward becomes an heiress, to make way for your own son." "you know that i'm not thinking of doing so. i've long seen that lord ballindine would not make a fitting husband for fanny--long before harry died." "and you think that i shall?" "indeed i do. i think she will be lucky to get you." "i'm flattered into silence: pray go on." "you will be an earl--a peer--and a man of property. what would she become if she married lord ballindine?" "oh, you are quite right! go on. i wonder it never occurred to her before to set her cap at me." "now do be serious. i wonder how you can joke on such a subject, with all your debts. i'm sure i feel them heavy enough, if you don't. you see lord ballindine was refused--i may say he was refused--before we heard about that poor boy's unfortunate death. it was the very morning we heard of it, three or four hours before the messenger came, that fanny had expressed her resolution to declare it off, and commissioned me to tell him so. and, therefore, of course, the two things can't have the remotest reference to each other." "i see. there are, or have been, two fanny wyndhams--separate persons, though both wards of your lordship. lord ballindine was engaged to the girl who had a brother; but he can have no possible concern with fanny wyndham, the heiress, who has no brother." "how can you be so unfeeling?--but you may pay your debts in your own way. you won't ever listen to what i have to say! i should have thought that, as your father, i might have considered myself entitled to more respect from you." "indeed, my lord, i'm all respect and attention, and i won't say one more word till you've finished." "well--you must see, there can be no objection on the score of lord ballindine?" "oh, none at all." "and then, where could fanny wish for a better match than yourself? it would be a great thing for her, and the match would be, in all things, so--so respectable, and just what it ought to be; and your mother would be so delighted, and so should i, and--" "her fortune would so nicely pay all my debts." "exactly. of course, i should take care to have your present income--five thousand a year--settled on her, in the shape of jointure; and i'm sure that would be treating her handsomely. the interest of her fortune would not be more than that." "and what should we live on?" "why, of course, i should continue your present allowance." "and you think that that which i have found so insufficient for myself, would be enough for both of us?" "you must make it enough, kilcullen--in order that there may be something left to enable you to keep up your title when i am gone." by this time, lord kilcullen appeared to be as serious, and nearly as solemn, as his father, and he sat, for a considerable time, musing, till his father said, "well, kilcullen, will you take my advice?" "it's impracticable, my lord. in the first place, the money must be paid immediately, and considerable delay must occur before i could even offer to miss wyndham; and, in the next place, were i to do so, i am sure she would refuse me." "why; there must be some delay, of course. but i suppose, if i passed my word, through jervis, for so much of the debts as are immediate, that a settlement might be made whereby they might stand over for twelve months, with interest, of course. as to refusing you, it's not at all likely: where would she look for a better offer?" "i don't know much of my cousin; but i don't think she's exactly the girl to take a man because he's a good match for her." "perhaps not. but then, you know, you understand women so well, and would have such opportunities; you would be sure to make yourself agreeable to her, with very little effort on your part." "yes, poor thing--she would be delivered over, ready bound, into the lion's den." and then the young man sat silent again, for some time, turning the matter over in his mind. at last, he said,-- "well, my lord; i am a considerate and a dutiful son, and i will agree to your proposition: but i must saddle it with conditions. i have no doubt that the sum which i suggested should be paid through your agent, could be arranged to be paid in a year, or eighteen months, by your making yourself responsible for it, and i would undertake to indemnify you. but the thirty thousand pounds i must have at once. i must return to london, with the power of raising it there, without delay. this, also, i would repay you out of fanny's fortune. i would then undertake to use my best endeavours to effect a union with your ward. but i most positively will not agree to this--nor have any hand in the matter, unless i am put in immediate possession of the sum i have named, and unless you will agree to double my income as soon as i am married." to both these propositions the earl, at first, refused to accede; but his son was firm. then, lord cashel agreed to put him in immediate possession of the sum of money he required, but would not hear of increasing his income. they argued, discussed, and quarrelled over the matter, for a long time; till, at last, the anxious father, in his passion, told his son that he might go his own way, and that he would take no further trouble to help so unconscionable a child. lord kilcullen rejoined by threatening immediately to throw the whole of the property, which was entailed on himself, into the hands of the jews. long they argued and bargained, till each was surprised at the obstinacy of the other. they ended, however, by splitting the difference, and it was agreed, that lord cashel was at once to hand over thirty thousand pounds, and to take his son's bond for the amount; that the other debts were to stand over till fanny's money was forthcoming; and that the income of the newly married pair was to be seven thousand five hundred a-year. "at least," thought lord kilcullen to himself, as he good-humouredly shook hands with his father at the termination of the interview--"i have not done so badly, for those infernal dogs will be silenced, and i shall get the money. i could not have gone back without that. i can go on with the marriage, or not, as i may choose, hereafter. it won't be a bad speculation, however." to do lord cashel justice, he did not intend cheating his son, nor did he suspect his son of an intention to cheat him. but the generation was deteriorating. xiv. the countess it was delightful to see on what good terms the earl and his son met that evening at dinner. the latter even went so far as to be decently civil to his mother, and was quite attentive to fanny. she, however, did not seem to appreciate the compliment. it was now a fortnight since she had heard of her brother's death, and during the whole of that time she had been silent, unhappy, and fretful. not a word more had been said to her about lord ballindine, nor had she, as yet, spoken about him to any one; but she had been thinking about little else, and had ascertained,--at least, so she thought,--that she could never be happy, unless she were reconciled to him. the more she brooded over the subject, the more she felt convinced that such was the case; she could not think how she had ever been induced to sanction, by her name, such an unwarrantable proceeding as the unceremonious dismissal of a man to whom her troth had been plighted, merely because he had not called to see her. as for his not writing, she was aware that lord cashel had recommended that, till she was of age, they should not correspond. as she thought the matter over in her own room, long hour after hour, she became angry with herself for having been talked into a feeling of anger for him. what right had she to be angry because he kept horses? she could not expect him to put himself into lord cashel's leading-strings. indeed, she thought she would have liked him less if he had done so. and now, to reject him just when circumstances put it in her power to enable her to free him from his embarrassments, and live a manner becoming his station! what must frank think of her?--for he could not but suppose that her rejection had been caused by her unexpected inheritance. in the course of the fortnight, she made up her mind that all lord cashel had said to lord ballindine should be unsaid;--but who was to do it? it would be a most unpleasant task to perform; and one which, she was aware, her guardian would be most unwilling to undertake. she fully resolved that she would do it herself, if she could find no fitting ambassador to undertake the task, though that would be a step to which she would fain not be driven. at one time, she absolutely thought of asking her cousin, kilcullen, about it:--this was just before his leaving grey abbey; he seemed so much more civil and kind than usual. but then, she knew so little of him, and so little liked what she did know: that scheme, therefore, was given up. lady selina was so cold, and prudent--would talk to her so much about propriety, self-respect, and self-control, that she could not make a confidante of her. no one could talk to selina on any subject more immediately interesting than a roman emperor, or a pattern for worsted-work. fanny felt that she would not be equal, herself, to going boldly to lord cashel, and desiring him to inform lord ballindine that he had been mistaken in the view he had taken of his ward's wishes: no--that was impossible; such a proceeding would probably bring on a fit of apoplexy. there was no one else to whom she could apply, but her aunt. lady cashel was a very good-natured old woman, who slept the greatest portion of her time, and knitted through the rest of her existence. she did not take a prominent part in any of the important doings of grey abbey; and, though lord cashel constantly referred to her, for he thought it respectable to do so, no one regarded her much. fanny felt, however, that she would neither scold her, ridicule her, nor refuse to listen: to lady cashel, therefore, at last, she went for assistance. her ladyship always passed the morning, after breakfast, in a room adjoining her own bed-room, in which she daily held deep debate with griffiths, her factotum, respecting household affairs, knitting-needles, and her own little ailments and cossetings. griffiths, luckily, was a woman of much the same tastes as her ladyship, only somewhat of a more active temperament; and they were most stedfast friends. it was such a comfort to lady cashel to have some one to whom she could twaddle! the morning after lord kilcullen's departure fanny knocked at her door, and was asked to come in. the countess, as usual, was in her easy chair, with the knitting-apparatus in her lap, and griffiths was seated at the table, pulling about threads, and keeping her ladyship awake by small talk. "i'm afraid i'm disturbing you, aunt," said fanny, "but i wanted to speak to you for a minute or two. good morning, mrs griffiths." "oh, no! you won't disturb me, fanny. i was a little busy this morning, for i wanted to finish this side of the--you see what a deal i've done,"--and the countess lugged up a whole heap of miscellaneous worsted from a basket just under her arm--"and i must finish it by lady-day [ ], or i shan't get the other done, i don't know when. but still, i've plenty of time to attend to you." [footnote : lady-day--annunciation day, march ] "then i'll go down, my lady, and see about getting the syrup boiled," said griffiths. "good morning, miss wyndham." "do; but mind you come up again immediately--i'll ring the bell when miss wyndham is going; and pray don't leave me alone, now." "no, my lady--not a moment," and griffiths escaped to the syrup. fanny's heart beat quick and hard, as she sat down on the sofa, opposite to her aunt. it was impossible for any one to be afraid of lady cashel, there was so very little about her that could inspire awe; but then, what she had to say was so very disagreeable to say! if she had had to tell her tale out loud, merely to the empty easy chair, it would have been a dreadful undertaking. "well, fanny, what can i do for you? i'm sure you look very nice in your bombazine; and it's very nicely made up. who was it made it for you?" "i got it down from dublin, aunt; from foley's." "oh, i remember; so you told me. griffiths has a niece makes those things up very well; but then she lives at namptwich, and one couldn't send to england for it. i had such a quantity of mourning by me, i didn't get any made up new; else, i think i must have sent for her." "my dear aunt, i am very unhappy about something, and i want you to help me. i'm afraid, though, it will give you a great deal of trouble." "good gracious, fanny!--what is it? is it about poor harry? i'm sure i grieved about him more than i can tell." "no, aunt: he's gone now, and time is the only cure for that grief. i know i must bear that without complaining. but, aunt, i feel--i think, that is, that i've used lord ballindine very ill." "good gracious me, my love! i thought lord cashel had managed all that--i thought that was all settled. you know, he would keep those horrid horses, and all that kind of thing; and what more could you do than just let lord cashel settle it?" "yes, but aunt--you see, i had engaged myself to lord ballindine, and i don't think--in fact--oh, aunt! i did not wish to break my word to lord ballindine, and i am very very sorry for what has been done," and fanny was again in tears. "but, my dear fanny," said the countess, so far excited as to commence rising from her seat--the attempt, however, was abandoned, when she felt the ill effects of the labour to which she was exposing herself--"but, my dear fanny--what would you have? it's done, now, you know; and, really, it's for the best." "oh, but, dear aunt, i must get somebody to see him. i've been thinking about it ever since he was here with my uncle. i wouldn't let him think that i broke it all off, merely because--because of poor harry's money," and fanny sobbed away dreadfully. "but you don't want to marry him!" said the naïve countess. now, fanny did want to marry him, though she hardly liked saying so, even to lady cashel. "you know, i promised him i would," said she; "and what will he think of me?--what must he think of me, to throw him off so cruelly, so harshly, after all that's past?--oh, aunt! i must see him again." "i know something of human nature," replied the aunt, "and if you do, i tell you, it will end in your being engaged to him again. you know it's off now. come, my dear; don't think so much about it: i'm sure lord cashel wouldn't do anything cruel or harsh." "oh, i must see him again, whatever comes of it;" and then she paused for a considerable time, during which the bewildered old lady was thinking what she could do to relieve her sensitive niece. "dear, dear aunt, i don't want to deceive you!" and fanny, springing up, knelt at her aunt's feet, and looked up into her face. "i do love him--i always loved him, and i cannot, cannot quarrel with him." and then she burst out crying vehemently, hiding her face in the countess's lap. lady cashel was quite overwhelmed. fanny was usually so much more collected than herself, that her present prostration, both of feeling and body, was dreadful to see. suppose she was to go into hysterics--there they would be alone, and lady cashel felt that she had not strength to ring the bell. "but, my dear fanny! oh dear, oh dear, this is very dreadful!--but, fanny--he's gone away now. lift up your face, fanny, for you frighten me. well, i'm sure i'll do anything for you. perhaps he wouldn't mind coming back again,--he always was very good-natured. i'm sure i always liked lord ballindine very much,--only he would have all those horses. but i'm sure, if you wish it, i should be very glad to see him marry you; only, you know, you must wait some time, because of poor harry; and i'm sure i don't know how you'll manage with lord cashel." "dear aunt--i want you to speak to lord cashel. when i was angry because i thought frank didn't come here as he might have done, i consented that my uncle should break off the match: besides, then, you know, we should have had so little between us. but i didn't know then how well i loved him. indeed, indeed, aunt, i cannot bring my heart to quarrel with him; and i am quite, _quite_ sure he would never wish to quarrel with me. will you go to my uncle--tell him that i've changed my mind; tell him that i was a foolish girl, and did not know my mind. but tell him i _must_ be friends with frank again." "well, of course i'll do what you wish me,--indeed, i would do anything for you, fanny, as if you were one of my own; but really, i don't know--good gracious! what am i to say to him? wouldn't it be better, fanny, if you were to go to him yourself?" "oh, no, aunt; pray do you tell him first. i couldn't go to him; besides, he would do anything for you, you know. i want you to go to him--do, now, dear aunt--and tell him--not from me, but from yourself--how very, very much i--that is, how very very--but you will know what to say; only frank must, _must_ come back again." "well, fanny, dear, i'll go to lord cashel; or, perhaps, he wouldn't mind coming here. ring the bell for me, dear. but i'm sure he'll be very angry. i'd just write a line and ask lord ballindine to come and dine here, and let him settle it all himself, only i don't think lord cashel would like it." griffiths answered the summons, and was despatched to the book-room to tell his lordship that her ladyship would be greatly obliged if he would step upstairs to her for a minute or two; and, as soon as griffiths was gone on her errand, fanny fled to her own apartment, leaving her aunt in a very bewildered and pitiable state of mind: and there she waited, with palpitating heart and weeping eyes, the effects of the interview. she was dreadfully nervous, for she felt certain that she would be summoned before her uncle. hitherto, she alone, in all the house, had held him in no kind of awe; indeed, her respect for her uncle had not been of the most exalted kind; but now she felt she was afraid of him. she remained in her room much longer than she thought it would have taken her aunt to explain what she had to say. at last, however, she heard footsteps in the corridor, and griffiths knocked at the door. her aunt would be obliged by her stepping into her room. she tried not to look disconcerted, and asked if lord cashel were still there. she was told that he was; and she felt that she had to muster up all her courage to encounter him. when she went into the room, lady cashel was still in her easy-chair, but the chair seemed to lend none of its easiness to its owner. she was sitting upright, with her hands on her two knees, and she looked perplexed, distressed, and unhappy. lord cashel was standing with his back to the fire-place, and fanny had never seen his face look so black. he really seemed, for the time, to have given over acting, to have thrown aside his dignity, and to be natural and in earnest. lady cashel began the conversation. "oh, fanny," she said, "you must really overcome all this sensitiveness; you really must. i've spoken to your uncle, and it's quite impossible, and very unwise; and, indeed, it can't be done at all. in fact, lord ballindine isn't, by any means, the sort of person i supposed." fanny knit her brows a little at this, and felt somewhat less humble than she did before. she knew she should get indignant if her uncle abused her lover, and that, if she did, her courage would rise in proportion. her aunt continued-- "your uncle's very kind about it, and says he can, of course, forgive your feeling a little out of sorts just at present; and, i'm sure, so can i, and i'm sure i'd do anything to make you happy; but as for making it all up with lord ballindine again, indeed it cannot be thought of, fanny; and so your uncle will tell you." and then lord cashel opened his oracular mouth, for the purpose of doing so. "really, fanny, this is the most unaccountable thing i ever heard of. but you'd better sit down, while i speak to you," and fanny sat down on the sofa. "i think i understood you rightly, when you desired me, less than a month ago, to inform lord ballindine that circumstances--that is, his own conduct--obliged you to decline the honour of his alliance. did you not do so spontaneously, and of your own accord?" "certainly, uncle, i agreed to take your advice; though i did so most unwillingly." "had i not your authority for desiring him--i won't say to discontinue his visits, for that he had long done--but to give up his pretensions to your hand? did you not authorise me to do so?" "i believe i did. but, uncle--" "and i have done as you desired me; and now, fanny, that i have done so--now that i have fully explained to him what you taught me to believe were your wishes on the subject, will you tell me--for i really think your aunt must have misunderstood you--what it is that you wish me to do?" "why, uncle, you pointed out--and it was very true then, that my fortune was not sufficient to enable lord ballindine to keep up his rank. it is different now, and i am very, very sorry that it is so; but it is different now, and i feel that i ought not to reject lord ballindine, because i am so much richer than i was when he--when he proposed to me." "then it's merely a matter of feeling with you, and not of affection? if i understand you, you are afraid that you should be thought to have treated lord ballindine badly?" "it's not only that--" and then she paused for a few moments, and added, "i thought i could have parted with him, when you made me believe that i ought to do so, but i find i cannot." "you mean that you love him?" and the earl looked very black at his niece. he intended to frighten her out of her resolution, but she quietly answered, "yes, uncle, i do." "and you want me to tell him so, after having banished him from my house?" fanny's eyes again shot fire at the word "banished", but she answered, very quietly, and even with a smile, "no, uncle; but i want you to ask him here again. i might tell him the rest myself." "but, fanny, dear," said the countess, "your uncle couldn't do it: you know, he told him to go away before. besides, i really don't think he'd come; he's so taken up with those horrid horses, and that mr blake, who is worse than any of 'em. really, fanny, kilcullen says that he and mr blake are quite notorious." "i think, aunt, lord kilcullen might be satisfied with looking after himself. if it depended on him, he never had a kind word to say for lord ballindine." "but you know, fanny," continued the aunt, "he knows everybody; and if he says lord ballindine is that sort of person, why, it must be so, though i'm sure i'm very sorry to hear it." lord cashel saw that he could not trust any more to his wife: that last hit about kilcullen had been very unfortunate; so he determined to put an end to all fanny's yearnings after her lover with a strong hand, and said, "if you mean, fanny, after what has passed, that i should go to lord ballindine, and give him to understand that he is again welcome to grey abbey, i must at once tell you that it is absolutely--absolutely impossible. if i had no personal objection to the young man on any prudential score, the very fact of my having already, at your request, desired his absence from my house, would be sufficient to render it impossible. i owe too much to my own dignity, and am too anxious for your reputation, to think of doing such a thing. but when i also remember that lord ballindine is a reckless, dissipated gambler--i much fear, with no fixed principle, i should consider any step towards renewing the acquaintance between you a most wicked and unpardonable proceeding." when fanny heard her lover designated as a reckless gambler, she lost all remaining feelings of fear at her uncle's anger, and, standing up, looked him full in the face through her tears. "it's not so, my lord!" she said, when he had finished. "he is not what you have said. i know him too well to believe such things of him, and i will not submit to hear him abused." "oh, fanny, my dear!" said the frightened countess; "don't speak in that way. surely, your uncle means to act for your own happiness; and don't you know lord ballindine has those horrid horses?" "if i don't mind his horses, aunt, no one else need; but he's no gambler, and he's not dissipated--i'm sure not half so much so as lord kilcullen." "in that, fanny, you're mistaken," said the earl; "but i don't wish to discuss the matter with you. you must, however, fully understand this: lord ballindine cannot be received under this roof. if you regret him, you must remember that his rejection was your own act. i think you then acted most prudently, and i trust it will not be long before you are of the same opinion yourself," and lord cashel moved to the door as though he had accomplished his part in the interview. "stop one moment, uncle," said fanny, striving hard to be calm, and hardly succeeding. "i did not ask my aunt to speak to you on this subject, till i had turned it over and over in my mind, and resolved that i would not make myself and another miserable for ever, because i had been foolish enough not to know my mind. you best know whether you can ask lord ballindine to grey abbey or not; but i am determined, if i cannot see him here, that i will see him somewhere else," and she turned towards the door, and then, thinking of her aunt, she turned back and kissed her, and immediately left the room. the countess looked up at her husband, quite dumbfounded, and he seemed rather distressed himself. however, he muttered something about her being a hot-headed simpleton and soon thinking better about it, and then betook himself to his private retreat, to hold sweet converse with his own thoughts--having first rung the bell for griffiths, to pick up the scattered threads of her mistress's knitting. lord cashel certainly did not like the look of things. there was a determination in fanny's eye, as she made her parting speech, which upset him rather, and which threw considerable difficulties in the way of lord kilcullen's wooing. to be sure, time would do a great deal: but then, there wasn't so much time to spare. he had already taken steps to borrow the thirty thousand pounds, and had, indeed, empowered his son to receive it: he had also pledged himself for the other fifty; and then, after all, that perverse fool of a girl would insist on being in love with that scapegrace, lord ballindine! this, however, might wear away, and he would take very good care that she should hear of his misdoings. it would be very odd if, after all, his plans were to be destroyed, and his arrangements disconcerted by his own ward, and niece--especially when he designed so great a match for her! he could not, however, make himself quite comfortable, though he had great confidence in his own diplomatic resources. xv. handicap lodge lord ballindine left grey abbey, and rode homewards, towards handicap lodge, in a melancholy and speculative mood. his first thoughts were all of harry wyndham. frank, as the accepted suitor of his sister, had known him well and intimately, and had liked him much; and the poor young fellow had been much attached to him. he was greatly shocked to hear of his death. it was not yet a month since he had seen him shining in all the new-blown splendour of his cavalry regimentals, and lord ballindine was unfeignedly grieved to think how short a time the lad had lived to enjoy them. his thoughts, then, naturally turned to his own position, and the declaration which lord cashel had made to him respecting himself. could it be absolutely true that fanny had determined to give him up altogether?--after all her willing vows, and assurances of unalterable affection, could she be so cold as to content herself with sending him a formal message, by her uncle, that she did not wish to see him again? frank argued with himself that it was impossible; he was sure he knew her too well. but still, lord cashel would hardly tell him a downright lie, and he had distinctly stated that the rejection came from miss wyndham herself. then, he began to feel indignant, and spurred his horse, and rode a little faster, and made a few resolutions as to upholding his own dignity. he would run after neither lord cashel nor his niece; he would not even ask her to change her mind, since she had been able to bring herself to such a determination as that expressed to him. but he would insist on seeing her; she could not refuse that to him, after what had passed between them, and he would then tell her what he thought of her, and leave her for ever. but no; he would do nothing to vex her, as long as she was grieving for her brother. poor harry!--she loved him so dearly! perhaps, after all, his sudden rejection was, in some manner, occasioned by this sad event, and would be revoked as her sorrow grew less with time. and then, for the first time, the idea shot across his mind, of the wealth fanny must inherit by her brother's death. it certainly had a considerable effect on him, for he breathed slow awhile, and was some little time before he could entirely realise the conception that fanny was now the undoubted owner of a large fortune. "that is it," thought he to himself, at last; "that sordid earl considers that he can now be sure of a higher match for his niece, and fanny has allowed herself to be persuaded out of her engagement: she has allowed herself to be talked into the belief that it was her duty to give up a poor man like me." and then, he felt very angry again. "heavens!" said he to himself--"is it possible she should be so servile and so mean? fanny wyndham, who cared so little for the prosy admonitions of her uncle, a few months since, can she have altered her disposition so completely? can the possession of her brother's money have made so vile a change in her character? could she be the same fanny who had so entirely belonged to him, who had certainly loved him truly once? perish her money! he had sought her from affection alone; he had truly and fondly loved her; he had determined to cling to her, in spite of the advice of his friends! and then, he found himself deserted and betrayed by her, because circumstances had given her the probable power of making a better match!" such were lord ballindine's thoughts; and he flattered himself with the reflection that he was a most cruelly used, affectionate, and disinterested lover. he did not, at the moment, remember that it was fanny's twenty thousand pounds which had first attracted his notice; and that he had for a considerable time wavered, before he made up his mind to part with himself at so low a price. it was not to be expected that he should remember that, just at present; and he rode on, considerably out of humour with all the world except himself. as he got near to handicap lodge, however, the genius of the master-spirit of that classic spot came upon him, and he began to bethink himself that it would be somewhat foolish of him to give up the game just at present. he reflected that a hundred thousand pounds would work a wondrous change and improvement at kelly's court--and that, if he was before prepared to marry fanny wyndham in opposition to the wishes of her guardian, he should now be doubly determined to do so, even though all grey abbey had resolved to the contrary. the last idea in his mind, as he got off his horse at his friend's door was, as to what dot blake would think, and say, of the tidings he brought home with him? it was dark when he reached handicap lodge, and, having first asked whether mr blake was in, and heard that he was dressing for dinner, he went to perform the same operation himself. when he came down, full of his budget, and quite ready, as usual, to apply to dot for advice, he was surprised, and annoyed, to find two other gentlemen in the room, together with blake. what a bore! to have to make one of a dinner-party of four, and the long protracted rubber of shorts which would follow it, when his mind was so full of other concerns! however, it was not to be avoided. the guests were, the fat, good-humoured, ready-witted mat tierney, and a little connaught member of parliament, named morris, who wore a wig, played a very good rubber of whist, and knew a good deal about selling hunters. he was not very bright, but he told one or two good stories of his own adventures in the world, which he repeated oftener than was approved of by his intimate friends; and he drank his wine plentifully and discreetly--for, if he didn't get a game of cards after consuming a certain quantum, he invariably went to sleep. there was something in the manner in which the three greeted him, on entering the room, which showed him that they had been speaking of him and his affairs. dot was the first to address him. "well, frank, i hope i am to wish you joy. i hope you've made a good morning's work of it?" frank looked rather distressed: before he could answer, however, mat tierney said, "well, ballindine, upon my soul i congratulate you sincerely, though, of course, you've seen nothing at grey abbey but tears and cambric handkerchiefs. i'm very glad, now, that what kilcullen told me wasn't true. he left dublin for london yesterday, and i suppose he won't hear of his cousin's death before he gets there." "upon my honour, lord ballindine," said the horse-dealing member, "you are a lucky fellow. i believe old wyndham was a regular golden nabob, and i suppose, now, you'll touch the whole of his gatherings." dot and his guests had heard of harry wyndham's death, and fanny's accession of fortune; but they had not heard that she had rejected her lover, and that he had been all but turned out of her guardian's house. nor did he mean to tell them; but he did not find himself pleasantly situated in having to hear their congratulations and listen to their jokes, while he himself felt that the rumour which he had so emphatically denied to mat tierney, only two days since, had turned out to be true. not one of the party made the slightest reference to the poor brother from whom fanny's new fortune had come, except as the lucky means of conveying it to her. there was no regret even pretended for his early death, no sympathy expressed with fanny's sorrow. and there was, moreover, an evident conviction in the minds of all the three, that frank, of course, looked on the accident as a piece of unalloyed good fortune--a splendid windfall in his way, unattended with any disagreeable concomitants. this grated against his feelings, and made him conscious that he was not yet heartless enough to be quite fit for, the society in which he found himself. the party soon went into the dining-room; and frank at first got a little ease, for fanny wyndham seemed to be forgotten in the willing devotion which was paid to blake's soup; the interest of the fish, also, seemed to be absorbing; and though conversation became more general towards the latter courses, still it was on general subjects, as long as the servants were in the room. but, much to his annoyance, his mistress again came on the tapis [ ], together with the claret. [footnote : a tapis was a small cloth or tapestry sometimes used to cover a table; hence the expression "on the tapis" meant "on the table" or "under consideration."] "you and kilcullen don't hit it off together--eh, ballindine?" said mat. "we never quarrelled," answered frank; "we never, however, were very intimate." "i wonder at that, for you're both fond of the turf. there's a large string of his at murphy's now, isn't there, dot?" "too many, i believe," said blake. "if you've a mind to be a purchaser, you'll find him a very pleasant fellow--especially if you don't object to his own prices." "faith i'll not trouble him," said mat; "i've two of them already, and a couple on the turf and a couple for the saddle are quite enough to suit me. but what the deuce made him say, so publicly, that your match was off, ballindine? he couldn't have heard of wyndham's death at the time, or i should think he was after the money himself." "i cannot tell; he certainly had not my authority," said frank. "nor the lady's either, i hope." "you had better ask herself, tierney; and, if she rejects me, maybe she'll take you." "there's a speculation for you," said blake; "you don't think yourself too old yet, i hope, to make your fortune by marriage?--and, if you don't, i'm sure miss wyndham can't." "i tell you what, dot, i admire miss wyndham much, and i admire a hundred thousand pounds more. i don't know anything i admire more than a hundred thousand pounds, except two; but, upon my word, i wouldn't take the money and the lady together." "well, that's kind of him, isn't it, frank? so, you've a chance left, yet." "ah! but you forget morris," said tierney; "and there's yourself, too. if ballindine is not to be the lucky man, i don't see why either of you should despair." "oh! as for me, i'm the devil. i've a tail, only i don't wear it, except on state occasions; and i've horns and hoofs, only people can't see them. but i don't see why morris should not succeed: he's the only one of the four that doesn't own a racehorse, and that's much in his favour. what do you say, morris?" "i'd have no objection," said the member; "except that i wouldn't like to stand in lord ballindine's way." "oh! he's the soul of good-nature. you wouldn't take it ill of him, would you, frank?" "not the least," said frank, sulkily; for he didn't like the conversation, and he didn't know how to put a stop to it. "perhaps you wouldn't mind giving him a line of introduction to lord cashel," said mat. "but, morris," said blake, "i'm afraid your politics would go against you. a repealer would never go down at grey abbey." "morris'll never let his politics harm him," said tierney. "repeal's a very good thing the other side of the shannon; or one might, carry it as far as conciliation hall, if one was hard pressed, and near an election. were you ever in conciliation hall yet, morris?" "no, mat; but i'm going next thursday. will you go with me?" "faith, i will not: but i think you should go; you ought to do something for your country, for you're a patriot. i never was a public man." "well, when i can do any good for my country, i'll go there. talking of that, i saw o'connell in town yesterday, and i never saw him looking so well. the verdict hasn't disturbed him much. i wonder what steps the government will take now? they must be fairly bothered. i don't think they dare imprison him." "not dare!" said blake--'and why not? when they had courage to indict him, you need not fear but what they'll dare to go on with a strong hand, now they have a verdict." "i'll tell you what, dot; if they imprison the whole set," said mat, "and keep them in prison for twelve months, every catholic in ireland will be a repealer by the end of that time." "and why shouldn't they all be repealers?" said morris. "it seems to me that it's just as natural for us to be repealers, as it is for you to be the contrary." "i won't say they don't dare to put them in prison," continued mat; "but i will say they'll be great fools to do it. the government have so good an excuse for not doing so: they have such an easy path out of the hobble. there was just enough difference of opinion among the judges--just enough irregularity in the trial, such as the omissions of the names from the long panel--to enable them to pardon the whole set with a good grace." "if they did," said blake, "the whole high tory party in this country--peers and parsons--would be furious. they'd lose one set of supporters, and wouldn't gain another. my opinion is, they'll lock the whole party up in the stone jug--for some time, at least." "why," said tierney, "their own party could not quarrel with them for not taking an advantage of a verdict, as to the legality of which there is so much difference of opinion even among the judges. i don't know much about these things, myself; but, as far as i can understand, they would have all been found guilty of high treason a few years back, and probably have been hung or beheaded; and if they could do that now, the country would be all the quieter. but they can't: the people will have their own way; and if they want the people to go easy, they shouldn't put o'connell into prison. rob them all of the glories of martyrdom, and you'd find you'll cut their combs and stop their crowing." "it's not so easy to do that now, mat," said morris. "you'll find that the country will stick to o'connell, whether he's in prison or out of it;--but peel will never dare to put him there. they talk of the penitentiary; but i'll tell you what, if they put him there, the people of dublin won't leave one stone upon another; they'd have it all down in a night." "you forget, morris, how near richmond barracks are to the penitentiary." "no, i don't. not that i think there'll be any row of the kind, for i'll bet a hundred guineas they're never put in prison at all." "done," said dot, and his little book was out--"put that down, morris, and i'll initial it: a hundred guineas, even, that o'connell is not in prison within twelve months of this time." "very well: that is, that he's not put there and kept there for six months, in consequence of the verdict just given at the state trials." "no, my boy; that's not it. i said nothing about being kept there six months. they're going to try for a writ of error, or what the devil they call it, before the peers. but i'll bet you a cool hundred he is put in prison before twelve months are over, in consequence of the verdict. if he's locked up there for one night, i win. will you take that?" "well, i will," said morris; and they both went to work at their little books. "i was in london," said mat, "during the greater portion of the trial--and it's astonishing what unanimity of opinion there was at the club that the whole set would be acquitted. i heard howard make bet, at the reform club, that the only man put in prison would be the attorney-general." "he ought to have included the chief justice," said morris. "by the bye, mat, is that howard the brother of the honourable and riverind augustus?" "upon my soul, i don't know whose brother he is. who is the riverind augustus?" "morris wants to tell a story, mat,' said blake; 'don't spoil him, now." "indeed i don't," said the member: "i never told it to any one till i mentioned it to you the other day. it only happened the other day, but it _is_ worth telling." "out with it, morris," said mat, "it isn't very long, is it?--because, if it is, we'll get dot to give us a little whiskey and hot water first. i'm sick of the claret." "just as you like, mat," and blake rang the bell, and the hot water was brought. "you know savarius o'leary," said morris, anxious to tell his story, "eh, tierney?" "what, savy, with the whiskers?" said tierney, "to be sure i do. who doesn't know savy?" "you know him, don't you, lord ballindine?" morris was determined everybody should listen to him. "oh yes, i know him; he comes from county mayo--his property's close to mine; that is, the patch of rocks and cabins--which he has managed to mortgage three times over, and each time for more than its value--which he still calls the o'leary estate." "well; some time ago--that is, since london began to fill, o'leary was seen walking down regent street, with a parson. how the deuce he'd ever got hold of the parson, or the parson of him, was never explained; but phil mahon saw him, and asked him who his friend in the white choker was. 'is it my friend in black, you mane?' says savy, 'thin, my frind was the honourable and the riverind augustus howard, the dane.' 'howard the dane,' said mahon, 'how the duce did any of the howards become danes?' 'ah, bother!' said savy, 'it's not of thim danes he is; it's not the danes of shwaden i mane, at all, man; but a rural dane of the church of england.'" mat tierney laughed heartily at this, and even frank forgot that his dignity had been hurt, and that he meant to be sulky; and he laughed also: the little member was delighted with his success, and felt himself encouraged to persevere. "ah, savy's a queer fellow, if you knew him," he continued, turning to lord ballindine, "and, upon my soul, he's no fool. oh, if you knew him as well--" "didn't you hear ballindine say he was his next door neighbour in mayo?" said blake, "or, rather, next barrack neighbour; for they dispense with doors in mayo--eh, frank? and their houses are all cabins or barracks." "why, we certainly don't pretend to all the apuleian luxuries of handicap lodge; but we are ignorant enough to think ourselves comfortable, and swinish enough to enjoy our pitiable state." "i beg ten thousand pardons, my dear fellow. i didn't mean to offend your nationality. castlebar, we must allow, is a fine provincial city--though killala's the mayo city, i believe; and claremorris, which is your own town i think, is, as all admit, a gem of paradise: only it's a pity so many of the houses have been unroofed lately. it adds perhaps to the picturesque effect, but it must, i should think, take away from the comfort." "not a house in claremorris belongs to me," said lord ballindine, again rather sulky, "or ever did to any of my family. i would as soon own claremorris, though, as i would castleblakeney. your own town is quite as shattered-looking a place." "that's quite true--but i have some hopes that castleblakeney will be blotted out of the face of creation before i come into possession." "but i was saying about savy o'leary," again interposed morris, "did you ever hear what he did?" but blake would not allow his guest the privilege of another story. "if you encourage morris," said he, "we shall never get our whist," and with that he rose from the table and walked away into the next room. they played high. morris always played high if he could, for he made money by whist. tierney was not a gambler by profession; but the men he lived among all played, and he, therefore, got into the way of it, and played the game well, for he was obliged to do so in his own defence. blake was an adept at every thing of the kind; and though the card-table was not the place where his light shone brightest, still he was quite at home at it. as might be supposed, lord ballindine did not fare well among the three. he played with each of them, one after the other, and lost with them all. blake, to do him justice, did not wish to see his friend's money go into the little member's pocket, and, once or twice, proposed giving up; but frank did not second the proposal, and morris was inveterate. the consequence was that, before the table was broken up, lord ballindine had lost a sum of money which he could very ill spare, and went to bed in a very unenviable state of mind, in spite of the brilliant prospects on which his friends congratulated him. xvi. brien boru the next morning, at breakfast, when frank was alone with blake, he explained to him how matters really stood at grey abbey. he told him how impossible he had found it to insist on seeing miss wyndham so soon after her brother's death, and how disgustingly disagreeable, stiff and repulsive the earl had been; and, by degrees, they got to talk of other things, and among them, frank's present pecuniary miseries. "there can be no doubt, i suppose," said dot, when frank had consoled himself by anathematising the earl for ten minutes, "as to the fact of miss wyndham's inheriting her brother's fortune?" "faith, i don't know; i never thought about her fortune if you'll believe me. i never even remembered that her brother's death would in any way affect her in the way of money, until after i left grey abbey." "oh, i can believe you capable of anything in the way of imprudence." "ah, but, dot, to think of that pompous fool--who sits and caws in that dingy book-room of his, with as much wise self-confidence as an antiquated raven--to think of him insinuating that i had come there looking for harry wyndham's money; when, as you know, i was as ignorant of the poor fellow's death as lord cashel was himself a week ago. insolent blackguard! i would never, willingly, speak another word to him, or put my foot inside that infernal door of his, if it were to get ten times all harry wyndham's fortune." "then, if i understand you, you now mean to relinquish your claims to miss wyndham's hand." "no; i don't believe she ever sent the message her uncle gave me. i don't see why i'm to give her up, just because she's got this money." "nor i, frank, to tell the truth; especially considering how badly you want it yourself. but i don't think quarrelling with the uncle is the surest way to get the niece." "but, man, he quarrelled with me." "it takes two people to quarrel. if he quarrelled with you, do you be the less willing to come to loggerheads with him." "wouldn't it be the best plan, dot, to carry her off?" "she wouldn't go, my boy: rope ladders and post-chaises are out of fashion." "but if she's really fond of me--and, upon my honour, i don't believe i'm flattering myself in thinking that she is--why the deuce shouldn't she marry me, _malgré_ [ ] lord cashel? she must be her own mistress in a week or two. by heavens, i cannot stomach that fellow's arrogant assumption of superiority." [footnote : malgré--(french) in spite of; notwithstanding] "it will be much more convenient for her to marry you _bon gré_ [ ] lord cashel, whom you may pitch to the devil, in any way you like best, as soon as you have fanny wyndham at kelly's court. but, till that happy time, take my advice, and submit to the cawing. rooks and ravens are respectable birds, just because they do look so wise. it's a great thing to look wise; the doing so does an acknowledged fool, like lord cashel, very great credit." [footnote : bon gré--(french) with the consent of] "but what ought i to do? i can't go to the man's house when he told me expressly not to do so." "oh, yes, you can: not immediately, but by and by--in a month or six weeks. i'll tell you what i should do, in your place; and remember, frank, i'm quite in earnest now, for it's a very different thing playing a game for twenty thousand pounds, which, to you, joined to a wife, would have been a positive irreparable loss, and starting for five or six times that sum, which would give you an income on which you might manage to live." "well, thou sapient counsellor--but, i tell you beforehand, the chances are ten to one i sha'n't follow your plan." "do as you like about that: you sha'n't, at any rate, have me to blame. i would in the first place, assure myself that fanny inherited her brother's money." "there's no doubt about that. lord cashel said as much." "make sure of it however. a lawyer'll do that for you, with very little trouble. then, take your name off the turf at once; it's worth your while to do it now. you may either do it by a _bona fide_ sale of the horses, or by running them in some other person's name. then, watch your opportunity, call at grey abbey, when the earl is not at home, and manage to see some of the ladies. if you can't do that, if you can't effect an _entrée_, write to miss wyndham; don't be too lachrymose, or supplicatory, in your style, but ask her to give you a plain answer personally, or in her own handwriting." "and if she declines the honour?" "if, as you say and as i believe, she loves, or has loved you, i don't think she'll do so. she'll submit to a little parleying, and then she'll capitulate. but it will be much better that you should see her, if possible, without writing at all." "i don't like the idea of calling at grey abbey. i wonder whether they'll go to london this season?" "if they do, you can go after them. the truth is simply this, ballindine; miss wyndham will follow her own fancy in the matter, in spite of her guardian; but, if you make no further advances to her, of course she can make none to you. but i think the game is in your own hand. you haven't the head to play it, or i should consider the stakes as good as won." "but then, about these horses, dot. i wish i could sell them, out and out, at once." "you'll find it very difficult to get anything like the value for a horse that's well up for the derby. you see, a purchaser must make up his mind to so much outlay: there's the purchase-money, and expense of english training, with so remote a chance of any speedy return." "but you said you'd advise me to sell them." "that's if you can get a purchaser:--or else run them in another name. you may run them in my name, if you like it; but scott must understand that i've nothing whatever to do with the expense." "would you not buy them yourself, blake?" "no. i would not." "why not?" "if i gave you anything like the value for them, the bargain would not suit me; and if i got them for what they'd be worth to me, you'd think, and other people would say, that i'd robbed you." then followed a lengthened and most intricate discourse on the affairs of the stable. frank much wanted his friend to take his stud entirely off his hands, but this dot resolutely refused to do. in the course of conversation, frank owned that the present state of his funds rendered it almost impracticable for him to incur the expense of sending his favourite, brien boru, to win laurels in england. he had lost nearly three hundred pounds the previous evening which his account at his banker's did not enable him to pay; his dublin agent had declined advancing him more money at present, and his tradesmen were very importunate. in fact, he was in a scrape, and dot must advise him how to extricate himself from it. "i'll tell you the truth, ballindine," said he; "as far as i'm concerned myself, i never will lend money, except where i see, as a matter of business, that it is a good speculation to do so. i wouldn't do it for my father." "who asked you?" said frank, turning very red, and looking very angry. "you did not, certainly; but i thought you might, and you would have been annoyed when i refused you; now, you have the power of being indignant, instead. however, having said so much, i'll tell you what i think you should do, and what i will do to relieve you, as far as the horses are concerned. do you go down to kelly's court, and remain there quiet for a time. you'll be able to borrow what money you absolutely want down there, if the dublin fellows actually refuse; but do with as little as you can. the horses shall run in my name for twelve months. if they win, i will divide with you at the end of the year the amount won, after deducting their expenses. if they lose, i will charge you with half the amount lost, including the expenses. should you not feel inclined, at the end of the year, to repay me this sum, i will then keep the horses, instead, or sell them at dycer's, if you like it better, and hand you the balance if there be any. what do you say to this? you will be released from all trouble, annoyance, and expense, and the cattle will, i trust, be in good hands." "that is to say, that, for one year, you are to possess one half of whatever value the horses may be?" "exactly: we shall be partners for one year." "to make that fair," said frank, "you ought to put into the concern three horses, as good and as valuable as my three." "yes; and you ought to bring into the concern half the capital to be expended in their training; and knowledge, experience, and skill in making use of them, equal to mine. no, frank; you're mistaken if you think that i can afford to give up my time, merely for the purpose of making an arrangement to save you from trouble." "upon my word, dot," answered the other, "you're about the coolest hand i ever met! did i ask you for your precious time, or anything else? you're always afraid that you're going to be done. now, you might make a distinction between me and some of your other friends, and remember that i am not in the habit of doing anybody." "why, i own i don't think it very likely that i, or indeed anyone else, should suffer much from you in that way, for your sin is not too much sharpness." "then why do you talk about what you can afford to do?" "because it's necessary. i made a proposal which you thought an unfair one. you mayn't believe me, but it is a most positive fact, that my only object in making that proposal was, to benefit you. you will find it difficult to get rid of your horses on any terms; and yet, with the very great stake before you in miss wyndham's fortune, it would be foolish in you to think of keeping them; and, on this account, i thought in what manner i could take them from you. if they belong to my stables i shall consider myself bound to run them to the best advantage, and"-- "well, well--for heaven's sake don't speechify about it." "stop a moment, frank, and listen, for i must make you understand. i must make you see that i am not taking advantage of your position, and trying to rob my own friend in my own house. i don't care what most people say of me, for in my career i must expect people to lie of me. i must, also, take care of myself. but i do wish you to know, that though i could not disarrange my schemes for you, i would not take you in." "why, dot--how can you go on so? i only thought i was taking a leaf out of your book, by being careful to make the best bargain i could." "well, as i was saying--i would run the horses to the best advantage--especially brien, for the derby: by doing so, my whole book would be upset: i should have to bet all round again--and, very likely, not be able to get the bets i want. i could not do this without a very strong interest in the horse. besides, you remember that i should have to go over with him to england myself, and that i should be obliged to be in england a great deal at a time when my own business would require me here." "my dear fellow," said frank, "you're going on as though it were necessary to defend yourself. i never accused you of anything." "never mind whether you did or no. you understand me now: if it will suit you, you can take my offer, but i should be glad to know at once." while this conversation was going on, the two young men had left the house, and sauntered out into blake's stud-yard. here were his stables, where he kept such horses as were not actually in the trainer's hands--and a large assortment of aged hunters, celebrated timber-jumpers, brood mares, thoroughbred fillies, cock-tailed colts, and promising foals. they were immediately joined by blake's stud groom, who came on business intent, to request a few words with his master; which meant that lord ballindine was to retreat, as it was full time for his friend to proceed to his regular day's work. blake's groom was a very different person in appearance, from the sort of servant in the possession of which the fashionable owner of two or three horses usually rejoices. he had no diminutive top boots; no loose brown breeches, buttoned low beneath the knee; no elongated waistcoat with capacious pockets; no dandy coat with remarkably short tail. he was a very ugly man of about fifty, named john bottom, dressed somewhat like a seedy gentleman; but he understood his business well, and did it; and was sufficiently wise to know that he served his own pocket best, in the long run, by being true to his master, and by resisting the numerous tempting offers which were made to him by denizens of the turf to play foul with his master's horses. he was, therefore, a treasure to blake; and he knew it, and valued himself accordingly. "well, john," said his master, "i suppose i must desert lord ballindine again, and obey your summons. your few words will last nearly till dinner, i suppose?" "why, there is a few things, to be sure, 'll be the better for being talked over a bit, as his lordship knows well enough. i wish we'd as crack a nag in our stables, as his lordship." "maybe we may, some day; one down and another come on, you know; as the butcher-boy said." "at any rate, your horses don't want bottom" said frank. he--he--he! laughed john, or rather tried to do so. he had laughed at that joke a thousand times; and, in the best of humours, he wasn't a merry man. "well, frank," said blake, "the cock has crowed; i must away. i suppose you'll ride down to igoe's, and see brien: but think of what i've said, and," he added, whispering--"remember that i will do the best i can for the animals, if you put them into my stables. they shall be made second to nothing, and shall only and always run to win." so, blake and john bottom walked off to the box stables and home paddocks. frank ordered his horse, and complied with his friend's suggestion, by riding down to igoe's. he was not in happy spirits as he went; he felt afraid that his hopes, with regard to fanny, would be blighted; and that, if he persevered in his suit, he would only be harassed, annoyed, and disappointed. he did not see what steps he could take, or how he could manage to see her. it would be impossible for him to go to grey abbey, after having been, as he felt, turned out by lord cashel. other things troubled him also. what should he now do with himself? it was true that he could go down to his own house; but everyone at kelly's court expected him to bring with him a bride and a fortune; and, instead of that, he would have to own that he had been jilted, and would be reduced to the disagreeable necessity of borrowing money from his own tenants. and then, that awful subject, money--took possession of him. what the deuce was he to do? what a fool he had been, to be seduced on to the turf by such a man as blake! and then, he expressed a wish to himself that blake had been--a long way off before he ever saw him. there he was, steward of the curragh, the owner of the best horse in ireland, and absolutely without money to enable him to carry on the game till he could properly retreat from it! then he was a little unfair upon his friend: he accused him of knowing his position, and wishing to take advantage of it; and, by the time he had got to igoe's, his mind was certainly not in a very charitable mood towards poor dot. he had, nevertheless, determined to accept his offer, and to take a last look at the three milesians. the people about the stables always made a great fuss with lord ballindine, partly because he was one of the stewards, and partly because he was going to run a crack horse for the derby in england; and though, generally speaking, he did not care much for personal complimentary respect, he usually got chattered and flattered into good humour at igoe's. "well, my lord," said a sort of foreman, or partner, or managing man, who usually presided over the yard, "i think we'll be apt to get justice to ireland on the downs this year. that is, they'll give us nothing but what we takes from 'em by hard fighting, or running, as the case may be." "how's brien looking this morning, grady?" "as fresh as a primrose, my lord, and as clear as crystal: he's ready, this moment, to run through any set of three years old as could be put on the curragh, anyway." "i'm afraid you're putting him on too forward." "too forrard, is it, my lord? not a bit. he's a hoss as naturally don't pick up flesh; though he feeds free, too. he's this moment all wind and bottom, though, as one may say, he's got no training. he's niver been sthretched yet. faith it's thrue i'm telling you, my lord." "i know scott doesn't like getting horses, early in the season, that are too fine--too much drawn up; he thinks they lose power by it, and so they do;--it's the distance that kills them, at the derby. it's so hard to get a young horse to stay the distance." "that's thrue, shure enough, my lord; and there isn't a gentleman this side the wather, anyway, undherstands thim things betther than your lordship." "well, grady, let's have a look at the young chieftain: he's all right about the lungs, anyway." "and feet too, my lord; niver saw a set of claner feet with plates on: and legs too! if you were to canter him down the road, i don't think he'd feel it; not that i'd like to thry, though." "why, he's not yet had much to try them." "faix, he has, my lord: didn't he win the autumn produce stakes?" "the only thing he ever ran for." "ah, but i tell you, as your lordship knows very well--no one betther--that it's a ticklish thing to bring a two year old to the post, in anything like condition--with any running in him at all, and not hurt his legs." "but i think he's all right--eh, grady?" "right?--your lordship knows he's right. i wish he may be made righter at john scott's, that's all. but that's unpossible." "of course, grady, you think he might be trained here, as well as at the other side of the water?" "no, i don't, my lord: quite different. i've none of thim ideas at all, and never had, thank god. i knows what we can do, and i knows what they can do:--breed a hoss in ireland, train him in the north of england, and run him in the south; and he'll do your work for you, and win your money, steady and shure." "and why not run in the north, too?" "they're too 'cute, my lord: they like to pick up the crumbs themselves--small blame to thim in that matther. no; a bright irish nag, with lots of heart, like brien boru, is the hoss to stand on for the derby; where all run fair and fair alike, the best wins;--but i won't say but he'll be the betther for a little polishing at johnny scott's." "besides, grady, no horse could run immediately after a sea voyage. do you remember what a show we made of peter simple at kilrue?" "to be shure i does, my lord: besides, they've proper gallops there, which we haven't--and they've betther manes of measuring horses:--why, they can measure a horse to half a pound, and tell his rale pace on a two-mile course, to a couple of seconds.--take the sheets off, larry, and let his lordship run his hand over him. he's as bright as a star, isn't he?" "i think you're getting him too fine. i'm sure scott'll say so." "don't mind him, my lord. he's not like one of those english cats, with jist a dash of speed about 'em, and nothing more--brutes that they put in training half a dozen times in as many months. thim animals pick up a lot of loose, flabby flesh in no time, and loses it in less; and, in course, av' they gets a sweat too much, there's nothin left in 'em; not a hapoth. brien's a different guess sort of animal from that." "were you going to have him out, grady?" "why, we was not--that is, only just for walking exercise, with his sheets on: but a canter down the half mile slope, and up again by the bushes won't go agin him." "well, saddle him then, and let pat get up." "yes, my lord"; and brien was saddled by the two men together, with much care and ceremony; and pat was put up--"and now, pat," continued grady, "keep him well in hand down the slope--don't let him out at all at all, till you come to the turn: when you're fairly round the corner, just shake your reins the laste in life, and when you're halfway up the rise, when the lad begins to snort a bit, let him just see the end of the switch--just raise it till it catches his eye; and av' he don't show that he's disposed for running, i'm mistaken. we'll step across to the bushes, my lord, and see him come round." lord ballindine and the managing man walked across to the bushes accordingly, and pat did exactly as he was desired. it was a pretty thing to see the beautiful young animal, with his sleek brown coat shining like a lady's curls, arching his neck, and throwing down his head, in his impatience to start. he was the very picture of health and symmetry; when he flung up his head you'd think the blood was running from his nose, his nostrils were so ruddy bright. he cantered off in great impatience, and fretted and fumed because the little fellow on his back would be the master, and not let him have his play--down the slope, and round the corner by the trees. it was beautiful to watch him, his motions were so easy, so graceful. at the turn he answered to the boy's encouragement, and mended his pace, till again he felt the bridle, and then, as the jock barely moved his right arm, he bounded up the rising ground, past the spot where lord ballindine and the trainer were standing, and shot away till he was beyond the place where he knew his gallop ordinarily ended. as grady said, he hadn't yet been stretched; he had never yet tried his own pace, and he had that look so beautiful in a horse when running, of working at his ease, and much within his power. "he's a beautiful creature," said lord ballindine, as he mournfully reflected that he was about to give up to dot blake half the possession of his favourite, and the whole of the nominal title. it was such a pity he should be so hampered; the mere _éclat_ of possessing such a horse was so great a pleasure; "he is a fine creature," said he, "and, i am sure, will do well." "your lordship may say that: he'll go precious nigh to astonish the saxons, i think. i suppose the pick-up at the derby'll be nigh four thousand this year." "i suppose it will--something like that." "well; i would like a nag out of our stables to do the trick on the downs, and av' we does it iver, it'll be now. mr igoe's standing a deal of cash on him. i wonder is mr blake standing much on him, my lord?" "you'd be precious deep, grady, if you could find what he's doing in that way." "that's thrue for you, my lord; but av' he, or your lordship, wants to get more on, now's the time. i'll lay twenty thousand pounds this moment, that afther he's been a fortnight at johnny scott's the odds agin him won't be more than ten to one, from that day till the morning he comes out on the downs." "i dare say not." "i wondher who your lordship'll put up?" "that must depend on scott, and what sort of a string he has running. he's nothing, as yet, high in the betting, except hardicanute." "nothing, my lord; and, take my word for it, that horse is ownly jist run up for the sake of the betting; that's not his nathural position. well, pat, you may take the saddle off. will your lordship see the mare out to-day?" "not to-day, grady. let's see, what's the day she runs?" "the fifteenth of may, my lord. i'm afraid mr watts' patriot 'll be too much for her; that's av' he'll run kind; but he don't do that always. well, good morning to your lordship." "good morning, grady;" and frank rode back towards handicap lodge. he had a great contest with himself on his road home. he had hated the horses two days since, when he was at grey abbey, and had hated himself, for having become their possessor; and now he couldn't bear the thought of parting with them. to be steward of the curragh--to own the best horse of the year--and to win the derby, were very pleasant things in themselves; and for what was he going to give over all this glory, pleasure and profit, to another? to please a girl who had rejected him, even jilted him, and to appease an old earl who had already turned him out of his house! no, he wouldn't do it. by the time that he was half a mile from igoe's stables he had determined that, as the girl was gone it would be a pity to throw the horses after her; he would finish this year on the turf; and then, if fanny wyndham was still her own mistress after christmas, he would again ask her her mind. "if she's a girl of spirit," he said to himself--"and nobody knows better than i do that she is, she won't like me the worse for having shown that i'm not to be led by the nose by a pompous old fool like lord cashel," and he rode on, fortifying himself in this resolution, for the second half mile. "but what the deuce should he do about money?" there was only one more half mile before he was again at handicap lodge.--guinness's people had his title-deeds, and he knew he had twelve hundred a year after paying the interest of the old incumbrances. they hadn't advanced him much since he came of age; certainly not above five thousand pounds; and it surely was very hard he could not get five or six hundred pounds when he wanted it so much; it was very hard that he shouldn't be able to do what he liked with his own, like the duke of newcastle. however, the money must be had: he must pay blake and tierney the balance of what they had won at whist, and the horse couldn't go over the water till the wind was raised. if he was driven very hard he might get something from martin kelly. these unpleasant cogitations brought him over the third half mile, and he rode through the gate of handicap lodge in a desperate state of indecision. "i'll tell you what i'll do, dot," he said, when he met his friend coming in from his morning's work; "and i'm deuced sorry to do it, for i shall be giving you the best horse of his year, and something tells me he'll win the derby." "i suppose 'something' means old jack igoe, or that blackguard grady," said dot. "but as to his winning, that's as it may be. you know the chances are sixteen to one he won't." "upon my honour i don't think they are." "will you take twelve to one?" "ah! youk now, dot, i'm not now wanting to bet on the horse with you. i was only saying that i've a kind of inward conviction that he will win." "my dear frank," said the other, "if men selling horses could also sell their inward convictions with them, what a lot of articles of that description there would be in the market! but what were you going to say you'd do?" "i'll tell you what i'll do: i'll agree to your terms providing you'll pay half the expenses of the horses since the last race each of them ran. you must see that would be only fair, supposing the horses belonged to you, equally with me, ever since that time." "it would be quite fair, no doubt, if i agreed to it: it would be quite fair also if i agreed to give you five hundred pounds; but i will do neither one nor the other." "but look here, dot--brien ran for the autumn produce stakes last october, and won them: since then he has done nothing to reimburse me for his expense, nor yet has anything been taken out of him by running. surely, if you are to have half the profits, you should at any rate pay half the expenses?" "that's very well put, frank; and if you and i stood upon equal ground, with an arbiter between us by whose decision we were bound to abide, and to whom the settlement of the question was entrusted, your arguments would, no doubt, be successful, but--" "well that's the fair way of looking at it." "but, as i was going to say, that's not the case. we are neither of us bound to take any one's decision; and, therefore, any terms which either of us chooses to accept must be fair. now i have told you my terms--the lowest price, if you like to call it so,--at which i will give your horses the benefit of my experience, and save you from their immediate pecuniary pressure; and i will neither take any other terms, nor will i press these on you." "why, blake, i'd sooner deal with all the jews of israel--" "stop, frank: one word of abuse, and i'll wash my hands of the matter altogether." "wash away then, i'll keep the horses, though i have to sell my hunters and the plate at kelly's court into the bargain." "i was going to add--only your energy's far too great to allow of a slow steady man like me finishing his sentence--i was going to say that, if you're pressed for money as you say, and if it will be any accommodation, i will let you have two hundred and fifty pounds at five per cent. on the security of the horses; that is, that you will be charged with that amount, and the interest, in the final closing of the account at the end of the year, before the horses are restored to you." had an uninterested observer been standing by he might have seen with half an eye that blake's coolness was put on, and that his indifference to the bargain was assumed. this offer of the loan was a second bid, when he found the first was likely to be rejected: it was made, too, at the time that he was positively declaring that he would make none but the first offer. poor frank!--he was utterly unable to cope with his friend at the weapons with which they were playing, and he was consequently most egregiously plundered. but it was in an affair of horse-flesh, and the sporting world, when it learned the terms on which the horses were transferred from lord ballindine's name to that of mr blake, had not a word of censure to utter against the latter. he was pronounced to be very wide awake, and decidedly at the top of his profession; and lord ballindine was spoken of, for a week, with considerable pity and contempt. when blake mentioned the loan frank got up, and stood with his back to the fire; then bit his lips, and walked twice up and down the room, with his hands in his pockets, and then he paused, looked out of the window, and attempted to whistle: then he threw himself into an armchair, poked out both his legs as far as he could, ran his fingers through his hair, and set to work hard to make up his mind. but it was no good; in about five minutes he found he could not do it; so he took out his purse, and, extracting half-a-crown, threw it up to the ceiling, saying, "well, dot--head or harp? if you're right, you have them." "harp," cried dot. they both examined the coin. "they're yours," said frank, with much solemnity; "and now you've got the best horse--yes, i believe the very best horse alive, for nothing." "only half of him, frank." "well," said frank; "it's done now, i suppose." "oh, of course it is," said dot: "i'll draw out the agreement, and give you a cheque for the money to-night." and so he did; and frank wrote a letter to igoe, authorizing him to hand over the horses to mr blake's groom, stating that he had sold them--for so ran his agreement with dot--and desiring that his bill for training, &c., might be forthwith forwarded to kelly's court. poor frank! he was ashamed to go to take a last look at his dear favourites, and tell his own trainer that he had sold his own horses. the next morning saw him, with his servant, on the ballinasloe coach, travelling towards kelly's court; and, also, saw brien boru, granuell, and finn m'goul led across the downs, from igoe's stables to handicap lodge. the handsome sheets, hoods, and rollers, in which they had hitherto appeared, and on which the initial b was alone conspicuous, were carefully folded up, and they were henceforth seen in plainer, but as serviceable apparel, labelled w. b. "will you give fourteen to one against brien boru?" said viscount avoca to lord tathenham corner, about ten days after this, at tattersall's. "i will," said lord tathenham. "in hundreds?" said the sharp irishman. "very well," said lord tathenham; and the bet was booked. "you didn't know, i suppose," said the successful viscount, "that dot blake has bought brien boru?" "and who the devil's dot blake?" said lord tathenham. "oh! you'll know before may's over," said the viscount. xvii. martin kelly's courtship it will be remembered that the tuam attorney, daly, dined with barry lynch, at dunmore house, on the same evening that martin kelly reached home after his dublin excursion; and that, on that occasion, a good deal of interesting conversation took place after dinner. barry, however, was hardly amenable to reason at that social hour, and it was not till the following morning that he became thoroughly convinced that it would be perfectly impossible for him to make his sister out a lunatic to the satisfaction of the chancellor. he then agreed to abandon the idea, and, in lieu of it, to indict, or at any rate to threaten to indict, the widow kelly and her son for a conspiracy, and an attempt to inveigle his sister anty into a disgraceful marriage, with the object of swindling her out of her property. "i'll see moylan, mr lynch," said daly; "and if i can talk him over, i think we might succeed in frightening the whole set of them, so far as to prevent the marriage. moylan must know that if your sister was to marry young kelly, there'd be an end to his agency; but we must promise him something, mr lynch." "yes; i suppose we must pay him, before we get anything out of him." "no, not before--but he must understand that he will get something, if he makes himself useful. you must let me explain to him that if the marriage is prevented, you will make no objection to his continuing to act as miss lynch's agent; and i might hint the possibility of his receiving the rents on the whole property." "hint what you like, daly, but don't tie me down to the infernal ruffian. i suppose we can throw him overboard afterwards, can't we?" "why, not altogether, mr lynch. if i make him a definite promise, i shall expect you to keep to it." "confound him!--but tell me, daly; what is it he's to do?--and what is it we're to do?" "why, mr lynch, it's more than probable, i think, that this plan of martin kelly's marrying your sisther may have been talked over between the ould woman, moylan, and the young man; and if so, that's something like a conspiracy. if i could worm that out of him, i think i'd manage to frighten them." "and what the deuce had i better do? you see, there was a bit of a row between us. that is, anty got frightened when i spoke to her of this rascal, and then she left the house. couldn't you make her understand that she'd be all right if she'd come to the house again?" while barry lynch had been sleeping off the effects of the punch, daly had been inquiring into the circumstances under which anty had left the house, and he had pretty nearly learned the truth; he knew, therefore, how much belief to give to his client's representation. "i don't think," said he, "that your sister will be likely to come back at present; she will probably find herself quieter and easier at the inn. you see, she has been used to a quiet life." "but, if she remains there, she can marry that young ruffian any moment she takes it into her head to do so. there's always some rogue of a priest ready to do a job of that sort." "exactly so, mr lynch. of course your sister can marry whom she pleases, and when she pleases, and neither you nor any one else can prevent her; but still--" "then what the devil's the use of my paying you to come here and tell me that?" "that's your affair: i didn't come without being sent for. but i was going to tell you that, though we can't prevent her from marrying if she pleases, we may make her afraid to do so. you had better write her a kind, affectionate note, regretting what has taken place between you, and promising to give her no molestation of any kind, if she will return to her own house,--and keep a copy of this letter. then i will see moylan; and, if i can do anything with him, it will be necessary that you should also see him. you could come over to tuam, and meet him in my office; and then i will try and force an entrance into the widow's castle, and, if possible, see your sister, and humbug the ould woman into a belief that she has laid herself open to criminal indictment. we might even go so far as to have notices served on them; but, if they snap their fingers at us, we can do nothing further. my advice in that case would be, that you should make the best terms in your power with martin kelly." "and let the whole thing go! i'd sooner--why, daly, i believe you're as bad as blake! you're afraid of these huxtering thieves!" "if you go on in that way, mr lynch, you'll get no professional gentleman to act with you. i give you my best advice; it you don't like it, you needn't follow it; but you won't get a solicitor in connaught to do better for you than what i'm proposing." "confusion!" muttered barry, and he struck the hot turf in the grate a desperate blow with the tongs which he had in his hands, and sent the sparks and bits of fire flying about the hearth. "the truth is, you see, your sister's in her full senses; there's the divil a doubt of that; the money's her own, and she can marry whom she pleases. all that we can do is to try and make the kellys think they have got into a scrape." "but this letter--what on earth am i to say to her?" "i'll just put down what i would say, were i you; and if you like you can copy it." daly then wrote the following letter-- my dear anty, before taking other steps, which could not fail of being very disagreeable to you and to others, i wish to point out to you how injudiciously you are acting in leaving your own house; and to try to induce you to do that which will be most beneficial to yourself, and most conducive to your happiness and respectability. if you will return to dunmore house, i most solemnly promise to leave you unmolested. i much regret that my violence on thursday should have annoyed you, but i can assure you it was attributable merely to my anxiety on your account. nothing, however, shall induce me to repeat it. but you must be aware that a little inn is not a fit place for you to be stopping at; and i am obliged to tell you that i have conclusive evidence of a conspiracy having been formed, by the family with whom you are staying, to get possession of your money; and that this conspiracy was entered into very shortly after the contents of my father's will had been made public. i _must_ have this fact proved at the assizes, and the disreputable parties to it punished, unless you will consent, at any rate for a time, to put yourself under the protection of your brother. in the meantime pray believe me, dear anty, in spite of appearances, your affectionate brother, barry lynch. it was then agreed that this letter should be copied and signed by barry, and delivered by terry on the following morning, which was sunday. daly then returned to tuam, with no warm admiration for his client. in the meantime the excitement at the inn, arising from anty's arrival and martin's return, was gradually subsiding. these two important events, both happening on the same day, sadly upset the domestic economy of mrs kelly's establishment. sally had indulged in tea almost to stupefaction, and kattie's elfin locks became more than ordinarily disordered. on the following morning, however, things seemed to fall a little more into their places: the widow was, as usual, behind her counter; and if her girls did not give her as much assistance as she desired of them, and as much as was usual with them, they were perhaps excusable, for they could not well leave their new guest alone on the day after her coming to them. martin went out early to toneroe; doubtless the necessary labours of the incipient spring required him at the farm but i believe that if his motives were analysed, he hardly felt himself up to a _tête-à-tête_ with his mistress, before he had enjoyed a cool day's consideration of the extraordinary circumstances which had brought her into the inn as his mother's guest. he, moreover, wished to have a little undisturbed conversation with meg, and to learn from her how anty might be inclined towards him just at present. so martin spent his morning among his lambs and his ploughs; and was walking home, towards dusk, tired enough, when he met barry lynch, on horseback, that hero having come out, as usual, for his solitary ride, to indulge in useless dreams of the happy times he would have, were his sister only removed from her tribulations in this world. though martin had never been on friendly terms with his more ambitious neighbour, there had never, up to this time, been any quarrel between them, and he therefore just muttered "good morning, mr lynch," as he passed him on the road. barry said nothing, and did not appear to see him as he passed; but some idea struck him as soon as he had passed, and he pulled in his horse and hallooed out "kelly!"--and, as martin stopped, he added, "come here a moment--i want to speak to you." "well, mr barry, what is it?" said the other, returning. lynch paused, and evidently did not know whether to speak or let it alone. at last he said, "never mind--i'll get somebody else to say what i was going to say. but you'd better look sharp what you're about, my lad, or you'll find yourself in a scrape that you don't dream of." "and is that all you called me back for?" said martin. "that's all i mean to say to you at present." "well then, mr lynch, i must say you're very good, and i'm shure i will look sharp enough. but, to my thinking, d'you know, you want looking afther yourself a precious dale more than i do," and then he turned to proceed homewards, but said, as he was going--"have you any message for your sisther, mr lynch?" "by--! my young man, i'll make you pay for what you're doing," answered barry. "i know you'll be glad to hear she's pretty well: she's coming round from the thratement she got the other night; though, by all accounts, it's a wondher she's alive this moment to tell of it." barry did not attempt any further reply, but rode on, sorry enough that he had commenced the conversation. martin got home in time for a snug tea with anty and his sisters, and succeeded in prevailing on the three to take each a glass of punch; and, before anty went to bed he began to find himself more at his ease with her, and able to call her by her christian name without any disagreeable emotion. he certainly had a most able coadjutor in meg. she made room on the sofa for him between herself and his mistress, and then contrived that the room should be barely sufficient, so that anty was rather closely hemmed up in one corner: moreover, she made anty give her opinion as to martin's looks after his metropolitan excursion, and tried hard to make martin pay some compliments to anty's appearance. but in this she failed, although she gave him numerous opportunities. however, they passed the evening very comfortably,--quite sufficiently so to make anty feel that the kindly, humble friendship of the inn was infinitely preferable to the miserable grandeur of dunmore house; and it is probable that all the lovemaking in the world would not have operated so strongly in martin's favour as this feeling. meg, however, was not satisfied, for as soon as she had seen jane and anty into the bed-room she returned to her brother, and lectured him as to his lukewarm manifestations of affection. "martin," said she, returning into the little sitting-room, and carefully shutting the door after her, "you're the biggest bosthoon of a gandher i ever see, to be losing your opportunities with anty this way! i b'lieve it's waiting you are for herself to come forward to you. do you think a young woman don't expect something more from a lover than jist for you to sit by her, and go on all as one as though she was one of your own sisthers? av' once she gets out of this before the priest has made one of the two of you, mind, i tell you, it'll be all up with you. i wondher, martin, you haven't got more pluck in you!" "oh! bother, meg. you're thinking of nothing but kissing and slobbhering.--anty's not the same as you and jane, and doesn't be all agog for such nonsense!" "i tell you, martin, anty's a woman; and, take my word for it, what another girl likes won't come amiss to her. besides, why don't you spake to her?" "spake?--why, what would you have me spake?" "well, martin, you're a fool. have you, or have you not, made up your mind to marry anty?" "to be shure i will, av' she'll have me." "and do you expect her to have you without asking?" "shure, you know, didn't i ask her often enough?" "ah, but you must do more than jist ask her that way. she'll never make up her mind to go before the priest, unless you say something sthronger to her. jist tell her, plump out, you're ready and willing, and get the thing done before lent. what's to hindher you?--shure, you know," she added, in a whisper, "you'll not get sich a fortune as anty's in your way every day. spake out, man, and don't be afraid of her: take my word she won't like you a bit the worse for a few kisses." martin promised to comply with his sister's advice, and to sound anty touching their marriage on the following morning after mass. on the sunday morning, at breakfast, the widow proposed to anty that she should go to mass with herself and her daughters; but anty trembled so violently at the idea of showing herself in public, after her escape from dunmore house, that the widow did not press her to do so, although afterwards she expressed her disapprobation of anty's conduct to her own girls. "i don't see what she has to be afeard of," said she, "in going to get mass from her own clergyman in her own chapel. she don't think, i suppose, that barry lynch'd dare come in there to pull her out, before the blessed altar, glory be to god." "ah but, mother, you know, she has been so frighted." "frighted, indeed! she'll get over these tantrums, i hope, before sunday next, or i know where i'll wish her again." so anty was left at home, and the rest of the family went to mass. when the women returned, meg manoeuvred greatly, and, in fine, successfully, that no one should enter the little parlour to interrupt the wooing she intended should take place there. she had no difficulty with jane, for she told her what her plans were; and though her less energetic sister did not quite agree in the wisdom of her designs, and pronounced an opinion that it would be "better to let things settle down a bit," still she did not presume to run counter to meg's views; but meg had some work to dispose of her mother. it would not have answered at all, as meg had very well learned herself, to caution her mother not to interrupt martin in his love-making, for the widow had no charity for such follies. she certainly expected her daughters to get married, and wished them to be well and speedily settled; but she watched anything like a flirtation on their part as closely as a cat does a mouse. if any young man were in the house, she'd listen to the fall of his footsteps with the utmost care; and when she had reason to fear that there was anything like a lengthened _tête-à-tête_ upstairs, she would steal on the pair, if possible, unawares, and interrupt, without the least reserve, any billing and cooing which might be going on, sending the delinquent daughter to her work, and giving a glower at the swain, which she expected might be sufficient to deter him from similar offences for some little time. the girls, consequently, were taught to be on the alert--to steal about on tiptoe, to elude their mother's watchful ear, to have recourse to a thousand little methods of deceiving her, and to baffle her with her own weapons. the mother, if she suspected that any prohibited frolic was likely to be carried on, at a late hour, would tell her daughters that she was going to bed, and would shut herself up for a couple of hours in her bed-room, and then steal out eavesdropping, peeping through key-holes and listening at door-handles; and the daughters, knowing their mother's practice, would not come forth till the listening and peeping had been completed, and till they had ascertained, by some infallible means, that the old woman was between the sheets. each party knew the tricks of the other; and yet, taking it all in all, the widow got on very well with her children, and everybody said what a good mother she had been: she was accustomed to use deceit, and was therefore not disgusted by it in others. whether the system of domestic manners which i have described is one likely to induce to sound restraint and good morals is a question which i will leave to be discussed by writers on educational points. however meg managed it, she did contrive that her mother should not go near the little parlour this sunday morning, and anty was left alone, to receive her lover's visit. i regret to say that he was long in paying it. he loitered about the chapel gates before he came home; and seemed more than usually willing to talk to anyone about anything. at last, however, just as meg was getting furious, he entered the inn. "why, martin, you born ideot--av' she ain't waiting for you this hour and more!" "thim that's long waited for is always welcome when they do come," replied martin. "well afther all i've done for you! are you going in now?--cause, av' you don't, i'll go and tell her not to be tasing herself about you. i'll neither be art or part in any such schaming." "schaming, is it, meg? faith, it'd be a clever fellow'd beat you at that," and, without waiting for his sister's sharp reply, he walked into the little room where anty was sitting. "so, anty, you wouldn't come to mass?" he began. "maybe i'll go next sunday," said she. "it's a long time since you missed mass before, i'm thinking." "not since the sunday afther father's death." "it's little you were thinking then how soon you'd be stopping down here with us at the inn." "that's thrue for you, martin, god knows." at this point of the conversation martin stuck fast: he did not know rosalind's recipe [ ] for the difficulty a man feels, when he finds himself gravelled for conversation with his mistress; so he merely scratched his head, and thought hard to find what he'd say next. i doubt whether the conviction, which was then strong on his mind, that meg was listening at the keyhole to every word that passed, at all assisted him in the operation. at last, some muse came to his aid, and he made out another sentence. [footnote : rosalind's recipe--in _as you like it_, act iii, sc. ii, rosalind, disguised as a young man, instructs orlando to practice his wooing on her.] "it was very odd my finding you down here, all ready before me, wasn't it?" "'deed it was: your mother was a very good woman to me that morning, anyhow." "and tell me now, anty, do you like the inn?" "'deed i do--but it's quare, like." "how quare?" "why, having meg and jane here: i wasn't ever used to anyone to talk to, only just the servants." "you'll have plenty always to talk to now--eh, anty?" and martin tried a sweet look at his lady love. "i'm shure i don't know. av' i'm only left quiet, that's what i most care about." "but, anty, tell me--you don't want always to be what you call quiet?" "oh! but i do--why not?" "but you don't mane, anty, that you wouldn't like to have some kind of work to do--some occupation, like?" "why, i wouldn't like to be idle; but a person needn't be idle because they're quiet." "and that's thrue, anty." and martin broke down again. "there'd be a great crowd in chapel, i suppose?" said anty. "there was a great crowd." "and what was father geoghegan preaching about?" "well, then, i didn't mind. to tell the truth, anty, i came out most as soon as the preaching began; only i know he told the boys to pray that the liberathor might be got out of his throubles; and so they should--not that there's much to throuble him, as far as the verdict's concerned." "isn't there then? i thought they made him out guilty?" "so they did, the false ruffians: but what harum 'll that do? they daren't touch a hair of his head!" politics, however, are not a favourable introduction to love-making: so martin felt, and again gave up the subject, in the hopes that he might find something better. "what a fool the man is!" thought meg to herself, at the door--"if i had a lover went on like that, wouldn't i pull his ears!" martin got up--walked across the room--looked out of the little window--felt very much ashamed of himself, and, returning, sat himself down on the sofa. "anty," he said, at last, blushing nearly brown as he spoke; "were you thinking of what i was spaking to you about before i went to dublin?" anty blushed also, now. "about what?" she said. "why, just about you and me making a match of it. come, anty, dear, what's the good of losing time? i've been thinking of little else; and, after what's been between us, you must have thought the matther over too, though you do let on to be so innocent. come, anty, now that you and mother's so thick, there can be nothing against it." "but indeed there is, martin, a great dale against it--though i'm sure it's good of you to be thinking of me. there's so much against it, i think we had betther be of one mind, and give it over at once." "and what's to hinder us marrying, anty, av' yourself is plazed? av' you and i, and mother are plazed, sorrow a one that i know of has a word to say in the matther." "but barry don't like it!" "and, afther all, are you going to wait for what barry likes? you didn't wait for what was plazing to barry lynch when you came down here; nor yet did mother when she went up and fetched you down at five in the morning, dreading he'd murdher you outright. and it was thrue for her, for he would, av' he was let, the brute. and are you going to wait for what he likes?" "whatever he's done, he's my brother; and there's only the two of us." "but it's not that, anty--don't you know it's not that? isn't it because you're afraid of him? because he threatened and frightened you? and what on 'arth could he do to harum you av' you was the wife of--of a man who'd, anyway, not let barry lynch, or anyone else, come between you and your comfort and aise?" "but you don't know how wretched i've been since he spoke to me about--about getting myself married: you don't know what i've suffered; and i've a feeling that good would never come of it." "and, afther all, are you going to tell me now, that i may jist go my own way? is that to be your answer, and all i'm to get from you?" "don't be angry with me, martin. i'm maning to do everything for the best." "maning?--what's the good of maning? anyways, anty, let me have an answer, for i'll not be making a fool of myself any longer. somehow, all the boys here, every sowl in dunmore, has it that you and i is to be married--and now, afther promising me as you did--" "oh, i never promised, martin." "it was all one as a promise--and now i'm to be thrown overboard. and why?--because barry lynch got dhrunk, and frightened you. av' i'd seen the ruffian striking you, i think i'd 've been near putting it beyond him to strike another woman iver again." "glory be to god that you wasn't near him that night," said anty, crossing herself. "it was bad enough, but av' the two of you should ever be set fighting along of me, it would kill me outright." "but who's talking of fighting, anty, dear?" and martin drew a little nearer to her--"who's talking of fighting? i never wish to spake another word to barry the longest day that ever comes. av' he'll get out of my way, i'll go bail he'll not find me in his." "but he wouldn't get out of your way, nor get out of mine, av' you and i got married: he'd be in our way, and we'd be in his, and nothing could iver come of it but sorrow and misery, and maybe bloodshed." "them's all a woman's fears. av' you an i were once spliced by the priest, god bless him, barry wouldn't trouble dunmore long afther." "that's another rason, too. why should i be dhriving him out of his own house? you know he's a right to the house, as well as i." "who's talking of dhriving him out? faith, he'd be welcome to stay there long enough for me! he'd go, fast enough, without dhriving, though; you can't say the counthry wouldn't have a good riddhance of him. but never mind that, anty: it wasn't about barry, one way or the other, i was thinking, when i first asked you to have me; nor it wasn't about myself altogether, as i could let you know; though, in course, i'm not saying but that myself's as dear to myself as another, an' why not? but to tell the blessed truth, i was thinking av' you too; and that you'd be happier and asier, let alone betther an' more respecthable, as an honest man's wife, as i'd make you, than being mewed up there in dread of your life, never daring to open your mouth to a christian, for fear of your own brother, who niver did, nor niver will lift a hand to sarve you, though he wasn't backward to lift it to sthrike you, woman and sisther though you were. come, anty, darlin," he added, after a pause, during which he managed to get his arm behind her back, though he couldn't be said to have it fairly round her waist--"get quit of all these quandaries, and say at once, like an honest girl, you'll do what i'm asking--and what no living man can hindher you from or say against it.--or else jist fairly say you won't, and i'll have done with it." anty sat silent, for she didn't like to say she wouldn't; and she thought of her brother's threats, and was afraid to say she would. martin advanced a little in his proceedings, however, and now succeeded in getting his arm round her waist--and, having done so, he wasn't slow in letting her feel its pressure. she made an attempt, with her hand, to disengage herself--certainly not a successful, and, probably, not a very energetic attempt, when the widow's step was heard on the stairs. martin retreated from his position on the sofa, and meg from hers outside the door, and mrs kelly entered the room, with barry's letter in her hand, meg following, to ascertain the cause of the unfortunate interruption. xviii. an attorney's office in connaught "anty, here's a letter for ye," began the widow. "terry's brought it down from the house, and says it's from misther barry. i b'lieve he was in the right not to bring it hisself." "a letther for me, mrs kelly? what can he be writing about? i don't just know whether i ought to open it or no;" and anty trembled, as she turned the epistle over and over again in her hands. "what for would you not open it? the letther can't hurt you, girl, whatever the writher might do." thus encouraged, anty broke the seal, and made herself acquainted with the contents of the letter which daly had dictated; but she then found that her difficulties had only just commenced. was she to send an answer, and if so, what answer? and if she sent none, what notice ought she to take of it? the matter was one evidently too weighty to be settled by her own judgment, so she handed the letter to be read, first by the widow, and then by martin, and lastly by the two girls, who, by this time, were both in the room. "well, the dethermined impudence of that blackguard!" exclaimed mrs kelly. "conspiracy!--av' that don't bang banagher! what does the man mean by 'conspiracy,' eh, martin?" "faith, you must ask himself that, mother; and then it's ten to one he can't tell you." "i suppose," said meg, "he wants to say that we're all schaming to rob anty of her money--only he daren't, for the life of him, spake it out straight forrard." "or, maybe," suggested jane, "he wants to bring something agen us like this affair of o'connell's--only he'll find, down here, that he an't got dublin soft goods to deal wid." then followed a consultation, as to the proper steps to be taken in the matter. the widow advised that father geoghegan should be sent for to indite such a reply as a christian ill-used woman should send to so base a letter. meg, who was very hot on the subject, and who had read of some such proceeding in a novel, was for putting up in a blank envelope the letter itself, and returning it to barry by the hands of jack, the ostler; at the same time, she declared that "no surrender" should be her motto. jane was of opinion that "miss anastasia lynch's compliments to mr barry lynch, and she didn't find herself strong enough to move to dunmore house at present," would answer all purposes, and be, on the whole, the safest course. while martin pronounced that "if anty would be led by him, she'd just pitch the letter behind the fire an' take no notice of it, good, bad, or indifferent." none of these plans pleased anty, for, as she remarked, "after all, barry was her brother, and blood was thickher than wather." so, after much consultation, pen, ink, and paper were procured, and the following letter was concocted between them, all the soft bits having been great stumbling-blocks, in which, however, anty's quiet perseverance carried the point, in opposition to the wishes of all the kellys. the words put in brackets were those peculiarly objected to. dunmore inn. february, . dear barry, i (am very sorry i) can't come back to the house, at any rate just at present. i am not very sthrong in health, and there are kind female friends about me here, which you know there couldn't be up at the house. anty herself, in the original draft inserted "ladies," but the widow's good sense repudiated the term, and insisted on the word "females": jane suggested that "females" did not sound quite respectful alone, and martin thought that anty might call them "female friends," which was consequently done. --besides, there are reasons why i'm quieter here, till things are a little more settled. i will forgive (and forget) all that happened up at the house between us-- "why, you can't forget it," said meg. "oh, i could, av' he was kind to me. i'd forget it all in a week av' he was kind to me," answered anty-- (and i will do nothing particular without first letting you know). they were all loud against this paragraph, but they could not carry their point. i must tell you, dear barry, that you are very much mistaken about the people of this house: they are dear, kind friends to me, and, wherever i am, i must love them to the last day of my life--but indeed i am, and hope you believe so, your affectionate sister, anastasia lynch. when the last paragraph was read over anty's shoulder, meg declared she was a dear, dear creature: jane gave her a big kiss, and began crying; even the widow put the corner of her apron to her eye, and martin, trying to look manly and unconcerned, declared that he was "quite shure they all loved her, and they'd be brutes and bastes av' they didn't!" the letter, as given above, was finally decided on; written, sealed, and despatched by jack, who was desired to be very particular to deliver it at the front door, with miss lynch's love, which was accordingly done. all the care, however, which had been bestowed on it did not make it palatable to barry, who was alone when he received it, and merely muttered, as he read it, "confound her, low-minded slut! friends, indeed! what business has she with friends, except such as i please?--if i'd the choosing of her friends, they'd be a strait waistcoat, and the madhouse doctor. good heaven! that half my property--no, but two-thirds of it,--should belong to her!--the stupid, stiff-necked robber!" these last pleasant epithets had reference to his respected progenitor. on the same evening, after tea, martin endeavoured to make a little further advance with anty, for he felt that he had been interrupted just as she was coming round; but her nerves were again disordered, and he soon found that if he pressed her now, he should only get a decided negative, which he might find it very difficult to induce her to revoke. anty's letter was sent off early on the monday morning--at least, as early as barry now ever managed to do anything--to the attorney at tuam, with strong injunctions that no time was to be lost in taking further steps, and with a request that daly would again come out to dunmore. this, however, he did not at present think it expedient to do. so he wrote to barry, begging him to come into tuam on the wednesday, to meet moylan, whom he, daly, would, if possible, contrive to see on the intervening day. "obstinate puppy!" said barry to himself--"if he'd had the least pluck in life he'd have broken the will, or at least made the girl out a lunatic. but a connaught lawyer hasn't half the wit or courage now that he used to have." however, he wrote a note to daly, agreeing to his proposal, and promising to be in tuam at two o'clock on the wednesday. on the following day daly saw moylan, and had a long conversation with him. the old man held out for a long time, expressing much indignation at being supposed capable of joining in any underhand agreement for transferring miss lynch's property to his relatives the kellys, and declaring that he would make public to every one in dunmore and tuam the base manner in which barry lynch was treating his sister. indeed, moylan kept to his story so long and so firmly that the young attorney was nearly giving him up; but at last he found his weak side. "well, mr moylan," he said, "then i can only say your own conduct is very disinterested;--and i might even go so far as to say that you appear to me foolishly indifferent to your own concerns. here's the agency of the whole property going a-begging: the rents, i believe, are about a thousand a-year: you might be recaving them all by jist a word of your mouth, and that only telling the blessed truth; and here, you're going to put the whole thing into the hands of young kelly; throwing up even the half of the business you have got!" "who says i'm afther doing any sich thing, mr daly?" "why, martin kelly says so. didn't as many as four or five persons hear him say, down at dunmore, that divil a one of the tenants'd iver pay a haporth [ ] of the november rents to anyone only jist to himself? there was father geoghegan heard him, an doctor ned blake." [footnote : haporth--half-penny's worth] "maybe he'll find his mistake, mr daly." "maybe he will, mr moylan. maybe we'll put the whole affair into the courts, and have a regular recaver over the property, under the chancellor. people, though they're ever so respectable in their way,--and i don't mane to say a word against the kellys, mr moylan, for they were always friends of mine--but people can't be allowed to make a dead set at a property like this, and have it all their own way, like the bull in the china-shop. i know there has been an agreement made, and that, in the eye of the law, is a conspiracy. i positively know that an agreement has been made to induce miss lynch to become martin kelly's wife; and i know the parties to it, too; and i also know that an active young fellow like him wouldn't be paying an agent to get in his rents; and i thought, if mr lynch was willing to appoint you his agent, as well as his sister's, it might be worth your while to lend us a hand to settle this affair, without forcing us to stick people into a witness-box whom neither i nor mr lynch--" "but what the d----l can i--" "jist hear me out, mr moylan; you see, if they once knew--the kellys i mane--that you wouldn't lend a hand to this piece of iniquity--" "which piece of iniquity, mr daly?--for i'm entirely bothered." "ah, now, mr moylan, none of your fun: this piece of iniquity of theirs, i say; for i can call it no less. if they once knew that you wouldn't help 'em, they'd be obliged to drop it all; the matter'd never have to go into court at all, and you'd jist step into the agency fair and aisy; and, into the bargain, you'd do nothing but an honest man's work." the old man broke down, and consented to "go agin the kellys," as he somewhat ambiguously styled his apostasy, provided the agency was absolutely promised to him; and he went away with the understanding that he was to come on the following day and meet mr lynch. at two o'clock, punctual to the time of his appointment, moylan was there, and was kept waiting an hour in daly's little parlour. at the end of this time barry came in, having invigorated his courage and spirits with a couple of glasses of brandy. daly had been for some time on the look-out for him, for he wished to say a few words to him in private, and give him his cue before he took him into the room where moylan was sitting. this could not well be done in the office, for it was crowded. it would, i think, astonish a london attorney in respectable practice, to see the manner in which his brethren towards the west of ireland get through their work. daly's office was open to all the world; the front door of the house, of which he rented the ground floor, was never closed, except at night; nor was the door of the office, which opened immediately into the hail. during the hour that moylan was waiting in the parlour, daly was sitting, with his hat on, upon a high stool, with his feet resting on a small counter which ran across the room, smoking a pipe: a boy, about seventeen years of age, daly's clerk, was filling up numbers of those abominable formulas of legal persecution in which attorneys deal, and was plying his trade as steadily as though no february blasts were blowing in on him through the open door, no sounds of loud and boisterous conversation were rattling in his ears. the dashing manager of one of the branch banks in the town was sitting close to the little stove, and raking out the turf ashes with the office rule, while describing a drinking-bout that had taken place on the previous sunday at blake's of blakemount; he had a cigar in his mouth, and was searching for a piece of well-kindled turf, wherewith to light it. a little fat oily shopkeeper in the town, who called himself a woollen merchant, was standing with the raised leaf of the counter in his hand, roaring with laughter at the manager's story. two frieze coated farmers, outside the counter, were stretching across it, and whispering very audibly to daly some details of litigation which did not appear very much to interest him; and a couple of idle blackguards were leaning against the wall, ready to obey any behest of the attorney's which might enable them to earn a sixpence without labour, and listening with all their ears to the different interesting topics of conversation which might be broached in the inner office. "here's the very man i'm waiting for, at last," said daly, when, from his position on the stool, he saw, through the two open doors, the bloated red face of barry lynch approaching; and, giving an impulse to his body by a shove against the wall behind him, he raised himself on to the counter, and, assisting himself by a pull at the collar of the frieze coat of the farmer who was in the middle of his story, jumped to the ground, and met his client at the front door. "i beg your pardon, mr lynch," said he as soon as he had shaken hands with him, "but will you just step up to my room a minute, for i want to spake to you;" and he took him up into his bed-room, for he hadn't a second sitting-room. "you'll excuse my bringing you up here, for the office was full, you see, and moylan's in the parlour." "the d----l he is! he came round then, did he, eh, daly?" "oh, i've had a terrible hard game to play with him. i'd no idea he'd be so tough a customer, or make such a good fight; but i think i've managed him." "there was a regular plan then, eh, daly? just as i said. it was a regular planned scheme among them?" "wait a moment, and you'll know all about it, at least as much as i know myself; and, to tell the truth, that's devilish little. but, if we manage to break off the match, and get your sister clane out of the inn there, you must give moylan your agency, at any rate for two or three years." "you haven't promised that?" "but i have, though. we can do nothing without it: it was only when i hinted that, that the old sinner came round." "but what the deuce is it he's to do for us, after all?" "he's to allow us to put him forward as a bugbear, to frighten the kellys with: that's all, and, if we can manage that, that's enough. but come down now. i only wanted to warn you that, if you think the agency is too high a price to pay for the man's services, whatever they may be, you must make up your mind to dispense with them." "well," answered barry, as he followed the attorney downstairs, "i can't understand what you're about; but i suppose you must be right;" and they went into the little parlour where moylan was sitting. moylan and barry lynch had only met once, since the former had been entrusted to receive anty's rents, on which occasion moylan had been grossly insulted by her brother. barry, remembering the meeting, felt very awkward at the idea of entering into amicable conversation with him, and crept in at the door like a whipped dog. moylan was too old to feel any such compunctions, and consequently made what he intended to be taken as a very complaisant bow to his future patron. he was an ill-made, ugly, stumpy man, about fifty; with a blotched face, straggling sandy hair, and grey shaggy whiskers. he wore a long brown great coat, buttoned up to his chin, and this was the only article of wearing apparel visible upon him: in his hands he twirled a shining new four-and-fourpenny hat. as soon as their mutual salutations were over, daly commenced his business. "there is no doubt in the world, mr lynch," said he, addressing barry, "that a most unfair attempt has been made by this family to get possession of your sister's property--a most shameful attempt, which the law will no doubt recognise as a misdemeanour. but i think we shall be able to stop their game without any law at all, which will save us the annoyance of putting mr moylan here, and other respectable witnesses, on the table. mr moylan says that very soon afther your father's will was made known--" "now, mr daly--shure i niver said a word in life at all about the will," said moylan, interrupting him. "no, you did not: i mane, very soon afther you got the agency--" "divil a word i said about the agency, either." "well, well; some time ago--he says that, some time ago, he and martin kelly were talking over your sister's affairs; i believe the widow was there, too." "ah, now, mr daly--why'd you be putting them words into my mouth? sorrow a word of the kind i iver utthered at all." "what the deuce was it you did say, then?" "faix, i don't know that i said much, at all." "didn't you say, mr moylan, that martin kelly was talking to you about marrying anty, some six weeks ago?" "maybe i did; he was spaking about it." "and, if you were in the chair now, before a jury, wouldn't you swear that there was a schame among them to get anty lynch married to martin kelly? come, mr moylan, that's all we want to know: if you can't say as much as that for us now, just that we may let the kellys know what sort of evidence we could bring against them, if they push us, we must only have you and others summoned, and see what you'll have to say then." "oh, i'd say the truth, mr daly--divil a less--and i'd do as much as that now; but i thought mr lynch was wanting to say something about the property?" "not a word then i've to say about it," said barry, "except that i won't let that robber, young kelly, walk off with it, as long as there's law in the land." "mr moylan probably meant about the agency," observed daly. barry looked considerably puzzled, and turned to the attorney for assistance. "he manes," continued daly, "that he and the kellys are good friends, and it wouldn't be any convenience to him just to say anything that wouldn't be pleasing to them, unless we could make him independent of them:--isn't that about the long and the short of it, mr moylan?" "indepindent of the kellys, is it, mr daly?--faix, thin, i'm teetotally indepindent of them this minute, and mane to continue so, glory be to god. oh, i'm not afeard to tell the thruth agin ere a kelly in galway or roscommon--and, av' that was all, i don't see why i need have come here this day. when i'm called upon in the rigular way, and has a rigular question put me before the jury, either at sessions or 'sizes, you'll find i'll not be bothered for an answer, and, av' that's all, i b'lieve i may be going,"--and he made a movement towards the door. "just as you please, mr moylan," said daly; "and you may be sure that you'll not be long without an opportunity of showing how free you are with your answers. but, as a friend, i tell you you'll be wrong to lave this room till you've had a little more talk with mr lynch and myself. i believe i mentioned to you mr lynch was looking out for someone to act as agent over his portion of the dunmore property?" barry looked as black as thunder, but he said nothing. "you war, mr daly. av' i could accommodate mr lynch, i'm shure i'd be happy to undhertake the business." "i believe, mr lynch," said daly, turning to the other, "i may go so far as to promise mr moylan the agency of the whole property, provided miss lynch is induced to quit the house of the kellys? of course, mr moylan, you can see that as long as miss lynch is in a position of unfortunate hostility to her brother, the same agent could not act for both; but i think my client is inclined to put his property under your management, providing his sister returns to her own home. i believe i'm stating your wishes, mr lynch." "manage it your own way," said barry, "for i don't see what you're doing. if this man can do anything for me, why, i suppose i must pay him for it; and if so, your plan's as good a way of paying him as another." the attorney raised his hat with his hand, and scratched his head: he was afraid that moylan would have again gone off in a pet at lynch's brutality, but the old man sat quite quiet. he wouldn't have much minded what was said to him, as long as he secured the agency. "you see, mr moylan," continued daly, "you can have the agency. five per cent. upon the rents is what my client--" "no, daly--five per cent.!--i'm shot if i do!" exclaimed barry. "i'm gething twenty-five pounds per annum from miss anty, for her half, and i wouldn't think of collecting the other for less," declared moylan. and then a long battle followed on this point, which it required all daly's tact and perseverance to adjust. the old man was pertinacious, and many whispers had to be made into barry's ear before the matter could be settled. it was, however, at last agreed that notice was to be served on the kellys, of barry lynch's determination to indict them for a conspiracy; that daly was to see the widow, martin, and, if possible, anty, and tell them all that moylan was prepared to prove that such a conspiracy had been formed;--care was also to be taken that copies of the notices so served should be placed in anty's hands. moylan, in the meantime, agreed to keep out of the way, and undertook, should he be unfortunate enough to encounter any of the family of the kellys, to brave the matter out by declaring that "av' he war brought before the judge and jury he couldn't do more than tell the blessed thruth, and why not?" in reward for this, he was to be appointed agent over the entire property the moment that miss lynch left the inn, at which time he was to receive a document, signed by barry, undertaking to retain him in the agency for four years certain, or else to pay him a hundred pounds when it was taken from him. these terms having been mutually agreed to, and barry having, with many oaths, declared that he was a most shamefully ill-used man, the three separated. moylan skulked off to one of his haunts in the town; barry went to the bank, to endeavour to get a bill discounted [ ]; and daly returned to his office, to prepare the notices for the unfortunate widow and her son. [footnote : bill discounted--a common way for young men to borrow money in nineteenth century britain was to sign a promissory note (an "i.o.u."), often called a "bill," to repay the loan at a specified time. the lender gave the borrower less than the face value of the note (that is, he "discounted" the note), the difference being the interest. sometimes these notes were co-signed by a third party, who became responsible for repaying the loan if the borrower defaulted; this is one of the major themes in trollope's later book _framley parsonage_. trollope himself was quite familiar with methods of borrowing, having gotten into debt in his youth.] xix. mr daly visits the dunmore inn daly let no grass grow under his feet, for early on the following morning he hired a car, and proceeded to dunmore, with the notices in his pocket. his feelings were not very comfortable on his journey, for he knew that he was going on a bad errand, and he was not naturally either a heartless or an unscrupulous man, considering that he was a provincial attorney; but he was young in business, and poor, and he could not afford to give up a client. he endeavoured to persuade himself that it certainly was a wrong thing for martin kelly to marry such a woman as anty lynch, and that barry had some show of justice on his side; but he could not succeed. he knew that martin was a frank, honourable fellow, and that a marriage with him would be the very thing most likely to make anty happy; and he was certain, moreover, that, however anxious martin might naturally be to secure the fortune, he would take no illegal or even unfair steps to do so. he felt that his client was a ruffian of the deepest die: that his sole object was to rob his sister, and that he had no case which it would be possible even to bring before a jury. his intention now was, merely to work upon the timidity and ignorance of anty and the other females, and to frighten them with a bugbear in the shape of a criminal indictment; and daly felt that the work he was about was very, very dirty work. two or three times on the road, he had all but made up his mind to tear the letters he had in his pocket, and to drive at once to dunmore house, and tell barry lynch that he would do nothing further in the case. and he would have done so, had he not reflected that he had gone so far with moylan, that he could not recede, without leaving it in the old rogue's power to make the whole matter public. as he drove down the street of dunmore, he endeavoured to quiet his conscience, by reflecting that he might still do much to guard anty from the ill effects of her brother's rapacity; and that at any rate he would not see her property taken from her, though she might be frightened out of her matrimonial speculation. he wanted to see the widow, martin, and anty, and if possible to see them, at first, separately; and fortune so far favoured him that, as he got off the car, he saw our hero standing at the inn door. "ah! mr daly," said he, coming up to the car and shaking hands with the attorney, for daly put out his hand to him--"how are you again?--i suppose you're going up to the house? they say you're barry's right hand man now. were you coming into the inn?" "why, i will step in just this minute; but i've a word i want to spake to you first." "to me!" said martin. "yes, to you, martin kelly: isn't that quare?" and then he gave directions to the driver to put up the horse, and bring the car round again in an hour's time. "d' you remember my telling you, the day we came into dunmore on the car together, that i was going up to the house?" "faith i do, well; it's not so long since." "and do you mind my telling you, i didn't know from adam what it was for, that barry lynch was sending for me?" "and i remember that, too." "and that i tould you, that when i did know i shouldn't tell you?" "begad you did, mr daly; thim very words." "why then, martin, i tould you what wasn't thrue, for i'm come all the way from tuam, this minute, to tell you all about it." martin turned very red, for he rightly conceived that when an attorney came all the way from tuam to talk to him, the tidings were not likely to be agreeable. "and is it about barry lynch's business?" "it is." "then it's schames there's divil a doubt of that." "it is schames, as you say, martin," said daly, slapping him on the shoulder--"fine schames--no less than a wife with four hundred a-year! wouldn't that be a fine schame?" "'deed it would, mr daly, av' the wife and the fortune were honestly come by." "and isn't it a hundred pities that i must come and upset such a pretty schame as that? but, for all that, it's thrue. i'm sorry for you, martin, but you must give up anty lynch." "give her up, is it? faith i haven't got her to give up, worse luck." "nor never will, martin; and that's worse luck again." "well, mr daly, av' that's all you've come to say, you might have saved yourself car-hire. miss lynch is nothing to me, mind; how should she be? but av' she war, neither barry lynch--who's as big a rogue as there is from this to hisself and back again--nor you, who, i take it, ain't rogue enough to do barry's work, wouldn't put me off it." "well, martin; thank 'ee for the compliment. but now, you know what i've come about, and there's no joke in it. of course i don't want you to tell me anything of your plans; but, as mr lynch's lawyer, i must tell you so much as this of his:--that, if his sister doesn't lave the inn, and honestly assure him that she'll give up her intention of marrying you, he's determined to take proceedings." he then fumbled in his pocket, and, bringing out the two notices, handed to martin the one addressed to him. "read that, and it'll give you an idea what we're afther. and when i tell you that moylan owns, and will swear to it too, that he was present when all the plans were made, you'll see that we're not going to sea without wind in our sails." "well--i'm shot av' i know the laist in the world what all this is about!" said martin, as he stood in the street, reading over the legally-worded letter--"'conspiracy!'--well that'll do, mr daly; go on--'enticing away from her home!'--that's good, when the blackguard nearly knocked the life out of her, and mother brought her down here, from downright charity, and to prevent murdher--'wake intellects!'--well, mr daly, i didn't expect this kind of thing from you: begorra, i thought you were above this!--wake intellects! faith, they're a dale too sthrong, and too good--and too wide awake too, for barry to get the betther of her that way. not that i'm in the laist in life surprised at anything he'd do; but i thought that you, mr daly, wouldn't put your hands to such work as that." daly felt the rebuke, and felt it strongly, too; but now that he was embarked in the business, he must put the best face he could upon it. still it was a moment or two before he could answer the young farmer. "why," he said--"why did you put your hands to such a dirty job as this, martin?--you were doing well, and not in want--and how could you let anyone persuade you to go and sell yourself to, an ugly ould maid, for a few hundred pounds? don't you know, that if you were married to her this minute, you'd have a lawsuit that'd go near to ruin you before you could get possession of the property?" "av' i'm in want of legal advice, mr daly, which thank god, i'm not, nor likely to be--but av' i war, it's not from barry lynch's attorney i'd be looking for it." "i'd be sorry to see you in want of it, martin; but if you mane to keep out of the worst kind of law, you'd better have done with anty lynch. i'd a dale sooner be drawing up a marriage settlement between you and some pretty girl with five or six hundred pound fortune, than i'd be exposing to the counthry such a mane trick as this you're now afther, of seducing a poor half-witted ould maid, like anty lynch, into a disgraceful marriage." "look here, mr daly," said the other; "you've hired yourself out to barry lynch, and you must do his work, i suppose, whether it's dirthy or clane; and you know yourself, as well as i can tell you, which it's likely to be--" "that's my concern; lave that to me; you've quite enough to do to mind yourself." "but av' he's nothing betther for you to do, than to send you here bally-ragging and calling folks out of their name, he must have a sight more money to spare than i give him credit for; and you must be a dale worse off than your neighbours thought you, to do it for him." "that'll do," said mr daly, knocking at the door of the inn; "only, remember, mr kelly, you've now received notice of the steps which my client feels himself called upon to take." martin turned to go away, but then, reflecting that it would be as well not to leave the women by themselves in the power of the enemy, he also waited at the door till it was opened by katty. "is miss lynch within?" asked daly. "go round to the shop, katty," said martin, "and tell mother to come to the door. there's a gentleman wanting her." "it was miss lynch i asked for," said daly, still looking to the girl for an answer. "do as i bid you, you born ideot, and don't stand gaping there," shouted martin to the girl, who immediately ran off towards the shop. "i might as well warn you, mr kelly, that, if miss lynch is denied to me, the fact of her being so denied will be a very sthrong proof against you and your family. in fact, it amounts to an illegal detention of her person, in the eye of the law." daly said this in a very low voice, almost a whisper. "faith, the law must have quare eyes, av' it makes anything wrong with a young lady being asked the question whether or no she wishes to see an attorney, at eleven in the morning." "an attorney!" whispered meg to jane and anty at the top of the stairs. "heaven and 'arth," said poor anty, shaking and shivering--"what's going to be the matter now?" "it's young daly," said jane, stretching forward and peeping clown the stairs: "i can see the curl of his whiskers." by this time the news had reached mrs kelly, in the shop, "that a sthrange gentleman war axing for miss anty, but that she warn't to be shown to him on no account;" so the widow dropped her tobacco knife, flung off her dirty apron, and, having summoned jane and meg to attend to the mercantile affairs of the establishment--turned into the inn, and met mr daly and her son still standing at the bottom of the stairs. the widow curtsied ceremoniously, and wished mr. daly good morning, and he was equally civil in his salutation. "mr daly's going to have us all before the assizes, mother. we'll never get off without the treadmill, any way: it's well av' the whole kit of us don't have to go over the wather at the queen's expense." "the lord be good to us;" said the widow, crossing herself. what's the matter, mr daly?" "your son's joking, ma'am. i was only asking to see miss lynch, on business." "step upstairs, mother, into the big parlour, and don't let's be standing talking here where all the world can hear us." "and wilcome, for me, i'm shure"--said the widow, stroking down the front of her dress with the palms of her hands, as she walked upstairs--"and wilcome too for me i'm very shure. i've said or done nothing as i wish to consail, mr daly. will you be plazed to take a chair?" and the widow sat down herself on a chair in the middle of the room, with her hands folded over each other in her lap, as if she was preparing to answer questions from that time to a very late hour in the evening. "and now, mr daly--av' you've anything to say to a poor widdy like me, i'm ready." "my chief object in calling, mrs kelly, was to see miss lynch. would you oblige me by letting miss lynch know that i'm waiting to see her on business." "maybe it's a message from her brother, mr daly?" said mrs kelly. "you had better go in to miss lynch, mother," said martin, "and ask her av' it's pleasing to her to see mr daly. she can see him, in course, av' she likes." "i don't see what good 'll come of her seeing him," rejoined the widow. "with great respect to you, mr daly, and not maning to say a word agin you, i don't see how anty lynch 'll be the betther for seeing ere an attorney in the counthry." "i don't want to frighten you, ma'am," said daly; "but i can assure you, you will put yourself in a very awkward position if you refuse to allow me to see miss lynch." "ah, mother!" said martin, "don't have a word to say in the matther at all, one way or the other. just tell anty mr daly wishes to see her--let her come or not, just as she chooses. what's she afeard of, that she shouldn't hear what anyone has to say to her?" the widow seemed to be in great doubt and perplexity, and continued whispering with martin for some time, during which daly remained standing with his back to the fire. at length martin said, "av' you've got another of them notices to give my mother, mr daly, why don't you do it?" "why, to tell you the thruth," answered the attorney, "i don't want to throuble your mother unless it's absolutely necessary; and although i have the notice ready in my pocket, if i could see miss lynch, i might be spared the disagreeable job of serving it on her." "the holy virgin save us!" said the widow; "an' what notice is it at all, you're going to serve on a poor lone woman like me?" "be said by me, mother, and fetch anty in here. mr daly won't expect, i suppose, but what you should stay and hear what it is he has to say?" "both you and your mother are welcome to hear all that i have to say to the lady," said daly; for he felt that it would be impossible for him to see anty alone. the widow unwillingly got up to fetch her guest. when she got to the door, she turned round, and said, "and is there a notice, as you calls it, to be sarved on miss lynch?" "not a line, mrs kelly; not a line, on my honour. i only want her to hear a few words that i'm commissioned by her brother to say to her." "and you're not going to give her any paper--nor nothing of that sort at all?" "not a word, mrs kelly." "ah, mother," said martin, "mr daly couldn't hurt her, av' he war wishing, and he's not. go and bring her in." the widow went out, and in a few minutes returned, bringing anty with her, trembling from head to foot. the poor young woman had not exactly heard what had passed between the attorney and the mother and her son, but she knew very well that his visit had reference to her, and that it was in some way connected with her brother. she had, therefore, been in a great state of alarm since meg and jane had left her alone. when mrs kelly came into the little room where she was sitting, and told her that mr daly had come to dunmore on purpose to see her, her first impulse was to declare that she wouldn't go to him; and had she done so, the widow would not have pressed her. but she hesitated, for she didn't like to refuse to do anything which her friend asked her; and when mrs kelly said, "martin says as how the man can't hurt you, anty, so you'd betther jist hear what it is he has to say," she felt that she had no loophole of escape, and got up to comply. "but mind, anty," whispered the cautious widow, as her hand was on the parlour door, "becase this daly is wanting to speak to you, that's no rason you should be wanting to spake to him; so, if you'll be said by me, you'll jist hould your tongue, and let him say on." fully determined to comply with this prudent advice, anty followed the old woman, and, curtseying at daly without looking at him, sat herself down in the middle of the old sofa, with her hands crossed before her. "anty," said martin, making great haste to speak, before daly could commence, and then checking himself as he remembered that he shouldn't have ventured on the familiarity of calling her by her christian name in daly's presence--"miss lynch, i mane--as mr daly here has come all the way from tuam on purpose to spake to you, it wouldn't perhaps be manners in you to let him go back without hearing him. but remember, whatever your brother says, or whatever mr daly says for him--and it's all--one you're still your own mistress, free to act and to spake, to come and to go; and that neither the one nor the other can hurt you, or mother, or me, nor anybody belonging to us." "god knows," said daly, "i want to have no hand in hurting any of you; but, to tell the truth, martin, it would be well for miss lynch to have a better adviser than you or she may get herself, and, what she'll think more of, she'll get her friends--maning you, mrs kelly, and your family--into a heap of throubles." "oh, god forbid, thin!" exclaimed anty. "niver mind us, mr daly," said the widow. "the kellys was always able to hould their own; thanks be to glory." "well, i've said my say, mr daly," said martin, "and now do you say your'n: as for throubles, we've all enough of thim; but your own must have been bad, when you undhertook this sort of job for barry lynch." "mind yourself, martin, as i told you before, and you'll about have enough to do.--miss lynch, i've been instructed by your brother to draw up an indictment against mrs kelly and mr kelly, charging them with conspiracy to get possession of your fortune." "a what!" shouted the widow, jumping up from her chair--"to rob anty lynch of her fortune! i'd have you to know, mr daly, i wouldn't demane myself to rob the best gentleman in connaught, let alone a poor unprotected young woman, whom i've--" "whist, mother--go asy," said martin. "i tould you that that was what war in the paper he gave me; he'll give you another, telling you all about it just this minute." "well, the born ruffian! does he dare to accuse me of wishing to rob his sister! now, mr daly, av' the blessed thruth is in you this minute, don't your own heart know who it is, is most likely to rob anty lynch?--isn't it barry lynch himself is thrying to rob his own sisther this minute? ay, and he'd murdher her too, only the heart within him isn't sthrong enough." "ah, mother! don't be saying such things," said martin; "what business is that of our'n? let barry send what messages he plazes; i tell you it's all moonshine; he can't hurt the hair of your head, nor anty's neither. go asy, and let mr daly say what he has to say, and have done with it." "it's asy to say 'go asy'--but who's to sit still and be tould sich things as that? rob anty lynch indeed!" "if you'll let me finish what i have to say, mrs kelly, i think you'll find it betther for the whole of us," said daly. "go on thin, and be quick with it; but don't talk to dacent people about robbers any more. robbers indeed! they're not far to fitch; and black robbers too, glory be to god." "your brother, miss lynch, is determined to bring this matter before a jury at the assizes, for the sake of protecting you and your property." "protecthing anty lynch!--is it barry? the holy virgin defind her from sich prothection! a broken head the first moment the dhrink makes his heart sthrong enough to sthrike her!" "ah, mother! you're a fool," exclaimed martin: "why can't you let the man go on?--ain't he paid for saying it? well, mr daly, begorra i pity you, to have such things on your tongue; but go on, go on, and finish it." "your brother conceives this to be his duty," continued daly, rather bothered by the manner in which he had to make his communication, "and it is a duty which he is determined to go through with." "duty!" said the widow, with a twist of her nose, and giving almost a whistle through her lips, in a manner which very plainly declared the contempt she felt for barry's ideas of duty. "with this object," continued daly, "i have already handed to martin kelly a notice of what your brother means to do; and i have another notice prepared in my pocket for his mother. the next step will be to swear the informations before a magistrate, and get the committals made out; mrs kelly and her son will then have to give bail for their appearance at the assizes." "and so we can," said the widow; "betther bail than e'er a lynch or daly--not but what the dalys is respictable--betther bail, any way, than e'er a lynch in galway could show, either for sessions or 'sizes, by night or by day, winter or summer." "ah, mother! you don't understhand: he's maning that we're to be tried in the dock, for staling anty's money." "faix, but that'd be a good joke! isn't anty to the fore herself to say who's robbed her? take an ould woman's advice, mr daly, and go back to tuam: it ain't so asy to put salt on the tail of a dunmore bird." "and so i will, mrs kelly," said daly; "but you must let me finish what i have to tell miss lynch.--this will be a proceeding most disagreeable to your brother's feelings." "failings, indeed!" muttered the widow; "faix, i b'lieve his chief failing at present's for sthrong dhrink!" "--but he must go on with it, unless you at once lave the inn, return to your own home, and give him your promise that you will never marry martin kelly." anty blushed deep crimson over her whole face at the mention of her contemplated marriage; and, to tell the truth, so did martin. "here is the notice," said daly, taking the paper out of his pocket; "and the matter now rests with yourself. if you'll only tell me that you'll be guided by your brother on this subject, i'll burn the notice at once; and i'll undertake to say that, as far as your property is concerned, your brother will not in the least interfere with you in the management of it." "and good rason why, mr daly," said the widow--"jist becase he can't." "well, miss lynch, am i to tell your brother that you are willing to oblige him in this matter?" whatever effect daly's threats may have had on the widow and her son, they told strongly upon anty; for she sat now the picture of misery and indecision. at last she said: "oh, lord defend me! what am i to do, mrs kelly?" "do?" said martin; "why, what should you do--but just wish mr daly good morning, and stay where you are, snug and comfortable?" "av' you war to lave this, anty, and go up to dunmore house afther all that's been said and done, i'd say barry was right, and that ballinasloe asylum was the fitting place for you," said the widow. "the blessed virgin guide and prothect me," said anty, "for i want her guidance this minute. oh, that the walls of a convent was round me this minute--i wouldn't know what throuble was!" "and you needn't know anything about throuble," said martin, who didn't quite like his mistress's allusion to a convent. "you don't suppose there's a word of thruth in all this long story of mr daly's?--he knows,--and i'll say it out to his face--he knows barry don't dare carry on with sich a schame. he knows he's only come here to frighten you out of this, that barry may have his will on you again." "and god forgive him his errand here this day," said the widow, "for it was a very bad one." "if you will allow me to offer you my advice, miss lynch," said daly, "you will put yourself, at any rate for a time, under your brother's protection." "she won't do no sich thing," said the widow. "what! to be locked into the parlour agin--and be nigh murdhered? holy father!" "oh, no," said anty, at last, shuddering in horror at the remembrance of the last night she passed in dunmore house, "i cannot go back to live with him, but i'll do anything else, av' he'll only lave me, and my kind, kind friends, in pace and quiet." "indeed, and you won't, anty," said the widow; "you'll do nothing for him. your frinds--that's av' you mane the kellys--is very able to take care of themselves." "if your brother, miss lynch, will lave dunmore house altogether, and let you have it to yourself, will you go and live there, and give him the promise not to marry martin kelly?" "indeed an' she won't," said the widow. "she'll give no promise of the kind. promise, indeed! what for should she promise barry lynch whom she will marry, or whom she won't?" "raily, mrs kelly, i think you might let miss lynch answer for herself." "i wouldn't, for all the world thin, go to live at dunmore house," said anty. "and you are determined to stay in this inn here?" "in course she is--that's till she's a snug house of her own," said the widow. "ah, mother!" said martin, "what for will you be talking?" "and you're determined," repeated daly, "to stay here?" "i am," faltered anty. "then i have nothing further to do than to hand you this, mrs kelly"--and he offered the notice to the widow, but she refused to touch it, and he consequently put it down on the table. "but it is my duty to tell you, miss lynch, that the gentry of this counthry, before whom you will have to appear, will express very great indignation at your conduct in persevering in placing poor people like the kellys in so dreadful a predicament, by your wilful and disgraceful obstinacy." poor anty burst into tears. she had been for some time past trying to restrain herself, but daly's last speech, and the horrible idea of the gentry of the country browbeating and frowning at her, completely upset her, and she hid her face on the arm of the sofa, and sobbed aloud. "poor people like the kellys!" shouted the widow, now for the first time really angry with daly--"not so poor, mr daly, as to do dirthy work for anyone. i wish i could say as much this day for your mother's son! poor people, indeed! i suppose, now, you wouldn't call barry lynch one of your poor people; but in my mind he's the poorest crature living this day in county galway. av' you've done now, mr daly, you've my lave to be walking; and the less you let the poor kellys see of you, from this time out, the betther." when anty's sobs commenced, martin had gone over to her to comfort her, "ah, anty, dear," he whispered to her, "shure you'd not be minding what such a fellow as he'd be saying to you?--shure he's jist paid for all this--he's only sent here by barry to thry and frighten you,"--but it was of no avail: daly had succeeded at any rate in making her miserable, and it was past the power of martin's eloquence to undo what the attorney had done. "well, mr daly," he said, turning round sharply, "i suppose you have done here now, and the sooner you turn your back on this place the betther--an' you may take this along with you. av' you think you've frightened my mother or me, you're very much mistaken." "yes," said daly, "i have done now, and i am sorry my business has been so unpleasant. your mother, martin, had betther not disregard that notice. good morning, miss lynch: good morning, mrs kelly; good morning, martin;" and daly took up his hat, and left the room. "good morning to you, mr daly," said martin: "as i've said before, i'm sorry to see you've taken to this line of business." as soon as the attorney was gone, both martin and his mother attempted to console and re-assure poor anty, but they did not find the task an easy one. "oh, mrs kelly," she said, as soon as she was able to say anything, "i'm sorry i iver come here, i am: i'm sorry i iver set my foot in the house!" "don't say so, anty, dear," said the widow. "what'd you be sorry for--an't it the best place for you?" "oh! but to think that i'd bring all these throubles on you! betther be up there, and bear it all, than bring you and yours into law, and sorrow, and expense. only i couldn't find the words in my throat to say it, i'd 've tould the man that i'd 've gone back at once. i wish i had--indeed, mrs kelly, i wish i had." "why, anty," said martin, "you an't fool enough to believe what daly's been saying? shure all he's afther is to frighthen you out of this. never fear: barry can't hurt us a halfporth, though no doubt he's willing enough, av' he had the way." "i wish i was in a convent, this moment," said anty. "oh! i wish i'd done as father asked me long since. av' the walls of a convent was around me, i'd niver know what throubles was." "no more you shan't now," said martin: "who's to hurt you? come, anty, look up; there's nothing in all this to vex you." but neither son nor mother were able to soothe the poor young woman. the very presence of an attorney was awful to her; and all the jargon which daly had used, of juries, judges, trials, and notices, had sounded terribly in her ears. the very names of such things were to her terrible realities, and she couldn't bring herself to believe that her brother would threaten to make use of such horrible engines of persecution, without having the power to bring them into action. then, visions of the lunatic asylum, into which he had declared that he would throw her, flitted across her, and made her whole body shiver and shake; and again she remembered the horrid glare of his eye, the hot breath, and the frightful form of his visage, on the night when he almost told her that he would murder her. poor anty had at no time high or enduring spirits, but such as she had were now completely quelled. a dreadful feeling of coming evil--a foreboding of misery, such as will sometimes overwhelm stronger minds than anty's, seemed to stifle her; and she continued sobbing till she fell into hysterics, when meg and jane were summoned to her assistance. they sat with her for above an hour, doing all that kindness and affection could suggest; but after a time anty told them that she had a cold, sick feeling within herself, that she felt weak and ill, and that she'd sooner go to bed. to bed they accordingly took her; and sally brought her tea, and katty lighted a fire in her room, and jane read to her an edifying article from the lives of the saints, and meg argued with her as to the folly of being frightened. but it was all of no avail; before night, anty was really ill. the next morning, the widow was obliged to own to herself that such was the case. in the afternoon, doctor colligan was called in; and it was many, many weeks before anty recovered from the effects of the attorney's visit. xx. very liberal when the widow left the parlour, after having placed her guest in the charge of her daughters, she summoned her son to follow her down stairs, and was very careful not to leave behind her the notice which daly had placed on the table. as soon as she found herself behind the shutter of her little desk, which stood in the shop-window, she commenced very eagerly spelling it over. the purport of the notice was, to inform her that barry lynch intended immediately to apply to the magistrates to commit her and her son, for conspiring together to inveigle anty into a marriage; and that the fact of their having done so would be proved by mr moylan, who was prepared to swear that he had been present when the plan had been arranged between them. the reader is aware that whatever show of truth there might be for this accusation, as far as martin and moylan himself were concerned, the widow at any rate was innocent; and he can conceive the good lady's indignation at the idea of her own connection, moylan, having been seduced over to the enemy. though she had put on a bold front against daly, and though she did not quite believe that barry was in earnest in taking proceedings against her, still her heart failed her as she read the legal technicalities of the papers she held in her hand, and turned to her son for counsel in considerable tribulation. "but there must be something in it, i tell you," said she. "though barry lynch, and that limb o' the divil, young daly, 'd stick at nothin in the way of lies and desait, they'd niver go to say all this about moylan, unless he'd agree to do their bidding." "that's like enough, mother: i dare say moylan has been talked over--bought over rather; for he's not one of them as'd do mischief for nothin." "and does the ould robber mane to say that i--. as i live, i niver as much as mentioned anty's name to moylan, except jist about the agency!" "i'm shure you didn't, mother." "and what is it then he has to say agin us?" "jist lies; that's av' he were called on to say anything; but he niver will be. this is all one of barry's schames to frighten you, and get anty turned out of the inn." "thin master barry doesn't know the widdy kelly, i can tell him that; for when i puts my hand to a thing, i mane to pull through wid it. but tell me--all this'll be costing money, won't, it? attorneys don't bring thim sort of things about for nothing," and she gave a most contemptuous twist to the notice. "oh, barry must pay for that." "i doubt that, martin: he's not fond of paying, the mane, dirthy blackguard. i tell you what, you shouldn't iver have let daly inside the house: he'll make us pay for the writing o' thim as shure as my name's mary kelly: av' he hadn't got into the house, he couldn't've done a halfporth." "i tell you, mother, it wouldn't have done not to let him see anty. they'd have said we'd got her shut up here, and wouldn't let any one come nigh her." "well, martin, you'll see we'll have to pay for it. this comes of meddling with other folks! i wonder how i was iver fool enough to have fitched her down here!--good couldn't come of daling with such people as barry lynch." "but you wouldn't have left her up there to be murdhered?" "she's nothin' to me, and i don't know as she's iver like to be." "may-be not." "but, tell me, martin--was there anything said between you and moylan about anty before she come down here?" "how, anything said, mother?" "why, was there any schaming betwixt you?" "schaming?--when i want to schame, i'll not go shares with sich a fellow as moylan." "ah, but was there anything passed about anty and you getting married? come now, martin; i'm in all this throuble along of you, and you shouldn't lave me in the dark. was you talking to moylan about anty and her fortune?" "why, thin, i'll jist tell you the whole thruth, as i tould it all before to mister frank--that is, lord ballindine, up in dublin; and as i wouldn't mind telling it this minute to barry, or daly, or any one else in the three counties. when moylan got the agency, he come out to me at toneroe; and afther talking a bit about anty and her fortune, he let on as how it would be a bright spec for me to marry her, and i won't deny that it was he as first put it into my head. well, thin, he had schames of his own about keeping the agency, and getting a nice thing out of the property himself, for putting anty in my way; but i tould him downright i didn't know anything about that; and that 'av iver i did anything in the matter it would be all fair and above board; and that was all the conspiracy i and moylan had." "and enough too, martin," said the widow. "you'll find it's quite enough to get us into throuble. and why wouldn't you tell me what was going on between you?" "there was nothing going on between us." "i say there was;--and to go and invaigle me into your schames without knowing a word about it!--it was a murdhering shame of you--and av' i do have to pay for it, i'll never forgive you." "that's right, mother; quarrel with me about it, do. it was i made you bring anty down here, wasn't it? when i was up in dublin all the time." "but to go and put yourself in the power of sich a fellow as moylan! i didn't think you were so soft." "ah, bother, mother! who's put themselves in the power of moylan?" "i'll moyle him, and spoil him too, the false blackguard, to turn agin the family--them as has made him! i wondher what he's to get for swearing agin us?"--and then, after a pause, she added in a most pathetic voice "oh, martin, to think of being dragged away to galway, before the whole counthry, to be made a conspirather of! i, that always paid my way, before and behind, though only a poor widdy! who's to mind the shop, i wondher?--i'm shure meg's not able; and there'll be mary'll be jist nigh her time, and won't be able to come! martin, you've been and ruined me with your plots and your marriages! what did you want with a wife, i wondher, and you so well off!"--and mrs kelly began wiping her eyes, for she was affected to tears at the prospect of her coming misery. "av' you take it so to heart, mother, you'd betther give anty a hint to be out of this. you heard daly tell her, that was all barry wanted." martin knew his mother tolerably well, or he would not have made this proposition. he understood what the real extent of her sorrow was, and how much of her lamentation he was to attribute to her laudable wish to appear a martyr to the wishes and pleasures of her children. "turn her out!" replied she, "no, niver; and i didn't think i'd 've heard you asking me to." "i didn't ask you, mother,--only anything'd be betther than downright ruin." "i wouldn't demane myself to barry so much as to wish her out of this now she's here. but it was along of you she came here, and av' i've to pay for all this lawyer work, you oughtn't to see me at a loss. i'm shure i don't know where your sisthers is to look for a pound or two when i'm gone, av' things goes on this way," and again the widow whimpered. "don't let that throuble you, mother: av' there's anything to pay, i won't let it come upon you, any way. but i tell you there'll be nothing more about it." mrs kelly was somewhat quieted by her son's guarantee, and, muttering that she couldn't afford to be wasting her mornings in that way, diligently commenced weighing out innumerable three-halfporths of brown sugar, and martin went about his own business. daly left the inn, after his interview with anty and the kellys, in anything but a pleasant frame of mind. in the first place, he knew that he had been signally unsuccessful, and that his want of success had been mainly attributable to his having failed to see anty alone; and, in the next place, he felt more than ever disgusted with his client. he began to reflect, for the first time, that he might, and probably would, irretrievably injure his character by undertaking, as martin truly called it, such a very low line of business: that, if the matter were persevered in, every one in connaught would be sure to hear of anty's persecution; and that his own name would be so mixed up with lynch's in the transaction as to leave him no means of escaping the ignominy which was so justly due to his employer. beyond these selfish motives of wishing to withdraw from the business, he really pitied anty, and felt a great repugnance at being the means of adding to her troubles; and he was aware of the scandalous shame of subjecting her again to the ill-treatment of such a wretch as her brother, by threatening proceedings which he knew could never be taken. as he got on the car to return to tuam, he determined that whatever plan he might settle on adopting, he would have nothing further to do with prosecuting or persecuting either anty or the kellys. "i'll give him the best advice i can about it," said daly to himself; "and if he don't like it he may do the other thing. i wouldn't carry on with this game for all he's worth, and that i believe is not much." he had intended to go direct to dunmore house from the kellys, and to have seen barry, but he would have had to stop for dinner if he had done so; and though, generally speaking, not very squeamish in his society, he did not wish to enjoy another after-dinner _tête-à-tête_ with him--"it's better to get him over to tuam," thought he, "and try and make him see rason when he's sober: nothing's too hot or too bad for him, when he's mad dhrunk afther dinner." accordingly, lynch was again summoned to tuam, and held a second council in the attorney's little parlour. daly commenced by telling him that his sister had seen him, and had positively refused to leave the inn, and that the widow and her son had both listened to the threats of a prosecution unmoved and undismayed. barry indulged in his usual volubility of expletives; expressed his fixed intention of exterminating the kellys; declared, with many asseverations, his conviction that his sister was a lunatic; swore, by everything under, in, and above the earth, that he would have her shut up in the lunatic asylum in ballinasloe, in the teeth of the lord chancellor and all the other lawyers in ireland; cursed the shades of his father, deeply and copiously; assured daly that he was only prevented from recovering his own property by the weakness and ignorance of his legal advisers, and ended by asking the attorney's advice as to his future conduct. "what the d----l, then, am i to do with the confounded ideot?" said he. "if you'll take my advice, you'll do nothing." "what, and let her marry and have that young blackguard brought up to dunmore under my very nose?" "i'm very much afraid, mr lynch, if you wish to be quit of martin kelly, it is you must lave dunmore. you may be shure he won't." "oh, as for that, i've nothing to tie me to dunmore. i hate the place; i never meant to live there. if i only saw my sister properly taken care of, and that it was put out of her power to throw herself away, i should leave it at once." "between you and me, mr lynch, she will be taken care of; and as for throwing herself away, she must judge of that herself. take my word for it, the best thing for you to do is to come to terms with martin kelly, and to sell out your property in dunmore. you'll make much better terms before marriage than you would afther, it stands to rason." barry was half standing, and half sitting on the small parlour table, and there he remained for a few minutes, meditating on daly's most unpleasant proposal. it was a hard pill for him to swallow, and he couldn't get it down without some convulsive grimaces. he bit his under lip, till the blood came through it, and at last said, "why, you've taken this thing up, daly, as if you were to be paid by the kellys instead of by me! i can't understand it, confound me if i can!" daly turned very red at the insinuation. he was within an ace of seizing lynch by the collar, and expelling him in a summary way from his premises, a feat which he was able to perform; and willing also, for he was sick of his client; but he thought of it a second time, and restrained himself. "mr lynch," he said, after a moment or two, "that's the second time you've made an observation of that kind to me; and i'll tell you what; if your business was the best in the county, instead of being as bad a case as was ever put into a lawyer's hands, i wouldn't stand it from you. if you think you can let out your passion against me, as you do against your own people, you'll find your mistake out very soon; so you'd betther mind what you're saying." "why, what the devil did i say?" said lynch, half abashed. "i'll not repeat it--and you hadn't betther, either. and now, do you choose to hear my professional advice, and behave to me as you ought and shall do? or will you go out of this and look out for another attorney? to tell you the truth, i'd jist as lieve you'd take your business to some one else." barry's brow grew very black, and he looked at daly as though he would much like to insult him again if he dared. but he did not dare. he had no one else to look to for advice or support; he had utterly estranged from him his father's lawyer; and though he suspected that daly was not true to him, he felt that he could not break with him. he was obliged, therefore, to swallow his wrath, though it choked him, and to mutter something in the shape of an apology. it was a mutter: daly heard something about its being only a joke, and not expecting to be taken up so d---- sharp; and, accepting these sounds as an _amende honorable_ [ ], again renewed his functions as attorney. [footnote : amende honorable--(french) apology] "will you authorise me to see martin kelly, and to treat with him? you'll find it the cheapest thing you can do; and, more than that, it'll be what nobody can blame you for." "how treat with him?--i owe him nothing--i don't see what i've got to treat with him about. am i to offer him half the property on condition he'll consent to marry my sister? is that what you mean?" "no: that's not what i mean; but it'll come to much the same thing in the end. in the first place, you must withdraw all opposition to miss lynch's marriage; indeed, you must give it your direct sanction; and, in the next place, you must make an amicable arrangement with martin about the division of the property." "what--coolly give him all he has the impudence to ask?--throw up the game altogether, and pitch the whole stakes into his lap?--why, daly, you--" "well, mr lynch, finish your speech," said daly, looking him full in the face. barry had been on the point of again accusing the attorney of playing false to him, but he paused in time; he caught daly's eye, and did not dare to finish the sentence which he had begun. "i can't understand you, i mean," said he; "i can't understand what you're after: but go on; may-be you're right, but i can't see, for the life of me. what am i to get by such a plan as that?" barry was now cowed and frightened; he had no dram-bottle by him to reassure him, and he became, comparatively speaking, calm and subdued. indeed, before the interview was over he fell into a pitiably lachrymose tone, and claimed sympathy for the many hardships he had to undergo through the ill-treatment of his family. "i'll try and explain to you, mr lynch, what you'll get by it. as far as i can understand, your father left about eight hundred a-year between the two--that's you and your sisther; and then there's the house and furniture. nothing on earth can keep her out of her property, or prevent her from marrying whom she plases. martin kelly, who is an honest fellow, though sharp enough, has set his eye on her, and before many weeks you'll find he'll make her his wife. undher these circumstances, wouldn't he be the best tenant you could find for dunmore? you're not fond of the place, and will be still less so when he's your brother-in-law. lave it altogether, mr lynch; give him a laise of the whole concern, and if you'll do that now at once, take my word for it you'll get more out of dunmore than iver you will by staying here, and fighting the matther out." "but about the debts, daly?" "why, i suppose the fact is, the debts are all your own, eh?" "well--suppose they are?" "exactly so: personal debts of your own. why, when you've made some final arrangement about the property, you must make some other arrangement with your creditors. but that's quite a separate affair; you don't expect martin kelly to pay your debts, i suppose?" "but i might get a sum of money for the good-will, mightn't i?" "i don't think martin's able to put a large sum down. i'll tell you what i think you might ask; and what i think he would give, to get your good-will and consent to the match, and to prevent any further difficulty. i think he'd become your tenant, for the whole of your share, at a rent of five-hundred a year; and maybe he'd give you three hundred pounds for the furniture and stock, and things about the place. if so, you should give him a laise of three lives." there was a good deal in this proposition that was pleasing to barry's mind: five hundred a-year without any trouble in collecting it; the power of living abroad in the unrestrained indulgence of hotels and billiard rooms; the probable chance of being able to retain his income and bilk his creditors; the prospect of shaking off from himself the consequences of a connection with the kellys, and being for ever rid of dunmore encumbrances. these things all opened before his eyes a vista of future, idle, uncontrolled enjoyment, just suited to his taste, and strongly tempted him at once to close with daly's offer. but still, he could hardly bring himself to consent to be vanquished by his own sister; it was wormwood to him to think that after all she should be left to the undisturbed enjoyment of her father's legacy. he had been brow-beaten by the widow, insulted by young kelly, cowed and silenced by the attorney whom he had intended to patronise and convert into a creature of his own: he could however have borne and put up with all this, if he could only have got his will of his sister; but to give up to her, who had been his slave all his life--to own, at last, that he had no power over her, whom he had always looked upon as so abject, so mean a thing; to give in, of his own accord, to the robbery which had been committed on him by his own father; and to do this, while he felt convinced as he still did, that a sufficiently unscrupulous attorney could save him from such cruel disgrace and loss, was a trial to which he could hardly bring himself to submit, crushed and tamed as he was. he still sat on the edge of the parlour table, and there he remained mute, balancing the pros and cons of daly's plan. daly waited a minute or two for his answer, and, finding that he said nothing, left him alone for a time, to make up his mind, telling him that he would return in about a quarter of an hour. barry never moved from his position; it was an important question he had to settle, and so he felt it, for he gave up to the subject his undivided attention. since his boyhood he had looked forward to a life of ease, pleasure, and licence, and had longed for his father's death that he might enjoy it. it seemed now within his reach; for his means, though reduced, would still be sufficient for sensual gratification. but, idle, unprincipled, brutal, castaway wretch as barry was, he still felt the degradation of inaction, when he had such stimulating motives to energy as unsatisfied rapacity and hatred for his sister: ignorant as he was of the meaning of the word right, he tried to persuade himself that it would be wrong in him to yield. could he only pluck up sufficient courage to speak his mind to daly, and frighten him into compliance with his wishes, he still felt that he might be successful--that he might, by some legal tactics, at any rate obtain for himself the management of his sister's property. but this he could not do: he felt that daly was his master; and though he still thought that he might have triumphed had he come sufficiently prepared, that is, with a considerable quantum of spirits inside him, he knew himself well enough to be aware that he could do nothing without this assistance; and, alas, he could not obtain it there. he had great reliance in the efficacy of whiskey; he would trust much to a large dose of port wine; but with brandy he considered himself invincible. he sat biting his lip, trying to think, trying to make up his mind, trying to gain sufficient self-composure to finish his interview with daly with some appearance of resolution and self-confidence, but it was in vain; when the attorney returned, his face still plainly showed that he was utterly unresolved, utterly unable to resolve on anything. "well, mr lynch," said daly, "will you let me spake to kelly about this, or would you rather sleep on the matther?" barry gave a long sigh--"wouldn't he give six hundred, daly? he'd still have two hundred clear, and think what that'd be for a fellow like him!" "you must ask him for it yourself then; i'll not propose to him any such thing. upon my soul, he'll be a great fool to give the five hundred, because he's no occasion to meddle with you in the matther at all, at all. but still i think he may give it; but as for asking for more--at any rate i won't do it; you can do what you like, yourself." "and am i to sell the furniture, and everything--horses, cattle, and everything about the place--for three hundred pounds?" "not unless you like it, you ain't, mr lynch; but i'll tell you this--if you can do so, and do do so, it'll be the best bargain you ever made:--mind, one-half of it all belongs to your sisther." barry muttered an oath through his ground teeth; he would have liked to scratch the ashes of his father from their resting-place, and wreak his vengeance on them, whenever this degrading fact was named to him. "but i want the money, daly," said he: "i couldn't get afloat unless i had more than that: i couldn't pay your bill, you know, unless i got a higher figure down than that. come, daly, you must do something for me; you must do something, you know, to earn the fees," and he tried to look facetious, by giving a wretched ghastly grin. "my bill won't be a long one, mr lynch, and you may be shure i'm trying to make it as short as i can. and as for earning it, whatever you may think, i can assure you i shall never have got money harder. i've now given you my best advice; if your mind's not yet made up, perhaps you'll have the goodness to let me hear from you when it is?" and daly walked from the fire towards the door, and placed his hand upon the handle of it. this was a hint which barry couldn't misunderstand. "well, i'll write to you," he said, and passed through the door. he felt, however, that it was useless to attempt to trust himself to his own judgment, and he turned back, as daly passed into his office--"daly," he said, "step out one minute: i won't keep you a second." the attorney unwillingly lifted up the counter, and came out to him. "manage it your own way," said he; "do whatever you think best; but you must see that i've been badly used--infernally cruelly treated, and you ought to do the best you can for me. here am i, giving away, as i may say, my own property to a young shopkeeper, and upon my soul you ought to make him pay something for it; upon my soul you ought, for it's only fair!" "i've tould you, mr lynch, what i'll propose to martin kelly; if you don't think the terms fair, you can propose any others yourself; or you're at liberty to employ any other agent you please." barry sighed again, but he yielded. he felt broken-hearted, and unhappy, and he longed to quit a country so distasteful to him, and relatives and neighbours so ungrateful; he longed in his heart for the sweet, easy haunts of boulogne, which he had never known, but of which he had heard many a glowing description from congenial spirits whom he knew. he had heard enough of the ways and means of many a leading star in that elysium, to be aware that, with five hundred a-year, unembarrassed and punctually paid, he might shine as a prince indeed. he would go at once to that happy foreign shore, where the memory of no father would follow him, where the presence of no sister would degrade and irritate him, where billiard-tables were rife, and brandy cheap; where virtue was easy, and restraint unnecessary; where no duties would harass him, no tenants upbraid him, no duns persecute him. there, carefully guarding himself against the schemes of those less fortunate followers of pleasure among whom he would be thrown in his social hours, he would convert every shilling of his income to some purpose of self-enjoyment, and live a life of luxurious abandonment. and he need not be altogether idle, he reflected within himself afterwards, as he was riding home: he felt that he was possessed of sufficient energy and talent to make himself perfectly master of a pack of cards, to be a proficient over a billiard-table, and even to get the upper hand of a box of dice. with such pursuits left to him, he might yet live to be talked of, feared, and wealthy; and barry's utmost ambition would have carried him no further. as i said before, he yielded to the attorney, and commissioned him fully to treat with martin kelly in the manner proposed by himself. martin was to give him five hundred a-year for his share of the property, and three hundred pounds for the furniture, &c.; and barry was to give his sister his written and unconditional assent to her marriage; was to sign any document which might be necessary as to her settlement, and was then to leave dunmore for ever. daly made him write an authority for making such a proposal, by which he bound himself to the terms, should they be acceded to by the other party. "but you must bear in mind," added daly, as his client for the second time turned from the door, "that i don't guarantee that martin kelly will accept these terms: it's very likely he may be sharp enough to know that he can manage as well without you as he can with you. you'll remember that, mr lynch." "i will--i will, daly; but look here--if he bites freely--and i think he will, and if you find you could get as much as a thousand out of him, or even eight hundred, you shall have one hundred clear for yourself." this was barry's last piece of diplomacy for that day. daly vouchsafed him no answer, but returned into his office, and barry mounted his horse, and returned home not altogether ill-pleased with his prospects, but still regretting that he should have gone about so serious a piece of business, so utterly unprepared. these regrets rose stronger, when his after-dinner courage returned to him as he sate solitary over his fire. "i should have had him here," said he to himself, "and not gone to that confounded cold hole of his. after all, there's no place for a cock to fight on like his own dunghill; and there's nothing able to carry a fellow well through a tough bit of jobation [ ] with a lawyer like a stiff tumbler of brandy punch. it'd have been worth a couple of hundred to me, to have had him out here--impertinent puppy! well, devil a halfpenny i'll pay him!" this thought was consolatory, and he began again to think of boulogne. [footnote : jobation--a tedious session; scolding] xxi. lord ballindine at home two days after the last recorded interview between lord ballindine and his friend, dot blake, the former found himself once more sitting down to dinner with his mother and sisters, the honourable mrs o'kelly and the honourable misses o'kelly; at least such were the titular dignities conferred on them in county mayo, though i believe, strictly speaking, the young ladies had no claim to the appellation. mrs o'kelly was a very small woman, with no particularly developed character, and perhaps of no very general utility. she was fond of her daughters, and more than fond of her son, partly because he was so tall and so handsome, and partly because he was the lord, the head of the family, and the owner of the house. she was, on the whole, a good-natured person, though perhaps her temper was a little soured by her husband having, very unfairly, died before he had given her a right to call herself lady ballindine. she was naturally shy and reserved, and the seclusion of o'kelly's court did not tend to make her less so; but she felt that the position and rank of her son required her to be dignified; and consequently, when in society, she somewhat ridiculously aggravated her natural timidity with an assumed rigidity of demeanour. she was, however, a good woman, striving, with small means, to do the best for her family; prudent and self-denying, and very diligent in looking after the house servants. her two daughters had been, at the instance of their grandfather, the courtier, christened augusta and sophia, after the two princesses of that name, and were now called guss and sophy: they were both pretty, good-natured girls--one with dark brown and the other light brown hair: they both played the harp badly, sung tolerably, danced well, and were very fond of nice young men. they both thought kelly's court rather dull; but then they had known nothing better since they had grown up, and there were some tolerably nice people not very far off, whom they occasionally saw: there were the dillons, of ballyhaunis, who had three thousand a-year, and spent six; they were really a delightful family--three daughters and four sons, all unmarried, and up to anything: the sons all hunted, shot, danced, and did everything that they ought to do--at least in the eyes of young ladies; though some of their more coldly prudent acquaintances expressed an opinion that it would be as well if the three younger would think of doing something for themselves; but they looked so manly and handsome when they breakfasted at kelly's court on a hunt morning, with their bright tops, red coats, and hunting-caps, that guss and sophy, and a great many others, thought it would be a shame to interrupt them in their career. and then, ballyhaunis was only eight miles from kelly's court; though they were irish miles, it is true, and the road was not patronised by the grand jury; but the distance was only eight miles, and there were always beds for them when they went to dinner at peter dillon's. then there were the blakes of castletown. to be sure they could give no parties, for they were both unmarried; but they were none the worse for that, and they had plenty of horses, and went out everywhere. and the blakes of morristown; they also were very nice people; only unfortunately, old blake was always on his keeping, and couldn't show himself out of doors except on sundays, for fear of the bailiffs. and the browns of mount dillon, and the browns of castle brown; and general bourke of creamstown. all these families lived within fifteen or sixteen miles of kelly's court, and prevented the o'kellys from feeling themselves quite isolated from the social world. their nearest neighbours, however, were the armstrongs, and of them they saw a great deal. the reverend joseph armstrong was rector of ballindine, and mrs o'kelly was his parishioner, and the only protestant one he had; and, as mr armstrong did not like to see his church quite deserted, and as mrs o'kelly was, as she flattered herself, a very fervent protestant, they were all in all to each other. ballindine was not a good living, and mr armstrong had a very large family; he was, therefore, a poor man. his children were helpless, uneducated, and improvident; his wife was nearly worn out with the labours of bringing them forth and afterwards catering for them; and a great portion of his own life was taken up in a hard battle with tradesmen and tithe-payers, creditors, and debtors. yet, in spite of the insufficiency of his two hundred a-year to meet all or half his wants, mr armstrong was not an unhappy man. at any moment of social enjoyment he forgot all his cares and poverty, and was always the first to laugh, and the last to cease to do so. he never refused an invitation to dinner, and if he did not entertain many in his own house, it was his fortune, and not his heart, that prevented him from doing so. he could hardly be called a good clergyman, and yet his remissness was not so much his own fault as that of circumstances. how could a protestant rector be a good parish clergyman, with but one old lady and her daughters, for the exercise of his clerical energies and talents? he constantly lauded the zeal of st. paul for proselytism; but, as he himself once observed, even st. paul had never had to deal with the obstinacy of an irish roman catholic. he often regretted the want of work, and grieved that his profession, as far as he saw and had been instructed, required nothing of him but a short service on every sunday morning, and the celebration of the eucharist four times a-year; but such were the facts; and the idleness which this want of work engendered, and the habits which his poverty induced, had given him a character as a clergyman, very different from that which the high feelings and strict principles which animated him at his ordination would have seemed to ensure. he was, in fact, a loose, slovenly man, somewhat too fond of his tumbler of punch; a little lax, perhaps, as to clerical discipline, but very staunch as to doctrine. he possessed no industry or energy of any kind; but he was good-natured and charitable, lived on friendly terms with all his neighbours, and was intimate with every one that dwelt within ten miles of him, priest and parson, lord and commoner. such was the neighbourhood of kelly's court, and among such lord ballindine had now made up his mind to remain a while, till circumstances should decide what further steps he should take with regard to fanny wyndham. there were a few hunting days left in the season, which he intended to enjoy; and then he must manage to make shift to lull the time with shooting, fishing, farming, and nursing his horses and dogs. his mother and sisters had heard nothing of the rumour of the quarrel between frank and fanny, which mat tierney had so openly alluded to at handicap lodge; and he was rather put out by their eager questions on the subject. nothing was said about it till the servant withdrew, after dinner, but the three ladies were too anxious for information to delay their curiosity any longer. "well, frank," said the elder sister, who was sitting over the fire, close to his left elbow--(he had a bottle of claret at his right)--"well, frank, do tell us something about fanny wyndham; we are so longing to hear; and you never will write, you know." "everybody says it's a brilliant match," said the mother. "they say here she's forty thousand pounds: i'm sure i hope she has, frank." "but when is it to be?" said sophy. "she's of age now, isn't she? and i thought you were only waiting for that. i'm sure we shall like her; come, frank, do tell us--when are we to see lady ballindine?" frank looked rather serious and embarrassed, but did not immediately make any reply. "you haven't quarrelled, have you, frank?" said the mother. "the match isn't off--is it?" said guss. "miss wyndham has just lost her only brother," said he; "he died quite suddenly in london about ten days since; she was very much attached to him." "good gracious, how shocking!" said sophy. "i'm sorry," said guss. "why, frank," said their mother, now excited into absolute animation; "his fortune was more than double hers, wasn't it?--who'll have it now?" "it was, mother; five times as much as hers, i believe." "gracious powers! and who has it now? why don't you tell me, frank?" "his sister fanny." "heavens and earth!--i hope you're not going to let her quarrel with you, are you? has there been anything between you? have there been any words between you and lord cashel? why don't you tell me, frank, when you know how anxious i am?" "if you must know all about it, i have not had any words, as you call them, with fanny wyndham; but i have with her guardian. he thinks a hundred and twenty thousand pounds much too great a fortune for a connaught viscount. however, i don't think so. it will be for time to show what fanny thinks. meanwhile, the less said about it the better; remember that, girls, will you?" "oh, we will--we won't say a word about it; but she'll never change her mind because of her money, will she?" "that's what would make me love a man twice the more," said guss; "or at any rate show it twice the stronger." "frank," said the anxious mother, "for heaven's sake don't let anything stand between you and lord cashel; think what a thing it is you'd lose! why; it'd pay all the debts, and leave the property worth twice what it ever was before. if lord cashel thinks you ought to give up the hounds, do it at once, frank; anything rather than quarrel with him. you could get them again, you know, when all's settled." "i've given up quite as much as i intend for lord cashel." "now, frank, don't be a fool, or you'll repent it all your life: what does it signify how much you give up to such a man as lord cashel? you don't think, do you, that he objects to our being at kelly's court? because i'm sure we wouldn't stay a moment if we thought that." "mother, i wouldn't part with a cur dog out of the place to please lord cashel. but if i were to do everything on earth at his beck and will, it would make no difference: he will never let me marry fanny wyndham if he can help it; but, thank god, i don't believe he can." "i hope not--i hope not. you'll never see half such a fortune again." "well, mother, say nothing about it one way or the other, to anybody. and as you now know how the matter stands, it's no good any of us talking more about it till i've settled what i mean to do myself." "i shall hate her," said sophy, "if her getting all her brother's money changes her; but i'm sure it won't." and so the conversation ended. lord ballindine had not rested in his paternal halls the second night, before he had commenced making arrangements for a hunt breakfast, by way of letting all his friends know that he was again among them. and so missives, in guss and sophy's handwriting, were sent round by a bare-legged little boy, to all the mounts, towns, and castles, belonging to the dillons, blakes, bourkes, and browns of the neighbourhood, to tell them that the dogs would draw the kelly's court covers at eleven o'clock on the following tuesday morning, and that the preparatory breakfast would be on the table at ten. this was welcome news to the whole neighbourhood. it was only on the sunday evening that the sportsmen got the intimation, and very busy most of them were on the following monday to see that their nags and breeches were all right--fit to work and fit to be seen. the four dillons, of ballyhaunis, gave out to their grooms a large assortment of pipe-clay and putty-powder. bingham blake, of castletown, ordered a new set of girths to his hunting saddle; and his brother jerry, who was in no slight degree proud of his legs, but whose nether trappings were rather the worse from the constant work of a heavy season, went so far as to go forth very early on the monday morning to excite the ballinrobe tailor to undertake the almost impossible task of completing him a pair of doeskin by the tuesday morning. the work was done, and the breeches home at castletown by eight--though the doeskin had to be purchased in tuam, and an assistant artist taken away from his mother's wake, to sit up all night over the seams. but then the tailor owed a small trifle of arrear of rent for his potato-garden, and his landlord was jerry blake's cousin-german [ ]. there's nothing carries one further than a good connexion, thought both jerry and the tailor when the job was finished. [footnote : cousin-german--first cousin] among the other invitations sent was one to martin kelly,--not exactly worded like the others, for though lord ballindine was perhaps more anxious to see him than anyone else, martin had not yet got quite so high in the ladder of life as to be asked to breakfast at kelly's court. but the fact that frank for a moment thought of asking him showed that he was looking upwards in the world's estimation. frank wrote him a note himself, saying that the hounds would throw off at kelly's court, at eleven; that, if he would ride over, he would be sure to see a good hunt, and that he, lord ballindine, had a few words to say to him on business, just while the dogs were being put into the cover. martin, as usual, had a good horse which he was disposed to sell, if, as he said, he got its value; and wrote to say he would wait on lord ballindine at eleven. the truth was, frank wanted to borrow money from him. another note was sent to the glebe, requesting the rector to come to breakfast and to look at the hounds being thrown off. the modest style of the invitation was considered as due to mr armstrong's clerical position, but was hardly rendered necessary by his habits; for though the parson attended such meetings in an old suit of rusty black, and rode an equally rusty-looking pony, he was always to be seen, at the end of the day, among those who were left around the dogs. on the tuesday morning there was a good deal of bustle at kelly's court. all the boys about the place were collected in front of the house, to walk the gentlemen's horses about while the riders were at breakfast, and earn a sixpence or a fourpenny bit; and among them, sitting idly on the big steppingstone placed near the door, was jack the fool, who, for the day, seemed to have deserted the service of barry lynch. and now the red-coats flocked up to the door, and it was laughable to see the knowledge of character displayed by the gossoons in the selection of their customers. one or two, who were known to be "bad pays," were allowed to dismount without molestation of any kind, and could not even part with their steeds till they had come to an absolute bargain as to the amount of gratuity to be given. lambert brown was one of these unfortunate characters--a younger brother who had a little, and but a very little money, and who was determined to keep that. he was a miserable hanger-on at his brother's house, without profession or prospects; greedy, stingy, and disagreeable; endowed with a squint, and long lank light-coloured hair: he was a bad horseman, always craning and shirking in the field, boasting and lying after dinner; nevertheless, he was invited and endured because he was one of the browns of mount dillon, cousin to the browns of castle brown, nephew to mrs dillon the member's wife, and third cousin of lord ballaghaderrin. he dismounted in the gravel circle before the door, and looked round for someone to take his horse; but none of the urchins would come to him. at last he caught hold of a little ragged boy whom he knew, from his own side of the country, and who had come all the way there, eight long irish miles, on the chance of earning sixpence and seeing a hunt. "here, patsy, come here, you born little divil," and he laid hold of the arm of the brat, who was trying to escape from him--"come and hold my horse for me--and i'll not forget you." "shure, yer honer, mr lambert, i can't thin, for i'm afther engaging myself this blessed minute to mr larry dillon, only he's jist trotted round to the stables to spake a word to mick keogh." "don't be lying, you little blackguard; hould the horse, and don't stir out of that." "shure how can i, mr lambert, when i've been and guv my word to mr larry?" and the little fellow put his hands behind him, that he might not be forced to take hold of the reins. "don't talk to me, you young imp, but take the horse. i'll not forget you when i come out. what's the matter with you, you fool; d'ye think i'd tell you a lie about it?" patsy evidently thought he would; for though he took the horse almost upon compulsion, he whimpered as he did so, and said: "shure, mr lambert, would you go and rob a poor boy of his chances?--i come'd all the way from ballyglass this blessed morning to 'arn a tizzy, and av' i doesn't get it from you this turn, i'll--" but lambert brown had gone into the house, and on his return after breakfast he fully justified the lad's suspicion, for he again promised him that he wouldn't forget him, and that he'd see him some day at mr dillon's. "well, lambert brown," said the boy, as that worthy gentleman rode off, "it's you're the raal blackguard--and it's well all the counthry knows you: sorrow be your bed this night; it's little the poor'll grieve for you, when you're stretched, or the rich either, for the matther of that." very different was the reception bingham blake got, as he drove up with his tandem and tax-cart: half-a-dozen had kept themselves idle, each in the hope of being the lucky individual to come in for bingham's shilling. "och, mr bingham, shure i'm first," roared one fellow. but the first, as he styled himself, was soon knocked down under the wheels of the cart by the others. "mr blake, thin--mr blake, darlint--doesn't ye remimber the promise you guv me?" "mr jerry, mr jerry, avick,"--this was addressed to the brother--"spake a word for me; do, yer honour; shure it was i come all the way from teddy mahony's with the breeches this morning, god bless 'em, and the fine legs as is in 'em." but they were all balked, for blake had his servant there. "get out, you blackguards!" said he, raising his tandem whip, as if to strike them. "get out, you robbers! are you going to take the cart and horses clean away from me? that mare'll settle some of ye, if you make so free with her! she's not a bit too chary of her hind feet. get out of that, i tell you;" and he lightly struck with the point of his whip the boy who had lambert brown's horse. "ah, mr bingham," said, the boy, pretending to rub the part very hard, "you owe me one for that, anyhow, and it's you are the good mark for it, god bless you." "faix," said another, "one blow from your honour is worth two promises from lambert brown, any way." there was a great laugh at this among the ragged crew, for lambert brown was still standing on the doorsteps: when he heard this sally, however, he walked in, and the different red-coats and top-boots were not long in crowding after him. lord ballindine received them in the same costume, and very glad they all seemed to see him again. when an irish gentleman is popular in his neighbourhood, nothing can exceed the real devotion paid to him; and when that gentleman is a master of hounds, and does not require a subscription, he is more than ever so. "welcome back, ballindine--better late than never; but why did you stay away so long?" said general bourke, an old gentleman with long, thin, flowing grey hairs, waving beneath his broad-brimmed felt hunting-hat. "you're not getting so fond of the turf, i hope, as to be giving up the field for it? give me the sport where i can ride my own horse myself; not where i must pay a young rascal for doing it for me, and robbing me into the bargain, most likely." "quite right, general," said frank; "so you see i've given up the curragh, and come down to the dogs again." "yes, but you've waited too long, man; the dogs have nearly done their work for this year. i'm sorry for it; the last day of the season is the worst day in the year to me. i'm ill for a week after it." "well, general, please the pigs, we'll be in great tune next october. i've as fine a set of puppies to enter as there is in ireland, let alone connaught. you must come down, and tell me what you think of them." "next october's all very well for you young fellows, but i'm seventy-eight. i always make up my mind that i'll never turn out another season, and it'll be true for me this year. i'm hunting over sixty years, ballindine, in these three counties. i ought to have had enough of it by this time, you'll say." "i'll bet you ten pounds," said bingham blake, "that you hunt after eighty." "done with you bingham," said the general, and the bet was booked. general bourke was an old soldier, who told the truth in saying that he had hunted over the same ground sixty years ago. but he had not been at it ever since, for he had in the meantime seen a great deal of hard active service, and obtained high military reputation. but he had again taken kindly to the national sport of his country, on returning to his own estate at the close of the peninsular war; and had ever since attended the meets twice a week through every winter, with fewer exceptions than any other member of the hunt. he always wore top-boots--of the ancient cut, with deep painted tops and square toes, drawn tight up over the calf of his leg; a pair of most capacious dark-coloured leather breeches, the origin of which was unknown to any other present member of the hunt, and a red frock coat, very much soiled by weather, water, and wear. the general was a rich man, and therefore always had a horse to suit him. on the present occasion, he was riding a strong brown beast, called parsimony, that would climb over anything, and creep down the gable end of a house if he were required to do so. he was got by oeconomy; those who know county mayo know the breed well. they were now all crowded into the large dining-room at kelly's court; about five-and-twenty redcoats, and mr armstrong's rusty black. in spite of his shabby appearance, however, and the fact that the greater number of those around him were roman catholics, he seemed to be very popular with the lot; and his opinion on the important subject of its being a scenting morning was asked with as much confidence in his judgment, as though the foxes of the country were peculiarly subject to episcopalian jurisdiction. "well, then, peter," said he, "the wind's in the right quarter. mick says there's a strong dog-fox in the long bit of gorse behind the firs; if he breaks from that he must run towards ballintubber, and when you're once over the meering [ ] into roscommon, there's not an acre of tilled land, unless a herd's garden, between that and--the deuce knows where all--further than most of you'll like to ride, i take it." [footnote : meering--a well-marked boundary, such as a ditch or fence, between farms, fields, bogs, etc] "how far'll you go yourself, armstrong? faith, i believe it's few of the crack nags'll beat the old black pony at a long day." "is it i?" said the parson, innocently. "as soon as i've heard the dogs give tongue, and seen them well on their game, i'll go home. i've land ploughing, and i must look after that. but, as i was saying, if the fox breaks well away from the gorse, you'll have the best run you've seen this season; but if he dodges back into the plantation, you'll have enough to do to make him break at all; and when he does, he'll go away towards ballyhaunis, through as cross a country as ever a horse put a shoe into." and having uttered this scientific prediction, which was listened to with the greatest deference by peter dillon, the rev. joseph armstrong turned his attention to the ham and tea. the three ladies were all smiles to meet their guests; mrs o'kelly, dressed in a piece of satin turk, came forward to shake hands with the general, but sophy and guss kept their positions, beneath the coffee-pot and tea-urn, at each end of the long table, being very properly of opinion that it was the duty of the younger part of the community to come forward, and make their overtures to them. bingham blake, the cynosure on whom the eyes of the beauty of county mayo were most generally placed, soon found his seat beside guss, rather to sophy's mortification; but sophy was good-natured, and when peter dillon placed himself at her right hand, she was quite happy, though peter's father was still alive, and bingham's had been dead this many a year and castletown much in want of a mistress. "now, miss o'kelly," said bingham, "do let me manage the coffee-pot; the cream-jug and sugar-tongs will be quite enough for your energies." "indeed and i won't, mr blake; you're a great deal too awkward, and a great deal too hungry. the last hunt-morning you breakfasted here you threw the coffee-grouts into the sugar-basin, when i let you help me." "to think of your remembering that!--but i'm improved since then. i've been taking lessons with my old aunt at castlebar." "you don't mean you've really been staying with lady sarah?" "oh, but i have, though. i was there three days; made tea every night; washed the poodle every morning, and clear-starched her sunday pelerine, with my own hands on saturday evening." "oh, what a useful animal! what a husband you'll make, when you're a little more improved!" "shan't i? as you're so fond of accomplishments, perhaps you'll take me yourself by-and-by?" "why, as you're so useful, maybe i may." "well, lambert," said lord ballindine, across the table, to the stingy gentleman with the squint, "are you going to ride hard to-day?" "i'll go bail i'm not much behind, my lord," said lambert; "if the dogs go, i'll follow." "i'll bet you a crown, lambert," said his cousin, young brown of mount brown, "the dogs kill, and you don't see them do it." "oh, that may be, and yet i mayn't be much behind." "i'll bet you're not in the next field to them." "maybe you'll not be within ten fields yourself." "come, lambert, i'll tell you what--we'll ride together, and i'll bet you a crown i pound you before you're over three leaps." "ah, now, take it easy with yourself," said lambert; "there are others ride better than you." "but no one better than yourself; is that it, eh?" "well, jerry, how do the new articles fit?" said nicholas dillon. "pretty well, thank you: they'd be a deal more comfortable though, if you'd pay for them." "did you hear, miss o'kelly, what jerry blake did yesterday?" said nicholas dillon aloud, across the table. "indeed, i did not," said guss--"but i hope, for the sake of the blakes in general, he didn't do anything much amiss?" "i'll tell you then," continued nicholas. "a portion of his ould hunting-dress--i'll not specify what, you know--but a portion, which he'd been wearing since the last election, were too shabby to show: well, he couldn't catch a hedge tailor far or near, only poor lame andy oulahan, who was burying his wife, rest her sowl, the very moment jerry got a howld of him. well, jerry was wild that the tailors were so scarce, so he laid his hands on andy, dragged him away from the corpse and all the illigant enthertainment of the funeral, and never let him out of sight till he'd put on the last button." "oh, mr blake!" said guss, "you did not take the man away from his dead wife?" "indeed i did not, miss o'kelly: andy'd no such good chance; his wife's to the fore this day, worse luck for him. it was only his mother he was burying." "but you didn't take him away from his mother's funeral?" "oh, i did it according to law, you know. i got bingham to give me a warrant first, before i let the policeman lay a hand on him." "now, general, you've really made no breakfast at all," said the hospitable hostess: "do let guss give you a hot cup of coffee." "not a drop more, mrs o'kelly. i've done more than well; but, if you'll allow me, i'll just take a crust of bread in my pocket." "and what would you do that for?--you'll be coming back to lunch, you know." "is it lunch, mrs o'kelly, pray don't think of troubling yourself to have lunch on the table. maybe we'll be a deal nearer creamstown than kelly's court at lunch time. but it's quite time we were off. as for bingham blake, from the look of him, he's going to stay here with your daughter augusta all the morning." "i believe then he'd much sooner be with the dogs, general, than losing his time with her." "are you going to move at all, ballindine," said the impatient old sportsman. "do you know what time it is?--it'll be twelve o'clock before you have the dogs in the cover." "very good time, too, general: men must eat, you know, and the fox won't stir till we move him. but come, gentlemen, you seem to be dropping your knives and forks. suppose we get into our saddles?" and again the red-coats sallied out. bingham gave guss a tender squeeze, which she all but returned, as she bade him take care and not go and kill himself. peter dillon stayed to have a few last words with sophy, and to impress upon her his sister nora's message, that she and _her_ sister were to be sure to come over on friday to ballyhaunis, and spend the night there. "we will, if we're let, tell nora," said sophy; "but now frank's at home, we must mind him, you know." "make him bring you over: there'll be a bed for him; the old house is big enough, heaven knows." "indeed it is. well, i'll do my best; but tell nora to be sure and get the fiddler from hollymount. it's so stupid for her to be sitting there at the piano while we're dancing." "i'll manage that; only do you bring frank to dance with her," and another tender squeeze was given--and peter hurried out to the horses. and now they were all gone but the parson. "mrs o'kelly," said he, "mrs armstrong wants a favour from you. poor minny's very bad with her throat; she didn't get a wink of sleep last night." "dear me--poor thing; can i send her anything?" "if you could let them have a little black currant jelly, mrs armstrong would be so thankful. she has so much to think of, and is so weak herself, poor thing, she hasn't time to make those things." "indeed i will, mr armstrong. i'll send it down this morning; and a little calf's foot jelly won't hurt her. it is in the house, and mrs armstrong mightn't be able to get the feet, you know. give them my love, and if i can get out at all to-morrow, i'll go and see them." and so the parson, having completed his domestic embassy for the benefit of his sick little girl, followed the others, keen for the hunt; and the three ladies were left alone, to see the plate and china put away. xxii. the hunt though the majority of those who were in the habit of hunting with the kelly's court hounds had been at the breakfast, there were still a considerable number of horsemen waiting on the lawn in front of the house, when frank and his friends sallied forth. the dogs were collected round the huntsman, behaving themselves, for the most part, with admirable propriety; an occasional yelp from a young hound would now and then prove that the whipper [ ] had his eye on them, and would not allow rambling; but the old dogs sat demurely on their haunches, waiting the well-known signal for action. there they sat, as grave as so many senators, with their large heads raised, their heavy lips hanging from each side of their jaws, and their deep, strong chests expanded so as to show fully their bone, muscle, and breeding. [footnote : whipper--an officer of the hunt whose duty was to help the hunstman control the hounds] among the men who had arrived on the lawn during breakfast were two who certainly had not come together, and who had not spoken since they had been there. they were martin kelly and barry lynch. martin was dressed just as usual, except that he had on a pair of spurs, but barry was armed cap-a-pie [ ]. some time before his father's death he had supplied himself with all the fashionable requisites for the field,--not because he was fond of hunting, for he was not,--but in order to prove himself as much a gentleman as other people. he had been out twice this year, but had felt very miserable, for no one spoke to him, and he had gone home, on both occasions, early in the day; but he had now made up his mind that he would show himself to his old schoolfellow in his new character as an independent country gentleman; and what was more, he was determined that lord ballindine should not cut him. [footnote : cap-a-pie--from head to foot] he very soon had an opportunity for effecting his purpose, for the moment that frank got on his horse, he unintentionally rode close up to him. "how d'ye do, my lord?--i hope i see your lordship well?" said barry, with a clumsy attempt at ease and familiarity. "i'm glad to find your lordship in the field before the season's over." "good morning, mr lynch," said frank, and was turning away from him, when, remembering that he must have come from dunmore, he asked, "did you see martin kelly anywhere?" "can't say i did, my lord," said barry, and he turned away completely silenced, and out of countenance. martin had been talking to the huntsman, and criticizing the hounds. he knew every dog's name, character, and capabilities, and also every horse in lord ballindine's stable, and was consequently held in great respect by mick keogh and his crew. and now the business began. "mick," said the lord, "we'll take them down to the young plantation, and bring them back through the firs and so into the gorse. if the lad's lying there, we must hit him that way." "that's thrue for yer honer, my lord;" and he started off with his obedient family. "you're wrong, ballindine," said the parson; "for you'll drive him up into the big plantation, and you'll be all day before you make him break; and ten to one they'll chop him in the cover." "would you put them into the gorse at once then?" "take 'em gently through the firs; maybe he's lying out--and down into the gorse, and then, if he's there, he must go away, and into a tip-top country too--miles upon miles of pasture--right away to ballintubber," "that's thrue, too, my lord: let his rivirence alone for understandhing a fox," said mick, with a wink. the parson's behests were obeyed. the hounds followed mick into the plantation, and were followed by two or three of the more eager of the party, who did not object to receiving wet boughs in their faces, or who delighted in riding for half an hour with their heads bowed close down over their saddle-bows. the rest remained with the whipper, outside. "stay a moment here, martin," said lord ballindine. "they can't get away without our seeing them, and i want to speak a few words to you." "and i want particularly to spake to your lordship," said martin; "and there's no fear of the fox! i never knew a fox lie in those firs yet." "nor i either, but you see the parson would have his way. i suppose, if the priest were out, and he told you to run the dogs through the gooseberry-bushes, you'd do it?" "i'm blessed if i would, my lord! every man to his trade. not but what mr armstrong knows pretty well what he's about." "well but, martin, i'll tell you what i want of you. i want a little money, without bothering those fellows up in dublin; and i believe you could let me have it; at any rate, you and your mother together. those fellows at guinness's are stiff about it, and i want three hundred pounds, without absolutely telling them that they must give it me. i'd give you my bill for the amount at twelve months, and, allow you six per cent.; but then i want it immediately. can you let me have it?" "why, my lord," said martin, after pausing awhile and looking very contemplative during the time, "i certainly have the money; that is, i and mother together; but--" "oh, if you've any doubt about it--or if it puts you out, don't do it." "divil a doubt on 'arth, my lord; but i'll tell you i was just going to ask your lordship's advice about laying out the same sum in another way, and i don't think i could raise twice that much." "very well, martin; if you've anything better to do with your money, i'm sure i'd be sorry to take it from you." "that's jist it, my lord. i don't think i can do betther--but i want your advice about it." "my advice whether you ought to lend me three hundred pounds or not! why, martin, you're a fool. i wouldn't ask you to lend it me, if i thought you oughtn't to lend it." "oh--i'm certain sure of that, my lord; but there's an offer made me, that i'd like to have your lordship's mind about. it's not much to my liking, though; and i think it'll be betther for me to be giving you the money," and then martin told his landlord the offer which had been made to him by daly, on the part of barry lynch. "you see, my lord," he concluded by saying, "it'd be a great thing to be shut of barry entirely out of the counthry, and to have poor anty's mind at ase about it, should she iver live to get betther; but thin, i don't like to have dailings with the divil, or any one so much of his colour as barry lynch." "this is a very grave matter, martin, and takes some little time to think about. to tell the truth, i forgot your matrimonial speculation when i asked for the money. though i want the cash, i think you should keep it in your power to close with barry: no, you'd better keep the money by you." "after all, the ould woman could let me have it on the security of the house, you know, av' i did take up with the offer. so, any way, your lordship needn't be balked about the cash." "but is miss lynch so very ill, martin?" "'deed, and she is, mr frank; very bad intirely. doctor colligan was with her three times yestherday." "and does barry take any notice of her now she's ill?" "why, not yet he didn't; but then, we kept it from him as much as we could, till it got dangerous like. mother manes to send colligan to him to-day, av' he thinks she's not betther." "if she were to die, martin, there'd be an end of it all, wouldn't there?" "oh, in course there would, my lord"--and then he added, with a sigh, "i'd be sorry she'd die, for, somehow, i'm very fond of her, quare as it'll seem to you. i'd be very sorry she should die." "of course you would, martin; and it doesn't seem queer at all." "oh, i wasn't thinking about the money, then, my lord; i was only thinking of anty herself: you don't know what a good young woman she is--it's anything but herself she's thinking of always." "did she make any will?" "deed she didn't, my lord: nor won't, it's my mind." "ah! but she should, after all that you and your mother've gone through. it'd be a thousand pities that wretch barry got all the property again." "he's wilcome to it for the kellys, av' anty dies. but av' she lives he shall niver rob a penny from her. oh, my lord! we wouldn't put sich a thing as a will into her head, and she so bad, for all the money the ould man their father iver had. but, hark! my lord--that's gaylass, i know the note well, and she's as true as gould: there's the fox there, just inside the gorse, as the parson said"--and away they both trotted, to the bottom of the plantation, from whence the cheering sound of the dog's voices came, sharp, sweet, and mellow. yes; the parson was as right as if he had been let into the fox's confidence overnight, and had betrayed it in the morning. gaylass was hardly in the gorse before she discovered the doomed brute's vicinity, and told of it to the whole canine confraternity. away from his hiding-place he went, towards the open country, but immediately returned into the covert, for he saw a lot of boys before him, who had assembled with the object of looking at the hunt, but with the very probable effect of spoiling it; for, as much as a fox hates a dog, he fears the human race more, and will run from an urchin with a stick into the jaws of his much more fatal enemy. "as long as them blackguards is there, a hollowing, and a screeching, divil a fox in all ireland'd go out of this," said mick to his master. "ah, boys," said frank, riding up, "if you want to see a hunt, will you keep back!" "begorra we will, yer honer," said one. "faix--we wouldn't be afther spiling your honer's divarsion, my lord, on no account," said another. "we'll be out o' this althogether, now this blessed minute," said a third, but still there they remained, each loudly endeavouring to banish the others. at last, however, the fox saw a fair course before him, and away he went; and with very little start, for the dogs followed him out of the covert almost with a view. and now the men settled themselves to the work, and began to strive for the pride of place, at least the younger portion of them: for in every field there are two classes of men. those who go out to get the greatest possible quantity of riding, and those whose object is to get the least. those who go to work their nags, and those who go to spare them. the former think that the excellence of the hunt depends on the horses; the latter, on the dogs. the former go to act, and the latter to see. and it is very generally the case that the least active part of the community know the most about the sport. they, the less active part above alluded to, know every high-road and bye-road; they consult the wind, and calculate that a fox won't run with his nose against it; they remember this stream and this bog, and avoid them; they are often at the top of eminences, and only descend when they see which way the dogs are going; they take short cuts, and lay themselves out for narrow lanes; they dislike galloping, and eschew leaping; and yet, when a hard-riding man is bringing up his two hundred guinea hunter, a minute or two late for the finish, covered with foam, trembling with his exertion, not a breath left in him--he'll probably find one of these steady fellows there before him, mounted on a broken-down screw, but as cool and as fresh as when he was brought out of the stable; and what is, perhaps, still more amazing, at the end of the day, when the hunt is canvassed after dinner, our dashing friend, who is in great doubt whether his thoroughbred steeplechaser will ever recover his day's work, and who has been personally administering warm mashes and bandages before he would venture to take his own boots off, finds he does not know half as much about the hunt, or can tell half as correctly where the game went, as our, quiet-going friend, whose hack will probably go out on the following morning under the car, with the mistress and children. such a one was parson armstrong; and when lord ballindine and most of the others went away after the hounds, he coolly turned round in a different direction, crept through a broken wall into a peasant's garden, and over a dunghill, by the cabin door into a road, and then trotted along as demurely and leisurely as though he were going to bury an old woman in the next parish. frank was, generally speaking, as good-natured a man as is often met, but even he got excited and irritable when hunting his own pack. all masters of hounds do. some one was always too forward, another too near the dogs, a third interfering with the servants, and a fourth making too much noise. "confound it, peter," he said, when they had gone over a field or two, and the dogs missed the scent for a moment, "i thought at any rate you knew better than to cross the dogs that way." "who crossed the dogs?" said the other--"what nonsense you're talking: why i wasn't out of the potato-field till they were nearly all at the next wall." "well, it may be nonsense," continued frank; "but when i see a man riding right through the hounds, and they hunting, i call that crossing them." "hoicks! tally"--hollowed some one--"there's graceful has it again--well done, granger! faith, frank, that's a good dog! if he's not first, he's always second." "now, gentlemen, steady, for heaven's sake. do let the dogs settle to their work before you're a-top of them. upon my soul, nicholas brown, it's ridiculous to see you!" "it'd be a good thing if he were half as much in a hurry to get to heaven," said bingham blake. "thank'ee," said nicholas; "go to heaven yourself. i'm well enough where i am." and now they were off again. in the next field the whole pack caught a view of the fox just as he was stealing out; and after him they went, with their noses well above the ground, their voices loud and clear, and in one bevy. away they went: the game was strong; the scent was good; the ground was soft, but not too soft; and a magnificent hunt they had; but there were some misfortunes shortly after getting away. barry lynch, wishing, in his ignorance, to lead and show himself off, and not knowing how--scurrying along among the dogs, and bothered at every leap, had given great offence to lord ballindine. but, not wishing to speak severely to a man whom he would not under any circumstances address in a friendly way, he talked at him, and endeavoured to bring him to order by blowing up others in his hearing. but this was thrown away on barry, and he continued his career in a most disgusting manner; scrambling through gaps together with the dogs, crossing other men without the slightest reserve, annoying every one, and evidently pluming himself on his performance. frank's brow was getting blacker and blacker. jerry blake and young brown were greatly amusing themselves at the exhibition, and every now and then gave him a word or two of encouragement, praising his mare, telling how well he got over that last fence, and bidding him mind and keep well forward. this was all new to barry, and he really began to feel himself in his element;--if it hadn't been for those abominable walls, he would have enjoyed himself. but this was too good to last, and before very long he made a _faux pas_, which brought down on him in a torrent the bottled-up wrath of the viscount. they had been galloping across a large, unbroken sheep-walk, which exactly suited barry's taste, and he had got well forward towards the hounds. frank was behind, expostulating with jerry blake and the others for encouraging him, when the dogs came to a small stone wall about two feet and a half high. in this there was a broken gap, through which many of them crept. barry also saw this happy escape from the grand difficulty of jumping, and, ignorant that if he rode the gap at all, he should let the hounds go first, made for it right among them, in spite of frank's voice, now raised loudly to caution him. the horse the man rode knew his business better than himself, and tried to spare the dogs which were under his feet; but, in getting out, he made a slight spring, and came down on the haunches of a favourite young hound called "goneaway"; he broke the leg close to the socket, and the poor beast most loudly told his complaint. this was too much to be borne, and frank rode up red with passion; and a lot of others, including the whipper, soon followed. "he has killed the dog!" said he. "did you ever see such a clumsy, ignorant fool? mr lynch, if you'd do me the honour to stay away another day, and amuse yourself in any other way, i should be much obliged." "it wasn't my fault then," said barry. "do you mean to give me the lie, sir?" replied frank. "the dog got under the horse's feet. how was i to help it?" there was a universal titter at this, which made barry wish himself at home again, with his brandy-bottle. "ah! sir," said frank; "you're as fit to ride a hunt as you are to do anything else which gentlemen usually do. may i trouble you to make yourself scarce? your horse, i see, can't carry you much farther, and if you'll take my advice, you'll go home, before you're ridden over yourself. well, martin, is the bone broken?" martin had got off his horse, and was kneeling down beside the poor hurt brute. "indeed it is, my lord, in two places. you'd better let tony kill him; he has an awful sprain in the back, as well; he'll niver put a foot to the ground again." "by heavens, that's too bad! isn't it bingham? he was, out and out, the finest puppy we entered last year." "what can you expect," said bingham, "when such fellows as that come into a field? he's as much business here as a cow in a drawing-room." "but what can we do?--one can't turn him off the land; if he chooses to come, he must." "why, yes," said bingham, "if he will come he must. but then, if he insists on doing so, he may be horsewhipped; he may be ridden over; he may be kicked; and he may be told that he's a low, vulgar, paltry scoundrel; and, if he repeats his visits, that's the treatment he'll probably receive." barry was close to both the speakers, and of course heard, and was intended to hear, every word that was said. he contented himself, however, with muttering certain inaudible defiances, and was seen and heard of no more that day. the hunt was continued, and the fox was killed; but frank and those with him saw but little more of it. however, as soon as directions were given for the death of poor goneaway, they went on, and received a very satisfactory account of the proceedings from those who had seen the finish. as usual, the parson was among the number, and he gave them a most detailed history, not only of the fox's proceedings during the day, but also of all the reasons which actuated the animal, in every different turn he took. "i declare, armstrong," said peter dillon, "i think you were a fox yourself, once! do you remember anything about it?" "what a run he would give!" said jerry; "the best pack that was ever kennelled wouldn't have a chance with him." "who was that old chap," said nicholas dillon, showing off his classical learning, "who said that dead animals always became something else?--maybe it's only in the course of nature for a dead fox to become a live parson." "exactly: you've hit it," said armstrong; "and, in the same way, the moment the breath is out of a goose it becomes an idle squireen [ ], and, generally speaking, a younger brother." [footnote : squireen--diminutive of squire; a minor irish gentleman given to "putting on airs" or imitating the manners and haughtiness of men of greater wealth] "put that in your pipe and smoke it, nick," said jerry; "and take care how you meddle with the church again." "who saw anything of lambert brown?" said another; "i left him bogged below there at gurtnascreenagh, and all he could do, the old grey horse wouldn't move a leg to get out for him." "oh, he's there still," said nicholas. "he was trying to follow me, and i took him there on purpose. it's not deep, and he'll do no hurt: he'll keep as well there, as anywhere else." "nonsense, dillon!" said the general--"you'll make his brother really angry, if you go on that way. if the man's a fool, leave him in his folly, but don't be playing tricks on him. you'll only get yourself into a quarrel with the family." "and how shall we manage about the money, my lord?" said martin, as he drew near the point at which he would separate from the rest, to ride towards dunmore. "i've been thinking about it, and there's no doubt about having it for you on friday, av that'll suit." "that brother-in-law of yours is a most unmitigated blackguard, isn't he, martin?" said frank, who was thinking more about poor goneaway than the money. "he isn't no brother-in-law of mine yet, and probably niver will be, for i'm afeard poor anty'll go. but av he iver is, he'll soon take himself out of the counthry, and be no more throuble to your lordship or any of us." "but to think of his riding right a-top of the poor brute, and then saying that the dog got under his horse's feet! why, he's a fool as well as a knave. was he ever out before?" "well, then, i believe he was, twice this year; though i didn't see him myself." "then i hope this'll be the last time: three times is quite enough for such a fellow as that." "i don't think he'll be apt to show again afther what you and mr bingham said to him. well, shure, mr bingham was very hard on him!" "serve him right; nothing's too bad for him." "oh, that's thrue for you, my lord: i don't pity him one bit. but about the money, and this job of my own. av it wasn't asking too much, it'd be a great thing av your lordship'd see daly." it was then settled that lord ballindine should ride over to dunmore on the following friday, and if circumstances seemed to render it advisable, that he and martin should go on together to the attorney at tuam. xxiii. doctor colligan doctor colligan, the galen of dunmore, though a practitioner of most unprepossessing appearance and demeanour, was neither ignorant nor careless. though for many years he had courted the public in vain, his neighbours had at last learned to know and appreciate him; and, at the time of anty's illness, the inhabitants of three parishes trusted their corporeal ailments to his care, with comfort to themselves and profit to him. nevertheless, there were many things about doctor colligan not calculated to inspire either respect or confidence. he always seemed a little afraid of his patient, and very much afraid of his patient's friends: he was always dreading the appearance at dunmore of one of those young rivals, who had lately established themselves at tuam on one side, and hollymount on the other; and, to prevent so fatal a circumstance, was continually trying to be civil and obliging to his customers. he would not put on a blister, or order a black dose, without consulting with the lady of the house, and asking permission of the patient, and consequently had always an air of doubt and indecision. then, he was excessively dirty in his person and practice: he carried a considerable territory beneath his nails; smelt equally strongly of the laboratory and the stable; would wipe his hands on the patient's sheets, and wherever he went left horrid marks of his whereabouts: he was very fond of good eating and much drinking, and would neglect the best customer that ever was sick, when tempted by the fascination of a game of loo. he was certainly a bad family-man; for though he worked hard for the support of his wife and children, he was little among them, paid them no attention, and felt no scruple in assuring mrs c. that he had been obliged to remain up all night with that dreadful mrs jones, whose children were always so tedious; or that mr blake was so bad after his accident that he could not leave him for a moment; when, to tell the truth, the doctor had passed the night with the cards in his hands, and a tumbler of punch beside him. he was a tall, thick-set, heavy man, with short black curly hair; was a little bald at the top of his head; and looked always as though he had shaved himself the day before yesterday, and had not washed since. his face was good-natured, but heavy and unintellectual. he was ignorant of everything but his profession, and the odds on the card-table or the race-course. but to give him his due, on these subjects he was not ignorant; and this was now so generally known that, in dangerous cases, doctor colligan had been sent for, many, many miles. this was the man who attended poor anty in her illness, and he did as much for her as could be done; but it was a bad case, and doctor colligan thought it would be fatal. she had intermittent fever, and was occasionally delirious; but it was her great debility between the attacks which he considered so dangerous. on the morning after the hunt, he told martin that he greatly feared she would go off, from exhaustion, in a few days, and that it would be wise to let barry know the state in which his sister was. there was a consultation on the subject between the two and martin's mother, in which it was agreed that the doctor should go up to dunmore house, and tell barry exactly the state of affairs. "and good news it'll be for him," said mrs kelly; "the best he heard since the ould man died. av he had his will of her, she'd niver rise from the bed where she's stretched. but, glory be to god, there's a providence over all, and maybe she'll live yet to give him the go-by." "how you talk, mother," said martin; "and what's the use? whatever he wishes won't harum her; and maybe, now she's dying, his heart'll be softened to her. any way, don't let him have to say she died here, without his hearing a word how bad she was." "maybe he'd be afther saying we murdhered her for her money," said the widow, with a shudder. "he can hardly complain of that, when he'll be getting all the money himself. but, however, it's much betther, all ways, that doctor colligan should see him." "you know, mrs kelly," said the doctor, "as a matter of course he'll be asking to see his sister." "you wouldn't have him come in here to her, would you?--faix, doctor colligan, it'll be her death out right at once av he does." "it'd not be nathural, to refuse to let him see her," said the doctor; "and i don't think it would do any harm: but i'll be guided by you, mrs kelly, in what i say to him." "besides," said martin, "i know anty would wish to see him: he is her brother; and there's only the two of 'em." "between you be it," said the widow; "i tell you i don't like it. you neither of you know barry lynch, as well as i do; he'd smother her av it come into his head." "ah, mother, nonsense now; hould your tongue; you don't know what you're saying." "well; didn't he try to do as bad before?" "it wouldn't do, i tell you," continued martin, "not to let him see her; that is, av anty wishes it." it ended in the widow being sent into anty's room, to ask her whether she had any message to send to her brother. the poor girl knew how ill she was, and expected her death; and when the widow told her that doctor colligan was going to call on her brother, she said that she hoped she should see barry once more before all was over. "mother," said martin, as soon as the doctor's back was turned, "you'll get yourself in a scrape av you go on saying such things as that about folk before strangers." "is it about barry?" "yes; about barry. how do you know colligan won't be repating all them things to him?" "let him, and wilcome. shure wouldn't i say as much to barry lynch himself? what do i care for the blagguard?--only this, i wish i'd niver heard his name, or seen his foot over the sill of the door. i'm sorry i iver heard the name of the lynches in dunmore." "you're not regretting the throuble anty is to you, mother?" "regretting? i don't know what you mane by regretting. i don't know is it regretting to be slaving as much and more for her than i would for my own, and no chance of getting as much as thanks for it." "you'll be rewarded hereafther, mother; shure won't it all go for charity?" "i'm not so shure of that," said the widow. "it was your schaming to get her money brought her here, and, like a poor wake woman, as i was, i fell into it; and now we've all the throuble and the expinse, and the time lost, and afther all, barry'll be getting everything when she's gone. you'll see, martin; we'll have the wake, and the funeral, and the docthor and all, on us--mind my words else. och musha, musha! what'll i do at all? faix, forty pounds won't clear what this turn is like to come to; an' all from your dirthy undherhand schaming ways." in truth, the widow was perplexed in her inmost soul about anty; torn and tortured by doubts and anxieties. her real love of anty and true charity was in state of battle with her parsimony; and then, avarice was strong within her; and utter, uncontrolled hatred of barry still stronger. but, opposed to these was dread of some unforeseen evil--some tremendous law proceedings: she had a half-formed idea that she was doing what she had no right to do, and that she might some day be walked off to galway assizes. then again, she had an absurd pride about it, which often made her declare that she'd never be beat by such a "scum of the 'arth" as barry lynch, and that she'd fight it out with him if it cost her a hundred pounds; though no one understood what the battle was which she was to fight. just before anty's illness had become so serious, daly called, and had succeeded in reconciling both martin and the widow to himself; but he had not quite made them agree to his proposal. the widow, indeed, was much averse to it. she wouldn't deal with such a greek as barry, even in the acceptance of a boon. when she found him willing to compromise, she became more than ever averse to any friendly terms; but now the whole ground was slipping from under her feet. anty was dying: she would have had her trouble for nothing; and that hated barry would gain his point, and the whole of his sister's property, in triumph. twenty times the idea of a will had come into her mind, and how comfortable it would be if anty would leave her property, or at any rate a portion of it, to martin. but though the thoughts of such a delightful arrangement kept her in a continual whirlwind of anxiety, she never hinted at the subject to anty. as she said to herself, "a kelly wouldn't demane herself to ask a brass penny from a lynch." she didn't even speak to her daughters about it, though the continual twitter she was in made them aware that there was some unusual burthen on her mind. it was not only to the kellys that the idea occurred that anty in her illness might make a will. the thoughts of such a catastrophe had robbed barry of half the pleasure which the rumours of his sister's dangerous position had given him. he had not received any direct intimation of anty's state, but had heard through the servants that she was ill--very ill--dangerously--"not expected," as the country people call it; and each fresh rumour gave him new hopes, and new life. he now spurned all idea of connexion with martin; he would trample on the kellys for thinking of such a thing: he would show daly, when in the plenitude of his wealth and power, how he despised the lukewarmness and timidity of his councils. these and other delightful visions were floating through his imagination; when, all of a sudden, like a blow, like a thunderbolt, the idea of _a will_ fell as it were upon him with a ton weight. his heart sunk low within him; he became white, and his jaw dropped. after all, there were victory and triumph, plunder and wealth, _his_ wealth, in the very hands of his enemies! of course the kellys would force her to make a will, if she didn't do it of her own accord; if not, they'd forge one. there was some comfort in that thought: he could at any rate contest the will, and swear that it was a forgery. he swallowed a dram, and went off, almost weeping to daly. "oh, mr daly, poor anty's dying: did you hear, mr daly--she's all but gone?" yes; daly had been sorry to hear that miss lynch was very ill. "what shall i do," continued barry, "if they say that she's left a will?" "go and hear it read. or, if you don't like to do that yourself, stay away, and let me hear it." "but they'll forge one! they'll make out what they please, and when she's dying, they'll make her put her name to it; or they'll only just put the pen in her hand, when she's not knowing what she's doing. they'd do anything now, daly, to get the money they've been fighting for so hard." "it's my belief," answered the attorney, "that the kellys not only won't do anything dishonest, but that they won't even take any unfair advantage of you. but at any rate you can do nothing. you must wait patiently; you, at any rate, can take no steps till she's dead." "but couldn't she make a will in my favour? i know she'd do it if i asked her--if i asked her now--now she's going off, you know. i'm sure she'd do it. don't you think she would?" "you're safer, i think, to let it alone," said daly, who could hardly control the ineffable disgust he felt. "i don't know that," continued barry. "she's weak, and 'll do what she's asked: besides, _they'll_ make her do it. fancy if, when she's gone, i find i have to share everything with those people!" and he struck his forehead and pushed the hair off his perspiring face, as he literally shook with despair. "i must see her, daly. i'm quite sure she'll make a will if i beg her; they can't hinder me seeing my own, only, dying sister; can they, daly? and when i'm once there, i'll sit with her, and watch till it's all over. i'm sure, now she's ill, i'd do anything for her." daly said nothing, though barry paused for him to reply. "only about the form," continued he, "i wouldn't know what to put. by heavens, daly! you must come with me. you can be up at the house, and i can have you down at a minute's warning." daly utterly declined, but barry continued to press him. "but you must, daly; i tell you i know i'm right. i know her so well--she'll do it at once for the sake--for the sake of--you know she is my own sister, and all that--and she thinks so much of that kind of thing. i'll tell you what, daly; upon my honour and soul," and he repeated the words in a most solemn tone, "if you'll draw the will, and she signs it, so that i come in for the whole thing--and i know she will i'll make over fifty--ay, seventy pounds a year for you for ever and ever. i will, as i live." the interview ended by the attorney turning barry lynch into the street, and assuring him that if he ever came into his office again, on any business whatsoever, he would unscrupulously kick him out. so ended, also, the connexion between the two; for daly never got a farthing for his labour. indeed, after all that had taken place, he thought it as well not to trouble his _ci-devant_ client with a bill. barry went home, and of course got drunk. when doctor colligan called on lynch, he found that he was not at home. he was at that very moment at tuam, with the attorney. the doctor repeated his visit later in the afternoon, but barry had still not returned, and he therefore left word that he would call early after breakfast the following morning. he did so; and, after waiting half an hour in the dining-room, barry, only half awake and half dressed, and still half drunk, came down to him. the doctor, with a long face, delivered his message, and explained to him the state in which his sister was lying; assured him that everything in the power of medicine had been and should be done; that, nevertheless, he feared the chance of recovery was remote; and ended by informing him that miss lynch was aware of her danger, and had expressed a wish to see him before it might be too late. could he make it convenient to come over just now--in half an hour--or say an hour?--said the doctor, looking at the red face and unfinished toilet of the distressed brother. barry at first scarcely knew what reply to give. on his return from tuam, he had determined that he would at any rate make his way into his sister's room, and, as he thought to himself, see what would come of it. in his after-dinner courage he had further determined, that he would treat the widow and her family with a very high hand, if they dared to make objection to his seeing his sister; but now, when the friendly overture came from anty herself, and was brought by one of the kelly faction, he felt himself a little confounded, as though he rather dreaded the interview, and would wish to put it off for a day or two. "oh, yes--certainly, doctor colligan; to be sure--that is--tell me, doctor, is she really so bad?" "indeed, mr lynch, she is very weak." "but, doctor, you don't think there is any chance--i mean, there isn't any danger, is there, that she'd go off at once?" "why, no, i don't think there is; indeed, i have no doubt she will hold out a fortnight yet." "then, perhaps, doctor, i'd better put it off till to-morrow; i'll tell you why: there's a person i wish--" "why, mr lynch, to-day would be better. the fever's periodical, you see, and will be on her again to-morrow--" "i beg your pardon, doctor colligan," said barry, of a sudden remembering to be civil,--"but you'll take a glass of wine?" "not a drop, thank ye, of anything." "oh, but you will;" and barry rang the bell and had the wine brought. "and you expect she'll have another attack to-morrow?" "that's a matter of course, mr lynch; the fever'll come on her again to-morrow. every attack leaves her weaker and weaker, and we fear she'll go off, before it leaves her altogether." "poor thing!" said barry, contemplatively. "we had her head shaved," said the doctor. "did you, indeed!" answered barry. "she was my favourite sister, doctor colligan--that is, i had no other." "i believe not," said doctor colligan, looking sympathetic. "take another glass of wine, doctor?--now do," and he poured out another bumper. "thank'ee, mr lynch, thank'ee; not a drop more. and you'll be over in an hour then? i'd better go and tell her, that she may be prepared, you know," and the doctor returned to the sick room of his patient. barry remained standing in the parlour, looking at the glasses and the decanter, as though he were speculating on the manner in which they had been fabricated. "she may recover, after all," thought he to himself. "she's as strong as a horse--i know her better than they do. i know she'll recover, and then what shall i do? stand to the offer daly made to kelly, i suppose!" and then he sat down close to the table, with his elbow on it, and his chin resting on his hand; and there he remained, full of thought. to tell the truth, barry lynch had never thought more intensely than he did during those ten minutes. at last he jumped up suddenly, as though surprised at what had been passing within himself; he looked hastily at the door and at the window, as though to see that he had not been watched, and then went upstairs to dress himself, preparatory to his visit to the inn. xxiv. anty lynch's bed-side scene the first anty had borne her illness with that patience and endurance which were so particularly inherent in her nature. she had never complained; and had received the untiring attentions and care of her two young friends, with a warmth of affection and gratitude which astonished them, accustomed as they had been in every little illness to give and receive that tender care with which sickness is treated in affectionate families. when ill, they felt they had a right to be petulant, and to complain; to exact, and to be attended to: they had been used to it from each other, and thought it an incidental part of the business. but anty had hitherto had no one to nurse her, and she looked on meg and jane as kind ministering angels, emulous as they were to relieve her wants and ease her sufferings. her thin face had become thinner, and was very pale; her head had been shaved close, and there was nothing between the broad white border of her nightcap and her clammy brow and wan cheek. but illness was more becoming to anty than health; it gave her a melancholy and beautiful expression of resignation, which, under ordinary circumstances, was wanting to her features, though not to her character. her eyes were brighter than they usually were, and her complexion was clear, colourless, and transparent. i do not mean to say that anty in her illness was beautiful, but she was no longer plain; and even to the young kellys, whose feelings and sympathies cannot be supposed to have been of the highest order, she became an object of the most intense interest, and the warmest affection. "well, doctor," she said, as doctor colligan crept into her room, after the termination of his embassy to barry; "will he come?" "oh, of course he will; why wouldn't he, and you wishing it? he'll be here in an hour, miss lynch. he wasn't just ready to come over with me." "i'm glad of that," said anty, who felt that she had to collect her thoughts before she saw him; and then, after a moment, she added, "can't i take my medicine now, doctor?" "just before he comes you'd better have it, i think. one of the girls will step up and give it you when he's below. he'll want to speak a word or so to mrs kelly before he comes up." "spake to me, docthor!" said the widow, alarmed. "what'll he be spaking to me about? faix, i had spaking enough with him last time he was here." "you'd better just see him, mrs kelly," whispered the, doctor. "you'll find him quiet enough, now; just take him fair and asy; keep him downstairs a moment, while jane gives her the medicine. she'd better take it just before he goes to her, and don't let him stay long, whatever you do. i'll be back before the evening's over; not that i think that she'll want me to see her, but i'll just drop in." "are you going, doctor?" said anty, as he stepped up to the bed. he told her he was. "you've told mrs kelly, haven't you, that i'm to see barry alone?" "why, i didn't say so," said the doctor, looking at the widow; "but i suppose there'll be no harm--eh, mrs kelly?" "you must let me see him alone, dear mrs kelly!" "if doctor colligan thinks you ought, anty dear, i wouldn't stay in the room myself for worlds." "but you won't keep him here long, miss lynch--eh? and you won't excite yourself?--indeed, you mustn't. you'll allow them fifteen minutes, mrs kelly, not more, and then you'll come up;" and with these cautions, the doctor withdrew. "i wish he was come and gone," said the widow to her elder daughter. "well; av i'd known all what was to follow, i'd niver have got out of my warm bed to go and fetch anty lynch down here that cowld morning! well, i'll be wise another time. live and larn they say, and it's thrue, too." "but, mother, you ain't wishing poor anty wasn't here?" "indeed, but i do; everything to give and nothin to get--that's not the way i have managed to live. but it's not that altogether, neither. i'm not begrudging anty anything for herself; but that i'd be dhriven to let that blagguard of a brother of hers into the house, and that as a frind like, is what i didn't think i'd ever have put upon me!" barry made his appearance about an hour after the time at which they had begun to expect him; and as soon as meg saw him, one of them flew upstairs, to tell anty and give her her tonic. barry had made himself quite a dandy to do honour to the occasion of paying probably a parting visit to his sister, whom he had driven out of her own house to die at the inn. he had on his new blue frock-coat, and a buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, over which his watch-chain was gracefully arranged. his pantaloons were strapped clown very tightly over his polished boots; a shining new silk hat was on one side of his head; and in his hand he was dangling an ebony cane. in spite, however, of all these gaudy trappings, he could not muster up an easy air; and, as he knocked, he had that look proverbially attributed to dogs who are going to be hung. sally opened the door for him, and the widow, who had come out from the shop, made him a low courtesy in the passage. "oh--ah--yes--mrs kelly, i believe?" said barry. "yes, mr lynch, that's my name; glory be to god!" "my sister, miss lynch, is still staying here, i believe?" "why, drat it, man; wasn't dr colligan with you less than an hour ago, telling you you must come here, av you wanted to see her?" "you'll oblige me by sending up the servant to tell miss lynch i'm here." "walk up here a minute, and i'll do that errand for you myself.--well," continued she, muttering to herself "for him to ax av she war staying here, as though he didn't know it! there niver was his ditto for desait, maneness and divilry!" a minute or two after the widow had left him, barry found himself by his sister's bed-side, but never had he found himself in a position for which he was less fitted, or which was less easy to him. he assumed, however, a long and solemn face, and crawling up to the bed-side, told his sister, in a whining voice, that he was very glad to see her. "sit down, barry, sit down," said anty, stretching out her thin pale hand, and taking hold of her brother's. barry did as he was told, and sat down. "i'm so glad to see you, barry," said she: "i'm so very glad to see you once more--" and then after a pause, "and it'll be the last time, barry, for i'm dying." barry told her he didn't think she was, for he didn't know when he'd seen her looking better. "yes, i am, barry: doctor colligan has said as much; and i should know it well enough myself, even if he'd never said a word. we're friends now, are we not?--everything's forgiven and forgotten, isn't it, barry?" anty had still hold of her brother's hand, and seemed desirous to keep it. he sat on the edge of his chair, with his knees tucked in against the bed, the very picture of discomfort, both of body and mind. "oh, of course it is, anty," said he; "forgive and forget; that was always my motto. i'm sure i never bore any malice--indeed i never was so sorry as when you went away, and--" "ah, barry," said anty; "it was better i went then; may-be it's all better as it is. when the priest has been with me and given me comfort, i won't fear to die. but there are other things, barry, i want to spake to you about." "if there's anything i can do, i'm sure i'd do it: if there's anything at all you wish done.--would you like to come up to the house again?" "oh no, barry, not for worlds." "why, perhaps, just at present, you are too weak to move; only wouldn't it be more comfortable for you to be in your own house? these people here are all very well, i dare say, but they must be a great bother to you, eh?--so interested, you know, in everything they do." "ah! barry, you don't know them." barry remembered that he would be on the wrong tack to abuse the kellys. "i'm sure they're very nice people," said he; "indeed i always thought so, and said so--but they're not like your own flesh and blood, are they, anty?--and why shouldn't you come up and be--" "no, barry," said she; "i'll not do that; as they're so very, very kind as to let me stay here, i'll remain till--till god takes me to himself. but they're not my flesh and blood"--and she turned round and looked affectionately in the face of her brother--"there are only the two of us left now; and soon, very soon you'll be all alone." barry felt very uncomfortable, and wished the interview was over: he tried to say something, but failed, and anty went on--"when that time comes, will you remember what i say to you now?--when you're all alone, barry; when there's nothing left to trouble you or put you out--will you think then of the last time you ever saw your sister, and--" "oh, anty, sure i'll be seeing you again!" "no, barry, never again. this is the last time we shall ever meet, and think how much we ought to be to each other! we've neither of us father or mother, husband or wife.--when i'm gone you'll be alone: will you think of me then--and will you remember, remember every day--what i say to you now?" "indeed i will, anty. i'll do anything, everything you'd have me. is there anything you'd wish me to give to any person?" "barry," she continued, "no good ever came of my father's will."--barry almost jumped off his chair as he heard his sister's words, so much did they startle him; but he said nothing.--"the money has done me no good, but the loss of it has blackened your heart, and turned your blood to gall against me. yes, barry--yes--don't speak now, let me go on;--the old man brought you up to look for it, and, alas, he taught you to look for nothing else; it has not been your fault, and i'm not blaming you--i'm not maning to blame you, my own brother, for you are my own"--and she turned round in the bed and shed tears upon his hand, and kissed it.--"but gold, and land, will never make you happy,--no, not all the gold of england, nor all the land the old kings ever had could make you happy, av the heart was bad within you. you'll have it all now, barry, or mostly all. you'll have what you think the old man wronged you of; you'll have it with no one to provide for but yourself, with no one to trouble you, no one to thwart you. but oh, barry, av it's in your heart that that can make you happy--there's nothing before you but misery--and death--and hell." barry shook like a child in the clutches of its master--"yes, barry; misery and death, and all the tortures of the damned. it's to save you from this, my own brother, to try and turn your heart from that foul love of money, that your sister is now speaking to you from her grave.--oh, barry! try and cure it. learn to give to others, and you'll enjoy what you have yourself.--learn to love others, and then you'll know what it is to be loved yourself. try, try to soften that hard heart. marry at once, barry, at once, before you're older and worse to cure; and you'll have children, and love them; and when you feel, as feel you must, that the money is clinging round your soul, fling it from you, and think of the last words your sister said to you." the sweat was now running down the cheeks of the wretched man, for the mixed rebuke and prayer of his sister had come home to him, and touched him; but it was neither with pity, with remorse, nor penitence. no; in that foul heart there was no room, even for remorse; but he trembled with fear as he listened to her words, and, falling on his knees, swore to her that he would do just as she would have him. "if i could but think," continued she, "that you would remember what i am saying--" "oh, i will, anty: i will--indeed, indeed, i will!" "if i could believe so, barry--i'd die happy and in comfort, for i love you better than anything on earth;" and again she pressed his hot red hand--"but oh, brother! i feel for you:--you never kneel before the altar of god--you've no priest to move the weight of sin from your soul--and how heavy that must be! do you remember, barry; it's but a week or two ago and you threatened to kill me for the sake of our father's money? you wanted to put me in a mad-house; you tried to make me mad with fear and cruelty; me, your sister; and i never harmed or crossed you. god is now doing what you threatened; a kind, good god is now taking me to himself, and you will get what you so longed for without more sin on your conscience; but it'll never bless you, av you've still the same wishes in your heart, the same love of gold--the same hatred of a fellow-creature." "oh, anty!" sobbed out barry, who was now absolutely in tears, "i was drunk that night; i was indeed, or i'd never have said or done what i did." "and how often are you so, barry?--isn't it so with you every night? that's another thing; for my sake, for your own sake--for god's sake, give up the dhrink. it's killing you from day to day, and hour to hour. i see it in your eyes, and smell it in your breath, and hear it in your voice; it's that that makes your heart so black:--it's that that gives you over, body and soul, to the devil. i would not have said a word about that night to hurt you now; and, dear barry, i wouldn't have said such words as these to you at all, but that i shall never speak to you again. and oh! i pray that you'll remember them. you're idle now, always:--don't continue so; earn your money, and it will be a blessing to you and to others. but in idleness, and drunkenness, and wickedness, it will only lead you quicker to the devil." barry reiterated his promises; he would take the pledge; he would work at the farm; he would marry and have a family; he would not care the least for money; he would pay his debts; he would go to church, or chapel, if anty liked it better; at any rate, he'd say his prayers; he would remember every word she had said to the last day of his life; he promised everything or anything, as though his future existence depended on his appeasing his dying sister. but during the whole time, his chief wish, his longing desire, was to finish the interview, and get out of that horrid room. he felt that he was mastered and cowed by the creature whom he had so despised, and he could not account for the feeling. why did he not dare to answer her? she had told him he would have her money: she had said it would come to him as a matter of course; and it was not the dread of losing that which prevented his saying a word in his own defence. no; she had really frightened him: she had made him really feel that he was a low, wretched, wicked creature, and he longed to escape from her, that he might recover his composure. "i have but little more to say to you, barry," she continued, "and that little is about the property. you will have it all, but a small sum of money--" here anty was interrupted by a knock at the door, and the entrance of the widow. she came to say that the quarter of an hour allowed by the doctor had been long exceeded, and that really mr barry ought to take his leave, as so much talking would be bad for anty. this was quite a god-send for barry, who was only anxious to be off; but anty begged for a respite. "one five minutes longer, dear mrs kelly," said she, "and i shall have done; only five minutes--i'm much stronger now, and really it won't hurt me." "well, then--mind, only five minutes," said the widow, and again left them alone. "you don't know, barry--you can never know how good that woman has been to me; indeed all of them--and all for nothing. they've asked nothing of me, and now that they know i'm dying, i'm sure they expect nothing from me. she has enough; but i wish to leave something to martin, and the girls;" and a slight pale blush covered her wan cheeks and forehead as she mentioned martin's name. "i will leave him five hundred pounds, and them the same between them. it will be nothing to you, barry, out of the whole; but see and pay it at once, will you?" and she looked kindly into his face. he promised vehemently that he would, and told her not to bother herself about a will: they should have the money as certainly as if twenty wills were made. to give barry his due, at that moment, he meant to be as good as his word. anty, however, told him that she would make a will; that she would send for a lawyer, and have the matter properly settled. "and now," she said, "dear barry, may god almighty bless you--may he guide you and preserve you; and may he, above all, take from you that horrid love of the world's gold and wealth. good bye," and she raised herself up in her bed--"good bye, for the last time, my own dear brother; and try to remember what i've said to you this day. kiss me before you go, barry." barry leaned over the bed, and kissed her, and then crept out of the room, and down the stairs, with the tears streaming down his red cheeks; and skulked across the street to his own house, with his hat slouched over his face, and his handkerchief held across his mouth. xxv. anty lynch's bed-side scene the second anty was a good deal exhausted by her interview with her brother, but towards evening she rallied a little, and told jane, who was sitting with her, that she wanted to say one word in private, to martin. jane was rather surprised, for though martin was in the habit of going into the room every morning to see the invalid, anty had never before asked for him. however, she went for martin, and found him. "martin," said she; "anty wants to see you alone, in private." "me?" said martin, turning a little red. "do you know what it's about?" "she didn't say a word, only she wanted to see you alone; but i'm thinking it's something about her brother; he was with her a long long time this morning, and went away more like a dead man than a live one. but come, don't keep her waiting; and, whatever you do, don't stay long; every word she spakes is killing her." martin followed his sister into the sick-room, and, gently taking anty's offered hand, asked her in a whisper, what he could do for her. jane went out; and, to do her justice sat herself down at a distance from the door, though she was in a painful state of curiosity as to what was being said within. "you're all too good to me, martin," said anty; "you'll spoil me, between you, minding every word i say so quick." martin assured her again, in a whisper, that anything and everything they could do for her was only a pleasure. "don't mind whispering," said anty; "spake out; your voice won't hurt me. i love to hear your voices, they're all so kind and good. but martin, i've business you must do for me, and that at once, for i feel within me that i'll soon be gone from this." "we hope not, anty; but it's all with god now--isn't it? no one knows that betther than yourself." "oh yes, i do know that; and i feel it is his pleasure that it should be so, and i don't fear to die. a few weeks back the thoughts of death, when they came upon me, nearly killed me; but that feeling's all gone now." martin did not know what answer to make; he again told her he hoped she would soon get better. it is a difficult task to talk properly to a dying person about death, and martin felt that he was quite incompetent to do so. "but," she continued, after a little, "there's still much that i want to do,--that i ought to do. in the first place, i must make my will." martin was again puzzled. this was another subject on which he felt himself equally unwilling to speak; he could not advise her not to make one; and he certainly would not advise her to do so. "your will, anty?--there's time enough for that; you'll be sthronger you know, in a day or two. doctor colligan says so--and then we'll talk about it." "i hope there is time enough, martin; but there isn't more than enough; it's not much that i'll have to say--" "were you spaking to barry about it this morning?" "oh, i was. i told him what i'd do: he'll have the property now, mostly all as one as av the ould man had left it to him. it would have been betther so, eh martin?" anty never doubted her lover's disinterestedness; at this moment she suspected him of no dirty longing after her money, and she did him only justice. when he came into her room he had no thoughts of inheriting anything from her. had he been sure that by asking he could have induced her to make a will in his favour, he would not have done so. but still his heart sunk a little within him when he heard her declare that she was going to leave everything back to her brother. it was, however, only for a moment; he remembered his honest determination firmly and resolutely to protect their joint property against any of her brother's attempts, should he ever marry her; but in no degree to strive or even hanker after it, unless it became his own in a fair, straightforward manner. "well, anty; i think you're right," said he. "but wouldn't it all go to barry, nathurally, without your bothering yourself about a will, and you so wake." "in course it would, at laist i suppose so; but martin," and she smiled faintly as she looked up into his face, "i want the two dear, dear girls, and i want yourself to have some little thing to remember me by; and your dear kind mother,--she doesn't want money, but if i ask her to take a few of the silver things in the house, i'm sure she'll keep them for my sake. oh, martin! i do love you all so very--so very much!" and the warm tears streamed down her cheeks. martin's eyes were affected, too: he made a desperate struggle to repress the weakness, but he could not succeed, and was obliged to own it by rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his coat. "and i'm shure, anty," said he, "we all love you; any one must love you who knew you." and then he paused: he was trying to say something of his own true personal regard for her, but he hardly knew how to express it. "we all love you as though you were one of ourselves--and so you are--it's all the same--at any rate it is to me." "and i would have been one of you, had i lived. i can talk to you more about it now, martin, than i ever could before, because i know i feel i am dying." "but you mustn't talk, anty; it wakens you, and you've had too much talking already this day." "it does me good, martin, and i must say what i have to say to you. i mayn't be able again. had it plazed god i should have lived, i would have prayed for nothing higher or betther than to be one of such a family as yourselves. had i been--had i been"--and now anty blushed again, and she also found a difficulty in expressing herself; but she soon got over it, and continued, "had i been permitted to marry you, martin, i think i would have been a good wife to you. i am very, very sure i would have been an affectionate one." "i'm shure you would--i'm shure you would, anty. god send you may still: av you war only once well again there's nothing now to hindher us." "you forget barry," anty said, with a shudder. "but it doesn't matther talking of that now"--martin was on the point of telling her that barry had agreed, under certain conditions, to their marriage: but, on second thoughts, he felt it would be useless to do so; and anty continued, "i would have done all i could, martin. i would have loved you fondly and truly. i would have liked what you liked, and, av i could, i would've made your home quiet and happy. your mother should have been my mother, and your sisthers my sisthers." "so they are now, anty--so they are now, my own, own anty--they love you as much as though they were." "god almighty bless them for their goodness, and you too, martin. i cannot tell you, i niver could tell you, how i've valued your honest thrue love, for i know you have loved me honestly and thruly; but i've always been afraid to spake to you. i've sometimes thought you must despise me, i've been so wake and cowardly." "despise you, anty?--how could i despise you, when i've always loved you?" "but now, martin, about poor barry--for he is poor. i've sometimes thought, as i've been lying here the long long hours awake, that, feeling to you as i do, i ought to be laving you what the ould man left to me." "i'd be sorry you did, anty. i'll not be saying but what i thought of that when i first looked for you, but it was never to take it from you, but to share it with you, and make you happy with it." "i know it, martin: i always knew it and felt it." "and now, av it's god's will that you should go from us, i'd rather barry had the money than us. we've enough, the lord be praised; and i wouldn't for worlds it should be said that it war for that we brought you among us; nor for all county galway would i lave it to barry to say, that when you were here, sick, and wake, and dying, we put a pen into your hand to make you sign a will to rob him of what should by rights be his." "that's it, dear martin; it wouldn't bless you if you had it; it can bless no one who looks to it alone for a blessing. it wouldn't make you happy--it would make you miserable, av people said you had that which you ought not to have. besides, i love my poor brother; he is my brother, my only real relation; we've lived all our lives together; and though he isn't what he should be, the fault is not all his own, i should not sleep in my grave, av i died with his curse upon me; as i should, av he found, when i am gone, that i'd willed the property all away. i've told him he'd have it all--nearly all; and i've begged him, prayed to him, from my dying bed, to mend his ways; to try and be something betther in the world than what i fear he's like to be. i think he minded what i said when he was here, for death-bed words have a solemn sound to the most worldly; but when i'm gone he'll be all alone, there'll be no one to look afther him. nobody loves him--no one even likes him; no one will live with him but those who mane to rob him; and he will be robbed, and plundered, and desaved, when he thinks he's robbing and desaving others." anty paused, more for breath than for a reply, but martin felt that he must say something. "indeed, anty, i fear he'll hardly come to good. he dhrinks too much, by all accounts; besides, he's idle, and the honest feeling isn't in him." "it's thrue, dear martin; it's too thrue. will you do me a great great favour, martin"--and she rose up a little and turned her moist clear eye full upon him--"will you show your thrue love to your poor anty, by a rale lasting kindness, but one that'll be giving you much much throuble and pain? afther i'm dead and gone--long long after i'm in my cold grave, will you do that for me, martin?". "indeed i will, anty," said martin, rather astonished, but with a look of solemn assurance; "anything that i can do, i will: you needn't dread my not remembering, but i fear it isn't much that i can do for you." "will you always think and spake of barry--will you always act to him and by him, and for him, not as a man whom you know and dislike, but as my brother--your own anty's only brother?--whatever he does, will you thry to make him do betther? whatever troubles he's in, will you lend him your hand? come what come may to him, will you be his frind? he has no frind now. when i'm gone, will you be a frind to him?" martin was much confounded. "he won't let me be his frind," he said; "he looks down on us and despises us; he thinks himself too high to be befrinded by us. besides, of all dunmore he hates us most." "he won't when he finds you haven't got the property from him: but frindship doesn't depend on letting--rale frindship doesn't. i don't want you to be dhrinking, and ating, and going about with him. god forbid!--you're too good for that. but when you find he wants a frind, come forward, and thry and make him do something for himself. you can't but come together; you'll be the executhor in the will; won't you, martin? and then he'll meet you about the property; he can't help it, and you must meet then as frinds. and keep that up. if he insults you, forgive it or my sake; if he's fractious and annoying, put up with it for my sake; for my sake thry to make him like you, and thry to make others like him." martin felt that this would be impossible, but he didn't say so--"no one respects him now, but all respect you. i see it in people's eyes and manners, without hearing what they say. av you spake well of him--at any rate kindly of him, people won't turn themselves so against him. will you do all this, for my sake?" martin solemnly promised that, as far as he could, he would do so; that, at any rate as far as himself was concerned, he would never quarrel with him. "you'll have very, very much to forgive," continued anty; "but then it's so sweet to forgive; and he's had no fond mother like you; he has not been taught any duties, any virtues, as you have. he has only been taught that money is the thing to love, and that he should worship nothing but that. martin, for my sake, will you look on him as a brother?--a wicked, bad, castaway brother; but still as a brother, to be forgiven, and, if possible, redeemed?" "as i hope for glory in heaven, i will," said martin; "but i think he'll go far from this; i think he'll quit dunmore." "maybe he will; perhaps it's betther he should; but he'll lave his name behind him. don't be too hard on that, and don't let others; and even av he does go, it'll not be long before he'll want a frind, and i don't know anywhere he can go that he's likely to find one. wherever he may go, or whatever he may do, you won't forget he was my brother; will you, martin? you won't forget he was your own anty's only brother." martin again gave her his solemn word that he would, to the best of his ability, act as a friend and brother to barry. "and now about the will." martin again endeavoured to dissuade her from thinking about a will just at present. "ah! but my heart's set upon it," she said; "i shouldn't be happy unless i did it, and i'm sure you don't want to make me unhappy, now. you must get me some lawyer here, martin; i'm afraid you're not lawyer enough for that yourself." "indeed i'm not, anty; it's a trade i know little about." "well; you must get me a lawyer; not to-morrow, for i know i shan't be well enough; but i hope i shall next day, and you may tell him just what to put in it. i've no secrets from you." and she told him exactly what she had before told her brother. "that'll not hurt him," she continued; "and i'd like to think you and the dear girls should accept something from me." martin then agreed to go to daly. he was on good terms with them all now, since making the last offer to them respecting the property; besides, as martin said, "he knew no other lawyer, and, as the will was so decidedly in barry's favour, who was so proper to make it as barry's own lawyer?" "good-bye now, martin," said anty; "we shall be desperately scolded for talking so long; but it was on my mind to say it all, and i'm betther now it's all over." "good night, dear anty," said martin, "i'll be seeing you to-morrow." "every day, i hope, martin, till it's all over. god bless you, god bless you all--and you above all. you don't know, martin--at laist you didn't know all along, how well, how thruly i've loved you. good night," and martin left the room, as barry had done, in tears. but he had no feeling within him of which he had cause to be ashamed. he was ashamed, and tried to hide his face, for he was not accustomed to be seen with the tears running down his cheeks; but still he had within him a strong sensation of gratified pride, as he reflected that he was the object of the warmest affection to so sweet a creature as anty lynch. "well, martin--what was it she wanted?" said his mother, as she met him at the bottom of the stairs. "i couldn't tell you now, mother," said he; "but av there was iver an angel on 'arth, it's anty lynch." and saying so, he pushed open the door and escaped into the street. "i wondher what she's been about now?" said the widow, speculating to herself--"well, av she does lave it away from barry, who can say but what she has a right to do as she likes with her own?--and who's done the most for her, i'd like to know?"--and pleasant prospects of her son's enjoying an independence flitted before her mind's eye. "but thin," she continued, talking to herself, "i wouldn't have it said in dunmore that a kelly demaned hisself to rob a lynch, not for twice all sim lynch ever had. well--we'll see; but no good 'll ever come of meddling with them people. jane, jane," she called out, at the top of her voice, "are you niver coming down, and letting me out of this?--bad manners to you." jane answered, in the same voice, from the parlour upstairs, "shure, mother, ain't i getting anty her tay?" "drat anty and her tay!--well, shure, i'm railly bothered now wid them lynches!--well, glory be to god, there's an end to everything--not that i'm wishing her anywhere but where she is; she's welcome, for mary kelly." xxvi. love's ambassador two days after the hunt in which poor goneaway was killed by barry's horse, ballindine received the following letter from his friend dot blake. limmer's hotel, th march, . dear frank, i and brien, and bottom, crossed over last friday night, and, thanks to the god of storms, were allowed to get quietly through it. the young chieftain didn't like being boxed on the quay a bit too well; the rattling of the chains upset him, and the fellows there are so infernally noisy and awkward, that i wonder he was ever got on board. it's difficult to make an irishman handy, but it's the very devil to make him quiet. there were four at his head, and three at his tail, two at the wheel, turning, and one up aloft, hallooing like a demon in the air; and when master brien showed a little aversion to this comic performance, they were going to drag him into the box _bon gré, mal gré_, till bottom interposed and saved the men and the horse from destroying each other. we got safe to middleham on saturday night, the greatest part of the way by rail. scott has a splendid string of horses. these english fellows do their work in tiptop style, only they think more of spending money than they do of making it. i waited to see him out on monday, when he'd got a trot, and he was as bright as though he'd never left the curragh. scott says he's a little too fine; but you know of course he must find some fault. to give igoe his due, he could not be in better condition, and scott was obliged to own that, _considering where he came from_, he was very well. i came on here on tuesday, and have taken thirteen wherever i could get it, and thought the money safe. i have got a good deal on, and won't budge till i do it at six to one; and i'm sure i'll bring him to that. i think he'll rise quickly, as he wants so little training, and as his qualities must be at once known now he's in scott's stables; so if you mean to put any more on you had better do it at once. so much for the stables. i left the other two at home, but have one of my own string here, as maybe i'll pick up a match: and now i wish to let you know a report that i heard this morning--at least a secret, which bids fair to become a report. it is said that kilcullen is to marry f---- w----, and that he has already paid heaven only knows how many thousand pounds of debt with her money; that the old earl has arranged it all, and that the beautiful heiress has reluctantly agreed to be made a viscountess. i'm very far from saying that i believe this; but it may suit you to know that i heard the arrangement mentioned before two other persons, one of whom was morris;--strange enough this, as he was one of the set at handicap lodge when you told them that the match with yourself was still on. i have no doubt the plan would suit father and son; you best know how far the lady may have been likely to accede. at any rate, my dear frank, if you'll take my advice, you'll not sit quiet till she does marry some one. you can't expect she'll wear the willow for you very long, if you do nothing yourself. write to her by post, and write to the earl by the same post, saying you have done so. tell her in the sweetest way you can, that you cannot live without seeing her, and getting your _congé_ [ ], if _congé_ it is to be, from her own dear lips; and tell him, in as few words, as you please, that you mean to do yourself the honour of knocking at his door on such and such a day--and do it. [footnote : congé--(french) dismissal, notice to quit] by the bye, kilcullen certainly returns to ireland immediately. there's been the devil's own smash among him and the jews. he has certainly been dividing money among them; but not near enough, by all accounts, to satisfy the half of them. for the sake of your reputation, if not of your pocket, don't let him walk off with the hundred and thirty thousand pounds. they say it's not a penny less. very faithfully yours, w. blake. shall i do anything for you here about brien? i think i might still get you eleven to one, but let me hear at once. as frank read the first portion of this epistle, his affection for his poor dear favourite nag returned in full force, and he felt all the pangs of remorse for having parted with him; but when he came to the latter part, to lord kilcullen's name, and the initials by which his own fanny was designated, he forgot all about horse and owner; became totally regardless of thirteen, eleven, and six to one, and read on hastily to the end; read it all again--then closed the letter, and put it in his pocket, and remained for a considerable time in silent contemplation, trying to make up his mind what he would do. nobody was with him as he opened his post-bag, which he took from the messenger as the boy was coming up to the house; he therefore read his letter alone, on the lawn, and he continued pacing up and down before the house with a most perturbed air, for half an hour. kilcullen going to marry fanny wyndham! so, that was the cause of lord cashel's singular behaviour--his incivility, and refusal to allow frank to see his ward. "what! to have arranged it all in twenty-four hours," thought frank to himself; "to have made over his ward's money to his son, before her brother, from whom she inherited it, was in his grave: to determine at once to reject an accepted suitor for the sake of closing on the poor girl's money--and without the slightest regard for her happiness, without a thought for her welfare! and then, such lies," said the viscount, aloud, striking his heel into the grass in his angry impetuosity; "such base, cruel lies!--to say that she had authorised him, when he couldn't have dared to make such a proposal to her, and her brother but two days dead. well; i took him for a stiff-necked pompous fool, but i never thought him such an avaricious knave." and fanny, too--could fanny have agreed, so soon, to give her hand to another? she could not have transferred her heart. his own dear, fond fanny! a short time ago they had been all in all to each other; and now so completely estranged as they were! however, dot was right; up to this time fanny might be quite true to him; indeed, there was not ground even for doubting her, for it was evident that no reliance was to be placed in lord cashel's asseverations. but still he could not expect that she should continue to consider herself engaged, if she remained totally neglected by her lover. he must do something, and that at once; but there was very great difficulty in deciding what that something was to be. it was easy enough for dot to say, first write, and then go. if he were to write, what security was there that his letter would be allowed to reach fanny? and, if he went, how much less chance was there that he would be allowed to see her. and then, again to be turned out of the house! again informed, by that pompous scheming earl, that his visits there were not desired. or, worse still, not to be admitted; to be driven from the door by a footman who would well know for what he came! no; come what come might, he would never again go to grey abbey; at least not unless he was specially and courteously invited thither by the owner; and then it should only be to marry his ward, and take her from the odious place, never to return again. "the impudent impostor!" continued frank to himself; "to pretend to suspect me, when he was himself hatching his dirty, mercenary, heartless schemes!" but still the same question recurred,--what was to be done? venting his wrath on lord cashel would not get him out of the difficulty: going was out of the question; writing was of little use. could he not send somebody else? some one who could not be refused admittance to fanny, and who might at any rate learn what her wishes and feelings were? he did not like making love by deputy; but still, in his present dilemma, he could think of nothing better. but whom was he to send? bingham blake was a man of character, and would not make a fool of himself; but he was too young; he would not be able to make his way to fanny. no--a young unmarried man would not do.--mat tierney?--he was afraid of no one, and always cool and collected; but then, mat was in london; besides, he was a sort of friend of kilcullen's. general bourke? no one could refuse an _entrée_ to his venerable grey hairs, and polished manner; besides, his standing in the world was so good, so unexceptionable; but then the chances were he would not go on such an errand; he was too old to be asked to take such a troublesome service; and besides, if asked, it was very probable he would say that he considered lord cashel entitled to his ward's obedience. the rector--the rev. joseph armstrong? he must be the man: there was, at any rate, respectability in his profession; and he had sufficient worldly tact not easily to be thrust aside from his object: the difficulty would be, whether he had a coat sufficiently decent to appear in at grey abbey. after mature consideration he made up his mind that the parson should be his ambassador. he would sooner have confided in bingham blake, but an unmarried man would not do. no; the parson must be the man. frank was, unfortunately, but little disposed to act in any case without advice, and in his anxiety to consult some one as to consulting the parson, returned into the house, to make a clear breast of it to his mother. he found her in the breakfast-room with the two girls, and the three were holding council deep. "oh, here's frank," said sophy; "we'd better tell him all about it at once--and he'll tell us which she'd like best." "we didn't mean to tell you," said guss; "but i and sophy are going to work two sofas for the drawing-room--in berlin wool, you know: they'll be very handsome--everybody has them now, you know; they have a splendid pair at ballyhaunis which nora and her cousin worked." "but we want to know what pattern would suit fanny's taste," said sophy. "well; you can't know that," said frank rather pettishly, "so you'd better please yourselves." "oh, but you must know what she likes," continued guss; "i'm for this," and she, displayed a pattern showing forth two gorgeous macaws--each with plumage of the brightest colours. "the colours are so bright, and the feathers will work in so well." "i don't like anything in worsted-work but flowers," said sophy; "nora dillon says she saw two most beautiful wreaths at that shop in grafton street, both hanging from bars, you know; and that would be so much prettier. i'm sure fanny would like flowers best; wouldn't she now, frank?--mamma thinks the common cross-bar patterns are nicer for furniture." "indeed i do, my dear," said mrs o'kelly; "and you see them much more common now in well-furnished drawing-rooms. but still i'd much sooner have them just what fanny would like best. surely, frank, you must have heard her speak about worsted-work?" all this completely disconcerted frank, and made him very much out of love with his own plan of consulting his mother. he gave the trio some not very encouraging answer as to their good-natured intentions towards his drawing-room, and again left them alone. "well; there's nothing for it but to send the parson; i don't think he'll make a fool of himself, but then i know he'll look so shabby. however, here goes," and he mounted his nag, and rode off to ballindine glebe. the glebe-house was about a couple of miles from kelly's court, and it was about half-past four when lord ballindine got there. he knocked at the door, which was wide open, though it was yet only the last day of march, and was told by a remarkably slatternly maid-servant, that her master was "jist afther dinner;" that he was stepped out, but was about the place, and could be "fetched in at oncet;"--and would his honour walk in? and so lord ballindine was shown into the rectory drawing-room on one side of the passage (alias hall), while the attendant of all work went to announce his arrival in the rectory dining-room on the other side. here mrs armstrong was sitting among her numerous progeny, securing the _débris_ of the dinner from their rapacious paws, and endeavouring to make two very unruly boys consume the portions of fat which had been supplied to them with, as they loudly declared, an unfairly insufficient quantum of lean. as the girl was good-natured enough to leave both doors wide open, frank had the full advantage of the conversation. "now, greg," said the mother, "if you leave your meat that way i'll have it put by for you, and you shall have nothing but potatoes till it's ate." "why, mother, it's nothing but tallow; look here; you gave me all the outside part." "i'll tell your dada, and see what he'll say, if you call the meat tallow; and you're just as bad, joe; worse if anything--gracious me, here's waste! well, i'll lock it up for you, and you shall both of you eat it to-morrow, before you have a bit of anything else." then followed a desperate fit of coughing. "my poor minny!" said the mother, "you're just as bad as ever. why would you go out on the wet grass?--is there none of the black currant jam left?" "no, mother," coughed minny, "not a bit." "greg ate it all," peached sarah, an elder sister; "i told him not, but he would." "greg, i'll have you flogged, and you never shall come from school again. what's that you're saying, mary?" "there's a jintleman in the drawing-room as is axing afther masther." "gentleman--what gentleman?" asked the lady. "sorrow a know i know, ma'am!" said mary, who was a new importation--"only, he's a dark, sightly jintleman, as come on a horse." "and did you send for the master?" "i did, ma'am; i was out in the yard, and bad patsy go look for him." "it's nicholas dillon, i'll bet twopence," said greg, jumping up to rush into the other room: "he's come about the black colt, i know." "stay where you are, greg; and don't go in there with your dirty face and fingers;" and, after speculating a little longer, the lady went into the drawing-room herself; though, to tell the truth, her own face and fingers were hardly in a state suitable for receiving company. mrs armstrong marched into the drawing-room with something of a stately air, to meet the strange gentleman, and there she found her old friend lord ballindine. whoever called at the rectory, and at whatever hour the visit might be made, poor mrs armstrong was sure to apologise for the confusion in which she was found. she had always just got rid of a servant, and could not get another that suited her; or there was some other commonplace reason for her being discovered _en déshabille_ [ ]. however, she managed to talk to frank for a minute or two with tolerable volubility, till her eyes happening to dwell on her own hands, which were certainly not as white as a lady's should be, she became a little uncomfortable and embarrassed--tried to hide them in her drapery--then remembered that she had on her morning slippers, which were rather the worse for wear; and, feeling too much ashamed of her _tout ensemble_ to remain, hurried out of the room, saying that she would go and see where armstrong could possibly have got himself to. she did not appear again to lord ballindine. [footnote : en déshabille--(french) partly or scantily dressed] poor mrs armstrong!--though she looked so little like one, she had been brought up as a lady, carefully and delicately; and her lot was the more miserable, for she knew how lamentable were her present deficiencies. when she married a poor curate, having, herself, only a few hundred pounds' fortune, she had made up her mind to a life of comparative poverty; but she had meant even in her poverty to be decent, respectable, and lady-like. weak health, nine children, an improvident husband, and an income so lamentably ill-suited to her wants, had however been too much for her, and she had degenerated into a slatternly, idle scold. in a short time the parson came in from his farm, rusty and muddy--rusty, from his clerical dress; muddy from his farming occupations; and lord ballindine went into the business of his embassy. he remembered, however, how plainly he had heard the threats about the uneaten fat, and not wishing the household to hear all he had to say respecting fanny wyndham, he took the parson out into the road before the house, and, walking up and down, unfolded his proposal. mr armstrong expressed extreme surprise at the nature of the mission on which he was to be sent; secondly at the necessity of such a mission at all; and thirdly, lastly, and chiefly, at the enormous amount of the heiress's fortune, to lose which he declared would be an unpardonable sin on lord ballindine's part. he seemed to be not at all surprised that lord cashel should wish to secure so much money in his own family; nor did he at all participate in the unmeasured reprobation with which frank loaded the worthy earl's name. one hundred and thirty thousand pounds would justify anything, and he thought of his nine poor children, his poor wife, his poor home, his poor two hundred a-year, and his poor self. he calculated that so very rich a lady would most probably have some interest in the church, which she could not but exercise in his favour, if he were instrumental in getting her married; and he determined to go. then the, difficult question as to the wardrobe occurred to him. besides, he had no money for the road. those, however, were minor evils to be got over, and he expressed himself willing to undertake the embassy. "but, my dear ballindine; what is it i'm to do?" said he. "of course you know, i'd do anything for you, as of course i ought--anything that ought to be done; but what is it exactly you wish me to say?" "you see, armstrong, that pettifogging schemer told me he didn't wish me to come to his house again, and i wouldn't, even for fanny wyndham, force myself into any man's house. he would not let me see her when i was there, and i could not press it, because her brother was only just dead; so i'm obliged to take her refusal second hand. now i don't believe she ever sent the message he gave me. i think he has made her believe that i'm deserting and ill-treating her; and in this way she may be piqued and tormented into marrying kilcullen." "i see it now: upon my word then lord cashel knows how to play his cards! but if i go to grey abbey i can't see her without seeing him." "of course not--but i'm coming to that. you see, i have no reason to doubt fanny's love; she has assured me of it a thousand times. i wouldn't say so to you even, as it looks like boasting, only it's so necessary you should know how the land lies; besides, everybody knew it; all the world knew we were engaged." "oh, boasting--it's no boasting at all: it would be very little good my going to grey abbey, if she had not told you so." "well, i think that if you were to see lord cashel and tell him, in your own quiet way, who you are; that you are rector of ballindine, and my especial friend; and that you had come all the way from county mayo especially to see miss wyndham, that you might hear from herself whatever message she had to send to me--if you were to do this, i don't think he would dare to prevent you from seeing her." "if he did, of course i would put it to him that you, who were so long received as miss wyndham's accepted swain, were at least entitled to so much consideration at her hands; and that i must demand so much on your behalf, wouldn't that be it, eh?" "exactly. i see you understand it, as if you'd been at it all your life; only don't call me her swain." "well, i'll think of another word--her beau." "for heaven's sake, no!--that's ten times worse." "well, her lover?" "that's at any rate english: but say, her accepted husband--that'll be true and plain: if you do that i think you will manage to see her, and then--" "well, then--for that'll be the difficult part." "oh, when you see her, one simple word will do: fanny wyndham loves plain dealing. merely tell her that lord ballindine has not changed his mind; and that he wishes to know from herself, by the mouth of a friend whom he can trust, whether she has changed hers. if she tells you that she has, i would not follow her farther though she were twice as rich as croesus. i'm not hunting her for her money; but i am determined that lord cashel shall not make us both miserable by forcing her into a marriage with his _roué_ of a son." "well, ballindine, i'll go; but mind, you must not blame me if i fail. i'll do the best i can for you." "of course i won't. when will you be able to start?" "why, i suppose there's no immediate hurry?" said the parson, remembering that the new suit of clothes must be procured. "oh, but there is. kilcullen will be there at once; and considering how long it is since i saw fanny--three months, i believe--no time should be lost." "how long is her brother dead?" "oh, a month--or very near it." "well, i'll go monday fortnight; that'll do, won't it?" it was at last agreed that the parson was to start for grey abbey on the monday week following; that he was to mention to no one where he was going; that he was to tell his wife that he was going on business he was not allowed to talk about;--she would be a very meek woman if she rested satisfied with that!--and that he was to present himself at grey abbey on the following wednesday. "and now," said the parson, with some little hesitation, "my difficulty commences. we country rectors are never rich; but when we've nine children, ballindine, it's rare to find us with money in our pockets. you must advance me a little cash for the emergencies of the road." "my dear fellow! of course the expense must be my own. i'll send you down a note between this and then; i haven't enough about me now. or, stay--i'll give you a cheque," and he turned into the house, and wrote him a cheque for twenty pounds. that'll get the coat into the bargain, thought the rector, as he rather uncomfortably shuffled the bit of paper into his pocket. he had still a gentleman's dislike to be paid for his services. but then, necessity--how stern she is! he literally could not have gone without it. xxvii. mr lynch's last resource on the following morning lord ballindine as he had appointed to do, drove over to dunmore, to settle with martin about the money, and, if necessary, to go with him to the attorney's office in tuam. martin had as yet given daly no answer respecting barry lynch's last proposal; and though poor anty's health made it hardly necessary that any answer should be given, still lord ballindine had promised to see the attorney, if martin thought it necessary. the family were all in great confusion that morning, for anty was very bad--worse than she had ever been. she was in a paroxysm of fever, was raving in delirium, and in such a state that martin and his sister were occasionally obliged to hold her in bed. sally, the old servant, had been in the room for a considerable time during the morning, standing at the foot of the bed with a big tea-pot in her hand, and begging in a whining voice, from time to time, that "miss anty, god bless her, might get a dhrink of tay!" but, as she had been of no other service, and as the widow thought it as well that she should not hear what anty said in her raving, she had been desired to go down-stairs, and was sitting over the fire. she had fixed the big tea-pot among the embers, and held a slop-bowl of tea in her lap, discoursing to nelly, who with her hair somewhat more than ordinarily dishevelled, in token of grief for anty's illness, was seated on a low stool, nursing a candle-stick. "well, nelly," said the prophetic sally, boding evil in her anger--for, considering how long she had been in the family, she had thought herself entitled to hear anty's ravings; "mind, i tell you, good won't come of this. the virgin prothect us from all harum!--it niver war lucky to have sthrangers dying in the house." "but shure miss anty's no stranger." "faix thin, her words must be sthrange enough when the likes o' me wouldn't be let hear 'em. not but what i did hear, as how could i help it? there'll be no good come of it. who's to be axed to the wake, i'd like to know." "axed to the wake, is it? why, shure, won't there be rashions of ating and lashings of dhrinking? the misthress isn't the woman to spare, and sich a frind as miss anty dead in the house. let 'em ax whom they like." "you're a fool, nelly--ax whom they like!--that's asy said. is they to ax barry lynch, or is they to let it alone, and put the sisther into the sod without a word said to him about it? god be betwixt us and all evil"--and she took a long pull at the slop-bowl; and, as the liquid flowed down her throat, she gradually threw back her head till the top of her mop cap was flattened against the side of the wide fire-place, and the bowl was turned bottom upwards, so that the half-melted brown sugar might trickle into her mouth. she then gave a long sigh, and repeated that difficult question--"who is they to ax to the wake?" it was too much for nelly to answer: she re-echoed the sigh, and more closely embraced the candlestick. "besides, nelly, who'll have the money when she's gone?--and she's nigh that already, the blessed virgin guide and prothect her. who'll get all her money?" "why; won't mr martin? sure, an't they as good as man and wife--all as one?" "that's it; they'll be fighting and tearing, and tatthering about that money, the two young men will, you'll see. there'll be lawyering, an' magisthrate's work--an' factions--an' fighthins at fairs; an' thin, as in course the lynches can't hould their own agin the kellys, there'll be undherhand blows, an' blood, an' murdher!--you'll see else." "glory be to god," involuntarily prayed nelly, at the thoughts suggested by sally's powerful eloquence. "there will, i tell ye," continued sally, again draining the tea-pot into the bowl. "sorrow a lie i'm telling you;" and then, in a low whisper across the fire, "didn't i see jist now miss anty ketch a hould of misther martin, as though she'd niver let him go agin, and bid him for dear mercy's sake have a care of barry lynch?--shure i knowed what that meant. and thin, didn't he thry and do for herself with his own hands? didn't biddy say she'd swear she heard him say he'd do it?--and av he wouldn't boggle about his own sisther, it's little he'd mind what he'd do to an out an out inemy like misther martin." "warn't that a knock at the hall-door, sally?" "run and see, girl; may-be it's the docthor back again; only mostly he don't mind knocking much." nelly went to the door, and opened it to lord ballindine, who had left his gig in charge of his servant. he asked for martin, who in a short time, joined him in the parlour. "this is a dangerous place for your lordship, now," said he: "the fever is so bad in the house. thank god, nobody seems to have taken it yet, but there's no knowing." "is she still so bad, martin?" "worse than iver, a dale worse; i don't think it'll last long, now: another bout such as this last 'll about finish it. but i won't keep your lordship. i've managed about the money;"--and the necessary writing was gone through, and the cash was handed to lord ballindine. "you've given over all thoughts then, about lynch's offer--eh, martin?--i suppose you've done with all that, now?" "quite done with it, my lord; and done with fortune-hunting too. i've seen enough this last time back to cure me altogether--at laist, i hope so." "she doesn't mean to make any will, then?" "why, she wishes to make one, but i doubt whether she'll ever be able;" and then martin gave his landlord an account of all that anty had said about her will, her wishes as to the property, her desire to leave something to him (martin) and his sisters: and last he repeated the strong injunctions which anty had given him respecting her poor brother, and her assurance, so full of affection, that had she lived she would have done her best to make him happy as her husband. lord ballindine was greatly affected; he warmly shook hands with martin, told him how highly he thought of his conduct, and begged him to take care that anty had the gratification of making her will as she had desired to do. "the fact," lord ballindine said, "of your being named in the will as her executor will give you more control over barry than anything else could do." he then proposed at once to go, himself, to tuam, and explain to daly what it was miss lynch wished him to do. this lord ballindine did, and the next day the will was completed. for a week or ten days anty remained in much the same condition. after each attack of fever it was expected that she would perish from weakness and exhaustion; but she still held on, and then the fever abated, and doctor colligan thought that it was possible she might recover: she was, however, so dreadfully emaciated and worn out, there was so little vitality left in her, that he would not encourage more than the faintest hope. anty herself was too weak either to hope or fear;--and the women of the family, who from continual attendance knew how very near to death she was, would hardly allow themselves to think that she could recover. there were two persons, however, who from the moment of her amendment felt an inward sure conviction of her convalescence. they were martin and barry. to the former this feeling was of course one of unalloyed delight. he went over to kelly's court, and spoke there of his betrothed as though she were already sitting up and eating mutton chops; was congratulated by the young ladies on his approaching nuptials, and sauntered round the kelly's court shrubberies with frank, talking over his future prospects; asking advice about this and that, and propounding the pros and cons on that difficult question, whether he would live at dunmore, or build a house at toneroe for himself and anty. with barry, however, the feeling was very different: he was again going to have his property wrenched from him; he was again to suffer the pangs he had endured, when first he learned the purport of his father's will; after clutching the fruit for which he had striven, as even he himself felt, so basely, it was again to be torn from him so cruelly. he had been horribly anxious for a termination to anty's sufferings; horribly impatient to feel himself possessor of the whole. from day to day, and sometimes two or three times a day, he had seen dr colligan, and inquired how things were going on: he had especially enjoined that worthy man to come up after his morning call at the inn, and get a glass of sherry at dunmore house; and the doctor had very generally done so. for some time barry endeavoured to throw the veil of brotherly regard over the true source of his anxiety; but the veil was much too thin to hide what it hardly covered, and barry, as he got intimate with the doctor, all but withdrew it altogether. when barry would say, "well, doctor, how is she to-day?" and then remark, in answer to the doctor's statement that she was very bad--"well, i suppose it can't last much longer; but it's very tedious, isn't it, poor thing?" it was plain enough that the brother was not longing for the sister's recovery. and then he would go a little further, and remark that "if the poor thing was to go, it would be better for all she went at once," and expressed an opinion that he was rather ill-treated by being kept so very long in suspense. doctor colligan ought to have been shocked at this; and so he was, at first, to a certain extent, but he was not a man of a very high tone of feeling. he had so often heard of heirs to estates longing for the death of the proprietors of them; he had so often seen relatives callous and indifferent at the loss of those who ought to have been dear to them; it seemed so natural to him that barry should want the estate, that he gradually got accustomed to his impatient inquiries, and listened to, and answered them, without disgust. he fell too into a kind of intimacy with barry; he liked his daily glass, or three or four glasses, of sherry; and besides, it was a good thing for him to stand well in a professional point of view with a man who had the best house in the village, and who would soon have eight hundred a-year. if barry showed his impatience and discontent as long as the daily bulletins told him that anty was still alive, though dying, it may easily be imagined that he did not hide his displeasure when he first heard that she was alive and better. his brow grew very black, his cheeks flushed, the drops of sweat stood on his forehead, and he said, speaking through his closed teeth, "d---- it, doctor, you don't mean to tell me she's recovering now?" "i don't say, mr lynch, whether she is or no; but it's certain the fever has left her. she's very weak, very weak indeed; i never knew a person to be alive and have less life in 'em; but the fever has left her and there certainly is hope." "hope!" said barry--"why, you told me she couldn't live!" "i don't say she will, mr lynch, but i say she may. of course we must do what we can for her," and the doctor took his sherry and went his way. how horrible then was the state of barry's mind! for a time he was absolutely stupified with despair; he stood fixed on the spot where the doctor had left him, realising, bringing home to himself, the tidings which he had heard. his sister to rise again, as though it were from the dead, to push him off his stool! was he to fall again into that horrid low abyss in which even the tuam attorney had scorned him; in which he had even invited that odious huxter's son to marry his sister and live in his house? what! was he again to be reduced to poverty, to want, to despair, by her whom he so hated? could nothing be done?--something must be done--she should not be, could not be allowed to leave that bed of sickness alive. "there must be an end of her," he muttered through his teeth, "or she'll drive me mad!" and then he thought how easily he might have smothered her, as she lay there clasping his hand, with no one but themselves in the room; and as the thought crossed his brain his eyes nearly started from his head, the sweat ran down his face, he clutched the money in his trousers' pocket till the coin left an impression on his flesh, and he gnashed his teeth till his jaws ached with his own violence. but then, in that sick-room, he had been afraid of her; he could not have touched her then for the wealth of the bank of england!--but now! the devil sat within him, and revelled with full dominion over his soul: there was then no feeling left akin to humanity to give him one chance of escape; there was no glimmer of pity, no shadow of remorse, no sparkle of love, even though of a degraded kind; no hesitation in the will for crime, which might yet, by god's grace, lead to its eschewal: all there was black, foul, and deadly, ready for the devil's deadliest work. murder crouched there, ready to spring, yet afraid;--cowardly, but too thirsty alter blood to heed its own fears. theft,--low, pilfering, pettifogging, theft; avarice, lust, and impotent, scalding hatred. controlled by these the black blood rushed quick to and from his heart, filling him with sensual desires below the passions of a brute, but denying him one feeling or one appetite for aught that was good or even human. again the next morning the doctor was questioned with intense anxiety; "was she going?--was she drooping?--had yesterday's horrid doubts raised only a false alarm?" it was utterly beyond barry's power to make any attempt at concealment, even of the most shallow kind. "well, doctor, is she dying yet?" was the brutal question he put. "she is, if anything, rather stronger;" answered the doctor, shuddering involuntarily at the open expression of barry's atrocious wish, and yet taking his glass of wine. "the devil she is!" muttered barry, throwing himself into an arm-chair. he sat there some little time, and the doctor also sat down, said nothing, but continued sipping his wine. "in the name of mercy, what must i do?" said barry, speaking more to himself than to the other. "why, you've enough, mr lynch, without hers; you can do well enough without it." "enough! would you think you had enough if you were robbed of more than half of all you have. half, indeed," he shouted--"i may say all, at once. i don't believe there's a man in ireland would bear it. nor will i." again there was a silence; but still, somehow, colligan seemed to stay longer than usual. every now and then barry would for a moment look full in his face, and almost instantly drop his eyes again. he was trying to mature future plans; bringing into shape thoughts which had occurred to him, in a wild way at different times; proposing to himself schemes, with which his brain had been long loaded, but which he had never resolved on,--which he had never made palpable and definite. one thing he found sure and certain; on one point he was able to become determined: he could not do it alone; he must have an assistant; he must buy some one's aid; and again he looked at colligan, and again his eyes fell. there was no encouragement there, but there was no discouragement. why did he stay there so long? why did he so slowly sip that third glass of wine? was he waiting to be asked? was he ready, willing, to be bought? there must be something in his thoughts--he must have some reason for sitting there so long, and so silent, without speaking a word, or taking his eyes off the fire. barry had all but made up his mind to ask the aid he wanted; but he felt that he was not prepared to do so--that he should soon quiver and shake, that he could not then carry it through. he felt that he wanted spirit to undertake his own part in the business, much less to inspire another with the will to assist him in it. at last he rose abruptly from his chair, and said, "will you dine with me to-day, colligan?--i'm so down in the mouth, so deucedly hipped, it will be a charity." "well," said colligan, "i don't care if i do. i must go down to your sister in the evening, and i shall be near her here." "yes, of course; you'll be near her here, as you say: come at six, then. by the bye, couldn't you go to anty first, so that we won't be disturbed over our punch?" "i must see her the last thing,--about nine, but i can look up again afterwards, for a minute or so. i don't stay long with her now: it's better not." "well, then, you'll be here at six?" "yes, six sharp;" and at last the doctor got up and went away. it was odd that doctor colligan should have sat thus long; it showed a great want of character and of good feeling in him. he should never have become intimate, or even have put up with a man expressing such wishes as those which so often fell from barry's lips. but he was entirely innocent of the thoughts which barry attributed to him. it had never even occurred to him that barry, bad as he was, would wish to murder his sister. no; bad, heedless, sensual as doctor colligan might be, barry was a thousand fathoms deeper in iniquity than he. as soon as he had left the room the other uttered a long, deep sigh. it was a great relief to him to be alone: he could now collect his thoughts, mature his plans, and finally determine. he took his usual remedy in his difficulties, a glass of brandy; and, going out into the garden, walked up and down the gravel walk almost unconsciously, for above an hour. yes: he would do it. he would not be a coward. the thing had been done a thousand times before. hadn't he heard of it over and over again? besides, colligan's manner was an assurance to him that he would not boggle at such a job. but then, of course, he must be paid--and barry began to calculate how much he must offer for the service; and, when the service should be performed, how he might avoid the fulfilment of his portion of the bargain. he went in and ordered the dinner; filled the spirit decanters, opened a couple of bottles of wine, and then walked out again. in giving his orders, and doing the various little things with which he had to keep himself employed, everybody, and everything seemed strange to him. he hardly knew what he was about, and felt almost as though he were in a dream. he had quite made up his mind as to what he would do; his resolution was fixed to carry it through but:--still there was the but,--how was he to open it to doctor colligan? he walked up and down the gravel path for a long time, thinking of this; or rather trying to think of it, for his thoughts would fly away to all manner of other subjects, and he continually found himself harping upon some trifle, connected with anty, but wholly irrespective of her death; some little thing that she had done for him, or ought to have done; something she had said a long time ago, and which he had never thought of till now; something she had worn, and which at the time he did not even know that he had observed; and as often as he found his mind thus wandering, he would start off at a quicker pace, and again endeavour to lay out a line of conduct for the evening. at last, however, he came to the conclusion that it would be better to trust to the chapter of chances: there was one thing, or rather two things, he could certainly do: he could make the doctor half drunk before he opened on the subject, and he would take care to be in the same state himself. so he walked in and sat still before the fire, for the two long remaining hours, which intervened before the clock struck six. it was about noon when the doctor left him, and during those six long solitary hours no one feeling of remorse had entered his breast. he had often doubted, hesitated as to the practicability of his present plan, but not once had he made the faintest effort to overcome the wish to have the deed done. there was not one moment in which he would not most willingly have had his sister's blood upon his hands, upon his brain, upon his soul; could he have willed and accomplished her death, without making himself liable to the penalties of the law. at length doctor colligan came, and barry made a great effort to appear unconcerned and in good humour. "and how is she now, doctor?" he said, as they sat down to table. "is it anty?--why, you know i didn't mean to see her since i was here this morning, till nine o'clock." "oh, true; so you were saying. i forgot. well, will you take a glass of wine?"--and barry filled his own glass quite full. he drank his wine at dinner like a glutton, who had only a short time allowed him, and wished during that time to swallow as much as possible; and he tried to hurry his companion in the same manner. but the doctor didn't choose to have wine forced down his throat; he wished to enjoy himself, and remonstrated against barry's violent hospitality. at last, dinner was over; the things were taken away, they both drew their chairs over the fire, and began the business of the evening--the making and consumption of punch. barry had determined to begin upon the subject which lay so near his heart, at eight o'clock. he had thought it better to fix an exact hour, and had calculated that the whole matter might be completed before colligan went over to the inn. he kept continually looking at his watch, and gulping down his drink, and thinking over and over again how he would begin the conversation. "you're very comfortable here, lynch," said the doctor, stretching his long legs before the fire, and putting his dirty boots upon the fender. "yes, indeed," said barry, not knowing what the other was saying. "all you want's a wife, and you'd have as warm a house as there is in galway. you'll be marrying soon, i suppose?" "well, i wouldn't wonder if i did. you don't take your punch; there's brandy there, if you like it better than whiskey." "this is very good, thank you--couldn't be better. you haven't much land in your own hands, have you?" "why, no--i don't think i have. what's that you're saying?--land?--no, not much: if there's a thing i hate, it's farming." "well, upon my word you're wrong. i don't see what else a gentleman has to do in the country. i wish to goodness i could give up the gallipots [ ] and farm a few acres of my own land. there's nothing i wish so much as to get a bit of land: indeed, i've been looking out for it, but it's so difficult to get." [footnote : gallipots--a gallipot was a small ceramic vessel used by apothecaries to hold medicines. the term was also used colloquially to refer to apothecaries themselves and even physicians (trollope so uses the term in later chapters).] up to this, barry had hardly listened to what the doctor had been saying; but now he was all attention. "so that is to be his price," thought he to himself, "he'll cost me dear, but i suppose he must have it." barry looked at his watch: it was near eight o'clock, but he seemed to feel that all he had drank had had no effect on him: it had not given him the usual pluck; it had not given him the feeling of reckless assurance, which he mistook for courage and capacity. "if you've a mind to be a tenant of mine, colligan, i'll keep a look out for you. the land's crowded now, but there's a lot of them cottier [ ] devils i mean to send to the right about. they do the estate no good, and i hate the sight of them. but you know how the property's placed, and while anty's in this wretched state, of course i can do nothing." [footnote : cottier--an irish tenant renting land directly from the owner, with the price determined by bidding] "will you bear it in mind though, lynch? when a bit of land does fall into your hands, i should be glad to be your tenant. i'm quite in earnest, and should take it as a great favour." "i'll not forget it;" and then he remained silent for a minute. what an opportunity this was for him to lose! colligan so evidently wished to be bribed--so clearly showed what the price was which was to purchase him. but still he could not ask the fatal question. again he sat silent for a while, till he looked at his watch, and found it was a quarter past eight. "never fear," he said, referring to the farm; "you shall have it, and it shall not be the worst land on the estate that i'll give you, you may be sure; for, upon my soul, i have a great regard for you; i have indeed." the doctor thanked him for his good opinion. "oh! i'm not blarneying you; upon my soul i'm not; that's not the way with me at all; and when you know me better you'll say so,--and you may be sure you shall have the farm by michaelmas." and then, in a voice which he tried to make as unconcerned as possible, he continued: "by the bye, colligan, when do you think this affair of anty's _will_ be over? it's the devil and all for a man not to know when he'll be his own master." "oh, you mustn't calculate on your sister's property at all now," said the other, in an altered voice. "i tell you it's very probable she may recover." this again silenced barry, and he let the time go by, till the doctor took up his hat, to go down to his patient. "you'll not be long, i suppose?" said barry. "well, it's getting late," said colligan, "and i don't think i'll be coming back to-night." "oh, but you will; indeed, you must. you promised you would, you know, and i want to hear how she goes on." "well, i'll just come up, but i won't stay, for i promised mrs colligan to be home early." this was always the doctor's excuse when he wished to get away. he never allowed his domestic promises to draw him home when there was anything to induce him to stay abroad; but, to tell the truth, he was getting rather sick of his companion. the doctor took his hat, and went to his patient. "he'll not be above ten minutes or at any rate a quarter of an hour," thought barry, "and then i must do it. how he sucked it all in about the farm!--that's the trap, certainly." and he stood leaning with his back against the mantel-piece, and his coat-laps hanging over his arm, waiting for and yet fearing, the moment of the doctor's return. it seemed an age since he went. barry looked at his watch almost every minute; it was twenty minutes past nine, five-and-twenty--thirty--forty--three quarters of an hour--"by heaven!" said he, "the man is not coming! he is going to desert me--and i shall be ruined! why the deuce didn't i speak out when the man was here!" at last his ear caught the sound of the doctor's heavy foot on the gravel outside the door, and immediately afterwards the door bell was rung. barry hastily poured out a glass of raw spirits and swallowed it; he then threw himself into his chair, and doctor colligan again entered the room. "what a time you've been, colligan! why i thought you weren't coming all night. now, terry, some hot water, and mind you look sharp about it. well, how's anty to-night?" "weak, very weak; but mending, i think. the disease won't kill her now; the only thing is whether the cure will." "well, doctor, you can't expect me to be very anxious about it: unfortunately, we had never any reason to be proud of anty, and it would be humbug in me to pretend that i wish she should recover, to rob me of what you know i've every right to consider my own." terry brought the hot water in, and left the room. "well, i can't say you do appear very anxious about it. i'll just swallow one dandy of punch, and then i'll get home. i'm later now than i meant to be." "nonsense, man. the idea of your being in a hurry, when everybody knows that a doctor can never tell how long he may be kept in a sick-room! but come now, tell the truth; put yourself in my condition, and do you mean to say you'd be very anxious that anty should recover?--would you like your own sister to rise from her death-bed to rob you of everything you have? for, by heaven! it is robbery--nothing less. she's so stiff-necked, that there's no making any arrangement with her. i've tried everything, fair means and foul, and nothing'll do but she must go and marry that low young kelly--so immeasurably beneath her, you know, and of course only scheming for her money. put yourself in my place, i say; and tell me fairly what your own wishes would be?" "i was always fond of my brothers and sisters," answered the doctor; "and we couldn't well rob each other, for none of us had a penny to lose." "that's a different thing, but just supposing you were exactly in my shoes at this moment, do you mean to tell me that you'd be glad she should get well?--that you'd be glad she should be able to deprive you of your property, disgrace your family, drive you from your own home, and make your life miserable for ever after?" "upon my soul i can't say; but good night now, you're getting excited, and i've finished my drop of punch." "ah! nonsense, man, sit down. i've something in earnest i want to say to you," and barry got up and prevented the doctor from leaving the room. colligan had gone so far as to put on his hat and great coat, and now sat down again without taking them off. "you and i, colligan, are men of the world, and too wide awake for all the old woman's nonsense people talk. what can i, or what could you in my place, care for a half-cracked old maid like anty, who's better dead than alive, for her own sake and everybody's else; unless it is some scheming ruffian like young kelly there, who wants to make money by her?" "i'm not asking you to care for her; only, if those are your ideas, it's as well not to talk about them for appearance sake." "appearance sake! there's nothing makes me so sick, as for two men like you and me, who know what's what, to be talking about appearance sake, like two confounded parsons, whose business it is to humbug everybody, and themselves into the bargain. i'll tell you what: had my father--bad luck to him for an old rogue--not made such a will as he did, i'd 've treated anty as well as any parson of 'em all would treat an old maid of a sister; but i'm not going to have her put over my head this way. come, doctor, confound all humbug. i say it openly to you--to please me, anty must never come out of that bed alive." "as if your wishes could make any difference. if it is to be so, she'll die, poor creature, without your saying so much about it; but may-be, and it's very likely too, she'll be alive and strong, after the two of us are under the sod." "well; if it must be so, it must; but what i wanted to say to you is this: while you were away, i was thinking about what you said of the farm--of being a tenant of mine, you know." "we can talk about that another time," said the doctor, who began to feel an excessive wish to be out of the house. "there's no time like the present, when i've got it in my mind; and, if you'll wait, i can settle it all for you to-night. i was telling you that i hate farming, and so i do. there are thirty or five-and-thirty acres of land about the house, and lying round to the back of the town; you shall take them off my hands, and welcome." this was too good an offer to be resisted, and colligan said he would take the land, with many thanks, if the rent any way suited him. "we'll not quarrel about that, you may be sure, colligan," continued barry; "and as i said fifty acres at first--it was fifty acres i think you were saying you wished for--i'll not baulk you, and go back from my own word." "what you have yourself, round the house, 'll be enough; only i'm thinking the rent 'll be too high." "it shall not; it shall be low enough; and, as i was saying, you shall have the remainder, at the same price, immediately after michaelmas, as soon as ever those devils are ejected." "well;" said colligan, who was now really interested, "what's the figure?" barry had been looking steadfastly at the fire during the whole conversation, up to this: playing with the poker, and knocking the coals about. he was longing to look into the other's face, but he did not dare. now, however, was his time; it was now or never: he took one furtive glance at the doctor, and saw that he was really anxious on the subject--that his attention was fixed. "the figure," said he; "the figure should not trouble you if you had no one but me to deal, with. but there'll be anty, confound her, putting her fist into this and every other plan of mine!" "i'd better deal with the agent, i'm thinking," said colligan; "so, good night." "you'll find you'd a deal better be dealing with me: you'll never find an easier fellow to deal with, or one who'll put a better thing in your way." colligan again sat down. he couldn't quite make barry out: he suspected he was planning some iniquity, but he couldn't tell what; and he remained silent, looking full into the other's face till he should go on. barry winced under the look, and hesitated; but at last he screwed himself up to the point, and said, "one word, between two friends, is as good as a thousand. if anty dies of this bout, you shall have the fifty acres, with a lease for perpetuity, at sixpence an acre. come, that's not a high figure, i think." "what?" said colligan, apparently not understanding him, "a lease for perpetuity at how much an acre?" "sixpence--a penny--a pepper-corn--just anything you please. but it's all on anty's dying. while she's alive i can do nothing for the best friend i have." "by the almighty above us," said the doctor, almost in a whisper, "i believe the wretched man means me to murder her--his own sister!" "murder?--who talked or said a word of murder?" said barry, with a hoarse and croaking voice--"isn't she dying as she is?--and isn't she better dead than alive? it's only just not taking so much trouble to keep the life in her; you're so exceeding clever you know!"--and he made a ghastly attempt at smiling. "with any other doctor she'd have been dead long since: leave her to herself a little, and the farm's your own; and i'm sure there'll 've been nothing at all like murder between us." "by heavens, he does!"--and colligan rose quickly from his seat "he means to have her murdered, and thinks to make me do the deed! why, you vile, thieving, murdering reptile!" and as he spoke the doctor seized him by the throat, and shook him violently in his strong grasp--"who told you i was a fit person for such a plan? who told you to come to me for such a deed? who told you i would sell my soul for your paltry land?"--and he continued grasping barry's throat till he was black in the face, and nearly choked. "merciful heaven! that i should have sat here, and listened to such a scheme! take care of yourself," said he; and he threw him violently backwards over the chairs--"if you're to be found in connaught to-morrow, or in ireland the next day, i'll hang you!"--and so saying, he hurried out of the room, and went home. "well," thought he, on his road: "i have heard of such men as that before, and i believe that when i was young i read of such: but i never expected to meet so black a villain! what had i better do?--if i go and swear an information before a magistrate there'll be nothing but my word and his. besides, he said nothing that the law could take hold of. and yet i oughtn't to let it pass: at any rate i'll sleep on it." and so he did; but it was not for a long time, for the recollection of barry's hideous proposal kept him awake. barry lay sprawling among the chairs till the sound of the hall door closing told him that his guest had gone, when he slowly picked himself up, and sat down upon the sofa. colligan's last words were ringing in his ear--"if you're found in ireland the next day, i'll hang you."--hang him!--and had he really given any one the power to speak to him in such language as that? after all, what had he said?--he had not even whispered a word of murder; he had only made an offer of what he would do if anty should die: besides, no one but themselves had heard even that; and then his thoughts went off to another train. "who'd have thought," he said to himself, "the man was such a fool! he meant it, at first, as well as i did myself. i'm sure he did. he'd never have caught as he did about the farm else, only he got afraid--the confounded fool! as for hanging, i'll let him know; it's just as easy for me to tell a story, i suppose, as it is for him." and then barry, too, dragged himself up to bed, and cursed himself to sleep. his waking thoughts, however, were miserable enough. xxviii. fanny wyndham rebels we will now return to grey abbey, lord cashel, and that unhappy love-sick heiress, his ward, fanny wyndham. affairs there had taken no turn to give increased comfort either to the earl or to his niece, during the month which succeeded the news of young harry wyndham's death. the former still adhered, with fixed pertinacity of purpose, to the matrimonial arrangement which he had made with his son. circumstances, indeed, rendered it even much more necessary in the earl's eyes than it had appeared to be when he first contemplated this scheme for releasing himself from his son's pecuniary difficulties. he had, as the reader will remember, advanced a very large sum of money to lord kilcullen, to be repaid out of fanny wyndham's fortune, this money lord kilcullen had certainly appropriated in the manner intended by his father, but it had anything but the effect of quieting the creditors. the payments were sufficiently large to make the whole hungry crew hear that his lordship was paying his debts, but not at all sufficient to satisfy their craving. indeed, nearly the whole went in liquidation of turf engagements, and gambling debts. the jews, money-lenders, and tradesmen merely heard that money was going from lord kilcullen's pocket; but with all their exertions they got very little of it themselves. consequently, claims of all kinds--bills, duns, remonstrances and threats, poured in not only upon the son but also upon the father. the latter, it is true, was not in his own person liable for one penny of them, nor could he well, on his own score, be said to be an embarrassed man; but he was not the less uneasy. he had determined if possible to extricate his son once more, and as a preliminary step had himself already raised a large sum of money which it would much trouble him to pay; and he moreover, as he frequently said to lord kilcullen, would not and could not pay another penny for the same purpose, until he saw a tolerably sure prospect of being repaid out of his ward's fortune. he was therefore painfully anxious on the subject; anxious not only that the matter should be arranged, but that it should be done at once. it was plain that lord kilcullen could not remain in london, for he would be arrested; the same thing would happen at grey abbey, if he were to remain there long without settling his affairs; and if he were once to escape his creditors by going abroad, there would be no such thing as getting him back again. lord cashel saw no good reason why there should be any delay; harry wyndham was dead above a month, and fanny was evidently grieving more for the loss of her lover than that of her brother; she naturally felt alone in the world--and, as lord cashel thought, one young viscount would be just as good as another. the advantages, too, were much in favour of his son; he would one day be an earl, and possess grey abbey. so great an accession of grandeur, dignity, and rank could not but be, as the earl considered, very delightful to a sensible girl like his ward. the marriage, of course, needn't be much hurried; four or five months' time would do for that; he was only anxious that they should be engaged--that lord kilcullen should be absolutely accepted--lord ballindine finally rejected. the earl certainly felt some scruples of conscience at the sacrifice he was making of his ward, and stronger still respecting his ward's fortune; but he appeased them with the reflection that if his son were a gambler, a _roué_, and a scamp, lord ballindine was probably just as bad; and that if the latter were to spend all fanny's money there would be no chance of redemption; whereas he could at any rate settle on his wife a jointure, which would be a full compensation for the loss of her fortune, should she outlive her husband and father-in-law. besides, he looked on lord kilcullen's faults as a father is generally inclined to look on those of a son, whom he had not entirely given up--whom he is still striving to redeem. he called his iniquitous vices, follies--his licentiousness, love of pleasure--his unprincipled expenditure and extravagance, a want of the knowledge of what money was: and his worst sin of all, because the one least likely to be abandoned, his positive, unyielding damning selfishness, he called "fashion"--the fashion of the young men of the day. poor lord cashel! he wished to be honest to his ward; and yet to save his son, and his own pocket at the same time, at her expense: he wished to be, in his own estimation, high-minded, honourable, and disinterested, and yet he could not resist the temptation to be generous to his own flesh and blood at the expense of another. the contest within him made him miserable; but the devil and mammon were too strong for him, particularly coming as they did, half hidden beneath the gloss of parental affection. there was little of the roman about the earl, and he could not condemn his own son; so he fumed and fretted, and twisted himself about in the easy chair in his dingy book-room, and passed long hours in trying to persuade himself that it was for fanny's advantage that he was going to make her lady kilcullen. he might have saved himself all his anxiety. fanny wyndham had much too strong a mind--much too marked a character of her own, to be made lady anything by lord anybody. lord cashel might possibly prevent her from marrying frank, especially as she had been weak enough, through ill-founded pique and anger, to lend him her name for dismissing him; but neither he nor anyone else could make her accept one man, while she loved another, and while that other was unmarried. since the interview between fanny and her uncle and aunt, which has been recorded, she had been nearly as uncomfortable as lord cashel, and she had, to a certain extent, made the whole household as much so as herself. not that there was anything of the kill-joy character in fanny's composition; but that the natural disposition of grey abbey and all belonging to it was to be dull, solemn, slow, and respectable. fanny alone had ever given any life to the place, or made the house tolerable; and her secession to the ranks of the sombre crew was therefore the more remarked. if fanny moped, all grey abbey might figuratively be said to hang down its head. lady cashel was, in every sense of the words, continually wrapped up in wools and worsteds. the earl was always equally ponderous, and the specific gravity of lady selina could not be calculated. it was beyond the power of figures, even in algebraic denominations, to describe her moral weight. and now fanny did mope, and grey abbey was triste [ ] indeed. griffiths in my lady's boudoir rolled and unrolled those huge white bundles of mysterious fleecy hosiery with more than usually slow and unbroken perseverance. my lady herself bewailed the fermentation among the jam-pots with a voice that did more than whine, it was almost funereal. as my lord went from breakfast-room to book-room, from book-room to dressing-room, and from dressing-room to dining-room, his footsteps creaked with a sound more deadly than that of a death-watch. the book-room itself had caught a darker gloom; the backs of the books seemed to have lost their gilding, and the mahogany furniture its french polish. there, like a god, lord cashel sate alone, throned amid clouds of awful dulness, ruling the world of nothingness around by the silent solemnity of his inertia. [footnote : triste--(french) sad, mournful, dull, dreary] lady selina was always useful, but with a solid, slow activity, a dignified intensity of heavy perseverance, which made her perhaps more intolerable than her father. she was like some old coaches which we remember--very sure, very respectable; but so tedious, so monotonous, so heavy in their motion, that a man with a spark of mercury in his composition would prefer any danger from a faster vehicle to their horrid, weary, murderous, slow security. lady selina from day to day performed her duties in a most uncompromising manner; she knew what was due to her position, and from it, and exacted and performed accordingly with a stiff, steady propriety which made her an awful if not a hateful creature. one of her daily duties, and one for the performance of which she had unfortunately ample opportunity, was the consolation of fanny under her troubles. poor fanny! how great an aggravation was this to her other miseries! for a considerable time lady selma had known nothing of the true cause of fanny's gloom; for though the two cousins were good friends, as far as lady selina was capable of admitting so human a frailty as friendship, still fanny could not bring herself to make a confidante of her. her kind, stupid, unpretending old aunt was a much better person to talk to, even though she did arch her eyebrows, and shake her head when lord ballindine's name was mentioned, and assure her niece that though she had always liked him herself, he could not be good for much, because lord kilcullen had said so. but fanny could not well dissemble; she was tormented by lady selina's condolements, and recommendations of gibbon, her encomiums on industry, and anathemas against idleness; she was so often reminded that weeping would not bring back her brother, nor inactive reflection make his fate less certain, that at last she made her monitor understand that it was about lord ballindine's fate that she was anxious, and that it was his coming back which might be effected by weeping--or other measures. lady selina was shocked by such feminine, girlish weakness, such want of dignity and character, such forgetfulness, as she said to fanny, of what was due to her own position. lady selina was herself unmarried, and not likely to marry; and why had she maintained her virgin state, and foregone the blessings of love and matrimony? because, as she often said to herself, and occasionally said to fanny, she would not step down from the lofty pedestal on which it had pleased fortune and birth to place her. she learned, however, by degrees, to forgive, though she couldn't approve, fanny's weakness; she remembered that it was a very different thing to be an earl's niece and an earl's daughter, and that the same conduct could not be expected from fanny wyndham and lady selina grey. the two were sitting together, in one of the grey abbey drawing-rooms, about the middle of april. fanny had that morning again been talking to her guardian on the subject nearest to her heart, and had nearly distracted him by begging him to take steps to make frank understand that a renewal of his visits at grey abbey would not be ill received. lord cashel at first tried to frighten her out of her project by silence, frowns, and looks: but not finding himself successful, he commenced a long oration, in which he broke down, or rather, which he had to cut up into sundry short speeches; in which he endeavoured to make it appear that lord ballindine's expulsion had originated with fanny herself, and that, banished or not banished, the less fanny had to do with him the better. his ward, however, declared, in rather a tempestuous manner, that if she could not see him at grey abbey she would see him elsewhere; and his lordship was obliged to capitulate by promising that if frank were unmarried in twelve months' time, and fanny should then still be of the same mind, he would consent to the match and use his influence to bring it about. this by no means satisfied fanny, but it was all that the earl would say, and she had now to consider whether she would accept those terms or act for herself. had she had any idea what steps she could with propriety take in opposition to the earl, she would have withdrawn herself and her fortune from his house and hands, without any scruples of conscience. but what was she to do? she couldn't write to her lover and ask him to come back to her!--whither could she go? she couldn't well set up house for herself. lady selina was bending over her writing-desk, and penning most decorous notes, with a precision of calligraphy which it was painful to witness. she was writing orders to dublin tradesmen, and each order might have been printed in the complete letter-writer, as a specimen of the manner in which young ladies should address such correspondents. fanny had a volume of french poetry in her hand, but had it been greek prose it would have given her equal occupation and amusement. it had been in her hands half-an-hour, and she had not read a line. "fanny," said lady selina, raising up her thin red spiral tresses from her desk, and speaking in a firm, decided tone, as if well assured of the importance of the question she was going to put; "don't you want some things from ellis's?" "from where, selina?" said fanny, slightly starting. "from ellis's," repeated lady selina. "oh, the man in grafton street.--no, thank you." and fanny returned to her thoughts. "surely you do, fanny," said her ladyship. "i'm sure you want black crape; you were saying so on friday last." "was i?--yes; i think i do. it'll do another time, selina; never mind now." "you had better have it in the parcel he will send to-morrow; if you'll give me the pattern and tell me how much you want, i'll write for it." "thank you, selina. you're very kind, but i won't mind it to-day." "how very foolish of you, fanny; you know you want it, and then you'll be annoyed about it. you'd better let me order it with the other things." "very well, dear: order it then for me." "how much will you want? you must send the pattern too, you know." "indeed, selina, i don't care about having it at all; i can do very well without it, so don't mind troubling yourself." "how very ridiculous, fanny! you know you want black crape--and you must get it from ellis's." lady selina paused for a reply, and then added, in a voice of sorrowful rebuke, "it's to save yourself the trouble of sending jane for the pattern." "well, selina, perhaps it is. don't bother me about it now, there's a dear. i'll be more myself by-and-by; but indeed, indeed, i'm neither well nor happy now." "not well, fanny! what ails you?" "oh, nothing ails me; that is, nothing in the doctor's way. i didn't mean i was ill." "you said you weren't well; and people usually mean by that, that they are ill." "but i didn't mean it," said fanny, becoming almost irritated, "i only meant--" and she paused and did not finish her sentence. lady selina wiped her pen, in her scarlet embroidered pen-wiper, closed the lid of her patent inkstand, folded a piece of blotting-paper over the note she was writing, pushed back the ruddy ringlets from her contemplative forehead, gave a slight sigh, and turned herself towards her cousin, with the purpose of commencing a vigorous lecture and cross-examination, by which she hoped to exorcise the spirit of lamentation from fanny's breast, and restore her to a healthful activity in the performance of this world's duties. fanny felt what was coming; she could not fly; so she closed her book and her eyes, and prepared herself for endurance. "fanny," said lady selina, in a voice which was intended to be both severe and sorrowful, "you are giving way to very foolish feelings in a very foolish way; you are preparing great unhappiness for yourself, and allowing your mind to waste itself in uncontrolled sorrow in a manner--in a manner which cannot but be ruinously injurious. my dear fanny, why don't you do something?--why don't you occupy yourself? you've given up your work; you've given up your music; you've given up everything in the shape of reading; how long, fanny, will you go on in this sad manner?" lady selina paused, but, as fanny did not immediately reply, she continued her speech "i've begged you to go on with your reading, because nothing but mental employment will restore your mind to its proper tone. i'm sure i've brought you the second volume of gibbon twenty times, but i don't believe you've read a chapter this month back. how long will you allow yourself to go on in this sad manner?" "not long, selina. as you say, i'm sad enough." "but is it becoming in you, fanny, to grieve in this way for a man whom you yourself rejected because he was unworthy of you?" "selina, i've told you before that such was not the case. i believe him to be perfectly worthy of me, and of any one much my superior too." "but you did reject him, fanny: you bade papa tell him to discontinue his visits--didn't you?" fanny felt that her cousin was taking an unfair advantage in throwing thus in her teeth her own momentary folly in having been partly persuaded, partly piqued, into quarrelling with her lover; and she resented it as such. "if i did," she said, somewhat angrily, "it does not make my grief any lighter, to know that i brought it on myself." "no, fanny; but it should show you that the loss for which you grieve is past recovery. sorrow, for which there is no cure, should cease to be grieved for, at any rate openly. if lord ballindine were to die you would not allow his death to doom you to perpetual sighs, and perpetual inactivity. no; you'd then know that grief was hopeless, and you'd recover." "but lord ballindine is not dead," said fanny. "ah! that's just the point," continued her ladyship; "he should be dead to you; to you he should now be just the same as though he were in his grave. you loved him some time since, and accepted him; but you found your love misplaced,--unreturned, or at any rate coldly returned. though you loved him, you passed a deliberate judgment on him, and wisely rejected him. having done so, his name should not be on your lips; his form and figure should be forgotten. no thoughts of him should sully your mind, no love for him should be permitted to rest in your heart; it should be rooted out, whatever the exertion may cost you." "selina, i believe you have no heart yourself." "perhaps as much as yourself, fanny. i've heard of some people who were said to be all heart; i flatter myself i am not one of them. i trust i have some mind, to regulate my heart; and some conscience, to prevent my sacrificing my duties for the sake of my heart." "if you knew," said fanny, "the meaning of what love was, you'd know that it cannot be given up in a moment, as you suppose; rooted out, as you choose to call it. but, to tell you the truth, selina, i don't choose to root it out. i gave my word to frank not twelve months since, and that with the consent of every one belonging to me. i owned that i loved him, and solemnly assured him i would always do so. i cannot, and i ought not, and i will not break my word. you would think of nothing but what you call your own dignity; i will not give up my own happiness, and, i firmly believe his, too, for anything so empty." "don't be angry with me, fanny," said lady selina; "my regard for your dignity arises only from my affection for you. i should be sorry to see you lessen yourself in the eyes of those around you. you must remember that you cannot act as another girl might, whose position was less exalted. miss o'joscelyn might cry for her lost lover till she got him back again, or got another; and no one would be the wiser, and she would not be the worse; but you cannot do that. rank and station are in themselves benefits; but they require more rigid conduct, much more control over the feelings than is necessary in a humbler position. you should always remember, fanny, that much is expected from those to whom much is given." "and i'm to be miserable all my life because i'm not a parson's daughter, like miss o'joscelyn!" "god forbid, fanny! if you'd employ your time, engage your mind, and cease to think of lord ballindine, you'd soon cease to be miserable. yes; though you might never again feel the happiness of loving, you might still be far from miserable." "but i can't cease to think of him, selina;--i won't even try." "then, fanny, i truly pity you." "no, selina; it's i that pity you," said fanny, roused to energy as different thoughts crowded to her mind. "you, who think more of your position as an earl's daughter--an aristocrat, than of your nature as a woman! thank heaven, i'm not a queen, to be driven to have other feelings than those of my sex. i do love lord ballindine, and if i had the power to cease to do so this moment, i'd sooner drown myself than exercise it." "then why were you weak enough to reject him?" "because i was a weak, wretched, foolish girl. i said it in a moment of passion, and my uncle acted on it at once, without giving me one minute for reflection--without allowing me one short hour to look into my own heart, and find how i was deceiving myself in thinking that i ought to part from him. i told lord cashel in the morning that i would give him up; and before i had time to think of what i had said, he had been here, and had been turned out of the house. oh, selina! it was very, very cruel in your father to take me at my word so shortly!" and fanny hid her face in her handkerchief, and burst into tears. "that's unfair, fanny; it couldn't be cruel in him to do for you that which he would have done for his own daughter. he thought, and thinks, that lord ballindine would not make you happy." "why should he think so?--he'd no business to think so," sobbed fanny through her tears. "who could have a business to think for you, if not your guardian?" "why didn't he think so then, before he encouraged me to receive him? it was because frank wouldn't do just what he was bid; it was because he wouldn't become stiff, and solemn, and grave like--like--" fanny was going to make a comparison that would not have been flattering either to lady selina or to her father, but she did not quite forget herself, and stopped short without expressing the likeness. "had he spoken against him at first, i would have obeyed; but i will not destroy myself now for his prejudices." and fanny buried her face among the pillows of the sofa, and sobbed aloud. lady selina walked over to the sofa, and stood at the head of it bending over her cousin. she wished to say something to soothe and comfort her, but did not know how; there was nothing soothing or comforting in her nature, nothing soft in her voice; her manner was repulsive, and almost unfeeling; and yet she was not unfeeling. she loved fanny as warmly as she was capable of loving; she would have made almost any personal sacrifice to save her cousin from grief; she would, were it possible, have borne her sorrows herself; but she could not unbend; she could not sit down by fanny's side, and, taking her hand, say soft and soothing things; she could not make her grief easier by expressing hope for the future or consolation for the past. she would have felt that she was compromising truth by giving hope, and dignity by uttering consolation for the loss of that which she considered better lost than retained. lady selina's only recipe was endurance and occupation. and at any rate, she practised what she preached; she was never idle, and she never complained. as she saw fanny's grief, and heard her sobs, she at first thought that in mercy she should now give up the subject of the conversation; but then she reflected that such mercy might be the greatest cruelty, and that the truest kindness would be to prove to fanny the hopelessness of her passion. "but, fanny," she said, when the other's tears were a little subsided, "it's no use either saying or thinking impossibilities. what are you to do? you surely will not willingly continue to indulge a hopeless passion?" "selina, you'll drive me mad, if you go on! let me have my own way." "but, fanny, if your own way's a bad way? surely you won't refuse to listen to reason? you must know that what i say is only from my affection. i want you to look before you; i want you to summon courage to look forward; and then i'm sure your common sense will tell you that lord ballindine can never be anything to you." "look here, selina," and fanny rose, and wiped her eyes, and somewhat composed her ruffled hair, which she shook back from her face and forehead, as she endeavoured to repress the palpitation which had followed her tears; "i have looked forward, and i have determined what i mean to do. it was your father who brought me to this, by forcing me into a childish quarrel with the man i love. i have implored him, almost on my knees, to invite lord ballindine again to grey abbey: he has refused to do so, at any rate for twelve months--" "and has he consented to ask him at the end of twelve months?" asked selina, much astonished, and, to tell the truth, considerably shocked at this instance of what she considered her father's weakness. "he might as well have said twelve years," replied fanny. "how can i, how can any one, suppose that he should remain single for my sake for twelve months, after being repelled without a cause, or without a word of explanation; without even seeing me;--turned out of the house, and insulted in every way? no; whatever he might do, i will not wait twelve months. i'll ask lord cashel once again, and then--" fanny paused for a moment, to consider in what words she would finish her declaration. "well, fanny," said selina, waiting with eager expectation for fanny's final declaration; for she expected to hear her say that she would drown herself, or lock herself up for ever, or do something equally absurd. "then," continued fanny,--and a deep blush covered her face as she spoke, "i will write to lord ballindine, and tell him that i am still his own if he chooses to take me." "oh, fanny! do not say such a horrid thing. write to a man, and beg him to accept you? no, fanny; i know you too well, at any rate, to believe that you'll do that." "indeed, indeed, i will." "then you'll disgrace yourself for ever. oh, fanny! though my heart were breaking, though i knew i were dying for very love, i'd sooner have it break, i'd sooner die at once, than disgrace my sex by becoming a suppliant to a man." "disgrace, selina!--and am i not now disgraced? have i not given him my solemn word? have i not pledged myself to him as his wife? have i not sworn to him a hundred times that my heart was all his own? have i not suffered those caresses which would have been disgraceful had i not looked on myself as almost already his bride? and is it no disgrace, after that, to break my word?--to throw him aside like a glove that wouldn't fit?--to treat him as a servant that wouldn't suit me?--to send him a contemptuous message to be gone?--and so, to forget him, that i might lay myself out for the addresses and admiration of another? could any conduct be worse than that?--any disgrace deeper? oh, selina! i shudder as i think of it. could i ever bring my lips to own affection for another, without being overwhelmed with shame and disgrace? and then, that the world should say that i had accepted, and rejoiced in his love when i was poor, and rejected it with scorn when i was rich! no; i would sooner--ten thousand times sooner my uncle should do it for me! but if he will not write to frank, i will. and though my hand will shake, and my face will be flushed as i do so, i shall never think that i have disgraced myself." "and if, fanny--if, after that he refuses you?" fanny was still standing, and she remained so for a moment or two, meditating her reply, and then she answered:-- "should he do so, then i have the alternative which you say you would prefer; then i will endeavour to look forward to a broken heart, and death, without a complaint and without tears. then, selina," and she tried to smile through the tears which were again running down her cheeks, "i'll come to you, and endeavour to borrow your stoic endurance, and patient industry;" and, as she said so, she walked to the door and escaped, before lady selina had time to reply. xxix. the countess of cashel in trouble after considerable negotiation between the father and the son, the time was fixed for lord kilcullen's arrival at grey abbey. the earl tried much to accelerate it, and the viscount was equally anxious to stave off the evil day; but at last it was arranged that, on the rd of april, he was to make his appearance, and that he should commence his wooing as soon as possible after that day. when this was absolutely fixed, lord cashel paid a visit to his countess, in her boudoir, to inform her of the circumstance, and prepare her for the expected guest. he did not, however, say a word of the purport of his son's visit. he had, at one time, thought of telling the old lady all about it, and bespeaking her influence with fanny for the furtherance of his plan; but, on reconsideration, he reflected that his wife was not the person to be trusted with any intrigue. so he merely told her that lord kilcullen would be at grey abbey in five days; that he would probably remain at home a long time; that, as he was giving up his london vices and extravagances, and going to reside at grey abbey, he wished that the house should be made as pleasant for him as possible; that a set of friends, relatives, and acquaintances should be asked to come and stay there; and, in short, that lord kilcullen, having been a truly prodigal son, should have a fatted calf prepared for his arrival. all this flurried and rejoiced, terrified and excited my lady exceedingly. in the first place it was so truly delightful that her son should turn good and proper, and careful and decorous, just at the right time of life; so exactly the thing that ought to happen. of course young noblemen were extravagant, and wicked, and lascivious, habitual breakers of the commandments, and self-idolators; it was their nature. in lady cashel's thoughts on the education of young men, these evils were ranked with the measles and hooping cough; it was well that they should be gone through and be done with early in life. she had a kind of hazy idea that an opera-dancer and a gambling club were indispensable in fitting a young aristocrat for his future career; and i doubt whether she would not have agreed to the expediency of inoculating a son of hers with these ailments in a mild degree--vaccinating him as it were with dissipation, in order that he might not catch the disease late in life in a violent and fatal form. she had not therefore made herself unhappy about her son for a few years after his first entrance on a life in london, but latterly she had begun to be a little uneasy. tidings of the great amount of his debts reached even her ears; and, moreover, it was nearly time that he should reform and settle down. during the last twelve months she had remarked fully twelve times, to griffiths, that she wondered when kilcullen would marry?--and she had even twice asked her husband, whether he didn't think that such a circumstance would be advantageous. she was therefore much rejoiced to hear that her son was coming to live at home. but then, why was it so sudden? it was quite proper that the house should be made a little gay for his reception; that he shouldn't be expected to spend his evenings with no other society than that of his father and mother, his sister and his cousin; but how was she to get the house ready for the people, and the people ready for the house, at so very short a notice?--what trouble, also, it would be to her!--neither she nor griffiths would know another moment's rest; besides--and the thought nearly drove her into hysterics,--where was she to get a new cook? however, she promised her husband to do her best. she received from him a list of people to be invited, and, merely stipulating that she shouldn't be required to ask any one except the parson of the parish under a week, undertook to make the place as bearable as possible to so fastidious and distinguished a person as her own son. her first confidante was, of course, griffiths; and, with her assistance, the wool and the worsted, and the knitting-needles, the unfinished vallances and interminable yards of fringe, were put up and rolled out of the way; and it was then agreed that a council should be held, to which her ladyship proposed to invite lady selina and fanny. griffiths, however, advanced an opinion that the latter was at present too lack-a-daisical to be of any use in such a matter, and strengthened her argument by asserting that miss wyndham had of late been quite mumchance [ ]. lady cashel was at first rather inclined to insist on her niece being called to the council, but griffiths's eloquence was too strong, and her judgment too undoubted; so fanny was left undisturbed, and lady selina alone summoned to join the aged female senators of grey abbey. [footnote : mumchance--silent and idle] "selina," said her ladyship, as soon as her daughter was seated on the sofa opposite to her mother's easy chair, while griffiths, having shut the door, had, according to custom, sat herself down on her own soft-bottomed chair, on the further side of the little table that always stood at the countess's right hand. "selina, what do you think your father tells me?" lady selina couldn't think, and declined guessing; for, as she remarked, guessing was a loss of time, and she never guessed right. "adolphus is coming home on tuesday." "adolphus! why it's not a month since he was here." "and he's not coming only for a visit; he's coming to stay here; from what your father says, i suppose he'll stay here the greater part of the summer." "what, stay at grey abbey all may and june?" said lady selina, evidently discrediting so unlikely a story, and thinking it all but impossible that her brother should immure himself at grey abbey during the london season. "it's true, my lady," said griffiths, oracularly; as if her word were necessary to place the countess's statement beyond doubt. "yes," continued lady cashel; "and he has given up all his establishment in london--his horses, and clubs, and the opera, and all that. he'll go into parliament, i dare say, now, for the county; at any rate he's coming to live at home here for the summer." "and has he sold all his horses?" asked lady selina. "if he's not done it, he's doing it," said the countess. "i declare i'm delighted with him; it shows such proper feeling. i always knew he would; i was sure that when the time came for doing it, adolphus would not forget what was due to himself and to his family." "if what you say is true, mamma, he's going to be married." "that's just what i was thinking, my lady," said griffiths. "when her ladyship first told me all about it,--how his lordship was coming down to live regular and decorous among his own people, and that he was turning his back upon his pleasures and iniquities, thinks i to myself there'll be wedding favours coming soon to grey abbey." "if it is so, selina, your father didn't say anything to me about it," said the countess, somewhat additionally flustered by the importance of the last suggestion; "and if he'd even guessed such a thing, i'm sure he'd have mentioned it." "it mightn't be quite fixed, you know, mamma: but if adolphus is doing as you say, you may be sure he's either engaged, or thinking of becoming so." "well, my dear, i'm sure i wish it may be so; only i own i'd like to know, because it makes a difference, as to the people he'd like to meet, you know. i'm sure nothing would delight me so much as to receive adolphus's wife. of course she'd always be welcome to lie in here--indeed it'd be the fittest place. but we should be dreadfully put about, eh, griffiths?" "why, we should, my lady; but, to my mind, this would be the only most proper place for my lord's heir to be born in. if the mother and child couldn't have the best of minding here, where could they?" "of course, griffiths; and we wouldn't mind the trouble, on such an occasion. i think the south room would be the best, because of the dressing-room being such a good size, and neither of the fireplaces smoking, you know." "well, i don't doubt but it would, my lady; only the blue room is nearer to your ladyship here, and in course your ladyship would choose to be in and out." and visions of caudle cups, cradles, and monthly nurses, floated over lady cashel's brain, and gave her a kind of dreamy feel that the world was going to begin again with her. "but, mamma, is adolphus really to be here on tuesday?" said lady selina, recalling the two old women from their attendance on the unborn, to the necessities of the present generation. "indeed he is, my dear, and that's what i sent for you for. your papa wishes to have a good deal of company here to meet your brother; and indeed it's only reasonable, for of course this place would be very dull for him, if there was nobody here but ourselves--and he's always used to see so many people; but the worst is, it's all to be done at once, and you know there'll be so much to be got through before we'll be ready for a house full of company,--things to be got from dublin, and the people to be asked. and then, selina," and her ladyship almost wept as the latter came to her great final difficulty--"what are we to do about a cook?--richards'll never do; griffiths says she won't even do for ourselves, as it is." "indeed she won't, my lady; it was only impudence in her coming to such a place at all.--she'd never be able to send a dinner up for eighteen or twenty." "what are we to do, griffiths? what can have become of all the cooks?--i'm sure there used to be cooks enough when i was first married." "well, my lady, i think they must be all gone to england, those that are any good; but i don't know what's come to the servants altogether; as your ladyship says, they're quite altered for the worse since we were young." "but, mamma," said lady selina, "you're not going to ask people here just immediately, are you?" "directly, my dear; your papa wishes it done at once. we're to have a dinner-party this day week--that'll be thursday; and we'll get as many of the people as we can to stay afterwards; and we'll get the o'joscelyns to come on wednesday, just to make the table look not quite so bare, and i want you to write the notes at once. there'll be a great many things to be got from dublin too." "it's very soon after poor harry wyndham's death, to be receiving company," said lady selina, solemnly. "really, mamma, i don't think it will be treating fanny well to be asking all these people so soon. the o'joscelyns, or the fitzgeralds, are all very well--just our own near neighbours; but don't you think, mamma, it's rather too soon to be asking a house-full of strange people?" "well, my love, i was thinking so, and i mentioned it to your father; but he said that poor harry had been dead a month now--and that's true, you know--and that people don't think so much now about those kind of things as they used to; and that's true too, i believe." "indeed you may say that, my lady," interposed griffiths. "i remember when bombazines used to be worn three full months for an uncle or cousin, and now they're hardly ever worn at all for the like, except in cases where the brother or sister of him or her as is dead may be stopping in the house, and then only for a month: and they were always worn the full six months for a brother or sister, and sometimes the twelve months round. your aunt, lady charlotte, my lady, wore hers the full twelve months, when your uncle, lord frederick, was shot by sir patrick o'donnel; and now they very seldom, never, i may say, wear them the six months!--indeed, i think mourning is going out altogether; and i'm very sorry for it, for it's a very decent, proper sort of thing; at least, such was always my humble opinion, my lady." "well; but what i was saying is," continued the countess, "that what would be thought strange a few years ago, isn't thought at all so now; and though i'm sure, selina, i wouldn't like to do anything that looked unkind to fanny, i really don't see how we can help it, as your father makes such a point of it." "i can't say i think it's right, mamma, for i don't. but if you and papa do, of course i've nothing further to say." "well, my love, i don't know that i do exactly think it's right; and i'm sure it's not my wish to be having people, especially when i don't know where on earth to turn for a cook. but what can we do, my dear? adolphus wouldn't stay the third night here, i'm sure, if there was nobody to amuse him; and you wouldn't have him turned out of the house, would you?" "_i_ have him turned out, mamma? god forbid! i'd sooner he should be here than anywhere, for here he must be out of harm's way; but still i think that if he comes to a house of mourning, he might, for a short time, submit to put up with its decent tranquillity." "selina," said the mother, pettishly, "i really thought you'd help me when i've so much to trouble and vex me--and not make any fresh difficulties. how can i help it?--if your father says the people are to come, i can't say i won't let them in. i hope you won't make fanny think i'm doing it from disrespect to her. i'm sure i wouldn't have a soul here for a twelvemonth, on my own account." "i'm sure miss wyndham won't think any such thing, my lady," said griffiths; "will she, lady selina?--indeed, i don't think she'll matter it one pin." "indeed, selina, i don't think she will," said the countess; and then she half whispered to her daughter. "poor fanny! it's not about her brother she's grieving; it's that horrid man, ballindine. she sent him away, and now she wants to have him back. i really think a little company will be the best thing to bring her to herself again." there was a little degree of humbug in this whisper, for her ladyship meant her daughter to understand that she wouldn't speak aloud about fanny's love-affair before griffiths; and yet she had spent many a half hour talking to her factotum on that very subject. indeed, what subject was there of any interest to lady cashel on which she did not talk to griffiths! "well, mamma," said lady selina, dutifully, "i'll not say another word about it; only let me know what you want me to do, and i'll do it. who is it you mean to ask?" "why, first of all, there's the fitzgeralds: your father thinks that lord and lady george would come for a week or so, and you know the girls have been long talking of coming to grey abbey--these two years i believe, and more." "the girls will come, i dare say, mamma; though i don't exactly think they're the sort of people who will amuse adolphus; but i don't think lord george or lady george will sleep away from home. we can ask them, however; mountains is only five miles from here, and i'm sure they'll go back after dinner." "well, my dear, if they will, they must, and i can't help it; only i must say it'll be very ill-natured of them. i'm sure it's a long time since they were asked to stay here." "as you say, mamma, at any rate we can ask them. and who comes next?" "why your father has put down the swinburn people next; though i'm sure i don't know how they are to come so far." "why, mamma, the colonel is a martyr to the gout!" "yes, my lady," said griffiths, "and mrs. ellison is worse again, with rheumatics. there would be nothing to do, the whole time, but nurse the two of them." "never mind, griffiths; you'll not have to nurse them, so you needn't be so ill-natured." "me, ill-natured, my lady? i'm sure i begs pardon, but i didn't mean nothing ill-natured; besides, mrs. ellison was always a very nice lady to me, and i'm sure i'd be happy to nurse her, if she wanted it; only that, as in duty bound, i've your ladyship to look to first, and so couldn't spare time very well for nursing any one." "of course you couldn't, griffiths; but, selina, at any rate you must ask the ellisons: your papa thinks a great deal about the colonel--he has so much influence in the county, and adolphus will very likely stand, now. your papa and the colonel were members together for the county more than forty years since." "well, mamma, i'll write mrs. ellison. shall i say for a week or ten days?" "say for ten days or a fortnight, and then perhaps they'll stay a week. then there's the bishop of maryborough, and mrs. moore. i'm sure adolphus will be glad to meet the bishop, for it was he that christened him." "very well, mamma, i'll write to mrs. moore. i suppose the bishop is in dublin at present?" "yes, my dear, i believe so. there can't be anything to prevent their coming." "only that he's the managing man on the education board, and he's giving up his time very much to that at present. i dare say he'll come, but he won't stay long." "well, selina, if he won't, i can't help it; and i'm sure, now i think about the cook, i don't see how we're to expect anybody to stay. what am i to do, griffiths, about that horrid woman?" "i'll tell you what i was thinking, my lady; only i don't know whether your ladyship would like it, either, and if you didn't you could easily get rid of him when all these people are gone." "get rid of who?" "i was going to say, my lady--if your ladyship would consent to have a man cook for a time, just to try." "then i never will, griffiths: there'd be no peace in the house with him!" "well, your ladyship knows best, in course; only if you thought well of trying it, of course you needn't keep the man; and i know there's murray in dublin, that was cook so many years to old lord galway. i know he's to be heard of at the hotel in grafton street." "i can't bear the thoughts of a man cook, griffiths: i'd sooner have three women cooks, and i'm sure one's enough to plague anybody." "but none's worse, my lady," said griffiths. "you needn't tell me that. i wonder, selina, if i were to write to my sister, whether she could send me over anything that would answer?" "what, from london, my lady?" answered griffiths--"you'd find a london woman cook sent over in that way twice worse than any man: she'd be all airs and graces. if your ladyship thought well of thinking about murray, richards would do very well under him: she's a decent poor creature, poor woman--only she certainly is not a cook that'd suit for such a house as this; and it was only impudence her thinking to attempt it." "but, mamma," said lady selina, "do let me know to whom i am to write, and then you and griffiths can settle about the cook afterwards; the time is so very short that i ought not to lose a post." the poor countess threw herself back in her easy chair, the picture of despair. oh, how much preferable were rolls of worsted and yards of netting, to the toils and turmoil of preparing for, and entertaining company! she was already nearly overcome by the former: she didn't dare to look forward to the miseries of the latter. she already began to feel the ill effects of her son's reformation, and to wish that it had been postponed just for a month or two, till she was a little more settled. "well, mamma," said lady selina, as undisturbed and calm as ever, and as resolved to do her duty without flinching, "shall we go on?" the countess groaned and sighed--"there's the list there, selina, which your father put down in pencil. you know the people as well as i do: just ask them all--" "but, mamma, i'm not to ask them all to stay here:--i suppose some are only to come to dinner?--the o'joscelyns, and the parchments?" "ask the o'joscelyns for wednesday and thursday: the girls might as well stay and sleep here. but what's the good of writing to them?--can't you drive over to the parsonage and settle it all there?--you do nothing but make difficulties, selina, and my head's racking." lady selina sate silent for a short time, conning the list, and endeavouring to see her way through the labyrinth of difficulties which was before her, without further trouble to her mother; while the countess leaned back, with her eyes closed, and her hands placed on the arms of her chair, as though she were endeavouring to get some repose, after the labour she had gone through. her daughter, however, again disturbed her. "mamma," she said, trying by the solemnity of her tone to impress her mother with the absolute necessity she was under of again appealing to her upon the subject, "what _are_ we to do about young men?" "about young men, my dear?" "yes, mamma: there'll be a house-full of young ladies--there's the fitzgeralds--and lady louisa pratt--and miss ellison--and the three o'joscelyns--and not a single young man, except mr o'joscelyn's curate!" "well, my dear, i'm sure mr. hill's a very nice young man." "so he is, mamma; a very good young man; but he won't do to amuse such a quantity of girls. if there were only one or two he'd do very well; besides, i'm sure adolphus won't like it." "why; won't he talk to the young ladies?--i'm sure he was always fond of ladies' society." "i tell you, mamma, it won't do. there'll be the bishop and two other clergymen, and old colonel ellison, who has always got the gout, and lord george, if he comes--and i'm sure he won't. if you want to make a pleasant party for adolphus, you must get some young men; besides, you can't ask all those girls, and have nobody to dance with them or talk to them." "i'm sure, my dear, i don't know what you're to do. i don't know any young men except mr. hill; and there's that young mr. grundy, who lives in dublin. i promised his aunt to be civil to him: can't you ask him down?" "he was here before, mamma, and i don't think he liked it. i'm sure we didn't. he didn't speak a word the whole day he was here. he's not at all the person to suit adolphus." "then, my dear, you _must_ go to your papa, and ask him: it's quite clear i can't make young men. i remember, years ago, there always used to be too many of them, and i don't know where they're all gone to. at any rate, when they do come, there'll be nothing for them to eat," and lady cashel again fell back upon her deficiencies in the kitchen establishment. lady selina saw that nothing more could be obtained from her mother, no further intelligence as regarded the embryo party. the whole burden was to lie on her shoulders, and very heavy she felt it. as far as concerned herself, she had no particular wish for one kind of guest more than another: it was not for herself that she wanted young men; she knew that at any rate there were none within reach whom she could condescend to notice save as her father's guests; there could be no one there whose presence could be to her of any interest: the gouty colonel, and the worthy bishop, would be as agreeable to her as any other men that would now be likely to visit grey abbey. but lady selina felt a real desire that others in the house might be happy while there. she was no flirt herself, nor had she ever been; it was not in her nature to be so. but though she herself might be contented to twaddle with old men, she knew that other girls would not. yet it was not that she herself had no inward wish for that admiration which is desired by nearly every woman, or that she thought a married state was an unenviable one. no; she could have loved and loved truly, and could have devoted herself most scrupulously to the duties of a wife; but she had vainly and foolishly built up for herself a pedestal, and there she had placed herself; nor would she come down to stand on common earth, though apollo had enticed her, unless he came with the coronet of a peer upon his brow. she left her mother's boudoir, went down into the drawing-room, and there she wrote her notes of invitation, and her orders to the tradesmen; and then she went to her father, and consulted him on the difficult subject of young men. she suggested the newbridge barracks, where the dragoons were; and the curragh, where perhaps some stray denizen of pleasure might be found, neither too bad for grey abbey, nor too good to be acceptable to lord kilcullen; and at last it was decided that a certain captain cokely, and mat tierney, should be asked. they were both acquaintances of adolphus; and though mat was not a young man, he was not very old, and was usually very gay. so that matter was settled, and the invitations were sent off. the countess overcame her difficulty by consenting that murray the man cook should be hired for a given time, with the distinct understanding that he was to take himself off with the rest of the guests, and so great was her ladyship's sense of the importance of the negotiation, that she absolutely despatched griffiths to dublin to arrange it, though thereby she was left two whole days in solitary misery at grey abbey; and had to go to bed, and get up, she really hardly knew how, with such assistance as lady selina's maid could give her. when these things were all arranged, selina told her cousin that adolphus was coming home, and that a house full of company had been asked to meet him. she was afraid that fanny would be annoyed and offended at being forced to go into company so soon after her brother's death, but such was not the case. she felt, herself, that her poor brother was not the cause of the grief that was near her heart; and she would not pretend what she didn't really feel. "you were quite right, selina," she said, smiling, "about the things you said yesterday i should want from dublin: now, i shall want them; and, as i wouldn't accept of your good-natured offer, i must take the trouble of writing myself." "if you like it, fanny, i'll write for you," said selina. "oh no, i'm not quite so idle as that"--and she also began her preparations for the expected festivities. little did either of them think that she, fanny wyndham, was the sole cause of all the trouble which the household and neighbourhood were to undergo:--the fatigue of the countess; griffiths's journey; the arrival of the dread man cook; richards's indignation at being made subordinate to such authority; the bishop's desertion of the education board; the colonel's dangerous and precipitate consumption of colchicum; the quarrel between lord and lady george as to staying or not staying; the new dresses of the miss o'joscelyns, which their worthy father could so ill afford; and, above all, the confusion, misery, rage, and astonishment which attended lord kilcullen's unexpected retreat from london, in the middle of the summer. and all in vain! how proud and satisfied lord ballindine might have been, had he been able to see all this, and could he have known how futile was every effort lord cashel could make to drive from fanny wyndham's heart the love she felt for him. the invitations, however, were, generally speaking, accepted. the bishop and his wife would be most happy; the colonel would come if the gout would possibly allow; lady george wrote a note to say they would be very happy to stay a few days, and lord george wrote another soon after to say he was sorry, but that they must return the same evening. the o'joscelyns would be delighted; mat tierney would be very proud; captain cokely would do himself the honour; and, last but not least, mr. murray would preside below stairs--for a serious consideration. what a pity so much trouble should have been taken! they might all have stayed at home; for fanny wyndham will never become lady kilcullen. xxx. lord kilcullen obeys his father on the appointed day, or rather on the night of the appointed day, lord kilcullen reached grey abbey; for it was about eleven o'clock when his travelling-phaëton rattled up to the door. he had been expected to dinner at seven, and the first attempts of murray in the kitchens of grey abbey had been kept waiting for him till half-past eight; but in vain. at that hour the earl, black with ill-humour, ordered dinner; and remarked that he considered it criminal in any man to make an appointment, who was not sufficiently attached to veracity to keep it. the evening was passed in moody silence. the countess was disappointed, for she always contrived to persuade herself that she was very anxious to see her son. lady selina was really vexed, and began to have her doubts as to her brother's coming at all: what was to be done, if it turned out that all the company had been invited for nothing? as to fanny, though very indifferent to the subject of her cousin's coming, she was not at all in a state of mind to dissipate the sullenness which prevailed. the ladies went to bed early, the countess grumbling at her lot, in not being allowed to see her son, and her daughter and niece marching off with their respective candlesticks in solemn silence. the earl retired to his book-room soon afterwards; but he had not yet sat down, when the quick rattle of the wheels was heard upon the gravel before the house. lord cashel walked out into the hall, prepared to meet his son in a befitting manner; that is, with a dignified austerity that could not fail to convey a rebuke even to his hardened heart. but he was balked in his purpose, for he found that lord kilcullen was not alone; mat tierney had come down with him. kilcullen had met his friend in dublin, and on learning that he also was bound for grey abbey on the day but one following, had persuaded him to accelerate his visit, had waited for him, and brought him down in his own carriage. the truth was, that lord kilcullen had thought that the shades of grey abbey would be too much for him, without some genial spirit to enlighten them: he was delighted to find that mat tierney was to be there, and was rejoiced to be able to convey him with him, as a sort of protection from his father's eloquence for the first two days of the visit. "lord kilcullen, your mother and i--" began the father, intent on at once commenting on the iniquity of the late arrival; when he saw the figure of a very stout gentleman, amply wrapped up in travelling habiliments, follow his son into the inner hall. "tierney, my lord," said the son, "was good enough to come down with me. i found that he intended to be here to-morrow, and i told him you and my mother would be delighted to see him to-day instead." the earl shook mr. tierney's hand, and told him how very welcome he was at all times, and especially at present--unexpected pleasures were always the most agreeable; and then the earl bustled about, and ordered supper and wine, and fussed about the bed-rooms, and performed the necessary rites of hospitality, and then went to bed, without having made one solemn speech to his son. so far, lord kilcullen had been successful in his manoeuvre; and he trusted that by making judicious use of mat tierney, he might be able to stave off the evil hour for at any rate a couple of days. but he was mistaken. lord cashel was now too much in earnest to be put off his purpose; he had been made too painfully aware that his son's position was desperate, and that he must at once be saved by a desperate effort, or given over to utter ruin. and, to tell the truth, so heavy were the new debts of which he heard from day to day, so insurmountable seemed the difficulties, that he all but repented that he had not left him to his fate. the attempt, however, must again be made; he was there, in the house, and could not be turned out; but lord cashel determined that at any rate no time should be lost. the two new arrivals made their appearance the next morning, greatly to lady cashel's delight; she was perfectly satisfied with her son's apology, and delighted to find that at any rate one of her expected guests would not fail her in her need. the breakfast went over pleasantly enough, and kilcullen was asking mat to accompany him into the stables, to see what novelties they should find there, when lord cashel spoiled the arrangement by saying, "could you spare me half-an-hour in the bookroom first, kilcullen?" this request, of course, could not be refused; and the father and son walked off, leaving mat tierney to the charity of the ladies. there was much less of flippant overbearing impudence now, about lord kilcullen, much less of arrogance and insult from the son towards the father, than there had been in the previous interview which has been recorded. he seemed to be somewhat in dread, to be cowed, and ill at ease; he tried, however, to assume his usual manner, and followed his father into the book-room with an affected air of indifference, which very ill concealed his real feelings. "kilcullen," began the earl, "i was very sorry to see tierney with you last night. it would have been much better that we should have been alone together, at any rate for one morning. i suppose you are aware that there is a great deal to be talked over between us?" "i suppose there is," said the son; "but i couldn't well help bringing the man, when he told me he was coming here." "he didn't ask you to bring him, i suppose?--but we will not talk about that. will you do me the favour to inform me what your present plans are?" "my present plans, my lord? indeed, i've no plans!--it's a long time since i had a plan of my own. i am, however, prepared to acquiesce entirely in any which you may propose. i have come quite prepared to throw at miss wyndham's feet myself and my fortune." "and do you expect her to accept you?" "you said she would, my lord: so i have taken that for granted. i, at any rate, will ask her; if she refuses me, your lordship will perhaps be able to persuade her to a measure so evidently beneficial to all parties." "the persuading must be with yourself; but if you suppose you can carry her with a high hand, without giving yourself the trouble to try to please her, you are very much mistaken. if you think she'll accept you merely because you ask her, you might save yourself the trouble, and as well return to london at once." "just as you please, my lord; but i thought i came in obedience to your express wishes." "so you did; but, to tell you the truth--your manner in coming is very different from what i would wish it to be. your--" "did you want me to crawl here on my hands and knees?" "i wanted you to come, kilcullen, with some sense of what you owe to those who are endeavouring to rescue you from ruin: with some feeling of, at any rate, sorrow for the mad extravagance of your past career. instead of that, you come gay, reckless, and unconcerned as ever; you pick up the first jovial companion you meet, and with him disturb the house at a most unseasonable hour. you are totally regardless of the appointments you make; and plainly show, that as you come here solely for your own pleasure, you consider it needless to consult my wishes or my comfort. are you aware that you kept your mother and myself two hours waiting for dinner yesterday?" the pathos with which lord cashel terminated his speech--and it was one the thrilling effect of which he intended to be overwhelming--almost restored lord kilcullen to his accustomed effrontery. "my lord," he said, "i did not consider myself of sufficient importance to have delayed your dinner ten minutes." "i have always endeavoured, kilcullen, to show the same respect to you in my house, which my father showed to me in his; but you do not allow me the opportunity. but let that pass; we have more important things to speak of. when last we were here together why did you not tell me the whole truth?" "what truth, my lord?" "about your debts, kilcullen: why did you conceal from me their full amount? why, at any rate, did you take pains to make me think them so much less than they really are?" "conceal, my lord?--that is hardly fair, considering that i told you expressly i could not give you any idea what was the amount i owed. i concealed nothing; if you deceived yourself, the fault was not mine." "you could not but have known that the claims against you were much larger than i supposed them to be--double, i suppose. good heaven!--why in ten years more, at this rate, you would more than consume the fee simple of the whole property! what can i say to you, kilcullen, to make you look on your own conduct in the proper light?" "i think you have said enough for the purpose; you have told me to marry, and i have consented to do so." "do you think, kilcullen, you have spent the last eight years in a way which it can please a father to contemplate? do you think i can look back on your conduct with satisfaction or content? and yet you have no regret to express for the past--no promises to make for the future. i fear it is all in vain. i fear that what i am doing what i am striving to do, is now all in vain. i fear it is hopeless to attempt to recall you from the horrid, reckless, wicked mode of life you have adopted." the sombre mantle of expostulatory eloquence had now descended on the earl, and he continued, turning full upon his victim, and raising and lowering his voice with monotonous propriety.--"i fear it is to no good purpose that i am subjecting your mother and myself to privation, restraint, and inconvenience; that i am straining every nerve to place you again in a position of respectability, a position suitable to my fortune and your own rank. i am endeavouring to retrieve the desperate extravagance--the--i must say--though i do not wish to hurt your feelings, yet i must say, disgraceful ruin of your past career. and how do you help me? what regret do you show? what promises of amendment do you afford? you drive up to my hall-door at midnight with your boon companion; you disturb the whole household at most unseasonable hours, and subject my family to the same disreputable irregularity in which you have yourself so long indulged. can such doings, kilcullen, give me any hopes for the future? can--" "my lord--i am extremely sorry for the dinner: what can i say more? and as for mat tierney, he is your own guest or her ladyship's--not mine. it is my misfortune to have come in the same carriage with him, but that is the extent of my offence." "well, kilcullen; if you think your conduct has always been such as it ought to be, it is of little use for me to bring up arguments to the contrary." "i don't think so, my lord. what can i say more? i have done those things which i ought not to have done. were i to confess my transgressions for the hour together, i could not say more; except that i have left undone the things which i ought to have done. or, do you want me to beat my breast and tear my hair?" "i want you, lord kilcullen, to show some sense of decency--some filial respect." "well, my lord, here i am, prepared to marry a wife of your own choosing, and to set about the business this morning, if you please. i thought you would have called that decent, filial, and respectable." the earl could hardly gainsay this; but still he could not bring himself to give over so soon the unusual pleasure of blowing up his only son. it was so long since lord kilcullen had been regularly in his power, and it might never occur again. so he returned from consideration of the future to a further retrospect on the past. "you certainly have played your cards most foolishly; you have thrown away your money--rather, i should say, my money, in a manner which nothing can excuse or palliate. you might have made the turf a source of gratifying amusement; your income was amply sufficient to enable you to do so; but you have possessed so little self-control, so little judgment, so little discrimination, that you have allowed yourself to be plundered by every blackleg, and robbed by every--everybody in short, who chose to rob you. the same thing has been the case in all your other amusements and pursuits--" "well, my lord, i confess it all; isn't that enough?" "enough, kilcullen!" said the earl, in a voice of horrified astonishment, "how enough?--how can anything be enough after such a course--so wild, so mad, so ruinous!" "for heaven's sake, my lord, finish the list of my iniquities, or you'll make me feel that i am utterly unfit to become my cousin's husband." "i fear you are--indeed i fear you are. are the horses disposed of yet, kilcullen?" "indeed they are not, my lord; nor can i dispose of them. there is more owing for them than they are worth; you may say they belong to the trainer now." "is the establishment in curzon street broken up?" "to tell the truth, not exactly; but i've no thoughts of returning there. i'm still under rent for the house." the cross-examination was continued for a considerable time--till the earl had literally nothing more to say, and lord kilcullen was so irritated that he told his father he would not stand it any longer. then they went into money affairs, and the earl spoke despondingly about ten thousands and twenty thousands, and the viscount somewhat flippantly of fifty thousands and sixty thousands; and this was continued till the earl felt that his son was too deep in the mire to be pulled out, and the son thought that, deep as he was there, it would be better to remain and wallow in it than undergo so disagreeable a process as that to which his father subjected him in extricating him from it. it was settled, however, that mr. jervis, lord cashel's agent, should receive full authority to deal summarily in all matters respecting the horses and their trainers, the house in curzon street, and its inhabitants, and all other appendages and sources of expense which lord kilcullen had left behind him; and that he, kilcullen, should at once commence his siege upon his cousin's fortune. and on this point the son bargained that, as it would be essentially necessary that his spirits should be light and easy, he was not, during the operation, to be subjected to any of his father's book-room conversations: for this he stipulated as an absolute _sine quâ non_ in the negotiation, and the clause was at last agreed to, though not without much difficulty. both father and son seemed to think that the offer should be made at once. lord cashel really feared that his son would be arrested at grey abbey, and he was determined to pay nothing further for him, unless he felt secure of fanny's fortune; and whatever were lord kilcullen's hopes and fears as to his future lot, he was determined not to remain long in suspense, as far as his projected marriage was concerned. he was determined to do his best to accomplish it, for he would have done anything to get the command of ready money; if he was not successful, at any rate he need not remain in the purgatory of grey abbey. the queen's bench would be preferable to that. he was not, however, very doubtful; he felt but little confidence in the constancy of any woman's affection, and a great deal in his own powers of fascination: he had always been successful in his appeals to ladies' hearts, and did not doubt of being so now, when the object of his adoration must, as he thought, be so dreadfully in want of some excitement, something to interest her. any fool might have her now, thought he, and she can't have any violent objection to being lady kilcullen for the present, and lady cashel in due time. he felt, however, something like remorse at the arrangement to which he was a party; it was not that he was about to make a beautiful creature, his own cousin, miserable for life, by uniting her to a spendthrift, a _roué_, and a gambler--such was the natural lot of women in the higher ranks of life--but he felt that he was robbing her of her money. he would have thought it to be no disgrace to carry her off had another person been her guardian. she would then have had fair play, and it would be the guardian's fault if her fortune were not secure. but she had no friend now to protect her: it was her guardian himself who was betraying her to ruin. however, the money must be had, and lord kilcullen was not long in quieting his conscience. "tierney," said kilcullen, meeting his friend after his escape from the book-room; "you are not troubled with a father now, i believe;--do you recollect whether you ever had one?" "well, i can't say i remember just at present," said mat; "but i believe i had a sort of one, once." "i'm a more dutiful son than you," said the other; "i never can forget mine. i have no doubt an alligator on the banks of the nile is a fearful creature--a shark when one's bathing, or a jungle tiger when one's out shooting, ought, i'm sure, to be avoided; but no creature yet created, however hungry, or however savage, can equal in ferocity a governor who has to shell out his cash! i've no wish for a _tête-à-tête_ with any bloody-minded monster; but i'd sooner meet a starved hyena, single-handed in the desert, than be shut up for another hour with my lord cashel in that room of his on the right-hand side of the hall. if you hear of my having beat a retreat from grey abbey, without giving you or any one else warning of my intention, you will know that i have lacked courage to comply with a second summons to those gloomy realms. if i receive another invite such as that i got this morning, i am off." lady cashel's guests came on the day appointed; the carriages were driven up, one after another, in quick succession, about an hour before dinner-time; and, as her ladyship's mind became easy on the score of disappointments, it was somewhat troubled as to the multitude of people to be fed and entertained. murray had not yet forgiven the injury inflicted on him when the family dinner was kept waiting for lord kilcullen, and richards was still pouting at her own degraded position. the countess had spent the morning pretending to make arrangements, which were in fact all settled by griffiths; and when she commenced the operation of dressing herself, she declared she was so utterly exhausted by what she had gone through during the last week, as to be entirely unfit to entertain her company. poor dear lady cashel! was she so ignorant of her own nature as to suppose it possible that she should ever entertain anybody? however, a glass of wine, and some mysterious drops, and a little paint; a good deal of coaxing, the sight of her diamonds, and of a large puce-coloured turban, somewhat revivified her; and she was in her drawing-room in due time, supported by lady selina and fanny, ready to receive her visitors as soon as they should descend from their respective rooms. lady cashel had already welcomed lord george, and shaken hands with the bishop: and was now deep in turnips and ten-pound freeholders with the gouty colonel, who had hobbled into the room on a pair of crutches, and was accommodated with two easy chairs in a corner--one for himself, and the other for his feet. "now, my dear lady george," said the countess, "you must not think of returning to mountains tonight: indeed, we made sure of you and lord george for a week." "my dear lady cashel, it's impossible; indeed, we wished it of all things, and tried it every way: but we couldn't manage it; lord george has so much to do: there's the sessions to-morrow at dunlavin, and he has promised to meet sir glenmalure aubrey, about a road, or a river, or a bridge--i forget which it is; and they must attend to those things, you know, or the tenants couldn't get their corn to market. but you don't know how sorry we are, and such a charming set you have got here!" "well, i know it's no use pressing you; but i can't tell you how vexed i am, for i counted on you, above all, and adolphus will be so sorry. you know lord kilcullen's come home, lady george?" "yes; i was very glad to hear we were to meet him." "oh, yes! he's come to stay here some time, i believe; he's got quite fond of grey abbey lately. he and his father get on so well together, it's quite a delight to me." "oh, it must be, i'm sure," said lady george; and the countess sidled off to the bishop's fat wife. "well, this is very kind of you and the bishop, to come at so short a notice: indeed i hardly dared expect it. i know he has so much to do in dublin with those horrid boards and things." "he is busy there, to be sure, lady cashel; but he couldn't deny himself the pleasure of coming to grey abbey; he thinks so very much of the earl. indeed, he'd contrive to be able to come here, when he couldn't think of going anywhere else." "i'm sure lord cashel feels how kind he is; and so do i, and so does adolphus. lord kilcullen will be delighted to meet you and the bishop." the bishop's wife assured the countess that nothing on earth, at the present moment, would give the bishop so much pleasure as meeting lord kilcullen. "you know the bishop christened him, don't you?" said lady cashel. "no! did he though?" said the bishop's wife; "how very interesting!" "isn't it? and adolphus longs to meet him. he's so fond of everything that's high-minded and talented, adolphus is: a little sarcastic perhaps--i don't mind saying so to you; but that's only to inferior sort of people--not talented, you know: some people are stupid, and adolphus can't bear that." "indeed they are, my lady. i was dining last week at mrs. prijean's, in merrion square; you know mrs. prijean?" "i think i met her at carton, four years ago." "well, she is very heavy: what do you think, lady cashel, she--" "adolphus can't bear people of that sort, but he'll be delighted with the bishop: it's so delightful, his having christened him. adolphus means to live a good deal here now. indeed, he and his father have so much in common that they can't get on very well apart, and i really hope he and the bishop'll see a good deal of each other;" and the countess left the bishop's wife and sat herself down by old mrs. ellison. "my dear mrs. ellison, i am so delighted to see you once again at grey abbey; it's such ages since you were here!" "indeed it is, lady cashel, a very long time; but the poor colonel suffers so much, it's rarely he's fit to be moved; and, indeed, i'm not much better myself. i was not able to move my left shoulder from a week before christmas-day till a few days since!" "you don't say so! rheumatism, i suppose?" "oh, yes--all rheumatism: no one knows what i suffer." "and what do you use for it?" "oh, there's nothing any use. i know the very nature of rheumatism now, i've had it so long--and it minds nothing at all: there's no preventing it, and no curing it. it's like a bad husband, lady cashel; the best way is to put up with it." "and how is the dear colonel, mrs. ellison?" "why, he was just able to come here, and that was all; but he was dying to see lord cashel. he thinks the ministers'll be shaken about this business of o'connell's; and if so, that there'll be a general election, and then what'll they do about the county?" "i'm sure lord cashel wanted to see the colonel on that very subject; so does adolphus--lord kilcullen, you know. i never meddle with those things; but i really think adolphus is thinking of going into parliament. you know he's living here at present: his father's views and his own are so exactly the same on all those sort of things, that it's quite delightful. he's taking a deal of interest about the county lately, is adolphus, and about grey abbey too: he's just the same his father used to be, and that kind of thing is so pleasant, isn't it, mrs ellison?" mrs ellison said it was, and at the same moment groaned, for her shoulder gave her a twinge. the subject of these eulogiums, in the meantime, did not make his appearance till immediately before dinner was announced, and certainly did not evince very strongly the delight which his mother had assured her friends he would feel at meeting them, for he paid but very little attention to any one but mat tierney and his cousin fanny; he shook hands with all the old gentlemen, bowed to all the old ladies, and nodded at the young ones. but if he really felt that strong desire, which his mother had imputed to him, of opening his heart to the bishop and the colonel respecting things temporal and spiritual, he certainly very successfully suppressed his anxiety. he had, during the last two or three days, applied himself to the task of ingratiating himself with fanny. he well knew how to suit himself to different characters, and to make himself agreeable when he pleased; and fanny, though she had never much admired her dissipated cousin, certainly found his conversation a relief after the usual oppressive tedium of grey abbey society. he had not begun by making love to her, or expressing admiration, or by doing or saying anything which could at all lead her to suspect his purpose, or put her on her guard. he had certainly been much more attentive to her, much more intimate with her, than he usually had been in his flying visits to grey abbey; but then he was now making his first appearance as a reformed rake; and besides, he was her first cousin, and she therefore felt no inclination to repel his advances. he was obliged, in performance of a domestic duty, to walk out to dinner with one of lady george's daughters, but he contrived to sit next to fanny--and, much to his father's satisfaction, talked to her during the whole ceremony. "and where have you hidden yourself all the morning, fanny," said he, "that nobody has seen anything of you since breakfast?" "whither have _you_ taken yourself all the day, rather, that you had not a moment to come and look after us? the miss o'joscelyns have been expecting you to ride with them, walk with them, talk with them, and play _la grace_ with them. they didn't give up the sticks till it was quite dark, in the hope of you and mr tierney making your appearance." "well, fanny, don't tell my mother, and i'll tell you the truth:-- promise now." "oh, i'm no tell-tale." "well then," and he whispered into her ear--"i was running away from the miss o'joscelyns." "but that won't do at all; don't you know they were asked here for your especial edification and amusement?" "oh, i know they were. so were the bishop, and the colonel, and lord george, and their respective wives, and mr hill. my dear mamma asked them all here for my amusement; but, you know, one man may lead a horse to water--a hundred can't make him drink. i cannot, cannot drink of the miss o'joscelyns, and the bishop of maryborough." "for shame, adolphus! you ought at any rate to do something to amuse them." "amuse them! my dear fanny, who ever heard of amusing a bishop? but it's very easy to find fault; what have you done, yourself, for their amusement?" "i didn't run away from them; though, had i done so, there would have been more excuse for me than for you." "so there would, fanny," said kilcullen, feeling that she had alluded to her brother's death; "and i'm very, very sorry all these people are here to bore you at such a time, and doubly sorry that they should have been asked on my account. they mistake me greatly, here. they know that i've thought grey abbey dull, and have avoided it; and now that i've determined to get over the feeling, because i think it right to do so, they make it ten times more unbearable than ever, for my gratification! it's like giving a child physic mixed in sugar; the sugar's sure to be the nastiest part of the dose. indeed i have no dislike to grey abbey at present; though i own i have no taste for the sugar in which my kind mother has tried to conceal its proper flavour." "well, make the best of it; they'll all be gone in ten days." "ten days! are they to stay ten days? will you tell me, fanny, what was the object in asking mat tierney to meet such a party?" "to help you to amuse the young ladies." "gracious heavens! does lady cashel really expect mat tierney to play _la grace_ with the miss o'joscelyns?--well, the time will come to an end, i suppose. but in truth i'm more sorry for you than for any one. it was very ill-judged, their getting such a crowd to bore you at such a time," and lord kilcullen contrived to give his voice a tone of tender solicitude. "kilcullen," said the earl, across the table, "you don't hear the bishop. his lordship is asking you to drink wine with him." "i shall be most proud of the honour," said the son, and bobbed his head at the bishop across the table. fanny was on the point of saying something respecting her brother to lord kilcullen, which would have created a kind of confidence between them, but the bishop's glass of wine broke it off, and from that time lord kilcullen was forced by his father into a general conversation with his guests. in the evening there was music and singing. the miss o'joscelyns, and miss fitzgeralds, and mr hill, performed: even mat tierney condescended to amuse the company by singing the "coronation", first begging the bishop to excuse the peculiar allusions to the "_clargy_", contained in one of the verses; and then fanny was asked to sing. she had again become silent, dull, and unhappy, was brooding over her miseries and disappointments, and she declined. lord kilcullen was behind her chair, and when they pressed her, he whispered to her, "don't sing for them, fanny; it's a shame that they should tease you at such a time; i wonder how my mother can have been so thoughtless." fanny persisted in declining to sing--and lord kilcullen again sat down beside her. "don't trouble yourself about them, fanny," said he, "they're just fit to sing to each other; it's very good work for them." "i should think it very good work, as you call it, for myself, too, another time; only i'm hardly in singing humour at present, and, therefore, obliged to you for your assistance and protection." "your most devoted knight as long as this fearful invasion lasts!--your amadis de gaul--your bertrand du guesclin [ ]! and no paladin of old ever attempted to defend a damsel from more formidable foes." [footnote : amadis . . . du guesclin--mediaeval heroes. amadis de gaul was the title hero of a th century romantic novel, probably first written in spanish, which was popular throughout europe. bertrand du guesclin was a historical figure, a fourteenth century french soldier and marshall of france.] "indeed, adolphus, i don't think them so formidable. many of them are my own friends." "is mrs ellison your own friend?--or mrs moore?" "not exactly those two, in particular." "who then? is it miss judith o'joscelyn? or is the reverend mr hill one of those to whom you give that sweetest of all names?" "yes; to both of them. it was only this morning i had a long _tête-à-tête_--" "what, with mr hill?" "no, not with mr hill though it wouldn't be the first even with him, but with judith o'joscelyn. i lent her a pattern for worsted work." "and does that make her your friend? do you give your friendship so easily?" "you forget that i've known her for years." "well, now, i've not. i've seen her about three times in my life, and spoken two words to her perhaps twice; and yet i'll describe her character to you; and if you can say that the description is incorrect, i will permit you to call her your friend." "well, let's hear the character." "it wouldn't be kind in me, though, to laugh at your _friend_." "oh, she's not so especially and particularly my friend that you need mind that." "then you'll promise not to be angry?" "oh no, i won't be angry." "well, then; she has two passions: they are for worsted and hymn-books. she has a moral objection to waltzing. theoretically she disapproves of flirtations: she encourages correspondence between young ladies; always crosses her letters, and never finished one for the last ten years without expressing entire resignation to the will of god,--as if she couldn't be resigned without so often saying so. she speaks to her confidential friends of young men as a very worthless, insignificant race of beings; she is, however, prepared to take the very first that may be unfortunate enough to come in her way; she has no ideas of her own, but is quick enough at borrowing those of other people; she considers herself a profound theologian; dotes on a converted papist, and looks on a puseyite [ ] as something one shade blacker than the devil. now isn't that sufficiently like for a portrait?" [footnote : puseyite--a follower of edward pusey ( - ), one of three scholars at oxford who started a movement critical of the church of england. one of the three, john henry newman, converted to catholicism, and pusey and his followers were accused of advocating catholic practices.] "it's the portrait of a set, i fear, rather than an individual. i don't know that it's particularly like miss o'joscelyn, except as to the worsted and hymn-books." "what, not as to the waltzing, resignation, and worthless young men? come, are they not exactly her traits? does she waltz?" "no, she does not." "and haven't you heard her express a moral objection to it?" "well, i believe i have." "did you ever get a letter from her, or see a letter of hers?" "i don't remember; yes, i did once, a long time ago." "and wasn't she very resigned in it?" "well, i declare i believe she was; and it's very proper too; people ought to be resigned." "oh, of course. and now doesn't she love a convert and hate a puseyite?" "all irish clergyman's daughters do that." "well, fanny, you can't say but that it was a good portrait; and after that, will you pretend to say you call miss o'joscelyn your friend?" "not my very friend of friends; but, as friends go, she's as good as most others." "and who is the friend of friends, fanny?" "come, you're not my father confessor. i'm not to tell you all. if i told you that, you'd make another portrait." "i'm sure i couldn't draw a disparaging picture of anybody you would really call your friend. but indeed i pity you, living among so many such people. there can be nobody here who understands you." "oh, i'm not very unintelligible." "much more so than miss o'joscelyn. i shouldn't wish to have to draw your portrait." "pray don't; if it were frightful i should think you uncivil; and if you made it handsome, i should know you were flattering. besides, you don't know enough of me to tell me my character." "i think i do; but i'll study it a little more before i put it on the canvass. some likenesses are very hard to catch." fanny felt, when she went to bed, that she had spent a pleasanter evening than she usually did, and that it was a much less nuisance to talk to her cousin adolphus than to either his father, mother, or sister; and as she sat before her fire, while her maid was brushing her hair, she began to think that she had mistaken his character, and that he couldn't be the hard, sensual, selfish man for which she had taken him. her ideas naturally fell back to frank and her love, her difficulties and sorrows; and, before she went to sleep, she had almost taught herself to think that she might make lord kilcullen the means of bringing lord ballindine back to grey abbey. she had, to be sure, been told that her cousin had spoken ill of frank; that it was he who had been foremost in decrying lord ballindine's folly and extravagance; but she had never heard him do so; she had only heard of it through lord cashel; and she quite ceased to believe anything her guardian might say respecting her discarded lover. at any rate she would try. some step she was determined to take about lord ballindine; and, if her cousin refused to act like a cousin and a friend, she would only be exactly where she was before. xxxi. the two friends the next three days passed slowly and tediously for most of the guests assembled at grey abbey. captain cokely, and a mr battersby, came over from newbridge barracks, but they did not add much to the general enjoyment of the party, though their arrival was hailed with delight by some of the young ladies. at any rate they made the rooms look less forlorn in the evenings, and made it worth the girls' while to put on their best bibs and tuckers. "but what's the use of it at all?" said matilda fitzgerald to little letty o'joscelyn, when she had spent three-quarters of an hour in adjusting her curls, and setting her flounces properly, on the evening before the arrival of the two cavalry officers; "not a soul to look at us but a crusty old colonel, a musty old bishop, and a fusty old beau!" "who's the old beau?" said letty. "why, that mr tierney. i can't conceive how lady cashel can have asked us to meet such a set," and matilda descended, pouting, and out of humour. but on the next day she went through her work much more willingly, if not more carefully. "that captain cokely's a very nice fellow," said matilda; "the best of that newbridge set, out and out." "well now, i really think he's not so nice as mr battersby," said letty. "i'm sure he's not so good-looking." "oh, battersby's only a boy. after all, letty, i don't know whether i like officers so much better than other men,"--and she twisted her neck round to get a look at her back in the pier-glass, and gave her dress a little pull just above her bustle. "i'm sure i do," said letty; "they've so much more to say for themselves, and they're so much smarter." "why, yes, they are smarter," said matilda; "and there's nothing on earth so dowdy as an old black coat, but, then, officers are always going away: you no sooner get to know one or two of a set, and to feel that one of them is really a darling fellow, but there, they are off--to jamaica, china, hounslow barracks, or somewhere; and then it's all to do over again." "well, i do wish they wouldn't move them about quite so much." "but let's go down. i think i'll do now, won't i?" and they descended, to begin the evening campaign. "wasn't miss wyndham engaged to some one?" said old mrs ellison to mrs moore. "i'm sure some one told me so." "oh, yes, she was," said mrs moore; "the affair was settled, and everything arranged; but the man was very poor, and a gambler,--lord ballindine: he has the name of a property down in mayo somewhere; but when she got all her brother's money, lord cashel thought it a pity to sacrifice it,--so he got her out of the scrape. a very good thing for the poor girl, for they say he's a desperate scamp." "well, i declare i think," said mrs ellison, "she'll not have far to look for another." "what, you think there's something between her and lord kilcullen?" said mrs moore. "it looks like it, at any rate, don't it?" said mrs ellison. "well, i really think it does," said mrs moore; "i'm sure i'd be very glad of it. i know he wants money desperately, and it would be such a capital thing for the earl." "at any rate, the lady does not look a bit unwilling," said mrs ellison. "i suppose she's fond of rakish young men. you say lord ballindine was of that set; and i'm sure lord kilcullen's the same,--he has the reputation, at any rate. they say he and his father never speak, except just in public, to avoid the show of the thing." and the two old ladies set to work to a good dish of scandal. "miss wyndham's an exceedingly fine girl," said captain cokely to mat tierney, as they were playing a game of piquet in the little drawing-room. "yes," said mat; "and she's a hundred thousand exceedingly fine charms too, independently of her fine face." "so i hear," said cokely; "but i only believe half of what i hear about those things." "she has more than that; i know it." "has she though? faith, do you know i think kilcullen has a mind to keep it in the family. he's very soft on her, and she's just as sweet to him. i shouldn't be surprised if he were to marry now, and turn steady." "not at all; there are two reasons against it. in the first place, he's too much dipped for even fanny's fortune to be any good to him; and secondly, she's engaged." "what, to ballindine?" said cokely. "exactly so," said mat. "ah, my dear fellow, that's all off long since. i heard kilcullen say so myself. i'll back kilcullen to marry her against ballindine for a hundred pounds." "done," said mat; and the bet was booked. the same evening, tierney wrote to dot blake, and said in a postscript, "i know you care for ballindine; so do i, but i don't write to him. if he really wants to secure his turtle-dove, he should see that she doesn't get bagged in his absence. kilcullen is here, and i tell you he's a keen sportsman. they say it's quite up with him in london, and i should be sorry she were sacrificed: she seems a nice girl." lord kilcullen had ample opportunities of forwarding his intimacy with fanny, and he did not neglect them. to give him his due, he played his cards as well as his father could wish him. he first of all overcame the dislike with which she was prepared to regard him; he then interested her about himself; and, before he had been a week at grey abbey, she felt that she had a sort of cousinly affection for him. he got her to talk with a degree of interest about himself; and when he could do that, there was no wonder that tierney should have fears for his friend's interests. not that there was any real occasion for them. fanny wyndham was not the girl to be talked out of, or into, a real passion, by anyone. "now, tell me the truth, fanny," said kilcullen, as they were sitting over the fire together in the library, one dark afternoon, before they went to dress for dinner; "hadn't you been taught to look on me as a kind of ogre--a monster of iniquity, who spoke nothing but oaths, and did nothing but sin?" "not exactly that: but i won't say i thought you were exactly just what you ought to be." "but didn't you think i was exactly what i ought not to have been? didn't you imagine, now, that i habitually sat up all night, gambling, and drinking buckets of champagne and brandy-and-water? and that i lay in bed all day, devising iniquity in my dreams? come now, tell the truth, and shame the devil; if i am the devil, i know people have made me out to be." "why, really, adolphus, i never calculated how your days and nights were spent. but if i am to tell the truth, i fear some of them might have been passed to better advantage." "which of us, fanny, mightn't, with truth, say the same of ourselves?" "of course, none of us," said fanny; "don't think i'm judging you; you asked me the question,--and i suppose you wanted an answer." "i did; i wanted a true one--for though you may never have given yourself much trouble to form an opinion about me, i am anxious that you should do so now. i don't want to trouble you with what is done and past; i don't want to make it appear that i have not been thoughtless and imprudent--wicked and iniquitous, if you are fond of strong terms; neither do i want to trouble you with confessing all my improprieties, that i may regularly receive absolution. but i do wish you to believe that i have done nothing which should exclude me from your future good opinion; from your friendship and esteem." "i am not of an unforgiving temperament, even had you done anything for me to forgive: but i am not aware that you have." "no; nothing for you to forgive, in the light of an offence to yourself; but much, perhaps, to prevent your being willing to regard me as a personal friend. we're not only first cousins, fanny, but are placed more closely together than cousins usually are. you have neither father nor mother; now, also, you have no brother," and he took her hands in his own as he said so. "who should be a brother to you, if i am not? who, at any rate, should you look on as a friend, if not on me? nobody could be better, i believe, than selina; but she is stiff, and cold--unlike you in everything. i should be so happy if i could be the friend--the friend of friends you spoke of the other evening; if i could fill the place which must be empty near your heart. i can never be this to you, if you believe that anything in my past life has been really disgraceful. it is for this reason that i want to know what you truly think of me. i won't deny that i am anxious you should think well of me:--well, at any rate for the present, and the future, and charitably as regards the past." fanny had been taken much by surprise by the turn her cousin had given to the conversation; and was so much affected, that, before he had finished, she was in tears. she had taken her hand out of his, to put her handkerchief to her eyes, and as she did not immediately answer, he continued: "i shall probably be much here for some time to come--such, at least, are my present plans; and i hope that while i am, we shall become friends: not such friends, fanny, as you and judith o'joscelyn--friends only of circumstance, who have neither tastes, habits, or feelings in common--friends whose friendship consists in living in the same parish, and meeting each other once or twice a week; but friends in reality--friends in confidence--friends in mutual dependence--friends in love--friends, dear fanny, as cousins situated as we are should be to each other." fanny's heart was very full, for she felt how much, how desperately, she wanted such a friend as kilcullen described. how delightful it would be to have such a friend, and to find him in her own cousin! the whole family, hitherto, were so cold to her--so uncongenial. the earl she absolutely disliked; she loved her aunt, but it was only because she was her aunt--she couldn't like her; and though she loved lady selina, and, to a degree, admired her, it was like loving a marble figure. there was more true feeling in what kilcullen had now said to her, than in all that had fallen from the whole family for the four years she had lived at grey abbey, and she could not therefore but close on the offer of his affection. "shall we be such friends, then?" said he; "or, after all, am i too bad? have i too much of the taint of the wicked world to be the friend of so pure a creature as you?" "oh no, adolphus; i'm sure i never thought so," said she. "i never judged you, and indeed i am not disposed to do so now. i'm too much in want of kindness to reject yours,--even were i disposed to do so, which i am not." "then, fanny, we are to be friends--true, loving, trusting friends?" "oh, yes!" said fanny. "i am really, truly grateful for your affection and kindness. i know how precious they are, and i will value them accordingly." again lord kilcullen took her hand, and pressed it in his; and then he kissed it, and told her she was his own dear cousin fanny; and then recommended her to go and dress, which she did. he sat himself down for a quarter of an hour, ruminating, and then also went off to dress; but, during that quarter of an hour, very different ideas passed through his mind, than such as those who knew him best would have given him credit for. in the first place, he thought that he really began to feel an affection for his cousin fanny, and to speculate whether it were absolutely within the verge of possibility that he should marry her--retrieve his circumstances--treat her well, and live happily for the rest of his life as a respectable nobleman. for two or three minutes the illusion remained, till it was banished by retrospection. it was certainly possible that he should marry her: it was his full intention to do so: but as to retrieving his circumstances and treating her well!--the first was absolutely impossible--the other nearly so; and as to his living happily at grey abbey as a family man, he yawned as he felt how impossible it would be that he should spend a month in such a way, let alone a life. but then fanny wyndham was so beautiful, so lively, so affectionate, so exactly what a cousin and a wife ought to be: he could not bear to think that all his protestations of friendship and love had been hypocritical; that he could only look upon her as a gudgeon, and himself as a bigger fish, determined to swallow her! yet such must be his views regarding her. he departed to dress, absolutely troubled in his conscience. and what were fanny's thoughts about her cousin? she was much surprised and gratified, but at the same time somewhat flustered and overwhelmed, by the warmth and novelty of his affection. however, she never for a moment doubted his truth towards her, or had the slightest suspicion of his real object. her chief thought was whether she could induce him to be a mediator for her, between lord cashel and lord ballindine. during the next two days he spoke to her a good deal about her brother--of whom, by-the-bye, he had really known nothing. he contrived, however, to praise him as a young man of much spirit and great promise; then he spoke of her own large fortune, asked her what her wishes were about its investment, and told her how happy he would be to express those wishes at once to lord cashel, and to see that they were carried out. once or twice she had gradually attempted to lead the conversation to lord ballindine, but kilcullen was too crafty, and had prevented her; and she had not yet sufficient courage to tell him at once what was so near her heart. "fanny," said lady selina, one morning, about a week after the general arrival of the company at grey abbey, and when some of them had taken their departure, "i am very glad to see you have recovered your spirits: i know you have made a great effort, and i appreciate and admire it." "indeed, selina, i fear you are admiring me too soon. i own i have been amused this week past, and, to a certain degree, pleased; but i fear you'll find i shall relapse. there's been no radical reform; my thoughts are all in the same direction as they were." "but the great trial in this world is to behave well and becomingly in spite of oppressive thoughts: and it always takes a struggle to do that, and that struggle you've made. i hope it may lead you to feel that you may be contented and in comfort without having everything which you think necessary to your happiness. i'm sure i looked forward to this week as one of unmixed trouble and torment; but i was very wrong to do so. it has given me a great deal of unmixed satisfaction." "i'm very glad of that, selina, but what was it? i'm sure it could not have come from poor mrs ellison, or the bishop's wife; and you seemed to me to spend all your time in talking to them. virtue, they say, is its own reward: i don't know what other satisfaction you can have had from them." "in the first place, it has given me great pleasure to see that you were able to exert yourself in company, and that the crowd of people did not annoy you: but i have chiefly been delighted by seeing that you and adolphus are such good friends. you must think, fanny, that i am anxious about an only brother--especially when we have all had so much cause to be anxious about him; and don't you think it must be a delight to me to find that he is able to take pleasure in your society? i should be doubly pleased, doubly delighted, if i could please him myself. but i have not the vivacity to amuse him." "what nonsense, selina! don't say that." "but it's true, fanny; i have not; and grey abbey has become distasteful to him because we are all sedate, steady people. perhaps some would call us dull, and heavy; and i have grieved that it should be so, though i cannot alter my nature; but you are so much the contrary--there is so much in your character like his own, before he became fond of the world, that i feel he can become attached to and fond of you; and i am delighted to see that he thinks so himself. what do you think of him, now that you have seen more of him than you ever did before?" "indeed," said fanny, "i like him very much." "he is very clever, isn't he? he might have been anything if he had given himself fair play. he seems to have taken greatly to you." "oh yes; we are great friends:" and then fanny paused--"so great friends," she continued, looking somewhat gravely in lady selina's face, "that i mean to ask the greatest favour of him that i could ask of anyone: one i am sure i little dreamed i should ever ask of him." "what is it, fanny? is it a secret?" "indeed it is, selina; but it's a secret i will tell you. i mean to tell him all i feel about lord ballindine, and i mean to ask him to see him for me. adolphus has offered to be a brother to me, and i mean to take him at his word." lady selina turned very pale, and looked very grave as she replied, "that is not giving him a brother's work, fanny. a brother should protect you from importunity and insult, from injury and wrong; and that, i am sure, adolphus would do: but no brother would consent to offer your hand to a man who had neglected you and been refused, and who, in all probability, would now reject you with scorn if he has the opportunity--or if not that, will take you for your money's sake. that, fanny, is not a brother's work; and it is an embassy which i am sure adolphus will not undertake. if you take my advice you will not ask him." as lady selina finished speaking she walked to the door, as if determined to hear no reply from her cousin; but, as she was leaving the room, she fancied that she heard her sobbing, and her heart softened, and she again turned towards her and said, "god knows, fanny, i do not wish to be severe or ill-natured to you; i would do anything for your comfort and happiness, but i cannot bear to think that you should"--lady selina was puzzled for a word to express her meaning--"that you should forget yourself," and she attempted to put her arm round fanny's waist. but she was mistaken; fanny was not sobbing, but was angry; and what selina now said about her forgetting herself, did not make her less so. "no," she said, withdrawing herself from her cousin's embrace and standing erect, while her bosom was swelling with indignation: "i want no affection from you, selina, that is accompanied by so much disapprobation. you don't wish to be severe, only you say that i am likely to forget myself. forget myself!" and fanny threw back her beautiful head, and clenched her little fists by her side: "the other day you said 'disgrace myself', and i bore it calmly then; but i will not any longer bear such imputations. i tell you plainly, selina, i will not forget myself, nor will i be forgotten. nor will i submit to whatever fate cold, unfeeling people may doom me, merely because i am a woman and alone. i will not give up lord ballindine, if i have to walk to his door and tell him so. and were i to do so, i should never think that i had forgotten myself." "listen to me, fanny," said selina. "wait a moment," continued fanny, "i have listened enough: it is my turn to speak now. for one thing i have to thank you: you have dispelled the idea that i could look for help to anyone in this family. i will not ask your brother to do anything for me which you think so disgraceful. i will not subject him to the scorn with which you choose to think my love will be treated by him who loved me so well. that you should dare to tell me that he who did so much for my love should now scorn it!--oh, selina, that i may live to forget that you said those words!" and fanny, for a moment, put her handkerchief to her eyes--but it was but for a moment. "however," she continued, "i will now act for myself. as you think i might forget myself, i tell you i will do it in no clandestine way. i will write to lord ballindine, and i will show my letter to my uncle. the whole house shall read it if they please. i will tell lord ballindine all the truth--and if lord cashel turns me from his house, i shall probably find some friend to receive me, who may still believe that i have not forgotten myself." and fanny wyndham sailed out of the room. lady selina, when she saw that she was gone, sat down on the sofa and took her book. she tried to make herself believe that she was going to read; but it was no use: the tears dimmed her eyes, and she put the book down. the same evening the countess sent for selina into her boudoir, and, with a fidgety mixture of delight and surprise, told her that she had a wonderful piece of good news to communicate to her. "i declare, my dear," she said, "it's the most delightful thing i've heard for years and years; and it's just exactly what i had planned myself, only i never told anybody. dear me; it makes me so happy!" "what is it, mamma?" "your papa has been talking to me since dinner, my love, and he tells me adolphus is going to marry fanny wyndham." "going to marry whom?" said lady selina, almost with a shout. "fanny, i say: it's the most delightful match in the world: it's just what ought to be done. i suppose they won't have the wedding before summer; though may is a very nice month. let me see; it only wants three weeks to may." "mamma, what are you talking about?--you're dreaming." "dreaming, my dear? i'm not dreaming at all: it's a fact. who'd've thought of all this happening so soon, out of this party, which gave us so much trouble! however, i knew your father was right. i said all along that he was in the right to ask the people." "mamma," said lady selina, gravely, "listen to me: calmly now, and attentively. i don't know what papa has told you; but i tell you fanny does not dream of marrying adolphus. he has never asked her, and if he did she would never accept him. fanny is more than ever in love with lord ballindine." the countess opened her eyes wide, and looked up into her daughter's face, but said nothing. "tell me, mamma, as nearly as you can recollect, what it is papa has said to you, that, if possible, we may prevent mischief and misery. papa couldn't have said that fanny had accepted adolphus?" "he didn't say exactly that, my dear; but he said that it was his wish they should be married; that adolphus was very eager for it, and that fanny had received his attentions and admiration with evident pleasure and satisfaction. and so she has, my dear; you couldn't but have seen that yourself." "well, mamma, what else did papa say?" "why, he said just what i'm telling you: that i wasn't to be surprised if we were called on to be ready for the wedding at a short notice; or at any rate to be ready to congratulate fanny. he certainly didn't say she had accepted him. but he said he had no doubt about it; and i'm sure, from what was going on last week, i couldn't have any doubt either. but he told me not to speak to anyone about it yet; particularly not to fanny; only, my dear, i couldn't help, you know, talking it over with you;" and the countess leaned back in her chair, very much exhausted with the history she had narrated. "now, mamma, listen to me. it is not many hours since fanny told me she was unalterably determined to throw herself at lord ballindine's feet." "goodness gracious me, how shocking!" said the countess. "she even said that she would ask adolphus to be the means of bringing lord ballindine back to grey abbey." "lord have mercy!" said the countess. "i only tell you this, mamma, to show you how impossible it is that papa should be right." "what are we to do, my dear? oh, dear, there'll be such a piece of work! what a nasty thing fanny is. i'm sure she's been making love to adolphus all the week!" "no, mamma, she has not. don't be unfair to fanny. if there is anyone in fault it is adolphus; but, as you say, what shall we do to prevent further misunderstanding? i think i had better tell papa the whole." and so she did, on the following morning. but she was too late; she did not do it till after lord kilcullen had offered and had been refused. xxxii. how lord kilcullen fares in his wooing about twelve o'clock the same night, lord kilcullen and mat tierney were playing billiards, and were just finishing their last game: the bed-candles were lighted ready for them, and tierney was on the point of making the final hazard. "so you're determined to go to-morrow, mat?" said kilcullen. "oh, yes, i'll go to-morrow: your mother'll take me for a second paddy rea, else," said mat. "who the deuce was paddy rea?" "didn't you ever hear of paddy rea?--michael french of glare abbey--he's dead now, but he was alive enough at the time i'm telling you of, and kept the best house in county clare--well, he was coming down on the limerick coach, and met a deuced pleasant, good-looking, talkative sort of a fellow a-top of it. they dined and got a tumbler of punch together at roscrea; and when french got down at bird hill, he told his acquaintance that if he ever found himself anywhere near ennis, he'd be glad to see him at glare abbey. he was a hospitable sort of a fellow, and had got into a kind of way of saying the same thing to everybody, without meaning anything except to be civil--just as i'd wish a man good morning. well, french thought no more about the man, whose name he didn't even know; but about a fortnight afterwards, a hack car from ennis made its appearance at glare abbey, and the talkative traveller, and a small portmanteau, had soon found their way into the hail. french was a good deal annoyed, for he had some fashionables in the house, but he couldn't turn the man out; so he asked his name, and introduced paddy rea to the company. how long do you think he stayed at glare abbey?" "heaven only knows!--three months." "seventeen years!" said mat. "they did everything to turn him out, and couldn't do it. it killed old french; and at last his son pulled the house down, and paddy rea went then, because there wasn't a roof to cover him. now i don't want to drive your father to pull down this house, so i'll go to-morrow." "the place is so ugly, that if you could make him do so, it would be an advantage; but i'm afraid the plan wouldn't succeed, so i won't press you. but if you go, i shan't remain long. if it was to save my life and theirs, i can't get up small talk for the rector and his curate." "well, good night," said mat; and the two turned off towards their bed-rooms. as they passed from the billiard-room through the hall, lord cashel shuffled out of his room, in his slippers and dressing-gown. "kilcullen," said he, with a great deal of unconcerned good humour affected in his tone, "just give me one moment--i've a word to say to you. goodnight, mr tierney, goodnight; i'm sorry to hear we're to lose you to-morrow." lord kilcullen shrugged his shoulders, winked at his friend and then turned round and followed his father. "it's only one word, kilcullen," said the father, who was afraid of angering or irritating his son, now that he thought he was in so fair a way to obtain the heiress and her fortune. "i'll not detain you half a minute;" and then he said in a whisper, "take my advice, kilcullen, and strike when the iron's hot." "i don't quite understand you, my lord," said his son, affecting ignorance of his father's meaning. "i mean, you can't stand better than you do with fanny: you've certainly played your cards admirably, and she's a charming girl, a very charming girl, and i long to know that she's your own. take my advice and ask her at once." "my lord," said the dutiful son, "if i'm to carry on this affair, i must be allowed to do it in my own way. you, i dare say, have more experience than i can boast, and if you choose to make the proposal yourself to miss wyndham on my behalf, i shall be delighted to leave the matter in your hands; but in that case, i shall choose to be absent from grey abbey. if you wish me to do it, you must let me do it when i please and how i please." "oh, certainly, certainly, kilcullen," said the earl; "i only want to point out that i think you'll gain nothing by delay." "very well, my lord. good night." and lord kilcullen went to bed, and the father shuffled back to his study. he had had three different letters that day from lord kilcullen's creditors, all threatening immediate arrest unless he would make himself responsible for his son's debts. no wonder that he was in a hurry, poor man! and lord kilcullen, though he had spoken so coolly on the subject, and had snubbed his father, was equally in a hurry. he also received letters, and threats, and warnings, and understood, even better than his father did, the perils which awaited him. he knew that he couldn't remain at grey abbey another week; that in a day or two it wouldn't be safe for him to leave the house; and that his only chance was at once to obtain the promise of his cousin's hand, and then betake himself to some place of security, till he could make her fortune available. when fanny came into the breakfast-room next morning, he asked her to walk with him in the demesne after breakfast. during the whole of the previous evening she had sat silent and alone, pretending to read, although he had made two or three efforts to engage her in conversation. she could not, however, refuse to walk with him, nor could she quite forgive herself for wishing to do so. she felt that her sudden attachment for him was damped by what had passed between her and lady selina; but she knew, at the same time, that she was very unreasonable for quarrelling with one cousin for what another had said. she accepted his invitation, and shortly after breakfast went upstairs to get ready. it was a fine, bright, april morning, though the air was cold, and the ground somewhat damp; so she put on her boa and strong boots, and sallied forth with lord kilcullen; not exactly in a good humour, but still feeling that she could not justly be out of humour with him. at the same moment, lady selina knocked at her father's door, with the intention of explaining to him how impossible it was that fanny should be persuaded to marry her brother. poor lord cashel! his life, at that time, was certainly not a happy one. the two cousins walked some way, nearly in silence. fanny felt very little inclined to talk, and even kilcullen, with all his knowledge of womankind--with all his assurance, had some difficulty in commencing what he had to get said and done that morning. "so grey abbey will once more sink into its accustomed dullness," said he. "cokely went yesterday, and tierney and the ellisons go to-day. don't you dread it, fanny?" "oh, i'm used to it: besides, i'm one of the component elements of the dullness, you know. i'm a portion of the thing itself: it's you that must feel it." "i feel it? i suppose i shall. but, as i told you before, the physic to me was not nearly so nauseous as the sugar. i'm at any rate glad to get rid of such sweetmeats as the bishop and mrs ellison;" and they were both silent again for a while. "but you're not a portion of the heaviness of grey abbey, fanny," said he, referring to what she had said. "you're not an element of its dullness. i don't say this in flattery--i trust nothing so vile as flattery will ever take place between us; but you know yourself that your nature is intended for other things; that you were not born to pass your life in such a house as this, without society, without excitement, without something to fill your mind. fanny, you can't be happy here, at grey abbey." happy! thought fanny to herself. no, indeed, i'm not happy! she didn't say so, however; and kilcullen, after a little while, went on speaking. "i'm sure you can't be comfortable here. you don't feel it, i dare say, so intolerable as i do; but still you have been out enough, enough in the world, to feel strongly the everlasting do-nothingness of this horrid place. i wonder what possesses my father, that he does not go to london--for your sake if for no one else's. it's not just of him to coop you up here." "indeed it is, adolphus," said she. "you mistake my character. i'm not at all anxious for london parties and gaiety. stupid as you may think me, i'm quite as well contented to stay here as i should be to go to london." "do you mean me to believe," said kilcullen, with a gentle laugh, "that you are contented to live and die in single blessedness at grey abbey?--that your ambition does not soar higher than the interchange of worsted-work patterns with miss o'joscelyn?" "i did not say so, adolphus." "what is your ambition then? what kind and style of life would you choose to live? come, fanny, i wish i could get you to talk with me about yourself. i wish i could teach you to believe how anxious i am that your future life should be happy and contented, and at the same time splendid and noble, as it should be. i'm sure you must have ambition. i have studied lavater [ ] well enough to know that such a head and face as yours never belonged to a mind that could satisfy itself with worsted-work." [footnote : lavater--johann kaspar lavater ( - ), swiss writer whose only widely read book was a tract on physiognomy (physiognomische fragmente zur beförderung der menschenkenntnis und menschenliebe). the victorians put much stock in physiognomy.] "you are very severe on the poor worsted-work." "but am i not in the right?" "decidedly not. lavater, and my head and face, have misled you." "nonsense, fanny. do you mean to tell me that you have no aspiration for a kind of life different from this you are leading?--if so, i am much disappointed in you; much, very much astray in my judgment of your character." then he walked on a few yards, looking on the ground, and said, "come, fanny, i am talking very earnestly to you, and you answer me only in joke. you don't think me impertinent, do you, to talk about yourself?" "impertinent, adolphus--of course i don't." "why won't you talk to me then, in the spirit in which i am talking to you? if you knew, fanny, how interested i am about you, how anxious that you should be happy, how confidently i look forward to the distinguished position i expect you to fill--if you could guess how proud i mean to be of you, when you are the cynosure of all eyes--the admired of all admirers--admired not more for your beauty than your talent--if i could make you believe, fanny, how much i expect from you, and how fully i trust that my expectations will be realised, you would not, at any rate, answer me lightly." "adolphus," said fanny, "i thought there was to be no flattering between us?" "and do you think i would flatter you? do you think i would stoop to flatter you? oh! fanny, you don't understand me yet; you don't at all understand, how thoroughly from the heart i'm speaking--how much in earnest i am; and, so far from flattering you, i am quite as anxious to find fault with you as i am to praise you, could i feel that i had liberty to do so." "pray do," said fanny: "anything but flattery; for a friend never flatters." but kilcullen had intended to flatter his fair cousin, and he had been successful. she was gratified and pleased by his warmth of affection. "pray do," repeated fanny; "i have more faults than virtues to be told of, and so i'm afraid you'll find out, when you know me better." "to begin, then," said kilcullen, "are you not wrong--but no, fanny, i will not torment you now with a catalogue of faults. i did not ask you to come out with me for that object. you are now in grief for the death of poor harry"--fanny blushed as she reflected how much more poignant a sorrow weighed upon her heart--"and are therefore unable to exert yourself; but, as soon as you are able--when you have recovered from this severe blow, i trust you will not be content to loiter and dawdle away your existence at grey abbey." "not the whole of it," said fanny. "none of it," replied her cousin. "every month, every day, should have its purpose. my father has got into a dull, heartless, apathetic mode of life, which suits my mother and selina, but which will never suit you. grey abbey is like the dead sea, of which the waters are always bitter as well as stagnant. it makes me miserable, dearest fanny, to see you stifled in such a pool. your beauty, talents, and energies--your disposition to enjoy life, and power of making it enjoyable for others, are all thrown away. oh, fanny, if i could rescue you from this!" "you are inventing imaginary evils," said she; "at any rate they are not palpable to my eyes." "that's it; that's just what i fear," said the other, "that time, habit, and endurance may teach you to think that nothing further is to be looked for in this world than vegetation at grey abbey, or some other place of the kind, to which you may be transplanted. i want to wake you from such a torpor; to save you from such ignominy. i wish to restore you to the world." "there's time enough, adolphus; you'll see me yet the gayest of the gay at almack's." "ah! but to please me, fanny, it must be as one of the leaders, not one of the led." "oh, that'll be in years to come: in twenty years' time; when i come forth glorious in a jewelled turban, and yards upon yards of yellow satin--fat, fair, and forty. i've certainly no ambition to be one of the leaders yet." lord kilcullen walked on silent for a considerable time, during which fanny went on talking about london, almack's, and the miserable life of lady patronesses, till at last she also became silent, and began thinking of lord ballindine. she had, some little time since, fully made up her mind to open her heart to lord kilcullen about him, and she had as fully determined not to do so after what selina had said upon the subject; but now she again wavered. his manner was so kind and affectionate, his interest in her future happiness appeared to be so true and unaffected: at any rate he would not speak harshly or cruelly to her, if she convinced him how completely her happiness depended on her being reconciled to lord ballindine. she had all but brought herself to the point; she had almost determined to tell him everything, when he stopped rather abruptly, and said, "i also am leaving grey abbey again, fanny." "leaving grey abbey?" said fanny. "you told me the other day you were going to live here," "so i intended; so i do intend; but still i must leave it for a while. i'm going about business, and i don't know how long i may be away. i go on saturday." "i hope, adolphus, you haven't quarrelled with your father," said she. "oh, no," said he: "it is on his advice that i am going. i believe there is no fear of our quarrelling now. i should rather say i trust there is none. he not only approves of my going, but approves of what i am about to do before i go." "and what is that?" "i had not intended, fanny, to say what i have to say to you for some time, for i feel that different circumstances make it premature. but i cannot bring myself to leave you without doing so;" and again he paused and walked on a little way in silence--"and yet," he continued, "i hardly know how to utter what i wish to say; or rather what i would wish to have said, were it not that i dread so much the answer you may make me. stop, fanny, stop a moment; the seat is quite dry; sit down one moment." fanny sat down in a little alcove which they had reached, considerably embarrassed and surprised. she had not, however, the most remote idea of what he was about to say to her. had any other man in the world, almost, spoken to her in the same language, she would have expected an offer; but from the way in which she had always regarded her cousin, both heretofore, when she hardly knew him, and now, when she was on such affectionate terms with him, she would as soon have thought of receiving an offer from lord cashel as from his son. "fanny," he said, "i told you before that i have my father's warmest and most entire approval for what i am now going to do. should i be successful in what i ask, he will be delighted; but i have no words to tell you what my own feelings will be. fanny, dearest fanny," and he sat down close beside her--"i love you better--ah! how much better, than all the world holds beside. dearest, dearest fanny, will you, can you, return my love?" "adolphus," said fanny, rising suddenly from her seat, more for the sake of turning round so as to look at him, than with the object of getting from him, "adolphus, you are joking with me." "no, by heavens then," said he, following her, and catching her hand; "no man in ireland is this moment more in earnest: no man more anxiously, painfully in earnest. oh, fanny! why should you suppose that i am not so? how can you think i would joke on such a subject? no: hear me," he said, interrupting her, as she prepared to answer him, "hear me out, and then you will know how truly i am in earnest." "no, not a word further!" almost shrieked fanny--"not a word more, adolphus--not a syllable; at any rate till you have heard me. oh, you have made me so miserable!" and fanny burst into tears. "i have spoken too suddenly to you, fanny; i should have given you more time--i should have waited till--" "no, no, no," said fanny, "it is not that--but yes; what you say is true: had you waited but one hour--but ten minutes--i should have told you that which would for ever have prevented all this. i should have told you, adolphus, how dearly, how unutterably i love another." and fanny again sat down, hid her face in her handkerchief against the corner of the summer-house, and sobbed and cried as though she were broken-hearted: during which time kilcullen stood by, rather perplexed as to what he was to say next, and beginning to be very doubtful as to his ultimate success. "dear fanny!" he said, "for both our sakes, pray try to be collected: all my future happiness is at this moment at stake. i did not bring you here to listen to what i have told you, without having become too painfully sure that your hand, your heart, your love, are necessary to my happiness. all my hopes are now at stake; but i would not, if i could, secure my own happiness at the expense of yours. pray believe me, fanny, when i say that i love you completely, unalterably, devotedly: it is necessary now for my own sake that i should say as much as that. having told you so much of my own heart, let me hear what you wish to tell me of yours. oh, that i might have the most distant gleam of hope, that it would ever return the love which fills my own!" "it cannot, adolphus--it never can," said she, still trying to hide her tears. "oh, why should this bitter misery have been added!" she then rose quickly from her seat, wiped her eyes, and, pushing back her hair, continued, "i will no longer continue to live such a life as i have done--miserable to myself, and the cause of misery to others. adolphus,--i love lord ballindine. i love him with, i believe, as true and devoted a love as woman ever felt for a man. i valued, appreciated, gloried in your friendship; but i can never return your, love. my heart is wholly, utterly, given away; and i would not for worlds receive it back, till i learn from his own mouth that he has ceased to love me." "oh, fanny! my poor fanny!" said kilcullen; "if such is the case, you are really to be pitied. if this be true, your condition is nearly as unhappy as my own." "i am unhappy, very unhappy in your love," said fanny, drawing herself up proudly; "but not unhappy in my own. my misery is that i should be the cause of trouble and unhappiness to others. i have nothing to regret in my own choice." "you are harsh, fanny. it may be well that you should be decided, but it cannot become you also to be unfeeling. i have offered to you all that a man can offer; my name, my fortune, my life, my heart; though you may refuse me, you have no right to be offended with me." "oh, adolphus!" said she, now in her turn offering him her hand: "pray forgive me: pray do not be angry. heaven knows i feel no offence: and how strongly, how sincerely, i feel the compliment you have offered me. but i want you to see how vain it would be in me to leave you--leave you in any doubt. i only spoke as i did to show you i could not think twice, when my heart was given to one whom i so entirely love, respect--and--and approve." lord kilcullen's face became thoughtful, and his brow grew black: he stood for some time irresolute what to say or do. "let us walk on, fanny, for this is cold and damp," he said, at last. "let us go back to the house, then." "as you like, fanny. oh, how painful all this is! how doubly painful to know that ray own love is hopeless, and that yours is no less so. did you not refuse lord ballindine?" "if i did, is it not sufficient that i tell you i love him? if he were gone past all redemption, you would not have me encourage you while i love another?" "i never dreamed of this! what, fanny, what are your hopes? what is it you wish or intend? supposing me, as i wish i were, fathoms deep below the earth, what would you do? you cannot marry lord ballindine." "then i will marry no one," said fanny, striving hard to suppress her tears, and barely succeeding. "good heavens!" exclaimed kilcullen; "what an infatuation is this!"--and then again he walked on silent a little way. "have you told any one of this, fanny?--do they know of it at grey abbey? come, fanny, speak to me: forget, if you will, that i would be your lover: remember me only as your cousin and your friend, and speak to me openly. do they know that you have repented of the refusal you gave lord ballindine?" "they all know that i love him: your father, your mother, and selina." "you don't say my father?" "yes," said fanny, stopping on the path, and speaking with energy, as she confronted her cousin. "yes, lord cashel. he, above all others, knows it. i have told him so almost on my knees. i have implored him, as a child may implore her father, to bring back to me the only man i ever loved. i have besought him not to sacrifice me. oh! how i have implored him to spare me the dreadful punishment of my own folly--wretchedness rather--in rejecting the man i loved. but he has not listened to me; he will never listen to me, and i will never ask again. he shall find that i am not a tree or a stone, to be planted or placed as he chooses. i will not again be subjected to what i have to-day suffered. i will not--i will not--" but fanny was out of breath; and could not complete the catalogue of what she would not do. "and did you intend to tell me all this, had i not spoken to you as i have done?" said kilcullen. "i did," said she. "i was on the point of telling you everything: twice i had intended to do so. i intended to implore you, as you loved me as your cousin, to use your exertions to reconcile my uncle and lord ballindine--and now instead of that--" "you find i love you too well myself?" "oh, forget, adolphus, forget that the words ever passed your lips. you have not loved me long, and therefore will not continue to love me, when you know i never can be yours: forget your short-lived love; won't you, adolphus?"--and she put her clasped hands upon his breast--"forget,--let us both forget that the words were ever spoken. be still my cousin, my friend, my brother; and we shall still both be happy." different feelings were disturbing lord kilcullen's breast--different from each other, and some of them very different from those which usually found a place there. he had sought fanny's hand not only with most sordid, but also with most dishonest views: he not only intended to marry her for her fortune, but also to rob her of her money; to defraud her, that he might enable himself once more to enter the world of pleasure, with the slight encumbrance of a wretched wife. but, in carrying out his plan, he had disturbed it by his own weakness: he had absolutely allowed himself to fall in love with his cousin; and when, as he had just done, he offered her his hand, he was quite as anxious that she should accept him for her own sake as for that of her money. he had taught himself to believe that she would accept him, and many misgivings had haunted him as to the ruined state to which he should bring her as his wife. but these feelings, though strong enough to disturb him, were not strong enough to make him pause: he tried to persuade himself that he could yet make her happy, and hurried on to the consummation of his hopes. he now felt strongly tempted to act a generous part; to give her up, and to bring lord ballindine back to her feet; to deserve at any rate well of her, and leave all other things to chance. but lord kilcullen was not accustomed to make such sacrifices: he had never learned to disregard himself; and again and again he turned it over in his mind--"how could he get her fortune?--was there any way left in which he might be successful?" "this is child's play, fanny," he said. "you may reject me: to that i have nothing further to say, for i am but an indifferent wooer; but you can never marry lord ballindine." "oh, adolphus, for mercy's sake don't say so!" "but i do say so, fanny. god knows, not to wound you, or for any unworthy purpose, but because it is so. he was your lover, and you sent him away; you cannot whistle him back as you would a dog." fanny made no answer to this, but walked on towards the house, anxious to find herself alone in her own room, that she might compose her mind and think over all that she had heard and said; nor did lord kilcullen renew the conversation till he got to the house. he could not determine what to do. under other circumstances it might, he felt, have been wise for him to wait till time had weakened fanny's regret for her lost lover; but in his case this was impracticable; if he waited anywhere it would be in the queen's bench. and yet, he could not but feel that, at present, it was hopeless for him to push his suit. they reached the steps together, and as he opened the front door, fanny turned round to wish him good morning, as she was hurrying in; but he stopped her, and said, "one word more, fanny, before we part. you must not refuse me; nor must we part in this way. step in here; i will not keep you a minute;" and he took her into a room off the hall--"do not let us be children, fanny; do not let us deceive each other, or ourselves: do not let us persist in being irrational if we ourselves see that we are so;" and he paused for a reply. "well, adolphus?" was all she said. "if i could avoid it," continued he, "i would not hurt your feelings; but you must see, you must know, that you cannot marry lord ballindine."--fanny, who was now sitting, bit her lips and clenched her hands, but she said nothing; "if this is so--if you feel that so far your fate is fixed, are you mad enough to give yourself up to a vain and wicked passion--for wicked it will be? will you not rather strive to forget him who has forgotten you?" "that is not true," interposed fanny. "his conduct, unfortunately, proves that it is too true," continued kilcullen. "he has forgotten you, and you cannot blame him that he should do so, now that you have rejected him; but he neglected you even before you did so. is it wise, is it decorous, is it maidenly in you, to indulge any longer in so vain a passion? think of this, fanny. as to myself, heaven knows with what perfect truth, with what true love, i offered you, this morning, all that a man can offer: how ardently i hoped for an answer different from that you have now given me. you cannot give me your heart now; love cannot, at a moment, be transferred. but think, fanny, think whether it is not better for you to accept an offer which your friends will all approve, and which i trust will never make you unhappy, than to give yourself up to a lasting regret,--to tears, misery, and grief." "and would you take my hand without my heart?" said she. "not for worlds," replied the other, "were i not certain that your heart would follow your hand. whoever may be your husband, you will love him. but ask my mother, talk to her, ask her advice; she at any rate will only tell you that which must be best for your own happiness. go to her, fanny; if her advice be different from mine, i will not say a word farther to urge my suit." "i will go to no one," said fanny, rising. "i have gone to too many with a piteous story on my lips. i have no friend, now, in this house. i had still hoped to find one in you, but that hope is over. i am, of course, proud of the honour your declaration has conveyed; but i should be wicked indeed if i did not make you perfectly understand that it is one which i cannot accept. whatever may be your views, your ideas, i will never marry unless i thoroughly love, and feel that i am thoroughly loved by my future husband. had you not made this ill-timed declaration--had you not even persisted in repeating it after i had opened my whole heart to you, i could have loved and cherished you as a brother; under no circumstances could i ever have accepted you as a husband. good morning." and she left him alone, feeling that he could have but little chance of success, should he again renew the attempt. he did not see her again till dinner-time, when she appeared silent and reserved, but still collected and at her ease; nor did he speak to her at dinner or during the evening, till the moment the ladies were retiring for the night. he then came up to her as she was standing alone turning over some things on a side-table, and said, "fanny, i probably leave grey abbey to-morrow. i will say good bye to you tonight." "good bye, adolphus; may we both be happier when next we meet," said she. "my happiness, i fear, is doubtful: but i will not speak of that now. if i can do anything for yours before i go, i will. fanny, i will ask my father to invite lord ballindine here. he has been anxious that we should be married: when i tell him that that is impossible, he may perhaps be induced to do so." "do that," said fanny, "and you will be a friend to me. do that, and you will be more than a brother to me." "i will; and in doing so i shall crush every hope that i have had left in me." "do not say so, adolphus:--do not--" "you'll understand what i mean in a short time. i cannot explain everything to you now. but this will i do; i will make lord cashel understand that we never can be more to each other than we are now, and i will advise him to seek a reconciliation with lord ballindine. and now, good bye," and he held out his hand. "but i shall see you to-morrow." "probably not; and if you do, it will be but for a moment, when i shall have other adieux to make." "good bye, then, adolphus; and may god bless you; and may we yet live to have many happy days together," and she shook hands with him, and went to her room. xxxiii. lord kilcullen makes another visit to the book-room lord cashel's plans were certainly not lucky. it was not that sufficient care was not used in laying them, nor sufficient caution displayed in maturing them. he passed his time in care and caution; he spared no pains in seeing that the whole machinery was right; he was indefatigable in deliberation, diligent in manoeuvring, constant in attention. but, somehow, he was unlucky; his schemes were never successful. in the present instance he was peculiarly unfortunate, for everything went wrong with him. he had got rid of an obnoxious lover, he had coaxed over his son, he had spent an immensity of money, he had undergone worlds of trouble and self-restraint;--and then, when he really began to think that his ward's fortune would compensate him for this, his own family came to him, one after another, to assure him that he was completely mistaken--that it was utterly impossible that such a thing as a family marriage between the two cousins could never take place, and indeed, ought not to be thought of. lady selina gave him the first check. on the morning on which lord kilcullen made his offer, she paid her father a solemn visit in his book-room, and told him exactly what she had before told her mother; assured him that fanny could not be induced, at any rate at present, to receive her cousin as her lover; whispered to him, with unfeigned sorrow and shame, that fanny was still madly in love with lord ballindine; and begged him to induce her brother to postpone his offer, at any rate for some months. "i hate lord ballindine's very name," said the earl, petulant with irritation. "we none of us approve of him, papa: we don't think of supposing that he could now be a fitting husband for fanny, or that they could possibly ever be married. of course it's not to be thought of. but if you would advise adolphus not to be premature, he might, in the end, be more successful." "kilcullen has made his own bed and he must lie in it; i won't interfere between them," said the angry father. "but if you were only to recommend delay," suggested the daughter; "a few months' delay; think how short a time harry wyndham has been dead!" lord cashel knew that delay was death in this case, so he pished, and hummed, and hawed; quite lost the dignity on which he piqued himself, and ended by declaring that he would not interfere; that they might do as they liked; that young people would not be guided, and that he would not make himself unhappy about them. and so, lady selina, crestfallen and disappointed, went away. then, lady cashel, reflecting on what her daughter had told her, and yet anxious that the marriage should, if possible, take place at some time or other, sent griffiths down to her lord, with a message--"would his lordship be kind enough to step up-stairs to her ladyship?" lord cashel went up, and again had all the difficulties of the case opened out before him. "but you see," said her ladyship, "poor fanny--she's become so unreasonable--i don't know what's come to her--i'm sure i do everything i can to make her happy: but i suppose if she don't like to marry, nobody can make her." "make her?--who's talking of making her?" said the earl. "no, of course not," continued the countess; "that's just what selina says; no one can make her do anything, she's got so obstinate, of late: but it's all that horrid lord ballindine, and those odious horses. i'm sure i don't know what business gentlemen have to have horses at all; there's never any good comes of it. there's adolphus--he's had the good sense to get rid of his, and yet fanny's so foolish, she'd sooner have that other horrid man--and i'm sure he's not half so good-looking, nor a quarter so agreeable as adolphus." all these encomiums on his son, and animadversions on lord ballindine, were not calculated to put the earl into a good humour; he was heartily sick of the subject; thoroughly repented that he had not allowed his son to ruin himself in his own way; detested the very name of lord ballindine, and felt no very strong affection for his poor innocent ward. he accordingly made his wife nearly the same answer he had made his daughter, and left her anything but comforted by the visit. it was about eleven o'clock on the same evening, that lord kilcullen, after parting with fanny, opened the book-room door. he had been quite sincere in what he had told her. he had made up his mind entirely to give over all hopes of marrying her himself, and to tell his father that the field was again open for lord ballindine, as far as he was concerned. there is no doubt that he would not have been noble enough to do this, had he thought he had himself any chance of being successful; but still there was something chivalrous in his resolve, something magnanimous in his determination to do all he could for the happiness of her he really loved, when everything in his own prospects was gloomy, dark, and desperate. as he entered his father's room, feeling that it would probably be very long before he should be closeted with him again, he determined that he would not quietly bear reproaches, and even felt a source of satisfaction in the prospect of telling his father that their joint plans were overturned--their schemes completely at an end. "i'm disturbing you, my lord, i'm afraid," said the son, walking into the room, not at all with the manner of one who had any hesitation at causing the disturbance. "who's that?" said the earl--"adolphus?--no--yes. that is, i'm just going to bed; what is it you want?" the earl had been dozing after all the vexations of the day. "to tell the truth, my lord, i've a good deal that i wish to say: will it trouble you to listen to me?" "won't to-morrow morning do?" "i shall leave grey abbey early to-morrow, my lord; immediately after breakfast." "good heavens, kilcullen! what do you mean? you're not going to run off to london again?" "a little farther than that, i'm afraid, will be necessary," said the son. "i have offered to miss wyndham--have been refused--and, having finished my business at grey abbey, your lordship will probably think that in leaving it i shall be acting with discretion." "you have offered to fanny and been refused!" "indeed i have; finally and peremptorily refused. not only that: i have pledged my word to my cousin that i will never renew my suit." the earl sat speechless in his chair--so much worse was this catastrophe even than his expectations. lord kilcullen continued. "i hope, at any rate, you are satisfied with me. i have not only implicitly obeyed your directions, but i have done everything in my power to accomplish what you wished. had my marriage with my cousin been a project of my own, i could not have done more for its accomplishment. miss wyndham's affections are engaged; and she will never, i am sure, marry one man while she loves another." "loves another--psha!" roared the earl. "is this to be the end of it all? after your promises to me--after your engagement! after such an engagement, sir, you come to me and talk about a girl loving another? loving another! will her loving another pay your debts?" "exactly the reverse, my lord," said the son. "i fear it will materially postpone their payment." "well, sir," said the earl. he did not exactly know how to commence the thunder of indignation with which he intended to annihilate his son, for certainly kilcullen had done the best in his power to complete the bargain. but still the storm could not be stayed, unreasonable as it might be for the earl to be tempestuous on the occasion. "well, sir," and he stood up from his chair, to face his victim, who was still standing--and, thrusting his hands into his trowsers' pockets, frowned awfully--"well, sir; am i to be any further favoured with your plans?" "i have none, my lord," said kilcullen; "i am again ready to listen to yours." "my plans?--i have no further plans to offer for you. you are ruined, utterly ruined: you have done your best to ruin me and your mother; i have pointed out to you, i arranged for you, the only way in which your affairs could be redeemed; i made every thing easy for you." "no, my lord: you could not make it easy for me to get my cousin's love." "don't contradict me, sir. i say i did. i made every thing straight and easy for you: and now you come to me with a whining story about a girl's love! what's her love to me, sir? where am i to get my thirty thousand pounds, sir?--and my note of hand is passed for as much more, at this time twelve-month! where am i to raise that, sir? do you remember that you have engaged to repay me these sums?--do you remember that, or have such trifles escaped your recollection?" "i remember perfectly well, my lord, that if i married my cousin, you were to repay yourself those sums out of her fortune. but i also remember, and so must you, that i beforehand warned you that i thought she would refuse me." "refuse you," said the earl, with a contortion of his nose and lips intended to convey unutterable scorn; "of course she refused you, when you asked her as a child would ask for an apple, or a cake! what else could you expect?" "i hardly think your lordship knows--" "don't you hardly think?--then i do know; and know well too. i know you have deceived me, grossly deceived me--induced me to give you money--to incur debts, with which i never would have burdened myself had i not believed you were sincere in your promise. but you have deceived me, sir--taken me in; for by heaven it's no better!--it's no better than downright swindling--and that from a son to his father! but it's for the last time; not a penny more do you get from me: you can ruin the property; indeed, i believe you have; but, for your mother's and sister's sake, i'll keep till i die what little you have left me." lord cashel had worked himself up into a perfect frenzy, and was stamping about the room as he uttered this speech; but, as he came to the end of it, he threw himself into his chair again, and buried his face in his hands. lord kilcullen was standing with his back resting against the mantel-piece, with a look of feigned indifference on his face, which he tried hard to maintain. but his brow became clouded, and he bit his lips when his father accused him of swindling; and he was just about to break forth into a torrent of recrimination, when lord cashel turned off into a pathetic strain, and kilcullen thought it better to leave him there. "what i'm to do, i don't know; what i am to do, i do not know!" said the earl, beating the table with one hand, and hiding his face with the other. "sixty thousand pounds in one year; and that after so many drains!--and there's only my own life--there's only my own life!"--and then there was a pause for four or five minutes, during which lord kilcullen took snuff, poked the fire, and then picked up a newspaper, as though he were going to read it. this last was too much for the father, and he again roared out, "well, sir, what are you standing there for? if you've nothing else to say; why don't you go? i've done with you--you can not get more out of me, i promise you!" "i've a good deal to say before i go, my lord," said kilcullen. "i was waiting till you were disposed to listen to me. i've a good deal to say, indeed, which you must hear; and i trust, therefore, you will endeavour to be cool, whatever your opinions may be about my conduct." "cool?--no, sir, i will not be cool. you're too cool yourself!" "cool enough for both, you think, my lord." "kilcullen," said the earl, "you've neither heart nor principle: you have done your worst to ruin me, and now you come to insult me in my own room. say what you want to say, and then leave me." "as to insulting language, my lord, i think you need not complain, when you remember that you have just called me a swindler, because i have been unable to accomplish your wish and my own, by marrying my cousin. however, i will let that pass. i have done the best i could to gain that object. i did more than either of us thought it possible that i should do, when i consented to attempt it. i offered her my hand, and assured her of my affection, without falsehood or hypocrisy. my bargain was that i should offer to her. i have done more than that, for i have loved her. i have, however, been refused, and in such a manner as to convince me that it would be useless for me to renew my suit. if your lordship will allow me to advise you on such a subject, i would suggest that you make no further objection to fanny's union with lord ballindine. for marry him she certainly will." "what, sir?" again shouted lord cashel. "i trust fanny will receive no further annoyance on the subject. she has convinced me that her own mind is thoroughly made up; and she is not the person to change her mind on such a subject." "and haven't you enough on hand in your own troubles, but what you must lecture me about my ward?--is it for that you have come to torment me at this hour? had not you better at once become her guardian yourself, sir, and manage the matter in your own way?" "i promised fanny i would say as much to you. i will not again mention her name unless you press me to do so." "that's very kind," said the earl. "and now, about myself. i think your lordship will agree with me that it is better that i should at once leave grey abbey, when i tell you that, if i remain here, i shall certainly be arrested before the week is over, if i am found outside the house. i do not wish to have bailiffs knocking at your lordship's door, and your servants instructed to deny me." "upon my soul, you are too good." "at any rate," said kilcullen, "you'll agree with me that this is no place for me to remain in." "you're quite at liberty to go," said the earl. "you were never very ceremonious with regard to me; pray don't begin to be so now. pray go--to-night if you like. your mother's heart will be broken, that's all." "i trust my mother will be able to copy your lordship's indifference." "indifference! is sixty thousand pounds in one year, and more than double within three or four, indifference? i have paid too much to be indifferent. but it is hopeless to pay more. i have no hope for you; you are ruined, and i couldn't redeem you even if i would. i could not set you free and tell you to begin again, even were it wise to do so; and therefore i tell you to go. and now, good night; i have not another word to say to you," and the earl got up as if to leave the room. "stop, my lord, you must listen to me," said kilcullen. "not a word further. i have heard enough;" and he put out the candles on the book-room table, having lighted a bed candle which he held in his hand. "pardon me, my lord," continued the son, standing just before his father, so as to prevent his leaving the room; "pardon me, but you must listen to what i have to say." "not another word--not another word. leave the door, sir, or i will ring for the servants to open it." "do so," said kilcullen, "and they also shall hear what i have to say. i am going to leave you to-morrow, perhaps for ever; and you will not listen to the last word i wish to speak to you?" "i'll stay five minutes," said the earl, taking out his watch, "and then i'll go; and if you attempt again to stop me, i'll ring the bell for the servants." "thank you, my lord, for the five minutes; it will be time enough. i purpose leaving grey abbey to-morrow, and i shall probably be in france in three days' time. when there, i trust i shall cease to trouble you; but i cannot, indeed i will not go, without funds to last me till i can make some arrangement. your lordship must give me five hundred pounds. i have not the means even of carrying myself from hence to calais." "not one penny. not one penny--if it were to save you from the gaol to-morrow! this is too bad!" and the earl again walked to the door, against which lord kilcullen leaned his back. "by heaven, sir, i'll raise the house if you think to frighten me by violence!" "i'll use no violence, but you must hear the alternative: if you please it, the whole house shall hear it too. if you persist in refusing the small sum i now ask--" "i will not give you one penny to save you from gaol. is that plain?" "perfectly plain, and very easy to believe. but you will give more than a penny; you would even give more than i ask, to save yourself from the annoyance you will have to undergo." "not on any account will i give you one single farthing." "very well. then i have only to tell you what i must do. of course, i shall remain here. you cannot turn me out of your house, or refuse me a seat at your table." "by heavens, though, i both can and will!" "you cannot, my lord. if you think of it, you'll find you cannot, without much disagreeable trouble. an eldest son would be a very difficult tenant to eject summarily: and of my own accord i will not go without the money i ask." "by heavens, this exceeds all i ever heard. would you rob your own father?" "i will not rob him, but i'll remain in his house. the sheriff's officers, doubtless, will hang about the doors, and be rather troublesome before the windows; but i shall not be the first irish gentleman that has remained at home upon his keeping. and, like other irish gentlemen, i will do so rather than fall into the hands of these myrmidons. i have no wish to annoy you; i shall be most sorry to do so; most sorry to subject my mother to the misery which must attend the continual attempts which will be made to arrest me; but i will not put my head into the lion's jaw." "this is the return for what i have done for him!" ejaculated the earl, in his misery. "unfortunate reprobate! unfortunate reprobate!--that i should be driven to wish that he was in gaol!" "your wishing so won't put me there, my lord. if it would i should not be weak enough to ask you for this money. do you mean to comply with my request?" "i do not, sir: not a penny shall you have--not one farthing more shall you get from me." "then good night, my lord. i grieve that i should have to undergo a siege in your lordship's house, more especially as it is likely to be a long one. in a week's time there will be a '_ne exeat_' [ ] issued against me, and then it will be too late for me to think of france." and so saying, the son retired to his own room, and left the father to consider what he had better do in his distress. [footnote : ne exeat--(latin) "let him not leave"; a legal writ forbidding a person to leave the jurisdiction of the court] lord cashel was dreadfully embarrassed. what lord kilcullen said was perfectly true; an eldest son was a most difficult tenant to eject; and then, the ignominy of having his heir arrested in his own house, or detained there by bailiffs lurking round the premises! he could not determine whether it would be more painful to keep his son, or to give him up. if he did the latter, he would be driven to effect it by a most disagreeable process. he would have to assist the officers of the law in their duty, and to authorise them to force the doors locked by his son. the prospect, either way, was horrid. he would willingly give the five hundred pounds to be rid of his heir, were it not for his word's sake, or rather his pride's sake. he had said he would not, and, as he walked up and down the room he buttoned up his breeches pocket, and tried to resolve that, come what come might, he would not expedite his son's departure by the outlay of one shilling. the candles had been put out, and the gloom of the room was only lightened by a single bed-room taper, which, as it stood near the door, only served to render palpable the darkness of the further end of the chamber. for half an hour lord cashel walked to and fro, anxious, wretched, and in doubt, instead of going to his room. how he wished that lord ballindine had married his ward, and taken her off six months since!--all this trouble would not then have come upon him. and as he thought of the thirty thousand pounds that he had spent, and the thirty thousand more that he must spend, he hurried on with such rapidity that in the darkness he struck his shin violently against some heavy piece of furniture, and, limping back to the candlestick, swore through his teeth--"no, not a penny, were it to save him from perdition! i'll see the sheriff's officer. i'll see the sheriff himself, and tell him that every door in the house--every closet--every cellar, shall be open to him. my house shall enable no one to defy the law." and, with this noble resolve, to which, by the bye, the blow on his shin greatly contributed, lord cashel went to bed, and the house was at rest. about nine o'clock on the following morning lord kilcullen was still in bed, but awake. his servant had been ordered to bring him hot water, and he was seriously thinking of getting up, and facing the troubles of the day, when a very timid knock at the door announced to him that some stranger was approaching. he adjusted his nightcap, brought the bed-clothes up close to his neck, and on giving the usual answer to a knock at the door, saw a large cap introduce itself, the head belonging to which seemed afraid to follow. "who's that?" he called out. "it's me, my lord," said the head, gradually following the cap. "griffiths, my lord." "well?" "lady selina, my lord; her ladyship bids me give your lordship her love, and would you see her ladyship for five minutes before you get up?" lord kilcullen having assented to this proposal, the cap and head retired. a second knock at the door was soon given, and lady selina entered the room, with a little bit of paper in her hand. "good morning, adolphus," said the sister. "good morning, selina," said the brother. "it must be something very particular, which brings you here at this hour." "it is indeed, something very particular. i have been with papa this morning, adolphus: he has told me of the interview between you last night." "well." "oh, adolphus! he is very angry--he's--" "so am i, selina. i am very angry, too;--so we're quits. we laid a plan together, and we both failed, and each blames the other; so you need not tell me anything further about his anger. did he send any message to me?" "he did. he told me i might give you this, if i would undertake that you left grey abbey to-day:" and lady selina held up, but did not give him, the bit of paper. "what a dolt he is." "oh, adolphus!" said selina, "don't speak so of your father." "so he is: how on earth can you undertake that i shall leave the house?" "i can ask you to give me your word that you will do so; and i can take back the check if you refuse," said lady selina, conceiving it utterly impossible that one of her own family could break his word. "well, selina, i'll answer you fairly. if that bit of paper is a cheque for five hundred pounds, i will leave this place in two hours. if it is not--" "it is," said selina. "it is a cheque for five hundred pounds, and i may then give it to you?" "i thought as much," said lord kilcullen; "i thought he'd alter his mind. yes, you may give it me, and tell my father i'll dine in london to-morrow evening." "he says, adolphus, he'll not see you before you go." "well, there's comfort in that, anyhow." "oh, adolphus! how can you speak in that manner now?--how can you speak in that wicked, thoughtless, reckless manner?" said his sister. "because i'm a wicked, thoughtless, reckless man, i suppose. i didn't mean to vex you, selina; but my father is so pompous, so absurd, and so tedious. in the whole of this affair i have endeavoured to do exactly as he would have me; and he is more angry with me now, because his plan has failed, than he ever was before, for any of my past misdoings.--but let me get up now, there's a good girl; for i've no time to lose." "will you see your mother before you go, adolphus?" "why, no; it'll be no use--only tormenting her. tell her something, you know; anything that won't vex her." "but i cannot tell her anything about you that will not vex her." "well, then, say what will vex her least. tell her--tell her. oh, you know what to tell her, and i'm sure i don't." "and fanny: will you see her again?" "no," said kilcullen. "i have bid her good bye. but give her my kindest love, and tell her that i did what i told her i would do." "she told me what took place between you yesterday." "why, selina, everybody tells you everything! and now, i'll tell you something. if you care for your cousin's happiness, do not attempt to raise difficulties between her and lord ballindine. and now, i must say good bye to you. i'll have my breakfast up here, and go directly down to the yard. good bye, selina; when i'm settled i'll write to you, and tell you where i am." "good bye, adolphus; god bless you, and enable you yet to retrieve your course. i'm afraid it is a bad one;" and she stooped down and kissed her brother. he was as good as his word. in two hours' time he had left grey abbey. he dined that day in dublin, the next in london, and the third in boulogne; and the sub-sheriff of county kildare in vain issued half-a-dozen writs for his capture. xxxiv. the doctor makes a clean breast of it we will now return for a while to dunmore, and settle the affairs of the kellys and lynches, which we left in rather a precarious state. barry's attempt on doctor colligan's virtue was very unsuccessful, for anty continued to mend under the treatment of that uncouth but safe son of galen. as colligan told her brother, the fever had left her, though for some time it was doubtful whether she had strength to recover from its effects. this, however, she did gradually; and, about a fortnight after the dinner at dunmore house, the doctor told mrs kelly and martin that his patient was out of danger. martin had for some time made up his mind that anty was to live for many years in the character of mrs martin, and could not therefore be said to be much affected by the communication. but if he was not, his mother was. she had made up her mind that anty was to die; that she was to pay for the doctor--the wake, and the funeral, and that she would have a hardship and grievance to boast of, and a subject of self-commendation to enlarge on, which would have lasted her till her death; and she consequently felt something like disappointment at being ordered to administer to anty a mutton chop and a glass of sherry every day at one o'clock. not that the widow was less assiduous, or less attentive to anty's wants now that she was convalescent; but she certainly had not so much personal satisfaction, as when she was able to speak despondingly of her patient to all her gossips. "poor cratur!" she used to say--"it's all up with her now; the lord be praised for all his mercies. she's all as one as gone, glory be to god and the blessed virgin. shure no good ever come of ill-got money;--not that she was iver to blame. thank the lord, av' i have a penny saved at all, it was honestly come by; not that i shall have when this is done and paid for, not a stifle; (stiver [ ] mrs kelly probably meant)--but what's that!" and she snapped her fingers to show that the world's gear was all dross in her estimation.--"she shall be dacently sthretched, though she is a lynch, and a kelly has to pay for it. whisper, neighbour; in two years' time there'll not be one penny left on another of all the dirthy money sim lynch scraped together out of the gutthers." [footnote : stiver--a dutch coin worth almost nothing] there was a degree of triumph in these lamentations, a tone of self-satisfied assurance in the truth of her melancholy predictions, which showed that the widow was not ill at ease with herself. when anty was declared out of danger, her joy was expressed with much more moderation. "yes, thin," she said to father pat geoghegan, "poor thing, she's rallying a bit. the docthor says maybe she'll not go this time; but he's much in dread of a re-claps--" "relapse, mrs kelly, i suppose?" "well, relapse, av' you will, father pat--relapse or reclaps, it's pretty much the same i'm thinking; for she'd niver get through another bout. god send we may be well out of the hobble this day twelvemonth. martin's my own son, and ain't above industhrying, as his father and mother did afore him, and i won't say a word agin him; but he's brought more throuble on me with them lynches than iver i knew before. what has a lone woman like me, father pat, to do wid sthrangers like them? jist to turn their backs on me when i ain't no furder use, and to be gitting the hights of insolence and abuse, as i did from that blagguard barry. he'd betther keep his toe in his pump and go asy, or he'll wake to a sore morning yet, some day." doctor colligan, also, was in trouble from his connection with the lynches: not that he had any dissatisfaction at the recovery of his patient, for he rejoiced at it, both on her account and his own. he had strongly that feeling of self-applause, which must always be enjoyed by a doctor who brings a patient safely through a dangerous illness. but barry's iniquitous proposal to him weighed heavy on his conscience. it was now a week since it had been made, and he had spoken of it to no one. he had thought much and frequently of what he ought to do; whether he should publicly charge lynch with the fact; whether he should tell it confidentially to some friend whom he could trust; or whether--by far the easiest alternative, he should keep it in his own bosom, and avoid the man in future as he would an incarnation of the devil. it preyed much upon his spirits, for he lived in fear of barry lynch--in fear lest he should determine to have the first word, and, in his own defence, accuse him (colligan) of the very iniquity which he had himself committed. nothing, the doctor felt, would be too bad or too false for barry lynch; nothing could be more damnable than the proposal he had made; and yet it would be impossible to convict him, impossible to punish him. he would, of course, deny the truth of the accusation, and probably return the charge on his accuser. and yet colligan felt that he would be compromising the matter, if he did not mention it to some one; and that he would outrage his own feelings if he did not express his horror at the murder which he had been asked to commit. for one week these feelings quite destroyed poor colligan's peace of mind; during the second, he determined to make a clean breast of it; and, on the first day of the third week, after turning in his mind twenty different people--martin kelly--young daly--the widow--the parish priest--the parish parson--the nearest stipendiary magistrate--and a brother doctor in tuam, he at last determined on going to lord ballindine, as being both a magistrate and a friend of the kellys. doctor colligan himself was not at all acquainted with lord ballindine: he attended none of the family, who extensively patronised his rival, and he had never been inside kelly's court house. he felt, therefore, considerable embarrassment at his mission; but he made up his mind to go, and, manfully setting himself in his antique rickety gig, started early enough, to catch lord ballindine, as he thought, before he left the house after breakfast. lord ballindine had spent the last week or ten days restlessly enough. armstrong, his clerical ambassador, had not yet started on his mission to grey abbey, and innumerable difficulties seemed to arise to prevent his doing so. first of all, the black cloth was to be purchased, and a tailor, sufficiently adept for making up the new suit, was to be caught. this was a work of some time; for though there is in the west of ireland a very general complaint of the stagnation of trade, trade itself is never so stagnant as are the tradesmen, when work, is to be done; and it is useless for a poor wight to think of getting his coat or his boots, till such time as absolute want shall have driven the artisan to look for the price of his job--unless some private and underhand influence be used, as was done in the case of jerry blake's new leather breeches. this cause of delay was, however, not mentioned to lord ballindine; but when it was well got over, and a neighbouring parson procured to preach on the next sunday to mrs o'kelly and the three policemen who attended ballindine church, mrs armstrong broke her thumb with the rolling-pin while making a beef pudding for the family dinner, and her husband's departure was again retarded. and then, on the next sunday, the neighbouring parson could not leave his own policemen, and the two spinsters, who usually formed his audience. all this tormented lord ballindine. and he was really thinking of giving up the idea of sending mr armstrong altogether, when he received the following letter from his friend dot blake. limmer's hotel. april, . dear frank, one cries out, "what are you at?" the other, "what are you after?" every one is saying what a fool you are! kilcullen is at grey abbey, with the evident intention of superseding you in possession of miss w----, and, what is much more to his taste, as it would be to mine, of her fortune. mr t. has written to me _from grey abbey_, where he has been staying: he is a good-hearted fellow, and remembers how warmly you contradicted the report that your match was broken off. for heaven's sake, follow up your warmth of denial with some show of positive action, a little less cool than your present quiescence, or you cannot expect that any amount of love should be strong enough to prevent your affianced from resenting your conduct. i am doubly anxious; quite as anxious that kilcullen, whom i detest, should not get young wyndham's money, as i am that you should. he is utterly, _utterly_ smashed. if he got double the amount of fanny wyndham's cash, it could not keep him above water for more than a year or so; and then she must go down with him. i am sure the old fool, his father, does not half know the amount of his son's liabilities, or he could not be heartless enough to consent to sacrifice the poor girl as she will be sacrificed, if kilcullen gets her. i am not usually very anxious about other people's concerns; but i do feel anxious about this matter. i want to have a respectable house in the country, in which i can show my face when i grow a little older, and be allowed to sip my glass of claret, and talk about my horses, in spite of my iniquitous propensities--and i expect to be allowed to do so at kelly's court. but, if you let miss wyndham slip through your fingers, you won't have a house over your head in a few years' time, much less a shelter to offer a friend. for god's sake, start for grey abbey at once. why, man alive, the ogre can't eat you! the whole town is in the devil of a ferment about brien. of course you heard the rumour, last week, of his heels being cracked? some of the knowing boys want to get out of the trap they are in; and, despairing of bringing the horse down in the betting by fair means, got a boy out of scott's stables to swear to the fact. i went down at once to yorkshire, and published a letter in _bell's life_ last saturday, stating that he is all right. this you have probably seen. you will be astonished to hear it, but i believe lord tattenham corner got the report spread. for heaven's sake don't mention this, particularly not as coming from me. they say that if brien does the trick, he will lose more than he has made these three years, and i believe he will. he is nominally at to ; but you can't get to anything like a figure from a safe party. for heaven's sake go to grey abbey, and at once. always faithfully, w. blake. this letter naturally increased lord ballindine's uneasiness, and he wrote a note to mr armstrong, informing him that he would not trouble him to go at all, unless he could start the next day. indeed, that he should then go himself, if mr armstrong did not do so. this did not suit mr armstrong. he had made up his mind to go; he could not well return the twenty pounds he had received, nor did he wish to forego the advantage which might arise from the trip. so he told his wife to be very careful about her thumb, made up his mind to leave the three policemen for once without spiritual food, and wrote to lord ballindine to say that he would be with him the next morning, immediately after breakfast, on his road to catch the mail-coach at ballyglass. he was as good as his word, or rather better; for he breakfasted at kelly's court, and induced lord ballindine to get into his own gig, and drive him as far as the mail-coach road. "but you'll be four or five hours too soon," said frank; "the coach doesn't pass ballyglass till three." "i want to see those cattle of rutledge's. i'll stay there, and maybe get a bit of luncheon; it's not a bad thing to be provided for the road." "i'll tell you what, though," said frank. "i want to go to tuam, so you might as well get the coach there; and if there's time to spare, you can pay your respects to the bishop." it was all the same to mr armstrong, and the two therefore started for tuam together. they had not, however, got above half way down the avenue, when they saw another gig coming towards them; and, after sundry speculations as to whom it might contain, mr armstrong pronounced the driver to be "that dirty gallipot, colligan." it was colligan; and, as the two gigs met in the narrow road, the dirty gallipot took off his hat, and was very sorry to trouble lord ballindine, but had a few words to say to him on very important and pressing business. lord ballindine touched his hat, and intimated that he was ready to listen, but gave no signs of getting out of his gig. "my lord," said colligan, "it's particularly important, and if you could, as a magistrate, spare me five minutes." "oh, certainly, mr colligan," said frank; "that is, i'm rather hurried--i may say very much hurried just at present. but still--i suppose there's no objection to mr armstrong hearing what you have to say?" "why, my lord," said colligan, "i don't know. your lordship can judge yourself afterwards; but i'd rather--" "oh, i'll get down," said the parson. "i'll just take a walk among the trees: i suppose the doctor won't be long?" "if you wouldn't mind getting into my buggy, and letting me into his lordship's gig, you could be following us on, mr armstrong," suggested colligan. this suggestion was complied with. the parson and the doctor changed places; and the latter, awkwardly enough, but with perfect truth, whispered his tale into lord ballindine's ear. at first, frank had been annoyed at the interruption; but, as he learned the cause of it, he gave his full attention to the matter, and only interrupted the narrator by exclamations of horror and disgust. when doctor colligan had finished, lord ballindine insisted on repeating the whole affair to mr armstrong. "i could not take upon myself," said he, "to advise you what to do; much less to tell you what you should do. there is only one thing clear; you cannot let things rest as they are. armstrong is a man of the world, and will know what to do; you cannot object to talking the matter over with him." colligan consented: and armstrong, having been summoned, drove the doctor's buggy up alongside of lord ballindine's gig. "armstrong," said frank, "i have just heard the most horrid story that ever came to my ears. that wretch, barry lynch, has tried to induce doctor colligan to poison his sister!" "what!" shouted armstrong; "to poison his sister?" "gently, mr armstrong; pray don't speak so loud, or it'll be all through the country in no time." "poison his sister!" repeated armstrong. "oh, it'll hang him! there's no doubt it'll hang him! of course you'll take the doctor's information?" "but the doctor hasn't tendered me any information," said frank, stopping his horse, so that armstrong was able to get close up to his elbow. "but i presume it is his intention to do so?" said the parson. "i should choose to have another magistrate present then," said frank. "really, doctor colligan, i think the best thing you can do is to come before myself and the stipendiary magistrate at tuam. we shall be sure to find brew at home to-day." "but, my lord," said colligan, "i really had no intention of doing that. i have no witnesses. i can prove nothing. indeed, i can't say he ever asked me to do the deed: he didn't say anything i could charge him with as a crime: he only offered me the farm if his sister should die. but i knew what he meant; there was no mistaking it: i saw it in his eye." "and what did you do, doctor colligan, at the time?" said the parson. "i hardly remember," said the doctor; "i was so flurried. but i know i knocked him down, and then i rushed out of the room. i believe i threatened i'd have him hung." "but you did knock him down?" "oh, i did. he was sprawling on the ground when i left him." "you're quite sure you knocked him down?" repeated the parson. "the divil a doubt on earth about that!" replied colligan. "i tell you, when i left the room he was on his back among the chairs." "and you did not hear a word from him since?" "not a word." "then there can't be any mistake about it, my lord," said armstrong. "if he did not feel that his life was in the doctor's hands, he would not put up with being knocked down. and i'll tell you what's more--if you tax him with the murder, he'll deny it and defy you; but tax him with having been knocked down, and he'll swear his foot slipped, or that he'd have done as much for the doctor if he hadn't run away. and then ask him why the doctor knocked him down?--you'll have him on the hip so." "there's something in that," said frank; "but the question is, what is doctor colligan to do? he says he can't swear any information on which a magistrate could commit him." "unless he does, my lord," said armstrong, "i don't think you should listen to him at all; at least, not as a magistrate." "well, doctor colligan, what do you say?" "i don't know what to say, my lord. i came to your lordship for advice, both as a magistrate and as a friend of the young man who is to marry lynch's sister. of course, if you cannot advise me, i will go away again." "you won't come before me and mr brew, then?" "i don't say i won't," said colligan; "but i don't see the use. i'm not able to prove anything." "i'll tell you what, ballindine," said the parson; "only i don't know whether it mayn't be tampering with justice--suppose we were to go to this hell-hound, you and i together, and, telling him what we know, give him his option to stand his trial or quit the country? take my word for it, he'd go; and that would be the best way to be rid of him. he'd leave his sister in peace and quiet then, to enjoy her fortune." "that's true," said frank; "and it would be a great thing to rid the country of him. do you remember the way he rode a-top of that poor bitch of mine the other day--goneaway, you know; the best bitch in the pack?" "indeed i do," said the parson; "but for all that, she wasn't the best bitch in the pack: she hadn't half the nose of gaylass." "but, as i was saying, armstrong, it would be a great thing to rid the country of barry lynch." "indeed it would." "and there'd be nothing then to prevent young kelly marrying anty at once." "make him give his consent in writing before you let him go," said armstrong. "i'll tell you what, doctor colligan," said frank; "do you get into your own gig, and follow us on, and i'll talk the matter over with mr armstrong." the doctor again returned to his buggy, and the parson to his own seat, and lord ballindine drove off at a pace which made it difficult enough for doctor colligan to keep him in sight. "i don't know how far we can trust that apothecary," said frank to his friend. "he's an honest man, i believe," said armstrong, "though he's a dirty, drunken blackguard." "maybe he was drunk this evening, at lynch's?" "i was wrong to call him a drunkard. i believe he doesn't get drunk, though he's always drinking. but you may take my word for it, what he's telling you now is as true as gospel. if he was telling a lie from malice, he'd be louder, and more urgent about it: you see he's half afraid to speak, as it is. he would not have come near you at all, only his conscience makes him afraid to keep the matter to himself. you may take my word for it, ballindine, barry lynch did propose to him to murder his sister. indeed, it doesn't surprise me. he is so utterly worthless." "but murder, armstrong! downright murder; of the worst kind; studied--premeditated. he must have been thinking of it, and planning it, for days. a man may be worthless, and yet not such a wretch as that would make him. can you really think he meant colligan to murder his sister?" "i can, and do think so," said the parson. "the temptation was great: he had been waiting for his sister's death; and he could not bring himself to bear disappointment. i do not think he could do it with his own hand, for he is a coward; but i can quite believe that he could instigate another person to do it." "then i'd hang him. i wouldn't raise my hand to save him from the rope!" "nor would i: but we can't hang him. we can do nothing to him, if he defies us; but, if he's well handled, we can drive him from the country." the lord and the parson talked the matter over till they reached dunmore, and agreed that they would go, with colligan, to barry lynch; tell him of the charge which was brought against him, and give him his option of standing his trial, or of leaving the country, under a written promise that he would never return to it. in this case, he was also to write a note to anty, signifying his consent that she should marry martin kelly, and also execute some deed by which all control over the property should be taken out of his own hands; and that he should agree to receive his income, whatever it might be, through the hands of an agent. there were sundry matters connected with the subject, which were rather difficult of arrangement. in the, first place, frank was obliged, very unwillingly, to consent that mr armstrong should remain, at any rate one day longer, in the country. it was, however, at last settled that he should return that night and sleep at kelly's court. then lord ballindine insisted that they should tell young kelly what they were about, before they went to barry's house, as it would be necessary to consult him as to the disposition he would wish to have made of the property. armstrong was strongly against this measure,--but it was, at last, decided on; and then they had to induce colligan to go with them. he much wished them to manage the business without him. he had had quite enough of dunmore house; and, in spite of the valiant manner in which he had knocked its owner down the last time he was there, seemed now quite afraid to face him. but mr armstrong informed him that he must go on now, as he had said so much, and at last frightened him into an unwilling compliance. the three of them went up into the little parlour of the inn, and summoned martin to the conference, and various were the conjectures made by the family as to the nature of the business which brought three such persons to the inn together. but the widow settled them all by asserting that "a kelly needn't be afeared, thank god, to see his own landlord in his own house, nor though he brought an attorney wid him as well as a parson and a docther." and so, martin was sent for, and soon heard the horrid story. not long after he had joined them, the four sallied out together, and meg remarked that something very bad was going to happen, for the lord never passed her before without a kind word or a nod; and now he took no more notice of her than if it had been only sally herself that met him on the stairs. xxxv. mr lynch bids farewell to dunmore poor martin was dreadfully shocked; and not only shocked, but grieved and astonished. he had never thought well of his intended brother-in-law, but he had not judged him so severely as mr armstrong had done. he listened to all lord ballindine said to him, and agreed as to the propriety of the measures he proposed. but there was nothing of elation about him at the downfall of the man whom he could not but look on as his enemy: indeed, he was not only subdued and modest in his demeanour, but he appeared so reserved that he could hardly be got to express any interest in the steps which were to be taken respecting the property. it was only when lord ballindine pointed out to him that it was his duty to guard anty's interests, that he would consent to go to dunmore house with them, and to state, when called upon to do so, what measures he would wish to have adopted with regard to the property. "suppose he denies himself to us?" said frank, as the four walked across the street together, to the great astonishment of the whole population. "if he's in the house, i'll go bail we won't go away without seeing him," said the parson. "will he be at home, kelly, do you think?" "indeed he will, mr armstrong," said martin; "he'll be in bed and asleep. he's never out of bed, i believe, much before one or two in the day. it's a bad life he's leading since the ould man died." "you may say that," said the doctor:--"cursing and drinking; drinking and cursing; nothing else. you'll find him curse at you dreadful, mr armstrong, i'm afraid." "i can bear that, doctor; it's part of my own trade, you know; but i think we'll find him quiet enough. i think you'll find the difficulty is to make him speak at all. you'd better be spokesman, my lord, as you're a magistrate." "no, armstrong, i will not. you're much more able, and more fitting: if it's necessary for me to act as a magistrate, i'll do so--but at first we'll leave him to you." "very well," said the parson; "and i'll do my best. but i'll tell you what i am afraid of: if we find him in bed we must wait for him, and when the servant tells him who we are, and mentions the doctor's name along with yours, my lord, he'll guess what we're come about, and he'll be out of the window, or into the cellar, and then there'd be no catching him without the police. we must make our way up into his bed-room." "i don't think we could well do that," said the doctor. "no, armstrong," said lord ballindine. "i don't think we ought to force ourselves upstairs: we might as well tell all the servants what we'd come about." "and so we must," said armstrong, "if it's necessary. the more determined we are--in fact, the rougher we are with him, the more likely we are to bring him on his knees. i tell you, you must have no scruples in dealing with such a fellow; but leave him to me;" and so saying, the parson gave a thundering rap at the hail door, and in about one minute repeated it, which brought biddy running to the door without shoes or stockings, with her hair streaming behind her head, and, in her hand, the comb with which she had been disentangling it. "is your master at home?" said armstrong. "begorra, he is," said the girl out of breath. "that is, he's not up yet, nor awake, yer honer," and she held the door in her hand, as though this answer was final. "but i want to see him on especial and immediate business," said the parson, pushing back the door and the girl together, and walking into the hall. "i must see him at once. mr lynch will excuse me: we've known each other a long time." "begorra, i don't know," said the girl, "only he's in bed and fast. couldn't yer honer call agin about four or five o'clock? that's the time the masther's most fittest to be talking to the likes of yer honer." "these gentlemen could not wait," said the parson. "shure the docther there, and mr martin, knows well enough i'm not telling you a bit of a lie, misther armstrong," said the girl. "i know you're not, my good girl; i know you're not telling a lie;--but, nevertheless, i must see mr lynch. just step up and wake him, and tell him i'm waiting to say two words to him." "faix, yer honer, he's very bitther intirely, when he's waked this early. but in course i'll be led by yer honers. i'll say then, that the lord, and parson armstrong, and the docther, and mr martin, is waiting to spake two words to him. is that it?" "that'll do as well as anything," said armstrong; and then, when the girl went upstairs, he continued, "you see she knew us all, and of course will tell him who we are; but i'll not let him escape, for i'll go up with her," and, as the girl slowly opened her master's bed-room door, mr armstrong stood close outside it in the passage. after considerable efforts, biddy succeeded in awaking her master sufficiently to make him understand that lord ballindine, and doctor colligan were downstairs, and that parson armstrong was just outside the bed-room door. the poor girl tried hard to communicate her tidings in such a whisper as would be inaudible to the parson; but this was impossible, for barry only swore at her, and asked her "what the d---- she meant by jabbering there in that manner?" when, however, he did comprehend who his visitors were, and where they were, he gnashed his teeth and clenched his fist at the poor girl, in sign of his anger against her for having admitted so unwelcome a party; but he was too frightened to speak. mr armstrong soon put an end to this dumb show, by walking into the bed-room, when the girl escaped, and he shut the door. barry sat up in his bed, rubbed his eyes, and stared at him, but he said nothing. "mr lynch," said the parson, "i had better at once explain the circumstances which have induced me to make so very strange a visit." "confounded strange, i must say! to come up to a man's room in this way, and him in bed!" "doctor colligan is downstairs--" "d---- doctor colligan! he's at his lies again, i suppose? much i care for doctor colligan." "doctor colligan is downstairs," continued mr armstrong, "and lord ballindine, who, you are aware, is a magistrate. they wish to speak to you, mr lynch, and that at once." "i suppose they can wait till a man's dressed?" "that depends on how long you're dressing, mr lynch." "upon my word, this is cool enough, in a man's own house!" said barry. "well, you don't expect me to get up while you're there, i suppose?" "indeed i do, mr lynch: never mind me; just wash and dress yourself as though i wasn't here. i'll wait here till we go down together." "i'm d----d if i do," said barry. "i'll not stir while you remain there!" and he threw himself back in the bed, and wrapped the bedclothes round him. "very well," said mr armstrong; and then going out on to the landing-place, called out over the banisters--"doctor--doctor colligan! tell his lordship mr lynch objects to a private interview: he had better just step down to the court-house, and issue his warrant. you might as well tell constable nelligan to be in the way." "d----n!" exclaimed barry, sitting bolt upright in his bed. "who says i object to see anybody? mr armstrong, what do you go and say that for?" mr armstrong returned into the room. "it's not true. i only want to have my bed-room to myself, while i get up." "for once in the way, mr lynch, you must manage to get up although your privacy be intruded on. to tell you the plain truth, i will not leave you till you come downstairs with me, unless it be in the custody of a policeman. if you will quietly dress and come downstairs with me, i trust we may be saved the necessity of troubling the police at all." barry, at last, gave way, and, gradually extricating himself from the bedclothes, put his feet down on the floor, and remained sitting on the side of his bed. he leaned his head down on his hands, and groaned inwardly; for he was very sick, and the fumes of last night's punch still disturbed his brain. his stockings and drawers were on; for terry, when he put him to bed, considered it only waste of time to pull them off, for "shure wouldn't they have jist to go on agin the next morning?" "don't be particular, mr lynch: never mind washing or shaving till we're gone. we won't keep you long, i hope." "you're very kind, i must say," said barry. "i suppose you won't object to my having a bottle of soda water?"--and he gave a terrible tug at the bell. "not at all--nor a glass of brandy in it, if you like it. indeed, mr lynch, i think that, just at present, it will be the better thing for you." barry got his bottle of soda water, and swallowed about two glasses of whiskey in it, for brandy was beginning to be scarce with him; and then commenced his toilet. he took parson armstrong's hint, and wasn't very particular about it. he huddled on his clothes, smoothed his hair with his brush, and muttering something about it's being their own fault, descended into the parlour, followed by mr armstrong. he made a kind of bow to lord ballindine; took no notice of martin, but, turning round sharp on the doctor, said: "of all the false ruffians, i ever met, colligan--by heavens, you're the worst! there's one comfort, no man in dunmore will believe a word you say." he then threw himself back into the easy chair, and said, "well, gentlemen--well, my lord--here i am. you can't say i'm ashamed to show my face, though i must say your visit is not made in the genteelest manner." "mr lynch," said the parson, "do you remember the night doctor colligan knocked you down in this room? in this room, wasn't it, doctor?" "yes; in this room," said the doctor, rather _sotto voce_. "do you remember the circumstance, mr lynch?" "it's a lie!" said barry. "no it's not," said the parson. "if you forget it, i can call in the servant to remember so much as that for me; but you'll find it better, mr lynch, to let us finish this business among ourselves. come, think about it. i'm sure you remember being knocked down by the doctor." "i remember a scrimmage there was between us. i don't care what the girl says, she didn't see it. colligan, i suppose, has given her half-a-crown, and she'd swear anything for that." "well, you remember the night of the scrimmage?" "i do: colligan got drunk here one night. he wanted me to give him a farm, and said cursed queer things about my sister. i hardly know what he said; but i know i had to turn him out of the house, and there was a scrimmage between us." "i see you're so far prepared, mr lynch: now, i'll tell you my version of the story.--martin kelly, just see that the door is shut. you endeavoured to bribe doctor colligan to murder your own sister." "it's a most infernal lie!" said barry. "where's your evidence?--where's your evidence? what's the good of your all coming here with such a story as that? where's your evidence?" "you'd better be quiet, mr lynch, or we'll adjourn at once from here to the open court-house." "adjourn when you like; it's all one to me. who'll believe such a drunken ruffian as that colligan, i'd like to know? such a story as that!" "my lord," said armstrong, "i'm afraid we must go on with this business at the court-house. martin, i believe i must trouble you to go down to the police barrack." and the whole party, except barry, rose from their seats. "what the devil are you going to drag me down to the court-house for, gentlemen?" said he. "i'll give you any satisfaction, but you can't expect i'll own to such a lie as this about my sister. i suppose my word's as good as colligan's, gentlemen? i suppose my character as a protestant gentleman stands higher than his--a dirty papist apothecary. he tells one story; i tell another; only he's got the first word of me, that's all. i suppose, gentlemen, i'm not to be condemned on the word of such a man as that?" "i think, mr lynch," said armstrong, "if you'll listen to me, you'll save yourself and us a great deal of trouble. you asked me who my witness was: my witness is in this house. i would not charge you with so horrid, so damnable a crime, had i not thoroughly convinced myself you were guilty--now, do hold your tongue, mr lynch, or i will have you down to the court-house. we all know you are guilty, you know it yourself--" "i'm--" began barry. "stop, mr lynch; not one word till i've done; or what i have to say, shall be said in public. we all know you are guilty, but we probably mayn't be able to prove it--" "no, i should think not!" shouted barry. "we mayn't be able to prove it in such a way as to enable a jury to hang you, or, upon my word, i wouldn't interfere to prevent it: the law should have its course. i'd hang you with as little respite as i would a dog." barry grinned horribly at this suggestion, but said nothing, and the parson continued: "it is not the want of evidence that stands in the way of so desirable a proceeding, but that doctor colligan, thoroughly disgusted and shocked at the iniquity of your proposal--" "oh, go on, mr armstrong!--go on; i see you are determined to have it all your own way, but my turn'll come soon." "i say that doctor colligan interrupted you before you fully committed yourself." "fully committed myself, indeed! why, colligan knows well enough, that when he got up in such a fluster, there'd not been a word at all said about anty." "hadn't there, mr lynch?--just now you said you turned the doctor out of your house for speaking about your sister. you're only committing yourself. i say, therefore, the evidence, though quite strong enough to put you into the dock as a murderer in intention, might not be sufficient to induce a jury to find you guilty. but guilty you would be esteemed in the mind of every man, woman, and child in this county: guilty of the wilful, deliberate murder of your own sister." "by heavens i'll not stand this!" exclaimed barry.--"i'll not stand this! i didn't do it, mr armstrong. i didn't do it. he's a liar, lord ballindine: upon my sacred word and honour as a gentleman, he's a liar. why do you believe him, when you won't believe me? ain't i a protestant, mr armstrong, and ain't you a protestant clergyman? don't you know that such men as he will tell any lie; will do any dirty job? on my sacred word of honour as a gentleman, lord ballindine, he offered to poison anty, on condition he got the farm round the house for nothing!--he knows it's true, and why should you believe him sooner than me, mr armstrong?" barry had got up from his seat, and was walking up and down the room, now standing opposite lord ballindine, and appealing to him, and then doing the same thing to mr armstrong. he was a horrid figure: he had no collar round his neck, and his handkerchief was put on in such a way as to look like a hangman's knot: his face was blotched, and red, and greasy, for he had neither shaved nor washed himself since his last night's debauch; he had neither waistcoat nor braces on, and his trousers fell on his hips; his long hair hung over his eyes, which were bleared and bloodshot; he was suffering dreadfully from terror, and an intense anxiety to shift the guilt from himself to doctor colligan. he was a most pitiable object--so wretched, so unmanned, so low in the scale of creation. lord ballindine did pity his misery, and suggested to mr armstrong whether by any possibility there could be any mistake in the matter--whether it was possible doctor colligan could have mistaken lynch's object?--the poor wretch jumped at this loop-hole, and doubly condemned himself by doing so. "he did, then," said barry; "he must have done so. as i hope for heaven, lord ballindine, i never had the idea of getting him to--to do anything to anty. i wouldn't have done it for worlds--indeed i wouldn't. there must be some mistake, indeed there must. he'd been drinking, mr armstrong--drinking a good deal that night--isn't that true, doctor colligan? come, man, speak the truth--don't go and try and hang a fellow out of mistake! his lordship sees it's all a mistake, and of course he's the best able to judge of the lot here; a magistrate, and a nobleman and all. i know you won't see me wronged, lord ballindine, i know you won't. i give you my sacred word of honour as a gentleman, it all came from mistake when we were both drunk, or nearly drunk. come, doctor colligan, speak man--isn't that the truth? i tell you, mr armstrong, lord ballindine's in the right of it. there is some mistake in all this." "as sure as the lord's in heaven," said the doctor, now becoming a little uneasy at the idea that lord ballindine should think he had told so strange a story without proper foundation--"as sure as the lord's in heaven, he offered me the farm for a reward, should i manage to prevent his sister's recovery." "what do you think, mr armstrong?" said lord ballindine. "think!" said the parson--"there's no possibility of thinking at all. the truth becomes clearer every moment. why, you wretched creature, it's not ten minutes since you yourself accused doctor colligan of offering to murder your sister! according to your own showing, therefore, there was a deliberate conversation between you; and your own evasion now would prove which of you were the murderer, were any additional proof wanted. but it is not. barry lynch, as sure as you now stand in the presence of your creator, whose name you so constantly blaspheme, you endeavoured to instigate that man to murder your own sister." "oh, lord ballindine!--oh, lord ballindine!" shrieked barry, in his agony, "don't desert me! pray, pray don't desert me! i didn't do it--i never thought of doing it. we were at school together, weren't we?--and you won't see me put upon this way. you mayn't think much of me in other things, but you won't believe that a school-fellow of your own ever--ever--ever--" barry couldn't bring himself to use the words with which his sentence should be finished, and so he flung himself back into his armchair and burst into tears. "you appeal to me, mr lynch," said lord ballindine, "and i must say i most firmly believe you to be guilty. my only doubt is whether you should not at once be committed for trial at the next assizes." "oh, my g----!" exclaimed barry, and for some time he continued blaspheming most horribly--swearing that there was a conspiracy against him--accusing mr armstrong, in the most bitter terms, of joining with doctor colligan and martin kelly to rob and murder him. "now, mr lynch," continued the parson, as soon as the unfortunate man would listen to him, "as i before told you, i am in doubt--we are all in doubt--whether or not a jury would hang you; and we think that we shall do more good to the community by getting you out of the way, than by letting you loose again after a trial which will only serve to let everyone know how great a wretch there is in the county. we will, therefore, give you your option either to stand your trial, or to leave the country at once--and for ever." "and my property?--what's to become of my property?" said barry. "your property's safe, mr lynch; we can't touch that. we're not prescribing any punishment to you. we fear, indeed we know, you're beyond the reach of the law, or we shouldn't make the proposal." barry breathed freely again as he heard this avowal. "but you're not beyond the reach of public opinion--of public execration--of general hatred, and of a general curse. for your sister's sake--for the sake of martin kelly, who is going to marry the sister whom you wished to murder, and not for your own sake, you shall be allowed to leave the country without this public brand being put upon your name. if you remain, no one shall speak to you but as to a man who would have murdered his sister: murder shall be everlastingly muttered in your ears; nor will your going then avail you, for your character shall go with you, and the very blackguards with whom you delight to assort, shall avoid you as being too bad even for their society. go now, mr lynch--go at once;--leave your sister to happiness which you cannot prevent; and she at least shall know nothing of your iniquity, and you shall enjoy the proceeds of your property anywhere you will--anywhere, that is, but in ireland. do you agree to this?" "i'm an innocent man, mr armstrong. i am indeed." "very well," said the parson, "then we may as well go away, and leave you to your fate. come, lord ballindine, we can have nothing further to say," and they again all rose from their seats. "stop, mr armstrong; stop," said barry. "well," said the parson; for barry repressed the words which were in his mouth, when he found that his visitors did stop as he desired them. "well, mr lynch, what have you further to say." "indeed i am not guilty." mr armstrong put on his hat and rushed to the door--"but--" continued barry. "i will have no 'buts,' mr lynch; will you at once and unconditionally agree to the terms i have proposed?" "i don't want to live in the country," said barry; "the country's nothing to me." "you will go then, immediately?" said the parson. "as soon as i have arranged about the property, i will," said barry. "that won't do," said the parson. "you must go at once, and leave your property to the care of others. you must leave dunmore _to-day_, for ever." "to-day!" shouted barry. "yes, to-day. you can easily get as far as roscommon. you have your own horse and car. and, what is more, before you go, you must write to your sister, telling her that you have made up your mind to leave the country, and expressing your consent to her marrying whom she pleases." "i can't go to-day," said barry, sulkily. "who's to receive my rents? who'll send me my money?--besides--besides. oh, come--that's nonsense. i ain't going to be turned out in that style." "you ain't in earnest, are you, about his going to-day?" whispered frank to the parson. "i am, and you'll find he'll go, too," said armstrong. "it must be to-day--this very day, mr lynch. martin kelly will manage for you about the property." "or you can send for mr daly, to meet you at roscommon," suggested martin. "thank you for nothing," said barry; "you'd better wait till you're spoken to. i don't know what business you have here at all." "the business that all honest men have to look after all rogues," said mr armstrong. "come, mr lynch, you'd better make up your mind to prepare for your journey." "well, i won't--and there's an end of it," said barry. "it's all nonsense. you can't do anything to me: you said so yourself. i'm not going to be made a fool of that way--i'm not going to give up my property and everything." "don't you know, mr lynch," said the parson, "that if you are kept in jail till april next, as will be your fate if you persist in staying at dunmore tonight, your creditors will do much more damage to your property, than your own immediate absence will do? if mr daly is your lawyer, send for him, as martin kelly suggests. i'm not afraid that he will recommend you to remain in the country, even should you dare to tell him of the horrid accusation which is brought against you. but at any rate make up your mind, for if you do stay in dunmore tonight it shall be in the bridewell, and your next move shall be to galway." barry sat silent for a while, trying to think. the parson was like an incubus upon him, which he was totally unable to shake off. he knew neither how to resist nor how to give way. misty ideas got into his head of escaping to his bed-room and blowing his own brains out. different schemes of retaliation and revenge flitted before him, but he could decide on nothing. there he sat, silent, stupidly gazing at nothing, while lord ballindine and mr armstrong stood whispering over the fire. "i'm afraid we're in the wrong: i really think we are," said frank. "we must go through with it now, any way," said the parson. "come, mr lynch, i will give you five minutes more, and then i go;" and he pulled out his watch, and stood with his back to the fire, looking at it. lord ballindine walked to the window, and martin kelly and doctor colligan sat in distant parts of the room, with long faces, silent and solemn, breathing heavily. how long those five minutes appeared to them, and how short to barry! the time was not long enough to enable him to come to any decision: at the end of the five minutes he was still gazing vacantly before him: he was still turning over in his brain, one after another, the same crowd of undigested schemes. "the time is out, mr lynch: will you go?" said the parson. "i've no money," hoarsely croaked barry. "if that's the only difficulty, we'll raise money for him," said frank. "i'll advance him money," said martin. "do you mean you've no money at all?" said the parson. "don't you hear me say so?" said barry. "and you'll go if you get money--say ten pounds?" said the parson. "ten pounds! i can go nowhere with ten pounds. you know that well enough." "i'll give him twenty-five," said martin. "i'm sure his sister'll do that for him." "say fifty," said barry, "and i'm off at once." "i haven't got it," said martin. "no," said the parson; "i'll not see you bribed to go: take the twenty-five--that will last you till you make arrangements about your property. we are not going to pay you for going, mr lynch." "you seem very anxious about it, any way." "i am anxious about it," rejoined the parson. "i am anxious to save your sister from knowing what it was that her brother wished to accomplish." barry scowled at him as though he would like, if possible, to try his hand at murdering him; but he did not answer him again. arrangements were at last made for barry's departure, and off he went, that very day--not to roscommon, but to tuam; and there, at the instigation of martin, daly the attorney took upon himself the division and temporary management of the property. from thence, with martin's, or rather with his sister's twenty-five pounds in his pocket, he started to that elysium for which he had for some time so ardently longed, and soon landed at boulogne, regardless alike of his sister, his future brother, lord ballindine, or mr armstrong. the parson had found it quite impossible to carry out one point on which he had insisted. he could not induce barry lynch to write to his sister: no, not a line; not a word. had it been to save him from hanging he could hardly have induced himself to write those common words, "_dear sister_". "oh! you can tell her what you like," said he. "it's you're making me go away at once in this manner. tell her whatever confounded lies you like; tell her i'm gone because i didn't choose to stay and see her make a fool of herself--and that's the truth, too. if it wasn't for that i wouldn't move a step for any of you." he went, however, as i have before said, and troubled the people of dunmore no longer, nor shall he again trouble us. "oh! but martin, what nonsense!" said the widow, coaxingly to her son, that night before she went to bed. "the lord wouldn't be going up there just to wish him good bye--and parson armstrong too. what the dickens could they be at there so long? come, martin--you're safe with me, you know; tell us something about it now." "nonsense, mother; i've nothing to tell: barry lynch has left the place for good and all, that's all about it." "god bless the back of him, thin; he'd my lave for going long since. but you might be telling us what made him be starting this way all of a heap." "don't you know, mother, he was head and ears in debt?" "don't tell me," said the widow. "parson armstrong's not a sheriff's officer, that he should be looking after folks in debt." "no, mother, he's not, that i know of; but he don't like, for all that, to see his tithes walking out of the country." "don't be coming over me that way, martin. barry lynch, nor his father before him, never held any land in ballindine parish." "didn't they--well thin, you know more than i, mother, so it's no use my telling you," and martin walked off to bed. "i'll even you, yet, my lad," said she, "close as you are; you see else. wait awhile, till the money's wanting, and then let's see who'll know all about it!" and the widow slapped herself powerfully on that part where her pocket depended, in sign of the great confidence she had in the strength of her purse. "did i manage that well?" said the parson, as lord ballindine drove him home to kelly's court, as soon as the long interview was over. "if i can do as well at grey abbey, you'll employ me again, i think!" "upon my word, then, armstrong," said frank, "i never was in such hot water as i have been all this day: and, now it's over, to tell you the truth, i'm sorry we interfered. we did what we had no possible right to do." "nonsense, man. you don't suppose i'd have dreamed of letting him off, if the law could have touched him? but it couldn't. no magistrates in the county could have committed him; for he had done, and, as far as i can judge, had said, literally nothing. it's true we know what he intended; but a score of magistrates could have done nothing with him: as it is, we've got him out of the country: he'll never come back again." "what i mean is, we had no business to drive him out of the country with threats." "oh, ballindine, that's nonsense. one can keep no common terms with such a blackguard as that. however, it's done now; and i must say i think it was well done." "there's no doubt of your talent in the matter, armstrong: upon my soul i never saw anything so cool. what a wretch--what an absolute fiend the fellow is!" "bad enough," said the parson. "i've seen bad men before, but i think he's the worst i ever saw. what'll mrs o'kelly say of my coming in this way, without notice?" the parson enjoyed his claret at kelly's court that evening, after his hard day's work, and the next morning he started for grey abbey. xxxvi. mr armstrong visits grey abbey on a delicate mission lord cashel certainly felt a considerable degree of relief when his daughter told him that lord kilcullen had left the house, and was on his way to dublin, though he had been forced to pay so dearly for the satisfaction, had had to falsify his solemn assurance that he would not give his son another penny, and to break through his resolution of acting the roman father [ ]. he consoled himself with the idea that he had been actuated by affection for his profligate son; but such had not been the case. could he have handed him over to the sheriff's officer silently and secretly, he would have done so; but his pride could not endure the reflection that all the world should know that bailiffs had forced an entry into grey abbey. [footnote : roman father--lucius junius brutus, legendary founder of the roman republic, was said to have passed sentence of death on his two sons for participating in a rebellion.] he closely questioned lady selina, with regard to all that had passed between her and her brother. "did he say anything?" at last he said--"did he say anything about--about fanny?" "not much, papa; but what he did say, he said with kindness and affection," replied her ladyship, glad to repeat anything in favour of her brother. "affection--pooh!" said the earl. "he has no affection; no affection for any one; he has no affection even for me.--what did he say about her, selina?" "he seemed to wish she should marry lord ballindine." "she may marry whom she pleases, now," said the earl. "i wash my hands of her. i have done my best to prevent what i thought a disgraceful match for her--" "it would not have been disgraceful, papa, had she married him six months ago." "a gambler and a _roué_!" said the earl, forgetting, it is to be supposed, for the moment, his own son's character. "she'll marry him now, i suppose, and repent at her leisure. i'll give myself no further trouble about it." the earl thought upon the subject, however, a good deal; and before mr armstrong's arrival he had all but made up his mind that he must again swallow his word, and ask his ward's lover back to his house. he had at any rate become assured that if he did not do so, some one else would do it for him. mr armstrong was, happily, possessed of a considerable stock of self-confidence, and during his first day's journey, felt no want of it with regard to the delicate mission with which he was entrusted. but when he had deposited his carpet-bag at the little hotel at kilcullen bridge, and found himself seated on a hack car, and proceeding to grey abbey, he began to feel that he had rather a difficult part to play; and by the time that the house was in sight, he felt himself completely puzzled as to the manner in which he should open his negotiation. he had, however, desired the man to drive to the house, and he could not well stop the car in the middle of the demesne, to mature his plans; and when he was at the door he could not stay there without applying for admission. so he got his card-case in his hand, and rang the bell. after a due interval, which to the parson did not seem a bit too long, the heavy-looking, powdered footman appeared, and announced that lord cashel was at home; and, in another minute mr armstrong found himself in the book-room. it was the morning after lord kilcullen's departure, and lord cashel was still anything but comfortable. her ladyship had been bothering him about the poor boy, as she called her son, now that she learned he was in distress; and had been beseeching him to increase his allowance. the earl had not told his wife the extent of their son's pecuniary delinquencies, and consequently she was greatly dismayed when her husband very solemnly said, "my lady, lord kilcullen has no longer any allowance from me." "good gracious!" screamed her ladyship; "no allowance?--how is the poor boy to live?" "that i really cannot tell. i cannot even guess; but, let him live how he may, i will not absolutely ruin myself for his sake." the interview was not a comfortable one, either to the father or mother. lady cashel cried a great deal, and was very strongly of opinion that her son would die of cold and starvation: "how could he get shelter or food, any more than a common person, if he had no allowance? mightn't he, at any rate, come back, and live at grey abbey?--that wouldn't cost his father anything." and then the countess remembered how she had praised her son to mrs ellison, and the bishop's wife; and she cried worse than ever, and was obliged to be left to griffiths and her drops. this happened on the evening of lord kilcullen's departure, and on the next morning her ladyship did not appear at breakfast. she was weak and nervous, and had her tea in her own sitting-room. there was no one sitting at breakfast but the earl, fanny, and lady selina, and they were all alike, stiff, cold, and silent. the earl felt as if he were not at home even in his own breakfast-parlour; he felt afraid of his ward, as though he were conscious that she knew how he had intended to injure her: and, as soon as he had swallowed his eggs, he muttered something which was inaudible to both the girls, and retreated to his private den. he had not been there long before the servant brought in our friend's name. "the rev. george armstrong", written on a plain card. the parson had not put the name of his parish, fearing that the earl, knowing from whence he came, might guess his business, and decline seeing him. as it was, no difficulty was made, and the parson soon found himself _tête-à-tête_ with the earl. "i have taken the liberty of calling on you, lord cashel," said mr armstrong, having accepted the offer of a chair, "on a rather delicate mission." the earl bowed, and rubbed his hands, and felt more comfortable than he had done for the last week. he liked delicate missions coming to him, for he flattered himself that he knew how to receive them in a delicate manner; he liked, also, displaying his dignity to strangers, for he felt that strangers stood rather in awe of him: he also felt, though he did not own it to himself, that his manner was not so effective with people who had known him some time. "i may say, a very delicate mission," said the parson; "and one i would not have undertaken had i not known your lordship's character for candour and honesty." lord cashel again bowed and rubbed his hands. "i am, my lord, a friend of lord ballindine; and as such i have taken the liberty of calling on your lordship." "a friend of lord ballindine?" said the earl, arching his eyebrows, and assuming a look of great surprise. "a very old friend, my lord; the clergyman of his parish, and for many years an intimate friend of his father. i have known lord ballindine since he was a child." "lord ballindine is lucky in having such a friend: few young men now, i am sorry to say, care much for their father's friends. is there anything, mr armstrong, in which i can assist either you or his lordship?" "my lord," said the parson, "i need not tell you that before i took the perhaps unwarrantable liberty of troubling you, i was made acquainted with lord ballindine's engagement with your ward, and with the manner in which that engagement was broken off." "and your object is, mr armstrong--?" "my object is to remove, if possible, the unfortunate misunderstanding between your lordship and my friend." "misunderstanding, mr armstrong?--there was no misunderstanding between us. i really think we perfectly understood each other. lord ballindine was engaged to my ward; his engagement, however, being contingent on his adoption of a certain line of conduct. this line of conduct his lordship did not adopt; perhaps, he used a wise discretion; however, i thought not. i thought the mode of life which he pursued--" "but--" "pardon me a moment, mr armstrong, and i shall have said all which appears to me to be necessary on the occasion; perhaps more than is necessary; more probably than i should have allowed myself to say, had not lord ballindine sent as his ambassador the clergyman of his parish and the friend of his father," and lord cashel again bowed and rubbed his hands. "i thought, mr armstrong, that your young friend appeared wedded to a style of life quite incompatible with his income--with his own income as a single man, and the income which he would have possessed had he married my ward. i thought that their marriage would only lead to poverty and distress, and i felt that i was only doing my duty to my ward in expressing this opinion to her. i found that she was herself of the same opinion; that she feared a union with lord ballindine would not ensure happiness either to him or to herself. his habits were too evidently those of extravagance, and hers had not been such as to render a life of privation anything but a life of misery." "i had thought--" "one moment more, mr armstrong, and i shall have done. after mature consideration, miss wyndham commissioned me to express her sentiments,--and i must say they fully coincided with my own,--to lord ballindine, and to explain to him, that she found herself obliged to--to--to retrace the steps which she had taken in the matter. i did this in a manner as little painful to lord ballindine as i was able. it is difficult, mr armstrong, to make a disagreeable communication palatable; it is very difficult to persuade a young man who is in love, to give up the object of his idolatry; but i trust lord ballindine will do me the justice to own that, on the occasion alluded to, i said nothing unnecessarily harsh--nothing calculated to harass his feelings. i appreciate and esteem lord ballindine's good qualities, and i much regretted that prudence forbad me to sanction the near alliance he was anxious to do me the honour of making with me." lord cashel finished his harangue, and felt once more on good terms with himself. he by no means intended offering any further vehement resistance to his ward's marriage. he was, indeed, rejoiced to have an opportunity of giving way decently. but he could not resist the temptation of explaining his conduct, and making a speech. "my lord," said the parson, "what you tell me is only a repetition of what i heard from my young friend." "i am glad to hear it. i trust, then, i may have the pleasure of feeling that lord ballindine attributes to me no personal unkindness?" "not in the least, lord cashel; very far from it. though lord ballindine may not be--may not hitherto have been, free from the follies of his age, he has had quite sense enough to appreciate your lordship's conduct." "i endeavoured, at any rate, that it should be such as to render me liable to no just imputation of fickleness or cruelty." "no one would for a moment accuse your lordship of either. it is my knowledge of your lordship's character in this particular which has induced me to undertake the task of begging you to reconsider the subject. lord ballindine has, you are aware, sold his race-horses." "i had heard so, mr armstrong; though, perhaps, not on good authority." "he has; and is now living among his own tenantry and friends at kelly's court. he is passionately, devotedly attached to your ward, lord cashel; and with a young man's vanity he still thinks that she may not be quite indifferent to him." "it was at her own instance, mr armstrong, that his suit was rejected." "i am well aware of that, my lord. but ladies, you know, do sometimes mistake their own feelings. miss wyndham must have been attached to my friend, or she would not have received him as her lover. will you, my lord, allow me to see miss wyndham? if she still expresses indifference to lord ballindine, i will assure her that she shall be no further persecuted by his suit. if such be not the case, surely prudence need not further interfere to prevent a marriage desired by both the persons most concerned. lord ballindine is not now a spendthrift, whatever he may formerly have been; and miss wyndham's princely fortune, though it alone would never have induced my friend to seek her hand, will make the match all that it should be. you will not object, my lord, to my seeing miss wyndham?" "mr armstrong--really--you must be aware such a request is rather unusual." "so are the circumstances," replied the parson. "they also are unusual. i do not doubt miss wyndham's wisdom in rejecting lord ballindine, when, as you say, he appeared to be wedded to a life of extravagance. i have no doubt she put a violent restraint on her own feelings; exercised, in fact, a self-denial which shows a very high tone of character, and should elicit nothing but admiration; but circumstances are much altered." lord cashel continued to raise objections to the parson's request, though it was, throughout the interview, his intention to accede to it. at last, he gave up the point, with much grace, and in such a manner as he thought should entitle him to the eternal gratitude of his ward, lord ballindine, and the parson. he consequently rang the bell, and desired the servant to give his compliments to miss wyndham and tell her that the rev. mr armstrong wished to see her, alone, upon business of importance. mr armstrong felt that his success was much greater than he had had any reason to expect, from lord ballindine's description of his last visit at grey abbey. he had, in fact, overcome the only difficulty. if miss wyndham really disliked his friend, and objected to the marriage, mr armstrong was well aware that he had only to return, and tell his friend so in the best way he could. if, however, she still had a true regard for him, if she were the fanny wyndham ballindine had described her to be, if she had ever really been devoted to him, if she had at all a wish in her heart to see him again at her feet, the parson felt that he would have good news to send back to kelly's court; and that he would have done the lovers a service which they never could forget. "at any rate, mr armstrong," said lord cashel, as the parson was bowing himself backwards out of the room, "you will join our family circle while you are in the neighbourhood. whatever may be the success of your mission--and i assure you i hope it may be such as will be gratifying to you, i am happy to make the acquaintance of any friend of lord ballindine's, when lord ballindine chooses his friends so well." (this was meant as a slap at dot blake.) "you will give me leave to send down to the town for your luggage." mr armstrong made no objection to this proposal, and the luggage was sent for. the powder-haired servant again took him in tow, and ushered him out of the book-room, across the hall through the billiard-room, and into the library; gave him a chair, and then brought him a newspaper, giving him to understand that miss wyndham would soon be with him. the parson took the paper in his hands, but he did not trouble himself much with the contents of it. what was he to say to miss wyndham?--how was he to commence? he had never gone love-making for another in his life; and now, at his advanced age, it really did come rather strange to him. and then he began to think whether she were short or tall, dark or fair, stout or slender. it certainly was very odd, but, in all their conversations on the subject, lord ballindine had never given him any description of his inamorata. mr armstrong, however, had not much time to make up his mind on any of these points, for the door opened, and miss wyndham entered. she was dressed in black, for she was, of course, still in mourning for her brother; but, in spite of her sable habiliments, she startled the parson by the brilliance of her beauty. there was a quiet dignity of demeanour natural to fanny wyndham; a well-balanced pose, and a grace of motion, which saved her from ever looking awkward or confused. she never appeared to lose her self-possession. though never arrogant, she seemed always to know what was due to herself. no insignificant puppy could ever have attempted to flirt with her. when summoned by the servant to meet a strange clergyman alone in the library, at the request of lord cashel, she felt that his visit must have some reference to her lover; indeed, her thoughts for the last few days had run on little else. she had made up her mind to talk to her cousin about him; then, her cousin had matured that determination by making love to her himself: then, she had talked to him of lord ballindine, and he had promised to talk to his father on the same subject; and she had since been endeavouring to bring herself to make one other last appeal to her uncle's feelings. her mind was therefore, full of lord ballindine, when she walked into the library. but her face was no tell-tale; her gait and demeanour were as dignified as though she had no anxious love within her heart--no one grand desire, to disturb the even current of her blood. she bowed her beautiful head to mr armstrong as she walked into the room, and, sitting down herself, begged him to take a chair. the parson had by no means made up his mind as to what he was to say to the young lady, so he shut his eyes, and rushed at once into the middle of his subject. "miss wyndham," he said, "i have come a long way to call on you, at the request of a friend of yours--a very dear and old friend of mine--at the request of lord ballindine." fanny's countenance became deeply suffused at her lover's name, but the parson did not observe it; indeed he hardly ventured to look in her face. she merely said, in a voice which seemed to him to be anything but promising, "well, sir?" the truth was, she did not know what to say. had she dared, she would have fallen on her knees before her lover's friend, and sworn to him how well she loved him. "when lord ballindine was last at grey abbey, miss wyndham, he had not the honour of an interview with you." "no, sir," said fanny. her voice, look, and manner were still sedate and courtly; her heart, however, was beating so violently that she hardly knew what she said. "circumstances, i believe, prevented it," said the parson. "my friend, however, received, through lord cashel, a message from you, which--which--which has been very fatal to his happiness." fanny tried to say something, but she was not able. "the very decided tone in which your uncle then spoke to him, has made lord ballindine feel that any further visit to grey abbey on his own part would be an intrusion." "i never--" said fanny, "i never--" "you never authorised so harsh a message, you would say. it is not the harshness of the language, but the certainty of the fact, that has destroyed my friend's happiness. if such were to be the case--if it were absolutely necessary that the engagement between you and lord ballindine should be broken off, the more decided the manner in which it were done, the better. lord ballindine now wishes--i am a bad messenger in such a case as this, miss wyndham: it is, perhaps, better to tell you at once a plain tale. frank has desired me to tell you that he loves you well and truly; that he cannot believe you are indifferent to him; that your vows, to him so precious, are still ringing in his ears; that he is, as far as his heart is concerned, unchanged; and he has commissioned me to ascertain from yourself, whether you--have really changed your mind since he last had the pleasure of seeing you." the parson waited a moment for an answer, and then added, "lord ballindine by no means wishes to persecute you on the subject; nor would i do so, if he did wish it. you have only to tell me that you do not intend to renew your acquaintance with lord ballindine, and i will leave grey abbey." fanny still remained silent. "say the one word 'go', miss wyndham, and you need not pain yourself by any further speech. i will at once be gone." fanny strove hard to keep her composure, and to make some fitting reply to mr armstrong, but she was unable. her heart was too full; she was too happy. she had, openly, and in spite of rebuke, avowed her love to her uncle, her aunt, to lady selina, and her cousin. but she could not bring herself to confess it to mr armstrong. at last she said: "i am much obliged to you for your kindness, mr armstrong. perhaps i owe it to lord ballindine to--to . . . i will ask my uncle, sir, to write to him." "i shall write to lord ballindine this evening, miss wyndham; will you intrust me with no message? i came from him, to see you, with no other purpose. i must give him some news: i must tell him i have seen you. may i tell him not to despair?" "tell him--tell him--" said fanny,--and she paused to make up her mind as to the words of her message,--"tell him to come himself." and, hurrying from the room, she left the parson alone, to meditate on the singular success of his mission. he stood for about half an hour, thinking over what had occurred, and rejoicing greatly in his mind that he had undertaken the business. "what fools men are about women!" he said at last, to himself. "they know their nature so well when they are thinking and speaking of them with reference to others; but as soon as a man is in love with one himself, he is cowed! he thinks the nature of one woman is different from that of all others, and he is afraid to act on his general knowledge. well; i might as well write to him! for, thank god, i can send him good news"--and he rang the bell, and asked if his bag had come. it had, and was in his bed-room. "could the servant get him pen, ink, and paper?" the servant did so; and, within two hours of his entering the doors of grey abbey, he was informing his friend of the success of his mission. xxxvii. veni; vidi; vici [ ] [footnote : veni; vidi; vici--(latin) julius caesar's terse message to the senate announcing his victory over king pharnaces ii of pontus in b.c.: "i came, i saw, i conquered."] the two following letters for lord ballindine were sent off, in the grey abbey post-bag, on the evening of the day on which mr armstrong had arrived there. they were from mr armstrong and lord cashel. that from the former was first opened. grey abbey, april, dear frank, you will own i have not lost much time. i left kelly's court the day before yesterday and i am already able to send you good news. i have seen lord cashel, and have found him anything but uncourteous. i have also seen miss wyndham, and though she said but little to me, that little was just what you would have wished her to say. she bade me tell you to come yourself. in obedience to her commands, i do hereby require you to pack yourself up, and proceed forthwith to grey abbey. his lordship has signified to me that it is his intention, in his own and lady cashel's name, to request the renewed pleasure of an immediate, and, he hopes, a prolonged visit from your lordship. you will not, my dear frank, i am sure, be such a fool as to allow your dislike to such an empty butter-firkin as this earl, to stand in the way of your love or your fortune. you can't expect miss wyndham to go to you, so pocket your resentment like a sensible fellow, and accept lord cashel's invitation as though there had been no difference between you. i have also received an invite, and intend staying here a day or two. i can't say that, judging from the master of the house, i think that a prolonged sojourn would be very agreeable. i have, as yet, seen none of the ladies, except my embryo lady ballindine. i think i have done my business a little in the _veni vidi vici_ style. what has effected the change in lord cashel's views, i need not trouble myself to guess. you will soon learn all about it from miss wyndham. i will not, in a letter, express my admiration, &c., &c., &c. but i will proclaim in connaught, on my return, that so worthy a bride was never yet brought down to the far west. lord cashel will, of course, have some pet bishop or dean to marry you; but, after what has passed, i shall certainly demand the privilege of christening the heir. believe me, dear frank, your affectionate friend, george armstrong. lord cashel's letter was as follows. it cost his lordship three hours to compose, and was twice copied. i trust, therefore, it is a fair specimen of what a nobleman ought to write on such an occasion. grey abbey, april, . my dear lord, circumstances, to which i rejoice that i need not now more particularly allude, made your last visit at my house a disagreeable one to both of us. the necessity under which i then laboured, of communicating to your lordship a decision which was likely to be inimical to your happiness, but to form which my duty imperatively directed me, was a source of most serious inquietude to my mind. i now rejoice that that decision was so painful to you--has been so lastingly painful; as i trust i may measure your gratification at a renewal of your connection with my family, by the acuteness of the sufferings which an interruption of that connexion has occasioned you. i have, i can assure you, my lord, received much pleasure from the visit of your very estimable friend, the reverend mr armstrong; and it is no slight addition to my gratification on this occasion, to find your most intimate friendship so well bestowed. i have had much unreserved conversation to-day with mr armstrong, and i am led by him to believe that i may be able to induce you to give lady cashel and myself the pleasure of your company at grey abbey. we shall be truly delighted to see your lordship, and we sincerely hope that the attractions of grey abbey may be such as to induce you to prolong your visit for some time. perhaps it might be unnecessary for me now more explicitly to allude to my ward; but still, i cannot but think that a short but candid explanation of the line of conduct i have thought it my duty to adopt, may prevent any disagreeable feeling between us, should you, as i sincerely trust you will, do us the pleasure of joining our family circle. i must own, my dear lord, that, a few months since, i feared you were wedded to the expensive pleasures of the turf.--your acceptance of the office of steward at the curragh meetings confirmed the reports which reached me from various quarters. my ward's fortune was then not very considerable; and, actuated by an uncle's affection for his niece as well as a guardian's caution for his ward, i conceived it my duty to ascertain whether a withdrawal from the engagement in contemplation between miss wyndham and yourself would be detrimental to her happiness. i found that my ward's views agreed with my own. she thought her own fortune insufficient, seeing that your habits were then expensive: and, perhaps, not truly knowing the intensity of her own affection, she coincided in my views. you are acquainted with the result. these causes have operated in inducing me to hope that i may still welcome you by the hand as my dear niece's husband. her fortune is very greatly increased; your character is--i will not say altered--is now fixed and established. and, lastly and chiefly, i find--i blush, my lord, to tell a lady's secret--that my ward's happiness still depends on you. i am sure, my dear lord, i need not say more. we shall be delighted to see you at your earliest convenience. we wish that you could have come to us before your friend left, but i regret to learn from him that his parochial duties preclude the possibility of his staying with us beyond thursday. i shall anxiously wait for your reply. in the meantime i beg to assure you, with the joint kind remembrances of all our party, that i am, most faithfully yours, cashel. mr armstrong descended to the drawing-room, before dinner, looking most respectable, with a stiff white tie and the new suit expressly prepared for the occasion. he was introduced to lady cashel and lady selina as a valued friend of lord ballindine, and was received, by the former at least, in a most flattering manner. lady selina had hardly reconciled herself to the return of lord ballindine. it was from no envy at her cousin's happiness; she was really too high-minded, and too falsely proud, also, to envy anyone. but it was the harsh conviction of her mind, that no duties should be disregarded, and that all duties were disagreeable: she was always opposed to the doing of anything which appeared to be the especial wish of the person consulting her; because it would be agreeable, she judged that it would be wrong. she was most sincerely anxious for her poor dependents, but she tormented them most cruelly. when biddy finn wished to marry, lady selina told her it was her duty to put a restraint on her inclinations; and ultimately prevented her, though there was no objection on earth to tony mara; and when the widow cullen wanted to open a little shop for soap and candles, having eight pounds ten shillings left to stock it, after the wake and funeral were over, lady selina told the widow it was her duty to restrain her inclination, and she did so; and the eight pounds ten shillings drifted away in quarters of tea, and most probably, half noggins of whiskey. in the same way, she could not bring herself to think that fanny was doing right, in following the bent of her dearest wishes--in marrying this man she loved so truly. she was weak; she was giving way to temptation; she was going back from her word; she was, she said, giving up her claim to that high standard of feminine character, which it should be the proudest boast of a woman to maintain. it was in vain that her mother argued the point with her in her own way. "but why shouldn't she marry him, my dear," said the countess, "when they love each other--and now there's plenty of money and all that; and your papa thinks it's all right? i declare i can't see the harm of it." "i don't say there's harm, mother," said lady selina; "not absolute harm; but there's weakness. she had ceased to esteem lord ballindine." "ah, but, my dear, she very soon began to esteem him again. poor dear! she didn't know how well she loved him." "she ought to have known, mamma--to have known well, before she rejected him; but, having rejected him, no power on earth should have induced her to name him, or even to think of him again. she should have been dead to him; and he should have been the same as dead to her." "well, i don't know," said the countess; "but i'm sure i shall be delighted to see anybody happy in the house again, and i always liked lord ballindine myself. there was never any trouble about his dinners or anything." and lady cashel was delighted. the grief she had felt at the abrupt termination of all her hopes with regard to her son had been too much for her; she had been unable even to mind her worsted-work, and griffiths had failed to comfort her; but from the moment that her husband had told her, with many hems and haws, that mr armstrong had arrived to repeat lord ballindine's proposal, and that he had come to consult her about again asking his lordship to grey abbey, she became happy and light-hearted; and, before griffiths had left her for the night, she had commenced her consultations as to the preparations for the wedding. xxxviii. wait till i tell you there was no one at dinner that first evening, but mr armstrong, and the family circle; and the parson certainly felt it dull enough. fanny, naturally, was rather silent; lady selina did not talk a great deal; the countess reiterated, twenty times, the pleasure she had in seeing him at grey abbey, and asked one or two questions as to the quantity of flannel it took to make petticoats for the old women in his parish; but, to make up the rest, lord cashel talked incessantly. he wished to show every attention to his guest, and he crammed him with ecclesiastical conversation, till mr armstrong felt that, poor as he was, and much as his family wanted the sun of lordly favour, he would not give up his little living down in connaught, where, at any rate, he could do as he pleased, to be domestic chaplain to lord cashel, with a salary of a thousand a-year. the next morning was worse, and the whole of the long day was insufferable. he endeavoured to escape from his noble friend into the demesne, where he might have explored the fox coverts, and ascertained something of the sporting capabilities of the country; but lord cashel would not leave him alone for an instant; and he had not only to endure the earl's tediousness, but also had to assume a demeanour which was not at all congenial to his feelings. lord cashel would talk church and ultra-protestantism to him, and descanted on the abominations of the national system, and the glories of sunday-schools. now, mr armstrong had no leaning to popery, and had nothing to say against sunday schools; but he had not one in his own parish, in which, by the bye, he was the father of all the protestant children to be found there--without the slightest slur upon his reputation be it said. lord cashel totally mistook his character, and mr armstrong did not know how to set him right; and at five o'clock he went to dress, more tired than he ever had been after hunting all day, and then riding home twelve miles on a wet, dark night, with a lame horse. to do honour to her guest lady cashel asked mr o'joscelyn, the rector, together with his wife and daughters, to dine there on the second day; and mr armstrong, though somewhat afraid of brother clergymen, was delighted to hear that they were coming. anything was better than another _tête-à-tête_ with the ponderous earl. there were no other neighbours near enough to grey abbey to be asked on so short a notice; but the rector, his wife, and their daughters, entered the dining-room punctually at half-past six. the character and feelings of mr o'joscelyn were exactly those which the earl had attributed to mr armstrong. he had been an orangeman [ ], and was a most ultra and even furious protestant. he was, by principle, a charitable man to his neighbours; but he hated popery, and he carried the feeling to such a length, that he almost hated papists. he had not, generally speaking, a bad opinion of human nature; but he would not have considered his life or property safe in the hands of any roman catholic. he pitied the ignorance of the heathen, the credulity of the mahommedan, the desolateness of the jew, even the infidelity of the atheist; but he execrated, abhorred, and abominated the church of rome. "anathema maranatha [ ]; get thee from me, thou child of satan--go out into utter darkness, thou worker of iniquity--into everlasting lakes of fiery brimstone, thou doer of the devil's work--thou false prophet--thou ravenous wolf!" such was the language of his soul, at the sight of a priest; such would have been the language of his tongue, had not, as he thought, evil legislators given a licence to falsehood in his unhappy country, and rendered it impossible for a true churchman openly to declare the whole truth. [footnote : orangeman--a member of the orange order, a militant irish protestant organization founded in and named after william of orange, who in deposed his father-in-law, catholic king james ii, became king william iii, and helped establish protestant faith as a prerequisite for succession to the english throne. the orange order is still exists and remains rabidly anti-catholic.] [footnote : anathema maranatha--an extreme form of excommunication from the catholic church formulated by the fathers of the fourth council of toledo. the person so excommunicated is also condemned to damnation at the second coming.] but though mr o'joscelyn did not absolutely give utterance to such imprecations as these against the wolves who, as he thought, destroyed the lambs of his flock,--or rather, turned his sheep into foxes,--yet he by no means concealed his opinion, or hid his light under a bushel. he spent his life--an eager, anxious, hard-working life, in denouncing the scarlet woman of babylon and all her abominations; and he did so in season and out of season: in town and in country; in public and in private; from his own pulpit, and at other people's tables; in highways and byways; both to friends--who only partly agreed with him, and to strangers, who did not agree with him at all. he totally disregarded the feelings of his auditors; he would make use of the same language to persons who might in all probability be romanists, as he did to those whom he knew to be protestants. he was a most zealous and conscientious, but a most indiscreet servant of his master. he made many enemies, but few converts. he rarely convinced his opponents, but often disgusted his own party. he had been a constant speaker at public meetings; an orator at the rotunda, and, on one occasion, at exeter hall. but even his own friends, the ultra protestants, found that he did the cause more harm than good, and his public exhibitions had been as much as possible discouraged. apart from his fanatical enthusiasm, he was a good man, of pure life, and simple habits; and rejoiced exceedingly, that, in the midst of the laxity in religious opinions which so generally disfigured the age, his wife and his children were equally eager and equally zealous with himself in the service of their great master. a beneficed clergyman from the most benighted, that is, most papistical portion of connaught, would be sure, thought mr o'joscelyn, to have a fellow-feeling with him; to sympathise with his wailings, and to have similar woes to communicate. "how many protestants have you?" said he to mr armstrong, in the drawing-room, a few minutes after they had been introduced to each other. "i had two hundred and seventy in the parish on new year's day; and since that we've had two births, and a very proper church of england police-serjeant has been sent here, in place of a horrid papist. we've a great gain in serjeant woody, my lord." "in one way we certainly have, mr o'joscelyn," said the earl. "i wish all the police force were protestants; i think they would be much more effective. but serjeant carroll was a very good man; you know he was removed from hence on his promotion." "i know he was, my lord--just to please the priests just because he was a papist. do you think there was a single thing done, or a word said at petty sessions, but what father flannery knew all about it?--yes, every word. when did the police ever take any of father flannery's own people?" "didn't serjeant carroll take that horrible man leary, that robbed the old widow that lived under the bridge?" said the countess. "true, my lady, he did," said mr o'joscelyn; "but you'll find, if you inquire, that leary hadn't paid the priest his dues, nor yet his brother. how a protestant government can reconcile it to their conscience--how they can sleep at night, after pandering to the priests as they daily do, i cannot conceive. how many protestants did you say you have, mr armstrong?" "we're not very strong down in the west, mr o'joscelyn," said the other parson. "there are usually two or three in the kelly's court pew. the vicarage pew musters pretty well, for mrs armstrong and five of the children are always there. then there are usually two policemen, and the clerk; though, by the bye, he doesn't belong to the parish. i borrowed him from claremorris." mr o'joscelyn gave a look of horror and astonishment. "i can, however, make a boast, which perhaps you cannot, mr joscelyn: all my parishioners are usually to be seen in church, and if one is absent i'm able to miss him." "it must paralyse your efforts, preaching to such a congregation," said the other. "do not disparage my congregation," said mr armstrong, laughing; "they are friendly and neighbourly, if not important in point of numbers; and, if i wanted to fill my church, the roman catholics think so well of me, that they'd flock in crowds there if i asked them; and the priest would show them the way--for any special occasion, i mean; if the bishop came to see me, or anything of that kind." mr o'joscelyn was struck dumb; and, indeed, he would have had no time to answer if the power of speech had been left to him, for the servant announced dinner. the conversation was a little more general during dinner-time, but after dinner the parish clergyman returned to another branch of his favourite subject. perhaps, he thought that mr armstrong was himself not very orthodox; or, perhaps, that it was useless to enlarge on the abominations of babylon to a protestant peer and a protestant parson; but, on this occasion, he occupied himself with the temporal iniquities of the roman catholics. the trial of o'connell and his fellow-prisoners had come to an end, and he and they, with one exception, had just. commenced their period of imprisonment. the one exception was a clergyman, who had been acquitted. he had in some way been connected with mr o'joscelyn's parish; and, as the parish priest and most of his flock were hot repealers, there was a good deal of excitement on the occasion,--rejoicings at the priest's acquittal, and howlings, yellings, and murmurings at the condemnation of the others. "we've fallen on frightful days, mr armstrong," said mr o'joscelyn: "frightful, lawless, dangerous days." "we must take them as we find them, mr o'joscelyn." "doubtless, mr armstrong, doubtless; and i acknowledge his infinite wisdom, who, for his own purposes, now allows sedition to rear her head unchecked, and falsehood to sit in the high places. they are indeed dangerous days, when the sympathy of government is always with the evil doers, and the religion of the state is deserted by the crown." "why, god bless me! mr o'joscelyn!--the queen hasn't turned papist, and the repealers are all in prison, or soon will be there." "i don't mean the queen. i believe she is very good. i believe she is a sincere protestant, god bless her;" and mr o'joscelyn, in his loyalty, drank a glass of port wine; "but i mean her advisers. they do not dare protect the protestant faith: they do not dare secure the tranquillity of the country." "are not o'connell and the whole set under conviction at this moment? i'm no politician myself, but the only question seems to be, whether they haven't gone a step too far?" "why did they let that priest escape them?" said mr o'joscelyn. "i suppose he was not guilty;" said mr armstrong; "at any rate, you had a staunch protestant jury." "i tell you the priests are at the head of it all. o'connell would be nothing without them; he is only their creature. the truth is, the government did not dare to frame an indictment that would really lead to the punishment of a priest. the government is truckling to the false hierarchy of rome. look at oxford,--a jesuitical seminary, devoted to the secret propagation of romish falsehood.--go into the churches of england, and watch their bowings, their genuflexions, their crosses and their candles; see the demeanour of their apostate clergy; look into their private oratories; see their red-lettered prayer-books, their crucifixes, and images; and then, can you doubt that the most dreadful of all prophecies is about to be accomplished?" "but i have not been into their closets, mr o'joscelyn, nor yet into their churches lately, and therefore i have not seen these things; nor have i seen anybody who has. have you seen crucifixes in the rooms of church of england clergymen? or candles on the altar-steps of english churches?" "god forbid that i should willingly go where such things are to be seen; but of the fearful fact there is, unfortunately, no doubt. and then, as to the state of the country, we have nothing round us but anarchy and misrule: my life, mr armstrong, has not been safe any day this week past." "good heaven, mr o'joscelyn--your life not safe! i thought you were as quiet here, in kildare, as we are in mayo." "wait till i tell you, mr armstrong: you know this priest, whom they have let loose to utter more sedition?--he was coadjutor to the priest in this parish." "was he? the people are not attacking you, i suppose, because he's let loose?" "wait till i tell you. no; the people are mad because o'connell and his myrmidons are to be locked up; and, mingled with their fury on this head are their insane rejoicings at the escape of this priest. they are, therefore,--or were, till saturday last, howling for joy and for grief at the same time. oh! such horrid howls, mr armstrong. i declare, mr armstrong, i have trembled for my children this week past." the earl, who well knew mr o'joscelyn, and the nature of his grievances, had heard all these atrocities before; and, not being very excited by their interest, had continued sipping his claret in silence till he began to doze; and, by the time the worthy parson had got to the climax of his misery, the nobleman was fast asleep. "you don't mean that the people made any attack on the parsonage?" said mr armstrong. "wait till i tell you, mr armstrong," replied the other. "on thursday morning last they all heard that o'connell was a convicted felon." "conspirator, i believe? mr o'joscelyn." "conspiracy is felony, mr armstrong--and that their priest had been let loose. it was soon evident that no work was to be done that day. they assembled about the roads in groups; at the chapel-door; at priest flannery's house; at the teetotal reading-room as they call it, where the people drink cordial made of whiskey, and disturb the neighbourhood with cracked horns; and we heard that a public demonstration was to be made." "was it a demonstration of joy or of grief?" "both, mr armstrong! it was mixed. they were to shout and dance for joy about father tyrrel; and howl and curse for grief about o'connell; and they did shout and howl with a vengeance. all thursday, you would have thought that a legion of devils had been let loose into kilcullen." "but did they commit any personal outrages, mr o'joscelyn?" "wait till i tell you. i soon saw how the case was going to be, and i determined to be prepared. i armed myself, mr armstrong; and so did mrs o'joscelyn. mrs o'joscelyn is a most determined woman--a woman of great spirit; we were resolved to protect our daughters and our infants from ill-usage, as long as god should leave us the power to do so. we both armed ourselves with pistols, and i can assure you that, as far as ammunition goes, we were prepared to give them a hot reception." "dear me! this must have been very unpleasant to mrs o'joscelyn." "oh, she's a woman of great nerve, mr armstrong. mary is a woman of very great nerve. i can assure you we shall never forget that thursday night. about seven in the evening it got darkish, but the horrid yells of the wild creatures had never ceased for one half-hour; and, a little after seven, twenty different bonfires illuminated the parish. there were bonfires on every side of us: huge masses of blazing turf were to be seen scattered through the whole country." "did they burn any thing except the turf, mr o'joscelyn?" "wait till i tell you, mr armstrong. i shall never forget that night; we neither of us once lay down; no, not for a moment. about eight, the children were put to bed; but with their clothes and shoes on, for there was no knowing at what moment and in how sudden a way the poor innocents might be called up. my daughters behaved admirably; they remained quite quiet in the drawing-room till about eleven, when we had evening worship, and then they retired to rest. their mother, however, insisted that they should not take off their petticoats or stockings. at about one, we went to the hall-door: it was then bright moonlight--but the flames of the surrounding turf overpowered the moon. the whole horizon was one glare of light." "but were not the police about, mr o'joscelyn?" "oh, they were about, to be sure, poor men; but what could they do? the government now licenses every outrage." "but what _did_ the people do?" said mr armstrong. "wait till i tell you. they remained up all night; and so did we, you may be sure. mary did not rise from her chair once that night without a pistol in her hand. we heard the sounds of their voices continually, close to the parsonage gate; we could see them in the road, from the windows--crowds of them--men, women and children; and still they continued shouting. the next morning they were a little more quiet, but still the parish was disturbed: nobody was at work, and men and women stood collected together in the roads. but as soon as it was dusk, the shoutings and the bonfires began again; and again did i and mrs o'joscelyn prepare for a night of anxious watching. we sat up all friday night, mr armstrong." "with the pistols again?" "indeed we did; and lucky for us that we did so. had they not known that we were prepared, i am convinced the house would have been attacked. our daughters sat with us this night, and we were so far used to the state of disturbance, that we were able to have a little supper." "you must have wanted that, i think." "indeed we did. about four in the morning, i dropped asleep on the sofa; but mary never closed her eyes." "did they come into the garden at all, or near the house?" "no, they did not. and i am very thankful they refrained from doing so, for i determined to act promptly, mr armstrong, and so was mary--that is, mrs o'joscelyn. we were both determined to fire, if we found our premises invaded. thank god the miscreants did not come within the gate." "you did not suffer much, then, except the anxiety, mr o'joscelyn?" "god was very merciful, and protected us; but who can feel safe, living in such times, and among such a people? and it all springs from rome; the scarlet woman is now in her full power, and in her full deformity. she was smitten down for a while, but has now risen again. for a while the right foot of truth was on her neck; for a while she lay prostrated before the strength of those, who by god's grace, had prevailed against her. but the latter prophecies which had been revealed to us, are now about to be accomplished. it is well for those who comprehend the signs of the coming time." "suppose we join the ladies," said the earl, awakened by the sudden lull in mr o'joscelyn's voice. "but won't you take a glass of madeira first, mr armstrong?" mr armstrong took his glass of madeira, and then went to the ladies; and the next morning, left grey abbey, for his own parish. well; thought he to himself, as he was driven through the park, in the earl's gig, i'm very glad i came here, for frank's sake. i've smoothed his way to matrimony and a fortune. but i don't know anything which would induce me to stay a week at grey abbey. the earl is bad--nearly unbearable; but the parson!--i'd sooner by half be a roman myself, than think so badly of my neighbours as he does. many a time since has he told in connaught, how mr o'joscelyn. and mary, his wife, sat up two nights running, armed to the teeth, to protect themselves from the noisy repealers of kilcullen. mr armstrong arrived safely at his parsonage, and the next morning he rode over to kelly's court. but lord ballindine was not there. he had started for grey abbey almost immediately on receiving the two letters which we have given, and he and his friend had passed each other on the road. xxxix. it never rains but it pours when frank had read his two letters from grey abbey, he was in such a state of excitement as to be unable properly to decide what he would immediately do. his first idea was to gallop to tuam, as fast as his best horse would carry him; to take four horses there, and not to stop one moment till he found himself at grey abbey: but a little consideration showed him that this would not do. he would not find horses ready for him on the road; he must take some clothes with him; and it would be only becoming in him to give the earl some notice of his approach. so he at last made up his mind to postpone his departure for a few hours. he was, however, too much overcome with joy to be able to do anything rationally. his anger against the earl totally evaporated; indeed, he only thought of him now as a man who had a house in which he could meet his love. he rushed into the drawing-room, where his mother and sisters were sitting, and, with the two letters open in his hand, proclaimed his intention of leaving home that day. "goodness gracious, frank! and where are you going?" said mrs o'kelly. "to grey abbey." "no!" said augusta, jumping up from her chair. "i am so glad!" shouted sophy, throwing down her portion of the worsted-work sofa. "you have made up your difference, then, with miss wyndham?" said the anxious mother. "i am so glad! my own dear, good, sensible frank!" "i never had any difference with fanny," said he. "i was not able to explain all about it, nor can i now: it was a crotchet of the earl's--only some nonsense; however, i'm off now--i can't wait a day, for i mean to write to say i shall be at grey abbey the day after to-morrow, and i must go by dublin. i shall be off in a couple of hours; so, for heaven's sake, sophy, look sharp and put up my things." the girls both bustled out of the room, and frank was following them, but his mother called him back. "when is it to be, frank? come tell me something about it. i never asked any questions when i thought the subject was a painful one." "god bless you, mother, you never did. but i can tell you nothing--only the stupid old earl has begged me to go there at once. fanny must settle the time herself: there'll be settlements, and lawyer's work." "that's true, my love. a hundred thousand pounds in ready cash does want looking after. but look here, my dear; fanny is of age, isn't she?" "she is, mother." "well now, frank, take my advice; they'll want to tie up her money in all manner of ways, so as to make it of the least possible use to you, or to her either. they always do; they're never contented unless they lock up a girl's money, so that neither she nor her husband can spend the principal or the interest. don't let them do it, frank. of course she will be led by you, let them settle whatever is fair on her; but don't let them bother the money so that you can't pay off the debts. it'll be a grand thing, frank, to redeem the property." frank hemmed and hawed, and said he'd consult his lawyer in dublin before the settlements were signed; but declared that he was not going to marry fanny wyndham for her money. "that's all very well, frank," said the mother; "but you know you could not marry her without the money, and mind, it's now or never. think what a thing it would be to have the property unencumbered!" the son hurried away to throw himself at the feet of his mistress, and the mother remained in her drawing-room, thinking with delight on the renovated grandeur of the family, and of the decided lead which the o'kellys would again be able to take in connaught. fanny's joy was quite equal to that of her lover, but it was not shown quite so openly. her aunt congratulated her most warmly; kissed her twenty times; called her her own dear, darling niece, and promised her to love her husband, and to make him a purse if she could get griffiths to teach her that new stitch; it looked so easy she was sure she could learn it, and it wouldn't tease her eyes. lady selina also wished her joy; but she did it very coldly, though very sensibly. "believe me, my dear fanny, i am glad you should have the wish of your heart. there were obstacles to your union with lord ballindine, which appeared to be insurmountable, and i therefore attempted to wean you from your love. i hope he will prove worthy of that love, and that you may never have cause to repent of your devotion to him. you are going greatly to increase your cares and troubles; may god give you strength to bear them, and wisdom to turn them to advantage!" the earl made a very long speech to her, in which there were but few pauses, and not one full stop. fanny was not now inclined to quarrel with him; and he quite satisfied himself that his conduct, throughout, towards his ward, had been dignified, prudent, consistent, and disinterested. these speeches and congratulations all occurred during the period of mr armstrong's visit, and fanny heard nothing more about her lover, till the third morning after that gentleman's departure; the earl announced then, on entering the breakfast-room, that he had that morning received a communication from lord ballindine, and that his lordship intended reaching grey abbey that day in time for dinner. fanny felt herself blush, but she said nothing; lady selina regretted that he had had a very wet day yesterday, and hoped he would have a fine day to-day; and lady cashel was overcome at the reflection that she had no one to meet him at dinner, and that she had not yet suited herself with a cook. "dear me," exclaimed her ladyship; "i wish we'd got this letter yesterday; no one knows now, beforehand, when people are coming. i'm sure it usen't to be so. i shall be so glad to see lord ballindine; you know, fanny, he was always a great favourite of mine. do you think, selina, the o'joscelyns would mind coming again without any notice? i'm sure i don't know--i would not for the world treat lord ballindine shabbily; but what can i do, my dear?" "i think, my lady, we may dispense with any ceremony now, with lord ballindine," said the earl. "he will, i am sure, be delighted to be received merely as one of the family. you need not mind asking the o'joscelyns to-day." "do you think not? well, that's a great comfort: besides, lord ballindine never was particular. but still, fanny, had i known he was coming so soon, i would have had murray down from dublin again at once, for mrs richards is not a good cook." during the remainder of the morning, fanny was certainly very happy; but she was very uneasy. she hardly knew how to meet lord ballindine. she felt that she had treated him badly, though she had never ceased to love him dearly; and she also thought she owed him much for his constancy. it was so good of him to send his friend to her--and one to whom her uncle could not refuse admission; and then she thought she had treated mr armstrong haughtily and unkindly. she had never thanked him for all the trouble he had taken; she had never told him how very happy he had made her; but she would do so at some future time, when he should be an honoured and a valued guest in her own and her husband's house. but how should she receive her lover? would they allow her to be alone with him, if only for a moment, at their first meeting? oh! how she longed for a confidante! but she could not make a confidante of her cousin. twice she went down to the drawing-room, with the intention of talking of her love; but lady selina looked so rigid, and spoke so rigidly, that she could not do it. she said such common-place things, and spoke of lord ballindine exactly as she would of any other visitor who might have been coming to the house. she did not confine herself to his eating and drinking, as her mother did; but she said, he'd find the house very dull, she was afraid--especially as the shooting was all over, and the hunting very nearly so; that he would, however, probably be a good deal at the curragh races. fanny knew that her cousin did not mean to be unkind; but there was no sympathy in her: she could not talk to her of the only subject which occupied her thoughts; so she retreated to her own room, and endeavoured to compose herself. as the afternoon drew on, she began to wish that he was not coming till to-morrow. she became very anxious; she must see him, somewhere, before she dressed for dinner; and she would not, could not, bring herself to go down into the drawing-room, and shake hands with him, when he came, before her uncle, her aunt, and her cousin. she was still pondering on the subject, when, about four o'clock in the afternoon, she got a message from her aunt, desiring her to go to her in her boudoir. "that'll do, griffiths," said the countess, as fanny entered her room; "you can come up when i ring. sit down, fanny; sit down, my dear. i was thinking lord ballindine will soon be here." "i suppose he will, aunt. in his letter to lord cashel, he said he'd be here before dinner." "i'm sure he'll be here soon. dear me; i'm so glad it's all made up between you. i'm sure, fanny, i hope, and think, and believe, you'll be very, very happy." "dear aunt"--and fanny kissed lady cashel. a word of kindness to her then seemed invaluable. "it was so very proper in lord ballindine to give up his horses, and all that sort of thing," said the countess; "i'm sure i always said he'd turn out just what he should be; and he is so good-tempered. i suppose, dear, you'll go abroad the first thing?" "i haven't thought of that yet, aunt," said fanny, trying to smile. "oh, of course you will; you'll go to the rhine, and switzerland, and como, and rome, and those sort of places. it'll be very nice: we went there--your uncle and i--and it was delightful; only i used to be very tired. it wasn't then we went to rome though. i remember now it was after adolphus was born. poor adolphus!" and her ladyship sighed, as her thoughts went back to the miseries of her eldest born. "but i'll tell you why i sent for you, my dear: you know, i must go downstairs to receive lord ballindine, and tell him how glad i am that he's come back; and i'm sure i am very glad that he's coming; and your uncle will be there. but i was thinking you'd perhaps sooner see him first alone. you'll be a little flurried, my dear,--that's natural; so, if you like, you can remain up here, my dear, in my room, quiet and comfortable, by yourself; and griffiths shall show lord ballindine upstairs, as soon as he leaves the drawing-room." "how very, very kind of you, dear aunt!" said fanny, relieved from her most dreadful difficulty. and so it was arranged. lady cashel went down into the drawing-room to await her guest, and fanny brought her book into her aunt's boudoir, and pretended she would read till lord ballindine disturbed her. i need hardly say that she did not read much. she sat there over her aunt's fire, waiting to catch the sound of the wheels on the gravel at the front door. at one moment she would think that he was never coming--the time appeared to be so long; and then again, when she heard any sound which might be that of his approach, she would again wish to have a few minutes more to herself. at length, however, she certainly did hear him. there was the quick rattle of the chaise over the gravel, becoming quicker and quicker, till the vehicle stopped with that kind of plunge which is made by no other animal than a post-horse, and by him only at his arrival at the end of a stage. then the steps were let down with a crash--she would not go to the window, or she might have seen him; she longed to do so, but it appeared so undignified. she sat quite still in her chair; but she heard his quick step at the hail door; she was sure--she could have sworn to his step--and then she heard the untying of cords, and pulling down of luggage. lord ballindine was again in the house, and the dearest wish of her heart was accomplished. she felt that she was trembling. she had not yet made up her mind how she would receive him--what she would first say to him--and certainly she had no time to do so now. she got up, and looked in her aunt's pier-glass. it was more a movement of instinct than one of premeditation; but she thought she had never seen herself look so wretchedly. she had, however, but little time, either for regret or improvement on that score, for there were footsteps in the corridor. he couldn't have stayed a moment to speak to anyone downstairs--however, there he certainly was; she heard griffiths' voice in the passage, "this way, my lord--in my lady's boudoir;" and then the door opened, and in a moment she was in her lover's arms. "my own fanny!--once more my own!" "oh, frank! dear frank!" lord ballindine was only ten minutes late in coming down to dinner, and miss wyndham not about half an hour, which should be considered as showing great moderation on her part. for, of course, frank kept her talking a great deal longer than he should have done; and then she not only had to dress, but to go through many processes with her eyes, to obliterate the trace of tears. she was, however, successful, for she looked very beautiful when she came down, and so dignified, so composed, so quiet in her happiness, and yet so very happy in her quietness. fanny was anything but a hypocrite; she had hardly a taint of hypocrisy in her composition, but her looks seldom betrayed her feelings. there was a majesty of beauty about her, a look of serenity in her demeanour, which in public made her appear superior to all emotion. frank seemed to be much less at his ease. he attempted to chat easily with the countess, and to listen pleasantly to the would-be witticisms of the earl; but he was not comfortable, he did not amalgamate well with the family; had there been a larger party, he could have talked all dinner-time to his love; but, as it was, he hardly spoke a word to her during the ceremony, and indeed, but few during the evening. he did sit next to her on the sofa, to be sure, and watched the lace she was working; but he could not talk unreservedly to her, when old lady cashel was sitting close to him on the other side, and lady selina on a chair immediately opposite. and then, it is impossible to talk to one's mistress, in an ordinary voice, on ordinary subjects, when one has not seen her for some months. a lover is never so badly off as in a family party: a _tête-à-tête_, or a large assembly, are what suit him best: he is equally at his ease in either; but he is completely out of his element in a family party. after all, lady cashel was right; it would have been much better to have asked the o'joscelyns. the next morning, frank underwent a desperate interview in the book-room. his head was dizzy before lord cashel had finished half of what he had to say. he commenced by pointing out with what perfect uprightness and wisdom he had himself acted with regard to his ward; and lord ballindine did not care to be at the trouble of contradicting him. he then went to the subject of settlements, and money matters: professed that he had most unbounded confidence in his young friend's liberality, integrity, and good feeling; that he would be glad to listen, and, he had no doubt, to accede to any proposals made by him: that he was quite sure lord ballindine would make no proposal which was not liberal, fair, and most proper; and he said a great deal more of the kind, and then himself proposed to arrange his ward's fortune in such a way as to put it quite beyond her future husband's control. on this subject, however, frank rather nonplussed the earl by proposing nothing, and agreeing to nothing; but simply saying that he would leave the whole matter in the hands of the lawyers. "quite right, my lord, quite right," said lord cashel, "my men of business, green and grogram, will manage all that. they know all about fanny's property; they can draw out the settlements, and grogram can bring them here, and we can execute them: that'll be the simplest way." "i'll write to mr cummings, then, and tell him to wait on messrs. green and grogram. cummings is a very proper man: he was recommended to me by guinness." "oh, ah--yes; your attorney, you mean?" said the earl. "why, yes, that will be quite proper, too. of course mr cummings will see the necessity of absolutely securing miss wyndham's fortune." nothing further, however, was said between them on the subject; and the settlements, whatever was their purport, were drawn out without any visible interference on the part of lord ballindine. but mr grogram, the attorney, on his first visit to grey abbey on the subject, had no difficulty in learning that miss wyndham was determined to have a will of her own in the disposition of her own money. fanny told her lover the whole episode of lord kilcullen's offer to her; but she told it in such a way as to redound rather to her cousin's credit than otherwise. she had learned to love him as a cousin and a friend, and his ill-timed proposal to her had not destroyed the feeling. a woman can rarely be really offended at the expression of love, unless it be from some one unfitted to match with her, either in rank or age. besides, fanny thought that lord kilcullen had behaved generously to her when she so violently repudiated his love: she believed that it had been sincere; she had not even to herself accused him of meanness or treachery; and she spoke of him as one to be pitied, liked, and regarded; not as one to be execrated and avoided. and then she confessed to frank all her fears respecting himself; how her heart would have broken, had he taken her own rash word as final, and so deserted her. she told him that she had never ceased to love him, for a day; not even on that day when, in her foolish spleen, she had told her uncle she was willing to break off the match; she owned to him all her troubles, all her doubts; how she had made up her mind to write to him, but had not dared to do so, lest his answer should be such as would kill her at once. and then she prayed to be forgiven for her falseness; for having consented, even for a moment, to forget the solemn vows she had so often repeated to him. frank stopped her again and again in her sweet confessions, and swore the blame was only his. he anathematised himself, his horses, and his friends, for having caused a moment's uneasiness to her; but she insisted on receiving his forgiveness, and he was obliged to say that he forgave her. with all his follies, and all his weakness, lord ballindine was not of an unforgiving temperament: he was too happy to be angry with any one, now. he forgave even lord cashel; and, had he seen lord kilcullen, he would have been willing to give him his hand as to a brother. frank spent two or three delightful weeks, basking in the sunshine of fanny's love, and lord cashel's favour. nothing could be more obsequiously civil than the earl's demeanour, now that the matter was decided. every thing was to be done just as lord ballindine liked; his taste was to be consulted in every thing; the earl even proposed different visits to the curragh; asked after the whereabouts of fin m'coul and brien boru; and condescended pleasantly to inquire whether dot blake was prospering as usual with his favourite amusement. at length, the day was fixed for the marriage. it was to be in the pleasant, sweet-smelling, grateful month of may,--the end of may; and lord and lady ballindine were then to start for a summer tour, as the countess had proposed, to see the rhine, and switzerland, and rome, and those sort of places. and now, invitations were sent, far and wide, to relatives and friends. lord cashel had determined that the wedding should be a great concern. the ruin of his son was to be forgotten in the marriage of his niece. the bishop of maryborough was to come and marry them; the ellisons were to come again, and the fitzgeralds: a duchess was secured, though duchesses are scarce in ireland; and great exertions were made to get at a royal prince, who was commanding the forces in the west. but the royal prince did not see why he should put himself to so much trouble, and he therefore sent to say that he was very sorry, but the peculiar features of the time made it quite impossible for him to leave his command, even on so great a temptation; and a paragraph consequently found its way into the papers, very laudatory of his royal highness's military energy and attention. mrs o'kelly and her daughters received a very warm invitation, which they were delighted to accept. sophy and augusta were in the seventh heaven of happiness, for they were to form a portion of the fair bevy of bridesmaids appointed to attend fanny wyndham to the altar. frank rather pished and poohed at all these preparations of grandeur; he felt that when the ceremony took place he would look like the ornamental calf in the middle of it; but, on the whole, he bore his martyrdom patiently. four spanking bays, and a new chariot ordered from hutton's, on the occasion, would soon carry him away from the worst part of it. lord cashel was in the midst of his glory: he had got an occupation and he delighted in it. lady selina performed her portion of the work with exemplary patience and attention. she wrote all the orders to the tradesmen, and all the invitations; she even condescended to give advice to fanny about her dress; and to griffiths, about the arrangement of the rooms and tables. but poor lady cashel worked the hardest of all,--her troubles had no end. had she known what she was about to encounter, when she undertook the task of superintending the arrangements for her niece's wedding, she would never have attempted it: she would never have entered into negotiations with that treacherous murray--that man cook in dublin--but have allowed mrs richards to have done her best,--or her worst,--in her own simple way, in spite of the duchess and the bishop, and the hopes of a royal prince indulged in by lord cashel. she did not dare to say as much to her husband, but she confessed to griffiths that she was delighted when she heard his royal highness would not come. she was sure his coming would not make dear fanny a bit happier, and she really would not have known what to do with him after the married people were gone. frank received two letters from dot blake during his stay at grey abbey. in the former he warmly congratulated him on his approaching nuptials, and strongly commended him on his success in having arranged matters. "you never could have forgiven yourself," he said, "had you allowed miss wyndham's splendid fortune to slip through your hands. i knew you were not the man to make a vain boast of a girl's love, and i was therefore sure that you might rely on her affection. i only feared you might let the matter go too far. you know i strongly advised you not to marry twenty thousand pounds. i am as strongly of opinion that you would be a fool to neglect to marry six times as much. you see i still confine myself to the money part of the business, as though the lady herself were of no value. i don't think so, however; only i know you never would have lived happily without an easy fortune." and then he spoke of brien boru, and informed lord ballindine that that now celebrated nag was at the head of the list of the derby horses; that it was all but impossible to get any odds against him at all;--that the whole betting world were talking of nothing else; that three conspiracies had been detected, the object of which was to make him safe--that is, to make him very unsafe to his friends; that scott's foreman had been offered two thousand to dose him; and that scott himself slept in the stable with him every night, to prevent anything like false play. the second letter was written by dot, at epsom, on the th of may, thirty minutes after the great race had been run. it was very short; and shall therefore be given entire. epsom, derby day, race just over. god bless you, my dear boy--brien has done the trick, and done it well! butler rode him beautifully, but he did not want any riding; he's the kindest beast ever had a saddle on. the stakes are close on four thousand pounds: your share will do well to pay the posters, &c., for yourself and my lady, on your wedding trip. i win well--very well; but i doubt the settling. we shall have awful faces at the corner next week. you'll probably have heard all about it by express before you get this. in greatest haste, yours, w. blake. the next week, the following paragraph appeared in "bell's life in london." it never rains but it pours. it appears pretty certain, now, that brien boru is not the property of the gentleman in whose name he has run; but that he is owned by a certain noble lord, well known on the irish turf, who has lately, however, been devoting his time to pursuits more pleasant and more profitable than the cares of the stable--pleasant and profitable as it doubtless must be to win the best race of the year. the pick-up on the derby is about four thousand pounds, and brien boru is certainly the best horse of his year. but lord ballindine's matrimonial pick-up is, we are told, a clear quarter of a million; and those who are good judges declare that no more beautiful woman than the future lady ballindine will have graced the english court for many a long year. his lordship, on the whole, is not doing badly. lord cashel, also, congratulated frank on his success on the turf, in spite of the very decided opinion he had expressed on the subject, when he was endeavouring to throw him on one side. "my dear ballindine," he said, "i wish you joy with all my heart: a most magnificent animal, i'm told, is brien, and still partly your own property, you say. well; it's a great triumph to beat those english lads on their own ground, isn't it? and thorough irish blood, too!--thorough irish blood! he has the 'paddy whack' strain in him, through the dam--the very best blood in ireland. you know, my mare 'dignity', that won the oaks in ' , was by 'chanticleer', out of 'floribel', by 'paddy whack.' you say you mean to give up the turf, and you know i've done so, too. but, if you ever do change your mind--should you ever run horses again--take my advice, and stick to the 'paddy whack' strain. there's no beating the real 'paddy whack' blood." on the st of may, , lord ballindine and fanny wyndham were married. the bishop "turned 'em off iligant," as a wag said in the servants' hall. there was a long account of the affair in the "morning post" of the day; there were eight bridesmaids, all of whom, it was afterwards remarked, were themselves married within two years of the time; an omen which was presumed to promise much continued happiness to lord and lady ballindine, and all belonging to them. murray, the man cook, did come down from dublin, just in time; but he behaved very badly. he got quite drunk on the morning of the wedding. he, however, gave richards an opportunity of immortalising herself. she behaved, on the trying occasion, so well, that she is now confirmed in her situation; and lady cashel has solemnly declared that she will never again, on any account, be persuaded to allow a man cook to enter the house. lady selina--she would not officiate as one of the bridesmaids--is still unmarried; but her temper is not thereby soured, nor her life embittered. she is active, energetic, and good as ever: and, as ever, cold, hard, harsh, and dignified. lord kilcullen has hardly been heard of since his departure from grey abbey. it is known that he is living at baden, but no one knows on what. his father never mentions his name; his mother sometimes talks of "poor adolphus;" but if he were dead and buried he could not give less trouble to the people of grey abbey. no change has occurred, or is likely to take place, in the earl himself--nor is any desirable. how could he change for the better? how could he bear his honours with more dignity, or grace his high position with more decorum? every year since the marriage of his niece, he has sent lord and lady ballindine an invitation to grey abbey; but there has always been some insuperable impediment to the visit. a child had just been born, or was just going to be born; or mrs o'kelly was ill; or one of the miss o'kellys was going to be married. it was very unfortunate, but lord and lady ballindine were never able to get as far as grey abbey. great improvements have been effected at kelly's court. old buildings have been pulled down, and additions built up; a great many thousand young trees have been planted, and some miles of new roads and walks constructed. the place has quite an altered appearance; and, though connaught is still connaught, and county mayo is the poorest part of it, lady ballindine does not find kelly's court unbearable. she has three children already, and doubtless will have many more. her nursery, therefore, prevents her from being tormented by the weariness of the far west. lord ballindine himself is very happy. he still has the hounds, and maintains, in the three counties round him, the sporting pre-eminence, which has for so many years belonged to his family. but he has no race-horses. his friend, dot, purchased the lot of them out and out, soon after the famous derby; and a very good bargain, for himself, he is said to have made. he is still intimate with lord ballindine, and always spends a fortnight with him at kelly's court during the hunting-season. sophy o'kelly married a blake, and augusta married a dillon; and, as they both live within ten miles of kelly's court. and their husbands are related to all the blakes and all the dillons; and as ballindine himself is the head of all the kellys, there is a rather strong clan of them. about five-and-twenty cousins muster together in red coats and top-boots, every tuesday and friday during the hunting-season. it would hardly be wise, in that country, to quarrel with a kelly, a dillon, or a blake. xl. conclusion we must now return to dunmore, and say a few parting words of the kellys and anty lynch; and then our task will be finished. it will be remembered that that demon of dunmore, barry lynch, has been made to vanish: like lord kilcullen, he has gone abroad; he has settled himself at an hotel at boulogne, and is determined to enjoy himself. arrangements have been made about the property, certainly not very satisfactory to barry, because they are such as make it necessary for him to pay his own debts; but they still leave him sufficient to allow of his indulging in every vice congenial to his taste; and, if he doesn't get fleeced by cleverer rogues than himself--which, however, will probably be the case--he will have quite enough to last him till he has drunk himself to death. after his departure, there was nothing to delay anty's marriage, but her own rather slow recovery. she has no other relatives to ask, no other friends to consult. now that barry was gone she was entirely her own mistress, and was quite willing to give up her dominion over herself to martin kelly. she had, however, been greatly shaken; not by illness only, but by fear also--her fears of barry and for barry. she still dreamed while asleep, and thought while awake, of that horrid night when he crept up to her room and swore that he would murder her. this, and what she had suffered since, had greatly weakened her, and it was some time before doctor colligan would pronounce her convalescent. at last, however, the difficulties were overcome; all arrangements were completed. anty was well; the property was settled; martin was impatient; and the day was fixed. there was no bishop, no duchess, no man-cook, at the wedding-party given on the occasion by mrs kelly; nevertheless, it was, in its way, quite as grand an affair as that given by the countess. the widow opened her heart, and opened her house. her great enemy, barry lynch, was gone--clean beaten out of the field--thoroughly vanquished; as far as ireland was concerned, annihilated; and therefore, any one else in the three counties was welcome to share her hospitality. oh, the excess of delight the widow experienced in speaking of barry to one of her gossips, as the "poor misfortunate crature!" daly, the attorney, was especially invited, and he came. moylan also was asked, but he stayed away. doctor colligan was there, in great feather; had it not been for him, there would probably have been no wedding at all. it would have been a great thing if lord ballindine could have been got to grace the party, though only for ten minutes; but he was at that time in switzerland with his own bride, so he could not possibly do so. "well, ma'am," said mrs costelloe, the grocer's wife, from tuam, an old friend of the widow, who had got into a corner with her to have a little chat, and drink half-a-pint of porter before the ceremony,--"and i'm shure i wish you joy of the marriage. faux, i'm tould it's nigh to five hundred a-year, miss anty has, may god bless and incrase it! well, martin has his own luck; but he desarves it, he desarves it." "i don't know so much about luck thin, mrs costelloe," said the widow, who still professed to think that her son gave quite as much as he got, in marrying anty lynch; "i don't know so much about luck: martin was very well as he was; his poor father didn't lave him that way that he need be looking to a wife for mains, the lord be praised." "and that's thrue, too, mrs kelly," said the other; "but miss anty's fortune ain't a bad step to a young man, neither. why, there won't be a young gintleman within tin--no, not within forty miles, more respectable than martin kelly; that is, regarding mains." "and you needn't stop there, ma'am, neither; you may say the very same regarding characther, too--and family, too, glory be to the virgin. i'd like to know where some of their ancesthers wor, when the kellys of ould wor ruling the whole counthry?" "thrue for you, my dear; i'd like to know, indeed: there's nothing, afther all, like blood, and a good characther. but is it thrue, mrs kelly, that martin will live up in the big house yonder?" "where should a man live thin, mrs costelloe, when he gets married, but jist in his own house? why for should he not live there?" "that's thrue agin, to be shure: but yet, only to think martin--living in ould sim lynch's big house! i wondther what ould sim would say, hisself, av he could only come back and see it!" "i'll tell you what he'd say thin, av he tould the thruth; he'd say there was an honest man living there, which wor niver the case as long as any of his own breed was in it--barring anty, i main; she's honest and thrue, the lord be good to her, the poor thing. but the porter's not to your liking, mrs costelloe--you're not tasting it at all this morning." no one could have been more humble and meek than was anty herself, in the midst of her happiness. she had no idea of taking on herself the airs of a fine lady, or the importance of an heiress; she had no wish to be thought a lady; she had no wish for other friends than those of her husband, and his family. she had never heard of her brother's last horrible proposal to doctor colligan, and of the manner in which his consent to her marriage had been obtained; nor did martin intend that she should hear it. she had merely been told that her brother had found that it was for his advantage to leave the neighbourhood altogether; that he had given up all claim to the house; and that his income was to be sent to him by a person appointed in the neighbourhood to receive it. anty, however, before signing her own settlement, was particularly careful that nothing should be done, injurious to her brother's interest, and that no unfair advantage should be taken of his absence. martin, too, was quiet enough on the occasion. it was arranged that he and his wife, and at any rate one of his sisters, should live at dunmore house; and that he should keep in his own hands the farm near dunmore, which old sim had held, as well as his own farm at toneroe. but, to tell the truth, martin felt rather ashamed of his grandeur. he would much have preferred building a nice snug little house of his own, on the land he held under lord ballindine; but he was told that he would be a fool to build a house on another man's ground, when he had a very good one ready built on his own. he gave way to such good advice, but he did not feel at all happy at the idea; and, when going up to the house, always felt an inclination to shirk in at the back-way. but, though neither the widow nor martin triumphed aloud at their worldly prosperity, the two girls made up for their quiescence. they were full of nothing else; their brother's fine house--anty's great fortune; their wealth, prosperity, and future station and happiness, gave them subjects of delightful conversation among their friends. meg. moreover, boasted that it was all her own doing; that it was she who had made up the match; that martin would never have thought of it but for her,--nor anty either, for the matter of that. "and will your mother be staying down at the shop always, the same as iver?" said matilda nolan, the daughter of the innkeeper at tuam. "'deed she says so, then," said jane, in a tone of disappointment; for her mother's pertinacity in adhering to the counter was, at present, the one misery of her life. "and which of you will be staying here along with her, dears?" said matilda. "she'll be wanting one of you to be with her, any ways." "oh, turn about, i suppose," said jane. "she'll not get much of my company, any way," said meg. "i've had enough of the nasty place, and now martin has a dacent house to put over our heads, and mainly through my mains i may say, i don't see why i'm to be mewing myself up in such a hole as this. there's room for her up in dunmore house, and wilcome, too; let her come up there. av she mains to demain herself by sticking down here, she may stay by herself for me." "but you'll take your turn, meg?" said jane. "it'll be a very little turn, then," said meg; "i'm sick of the nasty ould place; fancy coming down here, matilda, to the tobacco and sugar, after living up there a month or so, with everything nice and comfortable! and it's only mother's whims, for she don't want the shop. anty begged and prayed of her for to come and live at dunmore house for good and all; but no; she says she'll never live in any one's house that isn't her own." "i'm not so, any way," said jane; "i'd be glad enough to live in another person's house av i liked it." "i'll go bail you would, my dear," said matilda; "willing enough--especially john dolan's." "oh! av i iver live in that it'll be partly my own, you know; and may-be a girl might do worse." "that's thrue, dear," said matilda; "but john dolan's not so soft as to take any girl just as she stands. what does your mother say about the money part of the business?" and so the two friends put their heads together, to arrange another wedding, if possible. martin and anty did not go to visit switzerland, or rome, as soon as they were married; but they took a bathing-lodge at renvill, near galway, and with much difficulty, persuaded mrs kelly to allow both her daughters to accompany them. and very merry they all were. anty soon became a different creature from what she ever had been: she learned to be happy and gay; to laugh and enjoy the sunshine of the world. she had always been kind to others, and now she had round her those who were kind and affectionate to her. her manner of life was completely changed: indeed, life itself was an altered thing to her. it was so new to her to have friends; to be loved; to be one of a family who regarded and looked up to her. she hardly knew herself in her new happiness. they returned to dunmore in the early autumn, and took up their residence at sim lynch's big house, as had been arranged. martin was very shy about it: it was long before he talked about it as his house, or his ground, or his farm; and it was long before he could find himself quite at home in his own parlour. many attempts were made to induce the widow to give up the inn, and shift her quarters to the big house, but in vain. she declared that, ould as she was, she wouldn't think of making herself throublesome to young folks; who, may-be, afther a bit, would a dail sooner have her room than her company: that she had always been misthress, and mostly masther too, in her own house, glory be to god; and that she meant to be so still; and that, poor as the place was, she meant to call it her own. she didn't think herself at all fit company for people who lived in grand houses, and had their own demesnes, and gardens, and the rest of it; she had always lived where money was to be made, and she didn't see the sense of going, in her old age, to a place where the only work would be how to spend it. some folks would find it was a dail asier to scatther it than it wor to put it together. all this she said and a great deal more, which had her character not been known, would have led people to believe that her son was a spendthrift, and that he and anty were commencing life in an expensive way, and without means. but then, the widow kelly _was_ known, and her speeches were only taken at their value. she so far relaxed, however, that she spent every sunday at the house; on which occasions she invariably dressed herself with all the grandeur she was able to display, and passed the whole afternoon sitting on a sofa, with her hands before her, trying to look as became a lady enjoying herself in a fine drawing-room. her sundays were certainly not the comfort to her, which they had been when spent at the inn; but they made her enjoy, with a keener relish, the feeling of perfect sovereignty when she returned to her own domains. i have nothing further to tell of mr and mrs kelly. i believe doctor colligan has been once called in on an interesting occasion, if not twice; so it is likely that dunmore house will not be left without an heir. i have also learned, on inquiry, that margaret and jane kelly have both arranged their own affairs to their own satisfaction. present irish questions publisher's announcement _by the same author_ the campaign of : ligny, quatre bras, waterloo. demy vo, cloth, with maps, _s._ _d._ net. m. houssaye, in a letter to the author, says, "j'ai lu avec beaucoup de plaisir votre livre sur la campagna de . c'est un excellent résumé, copieux et critique, tres judicieux, tres précis, et tres clair." captain mahan, in a letter to the author, says, "your narrative is very clear, and to me quite convincing." _the times_: "we can recommend this book as a painstaking and instructive survey of the campaign." _the spectator_: "provides what has long been wanted--a study of the campaign by one well qualified to sift evidence dispassionately." _pall mail gazette_: "will fill a high place in the all too scanty library of british military literature." london: grant richards henrietta street, covent garden, w.c. present irish questions by william o'connor morris county court judge and chairman of quarter sessions of roscommon and sligo, and sometime scholar of oriel college, oxford [greek: nosei de moi propas stolos, oud' eni phrontidos egchos hô tis alexetai.]--sophocles. 'blessed is the amending hand.'--_old proverb._ london grant richards new york: e. p. dutton & co. i dedicate this book a tribute of admiration and esteem to the marquis of dufferin and ava, k.p. the most distinguished irishman of his time london: printed by william clowes and sons, limited, stamford street and charing cross. preface i have written much on ireland from early youth, especially in the _edinburgh review_ and the _times_; and two works of mine, 'ireland, - ' published in 'the cambridge historical series,' and 'ireland, - ,' have been received with more than ordinary favour. i have ventured to think that the opinions of a veteran inquirer into irish affairs, with respect to 'present irish questions' just now of much importance, and certain to be ere long fully discussed in parliament and elsewhere, may be of some use to a younger generation, that will have to examine and must be affected by them. i am not unaware of the cynical remarks of swift on the disregard shown to authors who may be said to have had their day; and i do not pretend that, in the instance of myself, 'old experience' has given something of a 'prophetic strain' to what is contained in this volume. but i can say, with truth, that few living men have had such opportunities as have fallen to my lot, during a long series of years, to understand ireland in its different parts, and the feelings and sentiments of the irish community; to form sound and moderate views on the many and perplexing phenomena called 'irish questions;' to deal reasonably with irish political and social problems, free from the influences of party prejudice and passion; in short, to do my subject complete and impartial justice. how the accidents and associations of a life already protracted beyond the ordinary span, have, as i hope, given me these qualifications, i have explained at some length in my 'ireland, - ;' i shall not repeat what i have already written. but ireland has constantly been uppermost in my thoughts; and as regards the conclusions i have come to in these pages, i may say, with the roman historian, 'hæc senectuti seposui.' the examination of 'present irish questions,' in this work, shows the views i entertain with regard to the actual condition of ireland in its various aspects, and to her probable future destinies. these views may be censured as too gloomy, and even paradoxical; but ireland remains, as she was when macaulay wrote of her, 'a member indeed of the empire, but a withered and distorted member;' the revolution which has passed, nay, is still passing, over her, has destroyed a great deal that ought to have been preserved, and has put little that is solid and stable in its place; there is much that is threatening and even dangerous in her political and social order, and in the sentiments of the mass of her community. in the case of ireland, indeed, as in that of any other people, i have faith in the effect of salutary legislation on wise and just principles, and of consistent good government steadily carried out, of both of which there has been but too little evidence, during the last twenty years, in irish affairs; above all, my trust is large in the healing influences of time. but i have not forgotten that the vision of 'pacata hibernia,' which flitted even before the majestic understanding of bacon, three centuries ago, has not been realised; the thoughtless optimism, which, during the last two generations, has represented ireland to be in a state of continual 'progress,' nay, as 'contented and happy,' whenever she has not been convulsed by disorder and trouble, or racked by poverty and distress, has been completely falsified; and with nations, as with individuals, the profound remark of butler is true; a life of repentance often fails to redeem the errors of the past. i proceed to indicate some at least of the authorities which relate to the different parts of my subject. the material condition of ireland of late years may, perhaps, be best ascertained by studying, over some length of time, the large body of statistics compiled by the government, and contained in that valuable publication, 'thom's directory,' and by a perusal of the irish debates in hansard. reference, too, should be made to the important papers of mr. childers, of lord farrer, and of mr. sexton in the report of the childers commission, and especially to the evidence of sir robert giffen, and even of sir edward hamilton, in the blue books appended to that inquiry. 'england's wealth, ireland's poverty,' by thomas lough, m.p., though a one-sided book, also deserves attention; and useful information may be obtained from 'the five years in ireland, - ,' of mr. michael j. f. mccarthy, too much a eulogy, however, of things as they are, and marked by a spirit of aversion to, and distrust of, the irish priesthood, which are a characteristic of a small section of the irish catholics. the sources of our knowledge respecting the moral, social, and political state of ireland are numerous and ample; i shall confine myself, as much as i can, to those which relate to what may be called her recent revolutionary period, though irish history in the past, even in the distant past, is anything but an 'old almanack.' this mass of evidence faithfully represents the disturbances and the troubles that have prevailed in ireland, with intervals of time between, during the last twenty years and upwards, and the fierce animosities and conflicts which have been the consequence. here a reader should again consult hansard, notably the debates on ireland, during the agitated period from to ; of course he should only study the great speeches. the publications on this subject are very many, and some of real importance; as regards the policy and conduct of the land, and even of the national leagues, and the frightful outbreak of disorder and crime which was the result, nothing is equal in value to the report of the judges of the 'special commission,' and to the immense body of evidence brought before them; 'the verdict,' by professor dicey, sums up well the conclusions at which they arrived. the utterances of the so-called irish 'nationalist' press, throughout these years, fully verify the facts disclosed in the report, and its findings; they have, indeed, been continued in a less ferocious and violent, but in a significant, strain ever since; a collection of them will be found in the volumes published by the irish unionist alliance. on this subject, and also on the state of opinion existing among a large majority, probably, of the irish people, see 'the continuity of the irish revolutionary movement,' by professor brougham leech; 'the truth about the land league,' by mr. arnold foster, m.p.; 'parnellism and crime,' republished from the _times_; 'incipient irish revolution,' anonymous but able; some valuable articles on ireland by the late lord grey that appeared in the _nineteenth century_; 'disturbed ireland,' by mr. t. w. russell, m.p.; 'the plan of campaign illustrated;' and 'about ireland,' by mrs. e. lynn lynton. the recent revolutionary and agrarian movements in ireland have not found many to vindicate them, or even fully to explain their causes; but reference may be made to 'the parnell movement,' by t. p. o'connor, m.p.; to the 'new ireland' of mr. a. m. sullivan; to mr. barry o'brien's 'irish wrongs and english remedies;' and to a series of articles called 'ungrateful ireland,' in the _nineteenth century_, from the pen of sir g. duffy. a host of papers in quarterly, monthly, and other reviews and magazines on the political and social condition of ireland of late years has, also, been published from time to time. attempts have been made, quite recently, to show that the troubles of ireland have become things of the past, and that she is a prosperous and happy land; but though real improvement has certainly taken place, these are mere repetitions of the optimistic fancies that have so often proved delusions. the great question of home rule, 'present' if for a time postponed, was first put forward formally by the late isaac butt. his 'irish federalism' is a thoughtful and able treatise that ought to be studied. the speeches in parliament, from to , on this subject, collected in hansard, deserve attention; notably the violent attacks on this policy made during many years by mr. gladstone. hansard, too, should be perused, after that statesman became a convert to home rule, for the speeches on both sides, on the home rule bills of and ; some are of marked power and insight, though few rise to the heights of great constitutional principles. mr. gladstone's defence of his sudden change of front will be found in his 'history of an idea,' a tract published soon after his defeat at the polls in ; he has endeavoured to vindicate his later irish policy, in many pamphlets and speeches, in volumes collected by himself. for a masterly examination of his public conduct on matters relating to ireland, and in some other passages in his career, i would especially direct the reader to the 'memoirs of the late lord selborne,' part ii. vol. ii. pp. - ; mr. lecky's brilliant sketch in his 'democracy and liberty,' cabinet edition, introduction, pp. - , is a composition of rare excellence. nothing is to be compared to professor dicey's 'england's case against home rule,' and his 'leap in the dark,' for a thorough investigation, from the unionist point of view, of the natural and the probable consequences of the gladstonian irish policy, and for an analysis of the two home rule bills; few political works have attracted equal attention. there have also been many publications, on the side of the union, of more or less merit; see 'home rule,' reprinted from the _times_, containing several very able letters and papers; 'the truth about home rule;' 'a sketch of unionist policy;' and a number of articles in the _edinburgh_ and the _quarterly review_, and in other reviews and magazines. the publications which advocate home rule have not been numerous; a reader may consult the 'hand book of home rule,' edited by mr. bryce, m.p.; 'irish members and english gaolers,' and 'combination and coercion,' by mr. shaw-lefevre; and some contributions to a few reviews and other serials. the 'present question' of the irish land, and of irish landed relations, goes back to even remote antiquity, and is connected with the whole course of irish history. the characteristics and peculiarities of tribal land tenure in ireland, before the anglo-norman conquest, have been admirably explained in sir henry maine's 'early history of institutions,' a very valuable work. i may refer to an article on this book, from my pen, in the _edinburgh review_ of july, . see, also, the 'senchus mor,' and the 'book of aicile,' fragments of the brehon laws, well annotated by the late professor richey. the state of the irish land, from the anglo-norman conquest to the beginning of the tudor period, has been fully illustrated in the 'statute of kilkenny,' edited by james hardiman, whose learned commentary is useful and important; in the 'discovery' of sir john davies; in spenser's 'view of the state of ireland;' in the 'o'conors of connaught,' by the o'conor don; in hallam's 'constitutional history,' vol. iii. chapter on ireland; and in professor richey's 'lectures.' i have glanced at the state of irish land tenure during the tribal and the feudal ages, in the introductory chapters to my 'ireland, - ,' in the 'cambridge historical series.' the most complete account, perhaps, of the confiscations of the irish land, from the reign of henry viii. to that of charles i., will be found in the 'carew papers,' edited by j. s. brewer and william bullen; valuable information abounds in the 'state papers relating to the reign of henry viii.,' edited by hans claude hamilton; in 'the life of sir john perrott and his letters;' in the 'earls of kildare,' edited by the marquis of kildare; in the 'state papers,' edited by hamilton, _ante_, 'relating to the reigns of edward vi., mary, and elizabeth;' in the 'annals of the four masters;' and see davies and spenser, _ante_. several modern writers have treated this subject in their narratives of irish history; froude's 'history of england,' vol. ii. ch. viii.; vol. iv. ch. xix.; vol. v. ch. xxviii.; vol. viii. chs. vii.-xi.; vol. x. ch. xxiv.; vol. xi. ch. xxvii., may be consulted; but a reader should be put on his guard against the brilliant but partisan historian. there is a valuable chapter also, in a very different work, mr. lecky's 'history of england in the eighteenth century,' vol. ii. ch. vi. pp. _seqq._; and a great deal may be learned from the 'o'conors of connaught,' and richey's 'lectures,' _ante_; and especially from an 'historical account of the plantation of ulster,' by the rev. george hill, and from sigerson's 'history of irish land tenure.' in the momentous period of confiscation, from the beginning of the reign of charles i. to that of william iii., a reader should study 'strafford's letters;' carte's 'life of ormond;' lord clanricarde's 'memoirs;' the 'letters of cromwell,' edited by carlyle; the 'acts of settlement and explanation;' the 'articles of the treaty of limerick;' sir william petty's 'political anatomy of ireland;' 'macariæ excidium;' and the abbe macgeoghegan's 'history of ireland.' the modern authorities on this period are numerous and some of great value; see gardiner's 'history of the commonwealth and protectorate' (the irish chapters), notably vol. iii. ch. xliv.; 'the cromwellian settlement of ireland,' by john p. prendergast; 'the life of sir william petty,' by lord edmund fitzmaurice, with an article by me in the _edinburgh review_ of july, ; 'the patriot parliament,' by thomas davis; macaulay's 'history of england' (the irish chapters), vol. iv. ch. xxii.; vol. v. ch. xiv.-xvi.; vol. vi. ch. xvii.; and mr. lecky's 'history,' _ante_, vol. ii. ch. ix. many instructive and philosophic passages on all these confiscations and their results, will be found scattered among the writings of burke; they are admirable. the era of violent confiscation closed with the reign of william iii.; the modern history of the irish land system begins from this period. for an account of the penal code, as it affected irish landed relations, reference may be made to vincent scully, 'on the penal laws;' to howard's 'popery cases;' and especially to burke's 'tracts on the popery laws.' much, too, can be gathered from curry's 'state of the irish catholics;' from primate boulter's and archbishop synge's 'letters;' from the writings on ireland of swift and berkeley; and from various passages in the 'works and correspondence of burke.' for the state of the irish land from the beginning of the reign of george iii. to the rebellion of , study the celebrated 'tour' of arthur young, written in - ; crumpe's 'essay;' an admirable sketch by mr. lecky in his 'history,' _ante_, vol. vii. ch. xxvii.; and sir george lewis on 'irish disturbances,' a book which gives an account of the rise and progress of the whiteboy movement, and carries the narrative down to . froude has illustrated this subject very skilfully in his 'two chiefs of dunboy;' but his account, in his 'the english in ireland,' is very inaccurate and one-sided. the nature of irish landed relations during the troubled period before the union is fully explained in many passages of mr. lecky's 'history,' _ante_, vols. vii. and viii.; and the reader should peruse lord clare's speech in the irish house of lords during the debates on the union. from the union to the present time, the authorities on the irish land system are very numerous; it is not easy to make compendious selection. for the period of the great war, edward wakefield's 'account of ireland' is valuable, and so is, for the immediately subsequent period, the evidence on the state of ireland taken by a committee of the house of commons in . the nature and the characteristics of the irish land system, in - , are fully explained and commented upon in the well-known report of the devon commission, and the voluminous evidence; and for the revolution wrought in the irish land by the famine of - , see the 'irish crisis,' by sir charles trevelyan, republished from the _edinburgh review_; and a 'history of the great irish famine,' by the rev. john o'rorke. much information, too, on the subject, as a whole, may be obtained from 'l'irlande, sociale, politique, et religieuse,' of gustave de beaumont; from 'ireland from the treaty of limerick to ,' by john mitchell; from parts of 'two centuries of irish history,' edited by james bryce, m.p.; from several 'reports' of the loyal national repeal association; and from parts of mr. barry o'brien's 'fifty years of concessions to ireland,' and 'irish wrongs and english remedies.' the irish land question has given birth to a literature of its own in the last half-century; legislation on the irish land system has been extraordinarily active. with respect to the first, reference may be made to 'two centuries of irish history,' _ante_, and to mr. barry o'brien's works, _ante_; to 'emigration and the tenure of irish land,' by lord dufferin; to john stuart mill's 'the irish land question;' to 'the irish people and the irish land,' by butt; to sir george campbell's 'the irish land,' a very good little book; to judge longfield's essay on the irish land in 'systems of land tenure;' and to my own 'letters on the land question of ireland,' republished from the _times_. i am happy to think that, on this subject, i have always 'pitched my whiggery low;' my first essay was on the encumbered estates act; when fresh from oxford i condemned that scheme of confiscation as unequivocally as, in the present and other works, i have condemned irish agrarian legislation since - . other books contain passages on the irish land system that may be read with profit; see the 'recollections and suggestions' of earl russell; 'ireland in ,' by gerald fitzgibbon; 'ireland,' by lord grey; 'journals, conversations, and essays relating to ireland,' by nassau senior; and 'new views on ireland,' by lord russell of killowen. as regards recent legislation on the irish land, from to , the acts passed by parliament must of course be studied, and also the important debates reported in hansard. butt wrote a very able volume on the land act of ; i contributed a short treatise; an exhaustive and technical work of great value, on all the irish land acts, has been produced by messrs. cherry and wakely; this, with the irish reports, supplies ample professional, and even general, information. with respect to the administration of the irish land acts, see the report of the committee of the house of lords, and the evidence published in ; the report of, and the evidence collected by, the bessborough commission of - ; the report of a committee of the house of lords on the working of the land act of , published, with the evidence, in ; the report, with the evidence, of the cowper commission, - ; the report, with the evidence, of the morley commission, - ; and, especially, the report of sir edward fry's commission of , with the important evidence it has put together. mr. lecky, in his 'democracy and liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii., has criticised, almost as severely as i have done, recent irish agrarian legislation; no serious defence of it has ever been made or attempted. to understand the real state of the financial relations between great britain and ireland, it is necessary to go back to the times of the union; those who resist the irish demand avoid an appeal to history. the debates in the irish parliament in should be carefully studied, especially the speeches of castlereagh, grattan, and foster. the seventh article of the treaty of union, set forth in this work, should also be diligently scanned and perused. see, too, the debates in the imperial parliament in ; the resolutions passed by the house of commons in that year; and the act abolishing the separate exchequer of ireland. reference, moreover, should be made to the evidence taken before general dunne's committee in , in which sophistry triumphed for the moment over truth. all these sources of information, however, are scanty and imperfect compared to the celebrated report of the childers commission, with the valuable evidence annexed to it; this for the first time completely brings out the whole facts on the subject. the debates in hansard on the financial claims of ireland may also be looked at; but they are not of peculiar importance; the same remark applies to nearly all the articles in reviews, magazines, and journals, in which endeavours have been made to answer the report. i may be allowed to say that i have some claim to have a distinct opinion in this matter; when still quite a boy i often heard my grand-uncle, the late sir john newport, one of the ablest and last of the chancellors of the irish exchequer, condemn the financial treatment of ireland from onwards; many years afterwards i was intimately acquainted with several of the independent irish gentlemen, survivors of the great school of grattan, who protested against mr. gladstone's fiscal irish measures from to a later date; butt and judge longfield, both very able economists, fully concurred. with respect to local government and administration in ireland, see mr. barry o'brien's 'fifty years of concessions to ireland,' vol. i. books iv. and v.; the report of the commissioners on irish corporate reform issued in - , and the irish municipal corporation reform act of ; the irish towns commissioners acts; a report made by mr. w. p. o'brien in ; a good treatise by mr. bailey published in ; and the recent irish local government act of , with the debates in hansard on this measure, should be perused. the authorities on irish education of all kinds are numerous, and some valuable. froude has glanced at the subject, with characteristic unfairness, in his 'the english in ireland;' the refutation of mr. lecky, in his 'england in the eighteenth century,' is complete. a good description of education in ireland, in all its branches, as it existed in , will be found in edward wakefield's 'account of ireland,' vol. ii. ch. xxiv.; another in mr. barry o'brien's 'fifty years of concessions to ireland,' vol. i. book i.; vol ii. book x.; the author brings the narrative down to . as regards high education in ireland, reference may be made to 'the history of the university of dublin,' by the rev. w. stubbs; to 'the constitutional history of the university of dublin,' by d. c. heron; to the report of archbishop whateley's commission, in , on the university of dublin; to mr. gladstone's irish university bill of , and the able debates on the subject in trinity college and the house of commons; to mr. fawcett's act of ; to a masterly pamphlet by butt, on the whole question, published in ; and to the 'irish university question,' by archbishop walsh, with recent debates in parliament on irish university reform. for the nature, constitution, and working of the queen's colleges and the queen's university, see the debates in parliament when peel introduced this policy; many reports; the work of archbishop walsh, _ante_; and the act creating the royal university in ireland may be examined. as regards primary and secondary education in ireland, see the reports of the education commissioners from to ; the reports of the national education board; the reports of the kildare, rosse, and powis commissions, noticed in this work; and mr. godkin's 'education in ireland.' an excellent synopsis of the subject, as a whole, will be found in 'the educational systems of great britain and ireland,' by mr. graham balfour. william o'connor morris. gartnamona, tullamore, _ th may, _. contents pages chapter i ireland in ireland has passed through a revolution in the victorian age--material progress--dublin--belfast--improvement in catholic places of worship and in the habitations of the people--state of the irish community--symptoms of retrogression--decline of agriculture--the progress of ireland ireland much less than that of england and scotland, and why--state of the irish land system--recent legislation has done some good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious effects--ireland divided into three peoples--notwithstanding great reforms catholic ireland is still, in the main, disaffected--presbyterian ireland--cry for the confiscation of the irish land--protestant ireland--fall of its old ascendency--discontent among the landed gentry--nature of the government of ireland by the imperial parliament--its merits and defects--attitude of the greater part of ireland towards it--the administration of irish affairs--the bureaucracy of the castle--the anglican, presbyterian, and catholic irish churches--the administration of justice in ireland--irish literature and public opinion--general survey of the present state of ireland--irish policy of lord salisbury's ministry--'present irish questions' to be discussed in this work - chapter ii the question of home rule the question of home rule not extinct--the reasons--butt's scheme of home rule--it is denounced and ridiculed by mr. gladstone, and defeated in the house of commons--death of butt--the home rule movement becomes allied with a foreign conspiracy--davitt and parnell--the land league--mr. gladstone's surrender to it--the movement makes no progress in the parliament of - --the general election of --mr. gladstone suddenly adopts the policy of home rule--the probable reasons--the home rule bill of --its nature and tendencies--decisive objections to the measure--it is rejected at the general election of , having been previously rejected in the house of commons-- policy and conduct of mr. gladstone--the home rule movement makes some progress in england, and why--the home rule bill of --it is much worse than that of --the reasons--it is rejected by the house of lords--home rule under different forms--the union must be maintained--proposal that parliament should occasionally sit in dublin--the over-representation of ireland should be redressed - chapter iii the question of the irish land--sketch of the history of the land system of ireland to the year great importance in the history of ireland of the conditions of land tenure--the ancient celtic land system and its characteristics--the norman conquest of ireland--norman feudalism in the irish land--the policy of henry vii., and especially of henry viii.--the era of the conquest and confiscation of the irish land--the possessions of the o'connors of offaly wrested from them--forfeiture of the domains of shane o'neill, and of the earl of desmond--attempts at colonisation--all ireland made shire land--the extinction of the old celtic land system--the plantation of ulster-- progress of confiscation during the reigns of the two first stuarts--the civil war--immense confiscations made by cromwell--his scheme of colonisation a failure--the era of confiscation closes after the battle of the boyne and the fall of limerick--the penal code of ireland--its fatal effects on the irish land--dismal period in irish landed relations-- gradual improvement--the period described by arthur young-- evil traces of the past remain--whiteboyism and agrarian disorder--state of irish landed relations up to the rebellion of , and after the union--over-population and the results--distress after the peace--state of irish landed relations up to --the report of the devon commission--the famine and its effects on the irish land--the encumbered estates acts--state of irish landed relations from to - chapter iv the question of the irish land (_continued_)--the irish land act of --the land league and the national league--the land act of --subsequent legislation as regards the land system of ireland state of landed relations in ireland in - --mr. gladstone prime minister--the land act of --its merits and defects-- a short period of prosperity in ireland--ominous symptoms-- michael davitt--the teaching of john finton lalor in --the 'new departure' in fenianism arranged in america--foundation of the land league--it was a foreign rebellious conspiracy, with an agrarian side, under a constitutional mask--parnell the master spirit of the league--his visit to america and the results--a short period of distress in ireland--conduct of the irish landlords--progress of the land league--mr. gladstone again prime minister in --the compensation for disturbance bill rejected by the house of lords--outburst of agrarian crime, as the land league increases in power--rents at griffith's valuation--boycotting--frightful state of ireland in --after a short attempt to repress it, mr. gladstone surrenders to the land league--the land act of --mr. gladstone breaks the pledges he had made in --his promise of compensating the irish landlords--the land act of a bad and unjust measure directly inconsistent with that of --the 'no rent manifesto'--the kilmainham treaty--the phoenix park tragedy--coercion--parnell founds the national league, the successor of the land league--renewal of agitation in --struggle with law and the government--subsequent agrarian legislation for ireland--this is really a concession to agitation, for the benefit of irish tenants, and to the injury of irish landlords - chapter v the question of the irish land (_continued_)--the administration of the irish land acts the administration of the land act of in the main good--difficulty about claims for tenants' improvements--the administration of the land act of , and of its supplements--the land commission and its sub-commissions-- allowances to be made for these tribunals--principles which the land commission should have adopted in fixing 'fair rents'--the procedure and practice it ought to have established--it made mistakes as to both--the nature of the sub-commission courts--this was objectionable in the highest degree--these courts have, however unconsciously, done grave wrong to irish landlords--causes of this--characteristics of their proceedings--they disregarded the principles they ought to have followed, and adopted faulty and erroneous methods--different illustrations of these grave mistakes-- the land commission and appeals as to 'fair rent'--importance of this subject--faulty procedure of the land commission in appeals--valuers--the second land commission--its procedure worse than that of the first--theory of occupation right-- this another wrong done to landlords--the fry commission and its report--confiscation of the property of irish landlords--the proofs of this--apologies made for the land commission--the administration of the land purchase acts - chapter vi the question of the irish land (_continued_)--proposed reform of the irish land system retrospect of the present irish land system--position of the irish landlords--position of the irish tenant class--this not as advantageous as might be supposed--the effects of the land code on irish agriculture injurious--the effects on the general irish community--confiscation, violation of contracts, shock given to credit, increased alienation of classes, and demoralisation--the land system considered on the side of ownership--'voluntary purchase'--mischief of this policy--it sets up a false standard against rent, and creates unjust distinctions between different classes of tenants--the results it has produced already--an instance of the system--the demand for the compulsory purchase of the irish land caused by 'voluntary purchase'--compulsory purchase has some hold on opinion, but is an impossible, and would be a disgraceful and ruinous policy--it would ruin irish landlords as a class--instances--it would ultimately bring ireland into the state in which she was before the great famine--proposed plan for the reform of irish land tenure--questions as to the means of compensating irish landlords, a deeply wronged order of men - chapter vii the question of the financial relations between great britain and ireland the subject briefly considered--financial position of ireland before , and under grattan's parliament--her taxation and debt small before --ireland financially a distinct country--at the union, pitt wished to 'assimilate her in finance' with great britain, but this impossible, and why--ireland's contribution after the union--this was unjust, but it left her financially a distinct country-- ireland made nearly bankrupt--the compromise of --the irish exchequer closed, and the irish and british debts consolidated--the object of the compromise was rather to relieve ireland from her burdens than to assimilate her in finance with great britain--she still remained for many years financially distinct from great britain, and is so still to some extent--the conduct of peel a striking proof of this--mr. gladstone imposes the income tax on ireland, and her spirit duties are largely raised--injustice of this policy--the committee of - --ireland does not obtain financial justice--the report of the childers commission made upon a reference by mr. gladstone following mr. goschen--the commission declares that ireland has been greatly overtaxed for many years--evidence on which it has founded this conclusion--examination of arguments to the contrary--another commission promised, but the promise not fulfilled--importance of settling this question - chapter viii the questions of irish local government and education--other questions--conclusion irish county government--the grand jury system in the eighteenth century--its merits and defects--the grand jury system in the nineteenth century, and especially since --the irish poor law system--elected and _ex-officio_ guardians--the local government of cities and towns in ireland--municipal institutions founded in ireland by the norman kings--why they did not prosper--boroughs and municipalities founded by james i. and the stuarts--their condition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--the municipal reform act of --the towns commissioners acts--attempts to reform the municipal system of local government in ireland--the local government of ireland act, --complete change in irish local government--the county councils--the county borough councils--the district, rural, and the urban district councils--their functions, rights, and duties--all these bodies placed on a democratic basis-- attitude of the county councils in the southern provinces-- education in ireland--history of primary education--the national system of education--the principles on which it is founded--how it has worked, and what its results have been--secondary education in ireland--its history--its present condition very imperfect--the intermediate education act--university education in ireland--its history--trinity college--the queen's colleges and the queen's university founded by peel--their comparative failure--mr. gladstone's bill to reform university education in ireland--its glaring errors and failures--trinity college thrown open in --the royal university founded in -- present state of university education in ireland--the true principles of reform--other irish questions--conclusion - appendix - index present irish questions chapter i ireland in ireland has passed through a revolution in the victorian age--material progress--dublin--belfast--improvement in catholic places of worship and in the habitations of the people--state of the irish community--symptoms of retrogression--decline of agriculture--the progress of ireland much less than that of england and scotland, and why--state of the irish land system--recent legislation has done some good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious effects--ireland divided into three peoples--notwithstanding great reforms catholic ireland is still, in the main, disaffected--presbyterian ireland--cry for the confiscation of the irish land--protestant ireland--fall of its old ascendency--discontent among the landed gentry--nature of the government of ireland by the imperial parliament--its merits and defects--attitude of the greater part of ireland towards it--the administration of irish affairs--the bureaucracy of the castle--the anglican, presbyterian, and catholic irish churches--the administration of justice in ireland--irish literature and public opinion--general survey of the present state of ireland--irish policy of lord salisbury's ministry--'present irish questions' to be discussed in this work. to understand thoroughly the ireland of the present day, it is necessary to have studied her history in the past. nevertheless, if we go back to a comparatively recent period, say to the beginning of the reign of victoria, we can obtain a reasonably clear idea of her existing condition. a revolution has passed over her in this space of time almost as complete as the revolution which has transformed france; the results have not yet been fully developed, but in nearly all respects they have been immense. the community has, for the most part, made material progress; but this has been far from great or decisive; it has been interrupted by seasons of distress, one culminating in a dire catastrophe, and has been retarded by many causes of trouble. taking the external aspect of ireland first, dublin has certainly advanced in the last sixty years; the capital has been surrounded by fine and increasing suburbs; the squares, the streets, the shops have improved; above all, though much remains yet to be done, the contrast between the dwellings of the rich and the poor is much less painful than it was within living memory. no city, however, has made such progress as belfast: its population, which, in , was not more than , souls, was, in , upwards of , ;[ ] its opulence has probably grown tenfold; it is the centre of the great manufacture of ulster; its building-yards are renowned for its magnificent ships; its estuary is crowded with the thronging fleets of commerce. the towns dependent on it, too, and the whole adjoining region, are flourishing from the great trade in linen, which has been aggregated within a comparatively small space; indeed, this prosperity has extended over all the north-east of ireland, and londonderry has long been a thriving seaport. few of the towns of the rest of ulster and of the southern provinces have improved; but signs of augmented wealth appear in other directions; in this respect they are striking in the extreme. the places of worship and the religious houses of the catholic church of ireland have been transformed; the mean 'chapels' of the past have largely disappeared; most parishes have a suitable church; fine cathedrals dominate many towns; we often admire monasteries and convents in architectural splendour. the most remarkable phenomenon, however, of this description is the great and fortunate change which has taken place in the habitations of the community throughout the country. the dense and wretched hovels which, sixty years ago, barely sheltered the millions of irish indigence, if still too frequent, have been, for the most part, effaced; the houses of the better class have greatly increased in numbers, though the population has enormously declined.[ ] and the face of the landscape in most counties bears witness, on the whole, to a still perceptible progress. the chief industry of ireland, indeed, as i shall show afterwards, has certainly retrograded within the last twenty years; her agricultural area and resources have much diminished. the advance, too, which, from about to , was manifest and rapid in most of her rural districts, has been, to a considerable extent, checked; capital has, for some time, been avoiding her soil. but if the process was stern, nay, appalling, the land has, within the last half century, been thrown open to husbandry, infinitely better and more fruitful than had existed before; the exertions which were made, for a long space of time, to improve cultivation have left far-spreading traces; we still behold the beneficent results. the land over the greater part of its surface is not 'puckered up' in thousands of squalid patches, the holdings of masses of cottar paupers; it has been made more available for real farming; and it has been largely drained, enclosed, and covered with woodland--at least, up to a recent period. the material condition of the irish community has, also, improved since the late queen ascended the throne. this, no doubt, is to be largely ascribed to the effects of the great famine of - , and of the immense emigration that followed in its train. the resources of ireland, before that calamity, were unable to support, in anything like comfort, the teeming multitudes crowded on her soil; an official report, made in , proved that two millions and a half of the poor in ireland were for months in the year on the brink of starvation; this huge mass of indigence, which forced up rent, beat down wages, and was most injurious to good husbandry, was almost incompatible with real social progress. the great and continuing exodus of the irish race, which has gone on for more than half a century, has not been without untoward results; but it has relieved the country from a destructive incubus; and this has certainly wrought a beneficent change, though the population has declined from about eight millions in to about four and a half millions in .[ ] ireland, indeed, is still, mainly, a poor country--in some districts she is exceedingly poor; but the disappearance of overwhelmingly redundant millions has enabled her to maintain the millions that have remained much better than of old, and has distinctly raised the standard of living among all the humbler classes. the wages of agricultural labour, seldom more than six or seven shillings a week before the famine, and then paid in potatoes by a vile truck system, have risen to ten and even twelve shillings, usually paid in cash; and they have not fallen, though irish agriculture is very far from prosperous. the wages of the higher kinds of labour have also greatly increased; this is apparent in nearly all trades, and is especially apparent in the trades of ulster. at the same time, the potato has long ceased to be the sole food of the poor; their dwellings, though still too often mean and bad, are infinitely better than they once were; their attire, and even their appearance, has greatly improved. i do not think, indeed, that o'connell's description of the peasantry of munster in could now be fairly applied to even the worst parts of ireland, the impoverished tracts on the seacoast of connaught: 'they have no clothes to change, they have none but what they wear at the moment.... their food consists of potatoes and water during the greater part of the year; potatoes and sour milk during another portion; they use some salt with their potatoes when they have nothing but water.'[ ] there is evidence, also, that, even of late years, the wealth of ireland has, in some measure, increased, especially in the middle and lower middle classes. the landed gentry, indeed, owing partly to the effects of free trade, and partly to those of legislation i shall describe afterwards, have been impoverished in many instances, and in many ruined; and the irish tenant farmer, if gorged by the spoil of his landlord, has not gained all that an agrarian revolution was expected to give him. but the commerce of ireland has made progress, within the last two decades, if this has not been by any means great; and though the capital she holds in the best securities has perceptibly diminished of late years, there has been a very large increase in most kinds of other investments.[ ] this picture of ireland, however, has dark features; her welfare has been, at best, partial; considerable deductions must be made from it. the progress of the capital, as has been the case in london, is largely to be ascribed to the depletion of many country districts, a change that has been going on for a long period, and has been accelerated by the decline of the landed gentry in wealth. the enormous advance of belfast, and of the adjoining neighbourhood, has been, to a great extent, caused by the concentration of the linen manufacture within a small area; the hand-loom has disappeared from ireland; this has been injurious to many petty towns and villages. the population and the trade of nearly all the chief towns in the southern provinces have diminished; cork, with its immense natural advantages, has not prospered; limerick and, notably, galway are in decay; most of the inland towns show few signs of improvement; the outskirts of almost all are defaced by lines of ruined hovels, the wrecks of abodes a dwindling tale of indwellers has left. many of these urban centres were, sixty years ago, seats of manufactures and of other industries, which, to a certain extent, were flourishing; but these sources of wealth have, for the most part, been dried up; they have been blotted out by the gigantic manufactures of england and scotland poured into ireland, everywhere, within a few hours, by steam. the collapse, indeed, of irish manufactures in the last half century has been striking and mournful; , persons were employed in textile and dyeing industries in ; in there were only , ; and though the growth of machinery may in part account for this difference, it assuredly cannot fully explain it.[ ] the same remark applies to irish fishing industry; the small craft which once swarmed along the coast, and, rearing a breed of hardy mariners, gathered in the prolific harvests of the sea, have been vanishing year after year; in , boats, and , men and boys were engaged in this calling; the numbers were and , in .[ ] turning to the face of the country, agriculture, we have seen, has improved, if we look back to the period before the famine; but it is still centuries behind that of england and scotland, and of late years it has markedly declined. it is not only that the prices of agricultural produce are much less than they were, in the last generation, and that its total value has fallen from £ , , in - , to £ , , in - .[ ] the agricultural area of ireland has diminished from to by rather more than , acres;[ ] and it is absolutely certain that within these decreasing limits, as i shall point out in subsequent chapters, agriculture has made little or no progress, and in some districts has distinctly become worse; we see the results of the vicious legislation of the last twenty years in deteriorated farms, in hundreds of cases, in a most injurious neglect of arterial drainage, and in the destruction of thousands of acres of woodland. and the ruin which has overtaken many of the landed gentry has been made only too manifest in the desolate aspect of scores of country seats, once happy homes, that now know their owners no more. it must be borne in mind, too, as we examine the present state of ireland, that if, on the whole, she has made some progress, she is still, as i have said, a poor country, and that a considerable part of connaught, her western province, has, for years, been in so poor a condition, that the government of late has laudably made a great effort to raise it out of the depths of indigence. other considerations, moreover, must be taken into account, if we would form a just conclusion as to the material position of ireland, and, especially, as to her material prospects. the reduction of her population, up to a certain point, was an essential condition of her social progress; but that limit appears to have been far surpassed; this continuous decline, during more than half a century, has become an ominous symptom. more than , , of souls have emigrated from ireland since ;[ ] and this number does not include the masses which fled from the catastrophe of - . this immense drain on the life of a nation has, for years, had a pernicious effect; in large parts of the country labourers have become so scarce that it is often difficult to save the harvest, which should be quickly gathered in, in a wet climate; and hands are wanting to industry in many places. emigration, too, has taken away the best part of the people, men and women in the flower of existence; the reproductive power of the community has, accordingly, declined; the birth-rate of ireland is less than it was; infirmity, disease, and, notably, insanity have increased; the population of the towns is seldom active and thriving.[ ] at the same time, the taxation of ireland has become many degrees more excessive in the last sixty years; the local rates have advanced from about £ , , to nearly £ , , ; the general taxation has been well-nigh doubled; and a tribunal of the very highest authority has recently declared that ireland is immensely overtaxed, and has been for upwards of forty years. nor can there be a real question but that large interests connected with the land have suffered greatly in the period that has now extended from - . it is unnecessary to refer to the condition of the landed gentry; i shall notice it at some length afterwards; but, much as the irish people dislike the poor-law, pauperism has distinctly increased during the last ten years, though the population has fallen off in numbers, and the charge of pauperism shows a corresponding increase.[ ] the income tax returns, too, as regards the land, are of sinister omen; those under schedule a have greatly diminished since ; and there is a considerable decline of property in the funds.[ ] as to the argument that the tenant right of the irish farmer has risen in value, and that this proves irish agriculture to be in a prosperous state, this is a complete, nay, a grotesque, fallacy. the rise in the value of tenant right is simply one of the many signs that a huge confiscation has taken place in the irish land. if ireland, therefore, has made material progress, this has been slow, partial, and with large drawbacks; such as it is, it must be mainly ascribed to the results of the famine, which liberated the soil from a destructive burden. the whole country, it has truly been said, has still too much the look of a 'great neglected estate,' requiring development in most of its parts; large sections of the population are poor, feeble in health, and backward. any advance, moreover, which ireland has made in well being, since - , is as nothing compared with the extraordinary growth of the prosperity of england and scotland, within the same period. true-hearted irishmen grieve as they pass from the lesser to the greater island, and contrast the husbandry of galway and mayo with that of the lothians and kent; as they gaze on the shannon, with scarcely a sail on its waters, and the clyde teeming with its fleets of commerce; above all, as they turn from the decaying towns of their own country to such centres of wealth and of gigantic trade, as some even of the provincial cities of britain, not to speak of the mighty world of london. the causes, indeed, of this contrast may be easily found; the mineral resources of ireland are scanty; her commerce and manufactures are small; she is essentially an agricultural land, which has lost much from the effects of free trade; she has suffered greatly from misgovernment, agitation, and social disorder; all this has kept her back in the national race. the mineral products, on the other hand, of england and scotland are immense, and of the first importance in an age of invention; they have decisively contributed to the huge development of the opulence and the trade of great britain; the policy of free trade, carried out for years, has had marvellous results in the same direction; if british agriculture is not progressing, british commerce and manufactures are still supreme; and great britain has been for ages a law-abiding land, in which order has been happily combined with liberty. these considerations fully explain the wide and ever-increasing distinction between ireland and england and scotland, only too manifest; they have been amply verified by unerring statistics. two figures may suffice for a general reader; the resources of ireland were estimated, a few years ago, at a sum of about four hundred millions sterling, that of great britain at not less than ten thousand millions.[ ] the social structure of ireland springs from the soil; it is most apparent in the relations that have been formed in the land. i shall dwell, at some length, in other chapters of this work, on the history and the characteristics of the irish land system, and on the revolution through which it has passed; i can here only briefly glance at the subject. that system, at the beginning of the late reign, still represented, in many respects, the features it had borne in the eighteenth century, though these had been, in a great degree, modified. the land, over four-fifths of its surface, was still in the ownership of a small class of men, divided in race and faith from its occupants; the conquests and confiscations which had drawn deep lines of distinction between the anglo-protestant landlord and the catholic and even the presbyterian peasant, had still left their indelible traces, if these had been, to a considerable extent, effaced. absenteeism had increased since the union, though absentee estates were showing signs of improvement; middleman tenures, with their manifold and complex mischiefs, were disappearing, but were still numerous; various causes, to operate for many years, were diminishing the security of the peasants' tenure. the power of the dominant landlord class was declining; it was being weakened by the castle bureaucracy, and by the emancipation of catholic ireland; but it was still nearly supreme in landed relations; this class was all but the absolute lords of the tillers of the soil. it is untrue that it was oppressive and unjust as a rule; but some of its members abused their excessive power; it had too much in common with an exclusive caste; and a whole train of economic causes were aggravating the evils of a land system from its origin placed on unsound foundations. agriculture was advancing in not a few counties; many of the landed gentry were improving men, who were making a beginning in the scientific farming, which, before long, was to be more fully developed. but the population, we have seen, had increased by millions ireland could not support; over whole districts, especially in munster and connaught, the land had been split up into petty holdings, the seats of a huge multitude of human misery. rents, therefore, were being unnaturally forced up, and the wages of labour unnaturally cut down; the land system was disorganised, and filled with dangerous elements. the worst vice of the system, however, has yet to be noticed; from different causes which i shall point out afterwards, the occupiers of the soil in ireland had, as a general rule, made even the permanent improvements on their farms, and large sums had repeatedly been paid on the transfer of these; they had thus gradually acquired concurrent rights in the land, in tens of thousands of instances; and yet these were outside the pale of the law, and could be annihilated by eviction, or even the raising of rent. these rights had the support, in parts of ulster, of a long-established custom, and were usually respected in the southern provinces; but they ought long before to have had full legal protection; and they were sometimes violated or disregarded by unscrupulous landlords. the results were seen in the white boy and the agrarian disorders which had disturbed ireland for more than a century, and even ran back to the confiscations of the past. this land system, essentially bad as it was, marked by evil distinctions and pregnant with wrong, scarcely attracted the attention of british statesmen, until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century. peel was the first minister who, even dimly, perceived its vices; he appointed a commission to report on the subject. the labours of this body were, in part, laudable; but the commissioners, filled with prejudice as to the excellence of british land tenure, and without experience of that of ireland, made a capital mistake in the suggestions they offered. instead of recommending that the concurrent rights of the irish tenant in the land, often equivalent to a real joint ownership, should receive, as was but just, the sanction of law, they proposed to restrict these in many ways; they put forward a plan of 'compensation,' as they called it, that was worse than useless. legislation to this effect was withdrawn from parliament; the terrible visitation of - had ere long shattered the irish land system, bringing ruin on hundreds of the landed gentry, making thousands of farmers of the better classes bankrupt, forcing the petty holders of the land--the cottar population, as it was named--to fly from the country in despairing multitudes. the land was largely set free from a dense mass of wretchedness; it was the general belief of the public men of the day, that what was most required, at this conjuncture, was to attract men of capital to it to do it justice, and to get rid, as quickly as possible, of the large body of irish landlords, who, even before deeply involved in debt, had been made hopelessly insolvent by recent events. the encumbered estates act became law, with scarcely an opposing protest; it was to 'regenerate ireland,' its authors proclaimed; its results were to develop a bad class of landlords, to annihilate the rights of the irish peasant wholesale, and to cause an iniquitous confiscation on an enormous scale. the irish land question, as was the phrase, was now raised once more; in the occupiers of the irish soil set on foot an agitation to vindicate their rights, destroyed or endangered by what had lately occurred; the government of lord derby lent a favourable ear; but it was defeated in the house of commons by intrigue; the land system remained in the state in which it had been left; no real attempt to improve it was made. a series of years followed in which ireland made distinct progress, and her agriculture advanced; it became a fixed idea with british statesmen, that there was nothing radically bad in irish land tenure, and that its defects would gradually disappear; the grievances of the irish peasant were ignored; his claims to what was now known as his tenant right, urged feebly by his advocates, were voted down in parliament; and a general belief prevailed that what ireland most needed was a still further and steady removal of what was deemed 'her surplus population' from her soil. as has so often happened in the affairs of ireland, her real condition at this period was not understood; and the reform in her land system, which had become essential, was indefinitely delayed with disastrous results. meanwhile, though things were serene on the surface, the inherent vices in irish landed relations were not really changed, and, in some respects, were made worse. the fenian troubles and outbreak of - showed how much there was still peccant in the state of ireland; mr. gladstone addressed himself, in , to the task of effecting a reform in her land system. the measure he carried through parliament was bold, and, in the main, statesmanlike; but it was injured by the predilection for english land tenure its author avowed, a general misconception of british statesmen; it was not without marked and even grave defects; and though unquestionably it did real good, it did not satisfy the tenant class--at least, the men who had become its leaders. in a few years the frightful period of the land league had begun; a reign of terror prevailed in about a third part of ireland, accompanied by far-spreading and atrocious crime. the movement was really a huge conspiracy, formed in america to overthrow british rule in ireland; but mr. gladstone, now minister for the second time, resolved to deal with it only on its agrarian side; he wrought a complete revolution in the irish land system, on principles wholly different from those of his measure of . this legislation was prepared without reflection; it passed through parliament when that assembly was almost in a state of panic; its author professed that his only object was to secure the occupier of the irish soil in his legitimate rights; but the methods he adopted to attain this end have never been heard of in modern times, and have never been employed before in civilised lands. the principle of the mediæval statutes, which endeavoured to fix the price of bread, and the rate of wages, was extended to the irish land system; rents were to be adjusted through the agency of the state, by tribunals to which no parallel can be found; tenants' improvements were declared exempted from rent; and a mode of land tenure, hitherto condemned by mr. gladstone, and known as the 'theory of the three f's,' was applied to the great majority of irish tenancies, in an exaggerated, crude, and dangerous form. this legislation, revolutionary and socialistic alike, has been given more ample scope in the last twenty years; it probably affects four-fifths of the rented lands in ireland; it has fashioned the type of land tenure over nearly all the country. the successors of mr. gladstone, who, indeed, had boasted that it set the doctrines of adam smith at nought, were not blind to the evils it soon developed; but it is questionable if their attempts to mitigate these, and to place the irish land system on a better basis, have not been at least as open to censure. with the ignorance of irish land tenure common in british statesmen, they proclaimed, what assuredly was not the fact, that mr. gladstone had 'created a dual ownership' in the irish land, and that, in order to get rid of this intolerable thing, it was necessary, in accord with english ideas, to bring ireland, as far as possible, under 'single ownership,' and to make the occupiers of the irish soil, to a large extent, its owners. the system of 'land purchase' in ireland, begun in , was freed from the limitations which made it safe and just, and widely enlarged under new conditions; irish tenants were encouraged to acquire the fee in their holdings, by a process never contemplated before; instead of having to pay any part of the price, the state advanced them the whole purchase moneys, repayable by an annual charge much less than any true rent. about a tenth part of the tenant class of ireland have become owners of their farms by these means; the transaction has been in no sense a 'purchase;' though given the name, it is really the exact opposite. i shall describe all this legislation, in detail, afterwards, and shall indicate its far-reaching effects; here i can only take a cursory survey. the attempts that have been made to reform the irish land system, in the last sixty years, have been, with scarcely an exception, failures; the irish land, it has truly been said, is strewn with the wrecks of repeated errors. the land act of was, on the whole, a well-conceived measure; but the recommendations made by the devon commission, the iniquitous and destructive encumbered estates act, the agrarian revolution wrought by mr. gladstone, and the 'land purchase' acts, as they are falsely called, have been monuments of want of insight and knowledge. and, what is even worse, legislation on the irish land has, over and over again, been too long delayed, and has been inconsistent, fitful, founded on no principle; the results have been in a high degree disastrous. reforms that would have been gladly welcomed if made years before, have been treated with contempt when made too late; and reforms have more than once been hasty experiments, carried out under the stress of menacing troubles. the fable of the sibylline books has been realised in this matter; and not a few of the efforts to improve irish land tenures have been little better than sudden leaps in the dark. as to recent legislation in this province, its consequences and tendencies have become manifest. that it has effected some good may be admitted; it has removed grievances that no doubt existed; it has made the government of ireland more easy for the time; it has allayed discontent for a moment; but the good is far outweighed by the evil. it is not only that the nostrum of the 'three f's,' and the adjustment of rent by the intervention of the state, have cut down the rental of ireland to an extent that cannot be justified, and have transferred to the occupier of the irish soil a large part of what was the owner's property by a process of confiscation concealed, but certain. it is not only that the status of the irish landlord has been iniquitously transformed to his extreme injury, and that the status of the irish tenant has been changed to his extreme advantage, in both instances without a pretence to right. the irish land system has been reduced to an almost hopeless state; it presents some of the worst features of the past; its conditions discourage the improvement of the land, promote its deterioration in many ways, and banish capital away from it; and its plain tendency has been to make agriculture decline. and the revolution, which has been thus accomplished, has aggravated the divisions of classes in ireland, and has been attended with ruinous litigation on a huge scale; and it has produced demoralisation far-reaching and profound, a sense of insecurity in all landed relations, and a far too general disregard of the respect due to contract. the policy, too, of so-called 'land purchase' has been accompanied with a train of evils on the increase. it is not creating, as its authors fondly hoped, a class of loyal and thriving freeholders; it is not even creating a body of industrious and improving farmers. it is, on the contrary, developing, in some of its parts, the bad land system of the eighteenth century; it has proved injurious to agriculture in one important respect. above all, from the very nature of the case, it has drawn harsh, nay, unjust, distinctions between the landed classes, which necessarily have been a cause of much discontent; and it has inevitably provoked a demand for a universal confiscation of the irish land even worse than any of those which have been the curse of ireland. i pass from the material and general state of ireland to that of the irish community, in its different parts. that community is still divided, as it has been for ages, into three separate and distinct peoples, marked off from each other in race and faith; whatever 'nationalist' leaders may assert, it is not, and has never been, in a real sense, a nation. the lines of demarcation between catholic, presbyterian, and protestant ireland are at least as clearly defined as they have always been; they have probably been widened by the troubles of late years, and by the legislation which has been a consequence. catholic ireland has a population of some three millions and a half of souls; it is in the main a celtic race, but with a considerable admixture of other elements; it has passed through a revolution remarkable and immense. sixty years ago, the worst parts of the penal code had long been things of the past; but the irish catholics had only recently thrown off the last remains of that thraldom, under o'connell's guidance; and their emancipation had only been effected by a great and very threatening movement. they were still comparatively an alien and a subject people; they had not many owners of land; they were not numerous in the upper trading and the professional classes; education was greatly wanting among them; they were for the most part a backward and poor peasantry, almost serfs of landlords distinct in creed and in blood; and they formed the bulk of the teeming millions that vegetated on the soil in indigent misery. the irish catholics, too, had still many and real grievances; the tithe of the established church had long been an unjust burden on the petty husbandman; it had recently given rise to a frightful war of classes, and had only been commuted a short time; the established church itself was a moral wrong, felt acutely by the irish priesthood at least. catholic ireland, besides, was deeply sunk in ignorance; the system of national education had only begun to flourish; and the irish catholic was still all but wholly excluded from county administration and municipal government. the worst of these grievances, however, was the state of the tenure of the land; this was especially harsh on the catholic peasant; if oppression was not general or even common, he was too often subjected to excessive rent and unfair eviction. this order of things has all but completely passed away; the position of catholic ireland in the state has almost wholly been changed. catholic emancipation has long been an accomplished fact; irish catholics and protestants are equal before the law; and have really equal chances in fighting the battle of life. though still not numerous, the catholic owners of land have multiplied; the irish catholic middle classes have made a marked advance; they have grown in knowledge and increased in wealth; they have risen to a higher plane of existence. at the same time, the grievances of the past have nearly all been removed by law, often indeed very late, and by questionable means; but the established church has fallen from its high estate; education has been diffused through the catholic masses; the irish catholics have obtained more than a just share in local government and administration of all kinds; their ascendency in this province is well-nigh assured. the most important, however, of these changes is that which has taken place in the state of the irish catholic peasantry. the process which lifted up millions of these from the land and sent them into exile was, no doubt, terrible; but it was the condition of the welfare and the progress of the population which remained. a great deal of the legislation, besides, which has revolutionised the tenure of land in ireland, and has had a special effect on the catholic occupiers of the soil, has been essentially ill designed and unjust; above all, it has been much too long delayed. but the irish catholic peasantry have long ago ceased to be serfs; they are more the owners of their own holdings than their former landlords; their rights in the land have been more than protected; they have acquired the fee in their farms in thousands of instances; the days of rack rents and harsh evictions have passed away for ever. if the lines of the old irish land system may still be traced, they rather resemble, it has truly been said, the lineaments of a phantom than of a living being. the attitude, however, of catholic ireland, and the sentiments of the immense majority of the irish catholics, must cause painful misgivings in reflecting minds. their aristocracy, indeed, and their landed gentry have always been loyal and true subjects; they can scarcely be distinguished from their protestant fellows. the irish catholics, too, of the upper middle classes are generally attached to the institutions under which they live; and catholic ireland has produced many eminent public servants, and has given splendid ornaments to the bench and the bar. but the spirit that prevails among the irish catholic lower middle classes, and notably among the masses of the peasantry, and the opinions and feelings they ostentatiously avow, are deeply to be regretted in many respects. notwithstanding all that has been done for it, and the immense reforms made in its interest, this part of catholic ireland is, beyond question, more disaffected and disloyal to the state than it was when o'connell was its master spirit; it is more hostile to government, law, and the existing order of things. the teaching of the land and the national leagues, and of the successor which has taken their place, has penetrated into the corporations and local boards, in which the catholic irish are supreme; these assemblies echo with revolutionary and socialistic cries, and denounce the whole system of british rule in ireland, aiming especially at the sovereign and those in the highest places. the irish catholics, too, in the three provinces of the south, have gained a complete ascendency in county and municipal affairs; their first object has been to exclude the landed gentry from them, and to destroy the influence which belongs to property; and they have exhibited tendencies absolutely opposed to the constitution to which they owe their authority. the worst symptoms, however, appear in the state of the peasantry; they have obtained advantages of which their fathers never even dreamed; the land system has been turned upside down for their behoof; they have no grievance in landed relations; and yet they remain unfriendly to the state, and show no sign of gratitude. this class contains the multitudes, who for more than twenty years, have allied themselves with a conspiracy against our power in ireland, and who, at the bidding of designing men, shout treasonable utterances at mob gatherings, and denounce the 'saxon' and 'landlordism' with one voice; and though they are a timid and somewhat inert mass, and they would not rise like their fathers in , they would not lift a hand to support our rule were foreign invaders to descend on our shores. this state of opinion, no doubt, is intelligible to the real student of irish history; the irish catholics are a people who have been cruelly wronged; they have only slowly risen out of serf-like thraldom; above all, they have only attained the position they hold in the state after long years of trials, and by giving trouble; they treasure the celtic traditions of the past; we may regret that they are what they are, but can hardly feel surprise. in other respects, the irish catholic masses, especially in a democratic age, must arouse the solicitude of thinkers worthy of the name. many thousands of them are still illiterate; they are too generally the mere followers of priests and demagogues, tossed hither and thither as their masters direct; they are animated by crude and wild ideas, like the peasantry of france before the revolution; they have scarcely anything in common with the corresponding class in england, trained for centuries in habits of well-ordered liberty. they form, in a word, a dangerous and easily led democracy; and yet, owing to recent legislation, ever to be deplored, they possess almost a monopoly of political power in ireland, and have sent representatives to parliament whose acts are a byword. conciliation, therefore, as the phrase is, has failed in the case of the greatest part of catholic ireland; this remains an alien, even a perilous, element in the state; it is worse than useless to shut our eyes to the truth; the time is still apparently distant when it will become contented and loyal. presbyterian ireland is a people of rather more than half a million of souls, almost concentrated within a nook of ulster; it was rebellious in sentiment a hundred years ago; it is now devotedly attached to the british connection, and has firmly supported the union during a period of trouble. this community, nevertheless, of artisans and farmers is rather widely separated from the aristocracy in their midst, for the most part english in blood, and of the anglican faith; and though the presbyterian farmer has obtained the benefit of the late reforms of land tenure, and has received advantages far in excess of justice, he declares himself to be discontented with his lot, and is clamouring for a vast confiscation of the irish land in his selfish interest. the irish protestants are a population rather larger than the presbyterians; but they are scattered over all parts of the country; they do not possess the political influence of their distant kinsmen in ulster. they comprise at least three-fourths of the leading landed gentry, and a considerable number of the better class of farmers; they predominate in the learned professions, and in the higher walks of commerce. but their lower orders feel the loss of the ascendency which was once their birthright; they have been thrust out from corporate and local government; they are isolated amidst a population not in sympathy with them; as a people they can hardly be described as prosperous. as to the protestant landed gentry, they have for centuries been the most loyal of subjects; it is significant that they have been called the british garrison by the conspirators who seek to overthrow our rule in ireland; they have given many eminent worthies to the state, and proved their devotion to it at the gravest crises; what they are has been shown in the war in south africa. at present, however, profound and just discontent has sunk deep into the hearts of this order of men. they are the heirs of conquest and confiscation, it is said; but they were placed in the position they hold by english kings and parliaments; is that any reason that, within the last half-century, the nemesis of conquest and confiscation should have been invoked against them, in the encumbered estates act and predatory agrarian laws? they were too much of an exclusive caste, separated from their dependents, and possessing powers over the occupiers of the soil, which were sometimes abused; is that any reason that they should have been deprived of political influence, supplanted by the bureaucratic castle, changed from owners of their estates into mere pensioners, shut out by the force of law from local and county government? what, however, the irish landed gentry most deeply feel is that, in the course of the last sixty years, they have been deceived, nay, betrayed, by british statesmen, who, having repeatedly assured them that their position was secure, have sacrificed them when it seemed to suit their purpose. the imperial parliament has, during the last century, had absolute control over the affairs of ireland. no impartial student of history will deny that it has governed ireland very much better than her old parliament could possibly have done, after the dreadful rising of had literally torn the country to pieces. the large majority of thinking persons have long ago been convinced that the policy of home rule, that is, the substitution for the houses at westminster of a statutory legislature seated in dublin, would be disastrous to the empire and ireland alike; and that the evils attendant on the present system would be aggravated a hundred-fold by the revolution mr. gladstone tried to effect. nor can it be questioned that the imperial parliament has, for a long period, sincerely desired to legislate and rule for the good of ireland, and has accomplished important irish reforms, whatever legitimate exceptions may be taken to them. protestant ascendency and the established church have fallen; the law has long been indifferent to irishmen of all classes; education has been brought home to the mass of the people; the tenure of land has been transformed, unwisely no doubt, but wholly in the interest of the occupiers of the soil. nevertheless, much that the imperial parliament has done, and left undone, in the victorian era, remains matter of censure and regret; and its irish administration has been in many respects unfortunate. the neglect to make a provision for the irish catholic priesthood, a main object of pitt and of our best statesmen, when the anglican church was disestablished in , was a grave and a calamitous mistake; the attempts that have been made to reform the irish land system have, with scarcely an exception, been sorry failures; the results have been, in no doubtful sense, deplorable. few, too, will justify such measures as the establishment in ireland of household suffrage, that is, giving a monopoly of political power to an ignorant and priest-ridden democracy,[ ] and depriving property and intelligence of all influence, or as the handing over county and city government, in three-fourths of ireland, to much the same classes. nor are even positive errors such as these the worst, perhaps, that can be laid to the charge of the imperial parliament in the conduct of irish affairs. with rare exceptions, the reforms it has made have been, unhappily, too late, and have been obtained only through menacing popular movements; it has over and over again made irish questions the mere subjects of the selfish strife of party, with evil consequences for irish interests; it has occasionally, and even for large spaces of time, shown a marked indifference to reasonable irish demands; and its administration of ireland has repeatedly been inconsistent, even contradictory, shortsighted, and feeble. it must be acknowledged, indeed, that the rule of the imperial parliament, in the circumstances in which ireland has been placed, is, from the nature of the case, faulty in many respects; it is that of a dominant assembly practically controlling a subject dependency; and, as we see in the striking instances of athens and rome, this kind of government has never been free from great and real objections. this, no doubt, is no reason that we should fly from less to unbearable evils, and adopt the fatal scheme of home rule; and the causes that have made our parliamentary _régime_ in ireland as defective as it is are evident, and, as i shall point out afterwards, may probably be removed, to some extent at least, without subverting the constitution of these realms. but the broad fact remains, and cannot be concealed; the imperial parliament, much as it has done, has not reached the hearts or gained, in any degree, the sympathy of an immense majority of the irish people. this conclusion, indeed, has been made only too manifest, if we look back at the history of ireland within living memory. the catholic association defied the imperial parliament, and was supreme in four-fifths of ireland, from to ; o'connell, in , rallied the irish catholic millions to the cause of the repeal of the union, that is, to the subversion of british rule from the giant's causeway to cape clear. home rule became a popular cry when proclaimed by butt; parnell soon rose to the head of an irish faction, which deliberately tried to paralyse and cross parliament, and to make its sway in ireland of no avail and contemptible. the land league and the national league were essentially conspiracies of foreign origin, and they appealed to socialistic greed in a season of distress; but their chief object was to annihilate british power in ireland; they had the support of huge catholic masses; they returned to parliament a band of more than eighty men, one of whose purposes was to checkmate its authority. too much is not to be made of these movements; three-fourths at least of the irish community have repeatedly been led away by able but unscrupulous leaders, and rush into courses to which they are not earnestly inclined; but these unquestionable facts assuredly prove that the institutions under which they exist are not acceptable to the great body of the people of ireland. this attitude has been displayed with marked and too plain significance, within a period, as it were, of yesterday. the united irish league fills the place of the land and the national leagues; it is a conspiracy against the state, like its forerunners; it aims ultimately at the same objects; its organisation and machinery are the same; it seeks to establish its domination by similar methods. it is, no doubt, less formidable than the land and the national leagues; it has received little support from america, and has no one to compare with parnell at its head; but it has sent more than three-fourths of the representatives of ireland into the house of commons; and these have combined to put in force the arts of obstruction with an audacity, a perseverance, and a measure of success, perhaps never so conspicuous before. its authority is less far-reaching than that of its predecessors; but it has established a reign of tyranny in not a few counties; it is largely backed by the irish priesthood and by much the greatest part of catholic ireland; and its leaders boast, not without truth, that, disloyal as many of their utterances are, they are completely in accord with popular sympathies. the acts and the speeches, indeed, of these men have never been more unequivocal than within the last two or three years;[ ] yet almost everywhere they obtain the applause and the support of the multitude. an irish contingent was sent to fight for the boers; the war in south africa was yelled at, at huge public meetings, as an odious instance of english tyranny and crime; every reverse that befell our arms was welcomed; the irish masses, especially of late, have made a display of their antipathy to, and hatred of, the state. there was an outbreak of disloyal rioting in dublin at the diamond jubilee; but for the accident of the spanish war there would have been a great commemoration of the rebellion of ; even the visit of the late queen to ireland was made an occasion for seditious speeches; if her death was very generally mourned, public bodies were found to refuse an expression of regret. irish administration, i have remarked, is in many respects faulty; this is mainly because it is dependent on british parties; it fluctuates as one or the other prevails in parliament. it sometimes represents completely opposite principles; besides, as lord-lieutenants and chief secretaries usually hold office for a short time only, they are tempted to adopt a hand-to-mouth policy, and to govern with little thought of the morrow. a marked change, however, has, in the course of time, passed over the ordinary system of administration carried on at the castle. the aristocracy and the leading irish gentry had still, even at the beginning of the victorian age, much influence in directing local affairs; their authority was not nearly as great as it had been; but they were still looked up to and consulted by the central government. this state of things has long ago ceased to exist; this order of men has long ago lost all political, and nearly all social, power; it has been superseded by a bureaucratic _régime_, depending mainly on paid officials and police, which rules ireland from the castle, with little external support. this mode of government is imposing and apparently strong; but it is essentially weak, and has little real hold on the country; the information, with which it is amply supplied, is often false, and occasionally causes grave mistakes; it forms an administrative system resembling that of the old centralised monarchy of france, of which tocqueville has exposed the defects and the vices. under this _régime_, however, the law of the land has certainly been vindicated more successfully than had been the case before; the government has acquired decidedly increased power in dealing with disorders dangerous to the state, and perhaps in holding the scales of justice even between divided classes; it has not diminished the strife of hostile irish factions, but it has maintained order more completely than of old; and this unquestionably is a great advantage, and a real set-off against some mischiefs and failures. it would be untrue to assert that this system of rule has been the paramount and even a main cause of the great decline in agrarian crime and trouble which ireland has happily witnessed of late years; other and far more potent causes have concurred; but it may fairly be said that it has contributed to it. it would, however, be a complete mistake to suppose that agrarian disorder, even in its worst aspects, has become permanently a thing of the past in ireland, or that this destructive curse of irish social life has not immense influence even at this moment, though its outward manifestations have been greatly changed. it was, so to speak, only yesterday that, under the auspices of the land and the national leagues, there was the most frightful outbreak of agrarian crime that had been seen since the great tithe conflict; it assumed the proportions, in fact, of a horrible servile war; and shallow, indeed, the understanding must be which imagines that this state of things can never recur. if open agrarian disorder, too, has been largely diminished, the spirit of agrarian disorder is still strong; and it is doing infinite mischief in many parts of ireland. steadily adhering to the precepts laid down by parnell, the united irish league has brought the detestable system of 'boycotting' to a hideous perfection in several counties; whole districts are subject to this secret but villainous tyranny; the results are seen in numbers of derelict farms, in hundreds of victims writhing under ever-present terror, in an infamous interference with trade and industry. this malignant influence is more or less felt through nearly the whole of the southern provinces, and even to a considerable extent in ulster; it should be added that the united irish league, for the present, discourages active agrarian crime, though its agents hold this force in reserve; it believes it can compass its ends without making use of this weapon.[ ] a few words must be said, in this short survey, on the organisations that uphold the christian faith in ireland. the disestablished anglican church has certainly made progress in spiritual life; it has more moral and even, perhaps, social influence than when it was an appurtenance of the erastian castle. it has been admirably administered and ruled; the uses of adversity have been sweet to it, and it has been successfully launched on its new career; this is a strong proof of the inherent energy and capacity of the anglo-protestant irish people. very different, too, from what had been expected, moderation and wisdom prevail in its councils; its clergy are sincerely pious, but not given to extreme doctrines; its members are for the most part free from the narrow sectarian views which had formerly, not without reason, been laid to their charge. its funds, amassed by good management, are, for the present, ample; but the rapid impoverishment of the landed gentry, the class from which it chiefly obtains support, and the confiscation with which they are threatened, no doubt expose it to future dangers; and it must always be the church of a small minority, surrounded by influences hostile to it, but a church which the state is bound to protect. the presbyterian church of ireland has but little changed; it has felt the effect of the great religious movement, which has stirred the three kingdoms in the last half-century, and it is less rationalistic than it once was; but it is still what it always was, a powerful centre of the faith of john knox, with a communion of strong democratic sympathies. the catholic church of ireland still rests on the old foundations; but it is hardly the unshaken structure it was in the last generation. its material resources have enormously increased; its fine edifices spread over the land; it still exercises immense influence over probably nine-tenths of catholic ireland. but a party has been growing up within it which resents, and has even defied, its pretensions; and though the power it possesses is, in the main, beneficent in the extreme, this has too often been abused in the domain of politics, and especially of late in irish landed relations. the priesthood still largely direct their flocks, but they are more dependent on them than they once were; had it been otherwise, they would have hardly conformed to the bidding of the land and the national leagues, as unhappily they did in too many instances. their leading men perceived from the first that these conspiracies were destructive of their moral influence; and had the whole body of the clergy received a just provision from the state, it would all but certainly have condemned the methods of the leagues as these were decisively condemned by rome. for the rest, the catholic church of ireland is no friend of protestant england, and of many of the institutions that exist in ireland; but this has been inevitable from the events of irish history; and whatever may be said, it has been essentially an ally of the state, by reason of its great religious authority. and if properly understood, it is a mighty conservative power, which ought if possible to be won over to the side of order and law; this is an ample, if there were no other, reason that statesmen should comply with its most reasonable demand, and remove the grievance, in high catholic education, that only blind bigotry can deny. the administration of justice in ireland is better, on the whole, than it was in the early victorian era. it is not only that the law's delay has been to a considerable extent, remedied, as it has been, in england, by an improved procedure. traces of protestant ascendency were to be seen on the irish bench sixty years ago, though these were evanescent and few; such a trial as that of o'connell in , marked by partiality and even by wrong, would be simply impossible at the present time. trial by jury, however, in ireland too often reflects the animosities and prejudices of class, and is liable to grave perversion and errors; it is sometimes necessary, in causes where religious or political feeling is engaged, to make a careful selection in forming juries, in order that common right should be done; this inevitable, but invidious, process, held up to execration by the name of 'packing,' is certainly a matter that causes regret. the fairness seen in the administration of the law in ireland has been strikingly illustrated of late years; leaders and agents of the land and the national leagues have had to answer for their offences in the inferior courts; but despite rabid clamour against what is called 'coercion,' the conduct of these inquiries has not been really impugned. a laudable attempt, however, to make the magisterial bench more popular, has lately placed on it an order of men, of whom some have abused their power; these instances, nevertheless, have not been frequent; the experiment cannot be pronounced a failure. the intellect of ireland is not so fruitful as it was in the generation before the union; she has no political thinkers to be named with burke, no writer of fiction equal to maria edgeworth, no dramatist to be compared to sheridan, no orators who have reached the heights of eloquence reached by grattan, curran, plunket, and other glories of her defunct parliament. but there has been progress in this respect within the last sixty years; ireland cannot boast of such public men as o'connell, sheil, and even spring rice; but she possesses dufferin in the diplomatic sphere, and lecky, and one or two others of repute in that of letters; she has only recently lost lord cairns and lord russell. the improvement of primary education in ireland has been immense; the land is full of elementary schools, which, in the last generation, were, comparatively, very few, and though a considerable part of the population is still illiterate, the greater part, whose fathers were sunk in ignorance, has felt the good influence of the light of knowledge. high education, too, has advanced in ireland; trinity college is greater than before as a place of learning; if two of the queen's colleges have certainly failed, the royal university has been, in a sense, successful. but, as i shall point out, in subsequent pages, university education in ireland remains defective; a university for the irish catholic upper middle class is a requirement rightly demanded from parliament. as for irish secondary education, it is still backward, but there is hope of improvement in this respect; the general standard of irish education, it should be added, is, except at trinity college, low, though this has been inevitable if we look back at the events of history. irish opinion generally still embodies the deep-seated animosities and strife of race and faith, at least as fully as it ever did; with few exceptions this appears in the tone of the newspaper press. the utterances of many of the self-styled 'nationalist' journals have been far more hostile to the state, and are conceived in a much worse spirit, than those of the same class of journals in o'connell's day. if we examine the condition of ireland, as a whole, we see that there has been some material progress, but with retrogression in important respects; and if a certain measure of good has been done, great wrong and evil have been accomplished, in the principal and the most far-reaching of her social relations. her moral and political progress has been at least doubtful; notwithstanding immense and searching reforms, the mass of the population is more disaffected than of old; discontent largely pervades the classes most loyal to the state; if the mere power of government has increased, its beneficent influence is but little recognised; the great body of the community maintains a hostile attitude. the crooked has not been made straight in ireland, nor the rough places plain; a state of society exists, in which, as the greek poet said, 'the fountains flow backwards, and things are out of joint.' an old order has nearly passed away; but the new order that is replacing it is but of little promise; a type of society has been well-nigh broken up, but a strong and solid type is not being formed in its stead; at all events, in the phrase of bacon, the time is still distant 'when the strings of the irish harp will all be in tune;' many respond to the player's hand in discord. 'the constitution in ireland,' peel once exclaimed, 'is not the british constitution, but its ghastly image;' let us see what it is in ireland at the present time. the sovereign is, in england, a main pillar of the state; he is a great political and social force; the monarchy is enthroned in the heart of the nation. in ireland he is almost an unknown name, associated with not a few evil memories; his influence, which ought to be immense over a celtic race, has never made itself sensibly felt. in england parliament responds to the national will, and has gathered the reverence of ages around it; in ireland it is a foreign and alien assembly, with which the mass of the people has no sympathy. in england the aristocracy is at the head of public affairs, leads society, commands universal respect; in ireland it has lost all authority; has no weight in the national councils; has no popular support, is even disliked at the castle. in england the middle class is enormously strong, and is the best bulwark of order and law; in england the democracy is almost wholly free from revolutionary ideas, as regards property, and seeks reforms by constitutional methods. in ireland, it is unhappily quite otherwise; the middle class is comparatively weak, and, in its lower strata, is opposed to the existing order of things; the democracy is an easily led multitude, ready at its leaders' bidding to rush into socialistic courses. in england, too, the commonwealth is completely secure; in ireland there is literally no commonwealth; and such organisations as the land, the national, and the united irish leagues, are dangerous symptoms of a kind of jacobin antipathy to the state. the words of peel are still unhappily true; but painful as the contrast he pointed out is, even this is not the worst circumstance in the present condition of irish affairs. what, i think, most alarms a reflecting mind, is the restlessness that pervades the mass of the people, an eagerness for some undefined change, a demand for the universal spoliation of a class, a sense of insecurity spreading far and wide, a neglect of the pursuits of calm industry in the hope of what a revolution may effect, an instability in the social fabric from top to bottom. the agitation, the disorder, and, i will add, the vicious legislation of late years, will, however, largely explain these phenomena. lord salisbury's ministry came into office, six years ago, at the head of the most powerful majority that had been returned to the house of commons since the great reform era. the time was singularly opportune to consider the state of ireland, and to deal with the irish questions that required sound and wise treatment. the opposition was paralysed by a rout at the polls; the national league conspiracy showed few signs of life; the 'nationalist' party was rent asunder; the community was more quiescent than it had been for years. it would be unfair to deny that, since it acquired power, the government has been beset by many and grave obstacles in legislating on domestic subjects; it has been encompassed by a sea of foreign troubles; it has had to conduct the protracted war in south africa. it would be absurd, too, to expect that it could, once for all, have placed irish affairs permanently on a secure basis; this can only be the result of the wisdom of years aided by the healing influence of time. but it has disappointed enlightened irish opinion; it has not done, or even tried to do, what it might have accomplished. undoubtedly parts of its policy have been good; it has effected something, if not much, in developing the material resources of the west of ireland, and in mitigating the danger and the stress of irish poverty; it has carried on the excellent work of mr. arthur balfour in this respect; the department of agriculture it has lately formed will, not improbably, be of real use in promoting industry and self-reliance among the peasantry, on the principles advocated, a century and a half ago, by berkeley. but commendation, i think, must here end; the government, i believe, has made grave mistakes; it has assuredly not successfully dealt with the great 'case of ireland,' greater now than in the days of molyneux and swift. it has not reduced the excessive representation of ireland in the house of commons; until this is done the union will not be secure. it has disregarded the verdict of the important commission which has declared that ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years; here it defies universal irish opinion; and having pledged itself to make a further inquiry, it has not hitherto taken a step to redeem its pledge. it is divided on the question of high education in ireland, and professes that this must be an 'open question,' as if this was not unwise and perilous; and though it has appointed a commission to report on the subject, catholic ireland very possibly may not obtain the place of learning which it is entitled to demand. above all, on the capital question of the irish land, the government has certainly all but ignored the recommendations of a commission chosen by itself, and has refused to lessen the injustice proved to have been done wholesale; like its predecessors, in the case of the encumbered estates act, it is still bent on agrarian legislation that has done infinite mischief. its administration, too, up to this has not been successful; it has allowed the united irish league to grow up and to gain strength, with far-spreading evil results; its conduct of irish affairs has been weak and empirical, and notably marked by false optimistic fancies. of late there has been improvement in this respect; we can only hope it will not be abortive. 'in this gigantic body,' macaulay exclaimed fifty-seven years ago, 'there is one vulnerable part near the heart.'[ ] the empire has expanded into ampler proportions than those described by the orator; its subject kings, dominations, princedoms, powers, above all, its myriads of many races and tongues, are united by far more durable ties than those which held it together in a generation that has passed away. four years ago, canada sent messengers from her great lakes, hindustan representatives of her ancient dynasties, the great island continent envoys from her free nations, to do homage to queen victoria; the pageant, gathered 'within london's streaming roar,' was a magnificent spectacle of world-wide loyalty. england has seen another and a still more wonderful sight; the martial sons of our great self-governing colonies have flocked in thousands to do battle in her cause, in the distant and ill-known wastes of south africa; in a long, bloody, and sometimes disastrous conflict, they have proved themselves to be worthy companions in arms of the offspring of the soldiery of blenheim and waterloo; they have fought and bled for england as if she was their common country. but ireland, as regards the mass of the people, has, on both occasions, stood sullenly aloof; her heart has gone out in sympathy with the boers; she remains, for the most part, hostile to our rule and disloyal. it is mere foolishness to shut our eyes to plain facts; still more so to join in the false pæans of interested partisans, and ignorant scribblers, who announce that because ireland is, on the surface, comparatively at peace, she is in every sense a contented or a happy land, free from grave elements of political and social danger. she is still the 'vulnerable part at the heart of the empire;' the spectre at the great national festival; the warning token, as in the case of the oriental despot, that human grandeur and power are, in the nature of things, mortal. she is still, as she was in the day of spenser, a malign influence across the path of our greatness, a riddle difficult to understand and interpret; the many problems she still presents to the statesman are perplexing in the extreme, and await solution. that any policy will suddenly remove the many evils apparent in her organic structure is a delusion a rational mind rejects; the deep-seated ills in that distempered frame may never be completely and finally cured. something effectual, nevertheless, may, i think, be done; i proceed to examine, in the following chapters, the 'present irish questions' that confront our rulers; and to consider what the amending hand may accomplish. chapter ii the question of home rule the question of home rule not extinct--the reasons--butt's scheme of home rule--it is denounced and ridiculed by mr. gladstone, and defeated in the house of commons--death of butt--the home rule movement becomes allied with a foreign conspiracy--davitt and parnell--the land league--mr. gladstone's surrender to it--the movement makes no progress in the parliament of - --the general election of --mr. gladstone suddenly adopts the policy of home rule--the probable reasons--the home rule bill of --its nature and tendencies--decisive objections to the measure--it is rejected at the general election of , having been previously rejected in the house of commons--policy and conduct of mr. gladstone--the home rule movement makes some progress in england, and why--the home rule bill of --it is much worse than that of --the reasons--it is rejected by the house of lords--home rule under different forms--the union must be maintained--proposal that parliament should occasionally sit in dublin--the over-representation of ireland should be redressed. home rule, it is very generally assumed, has vanished into the domain of extinct politics. unlike what had been the case from to , when this was the main of our domestic questions, home rule was scarcely referred to at the late election; it will receive little countenance at the hands of the present house of commons, however irish nationalists may persist in urging their demand. it would, nevertheless, be imprudent to believe that this policy, as has been said, 'is as dead as queen anne,' as impossible as a return to protection or to an unreformed parliament. isaac butt's scheme of home rule was treated with scorn and ridicule by mr. gladstone during many years; mr. gladstone was the author of the bills of and , embodying home rule in forms few will now approve of; and he left nothing undone to convert them into law. at the general election of , home rule was regarded as a mere irish craze, and hardly a candidate could be found, in england and scotland, to consent to an inquiry upon the subject; within six years home rule was a ministerial measure; and though the house of commons pronounced against it, and its decision was emphatically ratified at the general election of , still, on this occasion, the votes in favour of home rule were not much less numerous than those cast against it.[ ] in england condemned home rule, if not as decisively as six years before; but ireland, scotland, and wales declared for it; and a home rule bill received the sanction of the house of commons, which, but for the resistance made by the house of lords, would now be a fundamental law of these realms. it deserves notice, too, that not one of the liberal leaders, although, as a rule, they avoided the subject, repudiated this policy at the late election; two or three, indeed, gave it a qualified support; and it is evident that they keep the question in reserve, in the hope of turning it to account at a more convenient season. nor can it be denied, as long as ireland can send more than eighty nationalists into the house of commons, pledged to insist on home rule as their country's right, that the subject must command more or less attention; for many reasons it is impossible to ignore the claims of a representation so large in numbers. it must be added that, under our system of party government, especially as this has existed of late years, a considerable group of politicians, with a fixed purpose, can effect much by throwing its weight indifferently into the ministerial or the opposition scale, and giving its support to either side, in order to compass its own ends; it has, sometimes with successful results, swayed majorities by these means, and not in vain. this is the hope of the irish nationalist leaders; 'let parties in the house of commons,' they cynically argue, 'be equally divided, as must at some time happen,' and 'we shall gain home rule from either tories or whigs, if we assist either by our votes to keep them in office.' it cannot be said, if we look back at some political events within the last twenty years, that this expectation is wholly groundless; and though i am convinced it will not be realised, its existence alone suffices to prove that home rule cannot yet be dismissed as outside the sphere of practical politics. home rule, therefore, is a 'present irish question,' and if not at this moment urgent, it remains the most important of irish questions, for it directly affects the fortunes of the three kingdoms. it is necessary, accordingly, to examine it, in its principles at least; and an inquiry is opportune, at this juncture, for the subject can be fairly discussed in its different bearings, apart from the obscuring influences of national and party prejudice, and especially of political passion. isaac butt was the true author of the conception of home rule; for though a movement in favour of a repeal of the union had become dangerously active in - , and had been feebly intermittent since that period, this peculiar modification of the arrangements made at the union, in fixing the relations between great britain and ireland, was wholly an idea of that distinguished lawyer. the occasion, on which this scheme was put forward, was not a little remarkable for various reasons. mr. gladstone had just disestablished the anglican church in ireland, and had disendowed it, to a considerable extent; this policy was angrily resented by a party of irish protestants; for the maintenance of the established irish church had been made an essential condition of the treaty of union. these men, who were not without energy and parts, declared that a great international compact had been broken; and they gradually obtained the support of leaders of the 'young ireland' following, of survivors of the 'tail' of o'connell, and even of adherents of the fenian cause, all, in different degrees, opposed to the union. butt became the head and spokesman of this curiously assorted band, composed of essentially discordant elements; but he endeavoured to combine it into a strong parliamentary force, by propounding a plan of home rule for ireland, which he had thought out with patience and care, his hope being that this would unite his followers, and that his project would at least be entertained in parliament, and would not be as hopeless as an attempt to repeal the union. his views are set forth in his 'irish federalism,' a long-forgotten work, but which, even now, may be read with profit. butt professed, and i have no doubt sincerely, that he did not seek to disturb the union, and that the imperial parliament was to remain as it was; but he proposed to give ireland a parliament of her own, with full powers of legislation on irish affairs, and an executive practically appointed by this, which would have the government of ireland in its hands. having thus called into existence an irish state, possessing state rights of supreme importance, he sought to connect ireland with great britain by a federal tie; representatives from ireland were to repair to the imperial parliament, and to vote in that assembly on imperial questions, but not, as i believe butt meant, on those which belonged to england and scotland.[ ] the cry of home rule was welcomed in ireland by her catholic masses; at the general election of , sixty men were returned to the house of commons to support this policy, a party formidable in numbers, if not in essential strength. butt brought forward his plan, in outline, on three or four occasions; but the question was not discussed with the fulness of knowledge and the breadth of view it certainly required; on the whole, it was superficially treated. neither butt nor his opponents thoroughly perceived that his proposals virtually repealed the union, for if the imperial parliament was, nominally, to be left intact, a real parliament was to be placed in its stead, in ireland, which would practically annul its effective authority, from the giant's causeway to cape clear; and they seem not to have understood that 'irish federalism' implied federalism for great britain to a great extent, and introduced into the constitution the federal principle with its far-reaching and dangerous effects. butt's scheme, however, was powerfully attacked in its details; by no one so powerfully as by mr. gladstone, who had lately announced, to an approving multitude, that home rule was sheer folly or worse, and had exultingly asked, 'can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that, at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of the country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for bestowing benefits, through legislation, on the country to which we belong?'[ ] little knowing what the future was to bring forth, mr. gladstone declared that home rule was not to be even thought of, until it could be proved that the irish affairs, to which the irish parliament was to be confined, could be separated from imperial and british affairs, a partition he evidently deemed impossible; and he insisted that the introduction of irish members into the imperial parliament, which, according to this plan, was to have nothing to do with ireland, was not only essentially unjust, but involved the absurdity that these men 'were to judge as they might think fit of the general affairs of the empire, and also of exclusively english and scotch questions,' an interpretation not, i believe, correct. home rule was rejected by overwhelming majorities in the parliament of - ; and at the general election of the last-named year, it found no countenance, i have said, in england or scotland. the subject was scarcely referred to by mr. gladstone, wholly preoccupied by his midlothian campaign, and by his persistent efforts to deprive lord beaconsfield of power. butt had sincere reverence for the constitution and the law; the home rule movement, as long as he was at its head, was a constitutional and a lawful movement. but this eminent man had been supplanted, by degrees, by a politician of a very different nature; and when he had passed away in the spring of , parnell, and what was called the 'active irish party,' which had baffled and incensed the house of commons, became the directors of the home rule policy. the character of the movement was almost wholly changed; it became associated with a conspiracy hatched in the far west, which aimed at the separation of ireland from great britain; butt's moderate followers fell away from it, especially the band of protestants who had first set it on foot. meanwhile, american fenianism, which had in vain attempted open rebellion in ireland in - , had, at the instigation perhaps of michael davitt, made another effort to compass its ends; the 'new departure' in treason was made; the land league was formed with the avowed purpose of overthrowing 'irish landlordism,' as it was called, as being the mainstay of british power in ireland, and then of wresting ireland by force from her british rulers. but davitt was not well fitted for his work; parnell became the leader of the home rule and the land league movements; and during a short visit to the united states, he openly professed that his ultimate aim was 'to break the last link between great britain and ireland,' though he was still the chief of an apparently constitutional cause. ere long the land league, availing itself of a season of distress, and subsidised by fenians across the atlantic, had taken root in different parts of ireland; and gradually a reign of terror, marked by detestable crime, and essentially of the jacobin type, had acquired a frightful ascendency in ten or eleven counties. by this time, mr. gladstone had become minister: how he denounced the league in passionate language; endeavoured, for a few months, to hold it in check; succumbed to it, when he made the 'kilmainham treaty;' and, finally, how, after declaring that parnell and his adherents were 'aiming at dismemberment through rapine,' he became the author of the land act of , and threw the irish landed gentry as a sop to cerberus,--is sufficiently known, but i shall recur to the subject. during these years, parnell, artfully playing the double game, which this born conspirator especially made his boast, and linking what he called 'a constitutional with an illegal movement,' had more than once spoken on behalf of home rule in the house of commons, his moderate and even statesmanlike language being in marked contrast with his treasonable harangues in ireland. but parliament had been otherwise engaged with irish affairs; it had become more averse to home rule than ever; it had learned what the movement had begun to involve, veiled, if not open, rebellion against the state, and it voted down the question by immense majorities. statesmen of all parties, tory, whig, and radical, without exception, concurred in this view; lord salisbury, lord spencer, and john bright alike condemned the very idea of home rule. mr. gladstone indeed asserted afterwards that he had a policy of this kind in his thoughts; but if he had, he kept it to himself; it cannot be gathered from his speeches of the time; he never breathed to his colleagues a word about it; he allowed them to pronounce against home rule with his full apparent sanction.[ ] mr. gladstone's ministry fell in ; majuba, gordon, and his irish policy had set the best sense of the country against him. lord salisbury's government came in his place; for a short time the tendency, too often seen in british parties, to temporise with sedition and even crime in ireland was exhibited with untoward results; the negotiations between parnell and lord carnarvon have not yet been explained. at the general election of , parnell openly took the conservative side, denounced the liberals in the bitterest language, and perhaps, through the influence of the irish vote, deprived them of a few seats in england. his principal object certainly was to increase his own power and that of his band by weakening the strongest of british parties; but this association with the conservatives probably lessened the antipathy of their opponents to home rule, and was not without effect on the events that followed. ireland, however, was by no means a prominent question in this electoral contest; the tory, whig, and radical leaders dealt, for the most part, with different topics; and though mr. gladstone dropped ambiguous phrases, which, he ere long contended, indicated his conversion to home rule, his lieutenants continued to declare against this policy, their chief remaining openly in accord with them; indeed, all that could be collected, from what he wrote and said, was that he called upon the country to give him such decisive support as would make him independent of all irish factions. the result of this general election, taken as a whole, was to gain for the liberals a majority of some eighty seats in great britain; but in ireland it effected a notable change in politics. by a recent, and, for ireland, a most unwise statute, the electoral franchise had been assimilated in the three kingdoms; political ascendency had, for the first time, been secured for the masses of catholic ireland, largely an ignorant and superstitious multitude; property and intelligence were overwhelmed at the polls; and parnell and his satellites, now called nationalists, won more than eighty seats out of a total of one hundred and three. the liberal majority, therefore, would be effaced should the irish leader and his men give the conservatives their votes; a weak government would be the inevitable result; mr. gladstone, now in his seventy-sixth year, could hardly expect to return to office. in these circumstances, it became gradually known that mr. gladstone had accepted home rule in principle, and was even prepared to legislate upon the subject. it would be unfair to assert that personal motives alone determined this sudden resolve; though obviously should the liberal chief retain the allegiance of his party, and draw parnell and the nationalists to his side, by inaugurating home rule as a practical measure, he would inevitably be restored to power with a great majority. mr. gladstone, ever ready to yield to a popular cry, may have believed that five-sixths of ireland were passionately eager for home rule; he may have been convinced himself that, as affairs now stood, parliament would well-nigh be reduced to a deadlock should nothing be done to redress the balanced state of parties, and that home rule was the condition of a stable government; he may have thought that since the conservative dalliance with parnell, it had become impossible permanently to resist this policy; yet these considerations form no apology for the conduct of the aged, but most impulsive, statesman. only a few years before large parts of ireland had been in a state of frightful anarchy; a rebellious and socialistic movement against british rule and irish landed property had acquired great force; even at the present time, the national league, replacing the land league, kept disorder prevalent in many counties. was this the moment to effect a revolution in ireland, to tamper with, and to impair, the union, to hand over the loyalty, the property, and the worth of the island to the classes and the men against whom but, as yesterday, it had been necessary to put the severest coercion in force? lord salisbury resigned office in the first months of ; mr. gladstone became prime minister in his stead. had parties in the house of commons remained unchanged, the prospect for the old statesman would have been auspicious; the liberals and nationalists combined would have been supreme; home rule would have been the fruit of the new alliance. but the most distinguished men of the liberal party, resenting a coalition far worse than that of fox and north, and convinced that home rule would be ruinous to the state, fell off from their leader in large numbers; the powerful press of great britain, with few exceptions, emphatically condemned the minister's conduct. mr. gladstone, however, did not pause in his violent course; he introduced his first home rule bill in april, . i can only glance at the main features of this famous measure, and devote to it a passing comment.[ ] a parliament was to be established in the irish capital; this, subject to the limitations set forth in the bill, was practically to exercise supreme power in ireland. this parliament was to be composed of two orders, the first containing one hundred and three members, and formed of a few irish peers and of men of some substance; the second comprising two hundred and four or two hundred and six members elected on the existing democratic franchise. the two orders were ordinarily to sit together; but should differences in legislative measures arise, the first order was, for a short time, to have a suspensive veto on the decisions of the second order, which, however, possessing an immense majority, would almost necessarily in the long run completely prevail. the irish parliament was precluded from legislating on many subjects, for the most part imperial, but partly domestic; it was notably to have no control over the customs and excise of ireland, which were to be kept in the hands of the imperial parliament; and though it was permitted to impose any other taxes, the whole revenue of ireland was to pass through the hands of a british official, who was to pay into the imperial treasury a sum of about four millions sterling, as a contribution from ireland, for imperial purposes, before the irish treasury could receive a farthing. bills voted by the irish parliament might be annulled by the veto of the lord-lieutenant and perhaps of the british ministry; and the judicial committee of the english privy council, reinforced by a small body of irish judges, was to have the power to pronounce acts of the irish parliament void, if inconsistent with its constitutional rights. subject, however, to these restrictions and checks, the irish parliament was to be a sovereign power in ireland; it could practically appoint or displace the irish executive government; it could enact, change, or repeal any laws it should think fit; it could pass any resolutions it pleased; if an assembly partly subordinate, it would be largely supreme. ireland was to have no representatives in the imperial parliament, though this could dispose of the irish customs and excise; no irish protest could be made at westminster against unjust fiscal exaction, by no means impossible. for the rest, the union was nominally not disturbed, and the imperial parliament was nominally left intact; but it was declared that the irish parliament was to possess the rights secured to it, unless these were annulled by an act of the imperial parliament, to which the irish had given its consent, or by an act of the imperial parliament, in which representatives from ireland should have a voice. the bill was debated with great force of argument, but hardly in its high constitutional aspects. like the plan of butt, and every plan of the kind, it impliedly, if not expressly, repealed the union, for the very creation of an irish parliament destroyed the real authority of the imperial parliament, the symbol and guarantee of the union, in one of the main parts of the three kingdoms. it effected a radical change in our polity as a whole, for practically it gave birth to three parliaments, the irish sitting in college green in dublin, the british at westminster without irish members, and the imperial, properly to be only so-called, when assembled upon one great occasion; and, even more distinctly than the scheme of butt, it let the principle of federation into the constitution of the state. and it did all this obscurely, indirectly, and, so to speak, with reserve; the hand of a veiled prophet appeared in his work; this must have led to endless controversies dangerous in the extreme. nor did the bill even attempt to mark out the distinction between irish, british, and imperial affairs, which its author had declared was a _sine quâ non_; this distinction, in fact, cannot be drawn, as mr. gladstone acknowledged afterwards; irish, british, and imperial affairs so run into each other, that they cannot be divided into separate heads, to be under the jurisdiction of different parliaments. the conditions, too, which mr. gladstone described, as essential to a measure of home rule, were, in no sense, fulfilled. 'the unity of the empire,' that is, of great britain and ireland, as mr. gladstone no doubt had in his mind, was not secured, or, even in name, preserved; the subordinate irish parliament and its superior might, and probably would, come in serious conflict; this was absolutely inconsistent with the unity to be maintained. the 'political equality of england, scotland, and ireland' was not assured; the bill placed ireland in a degraded position, especially in all that dealt with taxation, and through the exclusion of irish members from the british house of commons. it did not 'produce an equitable distribution of imperial burdens,' for the financial arrangements were thoroughly unjust, and subjected ireland arbitrarily to a most galling tribute, without giving her the means of making a complaint. it did not 'provide safeguards for the minority,' that is, for the loyal classes of protestant and catholic ireland; it handed them over to an irish parliament, certain to be for years an instrument of their avowed enemies; and its supplement, a land purchase bill, did not furnish a third part of the funds required to buy out the irish landlords, a class which, mr. gladstone declared, it was 'an obligation of duty and honour' to save harmless, and which he admitted an irish parliament would, probably, plunder and destroy. lastly, the bill did not secure 'finality;' it was in no sense in the nature of a 'permanent settlement,' as subsequent events have conclusively proved.[ ] it may be urged, however, that even if this measure made a fundamental change in the constitution of these realms, and did not satisfy the conditions its author laid down, still the real question was, would it bring peace to ireland, and improve the relations in which she stood towards great britain? mr. gladstone and his followers assumed that this would be the case; the 'union of hearts' was to accomplish marvels; but this assumption was without the slightest warrant. the most favourable way to consider the subject, from the point of view of the home rule party, is to suppose that great britain and ireland were two communities, in no sense estranged from each other, and that ireland was not a widely divided people; and that both were not unwilling to accept the bill, as a kind of modification of the partnership made by the treaty of union. this supposition would be obviously contrary to the facts; but, even on this supposition, the proposed measure would have completely failed to attain its objects, and, on any ordinary view of human nature, would have exasperated great britain and ireland alike, and could not have been a 'message of peace' to ireland. the parliament at westminster would soon have found out that its real sovereignty in ireland had been practically destroyed; that the irish parliament could, in many ways, interfere with british and imperial affairs; that most of the checks on its powers were of little avail; this would certainly deeply offend the deceived british nation. the irish parliament, on the other hand, would necessarily resent the harsh limitations by which it had been bound; yet as it had most of the powers of a real parliament, it could very effectually evade or impair these; could, through its executive, largely annul them; could, at least, make continual and powerful protests. discord, and perhaps conflict, between great britain and ireland, from the nature of the case, would be the result; and, besides, there were special provisions in the bill which would be deemed intolerable by five-sixths of irishmen. even loyal ireland would not endure the banishment of irish representatives from the british house of commons, which would have power to impose the irish customs and excise; this would be taxation without representation, in the very worst sense. it was monstrous that ireland was to contribute a large sum for the charge of the empire and yet was to have no voice in the empire's affairs; it was humiliating that a british official was to have absolute control over the whole irish revenue. all this was subjecting ireland to a degrading tribute; it should be added that the prerogative of the english privy council, to set aside practically acts of the irish parliament, would have provoked the deepest and most widespread discontent. the bill, in a word, revealed strange ignorance of the feelings of mankind; it would have worked on the assumption only that human beings in great britain and ireland were without passions and wills of their own; it would have been blown to the winds, when put to the test. but 'the circumstances,' to adopt the words of burke, 'are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind;'[ ] what were the circumstances in the present instance? england and catholic ireland had been long opposed; the land and the national leagues formed a conspiracy against our rule in ireland; england had interests in ireland of the first importance; she had a large community of her own blood and faith in ireland, attached to the union and the old mother country. ireland had been distracted for ages by feuds of race and religion; protestant and catholic ireland stood apart from each other; the irish parliament, created by the bill, would certainly be an instrument of the heads of the catholic masses, supported by parnell and his band, and by fenians across the atlantic. under these conditions, home rule would have been a fatal gift, ruinous to great britain and ireland alike. suppose, for example, that an irish parliament, established in college green, since , had ruled ireland during the war in south africa. it would unquestionably have taken the side of the boers, as the nationalist leaders have openly done; and it would have possessed the means of doing infinite mischief. it could have passed resolutions condemning the war; have called on irishmen to keep aloof from the british army; have discouraged recruiting throughout ireland; have sent messages of good will to the boer government. but probably it would have gone far beyond these, its constitutional, rights; it could have winked at the preparation of an armed force in ireland to be despatched to the aid of the boers; it could have invited foreign powers to put a stop to the conflict; nay, it could have laid hands on the irish taxes, and refused to 'pay tribute to an alien government;' and what, in these cases, would have been england's means of obtaining redress, save by the power of the sword? in the instance of other wars, the same course would be followed; we cannot forget that at nationalist meetings, the mahdi, the dervishes, nay, all our enemies, were the objects of the applause of shouting irish multitudes. and as the irish parliament could injure england in war, so it could embarrass and annoy her, in a hundred ways, in peace. there was nothing in the bill to prevent protection in ireland, for the irish parliament could vote bounties on irish exports; there was nothing to prevent the issue of irish assignats, to mask confiscation of different kinds; and recourse would not improbably be had to these very expedients. it is unnecessary to dwell on what would be the legislation of the irish parliament at home, and the administration of the executive it would have a right to set up. composed as it would be, it would abolish 'landlordism' by a stroke of the pen, or by merely preventing the recovery of rent; it would simply turn society upside down, and establish a catholic ascendency by many degrees worse than protestant ascendency ever was; it would, in a word, let revolution loose in the island. protestant ireland would, as a matter of course, resist; a savage war of race and creed would certainly follow; the scenes of and might well be repeated; and the struggle would end in general bankruptcy. england, in her own interest, and in that of her friends in ireland, would assuredly intervene, under conditions like these; and the concession of home rule would probably lead to reconquest. the home rule bill of --apart from the fatal evils it must have caused--placed ireland in such an inferior position, that every irishman of spirit ought to have treated it with contempt; it was so dangerous to great britain, and, indeed, to the empire, that john bright declared that not twenty english members approved of it at heart. mr. gladstone himself, it should be remarked, regarded it with no doubtful misgivings; he presented it to the house of commons as 'but a choice of evils;' his measure itself, in many passages, revealed the profoundest distrust of the parliament he proposed to create. parnell, imposing his imperious will on his followers, accepted the bill with professions of delight; this was effusively welcomed by the emotional statesman, deceived by an unscrupulous plotter, over and over again; it is now known this was a mere pretence; home rule, under the conditions of the scheme, would have been made a stepping-stone only for larger demands; and this, indeed, might have been easily foreseen. the bill was rejected by a majority which did not express the true sense of the house of commons, and showed how strong may be the ties of party; the great body of the liberals, as, doubtless, they now bitterly regret, threw in their lot with mr. gladstone in his most reckless venture. it is of more importance to observe what the views on the subject were of the conspirators in america, who had set the land and national leagues on foot, and had supplied almost the whole of their funds; without their assistance the movement led by parnell would probably have never struggled into life. the prospect opened by the home rule bill was thus welcomed by the clan na gael, the most energetic and daring of the fenian parties; it will be noted that it was to be a means only to a very decisive end. 'the achievement of a national parliament gives us a footing on irish soil; it gives us the agencies and instrumentalities of a government _de facto_, at the very commencement of the irish struggle. it places the government of the land in the hands of our friends and brothers. it removes the castle's rings, and gives us what we may well express as the plant of an armed revolution.'[ ] and at a great fenian meeting held after the rejection of the bill, one of the leading speakers dropped these significant words: 'we have no desire to force the hand of parnell, or to drive the irish people into war unprepared. all that we demand is this, and we will be satisfied with nothing less--that no leader of the irish people, who is supposed to speak for them, shall commit himself, or them, to accepting as a final settlement, bills of relief unworthy of the dignity of ireland's national demand. we are perfectly willing to see them accept such bills as that of gladstone, as a settlement on account, but that must not be accepted as closing the transaction. we see no wisdom in it. it lowers the tone of the national cause. it lowers the spirit of the true people. to ask them to subside to a species of mere provincialism is an outrage on their struggle of seven hundred years for liberty. we admit that it may be good policy on the part of mr. parnell and mr. davitt to be what is called moderate in tone; but for us, who represent the national idea of the irish people, it would be worse than folly to conceal our sentiments. we recognise that ireland is incapable of fighting at present.'[ ] mr. gladstone dissolved parliament when it had thrown the bill out; he appears really to have believed that the nation would give its sanction to home rule. at the general election of , he exerted himself 'in the sacred cause of ireland,' with the energy he had shown in his midlothian campaign; he associated his new irish policy with appeals to the multitude; the opposition to him was that 'of the classes against the masses;' in a word, the enthusiastic, and perhaps sincere, convert played, with little scruple, the part of a mere demagogue. but england pronounced against him, with no uncertain voice; 'men of education and property,' as he sadly acknowledged, resisted him with the steadfastness of the english nature; a great majority was sent into the house of commons pledged against home rule; lord salisbury's government came again into office. it deserves special notice that the rejection of the bill did not, as was predicted would be the case, arouse anything like real discontent in ireland, or cause her catholic community to stir; this spectacle, which has been seen over and over again, proves how little the main body of the irish people care for a political revolution of the kind; and how home rule, as parnell and his band conceived it, was the work of a conspiracy of foreign origin, seeking, through it, to subvert british rule in ireland. the real purpose of these men was very clearly shown at a convention assembled at chicago, in the summer of ; speeches of the most incendiary nature were made; and two of parnell's envoys, despatched to collect funds 'for the cause,' announced that, after the failure of mr. gladstone's measure, their 'duty was to make the government of ireland by england impossible.' two or three years of trouble in ireland followed; it is unnecessary to refer to these at any length. a season of agricultural distress and of a fall in prices made the payment of irish rents difficult; the occasion was seized by the heads of the national league, which had gradually been acquiring formidable strength; the 'plan of campaign' was set afoot; and another attack was made on the irish landed gentry, with the ultimate object of paralysing the irish government, as had been solemnly proclaimed at chicago. the social disorder of this period was not so deeply marked with horrible deeds of blood, as the saturnalia of the land league were; but the movement was, perhaps, not less dangerous; the cruel practice of 'boycotting' was reduced to a system, and caused widespread misery and distress; an agrarian war was carried on in a few counties; judges, magistrates, and juries were terrorised in the administration of the law; and there were too numerous instances of atrocious crimes. but a firm hand was at the helm of the irish government; mr. balfour did not palter with sedition and treason; the conspiracy was before long put down; and it should be added that 'boycotting' and 'the plan of campaign' were unequivocally condemned at rome. in this struggle between the forces of disorder and law, the rump of the liberal party, which had accepted home rule, freely declared itself on the side of the national league and of anarchy. mr. gladstone, however, towered over his fellows; his vehement and, when aroused, unscrupulous nature, has never been more unfortunately displayed. he had been three times at the head of the state, charged with the administration of irish affairs; the government in office was engaged in a conflict with a conspiracy of no contemptible strength; yet mr. gladstone did not shrink from throwing his full weight into the scale against it, and giving his sanction to the movement led by parnell and his creatures. his conduct was so flagrantly at odds with his former self, that, but for the gravity of the situation, it would have been ludicrous; it consisted in adoring what he had burned, and burning what he had adored; nothing like it had been seen since fox, breaking away from the traditions of british statesmen, flung himself into the arms of jacobin france, and rejoiced at every reverse that befell england.[ ] a remarkable episode in the politics of the day was not without real effect on events that followed. the acts of the land and, in part, of the national leagues, and of the leaders of the revolutionary movements which had convulsed ireland, were investigated by the judges of the special commission appointed by parliament for the purpose; the inquiry, which lasted many months, was of supreme importance; such a damning sentence was never pronounced on a body of public men, as that pronounced on parnell and his followers, though the accusation of treason was not brought into question.[ ] this decision was sufficient for well-informed and sensible men; but parnell was acquitted on a personal, but minor, charge, that of having been the author of the well-known forged letters all but approving of the assassinations in the phoenix park; mr. gladstone and his adherents welcomed him as an injured martyr; the house of commons rang with their plaudits when he re-entered its walls. for a few months parnell became a popular personage in democratic england; he had negotiations with mr. gladstone with respect to home rule, the tenor of which has not transpired; his satellites appeared at many public meetings, and split the ears of the groundlings with plausible talk about 'self-government' for ireland and the 'union of hearts.' this mystification and falsehood were not without effect; the cause of home rule made a kind of progress in england; and, strange to say, the fall of parnell which ere long followed--i shall not dwell on its squalid and grotesque incidents--had an influence in the same direction. ireland had been brought into a state of comparative repose; the power of the national league appeared broken; the formidable leader of the conspiracy had left the stage; his adherents were scattered sheep, which had not a shepherd. with the ignorance of irish affairs so common to englishmen, and the desire, partly selfish, but partly generous, to 'get rid of the irish difficulty,' by any tolerable means, thousands in the constituencies, even in england, lately bitterly hostile to it, were gradually won over to the idea of home rule. the general election of followed; a number of causes, in addition to that i have set forth, contributed to favour the home rule movement. the 'swing of the pendulum,' seen in british politics, since democracy has gained the ascendant, very distinctly appeared; the 'idea that each side ought to have its innings' was widely spread; many unionist seats were lost by these means. the extraordinary energy shown by mr. gladstone, at an age far beyond the ordinary span, had considerable influence on the masses; and though his real authority had been long on the wane, he was still the popular figure in england and, above all, in scotland. he had, also, carefully kept his home rule scheme to himself; it was announced by his followers that his next measure for securing 'self-government,' as it was called, for ireland, would be free from the manifest faults of that of , and would finally, and happily, settle the question. a large part of the electorate was gained in this way; but the influence that most effectually assisted mr. gladstone was, essentially, of a very different kind. the anti-unionist liberals had been out of power for many years; though they had long been split into separate groups, they resolved to combine against the common enemy, and to drive the unionist government from its seat, by appeals to the ideas they assumed were dominant in democratic england and scotland. the newcastle programme was ostentatiously published; the question of home rule was mixed up with projects for disestablishing the church in england and wales, for the destruction or the emasculation of the house of lords, for enforcing temperance by the tyranny of the local veto, for extending the suffrage and raising the labourer's status; in this way they satisfied themselves they 'would sweep the country.' they knew, indeed, that mr. gladstone had no heart for much of their policy; but his passionate eagerness to accomplish home rule was notorious; they believed that by giving him a cordial support on this question, they would secure his powerful aid for the others, and that by the process known as 'log-rolling,' they would attain their objects. the unionist party was weakened at the election; but the sanguine hopes of its opponents were not fulfilled. many of the radical cries were far from popular; they nearly all combined large classes against them; england returned a large majority to the house of commons pledged against home rule, if not so considerable as six years before; and though scotland and wales were, in the main, favourable to mr. gladstone's policy, still the electorate of great britain, as a whole, pronounced against it. the election in ireland presented features which, with respect to home rule, were of marked significance. in , as in , the educated and upper classes were swamped at the polls, by the flood of illiterate and indigent multitudes; the irish catholic church used, nay, abused, its immense authority, to secure votes for mr. gladstone's coming measure. the same spectacle was beheld in ; but an element of confusion and disorder came in; the leaders of the factions, divided by the fall of parnell, though nationalists, ferociously flew at each other's throats; the election was marked by disgraceful scenes of lawlessness. these certainly prefigured what would be the character of a future irish parliament sitting in college green. this election gave mr. gladstone a majority of some forty seats in the house of commons, but a majority composed of not well-united elements; and the best opinion of england was strongly averse to his policy. but the veteran statesman--he was in his eighty-third year--did not pause for a moment in his headlong venture, though ominous sounds were being already heard; after the resignation of lord salisbury, through a weak adverse vote, his rival became prime minister for the fourth time. he had staked everything to obtain the success of the cause to which he had passionately devoted his declining years; he brought in his second home rule bill in the first months of . the measure had much in common with that of ; but in some respects it was very different, especially in one feature of supreme importance. an irish parliament was again to be set up in dublin; but it was to be a much smaller body than that proposed by the previous bill; it was to be composed of a legislative council of forty-eight members only, and of a legislative assembly of only a hundred and three; these were analogous to the first and second orders of , but were not to be even half in numbers; and no irish peers were to have a place in the new parliament. the legislative council and assembly, differing here from the original scheme, were to sit, not together, but apart; but the legislative council, like the first order, was to have a temporary suspensive veto on the assembly's acts; the assembly, too, like the second order, possessing a majority which would place real power in its hands; and both bodies, it should be added, being more democratic than the two which were to have been created in . the new irish parliament, like that to be formed seven years before, was restricted by limitations--these much the same as those contained in the former bill--in a number of imperial and domestic matters; it was, like its predecessor, to be subjected to the same kind of veto, and to nearly the same authority of the english privy council. in finance, the 'tribute,' which had been loudly condemned by all parties in ireland, was given up; there was to be no british official to lay his hands on irish revenue, and to divert it from its legitimate uses; but the irish customs were to be appropriated to the imperial charge, which ireland was declared to be justly liable to pay; and this was a sum of about two millions and a half, with an addition for a time of one million, a sum less than the estimate made in . the irish parliament, however, if thus made largely subordinate, was like the parliament of the preceding bill, to be in many, and most important, respects supreme. it was to rule ireland as a sovereign power, subject to the limitations by which it was to be bound; it could make, change, and repeal laws, as regards the irish community, almost as it pleased; it could, in a word, do nearly everything within the province of a real parliament. above all, it could appoint and control the irish executive government, to which the administration of irish affairs would belong; and it would thus have complete power over the most important machinery of the state. the bills of and of so far resembled each other, with some distinctions; but, in other respects, they markedly differed. the supremacy of the imperial parliament, implied but not expressed in the first scheme, was unequivocally asserted in the second, though this supremacy could not be effective, as respects ireland. the imperial parliament was nominally left untouched by both bills, though this was a play on words only; but it was to hold a position in the second it was not to hold in the first; the union was not in terms repealed by either measure, though virtually it was repealed by both, through the mere creation of an irish parliament. the bill of had, as its complement, a land purchase bill; in fact, both were made parts of the same policy; a sum of £ , , was to be an indemnity for irish landlords who should think fit to part with their estates; for mr. gladstone, we have seen, had declared that it was 'an obligation of duty and honour' to protect this order of men; and he asserted that parliament would, doubtless, vote any further sums required, a singular exhibition of credulous hope, for these would have amounted to £ , , at least; and he had himself, in a speech addressed to lord george hamilton, valued the lands of ireland at £ , , . but what was to be deemed sacred, in , had a very different aspect in ; the settlement of the irish land was, indeed, withheld for three years from the irish parliament, but, after this brief space of time, this was to be certainly left to a body, which mr. gladstone had evidently thought would make short work of the irish landed gentry, and would drive them, in beggary, out of their own country. these differences, however, between the two bills, sank into insignificance compared to a vital distinction which made them essentially unlike each other, and made their projects of home rule completely dissimilar. the exclusion of irish representatives from the house of commons at westminster, under the measure of , was palpably unjust, and had been condemned with much force of argument. mr. gladstone proposed to redress this wrong by summoning eighty irish members into the imperial house of commons; these were to have no cognisance of british questions, but were to have a right to vote on imperial and even irish questions, though the imperial parliament was to have little or no power in ireland, and an irish parliament was practically to fill its place, and to have all but supreme authority over irish affairs. this strange expedient obviously made the home rule schemes of and altogether different; but mr. gladstone never saw the essential distinction; he maintained that the inclusion of the irish members was little more than a detail of the measure. it would be perhaps unfair to insist that he introduced this immense change in order only to strengthen his already enfeebled party, which would be greatly in want of irish votes at westminster; more probably his intellect, yielding to old age, did not thoroughly grasp all that was involved in his project.[ ] the bill of , from a purely constitutional point of view, was infinitely more objectionable than that of . it not only, i have said, virtually repealed the union; it created a kind of federalism in these realms to which there has never been a parallel. the irish parliament was practically to rule ireland; no british members were to show their faces in it; it was to be all but the sovereign of the irish state. the british parliament was nominally to be sovereign of the british state; representatives from ireland were not to appear in it, and, in theory, they were not to deal with british questions. the imperial parliament was to be analogous to a supreme federal council; this ought to have jurisdiction over imperial affairs alone; but eighty irish members were to have seats in it, and they were to have a right to vote on imperial and irish questions, though ireland was to have a separate parliament of her own. this arrangement, in conception, was simply monstrous; it gave ireland powers to which she had no pretence to a claim; it really subjected great britain to her; it formed a federation in which a weak and small state was to have immense authority over another tenfold as strong; it might be described as one-sided federalism run mad. passing from the main principles to the details of the bill, this, like its predecessor, did not satisfy the conditions mr. gladstone had deemed to be essential. it did not separate british, irish, and imperial affairs; its author admitted at last that this was not possible. it asserted the supremacy of the imperial parliament, and gave it a more imposing position than it had under the bill of ; but it did not maintain the unity of the three kingdoms; the mere creation of an irish parliament placed this in jeopardy. it did not provide for the 'political equality' of great britain and ireland, for, in contradiction to the measure of seven years before, it practically gave ireland a kind of ascendency; her representatives were to possess rights in no sense to be justified. it did not provide an 'equitable distribution of imperial burdens;' in this province it would have done wrong to great britain; for, while it abandoned the odious irish tribute of , and an effective control over irish revenue, its expedient of allocating the irish customs, and nothing else, as the only source for the payment of imperial charges, would, in all probability, have caused the imperial treasury a great loss; the customs would have been enormously reduced by smuggling, to which irishmen have always been much addicted, which the irish parliament would have no interest to prevent, and which, very likely, it would directly encourage. again, it did not create 'safeguards for the minority;' as we have seen, it threw the irish landed gentry, after a brief respite, to the wolves, that is, to the tender mercies of the irish parliament; and, like the measure of , it took no heed of protestant and loyal catholic ireland, as a whole, though this assuredly was 'a minority' that required protection. finally, it could not have effected a 'permanent settlement' of the affairs of ireland; a 'lopsided' and iniquitous arrangement like this would certainly have had a very short existence. the measure of , in short, would have effected a complete revolution in the polity of these realms; it would have given the least important of the three kingdoms an iniquitous authority over the most important; it would unnaturally have placed weakness in superiority to power; it would have subjected the dominant to the lesser partner; all this, it will be observed, followed from the inclusion of irish representatives in the imperial parliament, who, though a parliament in dublin was to rule ireland, were to have a right to deal with imperial and irish questions. mr. gladstone, i repeat, seems never to have understood the strange and ruinous consequences this would involve; but this can be made manifest by one or two examples. the irish members would be excluded from the british parliament, and would have no right to vote on purely british questions, say upon the extension of the british railway system, or the disfranchisement of an english or scottish borough. but they would have eighty seats in the imperial parliament; and as it was impossible to separate a number of british questions from those of an imperial or irish character, they would have a most potent influence over british affairs; for example, they could legitimately vote upon such subjects as the confidence to be placed in a british ministry, the financial relations between great britain and ireland, or the validity of british incumbrances affecting irish estates. the exclusion, however, of irish members from the british parliament, and their introduction into the imperial parliament, would have led to even more disastrous results; it must, in many instances, have caused a complete paralysis of the state. this in-and-out plan, as it was derisively called, must have made parliamentary government well-nigh impossible; if irish members were to have a right to vote in the same house of commons on imperial and irish questions, but were not to have a right to vote on british questions, to vote, say, upon a war with a foreign power, and upon the domicile and status of irish subjects, but not to vote on matters of purely british commerce, there might, and very often would be, two conflicting majorities in the leading house of parliament; parliamentary affairs would be brought to a stand; the tenure of even the strongest ministry would be utterly insecure. it is needless to point out that the relations between great britain and ireland would almost certainly have been more strained, under the bill of , than they would have been under that of ; and that the government of ireland by the irish parliament, would, under both, have been much of the same character. the british nation would have been indignant at the humiliation of their ancient parliament, which would be sometimes placed at the mercy of irish members; it would have condemned the weakening in ireland of its authority, through the mere establishment of an irish parliament; it would have been sorely vexed that irish smuggling would filch away a large part of british revenue. it should be borne in mind, too, that the irish members, who would have been let into the imperial parliament, would have been more difficult to deal with, by many degrees, more openly disloyal, more obstructive, than irish nationalists could be, as affairs stand at present; they would have the support of the irish parliament; the imperial parliament could hardly impose a check on them. as for the rule of the irish parliament, within its proper domain, it would have been the same, or much the same, under either measure; that is, it would have been a succession of angry wranglings with england and oppression in ireland, leading to anarchy and general ruin. the home rule bill of , in a word, bad measure as it was, was innoxious compared to the home rule bill of . the fatal tendency of the scheme was quickly perceived; the sound mind of england was profoundly stirred; the bill was publicly burned in the city of london; innumerable petitions against it flowed in; an immense assembly, representing loyal catholic and protestant ireland, met in the capital, and denounced this whole policy in most determined language. as had happened, too, seven years before, the press of great britain, all but universally, condemned the new measure as hopelessly bad; it was significant that the liberal press was well-nigh silent, and that mr. gladstone was supported by very few petitions. the opposition simply tore the bill to shreds in the house of commons; but the self-deluded minister desperately held his course; the radical groups servilely gave him their votes; the process of 'log-rolling,' never before so recklessly displayed, kept his petty majority almost intact, a crying disgrace to any party in the state. at last, whether afraid of the country rising against him or yielding to the instigation of his irish allies--his subserviency to their truculence had been most painful--mr. gladstone forced the measure through the house of commons by a method never employed before; 'closure by compartments,' rightly compared to the 'guillotine,' put an end to resistance by iniquitous means. the bill passed the lower house by thirty-four votes only; not half of it had been examined or discussed; the part that had, had been so completely transformed, that its parent could hardly have known his own offspring. the most notable of these changes was that the in-and-out plan was given up; its ruinous effects had been fully dragged into the light, but an arrangement, perhaps even worse, had been placed in its stead. ireland was to retain her parliament in college green; but the eighty irish members were to have a right to sit in the imperial parliament, and to vote on all questions, not only imperial and irish, but strictly british alike. a philosophic and calm-minded writer has indicated what this would involve: 'irish members may disestablish the church of england, though england is to have no voice in the pettiest of irish affairs. irish members are to be allowed to impose taxes on england, say, to double the income tax, though of these taxes no inhabitant of ireland will pay a penny; the irish delegation, and this is the worst grievance of all, is to be enabled, in combination with a british minority, to detach wales from england, or to vote home rule for scotland, or to federalise still further the united kingdom by voting that man, jersey, and guernsey shall send members to the imperial parliament.'[ ] to say that this proposal would be unconstitutional would be to do it too much honour; it was scandalous in the existing situation of affairs; it implied that heads of the national league, leaders of a rebellious and socialistic movement, would have the power, without restriction or check, to rule the imperial parliament, in many instances, with reference to exclusively english and scottish questions; it practically bound great britain hand and foot in fetters to ireland; it was rightly called 'an absurd piece of infamy.' it is unnecessary to say that the system it would have established could not have stood a trial of even three months; england, whenever crossed, would have indignantly swept it away. but nemesis had commended the poisoned chalice to mr. gladstone's lips; the project, on which he had staked his fortunes, was that which he had incorrectly ascribed to butt, and had declared to be impossible and worse. the bill, it was notorious, could not have passed the house of commons had not its rejection by the house of lords been assured beforehand. it received its quietus, in that assembly, by a majority of about ten to one; the mind of england felt unquestionable relief; a great national peril had been averted. exactly as had happened in , scarcely a sound of discontent was heard in ireland; the demand for home rule, in fact, is largely a fictitious cry, with which the great body of irishmen has little or no sympathy; the evidence of this can be no longer doubtful. mr. gladstone retired, within a few months, from public life; one of his last acts was to shoot a parthian arrow at the house of lords, which, happily for these realms, had wrecked his policy; since that time he has disappeared from the scene; few eminent statesmen have been so soon forgotten. home rule was scattered to the winds at the general election of ; it has not been a prominent question at that of ; but if ireland has sent more than eighty of its supporters into the house of commons, the best elements in her community remain angrily hostile; and the opinion of great britain is distinctly adverse. for many reasons, however, as i have remarked, it is impossible to ignore the subject; in the strange chances and changes of british politics, and under our system of party government, a minister may again become an advocate of home rule, though certainly not in the present parliament. mr. gladstone's bills, it is likely, will not be heard of again; but home rule may be embodied in other forms; i may briefly refer to, and comment, on these. the project of restoring the parliament of - , an ideal of o'connell during many years of his life, will hardly be revived in these times; the conditions in great britain and ireland have so completely changed. the centripetal forces which, a hundred years ago, held the british and irish parliaments, in the main, together--they differed, however, on important questions--have long ago been all but completely destroyed; the present irish parliament could not be an assembly identified in race and faith with england; its house of commons could not be elected by a small body of protestants, and latterly by masses of catholic peasants, the serfs of their landlords. the centrifugal forces, on the other hand, those which would keep the two parliaments utterly apart, would probably be overwhelmingly strong; the irish house of commons would practically, at least for years, be ruled by the nominees of the national league and of the irish catholic priesthood; its electorate would, for the most part, be subject to these dominant powers; and protestant ireland would alike be swamped and incensed. nevertheless, the restoration of what has been called grattan's parliament, would, in my judgment, be a much better project than either of mr. gladstone's schemes of home rule. the irish parliament would be bound by known and fixed precedents, which it would be difficult wholly to disregard; an irish house of lords would exist as a check on the house of commons; above all--and this is of the very first importance--the irish executive would not be subject to the irish parliament; it would be appointed from westminster by british statesmen. a parliament of this type could hardly effect the ruinous mischiefs which mr. gladstone's irish parliaments could certainly effect. ireland, it has been urged, would obtain home rule, if she were assimilated to one of our self-governing colonies. these nations, as they may fitly be called, are by no means, as is commonly supposed, wholly independent of the crown and the imperial parliament; they have parliaments and executives of their own; but these in theory, and partly in fact, are subordinate. no act passed by the parliament of a self-governing colony can in any way contravene an imperial statute; the governor of a self-governing colony is a real governor; appeals run to the english privy council from colonial courts of justice. nevertheless, self-governing colonies are practically all but independent; they pay no contribution to imperial charges; they maintain their own garrisons, without a british army in their midst--at least, in a great many cases; they are hardly ever interfered with by the imperial parliament, or by the men in power at westminster. why, it may be argued, should not the same liberties belong to ireland, for centuries the peccant part of these kingdoms; would not the concession make her as loyal as most of our self-governing colonies? the answer is short, but amply sufficient; the circumstances of our self-governing colonies and of ireland are altogether different. in none of these settlements is there the profound estrangement which has long divided great britain from ireland; in none is there a community in which a loyal minority is separated from a disaffected majority by long-standing discords of race and faith; ireland is at our doors, our self-governing colonies distant. give ireland a parliament like that of victoria, and ireland would break off from the british connection; the irish parliament would possess ample power to trample on and oppress hundreds of thousands of law-abiding men, of whom the protection was england's duty; the irish parliament and executive, within a few leagues of our coasts, could, in innumerable ways, do infinite mischief. the supposed analogy, therefore, completely fails; it would be treason to the state, and to loyal irishmen, to make ireland a self-governing colony; and no british politician has as yet countenanced this mode of home rule. it has been hinted again, but with bated breath and humbleness, that the relations of great britain and ireland have been so long unfortunate, such a dreary record of disputes and miseries, that we should say to our intractable partner, 'depart in peace;' in a word, separation is a conceivable home rule policy. this proposal has never been discussed in parliament; the interest, the self-respect, the pride of englishmen almost forbid the thought. yet separation, strange as it may appear, would be a better and more safe expedient than either of mr. gladstone's schemes of home rule. the imperial parliament would have complete liberty to exercise its sovereign power in great britain; it would have a free hand to prevent injustice in ireland, either by the strong arm, or by fiscal and other expedients, say, by laying an embargo on irish products; it would not be subject to the exasperating but often effective checks which home rule would in any form involve; and the imperial executive would possess ample means to protect the interests of england and of her friends in ireland. let it not be forgotten that in perhaps the ablest speech ever made, in the house of commons, on this subject, peel declared that he would infinitely prefer separation to a repeal of the union, by no means so evil a policy as home rule. a few politicians, however, have put the theory forward that 'home rule all round' will meet the 'national demand' of ireland, and give her what they are pleased to call 'self-government.' england, scotland, ireland, and perhaps wales are to have local parliaments to deal with their own affairs; imperial affairs are to be directed by an imperial council. i am willing to admit that a scheme of this kind would be better than mr. gladstone's home rule bill of ; it would be less illogical, possibly not more disastrous. but i must be permitted to doubt whether these sages understand what their project certainly involves; this, indeed, seems to be rather in the nature of a device to angle for nationalist votes, without scruple, and then to propose a plan which england, scotland, ireland, and wales have never asked for, and which england and scotland, at least, would indignantly reject. this scheme is pure federalism, in the proper sense of the word; let us briefly consider what this means from the very nature of the case. england, scotland, ireland, and, i assume, wales would form separate states; they would have separate legislatures and executives to manage their local affairs, separate local forces, separate courts of justice; they would be, essentially, separate countries. the imperial parliament and its executive would be the only link between them; there would be an imperial army, and navy, and imperial tribunals; but the imperial parliament and its executive would only have jurisdiction over imperial affairs, and would be only the head of the separate states as respects foreign powers. but as it would be difficult in the extreme, under these conditions, to distinguish local from imperial affairs, an arbiter of some kind, armed with sufficient powers, would be necessary to say what affairs were local and what imperial, and decisively to pronounce on the subject, on the innumerable occasions when the question would arise; and it would be necessary, too, that there should be some means, perhaps a referendum to a popular vote, to effect any constitutional change, to reform or to abolish the constitution itself. this scheme obviously would be complex, intricate, and difficult to carry into effect; it would be a huge system of divided, and probably conflicting, powers, not easy to reconcile with each other; for this, and other reasons, it would require a formal constitution reduced to writing, and setting forth, under distinct heads or articles, the conditions of the federation that had been established, the spheres of the authority of the separate states, and the sphere of the authority of the imperial council. is it possible to suppose that the parliament of the united kingdom would ever break up this ancient and undivided monarchy; would tamely surrender its sovereign rights, and would substitute a new-fangled fabric of this kind for the venerable and unwritten constitution of these realms--a majestic temple that has grown up in silence; and that the british people, at all events, would not rise up in wrath at the very thought of such a change? for federalism 'amounts to a proposal for changing the whole constitution of the united kingdom. it is, in fact, the most "revolutionary" proposal, if the word "revolutionary" be used in its strict sense, which has ever been submitted to an english parliament. the abolition of the house of lords, the disestablishment of the church, the abolition of the monarchy, might leave the english constitution far less essentially changed than would the adoption of federalism.'[ ] it should be observed, too, with respect to this subject, that the conditions, under which federalism would have a chance of success, would be absolutely wanting in the present instance. england, scotland, ireland, and wales have long been moulded into a single sovereign state, and united under a supreme monarchy; no federation, i venture to assert, has been formed out of communities that have had a government of this kind. federations, in fact, have almost always grown out of an association of existing states, which desire to remain separate, and yet to be a nation for some purposes; they have not been evolved out of the fragments of one state artificially rent asunder. again, federalism requires that no single state should be enormously more powerful than the other partners; there must be something like equality between the different states;[ ] it is unnecessary to remark that england has tenfold the resources and strength of scotland, ireland, and wales; and, in truth, would annihilate the federation were her will really crossed, and break through the arbitrary limitations imposed on her. suppose, for example, that england had set her heart on a great foreign war, and had the support of her own parliament; does any one suppose that, if she were outvoted, by deputies from scotland, ireland, and wales, in the imperial council, even though backed by their own parliaments, the people of england would submit to be thwarted in this way; was samson bound by the withs of the philistines? something like this, indeed, was seen in the great civil war; the result was the subjugation of scotland, ireland, and wales, and the complete ascendency of england, under cromwell; an attempt to federalise the three kingdoms might lead to a similar issue. let us assume, however, that, through some evil stroke of destiny, federalism were made the constitution of these realms, and that this strange arrangement could be made to work even for a few years; the inevitable consequences, from the nature of the case, would follow. the omnipotence of the imperial parliament, the mainstay of the empire, would be gone; so would the omnipotence of the imperial executive government, the best security for justice and for equal liberties. their powers would be parcelled out and subdivided; they would not survive anywhere in their complete fulness; they would be distributed in fractions between separate states, and would be transformed and impaired in the process; real imperial unity and sovereignty could have no existence. general national weakness would be the probable result, leading, perhaps, to despotism within a short time; for federalism is essentially weak; i have no sympathy with jacobin france, but the committee of public safety rightly put federalism down, when they were engaged in their death-struggle with europe; and napoleon--perhaps the ablest ruler of the nineteenth century--approved of their conduct. but weakness would not be the only consequence; the dissemination of different powers would certainly produce disputes and conflicts between the federal and the state authorities; above all, the very existence of separate states and of a federal government would divide allegiance, and powerfully tend to disruption, as was seen in the great civil war in america. as regards ireland, the establishment of 'home rule all round' would necessarily be attended by all the evils inseparable from mr. gladstone's schemes; but federalism, having been thus made manifest, would probably increase, and in some sense justify, the alienation of ireland from the other parts of these kingdoms. home rule, therefore, whatever the form it may assume, would be, it is my firm conviction, incompatible with the welfare of the three kingdoms, injurious to great britain, a curse to ireland. in the peculiar circumstances which exist in ireland, and to which i have adverted before, separation, i believe, would be an expedient less disastrous than home rule of any description, this involving the creation of an irish parliament, and of an irish executive, which would be its instrument. home rule, in fact, gloss it over as you please, has been forced to the front by an irish faction, hostile to a man to the existence of british rule in ireland, and depending on fenianism in the united states; this party would be all-powerful in an irish parliament; and home rule would be made the means to a ruinous and disgraceful end. thousands of irishmen, indeed, honestly think home rule would do their country good, and have little or nothing to do with this bad conspiracy; this too, doubtless, is the case with the followers of mr. gladstone; but home rule is an irish nationalist movement, and irish nationalist movements are dangerous to the safety of the state. the union, therefore, must be maintained in the interest of great britain and ireland alike; and the union is an international settlement that has endured for a century. but no candid student of irish history, no impartial observer of irish affairs, from to the present time, can deny that the union has been in many respects a failure. it has been an incident, perhaps a result, of the union, that presbyterian ireland, rebellious from to , has, we have seen, become attached to the british connection, and is now devotedly attached to england. the power of the imperial parliament and of its executive have kept lawlessness and disorder down in ireland, and has restrained the evil passions of irish factions more than was ever the case under the rule of the irish parliament. the imperial parliament, too, has accomplished reforms in ireland, if often unwise, in the main beneficent; and, under the imperial executive, justice in ireland has been administered, for many years, in a very different way from that which was seen a century ago; its tribunals are perfectly free and impartial. but the union was, in itself, a bad half measure, tainted with iniquity and false promises; it did gross wrong to catholic ireland; the evil consequences are felt to this hour. the union has not fulfilled the sanguine hopes of pitt; ireland, as i have pointed out, is far more behind great britain in wealth than she was sixty years ago; she is perhaps the poorest country in europe at the door of the richest. the union, too, has not reconciled the feuds of religion and race in ireland; they are as marked as they were a century ago, if not attended with such deeds of violence; above all, the union has not made the chief part of the irish community attached to england, as pitt confidently predicted would certainly happen. nor can it be denied that the irish reforms of the imperial parliament have too often been ill-designed and faulty, especially, as we shall see, as regards the land; and they have unfortunately, in many instances, been concessions to agitation and dangerous social movements, and have been effected too late to do real good. the administration of ireland reveals the same defects; it has been marked by good intentions, which, sometimes, have proved gross mistakes; and notably it has, over and over again, been shifty, vacillating, without principle, and showing a curious disregard of sound irish opinion. unquestionably, too, ireland has, on many occasions, to the indignation of true-hearted irishmen, been made the mere plaything of british faction, with the worst results to her best interests; this has been perhaps the most pernicious incident that has followed the union; and in the immense revolution which has transformed ireland, within the last hundred years, the effects that may be traced to the union have by no means been wholly on the side of good. these evil consequences cannot be really questioned; it is very advisable to consider their causes, and if possible to see how they can be removed or lessened. they are partly to be ascribed to the fact that great britain and ireland are countries differing from each other in most important respects, and standing, so to speak, on different planes of existence; this alone makes british rule in ireland difficult, and perplexes and embarrasses british statesmen. they are partly due to defects in the english national character, essentially just in intention, and even generous, but with no sympathy with races of a character unlike its own, self-asserting, obstinate, sometimes rude and offensive; this has had marked and evil effects in the affairs of ireland. they are largely to be attributed to the nature of irish administration, seldom consistent, and changing with party changes: british statesmen appear at the castle; rule for a few years; and then depart and give place to successors, who probably carry out a very different policy. they are largely due to the nature of the representation of ireland, notably of late years; the nationalist party--and the same remark applies, in some degree, to the 'tail' of o'connell--have shown such an aversion to england, have used such seditious and even criminal language, have been so extravagant and wild in their demands, and have been such a dangerous element in the house of commons, that englishmen and scotchmen turn away from irish questions with disgust, and ireland unfortunately has often been the sufferer. but the most important of these causes, one which may be traced throughout irish history, and has been scarcely less evident since the union, has been the strange but signal ignorance of irish affairs--of all, in a word, that relates to ireland--which has been but too characteristic of the british people, and, in a lesser degree, of many british statesmen. this capital fault aroused the _sæva indignatio_, of swift; it was exposed by grattan, o'connell, even by lord clare; it was condemned in severe but thoughtful language by burke; it has been conspicuous during the events of the last twenty years.[ ] the resulting mischiefs have been numerous and grave in the extreme; can nothing be done to mitigate these and to make them less, consistently with maintaining the union in its full completeness? i, for one, have long thought that much could be effected were the imperial parliament occasionally to hold its sessions in dublin, and to govern ireland directly, so to speak, on the spot. this very measure was proposed by many distinguished irishmen, during the agitation for repeal in - ; it was made the subject of an eloquent eulogy by sheil at o'connell's trial; it was seriously entertained by the whig opposition of the day, as we know from a remarkable letter of lord waveney. this policy unfortunately passed out of sight; but even now, i believe, it would do the greatest good in ireland. it would be something that the proposed change would cause the wealth of england and scotland largely to flow into a poor country; that irish absenteeism would be diminished; that ireland would become, more than she is now, an attractive place of resort to the traveller. but it would be far more that the presence of the imperial parliament in college green would necessarily largely remove the ignorance of irish affairs i have just referred to; it would make english and scotch members familiar with the requirements, the feelings, the wishes of irishmen; as has happily been said, it would render our irish legislation and administration 'racy of the irish soil.' and probably more than any other expedient, it would exorcise the weak phantom of home rule by bringing irishmen in contact with the majesty of the sovereign assembly of the british empire. i shall not comment on the petty inconveniences the scheme might cause; really they are not worthy of serious attention. the occasional presence of royalty, too, in ireland, as was made manifest during the late queen's visit, unquestionably would have beneficent results. it would gratify a sentiment of celtic nature, always attached to persons rather than to institutions and laws, and especially attached to rulers and chiefs, which, in ireland, has been scarcely gratified before; it would spread far and wide a happy and good influence; it would certainly improve the social life of ireland, and add something to her scanty material wealth. the maintenance of the union, however, is the first requirement of a sound irish and imperial policy; one means of strengthening that fundamental law of these realms, consistently with strict constitutional justice, nay, if constitutional wrong is not to continue, has long been apparent to impartial minds. the over-representation of ireland, in the house of commons, is a flagrant anomaly, acknowledged for years; as i have remarked, it was largely expected that this important subject would have been taken up before this by lord salisbury's government, and have been settled in the parliament of - . taking the test of population alone, ireland has, compared to england, wales, and scotland, an excess of twenty-three members; taking the test of population and property combined, she has an excess probably of from thirty to forty. i am willing to allow that, in this matter, we ought not to follow arithmetic only; ireland, a poor country, far away from westminster, may have a claim to a representation somewhat more numerous than mere figures would give her. but can anything be more unjust, nay, absurd, than that ireland should have one hundred and three members, and that the world of london, with a population about the same as that of ireland, and probably possessing tenfold wealth, should have little more than half that number? this excessive representation must be reduced, and irish nationalists cannot here appeal to the union; the union did not save the established church of ireland, secured by the treaty in emphatic terms; and the union must not be wrested to work gross injustice. the anomaly can be only removed by a large scheme for the redistribution of seats, founded on sound constitutional principles; and should this become law, as i confidently hope will be one of the achievements of the existing parliament, the union will acquire a new security, for the nationalist vote in the house of commons would be greatly reduced, and the irish unionist vote would be greatly increased. a very few figures will prove this: the rural populations of the unionist counties of antrim and down are upwards of four hundred and thirty thousand souls; the rural populations of the home rule counties of kildare, kilkenny, king's, longford, wicklow, and louth have a population less than three hundred and ninety-eight thousand;[ ] yet antrim and down have only eight members, the other six counties have no less than twelve. the same disparity runs through all the irish counties; in the boroughs of ireland it is even more visible. protestant and unionist ireland, in a word, has probably fifteen or sixteen members too few; catholic and anti-unionist ireland fifteen or sixteen too many; it is high time this plain wrong should be redressed; it is unnecessary to point out how this would strengthen the union. and what probably is not less important, it would make the representation of ireland, not, what it is now, an utterly false index of irish opinion, but a reasonably fair and trustworthy index; were the irish representation cut down to eighty members, the nationalists would probably command not more than fifty seats; the unionists would command about thirty; and this, taking all things into account, would be a proportion approaching what is just. the 'doing' of right, in this matter, has been too long deferred; loyal ireland feels strongly upon the subject; the reform would be altogether in the interest of the state. chapter iii the question of the irish land--sketch of the history of the land system of ireland to the year great importance in the history of ireland of the conditions of land tenure--the ancient celtic land system and its characteristics--the norman conquest of ireland--norman feudalism in the irish land--the policy of henry vii., and especially of henry viii.--the era of the conquest and confiscation of the irish land--the possessions of the o'connors of offaly wrested from them--forfeiture of the domains of shane o'neill, and of the earl of desmond--attempts at colonisation--all ireland made shire land--the extinction of the old celtic land system--the plantation of ulster--progress of confiscation during the reigns of the two first stuarts--the civil war--immense confiscations made by cromwell--his scheme of colonisation a failure--the era of confiscation closes after the battle of the boyne and the fall of limerick--the penal code of ireland--its fatal effects on the irish land--dismal period in irish landed relations--gradual improvement--the period described by arthur young--evil traces of the past remain--whiteboyism and agrarian disorder--state of irish landed relations up to the rebellion of , and after the union--over-population and the results--distress after the peace--state of irish landed relations up to --the report of the devon commission--the famine and its effects on the irish land--the encumbered estates acts--state of irish landed relations from to . the fortunes of many communities, it has truly been said, have been decisively affected by the conditions of the ownership and the occupation of the soil. the social, even the political, life of modern europe has been, in a great measure, moulded by the land tenures that have grown out of the feudal system; i need only refer to the history of england, of france, and of germany. this remark, however, especially applies to the events that make up the annals of ireland; that long and unhappy tale of misfortunes and errors is intimately associated, all through, with the land, and with the relations connected with it. modern research has shown how grotesque and mischievous was the ignorance of the tudor lawyers and statesmen, who described the ancient organisation of the irish land as a medley of barbarian and pernicious usages; it was an archaic and imperfect specimen of the feudal system, with differences indeed, but marked with its essential features. norman feudalism, lawless and ill-ordered, was for centuries, after the first conquest, placed beside this primitive form of society, in parts of a country not half subdued; the results were seen in incessant strife and discord, and in social anarchy, which prevented civilisation growing up. the irishry had well-nigh driven the englishry into the sea, when henry vii. tried to make his authority felt in ireland; his successor, partly a celt in blood, and a real statesman, devised a noble scheme for bringing an ill-governed dependency within the domain of order and law, by planting an anglo-norman and native aristocracy in the soil, subject to a strong monarchy that would have protected the community as a whole. most unfortunately the policy of henry viii. was not carried out; in the great conflict of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, ireland was drawn into a long struggle with england, and was repeatedly made a place of arms for her foes; an era of savage conquest, accomplished piecemeal, with ruthless confiscation following in its train, was protracted during nearly a century and a half; and at the close of the reign of william iii., nine-tenths probably of the land of ireland had been wrested from its former possessors, and the old celtic land system had been destroyed by the sword and by law. race and religion made this position of affairs much worse; the age of protestant ascendency in ireland began; in infinitely the greatest part of the island the land was parcelled out among a caste of owners distinct in blood and faith from the children of the soil, and lording it over an oppressed peasantry; and the system was propped up by a code of cruel laws, which maintained and, so to speak, stereotyped these evil divisions. the lines of the land system of ireland were thus finally laid down; a variety of economic and social causes increased and deepened their extreme harshness; and though they have gradually been softened, and are now all but effaced, their traces and the results are still to be seen. the last thirty years have witnessed repeated attempts to effect radical changes in the modes of the ownership and the occupation of the land in ireland; they have wrought a revolution in irish landed relations, and have well-nigh turned them upside down; but the consequences have assuredly not been fortunate. the land system of ireland has been made a chaos of economic disorder, of dissensions of class, of legalised wrong, absolutely incompatible with social progress and the general welfare. i must glance, for an instant, at the distinctive features of the land system of ireland in the celtic age, for despite the effects of confiscation and conquest, faint traces of it may still be seen, and have a kind of influence.[ ] as was the case in all communities of the aryan stem, the land originally was largely held in collective ownership; but agriculture developed individual ownership by degrees, though less so in ireland than in more progressive countries. the people were settled on the soil in tribes, clans, and septs, these being the larger and the smaller units; the modes of the tenure of the land, misinterpreted by elizabethan sages, differed widely from each other, but revealed the traditions of old patriarchal usage and power, especially in their canons of descent and succession. the feudalisation of the land, as it has been significantly called, a process which took place in nearly the whole of europe, was also witnessed in ireland, to a certain extent; but this was not so complete and strongly marked as in france and england. the land, nevertheless, was, throughout the island, held ultimately from a supreme monarch; it was divided, under him, among families of princely chiefs, who ruled vast tracts with scarcely controlled authority; inferior chiefs were subject to these; the organisation of the land had much in common with the organisation of the anglo-norman manor, and with the position of the lord paramount of every manor, the head of the english state. the irish kings and chiefs had lands in demesne; they had a landed and a personal _noblesse_; the territories they ruled were held by classes strongly resembling the free tenants, the villeins, and the serfs of the feudal system. all this, however, was not as perfectly defined as it was in lands feudalised to a higher degree; and though the davieses and spensers were wholly in error in representing the dependents of the irish kings and chiefs as little better than a horde of fighting men and slaves, ireland never fully possessed the liberties feudalism secured. the ceile of substance, who had lands of his own, seems to have been in an inferior position to the english freeholder; the saer stock and daer stock tenants held their lands by a tenure like that of the metayers of france; the fuidhirs were kept in complete subjection, and had not even the rights of the villein. the land, too, was still largely held in collective ownership; in its occupation this is even now seen in backward and poor districts; and, curiously enough, distinctions were drawn between what was a 'fair' and a 'rack rent,' words still common in the mouth of the irish peasant, and to which recent legislation has given its sanction. as in the case of most lands where anything resembling feudalism prevailed, with the single exception of england, under her strong monarchy, ireland in these circumstances was torn by continual discord, increased by the recurring struggles with the dane. the celtic kings and chiefs, nevertheless, were beloved by their people; the land system fell in with celtic tribal ideas and sentiments. i pass over the incidents of the first norman conquest; in the course of time, an anglo-norman colony was established, within a pale ever-varying in extent, and held parts of the country under feudal conditions, the remaining, and by far the greatest, parts being left in the possession of the celtic kings and princes. anglo-norman feudalism, however, was completely different, in ireland, from what it was in england; it was not subject to vigorous kingly rule; it was confined within comparatively small limits. in these circumstances the pale fell into the hands of a few leading and great families; these, as had been largely the case in scotland, formed a domineering and oppressive _noblesse_, continually engaged in quarrels between themselves, and in petty wars with the celtic chiefs, and completely superior to the royal power in england. the geraldines, the butlers, the de burghs, and other great houses, had no law but their own wills in their vast lordships; their exactions and tyranny became a byword; their lives were spent in savage feudal strife, and in 'hostings against the irish enemy.' strange to say, too, these scions of a mighty conquering race fell under the spell of the celtic genius, and, as it was said, 'became more irish than the irish themselves; they were at least largely assimilated to a celtic model, and they adopted many of the usages of the celt. it was not much otherwise in the celtic region outside the pale; the irish chiefs often blended in marriage with the anglo-norman settlers; but they were continually at war with them, and with each other. under these conditions, feudalism, in its best aspects, could take no root, in the land, in ireland; and there is much reason to believe that the archaic irish land system was gradually changed and almost broken up, the power of the kings and chiefs being greatly increased, and the position of their dependents being made essentially worse. it is obvious that in a land, a scene of such disorder and misrule, civilisation and all that the word implies could not exist; ireland was probably more barbarous at the close of the fifteenth century than she had been when she first saw henry of anjou. the pale had been restricted within ever-narrowing bounds; generations of colonising 'englishry' had entered the country, and had left it in angry despair; the 'irishry' had encroached on their conqueror's domain; the work of strongbow and fitzstephen appeared to be undone. especially it was observed that nothing like a middle class, even then the best element in the social life of england, had been able to develop itself in ireland, and that the humbler classes were always in a state of wretchedness, ground down by exaction, and exposed to incessant wrongs of all kinds. 'what common folk of all the world'--these were the words of a state paper of the age--'is so poor, so feeble, so evil be seen in town and field, so greatly oppressed and trodden underfoot, fares so evil, with so great misery, and with so wretched a life, as the common folk of ireland?' henry vii. strengthened the authority of the crown in ireland; the viceroyalty of poynings marks an epoch in her chequered annals; but the conduct of the king was shifting and weak; the land fell under the control of the great house of kildare; the irishry were driven back, but in no sense subdued. surrey, the victor of flodden, intreated henry viii. to make the country his own by sheer force of arms; but his master refused in striking language; and proposed a scheme for bringing ireland under the control of the monarchy, for encouraging civilisation and promoting order, the wisest that has ever suggested itself to a british statesman. he made several of 'the degenerate' norman _noblesse_ peers; he extended the same dignity to several irish chiefs; he assembled representatives of ireland in a parliament composed of both races; he appointed commissioners to go through the country and to punish crime; above all--and this deserves special notice--he tried to conciliate the celtic community by bringing their usages within the cognisance of the law, and giving them effectual legal sanction; and he condemned the attempts being already made to force laws on them peculiar to england. had this enlightened policy been steadily pursued, the history of ireland would have run a wholly different course; but destiny, that has played so sinister a part in irish affairs, interfered to thwart the admirable designs of the king. the great geraldine rebellion broke out, supported by irregular celtic risings; from this time forward, during five generations of man, the era of cruel but intermittent conquest, accompanied by wholesale confiscation, set in. the powerful tribe of the o'connors of offaly, closely associated with the fallen house of kildare, was the first to feel the weight of the arm of england; its territories were forcibly overrun and annexed, given the name of the king's and the queen's counties, and peopled with a colony of settlers from england. celtic ireland ere long was brought into the conflict between elizabeth and philip ii., the representatives of the faiths that were dividing christendom; the princely chief, shane o'neill, fell a victim to the english conquerors, though their quarrel with him was not wholly one of seeking the assistance of a foreign enemy; his vast domains were, also, in part forfeited, in part handed over to a puppet of english power. the frightful desmond rebellion followed; it was directly encouraged by the pope and by spain; after a protracted struggle approaching a real civil war, the immense lordships of the great geraldine house were confiscated, and granted to a colony of english blood. tyrone, the real successor of his kinsman, shane o'neill, a soldier and statesman of no ordinary parts, seeing, as he bitterly said, that his 'lands were marked down by the spoiler,' endeavoured, not without partial success, to combine a great irish league against england; he entered into an alliance with spain; a spanish army landed on the southern coast of munster; after a long and sanguinary contest, tyrone yielded, but his resistance had been so formidable that he was allowed to retain his possessions. the subjugation of a large part of ireland, in the elizabethan wars, was marked by incidents of a most atrocious character. the government had no regular army to act in the field; it was compelled largely to rely on armed levies of the englishry, and on bodies of the irishry attached to the conqueror's standards; for in this, as in nearly all instances throughout their history, the irish celts were at feud with each other; celtic ireland was a house divided against itself. the queen, it has been written, 'ruled over blood and ashes,' when mountjoy sheathed his victorious sword; the memory of this period still lives in irish tradition. a season of exhaustion and repose ensued after james i. had ascended the throne; but the time, in the phrase of tacitus, had an evil aspect in peace itself. the pale had long before this been effaced; conquest and confiscation had spread over nearly the whole island; the domination of england was felt almost everywhere. as the result, the whole of ireland was made shire land; the old celtic land system, which still widely prevailed, was swept away by decisions of the anglican courts of justice; it was declared to be 'a lewd and not law-worthy thing;' all the irish land was subjected to english modes of tenure; they were imposed on a people which detested these gifts of the stranger; innumerable tribal rights were destroyed. ere long the work of confiscation began again; the domains of tyrone and of his kinsman o'donnell were pronounced forfeited for reasons that have never been ascertained; the crown was placed in possession of nearly six counties of ulster. up to this time the settlements of english colonists, which had been made in ireland by tudor conquest, had failed; the colonists had been almost lost in the midst of the irishry, who hemmed them around. this immense confiscation was, however, in part successful; it was carried out on comparatively enlightened principles; it has produced the famous plantation of ulster; and this, with other settlements in the counties of antrim and down, has established, in a large part of the northern province of ireland, a hardy and thriving community, in the main, of scottish blood. confiscation, nevertheless, did not stop here; 'the ravages of war,' in burke's language, were 'carried on amidst seeming peace;' enormous tracts were torn from their former owners on pretexts usually of the flimsiest kind, and were flung to court favourites, to jobbing speculators, to greedy adventurers of the baser sort. by this time three-fourths probably of the soil of ireland had passed into the hands of a new race of possessors; the descendants of anglo-norman nobles and of the celtic princes had been sufferers well-nigh in the same proportion. at last strafford marked out the whole province of connaught, for what has been called 'his majestic rapine;' this and other innumerable acts of spoliation and wrong unquestionably were the paramount cause of the great celtic rising of . another and soon to be a most potent element of evils and troubles had already begun to make its sinister presence felt in ireland. in the great religious schism of the sixteenth century, england had become protestant, ireland had remained catholic, and each had taken opposite sides in the conflict that followed; though the elizabethan wars were rather struggles of race than of faith. but as conquest and confiscation progressed in ireland, the anglican church, a scion of the norman church of the pale, was erected on the ruins of its celtic catholic rival; the land more and more became possessed by settlers alien in creed from the old owners, and from the vanquished children of the soil; and harsh laws had begun to deepen the distinctions between them. nevertheless, though its signs had in some measure appeared, the era of protestant ascendency and catholic subjection had not been developed in ireland, as yet, in its worst aspects. the wild celtic rising of was followed by a rising of the old englishry of the pale--the descendants of the first anglo-norman settlers; both movements were probably encouraged from france; though widely different, they ran into each other. the great civil war was now running its course in england; ireland, for the most part, took the side of the king; the majority of englishmen were certainly on the side of the parliament. i cannot retrace the scenes of the contest in ireland; after a fierce and protracted struggle, in which an envoy of the pope became the representative of an ill-united irish league; in which preston and ormond led the forces of the pale, and owen roe o'neill was at the head of the irish celts,--the whole island was subjugated by the sword of cromwell, as it never had been subjugated before. drogheda and wexford are names of woe in the annals of ireland; but the conquest of the protector, ruthless as it was, was not so cruel as that of the elizabethan soldiers; if deeply stained with blood, it was rapid and completely decisive. the colony in ulster had begun to flourish; cromwell designed a scheme for the colonisation of the vanquished country more thorough and extensive than any which had been designed before. three-fourths of ireland had been in arms against the parliament; that assembly had made grants by anticipation of irish forfeited lands to 'adventurers' who had advanced it moneys; an opportunity for immense confiscations had arisen; the protector was not slow to take advantage of it; his puritan fanaticism, his hatred of the irish people, especially of its 'idolatrous papists,' his strong english and religious sympathies, united to confirm him in his purpose. the forfeited lands in four of the irish counties were appropriated to the commonwealth and its uses; those in eighteen were to be granted to the 'adventurers' and the soldiery of the late conquest; those in seven were to be allotted to the army in england. the grants were to be either free, or to be purchased at nominal prices; the owners, who had lost their lands, were to be deported to connaught--'hell' was the alternative, the tradition runs--and 'courts of claims,' as they were called, were to be set up, to adjudicate on the conduct of those who were to be dispossessed--they were to be subjected to a test which scarcely one could satisfy--and practically to measure confiscation out under the pretence of law. by these means cromwell calculated that some forty thousand colonists, of english blood and of the puritan faith, would be poured into the millions of acres which the sword had placed in the hands of his government; these would form a prosperous settlement loyal to england; would keep rebellion in ireland for ever down; and would regenerate a land taken from a race akin to the amalekites of old. as a foretaste of the new and glorious order of things, sir william petty, a very able man, remarkably skilful in feathering his own nest, made a cadastral survey of ireland, which still remains. cromwell's scheme of confiscation was thoroughly carried out, spite of much angry wrangling between the puritan warriors. the remains of the defeated irish armies went, in thousands, into exile in foreign lands; they were the heralds of the renowned soldiery who, for a century and a half, were deadly, but honourable foes of the british name. the rule of the protector in ireland was stern but enforced peace; ireland was prostrate in the exhaustion of despair; there is much proof that, under the cromwellian settlement, the country made a kind of material progress. but cromwell's great scheme of colonisation failed, as such schemes had failed in many instances before; a large majority of the 'adventurers' and the soldiers sold their possessions, usually for a mere nothing: many 'degenerated' like the old norman families, and, won over by the spells 'of the daughters of heth,' had, in one or two generations, become 'mere irish.' the ultimate result of the cromwellian conquest was to establish in ireland three or four thousand owners of the soil, of english blood and puritan leanings, without the support of inferior dependents, in the midst of a vanquished population hostile in race and faith; the sentiments thus engendered have never died out; to this day 'a cromwellian landlord' is a name of reproach in catholic ireland. at the restoration hope for a moment revived in the hearts of the ruined owners, who had been dispossessed by cromwell, and of whom hundreds had fought for the crown; but this was dashed by the perfidy of charles ii. and his courtiers; the cromwellian forfeitures were, in the main, confirmed; large tracts were given back to favourites of the stuarts, but thousands of beggared families lost their estates for ever through a policy of cruel baseness and wrong. ireland remained quiescent for nearly thirty years; she even prospered under the wise rule of ormond--one of the noblest figures in her unhappy history; but the bitter memories of the past lived in the conquered people, though, as has repeatedly been seen in a celtic race, they were treasured in silence, and caused little apparent trouble. james ii. ascended the throne in ; he had a great opportunity to mitigate many of the wrongs of ireland; he might have removed some of the evils of the cromwellian conquest, and have effected changes in the settlement of the land, which, at least, would have done partial justice. but the unfortunate king was a bigot, and, in no sense, a statesman; like his father he tried the desperate policy of making use of ireland in his designs against english liberties; he sent tyrconnell to dublin, and, in a few months, revolution had broken out through the country; english and protestant ireland was well-nigh trampled underfoot; catholic and celtic ireland rose up in a wild hope of revenge. i cannot even glance at the stirring events that followed; the descendants of ruined barons of the pale and of celtic princes driven from their lands and their homes, joined in a great effort to raise a large armed force; the rising almost assumed a national aspect; but after the boyne and the fall of limerick, it was finally quelled by william iii. the process of confiscation was once more renewed; thousands of acres were taken forcibly from those who had resisted in the field, and were handed over to a new race of colonists belonging to the blood and the creed of the victors; and the shameful violation of a solemn treaty made all that was cruel in spoliation worse. the era of conquest in ireland and of confiscation by force--an agony prolonged for a century and a half--was brought to an end in the reign of william iii. this is not the place to examine the question on which side, as between england and ireland, the balance of the wrongs that were done inclines; but if much that is cruel and shameful is to be laid to the charge of england, ireland, it cannot be forgotten, crossed her path repeatedly in an age of grave national perils and troubles, and, moreover, wrecked her own cause by her wretched dissensions. the irish land had now nearly all fallen into the hands of a caste of owners, of english and scottish descent, and in faith protestant, divided from a people of catholic occupiers for the most part of the irish race; wide lines of demarcation had been drawn between them; and there was no middle class to bridge over the gulf. in a part of ulster alone where the proprietors and the holders of the soil were largely of the same religion and blood, was there the promise of a more auspicious order of things; even here causes of disunion were not wanting. nor were these the only vices and dangers of a land system which has scarcely had a parallel. enormous tracts had been bestowed on owners who never saw their estates; absenteeism existed to an immense extent; their lands, too, had, in thousands of instances, been underlet to a class of intermediate owners, who were to form a body of most oppressive landlords. in addition, the representatives of numbers of ruined families still vegetated on the domains which had been their own; the few families which had escaped from the spoilers, were held in reverence by the peasantry around; elements of disorder and trouble continued to fester. the destruction, too, of the old celtic modes of land tenure, and the substitution of the english system, had unjustly annihilated tribal rights wholesale; the free, and other dependents of the irish chiefs, had sunk into the position of mere tenants at will, that is, at the mercy of foreign and often unknown masters. one of the worst, if not the most apparent evil, of the gigantic confiscations which had taken place, and on which the land system had, so to speak, been founded, was that the respect which attaches to the ancient ownership of land, and which forms, perhaps, its surest support, could hardly exist in any part of ireland; the disastrous consequences may be traced to the present hour. landlords, with titles of yesterday, won by the sword, could not feel the interest in their estates and in the inhabitants on them, naturally felt by owners of gentle and ancient descent; the land which, as has been said, had been flung like a fox to ravening hounds, could not attract to it happy and peaceful memories; the very government had learned to think it could deal with the land as it pleased, and treated the rights gained by confiscation with contempt. prescription, the strongest cement of property, had no place in this ill-compacted land system.[ ] the era of protestant ascendency bringing catholic subjection with it, had now set in for many years in ireland; its evils were aggravated by harsh divisions of race, and by more than a century of bitter memories; its effects were more conspicuous in the land than in other social relations. this unnatural and calamitous position of affairs might, however, have been replaced ere long by a better order of things, had it not been artificially maintained and made enduring by legislation unexampled for its far-reaching cruelty. i cannot attempt to describe the penal code of ireland; in the emphatic words of burke, 'it was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its parts; it was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.'[ ] the objects of these execrable laws were threefold: to exclude the irish catholic whether of anglo-irish or celtic descent--misfortune had well-nigh effaced the distinction--from every office of trust in the state, from every profession, almost from every walk of life; to persecute and proscribe the catholic church of ireland, and to place its priesthood under a humiliating ban, and finally to ruin and degrade the few remaining catholic owners of the soil; to prevent the irish catholic from acquiring any real interest in it; and, above all, to keep the catholic peasantry in a condition of thraldom.[ ] the code was only too successful in compassing its ends; i pass from its operation as regards the two first, to point out how it sought to attain the third, and how its provisions affected the irish land and the manifold relations connected with it. the estate of the irish catholic owner was not to follow the ordinary courses of descent; it was 'to gavel,' and to be divided among many persons; this was for the avowed purpose of making 'the landed property of papists crumble away, and disappear.' the irish catholic owner was subjected to cruel enactments that literally set his household against him; his wife and children were bribed to become his foes; law sate at his hearth to make his existence wretched. the irish catholic, too, was forbidden to acquire land by purchase or even to possess an incumbrance on it; as far as possible the ownership of land was strictly confined to the protestant caste. but the wrong that, in its consequences at least, was perhaps the worst, was that the catholic occupier of the irish soil could not obtain anything like an advantageous tenure; he could not have a lease for a period beyond thirty-one years, and this, too, at an excessive rent; and, in the great mass of instances, he was a serf holding merely at will. the forty years that succeeded the death of william iii. are certainly the most mournful period in irish history. the memories of conquest and confiscation were still fresh; the penal code kept catholic ireland in its chains; society was fashioned on the type of the domination of a class, separated from a whole community in race and faith. nothing was left undone to perpetuate this evil order of things; the irish parliament was a mere oligarchy of the sons of the colonists of elizabeth, cromwell, and william, apart from a few leading men in ulster; its legislation for the vanquished race was barbarous; lords-lieutenant spoke of the irish catholics as of 'the common enemy;' a 'papist was presumed not to exist' in the irish courts of justice. meanwhile the penal laws were relentlessly carried out for years; the irish catholic was placed under a universal ban; the catholic church of ireland lay, as it were, in the valley of the shadow of death. but the direst consequences appeared in the land, and in the social life of the landed classes; these were most calamitous and have still left their traces. many of the few catholic owners abandoned their estates, and carried their swords into foreign lands, where some rose to well-deserved eminence; a small number conformed to the dominant faith in order to exist in comparative peace at home; the majority clung to their lands and bowed their heads to oppression. the protestant lords of the soil were what their antecedents and the law had made them; they were long a harsh and exacting order of men, filled with bigotry and the pride of a conquering race; they regarded the inferiors they ruled as pariahs and helots. but, as usually happens, when society is in an unnatural state, they did not prosper amidst the ruins around them; their lands were kept on a kind of pernicious mortmain, as they could not mortgage or sell them freely; absenteeism with all its mischiefs greatly increased; and middleman tenures largely multiplied, subjecting the peasantry to a detestable breed of landlords, protestants and of english descent, like their superiors, but much worse tyrants. as for the mass of the catholic occupiers of the soil, they were kept down in the lowest state of serfdom; but multitudes found their way into foreign armies; 'the wild geese,' as they were pathetically called, flew to austria and, above all, to france, where, in the ranks of the celebrated irish brigade--'ever and everywhere' true to the bourbon lilies--they won renown at dettingen, fontenoy, and other fields of fame. the aspect of ireland bore too faithful witness to the misery engendered in this evil order of things. the country was still covered with the wrecks of the late wars; the habitations, even of the protestant gentry, were squalid and mean; the towns were, in many instances, sinking into decay; the peasantry were huddled together into villages of huts; the traveller roamed through vast wastes of unfenced pasturage, evidences of a land almost left in a state of nature. hideous famines were of repeated occurrence; one, that of - , swept the population away in tens of thousands; the irish parliament characteristically did nothing to help the sufferers; it met the emergency by strengthening the means to enforce the payment of rent. the miserable condition of ireland was made worse by the legislation of the british parliament, which treated the country as a conquered colony; and, true to the principles of the mercantile system, impeded or prevented the growth of several irish industries. this was, of course, most injurious to the protestant settlers; but these were held down by the ruling power; as was finely said, 'they knelt to england on the necks of their countrymen.' the state of things in the colonised parts of ulster was somewhat better; but the scottish and presbyterian population of this corner of ireland had not a few causes of serious complaint.[ ] in the next generation a great but gradual change passed over the state of the irish community. the penal code was not in letter relaxed; but the evil spirit which had conceived it lost much of its force. the men who had fought at the boyne and at aghrim had passed away; the human conscience, moved by the influences of the eighteenth century, revolted from the barbarous legislation of a half-fanatical age. the irish catholics slowly began to make themselves felt in the state; many amassed large fortunes in foreign commerce; shut out as they still were by law from almost every profession and office, they made their way into the medical calling, and especially at the bar, where their disabilities were evaded or ignored. the catholic church was no longer proscribed; its worship, indeed, was still carried on under degrading conditions; but its priesthood were permitted to perform their sacred functions in peace; its dignitaries were even countenanced by the men in power at the castle. this great social change was conspicuously seen in the land; landed relations were markedly improved, and partly transformed. the catholic owners were permitted to hold their estates free from the cruel vexations of the past; they began to live on terms of friendship with the protestant caste; legal fictions annulled the laws which had made their lives wretched; their lands were, in many instances, held by the protestant gentry on secret trusts; and these, though contrary to law, were, as a rule, most honourably fulfilled. the principal, however, and most decisive change appeared in the position and the sentiments of the protestant lords of the soil. as time rolled on, and threw its kindly growths over the settlement of confiscation and the sword, these men began to feel that ireland was their country and home; they became, to a certain extent, irishmen; they felt sympathy, by degrees, with the conquered serfs in their midst. this feeling was strengthened by the tyrannous selfishness of the british parliament, which treated ireland as if she were its footstool, and of the official class, nearly all englishmen, who lorded it over the land they despised; an 'irish interest' grew up in the parliament at college green, composed very largely of the protestant landlords; this became patriotic, in a certain sense, and a protector of the scanty rights of ireland. as social order, too, was seldom disturbed, the wealth of the country had considerably increased; the gentry acquired a greater interest in their estates, and became more and more attached to them; absenteeism, as the result, perceptibly lessened; and middleman tenures, though still prevalent, diminished remarkably in the more progressive counties. the deep lines of demarcation which kept apart the owners and the occupiers of the soil were thus to a certain extent bridged over; the irish landlord, especially if resident, became a kindlier superior than his fathers had been; the irish peasant became less a stranger to him. the evidences of this better order of things became manifest on the face of the country. agriculture, though still backward, made real progress; the breeds of farming animals greatly improved; the huge breadths of pasturage had a less deserted aspect. the country towns had generally advanced; the land had been opened by good roads; the means of locomotion had been largely multiplied. the rental of ireland had doubled within living memory; in some counties, indeed, it was nearly as high as it is now; the land was at a price of more years' purchase than it is at the close of the nineteenth century. it was at this period that the great country houses of ireland were built, and their vast demesnes laid out; the wages of labour were low, but had distinctly risen; the peasant hind, arthur young tells us, in point of food and clothing, was as well off as his fellow in england. the land was largely parcelled out into considerable farms; but small holdings were on the increase; and the cottar system, in the course of time to become a source of manifold evils, was not yet a cause of much mischief; the pressure of population on the soil was not severely felt. many of the great landlords, too, were excellent men; they ruled the country well, and greatly improved their estates; in numberless instances they had won the hearts of dependents, who regarded them as kind masters. yet the picture was not without a dark side; this land system still had evil, nay, repulsive, features. except in the best part of ulster the deep divisions of race and faith continued to be profoundly marked; the penal code had made these, to a great extent, indelible. there was still much oppression and exaction in landed relations; the class of small landlords and the class of middlemen were too generally tyrannical and harsh; complaints of over-renting were not infrequent; and if the great landlords, as a rule, were not severe superiors, many were extravagant, addicted to excess, and reckless duellists; they bore a strong resemblance to the seigneurie of the old french monarchy. the peasantry, too, remained serfs, illiterate, ignorant, and superstitious; the good feelings they often had for their lords had too much of the submissiveness of the slave; and virtuous as their women ordinarily were, they too generally yielded to the lusts of their masters. the habitations, besides, of this population were still wretched; if their lot had assuredly become better, it was often hard, above all, degraded. they had begun to feel more acutely the ills they suffered; in many counties they had banded themselves together into lawless leagues, to protect themselves and to resist authority. these associations, known by the general name of whiteboys--perhaps taken from the camisards of the cevennes--had as their objects the preservation of rights of commonage, the extinction of tithes, and the reduction of rents; they may be traced back to the great confiscations of the past; they were held together by secret leaders and passwords; and they often kept whole districts in a state of terror. a draconic code was directed against them; though often put down they have risen to life again; ireland has never since been completely free from them; their influence still is distinctly apparent. associations of somewhat a similar kind, known as steelboys and oakboys, were formed even in the good parts of ulster; but they were much less dangerous and were not permanent. it is a characteristic of whiteboyism, as it has ever since been called, that it has always had a political side, and lends itself to revolutionary movements against government itself.[ ] though protestant ascendency was still supreme at this period, the confiscations of the past had not been forgotten; they were treasured in the minds of the descendants of the old catholic families, and of the population among which they lived. the extinction, too, of the tribal irish tenures, had, we have seen, been a cause of grievous wrongs; this was a tradition, also, handed down from father to son, and was still fresh in the remembrance of a whole race. the land system, though to outward seeming secure, nevertheless rested on unstable foundations, as was to appear in the course of time; another element of disturbance was being formed, which ultimately was to have immense force. under the modes of land tenure, which prevailed in england, since the system of small holdings had been broken up, the land had generally been laid out in large farms; partly from this circumstance, and partly owing to custom, the charge of making permanent improvements of the land had almost everywhere devolved on the owner of the soil; a tenant, who rented a farm, took it, so to speak, equipped with the buildings and other things of the kind that were suitable to it. but in ireland, partly because small farms were numerous, and partly because the custom had never grown up--the history of the past fully accounts for this--the permanent improvements were very seldom made by the landlord; the tenant, who held land, had to add, as it were, its plant to it; he had to do much that gave it any real value. as the inevitable result, the irish occupier of the soil felt that he had acquired a concurrent right in it; this, if the improvements were solid and lasting, might almost amount to a partial joint-ownership, at least give him, in equity, a real hold on the land. but a right of this kind was not recognised by the law, founded as this was upon notions of english tenure; it was liable to be destroyed should the tenant be dispossessed; and as the tenure of the immense majority of the occupiers of the soil in ireland was either at will, or for a short term at a high rent, this right, essentially of a quasi-proprietary kind, was made precarious, and had no legal protection. with the prescience of genius, burke perceived the evils that might grow out of this state of things, though, as yet, these were not much felt; he saw that it discouraged improvement of almost every kind; especially he saw that the denial of legal sanction to the rights in the land a tenant might have, and the fact that his tenure was short and uncertain, might become a source of grave wrong, and of far-reaching discontent. in a word, he detected an economic vice in the land system of ireland which, in the long run, was to do great mischief; and curiously enough he indicated the remedies that ought to be applied, and pointed out the true principles of a reform of irish land tenure. it would have been well had british statesmen adopted these; his simple, just, and statesmanlike plan puts to shame the ill-designed and unsuccessful attempts that have been made to recast the irish land system of late years, and the false, reckless, and socialistic theories at present current on this important subject.[ ] i must pass over even the main events of the history of ireland, after this period, up to the close of the eighteenth century. the 'irish interest,' mainly composed of the great landed gentry, and turning to account the american war, compelled the parliament at westminster to relax many of the commercial restraints on ireland, and to concede her a partial free trade; under the guidance of the illustrious grattan it obtained legislative independence for the irish parliament. at the same time the penal code was largely repealed; the irish catholic was permitted to acquire the ownership of the soil; before long he received the electoral franchise, though he was still excluded from the irish houses of lords and commons. in these circumstances, ireland made real material and social progress; the wealth of the country rapidly increased; the protestant and catholic upper classes began to unite in marriage; a commercial middle class, if still very weak, grew up. ireland seemed about to enter a happier era; yet there were drawbacks to this partial welfare, especially as regards the land system. middleman tenures were becoming much less frequent; absenteeism was markedly on the decline; but partly owing to their contact with the parliament in college green, and to the brilliant social life it created in dublin, the landed gentry became more extravagant than their fathers had been; they began to raise their rents and to encumber their estates; over-renting became more common than before; whiteboy movements and agrarian disorder prevailed in many districts. ireland, however, probably would have made a great advance but for the evil passions which the french revolution engendered in the frame of a society still deeply diseased. i cannot dwell on the unhappy years that followed, leading to the rebellion of ; i must confine myself to their influence on the irish land system. the object of tone and of the united irish leaders was to combine scottish and presbyterian ulster, and the great mass of the irish catholics, into a league against british rule and for 'irish freedom;' unhappily, they were but too successful. they appealed, not in vain, to thousands of farmers and traders in the northern province, who had long had solid grounds of discontent, and had been deeply stirred by the revolution in france; they laid hold on the elements of disorder and of division of race and faith, abounding in catholic ireland, but largely concealed, and called on the peasantry to overthrow their protestant tyrants, and to strike a decisive blow in 'the cause of ireland.' evil incentives were recklessly employed to arouse popular passions; maps of the old confiscated lands were made; and active emissaries went through the country, reviving dangerous traditions of the past, and stimulating the worst sentiments of hatred, greed, and revenge. as the result, sedition ran riot in ulster; in the southern provinces there was a great outburst of whiteboy crime, and a widespread rising against the payment of rent; and thousands of the occupiers of the soil were swept into the united irish ranks, scarcely conscious of the perils to which they were exposed. how the movement led to the bloody rebellion of , and how this was put down after a desperate struggle, it is unnecessary to consider here; the consequences in irish landed relations were most unfortunate. it is untrue that the large majority of the owners of the irish soil were guilty of the crimes that have been laid to their charge; but they bitterly resented the allusions to the confiscations of a bygone past; they became more estranged from their inferiors than they had been for years.[ ] this terrible outbreak shook society in ireland to its base, revived the old divisions of race and faith which had been disappearing to a considerable extent, and left memories behind which have not been forgotten. its inevitable result was to lead to the union, a measure long in the contemplation of british statesmen, and especially of pitt, and perhaps necessary in the most critical circumstances of the time. i cannot even refer to the events attending this great constitutional change; a large majority of the leading irish landlords disliked it at heart; but a minority, alarmed for their possessions, gave it support; how strong this feeling was may be seen in a famous speech of lord clare, who described the whole order of men as 'the heirs of confiscation hemmed in by enemies brooding on their wrongs.' the union greatly weakened the influence of the irish landed gentry, which had been very powerful in the defunct parliament; the 'irish interest,' for many years a real force, was almost subverted; english officials became again supreme at the castle; a bureaucracy gradually began to supplant the aristocracy of landlords in every sphere of government. as respects the land and landed relations, the class of catholic owners slowly augmented; but the consequences were trivial and not marked; middleman tenures continued steadily to disappear; but absenteeism certainly increased, though absentee estates were usually better managed than before. meanwhile causes of grave importance, tending to momentous social results, were profoundly affecting the whole land system, and the position of the classes dependent on it. partly owing to the corn laws of the irish parliament, partly to the extension of the parliamentary franchise, in , to the great mass of the catholic peasantry, but principally to the effects of the long war with france, ireland, it may be said, was well-nigh changed from a pastoral to an agricultural country; large farms were generally replaced by small; the land in most districts was divided into little tillage holdings; the cottar system multiplied apace; the population, about three millions of souls in the day of arthur young, increased to more than six millions at the peace of ; and this population becoming every year more dense, for the most part eked existence out on a precarious root. the economic and social consequences were very great, and continued in operation during a long series of years. the competition for the possession of land became intensely keen; rents were unnaturally forced up in thousands of cases; the value of landed property enormously rose; all this encouraged extravagance among the landed gentry, and especially induced them largely to encumber their estates. at the same time the wages of labour distinctly declined; the condition of the irish labouring peasant, when edward wakefield, a very industrious and able observer, wrote on the state of ireland in , was markedly worse than it had been in the time of arthur young. yet these were not the most serious, at least, the most lasting, effects of the revolution taking place in landed relations. as the large farm system was being broken up, as the small farm system had come in its stead, and as population had rapidly grown, the occupiers of the soil had more and more made the permanent additions to their holdings; they had built, fenced, and reclaimed land, more and more; and in the general eagerness to obtain the possession of land, considerable sums were often paid for farms on their transfer. the concurrent rights of the tenant classes in ireland had thus become enormously increased; they often amounted, equitably, to a real joint-ownership; yet these rights were without the support of law, and were liable to be extinguished often at the mere will of the landlord. in ulster alone, in its presbyterian and scottish parts, where the landed classes had been less disunited than in the south, a custom, now of considerable strength, had for a long time made the tenure of the peasant comparatively secure; yet even this was not under the ægis of law.[ ] made wise, after the event, we now clearly perceive what ought to have been done for ireland in this position of affairs. there never had been an irish poor law; protestant property was not to be charged for catholic want; but the population was fast increasing; a mass of wretched poverty was being formed; this should have been supported, and yet checked, by a poor law. at the same time legislation, as burke had contended, should have vindicated the moral rights of the occupier of the soil, should have made what really was his property his own, should have rendered his tenure profitable and secure. nothing of the kind, however, came into the minds of british statesmen, or even, it must be said, of the best irishmen of the day--the age was one of toryism harsh and unfeeling; the abuses of the poor law in england were great; it was not contemplated to apply it to ireland; above all, the equitable claims of the irish tenant were not understood or deemed worthy of notice; english tenure, utterly unfitted to his true position, was good enough for him. the land system, nevertheless, was not much disturbed while the high prices of the war prevailed; there was a good deal indeed of disorder connected with the land, but society was not deeply affected. and it is only just to observe that the landlords, as a class, did respect the concurrent rights of their tenants in the soil; the conclusive proof is that these could not have grown up had they been generally, or even largely, set at nought. but a great and calamitous change passed over ireland when the comparative wealth caused by the war collapsed, and when the return to cash payments made the effects worse. rents suddenly fell greatly, and even disappeared; the wages of labour, which had usually been paid through what may be called a wretched truck system, were reduced to a remarkable degree; hundreds of thousands of the cottar peasantry sank to the lowest depths of indigence. a great social convulsion, in a word, took place; this culminated in famine in several counties; a miserable population was deprived of the means of subsistence. in these circumstances the owners of the soil acted as a class would ordinarily act; many, impoverished themselves, let things drift; many made themselves conspicuous for good works of charity; a minority had recourse to severe measures, like the english landlords of the sixteenth century, to get rid of a mass of poverty clinging in despair to the land. the old divisions of race and faith unquestionably aggravated this state of things; but the government of the day showed little forethought, and, in fact, was infinitely the most to blame; it met the emergency, not by wise and healing measures, but by legislation, which made the eviction of the peasant from his holding easy and cheap, and by having recourse to repression unjust and severe in the extreme. in too many instances, 'clearances' of estates, an evil word, were witnessed; hundreds of families were driven from their homes and cast on the world; as the necessary result, in numberless cases, the equitable rights of the irish tenant were ruthlessly destroyed. as a matter of course, whiteboyism, never completely suppressed, broke out in formidable agrarian disorder; the peasantry, deprived of the protection of law, leagued themselves together to enforce a law of their own; crime multiplied to an immense extent; all the machinery of coercion could not wholly keep it under.[ ] i must pass rapidly over the next twenty years, though a very important period in irish history. catholic emancipation was wrung by o'connell, from a reluctant ministry, through violent agitation, which distracted ireland for years; the irish catholic was admitted into parliament at last. this great event was followed by the savage tithe war, a movement against the anglican church in ireland stained with detestable deeds of blood; the representation of ireland passed largely into o'connell's hands, the head of what was called 'his catholic tail.' protestant ascendency in ireland received a mortal blow; the influence of the irish landed gentry still further declined; that of the bureaucracy at the castle increased. from this time forward the irish landlord began to feel his position really insecure; it is remarkable how few large mansions and demesnes have ever since been designed or completed by this order of men. after the disastrous period which came to an end about , the wealth of ireland perceptibly grew; a kind of prosperity existed in many parts of the country. the age, too, had become more liberal and humane; the middleman was got rid of in not a few districts; the absentee landlords devoted more attention to their estates than they had ever devoted before. the process of eviction, moreover, became much less frequent, though too frequent for social order and peace; a considerable number of irish landlords expended large sums in improving their lands; farms were consolidated, with good results, in many parts of the country. but the essential features of the land system were not much changed; its economic conditions became, in important respects, worse. the landed gentry, if much less extravagant than their fathers had been, were, nevertheless, as a class, much involved in debt; and, as usually has been seen in cases of the kind, they became less really prosperous, as their authority declined. meanwhile, the population had continued rapidly to increase; by the close of this period it exceeded eight millions of souls, a total far too great for the resources of the land. the phenomena, already critical, became more sinister; rents were again forced up as the wealth of the country augmented, and reached the highest level they have ever attained; the wages of labour did not fall, indeed, they could hardly fall lower; but the cottar population had become more than ever dense; the competition for the possession of the soil grew fierce; as necessarily followed, the quasi-proprietary rights of the tenant in his holding had been enlarged, and yet these were still outside the pale of the law. a report, made in - , disclosed the appalling fact that two millions and a half of the irish community were for months in every year on the verge of starvation, and always in a condition of extreme misery. though ireland had made, in a sense, progress, her economic state had thus become dangerous, and very bad; and a poor law, enacted at last in , was utterly unable to cope with the evil. whiteboy crime and disorders continued to abound; in , an average year, there were more than a thousand instances of offences in landed relations. the year was that of the great repeal movement, of which o'connell was the master spirit. peel had been prime minister for two years; his attention had been already turned to the vices and the perils of the irish land system. he had been chief secretary for ireland from to ; but he had been identified with the tory misrule of that time; and though, like chesterfield in another age, he had been too sagacious not to see that poverty made the social ills of ireland more acute and worse, he had been the ablest opponent of the catholic cause, had supported protestant ascendency in many ways; and had not been in any sense an irish reformer. a strong conservative of the great middle class in england, he looked on ireland as an almost foreign land, and had scarcely any knowledge of her real needs; and though his severe administration at the castle had been wise and just, he carried out coercion with a steady hand, and is supposed to have been the author of the code of cheap ejectment, a cause of a great deal of evil and wrong. but his mind, if slow in moving, was moved at last; he saw that ireland largely required the amending hand; the conduct of o'connell, no doubt, had quickened his purpose. i cannot dwell on peel's other irish measures; at the close of he appointed a commission charged to inquire into the state of irish landed relations; had he continued long at the head of the state, he would probably have done much to improve the irish land system. the commission had, as president, the chief of the great house of courtenay; it was almost wholly composed of englishmen, more or less associated with land in england; it was, therefore, ill constituted to deal with what may be called the irish land question. but it investigated the subject it treated with most praiseworthy care; entering into every detail of irish landed relations, their history in the past, the state of land tenure, the condition of the different classes seated on the land, the working of the law with respect to tenant's improvements, the means of diminishing the wretched millions squatting on the soil, agrarian crime and all that it involved; the mass of evidence it collected is still of the greatest value. the report it made, if somewhat over-cautious and timid, was very instructive in many respects; especially it showed how the irish land system grew out of the conquests and confiscations of the past, and still bore the marks of its ill-omened origin, notably in the lines drawn between the owners and the occupiers of the soil marked by a profound division of race and faith; and many of the suggestions it made were wise, nay, excellent. but on the capital subject of land tenure, by many degrees the most important, the report only too clearly revealed the ignorance of englishmen as regards ireland, and, above all, as regards her landed relations. the commission ought to have fully recognised the concurrent rights in the soil, which the irish occupier had acquired in tens of thousands of instances, rights often equivalent to more or less joint-ownership; it ought to have insisted that the tenant right, as it was now called, of the ulster custom, and the claims arising from improvements, the work of the tenant, and from sums paid on the transfer of farms, should be made law-worthy, and effectually secured. with a want of insight which would have made burke gnash his teeth, it took exactly an opposite course; it warned the irish landlord that these concurrent rights were creating against him 'an embryo copyhold,' and eating away his freehold ownership; it plainly hinted that he would do well to get rid of them. it even refused to acknowledge that the tenant had a claim to any improvements if made in the past; but it proposed a scheme for compensating him for improvements made in the future, so limited and fenced round with restrictions, that it was quite illusory, and indeed deceptive. the report caused intense indignation in ulster, and was not well received in any part of ireland.[ ] bills, founded on the report of the devon commission, as it was called, were brought into parliament, but never became law. within a few months ireland was in the throes of an agony, the most terrible, perhaps, that has befallen any land in the nineteenth century. in the autumn of , the potato, which formed the only food of the indigent multitudes fastened on the land, failed, to a considerable extent, in many districts; in the following year the crop was all but completely destroyed. famine, far more general and appalling than that of twenty-five years before, had soon held a wretched population in its grasp; the results may almost be compared to those of the black death, and of the famines of the middle ages. the land system went to wreck in whole counties, especially in the west and along the seaboard; hundreds of the landed gentry were involved in ruin; thousands of farmers of the better class became bankrupt; the dense cottar multitudes were literally lifted up from the soil, and cast adrift, the waifs and strays of a far-reaching tempest. this is not the place to review the measures adopted to meet the dread visitation; if not free from errors, inevitable in a situation of the kind, they were, essentially, and, in the main, successful. peel was still in office in ; well knowing what poverty in ireland was, he introduced supplies of food into the remote and backward districts, which the energies of commerce could hardly reach; this wise policy saved tens of thousands of lives; as is notorious, he repealed the corn laws in the interest of the afflicted country. the government of lord john russell had succeeded him in ; it had to confront an emergency infinitely worse; it followed, in many respects, the example of peel, who had established 'relief works' in many counties; but it did not assist the most impoverished parts of ireland with food through the agency of the state; this possibly was a real mistake. nevertheless, it manfully and humanely met the tremendous crisis; it is easy to censure some of its acts, for instance, the wasteful and useless public works it set on foot, and the gigantic outdoor relief it was compelled to lavish; but millions in starvation were thrown on its hands; and the poor law, only lately in operation, could not cope with universal distress. on the whole, the statesmen in power did their duty wisely and well; thousands of unhappy victims succumbed, indeed, to famine, and to dire diseases following in its train; but ireland as a people was saved; assuredly she could not have saved herself. a word, too, must be said on the magnificent charity which flowed in from many lands into the community in its woe. england had turned in sympathy towards ireland in the season of distress which had followed the peace; she bestowed great sums on her, in - , through private subscription. the united states, france, germany, and italy joined in the good work; even the ottoman empire was not behindhand. i must dwell for a moment on the conduct and the position of the classes connected with the land during this appalling trial. the attitude of the landed gentry was much the same as it had been at an infinitely less disastrous crisis; but, on the whole, it was marked by nobler and more attractive features. the charity of the great landlords of ireland was most praiseworthy; many devoted large sums for the support of the poor on their lands by instituting fine works of enclosure and drainage; some, i know, even mortgaged their estates for this very purpose. hundreds of the lesser gentry, stricken down as they were, imitated their superiors as well as they could; old divisions were forgotten in the common misfortune; spite of the interested lies of a calumnious faction, as an order of men they acted extremely well. one of their bitterest enemies, who wrote at the time, has placed it on record, 'that the resident landlords and their families did, in many cases, devote themselves to the task of saving these poor people alive. many remitted their rents or half their rents; and ladies kept their servants busy and their kitchens smoking with continual preparation of food for the poor.'[ ] many, however, of the irish landlords, as was to be expected, looked hopelessly on at the misery around them; this was the case with feeble and incapable men, and the sight has always been seen in grave social crises; it was but in conformity with our frail and imperfect nature. a certain number, moreover, of the class had recourse to severe measures to remove from their lands the masses of wretchedness crowded upon them; the process of eviction became too frequent; hundreds of families were in this way dispossessed of their holdings. these acts of harshness were certainly to be deplored; but it was almost universally believed that the cottar in ireland could not live from the land after the failure of almost his only means of subsistence; it must be added that, in this very matter, the conduct of parliament and the government was by many degrees more severe. a strict test of destitution had to be applied; a law was passed that, as a condition of obtaining relief, no person possessing more than a quarter of an acre of land should be entitled to support from the state; thousands of families abandoned their homes, through the effects of this measure; for one evicted by a landlord, fifty perhaps were practically evicted by this stern policy. the law was possibly required in the terrible circumstances of the time; but it was condemned by the lord-lieutenant, lord bessborough, a great irish peer, and an able man; at all events, it justified, to a considerable extent, all that could be laid to the charge of a few irish landlords whose acts were most unfairly denounced by many writers, and were falsely described as common to the great body of the class. for the rest, as i have said, the land system was broken up in many districts; and not only the owners but the occupiers of the soil suffered cruelly from the highest to the lowest grade. after the first months of the famine, the immense exodus of the irish race, as it has fitly been called, began. the population fled from the country in hundreds of thousands; some found a home in england and in our australian colonies; nine-tenths, probably, in the great republic of the west. the sufferings of numbers of the emigrants were terribly severe; huddled together in the ill-found vessels of the time, hundreds perished before they beheld the lands they were seeking; that some check was not placed on the greed of the merchants, who subjected these victims to horrors like those of the middle passage, was certainly the worst mistake of the government of the day. during the agony of the famine there was comparatively little crime; the minds of men were engrossed by a dire calamity; but in a few months whiteboyism had been again aroused; there was a widespread outbreak of agrarian disorder followed by the abortive rising of . the time was now ripe, in the judgment of even leading statesmen, for making another of the great experiments on the irish land, which had been their policy since the age of the tudors. many of the irish landed gentry had been ruined; the estates of many were heavily charged with debt, in part caused by extravagance in the past, but chiefly by large provisions made for their families in more prosperous times, especially during the period of the high prices of the war.[ ] the object of the government--and peel concurred--was to make a clean sweep of the embarrassed owners, and to transfer their lands to a new order of men; 'english and scottish capital was to be attracted to the irish soil;' the irish landlord was to be 'sold out cheap;' his successor was to be a person fit 'to discharge the duties of property;' the 'regeneration of ireland' was to be the magnificent result.[ ] the sale of encumbered estates in ireland had from various causes been a slow and a costly process, an act was run through parliament with scarcely an expression of dissent,[ ] making the process as rapid and inexpensive as the wit of man could devise; a commission was appointed to carry the law into effect; and intending purchasers were to be given an indefeasible title to any lands they might acquire. this was a strong measure, but it was not nearly all; the concurrent rights of the tenants in the estates to be sold were absolutely ignored, and left without protection; the new possessors were empowered to destroy them if they pleased. the results were such as might have been looked for when lands were forced into the market wholesale, when ireland was still reeling from the strokes of a terrible famine, and agricultural ruin was seen everywhere. the commission acted as such tribunals invariably act when skilfully selected to carry out a policy; it addressed itself to its task of 'selling land cheap;' it was egged on by the lord-lieutenant of the day; and it sacrificed estates, in scores of instances, at less than half their value. this iniquitous proceeding went on for years, until the market for land in ireland righted itself at last; but the encumbered estates act was often renewed; about a sixth part of the lands of ireland has been transferred by these means. as the result many of the irish gentry, who might have tided over the crisis, were beggared and cast on the world penniless; and confiscation from above had its counterpart in confiscation from below; the partial joint-ownership of thousands of the occupiers of the soil was ruthlessly annihilated in numbers of cases. and what were the consequences of this scheme of spoliation and wrong, which english politicians would never have thought of but for their traditional contempt of the rights of property in land in ireland? english and scottish capital, indeed, reached the irish soil; but it reached it in the form of large mortgages, a heavy drain on the country's resources; the english and scottish purchasers of the irish land were a mere handful of men. the estates, in fact, transferred under the encumbered estates acts, as a rule, passed into the ownership of jobbers, speculators, and mortgagees, people without the associations old possession ensures; they have formed, as a class, harsh and exacting landlords, the true successors of the almost defunct middleman; they are responsible for much that is bad in irish landed relations of late years. a huge confiscation, in a word, failed, as those of elizabeth and cromwell failed before; the fact ought to be a warning to public men, who have been parading theories about the irish land--strewn as this has been with monuments of misdeeds and errors--as false and more dangerous than those which produced the encumbered estates acts.[ ] the exodus had, by , reduced the population of ireland by nearly two millions of souls; this decline has continued ever since; the population which, in , was considerably more than eight millions, is now, we have seen, only about four and a half millions. in an agitation sprang up, which might have wrought a great change in irish landed relations, had it not been brought by mere accident to an untimely end. the report of the devon commission, i have said, had troubled ulster; the famine had driven peasants, in tens of thousands, from their homes; the operation of the encumbered estates act was destroying their concurrent rights in their holdings. at the general election of ireland returned a large party of representatives to the house of commons pledged to vindicate the claims of the tenant farmers; these were expressed in a demand that has been called the 'three f's,' 'fair rent,' 'fixity of tenure,' and 'free sale,' a mode of occupation which had been largely secured by the custom of ulster, and to which o'connell had given his sanction. the government of lord derby was now in office; it had brought in measures which, in some degree, would have legalised the rights of the irish tenant; but the ministry was defeated, partly through an intrigue;[ ] the cause of the irish farmer was baffled and kept in suspense for years, largely owing to dissensions and treachery on the part of some of the irish members. by this time the country had begun to revive, and to throw off the worst effects of the famine; vast depopulated tracts had been opened to new husbandry; the land had been set free, over an immense area, from the incubus of a mass of wretchedness which had preyed on it, and had completely disorganised the land system, unnaturally forcing up rent and cutting down wages. under these conditions the statesmen in power, already expecting great things from the encumbered estates act, believed that the irish land system would right itself, and that it was unnecessary to consider or to protect the rights of the tenant classes; these would either disappear, or would be fairly adjusted in the improved landed relations that were being formed. at all events, there was no legislation to secure these claims; the scanty legislation, that dealt with the irish land, was unfavourable, in many ways, to these, and endeavoured to assimilate irish to english tenures, as tudor lawyers had done three centuries before; and lord palmerston, for a long time the head of the state, discouraged irish tenant right, in more than one speech, and declared that it only meant landlord wrong, unwise utterances that showed he did not understand the subject. at the same time, the policy of clearing the land for cultivators of a capitalist class, able to occupy and do justice to large farms, was generally advocated in high places; more than one lord-lieutenant announced that nature had made ireland a great grazing tract, and that her petty occupiers were little better than a social nuisance.[ ] for some time it seemed as though the forecasts made by the great majority of our statesmen would prove correct. the immense emigration from ireland to the united states had important results, unfortunate in many respects; but the uplifting of redundant millions from the soil greatly contributed to the country's welfare. holdings were consolidated over very large areas, a beneficent process, if humanely carried out; a certain number of englishmen and scotsmen rented large farms; the progress of husbandry of all kinds was distinct; a vast field for agriculture, really worthy of the name, was opened. a new standard for the management of land was, in fact, set up; at the same time a few purchasers, under the encumbered estates acts, laid out considerable sums in improving their estates; the treasury made large advances to many irish landlords; these did much in works of enclosure, draining, planting, and the like. ireland began to wear a new aspect in several counties, especially in the more thriving parts of the southern provinces; the ruins made by the famine, indeed, caused hideous eyesores, in wrecks of villages and the remains of peasant dwellings; but the mud hovels of the cottar population had largely disappeared, and the habitations of farmers of the better class very markedly improved. the economic conditions of landed relations became more conducive to prosperity than they had ever been before; rents fell considerably during a series of years, as the intense competition for land diminished; though they gradually rose in the course of time, they never reached the excessive rates of - ; and the wages of labour greatly increased, and attained a level that, happily, has since been preserved. many circumstances concurred to quicken and augment this unquestionable social and material progress. agricultural prices were high from about onward; free trade was as yet adding to the wealth of ireland; and there was a long succession of good harvests, the most important element in her general welfare. the railway system, too, introduced of late years, opened a number of new markets to her products, and greatly facilitated their access to british markets. at the same time the turnip replaced the potato over hundreds of thousands of acres; farm machinery greatly improved in ireland; the importation of the best stock from england and scotland had excellent results, and almost transformed the old breeds of irish farming animals. an era of prosperity, in a word, had seemed to dawn on ireland; and though agrarian disorder had not disappeared, the whiteboy secret societies were greatly broken up, and political agitation well-nigh ceased. in these circumstances, it was a common belief in england that 'the irish difficulty,' as it was called, was passing away, and that the 'hibernia pacata' had at last become a happy reality. yet the progress and tranquillity of this brief period were largely superficial and even deceptive; fires were still alive beneath the smouldering ashes. the partial prosperity of ireland mainly depended on good harvests and high prices; it was interrupted, even in these years, by two or three seasons of distress. notwithstanding the widespread consolidation of farms, and the removal from the soil of indigent millions, the land still, for the most part, remained in the possession of a mere peasantry; very few of the english and scottish capitalist farmers settled in ireland, and really throve; the great majority left the country, like the 'englishry' of a bygone age. and though things wore a serene aspect, the inherent vices of the land system continued to exist; in some respects they increased, or were more painfully felt. the old divisions of race and faith between the owners and the occupiers of the soil remained; they had but little changed and even had perhaps widened; much had happened to keep the landed classes more apart than before. the new purchasers, under the encumbered estates acts, were, we have seen, often hard-fisted and grasping landlords; they raised their rents, without scruple, in too many instances; standing on the letter of the law, they too often ignored the partial joint-ownership in their farms of their tenants; they had sometimes recourse to unjust and severe evictions. the old landlords, too, never recovered from the effects of the famine; they were overshadowed by the bureaucracy of the castle, which, for many years, had been growing in power; they thus became an order of men with privileges, but without authority, in the midst of inferiors, who had little sympathy with them, a dangerous position like that of the french seigneurie in the later years of the eighteenth century--a position described by tocqueville in very striking language. at the same time the peasantry stood aloof from them more than in the days of their fathers; and though they remained quiescent for years, as has often happened in irish history, there were causes for this increasing estrangement. they were no longer the grossly ignorant multitude of fifty years before; education had made some way among them, though in this respect they were still backward; they felt more acutely all that was hard in their lot, like the french peasantry before the great revolution of - . this sentiment, however, owed its principal force to sentiments engendered in far distant lands. the thousands of the exodus had left their country with memories embittered against some irish landlords, and, notably, against the british government; a new ireland was rising across the atlantic; the emigrants and their sons were in constant communication with the old ireland once their home; socialistic ideas as regards the land, blending with dislike of the superiors and the rulers, under whom they lived, were gradually diffused among the irish peasantry. the economic conditions, too, of landed relations by degrees made these feelings more general and intense. rents were rising as the wealth of the country increased, though, except in the cases of the new landlords, and of a very few surviving middlemen, they were, as a rule, by no means excessive. simultaneously a concurrence of causes had extinguished leasehold tenures in most parts of ireland, and had reduced the status of the irish farmer to that of a mere tenant at will, liable to be dispossessed by a notice to quit, at the mercy, in fact, of the lord of the soil. and, meanwhile, the equitable rights of the occupiers as a class, due to improvements, and to sums paid for the goodwill of farms, had been increasing to an immense extent; and yet a grievous wrong--they were not even recognised by law. law and fact had long been sharply clashing in landed relations; there was much that was essentially bad in the land system; and agrarian trouble and crime was on the increase. the mind of england had turned away from ireland after the petty outbreak of ; it charged the irish community with ungrateful folly, as it recollected the charity lavished during the famine. this sentiment was replaced by what was worse, indifference; throughout this period--from to --parliament gave little attention to the affairs of ireland. british statesmen continued to pin their faith to their policy; they disregarded ominous symptoms on the increase; ireland was rapidly becoming more prosperous; the claims of the irish tenant farmer were a delusion, or worse. this apathy was augmented by the state of the representation of ireland in these years; this was in a feeble, even a degraded condition; and largely owing to the authority of cardinal cullen, who prohibited the irish priesthood from taking any part in politics, agitation, i have said, had become a mere tradition of the past. yet the causes i have glanced at were silently at work, which ultimately were to lead to grave social troubles. the first sign of disturbance was seen in a little outbreak, the result of a conspiracy hatched by one of the rebels of , and supported to some extent from america: but the 'phoenix plot,' as it was called, almost at once collapsed; the government thought it hardly worthy of notice. another and much more formidable conspiracy was matured in - ; and though it was put down with little difficulty in time, it showed that there was much that was peccant in the state of ireland; and it deeply affected the minds of englishmen, aroused as it were out of a fool's paradise. the millions of the irish race in the far west were passionately appealed to by leaders, not without parts, to assist in a crusade against 'landlordism,' and british rule in ireland; they gave the movement very general support; they found numerous allies in thousands of irishmen disbanded after the great conflict between the north and the south. the fenian conspiracy was launched on its course; its directors made skilful attempts to debauch whole regiments, and to stir up the passions of the mob in many of the towns of ireland; and they especially turned their attention to the mass of the peasantry. here, however, their policy was injudicious and ill-conceived; they promised the irish land as a spoil to those who would join the ranks of the 'patriot irish army;' but all this alarmed the occupiers of the soil, whose only object was to acquire a better mode of tenure for their farms, and who rightly thought the fenian movement made their possessions insecure, a belief generally encouraged by the catholic priesthood. a short-lived rising, conducted by a few american soldiers, and backed by the rabble of a few villages and towns, found no real support in ireland, and was finally quelled in ; but in england there was a spurt of fenian disorder, and this, though easily quenched, made a profound impression. it was generally felt in england and scotland that, notwithstanding the optimism of a generation of public men, there was still much that was rotten in the state of ireland, and that this should be removed by large and searching reforms. the chief sign of this change in british opinion was seen in the result of the general election of ; mr. gladstone, who, hitherto, had taken comparatively little part in irish affairs, but who, with his keen instinct of every turn in the public mind, had been vehemently enlarging on the wrongs of ireland, was placed in power with a great majority, and at once addressed himself to the task of irish reform.[ ] chapter iv the question of the irish land (_continued_)--the irish land act of --the land league and the national league--the land of --subsequent legislation as regards the land system of ireland state of landed relations in ireland in - --mr. gladstone prime minister--the land act of --its merits and defects--a short period of prosperity in ireland--ominous symptoms--michael davitt--the teaching of john finton lalor in --the 'new departure' in fenianism arranged in america--foundation of the land league--it was a foreign rebellious conspiracy, with an agrarian side, under a constitutional mask--parnell the master spirit of the league--his visit to america and the results--a short period of distress in ireland--conduct of the irish landlords--progress of the land league--mr. gladstone again prime minister in --the compensation for disturbance bill rejected by the house of lords--outburst of agrarian crime, as the land league increases in power--rents at griffith's valuation--boycotting--frightful state of ireland in --after a short attempt to repress it, mr. gladstone surrenders to the land league--the land act of --mr. gladstone breaks the pledges he had made in --his promise of compensating the irish landlords--the land act of a bad and unjust measure directly inconsistent with that of --the 'no rent manifesto'--the kilmainham treaty--the phoenix park tragedy--coercion--parnell founds the national league, the successor of the land league--renewal of agitation in --struggle with law and the government--subsequent agrarian legislation for ireland--this is really a concession to agitation, for the benefit of irish tenants, and to the injury of irish landlords. mr. gladstone, after his conversion to home rule, more than once declared that, almost from early manhood he had given special attention to ireland; either his memory was at fault, or he had kept the fact to himself. he had been a conspicuous figure in politics, for many years before ; but until he had been placed at the helm of the state, he had shown little acquaintance with irish questions, and, indeed, had expressed few opinions on them. in he had said in the house of commons, that the existence of the anglican irish church would be probably long; he had been in high office almost since , and, as a colleague of lord palmerston, had acquiesced in the philippics of that statesman against irish tenant right, conduct that revealed ignorance of the land system of ireland. but, in , when the fenian outbreak had caused the nation to demand large reforms in ireland, he suddenly abandoned his attitude of reserve; he threw himself into irish affairs; his zeal, it may be remarked, as often happened, fell in with his interests, and with those of the liberal party, and gave him a leverage to drive disraeli from office. during months before the general election that ensued, the orator thundered on irish grievances, and on the manifold ills of ireland; in figurative and impassioned language, he said that the island was blighted by a huge upas tree, the church, the land, and education being the three main branches. these harangues, addressed to the new democracy, contributed powerfully to the fall of the conservative ministry; it was little noticed, at the time, that one of the results was ere long to compel mr. gladstone himself to subject ireland to severe repressive measures, for whiteboy and agrarian outrages became frequent in , the minister addressed himself to the task of hewing down the first branch of the poisonous upas; he disestablished and disendowed the protestant church of ireland. this is not the place to comment upon that great measure; it was well designed upon its professed principles; it dealt liberally, nay, generously, with the voluntary church, which replaced the church of the state it overthrew. but essentially it was a scheme of destruction, formed in nonconformist not in irish interests, and opposed to the views of generations of statesmen; it made no provision for the clergy of the irish catholic church, a policy which pitt, castlereagh, and lord john russell had had at heart, which had been all but a condition of the union, and which, if carried into effect, would have done much to strengthen and maintain that fundamental law, and to promote tranquillity in ireland and her general welfare. mr. gladstone now turned to the second branch of the upas, the land system of ireland and her landed relations. his whole career, especially in its home rule phase, proves that his knowledge of ireland was not exact or profound; at this time he had had little experience of the irish land question. but the mind of england was still attracted to irish affairs; a number of distinguished englishmen and scotchmen went to ireland, to investigate the state of the country on the spot; the british press sent some of its best contributors; the time was singularly opportune for a fair and complete inquiry; no minister has had, before or since, such assistance in dealing with irish problems. i must glance at the state of the irish land system in - , as this was fully explored and made manifest.[ ] the material progress being made, since about , had been largely developed in by far the greatest part of the island. the population was being still diminished by emigration and other causes; the area for real husbandry had been greatly extended; the rural community, at least in its lower grades, was infinitely better off than it had been before the famine. the look of the country, in most places, bore witness to a change beneficent in the main; it had been almost transformed since - . the cottar system, no doubt, was to be found in backward counties; but even in these it had been largely effaced; it was all but passing away in the more thriving counties; masses of indigence were to be seen only in tracts west of the shannon; and these were aggregated on an area comparatively small. the general consolidation of farms had, meanwhile, gone on; and though ireland remained, on the whole, a land of small farms, her land system had, from top to bottom, ceased to depend for its support on a perishable root. in every conceivable respect a marked improvement was visible in the state of the peasantry; they were by many degrees better clothed and fed than their fathers had been; the wages of agricultural labour were still rising, and were now paid in money, and not in plots of potatoes; and though the habitations of this whole class were, as a rule, still mean, the dwellings of the class of substantial farmers had shown signs of distinct social progress. at the same time agriculture had made a marked advance, owing to the influences i have referred to before; fine specimens of extensive farming were very commonly to be seen; thousands of acres had been reclaimed and enclosed of late years; at no period certainly had the landed gentry, in a great measure through moneys borrowed from the state, expended such large sums in improving their estates, especially in arterial drainage, and the introduction of the best breeds of stock of all kinds. the wealth of ireland, too, was increasing, if not rapidly; and a change for the better might be traced in what we may describe as her general social life. her middle class was still weak and small compared to that of england and scotland; but it had been growing in wealth and power; and this, to some extent, had had a good effect on a community still mainly dependent on the land. the material and even the social progress of ireland, since the famine, had thus been marked; it had been more decided than it has been, at any period, except, possibly, that from to . her land system, too, had become better in important parts; but in many respects it remained vicious; some of its vices had been aggravated, or were more sensibly felt. the hope that the land would pass generally into the hands of large farmers, able to develop its resources, had not been realised, or had been realised only to a relatively trivial extent; it was still held in the main by a peasantry of small occupiers of the soil, though the consolidation of farms had gone on over extensive areas, especially over wide tracts of pasturage, in the eastern, midland, and western counties, and this, in some instances, through a process of harsh eviction. the profound divisions of race and faith, the distinctive feature in the organic structure of the whole community, were at least as visible as ever in the land system; from causes i have pointed out before, they had, not improbably, been widened; this tended to increase the old dissension in landed relations, and the long-standing separation between the landed classes. middleman tenures, with their mischievous effects, had, since the famine, well-nigh disappeared; but the new landlord had largely replaced the middleman; absenteeism remained what it had been; and though absentee estates, as a rule, were under good agents, there was too much of that 'absenteeism of the heart,' condemned by tocqueville as a grave social danger. the purchasers under the encumbered estates acts, with some honourable exceptions, no doubt, were too often oppressive landlords; the old landlords, as a class, had, certainly, done much for their estates, but they had lost their political and largely their social influence; partly owing to apprehensions as regards tenant right, partly to the assurances of statesmen that their position was safe, they had become perhaps more exacting in their dealings with their dependents; in the existing situation, they more and more resembled a weak caste, controlled by the central government, and isolated amidst a community, to a great extent, not friendly. all this tended to produce a want of stability and insecurity in the land system, which was ominous of social strife and trouble; but the most active element of disturbance was to be certainly found in the contact with the rebellious movement which ireland had lately witnessed. fenianism had been scotched, but by no means slain; and though the peasantry had held aloof from it, fenian emissaries were going through the country, appealing to the passions and the greed of the occupiers of the soil, for different reasons not contented with their lot, hostile, in a great degree, to the order of things around them, and more alive to their grievances than in the past generation; at this very time a cry against the payment of rent, and against 'landlordism,' as it was called, was being heard in a few counties. it was significant that agrarian crimes--some of the worst type--and agrarian disorder were distinctly increasing; and it should be added, that, in spite of cardinal cullen, the younger catholic priests, in some districts, were beginning to play the part of agitators again. passing from the general state of landed relations, the conditions of land tenure, briefly noticed before, had not improved of late years, and were, in some respects, worse. rents had been rising for a considerable time: but except in comparatively few instances, they were not excessive, as affairs stood; whatever mendacious calumny has since maintained, ireland, on the whole, was in no sense an over-rented land.[ ] but the modes of occupation were essentially bad; they were open to the gravest objections; their vices had become more than ever apparent. the tenant right, under the ulster custom, had, i have remarked, largely secured the tenant farmer, in parts of the province, what was generally known as the 'three f's,' fair rent, fixity of tenure, the power of a free sale of the holding;[ ] though it should be especially borne in mind that the fair rent was never adjusted by an external agency, but was settled by what adam smith would have called 'higgling' between the owner and occupier of the soil. the custom, however, had been very powerful; its violation, on anything like a great scale, would have certainly caused a fierce war of classes; and it gave the ulster tenant, in tens of thousands of cases, a real proprietary right in the land, whatever might be the terms of his contract; a right equivalent to more or less joint-ownership, and that might be described as a precious _peculium_, subject to conditions that long had made it practically secure. but this most important right, involving property worth many millions, still remained wholly unprotected by law; and though its value had enormously increased, as the wealth of ulster had been developed, of late years, it was being 'nibbled away' on not a few estates, and restricted by limitations of many kinds that had greatly impaired it. an analogous right, like seed scattered by the winds, had partially spread into the southern provinces, as the natural result of the equitable claims, the occupiers of farms had repeatedly acquired, though this had not been recognised on many estates, and its efficacy was not as yet great; but this right, such as it was, like its fellow, was not law-worthy, and depended wholly on the will of the lord of the soil. in addition to the tenant right in the north and the south, the concurrent claims of the tenant farmers, throughout the country, in respect of improvements and of sums paid on the transfer of farms, for 'good-will,' had been greatly increasing of late years, especially as prosperity was advancing; and yet tenures had continued to become more precarious; leaseholds were being almost everywhere replaced by tenancies at will. these claims were never so extensive before; often equivalent to joint-ownership, in no doubtful sense, and, in almost all cases, of some value, they were, nevertheless, still outside the ægis of the law, a fact that must ever be borne in mind; they could be destroyed or greatly reduced by the raising of rent, they could be annihilated by a notice to quit, if eviction followed. unquestionably in the great mass of instances, these rights, whatever their nature, were not invaded; but they certainly had been in a certain number; a single case of invasion created alarm and distrust, and had a bad effect on landed relations; throw a stone into a pond, and it makes a ripple; it has a disturbing influence far beyond the surface it strikes. no wonder, then, that complaints of these modes of tenure had become very general, and were loudly expressed, not only by those who might suffer from them, but by intelligent minds which had mastered the subject. it was an exaggeration to assert, as was said at the time, that the peasant in ireland lived under a sword of damocles; but he lived under a system in which law and right were very plainly opposed. only a revolution, which parliament would not have sanctioned, could have effaced the inveterate ills of the irish land system, running up to the conquests and the confiscations of the past, and the divisions of race and faith in the irish land; the remark is as true now as it was thirty years ago; and a revolution of the kind, i am firmly convinced, would, even under the best conditions, make infinitely worse whatever was already bad. but it was possible for legislation to remove or mitigate the essential vices in the modes of irish land tenure; mr. gladstone rightly confined himself to this object. he brought in his first irish land bill in the early spring of ; he had to address a house of commons not much in sympathy with a project of the kind. many of the members were ignorant of the subject; many thought english land tenure perfect, and could not understand why it would not do for ireland, a prejudice at least three centuries old; some believed irish tenant right to be a violation of free trade, then in the ascendant in every phase of commerce. the minister's speech was adapted to those who heard it; it was tentative, moderate, not striking; he drew, indeed, very plain distinctions between british and irish land tenure, and showed how the first could be no rule of right for the second; but if he enlarged on the just claims of the occupier of the irish soil, he did not venture to maintain, what he probably felt, that these were often equivalent to a joint-ownership more or less developed. he was, in short, dexterous, but not profound; very inferior to burke, who, a century before, had grasped the essential facts in this province, though the question was still in the remote future. the most important parts of mr. gladstone's speech, and indeed, of those of his leading followers, regard being had to events by no means distant, were those in which he repudiated, with no doubtful censure, the whole theory of the 'three f's,' the extreme demand, at this time, of the tenant class in ireland. 'fair rent' he argued, especially if adjusted by the state, deprives a landlord of his first proprietary right, and involves his expropriation in the long run; 'fixity of tenure' means a perpetuity for the tenant, to which he has no just claim, and involves confiscation hardly disguised; 'free sale' was but a corollary to legislation on these principles.[ ] at the same time, mr. gladstone protested, with marked emphasis, that the bill he was introducing was to be absolutely a final measure; it was to effect a permanent settlement of the irish land; irish landlords would have nothing more to apprehend, irish tenants to expect. in this instance, as in that of home rule, the orator was to belie himself, and to be a curious example of the irony of fate; within a few years he was to legislate on the lines he had denounced as dangerous and false; to carry into effect a scheme for dealing with the irish land, infinitely worse than that of the 'three f's;' to scatter the 'finality,' to which he had pledged his word, to the winds. the bill thus launched was a comprehensive and wise measure, if not free from real, even grave, defects; it remains the only statesmanlike scheme for the settlement of irish landed relations that hitherto has received the assent of parliament.[ ] it made the tenant right of ulster, in its various forms, as these existed in different estates, law-worthy, and protected to the fullest extent; it gave the same sanction to the inchoate tenant right of the southern provinces. this was, in itself, an immense reform; but the bill properly had a far wider sweep; it extended, with the exception of certain kinds of lands, such as demesnes, town parks, holdings of a residential type, and, in most cases, large pastoral holdings, to nearly all the occupiers of the irish soil; even the excepted lands were partially within its scope. the first great object of the measure was to secure to the irish tenant the rights he had acquired to improvements he may have made on his farm, a right hitherto not within the pale of the law; its provisions, in this respect, were, i think, excellent. with a true perception of the unquestionable fact that, though the irish landlords, especially of late years, had expended considerable sums on their estates, still, as is inevitable under the small-farm system, the irish tenant, as a general rule, had made the greatest part of the additions to the land, mr. gladstone provided that, subject to limitations by no means severe, in order that the law should not run wild, improvements made on farms, in the absence of proof to the contrary, should be deemed to be the tenant's property, thus reversing the presumption of english law, iniquitous when applied to irish tenures, that what is annexed to the soil belongs to the owner, and not to its occupant. the ground being, so to speak, cleared, the bill declared that, in almost all cases, a tenant should have a right, when leaving his farm, even though dispossessed for the failure to pay his rent, to claim compensation, from his landlord, for his improvements; and facilities were offered to landlords to discharge these claims through loans from the state. in order, however, reasonably to secure right being done, in a complex and very difficult matter, the bill proceeded to define improvements, and to impose restrictions on claims, to which objection could fairly be made. apart from unexhausted tillages and manures, an improvement was to be a work 'suitable to a holding, and adding to its letting value,' a description as equitable and precise as could well be desired. and, speaking generally, claims in respect of improvements were not to be preferred were the improvement twenty years old, except in the case of buildings and the reclamation of waste land; nor if the improvement were prohibited by the landlord, under the conditions laid down; nor if it were made under a contract for value; nor if it were forbidden by a special contract; nor if, in certain cases, the landlord had agreed to make it; nor if the claim was barred by express written contract, in the case of improvements made before the bill became law; nor, in the case, with some exceptions, of certain classes of leases; nor if the landlord, under certain conditions, permitted a tenant to dispose of his interest in his farm. this measure, therefore, gave the irish tenant farmer complete property in his improvements, within reasonable bounds, and yet did not here invade the just rights of the landlord; it was only to be regretted that it had not been proposed many years before. it proceeded, however, a great deal further, and asserted a principle, for the behoof of the tenant, which has since been very generally condemned,[ ] though in my judgment, it was essentially right, if carried somewhat beyond proper and safe limits. except in the case of leases granted before the bill, and of a class of leases granted when it was to become law, mr. gladstone engrafted on the great mass of irish tenancies what really was a new tenant right; he was probably convinced, though he did not say so, that this was to be an equivalent for the joint-ownership, more or less manifest, which, in innumerable instances, the irish occupier had acquired in the soil. this tenant right was given the rather ambiguous name of 'compensation,' in the event of 'disturbance;' a sum varying in amount from seven to one year's rent, according to the size of the holding, but in no case to exceed £ , was to be paid to a tenant when dispossessed by a notice to quit, and, in some circumstances, by other means; this was to be over and above any sum due in respect of improvements; but this, too, as in the case of the last-named sum, was to be paid only when the tenant was 'quitting' the land. obviously this was a potential tenant right, if to be realised only in one way; it practically gave a quasi-proprietary right in the fee, as, when commenting on the bill, i pointed out at the time; and i certainly thought that the compensation was very large, and introduced a principle into the bill which might be abused. two other provisions of the measure, with respect to the position of the irish tenant, may be briefly noticed. no attempt was made to adjust rents, through the agency of the state, mr. gladstone having expressly denounced the idea; but in the case of petty occupiers, subjected to 'exorbitant rents,' compensation for disturbance might be adjudged to them, even if evicted for not paying the rent, that is, the landlord might be mulcted in very heavy penalties. in nearly all instances, too, the tenant was declared to be entitled to 'his away-going crops,' another privilege, sometimes of no little value, and analogous to that secured by usage in many parts of england. so far the bill dealt with the irish land on the side of occupation; but it dealt with it, also, on the side of ownership. john bright had urged the expediency, during several years, of facilitating the transfer of the fee simple, in his holding, to the irish tenant; this policy had been carried out, to some extent, by the act disestablishing the anglican church in ireland. the bill of extended the principle; it provided that the state might advance moneys to irish tenants, to enable them to become owners of their farms; but--and this should especially be kept in mind--the tenant was to supply a third part of the purchase money at least; and the transaction was to be effected by free contract, that is, by the voluntary act of the landlord disposing of his land. it remains to add, that the administration of the measure, was, for the most part--subject to an appeal to the superior courts--entrusted to the county courts of ireland, that is, to long-established tribunals of repute. the bill passed through both houses with little change; it has long been known as the irish land act of . it was, in the main, i repeat, a great reforming measure; it effected a far-reaching improvement in the tenure of land in ireland, and that without any marked infringement of the just rights of property. no impartial mind can fairly object to the protection given to the tenant right of the north and the south, or to the compensation secured for tenants' improvements; if 'compensation for disturbance' was a bold experiment, still this parliamentary tenant right, as it may be called, was in harmony with fact in nearly all instances. nevertheless, the act had three marked defects; these largely detracted from its practical value. it bristled with such exceptions and limitations that it was difficult even for the learned to understand; it seemed to the unlettered peasant a dangerous puzzle, involving him, perhaps, in lawsuits and costs; it did not strike his imagination as a substantial boon. though, too, it annexed a real tenant right to nearly all farms, and thus secured to the irish tenant, in almost all cases, any joint-ownership he may have acquired in the land, still this was intelligible only to educated men; 'compensation for disturbance' was to be given only when an occupier was about to leave his holding; but this was exactly what he could not bear to do; he was, therefore, ready to accept almost any terms, rather than face consequences he dreaded to think of. mr. gladstone, again, had, in this measure, shown that he wished to assimilate irish to english land tenure in the long run; he sought to vindicate the just claims of the irish tenant; but he desired ultimately to give him the status of his fellow in england, a long-standing, false conception of british statesmen. the land act, therefore, provided that most of the rights it conferred on the tenant might be commuted by the grant of a lease for thirty-one years or upwards; and it further enacted that tenants of the larger kind might 'contract themselves out' of the privileges it gave, by voluntary agreements made with their landlords. the object of this was to place the irish land, by degrees, no doubt, under rather long leases, discharged from the tenant right and other claims; but in the circumstances of ireland this was a mistake. this part of the act was a temptation to landlords, to persuade or even to force tenants to accept leases under conditions which might be too severe, with respect to rent and many other things, and to forego rights they would otherwise have enjoyed, by a process which might not be a free contract; it encouraged, in a word, unfair evasion of the law. this flaw in the measure was pointed out from the first; mr. gladstone, however, denied its existence, and characteristically shut his ears to other schemes of reform, notably to an ingenious proposal of the late judge longfield to extend the ulster tenant right to all irish tenancies by a very simple and self-acting process, and to a proposal of butt to convert tenancies at will into long leaseholds, at the rents then current. these projects certainly deserved attention; and, whatever their shortcomings, were easy to understand. the act of , like the act dealing with the protestant church, was followed by a short-lived outbreak of agrarian crime put down only by severe coercive measures. this phenomenon has been common in irish history, from the days of tyrconnell to the present time; disorder has been the immediate result of concessions; peccant humours discharge themselves if you touch the head of an ulcer. there is some reason, too, to believe that in a few instances--and they were very few--wrongheaded landlords, alarmed at the prospect before them, began to harass and even to dispossess tenants; they aimed at 'clearing' their estates, in order to evade the law; conduct of this kind naturally provoked indignation in some places.[ ] nevertheless, the land act of was generally well received in ireland, though it fell short of the popular demand, and it was ill understood by the tenant classes;[ ] many farmers availed themselves of its benefits, especially those holding under the ulster custom. five or six years of prosperity followed, the brightest perhaps ever seen in ireland; agricultural prices were high, harvests extremely good; the material progress of the country was decided; the peasantry seemed, as a rule, contented; agitation abandoned, as it were, the land, and concentrated itself on the home rule movement. mr. gladstone, always optimistic, and proud of his own offspring, boasted, towards the close of his first ministry, that his recent legislation had done wonders; the land act had reconciled irish landlords and tenants, and had greatly increased the selling price of land; he refused to see how much of all this was due to a cause wholly independent of himself, the comparative well-being of nearly all ireland. as had happened in the period from to , this tranquillity was not deeply founded or complete; as then, it was, in a great degree, deceptive. the peasantry were living fast in a good time; banks and traders had made large advances to them on the security of tenure the law had created; their position became such, in some districts, that a season of distress might reduce many to sudden poverty, and be productive of the necessarily resulting evils. rents, again, were rising as the country grew in wealth, though except in comparatively few cases--a fact that should be steadily kept in view--they were still, as a rule, by no means excessive; they were far below the rents of thirty years before; but this gradual rise was of course not popular. in some instances, too--but these were very rare, as was conclusively proved at a subsequent time--tenants, under more or less pressure on the part of their landlords, had accepted leases excluding them from the advantages of the law, and not equitable in some respects, or had wholly 'contracted themselves out' of the act; this naturally caused alarm and distrust in many peasant dwellings. but the principal reasons that content was really less than it seemed to be in landed relations were altogether of a different nature. like too many even excellent reforms in ireland, the land act of became law too late; twenty years before it would have been hailed as an extraordinary boon; it was now regarded as almost a half measure, in view of the socialistic ideas about the land afloat. at the same time, fenianism continued to make its influence felt; irish-americans continued to flit through the country denouncing british rule and irish landlords, and calling upon the peasantry, as in , to rise. even in these years of prosperity, though rents were well paid, there was a secret movement against rent beneath the surface of things, so well concealed that it was absolutely unknown by the government. meanwhile, in the midst of apparent peace, the elements of trouble in ireland still quiescent were to come to a head and to give rise to a movement. the most formidable to british rule though skilfully masked, which had been seen since the rebellion of . revolutionary schemes in ireland have always fastened on the land as the chief source from which they could derive strength; the united irish movement as i have pointed out, was connected with a peasant movement against the payment of rent. this idea had been brought into marked prominence by john finton lalor, one of the rebels of , a comparatively unknown but a sagacious man; 'you must associate' he wrote, 'the cause of irish liberty, for which the people really care little with a cause for which they care a great deal; an inert mass must be yoked to a powerful engine; the irish landlord must be driven from the land and the peasant masses be made its owners; and the fall of english power will follow that of its landlord garrison.' these words fell for the moment on unheeding ears; but the tradition has continued from that day to this the destruction of irish 'landlordism' was one of the objects of the fenian leaders of - , and they denounced the irish gentry in atrocious language, though they did not know how to carry out their policy. this teaching was eagerly adopted by michael davitt, a fenian, who had been convicted of a crime against the state; during a long imprisonment at dartmoor, he brooded 'on his country's wrongs,' but satisfied himself that if the independence of ireland was a patriot's first object, this could be attained only by uprooting the existing land system, by hounding on the occupiers of the soil against its owners, and by handing it over as spoil to the peasantry. davitt was released from dartmoor at the close of ; he attended a meeting in dublin at which parnell was present, and two of the assassins of the phoenix park tragedy; and he became supreme in the ranks of the fenian societies, known as 'the irish republican brotherhood,' which still retained a feeble life in ireland, and even in england and scotland. a short time afterwards he made his way to the united states, where he found the fenians divided into two parties, known under the general name of the clan na gael, but having different objects, though with a common purpose. both parties were for liberating ireland 'from the saxon yoke;' but the most violent and the most active sought to attain this end by expedients of desperate force; a 'skirmishing fund' had been established; 'england was to be invaded' by small bodies of 'resolute men;' her capital and chief towns were to be destroyed by dynamite. the other party, more prudent, but with similar aims, had been struck by parnell's attitude in the house of commons, and by the success of his unscrupulous tactics; its leaders began to think that something might be done by 'constitutional means;' they gradually came to an agreement with davitt, that 'the overthrow of english domination' was to be their ultimate end; but that efforts in this direction were to be linked with energetic efforts to subvert 'the landlord system, a disgrace to humanity and to the civilisation of the present century;' to banish the irish landed gentry from their country, and to secure their estates for their tenantry. this movement, though rebellious in no doubtful sense, was nevertheless to have a legal disguise; the wolf was to wear sheep's clothing; the 'formation of a peasant proprietary, and the abolition of arbitrary evictions,' were to be its proposed objects.[ ] treason, seeking support from socialistic greed, was thus the origin of the land league conspiracy, for this was its only legitimate name. i have glanced at this movement, on its political side, as it was associated with the cause of home rule; i must here consider it on its agrarian side, the most prominent, if not the most dangerous, to the state.[ ] the compact between davitt and the moderates of the clan na gael was called the 'new departure;' davitt returned to ireland to stir up what became known as the 'land war;' fenian emissaries went to ireland, about the same time, in order to collect arms and to drill peasants, with a view to a possible rising should the occasion be found. meanwhile, davitt had addressed himself to what was more immediately at hand; in the spring of he got a meeting together, in his native county, mayo, at which 'landlordism' and all its works were savagely denounced; during the following months other meetings of the same sort were held, but as yet only in the western province of connaught. at these gatherings the crusade against the landed gentry went on; rebellious utterances were blended with ferocious diatribes against[ ] landlords sometimes marked out for vengeance by name; and the peasantry were called on to keep 'a firm grip on their lands;' these would become their own should they only be steadfast. the land league movement was now launched on its course; but it was known to be an essentially fenian movement; it was subsidised from clan na gael funds; it was supported by a murderous clan na gael print; it was condemned in the severest language by an aged catholic prelate, one of the few of o'connell's surviving friends. the movement, however, as yet was not of much strength; davitt had opinions about the 'nationalisation of the land,' which, like those of the fenian leaders of - , were not to the mind of the peasantry; his efforts, hitherto, had not had much success. in this position of affairs he addressed himself to parnell, who had had fenian sympathies and associations for years, and had, we have seen, attracted fenian admiration abroad; what passed between the two men has not transpired; but parnell, if with reluctance, consented at last to become the head of the land league and to direct the movement. the measures he adopted were skilfully designed, in harmony with the 'new departure,' and with the double-dealing nature of a true conspirator. a central land league was established in dublin; it was to have 'branches' extending through the country; it was to make a steady attack on the land system. its professed objects, however, were constitutional, nay, fair; it was 'to agitate against rack-rents and unjust evictions,' and to 'facilitate the ownership of the soil by its occupants.' the ultimate purpose of the league, nevertheless, was that of the fenian chiefs; of its seven high officers four were fenians; it was wholly supported by fenian moneys; its most prominent members made a boast of their fenian sentiments.[ ] it was, in a word, a rebellious organisation in a constitutional garb; it was the embodiment of what parnell avowed afterwards: 'a true revolutionary movement in ireland should, in my opinion, partake both of a constitutional and an illegal character. it should be both an open and a secret organisation, using the constitution for its own purposes, but also taking advantage of its secret combination.'[ ] the land league established, under these auspices, gradually made some progress in the western parts of ireland, always centres of poverty more or less developed. it had not, however, as yet, become a power in the land; parnell went to the united states, as i have mentioned before, in order to obtain support for the 'new departure.' he was the grandson of a distinguished american; the elections for a president were near; it was necessary to bid for the irish vote; the chief of the league was invited to say what his irish policy was in the representative house of the people; and this he did in moderate and carefully chosen language. his real attitude, however, was very different; he associated with well-known fenian leaders, became acquainted with a contributor to the _irish world_, the worst journal of the clan na gael press; and more than once gave utterance to what was plain treason, notably to the 'last-link' speech already referred to. he obtained considerable funds for the league in ireland, and before long founded a similar league in america, which became a fenian organisation of the very worst type. meanwhile a season of distress had visited ireland; this quickened the elements of disorder being already let loose. the harvest of was not good; that of was the worst known since the great famine; the prosperity of the country suddenly came to an end. there was a universal calling in of demands, especially from tenant farmers, who, i have said, had been rather extravagant, and had become involved in debt;[ ] the whole class suffered more or less, though there was very little extreme indigence, and lord beaconsfield's government was not slow in providing relief, which private charity largely increased. in these circumstances the landed gentry acted as any class would naturally act; a considerable number made remissions of rent; if a large majority, as certainly was the case, insisted upon their legal rights--conduct which must be pronounced unfortunate--it must be recollected that an agitation of extreme violence had been directed against the whole order; and that mr. gladstone had declared that, after the land act, there were to be no more concessions. the league now acquired new power; its branches spread over large parts of the west; its directors, from members in the house of commons, to its avowed agents, and to the 'village ruffians,' who carried out its bidding in many places, rioted in atrocious threats against landlords whether good or bad; and a movement against the payment of rent began. the teaching which had been spread abroad during many months, bore the fruits which were to be expected from it; there was a sudden outbreak of agrarian crime, and of whiteboyism in its worst aspect; it deserves special notice that this was confined to the counties where the league was in real force. the landlords, under these conditions, were often driven to enforce their claims; attempts were made to show that the evictions that followed were the sole causes of this social disorder. but it is absolutely certain that this was not the case; it was the land league which provoked the evictions, and was responsible for the incidental crime.[ ] the spring of had come; lord beaconsfield had been driven from office, in an evil day for the renown of england; mr. gladstone had been returned again to power, on the flood of a tide of democratic sympathy. lord beaconsfield was not an author of any very large irish reform, but he understood ireland much better than his impetuous rival; he had seen from the first the real nature of the land league movement; in his address to the nation, when he dissolved parliament, he declared that an 'attempt scarcely less dangerous than famine and pestilence' was being made to separate ireland from great britain, words treated by mr. gladstone with scornful ridicule, but words of real truth. the incoming minister had of late taken little heed of irish affairs; he had been engaged in his crusade in midlothian, and in stirring up the multitude on the eastern question; but he had clung to his optimistic irish faith; he had solemnly announced that ireland was 'contented and happy,' when the country was suffering from unquestionable distress; he had even refused to renew a measure for the repression of agrarian crime, when agrarian crime was formidably on the increase, and the land league was rapidly growing in strength. at last, however, partly opening his eyes to the facts, he appointed a commission charged to report on irish land tenure; and he introduced a bill slightly to amend the land act of , showing thus from the outset that he choose to regard a conspiracy against the state on its economic side mainly, and not in its far more grave political aspect. a word must be said on this measure, which had its origin, to a great extent, in sheer and audacious falsehood. by this time parnell was at the head of some sixty adherents in the house of commons; he had linked the home rule and the land league movements; his followers were, in many instances, chiefs of the league; they induced mr. gladstone to listen to them, on representations characteristically untrue. evictions were on the increase in ireland, owing to the onslaught made by the league on the landed gentry; parnell and his band unscrupulously exaggerated the number, perhaps twenty-fold, by confounding ejectment decrees of the courts with evictions actually carried out; mr. gladstone appears to have accepted this shameful statement. the new 'compensation for disturbance' bill, as it was called, provided that in the case of certain classes of tenants, although they had failed to pay their rents, compensation, withheld, we have seen, under the act of , might be afforded them, under rather strict conditions; this was certainly an innovation of a startling kind, but something was to be said for it, in the existing position of affairs. the house of commons, however, disliked a measure nicknamed 'payment by reason of non-payment,' and limited its application in many ways; and the house of lords, unfortunately, i think, threw it out. this bill, closely circumscribed as it was, would not have extended, perhaps, to many tenants; it was condemned by parnell and his satellites as a sham. its rejection, however, gave an opportunity to the league; its leaders proclaimed at meetings, never so frequent before, that ireland had nothing to expect from a foreign parliament; the attack on 'landlordism' became more intense; treasonable and predatory harangues increased in vehemence. the influence of the conspiracy spread beyond connaught, over nearly all munster, and parts of leinster; wherever it was felt it was attended with agrarian crime; 'crime,' as mr. gladstone exclaimed, 'always dogged its footsteps.' offences of this kind portentously multiplied; they had been eight hundred and sixty-three at the close of ; they were two thousand five hundred and eighty-nine at the close of ;[ ] and these included a number of barbarous murders, and of other atrocious deeds of outrage and blood, especially of the mutilation of the cattle of those opposed to the league. a kind of servile war springing from the land had set in; and during this whole period the spokesmen of the league, whether in the highest or the lowest grades, continued to denounce the landed gentry, though they knew that their utterances were the direct incentive to far-spreading crime. parnell, however, infinitely the ablest of the conspirators, perceived that this brutal disorder would incense parliament, and, besides, could not have decisive results; the cool, calculating schemer laid down a plan of operations for the league, which he hoped would be less openly detestable, and much more effective. orders were issued that tenants should, in every part of ireland, repudiate the rents they had agreed to pay, and should pay only such sums as had been assessed on land by a valuation made by the state for rates, a standard long acknowledged to be much too low; every landlord who should reject these terms was to incur the vengeance of the league. by these means parnell expected, and not without reason, that a great combination for the forcible reduction of rent would be formed, and that numbers of farmers would flock in to the league, but he knew that his proposal was simply a defiance of the law, and that it would be resisted by many of the landed gentry; he hit on an expedient through which he believed he would attain his end. should any landlord refuse to accept the sum offered instead of the proper rent, and should proceed to dispossess the defaulting tenant--and practically he could have no other remedy--the evicted farm was to be left derelict; it was to be smitten, as it were, by the interdict of the league; and any wretch who should dare to take it was to be banned by the whole neighbourhood; he and his, and those who dealt with him, 'were to be shunned as lepers,' and 'treated as traitors to the cause.'[ ] in this way, the crime of 'boycotting,' as it has ever since been called--its origin may be traced to the great tithe war in ireland--was made part of 'the unwritten law' of the league; and parnell professed, whether sincerely or not, that through this device the league would baffle the law, and the landlords, as a class, as unhappily it did, in too many instances. having thus armed the conspiracy with increased power, he cynically began to deprecate crimes of violence: the device of 'boycotting' was a more excellent way; it would before long 'bring landlords to their knees,' and would ultimately 'plant the tenant in his farm to be held at a nominal rent,' should he only be true to the league. at the same time the astute plotter found other means to extend his authority and that of the conspiracy he ruled. he appealed to the elective local boards in each county, composed for the most part of tenant farmers, to join the league, and to carry out his policy; and continuously but steadily he brought the force of the league to bear upon the administration of the law, by the intimidation of juries, magistrates, and even judicial persons. the teaching of parnell was disseminated by the league and its agencies, especially at gatherings of peasant mobs; it was largely followed wherever the league prevailed. in hundreds of instances tenant farmers were compelled or induced to tender sums, 'at griffith's valuation,' as it was called, in lieu of the rents they were bound to pay; and on the rejection of the offer, refused to pay anything. a widespread combination against rent was thus set on foot, sustained by a principle of greed which held it together; the league was more completely organised than it had been before; it made its way into ten or eleven counties, the only centres in which it was formidably strong. in these circumstances the landed gentry acted, as an order of men so assailed would act; not a few accepted the terms imposed on them, and took their rents at the reduced scale, the majority resisted the mandates of the league, and appealed to the law to enforce their rights. the terrors of the league were at once directed against those who had dared to defy it; in a certain number of instances landlords and agents were brutally murdered, for popular passions had been let loose for years; in many more 'boycotting' was carried out with such fatal effect that scores of families were driven out of ireland, banned, persecuted, deprived even of the necessaries of life; in many others the demesnes of gentlemen were ravaged by 'land league hunts,' overrun and half destroyed by savage mob gatherings. evictions of course increased as the law was being trampled under foot; it is hardly necessary to say that parnell's doctrine was here ruthlessly applied; evicted farms were left deserted and waste over thousands of acres; the fears caused by 'boycotting' had become so intense, that no 'land-grabber,' as the name was, would dare to take them; the success of the league was in this respect remarkable. the vengeance of the conspiracy, too, was extended universally to another class of persons. tenants in numbers of instances paid their rents, either from an honest motive, or through dread of eviction; the payment was often made at night, and under a pledge of secrecy; but wherever they were discovered the league marked 'the traitor's doom;' they were sometimes 'boycotted' almost to death; sometimes murdered, often visited by gangs of ruffians--significantly known as parnell's police; the victims were shot in the legs, or the hair of their women was cut off, or their cattle were cruelly mutilated and maimed. it deserves special notice that, as was to be expected, parnell's warning against open crime was but little heeded; 'boycotting,' as mr. gladstone said, truly 'was but a passive thing;' it 'required assassination as its sanction;' the peasantry had been stirred up, in places, to frenzy; although parnell made few violent speeches at the time, his satellites still gave a free rein to their wicked licence. agrarian crime increased to an appalling extent; it had reached in a total of four thousand four hundred and thirty-nine cases, nearly two thousand more than those of the preceding year.[ ] in the spring and summer of , the power of the league was at its height; in its organisation and working it bore a strong resemblance to the jacobin societies of the revolution in france. it was directed by a council from a central office in dublin; its orders were sent thence to the bodies connected with it; these, scattered over many parts of the country, enforced its decrees through 'boycotting' crime, and terror. 'obnoxious' persons, landlords, agents, 'land-grabbers,' and tenants who had paid their rents, were denounced and exposed to the league's vengeance; officers of the law and of justice were especially banned; even those thought to be 'luke-warm' in the cause were declared 'suspected.' in some districts the regular government was practically superseded by the government of the league, described by mr. gladstone as 'a scheme of anarchic oppression;' in these a reign of terror was really supreme. it will never be known to what extent the league made use of whiteboyism and its secret conclaves in order to carry out its purposes; the central body, controlled by parnell, probably did not, but the affiliated bodies certainly did; it is impossible to account otherwise for the enormous increase of agrarian crime; the branches of the league, it is generally supposed, overshadowed, so to speak, the whiteboy societies; these were active agents in the atrocious deeds that were done. it is scarcely necessary to refer to what the condition of social life was wherever the influence of the league was great; despair settled on the hearts of thousands, who felt themselves exposed to unseen perils, and existed, as it were, in an atmosphere of crime; and it must be borne in mind that for one member of the better class, fifty probably of the humbler, who had transgressed the law of the league, were kept in a state of moral dread and torture. by this time the fenian league in the united states, formed by parnell, but ruled by the clan na gael, had completely joined hands with the league at home; its emissaries were found in many parts of ireland; its organ, the _irish world_, 'spread what it called the light,' the teaching of treason, murder, and dynamite; and it supplied the parent league with, probably, nine-tenths of its funds, for it is a significant fact, deserving special notice, that the contributions of the peasantry to the league were, from first to last, small. large parts of ireland were thus in a deplorable state; but it is a complete mistake to suppose, as has been asserted, that the authority of the league was general throughout the whole island. protestant ulster, with a true instinct of what the conspiracy was, a movement against british rule in ireland, kept aloof from the league, in angry contempt; and though its influence was more widely diffused, it was confined, i have said, to comparatively few counties if regarded as a dangerous and formidable power. it is also absolutely untrue that the movement was the uprising of an injured peasantry against oppressive landlords. there was little distress in and , when the league was rapidly growing in strength, for the harvests of those years were above the average; and the commission lately appointed by mr. gladstone had reported that over-renting in ireland was not common, though instances of over-renting were of course to be found.[ ] the centre of disturbance formed by the land league was, i have said, comparatively small; and it was, for the most part, limited to backward and poor districts; its wicked and sordid teaching did not command the sympathies of the more intelligent and better parts of ireland. its influence, however, spread, in different degrees of strength, over nearly the whole of catholic ireland, and it was more or less supported by the catholic priesthood, in many instances yielding to the pressure of their flocks. within the bounds where it did not create a reign of terror, it was joined by thousands who thought it a constitutional movement, especially by peasants only seeking an improved tenure; and it is not pretended that even a majority of those who took part in it had treasonable or rebellious objects in view. but it was not the less a conspiracy hatched abroad, and aiming at the subversion of british power in ireland; this was the policy its leaders avowed; and a conspiracy must be judged by the acts and words of those who direct it. the state of anarchy in ireland had become such, in the spring of , that the government was compelled to try to put it down; a prosecution against parnell and his chief lieutenants had failed; a bill, resisted by obstruction, more persistent than had been ever known before, passed through parliament with the object of repressing the land league. the measure, however, was not well designed; minor agents of the league, 'village ruffians,' 'parnell's police,' and the like, were imprisoned in large numbers, no real punishment; but the chiefs of the conspiracy were not brought within the law; the funds of the league were removed to paris; the movement went on in its destructive course. 'coercion,' nevertheless, was beginning to produce its effects, as it has always done in irish disorders, when mr. gladstone made a sudden change in his policy, never made before by a minister at the head of the state. he had denounced the conspiracy in passionate language; he had partly at least seen what its objects were; 'it aimed at dismemberment through rapine;' but always a man of phrases and not of action, he had shrunk in every passage of his career from facing difficulties where popular feelings were involved; and while ireland was still in a terrible state, he resolved to make a great concession to the league, and to effect a complete revolution in the irish land. it was a surrender akin to that of majuba, made with little information, and without mature reflection; whether its author believed, as i have remarked, that the conspiracy was most dangerous on its agrarian side, or was willing to propitiate parnell, at the expense of the irish landed gentry, he inaugurated the legislation, ever since pursued, which has resulted in destroying the property of the irish landlord, without gaining the sympathy of the occupier of the irish soil, has reduced the land system of ireland to a ruinous chaos, and has, in essential respects, been an absolute failure. mr. gladstone's position was difficult when he introduced his new irish land bill; his speech in the house of commons, lucid as regards details, was apologetic, ambiguous, often beside the subject. he went out of his way to praise irish landlords, 'acquitted,' he declared, by the late commission; he deeply regretted a new experiment on the irish land. he retained his admiration for the act of , but insinuated that it had been injured in the house of lords; had this not been the case, it would have settled the irish land question. he passed over his solemn pledges, on the faith of which millions had been lent on irish estates, that the legislation of eleven years before was final; here he took refuge in appeals to 'divine justice,' in the 'light of which' a statesman must walk, as if divine justice was an excuse for a gross breach of faith. he then unfolded his plan of reform; he endeavoured, with an ingenuity all his own, to distinguish it from the schemes he had emphatically condemned in ; but in this respect mystification was at fault; the measure was a clumsy imitation of the 'three f's,' and where it differed, it differed greatly for the worse. anticipating objections certain to be made, the orator dismissed 'political economy to saturn' with a confident gesture; for some untold reason the philosophy of adam smith could not possibly apply to the order of things in ireland. but by many degrees the most important part of the speech, in view of events which have since happened, was that in which mr. gladstone announced that should the measure really injure the irish landlord, the state was bound to provide an indemnity. he denied, indeed, that the bill could have any such effect; it would be a boon, he gravely said, to the irish landed gentry; but should the contrary be the case, 'compensation' would be clearly their right. 'i do not hesitate to say'--these were his very words spoken after the bill had made much progress--'that if it can be shown, on clear and definite experience, at the present time, that there is a probability, or if after experience shall prove that, in fact, ruin and heavy loss has been brought on any class in ireland by the direct effect of this legislation, that is a question which we ought to look very directly in the face.' the same meaning was even more clearly expressed: 'i should certainly be very slow to deny that where confiscation could be proved, compensation ought to follow,' and several of mr. gladstone's lieutenants spoke in the same sense.[ ] the bill, i have said, applied the principle of the 'three f's' to the relation of landlord and tenant in by far the greatest part of ireland. as in the case of the land act of , it excluded certain classes of lands from its scope, demesnes, residential holdings, town parks, and large pastoral farms; it extended also only to tenants at will, that is, subject to a notice to quit; it left tenants under leases outside its purview. it was confined, too, to 'present tenants in occupation,' at or near the existing time; it had no reference to 'future tenants,' that is, to tenants holding by contracts made after the bill should pass, or a few months afterwards. subject, however, to these exceptions, on the whole not large, the measure placed tenancies in ireland under the 'three f's,' but with conditions of tenure peculiar to itself, and hitherto unknown in ireland, or in any part of europe. 'fair rent,' which, under the ulster custom, was settled by a bargain between landlord and tenant, was to be adjusted through the intervention of the state, legislation akin to the mediæval statutes regulating the price of bread, and the wages of labour. 'fixity of tenure' was not to be a perpetuity in name; mr. gladstone feared that the speeches would be thrown in his teeth, in which he had declaimed against the idea; it was to be a lease for fifteen years, but capable of being renewed for ever, as a rule, through a periodical and costly lawsuit. 'free sale' was to be conceded under somewhat strict conditions; and the landlord was to be afforded a right of pre-emption in the case of such sales, in accordance with the analogy of the ulster custom. an estate virtually perpetual, at a state-settled rent, was thus to be carved out of the landlord's fee, and given to tenants actually in possession of the land; it was created in absolute derogation from the landlord's rights; it was a large if partial expropriation, in no doubtful sense. as to the interest of landlords in what was left of their property, they were to retain what are usually known as 'royalties'--timber, minerals, mines, and privileges of sport; they were to have the ordinary remedies for enforcing payment of rent; and the statutory leases were to be subject to certain conditions, taken, for the most part, from the ulster custom, the violation of which might lead to their forfeiture. a tribunal, called the land commission, was to be set up to carry the law into effect, that is, to 'fix fair rents,' and to make tenures 'fixed;' it was to be assisted by dependent agencies, known as sub-commissions, which, mr. gladstone intimated, were to be quite subordinate, and from which appeals to the land commission were to run; but a sinister feature of an untried revolutionary scheme--the decision of the land commission as respects 'fair rent'--was to be final. subject to an appeal to the land commission, the irish county courts were empowered to administer the law; but it was foreseen that they would not do much in this province. the new modes of tenure might be applied to lands, by agreements between landlords and tenants carefully guarded; and mr. gladstone believed that this would be the ordinary course of dealing. the bill, he thought, would not cause litigation to any great extent; it would operate as a self-acting force to lead to friendly contracts.[ ] so much for the scope of the bill and the classes of tenants to which its benefits were to extend. a most important change was made in the measure, which contained, originally, nothing of the kind; this has been attended with far-reaching results. as we have seen, tenants were to be compensated for their improvements, under the act of ; but the compensation was to be paid only when they were leaving the land; mr. healy, one of the ablest of parnell's lieutenants, induced parliament to accept a provision exempting tenants' improvements from rent, when the adjustment of 'fair rent' was to be made. however equitable in principle this might appear to be, it was, in the peculiar state of irish land tenure, unjust in the extreme to landlords, as i shall endeavour to point out afterwards; and it has been a source of litigation, as mischievous and demoralising as can well be conceived. the bill, like the act of , prohibited the subdivision and subletting of farms--an inveterate evil practice of the irish peasant--under conditions possibly rather too strict; and it made changes, in that statute, which require attention. it added weight, so to speak, to the law, in the tenant's interest; it increased the amount of compensation in respect of disturbance; it limited the power of 'contracting out,' to a smaller class of tenants than had been the case before, in fact, to large capitalist farmers; and it provided that tenants, who had accepted leases excluding them from the benefits of the act of , through illegitimate conduct on the part of their landlords, should be exonerated from such unfair contracts. it thus greatly amended the original land act; but it left many of its defects untouched; it is only right here to add that despite the lying clamour raised by the subsidised press of parnell--lying has ever since been part of its stock-in-trade--the instances were exceedingly few in which 'forced leases,' as they were called, were set aside by the courts. a remarkable feature of the bill has yet to be noticed: mr. gladstone, as was the case eleven years before, had still the wish, so characteristic of british statesmen, to assimilate irish to english land tenure; for this reason, as i said, he deprived 'future tenants' of the advantages of the bill; these were to hold their farms on the footing of pure contract. this was a shortsighted and bad arrangement; it tempted directly ill-conditioned landlords to dispossess tenants, whenever a chance offered, and to create 'future' tenants so as to discharge their estates from a burden; it revealed marked ignorance of the affairs of ireland. the bill dealt, also, with the land on the side of ownership; it gave additional facilities to tenants to purchase their holdings; the state was empowered to advance three-fourths of the moneys; but the tenants were to find the remaining fourth; the transaction was to be still a purchase, and not in the nature of a gift.[ ] the bill became law, with very little change; the house of lords, though fully alive to its evils, did not amend it in any important respect; the peers had in mind, perhaps too much, what had followed the rejection of the bill of the year before. mr. gladstone and his followers maintained at the time, and the statement has been ever since repeated, that the land act of , its popular title, was but a natural development of the original act of ; but this assertion is not only untrue, but absolutely contrary to the truth. the act of , no doubt, considered as a whole, annexed a large tenant right to the estate of the landlord, and to that extent placed a burden on it; but it preserved for the landlord the ownership of the land; it did not interfere with his rent, his first proprietary right; above all, it was, in the main, in accord with fact, and just. the act of was almost the exact opposite; it deprived the landlord of the ownership of his land, and nearly converted him into a mere rent-charger; it created against him a perpetuity at a state-settled rent; it really all but made the tenant the owner of the land; it was, in short, inconsistent with fact, and essentially unjust. the act of , too, established a principle, never heard of before in civilised countries, that tribunals of the state were to fix the rate of rent; this not only annihilated the most important of landed contracts, entirely to the landlord's detriment, it inevitably tended to cut down rents wholesale, as judge longfield had predicted would be the case. 'it is probable,' wrote that great authority, 'that the value of land, as fixed by any tenant-right measure, would be less than half the rent, which a solvent tenant would be willing to pay;'[ ] the prediction has been too well verified. the act of , in a word, was a remedial law, fairly adjusting the rights of landlord and tenant; the act of was a socialistic law, despoiling the landlord of his property wholesale, and handing it over to a dependent who had no claim to it; it was sheer confiscation hardly disguised; and it should be added that the exemption of tenants' improvements from rent, as affairs stood in ireland, was a grave wrong to the landlord. the act of , to speak plainly, transformed the irish land system iniquitously for the benefit of a single class; and it directly promoted litigation of the very worst kind, on an enormous scale, embittering, and still further dividing, the classes connected with the land. the evils of this legislation, a monument of reckless unwisdom, were at once manifest to well-informed persons; the duke of argyll and lord lansdowne resigned office rather than take part in a measure of the kind; lord ashbourne, the present holder of the great seal in ireland, caustically remarked that parliament would do much better should it deprive irish landlords of a fourth part of their rents on the spot. the verdict of enlightened and impartial opinion in ireland was very much the same. i shall comment on the administration of this law in another chapter; enough to say here that what was bad was made, by many degrees, worse. the conduct of parnell, as regards the measure, was characteristic; he assumed an attitude of moderation, and proposed to make 'a trial of the act by test cases;' he wrote to his fenian friends in the far west that the act was a mockery; he allowed the land league to riot in lawlessness as before. mr. gladstone, always incensed when his will was crossed, shut him up in prison under the recent statute, with several prominent leaders of the league; the reply was a manifesto against the payment of any rent, unhappily obeyed in some districts, though every symptom of exceptional distress had passed away. a brief but violent struggle was the result; the peasantry refused to pay a shilling in several counties; and as the principal agents of the league were within four walls, flights of viragoes, like those of the french revolution, were let loose to preach, far and near, the evangel of 'no rent.' this conflict, however, was not lasting; agrarian crime and disorder, indeed, still continued frequent; but the government was too strong for the 'ladies' land league;' by the spring of its triumph appeared to be certain. but mr. gladstone, 'unstable as water' in view of what he deemed popular movements, would not steadily persist in vindicating the law; the imprisonment of the chiefs of the conspiracy and their subordinates, in large numbers, seems to have made him feel sore if unworthy misgivings; he surrendered to the enemies of the state, for the second time, and entered with parnell into the famous 'kilmainham treaty,' as shameful as the glamorgan treaty which cost charles i. his head. the 'suspects,' as they were called, were set free in scores; the lord-lieutenant and the chief secretary indignantly left their posts; a new government for ireland was formed, charged to carry 'conciliation,' as the phrase was, out, that is, to make fresh concessions to parnell and his creatures. but the auspicious prospect was suddenly darkened by the frightful assassinations of the phoenix park; these cannot be justly laid to the charge of the league, indeed were against parnell's interest, for it was generally expected he would obtain high office; but two agents of the league were implicated in the crime; and the press of the league began soon to plead for the murderers. the mind of england was now thoroughly roused; mr. gladstone, bowing at once to england's will, carried through parliament the severest repressive measure that has ever, perhaps, been applied to ireland. the battle with the league was soon brought to a close; the conspiracy indeed resisted for a time, and crime, as always, was attendant on it; and the clan na gael gave it all the assistance it could, in large subsidies which had never ceased, in the dissemination in ireland of its incendiary journals, and especially by 'carrying the war into england,' and fulfilling its threats to attack her chief towns by fire and dynamite, outrages, however, that really came to nothing. but 'coercion,' as has been invariably the case in ireland, produced its effects; agrarian crimes, which, in , if less than those of the year before, were, nevertheless, three thousand four hundred and thirty-two in number, had fallen to eight hundred and seventy in .[ ] the land league was paralysed, if not destroyed; its organisation was, in name, suppressed by its framers. it reappeared, however, at once, in a new form; the skill of parnell in masking a conspiracy was never more fully displayed. he felt that the land league could not cope with the law; that the crimes of violence and blood, which attended its course, gave the government opportunities to put it down; that its openly avowed purposes were a danger to it. he set up, therefore, the 'national league' in its stead; the professed object of the association was to promote 'home rule,' while it upheld the rights of the occupiers of the irish soil, and kept the irish land, so to speak, in view; it was thus apparently a mere centre of a constitutional movement. through these means, and under these pretences, the astute and able plotter swept into his net thousands who had held aloof from the land league; many of the middle classes joined the national league, notably hundreds of the clergy of the catholic church in ireland; the peasantry gave it increased support; its influence spread beyond its predecessor's limits. the national league, however, was only the land league under another name;[ ] its leaders and officials were the same men; its 'branches' were those of the league it replaced; its real objects were exactly the same, the overthrow of british rule in ireland, and the annihilation of the irish landed gentry. but the methods it employed to work out its ends were, to a great extent, different; open agitation was kept down; public meetings, likely to be violent, were not held; the perpetration of agrarian crime was not encouraged. the movement, in a word, was comparatively secret and below the surface; but it was essentially the successor of the land league in its aims; we may say of it, with a slight change, in the words of the poet-- 'facies non una sororum, nec diversa tamen.' 'boycotting' was now made the chief weapon of the reformed conspiracy; 'national league courts' were held regularly in many districts, at which this barbarous interdict was systematically pronounced on persons violating 'the unwritten law' of the old league; the persecution against landlords, agents, 'land-grabbing' peasants who were 'disloyal and traitors,' and traders suspected of dealing with 'rotten sheep,' was carried on with a pertinacity and ingenuity hardly known before; the number of derelict farms augmented; and the government found it far from easy to deal with these crimes. at the same time, 'the nationalist press,' as it had been named, fully revealed the purpose of the conspirators; trusting to impunity, under the law of libel, which depended upon the will of juries, it was even more treasonable and seditious than before; and it gave infamous license to defamation of personages in high places, worthy of the abominations of the père duchesne.[ ] ireland, however, remained in comparative peace while the recent measure of repression continued in force; but this was injudiciously allowed to expire in --a strange act on the part of a conservative ministry; and in a short time agrarian disorder broke out afresh. crimes of this class had fallen, in , to seven hundred and sixty-two in number; they were one thousand and fifty-six in ; and 'boycotting' had increased fourfold.[ ] the national league remained quiescent, while mr. gladstone was making another surrender, and endeavouring to carry home rule through parliament. upon the rejection of the measure of , its activity was renewed; and it found considerable support from the american fenians, who, from first to last, had been its chief paymasters. i have referred to the convention at chicago graced by parnell's envoys, and to the wild boast that the english 'government of ireland was to be made impossible;' the treasonable aspect of the conspiracy became at once manifest. the league was assisted by another season of distress, from to ; the number of its adherents greatly increased; it began, like its predecessor, to defy the authority of the state. i have already dealt with this movement on its political side; i shall not repeat what i have already written: how the league endeavoured to stir up disorder in ireland; how it declared open war against the castle; how it tried to terrorise the ministers of the law; how it made 'boycotting' more effective than it had ever been; how, if responsible for many grave deeds of blood, it mainly relied on this malign influence, which tortured hundreds of victims in many districts, and was fitly compared to 'the pestilence that walks in darkness;' how mr. gladstone and the opposition, to the disgrace of both, gave the conspiracy their support and excused its crimes; and how it was ere long put down by mr. balfour strongly seconded by rome. but i must say a word on the agrarian side of the movement; for this illustrated the increased ingenuity of the league. some of its leaders issued a mandate against the payment of rent, except upon reductions to an enormous extent; should the landlords refuse, the tenants, on every estate, were to lodge their rents into what was called the 'war chest,' a common fund to be held in trust; the object of this being to prevent the secret payment of rent, which had repeatedly, we have seen, taken place, and to put a stop to 'defection from the cause.' the 'plan of campaign' as was its name, was thus ushered on; it was a criminal plot of the very basest kind; but though it proved successful in some instances, and it caused much agrarian disorder and crime, it was, on the whole, a comparative failure. the peasantry, close-fisted and shrewd, distrusted the so-called 'trustees of the war chest;' they generally declined to put their money in it; the 'plan' was only carried out on few estates, though it compelled many landlords to make reductions of rent; it is remarkable that parnell did not approve of the swindle. long, however, before the defeat of the league, there had been a thousand instances of agrarian crime: five thousand miserable beings had been 'boycotted,' in many cases with frightful results; a thousand had been placed under the protection of the police. as had happened during the _régime_ of the land league, these victims were nearly all of the humble classes. in another change was made in the irish land system, essentially a development of the land act of . that measure, i have said, applied to tenants at will only, that is, liable to be dispossessed by a notice to quit; it did not apply to tenants under leasehold tenures. a sharp distinction, therefore, was drawn between the two classes; a farmer, with land on one side of a ditch, could secure the advantages of the 'three f's;' his neighbour, on the other side, could not; the distinction was so palpably harsh, that many landlords in ireland saw its injustice, and enabled leasehold tenants to obtain the benefits of the law. an act, prepared by lord salisbury's government, brought ordinary irish leaseholders within the land act of ; these were given a right to have 'fair rents' fixed, and 'fixity of tenure' and 'free sale' under certain conditions. the act of , also, empowered the courts to set aside perpetual leases unfairly obtained; and it relaxed the restrictions of the act of with respect to subletting and subdivision, and the exclusion of 'town parks.' it improved, moreover, the law of ejectment, facilitating the vindication of the rights of the landlord; and--a strange provision--it enabled a middleman, in certain events, to creep out of his contract, and to free himself from the rent due to his superior landlord. in consequence of the fall of prices that had lately occurred, and the depression of agriculture that had been the result, the act, too, reduced, for a short period of time, 'fair rents' that had been already fixed; and it contained other enactments wholly in the interest of the occupier of the irish soil. regarded as a whole, something was to be said for the measure, on the principles of the legislation of ; but the liberation of the middleman from the payment of a debt has been attended with grave wrong, and was an ominous precedent leading to others of the kind. the new law was, of course, another inroad on the rights of the irish landlord, another innovation made against his interests; it has certainly strengthened his claim to compensation for the loss of his property, acknowledged by mr. gladstone to be unquestionable, should it be reasonably made out. for the rest, the national league made a boast that the act had been wrung by its efforts from a foreign parliament; the act certainly, like that of , was a concession, derogating from the rights of a powerless class, in the hope of weakening a conspiracy against the state, by detaching from it large classes supported by it, and handing over to these what had belonged to the irish landed gentry.[ ] the land act of , it has been alleged, was the principal cause that disorder in ireland was suppressed, and that comparative peace was restored. the measure may have had effects in this direction; but these assuredly were not great; the number of leaseholders was not large; the reductions made in 'fair rents' were temporary and small. in truth, as agrarian war, stirred up by the land league, did not diminish when the act of was passed, but was brought to an end by what is called coercion, the agrarian war, stirred up by the national league, was quelled, not by the act of , but by resolute government, assisted by a repressive measure infinitely less stringent than that of , and, in some degree, i have said, by rome. it is worse than unwise to ignore plain facts; grave outbreaks of disorder and crime in ireland can only be put down by severe means, and invariably have been put down by these; that 'force is no remedy' is mere false sentiment. the violence, nay, the power, of the national league decreased rapidly and greatly after about ; the conspiracy seemed well-nigh to have dwindled away. this was partly because parnell, negotiating with mr. gladstone, in the hope of obtaining home rule, discouraged agitation of every kind in ireland, and in order to hoodwink the english people, and to bring about the 'union of hearts,' represented, with his followers, that ireland was at perfect peace, and only awaited 'self-government' to be completely happy. but infinitely the most potent reason was that the fall of parnell almost broke up the league; his creatures split into angry factions, exasperated against each other by furious discord; as the result the organisation of the league was shattered; the peasantry and the catholic priesthood fell away from it. at the same time the fenians in the united states, much its best supporters, withdrew the subsidies they had hitherto lavished; the league became penniless and almost powerless. by the conspiracy showed scarcely a sign of life; agrarian crime had sunk to a very low ebb; there was no sign of a movement against the payment of rent; order prevailed, it may be said, throughout the community. the conspiracy, nevertheless, was not dead; its leaders, if quiescent, had not disappeared; well-informed observers knew that the end had not come. i have described in another chapter, by what means, and through what conditions, it revived gradually under lord salisbury's third government, and acquired strength that may be on the increase; it is not yet formidable, in any real sense, and its leaders are not to be named with parnell; it is not receiving funds as yet from america; but the united irish league is its true successor; and this commands eighty votes in the house of commons. time only can show if a period of agrarian strife and crime may not be about to open again for ireland; it is foolish optimism to assert that this is impossible, or to contend that the agrarian legislation of the last twenty years, as regards the irish land, will necessarily, or even probably, produce this fortunate result. in another change was effected in irish landed relations, as usual in the interest of the tenant, and against his landlord. middleman tenures had well-nigh been extinguished; but some hundreds, probably, were still to be found; and as a middleman, through the legislation of , was enabled to repudiate his contract, in certain cases, and to escape the payment of rent to his superior landlord, he was now to obtain an advantage in other instances. the large majority of this class of intermediate owners, originally created in the eighteenth century, held, at least, in present times, by perpetual leases, which had long ago, as a rule, been converted into estates in fee farm, that is, estates in fee, subject to a perpetual rent; parliament passed an act in , enlarged and amended five years afterwards, declaring that, in cases in which tenants of this kind were 'in _bonâ fide_ occupation' of lands, under rents which, in the judgment of the land commission, should be 'a full agricultural rent,' they might either agree with their landlords to redeem the rent at a price to be determined by that tribunal, or, should the landlords refuse their consent, might have 'fair rents' fixed as in the instance of common farming tenants.[ ] the application of this law could not extend far, for tenants of this description were very few; but it asserted a strange, and, i think, a most vicious principle. the act practically forced a superior landlord, often a poor man, either to accept a price assessed by a court over which he had no control, in lieu of a rent, in all probability reasonably well secured, or, as an alternative, to submit to have a 'fair rent' fixed on the land, the rent to be discharged from improvements made by the tenant. if, therefore, a tenant of this kind had built, say, a valuable house, on his holding, which would thus largely add to the security for the rent, this--at least, so it is generally believed--was not to be taken into account in fixing 'the fair rent;' and this principle, it may confidently be predicted, will be extended further. should a tenant, at a 'fair rent,' in this predicament, be evicted for the failure to pay the rent, a law, in all human probability, will be made, to obtain for him compensation, under the act of , from the benefits of which he would be, as affairs stand, excluded. the result might be that if, as would often happen, the improvements he had made were of great value--his interest, in the land, being a perpetual interest--the sum the landlord would be adjudged to pay, might swallow up the whole value of the rent, and practically confiscate his whole property.[ ] in another inroad was made on the rights of irish landlords, and another dole given to the tenant class in ireland; the descent to avernus had proved easy; a conservative government had followed it since . this fresh legislation was mainly in the interest of the presbyterian farmers of ulster, who had supported the union almost to a man, and possessed no little political weight; but who, always separated more or less from their landlords, had shown dissatisfaction with the fixing of 'fair rents,' and had begun to cry out for what is called 'the compulsory purchase' of the estates of their landlords, a policy on which i shall comment afterwards. the bill contained just and well-devised provisions; it improved the procedure for fixing 'fair rents,' if not nearly as thoroughly as it ought to have done; it protected the leases creating 'fixity,' under the new tenure--mr. gladstone, flying in the face of the ablest lawyers, had passionately declared that these were sacrosanct--in instances in which these might have been annulled; it proposed, what i had always considered right, that old arrears of rent ought not to be allowed to hang over the heads of tenants, and that rent could not be recovered on eviction, if due for upward of two years.[ ] but the bill abounded in principles dangerous and false; it was, taken as a whole, a mischievous measure; it was another mine sprung upon the irish landed gentry. lands hitherto excluded from the benefits of the 'three f's,' under the acts of and --that is, demesnes, town parks, residential, and pastoral holdings--were largely brought within the scope of the bill, that is, they were made subject to 'fair rents,' and, if held by tenants, were practically taken away from the landlords; the provisions of the bill, as to demesnes, were especially harsh; many a mansion and demesne, which might happen to be let, would really become the property of the tenant, the owner being put off with a rent-charge. the worst proposals of this measure, however, were those relating to improvements made by tenants, exempted from rent, we have seen, by the act of . the courts of justice in ireland had rightly declared with one voice, that improvements of this kind were not to be discharged from rent, unless they were the improvements treated by the act of , that is, rents might be charged on tenants' improvements, if these did not fall within the definition laid down by that law, or if they were outside the limitations it had imposed, in order to shut out obsolete and unjust claims, which might harass and do grievous wrong to landlords. all this was completely changed by the new measure; the definition of improvements was wholly altered, in order to secure their being exempted from rent; the restrictions in point of time, and many other matters, as regards claims for improvements, were largely swept away, and the power of 'contracting out' of such claims was still further abridged. the whole law, in a word, as to tenants' improvements, as these were to create exemption from rent, was placed on altogether a new basis; this was detrimental in every respect to the landlord, and gave advantages to the tenant, in my judgment, utterly unjust.[ ] the bill contained other provisions, all in the same direction, that is, for the advantage of the irish tenant, and to his landlord's loss, especially one relaxing the law as to the subdivision and subletting of farms, an inveterate and very pernicious practice. it introduced, also, a new principle, on which i shall say some words afterwards, with respect to another experiment on the irish land, that is, what is called land purchase, under conditions, not thought of before, until they were laid down by a conservative government. the measure was hustled through the house of commons with such indecorous haste, that sir edward carson, now a law-officer of the crown, walked out of that assembly to express his disgust; it narrowly escaped defeat in the house of lords, loyal as the peers to lord salisbury are; indeed, though hardly debated, its vices were soon made manifest. it is unnecessary to point out what the general character of the act is; it enlarged very considerably the sphere of the 'three f's,' greatly increasing the wrong done to the irish landlord, by doing away with the restrictions, placed by mr. gladstone, in , on illegitimate claims in respect of improvements; its direct tendency was to reduce rents wholesale, and to promote more litigation between landlord and tenant; and if it encouraged tenants to make improvements on their farms, its plain effect, i will not say its purpose, was to 'improve the irish landlords out of their estates,' the contemptuous phrase of a great master of equity. its mischief, however, went a great deal further; tenants making improvements are only exempted from rent, in respect of these, by this act; they are not within the protection of the act of , if improvements of any kind are excluded by it; if a tenant, therefore, makes an improvement on his farm, which is not 'suitable' to it in a real sense, say, builds a mansion upon a petty holding, he will not be entitled to compensation, should he quit it, even though dispossessed for non-payment of his rent. but tenants, in these circumstances, like those i have referred to before, would assuredly proclaim that they had here a great and real grievance; and they would be relieved from it, doubtless, by another law, giving them compensation, perhaps, to their landlord's ruin. a dangerous principle is thus hidden within the act; this will probably be asserted against the owners of ground rents, not only in ireland, but in england and scotland; and the law, taken as a whole, has strengthened the claim of the irish landed gentry to be indemnified, as was solemnly promised, for what they have suffered from the legislation begun in . while the irish land system was thus being dealt with, on the side of occupation, during many years, experiments were made on it, likewise on the side of ownership. resenting the legislation that had produced the 'three f's,' conservative politicians took it into their heads that mr. gladstone had 'created' 'dual ownership,' as they gave it the name, in ireland; they insisted that this was simply an intolerable thing. unfortunately mr. gladstone had no more 'created dual ownership' than he had created the mountains and lakes of ireland; he had only developed the joint ownership, which the irish tenant possessed in his holding, in thousands of instances, if he had developed it under the very worst conditions. this theory, however, at which burke would have laughed with contempt, and which revealed the incapacity to understand irish land tenure, ingrained, it would appear, in the english mind, was eagerly taken up and found much support; it was resolved to extend the process of converting tenants in ireland into owners of their farms, by a method hitherto untried, and unknown in any part of europe. under the church disestablishment act, and the land acts of and , the state had advanced money to the occupier of the irish soil, in order to enable him to acquire his farm; but it had made it incumbent on him to contribute part of the price; the transaction, therefore, was, in a real sense, a purchase. this, the only security for honesty and thrift, was taken away in ; parliament passed an act enabling the irish tenant to become owner of his holding without paying down a shilling; the state was to advance the whole price; and the state was to be repaid by a terminable annuity, charged on the land, and extinguished at the end of less than half a century. this terminable annuity was to be much less than a true rent, or even than a 'fair rent' adjusted by the state; the transaction, therefore, was not a purchase, but a gift, akin to a bribe, another largess bestowed on the tenant class in ireland, and another injury, as i shall prove, inflicted on the irish landed gentry. this 'land purchase,' as it was falsely called, was to be voluntary on the part of landlord and tenant; it was to be conducted on the footing of free contract, as had been the case under the preceding statutes; the state was to obtain a guarantee from the landlord; and parliament voted £ , , to carry out this policy. exactly as had happened in the case of the encumbered estates act, this scheme of 'land purchase' was pronounced successful; some scores of landlords sold land, some hundreds of tenants bought it; the real nature of the proceeding and its inevitable results were ignored; it was even boasted that 'dual ownership' would be got rid of, nay, that the irish land question was being finally 'settled.' but when the first sum of £ , , had been expended, and parliament was asked to vote a second sum, it began to hesitate as to this dealing with the irish land; the british taxpayer demurred and growled; with a true instinct he disliked the security; it was found very difficult to procure the funds required, large as the majority was of lord salisbury's government. his ministry, however, adhered to the new policy; and parliament enacted a measure in , which i have always thought unconstitutional in the highest degree, not to speak of the evils it was certain to produce. by this act a sum of about £ , , was made forthcoming to facilitate 'land purchase,' to abolish 'dual ownership,' and to change irish tenants into owners of land; this sum was to be secured by the methods before referred to, that is, by terminable annuities less than any equitable rent, and by guarantees on the part of selling landlords; but, furthermore, a whole series of funds, devoted to ireland, for irish purposes, and absolutely essential to her most important needs, were appropriated to make good any default on the part of 'purchasing' tenants, in the payment of annuities charged on their farms; and even the irish counties were rendered liable in the last resort. should, therefore, tenants in ireland, who had acquired the ownership of their farms, refuse to pay those annuities on any pretence, say, through an appeal made by a land league conspiracy--the manifesto against all rent cannot be forgotten--this extraordinary spectacle would then be seen: the state would have a right to seize upon the grants made for national schools and lunatic asylums throughout ireland; these institutions would be shut up; children and madmen would be let loose through the country; and the owner of an irish estate would have to pay for the dishonesty perhaps of his former tenants. the late lord randolph churchill severely condemned this scheme; i agree with him it was utterly unjust, and but too characteristic of the contempt of the rights of ireland, unhappily often displayed by british statesmen. only a sum, it will be observed, of about £ , , , that is, two of £ , , , and some £ , , more, has thus been made available for 'land purchase;' this obviously could not transfer even a fourth part of the irish land, valued, we have seen, by mr. gladstone at £ , , --in a remarkable speech in reply to lord george hamilton--and almost certainly worth from £ , , to £ , , . the process of doing away with 'dual ownership' and making tenants in ireland owners of their farms, having been pronounced by its authors slow, the act of , referred to before, enabled the landlord's guarantee to be dispensed with, and provided that, in the case of hopelessly embarrassed landlords, whose estates were being offered for sale in the courts, the tenants should virtually have a right of pre-emption, thus asserting a principle, on which i shall dwell afterwards, and known as the 'compulsory purchase' of the irish land. i shall point out, in another chapter, the present and the inevitable future results of this policy of so-styled 'land purchase;' suffice it to say here, that, in my judgment, it betrays utter ignorance of the irish land system, and of the customs and inclinations of the irish peasant; that it proceeds on an essentially immoral principle, the bribery of a class to promote its welfare; that, from the very nature of the case, it cannot abolish 'dual ownership;' that, human creatures being what they are, it cannot, as is being already proved, establish a thriving body of occupying owners on the irish soil; that it must create sharp and unjust distinctions in irish land tenure, iniquitous to the landlord and to every tenant, who may be excluded from its benefits; that it must directly tend, as it is even now tending, to arouse a cry for a wholesale confiscation of irish estates, the most shameful and wrongful ireland has yet witnessed; and that so far from settling the irish land question, it must necessarily unsettle it from top to bottom. as respects the legislation i have briefly described, on the side of the occupation of the irish land--by many degrees the most important--i shall also comment upon its results in a subsequent chapter, after examining its administration by the tribunal it has set up. but a word may be said, in this place, on its essential character: from to the present time, it is absolutely without a precedent in civilised lands; it has trampled on economic science and the truths it teaches, as, indeed, its chief author made his boast; it has created a mode of land tenure in ireland not in accord with fact, which has virtually deprived the irish landlord of real ownership in his estate, has turned him into a kind of annuitant, and has virtually changed the irish tenant into a kind of owner, but under conditions absolutely bad; its inevitable tendency was to cut down rents wholesale, without regard to the simplest justice; it established a system of mischievous litigation between landlord and tenant, demoralising and increasing the division of classes; it exhibited, on an enormous scale, characteristic contempt of irish rights of property; and finally, if parliamentary pledges are to be fulfilled, and gross wrong is not to be consecrated by law, it has given the irish landlord a great and legitimate claim to compensation from the state. as we survey this unwise and destructive medley of law, we are forcibly reminded of the words of burke:--'i am unalterably persuaded that the attempt to oppress, degrade, impoverish, confiscate, and extinguish the original gentlemen, and landed property of a whole nation, cannot be justified under any form it may assume.'[ ] chapter v the question of the irish land (_continued_)--the administration of the irish land acts the administration of the land act of in the main good--difficulty about claims for tenants' improvements--the administration of the land act of , and of its supplements--the land commission and its sub-commissions--allowances to be made for these tribunals--principles which the land commission should have adopted in fixing 'fair rents'--the procedure and practice it ought to have established--it made mistakes as to both--the nature of the sub-commission courts--this was objectionable in the highest degree--these courts have, however unconsciously, done grave wrong to irish landlords--causes of this--characteristics of their proceedings--they disregarded the principles they ought to have followed, and adopted faulty and erroneous methods--different illustrations of these grave mistakes--the land commission and appeals as to 'fair rent'--importance of this subject--faulty procedure of the land commission in appeals--valuers--the second land commission--its procedure worse than that of the first--theory of occupation right--this another wrong done to landlords--the fry commission and its report--confiscation of the property of irish landlords--the proofs of this--apologies made for the land commission--the administration of the land purchase acts. i turn to the administration of the new irish land code, of which i have described the distinctive features. the county courts of ireland, i have said, were entrusted with the task of carrying out the land act of ; the principal duty of the judges was to determine rights, under the ulster and analogous customs in the south, and to declare the sums to be paid to tenants, when leaving their holdings, for compensation for improvements, and in respect of disturbance. as evictions were by no means frequent, in the period between and , the litigation before these tribunals, under these different heads, though by no means trivial, was not excessive; the applications on the part of tenants were not very numerous; there was ample time to consider the law, whether in the subordinate or the appellate courts; and though there was much difference of opinion as to the amount of compensation to be given to suitors, the administration of the act was not seriously impugned,[ ] and, on the whole, was reasonable and just. the most remarkable circumstance in the inquiries held before the courts was, certainly, the extravagance of the claims put forward, on account of tenants' improvements, circumscribed as these were by the limitations of the law; everything in the nature of an agricultural work was called an improvement, from repairing an old fence to cleaning an old drain; hours and days were lost in endeavours to disentangle the truth, and to arrive at sound and legal conclusions. i could fill scores of pages with descriptions of demands of this kind, usually pressed with reckless and hard swearing; they ought to have been a warning, as unhappily they were not, not to break down the restrictions contained in the act of , and not to extend legislation, in this direction, against the rights of the landlord. i confine myself to a single example: i tried a case, in , in which a tenant's claims, under the act of , were £ ; i cut these down to £ ; after deducting £ found due to the landlord, i adjudged to the tenant a sum of less than £ ; and there was no appeal from the decision i pronounced.[ ] the land act of has been well-nigh superseded by the great measure of , and by the legislation which has been its supplement. the administration of this part of the new land code, by many degrees the most important, was given, as i have pointed out before, to a wholly new tribunal, the land commission, and to sub-commissions dependent on it; a concurrent jurisdiction was given to the irish county courts; but they have had very little to do in this province. the principal work of the land commission has been to fix 'fair rents,' and to make statutory leases, 'fixity of tenure,' in a word, in a kind of disguise, and thus to give effect to the policy adopted by mr. gladstone in . the three original members of the land commission, in all respects its directors, were the late mr. justice o'hagan, the late mr. e. f. litton, and the late mr. john e. vernon; lord salisbury denounced these appointments in emphatic language, as being against the just rights of irish landlords;[ ] the charge was not without plausible grounds at least, for mr. justice o'hagan had been one of the 'young ireland' party, and mr. litton had been a strong tenant-right advocate. these two gentlemen, nevertheless, were most honourable men, and capable, if not very distinguished, lawyers; mr. vernon was an excellent and experienced country gentleman, if, in politics, of the liberal faith; and as all three have long ago passed away, it would be unjust to make charges of illegitimate conduct, even if they may not have been wholly free from unconscious bias. great allowance ought to be made, in common justice, for the commissioners in the situation that had been made for them, and regard being had to their most arduous duties. to fix 'fair rent,' even approximately, was difficult in the extreme; as judge longfield predicted many years before, and every well-informed irishman knew, the adjustment of rent, through the agency of the state, would inevitably cause a general lowering of rents. again, the commissioners were, from the outset, harassed by a rush of applications to fix 'fair rents;' these came in, within a few weeks, in thousands; they were tempted, therefore, to set about their work at once, without taking the careful precautions, or entering into all the considerations, the nature of their duty required. two circumstances, also, no doubt, had effect on their minds; the land league was creating a reign of terror, and destroying the property of the irish landlords; the commissioners probably hoped that they would weaken the power of the league, by, so to speak, bidding against it, and cutting rents down. above all, the land commission, like the encumbered estates commission, was a tribunal set up to carry out a policy, that is, in word, to abate rents; and all experience, irish experience notably, proves that such a body of men usually fulfils its mission. mr. gladstone, we have seen, had expressed a belief that 'fair rents,' as a rule, would be fixed by contract; that the act of would produce this result; and that this part of the work of the land commission, accordingly, would not be very great. unquestionably, too, with his leading followers, he was convinced that rents in ireland would not be largely reduced;[ ] it is important to bear this distinctly in mind, regard being had to subsequent events. these anticipations were to prove vain; but the land commissioners possibly may have shared his views, and may have resolved to act upon them, before they first addressed themselves to the task of 'fixing fair rents.' after experience, it is easy to be wise; but we can now clearly discern what they ought to have done, considering the heavy work they were soon to find imposed on them. their first duty should have been to establish some standard, which would make a reasonable criterion of rent; the means to accomplish this end were not wanting. mr. law, the irish attorney-general of mr. gladstone, one of the most distinguished lawyers of his day, and afterwards a holder of the great seal of ireland, had made a definition of 'fair rent' in the house of commons; 'a fair rent was to be a competition rent minus the yearly value of the tenant's interest in the holding; that was what was intended, and anything else would be monstrously unjust.'[ ] for some reason that has not transpired, this definition did not find a place in the act; but the authority of its framer was great; it must have been known to the land commissioners; had they adopted it, and based their decisions upon it, things would have been very different from what they are at the present time. but there were other tests to indicate a standard of rent, to be regarded at least, if not conclusive. the valuation of the lands of ireland made for the assessment of rates, griffith's valuation, as it was commonly called, which parnell had made a measure of 'fair rent,' would certainly have been of real use, though it varied greatly in different counties; and the commission appointed by mr. gladstone, only a few months before, had, i have said, reported, that ireland, as a whole, was in no sense an over-rented land. there was another consideration, as regards irish rents, which the land commissioners ought to have borne in mind. the rents on the estates of the great landlords, and of the gentry of old descent, were, as a rule, low; the rents of the purchasers under the encumbered estates acts were high, nay, excessive, in not a few instances. other circumstances, moreover, of great importance, ought to have been taken into account, with respect to this subject. the rental of ireland was not as high as it had been before the great famine; where rents, therefore, had not been increased, and had been regularly paid for a long series of years, there was the strongest possible presumption that these would be 'fair.' again, the material progress of ireland had been great during the forty preceding years: the wages of labour had, indeed, risen; but owing to the introduction of good farm machinery, the cost of production, in agriculture, had diminished; the extension of the railway system had opened new markets, and had brought even connaught within a few hours of great britain; steam navigation had multiplied and improved; the modes of husbandry and the breeds of stock of all kinds had become infinitely better than they had been; and prices of late had been very high. these were all elements to be regarded in the determination of 'fair rent;' they ought to have been examined with care; and inquiries on these matters should have extended over a long space of time. moreover, as the land act of discharged improvements made by tenants from rent, as these were defined and limited by the act of , the greatest pains ought to have been taken that claims for exemption should be strictly dealt with, and not permitted to run riot, especially as it was notorious that demands of this kind, made under the law already in force, were usually excessive, supported by untrue statements, and by no means easy to resist and disprove. another fact, also, of the gravest moment, ought to have been thoroughly considered, as regards this question. as improvements made by tenants were not to be charged with rent, it was but equitable that the lands they might hold should be valued as if in their normal state; that if these had been deteriorated, either through wilful misconduct, or gross neglect, their occupiers were not to make profit of their own wrong; that deterioration, in a word, was not to be allowed to work rent down, and was to be taken into account, in adjudicating upon 'fair rent.' this was the more necessary because it was well known that numbers of farms in ireland had been more or less run out; and especially because, as in the case of the ryot of bengal, under the permanent settlement of lord cornwallis, an irish tenant would be strongly tempted to injure his lands, if he believed that, when 'a fair rent' should be fixed on them, he would be permitted to take advantage of his own default. it should be added that, in the fixing of 'fair rents,' the large sums which, in many instances, irish landlords had laid out in improving their estates, notably since the years that succeeded the famine, ought, as a matter of course, to have been kept in mind. these were the general principles which should have guided the land commission in approaching the question of fixing 'fair rent.' there was nothing in the act of to prevent the land commissioners, as a court of first instance, adjudicating directly in cases of this kind, or to compel them to refer these to their sub-commissions; indeed the plain intention of the law was in a contrary sense. had the land commissioners adopted this course--and this, i venture to say, was their obvious duty--they would, no doubt, have considered the questions before them at length, and with close attention; have made their inquiries go back many years, and have laid down, in elaborate judgments, the maxims and rules to be applied in the fixing of 'fair rent.' the evidence that would have come before them would have been of two kinds: that which depended upon the statements of valuers, on the side of landlords and tenants alike; this, of course, would be of great importance; but it should have been borne in mind that it would be biassed evidence; and that, in the existing state of ireland, and of irish opinion, the statements of tenants' valuers would require to be strictly watched. the other head of evidence was of a much more trustworthy kind; it was indicated by the circumstances of the cases being heard, and was necessarily suggested by the inquiries themselves. this class of evidence would be desired from a consideration of the rate of rent in the neighbourhood or even of adjoining lands, in a word, of what may be called the market price of rent; from an examination of what a reasonable rent would be, payable by a solvent tenant to a fair-minded landlord; and even from a review of rent fixed by the competition of bidders for land, these circumstances, in every given case, being, of course, controlled by a due regard being had, in the words of the law, for the 'tenant's interest.' there was another and very important test; the sums paid in ulster and elsewhere on the transfer of farms were usually large, sometimes not less than a third or even a half of the value of the fee simple; and as these sums were always subject to the existing rents, the first charges on the lands being sold, this would afford a strong presumption that such rents would be 'fair.' no doubt the act of declared that such payments were not to be taken into account, _per se_, and apart from other considerations in the actual fixing of rent, so far as regards a given farm; but the law certainly allowed--and it has always been so held--that payments of this kind might be kept in view in forming, generally, an estimate of what a 'fair rent' should be.[ ] the land commissioners, but from a different point of view, might have learned something from parnell in this matter. they were, no doubt, harassed by the prospect of the task before them; but had they taken a certain number of 'test cases,' and investigated them as a court of first instance, they would have laid down principles to be followed in the fixing of 'fair rent;' have explained these in well-considered judgments, going over the whole field of inquiry; and, so far as in them lay, have tried to do justice. even if they had not adopted this course, one of their members, as the act of provided, might have taken part for some time with their subordinates in the adjustment of rent; this would have been in accord with mr. gladstone's assertions that the land commission was to be the real arbiter of rent. unfortunately the commissioners acted quite otherwise; their conduct, palliate as you may, was an abdication of a plain duty, on the plea that they were overwhelmed by the work before them. not one of them ever sat in a court of first instance to fix 'fair rents;' they delegated this the most important of all their functions to their sub-commissions, to which they thus committed the charge of adjusting rent throughout the whole of ireland. these sub-commissions formed courts, each composed of three members, one a legal commissioner and two laymen; the sub-commissioners were nominees of the government, whether appointed on the recommendation of the land commission or not is not certain; the only qualifications for the legal commissioners were that they should be barristers or solicitors of six years' standing, and for the lay commissioners that they should have some knowledge of land. these were strange tribunals to deal with property worth hundreds of millions; but this was only a part of what must be called a scandal most discreditable to those responsible for it. the sub-commissioners, one and all, were much underpaid; their salaries were inadequate to secure fitting men; and, one and all, they were at the sufferance of the men at the castle, liable to be dismissed at a moment's notice, and without the independence which is the best guarantee of justice. some of the sub-commissioners, indeed, were only paid for the job, by the day; they had, therefore, a direct personal interest to reduce rents, in order to make work for themselves and to retain their places. even in ireland such tribunals were never set on foot, since cromwell assembled his courts of claims to give their sanction to his huge forfeitures; that they were ever thought of is one of the many proofs of the disregard shown to property in land in ireland. no wonder that it was significantly remarked: 'the whole spirit of our judicial institutions suggests that officers with such extensive powers should be selected with the greatest care and with reference to their possession of high qualifications, and that they should be placed in a position of independence, and should, so far as possible, be lifted above the suspicions that surround them.'[ ] sixty or seventy officials of this type--the number was afterwards largely increased--were thus, in the significant words of one, 'let loose over ireland' to deal with estates; it is very remarkable that they have never received instructions from the land commission how to perform their duties. the procedure of the courts of the sub-commissions was, under existing conditions, as well devised as could be fairly expected. the three commissioners, who formed a court, nearly always sate together, and heard the evidence brought before them as to what were 'fair rents;' the legal commissioner decided questions of law; and, this evidence having been taken, the two lay commissioners inspected the farms, the subjects of the previous inquiries, and having conferred with their legal colleague, determined with him what should be their 'fair rents.' this was the ordinary if not the universal practice; if some deviations have been made from it, these cannot be deemed of very great importance. grave complaints have been made, in not a few instances, of the lay commissioners, when engaged in examining lands; it has been said that they often neglected and 'scamped' their work; but these charges have been hardly, if at all, sustained; my own experience--and it is tolerably large--is that the commissioners performed their functions with diligence and care, and sometimes gave proof of real knowledge of husbandry.[ ] but it was utterly impossible that tribunals of this kind, not composed of experts of a high order, dependent upon the breath of the castle, without regulations to direct their conduct, and acting, without concert, in many districts, could adjust rent in a satisfactory way, and in conformity with true methods, especially as the work they had to do was excessive; indeed, they sometimes fixed 'fair rents' by dozens in a day. it was equally impossible that the sub-commissions--and to do their members justice they never made the attempt--could take into account all the manifold and far-reaching elements which enter into the question of 'fair rent,' and could set forth, in exhaustive judgments, the principles applicable to a most intricate problem. on the contrary, as a rule, and no doubt wisely, they avoided topics which might have tasked the highest judicial powers; they decided the cases before them summarily, and with little reflection, certainly without the protracted examination required to establish settled rules and doctrines. and the result has been that they disregarded, and even set at nought, a whole series of considerations, of supreme importance, with reference to the fixing of 'fair rent;' and, however unconsciously and innocently, they have been the authors, in the first instance at least, of the gravest injustice, and of wrong, done wholesale, to the landed gentry of ireland. to make this plain, let us glance back at the principles which assuredly ought to have been kept in view, in coming to sound conclusions on the subject of 'fair rent.' it will be seen that the sub-commissioners either gave little or no attention to these, or directly violated them in, perhaps, tens of thousands of cases. they have never attempted to establish some kind of standard, which would form a general measure of 'fair rent;' they have completely ignored the definition of mr. law, precise and most valuable as it was; they have treated 'griffith's valuation' as though it did not exist; they have regarded the report of mr. gladstone's commission, declaring that ireland was not excessively rented, as mere waste paper; they have apparently taken hardly any account of the well-known distinction between the low rentals of the great and old landlords, and the rack-rents too often exacted by purchasers under the encumbered estates acts. so, too, it would seem, they have refused to consider the strong presumption that rents would be 'fair' if not raised during a long series of years, and if reasonably well paid, within that period; and they certainly have given no real weight, as an element in adjusting rent, to the agricultural progress made by ireland since the great famine. innumerable complaints have been made against their decisions as to the exemption of tenants' improvements from rent; but my belief is that they gave great attention to this subject; the wrong that has been done was owing to the difficulty of the law, and of its application to given cases; and the law, besides, was not, i think, just. on the correlative and most important question of the deterioration of farms through the default of tenants, they have hardly ever inquired into this; they have repeatedly done the landlords wrong; they have made grave and palpable mistakes; and in many instances they have made no allowances for the expenditure of landlords upon their estates. having thus refused to follow the principles which ought to have been their guide, they have widely deviated in the actual fixing of 'fair rents' from rules and methods they should have observed and made effective. they have given too much weight to the class of evidence that was least important and most open to question; they have attached little and sometimes no value to the class of evidence by far the most trustworthy, and that ought to possess the greatest influence. this has especially been the case, as we shall see, with respect to the sums paid on the transfer of farms, the strongest possible indication that their rents must be 'fair,' on the ordinary principles of human nature, and giving the purchasers credit for the simplest common sense. these are grave charges against quasi-judicial bodies; let us see if they are not completely justified. the sub-commissioners, i have said, have taken no heed of mr. law's definition of 'fair rent;' but they have acted as though they set it at defiance; they have ignored the principle of competition in fixing 'fair' rents. unquestionably, as mr. law pointed out, a deduction should be made from a competition rent, regard being had to 'the tenant's interest,' that is, to his rights in respect of improvements, and perhaps to his rights on account of his tenure, a lease renewable every fifteen years, when a 'fair rent' is being fixed on his farm; but why the very idea of competition, that is, of market value, was to be excluded as an element in estimating 'fair rent,' is what men of common sense have never understood. this, in fact, was a portentous mistake, with consequences of a far-reaching kind; you might as well argue that because two partners had an interest in a fee simple estate, or two peasants had each a share in a cow, the price of the land or the cow was not to depend on what would be given for it at an auction mart or a county fair. yet this was a position the sub-commissions have always taken; they have always insisted that competition had nothing to do with 'fair rent.' the evidence on this subject is conclusive; i can only take a few samples from the statements of a cloud of witnesses, who really seem to make a boast of their faith. colonel bayley, a sub-commissioner of large experience, has laid it down that the 'difference between a competition rent and the fair rent would be more than per cent.; it would, i think, be more than that; there would be between and per cent. difference between the fair rent and the competition rent.'[ ] mr. roberts, another sub-commissioner, has deposed to much the same effect: 'decidedly, i believe that if the land was put in the market it would bring per cent. more than the rent i put on.'[ ] so, too, mr. bailey, a legal sub-commissioner, very much respected, has alleged: 'it would be most misleading to take the evidence of letting value in the neighbourhood, thus bringing in competition value, which we rigorously exclude in fair-rent cases.'[ ] mr. bomford, a well-known sub-commissioner, has said, in much the same sense: 'we do not take the competition rent, and cannot take it into consideration, when fixing what the fair rent should be. then you utterly exclude, when you come to the fixing of the fair rent, the element of competition?--yes, except in one matter, when we have town parks.'[ ] let us now see what distinctions, in fixing 'fair rents,' the sub-commissioners have drawn between landlords whose rentals were low and landlords whose rentals were really high; and how they have dealt with rents, paid for a long space of time, without having been raised; this is a fair index of the equity of their proceedings. it should be remarked, at the outset, that it soon appeared that rents had only been increased in comparatively few instances, going back over a series of years; yet, as a rule, nearly all rents were indiscriminately reduced. no attempt has been made, by any official of the land commission, to answer this damaging charge made, in , at a judicial inquiry held upon the subject: 'the result of that calculation, the accuracy of which cannot be challenged, shows that, as the result of all the cases that were heard, in only per cent. of them was any increase of rent for many years prior to proved. but whether the sub-commissioners are dealing with an estate on which for centuries the rents had remained unchanged, and on which the tenants had been fairly treated, or whether they were dealing with estates that had come into the hands of speculators by purchase in the landed estates court, in all cases the average result was the same. they deducted something between and per cent. from the existing rent, no matter how long it had existed, and no matter upon what estate it was being paid.'[ ] this significant evidence, too, points to the same conclusion: 'there is nothing to justify the reductions that have been made in the rents of good landlords, who did not raise their rents in the good years. in fact, the landlords who did raise their rents got off a great deal better, at the hands of the sub-commissioners, than the good landlords who did not raise them.'[ ] and mr. lecky, a calm-minded observer, if there ever was one, has added these striking and pregnant remarks: 'the landlords who have suffered least have probably been those who simplified their properties by the wholesale evictions, the harsh clearances, that too often followed the famine. next in the scale come those who exacted extreme rack-rents from their tenants. these rents had been received for many years, and though they were ultimately reduced more than rents which had been always low, they still, in innumerable instances, remained higher than the others. the large class who regarded land simply as a source of revenue, and, without doing anything harsh, or extortionate, or unjust, took no part in its management, have suffered very moderately. it is the improving landlord, who took a real interest in his estate, who sank large sums in draining and other purposes of improvement, who exercised a constant and beneficent influence over his tenants, who has suffered most from the legislation that reduced him to a mere powerless rent-charger, and, in most cases, rendered the sums he had expended an absolute loss.'[ ] the sub-commissions dealt with the subject of the exemption of tenants' improvements from rent, on the whole, as fairly, i think, as could be expected; and on the different questions of law that arose, appeals ran from them to the land commission, which usually investigated these cases at length. but this part of the law, really an excrescence on the act of , was unfair to the landlords, in the circumstances in which they were placed; they were confronted by innumerable and often obsolete and worthless claims, which they had only seldom the means of refuting; and if the demoralisation and false swearing under the act of was bad, they were infinitely worse under the act of . a witty irishman, indeed, once said that he could wish no severer punishment for mr. gladstone than to see him in a sub-commission court listening to those wrongful statements; the mischief has, of course, been aggravated since the act of has made the basis for the exemption larger and more ill-defined. the sub-commissions, i have said, were gravely in error, almost, as a rule, with respect to the deterioration of land, as an element to be considered in fixing rent; in this respect gross injustice has been done to landlords. there is scarcely any proof that, even in a single instance, the sub-commissioners valued land 'for fair rent,' as in its normal state; and yet, assuredly, this was what ought to have been done, if a premium was not to be put on misconduct, and because farms had been injured and exhausted in hundreds, throughout ireland. the deterioration was usually of two kinds--wilful waste committed in order to work down rent, and passive waste caused by negligence and bad farming. out of many instances, under the first head, i shall refer to one; the sub-commissioners usually gave little or no attention to wrongs of this kind; in this instance they enabled the tenant to make money by his own misdeeds; they reduced the rent nearly per cent.: 'the dykes were full of stuff and choked, and the sluice-gate, which we had repaired at our own expense, was all choked up, and the water had been left on the land as long as it could stay on it. i complained and remonstrated with the tenant. i sent for madden, and in mr. lyle's presence i stated this to him. his answer to me was that he was not such a damned fool as to have his land looking well when the commissioners came to look at it. 'sir e. fry: did that case come before the sub-commissioner court?--it did. 'did you give evidence of what the tenant said?--yes, sir.... 'mr. campbell: i will tell you, sir, what they did. 'how much did they reduce the first judicial rent?--they reduced the first judicial rent; they cut it down from £ _s._ to £ .'[ ] as for passive waste, that is, the bad cultivation of farms, the proof is conclusive that it has been seldom, if ever, considered by the sub-commissions in fixing 'fair rents.' if we bear in mind that many thousands of acres in ireland have been well-nigh destroyed by the burning done by tenants, and that hundreds of thousands have been run out by slovenly farming, the injury thus done to landlords has been enormous, especially as tenants' improvements have been exempted from rent against them; the 'candle,' it has been justly said, 'has been melted down at both ends.' i cite two instances, out of hundreds, of the injustice thus done; it has been proved over and over again that, in the case of two adjoining farms, in all respects of the same natural quality, the rent on that which was deteriorated was fixed at a much lower rate than the rent on that which was in good heart; in other words, the landlord was despoiled of the difference, and the tenant had the benefit of his bad husbandry. i take, almost at random, a case in ulster: 'the commissioners always value the land as they see it. i have two cases on my property in one townland. one tenant was an industrious, hard-working man, who had his farm in very good order. the second tenant, his wife had died, he was in poverty, with a lot of young children, and he himself was not quite "all there." these two holdings came at the same time before the sub-commissioners, and the rents were cut down in each case. when the thing was over, i said to quinn, who was one of the tenants, "are you satisfied with your reduction?" "how can i be satisfied," he said, "when my rent is at the same rate as hurson's rent?" i looked at the return and saw he was quite right.... the deteriorated farm was cut down considerably more than the cultivated farm.' another remarkable case occurred in the west: 'i had a case, i think decided this year; a farm that was divided between two sons fifteen or twenty years ago; the father divided the land before i came into the management of the property. 'did they get an equal portion? was it divided into halves?--into halves, and paid an equal rent. 'before the act of ?--before the act of . 'and was the land of uniform quality?--yes. 'had one of these men, before he went into court, greatly deteriorated the land?--yes. 'had the other attended to it?--he had attended to it; he looked after the land very well indeed. 'what reduction did the man who had deteriorated his half get?--the man who had deteriorated his half got - / per cent, reduction. 'what did the other get?--the other got - / per cent. 'the industrious tenant got - / ?--he got - / .'[ ] this was obviously gross and crying injustice; but two apologies have been made for acts of this kind. it is said that were a deteriorated farm rented as if it were in a normal state, the tenant could not afford to pay the 'fair rent,' in other words, the landlord is to be despoiled for the tenant's neglect. it is said again that the sub-commissioners are bound to value the land as they find it, and cannot estimate it at its intrinsic worth, that is, they are under no obligation to ascertain the truth, and do their duty. yet this sophistry has been gravely put forward as a justification for palpable wrong, through which the property of landlords has been filched away wholesale: 'the land to this day has suffered a very serious deterioration in value; but we did not deal with that as against the present tenant ...'[ ] 'have you frequently asked the sub-commissioners why they do not attach sufficient importance to deterioration?--no, but i heard them saying one reason was that if they put the rent of the farm as if it had been fairly treated, the tenant would not be able to pay that rent now in the deteriorated state.'[ ] the general result of these proceedings as regards exhausted farms has been thus described: 'my view with reference to deterioration is this. bad tenants, who had ill-treated and worn out their land, undoubtedly, in my opinion, have obtained larger reductions than they would have got had they farmed well. probably the reason is that were the land commissioners to put a rent on the land according to its natural capacity, before a deterioration, it would be an impossible rent for a broken-down bad tenant to pay. this stereotypes the rent in such cases at a figure unfairly low to the landlord; tends to lower the standard of fair rent generally; is a premium on bad farming; and places tenants under a serious temptation to ill-treat their land, so as to secure a larger reduction from the land court than otherwise could be obtainable.'[ ] the sub-commissions appear to have disregarded the just rights of landlords in another important respect. unquestionably, in the great mass of instances, as is inevitable when the land is held in small farms, the irish tenant had made the improvements on his holding; but the landed gentry, as i have pointed out, had done a good deal since the great famine. there is nevertheless cogent evidence that, in 'fixing fair rents,' the sub-commissions took hardly any account of the expenditure of landlords under this head. in the case of the estate of the late mr. talbot crosbie, one of the best breeders of prize stock in the three kingdoms, and a country gentleman of parts and intelligence, these significant facts were conclusively proved: 'table e gives the cases of eight holdings upon which there was an expenditure by the landlord of £ ?--yes. 'the old rent was £ ?--yes. 'that was reduced by the sub-commissioners to £ ?--yes. a reduction of about per cent. 'notwithstanding the outlay by the landlord in the interval of nearly £ ?--yes, that is it. 'table f is a list of eleven farms, on which there was practically no expenditure by the landlord?--quite so, no recent expenditure. that is, between and ?--there was a good deal done in the famine time, but i did not take account of that. 'you had no evidence in these eleven cases of expenditure for many years prior to the fixing of the rent?--no. in these cases the old rents tot up to £ ?--yes. and the reductions only brought them to £ ?--a reduction of per cent. 'in other words, on the unimproved farms the reductions only average , while on the improved farms they went as high as per cent.?--quite so. 'sir e. fry: were these two sets of farms different classes of farms?--they were practically of the same class.'[ ] in the same way, in the case of the estate of lord leconfield, a great and excellent landlord in the county clare, the sub-commission made no real allowance for a sum of £ , expended on twenty-seven farms. 'am i right in saying that from to there was spent by lord leconfield £ , in these twenty-seven cases?--the return speaks for itself. that is the result of it.' 'no. : as an example of the reductions of the sub-commissioners were the rents put back to what they had been in ?--very nearly. there is a difference, i think, of about / per cent.?--about / per cent. the rent in was £ , and the judicial rents on these farms was £ .'[ ] i pass on to the methods pursued by the sub-commissioners in actually fixing 'fair rents.' as i have said, they usually heard the cases at length in court; they usually devoted attention to them. i do not think they set much store on the reports of valuers, on the part either of landlords or tenants; they formed their decisions, as a general rule, on the inspections made by the lay commissioners of the lands they visited. this was a much better method, as i shall point out afterwards, than that adopted by their superiors; but obviously inspections of this kind made by officials without local knowledge of the farms, which they examined and valued, could not be a sufficient, or a satisfactory, way to fix 'fair rents.' the great error, however, made, in this matter, by the sub-commissions--and in this respect they had the countenance of the higher tribunal--was that they had little or no regard for the evidence which in adjusting rent was assuredly of the greatest importance. they rejected, we have seen, the principle of competition in adjudicating on rent; in fixing the 'fair rents' of holdings before them, they refused to consider the rents of the neighbourhood and of adjoining lands, that is, to consider the price of the market. yet this was but a trifling compared to their capital mistake, one that, indeed, can hardly be explained: in investigating the subject of 'fair rent,' they would not take into account sums paid on the transfer of farms, that is, their tenant right, in other words, as an indication of what ought to be their 'fair rents.' if we bear in mind, as i have said before, that these sums were given subject to the existing rents, which always formed the first charge on the lands, it is most difficult to understand, as we have seen, how this circumstance did not create a very strong presumption that the rents in question must be 'fair' from the very nature of the case, assuming the irish tenant to be a rational being. the sums paid for this tenant right were sometimes enormous, not uncommonly equal to one-third or one-half of the value of the fee; i illustrate my meaning from the evidence, taken with reference to the estate of lord downshire, one of the largest and best managed in ulster: 'what would you say the tenants' interest would be worth on the downshire estate?--well, judging from the average prices obtained by tenants on transfers, my opinion is that the tenants' interest would be worth £ , , . 'on the downshire estate alone?--yes. 'now, could that value in the tenants, or that interest in the tenants, exist, unless the rents at which they were holding were low rents?--no, the prices of tenant right are incompatible with high rents. does it in your opinion point to their being lower than the commercial rents?--yes, they are lower.'[ ] and will it be believed that on this very estate, in the case of thirteen farms, held at the rents fixed by the landlords, the tenant right realised £ , and yet the sub-commission reduced the rents more than per cent.? in other words, they declared that the old rents were not fair, though these lands, when transferred, fetched £ paid by their purchasers, subject to the rents in question![ ] the downshire was only one of many scores of estates in which the tenant right was exceedingly high, that is, the sums paid, at existing rents, on the transfer of farms, were very great, yet in all these instances this striking fact was not taken into account. it cannot cause surprise that, at a judicial inquiry held afterwards to review the subject, tenants' advocates endeavoured to exclude the evidence which, in the judgment of plain men of sense, affords almost a decisive indication as to whether given rents are 'fair.' it has been argued, however, that the price of tenant right, that is, the sums paid by incoming to outgoing tenants, on the sale of farms, at the current rents, ought to form no element in the fixing of 'fair rent;' it is only just to set forth the reasons. mr. bailey, the able legal sub-commissioner, referred to before, has explained them in this passage: 'do you attend to tenant right in considering the fair rent?--no, we do not. the view we take of it is this. the tenant right paid for land is paid for something of an altogether different character from the rent of the land.... when a tenant sells his interest in his holding, he sells two things, first, the improvements on the holding, and secondly, his goodwill or share of the gross product of the holding.... when you put these two items together, viz. improvements and goodwill, it seems to me that the prices paid for tenant right are not at all remarkable. then your view is that the price paid for tenant right throws no light on what the fair rent ought to be?--no, no light at all.' mr. bailey has added these significant words: 'the tenant does not buy at the rent which the tenement at present stands at, but he buys with a possible increase or reduction of the rent?--quite so. and in latter years with the fall of prices he was buying with the expectation of a very considerable reduction?--undoubtedly.'[ ] the first of these arguments appears to me to be wholly irrelevant to the real question. undoubtedly the tenant right of a farm represents the tenant's improvements and his interest in the land, and is completely distinct from the rent; and this is acquired on a sale by an incoming tenant. but the purchaser buys the tenant right, subject to the first charge, the rent; if the rent were excessive, or even high, either he would not buy at all, or he would pay a low price; when, therefore, we find the tenant right commanding very large sums, the conclusion is inevitable, that, taking human nature as it is, the rent must be in the nature of a 'fair rent.' the sub-commissions rejected a plain inference they ought to have drawn; that they refused to give weight to an all-important fact cannot be justified in any sense; and the result has been that in hundreds of cases they have done grave wrong to landlords. as for the second argument, it is very probable that in many instances tenants purchased farms in the anticipation of a reduction of rent; they speculated--a significant fact--that the sub-commissions would 'bear' the market; but even, on that supposition, this can hardly explain the huge sums paid for tenant right while the existing rents were current. for the rest, i refer to part of my own evidence given on this subject at the same inquiry; readers of ordinary intelligence may judge for themselves: 'the first question i ask the tenant is, "how much will you take for the land, £ , £ , £ ; ten, fifteen, twenty, or forty years' rent?" but i never can get an answer. they say, "oh, your honour, i am here to look after a 'fair rent,' and i am not going to tell your honour what i am going to ask for the land." however, i have a very shrewd notion.... you take into consideration in fixing the fair rent the price paid by the tenants?--yes, the price which an incoming tenant would give, because i am not one of those who think that the irish tenant is a fool; and when i find an incoming tenant giving ten, fifteen, twenty, and thirty years' purchase for a farm, i have a very shrewd suspicion that the rent is right.'[ ] it was under these conditions, and by proceedings of this kind, that the sub-commissions, bodies of ill-paid men, dependent upon the will of the government, and constituted to give effect to a policy, were sent throughout ireland to 'fix fair rents.' they had no assistance, we have seen, from the land commission; they often entertained very different views; but their uniform course was in the same direction; they indiscriminately abated rents, as they would abate a nuisance. in fact, they might have joined in the chorus of the doctors of molière: 'et saignare, et purgare, et clystériasaire;' they applied the same remedies to all their victims, and brought them nearly all into the same weak and low condition. but there was a right of appeal from the sub-commissions to the land commission; and this tribunal, certainly designed to have absolute power in the determination of rent, ought surely to have been expected to redress injustice. i approach a part of the subject on which the plain truth must be told, without making personal imputations of any kind. appeals from the sub-commissions were numbered by many thousands; and, as i have said--an iniquitous provision of the act of --the decisions of the land commission on the subject of 'fair rent' was made final, at least as regards the rate of rent; there was to be no further appeal to a higher tribunal. i quote these significant remarks on this restriction: 'in an ordinary case, i need not tell you, sir, who are conversant with the procedure of courts of justice, a litigant, in a civil case, no matter how much the issue may be involved, has the right, if he thinks fit, of taking the case from one court to another, until he reaches the highest tribunal of the land, the house of lords. and as you know, there is a well-known case, which the house of lords had to decide, in which the amount involved was one penny, an alleged overcharge on a railway ticket; but in these land cases, where there may be, and often is, a sum of £ , £ , or £ a year involved, because in some of the large farms in this country there have been reductions of £ and even of £ in the rent, under the act of parliament they cannot go beyond the head land commission, upon any question of value. that is the act of parliament whether it be right or wrong. there it is, and i am not here to discuss the policy of the act. but when a rehearing is given by the act of parliament to the land commission, and when the land commission are constituted the final judges in such large and important matters, it is obviously of great importance that the final rehearing should be full, and in every respect what the act of parliament says it is to be, namely, a rehearing.'[ ] the land commission sometimes heard these appeals at length, though usually their proceedings were summary in the extreme. the commissioners occasionally pronounced well-considered judgments, on the difficult questions of law that came before them, especially as regards the exemption of tenants' improvements from rent; in several instances the results were curious. the lay commissioner now and then dissented from his legal colleagues; his plain common sense rejected theories in tenants' interests; his decisions were more than once confirmed, on these points of law, by the highest court of appeal in ireland, a circumstance of no slight significance. nineteen-twentieths, however, of these appeals were conversant only with the amount of 'fair rent,' as to which the conclusions of the land commission could not be challenged. the land commissioners undoubtedly heard these cases, and sometimes had much evidence brought before them; in tolerably many instances they varied the 'fair rents' fixed by the sub-commissions, if these variations were seldom important. but the land commission practically adopted, with scarcely a single exception, the errors of principle and the faulty methods which had marked the practice and the proceedings of the sub-commissions.[ ] they excluded the element of competition from the subject of 'fair rent;' they never attempted to define 'fair rent,' or to establish a standard by which to gauge it; they disregarded, to a considerable extent at least, the distinction between the rentals of the old and the new landlords; they paid little or no attention to the fact that rents had been paid for many years without an increase; they hardly ever took deterioration into account, or the expenditure made on their estates by landlords. and in the actual fixing of 'fair rents' they virtually followed in the wake of their inferiors; they rejected, as a rule, the evidence that was most relevant; they refused to consider the rents of adjoining or neighbouring lands, in a word, the price of the market, in determining rent; above all, they gave scarcely any heed to the enormous sums paid for the tenant right of lands, as an indication that their rents were 'fair.' on all these particulars, in a word, supremely important as they were, they almost said ditto to the sub-commissions; in these respects the appeals were well-nigh useless. it should be added that the animus of the head of the land commission was significantly exhibited on one striking occasion. when opening the proceedings of the land commission, mr. justice o'hagan pointedly laid it down, that the object of the act of was 'to make tenants live and thrive;' in other words, as lord salisbury indignantly remarked, to compel rent to gravitate to the level of the most indolent and worthless irish peasant, and practically to discourage industry. these considerations indicate, to some extent at least, the nature and especially the value of these appeals. but this was not all, or nearly all; there was a grave miscarriage of the simplest justice in this important province. appeals, i have said, came in, in thousands; the work thrown on the land commissioners was immense; as one of their present successors remarked, 'if proper consideration' (had been) 'given to all the appeals you would' (have) 'wanted ten appeal courts to do it;'[ ] as was said again substantially, 'appeals would have crushed the land commissioners, had they not been crushed by them.'[ ] in this position of affairs, the land commissioners, no doubt with no bad or sinister purpose, adopted what must be called a device, to enable them quickly to dispose of appeals, nay, almost in a summary way. they were empowered, under the act of , to appoint 'independent valuers' to examine lands, and to report on the subject of their 'fair rents;' it was never contemplated that statements of this kind were to dispense with the duty of hearing appeals in detail, and pronouncing solemn judgments upon them; but, practically, the land commissioners, in the great mass of instances, when adjudicating on appeals, as regards 'fair rents,' almost wholly relied on the reports of these valuers, who, be it observed, were in no sense witnesses, and were not subject to examination on the part of the suitors before the court. in a word, the land commissioners did not exclude other kinds of evidence; but unquestionably the dicta of the valuers, as a rule, determined the decisions they made on 'fair rent.' this expedient greatly accelerated appeals; but it reduced the right of appeal well-nigh to a sham; and this procedure was by many degrees more repugnant to justice than that of the sub-commissions. in an inquiry held before the house of lords in , an eminent member of the irish bar remarked, 'it was the most unsatisfactory tribunal that i ever was before. what occurred was this: they took up the figures of the old rent, which we will say was £ , and the valuation £ , and the new rent £ . then they took up the valuer's report, which was a document concealed from the parties. it was entirely for the information of the court, and they turned round to me, as the landlord's counsel, the landlord being the appellant, and said, "can you go on with this appeal in the face of this document?" and they would show me the document.'[ ] and in the inquiry i have often referred to before, another distinguished lawyer has said, 'i have been in cases where, in order to overcome the difficulty, i marshalled a perfect phalanx of witnesses, for the landlord, but it was all no use. they listened to them, i admit,--they suggested that i was wasting time, but i am not stating they did not hear them,--but in the end, in the morning, the announcement was made that the judicial rent was confirmed.'[ ] as the general result these appeals, as it has been said, 'were strangled;' in thousands of instances they were withdrawn, the decisions of the land commission being final; expedition was attained; but it was only attained at the cost of gross wrong done to the landlords, a singular exhibition in a court of justice. i quote the following--and it should be borne in mind that the land commissioners have never attempted to explain this conduct, though the amplest opportunity was afforded, a few years ago: 'the extraordinary and anomalous state of things is that the valuers, not being assessors, do not sit with the commissioners, and do not hear the evidence, and yet they are not witnesses in the proper sense of the term, because they are neither examined nor cross-examined. common sense and justice revolt at the idea, when it is the duty of the land commissioners, upon the rehearing of a case, to sit and go through the proceedings _de novo_, that they should receive the evidence of valuers, which is not laid before the parties, and that those valuers should not be examined and cross-examined in the regular way. there is another matter to which i would refer. you will find, what is, indeed, what you might expect, that when the commissioners go to dublin, or cork, or elsewhere, with a list of two or three hundred cases to be heard by them, involving, it may be, thousands of pounds a year of rent, that list is gone through in two or three days, and why? because all the parties present know that they are taking part in what really is a solemn farce, and that what will happen in the morning after the hearing of their case is just this: john brown, landlord, james fogarty, tenant; judicial rent affirmed; john robinson, landlord, james mcnorth, tenant; judicial rent affirmed.'[ ] the first set of land commissioners passed away; they were succeeded by a second land commission, the president of which was mr. justice bewley, an accomplished, if not a very eminent, lawyer. this commission, like the other, was composed of honourable men; it is only just to remark that it was bound by the bad precedents made by the tribunal which it had replaced. the procedure of the sub-commissions was, in some degree, improved; but the methods of the second land commission differed for the worse where they differed from the methods of its predecessor. the land commissioners appear to have not at all regarded the general principles in fixing 'fair rent,' which ought to have had effect on their judgments; they gave less weight, than mr. justice o'hagan, and his colleagues did, to the most important evidence, in this province, to which i have adverted before, and laid too much stress on the least important evidence. as has been truly remarked, 'we believe that much more attention was paid in the early days of the land commission to the remaining kinds of popular evidence than has been the case of late years; and we are assured by one of the head commissioners that the act of has made a great change in the fixing of fair rents by placing an emphasis on the technical evidence, and throwing the popular evidence into the background.'[ ] the commissioners, too, followed the bad example of the first land commission, in the province of appeals; they practically disregarded almost everything but the reports of their valuers, unchecked statements made by men who were not even witnesses, were not sworn, and were not examined--a procedure worthy of the council of ten at venice; as before, the result was that appeals were made all but fruitless, in the court of which the decisions were, in this respect, final. there was, too, another grave miscarriage of justice caused, perhaps, by a mistake made by the head of the second land commission. the act of provided that 'fair rent' should be fixed, having due regard to the 'interest' of the tenant on the land, that is, to his improvements, and perhaps to the mode of his tenure. mr. justice bewley seems to have decided that another element ought to be taken into account, and should effect a reduction of rent; the tenant had 'an occupation right' in his favour, over and above the 'interest' the law gave him; by reason of this he had a right to have his rent cut down. the only plausible ground alleged for this doctrine was that landlords would usually accept a lower rent from a 'sitting' tenant in possession than from an incoming tenant; in other words, their good nature was turned against them, and was to be made a pretext for their being despoiled. it is just to observe that mr. justice bewley's colleagues dissented from this curious view of the law; and the claim for 'occupation right' has since been blown to the winds in the superior courts of ireland. but though many faint denials were made, some of the sub-commissioners acted upon mr. justice bewley's doctrine; the evidence is conclusive that this imaginary right was made the means of considerably reducing rent. mr. justice bewley candidly admitted: 'from the commencement, apparently, a number of the sub-commissioners have acted on the principle that there is a certain occupation interest, which every tenant has, varying according to circumstances, not any fixed amount, but varying, and that that is to be taken into account in fixing the fair rent.'[ ] this statement has been confirmed by a host of witnesses by no means willing in not a few instances. 'would you make a difference between the assessment of the fair rent in the case of a sitting tenant, and in the case of an incoming tenant--a stranger? certainly. can you give us any idea what that difference is, expressed in percentage?--i could not very well answer that question. it is a mental calculation, and a good deal would depend upon the length of the tenure of the tenant.'[ ] and again: 'in your experience of the land commission court, do you find the "occupation interest" has been taken into account in fixing the fair rent?--yes, i cannot account for the reductions that have been made, except on that supposition.'[ ] and again: 'as far as your experience goes, do they invariably value the holdings on the principle of giving an occupation interest to the sitting tenant?--yes, the tenants' valuers, as a rule, give or per cent. as the interest of the sitting tenant.... do you find that the sub-commissioners fix the rent on what the valuers state?--well, no; that would be going too much out of the way.'[ ] and again: 'have you any doubt that the rents are fixed on the basis of the occupation interest in the sitting tenant?--i have none. i do not know how else the rents could have been arrived at.'[ ] and once more: 'did the sub-commissioners invariably take the occupation interest of the sitting tenant into account?--i think so.' i conclude with these remarks of mr. barnes, one of the best and most impartial of irish valuers: 'when i came to give evidence in court i found that nothing else would be accepted as evidence unless based on occupation interest. it was almost the first question.... whenever there was an answer made that the valuation was based on what the landlord would get for the land in his own hands, it was discounted at once.'[ ] no wonder that it has been alleged by the highest authority with respect to this claim, since proved to have been unfounded, guarded and cautious as the language is: 'there is, however, reason to believe that this notion of an occupation interest existed in the minds of some of the early valuers, and did, in fact, influence them, and it is very possible that some cases in which the reductions there made appear startling, may be, in part, attributable to this doctrine.'[ ] what amount of the rental of ireland was unlawfully cut down owing to the theory of 'occupation right,' it is, of course, impossible to ascertain. reductions of rent, too, were probably unjustly made through the ignorance of the land commission as to agricultural matters. i refer to a grotesque instance of this: 'you have marked a passage there in the judgment, which, according to you, shows that owing to their ignorance as experts they entirely mistook what six-course rotation meant?--yes. the fact is they took it to be the same crop in the whole seventy acres, that instead of having so many different crops in this portion of the ground, it was to be put into one crop for the year, and that is what they call "rotation" in the court of rehearing.... it is plain enough, from the authorised report of the judgment, that they made that mistake?--it is clear as possible, and it was upon that that they threw me out. the tenant himself knew that it was all absurdity and mistake.'[ ] a remarkable incident occurred in which threw a strong, if not a complete, light on the proceedings of the land commission and its sub-commissions in the adjustment of rent. in the time had come for renewing the first statutory leases, under the act of ; the commissioners suddenly made such enormous reductions of rent that persons who knew ireland were simply astounded. the irish landlords naturally were indignant; after some hesitation, and with plain reluctance, the government gave its consent to a very imperfect inquiry. a commission, presided over by sir edward fry, a judge of the highest eminence, retired from office, and composed of four additional colleagues, two being well-known agricultural experts, was appointed to investigate the subject on the spot; but the scope of the inquiry was limited in the extreme; it was confined, in this respect, to examining the procedure and practice adopted in fixing 'fair rents;' it did not extend to the conduct generally of the land commission and its dependent tribunals. the commission was engaged nearly three months in its task; it held its sittings in different parts of ireland; it had before it witnesses; and restricted as it was in this province, it pronounced, in grave and judicial language, a marked censure on the methods that had been followed in fixing 'fair rents' in ireland. in fact, sir edward fry and his colleagues confirmed, in many respects, the charges which i have made with regard to this whole system. no doubt they reported, in very guarded words, 'that they were unable to conclude that the machinery of the land statutes has been uniformly worked with injustice towards landlords;'[ ] but as they pointedly refused to rehear a single case, in which the land commission and the sub-commissions had fixed a 'fair rent,' this statement, ambiguous as it is, is of no real importance. in other particulars the expression of these opinions cannot be mistaken; to impartial minds it will appear decisive. they evidently thought that such wrong had been done to landlords owing to the want of a definition of 'fair rent,' that they actually framed a definition of their own, in order to establish some kind of standard; this did not widely differ from that of mr. law, which, i have said, would have made things very different had it been adopted.[ ] they pointed out that the land commissioners should have assisted the sub-commissions in fixing 'fair rents,' and should not have left them 'like ships without a rudder or a compass on a stormy sea;' it is 'a subject of regret,' they reported, 'that in the early days of the system the land commissioners were unable to take a part in the tribunals of first instance; and that the whole original business was left to sub-commissions.'[ ] they strongly condemned the nature of the sub-commission courts, as being composed of members inadequately paid and mere tenants at sufferance; and they put forward an elaborate scheme to make the administration of justice in these tribunals more above suspicion.[ ] they evidently believed that the land commission and the sub-commissions did not give due weight to the class of evidence that was most important, and gave too much weight to that which was the least; and they made significant observations on this subject.[ ] on the whole, they arrived at the conclusion that the fixing of 'fair rents' 'gives opportunity for dissatisfaction, and leaves much more for improvement; ... and that the settlement of fair rents has been effected in an unsatisfactory manner, with diversity of opinion and practice, sometimes with carelessness, and sometimes with that bias towards one side or the other which exists in many honest minds.'[ ] but their strongest animadversion was found in the system, through which, i have said, the land commission really 'strangled' appeals, though in this province its decisions were final: 'an almost universal dissatisfaction is expressed with regard to these appeals, a dissatisfaction felt by some at least of the commissioners themselves. no witness, with, perhaps, a single exception, spoke in favour of the existing system.'[ ] mr. justice bewley has retired from office, and has been replaced by mr. justice meredith, a capable and experienced lawyer. he has done, probably as much as in him lay, to alleviate some of the wrong done to irish landlords; and for this he has been subjected to violent abuse, especially on the part of an advocate of ulster farmers, whose tongue is at odds with his trade in temperance. but he is bound by the precedents set by those who have gone before him; and though the work of the land commission is now better done than it was before the report of the fry commission appeared, and its general procedure has improved, little change has been effected in the reduction of rent in ireland. the government, as i have pointed out in a preceding chapter, has made a few administrative reforms in the composition and the arrangement of the sub-commissions; but it has not taken a single step to give effect to the recommendations made by the fry commission, so far as these are of real importance; it has refused to legislate on the subject, and to bring in the measure that was required; it has even refused to set a further inquiry on foot. the general results of the labours of the land commission and of its subordinate tribunals in fixing 'fair rents' may be summed up in a very few sentences. according to the report of the fry commission, the tenants of rural holdings in ireland are about , in number; , of these have had 'fair rents' fixed, between august, , and the end of march, .[ ] the tenants, who have not had 'fair rents' fixed, are probably either tenants of lands not within the land acts, or 'future tenants' since - , or tenants too poor to pay law costs; but these, perhaps in nine cases out of ten, have indirectly had the benefit of the law, and have had their rents reduced like those of the large majority, by voluntary concessions on the part of landlords. the great mass of 'fair rents' has been fixed by the land commission and its dependents, and the proceedings of these tribunals have, beyond question, formed a standard for the adjustment of rent; whether 'fair rents' have been fixed by the county courts,[ ] or by agreements between landlord and tenant, they have, in the main, conformed to the measure established by the courts set up in . the reductions of rent made, in every way, in the first statutory leases, were, on an average, rather more than per cent. on the old rental;[ ] but those on the second statutory leases have been per cent. more,[ ] that is, the fixing of 'fair rents,' so far as it has gone, has reduced rents rather more than per cent. it may be asserted, with some confidence, that through the operation of the new irish land code, taking in tenancies of all kinds, irish rents have been cut down nearly per cent.; little doubt can exist that they are now lower than they were in the day of wakefield, and in some instances in the day of arthur young, when the price of irish agricultural produce was less than half what it is at the present time.[ ] the agricultural rental of ireland, therefore, in all probability, has been reduced almost per cent., or will be in a short space of time; and as long as the present system of fixing 'fair rent' continues, however it may be lowered, it will certainly not be raised. the act of , i have already said, would, by itself, necessarily reduce rents; but the faulty administration of it, on which i have dwelt, has reduced them far more than ought to have been the case. in fact, disguise it as you may, an immense confiscation, gradual, indeed, and veiled, but not the less real, has been made of the property of irish landlords, even on the principles of a bad law; the evidence of this is, i believe, conclusive. rents have been cut down indiscriminately in the great mass of instances; for example, rents in country districts only opened to good markets of late years, have been reduced quite as much as rents around dublin, which had almost a monopoly of the best market until about - . but the proof of this spoliation is made most apparent by taking into account a single fact, and drawing the natural inference from it. the value of the landlords' interest in the land, before , was from to years' purchase; it is now between and ; at the same time the value of the tenants' interest has, in thousands of cases, enormously increased. i refer to a few examples out of scores to be found in the evidence given to the fry commission. i take first an estate in ulster: 'i only remember one case of a holding before that went up (in a sale of the farm) to anything like years' purchase of the rent, and i have several cases since then that have gone beyond it. i remember one case that struck me very forcibly because of the great amount the man got-- years' purchase. since then i have known, , , , years' purchase to be given.' i turn now to two estates in the south of ireland: 'charles bolster, acres; rent £ _s._; sold for £ in . daniel buckley, acres, at rent of £ _s._; sold in for £ . christopher crofts, acres; old rent, £ ; judicial rent fixed in , £ ; sold in for £ . timothy reefe, acres; rent, _s._; sold in for £ .' i pass on to the second estate: 'next case, acres; old rent, £ ; judicial rent, £ _s._, fixed in by agreement; sold in for £ . next, statute acres; old rent, £ ; judicial rent fixed in at £ ; sold in december, , for £ .'[ ] this great fall in the value of the fee simple in the irish land, and this great rise in the value of the tenant right, coinciding with the general fixing of 'fair rents,' distinctly point to a plain conclusion: the interest of the irish landlord has been enormously reduced, a result never contemplated by the author of the act of . in truth, there has been little or no decline in the market price of land in ireland; but property that ought to belong to the landlord has been improperly taken from him, and has been transferred to the tenant who had no right to it. excuses, however, have been made for this wholesale abolition of rent; they are worthless, but may be briefly noticed. ireland, it is said, is suffering, like england, from the agricultural depression of late years; and rents in ireland have not been cut down more by the act of the state than they have been reduced in england by the voluntary acts of landlords. but agricultural depression in ireland, a land of small holdings, and of pasturage, to a considerable extent, is not, by many degrees, as severe as in england, a land of large farms and largely of cereal culture; a signal proof of this is that, while in england, tenants have, in hundreds of instances, thrown up their farms, there has hardly been a case of the kind in ireland, as appears from the report of the fry commission. besides, if agricultural prices have fallen in ireland, compared to what they were, say, twenty-five years ago, they are higher than they were in the years, say, - , not to take into account the progress made by ireland, in the last half-century, in crops, farm machinery, and the breeds of farming animals. as to the reduction of rents in england and ireland, the supposed analogy completely fails. the rental of england rose greatly from to ; there was no corresponding increase in ireland; there was thus a margin for reduction, in the greater island, which in the lesser did not exist. again, no comparison can be made between state-settled irish rents and english rents lowered by the voluntary acts of landlords. 'fair rents' have practically been reduced for all time; the reduction of english rents is temporary, and can be at once annulled; this difference makes a supposed resemblance a very striking contrast. as to the argument that the courts which have fixed 'fair rents' have been composed of honourable men, and that it is extremely invidious to make charges against them, mere leather and prunella may be brushed aside. no one disputes the honour of the land and the sub-commissioners, but it does not follow that they have not done injustice; no one has disputed the honour of the commission which carried out the encumbered estates act, and yet it repeatedly sold estates at less than half their value. the irish landlords, i repeat, have been iniquitously despoiled; a huge confiscation has been made of their property. if the simplest right is to be done in this province, their claim to compensation has been rendered complete--apart from the utterances of mr. gladstone; should this be disregarded, parliament will have been chargeable with a grave breach of faith, and a precedent will have been set from trampling on the just rights of property in the three kingdoms, which will be dangerous in the extreme. i pass on to consider the irish land on the side of ownership, and the administration of the system of so-called 'land purchase.' of the total of £ , , alone available, some £ , , appear to have been expended; some , tenants have been made owners of their farms, without having paid a shilling of their own, that is, rather more than one in ten of the whole tenant class in ireland. the politicians who declared against 'dual ownership,' that bugbear of self-sufficient ignorance, can find little consolation in these figures; i shall comment afterwards on what this state of things has produced. the government of lord salisbury still proposes to seek to accelerate 'land purchase' of this kind; and loud complaints have been made of the law's delay in not having made the process more speedy. i have had no experience in this matter, and shall, therefore, give no opinion on it; but it appears to me that there has been some want of care in making advances to these so-styled 'purchasers;' not a few were insolvent when they acquired their farms, and many are now on the verge of bankruptcy. this, however, was perhaps inseparable from the system that has been pursued; it is only an additional proof of its essential vices. chapter vi the question of the irish land (_continued_)--proposed reform of the irish land system retrospect of the present irish land system--position of the irish landlords--position of the irish tenant class--this not as advantageous as might be supposed--the effects of the land code on irish agriculture injurious--the effects on the general irish community--confiscation, violation of contracts, shock given to credit, increased alienation of classes, and demoralisation--the land system considered on the side of ownership--'voluntary purchase'--mischief of this policy--it sets up a false standard against rent, and creates unjust distinctions between different classes of tenants--the results it has produced already--an instance of the system--the demand for the compulsory purchase of the irish land caused by 'voluntary purchase'--compulsory purchase has some hold on opinion, but is an impossible, and would be a disgraceful and ruinous policy--it would ruin irish landlords as a class--instances--it would ultimately bring ireland into the state in which she was before the great famine--proposed plan for the reform of irish land tenure--questions as to the means of compensating irish landlords, a deeply wronged order of men. having traced the attempts that have been made to reform irish land tenure, in the last thirty years, and noticed the administration of the new irish land code, i must, for the sake of clearness, take a short retrospect, and consider the irish land system as it exists at this day; i shall review it on the side of occupation first, that is, in the relations of landlord and tenant. the agricultural rental of ireland, we have seen, has been, or is being, reduced about per cent. since , through the operation of laws carried out by tribunals of the state; this proceeding, unexampled in civilised lands, has been the means, i have proved, of doing gross wrong to the irish landed gentry. but this, if a signal, is only one of the many acts of injustice perpetrated on a cruelly injured body of men. the fee simple has been wrested from the irish landlord, where he has been subjected to the legislation of late years; he has been deprived of the ownership which had been his birthright. an estate, nominally for fifteen years, but really capable of being renewed for ever, has been created against him by an unjust law; and this has been vested in his former tenants, subject to the mode of land tenure known as the 'three f's,' the chief of these being 'fair,' that is, state-settled rents, in the adjustment of which he has no voice. he may, no doubt, retain fragments of his old proprietary rights; parts of his estate may be excluded from the provisions of the law; he may be the lord of 'future tenants;' he is left 'royalties,' such as minerals, mines, and timber; he possesses most of his former legal remedies; and should the holders of the lands, which had been his own, who have obtained the benefits of the 'three f's,' infringe the statutory conditions imposed on them, they may be dispossessed, and he may enter upon their farms again. but, notwithstanding exceptions and possibilities like these, the irish landlord has, for practical purposes, been well-nigh assimilated to a rent-charger, and his tenants have been nearly converted into owners of the soil, an utter revolution in the whole land system, in truth, turning it upside down. the status, indeed, of the irish landed gentry now bears a strong resemblance to that of the chief landlords of the eighteenth century, who, separating themselves altogether from their lands, let them in perpetuity at low rents, and, as a necessary consequence, produced the middleman, the pest, as he has rightly been called, of irish land tenure. the enormous and, as i believe, the unjust benefits secured by recent legislation to the irish tenant, are not, however, so complete as they appear to be, and are not without disadvantages attendant on them. tenants of holdings, to which the law does not apply, such as tenants of demesnes and large pastoral lands, if rightly excluded, nevertheless complain; and 'future tenants,' and petty occupants, who cannot afford to seek 'fair rents' from the courts, have, from their point of view, solid grounds of complaint. the scope of the new land code is, therefore, to some extent, restricted; and if the law has actually caused a general reduction of rents, it has not secured the 'three f's' for a considerable body of farmers, not improbably a fourth or fifth part of the class as a whole. and even the occupiers of the irish soil, who have obtained the advantages of the new mode of tenure, have not obtained these without a certain kind of drawback. completely separated as they now are from their former landlords, they cannot expect indulgences from a class which considers itself to have been shamefully wronged; the allowances, which, whatever may be said, had been made to them, in thousands of cases, have, as a rule, been altogether withdrawn; they get no help in making improvements; they are usually obliged regularly to pay their 'fair rents;' above all, landlords, of a strict or harsh nature, are sometimes on the look-out to see if they do not violate the statutory conditions to which they are subject, in order to convert them into 'future tenants,' outside of the protection of the law, and even to reacquire their lands. these circumstances are not without adverse effects; though unquestionably they are far more than countervailed by the change which has been wrought in irish land tenure, and has given the irish tenant the benefits already described. yet, even from this point of view, the law does not operate as unreservedly in his favour as might be supposed. he has his 'fair rent,' probably much too low; his 'fixity of tenure,' a perpetuity in all but name; his right to 'free sale,' sometimes worth thousands of pounds. but, as a rule, he can only gain these advantages at the cost of a lawsuit recurring at short intervals of time, with the vexation and mischief this brings with it, a lawsuit, too, of which the results may be more or less doubtful. if, too, he is a saving and thrifty man he will hardly be able to acquire lands for himself, as, in consequence of the right of 'free sale,' the tenant right of these will have become immensely high; he will be confined, in most instances, to the farm he holds. on the other hand, if he be dishonest or imprudent, he will be tempted to run out and even to injure his land, in order to effect a reduction of rent, or to sublet or mortgage it should an opportunity be found. the new irish land code has thus had this special feature: it has done infinite harm to the despoiled landlord, but the tenant has not gained the expected benefits. let us now see what effect it has had on the great industry on which the irish landed classes depend, the main source of the wealth of their country. unquestionably, as i have remarked, over and over again, the tenant in ireland makes, for the most part, the plant of his farm a necessary incident of the small-farm system; but the irish landed gentry, in the last half century, have done a great deal in the work of improvement. whatever interested calumny may falsely assert, they have expended millions, as unerring statistics show, in planting, enclosure, and, especially, in arterial drainage, this last beyond the reach of the common peasant; they have, in thousands of instances, made the breeds of stock better; they have made large allowances as regards farm buildings. all this is now a thing of the past; the sometime landowner, in a real sense, has been divorced from his former estate; law has prohibited him from doing anything for it; his only interest is to collect the rent-charge called, in mockery, 'fair rent.' on the other hand, tenants in ireland have, in a great many cases--i have briefly glanced at the conclusive evidence--positively wasted or neglected their holdings, for the express purpose of working rent down; this shameful expedient has been hardly checked; the deterioration of a large area of land has been thus accomplished. and, at the same time, as 'fair rent' is much lower than the rent of the market, a considerable minority of this class have sublet or mortgaged their lands, in order to get advances of which they stand in need; this, no doubt, is a violation of the law; but it is a violation difficult to prove, and they run the risk. in this way, as i have shown, in a preceding chapter, the husbandry of ireland has declined of late years; woodland has been cut down recklessly to a great extent; main drainage has been largely neglected, a ruinous thing in a wet climate; in thousands of cases the farming of tenants at 'fair rents' is wretched. the face of the country reveals these facts: ireland is worse cultivated than it was twenty years ago; indeed, the best farming, in the island, by many degrees, is that conducted by a small number of men of substance, who still hold on the footing of free contract, having settled with their landlords, and taken out leases, a significant commentary on irish legislation since . this subject, however, must be considered from a broader point of view, and with reference to the community of ireland, as a whole. a great confiscation, i have said, has been wrought in the irish land; the immense fall in the value of the landlord's estate, and the immense rise in the value of the tenant right, prove that property belonging to one class has been transferred, wholesale, by law, to another, a result never contemplated by responsible statesmen. and confiscation has produced its inevitable effects; free dealing in land has been prevented; except to his former tenants an irish country gentleman cannot sell what remains to him of his former estate, and that through the system of 'land purchase;' capital shuns the irish soil as if it were a quicksand; trustees and mortgagees will not invest in it; in a word, as respects the class which had been its owners, the irish land has been bound in a kind of pernicious mortmain. it is unnecessary to dwell on the resulting evils; one of the sources of the wealth of ireland has been made barren; a paralysis has fallen on a member of irish industry; what is, perhaps, even worse, a sense of insecurity, of instability, of fear of unknown change, so widely prevails in irish landed relations, that they have become completely unsettled, and are a mere chaos. and as vicious legislation has cut the old landlord off from his estate, has assimilated him to the chief lord of the eighteenth century, and is evolving, by degrees, the middleman, so the effects of confiscation, by keeping land out of commerce, have unnaturally limited and restricted its nominal ownership; in fact, many of the features of the detestable penal laws of ireland are reappearing in the irish land system, and are being reproduced by the modern irish land code. another mischievous effect of this code, in another direction, requires attention. the value of tenant right, we have seen, has enormously increased; the sums paid by incoming to outgoing tenants, on the transfer of farms, have, accordingly, become enormous; these purchasers, therefore, are being subjected to heavy outlays, practically in the nature of rack-rents, which hamper their industry, starve their capital, and most injuriously affect good husbandry. one class of the community is thus wronged for the behoof of another; and agriculture must, more or less, suffer. not the least, however, of the manifold evils caused by this legislation have to be yet noticed. the ancient divisions of race and faith in the irish land system still continue; what was most harsh and oppressive in them has been effaced; but they have become wider and more marked in the last twenty years; and this is largely to be ascribed to the present land code. a mode of land tenure, which produces harassing litigation at short intervals of time, and makes landed relations cockpits for legal conflicts, necessarily sets the landed classes against each other; it has aggravated the old differences deep-rooted in the irish soil. the protestant gentleman and the catholic peasant are more estranged from each other, in the southern provinces, than they have been, i believe, within living memory; the same remark, too, applies to presbyterian ulster, where the gentry belong, for the most part, to the late established church, and the tenant classes are of the faith of john knox; the lines of distinction between these orders of men have deepened; and this alienation, concurring with another cause, has contributed to the cry for the confiscation of the irish land, which is now being very generally raised, and to which i shall refer afterwards. another mischief of this legislation, at which i have already glanced, is the widespread demoralisation it has caused, from the nature of the case. the litigation in the courts where 'fair rents' are being fixed, is often a miserable spectacle of hard and mendacious swearing productive of the worst effects on the human character. peasants, as a rule, do not scruple to pledge their oaths that their rents ought to be at most a fourth of the rents they had paid for perhaps half a century; the witnesses they call as valuers usually repeat these statements. the claims, too, for exemption from rent, on account of improvements, are often ridiculous, often shameful; i have seen sums paid for manures twenty years old, gravely put forward as creating a claim for exemption; and the subject of the deterioration of farms is another fruitful source of falsehood. it is hardly necessary to comment on the results, as regards self-respect and the moral sense of men, which must follow proceedings of this kind, carried on, over whole counties, in thousands of cases; they are, inevitably, in a very high degree, unfortunate; but, when law encourages dishonesty, they were to be only expected. such have been the fruits of the new irish land code, on the side of the occupation of the irish land. legislation, essentially faulty and unwise, in conflict with economic science and the facts of the case, has taken from the irish landlords their chief proprietary rights, and forcibly transferred these to their tenants; it has not conferred the benefits it intended on an unfairly favoured class; it has wrought a revolution in the irish land system, in contravention to plain justice, and given it an unnatural and evil aspect; it has caused iniquitous confiscation on a vast scale and demoralisation profound and widespread, with the far-reaching inherent mischiefs; and bad administration has made bad laws worse. political economy, spite of mr. gladstone, has not fled from this world at his bidding; she looks on, so to speak, at the ruins in ireland produced by the violation of her most certain principles; i will add, she affirms the claim to compensation of the irish landlord, if the simplest equity is not to be set at nought. as to the general situation evolved by the present irish land code, i may refer to these pregnant words of mr. lecky: 'it cannot be denied that this legislation has redressed some hard cases and benefited a large number of tenants; and as few men look beyond immediate consequences, or rightly estimate those which are indirect and remote, this fact is accepted by many as its justification. for my own part, i believe that it will one day be found that the evils resulting from this policy have greatly outweighed its benefits, and that they will fall far more heavily on another class than on the small class which was directly injured. in a poor country, where increased capital, improved credit, and secure industry are the greatest needs, it has shaken to the very basis the idea of the sanctity and obligation of contract; made it almost impossible to borrow any considerable sum on irish land; effectually stopped the influx of english gold; paralysed or prevented nearly all industrial undertakings stretching into a distant future. it has reacted powerfully upon trade, and thus contributed to impoverish the irish towns, while it has withdrawn the whole rental of ireland from the improvement of the soil, as the landlord can have no further inducement or obligation to spend money on his estate. in combination, also, with the home rule movement, it has driven much capital out of the land.'[ ] i pass on to the legislation of late years, with respect to the irish land, on the side of ownership. i have briefly described what that legislation is: a conservative ministry, impressed with the wrong idea that mr. gladstone had 'created dual ownership,' by the ill-conceived measure of , resolved to abolish this evil thing if they could, though it is the natural mould of irish land tenure; and parliament has allotted £ , , to attain this object, through the operation of what is falsely called 'land purchase.' the mode of proceeding has been explained: an irish landlord, who desires to sell his estate to his tenants, can obtain an advance for this purpose from the state, through the agency of the land commission; the tenants are then made owners of their farms, without contributing any moneys of their own, and hold at terminable annuities much lower than even 'fair rents.' the transaction, therefore, we have seen, is, in no sense, a purchase; it is a gift, in the nature of a bribe; it is completely different from the policy of john bright and the sales of land made to tenants before , in which these men paid part of the price at least, the only real security for thrift and honesty. of the £ , , , nearly half, i have said, has been spent; and out of the , agricultural irish tenants, some , have acquired their holdings, in fee, under these conditions. the law thus applies to a mere fraction of the class; it is idle to assert that this can do much to extinguish 'dual ownership' in all ireland; the sum required would be many times more than that which alone has been made available; and the process, at the present rate of 'purchases,' would not be accomplished within a century. we may, therefore, pass away from this part of the subject; but let us see how 'land purchase,' effected in this way, bears on the position of the irish landed gentry. the immense majority of this order of men still cling to their native country and their homes; they hate the idea of parting with the rights they retain in the land, trampled down and injured as they have been; this is especially the case with the best and most solvent landlords. but as the terminable annuities payable on 'land purchase' are not nearly so high as even very low rents, not to speak of the other conditions of this mode of tenure, it follows that tenants who have thus been made owners are infinitely better off than tenants still subject to rent; one class has great advantages, of which the other is deprived; as a necessary consequence an artificial standard is set up against rent, which does wrong to the landlord, from the nature of the case; gives every tenant on his estate a grievance; and not improbably may expose him to a determined refusal to pay any rent whatever. 'land purchase,' therefore--the name is a mere untruth--has been a failure as regards 'dual ownership;' and it is establishing against the irish landlord a false measure of rent, analogous to a base coinage, a strange achievement of a conservative government. let us next consider what has been the working of this economic nostrum, with respect to the class, for the benefit of which it was first prescribed, and which has reaped the advantages it gives. the tenants, who have been made owners of their farms, have, as a rule, discharged their obligations to the state very well, though i could point to not a few exceptions; and there have been strikes against the payment of the terminable annuities in some instances. this may be sufficient for official bureaucrats; it is not sufficient for those who know ireland, and can impartially watch the course of events. it was fondly expected that 'land purchase,' that is, bribing tenants in ireland to become owners of their farms, would create a powerful body of freeholders loyal to the state; but this has already been seen to be a mere delusion. as parnell predicted would be the case, these 'purchasers' are 'patriotic' in the highest degree; they fill the ranks of the united irish league, that is, of a conspiracy against our rule in ireland, and are numbered among its most efficient agents; human nature being what it actually is, this is precisely what was to be expected. it was confidently foretold, again, that these 'purchasers' would form a thriving class of model farmers; and that their lands would be patterns of admirable and improved peasant husbandry, but this forecast is being, in a great degree, falsified. these men, 'rocked and dandled into their possessions,' in the words of burke, without a single guarantee for common prudence, and especially without an effort of their own, have, in hundreds of instances, turned out sorry failures; and it has been the almost universal practice of the whole class to cut down every tree that grows on their lands, an act of ruinous waste in a rain-drenched climate. besides, as freehold ownership is not an irish idea--indeed, is opposed to irish ideas--these 'purchasers' have, in many cases, following the example of tenants 'at fair rents,' subdivided, sublet, or mortgaged their holdings; instead of remaining owners in a true sense, they are becoming middlemen lording it over rack-rented serfs. the agriculture, too, of hundreds of these farms is slovenly in the extreme, for bribery does not promote industry; what is 'easy got, easy goes' is a true proverb; and, in addition, a number of these men were really insolvent when they were made 'purchasers.' that ireland will blossom like a rose, under these conditions, is seen even now to be a chimera; and there is much reason to believe that many of these 'purchasers' have become the prey of the race of local usurers, a consummation that might have been predicted. 'i shall sell my estate,' a witty irishman once remarked, 'but i will keep two loan offices and four public-houses; and in two generations my "purchasing" tenants will be too happy to resell their lands to my grandsons.' a singular instance of 'land purchase,' and, indeed, of the working of another part of the land code, has come under my notice of late; i can answer for the accuracy of what i write; scores of similar cases could be, probably, found. in , an industrious scottish tradesman invested the savings of years of his life in buying a chief rent under the encumbered estates act; he gave £ for a perpetual rent-charge of £ , that is, not quite per cent. on his capital. the tenant of the lands subject to the rent was a middleman, with an estate of about £ a year; he had sublet the lands to a tenant in occupation of them, a slovenly, ill-conditioned, and indolent farmer. the land act of passed; the wealthy middleman, an excellent 'mark' for the chief rent, who, therefore, had been obliged to pay the £ a year, was empowered by the new law to evade his contract, and practically to get rid of his interest; the owner of the chief rent, therefore, had only the tenant in occupation to look to for the discharge of his claim. this person was succeeded by his son, a good-for-nothing and drunken man, who soon became head over ears in debt; but he was declared 'a purchaser' by the land commission, and, subject to a terminable annuity, was made owner of the lands. but the advance made was not more than £ ; the representative of the hardworking scotchman, who had bought property, as secure, at the time, as consols, was a loser of more than half of his capital; he was simply cheated out of £ , through the operation of an iniquitous law; his indignant protests may well be conceived. the subsequent history of this so-styled 'purchase' is significant, and not without interest. the worthless owner took possession of the lands; his first step was to cut down the woodland, until he was stopped by a creditor to whom he owed a mortgage. since that time he has become insolvent in all but name, and cannot pay the annuity due to the state; the land commission has been trying to sell the lands; but the attempt has, hitherto, been a failure; the lands have been 'boycotted,' and the market has been closed against a sale. these proceedings do not require a word of comment; they strikingly illustrate how the agrarian code of ireland makes havoc of capital, annuls contracts, and confiscates property for the behoof of dishonest thriftlessness. meanwhile the happy middleman enjoys his £ a year; i dare say he licks his lips as he thinks of the land act of , which scattered a just liability to the winds. the most remarkable and the worst effect--with a revolutionary tendency in no doubtful sense--of this mischievous system has, however, to be still noticed. about one out of ten of the agricultural tenants of ireland have 'purchased' their farms in the way described; the fund available for 'land purchase' cannot include more than one in five; and the process is and must be slow, owing to the law's delay. legislation, therefore, with a singular want of insight, has drawn, and is drawing, an unjust distinction between 'purchasing' and rent-paying tenants; it is dividing them into a small favoured class, and a multitude harshly left out in the cold--fat sheep in one fold, lean goats in another; as the inevitable result, the rent-paying tenant resents the benefits obtained by 'the purchaser;' and the immense majority of the farmers of ireland are made discontented with their lot, from their point of view not without reason. it is idle to say to this great body of men that they have already gained advantages from the state, on which they never reckoned thirty years ago, and that they have the 'three f's,' and all that the phrase implies; those who have secured much are eager to secure more; the unfair distinction arbitrarily made against them is unintelligible and exasperating, man being what he is. the policy of 'voluntary purchase,' as it is called, has, accordingly, from the very nature of the case, provoked and called into being the cry for the 'compulsory purchase' of the irish land, now being heard far and wide in ireland--that is, for the forcible expropriation of all irish landlords, and for placing all their tenants, in their stead, as owners of their estates. this demand has as yet been rejected by statesmen, and is, i believe, both hopeless and shameful; but it has, nevertheless, some logic on its side; it is a corollary from legislation essentially bad; and, backed as it is by a large force of irish opinion, it cannot be ignored or treated with contempt. it is simply extraordinary that many irish landlords have been encouraging, and still encourage, 'voluntary purchase,' on its existing lines, and will not perceive that it leads to 'compulsory purchase;' either from a desire to dispose of parts of their estates, or from motives not easy to understand, they are promoting a revolution, which, if accomplished, would assure their ruin, as i shall conclusively prove afterwards. but the well-informed and most thoughtful members of their class are not flies lured into a bottle by a bit of sugar; they are alive to all that is involved in what is called 'land purchase.' many years ago, when parliament was voting funds for 'voluntary purchase,' on the present system, i indicated what would be the results; i only claim credit for some share of common sense: 'law will have been severing the occupiers of the soil by an arbitrary process into a pampered caste, marked off from a disfavoured multitude; and, as a necessary consequence, the mass of tenants, kept in an inferior position, will be filled with discontent--and from their point of view with perfect justice--when, as the advances from the state run short, their prospects of "land purchase" shall wane and diminish. an "ugly rush" will be made throughout the country to force landlords, as a class, to sell, in order to get a chance of buying; in ulster the cry for "compulsory purchase," already heard, will swell high and fierce.'[ ] these, therefore, have been the fruits of the system called 'land purchase' with euphemistic falsehood. 'compulsory purchase,' a demand caused by an unwise policy, is a question that must be fairly discussed; it is nothing to the purpose that it has as yet made little way in parliament. this claim would have been regarded as sheer insanity thirty years ago; it was scouted by john bright as in the highest degree mischievous, though john bright was the first statesman who proposed making tenants in ireland owners of their farms, but through a real, not a sham, mode of purchase. the compulsory purchase of the rented land of ireland is a policy that has advocates even in england and scotland; and it is lamentable to observe how british opinion seems to take little heed how a measure of this kind would affect the position of the irish landlord, another of the many instances of its habitual disregard of the plainest rights of property in land in ireland. a set of doctrinaires, ignorant of irish nature and of the irish land, imagine that 'the creation of a peasant proprietary,' in all parts of ireland, as the cant phrase is, would, in any case, make the union secure, and would promote tranquillity, industry, and content. some politicians still cherish the fond belief, that thrusting irish tenants, wholesale, into the place of their landlords, by an act of violence without a parallel, would make irish government and administration more easy; and shut their eyes to the nature of this policy. english and scottish capitalists, who have made advances on irish estates, see in compulsory purchase the best probable means of realising securities now in danger; a few great absentee landlords, eager to part with their possessions in ireland, at almost any price, are possibly not opposed to this scheme; and so maybe a few bankrupt irish landlords, hoping to get a trifle out of a general shipwreck. the demand, however, for compulsory purchase has its only real strength in ireland; and unquestionably it is widespread and far-reaching. the conspiracy against british rule in ireland, which has made the annihilation of irish 'landlordism' one of its main objects, calls for compulsory purchase, as a matter of course; it finds no difficulty in banding together the peasantry of the southern provinces in support of a cry which means for this class an improvement in their lot, and appeals to deep-rooted sentiments of human nature. the irish catholic priesthood, too, back the movement to a man, and so do the local nationalist boards; for obvious reasons, both these orders of men seek to drive the irish landed gentry from their homes, and to replace them by dependents in sympathy with them. the demand has also extended to ulster, chiefly on account of the harsh distinction drawn between 'purchasing' and 'non-purchasing' tenants; it is economic rather than social or political; but the cry for compulsory purchase is perhaps loudest in parts of the northern province. its principal champion, at present, is an enthusiast, sincere, indeed, if without judgment and insight; but he is sustained by bodies of farmers formidable in numbers at least. the sharp and, as i think, the unfair distinction drawn by the present law between tenant 'purchasers' and tenants still subject to the payment of rent, has created, it cannot be said too often, the demand for the compulsory purchase of the irish land, and for this lord salisbury's government is largely responsible. but because an irish peasant, on one side of a fence, cannot obtain the benefits of land tenure, which his neighbour, on the other side, has obtained, and may even have a right to complain, it does not follow that compulsory purchase is a possible, or aught but a disgraceful policy; other interests and considerations must be taken into account. let us first see how compulsory purchase would affect the financial position of the three kingdoms. great as the prosperity of the empire is, the strain on its resources is immense; the expenditure of the state at home is vast, and on the increase; the war in south africa, and the settlement of that huge region, will cost unknown millions; the reform of our military and even of our naval system, necessary to our safety, will be a weighty burden for years; every chancellor of the exchequer has declared that fiscal economy, as far as possible, is his first duty. but what does the compulsory purchase of the irish land involve, and what, confessedly, are its essential conditions? mr. gladstone, i have said, asserted, long ago, that the value of the agricultural area of ireland was £ , , ; this estimate, i believe, is too high; but, in the opinion of competent judges, it cannot be deemed less than £ , , . but the forcible expropriation of the irish landed gentry on every principle of civilised law, as, indeed, sir michael hicks beach has already insisted, would imply giving them a large additional bonus; this probably would not be less than £ , , ; the sum, therefore, required for compulsory purchase, would, it may be assumed, be not less than £ , , . now, can any one imagine that the general taxpayer, in the financial situation in which we are, and shall be for years, will make himself liable for this colossal charge, equal to the ransom germany extorted from france, in order to bribe irish peasants into the ownership of their farms, and to effect an agrarian revolution, in which he has no interest? i should like to see the minister who would go to the country on such an insane policy, and who would call on the hardly taxed millions of england, scotland, and ireland, to burn huge holes in their pockets for such an object, for simply robbing peter to pay paul, and that without a pretence of right, or any conceivable good. and what security would the irish land afford for the payment of this enormous impost? the terminable annuities due from the 'purchasing' tenants would, it has pleasantly been said, be a sufficient guarantee; but men of common sense are not to be caught by chaff; the idea is a vain and worthless delusion. the 'no rent manifesto' and the 'plan of campaign' were movements of irish peasants, so to speak, of yesterday; what if another parnell were to arise and to issue a ukase that 'a foreign and alien government had no right to an unjust tribute;' and how could this be collected by a department of an absentee state? the general taxpayer, therefore, who, thirteen years ago, grumbled at a demand of £ , , only, will assuredly not fling £ , , , or half that sum, into the serbonian bog of the irish land. it is hardly necessary to dwell on so small a fact, 'that compulsory purchase would reduce the income tax of ireland about one-half, for nine-tenths of the tenant 'purchasers' would be below its level;' but even this cannot be left out of sight. conservative statesmen, it should be added, are especially bound to reject this scheme; in they denounced, in emphatic language, mr. gladstone's far less dangerous plan of making the state liable for £ , , , to buy out irish landlords; flagrant inconsistency in politics should be eschewed. the probably fixed purpose of the general taxpayer not to mulct himself heavily to fling the irish soil to a mass of peasants, is doubtless, and i say it with regret, the best security against the destruction of the irish landlords; this despoiled and maltreated body of men just now fill the place in irish affairs of the 'injured lady' of swift's satire, gravely told by her lover across the channel that 'i had cost him ten times more than i was worth to maintain me, and that it had been much better for him if i had been damned, or burnt, or thrown to the bottom of the sea.'[ ] nevertheless, i have faith in right-minded englishmen, however prejudiced or ill-informed about an unpopular class, if plain facts and figures are set before them; let us see how it would fare with the irish landlord were he forcibly expropriated under compulsory purchase. i will take the case of an irish country gentleman, who, in the period between and , had an income from his estate of £ a year, subject to a family charge of £ , at per cent., that is, had a net annual income of £ . owing to the depression of agriculture since , his rents would have naturally fallen about £ a year; but let us suppose that, through the operation of the new irish land code, they have been cut down to 'fair rents' of £ a year only. his annual income, therefore, would be £ less by £ , that is, he would still have £ a year he could call his own; how would it be with him were he forcibly sold out? admit that his estate would fetch eighteen years' purchase--the present average rate is seventeen--that is, would realise £ , ; deducting, say, £ for law costs, this would be a net residue of £ , . but the family charge would absorb £ , ; the surplus would be £ only, producing, let us calculate, £ per cent.; this ruined man, therefore, who, little more than twenty years ago, possessed an income of £ a year, would be left £ at the very utmost. i have taken care to understate the case; i challenge attention to my figures; i ask honest englishmen would not this be sheer robbery, accomplished, to the disgrace of the state, in its name? it has been urged, however--and to those who know the facts, the statement is cruel and shameful mockery--that the irish landlord would only lose his rented lands, and that 'he could live happily on the demesne land, which he would still retain.' this would be simply impossible in the case of nineteen-twentieths of the class; they would not have the means to keep their demesnes up; they would be compelled to part with them at almost any price; and the few, who would have the means, would, all but certainly, with their beggared fellows, leave a country in which they had been foully betrayed. it is notorious, indeed, that irish nationalist leaders, knowing what compulsory purchase means, have marked down the demesnes of the irish landed gentry as their prey; associates of american fenians and of the clan na gael are to revel in the mansions of the geraldines, the butlers, the o'connors, the o'neills, as jacobins revelled in the mansions of the la tremouilles and the de noailles. but man does not live by bread alone; the material ruin of the irish landlord would be bad enough; but the moral consequences of his expropriation must not be left out of sight. few of the purchasers under the encumbered estates acts care probably much about the lands they have bought; the same remark probably applies to most irish absentees. but an immense majority of the irish landed gentry are deeply attached to their hearths and their homes; they are bound to their lands by innumerable ties; they have been brought up with the sentiments which property in land creates; in the pathetic words of an old chronicler, 'they do not wish to pray in foreign churches, or to lie in foreign graves;' their hope has been to live and die amidst their ancestral surroundings. the state has, in a special manner, encouraged this belief; it rooted the irish landlord in the soil to be its supporter; is it to expel him from the position it has made for him, without a thought of the shock to his best feelings this must produce? would not such an act be dishonourable, nay, infamous? let us hear what the deepest of our political thinkers, burke, has written upon a somewhat parallel case: 'when men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by the existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful occupation--when they have accommodated all their ideas, and all their habits to it, ... i am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their minds and their feelings; forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition, and to stigmatise with shame and infamy that character and those customs, which before had been made the measure of their happiness and honour. if to this be added an expulsion from their habitations, and a confiscation of all their goods, i am not sagacious enough to discover how this despotick sport, made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties of men, can be discriminated from the rankest tyranny.'[ ] i have referred to an instance, within my knowledge, of the operation of the new irish land code, in the case of a middleman, his under-tenant, and a despoiled owner of a rent. i now refer to an instance, also within my knowledge, of what compulsory purchase would do in the case of an irish landlord. this person is a scion of one of the princely irish-milesian houses; his forefathers were lords of a tract extending from the boyne to the shannon. they belonged to one of the famous 'five bloods of ireland,' acknowledged to be half-royal by henry of anjou; they intermarried with the great norman-irish _noblesse_; one of their matronage was half-sister of surrey's fair geraldine; the ruins of the abbeys they founded are still to be seen. their domains were torn from them in the reign of mary tudor; but they fought stubbornly with their tribe in the great desmond war; they retained, though proscribed, the rank of princes, until the close of the sixteenth century; leaders of the house then carried their swords into foreign armies, and have given a field marshal to austria and grandees to spain. the direct line of the chiefs, however, remained in ireland; it vegetated in obscurity until the irish rising of - ; one of its members then appeared in the parliament of james ii. in dublin, and perished, at the head of his regiment, it is said, at aughrim. the fortunes of his descendants are not without interest; one is believed to have been a companion-in-arms of villars at malplaquet and dénain; two of his remote offspring, the tradition exists, perished in the ranks of napoleon's armies. but the heir of the family bowed under the yoke of the irish penal laws, and became a protestant, at least in name; his near kindred gave ireland anthony malone, one of the most illustrious irishmen of the eighteenth century, and gave england the best commentator on her most immortal poet. one of his representatives, the person of whom i write, still possesses a fragment of the immense possessions his fathers ruled; of more than thirty of their castles he has the wreck of one; a scroll on the roof of his house bears the touching legend that he has sprung from the loins of the old milesian princes. he is not wholly unknown as an irish landlord of this day; curiously, too, his rental has been hardly reduced by the visitations of the land and the sub-commissions. is this scion of the best and the most ancient _noblesse_ of ireland to be banished in his old age from his home, and to be replaced in it by ornaments of the land, the national, and the united irish leagues, for this would be one result of compulsory purchase? let us imagine, however, that, owing to the malign influence which, spenser said, attends england in irish affairs, the irish landed gentry were removed from the land, and their former tenants were put in their place as owners. what would be the consequences, economic, social, political, of this sudden agrarian revolution in one of the three kingdoms? the distribution of the irish soil between the classes which would possess it, would be unfavourable, in the highest degree, to the establishment of a 'peasant proprietary,' the common name in use on this subject. of the , tenant farmers in ireland, some , hold patches of from less than one to five acres in extent; are these to be stereotyped as real land owners? more than , occupy from fifty to five hundred acres and upwards; these include the great graziers of the rich tracts of pasturage; do these supply elements of a 'peasant proprietary' in any rational sense? the only class which even on plausible, _a priori_ grounds could be made occupying owners of the land would contain much less than , families; and probably it occupies less than two-thirds of the island as a whole. are all these bodies of men to be lumped, so to speak, together, and universally to receive the ownership of the soil; would not compulsory purchase, even on these conditions, be the sheerest folly? furthermore, the configuration of ireland and her climate make it next to impossible that a 'peasant proprietary' could generally thrive within her borders; nature herself forbids an attempt to carry out, on a large scale, a settlement of the kind. the central area of the island is a low watershed of wide extent, from which a succession of streams descends through vast tracts of morass and bog; in other parts of the country there are large and deep rivers, curving as they approach the sea, and flowing through mountain spaces; the lands they traverse are swampy, and require main drainage; a large part of ireland is composed of wild hill ranges only fit for the rearing of young and coarse breeds of cattle; she possesses a fine area of the best pasturage, confined, however, to a few counties; her true agricultural area is comparatively small. her climate, moreover, is wet to a proverb; torrents of rain from the atlantic fall on her plains for months; above all, her inland towns are far from each other, and petty; scarcely one is peopled by more than , souls. any well-informed and right-judging person who knows the conditions under which a 'peasant proprietary' can alone flourish, must know that, from the nature of the case, it would be a failure, in the circumstances in which it would be necessarily placed, were it forcibly established in every part of ireland. ireland has little in common with belgium, with northern italy, with france; this settlement of confiscation would go the way of the englishry of the middle ages and the cromwellian colonists. the most conclusive argument against compulsory purchase has, nevertheless, to be yet put forward. the state of things 'voluntary purchase' is evolving would assuredly be aggravated a hundred-fold were every tenant in ireland made the owner of his farm by a revolutionary act on the part of the state. it is significant, in the highest degree, that from the time of the 'new departure' to this hour, the conspiracy against our rule in ireland has clamoured for the expropriation of the irish landed gentry by force, and for the conversion of their tenants into possessors of these estates; far better informed than british statesmen, it has rightly calculated that this violent change would increase the 'nationalist' sympathies of the irish peasant; and this opinion is being confirmed, to a great extent, by the results of 'voluntary purchase' being now developed. the coarse materialist view that bribery will make a class law-abiding and loyal, is opposed to human nature and fact; bribery will not efface ideas, feelings, and tendencies, deep-rooted in history and ancient tradition; above all, if it is a concession to agitation and a rebellious movement, it will only quicken the animosity to the state and the greed of the favoured class. parnell, i have said, had his mind made up on this subject; he always insisted that the irish tenant, wherever his holding had been made his own, would be 'more true to the cause than ever;' it is curious that the confident prediction of a most able man appears to have been persistently ignored. for the rest, the mischief 'voluntary purchase' is already doing would be enormously aggravated by the effects of compulsory purchase. the irish tenant farmers, made owners of the land everywhere, would, like the present 'purchasers,' cut down woodland wholesale; the country would be disafforested over an immense area; the consequences to agriculture would be as bad as possible. arterial and main drainage too would, as a rule, be neglected; but these would, comparatively, be trifling results; the compulsory purchaser would deal with the land as their 'voluntary' fellows are now largely dealing, but, in all probability, more generally, and in much a greater proportion. holding as they would nine-tenths of the irish soil at terminable annuities much lower than any rent, they would inevitably subdivide, sublet, and mortgage their farms in tens of thousands of cases; they would become middlemen, over whole counties, the harsh oppressors of a multitude ground down by rack-rents; the worst kind of 'landlordism' would be reproduced in the worst aspect. the tendency of events is even now confirming what i wrote a long time ago on this subject: 'freehold ownership, therefore, would disappear more or less quickly over extensive tracts, the "yeomen" would become a diminishing quantity, and these would be replaced by a new class of landlords with tenants at competition rents, that is, determined by the land hunger of the celt. the transformation would inevitably go on, for its causes would operate with intense force; and before many years probably two-thirds of ireland would have become a land of mere peasant landlords placed over a mass of rack-rented tenants.'[ ] the creation of a universal 'peasant proprietary,' by force, would, in fact, bring the irish land system back by degrees into the state in which it was before the great famine, when millions of serfdom squatted on the soil, disorganising agriculture and preventing social progress. these considerations, however, by no means exhaust the case against the compulsory purchase of the rented land of ireland. irish landlords have been decried, for an evil purpose, during many years; their position is difficult and open to attack; but if they are an unpopular class, they have been a civilising influence in ireland of real value, the most civilising influence, perhaps, in her three southern provinces. their annihilation, despoiled and impoverished as they are, would still withdraw a large fund from irish rural labour; and it would be most injurious to agriculture in many ways, especially as regards main and arterial drainage, an absolute necessity for the irish soil, and scarcely possible except under a system of large estates. their extinction, too, englishmen ought not to forget, would deprive the state of one of its mainstays in ireland; the idea to the contrary growing up is a mere delusion; it was not for nothing that parnell and davitt described this order of men as 'the british garrison' and insisted that were it once out of the fortress the power of england in ireland would certainly perish. the conversion of irish farmers universally into landowners would also have a ruinous effect on many irish industries. it would do infinite harm to many branches of commerce, especially to trades of the higher type; it would be disastrous to such towns as dublin and belfast, already beginning to protest against it; and, whatever may be said, the prospect of it is dreaded by agricultural irish labourers as a class, which has always been ill-treated by their masters, the farmers, though, owing to the influence of priests and demagogues, they are unwilling to express the sentiments they really feel. compulsory purchase, in fact, is by no means so generally asked for in ireland as is supposed; her representation demands it by a great majority of votes; but this representation, as i have pointed out before, is not a true index of irish opinion. another consideration, too, should be taken into account in coming to a reasonable conclusion on this subject. the land system of england and scotland, from a variety of causes sufficiently known, is essentially different from that of ireland; politically, socially, economically, it has little in common with it. but were parliament to declare that the whole tenant class of ireland were to be transformed into fee simple owners, subject only to renders, much less than true rents, and payable for a short space of time, i much doubt if english and scottish tenants would acquiesce, and would not agitate for legislation of a similar kind, especially as british agriculture is still heavily depressed. leaseholders of large houses in towns, for long terms of years, at ground rents, and a whole class of builders, assuredly would join in such a demand; the contagion of revolution and socialism is always perilous. english and scottish landlords have usually played the part of the jew to the samaritan as regards their irish fellows; but 'proximus ardet ucalegon' might be borne in mind.[ ] the irish land system, therefore, from every point of view, is simply in a deplorable state; it is an economic and social chaos, pregnant with mischiefs and dangers of many kinds. confiscation has wrought its work on the irish landlord; has shaken the structure of irish society; and has produced its inevitable results in banishing capital from the land, and in dealing a weighty blow to irish credit. the legislation of , and of subsequent years, has conferred immense advantages on the tenant class in ireland; but these have fallen short of what might be supposed; this class declares itself to be dissatisfied with its lot; it is clamouring for the wholesale transfer to itself of the rented lands of ireland, through what is known as compulsory purchase, that is, corruption and spoliation combined in an act of the state. and these efforts of legislation, essentially unwise, in direct conflict with fact and economic science, a mere makeshift to stave off agitation and trouble, are, in all probability, by no means the worst. demoralisation has spread throughout irish landed relations, affecting them, unfortunately, in many ways; divisions of class have been made worse, as well as the old divisions of race and faith; respect for contracts and obligations has been destroyed; dishonesty and thriftlessness have been favoured, and industry and honesty not encouraged; an evil spirit of discontent and desire for change is abroad; agriculture is plainly on the decline; there is nothing secure or settled in the land. vicious as the irish land system unquestionably was before mr. gladstone first took it in hand, i believe that, having regard to the general interests of the state, it is still more vicious at the present time; it has been transformed, but, on the whole, transformed for the worse. as i wrote before, when commenting on the position of affairs in ireland, before the land act of , a revolution only could have removed the deep-rooted ills in all that related to the land; a revolution alone could remove them now. but in the one instance, as in the other, the evil caused by a revolution would be infinitely greater than the good; a new agrarian revolution in ireland would be a curse to her; it is better, as burke has remarked, to try to repair even ruins than to blot out every trace of the edifice. still, taking it as we find it, can nothing be done to amend, in some measure, at least, the existing land system? much of it, i admit, must be left untouched; the principle of settling rent, through the agency of the state, false as it is, must continue to work; the principle of so-called 'land purchase' must, within reasonable limits, be still given free scope. but something in the nature of reform is, i think, possible; the discussion of the subject may be of use; i contribute my mite to it, if with unfeigned diffidence. in order to find out the truth, and thoroughly to clear the ground, a commission, i suggest, ought to be appointed, as important as the devon commission of nearly sixty years ago; it should investigate the irish land question in all its branches. its president should be a great english nobleman--the nation would have confidence in the duke of bedford, a princely and most liberal english landlord; but the judicial element should be strong in it; english and irish judges should be among its members; it should include trained agricultural experts: it should have representatives of irish landlords and tenants. it should examine the irish land system as this existed before ; should review the whole series of irish land acts, from to the present time, and inquire into their results and tendencies; should carefully consider the operation of the tribunals selected to carry out the new irish land code, especially as regards the fixing of 'fair rents,' and that not with respect to their procedure only, an unjust limit imposed on the fry commission, but with respect to the principles that have been adopted and the methods pursued; it should deal exhaustively with the subject of so-called 'land purchase,' and see whether it has not directly led to the demand for compulsory purchase; it should take evidence as to 'peasant proprietary' and its creation; and it should make a complete and searching report, with a view to the legislation it might recommend. and if i am not altogether mistaken, such a commission would state, in emphatic language, that the present irish land code was ill designed, even if it cannot be now much changed; that its administration has been attended with grave errors; that cruel wrong has been done to irish landlords, while irish tenants have not obtained what was hoped for; that the economic and social results have been deplorable; that if 'land purchase' cannot be stopped, it is a bad expedient on its present lines, and that the cry for compulsory purchase has been its evident effect; and that extensive, still more universal peasant ownership, is an impossible and would be a pernicious policy. finally, if i am not much mistaken again, such a commission would report that a reform of the irish land system, if very difficult, should be attempted; and that, in its main scope and operation at least, it should be carried out on the side of land tenure, that is, in the relations of landlord and tenant, as has been the opinion of every thinker from burke onwards, who has not been swayed by the exigencies of agitation, or of party politics. i proceed briefly to put my scheme forward, assuming that i have made a reasonably correct forecast. i may say it has been a subject of reflection during many years, indeed, since the legislation of ; mr. gladstone, in his place in the house of commons, pointedly approved of a tract in which i set forth my views; and so, curiously enough, did parnell. it is impossible, i have said, to transform the existing system of irish land tenure; a wide departure from it cannot be made; but improvement is really feasible within certain limits. my object would be to get rid of palpable evils, inseparable from the present state of things; to make the positions of both irish landlords and tenants in some degree better than they now are; to place the irish land system on a somewhat less precarious basis. in the first place, the law as to the exemption of tenants' improvements from rent, an excrescence on the land act of , and made extravagant by the land act of , should be restricted in its application to some extent; as it stands, it is a fruitful cause of injustice, of demoralisation, and of hard swearing, producing endless litigation to very little purpose; claims in respect of improvements ought to be more limited, in point of time, than they are; a check should be placed on obsolete and illusory claims; this would be advantageous, i think, to all interests involved. again, it would be impracticable to exclude from the operation of the present land code lands that have been already brought within its scope; but a more precise definition should be made of the lands that are intended to be now excluded--demesnes, town parks, residential holdings, and large pastoral farms; the decisions of the courts, in this province, are very perplexing; a good definition would make litigation very considerably less. these changes, i am convinced, would do much appreciable good; but i would go a long way farther in attempting to make the status of both landlord and tenant in ireland less insecure and vexatious than it now is. in the first place, leaving lands now excluded out, i would make all agricultural and pastoral irish tenants entitled to the tenure of the 'three f's,' removing the prohibition as to 'future tenants,' a distinction that never ought to have been made, and, as far as possible, securing this mode of tenure to the poorest tenants, by means to which i shall advert afterwards. in the next place, i would make an earnest effort to lessen the ruinous litigation and the instability caused by the statutory leases renewable at short intervals of time. the tenant should have 'fixity of tenure' in a real sense; the estate created in his favour against the landlord ought not to be one of fifteen years only, however indefinitely it may be extended; i would prefer to see it an estate for ever; but, as in the present state of agriculture, there would be objections to this, on account of the uncertainty of the rate of rent, it might be an estate for a limited term. but the term ought not to be less than thirty years at least, renewable, of course, like the shorter term of fifteen; this would quiet possession and get rid of lawsuits for the period of a generation of men. the tenant should retain his right of 'free sale;' but i would make the conditions less stringent than they are under the existing law. the position of the irish tenant would thus be greatly improved; the sphere of the 'three f's' would be largely extended; he would have 'fixity of tenure,' for a long time, at least, without the hazard and loss of litigation every fifteen years; his right of 'free sale' would be less restricted; and he would have distinct advantages, as respects 'fair rent,' under the part of my plan i am about to explain. i turn to the position of the irish 'landlord'--i still use this expression and that of 'tenant,' though both words are hardly applicable to existing facts; this, too, in my judgment, would be made much better. the estate that is now created against him would still be preserved; i wish it were a perpetual estate, but it would be one for thirty years at least; he would, therefore, remain assimilated to a rent-charger, as he is at present. but like his tenant he would be comparatively free from lawsuits; he would be less harassed by claims in respect of improvements; he would have, in many particulars, a more stable tenure. he should, of course, retain the 'royalties' still reserved to him--mines, minerals, timber, and such things; and he should have the title to the statutory conditions he now has; but as his reversionary rights would be somewhat lessened, he should be compensated for these by a small money payment. with one great exception he should have the legal remedies to enforce the rights he now possesses; and that exception would be of great importance. i have always thought the law of ejectment for non-payment of rent harsh; it is an innovation on the ancient common law; it sometimes causes forfeitures far from just; it is not properly applicable to tenancies of long duration. i would certainly abolish this mode of procedure; i would instead of it give the landlord a power to sell the tenant's lands, by a procedure analogous to that of bankruptcy, should default be made in the payment of the rent, or rather the rent-charge that might be due. the advantage to both landlord and tenant would be great: the first would have a remedy more expeditious and just than he has; the second, should the land be sold and lost to him, would, as a rule, have a surplus over and above his debts; unlike what is sometimes the case in evictions, he would realise for himself his whole legitimate interest in the land. this single reform would do much to make 'fair rent' a less onerous charge than it now is. by these means the status of the irish landlord would be made by many degrees more secure; the irish tenant would acquire an interest in the land much more durable and stable than he has now, in fact, nearly equivalent to full ownership, subject to a rent-charge; and if his interest were made a perpetuity, as i hope would be the case at last, he would be assimilated to an owner subject to a perpetual rent, or to an english copyholder subject to a similar render. this is the position burke proposed he should have, considerably more than a century ago;[ ] it is that which has been advocated by john stuart mill, and, i am happy to add, by mr. john morley; it is the only position, compatible with common sense and justice, which the new irish land code has left possible, for i put the quackery of compulsory purchase out of sight, and voluntary purchase is a bad half-measure. the great subject of fixing rent by the state would remain; for, unjustifiable as this expedient is, it is impossible, after what has happened, to dispense with it. without imputing personal motives or moral blame to any one, the land commission and its sub-commissions ought, i am convinced, to cease to be the agency to fix 'fair rents;' however unconsciously, in my judgment, they have often proceeded on false principles, and have done immense, if not wilful wrong; they are decried by landlords and tenants alike in ireland. besides, there is a constitutional objection to their adjusting rent; the land commission is entrusted with the task of carrying out 'land purchase;' it has a direct inducement to whittle rents away, in order to facilitate the sale of land; its interest and its duty are thus placed in conflict. be this as it may, my plan for fixing 'fair rents' in ireland by the state would be altogether different. in the first place, a definition of 'fair rent' should be made by statute, and should dominate, so to speak, the subject; the omission of this criterion has caused grave injustice. this having been made, i would adjust irish rents by a method much better, i believe, than that now in existence. a body of competent and well-paid valuers of land should be formed--there would be no difficulty about this in ireland; these men should visit, when required, estates; and having heard what landlords and tenants had to say on the spot, should declare what they consider the 'fair rents' of farms, making a deduction for improvements as arranged by a reformed law, and taking waste and deterioration into account. the reports made by the valuers should be complete and explicit; they would probably satisfy landlords and tenants in most instances; but dissatisfied persons should have a right to an appeal, which should be a full rehearing of all the facts in issue; but the appeal should be at the peril of costs against unsuccessful suitors. the tribunals to decide the appeals should, i suggest, be composed of two eminent judges, for each of the four provinces, assisted by trained agricultural experts; but the authority of the judges should prevail on all questions. from these courts a further appeal should run to the court of appeal in ireland, on all matters of law and fact, and ultimately should run to the house of lords; the present restricted appeal to the land commission has been little better than a sorry mockery of right. the scheme i propose has obvious defects; it sanctions the vicious principle of state-settled rents, a thing unknown in lands outside of ireland, a defiance of the simplest axioms of economic science. but it endeavours at least to improve a bad system of tenure dealing with accomplished facts now beyond recall; i certainly think it would make the relations of irish landlords and tenants better than they are, and would tend to place both classes in the positions which, as affairs now stand, they will probably, in the long run, occupy. as regards 'alternative policies,' as they have been called, i have set forth the reasons that the compulsory purchase of the irish land would be, i believe, impossible, and, were it possible, would be a confiscation of the foullest kind, ruinous to great britain and ireland alike. i have also shown how the present system of so-styled 'voluntary purchase' is, in my judgment, essentially immoral, and pregnant with dangers; and i have indicated the results being already produced. that system, however, must go on; for the present it cannot be arrested; a conservative government still pins its faith on it, as a whig government, half a century ago, pinned its faith on the encumbered estates act; but a 'peasant proprietary' rooted in corruption will hardly succeed, and 'voluntary purchase' draws the worst kind of distinctions in irish land tenure. the acceleration, indeed, of this 'remedy' has been deemed advisable; and as long as the sum voted by parliament is not expended, the system evidently must continue in force. some of its evils, however, would be lessened were the state to reserve to itself the woodland, which tenant 'purchasers,' as a rule, cut down and sell; and if tenants proved to be solvent were compelled to advance part of the money required to transfer their lands to themselves. it is revolting to my mind to see a wealthy irish farmer bribed into the ownership of his farm by an act of the state, without having paid a shilling of the price. i commend this spectacle to the hard-pressed general taxpayer. i need hardly say that, under the scheme i propose, existing interests of tenants should remain intact, and statutory leases should be allowed to come to an end, before a change should be made by law in the position they hold. the question of compensating the irish landlords would remain; a very few words on this will suffice. i must remind the reader, as i have already shown, that the land act of was passed on the condition that, should experience prove that real injury had been done to this order of men, their right to indemnity would be plain; mr. gladstone's language was unequivocal; the house of commons approved. nor can any reasonable doubt exist that the course of legislation from to has confiscated the property of the class to an immense extent; the simple fact that the value in ireland of the fee simple in land has been reduced by a third at least, and that the value of the tenant right has been increased in about the same proportion, points to a conclusion evident to impartial minds. i am satisfied as to what would be the report on this subject of the commission i should wish to see appointed; it could not avoid drawing an inference that cannot be resisted. the question, therefore, will have to be faced; the good faith of parliament is virtually at stake; and if a pledge made in the name of the state is not to be broken, the right of the irish landlords to compensation is complete. independently, too, of considerations of this kind, it is a recognised principle that should a policy have caused loss to a class, the state is morally bound to make the loss up; a violation of this principle is unjust and dangerous alike. i quote from john stuart mill on this very question: 'the principle of property gives the landowners no right to the land, but only a right to compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be the policy of the state to deprive them of. to that their claim is indefeasible. it is due to landowners and to owners of any property whatever, recognised as such by the state, that they should not be dispossessed of it without receiving its pecuniary value, or an annual income equal to what they have derived from it. if the land was bought with the produce of the labour of themselves or their ancestors, compensation is due to them on that ground; even if otherwise, it is still due on the ground of prescription. nor can it ever be necessary for accomplishing an object by which the community altogether will gain, that a particular portion of the community should be immolated. when the property is of a kind to which peculiar affections attach themselves, the compensation ought to exceed a bare pecuniary equivalent.... the legislature, which, if it pleased, might convert the whole body of landlords into fundholders or pensioners, might, _à fortiori_, commute the average receipts of irish landowners into a fixed rent-charge, and raise the tenants into proprietors; supposing always that the full market value of the land was tendered to the landlords, in case they preferred that to accepting the conditions proposed.'[ ] assuming, then, the case for compensating the irish landlords to have been made out, compensation can be afforded without the loss of a shilling to the state. the _bonâ fide_ encumbrances on their estates, that is, those which represent advances in cash, are now at an interest of from to per cent.; the state could pay off those which were perfectly secure at an interest of - / per cent., and could make the landlords chargeable with interest at per cent., in order to provide against possible loss. as for encumbrances that were not perfectly secure, the state should only pay off what was well charged; but it should do this on the same conditions; and it should declare hopeless encumbrances extinct. this would be a considerable and just boon to the irish landlords; the securities taken by the state should be in the form of debentures, which would pass from hand to hand in the market; and many owners of encumbrances would no doubt accept sums less than their full demands, for these, they well know, are at present in danger. i would go, however, farther in relieving the irish landlords; their estates are subject to a mass of family charges created under a different order of things; if the state has arbitrarily cut down the fund set apart for these, by a wholesale reduction of rents, i cannot understand how it is not the simplest justice to cut the charges down in some fair proportion. at all events, i make these suggestions for what they may be worth; if right is to be done to the irish landed gentry, and a gross breach of public faith is not to be made, some relief of this kind should be extended to them. very possibly this will not be afforded; but i venture to remind politicians that even an unpopular class cannot be cruelly wronged and sacrificed, without doing injury to all classes, and shaking to their foundations the clear rights of property. and i openly avow that, in my judgment, it would be in the highest degree against the national interest to annihilate this body of men, as must probably happen, should things in ireland be left as they are. what if they are the heirs of conquest and confiscation in the past? is that a reason for destroying them after the lapse of centuries, and when england planted them in the land to be her mainstay? what if, in instances, comparatively few in the extreme, they have abused the social trust imposed on them? was not this because the opportunity was given by law, and was not the law the work of successive parliaments? is it not a fact that british ministers, so to speak, of yesterday, declared that they were secure in their proprietary rights; and that mr. gladstone solemnly acquitted them of what had been laid to their charge? on the other hand, have they not been for ages the staunchest friends of england in irish affairs, especially in troubled and perilous times? is it for nothing that they have been called the british garrison by her foes, the strongest obstacle to rebellion and treason? and is a class, which has, on the whole, been a civilising influence, for many years, in ireland, and which has given the state far more than a due proportion of worthies--warriors, orators, statesmen, thinkers, men of eminence in all the arts of life--to be sacrificed at the bidding of a conspiracy bent on subverting british rule in ireland, or in deference to false and perilous theories? chapter vii the question of the financial relations between great britain and ireland the subject briefly considered--financial position of ireland before , and under grattan's parliament--her taxation and debt small before --ireland financially a distinct country--at the union, pitt wished to 'assimilate her in finance' with great britain, but this impossible, and why--ireland's contribution after the union--this was unjust, but it left her financially a distinct country--ireland made nearly bankrupt--the compromise of --the irish exchequer closed, and the irish and british debts consolidated--the object of the compromise was rather to relieve ireland from her burdens than to assimilate her in finance with great britain--she still remained for many years financially distinct from great britain, and is so still to some extent--the conduct of peel a striking proof of this--mr. gladstone imposes the income tax on ireland, and her spirit duties are largely raised--injustice of this policy--the committee of - --ireland does not obtain financial justice--the report of the childers commission made upon a reference by mr. gladstone following mr. goschen--the commission declares that ireland has been greatly overtaxed for many years--evidence on which it has founded this conclusion--examination of arguments to the contrary--another commission promised, but the promise not fulfilled--importance of settling this question. the financial relations between great britain and ireland have been a subject, at intervals of time, no doubt, of strong controversy during a whole century. i shall not harp on the saying of johnson to an irish friend, 'avoid a union with england, she will only rob you;' but, in the opinion of well-informed irishmen, the fiscal treatment of ireland, since - , strikingly illustrates the significant remark of burke, 'when any community is subordinately connected with another, the great danger of the connection is, the extreme pride and self-complacency of the superior, which, in all matters of controversy, will probably decide in its own favour.' there is no reason to impeach the good faith of pitt and castlereagh; but the financial arrangements they made for ireland, when the union became law, were denounced by the most distinguished irishmen of the day; these imposed on ireland an overwhelming burden, and, in fact, reduced her to the very edge of bankruptcy. a compromise was effected in - ; this has been described as a generous boon to ireland; but it was at best a slight relief from injustice; and it weakened securities she had against fiscal exaction, while it involved her in liabilities which, if remote, were not the less possible. it is a most significant fact that peel, who, as chief secretary from to , was familiar with the economic state of ireland, refused, though under the strongest inducements, to apply to ireland the fiscal charges extended to her by one of his brilliant successors; the most sagacious financier of the nineteenth century played, in this matter, a very different part from the most impulsive and not the least unscrupulous. in , and from thence in other years, mr. gladstone, in order to carry out a policy distinctly opposed to many irish interests, subjected ireland to a sudden and heavy load of taxation, exactly at the time when, for the plainest reasons, she ought to have been exempted from it; from that day to this, irishmen, who understand the question, are agreed that this was gross, nay, cruel, injustice. the whole subject of british and irish financial relations was sent by mr. gladstone to a commission in , here following the example of mr. goschen; a careful inquiry was held during many months; the report of the commission was startling and important in the extreme. this tribunal, mainly composed of eminent english experts, announced, and that almost with one voice, that ireland was being enormously overtaxed, and had been for upwards of forty years; and it plainly intimated that a remedy for this wrong should be found. no real answer has been made to this remarkable judgment; the attempts at answers that have been made are nearly all mere trifling; lord salisbury's government evidently believes that an answer is not possible; it promised to appoint another commission to investigate certain parts of the subject; years have passed, and it has not performed its promise. meanwhile, even amidst the hurly-burly of irish politics, irishmen of all parties have united in a demand for redress; and if the demand is not pressed with extreme vehemence, it is sustained by all that is best in irish opinion. it is obviously unwise, and it may become dangerous, to continue to ignore such a claim; in any event the financial relations of the three kingdoms are not the least important of 'present irish questions;' i shall briefly examine it in this chapter. it is unnecessary to dwell on the financial relations of great britain and ireland before and the union. england held the position of an absolutely dominant state before , ireland that of a conquered and despised colony; ireland was under the control of the british parliament, and was governed by english officials supreme at the castle. ireland was excluded from the foreign and colonial trade of great britain; her agriculture and manufactures were half destroyed by the selfish jealousy and greed of her imperious neighbour. she contributed, on the other hand, nothing to the treasury of the ruling power; she had little or no part in british wars, or in building up the edifice of the empire, except through her soldiers in the british army; she was free from british debt and from british taxation. in these circumstances, grievous as was the incubus of protestant ascendency upon the land, it is remarkable what material progress she made; her parliament, though little more than a local vestry, unquestionably promoted her material welfare; she was very lightly taxed, and was free from debt for many years. she was still so completely distinct from great britain, that it was not until that her parliament agreed that , men, of whom , were to remain in ireland, should be enrolled for the defence of the state; before that time, she was only obliged to maintain a small british force within her borders. after a partial relaxation of the restraints on her commerce caused by the stress of the american war, and by the famous volunteer movement, ireland obtained legislative independence in ; she ceased to be subject to the british parliament, and to fill the position of a degraded colony; she became, in theory at least, an independent state in many respects. her parliament was all but sovereign in name; ireland was now united to great britain only by the link of the crown; by an executive always despatched from downing street; and, it must be added, by the corruption of her houses of lords and commons. she was thus more than ever a distinct country; in fact, most british statesmen had soon perceived that the celebrated settlement of greatly weakened her old connection with england. she advanced, however, markedly in prosperity for many years, until the french revolution arrested this; her debt was little more than £ , , for a long time, her taxation only about £ , , . but by the close of the eighteenth century these figures had been disastrously changed; her debt had risen to upwards of £ , , , her taxation to about £ , , . this great increase had been partly caused by the costly expenditure of her transformed parliament, which had spent considerable sums on public works, and on economic experiments of different kinds; but five-sixths of it was probably caused by the enormous charge incurred by the rebellion of --one of the most woeful tragedies of irish history--and by the suppression of that ill-starred movement.[ ] the rebellion led at once to the union; it precipitated what had perhaps become a necessity of state. the great measure of pitt was badly designed, and was, moreover, tainted by a grave breach of faith; it was only what was called a 'protestant union,' that is, it rested upon false and narrow foundations; it deceived catholic ireland, and did her gross wrong; above all, it did not effect its main object, and incorporate the lesser with the more powerful country. it left ireland, hitherto completely distinct, still, to a very considerable extent, a distinct state; she retained a separate government and administration, separate courts of justice, a separate exchequer for many years; this shadow of separation, as foster, one of her ablest worthies, foretold, would give a demand for separation substance.[ ] the financial arrangements between great britain and ireland were practically altogether the work of pitt. a disciple of adam smith, the minister's wish was to 'assimilate the two countries in finance;' to place both under the same fiscal system, to make taxation in both uniform. but in , the national debt of great britain was more than £ , , , and her taxation was about £ a head; the national debt of ireland, we have seen, was some £ , , , and her taxation by the head not more than _s._; this immense inequality made 'assimilation in finance' impossible. besides, pitt, as a matter of course, knew that great britain was a very rich country, and ireland perhaps the poorest in europe; he was too great a financier to accept the false and shallow theory that, as between two communities wholly unequal in wealth, equal taxes were really equal burdens, and could be just; he had emphatically remarked in , when his celebrated 'commercial propositions' were opposed by the selfish monopolies of british commerce, 'if one country exceeded another in wealth, population, and established commerce in a proportion of two to one, he was nearly convinced that that country would be able to bear near ten times the burden that the other would be equal to.'[ ] it had become necessary, therefore, at the time of the union, to place the financial relations between great britain and ireland on a basis that had nothing in common with uniformity of taxation, and a common fiscal system; 'assimilation in finance' was for the present to be indefinitely postponed. the financial settlement made at the union distinctly embodied these principles, and was carried by castlereagh through the irish parliament, by what methods history records with shame. like pitt, the chief secretary looked forward to a time when great britain and ireland might be under the same fiscal system; but at this juncture, this consummation was, he acknowledged, hopeless. ireland was, financially, to remain a separate country; she was to have a separate exchequer and separate taxes; her national debt was to be kept distinct from that of great britain. she was to furnish only a contribution to the state; and castlereagh declared, over and over again, that this contribution was to be only in proportion to her means, and that in no event was she to be unduly taxed. 'the great point to be ascertained is the best criterion that can be found of the relative means of the two countries, in order to fix the relative proportions of their contributions.... as to the future, it is expected that the two countries will move forward together, and unite with regard to their expenses in the measure of their relative abilities.' by a comparison made between british and irish imports and exports, and between the values of certain commodities, castlereagh came to the conclusion that the contributions which great britain and ireland ought to be expected to make for the general support and administration of the state, should be, respectively, fifteen- and two-seventeenths, that is, great britain was to pay about per cent., and ireland about per cent. of the sum total. this proportion was to be made liable to revision at the end of twenty years; for this provision, castlereagh remarked, gave 'ireland the utmost possible security that she cannot be taxed beyond the measure of her comparative ability, and that the ratio of her contributions must ever correspond with her relative wealth and prosperity;' and then followed arrangements which undoubtedly had the 'assimilation of great britain and ireland in finance' remotely in view; but subject to limitations that would preserve for ireland her fiscal rights, and would secure her from taxation beyond her means, and unjust. it was proposed that if, at some future time, the debts of both countries should be discharged, or if their debts and their contributions were in the same proportion, great britain and ireland might be 'assimilated in finance,' and placed under the same fiscal system; but this was to be on two express conditions, that the circumstances of the two countries should admit of this change, and that, in any case, should the change be made, ireland--as was the case of scotland when her union took place-should have the benefit of such 'exemptions and abatements' of taxation as might be deemed proper, and the circumstances of the situation might allow. the meaning of the technical words, 'exemptions and abatements,' interpreted of late years in a pettifogging sense, was fully recognised at the time, and for a long subsequent period, indeed, has been recognised to this day by most of our leading statesmen, namely, that ireland was not to be taxed unfairly or beyond her resources, as castlereagh had repeatedly promised.[ ] the opposition in the irish parliament had many able lawyers--the names of saurin, of plunket, of bushe are still known to fame; it is to be regretted, perhaps, that these powerful minds did not examine with more jealousy the conditions under which great britain and ireland might be 'assimilated in finance,' distant as the contingency appeared to be; did not criticise more sharply words that might be wrested from their accepted sense; and trusted too much to castlereagh's phrases. but the attention of the opposition was rather directed to the union in its political than in its financial aspect; it rather denounced the attempt to destroy the settlement of than scrutinised the terms of the fiscal system to be imposed on ireland, at least, as these were concerned with the future. the arrangements, nevertheless, by which ireland was to make the contribution of the two-seventeenths were fiercely assailed in both the houses in college green; foster described the calculations of pitt and castlereagh as utterly false, and declared that the charge to be borne by ireland was much too large; grattan echoed this opinion in characteristic language: 'though i do not think the means of this country are unequal to any necessary expense, yet i do think they are inadequate to that contributory expense which the union stipulates.... the attempt will exhaust the country, at the same time that it enslaves her. colour it as you please, ireland will pay more than she is able. considering these the terms of the union so far as they relate to revenue, they amount to a continuation of the double establishment, an increase of the separate establishment, and a military government, with a prospect of soon succeeding to the full taxes of england.'[ ] the opposition, too, in the irish house of commons loudly protested: 'your majesty's faithful commons are satisfied that this calculation is extremely erroneous; and that on a just and fair inquiry into the comparative means of each country, the kingdom ought not, and is not able to contribute anything like that proportion.'[ ] and twenty irish peers placed this emphatic protest on record; i have space for a few sentences only: 'under such circumstances, it appears to us that if this kingdom should take upon herself irrevocably the payment of two-seventeenths of these expenses, she will not have means to perform her engagements unless by charging her landed property with _s._ or _s._ in the pound; it must end in the draining from her her last guinea, in totally annihilating her trade for want of capital, in rendering the taxes unproductive, and consequently in finally putting her in a state of bankruptcy. we think ourselves called upon to protest against a measure so ruinous to our country, and to place the responsibility of its consequences upon such persons as have brought it forward and supported it.'[ ] the treaty of union left ireland, financially, still a separate country, paying a fixed contribution for the uses of the state. the great war with france soon broke out again; england was involved with napoleon in a life-and-death struggle; her fiscal resources were strained to the utmost; her expenditure became prodigious for a series of years. in these circumstances, the debt of ireland rose from £ , , to upwards of £ , , ; and her taxation from about £ , , to about £ , , ; while the debt of great britain advanced from some £ , , to some £ , , , and her taxation from some £ , , to £ , , ; the taxation of ireland being by the head about £ in , that of great britain being about £ , the figures sixteen years before being _s._ and £ . the immense increase in the debt of ireland, much greater in proportion than that of great britain, was certainly due to a large extent to the fact--and this was frankly admitted by grattan--that the poorer country could not keep pace with the richer in the gigantic charges of the war; the case, it has justly been remarked, may be compared to a case of this kind: 'if one man, a, who has been living at the rate of £ per annum, arranges to keep house with another man, b, who has for some time been living at the rate of £ per annum, and to spend £ for every £ which b spends, then so long as b continues to live at the same rate as before, the expenses of a will not be increased. but if b begins to live at the rate of £ a year, a will have to spend £ a year, and if his means are not sufficient for this, he must become bankrupt.'[ ] allowing, nevertheless, for all this, it is not the less certain that the calculations of pitt and castlereagh were utterly falsified by the event, and that the warnings of foster, grattan, and other well-informed irishmen, besides the protests made in the irish parliament, were verified to the fullest extent; as has been remarked by a distinguished english expert, 'the calculations of mr. pitt and lord castlereagh, the ministers who promoted the union, and who declared that ireland would be able to pay, and ought to pay, two-seventeenths of the joint expenses of the united kingdom, turned out to be mistaken, and the opinions of mr. grattan, mr. foster, and other irish members, who denied that she would be able to contribute so large a proportion, are proved by the event to have been well founded.'[ ] this contrast, it is hardly necessary to say, to persons acquainted with irish history, is only one of the innumerable proofs of the ignorance of ireland too common to british statesmen, and of their too common disregard of the best irish opinion. in - , at the close of the war, ireland was financially in a bankrupt condition; she could not pay the interest on her debt; she could not bear the weight of further taxation; she was exhausted and sucked dry by fiscal injustice. her social state, too, had become very alarming; her population had rapidly increased, and, mainly depending on the frail potato, was already becoming an incubus on the land; the collapse of the high war prices had caused a sudden fall in rents and the wages of labour; there was general distress in several counties, and whiteboy and agrarian disorder widely prevailed. the financial position of ireland was necessarily taken up by parliament; a committee of the house of commons was selected to report upon it. by this time one of the contingencies had taken place for the possible 'assimilation in finance' with great britain of the much weaker country; the contribution of ireland, compared with her debt, was even in less proportion than the contribution of great britain to her own; she had been left far behind in the effort to pay her way. in this position of affairs the committee made its report, after a long and careful examination of the case; the house of commons passed these resolutions in may, : 'that it is the opinion of this committee that the values of the respective debts of great britain and ireland, estimated according to the provisions of the acts of union, have been, at a period subsequent to these acts, in the same proportion to each other (within one-hundredth part of the said value), with the respective contributions of each country respectively, towards the annual expenditure of the united kingdom; and that the respective circumstances of the two countries will henceforth admit of their contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed upon the same articles upon each, to the future expenditure of the united kingdom; subject only to such particular exemptions and abatements in ireland and in scotland as circumstances may appear from time to time to demand; and that it is no longer necessary to regulate the contribution of the two countries according to any specific proportion, or according to the rules prescribed by the acts of union, with respect to such proportions. that it is the opinion of this committee, that it is expedient that all expenses henceforth to be incurred, together with the interest and charges of all debts hitherto contracted, shall be so defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes to be imposed on the same articles in each country; and that from time to time, as circumstances may require, such taxes should be imposed and applied accordingly, subject only to such exemptions and abatements in ireland and scotland as circumstances may appear to demand. that it is the opinion of this committee that such legislative measures should be adopted as may be necessary to carry into further effect the purposes of the said acts of union, by consolidating the public revenues of great britain and ireland into one fund, and applying the same to the general services of the united kingdom.'[ ] these resolutions were partly embodied in an act which received the royal assent in june, . by this law the separate exchequer of ireland was shut up; there was to be but one exchequer for the three kingdoms; all the revenues of great britain and ireland were thrown into a general fund to be applied to the requirements of the state; the separate debt of ireland was fused into that of great britain, the two making a common national debt. by these means ireland was relieved from an intolerable load of debt; but those who contend that an immense boon was thus conferred on her, only illustrate the aphorism of burke referred to before; the matter was decided by the opinion of the dominant power. ireland, no doubt, was set free from an overwhelming burden; but the burden was one improperly cast on her by the union; the relief was only a small redress of injustice.[ ] on the other hand, the arrangements of abolished the contribution of the two-seventeenths, and made ireland less a separate country, financially, than she had been before; the resolutions of the house of commons did not all become law, but they at least declared that she might become 'assimilated in finance' to great britain at a convenient time, and thus diminished her security against undue taxation; and the amalgamation of her debt with that of great britain made her subject, at least conceivably, to a gigantic charge, for which she was not in any way liable. the compromise, however, effected at this time, rather contemplated the relief of ireland from existing debt than her ultimate 'assimilation in finance to great britain,' and the extension to both countries of the same fiscal system. for many years after ireland remained, financially, completely distinct from great britain, and under a scheme of taxation altogether different. nor is the reason difficult to seek; she was declared entitled, by the resolutions before mentioned, to the 'exemptions and abatements' secured to her by the treaty of union; and the parliament of that day respected the treaty, interpreting these terms in their true sense, that ireland was not to be taxed beyond her means. her fiscal wrongs, besides, from to , were still fresh in the minds of statesmen; these did not wish to repeat injustice; above all, she had many representatives of real weight at westminster--grattan was a tower of strength in himself, and he had very able followers; these men would certainly have fiercely resented attempts to impair the financial rights of their country. the fiscal systems of great britain and ireland, still altogether distinct, continued nearly on this footing for a series of years. great britain was gradually relieved from taxation peculiar to herself, amounting to very considerable sums; ireland was not relieved in the same proportion; but this was hardly a real grievance; the taxation of great britain during the war had been enormously higher than that of ireland. in - the charge on great britain, which had been about £ per head, had been reduced to £ _s._; that on ireland, which had been about £ a head, had been reduced to _s._ _d._ there seems to have been little to complain of in these figures. some steps, however, but tentative only, were made by degrees in 'assimilating the two countries in finance,' according to the resolutions of ; the duties on tea were made equal for the three kingdoms, and the duties on tobacco, as early as ; but it deserves special notice that this policy was angrily opposed by many irishmen in the house of commons, the most conspicuous of these being sir john newport, a real master of irish finance, who had been chancellor of the irish exchequer in - . still, notwithstanding innovations like these, the fiscal systems of great britain and ireland remained substantially distinct for a long period; this was notably made manifest as late as . at this time the population of england was in an alarming state; the chartist agitation was in full swing; british commerce was half strangled by heavy duties on foreign imports; the corn laws crippled and burdened industry. peel was at the head of his great ministry; he began to carry into effect the policy of free trade, inaugurated by pitt, but unhappily delayed; in order to accomplish this he had to diminish or get rid of the charges on foreign imports, and generally to substitute direct for indirect taxation. he was under a strong temptation to 'assimilate great britain and ireland in finance;' but he had been a friend and colleague of castlereagh; he understood the true import of the treaty of union; above all, he knew ireland well for an englishman; he had practically been her ruler for nearly six years. in these circumstances he imposed the income tax on great britain as an equivalent for many indirect taxes; but he pointedly abstained from extending the tax to ireland; he felt that this would be an act of financial wrong; and though he increased for a short time the duty on irish spirits, he took off the increase within a few months. the only 'assimilation in finance' he effected was to make the stamp duties in great britain and ireland equal, and this was rather a legal than an economic reform. the life of the great minister was prematurely cut short; time brought with it its changes on its wings. the statesman who had living traditions of the union and its finance had passed away; o'connell had disappeared from the scene; the representation of ireland had fallen into a deplorable state. meanwhile the free trade policy of peel had achieved great results in england and scotland; free trade had given an immense impulse to our manufactures and our foreign commerce; the repeal of the corn laws had wonderfully quickened industry, and had been a magnificent boon to the mass of the people; the prosperity of great britain was advancing by leaps and bounds. the development of free trade was the object of nearly all our statesmen; to accomplish this it was essential still further to lessen or to abolish the duties on foreign imports, and to let in the raw materials of manufactures free; indirect taxation was still further to give place to direct. in , and during part of the subsequent period, our finances were in the hands of a minister whose impulsive nature was upheld by a most imperious will, and who, whatever was his policy, seldom stuck at trifles. apparently without mature reflection, and, it is to be hoped, with little knowledge of the facts of the case, mr. gladstone, setting the example of peel at nought, suddenly subjected ireland to the income tax, and began to raise the duties on irish spirits; by these duties had been more than trebled; and the taxation of ireland had been increased by upwards of two millions sterling. and what were the circumstances, during a large part of this period, of the country on which this enormous burden had been laid? ireland, no doubt, had begun to revive from the effects of the catastrophe of - ; but, compared with great britain, she was miserably poor; and the great famine had shaken her social structure to its base. two millions of her population had fled from their homes into exile; a large part of the upper and of the middle classes had been involved in ruin; whole tracts of her lands were derelict wastes; her local taxation was exceedingly high. the imposition of this load of taxation on a country in such a condition, unjustifiable in the abstract, and from every point of view, was, in the existing position of affairs, an act of cruel wrong; no wonder even one of mr. gladstone's colleagues has remarked, measured as is his language, 'we think that if the house of commons, in the period to , when the great enhancement of taxation took place, had fully considered the circumstances of ireland, they would not have felt themselves justified in increasing the taxation of that country by means of the income tax and the equalisation of the spirit duties.'[ ] at this time, in a word, the future solon of home rule proved himself to be the merciless draco of irish finance. this great increase of taxation, to a considerable extent, 'assimilated ireland to great britain in finance;' placed the two countries under nearly the same fiscal system; made the taxes of each not far from equal. this assimilation, however, was still by no means complete--indeed, is not complete to the present day; ireland has still fiscal privileges under the treaty of union; and this should be carefully borne in mind. mr. gladstone, moreover, when he made this increase, acknowledged that ireland remained a distinct country, entitled to immunities of her own; when he made her liable to the income tax, he cancelled a debt of £ , , which he professed she owed; and if this was an illusory pretence, for her liability for this reason was more than doubtful, and the income tax she has since paid has exceeded £ , , , still he distinctly admitted the principle--indeed, it has always been admitted by statesmen worthy of the name. the enormous new burdens imposed on ireland, from to , provoked widespread and profound discontent; a parliamentary inquiry was conceded; a committee of the house of commons went into the subject in - . but the representation of ireland, i have said, was feeble; her complaints were stifled by the arts of the treasury; the arguments of her members were overborne by specious but utterly false sophistry; the inquiry came to nothing as regards her interests. the question remained in abeyance for years; the irish reforms of mr. gladstone, from to , the troubles caused by the land and the national leagues, and the home rule agitation that followed, turned public attention away from the subject; but it was not forgotten by well-informed irishmen; two real economists, butt and judge longfield, insisted that ireland had here a grievance; and this was the opinion of several independent gentlemen, survivors of the illustrious school of grattan. at last mr. goschen, perhaps moved by remonstrances from ireland being urged again, appointed a committee of the house of commons to examine into, and to report upon, 'the equity of the financial relations in regard to the resources and the population of the three kingdoms;' mr. gladstone, in , recurred to the subject, which, rather unaccountably, had been let drop. he directed a commission of great authority, composed for the most part of expert englishmen, and presided over by the late mr. childers, a chancellor of the exchequer of mr. gladstone, to inquire thoroughly into the whole question of the financial relations of great britain and ireland, and fully to set forth the conclusions they should form. the scope of the investigation was to include the history of the subject since the union; a consideration of the financial resources of great britain and ireland regarded as distinct countries, and the principles to be kept in mind in forming a correct judgment; and, finally, the charge of ireland with respect to the state, and the contribution which ireland should make to it.[ ] this inquiry, set on foot by a british statesman who had made himself notorious for 'assimilating great britain and ireland in finance,' proceeded, nevertheless, upon an admission that, financially, the two countries were still distinct, and that the resources of each--their 'taxable capacity,' in other words, a phrase turned into absurd ridicule--afforded the true and the only test, as to the equity of irish compared to british taxation. the commissioners were engaged in their arduous task for months; they explained, with a fulness and clearness never before so complete, the history of the financial relations between great britain and ireland. they brought distinctly out the fiscal position of the two countries before the union; they set forth at length the financial arrangements made in - ; they described the compromise effected in ; they dwelt on the fiscal policy of peel to ireland, and placed it in significant contrast with that of mr. gladstone; and they conclusively proved that, from the union to the present time, great britain and ireland had been treated financially as separate countries, despite the 'assimilation' of - , and that the right of ireland, under the treaty of union, to the 'exemptions and abatements' secured to her, these being interpreted as the case requires, still give her immunities from taxation especially her own, which must be recognised if she is to obtain justice. turning, then, to the resources of great britain and ireland, regarded as apart, as being the true criterion of the taxation which ireland ought to bear, the commissioners reviewed a great mass of evidence, which, as far as was perhaps possible, made the truth manifest, and arrived at conclusions which appear to be decisive. comparing the death duties of ireland and of great britain, the proportion is about to ; comparing the income tax, it is about to ; taking a great variety of other tests, receipts of railways, savings banks deposits, money and postal orders, and letters and telegrams, it varies from to and ; and an estimate of the income of the two countries, an estimate certainly not fair to ireland, gives a proportion of about to . there are many reasons that these figures exaggerate the true resources of ireland, but, assuming them to be approximately correct, the commission has reported that great britain exceeds ireland in resources by to ; in other words, that the 'taxable capacity of ireland, as contrasted with that of great britain, cannot now be more than as to .'[ ] applying this inference to the taxation of the two countries, the conclusions formed by this tribunal can hardly admit of question. the revenue and taxation of ireland compared with that of great britain from to has been £ , , and £ , , against from £ , , to £ , , , that is, ireland contributed from to per cent. of the sum total. but if the resources of ireland are only one-twentieth of those of great britain, her taxation ought to be one-twentieth only, that is, it ought not to be from £ , , to £ , , ; it ought to be less than £ , , ; not or per cent., but less than per cent. it follows from this that ireland has been overtaxed at the rate of between two and three millions a year, and that for a very considerable space of time.[ ] enormous against ireland as is this excess of taxation, it may amount to a very much larger sum, if the national account be taken on another, perhaps a sounder, basis. there is the highest authority to show that taxation ought only to fall, in the instance of any given country, on the surplus remaining over and above the cost of the necessaries of life; and as regards the populations of great britain and ireland, this cost may be assumed to be £ a head. but if we take the income of great britain to be millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life at the above rate would for great britain be a sum of millions; and the surplus available for taxation would be millions. on the other hand, if we turn to ireland, the poor country, and suppose her income to be millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life for ireland would be a sum of millions; and the surplus available for taxation would be millions only. on this hypothesis, the resources of ireland which might be fairly taxed--her taxable capacity, in a word--would, compared with the resources of great britain, be, not as to , but as to only; and her taxation ought to be less than £ , , , not, as before mentioned, less than £ , , . the childers commission, no doubt, with the exception of one of its members, did not give its sanction to this conclusion; but it was that formed by sir robert giffen, a master of the subject on all its bearings, and it cannot, in common fairness, be left out of sight. sir robert giffen's view is expressed in these words; it will be observed that his figures do not correspond with those just cited; but the only point to consider is the principle on which he takes his stand: 'if you deduct a minimum sum, so much per head from each of the community, as a sort of minimum sum, though you would not wish to take anything from a man who had no more than that, then the taxable income would be the whole income in each country above that sum. that was the sort of general idea. if you apply that to ireland, and take a minimum sum of, say, £ a head, you would get upon the basis of an irish income of £ , , a taxable surplus, i think, now of about £ , , , and in great britain your taxable surplus would come to over £ , , .'[ ] setting, however, these last considerations aside, the childers commission has conclusively shown that ireland is very largely overtaxed, and has been so for a long series of years; and the figures that represent this great overcharge by no means represent the real difference of the burdens imposed on the two countries. it does not require the authority of pitt to tell us that even equal taxation, equally applied, is felt much more acutely by a poor community than by one that is rich and prosperous; let us assume, what is by no means the fact, that this equality exists as between great britain and ireland, still ireland suffers much more than great britain. as mill remarked a long time ago, 'it is not the same thing to take £ from a man who has £ a year, as to take £ from a man who has £ , or £ from a man who has £ ; the sacrifice imposed on the taxpayer is greater upon the man from whom you take £ out of £ than it is on the man from whom you take £ out of £ , although the proportion is the same.' a few examples, taken from the case of great britain and ireland, will make the truth of this proposition perfectly clear. the wages of an agricultural labourer in great britain are, say, £ a year; the wages of an agricultural labourer in ireland are, say, £ ; the first pays £ taxes on his tea and tobacco; the second pays only £ ; but the £ are obviously much the heavier charge. or suppose that a british artisan has £ a year, and an irish artisan no more than £ ; is not the first more lightly taxed than the second, if he contributes £ to the revenue against £ ? and the same thing happens if we ascend the social scale; the £ income tax paid by a british landlord of £ a year is not felt by him to be such a charge as the £ paid by an irish landlord of £ a year; the same principle would extend to the profits of trade were there small sums in ireland and large sums in great britain. make taxes, therefore, as equal as possible, and make their incidence completely equal, still, in the case of a poor compared to a wealthy country, the real burden on the taxpayer will be very different; it was for this reason that the late mr. nassau senior, an economist of no ordinary parts, pointedly remarked, as regards british and irish taxation, 'england is the most lightly taxed and ireland the most heavily taxed country in europe, although both are nominally liable to equal taxation: i do not believe that ireland is a poor country because she is overtaxed, but i think she is overtaxed because she is poor.'[ ] ireland, therefore, on a full review of the argument, has been overtaxed at least between two and three millions sterling a year for certainly more than forty years; and this excess, as she is a very poor country, is, in her case especially severe. the trend of taxation, if the phrase may be employed, as we follow its course, during a long period, clearly indicates that she has suffered from grave financial wrong. in - , we have seen, the taxation of great britain was at the rate of £ _s._ a head, that of ireland being _s._ _d._; the proportion was £ _s._ _d._ and £ _s._ _d._ in - ; in it was £ _s._ and £ _s._; in other words, the imposts of the wealthy country were progressively decreased, while the imposts of the poor country were progressively raised. this distinction, no doubt, has been partly due to the fact that the population of great britain has been largely augmented, and the population of ireland has been enormously reduced in numbers; the charge in great britain has been distributed among ever growing millions, the charge in ireland has been concentrated upon ever lessening thousands; but this will not nearly account for the difference; 'the wealthier country' it has been caustically said, 'was taxed less and less as it became more wealthy; the poorer country was burdened more and more as its poverty increased.'[ ] and the overcharge on ireland is all the more grievous because it owed its origin to the policy of free trade; and this policy has been a questionable boon to ireland, while to great britain it has been an immense benefit. no doubt the cheapening of the price of the necessaries and of some of the conveniences of life, which has been one of the results of free trade, has been a great advantage to the irish labourer, artisan, and mere cottar peasant; but free trade has been injurious to the real irish farmer and the irish landlord, and to most of the classes connected with the land; and the land is the main source of the scanty wealth of ireland. free trade, on the other hand, has been a principal cause of the extraordinary development of the material welfare of england which has been witnessed during the last fifty years; it has doubled and trebled her gigantic manufactures and trade, if her agriculture is by no means flourishing. this striking contrast gives pain to right-minded irishmen; they feel, as grattan predicted would be the case, that their country's interests have been sacrificed to british commerce; and the following observations are essentially true and just: 'the change' (from protection to free trade) 'has not been so advantageous to ireland, a country in which there is but little trade or manufacturing industry, as it has been to england; although, as consumers, the irish population may have gained in some cases by the abolition of the duties on foodstuffs, yet, on the other hand, as producers, chiefly dependent on agriculture, they have lost in a far greater degree by the cheap prices in the british markets, produced, in part at least, by the free and untaxed supply of foreign corn, live stock, dead meat, butter, cheese, eggs, and other articles of food.... it may even perhaps be said that just as ireland suffered in the last century from the protective and exclusive commercial policy of great britain, so she has been at a disadvantage in this century from the adoption of an almost unqualified free trade policy for the united kingdom.'[ ] many attempts, i have said, have been made to answer the conclusive report of the childers commission, to carp at its proceedings, to challenge its statements, to deny that ireland has been largely overtaxed; but, with scarcely an exception, they have been grotesque failures. i need hardly notice an audacious sally, which has been turned to account in the house of commons, and has split the ears of the groundlings in different parts of england. england, the argument runs, has been too kind to ireland; ireland pays no land tax and sundry other duties; in other respects she is equally taxed with great britain; she has not even a semblance of a real complaint; and--exactly in the manner of swift's satire--'let her hold her tongue, or it may be the worse for her.' ireland, no doubt, 'assimilated as she has been in finance,' is free from some charges imposed on england; she has still 'exemptions and abatements' which, to some extent, preserve her rights under the treaty of union, and show that she is still financially a distinct country, as has been recognised by every leading british statesman, from the day of pitt to the day of mr. gladstone. but the english land tax, properly speaking, is not a tax at all; it is a rent-charge for centuries payable by the land; at all events, the irish crown and quit rents may be set off against it; and, as to the other taxes referred to, the cost of collection in ireland would exceed the returns; it would be a case of _in thesauro nihil_, as in plantagenet times. another argument, of which the late mr. lowe was the author, is more plausible, and has done better service; but it is not the less shallow and false sophistry, when brought to the test. taxation, it is said, falls on populations only; it is sheer nonsense to say that it falls on countries; it is not levied from great britain and ireland; it is levied from the inhabitants within their borders. but the englishman, the scotsman, and the irishman are equally taxed; the irishman, indeed, has a small advantage; equality of taxation is the rule in this matter; and obviously equality is the same thing as equity. an english landlord in kent, a scotch landlord in perthshire, an irish landlord in kildare, pay the same income tax on the same rentals; so does a merchant in london, a merchant in edinburgh, a merchant in belfast, on the same profits; and the same principle extends to all other classes. a farmer in surrey, a crofter in argyleshire, a shopkeeper in galway, pay exactly the same tax on a gallon of rum, a gallon of whiskey, a hogshead of beer; the charge is the same for each commodity in the three households. this irish grievance, therefore, is a mere delusion; it is a sickly phantom that vanishes in the light of the day. that taxation falls on populations and not on areas of land is a truism really never disputed; the use of the word 'countries,' in this sense, is a mere popular phrase. this argument keeps out of sight the fact that equal taxes, however equally imposed, are much heavier in the case of a poor than of a rich community; but, waiving this objection, it is a sheer fallacy. if two populations had exactly the same tastes, used the same commodities in the same proportions, and were in the possession of the same resources; equality of taxation, if equally applied, would probably be essentially just. but if two populations have different tastes, if they differ in the use of even the same commodities, and if their resources are very different, and especially if equal taxation be not equally applied, this apparent equality, far from being equity, may become plain, nay, very grave iniquity. this may be made intelligible, at a glance, by the consideration of a few instances easily conceived. impose an equal tax on coals in england and ireland: would the charge fall equally on englishmen in a land of coal and on irishmen in a land of peat mosses? tax londoners and parisians at the same rate on coffee: would the londoner, who drinks comparatively little coffee, be as heavily mulcted as the parisian, who drinks a great deal? or suppose that light taxes were laid on articles that suit englishmen, and enter into the consumption of the millions of england, and that heavy taxes were laid on articles that suit irishmen, and are consumed by the irish millions: would not this system favour englishmen, and injure irishmen, though the taxes on all these articles were the same in both countries? examples by the hundred might be brought forward; these suffice to prove that equality of taxation, as between communities, differing from each other in the conditions and circumstances of life, and notably if the incidence of this taxation is not the same, may be made to effect the grossest injustice. and this financial wrong has been done, to a very great extent, if we compare the taxation of great britain and ireland. the consumption of tea and tobacco by the head is nearly the same in both countries; the taxes on these commodities are the same; admit that this is equitable in a certain sense, though the impost is relatively more burdensome on the poor community. the consumption of spirits by the head, also, is much the same for the three kingdoms; the taxation is precisely the same; this, for the sake of argument, i will call justice. but the consumption of beer by the head in great britain is about double what it is in ireland; probably ten englishmen drink beer compared to one irishman; whiskey is the ordinary spirituous drink of irishmen. now, the taxes on beer and on whiskey are the same in great britain and ireland; but the tax on beer, measured by the alcoholic standard, is about six times lower than the tax on whiskey;[ ] beer, therefore, compared with whiskey is greatly undertaxed; whiskey compared with beer is greatly overtaxed; the ordinary drink of englishmen is treated differently from the ordinary drink of irishmen, one being encouraged, the other discouraged; though the taxes on each commodity may be everywhere the same, the equality of taxation manifestly results in wrong. the difference amounts to a very large sum; it is one of the causes that ireland is overtaxed.[ ] equality of taxation may, therefore, be not equity; it may, as i have said, be sheer iniquity; and this is emphatically the case with respect to ireland. this system is productive of gross injustice as regards what may be deemed the popular irish drink; but arguments to support it have not been wanting; they have been complacently gulped down at several public meetings, it is unnecessary to add within the borders of england. the 'mere irish,' it is said, have shocking bad tastes; let them take beer instead of whiskey and they can have no grievance; besides, whiskey is a nasty and unwholesome thing; it is in mercy to them that it is excessively taxed. is it possible that people who utter this stuff do not see that sumptuary legislation of extreme harshness, nay, persecution of the worst kind, may be justified on the same class of premises? suppose that napoleon, in the plenitude of his power, had declared that the parisians did not know what was good for them, and had heavily taxed their coffee to make them drink tea, even austerlitz would not have saved the empire. marie antoinette actually made an attempt to banish from her court the velvets and silks of lyons, and to make it adopt the cambrics and muslins of belgium; she would have been too glad to see the first taxed and the second duty free, for she thought the french taste for heavy and gorgeous apparel bad; she only aroused the indignation of versailles. or say that the priests of the jove of the capitol had argued in this way: 'really these detestable christians are fools for worshipping a crucified jew; they have only to bow down to cæsar to escape the lions; otherwise they have themselves alone to blame.' nay, coming nearer home, might not a holy prelate of the irish established church in the eighteenth century have reconciled the penal code to his conscience, by whispering to himself that the deluded papists had but to give up their vain superstitions, and to conform to the pure well of faith that had its source in the castle, and that then they would be no longer outlaws; but let them take the consequences if they were blind to their best interests on earth and in heaven. in fact, any act of despotism on the part of the state might be vindicated on these very laudable principles; but on this matter of the taxation of irish whiskey i shall confine myself to a single remark. reverse the cases of england and ireland with respect to the imposts on beer and on whiskey; tax beer very heavily and whiskey very lightly; and what would englishmen say of an argument that has been thought good enough for irishmen; how long would a government exist that would try to carry out such a policy? in truth, this reasoning, if it can be so called, is the worst kind of sophistry: the frank brutality of the roman proconsul, who told the population of a subject province that they must endure their burdens as they would endure the rain and the tempest, is less censurable, to my mind at least, than this compound of absurd and offensive insolence. another argument, really of no greater value, has had many supporters in the house of commons. true it is, it is admitted, that, compared with great britain, ireland has been hardly treated in finance; but this is because she is a poor country, and a poor country must suffer from taxation, fair as it may be, more than a wealthy country. but the same inequality is seen in england: dorset and wiltshire are more heavily burdened than yorkshire and lancashire, yet dorset and wiltshire make no complaints as ireland does. this argument, however, ignores history, and sets the treaty of union at nought; dorset and wiltshire are mere fractions of england; ireland has always been financially a distinct country, entitled to separate financial rights; and this has been recognised by the ablest british statesmen, notably, of late years, by mr. goschen, and by mr. gladstone. this reasoning, in a word, assumes that ireland is merely an aggregate of british counties; but this has never been her true financial position; it is easy to sneer at the phrase 'separate entity' by which she has been called, that is, a land, financially, apart from great britain, but sneers cannot get the better of facts. these statements of distinguished english experts are unquestionable in view of the record of history. lord farrer has remarked: 'it is abundantly clear that of the two conflicting theories--viz. the one which regards great britain and ireland as one country for the purpose of taxation and expenditure, and the other which regards great britain and ireland as separate partners--the second is the one upon which our instructions are founded; the one which has the greatest support in history, and the one upon which all parties in parliament have recently acted.'[ ] and mr. childers completely concurs: 'if apart from the reference, it is asked why a distinction should be taken between great britain and ireland any more than between kent and yorkshire, the answer is that ireland entered into a partnership with great britain under a formal treaty of union, which did, to a certain extent, by the recognition of the claim of ireland to abatements and exemptions, if circumstances should require, maintain the position of ireland as entitled to separate treatment as a whole, so far as relates to taxation. it must also be recollected that, as a matter of fact, ireland has, at all times since the union, in various degrees received such separate treatment. ireland, therefore, cannot be regarded as merely a group of counties of the united kingdom.'[ ] two other arguments may be ascribed to the ingenuity, if this is the true word, of the treasury; but the first rests on a gross misrepresentation of fact, the other upon a false theory; both, with a slight reservation, may be dismissed as hopeless. ireland, it is said, may possibly be overtaxed--admit this for the sake of argument--but she has had more than her fair share of loans from the state; a considerable part of these has been freely remitted; this has not been the case in england and scotland; a large counterclaim, therefore, may be made against her. 'out of a total sum of about one hundred and nineteen millions and a half advanced in the united kingdom, a little over fifty-two millions, or . per cent., has been advanced to ireland, and of this, so large a proportion as one-fifth, or over ten millions, had to be remitted, or treated as a free grant, whilst only one fifty-eighth part of the advances made to great britain were so treated.'[ ] so far as these loans have been advances for the real good of ireland, for example, for the promotion of reproductive works-these may fairly be taken into account; but millions have been misapplied and wasted or spent in the unproductive relief of distress;[ ] these sums probably are greater than the excess made out by the treasury. as regards the remission of the £ , , , the assertion relied on is simply deceptive. not less than £ , , of this sum represent the fund the extinction of which was the consideration of putting the income tax on ireland by mr. gladstone; and, as the charge of that tax has been since more than £ , , , it savours of impudence to call this a remission; it was writing off a doubtful debt to justify a new and portentous burden. the residue of the £ , , is composed of advances that have been misspent or spent on purposes really not irish; these were not remitted in the proper acceptation of the word. 'the remaining portion of the ten millions of alleged remissions of loans consists mainly of remissions of the repayment of expenditure by the board of works, where it was shown that such expenditure had been wasteful, and of advances to the clergy and laity of the established church of ireland, which advances parliament, by legislation, deprived them of the ability of repaying. altogether it would appear, from sir edward hamilton's evidence, that in reality only about one million out of the ten corresponded in their character to the advances made to great britain, and that consequently the proportion of real remissions of loans to ireland did not differ very materially from that of the proportion of the remission in great britain.' the second argument appears to be more plausible; but it is mischievous, in a high degree, and dangerous; except to a slight extent, it is completely fallacious. ireland, it is allowed, contributes from £ , , to £ , , to the exchequer; but of this sum £ , , and upwards are expended on her; she really hardly pays £ , , to the state; the £ , , therefore, or nearly all this sum, create a just counterclaim against her, even admitting she is excessively taxed. this expenditure on ireland, it is contended, is for irish 'local' purposes; it is not expenditure for 'imperial' purposes; the account, as between great britain and ireland, is to be taken as if all this expenditure, or nearly so, were purely local. but is not the expenditure for keeping up the lord-lieutenant and his court, is not the expenditure on the government and administration of ireland, essentially, and in the main, imperial, and not local in a legitimate sense, so long as the united kingdom exists? is it not as imperial, at least for the most part, as the expenditure on the british army and navy and on the government and administration of england and scotland is imperial, and not, properly speaking, local? this argument could be retorted with decisive effect, if urged in the interest of ireland against great britain. if this kind of expenditure in ireland is held to be local, not imperial, the same rule must apply to england and scotland; this expenditure in their case must be local and not imperial. why, then, should ireland contribute to such charges as public works in edinburgh and london, as the maintenance of the great english dockyards and harbours, as the cost of the army and navy outside ireland, and of the government and administration of england and scotland? clearly on the treasury hypothesis she should not contribute; and if she does, she has an immense counterclaim, so far as her contributions are applied to these local objects. but, in truth, this whole argument, when examined, is a mere sophism. the revenues of the three kingdoms are paid into a common exchequer; they are distributed according to the uses of the state; this expenditure, as a general rule, must be held to be imperial, not local, and cannot give a part of the three kingdoms a right to make a claim against another. the state spends millions on london which it does not spend on surrey; it spends millions in hants which it does not spend in berkshire: does this circumstance give surrey or berkshire a title to say we can make a demand on london and hants? precisely in the same way, the expenditure of the state on ireland, as contra-distinguished from that on great britain, cannot, at least as a general principle, give great britain a right to make a counterclaim on ireland. it is unnecessary to point out how this theory has a tendency to create local and even national ill-will; to set parts of one country against other parts, and two countries against each other; it distinctly alienates ireland from great britain; as i have said, it is full of mischief and peril. in truth, however, it is a mere device to excuse the overcharge of irish taxation; it has never entered the minds of statesmen. nothing can be more certain than that every great british financier, from the day of pitt to the day of peel, and to the day of mr. gladstone, has regarded the expenditure of the three kingdoms, as this is paid into a common exchequer, as a general fund to be allocated as the state requires; and has not regarded it as a fund, under local heads, to be laid out in separate districts, so as to give any one district a counterclaim against another. i quote from a report of one of the members of the childers commissions: 'a division of the expenditure of the united kingdom into "charge for irish purposes" and "imperial expenditure," cannot be made under the system of finance embodied in the constitution established by the legislative union. all expenditure under that system is "expenditure of the united kingdom," or, to express it more briefly, "imperial expenditure;" and all imperial expenditure is defrayed from the common fund of the imperial exchequer. if a part of the imperial expenditure be described as a charge "for irish purposes," this classification does not affect the fact that it is imperial expenditure, and charged as such upon the whole imperial revenue. to regard this expenditure as non-imperial, to deduct it from the particular revenue contributed by ireland to imperial expenditure, to treat the fraction of irish revenue left as if it were the whole of the irish contribution to imperial expenditure, and to regard imperial expenditure itself as not including "the charge for irish purposes," would be to do what the constitution does not sanction: it would be to deal with the revenue and expenditure of the united kingdom as if the revenues of great britain and ireland were raised and administered by separate authorities, each of which, having first, out of its own revenue, defrayed its separate charges, then applied the balance to payment of common expenses, which, in that case, would be properly classified as imperial.'[ ] and the evidence of sir robert giffen is to the same effect: 'the opinion which i have formed is that, on the whole, it is not possible to make the distinction between the different objects of imperial expenditure which is made in some of these discussions; that, in fact, all the expenditure by an imperial government is to be considered expenditure for imperial purposes, and although part of it may be spent locally, you cannot in any way call it expenditure for the special benefit of that locality. it is expenditure for the general objects of the imperial government.'[ ] the theory of the treasury is thus essentially false; but accidentally, it contains, i think, a residuum of truth. when, as between two countries, one pays a considerable sum, exclusively or mainly from local rates, and the same charge in the other country is for the most part defrayed from imperial taxation by the state, it appears to me that a portion of the sum so paid by the state may give one country a counterclaim against the other to some extent. this is the case as between great britain and ireland; the cost of national education and of the police force is largely discharged in great britain by local rates; in ireland it amounts to about £ , , , and is mainly defrayed from imperial taxes; this may create a counterclaim against ireland within reasonable limits at least. no doubt the charge of bringing up the young of the poorer classes and of maintaining public order by a suitable force, ought largely to be an imperial charge; but when in one community it is chiefly borne by local funds, and in another it is chiefly borne by the common exchequer of both, this seems to give the first community a partial claim against the second. this counterclaim, such as it is, has been reckoned, in addition to a sum for free grants, at about £ , a year by the childers commission; but it did not thoroughly go into the subject; this estimate is believed to be too low by well-informed persons; the counterclaim has been calculated to be about £ , , sterling. lord salisbury's government, we have seen, promised to appoint a second commission to examine this question at length, besides some other financial questions suggested by the report of the childers commission; for some unknown reason it has not redeemed its pledge; it is very desirable that it should redeem it. apart from the mischief of a delay approaching a breach of public faith, the only inference that can be drawn, if this promise is broken, is that the government accepts the view in this matter of the childers commission. the childers commission has conclusively proved that ireland is much too highly taxed; whatever counterclaim may be made against this excess, the overcharge can be little less than two millions a year. the arguments urged against this conclusion are mere leather and prunella that may be brushed aside; the report of the commission has had the sanction of nearly all economists of a high order. by all means let another commission strike a balance after making every fair allowance; but if it shall be struck, as it must be in ireland's favour, the only real question for impartial men will be how it shall be best discharged. ireland has practically acquiesced for years in fiscal injustice; in any view of the case she has no right to call for a change in our whole system of finance for her special benefit. still less has she a right to demand that her customs and excise duties should be placed at a lower level than those of great britain; this would raise a mischievous barrier between the two countries; this policy would be, perhaps, impossible; if possible, it would probably injure ireland greatly in the long run. the only remaining alternative is to leave our existing fiscal system intact, but to make an annual grant from the exchequer for irish uses, as compensation for excessive taxation; this has the support of the childers commission. 'the third method, and that which most strongly recommends itself to our judgment, is to give compensation to ireland by making an annual allocation of revenue in their favour, to be employed in promoting the material prosperity and social welfare of the country.'[ ] it is difficult to suppose, should a large yearly sum be found to be due to ireland, as affairs now stand, that parliament will refuse to pay honourably a just debt; it would be a shameful act to repudiate an obligation of the kind. years ago pitt declared in his characteristic style that 'ireland might safely rely on great britain for the discharge of any fair claim on her; the liberality, the justice, the honour of the people of great britain have never been found deficient.' the time has come to test the value of this pledge; it has been announced by the highest authority, in which english opinion largely prevails, that ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years: will the 'people of great britain' give effect to this judgment, and make good a claim which hardly admits of a doubt? the demand of ireland, no doubt, is not sustained by violent agitation and the shouts of multitudes; but it is backed by all that is best in irish opinion; it rests upon the simplest financial justice. it is dangerous to treat a demand such as this with contempt, and still more so with weak sophistry; not that ireland can make an effective resistance to fiscal wrong, however clearly proved; and i for one deprecate rhodomontade about 'the boston tea-ships.' but a claim may have great moral force, though it be not supported by physical power; the disregard of this claim would provoke well-informed irishmen, and weaken the union perhaps greatly; and, after all, is it a seemly sight, is it becoming in the eyes of the world, that the richest country in europe should practically impose an iniquitous burden upon the poorest? chapter viii the questions of irish local government and education--other questions--conclusion irish county government--the grand jury system in the eighteenth century--its merits and defects--the grand jury system in the nineteenth century, and especially since --the irish poor law system--elected and _ex-officio_ guardians--the local government of cities and towns in ireland--municipal institutions founded in ireland by the norman kings--why they did not prosper--boroughs and municipalities founded by james i. and the stuarts--their condition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--the municipal reform act of --the towns commissioners acts--attempts to reform the municipal system of local government in ireland--the local government of ireland act, --complete change in irish local government--the county councils--the county borough councils--the district, rural, and the urban district councils--their functions, rights, and duties--all these bodies placed on a democratic basis--attitude of the county councils in the southern provinces--education in ireland--history of primary education--the national system of education--the principles on which it is founded--how it has worked, and what its results have been--secondary education in ireland--its history--its present condition very imperfect--the intermediate education act--university education in ireland--its history--trinity college--the queen's colleges and the queen's university founded by peel--their comparative failure--mr. gladstone's bill to reform university education in ireland--its glaring errors and failure--trinity college thrown open in --the royal university founded in --present state of university education in ireland--the true principles of reform--other irish questions--conclusion. that local government in ireland should still be a 'present irish question,' may appear strange to persons only versed in the mere routine of politics. the subject has been before parliament for nearly thirty years; it has engaged the attention of more than one of its committees; butt endeavoured, to no purpose, to legislate on it. in lord salisbury's government brought in a measure which aimed at transforming the whole system of administering local affairs in ireland; but it had unquestionable defects and was vehemently opposed; unfortunately, as i believe, it was permitted to drop. six years afterwards, that is, in , the greater part of a parliamentary session was employed in dealing with the question again; a bill became law which placed irish local government, in all its departments, upon a new basis, and completely changed the characteristics it had had for centuries. the measure was to be a _ne plus ultra_; it was extolled by applauding partisans as a magnificent scheme of popular reform; these have since, over and over again, declared that its success has been more than manifest. it is too soon to pronounce, with anything like confidence, on what its ultimate results may be, or even to say, with certainty, how it will practically work; but enough has already been made apparent to cause thoughtful and fair-minded irishmen to regard the changes it has effected with grave misgivings; to question the principles on which it rests, or at least the wisdom of applying them to ireland as she now is; and to ask whether it must not be amended if the social structure of ireland is not to be still more violently disturbed, than it has been by the experiments that have been made on it. besides, the local government and administration of every community, especially if formed on a popular type, affect its existence in many ways; strongly indicate what its opinions are, what its qualities, what its evident tendencies; in a word, largely represent its essential nature. it was not for nothing that in his survey of the revolution in france, burke did not confine himself to the sovereign assembly at versailles, but turned his penetrating glance on the petty assemblies which had been set up in the new-made departments, for the conduct of their local affairs; these, he insisted, formed the truest expression of the mind of the people and of the leaders at its head. for these reasons, therefore, if we would understand ireland, her local government is a 'present irish question;' it is a question, moreover, which, whatever may be said, in all probability has not been finally settled. in order to understand the subject, i must glance at the system of irish local government, as this existed until, as it were, yesterday; i turn, in the first instance, to irish county government. the beginnings of this scheme have been traced back to the time of strafford; but it was not finally established until the reign of william iii., when the subjugation of ireland had been made complete. the irish grand juries always had criminal jurisdiction in their countries like their english fellows; but unlike these they were now entrusted with almost absolute control over irish county government. this was partly because they were representatives of the conquering race, by this time the owners of nine-tenths of the lands of the country; and partly because there was no local organisation in ireland, like the english parish, which could give local influence to the conquered race. the grand juries were always composed of the leading landed gentry of their respective counties; they were nominated by the sheriffs, that is, by officials of the central government; they were wholly devoid of a popular element; and as no catholic could have a share in their councils, until nearly the end of the eighteenth century, they embodied, in the fullest sense, the protestant ascendency of the day, supreme in every sphere of authority in the state. the grand juries had almost the exclusive power of administering the local affairs of their counties, of managing their roads, public buildings, and police; and they levied the charges for these by a local rate, known as the county cess to this hour, and imposed almost wholly on the occupiers of the soil, that is, in five cases out of six on the catholic peasantry, a striking instance of taxation without representation to check it. these assemblies of local magnates met twice a year at the assizes which were held in their counties. miss edgeworth has given us graphic accounts of them: how a seat on a grand jury was deemed a prize to be sometimes fought for; how the grand juries entertained the judges in state, and vied with these sages in their mighty potations; and how, while wretches were hanged and jurymen dined, the assize towns were scenes of not fastidious revelry. there was much jobbing, corruption, and waste in the administration of the counties in those days; much of the 'scratch me, and i will scratch you;' much 'give and take' at the cost of the ratepayers. but there was another and better side to the picture: the irish gentry of the time had the faculty of command; they ruled their districts efficiently with their police; the public works for which they were responsible were usually good. arthur young has especially noticed that the roads they constructed were almost always well laid out and kept up. catholics were not admitted on grand juries until the great relief act of , the first general relaxation of the execrable penal code. but the catholic members of these bodies have always been few; the large majority of the irish landlords remains still protestant. the bureaucracy of the castle, after the union, began to encroach on the domain of the grand juries; at the same time the growing needs of the country made the expenditure on local affairs much larger. the grand juries lost much of their authority by degrees; they were more and more controlled by the central government, which supplanted them in a variety of ways; and they were ere long compelled to vote sums for public works of different kinds for the behoof of their counties. this change effectually checked corruption and jobbing; but as the requirements of the counties increased, and the 'imperative presentments,' as they were called, were augmented, the charge of the local rate or county cess became more onerous--it has advanced enormously in the last sixty years; and this was still mainly imposed on the catholic peasantry. the civil or fiscal administration, which the grand juries possessed until , was finally arranged by an act of parliament passed in ,[ ] supplemented, from time to time, by subsequent statutes. these bodies were composed of the same elements, and nominated by the sheriffs as before; and they had a general supervision over all the public works, roads, bridges, and buildings for public purposes, comprised within their different counties, including within these areas nearly all villages, and the large majority of the lesser towns. but they were made strictly dependent on the central government; this had the appointment of their chief officers; their accounts were subjected to a regular audit; and their 'imperative presentments' were largely extended. they acquired, too, an additional jurisdiction in some respects, especially as regards inquiries into criminal injuries and compensating persons who had been sufferers, and as regards voting an extra police force in disturbed districts; but their old local police had disappeared, and had been replaced by the great central constabulary force. a change, too, was effected in the modes through which local rates were voted in the counties for public purposes. these sums were 'presented' in the first instance at 'baronial' and 'county at large' sessions, held by county justices and ratepayers of substance; but these bodies were subordinate to the grand juries, and to a considerable extent drawn from the same classes; no popular element was infused in county government, and the grand juries were, in the last resort, supreme, within the limits which had been assigned to them. the local expenditure voted and assessed in this way was subject to examination by a judge of assize, who 'fiated' it, as a general rule; and ratepayers had a right to challenge it, by a procedure called 'a traverse,' which, however, was seldom turned to account. the irish grand juries were thus oligarchic bodies, survivals of the protestant ascendency of a bygone age, and with a tendency, in their later history, to become subordinate boards of the castle. i pass on to the irish poor law system, another considerable department of irish local government. as we have seen, unlike what had been the case in england, no poor law existed in ireland until ; the want of such a measure was one of the causes of the pressure of a huge mass of indigence on the soil before the catastrophe of - . the irish poor law, with some marked distinctions, was analogous to the new english poor law, as it has long been called; it has now been in operation for about sixty years. the country was divided into a series of unions, which have varied from to in number; at present there are of these; these were the principal units for carrying the poor law system into effect. the unions were again subdivided into lesser districts, electoral divisions for the county, wards for the larger towns; the persons chosen to administer the poor law were taken from these areas; and the unions and all that pertained to them were placed under the control of the central government, represented by the local government board of ireland. the persons returned from the electoral divisions and the wards were selected by the votes of the ratepayers, and were known as the elected guardians; a popular element was thus introduced into the administration of the law, which had never been introduced into irish county government. the vote of the ratepayers, however, was cumulative, not single; the largest ratepayers had the most votes, a safeguard, it has been assumed, for property; and the elected guardians, in theory at least, were balanced by an equal number of _ex-officio_ guardians, composed of magistrates within the unions. the chief duties of the elected and the _ex-officio_ guardians, collectively known as boards of guardians, were to provide for the wants of the poor, and to assess and levy poor rates for that purpose; but many other duties were gradually imposed on them, the principal of these being the care of the sanitary state of the lesser towns within their districts. there was a marked difference between the incidence of the poor rate and of the county rate, or cess, of the grand juries. the county cess, we have seen, was mainly a charge on the catholic occupiers of the soil, the poor rate was, to a very considerable extent, a charge on the owners, for the most part protestants; for the landlord was bound to pay the whole poor rate in the case of the pettiest holdings, and to allow his tenants half the poor rate in the case of other holdings; by these means the burden of at least half the poor rate, it is believed, was borne by the irish landed gentry. it should be added that the elected guardians have practically had the administration of the poor law in their hands; the _ex-officio_ guardians, especially of late years, took little part in it.[ ] i turn from the administration of local rural affairs in ireland to that of its chief cities and its towns. the irish towns, conquered and settled by the danes, had, perhaps, a kind of municipal government; the plantagenet kings conferred municipal rights as freely in ireland as they did in england. thus dublin received a charter from john, modelled on that of his 'liegemen of bristol;' limerick, waterford, kilkenny, and several other towns were incorporated and given powers of self-government at different periods of the middle ages. but the municipal life and the municipal spirit which grew up and gained strength in the thriving towns of england, and secured for them a large measure of local liberty, had hardly any existence in a land like ireland, distracted by feudal and tribal anarchy; the corporate cities and towns of ireland fell into the hands of great anglo-norman nobles and celtic chiefs, and seem to have all but lost their local franchises. during the long agony of the sixteenth century, when ireland was devastated by a horrible strife of race and faith, these privileges were still further effaced; at the death of elizabeth the irish municipal centres, with the exception of the capital, were mere names and shadows. a great change took place when the subjugated land passed under the domination of the first stuarts. english law was now extended over the whole of ireland; a colonial caste of settlers was becoming lords of the soil; the government was conducted by the men at the castle, ruling through a parliament largely composed of the new settlers. james i. created forty-six irish boroughs with a stroke of the pen, and gave them a representation in the parliament and municipal rights; but these, for the most part, were mere villages; they obtained their large privileges solely in order to support 'the english interest,' as it was called, in the irish house of commons. this system was continued by the later stuarts; besides dublin and the larger towns of ireland, there were about a hundred of these petty municipalities and parliamentary boroughs in the eighteenth century. these places, however, could have no municipal freedom, and were wholly devoid of municipal feeling; they became nearly all the mere appanages of the neighbouring leading families; and, with hardly an exception, they were extreme types of the protestant ascendency which prevailed everywhere. something of the same kind was witnessed in england, under the aristocratic rule of that age, but there was the difference between a sorry caricature and a picture; the great cities and the better towns of england still retained an ample measure of municipal liberty, and, especially, did not lose the municipal spirit; the exact contrary was the case in ireland. a large majority of the little irish boroughs were deprived of their parliamentary representation at the union, but they retained their nominal municipal rights. they still remained under the control of the chief landed gentry; and they became, as indeed they had always been, centres of maladministration, corruption, and peculation of all kinds. when, after the passing of the great reform act of , statesmen directed their minds to the questions of corporate and municipal reform in england, they naturally turned their minds to ireland also, where this reform was notoriously still more imperative. after the publication of a masterly report in - , which thoroughly illustrated the whole subject, the abuses in the irish corporations were shown to be such--they were enormous even in the cities and larger towns--that peel, the leader of the opposition, actually gave them up; he proposed to deprive the corporate towns of all municipal rights and franchises, and to place them under the authority of commissioners appointed by the crown. this plan, however, was rejected by the melbourne government, and was not sanctioned by the house of commons; after a long and angry controversy, which continued for years, a measure became law as late as ; and by this, with the exception of ten, all the corporate towns of ireland lost their municipal rights, and were thus left without any power of self-government. with respect even to the ten still enfranchised towns, their old privileges were greatly curtailed and were transferred to the central government; and their municipal liberties were restricted and narrowed. they retained, indeed, many rights of self-government; but the municipal franchise was placed at a high level; the great body of the townsmen did not possess it; and they were subject to the supervision of the local government board, that is, of the central government, to a considerable extent at least. true municipal life, and the municipal sentiment, could not, therefore, become well developed, in the case of towns under such conditions; they showed but few symptoms of the wonderful growth of prosperity and power which has been such a marked feature in the history of the great corporate towns of england, in what may be called the victorian age, though, no doubt, the cases were widely different--poor ireland could not, in this respect, compete with wealthy and progressive england. the deficiency of corporate towns in ireland was felt ere long to be such, that, in , and subsequent years, municipal rights were, in some measure, extended to nearly a hundred of these towns. these places were governed by bodies called town commissioners elected by a kind of popular vote; but the authority of these bodies has never been large; the municipal franchise was very high; and these towns were also under the irish local government board. municipal institutions, like others of english origin, had thus, from a variety of causes, when transferred to ireland, only a stunted, imperfect, and maimed existence. we may briefly glance at the operation of the system of rural and urban local government, of which we have endeavoured to sketch the outlines. except, perhaps, in the instance of criminal injuries, and of the compensation to be adjudged by them, where they did not always give proof of a judicial spirit, the grand juries, for upwards of two generations, administered county affairs very well; they were economical, prudent, and jealous of expense, if the public buildings they sanctioned were, occasionally, too costly; but the system was an anachronism, and had had its day. in ordinary times the irish poor law was reasonably well administered by the boards of guardians, as well, probably, as was the case in england; they were rather parsimonious in assessing rates, and gave little attention to the sanitary state of their towns, but, on the whole, there was not much cause to complain of them; and the irish people, it must be recollected, have never liked the poor law. the local administration of the cities and the larger towns of ireland was worse--a notable exception was seen in belfast; but these, as a rule, gave proof of the restricted system on which their government had been formed; the results appeared in a high death rate, in bad supplies of water, in crowds of squalid and deserted dwellings--in a word, in stagnation and a want of progress, if other and powerful causes concurred. when the movement conducted by parnell acquired strength, almost a revolution passed over the seats of irish local government, where these, except in ulster, possessed a popular element. parnell called on the boards of guardians, the corporations, and the town commissioners, in places where the 'people' had any effective voice, to rally round the land and the national leagues; he achieved remarkable success in the three provinces of the south. this was especially made manifest in the boards of guardians, composed largely of farmers of substance, and in which the _ex-officio_ guardians had little real power; these bodies set a crusade against the landed gentry on foot; marked them out for plunder in many ways; encouraged 'boycotting' and defiance of the law; gave a free rein to rebellious utterances of many kinds; and denounced irish 'landlordism' and british rule in ireland, as fiercely as they had been denounced at land and national league gatherings.[ ] the same phenomena appeared in many of the corporate and inferior towns: the corporation of dublin indulged in anti-british threats and speeches; the corporation of limerick refused to pay a lawful tax; the corporation of cork proclaimed itself supreme in a 'rebel' city; the example was generally followed in the lesser towns of the south; in short, these bodies became centres of sedition, socialism, and resistance to the law, and widely disseminated their pernicious teaching. in fact, they made themselves agencies of the land and the national leagues; at the same time, in numerous instances, they set the authority of the local government board at naught.[ ] the system of irish local government was obviously so defective, so antiquated, so contrary to the spirit of the age, that several attempts, we have seen, were made, long ago, to reform it. it has now been completely transformed on the principles applied to england and scotland; the occasion of this transformation was somewhat singular. in considerable relief was given, in england and scotland, to the landed interest by a subvention made by the state, which defrayed half the charge of the local county rates, the depression of agriculture being so grievous; the justice of this measure was hardly disputed. but the report of the childers commission, declaring that ireland was greatly overtaxed, and had been for a long series of years, was published about the same time; the government, probably because it had made up its mind not to countenance the report in any way, refused to extend the same relief to ireland, although it was as much required--a decision that simply nothing could warrant. the indignation, however, expressed in ireland, and the remonstrances even of the ministerial press, angrily as it had challenged the findings of the report, before long changed the government's purpose; it was formally announced, in , that ireland would obtain the same boon as great britain, and, apparently, as a condition of this, that irish local government was to be reformed. the measure of was the result of this compromise; the interdependence of two subjects, which have nothing in common, has made it not easy to interpret; but, as we shall see, its authors have provided, with skill, against one of the dangers the change involved, that is, the probability that it might expose the irish landed gentry to predatory attacks. before examining the recent law, i venture to make a single remark. the question of the alleviation of the charge of rates, a concession made to ireland with bad grace, and made to england and scotland as a matter of course, has nothing to do with the infinitely larger question of the excessive taxation imposed on ireland; relief in the one case does not imply relief in the other; the two subjects are altogether distinct. it is essential carefully to keep this in mind, for attempts are being made to confuse the two questions, and characteristically to argue that ireland ought to rest and be thankful, and not to say a word about her overtaxation, because, forsooth, in common with england and scotland, she has received assistance as regards her local rates. the transformation which has been effected in irish local government has completely changed the old order of things, and is of an extremely democratic character. county government has been taken from the grand juries, and has been extended to bodies known by the name of county councils, recently formed in great britain. the county councils proper are thirty-two in number, corresponding to the number of the irish counties; they are popular assemblies in the fullest sense of the word. they are elected by the ratepayers of their districts, who possess the present extravagantly low suffrage; the right of election is also bestowed on women; and the protection of the cumulative vote has been removed; a cottar has the same voting power as a man of forty thousand a year. any of these voters may have a seat in a county council; the body, therefore, may be crowded with petty ratepayers; and women also may have seats. three members of the grand jury, in each county, are entitled to sit in a county council, but for a short time only--a provision intended to reconcile the old with the new; the county councils are given a right to 'co-opt' a few members; and the heads of bodies subordinate to them have the privilege of taking part in their counsels. the rights and the responsibilities of the grand juries have, as a rule, been transferred to the county councils, except in the instance of criminal injuries, and of determining compensation for these; this jurisdiction, subject to an appeal to a judge of assize, has been properly conferred on the county court judges, for it is essentially of a judicial nature. the powers of the county councils thus extend to the management and the supervision of the roads, bridges, and buildings for public purposes comprised within their counties, and also to the regulation of villages and petty towns; but, like the grand juries, they are subject to the same control of the central government; they must make 'imperative presentments' like the grand juries; and, as in the instance of the grand juries, subordinate bodies have the initiative in part of their duties. their powers, however, have been made larger and wider than those of the grand juries; they have been given the right to assess and levy the poor rate in rural districts, the management of the asylums of the lunatic poor, an authority, in cases of exceptional distress, subject to the permission of the local government board, to sanction relief to poor people out-of-doors, and several other powers of not much importance. it should be added that the county councils are not restricted in any way by judge's 'fiats' and by 'traverses' as the grand juries were; these securities, such as they were, have disappeared; but their conduct may be controlled to a certain extent by the superior courts of ireland, as that of most public bodies may be, if only through a tedious and costly procedure, and they are more or less under the authority of the local government board. six of the principal cities and towns of ireland, dublin, belfast, cork, limerick, londonderry, and waterford, have been made distinct counties, with the appellation of county boroughs. the scheme of county councils has been applied to these also; the townsmen and townswomen have the same power of voting, and the same democratic suffrage as the counties proper; the borough assemblies may have the same kinds of members; but the titles of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses have been preserved, in recognition, so to speak, of strictly urban government. these bodies, which, it will be observed, are popular in the widest sense of the word, have the powers of grand juries within their respective spheres; but they retain besides their former administrative powers subject to the control of the local government board; they have thus been changed from narrow and close oligarchies into democracies on the very broadest basis. the county councils have under them two minor bodies, the rural district councils and the urban district councils, the characteristics of which may be briefly noticed. the sphere of the authority of the rural district council corresponds, for the most part, to the poor law union; these councils are elected and constituted under the same conditions as the larger councils already described; they are, therefore, mere democracies in considerable numbers. the rural district councils are given the powers of the baronial presentment sessions of the grand juries, that is, they may initiate proceedings as their predecessors did; they are made the sole guardians of the poor within their districts, the _ex-officio_ guardians having been abolished; their chairmen are members of the county councils; it may be added here that rating for the poor has been extended generally over the union, not as hitherto confined to the electoral division and the ward, a questionable provision which will certainly increase the expenditure for the relief of poverty. the sphere of the authority of the urban district councils has been made that of the larger towns of ireland, being sanitary areas within themselves; but power has been taken to increase the number of these towns, and this increase will be probably witnessed. the urban district councils resemble, in their mode of election and their constitution, the other assemblies, that is, they are democracies to the fullest extent; but they retain the names of corporate or town commissioners towns, and of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses where they possessed these before. the powers of the urban district councils are those of the grand juries within the towns, except as respects the larger public buildings, which were formerly charged on 'the county at large;' these councils levy and assess the poor rate within their districts; and they retain the powers of urban government they formerly possessed. the local government board has authority, also, over the rural district and the urban district councils. the entire system of irish local government has thus been placed on an extremely democratic basis, subject, however, to partial control by the central government. this revolution, for it has been nothing less, was obviously liable to be attended by the many mischiefs inseparable from a sudden transfer of enormous powers to local assemblies of the most popular type, to maladministration, waste, and extravagance, and, as especially would be the case in ireland, to violent or insidious attacks on the landed gentry. the late measure has provided against these evils, if not completely or adequately, with ingenuity and skill. the relief of irish agriculture was its first financial object; to effect this the county cess and the poor rate have been consolidated into a single charge; and half of this is to be defrayed by the state and appropriated to the relief of agricultural lands, towns and lands, within municipal limits, being excepted. the subvention is not to extend to sums payable in respect of criminal injuries, nor to sums payable in respect of extra police in disturbed districts; these charges are properly to be borne by local areas as before. the relief afforded is an annual sum of about £ , ; it is divided in tolerably equal shares between the owners and the occupiers of the soil, that is, between the landlords and tenants of ireland; it is characteristic of radical clamour, that a boon, the justice of which could not be disputed, was denounced as an 'infamous job' for the behoof of the irish landed gentry. a powerful check has been placed on extravagance and waste, and on attempts to injure property in land, exposed, we have seen, to undoubted dangers. the relief afforded was calculated on the local expenditure for , in the words of the law, 'the standard year;' it was regularly to be one-half of this sum. should the local expenditure, therefore, in subsequent years, be in excess of that of the standard year, the proportionate value of the relief would fall; should it be a lesser amount, the value would rise. a strong restraint was thus imposed on attempts recklessly to job and waste local funds, and notably to plunder irish landlords; but this restriction only applies to agricultural lands; it does not extend to property in towns; and it is difficult to say that it will always prove effective against democratic sentiment, passion, and greed. the extent of the relief afforded to irish landlords differs widely as between landlords of different classes of tenants; landlords of mere cottars will get very little; landlords of farmers of substance will get much more; but it is unnecessary here to enlarge on this special subject.[ ] this sweeping measure, in my judgment at least, might have been better framed to carry out its policy. like much of the legislation of the imperial parliament, it has been fashioned too closely on the english model; it gives to a poor and backward country, not trained in self-government, local institutions naturally adapted only to an opulent and well-ordered country accustomed for centuries to local liberties. having regard to the peculiar state of ireland, it might have made the powers of local government it conferred larger, but it ought not to have been as purely democratic as it is; and it ought to have been accompanied by safeguards it does not possess. i would have been disposed to give the irish county councils a right to take evidence for private bills on the spot; this, if transmitted to the irish privy council, and considered by it, might be made the basis of reports by that body, which could be turned into acts of parliament, by a summary process, thus getting rid of great and useless expense, and silencing one of the few real arguments in favour of home rule. i would also have allowed the county councils of different counties, in matters in which they had a common interest, say, in the drainage of some of the great irish rivers, to carry out together public works of this kind, and to assess and levy rates for the purpose if, on consideration, this was deemed expedient; at present they have no authority like this; and such a power would, i think, be for the general good of ireland. the county councils, too, i believe, might be given a deliberative voice, in cases they have not at present; for example, should the rate-payers of any county make a demand for sectarian education, within its area, and declare themselves ready to pay a rate for it, the county council should have a right to entertain the project, and to report on it to the central government. and i am convinced that members of the county councils ought to have some seats on the local government board, and on other boards now filled by the castle bureaucracy; this would introduce a popular element into these bodies, and, in many ways, would be of real advantage. on the other hand, in the election and the constitution of the county and other councils, democracy has simply been let run riot; and the resulting evils have already been made manifest. illiterate persons ought not to have been qualified to be electors; the single should not have replaced the cumulative vote, property being thus deprived of its legitimate weight; above all, as is evident, security should have been taken that the landed gentry should have a proper representation on the county councils. the authority, too, of the superior courts over all these assemblies should have been made more effective and less costly than it is at present; and that of the local government board should have been better defined and increased. in all this province the checks possessed by the central government over these local democracies are not, i think, sufficient. it is impossible, i have remarked, to say with certainty what the end of this social revolution will be; but some of the results are, even now, apparent. there has, as yet, been little tendency in the local boards to waste, or to attempts to despoil the landed gentry; the check in this respect is of great force; but no one, i repeat, can predict what may be done under the influence of democratic sympathies, especially should the existing agitation acquire increased strength in ireland. some of the councils have been very fairly managed; a few others have been badly administered; as a rule, much time has been misspent in irrelevant talk; there has been a good deal of squabbling with the local government board; but, on the whole, the local business of the counties and towns has been conducted as reasonably well as could be expected in the case of a new and immense experiment. but the consequences of giving raw democracies great and sudden power have already been made but too manifest, as persons, who knew ireland, foresaw would happen. in parts of ulster representatives of the landed gentry have been elected to the county councils; property in these has still legitimate influence. but in leinster, munster, and connaught, this order of men has been all but completely shut out from these boards; the land is not represented at all; this is an absolutely unnatural position of affairs, pregnant with many ills to the community as a whole. it is not only that the landed gentry have been deprived of an influence they ought to possess, in a society in any degree well ordered; this change has a tendency to make them more and more, what they have largely been made already, a privileged class without duties, akin to the old seigneurie of france, a state of things of which tocqueville has powerfully described the evils. in the southern provinces, too, the new democracies, composed of catholic 'nationalists,' by large majorities, have driven loyal, and especially protestant, men and women from local offices they had filled with credit, and this too at a considerable charge on the rates, a clear proof how no restraints can be wholly effective. but the main feature in the conduct of the county and other councils is that in most parts of ireland they have followed the advice given by parnell to their weaker forerunners; they have made themselves agencies of the united irish league, as boards before them were agencies of the land and the national leagues, and they have given but too ample proof of disaffection, disloyalty, and hatred of british rule. in some counties, the councils seized the court houses, and refused light and fire to the superior and the county court judges. throughout the south of ireland most of the boards vied with each other in wild expressions of sympathy with the boers, and of hopes that disaster would befall the british army; many gave free voice to frankly rebellious language; many denounced irishmen being recruited for the british army. nor did these sinister exhibitions end here; some of these bodies went out of their way to sneer at their aged sovereign, when she paid last year her last visit to the irish shores, to question her motives, to speak all kinds of evil; a few even refused to say a word of regret for her death, nay, indulged in language of scarcely veiled insult. these councils, in a word, in a number of instances, have shown a marked resemblance to the assemblies of the communes of jacobin france, indignantly held up to execration by burke; they have been petty nests of seditious agitation and clamour. it is at least well that this manner of men has not succeeded, in the great statesman's language, in 'ascending from parochial tyranny to federal anarchy' and have warned us what would be the nature of a home rule parliament. this scheme of local government must be given a trial; but ultimately it will have to be reformed, in a conservative sense, if things in ireland are not to be left upside down.[ ] i turn to the subject of irish education, which has been lately attracting much public attention. university education is the most prominent part of this question; but, in order to understand it, we must briefly consider the history of irish education in all its branches. the first scheme of primary education in ireland, of which we have a record--i pass over the traditions of the middle ages--was due to the policy of henry viii.; he procured an act from the irish parliament, to the effect that elementary schools should be set up in different irish parishes; but, true to the ideal of tudor statesmen--an ideal, however, which he did not always pursue--he required that these should be 'english schools,' to teach the irish poor 'the english language.' many years passed before these schools were found beyond the borders of the pale; but, as the march of conquest advanced, they existed in many irish parishes; there were more than five hundred of them in , the largest number probably they ever attained. these schools were originally intended to be open without distinction of creed; but, under the conditions of irish history, they necessarily became confined to the lower protestant classes; they were under the control of the clergy of the established church, and catholic children were kept away from them. elizabeth founded another class of schools, in part elementary, in part of a higher type; these were known as the diocesan irish schools; but there seem never to have been more than sixteen of these; and they, too, became exclusively protestant. to these schools should be added 'the english erasmus smith schools,' as they were called, foundations grafted, so to speak, on grammar schools established by a wealthy cromwellian settler; at one time they were more than one hundred in number; and if not wholly, they were nearly confined to protestant children. a series of reports of commissions and other records show that the education afforded in all these schools was not what it ought to have been; but this was to be expected in the case of a country where protestant ascendency was supreme, where all administration was selfish and corrupt, and where the schools were the monopoly of a fraction of the people only. as to the education of the irish catholic poor in these centuries, it was discouraged, and ultimately prohibited by the penal code; the catholic child could not learn the rudiments in his own land; but in spite of this, 'hedge schools,' a significant name, grew up, in hundreds, throughout the country, in which, to adopt the words of davis, a man of genius-- 'still crouching 'neath the sheltering hedge, or stretched on mountain fern, the teacher and his pupils met feloniously to learn.' as may, however, be supposed the instruction afforded in these schools was usually bad; throughout the eighteenth century and a part of the nineteenth, the young of catholic ireland were brought up in ignorance. in an odious experiment was made, and continued for a long period, to cause education to wean the catholic child from his faith. an institution, called the charter school, was established; the object of its founders was to make 'the young of the papists' protestant, by attracting them to seminaries where they were kept apart from their parents and priests, boarded, lodged, and handed over to protestant tradesmen; millions were spent in furthering a detestable policy, which literally set up mammon against god. the charter schools, however, completely failed; they never had more than fourteen hundred pupils, and they became wretched dotheboys halls where cruel and pampered squeerses, eating up funds set apart for education such as it was, starved and ill-treated children victims of every kind of disease. when the partial relaxation of the penal laws allowed the children of the irish catholics to be taught the rudiments, the 'christian brothers' began to found their schools, under the sanction of a bull of pius vi.; these schools, sectarian, like the genius of the irish people, have, though receiving no endowment from the state, grown from small beginnings into a number of excellent catholic schools. the quakers in ireland had established a few elementary schools before the union; and so had the presbyterians of ulster. the charter schools lingered down to the year ; they disappeared when their subsidies ceased; but the 'incorporated irish society' is in possession of the lands they once held, and it supports a number of good protestant schools. primary education, however, in ireland remained very backward; the protestant schools did not flourish; the catholic 'hedge schools' continued until the nineteenth century had far advanced. attempts were made to promote irish primary education, in different ways, after the union; a board of commissioners of education was appointed, and made valuable reports; but these efforts were of little avail for the benefit at least of the catholic young; the schools thus established were all protestant; and the evangelical movement, which was then powerful, made them proselytising with scarcely a single exception, a danger which the example of the charter schools had especially made the catholic irish priesthood dread. an institution, however, called the 'kildare place schools' had, for a time, considerable success; these schools were thrown open to children of all creeds, and had the high approval of o'connell himself; but it was one of the rules that the bible should be read in the schools; they became proselytising in no doubtful sense, and ultimately they were tabooed by the catholic priesthood. primary education in ireland was in this state, when the subject was taken up by mr. stanley, the chief secretary for ireland of lord grey, and, in after years, the 'rupert of debate.' he founded in - what has ever since been known as the 'national system of education' of an elementary kind in ireland. the principles on which he proceeded were in accord with the somewhat shallow liberalism of the day, but, it must be added, with the ideas of many enlightened irishmen. primary education was to be endowed by the state, but it was to be divided into two parts: secular instruction was to be given in the new schools to children assembled together to learn, and that without distinction of creed; but religious instruction was to be given to children kept apart, protestants and catholics being completely separate, by the pastors of their respective communions. by these means it was hoped that a sound system of primary education would be formed; that proselytising would be made impossible; and that the youth of the warring races and faiths of ireland, under the influence of a common teaching, would be made gradually to forget the animosities of the past. the national schools were to be the lethe of irish discords. i can barely glance at the chequered history of the institution which was thus established. the 'national system,' the name long in common use, was angrily condemned by the clergy of the established church of ireland, and by a majority, perhaps, of the laity; this opposition was partly due to the spirit of an ascendency that would not brook equality; but it was largely to be ascribed to a higher motive. the new system, it was argued, cut education in two; the separation of what is secular from what is religious practically postpones what is divine to the human; and this is especially the case under the arrangements in force, for religious instruction in the schools may be a mere accident. the irish protestant clergy, and many other protestants, have never taken to the national schools; their sincerity is proved by the fact that a 'church education society' exists, which, though depending on voluntary subscriptions alone, supports nearly two hundred exclusively protestant schools. as for the presbyterians of ireland, the national system of education fell in with their views; its 'liberalism' was congenial to them; but though schools of this type have flourished in ulster, the presbyterians have given a great deal of trouble to the commissioners charged to carry out the law, and have shown much animosity to the catholic irish. the irish catholic priesthood at first accepted the national system almost with gratitude; it gave their flocks a rudimentary instruction they were much in need of; it seemed to provide against the proselytising they feared above all things; and during some years the heads of their church in ireland, for the most part not of the ultramontane faith, were not indisposed to welcome a compromise. by degrees, however, opposition grew up in catholic ireland against the system; and, it must be allowed, not without reason. the catholic element on the commission was much too weak; the purely secular instruction in the schools was made partly religious, for books of a protestant complexion found their way into them; a cry of protestant proselytising was raised; and the national system was solemnly condemned in , at the great catholic synod of thurles, a sentence, however, which had no effect on the government. but the real grievances of the irish catholics, in this matter, have nearly all been removed; the catholic commissioners have been made equal in number with the presbyterian and protestant; secular instruction in the schools has again been made strictly secular; attempts at proselytising have long been rendered impossible; it should be added--and this is very important--the catholic priesthood have become the managers of a large majority of the schools. the system has certainly struck deep roots in ireland; there are now nearly national schools, endowed with about £ , , by the state, and teaching nearly , pupils; they are supported by model and training schools, and have a large staff of competent teachers; the instruction they afford, if not remarkable, is, on the whole, sufficiently good. it may fairly be said that the national system has been a beneficent influence of the greatest value; light has shone on a people that once sate in darkness. the system, however, has become, insensibly, but greatly, changed; the national schools have long been, for the most part, sectarian, that is, composed of protestant or of catholic children; the 'mixed' schools, as they are called, are comparatively few. but the main principle of the system still is in force; the instruction given in the schools, when the pupils sit together, is strictly secular; and this is secured by a conscience clause; the bible cannot be read, in school hours, even in a protestant school; no catholic school can have a catholic emblem. the religious instruction given in the schools is hardly what it ought to be, especially in the case of the protestant schools; it must be added that the hope of their founders that they would bridge over the gulf of discords in ireland has not been, in the slightest degree, realised. the irish are, naturally, a religious people; their history, a long conflict of races and faiths, has, necessarily, made them intensely sectarian. the system of education, of which i have traced the outlines, was certainly not well designed for them; it would have been severely condemned by burke, the deepest of thinkers on the affairs of ireland. and though the national system has had a real measure of success, it owes this, in the main, to the immense subvention it receives from the state; it has little or no support from voluntary aid; an attempt to impose an education rate on ireland would be a failure, would not improbably wreck the system. nor is this in harmony with genuine irish sentiment; one of the most conclusive proofs is that national education has become, to a great extent, sectarian; the 'christian brothers' and the 'church education society' schools, sustained by voluntary effort alone, and overweighted in the race by the endowed schools of the state, show how strong is irish sectarian feeling. the clergy, too, of the late established church, and a considerable body of their communion, remain hostile to the national schools; and though the catholic priesthood have made them, to a great extent, their own, and avail themselves of the advantages they afford, they are hardly in heartfelt sympathy with them. nor can it be denied that the conscientious objections to the national system have real weight; the system, if not irreligious, is, we may say, neutral; it does not make religion an essential part of school life. it would, nevertheless, i believe, be exceedingly unwise to disturb a system which, on the whole, has for many years had excellent results in ireland. the opposition to it is not strong; the children of the humbler classes freely avail themselves of it, and that with the full consent of their parents. nor is the conscientious objection of much force in the case of schools which are only day schools, and in which the rudiments alone are taught; this is not the case of education of the higher kind, in which this objection is perhaps decisive; and it cannot be said that the national schools have, in any sense, impaired the religion of the irish people.[ ] i pass from elementary to schools of a secondary kind in ireland. the diocesan schools of elizabeth were nearly all secondary schools; but they were never numerous, and have all but disappeared. the two first stuarts made an attempt to establish secondary education in ireland on a larger scale. they founded the 'free royal schools,' as they have been called, now seen at armagh, cavan, dungannon, portora, and raphoe; they endowed them with lands perhaps worth in our day, £ a year; they looked forward to a time when they might rival eton, winchester, and the great public schools of england. erasmus smith established three considerable 'grammar schools,' and granted valuable estates for their support; a tolerably large number of secondary schools was also founded, from time to time, by benefactors of the dominant race in ireland: of these kilkenny college, a seminary created by the house of ormond, which reared swift and berkeley, was the most conspicuous. these schools, though often nominally open to different creeds, became, nevertheless, in the eighteenth century, under the protestant ascendency, supreme in the land, restricted to the young of the protestant caste; they felt the effects of monopoly, and of the corruption prevailing in the state; the education they afforded was, for the most part, bad; their governing bodies and masters were often grasping and selfish. after the relaxation of the penal code, the irish catholics began to found secondary schools; their exertions were, in a high degree, praiseworthy; and though these schools received no support from the state, some of them have done really excellent work. a number, too, of secondary schools were established in ulster, for the most part for presbyterian uses; some of these are sectarian, some open to all faiths; some have, others have not, received assistance from the state; in several the education given has been, on the whole, good. a few secondary schools--st. columba is much the best--have also been founded within the last century, usually for the benefit of the late established church of ireland. the progress made by secondary schools in ireland, even in the nineteenth century, has not been rapid. it is not to be named with the immense development of public schools in england, within the same period, caused, in some measure, by the genius of arnold; secondary irish schools, in fact, have been largely a failure, like other institutions of british origin. this is mainly to be attributed to three reasons: the higher upper classes in ireland usually send their sons to be educated in the great english public schools; the irish secondary schools are seldom well endowed; above all, the upper middle class in ireland is small and has little influence. two commissions, appointed in and in , examined secondary education in ireland as it then existed; their reports give a far from favourable account of the system. the secondary irish schools have not been much affected by an act of parliament passed in , which provided for making better schemes for their management; but certainly they have derived very great benefit from the intermediate education act of lord cairns, which established a system of competition between them, and secured prizes for successful competitors. in these honourable trials the catholic schools have done well; but even now the secondary schools are decidedly inferior to what they ought to be, and do not exhibit many signs of improvement. an impartial inquirer thus described them in :[ ] 'upon the whole, secondary instruction, throughout the country, was as some one--i believe lord cairns--said, "bad in quality and deficient in quantity." the fact seems incredible, but there can be no doubt of its authenticity, viz. that out of a total population of , , , there were only , boys in ireland learning latin, greek, or modern languages in . or, to put the matter in another way, while in england about ten or fifteen in every were instructed in these languages, only two in every were instructed in them in ireland.'[ ] i pass on to university life in ireland, the question, i have said, most prominent at this time. ireland had no oxford or cambridge in the middle ages; an attempt to establish a university in dublin failed; science and literature could not grow up in a land distracted by feudal and tribal strife, and in which two churches were continually at war with each other. elizabeth founded trinity college towards the close of her reign, on the site of a monastery that had been suppressed; it was the intention of the queen, and of her two first successors, that this seminary should expand into a university in the true sense, containing a number of colleges within its sphere, and probably open to all students whatever their race or their faith. this happy consummation, however, was made impossible during the long period of civil war and trouble, which only came to an end with that of the seventeenth century. trinity college remained a single foundation; and, in the era of protestant ascendency that ensued, when catholic ireland lay under the ban of the penal code, it necessarily became an exclusively protestant place of learning, its dignities, its honours, nay, admission to it, being reserved to members of the established church. it had, however, been amply endowed; and, from an early period, it possessed many distinguished worthies, the names of ussher, of king, of browne, and of others, being still remembered. trinity college, strange to say, was very high church during the reigns of the two last stuarts and of anne; its leading divines preached the creed of passive obedience; and it was remarkable for its aversion to presbyterian ireland, as was clearly shown in the diatribes of swift. the college, however, became whiggish and low church during the reign of walpole--its provost was appointed by the crown; and until nearly the close of the eighteenth century, its professorships, its fellowships, its scholarships, its degrees, even entrance to its walls, were strictly confined to the dominant communion of the anglican church. but a liberal spirit grew up, and gained strength within it; this appears in many of the admirable writings of berkeley, breathing the ideas that afterwards inspired grattan, and in the histories of leland and warner, on the whole just to the vanquished catholic people; and after the almost national movement which produced the revolution of , trinity college took a remarkable step, which proved that it was in advance of the politics of that age. in , when the irish parliament passed a great measure of catholic relief, the college made catholics eligible for its degrees and its minor prizes; and, but that its statutes made this impossible, it would, perhaps, have allowed catholics to become professors, fellows, and scholars--in short, to have a share in its dignities and its government. nothing like this was done at oxford and cambridge until the nineteenth century had run far its course. from this time onwards trinity college, accessible to presbyterians some years before, received catholics honourably within its precincts. a few distinguished catholic irishmen have obtained the excellent education it has always afforded; and these have been treated with scrupulous fairness; no attempt at proselytising has ever been made or thought of. their numbers, however, have never been large; and they were necessarily placed in an inferior position, for they could not become professors, fellows, or scholars; the college remained an institution essentially protestant, even anti-catholic, in much of its teaching, for example, in the predilection it long showed for locke. the college continued to thrive and to make progress; the reproach cast on it that she was the 'silent sister,' was rather due to the want of publishing enterprise in the irish capital, than to any deficiency in literary power; at all events, it has long ago been removed; trinity college has stood for a century in the foremost rank of places of learning famed for scientific eminence. in - an attempt was made to introduce catholics on the foundation, as scholars; but this was prohibited by the statutes; some 'non-foundation' scholarships were then endowed; and catholics were enabled to compete for them. this was the position of the college, when, in - , after the agitation for repeal had shown how disaffected catholic ireland still was, peel turned his mind to irish remedial measures, and among these to a reform of high education in ireland. his policy was to maintain the union intact, and all the institutions closely connected with it, but to create institutions, so to speak, alongside of these, to which irish presbyterians, and catholics especially, might freely resort, in complete equality with all irishmen; he therefore left trinity college exactly as it was, but resolved to establish and endow places of learning, which he hoped would be popular supplements to it, and would give a university training to students who, as affairs stood, were not on the same level as the favoured protestants in it. he founded the queen's colleges of belfast, of cork, and of galway; these were supplied with an ample staff of professors, endowed, and given the means to bestow many prizes; and they were affiliated to the queen's university, empowered to confer degrees. the principle on which these institutions were formed was, following the so-called liberalism of the time, almost exactly the same as that on which the irish national schools had been based. secular education in them was to be united, religious education was to be kept apart; their students were to learn the things that belonged to this world together; but as to what belonged to another world, this teaching was to be provided by their pastors outside their colleges, and they were not to have it in common. the colleges, and the university, therefore, were essentially seats of non-religious knowledge; religious equality, it was said, could be only thus secured; and residence in the colleges was not required. the principle pervading the irish national education system was certainly open to grave objections; these became infinitely stronger, when it was applied to a system of high education in ireland. secular instruction could be really combined, and given to children together, when limited to the first rudiments: how could it be combined when it should embrace such subjects as moral philosophy, metaphysics, modern history, nay, physical science, and when taught to young men of the university age? besides, religious instruction, without a great shock to conscience, could be made a subordinate consideration in mere day schools: how could it, consistently with christian duty, be practically excluded from a university course, and left to undergraduates to be dealt with as they might think fit, and that at the most critical time of their life? indifference to the divine, masked in specious 'liberal' phrases, was, in truth, the cardinal feature of this scheme; it would have been severely reprobated by burke; it was repugnant to the ideas of five-sixths of irishmen; its tendency was to form minds in superior men, like those of hume and gibbon, in inferior men, to produce infidel, even atheistic, sentiments. it was denounced as 'godless' in the house of commons by the high church party; it was condemned by o'connell, from the outset, though the men of 'young ireland' were not adverse; after some hesitation, it was rejected unequivocally by the irish catholic bishops,[ ] and finally was held up to anathema at the synod of thurles. that the bishops were sincere is proved by the fact, that they established the irish catholic university a few years afterwards--the first head of this creation was newman; and the foundation has been maintained ever since, though it could not give a degree, and it received nothing from the state, and its only funds were the contributions of a poor communion, a noble example of self-sacrifice and of a true sense of duty. meanwhile, the queen's colleges and university were kept up and endowed, at the rate of about £ , a year; the college of belfast has done well, for it falls in with presbyterian ideas; but the colleges of cork and of galway, notably the last, have been sorry, nay, almost useless, failures; and peel's hope that his project would secure a good university training to irish catholics of the better class has not been, to any real extent, fulfilled. trinity college remained for many years unchanged, that is, it gave an admirable education to a very few catholics; but it continued to be a protestant institution in its essential nature; its governing body and its hierarchy were all protestant; its teaching was protestant in some of its parts; its higher honours were a monopoly of the favoured communion. the extreme unfairness of this university system, the ascendency secured to trinity college, which, admirable institution as it was, was practically nearly confined to protestants of the upper class; the failure, with respect to catholic ireland, of the queen's colleges and the queen's university, and the large and useless expenditure this involved; above all, the denial to the catholic university of any share in the bounty of the state, though its claim to it could be hardly doubtful,--attracted the attention of several statesmen, from to ; but nothing was done, or even attempted. the subject was taken up by mr. gladstone, with characteristic earnestness, during his first ministry; he declared that university education in ireland was 'a scandal;' indeed, irish education of the higher kind was the third branch of the upas tree which threw its baleful shade over the land. he brought in a measure of reform in the session of ; it was an ambitious and a comprehensive scheme; but it was much the worst of his irish reforms of this period; and it ended in complete and disastrous failure. with the historical instinct occasionally seen in his legislation, mr. gladstone proposed to revive the idea of elizabeth and the first stuarts, and to found a great national university, which was to have the management and control of the higher education throughout ireland. the governing body of this new institution was to be composed partly of men chosen by the lord-lieutenant, and partly of the heads of the colleges to be connected with it; and it was to have the sole power of conferring degrees in ireland. trinity college was to hand over to the national university a sum of £ , a year, that is, more than a fourth of its endowments from the state; its professorships, its fellowships, its scholarships, in a word, all its prizes, were to be thrown open to all its students whatever their faith; but in most other respects it was not to be essentially changed, except as to the power of granting degrees. trinity college was to be affiliated to the national university as a dependent college, and so were a number of minor colleges; but this remarkable distinction was made in homage to the 'liberalism' of the day: the queen's colleges, that of galway being suppressed as useless, were to retain the endowments they received from the state, on the ground that they were free to all comers; but the catholic university was not to obtain a shilling, nor yet other colleges of a sectarian type, on the ground that they were 'close and exclusive,' this being the case of all the catholic colleges that could be affiliated to the new foundation. the queen's university was to be abolished, for the national university was to be sole and supreme; and then came provisions, which, strange as they may appear at first sight, were perhaps inevitable under the conditions on which the project was formed. moral philosophy, metaphysics, and modern history were shut out from the national university course; they might be taught in the colleges, but were to be no part of university learning. and the national university, like the queen's colleges, was to be 'non-religious;' its system of education was to be secular and united, that is its students were to be examined together in secular learning, but in religious matters they were to stand apart; religion, indeed, might be a subject of college teaching, but it was not to be heard of within the university walls; in fact, it was probably to be left to the students and their clergy. this complicated measure, not easy thoroughly to understand, was sustained, for a few days, by the glamour of mr. gladstone's rhetoric. but ere long it arrayed against it an immense preponderance of opinion in ireland, and was assailed with fatal effect in the house of commons. the heads of trinity college took the initiative in declaring against it; in debates, wise, patriotic, and just alike, they recognised the claims of catholic ireland; but they protested against the wrong being done to the great and ancient foundation they represented, and especially against the degradation to which it was subjected by the bill. trinity college was to be deprived for no reason of a large part of its revenue; it was to be placed under a governing body, in which nominees of the castle would be all-powerful--an influence pernicious to its independence and self-government; above all, the national university was to supplant it, and was to exclude from its teaching the noblest studies of the intellect of man. the platonism which had inspired berkeley, the records which had animated the genius of burke, and had been fostered in the alma mater of these great worthies, were to be banished from a foundation which was to be made the head of university life in ireland. these sentiments were fully shared by enlightened irishmen: that moral and metaphysical science and modern history should be virtually proscribed in the university about to be set up, was, as it were, putting out one of the eyes of the intellect, effacing what was best in the map of knowledge. but the most decisive condemnation of the scheme was that pronounced by the irish catholic bishops. like their predecessors of nearly thirty years before, and the anglican high church party of that day, they asserted that the project was really 'godless;' it was irreligion in the mask of non-religion; its liberalism was in the highest degree illiberal, for it offered their flocks a system of education it was known they would reject; and it was flagrantly, nay, basely, unjust, for while trinity college, and the queen's colleges, and the queen's university, were to remain endowed, the catholic university and all catholic colleges were to get nothing from the state. these arguments made their way into the house of commons, and were vindicated in speeches of great ability. disraeli dwelt especially on the poverty and the imperfection of a university scheme, in which the finest branches of knowledge were not to enter; he frankly denounced the bill as 'atheistic,' an epithet which burke assuredly would have fastened on it. other speakers, notably ball, a very brilliant irishman, enlarged on the wrong done to trinity college, and earnestly advocated the catholic claims; not only was the minister offering a stone for bread, he was virtually trying to bribe the irish catholic into accepting institutions he disliked, and in the attempt was deeply offending his conscience. notwithstanding the efforts of a powerful government, the bill was rejected by the house of commons; nearly all the irish members voted against it, and so did the best men of the liberal party. the year that witnessed the collapse of mr. gladstone's measure, witnessed, also, a reform of trinity college conceived in the spirit of the 'liberalism' of the hour, and hailed as an illustration of what is called progress. the government, the dignities, and the prizes of the college were thrown open to all without regard to their creed; this was welcomed as 'university equality' in the most perfect sense. it is a mistake to suppose that a corresponding change was ever made at oxford and cambridge; the extension of their privileges to persons whatever their faith, has, thanks to the exertions of the late lord selborne, been strictly confined to lay offices; the religious character and teaching of the universities have been carefully preserved.[ ] though trinity college has been made 'non-religious' by this measure, and that to such a degree that its governing body might conceivably be composed of avowed atheists, it has, nevertheless, to this day remained a protestant institution in all essential respects. its professors, fellows, and scholars have, since , been nearly all protestants; its catholic students are not eight in a hundred of the number as a whole; and the chief practical result of the late reform has been to make the heads of the irish catholic church more opposed than before to seeing catholics enter its precincts. in , lord beaconsfield's ministry made an attempt to diminish the injustice done to irish catholics by the system of university education still in force in ireland. the queen's university was abolished; a royal university was established, which was enabled to confer degrees on, and to give prizes to, the students of the catholic university and other colleges; but the royal university is a mere examining board; it is not a university properly so called. one incident connected with this institution deserves attention; the success of the students of catholic colleges at the royal university examinations has been so great, that it ought to silence jeers at the 'superstition' which keeps them back, the vulgar cant of ignorant prejudice or worse.[ ] meanwhile the iniquities and anomalies of the irish university system have continued but very little changed.[ ] trinity college remains a protestant institution well endowed, almost a monopoly of the protestant upper class in ireland, practically little resorted to by irish catholics; the queen's colleges are avoided by the irish catholics, as being 'irreligious' if called 'non-religious,' though the college of belfast suits presbyterian views; they, too, receive a large bounty from the state; but the catholic university, the true seminary for the upper middle catholic classes, and now divided into different colleges, is still, as such, left out in the cold. its students, no doubt, can obtain royal university degrees, and some of its professors have been placed as examiners on that foundation; but it is the veriest mockery to call this justice when we look at trinity college and the queen's colleges. 'the words of scripture are reversed,' in macaulay's language; 'the rich are filled with good things and the hungry are sent empty away.' i do not envy those who, whatever their reasons, refuse to acknowledge the wrong done by these arrangements. it will hardly be denied, in the twentieth century, that protestant ascendency ought not to exist in any sphere of irish affairs, and that in university life, as in all matters, irish catholics ought to have civil equality, and that without a violation of the rights of conscience. it has been triumphantly maintained that, in high education, these conditions are actually fulfilled in ireland; trinity college and the queen's colleges are accessible to all students, without regard to their religion or no religion; these have a perfectly equal right to share in the government and the honours of institutions thrown completely open. but those who argue in this way either shut their eyes to facts, or will not perceive that this fine 'liberalism' in ireland works sheer injustice. catholics are but a handful of students in trinity college and the queen's colleges compared to what their natural proportion ought to be; trinity college, if nominally open, is in all essential respects protestant; the queen's colleges as being 'non-religious,' that is, in the view of their church 'irreligious,' are practically avoided by irish catholics; yet the state endows trinity college and the queen's colleges; it starves the catholic university and other catholic colleges, which are thus unfairly handicapped by their rivals. if this is not furthering protestant ascendency in irish high education, and denying civil equality to irish catholics who, in this matter, will not forego the rights of conscience, i do not know what else it can be; it seems to me to be iniquity in no doubtful sense. and are the objections of the irish catholics, in this province, as 'irrational' and 'superstitious' as has been scoffingly said? reverse the case of trinity college: suppose that england was a catholic power, and that she kept up a great catholic university in the irish capital, discountenancing protestant institutions in many ways, how many protestants would enter its walls, how soon would the cry of catholic ascendency be raised? or suppose that oxford and cambridge were made 'non-religious,' as the queen's colleges in ireland are, would not an immense majority of english parents declare that these seats of learning were 'godless,' and persistently keep their sons away from them? the simple truth is that the catholic objections to trinity college and the queen's colleges are really those which, in this matter, have been entertained by the deepest thinkers; to my mind, at least, they seem perfectly well-founded. as to the statement that these objections are those of the irish catholic bishops alone, and are mere 'superstitious fancies,' it is enough to reply that, on two occasions, the irish catholic laity have distinctly pronounced on this subject, and have declared that they agree with the heads of their church. and as to the argument that catholic states do not endow sectarian institutions like the catholic university and other irish catholic colleges, it will be quite time enough to examine this when anything like such a state of things can be found as that which at present exists in ireland. one argument, however, seldom frankly set forth, but hinted at in a variety of ways, has been a real obstacle to a reform of this vicious system; it strongly appeals to british national prejudice, of all aberrations of opinion the most difficult to overcome. 'popery,' it is said, is a 'detestable thing;' a 'protestant' state 'must have nothing to do with it;' to endow a catholic university in ireland, therefore, or any colleges of the same complexion, would be 'sacrificing to baal,' or something as wicked. catholic ireland must put up with trinity college and the queen's colleges, which have been made open to all sorts and conditions of men; its 'conscientious objections' are mere 'bigotry.' this reasoning, which condemns as impious the religion of the greatest part of christendom, would unfortunately overthrow many arrangements by which provision has been made in our 'protestant' state for catholic institutions of different kinds; if pushed to its consequences, it would revive the penal code in ireland, and lead to the confiscation of catholic charities. but though it has still indirectly an effect on some politicians, it is, in its naked simplicity, only the faith of mr. kensit and of those who walk in his footsteps; it is worthy of the philosophy of lord george gordon, of the meekness of orangeism, of the bray of exeter hall. for some time a turn in british opinion has happily taken place; 'liberalism,' it has been perceived, in irish university education has failed; mr. arthur balfour has made himself conspicuous in advocating the just claims of catholic ireland. even as i write a commission is being appointed to consider the whole subject of university life in ireland; there can be no reasonable doubt that it will fully bring to light the anomalies and the unfairness of the existing system, and will recommend that the catholic university, and other catholic colleges perhaps, shall be endowed. in truth, things have already come to such a pass that trinity college, the one institution of which, it is said, 'all irishmen are really proud,' will, owing to the exceptional favour it receives from the state, be placed in grave danger, and the queen's colleges also, if a catholic university in ireland be not established and endowed, in order to secure to the irish catholic civil equality, in high education, through the assistance of the state.[ ] on what principles, then, and by what means, is university education in ireland to be so reformed as to do equal justice to all irishmen, to place protestants, presbyterians, and catholics on the same level, and, especially, to vindicate the rightful claims of catholic ireland? two leading projects have at least been sketched out: the first, the grander and the more ambitious, but, in my judgment, scarcely possible to carry into effect; the second, more simple, more in harmony with existing facts, and, i think, safer and much more easy to realise. the first scheme, following in some respects the measure of mr. gladstone of , but making a marked improvement on it, would aim at establishing and endowing a national university for all irishmen, which should have a power to confer degrees, in common with the royal university now existing, and should have an ample professional staff; it should have its examinations for degrees and for other honours. the governing body of this university should be composed of the heads of the colleges affiliated to it--the element of the castle being excluded, according at least to the best authorities--and trinity college should not be deprived of any part of its revenues, as it was to be under the bill of . two of the queen's colleges probably should be suppressed; but the college of belfast, which has been successful, should probably be made a presbyterian college, at least in the main; the endowments it would receive should be, doubtless, increased. high catholic education should be provided for in this way: the catholic university should be established and endowed, and placed reasonably on a level with trinity college, and perhaps other catholic colleges also; but, in consideration of this assistance from the state, a lay element should be introduced into the catholic university governing body; this should not be composed wholly of catholic clergymen; and the teaching body should be composed of men, chosen without regard to religious distinctions, but so constituted that a majority should be catholics, and that catholic education should be predominant. other catholic colleges might be connected with this institution; and trinity college, the catholic university, and the belfast and all other colleges, should be subordinate to the national university in this sense; their students should be obliged to resort to it, or to the royal university if they preferred it, in order to pass examinations, and to obtain degrees or other honours, there being thus two universities of different types in ireland. education in all the affiliated colleges should be perfectly free, that is, left to the arrangements made by their governing bodies; but a certain standard of proficiency should exist, which, however, the tests of university examinations would probably secure. an irish national university, could it be founded on these lines, would present many attractive features, would realise, indeed, a noble ideal. it would preserve trinity college as a great place of learning, would give presbyterian ireland a college practically its own, and ought to satisfy the legitimate demands of catholic ireland. that its dependent colleges should compete with each other for its degrees and honours, and be friendly rivals in the splendid race of learning, would also be an immense advantage; and the royal university would, doubtless, suffice for students too poor to enter the dependent colleges, and yet aspiring to pass examinations and to obtain degrees. but could a national university of this type be set up in ireland with a prospect that it would succeed or flourish? its governing body would be formed of the heads of the colleges connected with it; these would be mainly composed of catholic and protestant divines: could these, in the existing state of ireland, agree as to the university course that ought to be adopted? suppose that archbishop walsh and dr. salmon, the venerable provost of trinity college, were together members of this supreme board. would the first approve of locke's essay on the human understanding as a subject of examination in the university schools? would the second approve of bellarmine and even of bossuet? dissension, i fear, would be the inevitable result; and in that case 'the castle' would certainly try to gain authority over the governing body, and to place on it nominees of its own, in my judgment, an exceedingly mischievous thing. very probably, too, the state, in the long run, would deprive trinity college of some of its revenues, on different pleas that could be plausibly urged; to this there would be the gravest objections. and how could moral philosophy, metaphysics, and modern history, nay, even physical science itself, be made parts of university studies? how could protestants and catholics be examined in them in common? would it not be necessary to exclude them from university teaching, as in the case of mr. gladstone's ill-starred measure--to close the university to the best works of the intellect of man, to deprive it of the most fruitful branches of learning? i fear the idea of a national university, as affairs now stand in ireland, is not likely to become a reality with results that could be deemed hopeful. no doubt the royal university does, to some extent, have examinations on these debateable subjects; but they occupy a very small place in its teaching; and in a national university this ought not to be the case. a national university would not be founded in ireland under the second project. trinity college would remain completely intact; it would retain its present governing body, its privileges, and its power of conferring degrees. the queen's colleges--that of galway being probably suppressed, and its funds transferred to the college of belfast--and the royal university would continue unchanged; the students of the queen's colleges would probably seek degrees from the royal university as they do at present. but the catholic university should be established and endowed, and placed on the same level as trinity college, as far as this could be effected by law; the charge of the endowment would not be great--it would be perhaps £ , for buildings, and perhaps £ , a year for other purposes; but the students, and those of other colleges to be connected with it, would not be numerous, at least for years; it should, of course, have the power of conferring honours and degrees. in return for these advantages, the state should have a right to insist that its governing body should be in part laymen--the irish catholic bishops have already agreed to this; and the state ought, also, to have a right to require that the secular education it should afford should be good, a security which could fully, if indirectly, be obtained. the advantages of this scheme, it is obvious, are that it would get rid of the difficulties inseparable from a national university in ireland; it would preserve trinity college exactly as it is, an enormous gain for that great place of learning; it would interfere as little as possible with things as they are; and it would do all that catholic ireland could reasonably demand. it is understood that a scheme of this description has the approval of the authorities of trinity college, and of their distinguished representative, mr. lecky; their opinions are of the very greatest weight. the only real objection made to this plan is one made by characteristic prejudice: the education, in the catholic university, it is said, would be bad, and its degrees would be of no value. in the face of the success of catholic university students at the royal university examinations, the first assertion has been proved to be false; and besides, this is the affair of the students and their parents alone. as to the inferiority of the catholic university degrees, there is no reason to believe that this would exist; these degrees, moreover, would have to compete with those of the royal university and of trinity college; if they were really inferior, this would soon be found out, and the catholic university would have to increase their value. this is the true security the state and the public would possess. a few 'present irish questions' remain, on which i may offer passing remarks. ireland is essentially a poor country; her middle class is comparatively very weak; her trade and manufactures are small; the greater part of the community is a celtic race. it has long been contended by well-informed irishmen that many undertakings, which, in great britain, have properly been left to private enterprise, ought, in ireland, to be carried out by the state, as for centuries has been the case in france, a celtic land, as was largely the case in ireland under her extinct parliament. this observation especially applies to the irish railway system. as long ago as , thomas drummond, the under secretary of well-known renown, strongly recommended that irish railways should be laid out, managed, and controlled by the government; but this was inconsistent with english ideas; the irish railways were abandoned to private companies. the results have been very far from fortunate; many of the lines have been badly designed; the irish railway fares are a great deal too high; too numerous boards of directors are a heavy charge; railway communication, in a word, in ireland is of an inferior kind, and much too costly in a backward and poor country. not indeed that the state has not made large advances to irish railway companies, some of these on terms very unjust to ratepayers; but the system is faulty and ill-developed; a reform in this direction is greatly wanted.[ ] as drummond insisted, the state, even now, ought to buy up and direct the irish railways; but this is only a part of what it ought to do in this province. the material condition of ireland is not prosperous; her main river basins require drainage; her whole arterial drainage is in a bad state, and has suffered much from the legislation of , and from the policy of so-called 'land purchase,' for ordinary irish tenants will not keep it up, and their landlords cannot now be expected to do so; these works must be undertaken by the state, or assuredly they will not be undertaken at all. mr. arthur balfour has done something in this direction by the encouragement of light railways in remote parts of ireland, and by the foundation of the 'congested districts board,' an institution that has had excellent results. but this is only the fringe of the subject; an enormous amount of work remains to be done; and this, in the circumstances of ireland, can only be done by the government. in a book which has attracted some attention--'ireland, - '--i wrote these words nearly four years ago: 'an irishman, wolseley, an irishman, roberts, are the foremost of living british soldiers; but there are no irish guards, and few irishmen in our artillery; we see here a want of tact and of sympathy.' time, in this respect, has suddenly brought its changes; has again illustrated the genius of the irishman in war, and, in some measure, has removed a reproach from england. it is true that the conspiracy, which still exists in ireland, did all that it could to prevent irishmen from taking part in the contest in south africa, and that even a petty irish contingent appeared in the ranks of the boers. but lord wolseley had at least a great share in fitting out the largest expedition which has ever left our shores to fight an enemy at a distance of six thousand miles--no other power could do anything of the kind; and without disparaging our other generals, the presence of a superior mind was at once seen when lord roberts was given the supreme command in our army. and the irish soldiery who fought in the campaigns of - were true to the noble traditions of their race; they were in the forefront of many a bloody conflict; and now that a regiment of irish guards has been at last embodied--a tardy acknowledgment of irish military worth--england may rest assured that these men will rival the famous irish brigade of another age, 'ever and everywhere true' to the bourbon lilies, and conspicuous in the service of france on many a field of renown. i may add a word on another subject, in which ireland perhaps has a just claim on england. the descendants of the chiefs, who, in scotland, clung to the cause of the stuarts, have, for the most part, regained their forfeited lands and honours; no such reparation has been made to the descendants of irish nobles and princes, who supported the stuarts in the nobler cause of their country. the representative of the last of the celtic kings of ireland--a man of large possessions and of unquestionable parts--has no place on the roll of the peerage; the sons of ennobled cromwellian troopers and tradesmen have precedence at court over the sons of the most illustrious milesian houses. this is not a mere trifle as may carelessly be said; it tends to revive memories that it were better to forget. can nothing be done to make a graceful concession, which would touch many an irish heart, and would go some way to promote a spirit of loyalty and hope in ireland, which it should be a great object of statesmanship to create and foster? if the picture i have drawn of ireland is correct in outline, there is much of evil omen in her present condition. the ancient divisions of race and faith, the most distinctive feature in her social structure, are at least as deeply marked as they have been for a century; bad legislation has made them deeper and wider. catholic ireland remains disaffected to british rule, despite efforts of conciliation and concessions that cannot be justified; no class in the community is completely satisfied; discontent rankles in the hearts of the landed gentry. the union, indeed, has been successfully maintained; the frightful agrarian disorder of - no longer exists. but the union is not permanently assured as long as the liberal party and eighty irish members demand home rule, and the over-representation of ireland continues; the conspiracy of the land and the national leagues has revived in that of the united irish league; and this seeks to compass the ends of its prototypes by obstruction in parliament and detestable socialistic tyranny. and the frame of irish society has been well-nigh shattered; ruins have been made, nothing solid has been put in their place. an aristocracy, long waning, has been practically destroyed, and can no longer be a support of the state; the bureaucracy of the castle reigns in its stead; but this is essentially a weak government; it can maintain order, but has no hold on the people; the irish democracy, to which power has been transferred, regards it with a dislike and a contempt it does not try to conceal. the country has made hardly any progress of late years; if some improvement in the state of the middle classes appears, agriculture, its leading industry, has perceptibly declined. in by far the most important of irish social relations, those connected with the land, a revolution has taken place; a huge if a veiled confiscation has gone on; the landed gentry have been shamefully wronged; the occupiers of the soil have been most unduly favoured; yet both classes declare they have been ill-treated, notably the last. and the irish land system has been turned upside down, with consequences disastrous and far-reaching; the landlord has been cut off from his estate; the tenant has been encouraged in thriftlessness and waste by law; the land has been bound in a ruinous mortmain, like that which existed under the penal code, and subjected to demoralising litigation, breeding a war of class; capital and fruitful enterprise turn away from it. and, at the same time, in order to lessen these evils, recourse has been had to remedies that are perhaps worse; the system of so-called 'land purchase' has been devised; the result has been to create a class of peasant owners reproducing the nearly extinct middleman, and, above all, to arouse a cry for the 'compulsory purchase' of the rented lands of ireland, an act of wholesale spoliation unjust and disastrous alike. in the position of affairs we now see in ireland, the stability of society has been rudely shaken; the sense of the security of property has well-nigh disappeared; the sanctity of contracts has no respect; the pillars on which order and prosperity rest have been injured; violent revolution has been arrested, indeed, but revolutionary and socialistic ideas spread far and wide. and will any impartial inquirer deny that these untoward results may be largely ascribed to the faulty legislation of late years, and to a system of administration shifty and feeble? and what judgment is to be passed on the thoughtless optimism too common in opinion with respect to ireland? meanwhile, reforms imperatively required are not even attempted; they are passed over or postponed to some more convenient season. the time surely has come to look things in ireland straight in the face; to see if statesmanship cannot do something really effective for her good. this end assuredly will not be attained by breaking up the three kingdoms under the guise of home rule, or by promoting a confiscation the worst ireland has ever seen; still less will it be attained by the quackery in legislation and administration too apparent of late years; nor can trifling and foolish optimism blind the eyes of intelligent thinkers to facts. ireland can only expect to make progress by ruling the community on the just and sound principles to which long experience has given its sanction; and this consummation can only be the slow result of time. appendix the irish government bill, . arrangement of clauses. part i. _legislative authority._ clause . establishment of irish legislature. . powers of irish legislature. . exceptions from powers of irish legislature. . restrictions on powers of irish legislature. . prerogatives of her majesty as to irish legislative body. . duration of the irish legislative body. _executive authority._ . constitution of the executive authority. . use of crown lands by irish government. _constitution of legislative body._ . constitution of irish legislative body. . first order. . second order. _finance._ . taxes and separate consolidated fund. . annual contributions from ireland to consolidated fund of united kingdom. . collection and application of customs and excise duties in ireland. . charges on irish consolidated fund. . irish church fund. . public loans. . additional aid in case of war. . money bills and votes. . exchequer division and revenue actions. _police._ . police. part ii. _supplemental provisions._ powers of her majesty. . powers over certain lands reserved to her majesty. legislative body. . veto by first order of legislative body, how overruled. . cesser of power of ireland to return members of parliament. decision of constitutional questions. . constitutional questions to be submitted to judicial committee. lord-lieutenant. . office of lord-lieutenant. judges and civil servants. . judges to be removable only on address. . provisions as to judges and other persons having salaries charged on the consolidated fund. . as to persons holding civil service appointments. . provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances. _transitory provisions._ . transitory provisions in schedule. _miscellaneous._ . post office and savings banks. . audit. . application of parliamentary law. . regulations for carrying act into effect. . saving of powers of house of lords. . saving of rights of parliament. . continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc. . mode of alteration of act. . definitions. . short title of act. schedules. _a bill to amend the provision for the future government of ireland._ [a.d. . be it enacted by the queen's most excellent majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows: part i. _legislative authority._ [sidenote: establishment of irish legislature.] = .= on and after the appointed day there shall be established in ireland a legislature consisting of her majesty the queen and the irish legislative body. [sidenote: powers of irish legislature.] = .= with the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this act mentioned, it shall be lawful for her majesty the queen, by and with the advice of the irish legislative body, to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of ireland, and by any such law to alter and repeal any law in ireland. [sidenote: exceptions from powers of irish legislature.] = .= the legislature of ireland shall not make laws relating to the following matters, or any of them:-- ( ) the status or dignity of the crown, or the succession the crown or a regency; ( ) the making of peace or war; ( ) the army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval forces, or the defence of the realm; ( ) treaties and other relations with foreign states, or the relations between the various parts of her majesty's dominions; ( ) dignities or titles of honour; ( ) prize or booty of war; ( ) offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between her majesty and any foreign state; or offences committed on the high seas; ( ) treason, alienage, or naturalisation; ( ) trade, navigation, or quarantine; ( ) the postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this act mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in ireland; ( ) beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks; ( ) the coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights and measures; or ( ) copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or profits of any works or inventions. any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. [sidenote: restrictions on powers of irish legislature.] = .= the irish legislature shall not make any law-- ( ) respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or ( ) imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account of religious belief; or ( ) abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational institution or charity; or ( ) prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at that school; or ( ) impairing, without either the leave of her majesty in council first obtained on an address presented by the legislative body of ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights, property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by royal charter or local and general act of parliament; or ( ) imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as defined by this act, or either of such duties, or affecting any act relating to such duties or either of them; or ( ) affecting this act, except in so far as it is declared to be alterable by the irish legislature. [sidenote: prerogatives of her majesty as to irish legislative body.] = .=--her majesty the queen shall have the same prerogatives with respect to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the irish legislative body as her majesty has with respect to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the imperial parliament. [sidenote: duration of the irish legislative body.] = .=--the irish legislative body whenever summoned may have continuance for five years and no longer, to be reckoned from the day on which any such legislative body is appointed to meet. _executive authority._ [sidenote: constitution of the executive authority.] = .=--( ) the executive government of ireland shall continue vested in her majesty, and shall be carried on by the lord-lieutenant on behalf of her majesty with the aid of such officers and such council as to her majesty may from time to time seem fit. ( ) subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by her majesty, the lord-lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of her majesty to bills passed by the irish legislative body, and shall exercise the prerogatives of her majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing, and dissolving of the irish legislative body, and any prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him by her majesty. [sidenote: use of crown lands by irish government.] = .=--her majesty may, by order in council, from time to time place under the control of the irish government, for the purposes of that government, any such lands and buildings in ireland as may be vested in or held in trust for her majesty. _constitution of legislative body._ [sidenote: constitution of irish legislative body.] = .=--( ) the irish legislative body shall consist of a first and second order. ( ) the two orders shall deliberate together, and shall vote together, except that, if any question arises in relation to legislation or to the standing orders or rules of procedure or to any other matter in that behalf in this act specified, and such question is to be determined by vote, each order shall, if a majority of the members present of either order demand a separate vote, give their votes in like manner as if they were separate legislative bodies; and if the result of the voting of the two orders does not agree the question shall be resolved in the negative. [sidenote: first order.] = .=--( ) the first order of the irish legislative body shall consist of one hundred and three members, of whom seventy-five shall be elective members and twenty-eight peerage members. ( ) each elective member shall at the date of his election and during his period of membership be _bonâ fide_ possessed of property which-- (_a_) if realty, or partly realty and partly personalty, yields two hundred pounds a year or upwards, free of all charges; or-- (_b_) if personalty yields the same income, or is of the capital value of four thousand pounds or upwards, free of all charges. for the purpose of electing the elective members of the first order of the legislative body, ireland shall be divided into the electoral districts specified in the first schedule to this act, and each such district shall return the number of members in that behalf specified in that schedule. ( ) the elective members shall be elected by the registered electors of each electoral district, and for that purpose a register of electors shall be made annually. ( ) an elector in each electoral district shall be qualified as follows, that is to say, he shall be of full age, and not subject to any legal incapacity, and shall have been during the twelve months next preceding the _twentieth day of july_ in any year the owner or occupier of some land or tenement within the district of a net annual value of twenty-five pounds or upwards. ( ) the term of office of an elective member shall be _ten years_. ( ) in every fifth year thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the elective members, as the case requires, shall retire from office, and their places shall be filled by election; the members to retire shall be those who have been members for the longest time without re-election. ( ) the offices of the peerage members shall be filled as follows, that is to say,-- (_a_) each of the irish peers who on the appointed day is one of the twenty-eight irish representative peers, shall, on giving his written assent to the lord-lieutenant, become a peerage member of the first order of the irish legislative body; and if at any time within _thirty years_ after the appointed day any such peer vacates his office by death or resignation, the vacancy shall be filled by the election to that office by the irish peers of one of their number in manner heretofore in use respecting the election of irish representative peers, subject to adaptation as provided by this act, and if the vacancy is not so filled within the proper time, it shall be filled by the election of an elective member. (_b_) if any of the twenty-eight peers aforesaid does not within _one month_ after the appointed day give such assent to be a peerage member of the first order, the vacancy so created shall be filled up as if he had assented and vacated his office by resignation. ( ) a peerage member shall be entitled to hold office during his life, or until the expiration of _thirty years_ from the appointed day, whichever period is the shortest. at the expiration of such _thirty years_ the offices of all the peerage members shall be vacated as if they were dead, and their places shall be filled by elective members qualified and elected in manner provided by this act with respect to elective members of the first order, and such elective members may be distributed by the irish legislature among the electoral districts, so, however, that care shall be taken to give additional members to the most populous place. ( ) the offices of members of the first order shall not be vacated by the dissolution of the legislative body. ( ) the provisions in the second schedule to this act relating to members of the first order of the legislative body shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in the body of this act. [sidenote: second order.] = .=--( ) subject as in this section hereafter mentioned, the second order of the legislative body shall consist of two hundred and four members. ( ) the members of the second order shall be chosen by the existing constituencies of ireland, two by each constituency, with the exception of the city of cork, which shall be divided into two divisions in manner set forth in the third schedule to this act, and two members shall be chosen by each of such divisions. ( ) any person who, on the appointed day, is a member representing an existing irish constituency in the house of commons shall, on giving his written assent to the lord-lieutenant, become a member of the second order of the irish legislative body as if he had been elected by the constituency which he was representing in the house of commons. each of the members for the city of cork, on the said day, may elect for which of the divisions of that city he wishes to be deemed to have been elected. ( ) if any member does not give such written assent within _one month_ after the appointed day, his place shall be filled by election in the same manner and at the same time as if he had assented and vacated his office by death. ( ) if the same person is elected to both orders, he shall, within _seven days_ after the meeting of the legislative body, or if the body is sitting at the time of the election, within _seven days_ after the election, elect in which order he will serve, and his membership of the other order shall be void and be filled by a fresh election. ( ) notwithstanding anything in this act, it shall be lawful for the legislature of ireland at any time to pass an act enabling the royal university of ireland to return not more than two members to the second order of the irish legislative body in addition to the number of members above mentioned. ( ) notwithstanding anything in this act, it shall be lawful for the irish legislature, after the first dissolution of the legislative body which occurs, to alter the constitution or election of the second order of that body, due regard being had in the distribution of members to the population of the constituencies; provided that no alteration shall be made in the number of such order. _finance._ [sidenote: taxes and separate consolidated fund.] = .=--( ) for the purpose of providing for the public service of ireland, the irish legislature may impose taxes, other than duties of customs or excise as defined by this act, which duties shall continue to be imposed and levied by and under the direction of the imperial parliament only. ( ) on and after the appointed day there shall be an irish consolidated fund separate from the consolidated fund of the united kingdom. ( ) all taxes imposed by the legislature of ireland and all other public revenues under the control of the government of ireland shall, subject to any provisions touching the disposal thereof contained in any act passed in the present session respecting the sale and purchase of land in ireland, be paid into the irish consolidated fund, and be appropriated to the public service of ireland according to law. [sidenote: annual contributions from ireland to consolidated fund of united kingdom.] = .=--( ) subject to the provisions for the reduction or cesser thereof in this section mentioned, there shall be made on the part of ireland to the consolidated fund of the united kingdom the following annual contributions in every financial year; that is to say,-- (_a_) the sum of _one million four hundred and sixty-six thousand pounds_ on account of the interest on and management of the irish share of the national debt: (_b_) the sum of _one million six hundred and sixty-six thousand pounds_ on account of the expenditure on the army and navy of the united kingdom: (_c_) the sum of _one hundred and ten thousand pounds_ on account of the imperial civil expenditure of the united kingdom: (_d_) the sum of _one million pounds_ on account of the royal irish constabulary and the dublin metropolitan police. ( ) during the period of _thirty years_ from this section taking effect the said annual contributions shall not be increased, but may be reduced or cease as hereinafter mentioned. after the expiration of the said _thirty years_ the said contributions shall, save as otherwise provided by this section, continue until altered in manner provided with respect to the alteration of this act. ( ) the irish share of the national debt shall be reckoned at _forty-eight million pounds_ bank annuities, and there shall be paid in every financial year on behalf of ireland to the commissioners for the reduction of the national debt an annual sum of _three hundred and sixty thousand pounds_, and the permanent annual charge for the national debt on the consolidated fund of the united kingdom shall be reduced by that amount, and the said annual sum shall be applied by the said commissioners as a sinking fund for the redemption of the national debt, and the irish share of the national debt shall be reduced by the amount of the national debt so redeemed, and the said annual contribution on account of the interest on and management of the irish share of the national debt shall from time to time be reduced by a sum equal to the interest upon the amount of the national debt from time to time so redeemed, but that last-mentioned sum shall be paid annually to the commissioners for the reduction of the national debt in addition to the above-mentioned annual sinking fund, and shall be so paid and be applied as if it were part of that sinking fund. ( ) as soon as an amount of the national debt equal to the said irish share thereof has been redeemed under the provisions of this section, the said annual contribution on account of the interest on and management of the irish share of the national debt, and the said annual sum for a sinking fund shall cease. ( ) if it appears to her majesty that the expenditure in respect of the army and navy of the united kingdom, or in respect of imperial civil expenditure of the united kingdom, for any financial year has been less than _fifteen_ times the amount of the contributions above named on account of the same matter, a sum equal to _one-fifteenth_ part of the diminution shall be deducted from the current annual contribution for the same matter. ( ) the sum paid from time to time by the commissioners of her majesty's woods, forests, and land revenues to the consolidated fund of the united kingdom on account of the hereditary revenues of the crown in ireland shall be credited to the irish government, and go in reduction of the said annual contribution payable on account of the imperial civil expenditure of the united kingdom, but shall not be taken into account in calculating whether such diminution as above mentioned has or has not taken place in such expenditure. ( ) if it appears to her majesty that the expenditure in respect of the royal irish constabulary and the dublin metropolitan police for any financial year has been less than the contribution above-named on account of such constabulary and police, the current contribution shall be diminished by the amount of such difference. ( ) this section shall take effect from and after the _thirty-first day of march, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven_. [sidenote: collection and application of customs and excise duties in ireland.] = .=--( ) on and after such day as the treasury may direct all moneys from time to time collected in ireland on account of the duties of customs or the duties of excise as defined by this act shall, under such regulations as the treasury from time to time make, be carried to a separate account (in this act referred to as the customs and excise account) and applied in the payment of the following sums in priority as mentioned in this section; that is to say,-- first, of such sum as is from time to time directed by the treasury in respect of the costs, charges, and expenses of and incident to the collection and management of the said duties in ireland not exceeding four per cent. of the amount collected there; secondly, of the annual contributions required by this act to be made to the consolidated fund of the united kingdom; thirdly, of the annual sums required by this act to be paid to the commissioners for the reduction of the national debt; fourthly, of all sums by this act declared to be payable out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account; fifthly, of all sums due to the consolidated fund of the united kingdom for interest or sinking fund, in respect of any loans made by the issue of bank annuities or otherwise to the government of ireland under any act passed in the present session relating to the purchase and sale of land in ireland, so far as such sums are not defrayed out of the moneys received under such act. ( ) so much of the moneys carried to a separate account under this section as the treasury consider are not, and are not likely to be, required to meet the above-mentioned payments, shall from time to time be paid over and applied as part of the public revenues under the control of the irish government. [sidenote: charges on irish consolidated fund.] = .=--( ) there shall be charged on the irish consolidated fund in priority as mentioned in this section:-- first, such portion of the sums directed by this act to be paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account in priority to any payment for the public revenues of ireland, as those moneys are insufficient to pay; secondly, all sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the government of ireland, whether for interest, management, or sinking fund; thirdly, all sums which at the passing of this act are charged on the consolidated fund of the united kingdom in respect of irish services other than the salary of the lord-lieutenant; fourthly, the salaries of all judges of the supreme court of judicature or other superior court in ireland, or of any county or other like court, who are appointed after the passing of this act, and the pensions of such judges; fifthly, any other sums charged by this act on the irish consolidated fund. ( ) it shall be the duty of the legislature of ireland to impose all such taxes, duties, or imposts as will raise a sufficient revenue to meet all sums charged for the time being on the irish consolidated fund. [sidenote: irish church fund.] = .=--( ) until all charges which are payable out of the church property in ireland, and are guaranteed by the treasury, have been fully paid, the irish land commission shall continue as heretofore to exist, with such commissioners and officers receiving such salaries as the treasury may from time to time appoint, and to administer the church property and apply the income and other moneys receivable therefrom; and so much of the salaries of such commissioners and officers and expenses of the office as is not paid out of the church property shall be paid out of moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this act, and if these moneys are insufficient, out of the consolidated fund of ireland, and if not so paid, shall be paid out of the moneys provided by parliament. provided as follows:-- (_a_) all charges on the church property for which a guarantee has been given by the treasury before the passing of this act shall, so far as they are not paid out of such property, be paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this act, and if such moneys are insufficient, the consolidated fund of ireland, without prejudice nevertheless to the guarantee of the treasury; (_b_) all charges on the church property, for which no guarantee has been given by the treasury before the passing of this act shall be charged on the consolidated fund of ireland, but shall not be guaranteed by the treasury nor charged on the consolidated fund of the united kingdom. ( ) subject to any existing charges on the church property, such property shall belong to the irish government and any portion of the annual revenue thereof which the treasury, on the application of the irish government, certify at the end of any financial year not to be required for meeting charges, shall be paid over and applied as part of the public revenues under the control of the irish government. ( ) as soon as all charges on the church property guaranteed by the treasury have been paid, such property may be managed and administered, and subject to existing charges thereon disposed of, and the income or proceeds thereof applied, in such manner as the irish legislature may from time to time direct. [sidenote: & vict. c. .] [sidenote: & vict. c. .] ( ) 'church property' in this section means all property accruing under the irish church act, , and transferred to the irish land commission by the irish church act amendment act, . [sidenote: public loans.] = .=--( ) all sums due for principal or interest to the public works loan commissioners or to the commissioners of public works in ireland in respect of existing loans advanced on any security in ireland shall on and after the appointed day be due to the government of ireland instead of the said commissioners, and such body of persons as the government of ireland may appoint for the purpose shall have all the powers of the said commissioners or their secretary for enforcing payment of such sums, and all securities for such sums given to such commissioners or their secretary shall have effect as if the said body were therein substituted for those commissioners or their secretary. ( ) for the repayment of the said loans to the consolidated fund of the united kingdom, the irish government shall pay annually into that fund by half-yearly payments _on the first day of january_ and _the first day of july_, or on such other days as may be agreed on, such instalments of the principal of the said loans as will discharge all the loans within _thirty years_ from the appointed day, and shall also pay interest half-yearly on so much of the said principal as from time to time remains unpaid at the rate of _three_ per cent. per annum, and such instalments of principal and interest shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this act, and if those are insufficient, out of the consolidated fund of ireland. [sidenote: additional aid in case of war.] = .= if her majesty declares that a state of war exists and is pleased to signify such declaration to the irish legislative body by speech or message, it shall be lawful for the irish legislature to appropriate a further sum out of the consolidated fund of ireland in aid of the army or navy, or other measures which her majesty may take for the prosecution of the war and defence of the realm, and to provide and raise money for that purpose; and all moneys so provided and raised, whether by loan, taxation, or otherwise, shall be paid into the consolidated fund of the united kingdom. [sidenote: money bills and votes.] = .=--( ) it shall not be lawful for the irish legislative body to adopt or pass any vote, resolution, address, or bill for the raising or appropriation for any purpose of any part of the public revenue of ireland, or of any tax, duty, or impost, except in pursuance of a recommendation from her majesty signified through the lord-lieutenant in the session in which such vote, resolution, address, or bill is proposed. ( ) notwithstanding that the irish legislature is prohibited by this act from making laws relating to certain subjects, that legislature may, with the assent of her majesty in council first obtained, appropriate any part of the irish public revenue, or any tax, duty, or impost imposed by such legislature, for the purpose of, or in connection with, such subjects. [sidenote: exchequer division and revenue actions.] = .=--( ) on and after the appointed day, the exchequer division of the high court of justice shall continue to be a court of exchequer for revenue purposes under this act, and whenever any vacancy occurs in the office of any judge of such exchequer division, his successor shall be appointed by her majesty on the joint recommendation of the lord-lieutenant of ireland and the lord high chancellor of great britain. ( ) the judges of such exchequer division appointed after the passing of this act shall be removable only by her majesty on address from the two houses of the imperial parliament, and shall receive the same salaries and pensions as those payable at the passing of this act to the existing judges of such division, unless with the assent of her majesty in council first obtained, the irish legislature alters such salaries or pensions, and such salaries and pensions shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account in pursuance of this act, and if the same are insufficient shall be paid out of the irish consolidated fund, and if not so paid shall be paid out of the consolidated fund of the united kingdom. ( ) an alteration of any rules relating to the procedure in such legal proceedings as are mentioned in this section shall not be made except with the approval of the lord high chancellor of great britain, and the sittings of the exchequer division and the judges thereof shall be regulated with the like approval. ( ) all legal proceedings instituted in ireland by or against the commissioners or any officers of customs or excise, or the treasury, shall, if so required by any party in such proceedings, be heard and determined before the judges of such exchequer division, or some or one of them, and any appeal from the decision in any such legal proceeding, if by a judge, shall lie to the said division, and if by the exchequer division, shall lie to the house of lords, and not to any other tribunal; and if it is made to appear to such judges, or any of them, that any decree or judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid, has not been duly enforced by the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such judges or judge shall appoint some officer to enforce such judgment or decree; and it shall be the duty of such officer to take proper steps to enforce the same, and for that purpose such officer and all persons employed by him shall be entitled to the same immunities, powers, and privileges as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers. ( ) all sums recovered in respect of duties of customs and excise, or under any act relating thereto, or by an officer of customs or excise, shall, notwithstanding anything in any other act, be paid to the treasury, and carried to the customs and excise account under this act. _police._ [sidenote: police.] = .=--the following regulations shall be made with respect to police in ireland:-- (_a_) the dublin metropolitan police shall continue and be subject as heretofore to the control of the lord-lieutenant as representing her majesty for a period of _two years_ from the passing of this act, and thereafter until any alteration is made by act of the legislature of ireland, but such act shall provide for the proper saving of all then existing interests, whether as regards pay, pensions, superannuation allowances, or otherwise. (_b_) the royal irish constabulary shall, while that force subsists, continue and be subject as heretofore to the control of the lord-lieutenant as representing her majesty. (_c_) the irish legislature may provide for the establishment and maintenance of a police force in counties and boroughs in ireland under the control of local authorities, and arrangements may be made between the treasury and the irish government for the establishment and maintenance of police reserves. part ii. _supplemental provisions._ powers of her majesty. [sidenote: power over certain lands reserved to her majesty.] = .=--on and after the appointed day there shall be reserved to her majesty-- ( ) the power of erecting forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other buildings for military or naval purposes; ( ) the power of taking waste land, and, on making due compensation, any other land for the purpose of erecting such forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, or other buildings as aforesaid, and for any other military or naval purpose, or the defence of the realm. legislative body. [sidenote: veto by first order of legislative body, how overruled.] = .=--if a bill or any provision of a bill is lost by disagreement between the two orders of the legislative body, and after a period ending with a dissolution of the legislative body, or the period of _three years_, whichever period is longest, such bill, or a bill containing the said provision, is again considered by the legislative body, and such bill or provision is adopted by the second order and negatived by the first order, the same shall be submitted to the whole legislative body, both orders of which shall vote together on the bill or provision, and the same shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority of the members so voting together. [sidenote: cesser of power of ireland to return members to parliament.] = .=--on and after the appointed day ireland shall cease, except in the event hereafter in this act mentioned, to return representative peers to the house of lords or members to the house of commons, and the persons who on the said day are such representative peers and members shall cease as such to be members of the house of lords and house of commons respectively. decision of constitutional questions. [sidenote: constitutional questions to be submitted to judicial committee.] = .= questions arising as to the powers conferred on the legislature of ireland under this act shall be determined as follows:-- (_a_) if any such question arises on any bill passed by the legislative body, the lord-lieutenant may refer such question to her majesty in council; (_b_) if, in the course of any action or other legal proceeding, such question arises on any act of the irish legislature, any party to such action or other legal proceeding may, subject to the rules in this section mentioned, appeal from a decision on such question to her majesty in council; (_c_) if any such question arises otherwise than as aforesaid in any act of the irish legislature, the lord-lieutenant or one of her majesty's principal secretaries of state may refer such question to her majesty in council; (_d_) a question referred or appeal brought under this section to her majesty in council shall be referred for the consideration of the judicial committee of the privy council; (_e_) the decision of her majesty in council on any question referred or appeal brought under this section shall be final, and a bill which may be so decided to be, or contain a provision, in excess of the powers of the irish legislature shall not be assented to by the lord-lieutenant; and a provision of any act which is so decided to be in excess of the powers of the irish legislature shall be void; (_f_) there shall be added to the judicial committee when sitting for the purpose of considering questions under this section, such members of her majesty's privy council, being or having been irish judges, as to her majesty may seem meet; (_g_) her majesty may, by order in council from time to time, make rules as to the cases and mode in which and conditions under which, in pursuance of this section, questions may be referred and appeals brought to her majesty in council, and as to the consideration thereof by the judicial committee of the privy council, and any rules so made shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in this act; (_h_) an appeal shall not lie to the house of lords in respect of any question in respect of which an appeal can be had to her majesty in council in pursuance of this section. lord-lieutenant. [sidenote: office of lord-lieutenant.] = .=--( ) notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any act of parliament, every subject of her majesty shall be eligible to hold and enjoy the office of lord-lieutenant of ireland, without reference to his religious belief. ( ) the salary of the lord-lieutenant shall continue to be charged on the consolidated fund of the united kingdom, and the expenses of his household and establishment shall continue to be defrayed out of moneys to be provided by parliament. ( ) all existing powers vested by act of parliament or otherwise in the chief secretary for ireland may, if no such officer is appointed, be exercised by the lord-lieutenant until other provision is made by act of the irish legislature. ( ) the legislature of ireland shall not pass any act relating to the office or functions of the lord-lieutenant of ireland. judges and civil servants. [sidenote: judges to be removable only on address.] = .= a judge of the supreme court of judicature or other superior court of ireland, or of any county court or other court with a like jurisdiction in ireland, appointed after the passing of this act, shall not be removed from his office except in pursuance of an address to her majesty from both orders of the legislative body voting separately, nor shall his salary be diminished or right to pension altered during his continuance in office. [sidenote: provisions as to judges and other persons having salaries charged on the consolidated fund.] = .=--( ) all persons who at the passing of this act are judges of the supreme court of judicature or county court judges, or hold any other judicial position in ireland shall, if they are removable at present on address to her majesty of both houses of parliament, continue to be removable only upon such address from both houses of the imperial parliament, and if removable in any other manner shall continue to be removable in like manner as heretofore; and such persons, and also all persons at the passing of this act in the permanent civil service of the crown in ireland whose salaries are charged on the consolidated fund of the united kingdom, shall continue to hold office and to be entitled to the same salaries, pensions, and superannuation allowances as heretofore, and to be liable to perform the same or analogous duties as heretofore; and the salaries of such persons shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this act, or if these moneys are insufficient, out of the irish consolidated fund, and if the same are not so paid shall continue charged on the consolidated fund of the united kingdom. ( ) if any of these said persons retires from office with the approbation of her majesty before he has completed the period of service entitling him to a pension, it shall be lawful for her majesty, if she thinks fit, to grant to that person such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he would have been entitled if he had completed the said period of service, as to her majesty seems meet. [sidenote: as to persons holding civil service appointments.] = .=--( ) all persons not above provided for and at the passing of this act serving in ireland in the permanent civil service of the crown shall continue to hold their offices and receive the same salaries, and to be entitled to the same gratuities and superannuation allowances as heretofore, and shall be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore or duties of similar rank, but any of such persons shall be entitled at the expiration of _two years_ after the passing of this act to retire from office, and at any time if required by the irish government shall retire from office, and on any such retirement shall be entitled to receive such payment as the treasury may award to him in accordance with the provisions contained in the fourth schedule to this act. ( ) the amount of such payment shall be paid to him out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this act, or, if those moneys are insufficient, out of the irish consolidated fund, and so far as the same are not so paid shall be paid out of moneys provided by parliament. [sidenote: & vict. c. .] ( ) the pensions commutation act, , shall apply to all persons who, having retired from office, are entitled to any annual payment under this section in like manner as if they had retired in consequence of the abolition of their offices. ( ) this section shall not apply to persons who are retained in the service of the imperial government. [sidenote: provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances.] = .= where before the passing of this act any pension or superannuation allowance has been granted to any person on account of service as a judge of the supreme court of judicature of ireland, or of any court consolidated into that court, or as a county court judge, or in any other judicial position, or on account of service in the permanent civil service of the crown in ireland otherwise than in some office, the holder of which is, after the passing of this act, retained in the service of the imperial government, such pension or allowance, whether payable out of the consolidated fund or out of moneys provided by parliament, shall continue to be paid to such person, and shall be so paid out of the moneys carried to the customs and excise account under this act, or, if such moneys are insufficient, out of the irish consolidated fund, and so far as the same is not so paid, shall be paid as heretofore out of the consolidated fund of the united kingdom or moneys provided by parliament. _transitory provisions._ [sidenote: transitory provisions in schedule.] = .= the provisions contained in the fifth schedule to this act relating to the mode in which arrangements are to be made for setting in motion the irish legislative body and government, and for the transfer to the irish government of the powers and duties to be transferred to them under this act, or for otherwise bringing this act into operation, shall be of the same effect as if they were enacted in the body of this act. _miscellaneous._ [sidenote: post office and savings banks.] = .= whenever an act of the legislature of ireland has provided for carrying on the postal and telegraphic service with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in ireland, and the post office and other savings banks in ireland, and for protecting the officers then in such service, and the existing depositors in such post-office savings banks, the treasury shall make arrangements for the transfer of the said service and banks, in accordance with the said act, and shall give public notice of the transfer, and shall pay all depositors in such post-office savings bank who request payment within _six months_ after the date fixed for such transfer, and after the expiration of such _six months_ the said depositors shall cease to have any claim against the postmaster-general or the consolidated fund of the united kingdom, but shall have the like claim against the consolidated fund of ireland, and the treasury shall cause to be transferred in accordance with the said act the securities representing the sums due to the said depositors in post-office savings banks, and the securities held for other savings banks. [sidenote: audit.] = .= save as otherwise provided by the irish legislature-- (_a_) the existing law relating to the exchequer and the consolidated fund of the united kingdom shall apply to the irish exchequer and consolidated fund, and an officer shall from time to time be appointed by the lord-lieutenant to fill the office of the comptroller-general of the receipt and issue of her majesty's exchequer and auditor-general of public accounts so far as respects ireland; and [sidenote: & vict. c. .] (_b_) the accounts of the irish consolidated fund shall be audited as appropriation accounts in manner provided by the exchequer and audit departments act, , by or under the direction of the holder of such office. [sidenote: application of parliamentary law.] = .=--( ) the privileges, immunities, and powers to be held, enjoyed, and exercised by the irish legislative body, and the members thereof, shall be such as are from time to time defined by act of the irish legislature, but so that the same shall never exceed those at the passing of this act, held, enjoyed, and exercised by the house of commons, and by the members thereof. ( ) subject as in this act mentioned, all existing laws and customs relating to the members of the house of commons and their election, including the enactments respecting the questioning of elections, corrupt and illegal practices, and registration of electors, shall, so far as applicable, extend to elective members of the first order and to members of the second order of the irish legislative body. provided that,-- (_a_) the law relating to the offices of profit enumerated in schedule h to the representation of the people act, , shall apply to such offices of profit in the government of ireland not exceeding ten, as the legislature of ireland may from time to time direct; (_b_) after the first dissolution of the legislative body, the legislature of ireland may, subject to the restrictions in this act mentioned, alter the laws and customs in this section mentioned. [sidenote: regulations for carrying act into effect.] = .=--( ) the lord-lieutenant of ireland may make regulations for the following purposes:-- (_a_) the summoning of the legislative body and the election of a speaker, and such adaptation to the proceedings of the legislative body of the procedure of the house of commons as appears to him expedient for facilitating the conduct of business by that body on their first meeting; (_b_) the adaptation of any laws relating to the election of representative peers; (_c_) the adaptation of any laws and customs relating to the house of commons or the members thereof to the elective members of the first order and to members of the second order of the legislative body; and (_d_) the mode of signifying their assent or election under this act by representative peers or irish members of the house of commons as regards becoming members of the irish legislative body in pursuance of this act. ( ) any regulations so made shall, in so far as they concern the procedure of the legislative body, be subject to alteration by standing orders of that body, and so far as they concern other matters, be subject to alteration by the legislature of ireland, but shall, until alteration, have the same effect as if they were inserted in this act. [sidenote: saving of powers of house of lords.] = .= save as in this act provided with respect to matters to be decided by her majesty in council, nothing in this act shall affect the appellate jurisdiction of the house of lords in respect of actions and suits in ireland, or the jurisdiction of the house of lords to determine the claims to irish peerages. [sidenote: savings of rights of parliament.] = .= save as herein expressly provided, all matters in relation to which it is not competent for the irish legislative body to make or repeal laws shall remain and be within the exclusive authority of the imperial parliament, whose power and authority in relation thereto, save as aforesaid, shall in no wise be diminished or restrained by anything herein contained. [sidenote: continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.] = .=--( ) except as otherwise provided by this act, all existing laws in force in ireland, and all existing courts of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and all existing legal commissions, powers, and authorities, and all existing officers, judicial, administrative, and ministerial, and all existing taxes, licence, and other duties, fees, and other receipts in ireland shall continue as if this act had not been passed; subject, nevertheless, to be repealed, abolished, or altered in manner and to the extent provided by this act; provided that, subject to the provisions of this act, such taxes, duties, fees, and other receipts, shall, after the appointed day, form part of the public revenues of ireland. ( ) the commissioners of inland revenue and commissioners of customs, and the officers of such commissioners respectively, shall have the same powers in relation to any articles subject to any duty of excise or customs, manufactured, imported, kept for sale, or sold, and any premises where the same may be, and to any machinery, apparatus, vessels, utensils, or conveyance used in connection therewith, or the removal thereof, and in relation to the person manufacturing, importing, keeping for sale, selling, or having the custody or possession of the same as they would have had if this act had not been passed. [sidenote: mode of alteration of act.] = .=--( ) on and after the appointed day this act shall not, except such provisions thereof as are declared to be alterable by the legislature of ireland, be altered except-- (_a_) by act of the imperial parliament and with the consent of the irish legislative body testified by an address to her majesty, or (_b_) by an act of the imperial parliament, for the passing of which there shall be summoned to the house of lords the peerage members of the first order of the irish legislative body, and if there are no such members then twenty-eight irish representative peers elected by the irish peers in manner heretofore in use, subject to adaptation as provided by this act; and there shall be summoned to the house of commons such one of the members of each constituency, or in the case of a constituency returning four members such two of those members, as the legislative body of ireland may select, and such peers and members shall respectively be deemed, for the purpose of passing any such act, to be members of the said houses of parliament respectively. ( ) for the purposes of this section, it shall be lawful for her majesty by order in council to make such provisions for summoning the said peers of ireland to the house of lords and the said members from ireland to the house of commons as to her majesty may seem necessary or proper, and any provisions contained in such order in council shall have the same effect as if they had been enacted by parliament. [sidenote: definitions.] = .= in this act-- the expression 'the appointed day' shall mean such day after the _thirty-first day of march in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven_ as may be determined by order of her majesty in council. the expression 'lord-lieutenant' includes the lords justices or any other chief governor or governors of ireland for the time being. the expression 'her majesty the queen,' or 'her majesty in council,' or 'the queen,' includes the heirs and successors of her majesty the queen. the expression 'treasury' means the commissioners of her majesty's treasury. the expression 'treaty' includes any convention or arrangement. the expression 'existing' means existing at the passing of this act. the expression 'existing constituency' means any county or borough, or division of a county or borough, or a university returning at the passing of this act a member or members to serve in parliament. the expression 'duties of excise' does not include a duty received in respect of any licence whether for the sale of intoxicating liquors or otherwise. the expression 'financial year' means the twelve months ending on the _thirty-first day of march_. [sidenote: short title of act.] = .= this act may be cited for all purposes as the irish government act, . schedules. first schedule. first order of the irish legislative body. ------------------------------------------------- electoral districts.|number of members.|rotation. --------------------|------------------|--------- | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------- second schedule. provisions relating to the first order of the irish legislative body. third schedule. boundaries of divisions of the city of cork for the purpose of returning members to the second order of the legislative body. fourth schedule. provisions as to superannuation allowances of persons in the permanent civil service. fifth schedule. transitory provisions. the irish government bill, . arrangement of clauses. part i. _legislative authority._ clause . establishment of irish legislature. . powers of irish legislature. . exceptions from powers of irish legislature. . restrictions on powers of irish legislature. _executive authority._ . executive power in ireland. _constitution of legislature._ . composition of irish legislative council. . composition of irish legislative assembly. . disagreement between two houses, how settled. _irish representation in house of commons._ . representation in parliament of irish counties and boroughs. _finance._ . as to separate consolidated fund and taxes. . hereditary revenues and income tax. . financial arrangements as between united kingdom and ireland. . treasury account (ireland). . charges on irish consolidated fund. . irish church fund. . local loans. . adaptation of acts as to local taxation accounts and probate, etc., duties. . money bills and votes. . exchequer judges for revenue actions, election petitions, etc. _post office, postal telegraphs, and savings banks._ . transfer of post office and postal telegraphs. . transfer of savings banks. _irish appeals and decision of constitutional questions._ . irish appeals. . special provision for decision of constitutional questions. _lord-lieutenant and crown lands._ . office of lord-lieutenant. . use of crown lands by irish government. _judges and civil servants._ . tenure of future judges. . as to existing judges and other persons having salaries charged on the consolidated fund. . as to persons holding civil service appointments. . as to existing pensions and superannuation allowances. _police._ . as to police. _miscellaneous._ . irish exchequer consolidated fund and audit. . law applicable to both houses of irish legislature. . supplemental provisions as to powers of irish legislature. . limitation on borrowing by local authorities. _transitory provisions._ . temporary restriction on powers of irish legislature and executive. . transitory provisions. . continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc. . appointed day. . definitions. . short title. schedules. _a bill to amend the provision for the government of ireland._ [a.d. . whereas it is expedient that without impairing or restricting the supreme authority of parliament, an irish legislature should be created for such purposes in ireland as in this act mentioned: be it therefore enacted by the queen's most excellent majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:-- part i. _legislative authority._ [sidenote: establishment of irish legislature.] = .= on and after the appointed day there shall be in ireland a legislature consisting of her majesty the queen and of two houses, the legislative council and the legislative assembly. [sidenote: powers of irish legislature.] = .= with the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this act mentioned, there shall be granted to the irish legislature power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of ireland in respect of matters exclusively relating to ireland or some part thereof. [sidenote: exceptions from powers of irish legislature.] = .= the irish legislature shall not have power to make powers of laws respect of the following matters or any of them:-- ( ) the crown, or the succession to the crown, or a regency; or the lord-lieutenant as representative of the crown; or ( ) the making of peace or war or matters arising from a state of war; or ( ) naval or military forces, or the defence of the realm; or ( ) treaties and other relations with foreign states, or the relations between different parts of her majesty's dominions, or offences connected with such treaties or relations; or ( ) dignities or titles of honour; or ( ) treason, treason-felony, alienage or naturalisation; or ( ) trade with any place out of ireland; or quarantine, or navigation (except as respects inland waters and local health or harbour regulations); or ( ) beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks (except so far as they can consistently with any general act of parliament be constructed or maintained by a local harbour authority); or ( ) coinage; legal tender; or the standard of weights and measures; or ( ) trade marks, merchandise marks, copyright, or patent rights. any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. [sidenote: restrictions on powers of irish legislature.] = .= the powers of the irish legislature shall not extend to the making of any law-- ( ) respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or ( ) imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account of religious belief; or ( ) abrogating or prejudicially affecting the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational institution or charity; or ( ) prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money, without attending the religious instruction at that school; or ( ) whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or may be denied the equal protection of the laws, or whereby private property may be taken without just compensation; or ( ) whereby any existing corporation incorporated by royal charter or by any local or general act of parliament (not being a corporation raising for public purposes taxes, rates, cess, dues, or tolls, or administering funds so raised) may, unless it consents, or the leave of her majesty is first obtained on address from the two houses of the irish legislature, be deprived of its rights, privileges, or property without due process of law; or ( ) whereby any inhabitant of the united kingdom may be deprived of equal rights as respects public sea fisheries. any law made in contravention of this section shall be void. _executive authority._ [sidenote: executive power in ireland.] = .=--( ) the executive power in ireland shall continue vested in her majesty the queen, and the lord-lieutenant, on behalf of her majesty, shall exercise any prerogatives or other executive power of the queen the exercise of which may be delegated to him by her majesty, and shall, in her majesty's name, summon, prorogue, and dissolve the irish legislature. ( ) there shall be an executive committee of the privy council of ireland to aid and advise in the government of ireland, being of such numbers, and comprising persons holding such offices, as her majesty may think fit, or as may be directed by irish act. ( ) the lord-lieutenant shall, on the advice of the said executive committee, give or withhold the assent of her majesty to bills passed by the two houses of the irish legislature, subject nevertheless to any instructions given by her majesty in respect of any such bill. _constitution of legislature._ [sidenote: composition of irish legislative council.] = .=--( ) the irish legislative council shall consist of _forty-eight_ councillors. ( ) each of the constituencies mentioned in the first schedule to this act shall return the number of councillors named opposite thereto in that schedule. [sidenote: & vict. c. .] ( ) every man shall be entitled to be registered as an elector, and when registered to vote at an election, of a councillor for a constituency, who owns or occupies any land or tenement in the constituency of a rateable value of more than _twenty_ pounds, subject to the like conditions as a man is entitled at the passing of this act to be registered and vote as a parliamentary elector in respect of an ownership qualification, or of the qualification specified in section five of the representation of the people act, , as the case may be: provided that a man shall not be entitled to be registered, nor if registered to vote, at an election of a councillor in more than one constituency in the same year. ( ) the term of office of every councillor shall be _eight_ years, and shall not be affected by a dissolution; and one _half_ of the councillors shall retire in every _fourth_ year, and their seats shall be filled by a new election. [sidenote: composition of irish legislative assembly.] = .=--( ) the irish legislative assembly shall consist of _one hundred and three_ members, returned by the existing parliamentary constituencies in ireland, or the existing divisions thereof, and elected by the parliamentary electors for the time being in those constituencies or divisions. ( ) the irish legislative assembly when summoned may, unless sooner dissolved, have continuance for _five_ years from the day on which the summons directs it to meet and no longer. ( ) after _six_ years from the passing of this act, the irish legislature may alter the qualification of the electors, and the constituencies, and the distribution of the members among the constituencies, provided that in such distribution due regard is had to the population of the constituencies. [sidenote: disagreement between two houses, how settled.] = .= if a bill, or any provision of a bill, adopted by the legislative assembly is lost by the disagreement of the legislative council, and after a dissolution, or the period of _two years_ from such disagreement, such bill, or a bill for enacting the said provision, is again adopted by the legislative assembly, and fails within three months afterwards to be adopted by the legislative council, the same shall forthwith be submitted to the members of the two houses deliberating and voting together thereon, and shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority of those members present and voting on the question. _irish representation in house of commons._ [sidenote: representation in parliament of irish counties and boroughs.] = .= unless and until parliament otherwise determines, the following provisions shall have effect:-- ( ) after the _appointed day_ each of the constituencies named in the second schedule to this act shall return to serve in parliament the number of members named opposite thereto in that schedule, and no more, and dublin university shall cease to return any member. ( ) the existing divisions of the constituencies shall, save as provided in that schedule, be abolished. ( ) an irish representative peer in the house of lords and a member of the house of commons for an irish constituency shall not be entitled to deliberate or vote on-- (_a_) any bill or motion in relation thereto, the operation of which bill or motion is confined to great britain or some part thereof; or (_b_) any motion or resolution relating solely to some tax not raised or to be raised in ireland; or (_c_) any vote or appropriation of money made exclusively for some service not mentioned in the third schedule to this act; or (_d_) any motion or resolution exclusively affecting great britain, or some part thereof, or some local authority, or some person or thing therein; or (_e_) any motion or resolution incidental to any such motion or resolution, as either is last mentioned, or relates solely to some tax not raised or to be raised in ireland, or incidental to any such vote or appropriation of money as aforesaid. ( ) compliance with the provisions of this section shall not be questioned otherwise than in each house in manner provided by the house. ( ) the election laws and the laws relating to the qualification of parliamentary electors shall not, so far as they relate to parliamentary elections, be altered by the irish legislature, but this enactment shall not prevent the irish legislature from dealing with any officers concerned with the issue of writs of election, and if any officers are so dealt with, it shall be lawful for her majesty by order in council to arrange for the issue of such writs, and the writs issued in pursuance of such order shall be of the same effect as if issued in manner heretofore accustomed. _finance._ [sidenote: as to separate consolidated fund and taxes.] = .=--( ) on and after the appointed day there shall be an irish exchequer and consolidated fund separate from those of the united kingdom. ( ) the duties of customs and excise and the duties on postage shall be imposed by act of parliament, but subject to the provisions of this act the irish legislature may, in order to provide for the public service of ireland, impose any other taxes. ( ) save as in this act mentioned, all matters relating to the taxes in ireland and the collection and management thereof shall be regulated by irish act, and the same shall be collected and managed by the irish government, and from part of the public revenues of ireland: provided that-- (_a_) the duties of customs shall be regulated, collected, managed, and paid into the exchequer of the united kingdom as heretofore; and (_b_) all prohibitions in connection with the duties of excise, and so far as regards articles sent out of ireland, all matters relating to those duties, shall be regulated by act of parliament; and (_c_) the excise duties on articles consumed in great britain shall be paid in great britain, or to an officer of the government of the united kingdom. ( ) save as in this act mentioned, all the public revenues of ireland shall be paid into the irish exchequer and form a consolidated fund, and be appropriated to the public service of ireland by irish act. ( ) if the duties of excise are increased above the rates in force on the _first day of march one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three_ the net proceeds in ireland of the duties in excess of the said rates shall be paid from the irish exchequer to the exchequer of the united kingdom. ( ) if the duties of excise are reduced below the rates in force on the said day, and the net proceeds of such duties in ireland are in consequence less than the net proceeds of the duties before the reduction, a sum equal to the deficiency shall, unless it is otherwise agreed between the treasury and the irish government, be paid from the exchequer of the united kingdom to the irish exchequer. [sidenote: hereditary revenues and income tax.] = .=--( ) the hereditary revenues of the crown in ireland which are managed by the commissioners of woods shall continue during the life of her present majesty to be managed and collected by those commissioners, and the net amount payable by them to the exchequer on account of those revenues, after deducting all expenses (but including an allowance for interest on such proceeds of the sale of those revenues as have not been re-invested in ireland), shall be paid into the treasury account (ireland) hereinafter mentioned, for the benefit of the irish exchequer. ( ) a person shall not be required to pay income tax in great britain in respect of property situate or business carried on in ireland, and a person shall not be required to pay income tax in ireland in respect of property situate or business carried on in great britain. ( ) for the purpose of giving to ireland the benefit of the difference between the income tax collected in great britain from british, colonial, and foreign securities held by residents in ireland, and the income tax collected in ireland from irish securities held by residents in great britain, there shall be made to ireland out of the income tax collected in great britain, an allowance of such amount as may be from time to time determined by the treasury, in accordance with a minute of the treasury, laid before parliament before the appointed day, and such allowance shall be paid into the treasury account (ireland) for the benefit of the irish exchequer. ( ) provided that the provisions of this section with respect to income tax shall not apply to any excess of the rate of income tax in great britain above the rate in ireland or of the rate of income tax in ireland above the rate in great britain. [sidenote: financial arrangements as between united kingdom and ireland.] = .=--( ) the duties of customs contributed by ireland and, save as provided by this act, that portion of any public revenue of the united kingdom to which ireland may claim to be entitled, whether specified in the third schedule to this act or not, shall be carried to the consolidated fund of the united kingdom, as the contribution of ireland to imperial liabilities and expenditure as defined in that schedule. ( ) the civil charges of the government in ireland shall, subject as in this act mentioned, be borne after the appointed day by ireland. ( ) after _fifteen_ years from the passing of this act the arrangements made by this act for the contribution of ireland to imperial liabilities and expenditure, and otherwise for the financial relations between the united kingdom and ireland, may be revised in pursuance of an address to her majesty from the house of commons, or from the irish legislative assembly. [sidenote: treasury account (ireland)] = .=--( ) there shall be established under the direction of the treasury an account (in this act referred to as the treasury account (ireland)). ( ) there shall be paid into such account all sums payable from the irish exchequer to the exchequer of the united kingdom, or from the latter to the former exchequer, and all sums directed to be paid into the account for the benefit of either of the said exchequers. ( ) all sums which are payable from either of the said exchequers to the other of them, or being payable out of one of the said exchequers are repayable by the other exchequer, shall in the first instance be payable out of the said account so far as the money standing on the account is sufficient; and for the purpose of meeting such sums the treasury out of the customs revenue collected in ireland, and the irish government out of any of the public revenues in ireland, may direct money to be paid to the treasury account (ireland) instead of into the exchequer. ( ) any surplus standing on the account to the credit of either exchequer, and not required for meeting payments, shall at convenient times be paid into that exchequer, and where any sum so payable in to the exchequer of the united kingdom is required by law to be forthwith paid to the national debt commissioners, that sum may be paid to those commissioners without being paid into the exchequer. ( ) all sums payable by virtue of this act out of the consolidated fund of the united kingdom or of ireland shall be payable from the exchequer of the united kingdom or of ireland shall be payable from the exchequer of the united kingdom or ireland, as the case may be, within the meaning of this act, and all sums by this act made payable from the exchequer of the united kingdom shall, if not otherwise paid, be charged on and paid out of the consolidated fund of the united kingdom. [sidenote: charges on irish consolidated fund.] = .=--( ) there shall be charged on the irish consolidated fund in favour of the exchequer of the united kingdom as a first charge on sums which-- (_a_) are payable to that exchequer from the irish exchequer; or [sidenote: & vict. c. .] (_b_) are required to repay to the exchequer of the united kingdom sums issued to meet the dividends or sinking fund or guaranteed land stock under the purchase of land (ireland) act, : or (_c_) otherwise have been or are required to be paid out of the exchequer of the united kingdom in consequence of the non-payment thereof out of the exchequer of ireland or otherwise by the irish government. ( ) if at any time the controller and auditor-general of the united kingdom is satisfied that any such charge is due, he shall certify the amount of it, and the treasury shall send such certificate to the lord-lieutenant, who shall thereupon by order, without any counter-signature, direct the payment of the amount from the irish exchequer to the exchequer of the united kingdom, and such order shall be duly obeyed by all persons, and until the amount is wholly paid no other payment shall be made out of the irish exchequer for any purpose whatever. ( ) there shall be charged on the irish consolidated fund next after the foregoing charge-- [sidenote: & vict. c. .] (_a_) all sums, for dividends or sinking fund on guaranteed land stock under the purchase of land (ireland) act, , which the land purchase account and the guarantee fund under that act are insufficient to pay; (_b_) all sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the government of ireland, whether for interest management, or sinking fund; (_c_) an annual sum of _five thousand pounds_ for the expenses of the household and establishment of the lord-lieutenant; (_d_) all existing charges on the consolidated fund of the united kingdom in respect of irish services other than the salary of the lord-lieutenant; and (_e_) the salaries and pensions of all judges of the supreme court or other superior court in ireland or of any county or other like court, who are appointed after the passing of this act, and are not the exchequer judges hereafter mentioned. ( ) until all charges created by this act upon the irish consolidated fund and for the time being due are paid, no money shall be issued from the irish exchequer for any other purpose whatever. [sidenote: irish church fund. & vict. c. . & vict. c. .] = .=--( ) all existing charges on the church property in ireland--that is to say, all property accruing under the irish church act, , and transferred to the irish land commission by the irish church amendment act, --shall so far as not paid out of the said property be charged on the irish consolidated fund, and any of those charges guaranteed by the treasury, if and so far as not paid, shall be paid out of the exchequer of the united kingdom. ( ) subject to the existing charges thereon, the said church property shall belong to the irish government, and be managed, administered, and disposed of as directed by irish act. [sidenote: local loans.] = .=--( ) all sums paid or applicable in or towards the discharge of the interest or principal of any local loan advanced before the appointed day on security in ireland, or otherwise in respect of such loan, which but for this act would be paid to the national debt commissioners, and carried to the local loans fund, shall, after the appointed day, be paid, until otherwise provided by irish act, to the irish exchequer. ( ) for the payment of the local loans fund of the principal and interest of such loans, the irish government shall after the appointed day pay by half-yearly payments an annuity for _forty-nine_ years, at the rate of _four_ per cent., on the principal of the said loans, exclusive of any sums written off before the appointed day from the account of assets of the local loans fund, and such annuity shall be paid from the irish exchequer to the exchequer of the united kingdom, and when so paid shall be forthwith paid to the national debt commissioners for the credit of the local loans fund. ( ) after the appointed day, money for loans in ireland shall cease to be advanced either by the public works loan commissioners or out of the local loans fund. [sidenote: adaptation of acts as to local taxation accounts and probate, etc., duties. see & vict. c. . & vict. c. .] = .=--( ) so much of any act as directs payment to the local taxation (ireland) account of any share of probate, excise, or customs duties payable to the exchequer of the united kingdom shall, together with any enactment amending the same, be repealed as from the appointed day without prejudice to the adjustment of balances after that day; the like amounts shall continue to be paid to the local taxation accounts in england and scotland as would have been paid if this act had not passed, and any residue of the said share shall be paid into the exchequer of the united kingdom. [sidenote: see & vict. c. , ss. - . & vict. c. , s. . & vict. c. , s. . & vict. c. , ss. - .] ( ) the stamp duty chargeable in respect of the personalty of a deceased person, shall not in the case of administration granted in great britain be chargeable in respect of any personalty situate in ireland; nor in the case of administration granted in ireland be chargeable in respect of any personalty situate in great britain; and any administration granted in great britain shall not, if re-sealed in ireland, be exempt from stamp duty on administration granted in ireland, and any administration granted in ireland shall not, when re-sealed in great britain, be exempt from stamp duty on administration granted in great britain. ( ) in this section the expression 'administration' means probate or letters of administration, and as respects scotland, confirmation inclusive of the inventory required under the acts relating to the said stamp duty, and the expression 'personalty' means personal or movable estate and effects. [sidenote: money bills and votes.] = .=--( ) bills for appropriating any part of the public revenue or for imposing any tax shall originate in the legislative assembly. ( ) it shall not be lawful for the legislative assembly to adopt or pass any vote, resolution, address, or bill for the appropriation for any purpose of any part of the public revenue of ireland, or of any tax, except in pursuance of a recommendation from the lord-lieutenant in the session in which such vote, resolution, address, or bill is proposed. [sidenote: exchequer judges for revenue actions, elections petitions, etc.] = .=--( ) two of the judges of the supreme court in ireland shall be exchequer judges, and shall be appointed under the great seal of the united kingdom; and their salaries and pensions shall be charged on and paid out of the consolidated fund of the united kingdom. ( ) the exchequer judges shall be removable only by her majesty on address from the two houses of parliament, and each such judge shall, save as otherwise provided by parliament, receive the same salary and be entitled to the same pension as is at the time of his appointment fixed for the puisne judges of the supreme court, and during his continuance in office his salary shall not be diminished, nor his right to pension altered, without his consent. ( ) an alteration of any rules relating to such legal proceedings as are mentioned in this section shall not be made except with the approval of her majesty the queen in council; and the sittings of the exchequer judges shall be regulated with the like approval. ( ) all legal proceedings in ireland, which are instituted at the instance of or against the treasury or commissioners of customs, or any of their officers, or relate to the election of members to serve in parliament, or touch any matter within the powers of the irish legislature, or touch any matter affected by a law which the irish legislature have not power to repeal or alter, shall, if so required by any party to such proceedings, be heard and determined before the exchequer judges or (except where the case requires to be determined by two judges) before one of them, and in any such legal proceeding an appeal shall, if any party so requires, lie from any court of first instance in ireland to the exchequer judges, and the decision of the exchequer judges shall be subject to appeal to her majesty the queen in council and not to any other tribunal. ( ) if it is made to appear to an exchequer judge that any decree or judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid has not been duly enforced by the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such judge shall appoint some officer whose duty it shall be to enforce the judgment or decree; and for that purpose such officer and all persons employed by him shall be entitled to the same privileges, immunities, and powers as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers. ( ) the exchequer judges, when not engaged in hearing and determining such legal proceedings as above in this section mentioned, shall perform such of the duties ordinarily performed by other judges of the supreme court in ireland as may be assigned by her majesty the queen in council. ( ) all sums recovered by the treasury or the commissioners of customs or any of their officers, or recovered under any act relating to duties of customs, shall, notwithstanding anything in any other act, be paid to such public account as the treasury or the commissioners direct. _post office, postal telegraphs, and savings banks._ [sidenote: transfer of post office and postal telegraphs.] = .=--( ) as from the _appointed day_ the postal and telegraph service in ireland shall be transferred to the irish government, and may be regulated by irish act, except as in this act mentioned and except as regards matters relating-- (_a_) to such conditions of the transmission or delivery of postal packets and telegrams as are incidental to the duties on postage; or (_b_) to foreign mails or submarine telegraphs or through lines in connection therewith; or (_c_) to any other postal or telegraph business in connection with places out of the united kingdom. ( ) the administration of or incidental to the said excepted matters shall, save as may be otherwise arranged with the irish post office, remain with the postmaster-general. ( ) as regards the revenue and expenses of the postal and telegraph service, the postmaster-general shall retain the revenue collected and defray the expenses incurred in great britain, and the irish post office shall retain the revenue collected and defray the expenses incurred in ireland, subject to the provisions of the fourth schedule to this act; which schedule shall have full effect, but may be varied or added to by agreement between the postmaster-general and the irish post office. ( ) the sums payable by the postmaster-general or irish post office to the other of them in pursuance of this act shall, if not paid out of post-office moneys, be paid from the exchequer of the united kingdom or of ireland, as the case requires, to the other exchequer. [sidenote: & vict. c. .] ( ) sections forty-eight to fifty-two of the telegraph act, , and any enactment amending the same, shall apply to all telegraphic lines of the irish government in like manner as to the telegraphs of a company within the meaning of that act. [sidenote: transfer of savings banks] = .=--( ) as from the _appointed day_ there shall be transferred to the irish government the post-office savings banks in ireland, and all such powers and duties of any department or officer in great britain as are connected with post-office savings banks, trustee savings banks, or friendly societies in ireland, and the same may be regulated by irish act. ( ) the treasury shall publish not less than six months previous notice of the transfer of savings banks. ( ) if before the date of the transfer any depositor in a post-office savings bank so requests, his deposit shall, according to his request, either be paid to him or transferred to a post-office savings bank in great britain, and after the said date the depositors in a post-office savings bank in ireland shall cease to have any claim against the postmaster-general or the consolidated fund of the united kingdom, but shall have the like claim against the government and consolidated fund of ireland. ( ) if before the date of the transfer the trustees of any trustees savings bank so request, then, according to the request, either all sums due to them shall be repaid, and the savings bank closed, or those sums shall be paid to the irish government, and after the said date the trustees shall cease to have any claim against the national debt commissioners or the consolidated fund of the united kingdom, but shall have the like claim against the government and consolidated fund of ireland. ( ) notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this section, if a sum due on account of any annuity or policy of insurance which has before the above-mentioned notice been granted through a post-office or trustee savings bank, is not paid by the irish government, that sum shall be paid out of the exchequer of the united kingdom. _irish appeals and decision of constitutional questions._ [sidenote: irish appeals.] = .=--( ) the appeal from courts in ireland to the house of lords shall cease; and where any person would, but for this act, have a right to appeal from any court in ireland to the house of lords, such person shall have the like right to appeal to her majesty the queen in council; and the right so to appeal shall not be affected by any irish act; and all enactments relating to appeals to her majesty the queen in council, and to the judicial committee of the privy council, shall apply accordingly. [sidenote: & vict. c. ] ( ) when the judicial committee sit for hearing appeals from a court in ireland, there shall be present not less than four lords of appeal, within the meaning of the appellate jurisdiction act, , and at least one member who is or has been a judge of the supreme court in ireland. ( ) a rota of privy councillors to sit for hearing appeals from courts in ireland shall be made annually by her majesty in council, and the privy councillors, or some of them, on that rota shall sit to hear the said appeals. a casual vacancy in such rota during the year may be filled by order in council. ( ) nothing in this act shall affect the jurisdiction of the house of lords to determine the claims to irish peerages. [sidenote: special provision for decision of constitutional questions.] = .=--( ) if it appears to the lord-lieutenant or a secretary of state expedient in the public interest that steps shall be taken for the speedy determination of the question whether any irish act, or any provision thereof, is beyond the power of the irish legislature, he may represent the same to her majesty in council, and thereupon the said question shall be forthwith referred to and heard and determined by the judicial committee of the privy council, constituted as if hearing an appeal from a court in ireland. ( ) upon the hearing of the question such persons as seem to the judicial committee to be interested may be allowed to appear and be heard as parties to the case, and the decision of the judicial committee shall be given in like manner as if it were the decision of an appeal, the nature of the report or recommendation to her majesty being stated in open court. ( ) nothing in this act shall prejudice any other power of her majesty in council to refer any question to the judicial committee, or the right of any person to petition her majesty for such reference. _lord-lieutenant and crown lands._ [sidenote: office of lord-lieutenant.] = .=--( ) notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any act, every subject of the queen shall be qualified to hold the office of lord-lieutenant of ireland, without reference to his religious belief. ( ) the term of office of the lord-lieutenant shall be _six years_, without prejudice to the power of her majesty the queen at any time to revoke the appointment. [sidenote: use of crown lands by irish government.] = .= her majesty the queen in council may place under the control of the irish government, for the purposes of that government, such of the lands and buildings in ireland vested in or held in trust for her majesty, and subject to such conditions or restrictions (if any) as may seem expedient. _judges and civil servants._ [sidenote: tenure of future judges.] = .= a judge of the supreme court or other superior court in ireland, or of any county court or other court with a like jurisdiction in ireland, appointed after the passing of this act, shall not be removed from his office except in pursuance of an address from the two houses of legislature of ireland, nor during his continuance in office shall his salary be diminished or right to pension altered without his consent. [sidenote: as to existing judges and other persons having salaries charged on the consolidated fund.] = .=--( ) all existing judges of the supreme court, county court judges, and land commissioners in ireland, and all existing officers serving in ireland in the permanent civil service of the crown and receiving salaries charged on the consolidated fund of the united kingdom, shall, if they are removable at present on address from both houses of parliament, continue to be removable only upon such address, and if removable in any other manner shall continue to be removable only in the same manner as heretofore; and shall continue to receive the same salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore, or such duties as her majesty may declare to be analogous, and their salaries and pensions, if and so far as not paid out of the irish consolidated fund, shall be paid out of the exchequer of the united kingdom: provided that this section shall be subject to the provisions of this act with respect to the exchequer judges. ( ) if any of the said judges, commissioners, or officers retires from office with the queen's approbation before completion of the period of service entitling him to a pension, her majesty may, if she thinks fit, grant to him such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he would on that completion have been entitled, as to her majesty seems meet. [sidenote: as to persons holding civil service appointments.] = .=--( ) all existing officers in the permanent civil service of the crown, who are not above provided for, and are at the appointed day serving in ireland, shall, after that day, continue to hold their offices by the same tenure, and to receive the same salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore, or such duties as the treasury may declare to be analogous; and the said gratuities and pensions, and until three years after the passing of this act, the salaries due to any of the said officers if remaining in his existing office, shall be paid to the payees by the treasury out of the exchequer of the united kingdom. ( ) any such officer may, after _three years_ from the passing of this act, retire from office, and shall, at any time during those three years, if required by the irish government, retire from office, and on any such retirement may be awarded by the treasury a gratuity or pension in accordance with the fifth schedule to this act: provided that-- (_a_) six months' written notice shall, unless it is otherwise agreed, be given either by the said officer or by the irish government, as the case requires; and (_b_) such number of officers only shall retire at one time, and at such intervals of time as the treasury, in communication with the irish government, sanction. ( ) if any such officer does not so retire, the treasury may award him, after the said three years, a pension in accordance with the fifth schedule to this act, which shall become payable to him on his ultimate retirement from the service of the crown. ( ) the gratuities and pensions awarded in accordance with the fifth schedule to this act shall be paid by the treasury to the payees out of the exchequer of the united kingdom. ( ) all sums paid out of the exchequer of the united kingdom in pursuance of this section shall be repaid to that exchequer from the irish exchequer. ( ) this section shall not apply to officers retained in the service of the government of the united kingdom. [sidenote: as to existing pensions and superannuation allowances.] = .= any existing pension granted on account of service in ireland as a judge of the supreme court or of any court consolidated into that court, or as a county court judge, or in any other judicial position, or as an officer in the permanent civil service of the crown other than in an office the holder of which is after the appointed day retained in the service of the government of the united kingdom, shall be charged on the irish consolidated fund, and if and so far as not paid out of that fund, shall be paid out of the exchequer of the united kingdom. _police._ [sidenote: as to police.] = .=--( ) the forces of the royal irish constabulary and dublin metropolitan police shall, when and as local police forces are from time to time established in ireland in accordance with the sixth schedule to this act, be gradually reduced and ultimately cease to exist as mentioned in that schedule; and after the passing of this act, no officer or man shall be appointed to either of these forces; provided that until the expiration of _six_ years from the appointed day, nothing in this act shall require the lord-lieutenant to cause either of the said forces to cease to exist, if as representing her majesty the queen he considers it inexpedient. ( ) the said two forces shall, while they continue, be subject to the control of the lord-lieutenant as representing her majesty, and the members thereof shall continue to receive the same salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and hold their appointments on the same tenure as heretofore, and these salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and all the expenditure incidental to either force, shall be paid out of the exchequer of the united kingdom. ( ) when any existing member of either force retires under the provisions of the sixth schedule to this act, the treasury may award to him a gratuity or pension in accordance with that schedule. ( ) those gratuities and pensions and all existing pensions payable in respect of service in either force, shall be paid by the treasury to the payees out of the exchequer of the united kingdom. ( ) two-thirds of the net amount payable in pursuance of this section out of the exchequer of the united kingdom shall be repaid to that exchequer from the irish exchequer. _miscellaneous._ [sidenote: irish exchequer consolidated fund and audit.] . save as may be otherwise provided by irish act-- (_a_) the existing law relating to the exchequer and consolidated fund of the united kingdom shall apply with the necessary modifications to the exchequer and consolidated fund of ireland, and an officer shall be appointed by the lord-lieutenant to be the irish comptroller and auditor-general; and [sidenote: & vict. c. ] (_b_) the accounts of the irish consolidated fund shall be audited as appropriation accounts in manner provided by the exchequer and audit departments act, , by or under the direction of such officer. [sidenote: law applicable to both houses of irish legislature.] = .=--( ) subject as in this act mentioned and particularly to the seventh schedule to this act (which schedule shall have full effect), all existing election laws relating to the house of commons and the members thereof shall, so far as applicable, extend to each of the two houses of the irish legislature and the members thereof, but such election laws so far as hereby extended may be altered by irish act. ( ) the privileges, rights, and immunities to be held and enjoyed by each house and the members thereof shall be such as may be defined by irish act, but so that the same shall never exceed those for the time being held and enjoyed by the house of commons, and the members thereof. [sidenote: supplemental provisions as to powers of irish legislature.] = .=--( ) the irish legislature may repeal or alter any provision of this act which is by this act expressly made alterable by that legislature, and also any enactments in force in ireland, except such as either relate to matters beyond the powers of the irish legislature, or being enacted by parliament after the passing of this act, may be expressly extended to ireland. an irish act notwithstanding it is in any respect repugnant to any enactment excepted as aforesaid, shall, though read subject to that enactment, be, except to the extent of that repugnancy, valid. ( ) an order, rule, or regulation, made in pursuance of, or having the force of, an act of parliament, shall be deemed to be an enactment within the meaning of this section. ( ) nothing in this act shall affect bills relating to the divorce or marriage of individuals, and any such bill shall be introduced and proceed in parliament in like manner as if this act had not been passed. [sidenote: limitation of borrowing by local authorities.] = .= the local authority for any county or borough or other area shall not borrow money without either-- (_a_) a special authority from the irish legislature, or (_b_) the sanction of the proper department of the irish government; and shall not, without such special authority, borrow: (i.) in the case of municipal borough or town or area less than a county, any loan which together with the then outstanding debt of the local authority, will exceed twice the annual rateable value of the property, in the municipal borough, town, or area; or (ii.) in the case of a county or larger area, any loan which together with the then outstanding debt of the local authority, will exceed one-tenth of the annual rateable value of the property in the county or area; or (iii.) in any case a loan exceeding one-half of the above limits without a local inquiry held in the county, borough, or area by a person appointed for the purpose by the said department. _transitory provisions._ [sidenote: temporary restriction on powers of irish legislature and executive.] = .=--( ) during _three_ years from the passing of this act, and if parliament is then sitting until the end of that session of parliament, the irish legislature shall not pass an act respecting the relations of landlord and tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of land generally; provided that nothing in this section shall prevent the passing of any irish act with a view to the purchase of land for railways, harbours, water-works, town improvements, or other local undertakings. ( ) during _six_ years from the passing of this act, the appointment of a judge of the supreme court or other superior courts in ireland (other than one of the exchequer judges) shall be made in pursuance of a warrant from her majesty countersigned as heretofore. [sidenote: transitory provisions.] = .=--( ) subject to the provisions of this act her majesty the queen in council may make or direct such arrangements as seem necessary or proper for setting in motion the irish legislature and government and for otherwise bringing this act into operation. ( ) the irish legislature shall be summoned to meet on the _first tuesday in september, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four_, and the first election of members of the two houses of the irish legislature shall be held at such time before that day as may be fixed by her majesty in council. ( ) upon the first meeting of the irish legislature the members of the house of commons then sitting for irish constituencies, including the members for dublin university, shall vacate their seats, and writs shall, as soon as conveniently may be, be issued by the lord chancellor of ireland for the purpose of holding an election of members to serve in parliament for the constituencies named in the second schedule of this act. ( ) the existing chief baron of the exchequer, and the senior of the existing puisne judges of the exchequer division of the supreme court, or if they or either of them are or is dead or unable or unwilling to act, such other of the judges of the supreme court as her majesty may appoint, shall be the first exchequer judges. ( ) where it appears to her majesty the queen in council, before the expiration of _one year_ after the appointed day, that any existing enactment respecting matters within the powers of the irish legislature requires adaptation to ireland, whether-- (_a_) by the substitution of the lord-lieutenant in council, or of any departments or office of the executive government in ireland, for her majesty in council, a secretary of state, the treasury, the postmaster-general, the board of inland revenue, or other public department or offices in great britain; or (_b_) by the substitution of the irish consolidated fund or moneys provided by the irish legislature for the consolidated fund of the united kingdom, or moneys provided by parliament, or (_c_) by the substitution or confirmation by, or other act to be done by or to, the irish legislature for confirmation by or other act to be done by or to parliament; or (_d_) by any other adaptation; her majesty, by order in council, may make that adaptation. ( ) her majesty the queen in council may provide for the transfer of such property, rights, and liabilities, and the doing of such other things as may appear to her majesty necessary or proper for carrying into effect this act or any order in council under this act. ( ) an order in council under this section may make an adaptation or provide for a transfer either unconditionally or subject to such exceptions, conditions, and restrictions as may seem expedient. ( ) the draft of every order in council under this section shall be laid before both houses of parliament for not less than two months before it is made, and such order when made shall, subject as respects ireland to the provisions of an irish act, have full effect, but shall not interfere with the continued application to any place, authority, person, or thing, not in ireland, of the enactment to which the order relates. [sidenote: continuance of existing laws, courts, offices, etc.] = .=--except as otherwise provided by this act, all existing laws, institutions, authorities, and officers in ireland, whether judicial, administrative, or ministerial, and all existing taxes in ireland shall continue as if this act had not passed, but with the modifications necessary for adapting the same to this act, and subject to be repealed, abolished, altered, and adapted in the manner and to the extent authorised by this act. [sidenote: appointed day.] = .=--subject as in this act mentioned the appointed day for the purposes of this act shall be the day of the first meeting of the irish legislature, or such other day not more than _seven_ months earlier or later as may be fixed by order of her majesty in council either generally or with reference to any particular provision of this act, and different days may be appointed for different purposes and different provisions of this act, whether contained in the same section or in different sections. [sidenote: definitions.] = .=--in this act unless the context otherwise requires-- the expression 'existing' means existing at the passing of this act. the expression 'constituency' means a parliamentary constituency or a county or borough returning a member or members to serve in either house of the irish legislature, as the case requires, and the expression 'parliamentary constituency' means any county, borough, or university returning a member or members to serve in parliament. the expression 'parliamentary elector' means a person entitled to be registered as a voter at a parliamentary election. the expression 'parliamentary election' means the election of a member to serve in parliament. the expression 'tax' includes duties and fees, and the expression 'duties of excise' does not include licence duties. the expression 'foreign mails' means all postal packets, whether letters, parcels, or other packets, posted in the united kingdom and sent to a place out of the united kingdom, or posted in a place out of the united kingdom and sent to a place in the united kingdom, or in transit through the united kingdom to a place out of the united kingdom. the expression 'telegraphic line' has the same meaning as in the telegraphs acts, to . the expression 'duties on postage' includes all rates and sums chargeable for or in respect of postal packets, money orders, or telegrams, or otherwise under the post-office acts or the telegraph act, . the expression 'irish act' means a law made by the irish legislature. [sidenote: & vict. c. . & vict. c. . & vict. c. . will. , and vict. c. . & vict. c. . & vict. c. .] the expression 'election laws' means the laws relating to the election of members to serve in parliament, other than those relating to the qualification of electors, and includes all the laws respecting the registration of electors, the issue and execution of writs, the creation of polling districts, the taking of the poll, the questioning of elections, corrupt and illegal practices, the disqualification of members, and the vacating of seats. the expression 'rateable value' means the annual rateable value under the irish valuation acts. the expression 'salary' includes remuneration, allowances, and emoluments. the expression 'pension' includes superannuation allowance. [sidenote: short title.] = .=--this act may be cited as the irish government act, . schedules. first schedule: legislative council--constituencies and number of councillors. ------------------------------------------ constituencies. | councillors. ---------------------------|-------------- antrim county | three armagh county | one belfast borough | two carlow county | one cavan county | one clare county | one cork county-- | east riding | three west riding | one cork borough | one donegal county | one down county | three dublin county | three " borough | two fermanagh county | one galway county | two kerry county | one kildare county | one kilkenny county | one king's county | one leitrim and sligo counties | one limerick county | two londonderry county | one longford county | one louth county | one mayo county | one meath county | one monaghan county | one queen's county | one roscommon county | one tipperary county | two tyrone county | one waterford county | one westmeath county | one wexford county | one wicklow county | one ---------------------------|-------------- | forty-eight ------------------------------------------ the expression 'borough' in this schedule means an existing parliamentary borough. counties of cities and towns not named in this schedule shall be combined with the county at large in which they are included for parliamentary elections, and if not so included, then with the county at large bearing the same name. a borough named in this schedule shall not for the purposes of this schedule form part of any other constituency. second schedule: irish members in the house of commons. --------------------------------------------------- | number of members constituency. | for house | of commons. ------------------------------|-------------------- antrim county | three armagh county | two belfast borough (in divisions |} as mentioned below) |} four carlow county | one cavan county | two clare county | two cork county (in divisions |} as mentioned below) |} five cork borough | two donegal county | three down county | three dublin county | two " borough (in divisions |} as mentioned below) |} four fermanagh county | one galway county | three " borough | one kerry county | three kildare county | one kilkenny county | one " borough | one king's county | one leitrim county | two limerick county | two " borough | one londonderry county | two " borough | one longford county | one louth county | one mayo county | three meath county | two monaghan county | two newry borough | one queen's county | one roscommon county | two sligo county | two tipperary county | three tyrone county | three waterford county | one " borough | one westmeath county | one wexford county | two wicklow county | one ------------------------------|-------------------- | eighty --------------------------------------------------- ( ) in this schedule the expression 'borough' means an existing parliamentary borough. ( ) in the parliamentary boroughs of belfast and dublin, one member shall be returned by each of the existing parliamentary divisions of those boroughs, and the law relating to the divisions of boroughs shall apply accordingly. ( ) the county of cork shall be divided into two divisions, consisting of the east riding and the west riding, and three members shall be elected by the east riding, and two members shall be elected by the west riding; and the law relating to divisions of counties shall apply to these divisions. third schedule: finance-imperial liabilities, expenditure, and miscellaneous revenue. _liabilities._ for the purposes of this act, 'imperial liabilities' consist of:-- ( ) the funded and unfunded debt of the united kingdom, inclusive of terminable annuities paid out of the permanent annual charge for the national debt, and inclusive of the cost of the management of the said funded and unfunded debt, but exclusive of the local loans stock and guaranteed land stock, and the cost of the management thereof; and ( ) all other charges on the consolidated fund of the united kingdom for the repayment of borrowed money, or to fulfil a guarantee. _expenditure._ for the purpose of this act imperial expenditure consists of expenditure for the following services:-- . naval and military expenditure (including greenwich hospital). . civil expenditure, that is to say-- (_a_) civil list and royal family. (_b_) salaries, pensions, allowances, and incidental expenses of-- (i.) lord-lieutenant of ireland. (ii.) exchequer judges in ireland. (_c_) buildings, works, salaries, pensions, printing, stationery, allowances, and incidental expenses of-- (i.) parliament; (ii.) national debt commissioners; (iii.) foreign office and diplomatic and consular service, including secret service, special services, and telegraph subsidies; (iv.) colonial office, including special services and telegraph subsidies; (v.) privy council; (vi.) board of trade, including the mercantile marine fund, patent office, railway commission, and wreck commission, but excluding bankruptcy; (vii.) mint; (viii.) meteorological society; (ix.) slave trade service. (_d_) foreign mails and telegraphic communication with places outside the united kingdom. _revenue._ for the purposes of this act the public revenue to a portion of which ireland may claim to be entitled consists of revenue from the following sources:-- . suez canal shares or payments on account thereof. . loans and advances to foreign countries. . annual payments by british possessions. . fees, stamps, and extra receipts received by departments, the expenses of which are part of the imperial expenditure. . small branches of the hereditary revenues of the crown. . foreshores. fourth schedule: provisions as to post office. ( ) the postmaster-general shall pay to the irish post office in respect of any foreign mails sent through ireland and the irish post office shall pay to the postmaster-general in respect of any foreign mails sent through great britain, such sum as may be agreed upon for the carriage of those mails in ireland or great britain, as the case may be. ( ) the irish post office shall pay to the postmaster-general; (i.) one-half of the expense of the packet service and submarine telegraph lines between great britain and ireland after deducting from that expense of the sum fixed by the postmaster-general as incurred on account of foreign mails or telegraphic communication with a place out of the united kingdom, as the case may be; and (ii.) five per cent. of the expenses of the conveyance outside the united kingdom of foreign mails, and of the transmission of telegrams to places outside the united kingdom; and (iii.) such proportion of the receipts for telegrams to places out of the united kingdom as is due in respect of the transmission outside the united kingdom of such telegrams. ( ) the postmaster-general and the irish post office respectively shall pay to the other of them on account of foreign money orders, of compensation in respect of postal packets, and of any matters not specifically provided for in this schedule, such sums as may be agreed upon. ( ) of the existing debt incurred in respect of telegraphs, a sum of five hundred and fifty thousand pounds, two and three quarters per cent. consolidated stock shall be treated as debt of the irish post office, and for paying the dividends on and redeeming such stock there shall be paid half-yearly by the irish exchequer to the exchequer of the united kingdom an annuity of _eighteen_ thousand pounds for _sixty_ years, and such annuity when paid into the exchequer shall be forthwith paid to the national debt commissioners and applied for the reduction of the national debt. ( ) the postmaster-general and the irish post office may agree on the facilities to be afforded by the irish post office in ireland in relation to any matters the administration of which by virtue of this act remains with the postmaster-general, and with respect to the use of the irish telegraphic lines for through lines in connection with submarine telegraphs, or with telegraphic communication with any place out of the united kingdom. fifth schedule: regulations as to gratuities and pensions for civil servants. sixth schedule: part i.--regulations as to establishment of police forces and as to the royal irish constabulary and dublin metropolitan police ceasing to exist. ( ) such local police forces shall be established under such local authorities and for such counties, municipal boroughs, or other larger areas, as may be provided by irish act. ( ) whenever the executive committee of the privy council in ireland certify to the lord-lieutenant that a police force, adequate for local purposes, has been established in any area, then, subject to the provisions of this act, he shall within six months thereafter direct the royal irish constabulary to be withdrawn from the performance of regular police duties in such area, and such order shall be forthwith carried into effect. ( ) upon any such withdrawal the lord-lieutenant shall order measures to be taken for a proportionate reduction of the numbers of the royal irish constabulary, and such order shall be duly executed. ( ) upon the executive committee of the privy council in ireland certifying to the lord-lieutenant that adequate local police forces have been established in every part of ireland, then subject to the provisions of this act, the lord-lieutenant shall within six months after such certificate, order measures to be taken for causing the whole of the royal irish constabulary to cease to exist as a police force, and such order shall be duly executed. ( ) where the area in which a local police force is established is part of the dublin metropolitan police district, the foregoing regulations shall apply to the dublin metropolitan police in like manner as if that force were the royal irish constabulary. part ii.--regulations as to gratuities and pensions for the royal irish constabulary and dublin metropolitan police. seventh schedule: regulations as to houses of the legislature and the members thereof. _legislative council._ ( ) there shall be a separate register of electors of councillors of the legislative council which shall be made, until otherwise provided by irish act, in like manner as the parliamentary register of electors. ( ) where, for the election of councillors, any counties are combined so as to form one constituency, then until otherwise provided by irish act, (_a_) the returning officer for the whole constituency shall be that one of the returning officers for parliamentary elections for those counties to whom the writ is addressed, and the writ shall be addressed to the returning officer for the constituency with the largest population, according to the census of . (_b_) the returning officer shall have the same authority throughout the whole constituency as a returning officer to a parliamentary election for a county has in the county. (_c_) the registers of electors of each county shall jointly be the register of electors for the constituency. (_d_) for the purposes of this schedule 'county' includes a county of a city or town, and this schedule, and the law relating to the qualification of electors, shall apply, as if the county of a city or town formed part of the county at large with which it is combined, and the qualification in the county of a city or town shall be the same as in such county at large. ( ) writs shall be issued for the election of councillors at such time not less than one or more than three months before the day for the periodical retirement of councillors as the lord-lieutenant in council may fix. ( ) the day for the periodical retirement of councillors shall, until otherwise provided by irish act, be the last day of august in every fourth year. ( ) for the purposes of such retirement, the constituencies shall be divided into two equal divisions, and the constituencies in each province shall be divided as nearly as may be equally between those divisions, and constituencies returning two or more members shall be treated as two or more constituencies, and placed in both divisions. ( ) subject as aforesaid, the particular constituencies which are to be in each division shall be determined by lot. ( ) the said division and lot shall be made and conducted before the appointed day in manner directed by the lord-lieutenant in council. ( ) the first councillors elected for the constituencies in the first division shall retire on the first day of retirement which occurs after the first meeting of the irish legislature, and the first councillors for the constituencies in the second division shall retire on the second day of retirement after that meeting. ( ) any casual vacancy among the councillors shall be filled by a new election, but the councillor filling the vacancy shall retire at the time at which the vacating councillor would have retired. _legislative assembly._ ( ) the parliamentary register of electors for the time being shall, until otherwise provided by irish act, be the register of electors of the legislative assembly. _both houses._ ( ) until otherwise provided by irish act, the lord-lieutenant in council may make regulations for adapting the existing election laws to the election of members of the two houses of the legislature. ( ) annual sessions of the legislature shall be held. ( ) any peer, whether of the united kingdom, great britain, england, scotland, or ireland, shall be qualified to be a member of either house. ( ) a member of either house may by writing under his hand resign his seat, and the same shall thereupon be vacant. ( ) the same person shall not be a member of both houses. ( ) until otherwise provided by irish act, if the same person is elected to a seat in each house, he shall, before the eighth day after the next sitting of either house, by written notice, elect in which house he will serve, and upon such election his seat in the other house shall be vacant, and if he does not so elect, his seat in both houses shall be vacant. ( ) until otherwise provided by irish act, any such notice electing in which house a person will sit, or any notice of resignation, shall be given in manner directed by the standing orders of the houses, and if there is no such direction, shall be given to the lord-lieutenant. ( ) the powers of either house shall not be affected by any vacancy therein, or any defect in the election or qualification of any member thereof. ( ) until otherwise provided by irish act, the holders of such irish offices as may be named by order of the queen in council before the appointed day, shall be entitled to be elected to and sit in either house, notwithstanding that they hold offices under the crown, but on acceptance of any such office the seat of any such person in either house shall be vacated unless he has accepted the office in succession to some other of the said offices. _transitory._ ( ) the lord-lieutenant in council may, before the appointed day, make regulations for the following purposes:-- (_a_) the making of a register of electors of councillors in time for the election of the first councillors, and with that object for the variation of the days relating to registration in the existing election laws, and for prescribing the duties of officers, and for making such adaptations of those laws as appear necessary or proper for duly making a register; (_b_) the summoning of the two houses of the legislature of ireland, the issue of writs and any other things appearing to be necessary or proper for the election of members of the two houses; (_c_) the election of a chairman (whether called speaker, president, or by any other name) of each house, the quorum of each house, the communications between the two houses, and such adaptation to the proceedings of the two houses of the procedure of parliament, as appears expedient for facilitating the conduct of business by those houses on their first meeting; (_d_) the adaptation to the two houses and the members thereof of any laws and customs relating to the house of commons or the members thereof; (_e_) the deliberation and voting together of the two houses in cases provided by this act. ( ) the regulations maybe altered by irish act, and also in so far as they concern the procedure of either house alone, by standing orders of that house, but shall, until altered, have effect as if enacted in this act. note i from the 'memoirs of the late lord selborne' (part ii. pp. - ). ... each new step gladstone takes is, as it seems to me, more and more on the side of _moral_ as well as political evil. much as i disapproved of his surrender of last year to parnell, i disapprove very much more of his present endeavour to prevent the restoration in the present stage of the home rule question, of the reign of law in ireland, and of the _means_ he is attempting to use for _that_ purpose. deliberate and organised obstruction in the house of commons, and an attempt to overrule a majority against him there, of more than one hundred, by violent appeals to popular passions outside,--those appeals being supported by representing the cause of anarchy and conspiring against law as the cause of liberty,--by denying the existence of any case for strengthening the law, in the face of a complete and manifest paralysis of law by the power of a seditious organisation, into whose scale he has now thrown his whole influence,--and by denouncing, in the most violent terms, the principle of measures for the protection of the loyal, and for securing the due administration of justice, which are the same (in their general character, for it is not necessary here to go into questions of detail) with those by means of which he himself governed ireland for the last years of his power, and far more consistent with all real ideas of liberty than the suspension of the habeas corpus act, which he introduced in . it was quite open to him (of course) to contend that, by the acceptance of his home rule scheme, the necessity for any such measures might be prevented, and that he prefers and insists upon that alternative,--so much as _that_ was involved in his measures of last year; but it is quite a different thing to denounce the principle of maintaining law and government, and defending those who respect and obey law from the tyranny of conspirators against it, and making the ordinary criminal law of the country a reality and not a mere idle name,--'as coercion,' in the sense of an undue invasion of liberty. to do this, and to appeal _ad populum_ against it from an overwhelming majority in parliament is _acheronta movere_, with a vengeance.... for a man who, with his attainments, his experience, his professions, his fifty years' public service, his political education under some of the greatest and best men of the time, has three times filled the highest office in the state, and is now on the verge of the grave, so to end his career, seems to me more shocking and disheartening than anything else recorded in our history. it is only the old respect, and old attachment, which makes one search about for the possible explanations, in the workings of a very complex and intricate mind. if (as i trust) the government and the house of commons stand firm, all his efforts in the cause of anarchy will be in vain. the clause as to removing trials to england may have to be given up; but the _permanence_ of the bill (its best feature of all) must remain, if any good is to be done. ... i will spare you a long yarn about politics this time. the g.o.m. seems to be determined to pull the whole irish house down, parliamentary government and all, unless he can have his own way. but i have no fear that he _will_ have his way, just at present, whatever harm he may do in the endeavour. but the struggle is very disagreeable, as well as sharp. note ii report of special commission (vol. iv. pp. , ). _conclusions of the report of the judges._ we have now pursued our inquiry over a sufficiently extended period to enable us to report upon the several charges and allegations which have been made against the respondents, and we have indicated in the course of this statement our findings upon these charges and allegations, but it will be convenient to repeat _seriatim_ the conclusions we have arrived at upon the issues which have been raised for our consideration. i. we find that the respondent members of parliament collectively were not members of a conspiracy having for its object to establish the absolute independence of ireland, but we find that some of them, together with mr. davitt, established and joined in the land league organisation with the intention by its means to bring about the absolute independence of ireland as a separate nation. the names of these respondents are set out on a previous page. ii. we find that the respondents did enter into a conspiracy by a system of coercion and intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose of impoverishing and expelling from the country the irish landlords who were styled the 'english garrison.' iii. we find that the charge that 'when on certain occasions they thought it politic to denounce, and did denounce, certain crimes in public they afterwards led their supporters to believe such denunciations were not sincere' is not established. we entirely acquit mr. parnell and the other respondents of the charge of insincerity in their denunciation of the phoenix park murders, and find that the 'facsimile' letters on which this charge was chiefly based as against mr. parnell is a forgery. iv. we find that the respondents did disseminate the _irish world_ and other newspapers tending to incite to sedition and the commission of other crime. v. we find that the respondents did not directly incite persons to the commission of crime other than intimidation, but that they did incite to intimidation, and that the consequence of that incitement was that crime and outrage were committed by the persons incited. we find that it has not been proved that the respondents made payments for the purpose of inciting persons to commit crime. vi. we find as to the allegation that the respondents did nothing to prevent crime and expressed no _bonâ fide_ disapproval, that some of the respondents, and in particular mr. davitt, did express _bonâ fide_ disapproval of crime and outrage, but that the respondents did not denounce the system of intimidation which led to crime and outrage, but persisted in it with knowledge of its effect. vii. we find that the respondents did defend persons charged with agrarian crime, and supported their families, but that it has not been proved that they subscribed to testimonials for, or were intimately associated with, notorious criminals, or that they made payments to procure the escape of criminals from justice. viii. we find, as to the allegation that the respondents made payments to compensate persons who had been injured in the commission of crime, that they did make such payments. ix. as to the allegation that the respondents invited the assistance and co-operation of and accepted subscriptions of money from known advocates of crime and the use of dynamite, we find that the respondents did invite the assistance and co-operation of and accepted subscriptions of money from patrick ford, a known advocate of crime and the use of dynamite, but that it has not been proved that the respondents, or any of them, knew that the clan-na-gael controlled the league or was collecting money for the parliamentary fund. it has been proved that the respondents invited and obtained the assistance and co-operation of the physical force party in america, including the clan-na-gael, and in order to obtain that assistance, abstained from repudiating or condemning the action of that party. index a administration of the affairs of ireland: its nature and defects, , . agrarian crime in ireland, , , , , . _see_ whiteboyism agriculture, state of, in ireland, , , , , , b balfour, mr. arthur: his successful policy when chief secretary for ireland, ; he establishes light railways in ireland, and the congested districts board, , belfast, improvement in, within the last sixty years, bewley, mr. justice, the head of the second land commission: his theory of occupation right in the irish land, , bureaucracy, the, of the castle, , butt, isaac: the true author of the conception of home rule, ; his work on irish federalism, c chicago, the convention at, in : speeches of two of parnell's envoys, code, the irish penal: its effects on the irish land, , . _see_ the question of the irish land, chap. iii., in several places commissions appointed for considering and administering irish affairs: ( ) the devon commission and its report--the mistake it made as to irish land tenure, ; ( ) the childers commission and its report on irish finance, - (_see_ chapter on the present question of irish finance, _passim_); ( ) the land commission appointed to carry out the land act of and its supplements, , , . _see_ chaps. iv., v., vi., on the question of the irish land, in many places confiscations of the irish land, , , , , , , . _see_ chap. iii., on the question of the irish land, in several places cork has not prospered within the last sixty years, cromwell, irish policy of, especially as to the land, , d davitt, michael, inaugurates the irish land league, derby, the administration of lord, brings in irish land bills in , which do not become law, dublin, improvements in, within sixty years, e emancipation, catholic: its effects on irish landed relations, , encumbered estates act: an iniquitous measure of confiscation, and its results, , exodus, the, of the irish race after the famine, . _see_ chap. iii., the question of the irish land, in several places f famine, the great irish, of - , , , ; and _see_ chap. iii., on the irish land, in several places fenian outbreaks in ireland, , ; the consequences, ; the influence of fenianism in ireland after , finance, the question of irish: the financial relations between great britain and ireland a subject of long controversy, ; what they were before , , and under grattan's parliament, ; increase of the debt and the taxation of ireland by the close of the eighteenth century, , ; the financial arrangements made at the union, the work of pitt, , ; his object was to 'assimilate great britain and ireland in finance,' but this was impossible, and why, ibid.; the financial settlement effected at the union--ireland to pay a contribution, but not to be taxed beyond her means, ibid.; the seventh article of the treaty of union and its constitutional meaning, , ; the settlement denounced in the irish parliament, especially by foster and grattan, ; protest of the twenty peers, , ; the union left ireland financially a distinct country, ; the settlement made at the union reduced her to bankruptcy, and how, , ; the compromise of , , ; the real objects of this measure, , ; though theoretically to 'be assimilated' in finance, ireland remained for many years financially a completely distinct country, and the reasons, ; this fully recognised by peel in , ; he refused to extend the income tax to ireland, and permanently to increase her spirit duties, ibid.; mr. gladstone in suddenly disregards this policy, and imposes the income tax on ireland, and raises her spirit duties, ; gross injustice of this increase of taxation, especially under the circumstances of ireland, , ; ireland to a considerable extent 'assimilated in finance' to great britain, but not completely, even to the present day, a fact that should be kept in mind, ; the committee of - on irish finance, ibid.; it fails to get ireland justice, ; mr. goschen appoints a committee to investigate the subject, ibid.; this followed by the childers commission, appointed by mr. gladstone in , ibid.; scope of the inquiry, , ; the work of the childers commission, ; it reports that ireland has been overtaxed at the rate of between two and three millions a year, and that for a very considerable space of time, ; view of sir r. giffen that even this estimate falls short of the real truth, , ; this overtaxation especially severe in the case of ireland, a poor country, - ; the attempts that have been made to answer and refute the report of the childers commission have been grotesque failures, ; examination of these arguments and reply to them--they are either fallacious, or mischievous and dangerous, - ; question of a counterclaim against ireland in finance, ; financial redress which ireland has a right to demand, ; the question should be settled, foster, mr., speaker of the irish house of commons, opposes the financial arrangements of the union, g galway in decay, gladstone, mr.: he ridicules butt's scheme of home rule, ; fall of his administration in , ; his attitude at the general election of that year, ibid.; he becomes a convert to home rule and the probable reasons, , ; the best members of the liberal party break away from him, ; he introduces his first home rule bill, ibid.; he dissolves parliament after the rejection of that measure by the house of commons, ; he allies himself with the party of disorder in ireland, , ; he negotiates with parnell about home rule, ; he returns to office in with a small majority, ; he introduces his second home rule bill in , ; his irish policy in , ; he disestablishes and disendows the protestant church in ireland, ibid.; he makes no provision for the irish catholic clergy, a capital mistake, ; he introduces the land act of for ireland, , ; he declares against the three f's, and announces that this measure is to be final, ibid.; he becomes minister for the second time in , ; he introduces the compensation for disturbance bill, ; he surrenders to the land league and introduces the land act of , ; he makes the kilmainham treaty with parnell, ; the fiscal wrong he does to ireland in - , ; he appoints the childers commission in to investigate the subject of irish finance, ; his scheme of irish university reform, , . and _see_ chap. viii., on other irish questions goschen, mr., refers the question of the financial relations of great britain and ireland to a committee, grattan: he denounces the financial settlement made at the union for ireland, h henry vii.: his irish policy, henry viii.: his wise policy for ireland unhappily prevented, , home rule, the question of: home rule not dead, ; the present attitude of the liberal and the 'nationalist' parties towards home rule, ; it is a 'present irish question,' ; isaac butt inaugurated this policy, ibid.; his plan of home rule, ; the irish home rule party, ; butt's proposals powerfully attacked in parliament, notably by mr. gladstone, ibid.; butt is gradually supplanted by parnell, ; michael davitt and the 'new departure,' ibid.; parnell the head of the land league, , ; mr. gladstone succumbs to it, ; home rule condemned by statesmen of all parties in - , ibid.; mr. gladstone accepts home rule, ; the first home rule bill of , ; its characteristics and the objections to it, - ; what its results would have been, - ; the bill is rejected in the house of commons, ; attitude of the fenians in america, , ; causes that promoted the home rule policy in great britain, , ; results of the general election of , ; the home rule bill of , ; its characteristics and vices, - ; it is a much more objectionable measure than that of , and why, ; strong opposition to it in the country, ; the in-and-out plan given up, ; the bill passes the house of commons by a small majority through the expedient of 'closure by compartments' ; it is rejected in the house of lords by an overwhelming majority, ; home rule is scattered to the winds at the general election of , ibid.; it is not a prominent question at that of , ibid.; the subject cannot be dismissed, ; different forms of home rule, - ; separation a better policy than home rule, ; 'home rule all round,' , ; conclusive objections to this scheme, - ; the union must be maintained, and home rule rejected by the nation, ; the rule of the imperial parliament has had some bad effects in irish affairs, and why, , ; proposal that the imperial parliament should occasionally sit in dublin, and the advantages of this, ; royalty should sometimes visit ireland, ; necessity, in order to guard against home rule, and for other reasons, to reduce the over-representation of ireland in the house of commons, , i ireland in : a revolution has passed over ireland, ; she has made some material progress, ; dublin and belfast, ibid.; improvement in the habitations of the community and in catholic places of worship, , ; material progress of the community, - ; the dark side of the picture, ; decline of several towns in ireland, of manufactures, of fishing industry, and of agriculture, , ; ireland a poor country, ; excessive emigration, ; great increase of local and general taxation, ; the progress of ireland as nothing compared to that of england and scotland, ; the irish land system at the beginning of the reign of victoria, ; sketch of it from that to the present time, - (and _see_ the question of the irish land, chap. iii., in many places); ireland and her three peoples, ; catholic ireland remains for the most part disaffected, despite the great reforms effected in its interest, - ; the catholic democracy of ireland, ; failure of the policy of conciliation, ; presbyterian ireland--its sentiments and demands, ibid.; protestant ireland--its position in the community, , ; discontent of the landed gentry, ; character of the irish legislation of the imperial parliament, - , and of its administration of irish affairs, , ; the anglican church of ireland, ; the presbyterian church, ibid.; the catholic church, ; the administration of justice in ireland, , ; irish literature and education, , ; _resumé_ of the general condition of ireland, - ; the irish policy of lord salisbury's government during the last six years, , ; ireland still 'the vulnerable part near the heart of the empire,' , l lalor, john finton, a rebel of : his teaching with respect to the irish land, land, the question of the irish: importance of the subject, , ; the celtic tribal land system in ireland, , ; the tribes, clans, and septs, ; the partial feudalisation of the land system, ; collective ownership of which traces still exist, ; the anglo-norman conquest of ireland and the colony of the pale, ; the land falls into the hands of great families, ibid.; miserable state of ireland at the close of the fifteenth century, ; henry vii. and poynings, ibid.; sagacious policy of henry viii., especially as regards the land, ; this, unfortunately, was not carried out, ibid.; the era of conquest begins, and of the confiscation of the irish land, ibid.; confiscation of the territories of the o'connors of offaly, of shane o'neill, and of the earl of desmond, , ; rebellion of tyrone, ; all ireland made shireland, and the old celtic land system is effaced by law, ibid.; english modes of land tenure imposed on the people, , ; confiscation of the territories of tyrone and of o'donnell, ; the plantation of ulster, ibid.; further confiscation in times of peace, ibid.; strafford marks out connaught for confiscation, ; beginning of protestant ascendency in the land, ; vast confiscations effected by cromwell, ; his scheme of a general colonisation of ireland fails, - ; results of the cromwellian conquest in the land, ; policy of charles ii. as regards the land, ibid.; confiscations after the boyne and the fall of limerick, ; state of the irish land system when the period of violent confiscation ends, , ; the era of protestant ascendency and of catholic subjection in ireland, , ; the penal code and its effects on the land, , ; mournful period in irish history, - ; gradual improvement in irish landed relations, - ; evil traces of the past: whiteboyism, ; traditions of the ancient land system survive, ; edmund burke on irish land tenures--he indicates a grave economic vice in the land system, ; progress of ireland after , ibid.; its effects on the land, ; evil results of the rebellion of , ; the union speech of lord clare on irish landed relations, ; revolution in the land system in the first years of the nineteenth century, ; the important social and economic results, , ; want of a poor-law, ; the concurrent rights of tenants in the land not protected by the law, ibid.; period of distress after the peace of , , ; evictions and clearances of estates, ; agrarian disorder, ; catholic emancipation, ibid.; its results as regards irish landed relations, ; peel and the irish land, ; the devon commission and its report, , ; its recommendations as to land tenure ill conceived and condemned in ireland, ; the famine of - , and its effects on the irish land, , ; the exodus, ; the encumbered estates act, and the effects of this scheme of confiscation, , ; agrarian agitation of in ireland fails, ; false ideas of british statesmen as regards the land, ; partial prosperity in ireland for some years, ; this largely deceptive, ; growth of fenianism, ; the fenian outbreak, , ; change of opinion in england as regards ireland, ; mr. gladstone prime minister, ; state of the irish land system before the land act of , - ; the land act of and its provisions, - ; merits and defects of this measure, , ; state of irish landed relations after the act, , ; origin of the land league, , ; distress in ireland, and the land league, - ; the compensation for disturbance bill rejected by the house of lords, ; frightful state of ireland and of landed relations in - , - ; the land act of , ; the provisions of the measure, , ; the act is directly opposed to that of , ; the no-rent movement, ; the national league replaces the land league, , ; state of irish landed relations in and , ; the land act of , ; the land act of , , ; the land purchase section in the irish land act, ; the principle of this system false and dangerous, ibid.; the land purchase act of , ; recent legislation on the irish land unjust and tending to confiscation, , . the administration of the irish land acts, ; of the act of , ; of the act of , and its supplements, ; the first land commission--allowances to be made for it, ; principles it should have followed and course it should have pursued in fixing 'fair rents,' - ; the sub-commission--nature of these tribunals, , ; how they ought to have fixed 'fair rents,' , ; criticism of mr. lecky, , ; examples of injustice, , ; faulty methods of fixing 'fair rents,' , ; appeals to the land commission rendered almost nugatory, , ; the second land commission: mr. justice bewley and his theory of occupation right, , ; instance of a gross mistake, ; the fry commission--its report a masked censure on the proceedings of the land commission, , ; mr. justice meredith head of the present land commission, ; conduct of the government as regards the report of the fry commission, ; results of the labours of the land commission and the sub-commission in fixing 'fair rents,' , ; confiscation of the property of landlords, ; excuses made for this false, , ; results of the system of land purchase so far, ibid.; mischievous and dangerous consequences of all this legislation on the irish land; a retrospect of it on the side of occupation, - ; judgment of mr. lecky, , ; retrospect of it on the side of ownership, especially with regard to the subject of 'compulsive purchase,' which the system of 'voluntary purchase' has necessarily made a grave question, - ; judgment of mr. lecky, , ; the irish land system in a deplorable state, - ; plan of the author for the reform of this system approved by mr. gladstone and by parnell, - ; the compensation of the irish landlords must be accomplished if public faith is to be kept and common justice done, - land league, the: reign of terror caused by, ; its teaching and that of the national league, ; ascendency of the land league in ten or eleven irish counties, ; frightful state of ireland due to it, - law, mr., the irish attorney-general of mr. gladstone in : his definition of 'fair rent,' limerick in decay, litton, mr. e. f., a member of the first land commission, local government, sketch of, in ireland, - . _see_ chap. viii., other irish questions, in several places m macaulay, lord: speech on the state of ireland in , meredith, mr. justice, head of the present land commission: a capable lawyer, but bound by the precedents of his forerunners, n national league, the: it replaces the land league, , ; its leaders set on foot 'the plan of campaign,' ; it was founded by parnell, ; its character, ; agrarian side of the national league movement, , ; decline of the power of the national league in , ; it is at its lowest ebb in , ibid. national system of education, - . _see_ chap. viii., on other present irish questions o o'connell: his evidence on the state of ireland in , ; he wrings catholic emancipation from a reluctant government, ; leader of the repeal movement of - , o'hagan, mr. justice, head of the first land commission, 'other present irish questions,' chap. viii. i. local government in ireland, ; the grand juries, their composition and functions, - ; the administration of the poor law and the boards of guardians, - ; the administration of cities and towns--its history, - ; character of, in recent times, - ; how the reform of was brought about, , ; sketch of the local government act of , - ; and of its working up to the present time, - . ii. education in ireland, history of, _seqq._: primary education, - ; the national system founded by mr. stanley--its principles and history, - . secondary education, diocesan schools, ; royal schools, ibid.; erasmus smith schools, ; other schools; the system has not been successful, and why, , . university education, trinity college, its history and the character of the institution, - ; peel founds the queen's colleges and university, ; character of these institutions, ; the catholic university, ibid.; mr. gladstone's scheme of irish university reform, , ; grave objections to it, , ; it is rejected by the house of commons, ; trinity college "opened," ibid.; the royal university, ; injustice of the present system of university education in ireland, - ; two plans of reform suggested, the second to be preferred, - p palmerston, lord: he condemns irish tenant right, parnell: supplants butt, ; leader of the land league, , ; he denounces the conservative party in , ; he pretends to accept the home rule bill of , ; the special commission and parnell, ; he negotiates with mr. gladstone on home rule, ibid.; his fall, peel: his remarks on the constitution in ireland, ; he appoints the devon commission, ; his policy during the famine, ; he refuses in to extend the income tax to ireland, ; he founds the queen's colleges and the queen's university in ireland, pitt: the author of the financial arrangements made at the union, primary education in ireland, - . _see_ chap. viii., on other present irish questions q queen's colleges and queen's university: founded by peel, . _see_ chap. viii., on other present irish questions r rebellion of : its effects on the irish land, s salisbury, lord: character of the irish policy of his ministry, , stanley, mr., founds the system of national education in ireland, strafford: his irish policy, t trinity college, - . _see_ chap. viii., on present irish questions u ulster custom, the, , , , union, the, , , united irish league, the: fills the place of the land and the national leagues, ; speeches and conduct of its leaders, , v vernon, mr. i. e., one of the members of the first land commission, w whiteboyism in ireland, , , , y young, arthur: his tour in ireland, , appendices i. the irish government bill, , - ii. the irish government bill, , - iii. note i. from the 'memoirs of the late lord selborne,' , iv. report of the special commission, vol. iv. pp. , . conclusion of the report of the judges, - the end london: printed by william clowes and sons, limited, stamford street and charing cross. footnotes: [ ] it considerably exceeds , by the figures of the census of . [ ] houses of the first class , , " second class , , " third class , , " fourth class , , these figures are taken from that most valuable publication, 'thom's irish directory for ,' p. . it contains the statistics of ireland carefully compiled from official sources. [ ] there has been a small decrease since . [ ] evidence taken before a select committee of the house of commons, - , vol. i. p. . the whole of o'connell's evidence should be studied. [ ] funded debt held in ireland £ , , £ , , government funds and other securities: india stock, land stock, war stock, joint stock banks, trustee savings banks, and post office savings banks £ , , £ , , 'thom's directory, ,' p. . [ ] see the remarkable evidence of mr. booth, a high authority, taken by the childers commission, 'minutes of evidence,' vol. ii. pp. , . this should all be studied. [ ] 'thom's directory, ,' p. . [ ] report of childers commission, p. -- - - crops £ , , £ , , stock £ , , £ , , [ ] 'thom's directory, ,' p. . [ ] 'thom's directory, ,' p. . [ ] see the striking observations of mr. childers, well worth serious attention: 'report of the childers commission,' pp. , . [ ] 'thom's directory, ,' p. . number of paupers relieved in , , ; in , , . charge in , £ , ; in , £ , . these are the latest returns. [ ] 'thom's directory, ,' p. . assessment of lands, in , under schedule a, £ , , ; in , £ , , . funded property at the same periods, £ , and £ , . these, too, are the latest returns. [ ] 'report of the childers commission,' p. . i cite also the following from the report, p. : 'the income-tax figures are, perhaps, the best and most complete test of the comparative growth of the wealth of the two countries. taking the two years, and , we find that the net assessment for great britain was, in , £ , , ; and in , £ , , . the net assessment for ireland was, in , £ , , ; and in , £ , , . in these thirty-eight years the net assessment for great britain is more than two and a third times as great as it was in , whilst that for ireland has only increased by one quarter. put in percentage form, the figures are still more striking: in great britain was assessed at per cent. of the whole; ireland per cent. in great britain was assessed at . per cent, of the whole; ireland . per cent. in other words, ireland's assessment was to that of great britain as to in , and as to in .' [ ] see on this subject the true and indignant remarks of mr. lecky, 'democracy and liberty,' vol. i. pp. , . [ ] the tone of disaffected opinion in ireland can only be thoroughly understood by a careful study of the conduct and the language of 'nationalist' leaders. i select a few specimens out of hundreds of instances. mr. william o'brien, the corypheus of the united irish league, spake thus at letterkenny in january, : 'if ten thousand frenchmen, or russians, or germans were to land in bantry bay, with a supply of arms for the people, they would walk over the country and drive the english garrison into the sea.' the same worthy exclaimed at a monster meeting in dublin in september, 'english rule in ireland was so bad that they would be justified in chasing the english out of ireland bag and baggage. what was wanting to them, unfortunately, were the guns and artillery to do it.' mr. michael davitt, of land league renown, speaking in the queen's county about the same time, said, 'england is unquestionably the greatest empire of liars (loud cheers and laughter), of hypocrites, and of poltroons, judged by its achievements in south africa, that has ever postured before mankind with a civilising mission.' because the corporation of dublin voted, by a small majority, an address to queen victoria when she paid her last visit to ireland, mr. john redmond, the chairman of the 'irish parliamentary party,' said, in january, , 'it rests with the people themselves to say whether they will redeem the reputation of dublin from the stain that has been cast on it.' so mr. john dillon, m.p., spoke in the same sense, a few months ago, 'the voice of the capital will be the voice of the rest of ireland (applause), that we will not tolerate in this old city that new type of politics which thinks it consistent with irish nationality to cringe and crouch before a foreign queen.' at least two county councils in ireland, and more than one local board, refused to vote an expression of condolence when the queen died. it is painful to contrast these sentiments with the loyalty of o'connell when the queen ascended the throne. [ ] since the above lines were written, there has been a serious outbreak of agrarian crime in ireland in the form of incendiary fires, which may be distinctly traced to the operations of the united irish league. [ ] speech in the house of commons, february , . [ ] the figures were , , against , , : dicey, 'england's case against home rule,' p. . [ ] butt maintained, in his place in parliament (hansard, march , ), that this was the true import of his project. [ ] speech on receiving the freedom of aberdeen, september , . [ ] see mr. gladstone's 'history of an idea,' an apology for his attitude towards home rule at this time, which seems to me to be his condemnation. [ ] for an admirable analysis of the bill, see dicey's 'england's case against home rule,' pp. - . the text of the bill will be found in the appendix to this volume. [ ] for a full statement of mr. gladstone's 'conditions,' see his speech in the house of commons, april , . [ ] 'reflections on the revolution in france,' vol. i. p. , ed. . [ ] report of the special commission, vol. iv. p. . [ ] 'the queen's enemies in america,' p. . [ ] for a scathing condemnation of mr. gladstone's public conduct in these years, see several great speeches of lord hartington and mr. goschen. see also 'the memoirs of lord selborne,' part ii. vol. ii. pp. , _et seq._, and note in appendix to this volume. see, too, dicey's 'leap in the dark,' p. . lord selborne's sketch of mr. gladstone's character as a statesman, 'memoirs,' part ii. vol. ii. pp. - , deserves careful study. mr. lecky's admirable account, 'democracy and liberty,' introduction to vol. i., second edition, is well known. [ ] report of the judges, vol. iv. pp. , . see the note at the end of this volume in the appendix. [ ] for a very able analysis of and commentary on the bill of , see professor dicey's 'leap in the dark.' for the text of the bill, see the appendix to this volume. [ ] dicey's 'leap in the dark,' p. . [ ] 'england's case against home rule,' p. . [ ] the german empire, in which prussia is the leading state, may seem an example to the contrary; but the german empire is hardly a federation properly so called; it is a great military monarchy ruling subject kingdoms. [ ] i feel obliged to refer to these authorities; not in order to stir up resentment against england in ireland, but to point out a most important, if unfortunate, fact in the relations between the two countries. swift, in his 'view of the state of ireland,' works, vol. ii. vo ed. , says, 'we are in the condition of patients, who have physic sent them by doctors at a distance, strangers to their constitution and the nature of the disease.' burke, 'correspondence,' vol. iii. p. , has remarked, 'i have never known any of the successive governments of my time influenced by any other feeling relative to ireland than the wish that they should hear of it and of its concerns as little as possible.' so grattan, cited by mr. lecky, vol. vii. p. , exclaimed, 'it is a matter of melancholy reflection to consider how little the cabinet knows of anything relating to ireland. ireland is a subject it considers with a lazy contumely, and picks up here and there, by accident or design, interested and erroneous intelligence.' i quote this passage from one of the speeches of lord clare: 'the people of england know less of this country than of any other nation in europe;' and this passage from one of the speeches of o'connell: 'we are governed by foreigners; foreigners make our laws.... as to ireland, the imperial parliament has the additional disadvantage springing from want of interest and total ignorance. i do not exaggerate; the ministers are in total ignorance of this country.' this want of knowledge of ireland, too often associated with indifference, has, i repeat, been distinctly made manifest of late years. [ ] these figures are taken from the irish census of . by the census of , the population of antrim and down has increased, and that of every other county in ireland, except dublin, has declined. the over-representation of ireland has thus become more than ever an unjust anomaly. [ ] for an admirable account of the ancient land system of celtic ireland, see maine's 'early history of institutions.' i may be allowed to refer to an article on this work, from my pen, in the _edinburgh review_ of july, , and to the first chapter of my 'history of ireland,' in the cambridge 'historical series.' [ ] in the case of this, as of all the chapters, a list of the principal authorities and sources of information will be found in the preface to this book. for the conquest and confiscations of the irish land, from the norman conquest to the end of the reign of william iii., see 'the statute of kilkenny,' edited by james hardiman; 'the discoverie of sir john davies;' 'the carew papers,' edited by j. s. brewer and william bullen; spenser's 'view of the state of ireland;' holingshead's 'chronicles of ireland;' carte's 'life of ormond;' lord clanricarde's 'memoirs;' sir william petty's 'political anatomy of ireland;' 'macariæ excidium;' and king's 'state of the protestants of ireland.' as regards modern authorities, numerous, and some very valuable, the reader may be referred to froude's 'history of england,' vol. ii. ch. viii.; vol. v. ch. xxviii.; vol. viii. chs. vii., xi.; vol. x. ch. xxiv.; vol. xi. ch. xxvii.; to mr. lecky's 'history of england in the eighteenth century,' vol. ii. ch. vi.; and to the irish chapters in mr. gardiner's 'history of england,' from the accession of james i. to the outbreak of the civil war; to his 'history of the great civil war,' vol. i. chs. vi., xi.; vol. ii. chs. xxvii., xxxvii., xliv.; and to the irish chapters of his 'history of the commonwealth and protectorate.' other modern works on the subject are sigerson's 'history of land tenure in ireland;' 'an historical account of the plantation of ulster,' by the rev. george hill; 'the cromwellian settlement of ireland,' by john p. prendergast; and the 'life of sir william petty,' by lord edmund fitzmaurice. see a review by me of this last work in the _edinburgh review_ of july, ; and also chs. iii., iv., and v. of my 'history of ireland, - ,' referred to before. there are innumerable minor authorities; and hallam's 'chapter on ireland,' vol. iii., may be studied. [ ] 'letter to sir hercules langriche:' 'works,' vol. i. p. , ed. . [ ] for an account of the penal laws of ireland, see vincent scully on 'the irish penal laws;' howard's 'popery laws;' and burke's 'tracts on the popery laws,' a short but masterly work. [ ] for the state of ireland and of the irish land at this period, see the irish statute book from to about , and especially the writings of swift and berkeley on irish affairs. swift, however, is not just to the irish landed gentry, many as were their faults. see also the 'letters' of archbishop boulter, the virtual ruler of ireland during a series of years, and of archbishop synge. reference, too, may be made to molyneux's 'case of ireland,' and to hutchinson's and caldwell's 'restraints on the trade of ireland.' for modern authorities, consult lecky's 'history of england in the eighteenth century,' vol. ii. ch. vii.; vol. iv. chs. xvi., xvii. froude's 'english in ireland' is very inaccurate and one-sided for this period; but his fine romance, the 'two chiefs of dunboy,' contains a brilliant, and, in the main, a true account of the state of irish social life in those days. [ ] by far the best account of the state of ireland, at this period, is to be found in the celebrated 'tour' of arthur young, who wrote in - . see also mr. lecky's 'history of england in the eighteenth century,' vol. vi. chs. xxiv., xxv.; vol. vii. ch. xxvii. the 'irlande, sociale, politique, et religieuse' of gustave de beaumont may also be consulted; but though a very able work, it is that of a democratic doctrinaire. for the whiteboy movements, see the irish statute book, and sir george lewis on 'irish disturbances.' [ ] see burke's 'tracts on the popery laws,' vol. ii. pp. , . arthur young, too, often dwells on this subject. [ ] for an account of this period nothing can be compared to mr. lecky's 'history of england in the eighteenth century,' vols. vii., viii. these contain all the information that can be obtained, collected from every available source. i may refer to my 'ireland, - ,' chs. i., ii. [ ] there is no complete history of ireland from the union to the present time, though the materials for such a work are abundant. i may refer to my 'ireland, - ,' from the second chapter to the end. an excellent and elaborate description of ireland from to will be found in the volumes of edward wakefield. [ ] the best account of this period--the forerunner of one even more calamitous--will be found in the proceedings of a parliamentary committee on the state of ireland in - , and in the mass of evidence collected by it. the evidence of o'connell is full of interest. [ ] i perfectly recollect, though quite a boy, this strong and widespread expression of sentiment. [ ] mitchel's 'history of ireland,' vol. ii. p. . mitchel was a rebel, but an honourable man, superior to the falsehoods disseminated by later agitators against irish landlords. [ ] every one acquainted with the history of irish titles, from about to , knows that this was the case. [ ] 'clarendon,' wrote greville, 'told me he expected the encumbered estates act would prove the regeneration of ireland.' [ ] that great lawyer, lord st. leonards, protested. he had been lord chancellor of ireland. [ ] for the state of ireland during the famine and the years that followed, see 'the irish crisis,' by sir charles trevelyan, reprinted from the _edinburgh review_; and the 'letters' of mr. campbell foster, the commissioner of the _times_. valuable information will also be found in the greville 'memoirs,' vols. v., vi. i may refer to my 'ireland, - ,' chs. v. and part of vi. [ ] for an account of these machinations of party, see greville, 'memoirs,' vol. vii. p. . [ ] i heard several of these most injudicious and ill-informed expressions of a false opinion. [ ] for the state of ireland from the end of the famine to , reference may be made to 'two centuries of irish history,' edited by mr. bryce; to the greville 'memoirs,' vols. vii. and viii.; to greville's 'policy of england towards ireland;' to the 'recollections and suggestions of earl russell;' to parts of the 'life of lord palmerston;' to 'journals, conversations, and essays relating to ireland,' by nassau senior; to the 'young ireland,' the 'four years of irish history,' and 'the league of the north and south,' by sir c. g. duffy; to the 'new ireland' of mr. a. m. sullivan; and to the 'parnell movement' of mr. t. p. o'connor. valuable information as to this period will also be found in mr. barry o'brien's works, 'fifty years of concessions to ireland' and 'irish wrongs and english remedies;' and there are many other authorities. this period is dealt with in my 'ireland, - .' ch. vi. [ ] from the mass of literature on this subject reference may especially be made to 'the irish land,' by the late sir george campbell; judge longfield's essay in 'systems of land tenure;' the 'irish land and the irish people,' by butt; and the 'ireland, industrial, political, and social,' of the late mr. j. n. murphy. as special commissioner of the _times_, i went into the irish land question at length on the spot; and it would be affectation to deny that my letters, since republished, powerfully contributed to the legislation which ere long followed. see, for further information, 'the irish land question' of john stuart mill; 'emigration and the tenure of irish land,' by lord dufferin; 'the new ireland' of the late mr. a. m. sullivan; parts of mr. barry o'brien's 'fifty years of concessions to ireland'; 'ireland in ,' by the late mr. g. fitzgibbon, a master of the court of chancery in ireland; and mr. lecky's 'democracy and liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii. [ ] this fact has been established by conclusive and impartial evidence, which hardly admits of question. it should be steadily kept in the reader's mind; for an idea, largely countenanced by iniquitous legislation badly administered, has prevailed of late years, that rack-renting in ireland was common, nay, general. exactly the contrary has been the case during the last half century. butt, in his 'the irish people and the irish land,' published in , hardly alludes to over-renting; he properly dwells on the insecurity of irish land tenure. master fitzgibbon, a great authority on the subject, in his 'ireland in ,' p. , pointedly remarked, ' estates are under my jurisdiction, in the court of chancery, the rents of which amount to £ , , paid by , tenants. i have been now nearly eight years in office, during which time the rents have been paid without murmuring or complaint worth noticing.... it is well known that my ears are open to any just complaint from any tenant.' the testimony of judge longfield, another great authority, is nearly to the same effect. in 'systems of land tenure,' published in , he wrote thus (p. ): 'this complaint of high rents has been made without ceasing for more than three hundred years. there was never less ground for it than at the present day, although in some instances the rent demanded is still too high; but this chiefly occurs where the landlords are middlemen, or where the property is very small.' these views are fully confirmed by evidence of a later period, to which i shall refer. i may add that, in , i examined the rentals of many scores of irish estates, and was convinced that over-renting was very rare. see my 'letters on the land question of ireland,' republished from the _times_, _passim_. i quote a single instance, from many to the same purpose (p. ): 'it may be asserted, too, without fear of contradiction, that if in some districts rents are too high, they are not so as a general rule.' i have managed an irish estate for upwards of fifty years, and have some claim to be an agricultural expert. [ ] for the characteristics of the ulster tenant right, see butt's 'landlord and tenant act, ,' ch. xv. pp. - . as to the legal authorities on the subject, reference may be made to the learned treatise of messrs. cherry and wakley, 'the irish land law and land purchase acts,' pp. - . a popular account of the ulster custom will be found in my 'letters on the land question of ireland,' pp. - , and a more technical account in a legal treatise from my pen on the land act of , pp. - . the best definition i have seen of the right is one made by the late p. j. blake, q.c., c.c.j. of a northern county, 'cherry and wakley,' p. : 'the right or custom in general of yearly tenants, or those deriving through them, to continue in undisturbed possession so long as they act properly as tenants and pay their rents. the correlative right of the landlord periodically to raise the rent, so as to give him a just, fair, and full participation in the increased value of the land, but not so as to extinguish the tenant's interest by paying a rack rent. the usage or custom of the yearly tenants to sell their interest, if they do not wish to continue in possession, or if they become unable to pay the rent. the correlative right of the landlord to be consulted, and to exercise a potential voice in the approval or disapproval of the proposed assignee.' [ ] i quote a few passages from the speeches of mr. gladstone, and others, on this subject. mr. gladstone said, march , , 'if you value rents you may as well, for every available purpose, adopt perpetuity of tenure at once. it is perpetuity of tenure only in a certain disguise.... the man who becomes a mere annuitant loses all general interest in the prosperity of the land.' and again, february , : 'perpetuity of tenure on the part of the occupier is virtually expropriation of the landlord.... the mere readjustment of rent can by no means dispose of all contingencies the future may produce in his favour.' sir roundell palmer, afterwards lord selborne, said, march , , 'fixity of tenure, in plain english, means taking away the property of one man and giving it to another.' so lord granville, june , , said in the house of lords, 'they might have introduced a bill--which they were determined not to do--adopting fixity of tenure, taking away his property from the landlord, and establishing a valuation rent.' passages of this kind, at least as strong, might be multiplied a hundred-fold. [ ] it is impossible, in a sketch like this, to describe in detail the agrarian legislation for ireland, which parliament has enacted from to this time. the work of butt referred to before is an admirable commentary on the bill of , which soon became law. a brief account of all this legislation will be found in mr. lecky's 'democracy and liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii. the legal treatises of messrs. cherry and wakley, pp. - , and of mr. justice barton, are elaborate and complete. [ ] judge longfield and mr. lecky are much the most distinguished of these numerous censors. [ ] by this time i was an irish county court judge; and i had some experience of reprehensible acts of this kind, extremely few as they were. [ ] it is very remarkable that the stringent provisions of the act against exorbitant rents seem to have been almost unknown to the peasantry, though exorbitant rents were, no doubt, existing here and there. [ ] report of the judges of the special commission, vol. iv. pp. - . [ ] by many degrees the best account of the land league movement will be found in the 'report of the proceedings of the special commission of - ,' republished by the _times_ in four volumes. reference may also be made to 'parnellism and crime,' a series of essays in the _times_; to the 'truth about the land league,' by mr. arnold foster; to 'the continuity of the irish revolutionary movement,' by professor brougham leech; and to a pamphlet called 'the queen's enemies in america.' a kind of apology for the conspiracy will be found in 'the parnell movement,' by mr. t. p. o'connor, m.p.; but the irish 'nationalists' have judiciously been reticent on the subject. i may refer to my 'ireland, - ,' ch. viii. [ ] these infamous speeches, worthy of marat and hébert, were continued for years, and fill a large part of the evidence in the proceedings of the special commission. i select a sample or two taken at random. mr. m. harris said, 'if the tenant farmers of ireland shoot down landlords as partridges are shot in september, mat harris would never say a word against them' (vol. ii. p. ). the same worthy, afterwards an m.p., exclaimed on another occasion (vol. i. p. ), 'mrs. blake of keenoyle is no better than a she-devil.... mr. robinson called the people of connemara vermin; the people of connemara ought to treat him as vermin. leonard of tuam i will say nothing about. i will denounce him at his own door.' so, too, a mr. boyton said (vol. iv. p. ), 'we have seen plenty of them, landlords and agents, that deserve to be shot at any man's hand. i have always denounced the commission of outrages by night, but meet him in the broad daylight, and if you must blow his brains out, blow them out in the daytime.' multiply such speeches addressed to an excitable peasantry, and the results which followed can easily be understood. [ ] this has been established by conclusive evidence, and should be carefully borne in mind. mr. egan, one of the treasurers of the league, said, 'on my own behalf, and on behalf of my friends of the league, both in prison and outside, i can say that we regard the land question only in the light of a step towards national independence, which is, and shall continue to be, the goal of all our efforts.' mr. healy, m.p., said, 'this is a movement to win back from england the land of ireland, which was robbed from the people by the confiscating armies of elizabeth and cromwell.... but i would remind you that mr. parnell ... explained the basis of the movement when he told the galway farmers that he would never have taken off his coat in this movement were it not with irish nationality as its object.' parnell occasionally let out the truth; he said, 'let every farmer, while he keeps a firm grip of his holding, recognise also the great truth that he is serving his country and the people at large, and helping to break down english misrule in ireland' (report of the proceedings of the special commission, vol. iv. pp. , ). these speeches were, in hundreds, imitated and followed by other speakers. [ ] report of the judges, vol. iv. p. . [ ] i was at this time judge of the county kerry; these demands increased more than twofold at a single quarter sessions. [ ] report of the judges, vol. iv. pp. - . [ ] report of the judges, vol. iv. p. . [ ] some of the cynical and wicked utterances of parnell in proclaiming and expounding the new policy of 'boycotting' must be quoted. these, it is needless to say, were exaggerated in scores of speeches by orators of the league. in view almost of the corpse of a land agent who had been foully murdered, the arch-conspirator coolly remarked (proceedings of the special commission, vol. iv. p. ): 'i had wished in referring to a sad occurrence which took place lately, the shooting or attempted shooting of a land agent in the neighbourhood (uproar)--i had wished to point out that recourse to such measures of procedure is entirely unnecessary and absolutely prejudicial where there is a suitable organisation amongst the tenants themselves.' the methods to be adopted in 'boycotting'--the word was so named from a captain boycott, who was one of the first sufferers--were those set forth by parnell (report of the judges, vol. iv. p. ): 'now, what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from which his neighbour has been evicted? (various shouts, among which, "kill him!" "shoot him!") now, i think i heard somebody say "shoot him" ("shoot him!"); but i wish to point out to you a very much better way, a more christian and charitable way, which will give the lost sinner an opportunity of repenting. (hear, hear.) when a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must show[a] him on the roadside when you meet him, you must show him in the streets of the town, you must show him at the shop counter, you must show him in the fair and in the market-place, and even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into a moral coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his kind as if he was a leper of old. you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed, and you may depend upon it, if the population of a county in ireland carry out this doctrine, that there will be no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public opinion of all right-thinking men within the county, and to transgress your unwritten code of laws.' [a] in other, possibly more correct, reports, the word is 'shun,' not 'show.' [ ] report of the judges, vol. iv. p. . [ ] it is very important to bear this in mind, regard being had to the circumstances of the time, which have been shamefully misrepresented, and to subsequent legislation and its administration. i quote a few words from the report, p. : 'it was unusual in ireland to exact what in england would have been considered as a full or fair commercial rent. such a rent over many of the larger estates, the owners of which were resident, and took an interest in the welfare of their tenants, it has never been the custom to demand. the example has been largely followed, and is, to the present day, rather the rule than the exception in ireland.' m. de molinari, a very competent foreign observer, wrote to the same effect in : 'le taux général des rentes est modéré; autant que j'ai pu en juger, il est à qualité égale de terrain de moitié plus bas que celui des terres des flandres' ('l'irlande, le canada, jersey,' p. ). see for further authorities, mr. lecky's 'democracy and liberty,' vol. i. p. . [ ] mr. gladstone, speeches in the house of commons, july , , and may , . lord carlingford, and notably lord selborne, said nearly the same. [ ] this i know to be the fact on the very best authority. [ ] a good popular account of the law of will be found in mr. lecky's 'democracy and liberty,' vol. i. pp. - . see for an elaborate and technical description, 'cherry and wakley,' pp. - . [ ] 'systems of land tenure,' p. . [ ] report of the judges, vol. iv. p. . [ ] report of the judges, vol. iv. p. : 'we consider that the national league, like the ladies' land league, was substantially the old land league under another name.' [ ] i quote a few words from hundreds of these detestable writings, which should be studied. mr. william o'brien, the editor of one of parnell's newspapers, and now the leader of the 'united irish league,' published this in _united ireland_, april , : 'it would be still more gratifying if the irish millions, scattered over the globe, should wake up one of these mornings to hear the war chimes joyfully ringing the declaration that would drive england on to downfall and destruction.' and again, september , : 'we cannot fight england in the open. we can keep her in hot water. we cannot evict our rulers neck and crop. we can make their rule more insupportable for them than for us.... it is no fault of ours if we cannot organise waterloos to decide our quarrels.' as to personalities, i quote two passages. december , : 'monstrous and incredible, surely, six hundred irish gentlemen could not eat their dinner without pouring out libations to the adoration of an old lady who is only known in ireland by her scarcely decently disguised hatred of this country, and by the inordinate amount of her salary.' again, june , : 'with all the stubborn force of a cruel, narrow, dogged nature, lord spencer struck murderous blow after blow at the people under his rod. he stopped at nothing; not at subsidising red-handed murderers, not at knighting jury-packers, not at sheltering black official villainy with a coat of darkness, not at police quarterings, blood taxes, the bludgeoning of peaceful meetings, the clapping of handcuffs and convict jackets on m.p.'s, mayors, and editors, not at wholesale battues of hangings and transportations by hook or crook.' [ ] report of the judges, vol. iv. p. . mr. gladstone in the house of commons, april , . [ ] for an elaborate account of the act of , see 'cherry and wakley,' pp. - . reference, too, may be made to mr. lecky's 'democracy and liberty,' vol. i. pp. - . [ ] for an account of this legislation, which has not received the attention it deserves, as it is limited in its scope, see 'cherry and wakley,' pp. - , and 'barton,' pp. - . [ ] upwards of thirty years ago, when the question of compensating irish tenants for their improvements was coming fully to the front, a wealthy middleman, who held a large demesne in perpetuity, at a rather high rent, and had built a valuable mansion on it, in addition to planting hundreds of acres of woodland, asked me 'if i thought parliament would compensate him, for, in that case, he could make his landlord pay him £ , .' my reply was that 'parliament would not be so insane.' i should be sorry to make such a reply now, having regard to recent legislation. [ ] i believe i may claim some credit for having contributed to this provision. i had had large experience of the injustice of keeping tenants subject to long-standing arrears; and, as a judge, had taken strong measures to prevent and defeat the practice. [ ] for an elaborate account of the act which was the result of this bill, see the work of mr. justice barton, 'the land law (ireland) act, .' [ ] 'letter to a member of the national assembly,' vol. i. p. . [ ] a committee of the house of lords sate, in , to consider the administration of the land act of . the report and the evidence were, in the main, in favour of the judges. [ ] rushe _v._ whitney, roscommon quarter sessions, october, . [ ] lord salisbury in the house of lords, august , : 'they are all three strong liberals, with strong views of tenant right.... there is no doubt that all three are appointed with a strong prepossession in favour of views which are advocated by the representatives of the tenantry in ireland, and which are deprecated by the landlords.... it is not the relegation of landlord and tenant to an impartial tribunal.' [ ] mr. gladstone, july , : 'i shall be bitterly disappointed with the operation of the act if the property of the landlords of ireland does not come to be worth more than twenty years' purchase on the judicial rent.' mr. w. e. forster, same date: 'i think the final result of the measure will be, within a few years, that the landowners of ireland, small and large, will be better off than they are at this moment.' lord carlingford, august , : 'my lords, i maintain that the provisions of this bill will cause the landlords no money loss whatever. i believe that it will inflict upon them no loss of income, except in those cases in which a certain number of landlords may have imposed upon their tenants excessive and inequitable rents.' [ ] hansard, vol. , p. . [ ] the nature and character of these two classes of evidence has been thus well described in the report of the edward fry's commission, p. : 'if the matter were perfectly open, it appears to us that two independent lines of evidence might be pursued by a person inquiring what is the fair rent to be fixed for a holding. one class of evidence may for shortness be called the popular evidence; the other the technical. the popular evidence would comprise the prices obtained by the tenant for a sale of his interest or _bonâ fide_ offers which he had received for it, evidence of the letting value or judicial rents of similar holdings, evidence of the sums paid for conacre or agistment, evidence of the long and punctual payment of a real rent, or of the long arrears of a nominal rent, and evidence of the prosperity or poverty of the persons who had successively lived off the produce of the holding. the technical evidence would be that more familiar to professional valuators. they would inspect the land, ascertain the acreages of the different classes of land on the farm, and what they would produce or carry; they would consider the quantity and value of the produce and the cost of production, and the shares of the surplus remaining after the cost of production divisible between landlord and tenant respectively. the popular evidence would be affected by all the motives which make men in ireland desirous to occupy land; the technical evidence would assume the desire of making a money profit out of the occupation of land as the sole motive of such occupation. the eighth section of the act of seems to admit of both lines of evidence with a single exception. it provided that in fixing the fair rent consideration should be given not to some but to all the circumstances of the case, the holding and the district, with the single exception that (sub-sec. ) the price paid for the tenancy otherwise than to the landlord or his predecessors was not of itself, apart from other considerations, to be taken into account; though, conjoined with other considerations, it still remains admissible.' [ ] report of the fry commission, p. . [ ] ibid., p. : 'some specific charges of misconduct or negligence have been made against lay assistant commissioners and court valuers; as _e.g._ visiting the land without due notice to the landlord; visiting the holding when lying under snow or water, or when suffering from prolonged drought, and refusing to wait whilst a trench was dug to show the condition of the alleged drainage. we have investigated many of these cases, and the explanations given have generally been satisfactory to us.' [ ] evidence taken by mr. morley's commission on the irish land acts, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission: mr. campbell, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] 'democracy and liberty,' vol. i. pp. , . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . as a county court judge i have a concurrent jurisdiction, happily seldom exercised, in fixing 'fair rents.' i had a somewhat similar case before me some seventeen or eighteen years ago, and i adjourned the hearing for four years to allow the land to recover. i believe i am the only official who did anything of the kind until quite recently. [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] evidence taken by the morley commission, - , p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . the procedure of the sub-commissions has, since , been somewhat improved with respect to deterioration and waste, but many years too late. [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, pp. , . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission: mr. campbell, p. . [ ] mr. vernon, the lay commissioner, was, of course, not responsible for this. [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission: mr. campbell, p. . [ ] report of the fry commission, p. . i entirely dissent from the above opinion of the head commissioner. [ ] evidence taken by the morley commission, p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] report of the fry commission, p. . [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, p. . [ ] report of the fry commission, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] report of the fry commission, pp. , . [ ] ibid., pp. - . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] report of the irish land commission to march, , p. . [ ] it is but just to the land commission to state that the reductions of rent made by the county courts were somewhat higher than those it made. but this was notoriously because rack-rented tenants, for the sake of expedition, rushed first to these tribunals. [ ] report of the irish land commission, p. . [ ] report of the irish land commission, p. . [ ] see a remarkable instance in the evidence taken by the fry commission, p. : 'the holding was let in at _s._ the irish acre, equal to about £ per statute acre. the sub-commissioners have now cut it down to less than _s._ _d._ per acre.' [ ] evidence taken by the fry commission, pp. , , . [ ] 'democracy and liberty,' vol. i. pp. , . [ ] letters to the _manchester guardian_, written in , and since republished. this little work was much noticed at the time; attempts to answer it were made to no purpose. the facts now speak for themselves. [ ] swift's 'works,' vol. ii. p. , ed. . [ ] 'reflections on the revolution in france,' vol. i. p. . [ ] the _manchester guardian_, . i quote this passage, for i think its substance was referred to by the late mr. rathbone, member for liverpool. [ ] mr. lecky, 'democracy and liberty,' vol. ii. pp. - , rather favours the policy of creating and extending peasant ownership in ireland, and, to a certain extent, approves of the so-called 'land purchase' acts, but only as a doubtful experiment, to endeavour to escape from a hopelessly bad land system. the distinguished historian and thinker, in my opinion, is not sufficiently alive to the iniquity of these measures as they affect landlords who wish to retain their estates, or, rather, what remains of them; but he clearly perceives some of the objections to this vicious legislation. i quote his remarks at some length: 'in ireland, as is well known, great efforts are made to create such a proprietary; but the conditions of ireland are unlike those of any other part of the civilised globe. it has been the deliberate policy of the government to break down, by almost annual acts, the obligation of contracts, and the existing ownership of land has been rendered so insecure, the political power attached to it has been so effectually destroyed, and the influences tending to anarchy and confiscation have been made so powerful, that most good judges have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to force into existence by strong legislative measures a new social type, which may, perhaps, possess some elements of stability and conservatism. in order to effect this object, the national credit has been made use of in such a way that a tenant is enabled to purchase his farm without making the smallest sacrifice for that object, the whole sum being advanced by the government, and advanced on such terms that the tenant is only obliged to pay for a limited number of years a sum from to per cent. less than his present rent. in other words, a man whose rent has been fixed by the land court at £ a year, can purchase his farm by paying, instead of that sum, £ or £ a year for forty-nine years. the arrangement sounds more like burlesque than serious legislation; but the belief that political pressure can obtain still better terms for the tenant, and that further confiscatory legislation may still more depreciate the value of land to the owner who has inherited it, or purchased it in the open market, has taken such deep root in ireland that the tenants have shown little alacrity to avail themselves of their new privilege. what may be the ultimate issue of the attempt to govern a country in complete defiance of all received economical principles remains to be seen. the future must show whether a large peasant proprietary can be not only called into existence, but permanently maintained, under these conditions, and whether it will prove the loyal and conservative element that english politicians believe. according to all past experience, peasant proprietors rarely succeed, except when they possess something more than an average measure of industrial qualities, and the irish purchase laws give no preference to the energetic, the industrious, and the thrifty. on the contrary, it is very often the farmer who is on the verge of bankruptcy who is most eager to buy, in order to reduce his annual charge. the tendency of the new proprietors to mortgage, to sublet, and to subdivide, is already manifest, and some of the best judges of irish affairs, who look beyond the present generation, are very despondent about the future. they believe that a peasant proprietary, called into existence suddenly and artificially, with no discrimination in favour of the better class, in a country where industrial qualities are very low, and where the strongest wish of the farmer is either to divide his farm among his children, or to burden it with equal mortgages for their benefit, must eventually lead to economic ruin, to fatal subdivision, to crushing charges on land. the new policy must also, they contend, almost wholly withdraw from the country life, where it is peculiarly needed, the civilising and guiding influence of a resident gentry. whether or not these apprehensions are exaggerated time only can show. two predictions may, i think, with some confidence be made. the one is, that the transformation is likely to be most successful if it is gradually effected. the other is, that a great part of the influence once possessed by the landlord will, under the new conditions, pass to the money-lender.' [ ] i quote these remarks of burke, a striking instance of his political wisdom ('tracts on the popery laws,' vol. ii. p. ): 'it is on this principle (to get rid of short and unprofitable tenures) that the romans established their _emphyteusis_, or fee-farm. for though they extended the ordinary term of their creation to nine years only, yet they encouraged a more permanent letting to farm, with the condition of improvement, as well as of annual payment where the land had lain rough and neglected.' so john stuart mill ('irish land question,' p. , ed. ): 'the idea of property does not, however, necessarily imply that there should be no rent, any more than that there should be no taxes. it merely implies that the rent should be a fixed charge, not liable to be raised against the farmer by his own improvements, or by the will of a landlord. a tenant at a quit rent is, to all intents and purposes, a proprietor; a copyholder is not less so than a freeholder. what is wanted is permanent possession on fixed terms.' mr. morley said not long ago, in his place in parliament, that, as things now stand in ireland, the landlord must become a rent-charger and the tenant a copyholder, a true utterance. [ ] 'principles of political economy,' book ii. chap. ii. p. . i may refer, too, to these pregnant remarks of bentham ('theory of legislation,' chap, xv.): 'the principle of security requires that reform should be attended with complete indemnity.... i cannot yet quit the subject, for the establishment of the principle of security demands that error should be pursued in all its retreats.... the interest of individuals, it is said, ought to yield to the public interest; but what does that mean? is not one individual as much a part of the public as another? the public interest which you introduce as a person is only an abstract term; it represents nothing but the mass of individual interests.... individual interests are the only real interests. take care of the individuals; never molest them, never suffer any one to molest them, and you will have done enough for the public.... i shall conclude by a general observation of great importance. the more the principle of property is respected, the stronger hold it takes on the popular mind. slight attacks on this principle prepare the way for heavier ones. a long time has been necessary to carry property to the point where we now see it in civilised societies; but a fatal experience has shown with what facility it may be shaken, and how easily the savage instinct of plunder gets the better of the laws.' [ ] for the constitutional position of the british and irish parliaments before the union, see hallam's 'constitutional history,' vol. iii., chapter on ireland, and ball's 'legislative irish system,' chaps. v., xv. see also lecky's 'history of england in the eighteenth century,' vol. ii. chap. vii.; vol. iv. chaps. xvi., xvii. as to the financial position of the two countries, see the opening pages of each of the reports of the childers commission. [ ] grattan described this vicious state of things in his inimitable style ('speeches,' p. , ed. published by duffy): 'the union is not an identification of the two nations; it is merely a merger of the parliament of one nation in that of another.... there is no identification in anything save in legislature, in which there is complete and absolute absorption. it follows that the two nations are not identified, though the irish legislature be absorbed, and by that act of absorption the feeling of one of the nations is not identified, but alienated. the petitions on our table bespeak that alienation.' [ ] report of the childers commission, p. . [ ] i transcribe this part of the seventh article of the treaty of union; i believe that i have fairly described its purport (report of childers commission, p. ): 'that if at any future day the separate debt of each country respectively shall have been liquidated, or if the values of their respective debts ... shall be to each other in the same proportion with the respective contributions of each country respectively.... and if it shall appear to the parliament of the united kingdom that the respective circumstances of the two countries will thenceforth admit of their contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in each, to the future expenditure of the united kingdom to declare that all future expense thenceforth to be incurred, together with the interest and charges of all joint debts contracted previous to such declaration, shall be so defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in each country, and thenceforth from time to time, as circumstances may require, to impose and apply such taxes accordingly, subject only to such particular exemptions or abatements in ireland, and in that part of great britain called scotland, as circumstances may appear, from time to time, to demand.' [ ] grattan's speeches, quoted in a memorandum supplied to the childers commission by sir edward hamilton, p. . [ ] 'minutes of evidence,' childers commission, vol. i. p. . [ ] memorandum of sir edward hamilton, p. . [ ] report of the childers commission, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] report of the childers commission, pp. , . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] report of the childers commission, p. . [ ] i think it necessary to set out verbatim the terms of reference to the commission; i have for the sake of clearness changed their order: 'to inquire into the financial relations between great britain and ireland, and their relative taxable capacity, and to report: i. upon what principles of comparison, and by the application of what specific standards, the relative capacity of great britain and ireland to bear taxation may be most equitably determined. ii. what, so far as can be ascertained, is the true proportion, under the principles and specific standards so determined, between the taxable capacity of great britain and ireland. iii. the history of the financial relations between great britain and ireland, at and after the legislative union, the charge for irish purposes on the imperial exchequer during that period, and the amount of irish taxation remaining available for contribution to imperial expenditure; also the imperial expenditure to which it is considered equitable that ireland should contribute.' [ ] report of the childers commission, p. . [ ] since , when the childers commission made its report, the overtaxation of ireland has increased. [ ] report of childers commission: 'minutes of evidence,' vol. i. p. . [ ] report of the childers commission, p. . [ ] report of the childers commission, p. . [ ] report of the childers commission, pp. , . [ ] 'minutes of evidence,' childers commission, vol. ii. p. . [ ] i quote from the report of the childers commission, p. , these valuable remarks on the subject: 'neither can there then be any question that a system of equal rates of taxes on the same subjects is compatible with the utmost inequality of burdens between two countries contributing to one exchequer. all that need be done in order to exact an undue proportion--unlimited in extent--of the means of either of the countries is to tax the commodities most consumed in that country, and in fixing the rate of the tax on each commodity, to fix the higher rates on the particular commodities most generally in use in that country, and the lower rates on those most consumed in the other. the same kind of effect, of course, may be produced, and the same discrimination exercised, by totally exempting some commodities and taxing others, however lightly. in fact, a system of equal rates of taxes may thus be rendered more easily unjust and burdensome to the country discriminated against than one of differential taxes, because in the latter case, the unequal treatment, and the mode of it being manifest, are more liable to criticism and limitation; whilst in the former, the true effect of the system is disguised by the circumstances that each particular head of tax is at the same rate in both countries.' [ ] report of the childers commission, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] report of the childers commission, p. . [ ] ibid.: evidence of mr. munough o'brien, pp. , : 'the system of imperial loans for temporary emergencies and charity tends to increase the poverty of ireland, whose future income is mortgaged to pay interest on expenditure from which there is no return. there is no surer road to ruin for an individual than borrowing money to live upon, and most of these imperial loans are practically made from time to time to enable the irish people to live or relieve acute distress and disorder. loans are almost annually made to keep the people quiet or to keep them alive. yet this expenditure does not prevent the recurrence of famine, distress, and discontent; it rather tends to cause their recurrence.' [ ] report of the childers commission: report of mr. sexton and others, pp. , . [ ] report of the childers commission: 'evidence,' vol. ii. p. . [ ] report of the childers commission, pp. , . [ ] & will. iv. c. . the works of messrs. vanston and foote on the grand juries of ireland may be referred to. [ ] the reader may be referred to mr. moore's work on the irish poor law. [ ] see the report of a committee of the house of lords, and especially of the evidence, taken in - , with respect to the administration of the irish poor law at the time. [ ] for a further account of local government in ireland, a reader may consult the report of mr. w. p. o'brien on local government, , and reports on the towns of ireland and their taxation about the same date. an excellent tract on the subject was published by mr. william j. bailey in , called 'local and centralised government in ireland.' with respect to the system of municipal government in ireland as it existed before , nothing is so valuable as the reports of the commissioners, very able men, charged to inquire into the subject in - . a useful and well-informed account will also be found in mr. barry o'brien's 'fifty years of concessions to ireland,' vol. i. book v. [ ] i have only been able to sketch the outlines of the measure, the local government (ireland) act, , p. , vict. cap. . a good commentary on it has been written by mr. brett of the irish bar. [ ] mr. lecky, 'democracy and liberty,' cabinet edition, introduction, p. , has well described this vaunted reform: 'it was a measure introduced in fulfilment of distinct pledges, and it contains very skilful provisions intended to protect existing interests. but, after all is said, it means a great transfer of power and influence from the loyal to the disloyal, and it goes in the direction of democracy far beyond anything that a few years ago would have been accepted by the conservatives, or by the moderate liberals.' [ ] for a description of elementary education in ireland up to , see passages in wakefield's 'account of ireland;' and for a description in earlier and later times, see mr. barry o'brien's 'fifty years of concessions to ireland,' book i. chs. i.-xiv.; mr. graham balfour's 'educational systems of great britain and ireland,' pp. - ; the report of the commissioners of irish education, - ; the important report of the powis commission, - ; and the reports of the commissioners of national education in ireland. mr. froude, in his 'english in ireland,' vol. i. p. ; vol. ii. p. , has characteristically eulogised the charter schools; but he stands alone; mr. lecky, 'history of england in the eighteenth century,' vol. ii. pp. - , has commented on this odious system as it deserved. [ ] barry o'brien, 'fifty years of concessions to ireland,' vol. ii. p. . [ ] see wakefield's 'account of ireland' for the state of her secondary schools in ; barry o'brien's 'fifty years of concessions to ireland,' book x. chs. i., ii., iii.; graham balfour's 'the educational system of great britain and ireland,' pp. - ; and the reports of the two commissions of - and of - , of which the heads were lord kildare and the earl of rosse. [ ] see the resolutions in duffy's 'young ireland,' pp. , . there has been much misrepresentation on this subject. [ ] see 'the problem of irish education,' by butt, a masterly and impartial tract. [ ] see for the figures 'the irish university question,' by archbishop walsh, _passim_. [ ] for further information on the history and the present state of the university system in ireland, see 'the history of the university of dublin,' by the rev. j. w. stubbs, and 'the constitutional history of the university of dublin,' by d. c. heron; howley on 'universities;' 'what is meant by freedom of education,' by the o'conor don; 'university education,' by an irish protestant celt; and especially 'the problem of irish education,' by butt. see also the irish university debates in hansard for , and the very able debate in trinity college. the reader, too, may be referred to mr. barry o'brien's 'fifty years of concessions to ireland,' book xi.; to mr. graham balfour's 'educational systems of great britain and ireland,' pp. - ; to mr. godkin's 'education in ireland;' and to archbishop walsh's 'the irish university question.' [ ] too much is not to be made of 'nationalist' clamour; but these remarks of mr. dillon, m.p., are significant (_freeman's journal_, april , ): 'i do not believe that these movements will ever succeed ... until that fortress of english domination and anti-irish bigotry, trinity college, is for ever swept away, or there is placed opposite to it a truly national university, where the most honoured classes will be the classes of irish literature and irish history.' archbishop walsh, a much abler man, has written in the same sense in his work, 'the irish university question.' the question, he contends, in many passages, must be settled by levelling up or by levelling down, that is, by raising the catholic university to the position of trinity college, or by disestablishing and disendowing trinity college. the evil precedent of the act disestablishing the anglican church in ireland, will, it is hoped, be eschewed. [ ] see on this subject mr. lough's 'england's wealth, ireland's poverty,' pp. - . transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. our common land (and other short essays). [illustration: logo] our common land (and other short essays). by octavia hill. london: macmillan and co. . [_all rights reserved._] charles dickens and evans, crystal palace press. contents. i. page our common land ii. district visiting iii. a few words to volunteer visitors among the poor iv. a more excellent way of charity v. a word on good citizenship vi. open spaces vii. effectual charity viii. the future of our commons our common land. i. our common land. probably few persons who have a choice of holidays select a bank holiday, which falls in the spring or summer, as one on which they will travel, or stroll in the country, unless, indeed, they live in neighbourhoods very far removed from large towns. every railway station is crowded; every booking-office thronged; every seat--nay, all standing room--is occupied in every kind of public conveyance; the roads leading out of london for miles are crowded with every description of vehicle--van, cart, chaise, gig--drawn by every size and sort of donkey, pony, or horse; if it be a dusty day, a great dull unbroken choking cloud of dust hangs over every line of road. yet in spite of all this, and in spite of the really bad sights to be seen at every public-house on the road, in spite of the wild songs and boisterous behaviour, and reckless driving home at night, which show how sadly intoxication is still bound up with the idea and practical use of a holiday to hundreds of our people, how much intense enjoyment the day gives! how large a part of this enjoyment is unmixed good! and the evil is kept in check very much. we may see the quiet figure of the mounted policeman as we drive home, dark in the twilight, dark amidst the dust, keeping order among the vehicles, making the drunken drivers mind what they are doing. he keeps very tolerable order. and then these days in the country ought to lessen the number of drunkards every year; and more and more we shall be able to trust to the public opinion of the quiet many to preserve order. and watch, when at last the open spaces are reached towards which all these lines of vehicles are tending--be it epping, or richmond, or greenwich, or hampstead--every place seems swarming with an undisciplined, but heartily happy, crowd. the swings, the roundabouts, the donkeys, the stalls, are beset by dozens or even hundreds of pleasure-seekers, gay and happy, though they are not always the gentlest or most refined. look at the happy family groups--father, and mother, and children, with their picnic dinners neatly tied up in handkerchiefs; watch the joy of eager children leaning out of vans to purchase for a halfpenny the wonderful pink paper streamers which they will stick proudly in their caps; see the merry little things running untiringly up and down the bank of sand or grass; notice the affectionate father bringing out the pot of ale to the wife as she sits comfortably tucked up in shawls in the little cart, or treating the children to sweetmeats; sympathise in the hearty energy of the great rough lads who have walked miles, as their dusty boots well show; their round, honest faces have beamed with rough mirth at every joke that has come in their way all day; they have rejoiced more in the clamber to obtain the great branches of may than even in the proud possession of them, though they are carrying them home in triumph. to all these the day brings unmixed good. now, have you ever paused to think what londoners would do without this holiday, or what it would be without these open spaces? cooped up for many weeks in close rooms, in narrow streets, compelled on their holiday to travel for miles in a crowded stream, first between houses, and then between dusty high hedges, suddenly they expand into free uncrowded space under spreading trees, or on to the wide common from which blue distance is visible; the eye, long unrefreshed with sight of growing grass, or star-like flowers, is rejoiced by them again. to us the common or forest looks indeed crowded with people, but to them the feeling is one of sufficient space, free air, green grass, and colour, with a life without which they might think the place dull. every atom of open space you have left to these people is needed; take care you lose none of it; it is becoming yearly of more vital importance to save or increase it. there is now a bill for regulating inclosure before the house of commons. mr. cross has said what he trusts will be its effect if it becomes law; but those who have been watching the history of various inclosures, and the trials respecting special commons, are not so hopeful as mr. cross is as to the effect this bill would have. it makes indeed good provisions for regulating commons to be kept open for the public when a scheme for regulation is applied for. but the adoption of such a scheme depends in large part on the lord of the manor. will he in nine cases out of ten ever even apply for a scheme for regulating a common, when he knows that by doing so he shuts out from himself and his successors for ever the possibility of inclosing it, and appropriating some part of it? do any provisions for regulating, however excellent, avail anything when no motive exists which should prompt the lord of the manor to bring the common under them? and, as the bill stands, it cannot be so brought without his consent. secondly, the bill provides that urban sanitary authorities can purchase rights which will enable them to keep open any suburban common, or may accept a gift of the same. but then a suburban common is defined as one situated within six miles of the outside of a town of , inhabitants. now, i hardly know how far out of a large town bank-holiday excursionists go, but i know they go every year farther and farther. i am sure that a common twelve, nay, twenty, miles off from a large town is accessible by cheap trains to hundreds of excursionists all the summer, to whom it is an inestimable boon. again, is the privilege of space, and light, and air, and beauty not to be considered for the small shopkeeper, for the hard-working clerk, who will probably never own a square yard of english land, but who cares to take his wife and children into the country for a fortnight in the summer? do you not know numbers of neighbourhoods where woods, and commons, and fields used to be open to pedestrians, and now they must walk, even in the country, on straight roads between hedges? the more that fields and woods are closed, the more does every atom of common land, everywhere, all over england, become of importance to the people of every class, except that which owns its own parks and woods. "on the lowest computation," says the report of the commons preservation society, " , , acres of common land have been inclosed since queen anne's reign; now there are but , , acres left.[ ] the right of roving over these lands has been an immense boon to our people; it becomes at once more valued and rarer year by year. is it impossible, i would ask lawyers and statesmen, to recognise this right as a legal one acquired by custom, and not to be taken away? mr. lefevre suggested this in a letter to _the times_. he says: "the right of the public to use and enjoy commons (which they have for centuries exercised), it must be admitted, is not distinctly recognised by law, though there is a remarkable absence of adverse testimony on the subject. the law, however, most fully recognises the right of the village to its green, and allows the establishment of such right by evidence as to playing games, &c., but it has failed as yet to recognise the analogy between the great town and its common, and the village and its green, however complete in fact that analogy may be. but some of these rights of common, which are now so prized as a means of keeping commons open, had, if legal theory is correct, their origin centuries ago in custom. for long they had no legal existence, but the courts of law at last learned to recognise custom as conferring rights. the custom has altered in kind; in lieu of cattle, sheep, and pigs turned out to pasture on the commons, human beings have taken their place, and wear down the turf instead of eating it. i can see no reason why the law, or, if the courts are too slow to move, the legislature, should not recognise this transfer and legalise this custom. again, it is probable that commons belonged originally much more to the inhabitants of a district than to the lord. feudal theory and its subsequent development--english real property law--have ridden rather roughly over the facts and the rights of the case. the first placed the lord of the manor in his position as lord, giving him certain privileges, and coupling with them many responsibilities. the second gradually removed these responsibilities, and converted into a property what was at first little more than an official trust. if these considerations are beyond the scope of the law courts, they are proper for parliament. one step has been made. it has been proved that it is not necessary to purchase commons for the public, but that ample means of protecting them from inclosure exist. it is also obvious that the rights which constitute these means are now in practice represented by a public user of commons for recreation. the legislature should, i venture to think, recognise this user as a legal right." if the legislature would do this, commons all over england might be kept open, which, i venture to think, would be a great gain. hitherto the right to keep commons open has been maintained, even in the neighbourhood of towns, by legal questions affecting rights of pasturage, of cutting turf, or carting gravel. this is all very well if it secures the object, but it is on the large ground of public policy, for the sake of the health and enjoyment of the people, that the conscience of the nation supports the attempt to keep them open; it cares little for the defence of obsolete and often nearly valueless customs, and it would be very well if the right acquired by use could be recognised by law, and the defence put at once on its real grounds. i have referred to the opinion expressed by lawyers and members of parliament that the opportunity of applying for schemes for regulation provided by the bill now before the house will not be used at all largely, owing to the necessity of the consent of those owning two-thirds value of the common, and of the veto possessed by the lord of the manor. they tell me also (and it certainly appears to me that both statements are evident on reading the bill) that _unless mr. cross consents to insert a clause forbidding all inclosures except under this act_, the passing of it will be followed by a large number of high-handed inclosures under old acts, or without legal right. for unless the right of some independent body like the public who use the space can be recognised as having a voice in opposing illegal inclosures, what chance have the rural commons? the agricultural labourers, often tenants-at-will of a powerful landlord, can be ejected and their rights immediately cancelled; moreover, they do not know the law, they have few to advise them, to plead their cause, or to spend money on expensive lawsuits. mr. lefevre says in the same letter quoted above, "i would at least ask them to declare all inclosures not authorised by parliament to be _primâ facie_ illegal and to remove the necessity of litigation by persons actually themselves commoners, by authorising any public body, or public-spirited individual, to interfere in the case of any such inclosures, and put the lord to strict proof of his right." and do not let us be too ready to see the question dealt with as a matter of mere money compensation. it is much to be feared lest the short-sighted cupidity of one generation of rural commoners may lose a great possession for future times. this danger is imminent because we are all so accustomed to treat money value as if it were the only real value! can we wonder if the eyes of poor men are often fixed rather on the immediate money value to themselves than on the effect of changes for their descendants? should we stand by, we who ought to see farther, and let them part with what ought to be a possession to the many in the future? a few coals at christmas, which rapidly come to be looked upon as a charity graciously accorded by the rich, or the recipients of which are arbitrarily selected by them, may in many cases be blindly accepted by cottagers in lieu of common rights. is the influence of such doles so healthy that we should wish to see them taking the place of a common right over a little bit of english soil? the issue at a nominal charge of orders to cut turf or furze by a lord of the manor has been known gradually to extinguish the right to do so without his leave. is the influence of the rich and powerful so slight that we should let it be thus silently strengthened? is the knowledge just brought so prominently before us that one quarter of the land in england is owned by only seven hundred and ten persons so satisfactory that we will stand by and see quietly absorbed those few spots which are our common birthright in the soil? it is not likely that farms or estates will diminish in size; and the yeoman class is, i suppose, passing away rapidly. with the small holdings, is there to pass away from our people the sense that they have any share in the soil of their native england? i think the sense of owning some spaces of it in common may be healthier for them than even the possession of small bits by individuals, and certainly it now seems more feasible. lowell tells us that what is free to all is the best of all possessions: 'tis heaven alone that is given away, 'tis only god may be had for the asking; there is no price set on the lavish summer, and june may be had by the poorest comer. hugh miller, too, points out how intimately the right to roam over the land is connected with the love of it, and hence with patriotism. he says, speaking of his first visit to edinburgh: "i threw myself, as usual, for compensatory pleasures, on my evening walks, but found the inclosed state of the district, and the fence of a rigorously-administered trespass-law, serious drawbacks; and ceased to wonder that a thoroughly cultivated country is, in most instances, so much less beloved by its people than a wild and open one. rights of proprietorship may exist equally in both; but there is an important sense in which the open country belongs to the proprietors and to the people too. all that the heart and intellect can derive from it may be alike free to peasant and aristocrat; whereas the cultivated and strictly fenced country belongs usually, in every sense, to only the proprietor; and as it is a much simpler and more obvious matter to love one's country as a scene of hills, and streams, and green fields, amid which nature has often been enjoyed, than as a definite locality, in which certain laws and constitutional privileges exist, it is rather to be regretted than wondered at that there should be often less true patriotism in a country of just institutions and equal laws, whose soil has been so exclusively appropriated as to leave only the dusty high-roads to its people, than in wild open countries, in which the popular mind and affections are left free to embrace the soil, but whose institutions are partial and defective." so writes at least one man of the people; and whether we estimate the relative value of just laws or familiar and beloved scenes quite as he does, or not, i think we must all feel there is deep truth in what he says. let us then press government, while there is still time, that no bit of the small portion of uninclosed ground, which is the common inheritance of us all as english men and women, shall be henceforth inclosed, except under this bill; which simply means that each scheme shall be submitted to a committee of the house, and considered on its merits. surely this is a very reasonable request. do not let us be satisfied with less. do not let us deceive ourselves as to the result of this bill if it pass unamended. footnote: [ ] the amount remaining uninclosed and subject to common-rights is variously estimated; a report of the inclosure commissioners in putting it at about , , for england and wales, while the recent return of landowners, prepared by the local government board, makes the uninclosed area little more than , , acres. ii. district visiting.[ ] i have assumed throughout this paper that most district visitors feel a certain dissatisfaction both with district visiting and with systems of relief as they exist, even where such systems are best organised. some may think that there is too much relief given, some that there is too little, others that what is given is of the wrong kind. i believe, also, some visitors feel that their spiritual influence is interfered with in different ways by the unsatisfactory character of the temporal relief. to some of them it seems incongruous to carry tracts in one hand and coal-tickets in another; to others, that carrying either, still more carrying both, as a matter of course, shuts them off from true intercourse with the best kind of working men and women; others, again, feel that carrying tracts without coal-tickets when the grate is empty seems a little like want of sympathy; and others that carrying coal-tickets without tracts is treating the poor as if they were only concerned with the outside things of life. however earnestly our clergy have desired to solve this problem of how to deal wisely with the temporal condition of their flocks, it remains a problem still. however tenderly our visitors have mourned over it, as it affects hundreds of individuals, it remains mournful still. what prospect is there of its being vigorously studied with a view to solution, or even to radical improvement, by those who have power to effect improvement? busy, overworked clergymen, with services and sermons, and churches and schools, and thousands of souls to see to, have inherited systems of relief in their parishes which they hardly have time to reform, and the gigantic pressure of daily duty perpetuates many unwise plans, though many, i am well aware, are being abolished. how far the best still falls below what they would like to see let the clergy themselves say. i believe most of them, if asked, would reply: "i have tried honestly to make my system of relief as satisfactory as i could, but it is far from my ideal." and this is so from another cause. you can never make a _system_ of relief good without perfect administration, far-sighted watchfulness in each individual case; and this is specially true in an age in which bad systems of relief have trained the people to improvidence. given your entirely enlightened clergyman, he cannot in a large london parish do much more than see to his people when the crisis of distress has come. he cannot watch over them before it comes, yet it is then that distress is preventable. on whom does the continuous watchfulness devolve at best? visitors, young, inexperienced, untaught, undertake districts; they find themselves part of a system, and follow in its lines; they meet individual cases of want, improvidence, disease, and though they know little themselves how to deal with such, they hesitate to make calls upon the time of a too busy clergyman, kind as he is in helping, gladly as he would reply to a practical question about the individual; they cannot talk out with him radical means of dealing with the roots of such evils. what can they do? they give or withhold the soup-ticket or the shilling. has the clergyman usually time, has the visitor often knowledge to do much more than deal with the individual question of relief or no relief at the moment in the special case? and yet the problem has become appalling, gigantic: viewed in its entirety, it might make us almost tremble? statesmen, philanthropists, political economists, try their hands at it, or rather their heads. do they succeed better than the clergy and the visitors? do they not often succeed worse? for the clergy and the visitors at least bear witness to the poor of sympathy with them, and deal with the wants round them practically; while the theorists, let their theories be ever so excellent, somehow stand so far off that they bring little practically into operation. who does not know of good laws passed which are nearly inoperative because not enforced by brave persons face to face with the evils which should be removed by them? who does not know of sound principles of political economy clearly enunciated to those unconcerned by them, which never reach the ears of those whose lives they deeply affect, still less are brought before them by those whom they would trust? now these two classes, the studious, more leisurely, generalising thinkers, and the loving, individualising doers, need to be brought into communication; and that is what in this paper i wish most emphatically to enforce. each has knowledge the other requires; separated, they are powerless; combined, they may do much. for i have drawn miserable pictures of the weakness of both, but see on the other hand what each has of strength. the clergy have all that is pitiful, all that is generous in the hearts of their richer parishioners on their side--the power of calling out workers from among them, the power of directing a large part of their alms, the distribution of money, the leadership of the men. besides these they have the enormous accumulated knowledge of the poor, gathered in long years of intimate observation of them in their homes--a mass of information over which they may not have much time to brood, and from which they may not be in the habit of generalising, yet what might not the theorists learn from it? and the visitors. i have called them inexperienced, and i might have added that their work is less valuable in many ways, because it is intermittent; but pause to think what these visitors are and might be. hundreds, perhaps thousands, of gentle, earnest, duty-doing souls, well born, well nurtured, well provided for, possibly well educated, turning aside out of the bright paths which they could pursue continuously, to bring a little joy, a little help, to those who are out of the way. a voluntary gift this, if a very solemn duty. i have heard persons who give their whole time to the poor speak a little disparagingly of these fleeting visits, and young girls themselves, fevered with desire to do more, talk rather enviously of those who can give their time wholly to such work; but have they ever thought how much is lost by such entire dedication?--or, rather, how much is gained by her who is not only a visitor of the poor, but a member of a family with other duties? it is the families, the homes of the poor, that need to be influenced. is not she most sympathetic, most powerful, who nursed her own mother through her long illness, and knew how to go quietly about the darkened room; who entered so heartily into the sister's love and marriage; who obeyed so perfectly the father's command when it was hardest? better still if she be wife and mother herself, and can enter into the responsibilities of a head of a household, understands her joys and cares, knows what heroic patience it needs to keep gentle when the nerves are unhinged and the children noisy. depend upon it, if we thought of the poor primarily as husbands, wives, sons, and daughters, members of households, as we are ourselves, instead of contemplating them as a different class, we should recognise better how the house training and high ideal of home duty was our best preparation for work among them. nay, to come down to much smaller matters than these family duties, to the gladness of party, ball, and flower-show, i believe these, too, in innocent and happy amount, when they brighten the eyes and bring the ready smile to the face, and make the step free and joyous, prepare us to bring a gleam of sunlight into many a monotonous life among the poor. what, in comparison with these gains, is the regularity of work of the weary worker, whose life tends to make her deal with people _en masse_, who gains little fresh spring from other thoughts and scenes? for what is it that we look forward to as our people gradually improve? not surely to dealing with them as a class at all, any more than we should tell ourselves off to labour for the middle class, or aristocratic class, or shop-keeping class. our ideal must be to promote the happy natural intercourse of neighbours--mutual knowledge, mutual help, of a kind, certainly, but not this professed devotion of a life; and it will be better from the beginning to mould our system so that it shall bear witness of what it ought to become. if we establish a system of professed workers, amateur or paid, we shall quickly begin to hug our system, and perhaps to want to perpetuate it even to the extent of making work for it. well, here we have then our wonderful company of visitors full of real care for the people, with time and intelligence to apply the wisest principles, did they but know them, with fullest thought, to individual cases; capable of inspiring confidence, of winning allegiance; of getting those whom they visit to understand what is best for their future, and to make up their minds to do it. is not this precisely what is needed--the individual thought which can apply the wise principles, the love which can influence the wills which should be brought into harmony with those principles? then turn to consider how these principles are now being thought out, with what painstaking devotion, what science, what accuracy some of our greatest men are studying them. what a mass of information they have accumulated! how day by day they are learning to explain better the meaning of it all! think of the doctors, the legislators, the poor-law reformers, the advocates of co-operation, the members of the charity organisation society, how they examine, study, and expound. once duty to the poor was supposed to consist in giving large alms; once, self-sacrifice and devotion were thought sufficient qualifications for a worker among the poor; now it is seen that to these must be added the farthest sight, the wisest thought, the most self-restraining resolution to make a useful worker. these two classes, gentle doers and wise thinkers, stand far apart, yet, if they could be brought into close communication, both would gain much; the people for whom they are both labouring would gain much more. in what follows i have tried to show how such a communication might be made a practical reality. the scheme described is not based wholly on theory, but has substantially been in operation in a district of marylebone for some years, and has been lately adopted by two other districts. to effect a union, to establish communication with so numerous a body as the district visitors of london, would be in itself difficult. the difficulty is increased by the fact that they are not only a very numerous, but very changeful body; not only does death, marriage, or migration take them wholly away, but they are often interrupted by temporary absence from home, household duties, illness, and this far more than would be the case with paid workers, their district work being only a secondary, though a very real, duty. these incessant changes could never, without enormous labour and much likelihood of confusion, be registered at one centre; and this necessitates that the visitors must be dealt with by certain selected persons, who may be local leaders or centres. large numbers of them are already gathered in district groups, round various churches and chapels. my first very natural thought was to ask the ministers of those churches and chapels to accept new duties towards their visitors, to bring before them whatever it might seem to the theorists ought to come under their notice, and to transmit to the theorists any individual problems quite too hard for solution in the locality, and to be ready to furnish other information to visitors on questions affecting the temporal condition of their people. but it was obviously impossible to ask hard-worked london clergymen and ministers to undertake additional work, especially such a work as this. for its whole value should depend on the constant, living, detailed interchange of information. and, besides, though the district visitors attached to churches and chapels are by far the most numerous bodies to be enrolled, there are other groups which it is important to secure, and there are also individual visitors to be enlisted who might be ready to help with tangible work, and not prepared to take spiritual work. and this is another reason for not asking the clergy to take up the task. on the whole, then, it appears to me best to suggest leaving the question of all spiritual and moral work exactly where it is--where it almost must be, gathering round the clergy and ministers, everything affecting it being referred to them, and of course all funds and charities now in their hands being as hitherto managed and distributed wholly under their direction; but at the same time to ask them to consider whether they could single out someone from each ecclesiastical district, or from any given group of visitors, who should be a secretary to the others--a means of communication between them and the people dealing as officials or theorists with questions affecting large bodies of the poor. i will describe what i think such a secretary should be and do. she need at first have no special knowledge of laws affecting the poor, institutions established for them, or the principles of action which those who have thought most on the subject unite in thinking best; ladies furnished with such knowledge would not be found in many districts, and though such information would doubtless be of immense value, it would not be essential to secure it at first, as a great deal would be rapidly acquired by anyone holding the post of which i speak. she ought to have a good deal of time for writing, and seeing her fellow-workers. she need not have time for visiting the poor. in fact i should advise selecting someone who had experience in visiting them, but was content to resign that work, as i think her full available power should be devoted to her secretarial duties. she should be able, however, to attend regularly at least one meeting weekly of the charity organisation committee of her district. if she has a house of her own, or so much control over one as would enable her to see the visitors often there, it would be a great advantage; in fact, some way of seeing them frequently and individually appears to me essential. she should be one who, for the greater part of the year, is resident in town; for though of course a temporary successor could be appointed, or her post left vacant, absences, especially if frequent, would be a drawback to her usefulness. she ought to have tact, gentleness, and firmness. she must be a careful, conscientious woman of business, with clear head, or very methodical ways; for next to ready sympathy, method will be of all things most necessary to her. such a secretary should, in that capacity, busy herself only with matters relating to the temporal condition of the poor. she would have relations to her own group of visitors, to the locality in which she lived, and to the metropolis generally. those to her own fellow-workers would be different probably in different cases; but i suppose she would help and advise new visitors, tell them of the local charities, consult with them about special cases, register their temporary absence, getting the clergy to fill in such gaps if possible, show them how to keep written records of families under their charge in given form, so as to be of use to succeeding visitors, whether temporary or permanent, and communicate to visitors, new and old, all facts within her knowledge which might be of value to them. with regard to the local organisation, i will not stay to describe in detail the ways in which she might be valuable to the school board officer, to the relieving officer, to the inspector of nuisances, who might learn to look to her for more radical means of help than are at their command, both material and moral, and for information as to details such as rarely reaches officials, and yet might enable them to bring beneficent laws more powerfully to bear on special cases. the secretary should not only avail herself of the investigating machinery of the charity organisation society, but she should, as i said, attend the committee meetings. there she will learn an immense deal about wise principles of relief, new and important facts of law affecting the people, and the working of various institutions; in short, she ought to get there nearly all the instruction she requires. she would also be invaluable to the committee. she would be well acquainted with the principles on which relief is given by those whom she represents, could tell whether they would be likely to make a grant in a certain case, and, approximately, how large such grant would be. she would know, too, how to enlist that individual gentle help which is so often needed in cases coming before the charity organisation society after the preliminary investigation is made, and which the paid agent has neither time nor capacity to give. in fact, for applicants from every street, and court, and lane, in which a visitor was at work, she would know to whom to turn for the personal attention which the charity organisation committee feel they so urgently need. nor would her services end there. not only would she obtain the aid of the visitors she represented at such times of crisis in the history of a poor family as those in which they usually apply to the charity organisation society, not only would she be able to supply a detailed report of the past life of the applicant on points which might bear on the committee's decision, but afterwards, when the decision was made and relief granted or withheld, through succeeding years she would get the people watched over with that continuous care without which right decisions at any particular crisis of life lose half their efficacy; indeed, she might often avert such a crisis altogether. for instance, she might get the visitors to induce the man to join a provident dispensary or club; which would be more satisfactory, though not perhaps more necessary, than refusing him aid when he has not done so. sometimes, when i think of those charity organisation committees so much misunderstood by many, because they have so resolutely determined to give no fresh unsatisfactory relief, some of them tenderly pitiful of the poor, some of them a little far off from them, but all trying to help them in thoughtfully considered ways, and of the great current of careless, inconsiderate relief going on unchecked and uncontrolled by them, i feel as if a union between you and them would do more than almost anything else to help the poor. there they are all ready for you in every district of london, asking you to co-operate, asking you to study with them what is best, and you leave them in too many cases to be mere repressors of the grossest forms of mendicity, and by no means organisers of charity. if the plan i suggest were adopted by only a few visiting societies, i delight to think what might be gained by furnishing the committees with a few gentle workers representing many more, and associated with the charities of the neighbourhood. but i pass on to consider the relations of these secretaries to the metropolis. they ought to be supplied with information about the laws affecting the poor, sanitary laws, poor laws, education acts, &c.; they ought to get notice of important meetings about medical charities; of new suggestions and arrangements as to the best methods of collecting and storing the earnings of the poor. and how is this to be done? much of it might even now be done through the charity organisation society. all of it, i hope, will be done through the society in the future; but the committees are too busy, too occupied with their daily labour, to deal with this new matter with the fulness of detail which at first it will require; and perhaps they do not everywhere nor always command the full sympathy and confidence of their district. added to which, i have noticed that people, curiously enough, are more willing to invite information from private persons than from official bodies. something must be done to meet the wants of a time of transition, and i trust i am not over-bold in offering, while the plan is new, to do what i can to fill the gap; but in the future we ought to endeavour to secure that the visitors should be so organised that they themselves can compare notes, and each communicate to each how practical difficulties have been met in particular localities--so organised that facts bearing on their work should reach them swiftly and certainly, and that their experience should be accessible for legislators and reformers. i have set before you nothing great, nothing grand, no new society, no fresh light even on the problems respecting wiser systems of relief, or their applications to individuals, which you are desiring so much to solve, each in your own parish or court. i do believe those problems to be capable of solution. i do believe that our almsgiving has been cruel in its kindness. it is for the sake of the people themselves that i would see it decreased, yes, even put down altogether; i believe they would be richer, as well as happier, for it. for the sake of the energy of the poor, the loss of which is so fatal to them, for the sake of that intercourse with them, happy, friendly, human intercourse, which dependence renders impossible, seek to your utmost for better ways of helping them. we can give you no general rules which will obviate necessity of thought, singly must your difficulties be met, singly conquered; but see that you throw upon them all available light from the experience of others, the thoughts of the thoughtful. no new society, no great scheme, have i to urge, only if here or there any one or two of the groups of visitors care to select one among them to be their secretary, and send me her name and address, i will tell her what i can which i think may be helpful to her or them. we might meet, too, we secretaries, now and again, to talk over important questions and strengthen one another; and though i could not possibly find time to deal with difficulties in detail, i might show, or get shown, what plans have been found useful in places which i know. i might help, too, a little about finding employment. i hear of a good many situations of an exceptional kind, and difficult to fill up suitably, and notice of such vacancies i might send on to secretaries, who could find among their visitors someone who would care to spend thought and time in fitting into an exceptional place the person best adapted for it. the large demands for labour are, i believe, best dealt with by advertisement or registry; but there is not any more valuable way of helping individuals than by fitting them in where they are wanted, in ways that are not possible except to those who have personal knowledge of candidates. mere routine notices might thus meet great human needs. i have spoken throughout this paper of outward means and appliances; i have referred very little to improvement of the lives and spirits of men. this is not because i do not care for those lives and spirits. they are reached, we must remember, in many different ways. a great deal of life is necessarily spent in getting its surroundings into order, and in london here, this machinery of ours, all the tangible things round us, need a great deal done to them; it tests us better than any words can do. it is very difficult--impossible, i believe--to make the things of this world fair and orderly, to arrange them justly, to govern them rightly, without living very nobly. the right use of money, the laws affecting houses and lands, involve principles which test the sincerity of a man or a nation; they test it, i say, as words cannot test it. i think our poor see this very clearly, and that, strange as it may seem, the messages about god's nature, and about his relation to them, come in a subtle way through our acts. more perhaps than through our words. this is emphatically so just now. they have heard a great many words, and have been puzzled because our actions have often seemed to them at variance with those words. i know how hopelessly we must fail in any attempt to live up to the unspeakable majesty of god's tenderness, and the boundless wisdom of his righteousness; but even our failure, after sincere trial, brings a message of what he is to his children. our actions are speaking to them. for this reason i have never felt the execution of the most minute duty with regard to tangible things beneath my notice, and i do not feel that in urging any of you to consider the right settlement of questions of temporal relief, i am asking you to devote yourselves to a task which is otherwise than holy. on the contrary, i have felt that it can be only rightly dealt with by those who are content to carry it on in silent allegiance to one who will judge with farther sight than feeble men, who will know what deeper mercy there may be in the act which looks to men harsh at the moment. indeed, i dare not, trust the difficult things there may be to do in refusal of immediate help to any mere reasonable political economist. the generals who can direct the sad retracing of our foolish steps should be those who care for the people because their father cares, and so desire to make them what he would have them to be; and the only ones who will have fortitude to bear the misunderstanding this may cause will be those who feel tenderest pity for the people. not a small thing, even in itself, is the dealing with the tangible and soulless things of earth. we may be very proud, justly proud, of the well-ordered spot of earth, the well-spent income, the self-restrained providence, whether they are our own, or whether we have helped another so to regulate the talents entrusted to him; but the glad pride breaks away, and a deep thankfulness overpowers us, if ever by word or deed we seem to have helped anyone to catch even a little glimpse of the mighty love which enwraps his spirit, uniting it in solemn harmony with all that _is_ contained, as well as all that _cannot_ be contained, in this wonderful, visible world. footnote: [ ] read on the th of may, , to a meeting of district visitors and clergy at the bishop of gloucester and bristol's house in london. iii. a few words to volunteer visitors among the poor.[ ] you have asked me to speak to you to-day about work in this parish, and you know i have not the pleasure of knowing it or you. if anything i say is inapplicable you must forgive my ignorance; but if i am able to give you any hints which are of use it will not be strange, for one comes across the same kind of difficulties in many various districts of london just now. after the paper is read, if there are any special questions affecting your own district which any of you care to ask me about, i shall be delighted to answer them to the best of my power from this place, or we will have a little general conversation about them later. now i am going to say a great deal about hurtful gifts; but do not misunderstand me, and jump to a conclusion that because i speak of these i have lost sight of the great and good gifts we are each of us bound to make. the needs of the poor we must consider our special charge, and each of us give what we can that _is_ real help--not only time, and heart, and spirit, and thought, but money too; only we must see that it is really helpful, which needs thought and experience, and if we haven't experience we must seek it. there are gifts of money to be made; there are hard workers recovering from illness to be sent to convalescent homes; there are orphans to be supported and well educated; there are pensions to feeble old people who have worked hard, to be given to meet their own savings or compensate for lost savings; there are children to be placed in industrial schools; girls to be fitted out for service; travelling expenses to be paid for people going to better fields of work; but the decision about even these safer forms of gift requires experience. give, by all means, abundantly, liberally, regularly, individually, with all enthusiasm, by all manner of means, but oh, give wisely too. now to secure this wise relief, i am convinced you will require good investigation, co-operation on the part of your donors, thought and time given by your wisest men. all these are essential, but i am not going to dwell on them just now; the part of your work i am naturally most interested in is your district visiting. i wonder whether you have among you instances of the solitary, inexperienced district visitor, and can feel for her difficulties? do you know what i mean? a lady, well born, highly cultivated, well nurtured, becomes convinced that she has duties to the poor. perhaps some great personal pain drives her to seek refuge from it in christian service of the poor; perhaps some family loss darkens her whole horizon, and opens her eyes to other forms of sorrow; perhaps some stirring sermon startles her in the midst of triumphant pleasure, making her feel that she ought to give some slight offering of time to the poor; perhaps weariness of all superficial glitter of amusement makes her seek for deeper interests in life. be it what it may--desire to do good, or the urgent request of a friend, or desire to escape pain, she determines to volunteer as a district visitor. she is welcomed by the clergy, and requested to take such and such a district--i really think she has often little more preparation or instruction than that. she does not start with the desire of knowing the poor, but of helping them; help being in her mind synonymous in such cases with temporal help. she does not think of them primarily as _people_, but as _poor_ people. but though her ideas naturally therefore turn to questions of _relief_ as if these were her main concerns, she has never studied what has been found to be the effect of different ways of alms-giving, she knows little about the earnings of the poor, little of their habits and expenses, little about poor-law relief, little about the thousand and one societies for granting various kinds of help, little about the individual donors at work in the neighbourhood, little about distant fields of labour and demands for workers in them. now just pause and think of the effect of her actions when she begins--as begin she must by the very fact of her view of her duty--to deal practically with questions of relief; questions which, to say the least, are so difficult to deal with wisely that our most earnest, experienced, and thoughtful men pause in awe before them, advance slowly to practical conclusions, and speak humbly about them after years of study. ladies would pause before they went in and offered to help a house-surgeon at a hospital by undertaking a few patients for him, yet are they not doing something like it when they don't seek advice in district visiting? gradually, after weeks, months, perhaps years of worse than wasted labour, those who persevere begin to realise the disastrous effect of their action; hundreds who do not steadily persevere never even catch a glimpse of it, and go on blindly scattering gifts to the destruction of the recipients. for just pause and think what these gifts do to them. you or i go into a wretched room; we see children dirty and without shoes, a forlorn woman tells us a story of extreme poverty, how her husband can find no work. we think it can do no harm to give the children boots to go to school; we give them, and hear no more. perhaps we go to scotland the following week, and flatter ourselves if we remember the children that that gift of boots at least was useful. yet just think what harm that may have done. perhaps the woman was a drunkard, and pawned the boots at once and drank the money; or perhaps the man was a drunkard neglecting his home, and the needs of it, which should have been the means of recalling him to his duties, he finds partially met by you and me and others; or perhaps the clergy have seen that the poor woman cannot support the children and her husband, who is much too ill to find work, and have felt that if she and they are not to die of starvation they must go into the workhouse, for it is the only means of getting enough for them; charity, not being organised in the district, cannot undertake to do all that is wanted for them, and so had better do nothing. for gifts so given may raise false hopes which you and i, now pleasantly enjoying ourselves, never think of. because we went in and gave those boots, because others like us gave coal-tickets and soup-tickets last winter, what may not turn up? the poor woman asks herself. that gambling, desperate spirit enters into her heart, the stake being freedom and home. she plays high: she wins, or loses. we charitable people first of all never investigated the case to learn what it really was, what the character of the people was, whether the home was worth keeping together, whether with or without club-money it would cost more than we were ready or able to give; we raised hopes which it is a chance whether we fulfil; we met the want before us without thought; we forgot to consider the influence of that action on the life. such gifts are uncertain, insufficient, based on no knowledge. let us imagine that in another case we give to a man whose income is small; what is the effect on his character of these irregular doles? do they not lead him to trust to them, to spend up to the last penny what he earns, and hope for help when work slackens or altogether fails? does he try, cost what it may, to provide for sickness, for times when trade is dull and employment scarce? yet though we have by our gifts encouraged him in not making the effort to do this, are we quite sure to be at hand when the need comes? are we not most likely to be away? trade is slack when london is empty and district visitors away. every man's riches depend on his providence; they do so tenfold more markedly the nearer poverty he is, yet we have undermined his providence by uncertain action. do not our doles encourage him to keep his big daughter at home, earning a few pence in the street, where she has what she calls "freedom," instead of training her for decent service? i believe our irregular alms to the occupant of the miserable room, to the shoeless flower-seller, are tending to keep a whole class on the very brink of pauperism who might be taught self-control and foresight if we would let them learn it. i believe too that our blanket charities, soup-kitchens, free dormitories, old endowed charities distributing inadequate doles, have a great tendency to keep down the rate of wages of the very lowest class, partly because they come in like a rate in aid of wages, not so regular as that of the old poor-law, yet still appreciable--partly because they tempt large numbers who might raise themselves to hang on to low callings, and make competition fiercer in them and the chance of absolute want greater. the street-sellers and low class desultory workers usually remain what they are by choice; a little self-control would raise them into the ranks of those who are really wanted, and who have made their way from the brink of pauperism to a securer place, and one where they are under better influences. above all is this true of the children. a little self-control would enable the daughters of most of these people to rise into the class of domestic servants; and their sons, instead of remaining street-sellers, would soon learn a trade or go to sea if they cared to do regular work. we are largely helping, by our foolish gifts, to keep them herded together in crowded, dirty, badly-built rooms, among scenes of pauperism, crime, and vice. and we each of us think it is only the two shillings and sixpence, only the shilling for this or that perfectly justifiable object we have given. i have sometimes wanted to move some widow and her children to the north, where the children would learn a trade and support themselves well, where the woman would find much more work at washing and charring, and where the family would have a cottage healthy and spacious, instead of the one close room. the widow has been a little fearful of making so important a step. if the guardians, if the clergy, if, above all, the visitors, have let the need of work teach its own natural lesson, that family has removed and has been happy and independent. i have now several such well established in the north. but if the various donors have broken in with their miserable pittances of fixed or desultory relief, the family, in poverty and uncertainty of income, have dragged on here in london. in nearly every case requiring help there is some such step of _self_-help which ought to be taken by the family itself, or some member of it; some girl ought to go to service, some boy to get a place, some member of the family to begin learning a trade, some cheaper lodging to be found. depend on it, you cannot wisely help a family, you cannot tell whether help at all is needed, till the circumstances and character of each member has been well investigated. lay this to heart as a fact--i am certain of it. let it be with any of you who desire to do good a strict rule to yourselves to have the case of every family you want to help thoroughly scrutinised. if you can make up your mind not to give anything pending the receipt of a report, so much the better. but if you can't (i think you soon will), at any rate never give a sixpence without sending for a report on the case; it will guide your future action in that and other instances. it is not much i ask of you. the charity organisation society in every district in london will do the work for you free of charge. i am afraid i cannot yet promise you that it will always advise you as to efficient treatment; some of the committees could, and all that could would. but it is even more difficult to advise as to suitable treatment than to investigate a case, and it is not easy to find members for thirty-eight committees yet who know very much of the subject. but every charity organisation committee will know _far_ more than inexperienced visitors, and i should strongly advise all visitors to consult the committee about families in their district apparently needing relief. i hope you will notice that i have dwelt on the need of restraining yourselves from alms-giving on the sole ground that such restraint is the only true mercy to the poor themselves. i have no desire to protect the purses of the rich, no hard feeling to the poor. i am thinking continually and only of what is really kindest to them--kindest in the long run, certainly, but still kindest. i think small doles unkind to them, though they bring a momentary smile to their faces. first of all, i think they make them really poorer. then i think they degrade them and make them less independent. thirdly, i think they destroy the possibility of really good relations between you and them. surely when you go among them you have better things to do for them than to give them half-crowns. you want to know them, to enter into their lives, their thoughts, to let them enter into some of your brightness, to make their lives a little fuller, a little gladder. you who know so much more than they might help them so much at important crises of their lives; you might gladden their homes by bringing them flowers, or, better still, by teaching them to grow plants; you might meet them face to face as friends; you might teach them; you might collect their savings; you might sing for and with them; you might take them into the parks, or out for quiet days in the country in small companies, or to your own or your friends' grounds, or to exhibitions or picture galleries; you might teach and refine and make them cleaner by merely going among them. what they would do for you i will not dwell on, for if the work is begun in the right spirit you will not be thinking of that; but i do believe the poor _have_ lessons to teach us of patience, vigour, and content, which are of great value to us. we shall learn them instinctively if we are among them as we ought to be as friends. it is this side of your relation to them, that of being their friends, which has given all the value to your work as district visitors; it has been because you have been friends, in as far as you have been friends, that the relation between you has been happy and good. the gift has often darkened this view of you, and prevented the best among the poor from wishing to know you; when it has absolutely been the expression of friendship, its evil has been reduced to a great extent. but the gift you have to make to the poor, depend upon it, is the greatest of all gifts you can make--that of yourselves, following in your great master's steps, whose life is the foundation of all charity. the form of it may change with the ages, the great law remains, "give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away;" but see that thou give him bread, not a stone--bread, the nourishing thing, that which wise thought teaches you will be to him helpful, not what will ruin him body and soul; else, while obeying the letter of the command, you will be false to its deep everlasting meaning. my friends, i have lived face to face with the poor for now some years, and i have not learned to think gifts of necessaries, such as a man usually provides for his own family, helpful to them. i have abstained from such, and expect those who love the poor and know them individually will do so more and more in the time to come. i have sometimes been asked by rich acquaintances when i have said this whether i do not remember the words, "never turn your face from any poor man." oh, my friends, what strange perversion of words this seems to me. i may deserve reproach; i may have forgotten many a poor man, and done as careless a thing as anyone, but i cannot help thinking that to give _oneself_ rather than one's _money_ to the poor is not exactly turning one's face from him. if i, caring for him and striving for him, do in my inmost heart believe that my money, spent in providing what he might by effort provide for himself, is harmful to him, surely he and i may be friends all the same. surely i am bound to give him only what i believe to be best. he may not always understand it at the moment, but he will feel it in god's own good time. footnote: [ ] read at westminster, june rd, . iv. a more excellent way of charity.[ ] you have asked me to speak to you to-night, though i am a stranger to your parish, and know nothing of its special needs or special advantages. why, then, am i here? i suppose i may safely assume that it is mainly because i represent those who have deep care for the poor, and _also_ strong conviction that organisation and mature thought are necessary to any action which shall be really beneficial to them. i fancy your parish, like many another--like most others that have not passed through the stage and answered the problem--is just now questioning itself as to whether investigation, organisation, deliberate and experienced decision, which it feels to be essential if wise relief is to be secured, are, or are not, compatible with gentle and kindly relief; whether charity can be fully of the heart, if it is also of the head. if so, how are you to get the full strength of head and heart. if this is impossible, what in the world you are to do, for you cannot give up either. you ask practically, i fancy, when you invite me here, what i think on these points. i answer, then, emphatically and decidedly, that my experience confirms me entirely in the belief that charity loses nothing of its lovingness by being entirely wise. now it cannot be wise without full knowledge of the circumstances of those to be dealt with--hence the necessity of investigation; it cannot come to satisfactory conclusions on those facts unless it employs the help of experienced men--hence the need of a committee for decision; it will not be gracious and gentle, nor fully enter into individual needs, unless it secures the assistance of a good body of visitors. i do not wish to draw your attention to any special form of organisation, but i believe you will find, the more you think of it, that some form is needed, and that whatever it be, it will have to secure those three as essentials--good investigation, decision by a wise committee, and the help of a staff of visitors. i shall say nothing further on the first head, investigation, except that i consider it is done best by a good paid officer. a great deal of the preliminary work is quickly and well done by an experienced person, which it would be difficult for a volunteer to do; neither is it a sort of work which it is worth while for a volunteer to undertake. i refer to verifying statements as to residence, earnings, employment, visiting references, and employers. the finishing touches of investigation, the little personal facts, the desires and hopes, and to a certain extent the capacities of the applicant, no doubt a volunteer visitor would learn more thoroughly, but that can always be done separately from the preliminary and more formal inquiry. and now to turn to the consideration of the visitors--those who must be the living links binding your committee with the poor, the interpreters of their decision, the bearers of their alms, the perpetual guardians to prevent renewed falling into want. i have spoken in so many other places of the extreme value of such a body working in concert with a wise committee, and of the mistakes they are likely to make where undirected, that i am unwilling to dwell on either point in much detail here. i will only briefly reiterate that i think no committee can do its work with real individual care unless it contains those who will watch over each family with continuous interest, interpret its decisions intelligently and kindly, and learn all personal detail which may assist the committee in judging rightly. unhappily, visitors have very seldom any special training for their work, nor is the need of it pointed out to them. i earnestly wish we could get this recognised; not that any should be deterred from working from want of training, but that in every district some plans for advising and helping the inexperienced visitors, and binding all visitors more together, should be adopted. i have, in a paper read elsewhere, given a sketch of a practical scheme for securing this end. but even without the help there spoken of, visitors might try to look a little farther into the result of their action. they think of the immediate effect, and very little of the future one. now in all things we must beware of hasty action. it is not well, in the desire to alleviate an immediate want, to produce worse want in the future. i do not know the poor of your district: there may be many more of them, and they may be poorer, than i suppose; but in really populous poor parishes i have found, and surely you should find here, that an immense deal more might be done by the people for themselves than has been done hitherto. whatever may be the difficulties of finding work for them, aim at that first. try to get them to bring up their children to callings requiring skill, and which will raise them to the higher ranks of labour; help them to save; encourage them to join clubs; lend them books; teach them to cultivate and care for flowers. these and other like influences will indirectly help them far more even as to outward comforts, than any gifts of necessaries. but do not, when a family wants help, hesitate to give largely, if adequate help will secure permanent good. remember, if you establish people in life so that they can be self-supporting, it is well worth while to do it, cost what it may. i know little of your parish. but if it be, as i fancy, one in which the rich are many and the poor few compared to other places, i should like to add a word or two to such residents as are in good health and working here, urging them to consider the needs of more desolate districts, and pause to think whether or not they could transfer some of their time to them. i know it is a difficult question, and one to be judged in each case on its merits. i know well what may be urged on the ground of individual friendships formed with dwellers in your neighbourhood, on the score of want of strength and time, and the claims of your own parish. weigh these by all means, but think of the other side too, if by chance you can realise it. friendship with poor old women in your district! respect its claims; but are there no times when it may be worth while to make a change in work, even if it cause one to see less of friends? have you ever seen the ward of an east end workhouse, where from year's end to year's end the old women live without any younger life round them, no sons or daughters whose strength may make their feebleness more bearable, no little grandchildren to be cared for, and make the old which is passing forget itself in the young which is coming into vigour! is your bright young presence not asked for by the gray, monotonous, slowly-ebbing life of those wards? if your strength does not allow you to visit in remote districts, i grant that an unanswerable argument; for strength is meant to be temperately used and not thrown away. time! well, it takes time to go backwards and forwards; but isn't one hour where the need is great and the workers very few worth more than many hours in a more favoured district? have you ever realised what those acres and acres of crowded, heated, badly-built houses, over which you pass so quickly by train when you go in and out of london, mean? what kind of homes they make? what sort of human beings live and die there? have you asked yourselves whether your presence, your companionship, is needed there? whether the little children want your teaching? whether your gentleness, your refinement, your gaiety, your beauty, are wanted there? neighbourhood! oh yes, it has strong claims--some of the best possible; but then we must take care that we let our neighbours come round us naturally, rich _and_ poor. i only know this neighbourhood as i see it from the station, and it is possible it is otherwise inside, for i know quarters where the poor lodge often escape the eye of a casual observer; but i do know districts which _are_ very like what yours _looks_, where the villas cover all the ground, and there is no place for the poor man's cottage. where the idea of building for him would be mentioned with awed abhorrence by the comfortable residents, and they would talk about the unpleasantness of the poor living so near, chances of infection, &c. &c. where the few persons required to serve the needs of the residents live, in a somewhat pampered and very respectful dependence, in small districts decently withdrawn from view, visited and over-visited by ladies who haven't far to go--where the poor say there isn't a house to be had, and the rich say they get everything from a distance. while you are determined to have the _rich_ neighbourhoods, you must have the poor ones elsewhere. when you have gathered the poor round you, built for them, taught them, purified their houses and habits by your near presence, by all means talk about the claims of neighbourhood. but till then you must, i believe, take a wider outlook, and think of the neighbourhoods you have left, where moreover those who indirectly serve you earn their bread. you who are merchants' wives and daughters, nay, even those of you who buy the merchants' goods, have the dock-labourers no claims upon you? if the question, who is my neighbour? is asked by you, how do you think god answers it from heaven when he looks down and sees the vast multitudes of undisciplined poor by whose labour you live, and the few heroic workers whose lives are being spent for those poor almost forsaken by you? and if some of you went there to give what little of leisure, what little of strength, you have to spare, would your own neighbourhood suffer? i fancy not. for it seems as if usually where there are few poor and many rich living near together, the former become dependent in fat unenergetic comfort on the latter; and if this be such a neighbourhood, a few finding a call for their sympathy and help elsewhere might do good to all. it might be a real blessing to the place where you live to transfer to other and needier districts some of the superfluous wealth and unneeded care which from its very abundance may be spoiling and pampering your native poor. what a good thing it might be if each of your congregation here would undertake to help with money and with workers some poor district where wise principles were being strenuously and faithfully worked out. only remember, though you may send your money, and send it to those who use it wisely, the gift is a very poor one compared with that of yourselves. it is _you_ who are wanted there, your love, your knowledge, your sympathy, your resolution--above all, your knowledge; for if you saw, you could not leave things as they are. for instance, on a summer evening sultry as this, there are thousands of families who have no place to sit in but one close room, in which the whole family has eaten, slept, washed, cooked. it is stifling. they go to the doorstep; their neighbours are at their steps. it gets hotter, the children swarm in the narrow court; the dust flies everywhere; the heat, the thirst is insufferable, the noise deafening, the crowd bewildering; they go to the public-house: do you wonder? it may be there are a few spaces unbuilt over close by, but who will open the gates for them, plant a few flowers, put a few seats? the garden of lincoln's inn fields is certainly kept very lovely; but how few eyes are allowed to see it; red lion square is a howling ugliness; the board school playgrounds are closed on saturday;[ ] the little graveyard in drury lane[ ]--half the graveyards in london--are close locked and barred, and left in ugliness too; the quakers are actually deciding to sell for building purposes their ancient burial-ground near bunhill fields.[ ] can they not afford to let the place allotted to their dead be consecrated to the poor and become a place of rest to the weary living before their pilgrimage is over? money, money, money, to spend where we see its effect in parks, or villas, or cosy suburban houses, and not a glimpse of what we might do with it in the districts where the poor live and die. of course this is only one side of the truth, and no one knows the converse better than i. i know how people are coming forward year by year to do and to feel more and more of their duty to the poor. the interest deepens and spreads, and that rapidly. haven't i myself such a body of fellow-workers as makes me hardly know how to be thankful enough? and doubtless many of you here are doing exactly what i urge, or better things than i have thought of. but forgive me if the sight of all that is needed sometimes makes me a little impatient, and urge the point with some implied reproach towards those who delay to come and do what it looks as if they might. i daresay they may many of them have better reasons than i know for holding aloof: all have not the same duties; but sure i am that the need is urgent, and that to many such work would add new and deeper interests to life. i only say, "look for yourselves what the need is, consider what your duty may be, and when seen do it resolutely, quietly, hopefully." and now, leaving the subject of visitors, let us consider, in conclusion, the third point essential to wise dealing with the poor--the decisions of your committee after the facts are gathered for it by investigating agent and volunteer visitor. now, to secure right decision, one must have a distinct object in view. what is to be the ultimate object of your decisions respecting relief? let us at once distinctly clear the way by assuming that it must be the good of the people themselves. we have nothing to do with saving the money of the rich. it is possible--nay, probable--that in our first attempts to put charity on a right footing, we may have to spend more than we did before, and make larger demands on the purses of the wealthy. a few substantial gifts, wisely bestowed, may easily make up a larger sum than a multitude of petty careless doles. a weekly pension, a grant of a few pounds to help a family to migrate, is more than the money-equivalent of many a random shilling. but if, on reflection, we decide to withhold gifts of any kind whatsoever, it is only to be done for the sake of the people themselves. if doles, or bread-tickets, or coal-tickets, are proved to help the people, we are bound to give them to the extent of our power. if they are proved to injure them, we are bound not to give them, however pleasant it may be, however easy, however it may seem to pave the way for other influences. do we want to make the poor depend on relief, which is ready at a moment's notice, instead of having the fortitude to save a little to meet a sudden emergency? if so, we shall be always treating cases as urgent, and relieving pending investigation, and assuming that discretionary power of granting instant help must be vested somewhere besides in the relieving-officer. i know parishes where benevolent people plead that starvation or great need may arise if they have a weekly committee and no officer empowered to deal with urgent cases. suppose we ourselves had lost the pride of independence which does still exist in the middle and upper classes, though the tendency to look for extraneous help is, i sometimes fear, eating gradually upwards; but suppose we had no hesitation on the score of pride in asking our richer neighbour for a meal, or new clothes or boots, or additional blankets, or a ton of coal, would it be better for us to use just the amount of providence necessary for us to go to him a week beforehand and say, "please we shall want our dinner next sunday," or would it be better for us to be led to expect that if we called on saturday to tell him the fact, and he was out at a garden-party, when he came home he would say: "dear me, perhaps they have no dinner, and sunday too. i dare not wait to see why they are in want; whether there is any member of the family who might be helped to a place where he can earn more. i'd better send some roast meat. i don't like to be enjoying myself at garden-parties with my wife and daughter and not consider my poorer neighbours"? do you think that, be our earnings much or little, that kind of help would be likely to be helpful? the smaller the earnings the more need of providence; and there is no man so poor but he might, by effort, at least have a few shillings in hand for emergency, if he really felt it important. literally, that is all that is wanted to do away with this clamour about urgency. that every man should at some time of his life put aside five or ten shillings which should be ready for need, and apply for help directly he saw need to draw upon that, instead of when he hadn't a crust in the house. i don't know whether you are troubled with this great bugbear of "urgency" here; it frightens many districts, but always disappears when approached. depend upon it, starvation cases are more likely to arise where we have trained our poor to look for instantaneous help, than where they rely on their own forethought at least to the extent i have mentioned; for _if_ they trust to sudden aid, and any accident prevents their receiving it, then they have no money, and are in need indeed. depend on it, the poor-law, which the poor do not turn to readily, which has, moreover, a strong permanent machinery in every parish in england, is the only right source of relief for urgent cases. no respectable family but has friends, neighbours, or savings to fall back on just while you look well into their cases. those who are not respectable want, and, in my estimation, should have, help; but they cannot be helped easily with grants in urgent haste; they need thought, and influence, and much power. if, then, we decide that urgent cases can be left to the poor-law, your committees will have those only left to deal with whose circumstances they can thoroughly know and deliberately decide upon. and these, i believe they will find, class themselves into cases in which temporary help will raise the applicants into permanently self-supporting positions, and chronic cases. the first, no doubt, they will try to help liberally, carefully, and kindly. the second they will probably help only if they can do so adequately, which i should fancy here you might easily do, if you all heartily and thoughtfully co-operated, and knew each what the other was doing, so that no work was done twice over. such organisation of alms-giving would be, i should think, the limit of your aim at present. perhaps you will also add to these relieved persons a very large number of sick, whom i should be glad to see after, say, a year's notice, forced into some independent form of sick-club. for i do not myself believe that we from above can help the people so thoroughly and well in any other way as by helping them to help themselves. this i think they are meant to do--this i believe they can do by association and by forethought. when they do provide necessaries for their own families, i think it leaves our relation to them far better, and enables us to help them more fully in better ways. after all, what are the gifts of these outside things compared to the great gifts of friendship, of teaching, of companionship, of advice, of spiritual help? i know some people think the half-crown, or packet of tea, the best introduction to these. i cannot say i have seen it so. i do not remember a single example in any age or country in which a class in receipt of small occasional doles was in a position of honourable healthy friendship with the givers of such, or fit to receive from them any intelligent teaching. of course the receipt of alms produces curtsies and respectful welcomes, and perhaps attendances at church or chapel from those who care more for the gifts than for the quiet dignity of independence which is found in many humble people; more for the good tea than for any sermon or service. but how do the better ones feel it? haven't your gifts absolutely tended to alienate them from churches and chapels? do they not scorn them, and desire to be seen to benefit nothing by them? the application for help is nearly always made by the wife, and the respectable husband would no more make it than you or i would, in nine cases out of ten. only notice what happens whenever the rule is that the man must come up to ask for help; they hardly ever come, but simply earn the needed amount. and among the women, too, the better ones hold aloof from anything that looks like bribery to come to a place of worship. i would ask any clergyman whether he does not think that the mixing of temporal gifts with spiritual teaching has not a direct tendency to lower the value of the teaching in the eyes of the recipient? of old, when apostles preached, they treated the gospel as good news which the people would care to receive for itself; they honoured it in treating it as if it were a blessing. of course it is difficult to distinguish between the actions which come from the radiant outpouring of every species of good gift in mere wealth of joyful human love springing from vivid sense of divine love, which we see in earnest preachers of all ages, from the gift which is meant to be, and felt to be, a bribe. in many cases, probably, the gifts comprise a mixture of love and a purpose to attract, which it would be impossible to separate. but religious teaching, i have no manner of doubt whatever, has suffered of late years incomparably more than it has gained by this confusion. let the gift, then, stand or fall by its own intrinsic value; if it be helpful in itself, cultivating such right qualities as will make the recipient richer in such outside things as itself, let it be made. if not, withhold it. and for god's sake let his truth stand on its own merits. if it be a real need of his children, trust him in his own good time to make this plain to them. preach it by word, by deed, by patient abiding; but do not use bribes, or even what look like bribes, to make men take it in. depend on it, it cannot be taken so. it has been accepted in this and other ages by men ready to meet poverty, toil, scorn, death, rather than be false to it; it has been accepted with acclaim by multitudes who felt in it the answer to their difficulties, the great good news for their lives. the lowest natures, when they have received it, have done so through the noble feelings which are latent in the worst of us. it is only through appeal to these--their fortitude, their reverence--that it can come home to them. i cannot believe that god's truth has ever entered one human heart wrapped up in a bribe. let it speak quietly for itself; it is very strong. shall we doubt it? our special form of it, or application of it, may not commend itself to our neighbours. do not let this disappoint us; let us with single-minded zeal try to get those neighbours to be and to do what they see to be right, and then will be revealed to them, gradually, whatever form of truth they can comprehend and apply. they will help to form god's church, which is of many members; and if our little systems have their day, they have their day and cease to be, we must remember that the words go on: they are but broken lights of thee, and thou, o lord, art more than they. footnotes: [ ] read at a meeting held in a suburban district in july, . [ ] eighteen of these are now to be opened. [ ] now open to the public, and planted as a garden. [ ] since sold for building. v. a word on good citizenship. i have often, on previous occasions, felt bound to urge, not only the evils of indiscriminate alms-giving, but the duty of withholding all such gifts as the rich have been accustomed to give to the poor. at the same time i have realised so fully how tremendous the responsibility of abstaining from such gifts is considered by the donors, that i have not thought they could act on my advice without themselves seeing that it would be merciful as well as wise to withhold such gifts. i have, therefore, usually said: "look for yourself, but look with the sound of my words ringing in your ears." and those words have been distinctly to proclaim that i myself have no belief whatever in the poor being one atom richer or better for the alms that reach them, that they are very distinctly worse, that i give literally no such alms myself, and should have no fear for the poor whatever if any number of people resolved to abstain from such alms. but, on the other hand, i have long felt, and feel increasingly, that it is most important to dwell on the converse of the truth. the old forms in which charity expressed itself are past or passing away. with these forms are we to let charity itself pass? are there no eternal laws binding us to charitable spirit and deed? are we, who have become convinced that doles of soup, and loans of blankets, and scrubbing-brushes sold at less than cost-price, have failed to enrich any class--have helped to eat out their energy and self-reliance--thereon to tighten our purse-strings, devise new amusements for ourselves, expend more in luxurious houses and expensive dinners, cultivate our own intellects, indulge elegant tastes, and float down the stream of time in happy satisfaction that the poor cannot be bettered by our gifts--in fact, must learn self-help--we meantime going to flower-shows, or picture galleries, or studying systems of political economy? are the old words, "bear ye one another's burdens," to pass away with the day of coal-tickets? have the words, "ye are members one of another," ceased to be true because our tract and dole distribution has broken down? are there no voices still speaking in our hearts the old commandment, "love one another?" is that love to be limited henceforward to the pleasant acquaintances who call upon us, and like the same poets, and can talk about rome and the last clever book? or is it, as of old, to go forth and gather in the feeble, the out-of-the-way, the poor? is humanity, is nationality, is citizenship too large for our modern love or charity to embrace, and shall it in the future be limited to our family, our successful equals, or our superiors? are we going to look out and up, but never down? the love of our master christ, the love of st. francis, the love of howard, the love of john brown, the burning love of all who have desired to serve others, has been a mighty, all-embracing one, and specially tender, specially pitiful. all modern forms of alms-giving may pass and change, but this love must endure while the world lasts. and if it endure, it must find expression. charity such as this _does_ find expression. it finds expression, when healthiest and most vigorous, not in weak words, but in strong acts. if we would not be mere butterflies and perish with our empty, fleeting, self-contained lives; if we would not be fiends of intellectual self-satisfaction living a cold and desolate life; if we would not leave the hungry, the forlorn, the feeble, to perish from before us, or to rise and rend us; we must secure such love as that which lighted and intensified the lives of heroes and of missionaries, and struggle to see what scope there is for acts which shall embody that love. the mistake the old-fashioned donors make is not in their benevolence--that cannot be too strong--but they forget to watch whether the influence of their deeds is beneficent. i should not at all wonder if even thirty years ago doles were more beneficent than now. if the poor had at that time not learned to trust to them, if they came straight from the loving hands of those who cared to step aside from beaten tracks to know and serve the poor they must have had very different results from any they have now, when people _have_ learned to depend on them, when they are almost the fashion, and often the relief for the consciences of those who don't feel quite easy, if they give _no_ time, _no_ heart, _no_ trouble, nor _any_ money to the poor. i have no manner of doubt, that just now gifts of necessaries are injurious. what form, then, shall our charity take in the immediate future? take that question home to yourselves, each of you who has not answered it already; ask it of yourselves, not as if you were asked to take the position of hero, or martyr, or professed philanthropist, but as if i had said to you, "what do you, as a man or woman, feel bound to do beyond the circle of your family for those who are fellow-men, fellow-citizens, many of them sunk into deep ruts of desolation, poverty, and sin?" find some answer, live up to it, so shall your own life, your own city, your own age be better. i will tell you what kind of answer i think may come to you. first, as to money, which is perhaps the most difficult thing to give without doing harm. don't sit down under the conviction that therefore you are to buy or spend it all for yourself. if you like to earn rather less, to pause in middle life, and give full thought to spending what you have, or, better still, to give time which might have made money, i shall certainly not complain of you. but do not think there is no scope for beneficent gifts of money because soup-kitchens and free dormitories are not beneficent. there is abundant scope for large gifts, large enough to please the proudest of you. are there no great gifts of open spaces to be made for the rich and poor to share alike in the time to come--spaces which shall be to the child no more corrupting than the mountain to the highlander, or the long sea horizon to the fisherman's lad? they will come to him as an inheritance he possesses as a londoner or an english child; most likely being taken, like light and air, straight from god, and not in any way tending to remind him of men's gifts, still less to pauperise him. but if a memory of you as a donor comes to him as youth ripens into manhood, long after you are in your grave, the thought is more likely to incite him to make some great, abidingly useful gift to his town, than in any way to paralyse his energies or weaken his self-respect. are there no places to plant with trees, no buildings to erect, no libraries to found, no scholarships to endow? are there, moreover, none of those many works to achieve, which a nation, a municipality, a vestry, first needs to see done, to learn the use of by using, though finally such a community may prize them more by making an effort to establish similar ones? for instance, no one would dwell more urgently than i on the need of making healthy houses for the poor remunerative; and now the problem of doing so has been in a great measure solved. but do we not owe this to the efforts of a body of men in earlier time who were content to lose money in experiments and example? pioneers must risk, if not give, largely, that we may travel smoothly over the road which they made with such difficulty. are we in turn never to be pioneers? are there no improved public-houses, no improved theatres, no better machinery for collecting savings, which we may establish and give our money to? the same kind of far-sighted policy might be adopted with all smaller gifts, making them either radically beneficial in themselves, as when they train an orphan for service-work in life, or give rest to an invalid whose savings are exhausted; or they may be gifts of things which no one is bound to provide for himself, but which give joy--as if you helped to put coloured decoration outside our schools or houses in dingy streets, or invited a company of poor people whom you know to tea in your garden during the fair june weather, or even sent some shells from your home by the sea to small children in one of our few london playgrounds. but to leave the question of money and come to the greater gift of _time_. here especially i would beg you to consider whether you have each of you done your utmost. a poor district in london is inhabited by a number of persons, ill-educated, dirty, quarrelsome, drunken, improvident, unrefined, possibly dishonest, possibly vicious. i will assume that we, too, have each of us a good many faults--perhaps we are selfish, perhaps we are indolent. i am sure all the virtue is not among the rich; but certain advantages they surely have which the poor have not--education, power of thinking out the result of certain courses of action, more extended knowledge of facts or means of acquiring it, habits of self-control, habits of cleanliness, habits of temperance, rather more providence usually, much more refinement, nearly always a higher standard, perhaps a high standard, of honesty. have we not a most distinct place among the poor, if this be so? is not our very presence a help to them? i have known courts nearly purified from very gross forms of evil merely by the constant presence of those who abhorred them. i know, you probably all know, that dirt disappears gradually in places that cleanly people go in and out of frequently. mere intercourse between rich and poor, if we can secure it without corrupting gifts, would civilise the poor more than anything. see, then, that you do not put your lives so far from those great companies of the poor which stretch for acres in the south and east of london, that you fail to hear each other speak. see that you do not count your work among them by tangible result, but believe that healthy human intercourse with them will be helpful to you and them. seek to visit and help in parishes in which this is recognised as an end in itself. again, we have got our population into a state of semi-pauperism, from which individuals and societies cannot raise them merely by abstaining from gifts by guardians or withdrawing out-relief. we have accustomed them to trust to external help, and only by most patient individual care shall we raise them. neither can we persuade donors, unaccustomed to study the future results of their acts, to abstain from distinctly unwise charity unless we are among them, unless we are ready, too, to consider with them about each human soul, which is to them and to us inexpressibly precious, what is at the moment the wise thing to do. have most gentlemen any idea how much this work needs doing in the poor districts of london? the charity organisation society came forward now some years ago to try to get the donors of london to meet and consider this question in detail in every district in london. it undertook to look carefully into all cases brought to its offices, and to report the results of its inquiries. it did _not_ undertake to make additional gifts except where they might secure enduring benefit, but it said to the donors, "associate yourselves, relieve after due thought, after investigation, and in conjunction one with another." that society has made great way; it has established offices in every district, and has provided an investigating machinery of inexpressible value, of which every londoner may avail himself. but, i ask, where are the donors? where are the representatives of the various relieving agencies? the clergy? the district visitors? there are of course a certain number who have co-operated heartily, but, as a rule, i am forced to reply very mournfully, after all these years they are for the most part going on with their ill-considered relief very much the same, not using the machinery, and reproaching the charity organisation society that _it_ is not relieving largely, and that it is not composed of themselves! now, till these relieving agencies come in and take their share, and give their gentler tone to the somewhat dry machinery, are these offices to be places where mere routine business is done by an agent who cannot have much individual care for the applicants? or is there to be anyone to watch over each applicant with real charity, questioning him gently, thinking for him sympathetically, seeking for him such help as will be really helpful? in some offices in the poor districts we have found honorary secretaries to do this, and splendid work it has been. wherever such help has been forthcoming the poor have been well served, and the old-fashioned donors have been in some measure won to wiser courses of action. but many more such honorary secretaries are needed, and that imperatively and immediately. are there no men of leisure, with intellect and heart, who will come forward? i have known no such urgent need as this in the many years i have spent face to face with the poor since i came to london--the need of advice, of sympathy, of thoughtful decision for poor man after poor man, as he comes up to our offices at a crisis in his life. one more instance of the way help can be given, and i have done; for i will not dwell now on the good that might be done by the purchase and management of the houses of the poor, by teaching, by entertainments for them, by oratorios, by excursions, by the gift of beautiful things. i will only point out now that as guardians or vestrymen the most influential sphere of work presents itself. if you try to get into parliament, many men of equal education, high principles, and refinement probably contest the place with you; if you succeed they fail; if you try to make a name among the fashionable or wealthy circles, you may or may not succeed; but if you fail no one misses you much. but if, instead of trying to get high up, you were to try to get down low, what a position of usefulness you would have! you would learn much from vigorous colleagues, much i fancy which would make you ashamed; but what might not they gain, what might not the locality gain, if the administration of its affairs were carried on under the influence of men of education! as guardians, how you might see to the poor, leading them back to independence in most thoughtful ways, watching over them individually that no wrong was done! as vestrymen, how you might be on the side of far-sighted expenditure or the suppression of corruption! when i see people all struggling to get up higher, they seem to me like people in a siege, who should all rush to defend the breach for the glory and renown of it, and trample one another to death, and leave little doors unwatched all round the town; and i can't help wondering sometimes why more of them don't pray marion erle's prayer when she leaves the wedding-dress unfinished to go and nurse the fever-stricken patient, "let others miss me, never miss me, god." i don't the least mean that the works i have suggested are the only ones, or the best, or even that always that _kind_ of work may be best. the form that charity takes in this age or in that must be decided by the requirements of the time, and these i describe may be as transient as others. only never let us excuse ourselves from seeking the best form in the indolent belief that no good form is possible, and things are better left alone; nor, on the other hand, weakly plead that what we do is _benevolent_. we must ascertain that it is really _beneficent_ too. vi. open spaces.[ ] all that is strictly practical that i have to say to-day could be summed up in a very few words. i have no changes in the law to suggest. i have not thought it well to relate the past history of inclosures, nor even to prepare for you statistics, neither have i touched on recent legislation respecting commons. i have had but one end in view in writing this paper--the laying out and opening small central spaces as public gardens. i have to interest you in accomplishing the object. "there is little to see, and little to say; it is only to do it," as was once said by a hard worker. i cannot transport you all to see the good sample-work which there is in some few neighbourhoods in london. i can, therefore, only ask you to let me describe in some detail the need of these gardens, then what has been, and what, it seems to me, should be, done, with various kinds of small spaces. this paper contains this description and information, as to the very simple preliminary steps necessary to be taken to render some of these spaces available for public use; but though so much of it is thus necessarily descriptive, it is only on the ground of its bearing on distinct practical results that i trouble you with it. there are two great wants in the life of the poor of our large towns, which ought to be realised more than they are--the want of space, and the want of beauty. it is true that we have begun to see that a whole family living in one room is very crowded, and we have been for some years well aware that it would be a good thing if we could manage so to build that a working man could pay for two or even three rooms; it is true that we have learned that the extreme narrowness of our courts and alleys, and the tiny spaces, often only four or five feet square, called by courtesy "yards," which are to be found at the back of many of the houses filled with families of the poor, appear to us insufficient. we wish we could enlarge them, we wish that building acts had prevented landlords thus covering with rent-producing rooms the gardens or larger yards which once existed at the back of high houses; and we are alive to the duty of trying to obviate, as soon as may be, this want of space, to any degree to which it may yet be possible. but there is a way in which some compensation for this evil may be provided, which appears only to have begun lately to dawn upon the perception of men. i mean the provision of small open spaces, planted and made pretty, quite near the homes of the people, which might be used by them in common as sitting-rooms in summer. even in england there are a good many days when at some hours sitting out of doors is refreshing, and when very hot days do come, it seems almost a necessity. i fancy very few of you know what a narrow court near drury lane or clerkenwell is on a sultry august evening. the stifling heat, the dust lying thick everywhere, the smell of everything in the dirty rooms, the baking, dry glare of the sun on the west window of the low attic, just under the roof, making it seem intolerable--like an oven. the father of the family which lives there, you may be pretty sure, is round the corner at the public-house, trying to quench his thirst with liquor which only increases it; the mother is either lolling out of the window, screaming to the fighting women below, in the court, or sitting, dirty and dishevelled, her elbow on her knee, her chin on her hand, on the dusty, low door-step, side by side with a drunken woman who comments with foul oaths on all who pass. the children, how they swarm! the ground seems alive with them, from the neglected youngest crawling on the hot stones, clawing among the shavings, and potato-peelings, and cabbage-leaves strewn about, to the big boy and girl "larking" in vulgarest play by the corner. the sun does not penetrate with any purifying beams to the lower stories of the houses, but beats on their roofs, heating them like ovens. the close staircase is sultry, the dust-bins reek, the drains smell, all the dirty bedding smells, the people's clothes smell. the wild cries of the thirsty, heated, irritated crowd driven to drink, the quarrelling children's voices echo under the low and narrow archway by which you enter the court. everyone seems in everyone else's way. you begin to wonder whether a human being, man, woman, or child, is in very deed in any sense precious, either to god who made them, or to their own family, or to their fellow-citizens. somehow you wonder whether, when one of them is carried out by the undertaker at last, to use a common old saying, "his room is not worth more than his company," so fearful is the life to which people take under such conditions, so terribly does the need of a little more space strike you, so impossible seems any quiet in which tone might be recovered by these exhausted creatures. and yet every one of those living beings, crowding almost under your feet, having to move from doorway or stair as you enter, has a human form, a human character too; somebody knows and loves him, some mother, father, sister, brother, child, watches for that face among the many, and would feel a great gap left in the world if that one came never any more up the court. even the reeling drunkard would be missed. each is surrounded by a love which makes him precious, each has also some germ and gleam of good in him, something you can touch, or lead, or strengthen, by which in time he might become the man he was meant to be. each is a child of god, meant by him for some good thing. put him in a new colony with wood, or heath, or prairie round him, or even lead him into the quiet of your own study, and you will begin to see what is in the man. it is this dreadful crowding of him with hundreds more, this hustling, jostling, restless, struggling, noisy, tearing existence, which makes him seem to himself or you so useless, which makes him be so little what he might be. can you give him a little pause, a little more room, especially this sultry summer afternoon? i think you may. there are, all over london, little spots unbuilt over, still strangely preserved among the sea of houses--our graveyards. they are capable of being made into beautiful out-door sitting-rooms. they should be planted with trees, creepers should be trained up their walls, seats should be placed in them, fountains might be fixed there, the brightest flowers set there, possibly in some cases birds in cages might be kept to delight the children. to these the neighbouring poor should be admitted free, under whatever regulations should seem best. the regulations will vary according to the size of the ground and other local circumstances. in some cases where the ground is large it might, no doubt, be thrown absolutely open, as leicester square is, a man being always in attendance to keep order, though the people will themselves help to keep order very soon. in the case of very small grounds admission might be given to certain numbers by tickets placed in the hands of guardians, schoolmasters, ministers of all denominations, bible-women, and district visitors. though, no doubt, much supervision would be needed at first, after a time an old man, any not too feeble old pensioner, especially if fortified with some kind of uniform, would be amply sufficient, if always there, to keep order. his wages would be small, and employing him would be a double charity. in these gardens, near to their own homes, and therefore easily accessible to the old and feeble, they might sit quietly under trees; there the tiny children might play on gravel or grass, with a sense of mother earth beneath them. there comrades might meet and talk, whose homes are too small and wretched for them to sit there in comfort, and for whom the public-house is too often the only place to meet in, or to read the newspaper. if visitors could gather small groups of children together, and use these out-door sitting-rooms as places to teach them games, read to them, or get leave for them to train the creepers up the wall, much good might be done, and much of the evil of playing in the streets prevented. it is to the conversion of these churchyards into gardens that i would specially turn your attention to-day; there are a vast number of them all over london, as shown in a map prepared by the commons preservation society, , great college street, westminster. i have ventured to draw the attention of some few london vicars to the question, and if you would each of you look in any crowded neighbourhood known to you, what might be done, and bring the question before the incumbents, churchwardens, or leading vestrymen, a great many of these graveyards might rapidly be made available. of course there may be special local difficulties here and there, but the process is very simple where there is no opposition; and if those parishes where there is none would lead the way, that would soon bring the others to follow so good an example. the first step to be taken is to secure the leave of the incumbent of the parish. notice must then be placed on the church-doors giving notice that a vestry meeting will be called to consider the scheme. the vestry then obtains a faculty from the dean of arches. the vestry can then be asked for a grant, and they can apply to the metropolitan board of works for a further grant. in the case of st. george's-in-the-east £ , was voted by the vestry, and £ , by the metropolitan board of works. this was of course a specially expensive scheme, the churchyard itself being large, and the freehold of adjoining ground, which was formerly a burial-ground belonging to dissenters, having to be absolutely bought. the expense in the case of the drury lane ground was about £ ; the vestry became responsible for the whole, but hope the neighbouring parishes and private persons will help. it appears to me that the vestries should in the first instance be applied to, though doubtless private people would gladly help if necessary. it may be interesting to you to know, so far as i can tell you, what has already been done in planting and opening churchyards. mr. harry jones has induced his vestry to co-operate with him, and has made a public garden of the churchyard of st. george's-in-the-east. he obtained the hearty co-operation of his parishioners, and the place bears the stamp of being one in which they feel they all have a share. i believe the churchwarden gave the fountain, and the vestry, instead of having to be urged on to spend more, actually ordered , bulbs this spring, in their enthusiasm to make the place bright and pretty! the high wall covered with spikes, which separated the church from the dissenting burial-ground, has been pulled down, and the whole thrown into one. the ground has been laid out with grass, flower-beds, broad gravel walks, and plenty of seats have been placed there. the day i was last there, there were many people in the garden, one or two evidently convalescents. the ground was in perfect order, a gardener and one man being in attendance; but the people, though evidently of the lower class, were clearly impressed with a feeling that the garden should be respected. in fact the special feature of this garden seemed to me to be the evident sense of its being common property--something that everyone had had a share in doing, and in which they had a common interest. the tombstones are all removed, but measurements were taken, and an authorised plan made of the ground, showing precisely the place of every grave, also a certified copy of every tombstone has been entered in a large book. these precautions for carefully preserving power of identifying the spot where any body is buried, and securing the record of the inscription, have entirely satisfied the owners of graves and the legal authorities, and it would be well for vicars having disused churchyards to remember the plan as one which has met all difficulties in the way of removing tombstones. the little churchyard in bishopsgate which has been planted is probably well known to most of you. it is, i believe, a delight to many. a friend said to me the other day, "i often pass through it; it is certainly very nice. the only thing i am sorry about is that they have taken away the peacock and put two swans instead." "are they not as pretty?" i asked. "oh, i daresay they are," he replied; "it was the swans i was thinking of, they have so small a space, while the peacock was quite happy, because he always had plenty of people to admire his tail!" the rev. g. m. humphreys brought the question of opening the little burial-ground in drury lane before the notice of the st. martin's-in-the-fields vestry. they agreed to carry forward the work, and it was opened last week to the people as a garden. it is a refreshing breathing-space in a terribly crowded neighbourhood. it is bounded by a small piece of ground on the north which is admirably fitted for a block of dwellings for working people. if the duke of bedford, to whom i understand it belongs, would build, or arrange for others to build there, a block of houses where abundant air would be secured to them, and transfer there the population of some crowded court, he would do a great and good work. by-the-way, this paper was written before the news reached me of the temporary closing of the garden until such time as the vestry have decided in what way to regulate the admission of the public in future. as much will doubtless be heard of this temporary closing, i may as well explain, that my friend, miss cons, was there on thursday, and saw the extent of mischief done, and went pretty thoroughly into the whole question. there does not appear to have been any destructiveness of mischievous feeling--the people availed themselves in such crowds of the privilege of going in, that the ivy was very much trampled on, and the yuccas which had been planted in the middle of the gravel without any sort of protection had their leaves spoiled; but the shrubs were hardly injured, nor does there appear to have been any intentional mischief done. it is hardly wonderful that the ivy should be trampled on, seeing that no low wire fence, such as guards the beds in leicester square, nor little hoops, such as protect them in st. george's-in-the-east, had been placed. at the same time i may add that, seeing how very small the ground is in proportion to the dense population near drury lane, in the letter in which i brought the subject of planting it before the vicar, i suggested opening it by tickets distributed by workers in the district, rather than throwing it absolutely open to everyone. i thought that might have been done later, if it were found possible. i also pointed out to the man in charge, as i left the ground last week, that _at first_ much supervision would be needed. if the vestry has the smallest doubt about the possibility of succeeding in keeping it in order, i have not the smallest hesitation in undertaking to do it for them for a year, if they like to trust me with it, and so meet the first difficulties by special individual care, and prove the possibility of conducting the experiment there, as well as it has been done in st. george's-in-the-east. but i have no doubt they will see their way effectually to carry through the good work they have begun, only i have not had time to communicate with them yet. the large churchyard in the waterloo road is in process of being turned into a garden. the rev. arthur robinson has collected £ , and is laying it out more like a country garden, and less like a place planned by a board of works, than any other i have seen. he has stumps prepared for ferns to grow on (and wants some, by-the-way, which some of you might send him); he has a nice bank, winding walks between the turf, knows which side of the church his wisteria will grow, spoke with hope of getting the large blue clematis to flower, wants numberless creepers to cover the church walls, and to wreathe around and make beautiful the few tombs which he leaves unmoved because relatives are still living and care to retain them. i understand he purposes applying to the vestry for help, and in view of the many churchyards there are to deal with, this would seem the right thing to do in general. at the same time, i can see we should get a more country-like garden, the more the planning of it could be left in the hands of a man of culture, who loves plants and colour. i believe st. pancras churchyard is now open as a garden; limehouse is, i understand, thus utilised as far as the tombstones allow. the rev. w. allen has got his parishioners to memorialise the vestry to take some steps towards opening the ground in bermondsey, but hitherto without success, and there may be others either now laid out or in progress--i earnestly hope there are--of which i have no knowledge. i regret to say that an attempt to induce the quakers to appropriate to the same purpose a burial-ground belonging to them in bunhill fields has utterly failed. the ground was one which would have been of almost more value for the purpose than any i know in london. it is close to whitecross street, which some of you may know as a street quite swarming with costermongers; the houses there are tunnelled every few yards with archways leading to as crowded courts as i know anywhere. many houses of the poor actually overlooked the ground. in coleman street, which bounds the ground on the north, is a factory from which crowds of workmen turn out daily at dinner-time, many, no doubt, to adjourn to the public-house. but one hot day last summer, when i was there, dozens of them were sitting on the dusty pavement, their backs leaning against the great, dead, heated wall, which hid from them the space occupied by the burial-ground. there is not a tombstone in it, and it might have been planted and thrown open easily. last summer i wrote to the quakers, hearing they were about to sell the ground for building, laying before them the reasons for devoting it to the public as a garden. after urging them to give it thus to the poor themselves, i added a request that if they did not see their way to do this, they would at least pause to enable me and my friends who were interested in such undertakings to see whether we could not raise enough money to secure it for the poor, even if they determined to exact for it full building-land value. i certainly could hardly believe that quakers could thus sell land once devoted to their dead, and which had never brought them in rent, but i thought it just possible they might hesitate to give what belonged to the society all to the poor. at any rate, i was determined no want of effort on my part should lose for the people so valuable and unique a space lying in the heart of a crowded neighbourhood. my letter was never even considered by the meeting. the company in treaty for the ground did not purchase it then, because they thought it irreverent to disturb the dead. yet although i have again and again seen and written to leading quakers about it, and addressed several letters to their organ, _the friend_, they have deliberately just sold it for building. no builder could be found who liked to buy the ground and disturb the bodies, and the quakers themselves employed workmen to accomplish the most ghastly unearthing of the contents of the graves, uprooting five thousand bodies, which, i should think, never was undertaken before. they are selling the land for dwellings for the poor, and are excusing themselves by harping on the need of dwellings; but the immediate neighbourhood is to be dealt with under the artisans dwellings bill, by means of which a large number of healthy homes for the poor will be erected, while i fear there is no chance of any other garden being made in their midst. and, especially as only a portion of the quakers' burial-ground is to be devoted to workmen's dwellings, the number of rooms provided in the district will not be sensibly affected. they have excused themselves, too, because they have not dug up george fox, but only some of their lesser leaders and their nameless dead. even if they formed a slightly different estimate of the relative advantages of a few more rooms and a garden, i own to an amazed sorrow that the quakers rejected a scheme by which the land might have been rendered a blessing to the living, without doing violence to what seems to me to be a natural instinct of reverence, ineradicable in every human heart, for whatever has been associated with the loved, or the great and noble who are no longer with us. nor could i have borne, if i had been they, to draw so marked a distinction between the unknown, who had surely been loved, and the known, who had been famous, as to uproot five thousand bodies and spare george fox's grave. i am sorry english workmen were called in to "separate those who had lain side by side for two centuries," that "the bones of young and old were" by them "placed in coarse deal boxes and re-interred in a large hole at the other end of the ground." that "many of them, while awaiting this fresh burial, were piled in a rude heap in a corner," with carbolic acid poured over them. is this the lesson our workmen are to learn? are they, too, valueless because so nameless? these poor bodies now mouldering away were once animated by spirits of beloved men and women. that which was once the form which embodied any human soul, named or unnamed, would have seemed to me worth a little gentler care. better have let it mingle quietly with the dust and feed the trees and the daisies, keeping the resting-place of the dead one also for the weary and the poor. i deal with the matter thus at length because the quakers still have a burial-ground in whitechapel and one in bermondsey, which would be available as gardens, and which they have not yet sold; and also because i am not aware that they have decided how they will deal with the small portion of the bunhill fields ground which they cannot build over, where they have re-buried their unearthed dead. have any of you influence with them, or can anything be done? the whitechapel ground, though not nearly so central and important as bunhill fields, is well worth preserving. it is overlooked by the workhouse, in the chronic wards of which there must be many who would rejoice to look out over trees and flowers, and who will never see them again unless this ground is planted with them. on the east side of the ground, too, is a wall; only to pull down that wall and put a railing instead, would give light and air to a whole street. yet though mr. lefevre, on behalf of the commons preservation society, has twice asked them to say whether, and if so on what terms, they would arrange for the ground to be put in order and used as a garden for the people, they give evasive answers, and i believe have it in contemplation to sell it for building. the rector of whitechapel has written to them, the guardians have memorialised them. they make no responsive sign. i make these remarks in no spirit of hostility to the quakers; some of my oldest and best friends are quakers, and i have the deepest respect for them as a body, and well know they have been leaders in much that is good, thoughtful, and liberal in times past, to the poor to a remarkable degree, and i know the value of such gardens is only beginning to attract notice; but i think the facts as concerning the land should be well known to the whole society and to the public, and i only hope that the society will consider them thoroughly at their yearly meeting this month. within the last few days i have received letters from leading quakers, asking me to bring the question before their yearly meeting; but i think i must really leave it in their own hands; the responsibility is wholly theirs. their best ground is now almost gone, the facts are well before them, and mr. shaw-lefevre's offer is not only well known to the whole society, but the correspondence between him and their committee has been published in _the friend_ newspaper. there is another body which i hope will swiftly become aware of their opportunities for doing good with land which is under their control--the london school board. they have in all fifty-seven acres of playground, which they entirely close on the children's one holiday, saturday, and during the summer evenings. it seems almost incredible, does it not? but so it really is. of course the fact is that the board has not considered how to manage the supervision. but surely that difficulty ought to be met either by the board itself paying for it, if that is within its powers, or by some society, such as that which has summoned us here to-day, or by individual donors. having the ground which, however small, is at least available for games for a certain number of children selected by the masters, it seems ridiculous not to use it. a deputation from this society will wait on the school board on may , to press the opening of the ground upon them--for that deputation influential support is much needed. if any of you can help, i hope you will communicate with miss lankester. i spoke of the very corrupting influence of the streets, though i did so with reference to the small companies of children who might be brought together for quiet pastimes in our churchyard-gardens of the future. the school board playgrounds would afford scope for the more active games. surely this should be afforded by anybody who realises how very beneficial athletic exercise and active play would be to the children's health, and how happy it would make them. why, i have seen two swings make children so happy, i have been ashamed to think how few we have in london. they don't take much space, and what delight they give! a clergyman near here is about to fit up a yard as a gymnasium for the men belonging to a workmen's club, and doubtless others will do the same. the uses to which even a small playground in london may be put would take long to describe. i have charge of two, where, besides opening them every saturday and in the summer evenings, every may we have a real maypole--flowers from the country in thousands, flags flying, band playing, swings, and see-saws fully used, children marching, dancing, and skipping, and a kind and able body of ladies and gentlemen who know them amusing them, keeping order, and increasing by their presence the sense of festivity. the trustees of lincoln's inn fields have, for the last two or three years, kindly granted to me leave to take in a company of the children of our tenants one afternoon each summer. it is a pleasant sight. the square is larger, i believe, than any in london, and the trees are most beautiful. they have also just given permission to the boys from the refuge in great queen street to exercise there two mornings a week from seven to nine o'clock. but this is a small amount of use to make of one of the largest, and most beautiful, and most central spaces of the metropolis, where there are few or no residents to be disturbed or interfered with at the hours when the ground would be most valuable; and it is to be earnestly hoped that the trustees will soon extend the privileges that they have hitherto kindly accorded to us to others. it appears to me to be simply a question of adequate supervision, and for this there are people who would be willing to pay. it is well known that the temple and lincoln's inn gardens are now opened regularly on summer evenings to children. why the managers limit the privilege to children i cannot think. surely older people need the air, and surely they would help unconsciously to keep order too. the more of such places that are open, the less will the grass in each be worn--the better the people will learn to behave. i have sometimes heard it urged against opening places to the poor that there is a chance of their conveying infection to children of a higher class. setting aside the fact that out of doors is the last place people are likely to take infection, and that i presume the richer children would be under supervision as to playing with strangers, i ask you seriously to consider who ought to monopolise the few spaces there are in this metropolis for outdoor amusements. is it the children whose parents take them to the sea, or the country, or the continent, when the summer sun makes london unbearable? is it the children who, if their little cheeks look pale, or their strength flags after an illness, are at once sent under careful supervision to hastings or malvern? is it even the children whose sturdy and vigorous father has amassed a little money, and delights to take them by train on a saturday afternoon to richmond, bushey, or erith? or is it not rather the tiny child of the hard-working widow, whose frail form seems almost to grow smaller year by year instead of larger? is it not the pale child with great sunken eyes, just discharged from the hospital, the bed being wanted, convalescent, but to whom fresh air and a little quiet are still so needful? is it not to the careful, motherly, little elder sister, patient nurse of eight or nine years old, hugging the heavy, round-cheeked baby, with two or three other children clinging to her dress, she who cannot get as far as the park? is it not the sturdy urchin, son of a costermonger perhaps, whose hardy and energetic spirit scorns the bounds of the narrow court, and seeks wider fields with freer power of movement, but who has no chance, even when july comes, of climbing cliffs or jumping ditches? should not the few spaces be available for these latter to the very utmost of your power? and again, do you really think now, people who live in comfortable houses, that you do or can escape infection by any precautions if small-pox and fever rage in the back courts of your city? you take all manner of precautions, i know (except, perhaps, what i should call the best of all), but you have no idea how near you, how all round you, this infection is, if it be indeed the subtle thing doctors say. the shops you enter, the cabs you travel in, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, all bring you into communication with those who are coming in contact with patients whenever disease is rife. depend on it, your best chance of escape is to make the places inhabited by the poor healthy, to let them have open space where the fresh wind may blow over them and their clothes, places where they may be less crowded and gain health. you never will, or can, really separate yourselves from your neighbours; accept then the nobler aim of making them such that you shall desire not separation--but union. among the small open spaces which we must hope to see thrown open to the people in the time to come in a greater or less degree are the squares. of course i know that the ground in the square gardens is the property of the freeholder, and that with the leases of the surrounding houses are granted certain privileges with regard to the gardens, which neither can nor ought to be arbitrarily withdrawn. but i hope the day is not far distant when it may dawn upon the dwellers in our west end squares that during august and september not one in fifty of their families is in town, and that it is a rather awful responsibility to lock up the only little bit of earth which is unbuilt over, which is within reach of the very old, the very feeble, or the very young; and that when they leave town they will, in their corporate capacity, grant such discretionary power to those who stay in town, to admit the poor to sit under the trees, as may seem consistent with their rights as leaseholders, interpreted perhaps a little liberally, as they contrast the utmost they _can_ give in the somewhat dingy, early dried-up, london plane-tree, with the wealth of magnificent foliage of wood, or park, or mountain, to which they and their rejoicing family, baby and all, grandmother and all, go before the autumn sun dries up poor scorched london. also, oh, you rich people, to whom the squares belong, some few of whom too own private gardens actually in london, adjoining hyde park or regent's park, or saved on some great estate round the landowner's house, i think you might have a flower-show or large garden-party, once a year, for the poor of your neighbourhood, while you are in town to meet them. i have seen such things done in squares with delightful results. a whole district gathered together, old friends and new, in happy fellowship under the trees, the band playing, and the place looking its gayest. i have seen tents filled with flowers reared in the houses of the poor, each in itself a poor plant, yet, gathered together, looking quite bright and flourishing; and friends whom circumstances had parted, former clergymen, former visitors, meeting the poor friend whom else it might have been difficult to see. have such a party once a year if you can; one afternoon in the summer will never be missed by the dwellers in the square, while the memories of many a poor neighbour may be enriched by the thought of the bright gathering in the soft summer air. i never was present at the flower-shows at westminster abbey, nor do i know how far they grew out of previous intercourse with the poor; but i feel sure that is the way to use any open space in london. the more the festivals can be connected with previous work the better; but those few who own ground easily accessible to the people will do well to put the ground once yearly at the service of those who _do_ know the poor for a flower-show or garden-party. i know nothing that with less trouble gives more joy, or more thoroughly brings corporate life into a parish. there are, besides the grander squares, some, i think, which are deserted by the rich, where "life"--that is, plenty going on--would be more acceptable than quiet; where the residents would be actually glad to have the gates thrown open, the beds set with bright flowers, the seats available for all, as in leicester square. i think even a band on a saturday afternoon might be thought a gain. it is a pity these deserted wildernesses, with their poverty-stricken privet-hedges, are not by some common consent made to adapt themselves to the needs of the neighbourhood. i have thus far dwelt mainly on open spaces as affecting the health or social life of our people, but there is another way in which such spaces might be made most valuable to them. that is, if they could be made really beautiful. londoners are surrounded with the most depressing ugliness; the richer ones try with more or less good taste to mitigate this by decoration indoors; but those who have little or no superfluous wealth, and far less refinement, to lead them to spend any part of it in this way, are, at home and abroad, from year's end to year's end, surrounded by ugliness. if we could alter this, it would go far to refine and civilise them. now it would be difficult to do this in their own homes at once; besides, that is a sphere where each should do it for his own family; but wherever a common meeting-place is arranged, within doors or without, there it seems to me that rich people might find a really useful scope for spending money. the poor man's independence does not demand that he should plant trees and flowers for himself, or decorate with colour wall or door, still less does it require that he should provide such beautiful things for the public, rich or poor. my sister has founded a society, called, after the man of ross, the kyrle society, which has for its object to bring beauty into the haunts of the poor; it has met with much support, and i hope the day may come when hospitals, mission-rooms, school-rooms, workmen's clubs, and, in fact, all common meeting-places of the poor, may be enriched by beautiful things given by it. it is dealing also with open spaces, is not only planting and bringing plants to the poor, but it is trying in other ways to beautify these spaces, and i am not without hope that gradually either mural decorations, inscriptions in tiles, or possibly cloisters, might be given by those who cared to obtain for their fellow-citizens, not only space, but beauty. this is being done in some cases. i will read you a short poem now being painted on zinc by a lady, to put up on a wall of a tiny little garden in a court in whitechapel which is under my care. song of the city sparrow. when the summer-time is ended and the winter days are near; when the bloom hath all departed with the childhood of the year; when the martins and the swallows flutter cowardly away, then the people can remember that the sparrows always stay. that although we're plain and songless, and poor city birds are we, yet before the days of darkness we, the sparrows, never flee. but we hover round the window, and we peck against the pane, while we twitteringly tell them that the spring will come again. and when drizzly dull november falls so gloomily o'er all, and the misty fog enshrouds them in a dim and dreary pall; when the streets all fade to dreamland, and the people follow fast, and it seems as though the sunshine was for evermore gone past; then we glide among the house-tops, and we track the murky waste, and we go about our business with a cheerful earnest haste. not as though our food were plenty, or no dangers we might meet; but as though the work of living was a healthy work and sweet. when the gentle snow descendeth, like a white and glistening shroud, for the year whose life hath ended, floated upwards like a cloud; then although the open country shineth very bright and fair, and the town is overclouded, yet we still continue there. even till the spring returneth, bringing with it brighter birds, unto whom the city people give their love and gentle words, and we yet again, descended to become the least of all, take our name as "only sparrows," and are slighted till we fall. still we're happy, happy, happy, never minding what we be; for we have a work and do it, therefore very blithe are we. we enliven sombre winter, and we're loved while it doth last, and we're not the only creatures who must live upon the past. with a chirrup, chirrup, chirrup, we let all the slights go by, and we do not feel they hurt us, or becloud the summer sky. we are happy, happy, happy, never minding what we be, for we know the good creator even cares for such as we. is it not pleasant to think of the children having those words to read--painted in pretty colours, too--rather than looking at a blank wall? sometimes i think we might even hope to carry with us the hearts of people by setting up for them deliberately very solemn and beautiful words indeed, coloured richly in lasting tiles. i do not see why at any rate our churches should not bear on their face some message to the outside world. i was fancying the other day, as i looked at the great, blank, dirty, dead side wall of a london church, which was seen from a principal thoroughfare, and which bounded the graveyard, long disused, but full of graves, how beautiful it would be to put in coloured tiles, along the whole length of the wall, kingsley's words: do noble things, not dream them, all day long, and so make life, death, and that vast for-ever, one grand, sweet song. the words are simple, and would go home to the hearts of every passer-by; the bright colours, the look of expensive care bestowed on them, the fact that they are on the wall of a church, would give them a look of serious purpose, too great, it seems to me, for any sense of jar as to their publicity to be felt for a moment. it seemed to me that as the hurrying crowd went its way along the thoroughfare, the words might recall to someone high purposes once entertained and long forgotten, either in the struggle of life or the more deadening influence of success or ease--startle him to memories, at least, of a greater, nobler life than he was leading; to the weary and dejected it seemed to me they might point to the continuance in that great hereafter of all we seem to lose here, and all the while the words would be felt to be keeping watch over the dead, whose sudden silence is so hard to bear, but the harmony of whose grand, sweet song in that vast for-ever we catch now and again when we _are_ doing noble things, and so tuning our hearts into more perfect sympathy with the music of god's universe. i have spoken mainly of making open spaces, because i think the usefulness of the parks and the embankment is much more generally known. i am rather afraid of their being supposed to supersede the need of small open spaces quite near the homes of the poor, than of their value being underrated. the old and the very young cannot get to them often, nor from all parts of london. but i ought hardly to pass them over in absolute silence; they certainly do meet a quite distinct want on the part of the stronger portion of the community, who can get some sense of power of expansion, can see the fair summer sun going down behind the towers of westminster abbey, a space of sky being visible, so rarely seen from the streets or courts. let us be very thankful for them. also when i undertake to speak to you about open spaces, though i cannot to-day dwell on them at length, i dare not omit all reference to those which are perhaps most precious of any, and which are by no means secured to us as yet as the parks are--our commons--the only portion of the land of england which remains in a living sense of the birthright of the people of england, and which, bit by bit, gradually and insidiously is filched away, under this and that pretext, by one big landowner after another, quietly surrounded by his effectual railing, and added to his park or field. often is this done under shadow of law, often without any legal right, but just because no one is careful enough, or rich enough, or brave enough to oppose. my friends, there is a society which has done much good work, much unpopular work, which this session even saved you from encroachments on mitcham and barnes commons; it is little known, it wants money support, and it deserves your full support of every kind--the commons preservation society. note down its address, , great college street, westminster, give it what support you can, but above all if ever you see a common threatened, or a piece of one inclosed, write and ask the society whether it is legally done--what chance of redress there is. the society has set itself to fortify local effort by advice, by parliamentary support, sometimes by money; it watches over the interests of englishmen in the small amount of uninclosed land yet remaining to them. while house is being added to house and field to field, while one small farm after another is being swallowed up in the big estate, there are yet left for the common inheritance of englishmen who have small chance of ever owning even a little garden of their very own, some few moorland spaces, set with gorse and heather, fringed by solemn rank of guardian fir-trees, where in the sandy banks their children yet may hollow caves, where the heath-bell waves in the faint evening breeze, and from which--oh, wondrous joy to us londoners--still the far blue distance may be seen, witness to us for ever, as it lies there still, and calm, and bright, that the near things which overshadow us, which seem so tremendous, like tall london houses, built by man, and covering so large a portion of our horizon and sky, hemming us in with terrible oppressive sense of dreariness, may fade back and back from us in distance, till they become even lovely in god's fair sunlight, little jagged peaks only against his calm sky, and all softened into sweetest colour by the light he sheds over them. keep those fair, far, still places for your children, and your children's children, if you can: the more cities increase, the more precious they will be; for the more man's soul will long for the beauty, for the quiet, which the city does not, cannot give. footnote: [ ] read at a meeting of the national health society, may , . vii. effectual charity.[ ] tender pity for the poor has been a growing characteristic of this age; a better sign of it still is the increased sense of duty to them, not only as _poor_ men, but as _men_. there needs, however, it appears to me, something still before our charity shall be effectual for good. the feeling is there, the conscience is there, but there is wanting the wise thought and the resolute, because educated, will. our charity, if by the word we mean our loving-kindness, has been good in itself, but if we mean by the word, alms-giving, can we flatter ourselves that it has been productive of a satisfactory state of things? we have taught our poor to live in uncertainty as to their resources, which is producing among them a reckless want of forethought, which is quite appalling. the most ordinary occurrences of their lives--the regular winter frost which stops the work of some men year by year; the changes in the labour market, caused by the london season; the expenses attending illness; the gradual approach of old age--are not dwelt on now usually among the poor as reasons for trying to provide a fund to meet them. thus there are hundreds of our people living on the extremest brink of pauperism or starvation, learning more and more to be dependent on the chance coal-ticket, or half-crown, or blanket; and if it does not happen to be given at the moment when it is wanted, how forlorn is the position of the improvident man? but look also on the even more important question of their spirit, and of their relation to those above them in class. can there be energy, independence, vigour, healthy activity among them? can there be between them and the donors any of that happy manly interchange of thought, by which the possessors of education, refinement, leisure, might help, or be helped by, the active, self-reliant working-man, with his large capacity for fresh vigorous joy, and his store of power accumulated during a long period of endurance and patient effort? if different classes, like different people, have separate characters which are meant to act and react one on the other, are we not, by allowing the help to be one of a dole of money, destroying the possibility of the better help that might have been? and is our money doing any good? did you ever see the district--the family--the individual that was richer for this repeated alms-giving? has it ever been powerful, even for outside good, to be recipients? is the bed better covered in the long run for the lent blankets, or the children better fed for the free distribution of soup? or is it consistent with our ideal that there should be this body of people dependent for the most ordinary necessities of life on the gifts of another class? rely upon it, if we foster this state of things it will continue to increase. here we are, however, in the midst of this alms-giving, aimless, thoughtless, ineffectual to achieve any object its donors had in view. it is a gigantic system, or rather no system, which has grown up around us. what is our duty with regard to it? specially what is the duty of those of us who are, in any sense of the word, trustees of charitable funds? there is a society which you all know well enough by name--the charity organisation society--which has set itself to help distributors of alms in two important ways. first, it has offered to examine, free of all charge, carefully, for anyone who wants to learn about them, the circumstances and character of applicants for relief. donors cannot decide what help it is wise to give until they know all about an applicant; the society can learn such facts in a far more complete way than donors possibly can. clearly then, to my mind, donors or distributors of gifts ought to accept this proffered help. but the society offers a second advantage; it will give an opinion on the case of an applicant. when the facts respecting his condition and character are ascertained, the problem is simply this. how can he be so helped that the help may soon be needed no longer; how placed speedily out of the reach of want, in an honourable useful place where he can help himself? or if his need be necessarily chronic, how can he be provided for adequately and regularly--so regularly that he shall be tempted neither to begging nor extravagance? it is very difficult to set a man up again in the world; and the main hope of doing it is to pause deliberately over his case, to bring to bear upon it all the collected information, all the practised experience, and intelligent thought of men and women accustomed to think out such problems, and to watch the results of many attempts to solve them. the ordinary district visitor has no qualifications for forming an opinion on the best way of meeting the difficulties of the case, nor usually has the busy clergyman much more. the visitor has very rarely even a glimmering notion that there is such a way of dealing with the poverty she pities, she hardly dreams that it is possible to attack it at its roots, and so she gives the ticket or the shilling. the clergyman usually feels that this is an unsatisfactory way of treating the matter; but he knows probably no more than the visitor, in what part of the country there may be an opening for work for the man whose trade is slack in london; nor what training would enable the invalid girl who can only use her hands, and lies bed-ridden and helpless, to contribute something to the common income; nor what institution would receive, and how the guardians might pay for, the cripple who is made an excuse for begging for the whole family, and how he might learn a trade, and in the future honourably support himself. it is only a body accustomed to deal with many such cases, to devote attention to practical questions mainly, that acquires the knowledge of what measures can be taken under different circumstances, and knows the latest news as to the labour market, and the opportunities open to the needy. i am far from saying that the charity organisation society has, as yet, in each of the thirty-eight divisions of london, a committee capable of giving a valuable opinion on a case; nor even that in every district the committee has realised that to give such an opinion is its real end and aim. but i do say that this is the intention of the society, and that on the committee, if anywhere, you will in each neighbourhood find the men and women most alive to the importance of fulfilling this duty; for more and more of the district committees are finding members who set before themselves the necessity of learning to execute it. i know little of your own charity organisation committee, but i would ask you to remember that it is not a separate society coming from afar and settling down among you. it is what you workers among the poor make it; it is you who ought to form it. and that which i said above you separately were not able to do, collectively you, and none but you, can do--decide what help it is wise to give to every poor man or woman who comes before you at a crisis in life. a representative from every local charity, a few men conversant with the work of every great metropolitan charity, two or three active guardians, the clergy and ministers of all denominations, or some leading member of their staff or congregations, these should form your district committee. after careful investigation by a skilled paid officer, the case of an applicant for charity, when it comes before such a committee as that, has a fair chance of really effectual treatment. either someone present will know of work that needs to be done; or, if the applicant's wants can only be met by distinct gift, then, all the givers or their representatives being present, the gift can after due deliberation be made without chance of overlapping, with certainty that it is sufficient and its object well thought out. district visitors will find it valuable to study with the district committee many questions respecting relief. the work of visitors is one in which i have long taken the deepest interest; their gentle influence in their informal visits is just what is wanted to bridge over the great chasm which lies open between classes. rich and poor should know one another simply and naturally as friends, and the more visitors can enter into such real friendship the better. when, however, they attempt to deal with cases of relief, i feel that they possess few of the qualifications requisite for doing it wisely, and i would most seriously urge them, either to leave this branch of help entirely to others, or with deliberate purpose to set themselves to learn all that it is essential to them to know before they can do it well. for there is more at stake, a great deal more, than the wasting of their own or their friends' money: that would matter comparatively little if the effect of mistake in its use were not positively disastrous to the poor. but it is disastrous. we go into the house of a young working-man; we meet with ready gift the first need as it arises; we do not pause to remember how the effort to meet that need was a duty for the young husband and father. we discourage the quiet confidence, the careful forethought which would have made a man of him; we diminish his sense of responsibility; the way he spends his earnings begins to appear to him a matter of smaller moment--he dissipates them in the public-house; he gets into the habit of doing so; we, or succeeding visitors, feel the hopelessness of help increase; not only does the drag upon our purse become heavier and heavier, but it becomes clearer to us that the money we give does not adequately feed the wife and children, while it does lead the husband to hope that if he yields to the strongly increased temptation to drink, some lady will help, some charity interpose, the children won't quite starve. we have weakened the natural ties, broken the appointed order, and the neat, tidy little home has sunk into the drunkard's desolate room. or we take up the case of a widow, and instead of once for all considering how much she can do for her own and her children's support, and deliberately uniting our forces to relieve her once for all of that part of the cost which she cannot meet, we let her come up to our house whenever she cannot fulfil her engagements, and we give her, when her story or tears move us, a few shillings. we ease our own feelings by doing this, but what besides have we done. we have not fortified her for the battle of life; we have not cultivated in her the habit of deliberate arrangement as to the best expenditure of her scanty means. we have done something to teach her how easy it is, if she gets into debt and the brokers are put in, to go round to one house after another and get a few shillings from each, and having met the difficulty for the moment to begin involving herself in another. look at her a few years later. the sincere grief of the widowed mother has been degraded into a means of begging; the ready tears come, or appear to come, at call; the sacred grief is for everyone to see in hopes someone may alleviate it with half-a-crown. the sense of a right to be helped has grown, the sense of her own duty has diminished. work has not paid so well that it has been steadily persevered in. the easily begged money has been easily spent; the powers of endurance, the habits of industry are gone; grief is her stock-in-trade; its frequent use has diminished the power of feeling strongly and sincerely. perhaps she has discovered that professions of piety are rewarded with half-crowns, and expressions, once sincere, have become cant phrases. we are shocked at her; we say we were glad enough to help her when she was working, and was feeling simply and strongly, but now it is different. my friends, who made it different? god gave her the sacred sorrow and the difficulties of her life to soften and to train her. it might have been well that we should like true friends have stood by her, and so far diminished her difficulty as to make it just within her power to meet it; it might have been well for us to support one child, to pay school-fees, or to help in some other way by some one distinct payment, so regular as to become very natural to her, but in some way we ought to have left her responsibilities to have been met by her own energies. then we should have been able to take and keep the position of friends; she would not have learned to watch our faces to see what expression on her part extorted pity or shillings best, but would have come to us when the memories of the past were too heavy to bear alone, and the words of hope in god's mercy and wisdom would have been spoken from the heart to the heart. let visitors be friends, and nothing else, leaving money help to others; or else study seriously all wise effectual ways of help, that they may not be driven to miserable doles of half-crowns and bread-tickets, which are surely destructive of vigorous life in the poor, and of natural healthy relation between friends. i could, you could yourselves, multiply instances of this a hundredfold. it will be more profitable to study how in the future they may be avoided. a marked advantage of district committees is that, while doing nothing to weaken local action, they present a larger area to the sympathy of their members. when parishes were first constituted, each parish must in general have had its own rich and poor. but this has ceased to be so in many cases, owing to the large population dwelling in a small area. the tendency of late has been to subdivide ecclesiastical districts. the rich are not anxious to have the poor living in very close proximity to them, and every class is more and more driven into quarters appropriated exclusively to itself. the consequence of this is--and increasingly--that if a rich man says, "i will help in my own parish," there are vast numbers of poor living perhaps near to him, probably within what in the country would be considered easy walking distance, and certainly in the same town, whose lives he does not touch. i cannot tell you how terrible to me appear these vast spaces of ground covered with houses inhabited by persons at one dead level of poverty; sometimes the tracts appropriated to the houses of the wealthy seem to me in another way more terrible. all good gifts, for which we are bound to lift our hearts in praise to god, seem to retain their sanctity only when they are shared; and it seems to me often as if the luxury, the ease, the splendour, yes, even the fair spaces of lawn and terrace were almost ghastly when they are enjoyed by those who never consider the poor, in whom no spirit of self-sacrifice leads to resolute appropriation of some large share of the good things to those who are out of the way. there are few who do not recognise the duty of giving or sharing in some measure; but the subdivision of districts, leaving one poor and another rich, the ever-extending size of london making the poor farther and farther off from the rich, has a tendency to shut out many poor from this sympathy. the charity organisation society has done something to mitigate this evil, to make you feel that you are parts of a larger whole than your ecclesiastical parish. the poor-law has compulsorily made you feel it. when it became clear that it was intolerably unjust to throw the burden of the largest number of paupers on the poorest ratepayers, poor-law areas were enlarged so as to unite rich and poor neighbourhoods; also, certain expenditure was charged to a metropolitan rate. that poor-law arrangement, however, never touched your hearts. it is doubtful whether the dwellers in fitzroy park feel more united with those in somer's town because they are both in st. pancras parish, nor much added tenderness for the sick man in poplar, because if he has small-pox he is carried to a hospital supported by a metropolitan rate. the alteration has done good because it has equalised burdens, and enforced the fulfilment of a duty. but the charity organisation society does more--it asks you to accept this duty as a privilege, and voluntarily and gladly to help, remembering the less favoured districts which are near you, or which, though farther off, still belong to the same city. it has taken the poor-law boundary to mark its area; it has asked all charitable people within that area to meet and consult about their charities; it has arranged that the working expenses of office and agent shall be shared by a large district, it has formed a meeting-place, where workers for the poor shall be able to learn each what the other is doing, even at the farther extremes of a long parish like this. you will certainly enlarge your sympathies if thus you meet; for when there come before you the stories of living men and women wanting help in districts where funds are not abundant, when you learn to know the clergy and others labouring in poorer places, you will begin to interpret the word "neighbour" in a large and liberal sense. do you realise how limited is our notion of it now, and what it has brought us to? have you any picture before you of the parts of london where for acres and acres the ground is covered with the dwellings of the poor alone, where no landlord can afford many feet of space unbuilt over at the back of his house; where the clergyman toils on almost singlehanded, for unrefreshed year after unrefreshed year; where curates will hardly go and work; where no gay life enlivens the monotony of toil, which is interrupted only by the wild unholy carousal of a bank holiday; where the clergyman's wife can hardly sleep because of the wild mirth of the surrounding streets? we talk of the claims of parish and neighbourhood, and they should be seriously remembered; but are they not sometimes urged rather from a lazy desire not to take the trouble to go farther, or from the easy agreeable wish to oblige the neighbouring minister, who calls to ask a new resident for help in the sunday school or district? if, indeed, the decision is a deliberate choice of a near duty distinctly seen, rather than of a far off one less realised, one may respect it. but we must remember there are other claims than those arising out of proximity, and that it may be our duty to realise what is not brought under our eyes. we live upon the labours of the poor in districts far from our homes. our fathers and brothers may have chambers, factories, offices right down among them. we are content to draw our wealth from these. does this imply no duty? is the whole duty fulfilled when the head of a firm draws a cheque for donations to the local charity, and are the gentle ministrations of the ladies of the family to be confined to the few pampered poor near their house? it is our withdrawal from the less pleasant neighbourhood to build for ourselves substantial villas with pleasant gardens, which has left these tracts what they are. even when there is nothing sensationally terrible in the wickedness or destitution of a place, when it is covered with little houses of laundresses or small shopkeepers, are we who have advantages of education or refinement not needed there? have we no bright flowers to take to the people, no books to lend, no sweet sympathy and young brightness to carry among them? ought we not to be accumulating those memories which will give us a place near them as real friends if the time of loss and trial comes? i would urge you all who are inhabitants of a large parish, markedly divided into poor and rich districts, as citizens of a city fearfully so divided, to weigh well your duties; and, never forgetting the near ones to home and neighbourhood, to remember also that when europe is sacrificed to england, england to your own town, your own town to your parish, your parish to your family, the step is easy to sacrifice your family to yourself. whereas if you try to accept the duty as our lord showed it, and to carry with you joyfully in such acceptance those who are nearest and dearest to you, you will find that a large and true imagination will show you the place which every duty should hold in your lives; you will not find any human being so away but that your sympathy will reach, and your desire to help will tell in due degree if the need of help comes. your life, be it shadowed ever so much by individual loss or pain, will be full and blessed; for all god's children will be dear to you, and his earth sacred; you will have no real conflict of duties, nor long doubt about their relative importance; no pain shall overwhelm, nor doubt confound you; for the blessing of guidance shall be yours, and you will assuredly learn what those words mean, "when thou passest through the waters i will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee." "though the lord give thee the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more; but thine eyes shall see thy teachers, and thine ears shall hear a word saying, this is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand or when ye turn to the left." footnote: [ ] paper read at a meeting of the charity organisation society, at highgate, june th, . viii. the future of our commons. the question of the appropriation of the common land of england is one which is of great importance now, and which will be of increasing importance as time goes on. the matter is not simply one of providing a public park or common in the near neighbourhood of cities which are now large and rapidly increasing, nor of securing a cricket or recreation ground and an acre or two of cottage gardens to a few villagers. the question before the country--and it is well we should realise its magnitude before important decisions are made--is whether, consistently with all private rights, there is still any land in england which can be preserved for the common good; and, secondly, in what way such land can best be used. is it best to parcel it out amongst various owners, and increase the building or corn-growing area? is it best to let the largest possible amount of it in allotments to the poor? is it well to devote any portion of it, in rural as well as suburban districts, to the public, to be by them enjoyed in common, in the form of beautiful, wild, open space? it must be observed that the nation as a nation is not held to possess the open, uncultivated, unappropriated land of england. true, generation after generation has passed over much of it freely, but it seems that the people are not thereby held to have acquired a right to do so. perhaps this is because such right has no money value, for rights of way, rights of light, rights of possession of soil, even rights on these very open spaces of pasturing cattle, cutting furze and of playing games are recognised by law when they have been long enjoyed. had the right to wander freely, and to enjoy the beauty of earth and sky, been felt to be a more distinct possession, it may be that these rights also would have been legally recognised; but it has not hitherto been so. it is, therefore, lords of manors and commoners who have mainly the control of such waste places. when, however, they come to parliament to ask to have their respective rights settled, and to get leave to inclose, parliament has, under the inclosure acts, distinctly a voice in deciding the appropriation of the land. what ought its decision to be, having in view the future life of the nation as well as the present one? that æsthetic considerations govern individuals in the disposition of their own estates is clear. when a gentleman possesses an estate he apportions it to various uses. he asks himself how much of it he will devote to arable land and kitchen garden; some small part he may set aside for his children, that they may dig in it and plant it in their spare time; and a part of it he will devote probably to a flower-garden or a park; for he knows that the family has need of enjoyment and of rest, and that beauty sustains in them some higher life than the mere material one. are we as a nation to have any flower-garden at all? can we afford it? do we care to set aside ground for it, or will we have beet-root and cabbages only? in other words, is all the land, so far as the people are concerned, from sea to sea, to be used for corn-growing, or building over only? are those who own estates to have their gardens, and the people to have none? or, if any, how many and how pretty may they be? is there only land enough for exercise near the big city, or can we have any for beauty far away from it? surely we want some beauty in our lives; they cannot be all labour, they cannot be all feeding. when the work is done, when the eating is finished, the soul and spirit of men ask for rest; they want air, they want the sense of peace, they want the sense of space, they want the influence of beauty. men seek it on the rocky sea-shore, on the peaks of the mountains, by the streams in the valleys, or on the heather-covered moorlands. over-excited in the cities, over-strained by toil, they need, if it were but once in their lives, that wonderful sense of pause and peace which the near presence of the great creations of god gives. the silence brings them marvellous messages, the clouds seem their companions, the lights which pass over the heather-covered hills fill them with an immeasurable joy. old cares seem so far away as hardly to be real; and in the great peace which surrounds them the whole spirit is brought into harmony with grander music, tuned to nobler imaginings, and nerved for mightier struggles. "man does not live by bread alone." and the words god speaks to us on the moorlands proceed, indeed, from his mouth with audible power, and memories of them haunt us with ennobling and consoling thought in the bustle, the struggle, and the pain to which we must return. this as individuals we know. there are signs that, as a nation, we are beginning to see it. a very remarkable change with regard to the relative value of different uses of land has taken place in england during the last thirty years, as the course taken by the legislature sufficiently proves. mr. cross, in introducing the commons act of last year, laid stress upon this change. he pointed out that the inclosure act of was framed when the notion of statesmen was that england must depend, at any rate in case of war, wholly on herself for the wheat which her people needed. the corn laws were not then repealed; the country was not nearly so thickly populated; space was far more abundant; and the production of wheat seemed the best possible use to which land could be devoted. it was far different now. corn reached our shores untaxed; our population had so vastly increased that it necessarily depended largely on imported wheat; we had learned much more about the importance to health of fresh air and exercise, and we felt increasingly the value of space as well as food for our people. the needs of the nation in demanded inclosure for purposes of cultivation, and the act of that year was accordingly specially drawn to facilitate it. but now the case was different, and mr. cross stated that his bill was specially intended to promote regulation to meet the growing need of open space. further proof of the change in public opinion is afforded by the course taken by parliament with regard to the new forest. in no public objection was raised to an act which was passed, empowering the crown to plant formal and monotonous plantations of fir-trees, valuable as timber, in such a manner as eventually to cover the whole expanse of forest; while in this act was repealed in favour of one which provided that the ancient trees and wild undergrowth should be left henceforward undisturbed; thus showing that the nation is now willing to sacrifice the profits accruing from fast-growing timber in order to preserve forest glades and heathery slopes, valuable only for their beauty. the advantages to the nation of possessing uninclosed land in perpetuity in certain instances, as opposed to the advantage of cultivating every available acre, have thus been distinctly recognised. but the proportion and situation of such uninclosed land remains to be determined, and will be decided by parliament in the course of the next year or two. mr. cross's act prescribes that the application for regulation or inclosure shall be made to the inclosure commissioners (who were appointed under the act of ), the commissioners are to hold a local inquiry, and then prepare a scheme which is to be submitted to a committee of the house. the scheme, when approved by the committee, comes before the house for confirmation. it may prove unfortunate that agents originally selected to administer an act having for its main object _inclosure_--_i.e._ the dividing of the land among separate owners--should have been chosen to carry out one specially intended, as mr. cross explained, to facilitate _regulation_--_i.e._ the preserving of the land open for the use of all. so great has been the tendency to inclose that, out of , acres available for allotments, recreative-grounds, &c., under the act of , only , had actually been thus allotted; whilst in , out of , acres proposed to be inclosed, such were the views of the commissioners, that they considered nine acres to be adequate reservation for public purposes--viz. three for recreation, and six for field-gardens. and the four schemes hitherto submitted to parliament under the new act contained a provision for only seventeen acres to be reserved for recreation and sixty-five for field-gardens out of , to be inclosed. the lords of the manors subsequently offered two more in each case, if opposition in committee were withdrawn. the offer was accepted by the committee, but the attempt to pass the bill at the fag end of the session was most fortunately frustrated. there is yet time, therefore, for consideration whether regulation would not meet the requirements of some of these cases rather than inclosure; and in some of them, or at least those parts of them which are commons or waste lands of manors strictly speaking, as distinguished from commonable lands, it would seem that if ever regulating schemes are to be adopted in rural districts, these are cases most suitable for them. one of the commons recommended for inclosure--riccall dam--is pasture land, and will never be available for growing corn, as it is subject to floods. it is close to the village, and is constantly used for cricket. the chief objection to its present condition is that the existing rights of turning out cattle upon it are improperly used, an evil which it is admitted could be remedied by regulation. if such an open space is to be inclosed, it is difficult to conceive what rural common, in the opinion of the inclosure commissioners, would be a fit subject for regulation. the conviction is forced upon us that, unless the inclosure commissioners insist upon regulation wherever it is practicable, there will be little prospect of this part of the recent act having a fair trial. those who are pecuniarily interested in the commons--the lords of the manors and the commoners--will, as a rule, prefer inclosure to regulation, and the bias of the commissioners will probably be in the same direction; and if the option rests only with them there is little doubt which course will be preferred. it behoves, then, the commissioners to carry out the intentions of mr. cross, and to refuse inclosure in any case where regulation may be applicable, and not to act only upon the instance and preferment of those interested. the failure so far of the regulating clauses of the act of bears out the views of those who opposed the act, and who, while conceding the good intents of the promoters, pointed out that the regulating clauses were so hampered by the necessity of consents that they practically presented no alternative to inclosure, and who predicted that few, if any, schemes would ever come before parliament under this part of the act. it has been shown that in all probability thirty-seven schemes for inclosure come before parliament next session. many thousands of acres now open will be subjected to inclosure under these schemes, and they will form the precedent for dealing with others in the future. they will come before parliament; but the evidence in each case is heard only by a small committee; and there are but few outside that committee who will notice or care anything about each scheme as it successively comes forward. and yet, if the schemes are all carried out, england will have next year from this cause alone thirty-seven fewer open spaces than she has hitherto possessed. a great deal of this land might be saved if public attention were aroused, and aroused in time. on the next two or three years the fate of our commons will mainly depend. for seven years past, pending legislation, it has been possible to resist all schemes for inclosure; but since the passing of the act of postponement of action is no longer possible, and each scheme must be dealt with immediately, and on its own merits. there is danger lest, as the schemes may relate each to a small area, and may not come before the public simultaneously, the gravity of the issue may not be generally perceived. it is no less a one than what proportion of the soil of england--of its commons, charts, and forests, its scars, fells, and moorlands--shall be retained to be used in common by her people as open unappropriated space both now and in the time to come. such, however, has been the growth of public opinion, that we may assume that parliament would not sanction the inclosure of a common in the near neighbourhood of any large and populous town. but there seems some danger lest our legislators and the public should not duly consider how rapid is the growth of many towns, and that some which are not large and closely packed now may in a few years become so, and may need commons in their vicinity; nor how in many places suburb stretches beyond suburb as year succeeds year, and thus the town approaches the commons which once were rural. increased facilities of swift and inexpensive travelling, and the opening of new lines of railway, make many a common once out of reach of the dwellers in town practically easy of access. and there is a reason why even the still more distant rural commons should if possible be saved from inclosure. every year, in many country neighbourhoods, population is increasing, and houses for letting are being built; more and more the field-paths by the river-side are being closed, and the walks through the cornfields or bright upland meadows are being shut. the hedge through the many gaps of which it was easy once to step into the roadside-wood and to gather primroses in thousands is now stoutly repaired, and new boards are put up warning trespassers that they "will be prosecuted." in self-defence the landowners erect barriers and warn off the public wherever that public becomes numerous. the field shut up for hay in the remote country has so small a chance of being trampled on, that the farmer, hospitably or carelessly, leaves the gate unlocked; but as the neat little rows of lodging-houses come to be built near it, or as substantial villas multiply in the neighbourhood, and the buttercups tempt the more numerous little children to run in among the tall grass near the path, or the great boughs of may induce the big boys to make long trampled tracks beside the hedge, the farmer is obliged to lock his gate, put up his notices, or, if "right of way" exist, erect a fence which should leave the narrowest admissible pathway for the public. so it is, so it will be, year by year increasingly, with all private property. it is not only the artisan who, on his day's holiday, will depend more and more on the common or public park; the professional man, the shopkeeper who is able to take a house or lodgings for a few weeks in august or september for his family, will also depend more and more each year on finding some neighbourhood where there is a heath, or forest, or moor which is public. he does not take his wife and children away only to breathe fresher air, nor is the small lodging-house garden all they want to spend the day in. to walk merely along the roads, if these roads pass between parks or fields barricaded from entrance, frets the human love of freedom which makes us want to wander farther, to escape the dusty prescribed track, to break away over the hills, or pause in the meadow by the pool or the river, or gather the flowers in the wood. the more these are and must be closed, the more intensely precious does the common or forest, safe for ever from inclosure, become. it is not only the suburban common, it is the rural also which is of value to us as a people. nor does the allotment scheme, admirable as it is in giving the landless classes a share in our common soil, in the least degree meet the need for beauty. under all the schemes for inclosing rural commons, it is probable that henceforward provision will be made for field-gardens. this is excellent. but do not let it be supposed that such allotments compensate for the entire loss of all open unappropriated land. it is, moreover, possible that allotments might, as time goes on, be provided from quite other sources than our commons. the very considerable area held in trust for charitable purposes may well furnish ground for the purpose. moreover, future changes which should facilitate the transfer of land, and should enable men to buy or rent it in small quantities, would meet the demand for allotments. such changes might easily be effected when englishmen come to the conclusion that small gardens are desirable for the people. if the allotments are not made now we may still hope for them in the future; but if we lose our open spaces now, shall we ever recover them? think of the cost of purchasing them back! think of the compulsory powers to compel sale of contiguous plots! think of the impossibility of breaking them ever again into uneven surface of woodland, dingle, or old quarry, or getting the forest trees on them again; and pause before you barter them for a few cultivated gardens, rented at high rates to a small group of men--valuable as field-gardens in themselves maybe. note, too, by-the-way, what is done in giving them. for allotments, working-men will pay four or five times the agricultural value and have done so, under the old inclosure acts. that proves them to be appreciated. under the recent act the amount of payment is limited. but is it not strange to take away free enjoyment from many, and to offer in exchange, at any money payment, a privilege to the few? we have mentioned the schemes of inclosure now coming before the legislature, but besides these there is another extensive process of inclosure going on for which the legislature is not responsible. it is that which is silently pursued by lords of manors, without any distinct legal settlement of rights. they _may_ be taking only their due; they may be taking more. in some cases they are offering to the commoners, or to the poor, where lands are left for their benefit, gifts of money or land or coals, in lieu of their old rights of cutting fuel or turning out a cow. perhaps the coals are quite equivalent to the value of the fuel to the individual cottager; but they depend often on the will of squire or lord, are administered by churchwardens to the needy, and become a form of dole instead of a birthright. again, all land in england is increasing in value. why should the ignorant agricultural labourer be induced, by the gift of a few poles of land, to part with the valuable inheritance of his descendants? why should the lord absorb to himself alone the "unearned increment of the land?" it ought not to be left to any private person to make such terms with his tenants, still less ought he to be allowed to decide, by high-handed erection of fence, how much is his and how much is theirs. yet there are numbers of such inclosures silently going on throughout england in districts where there is no one powerful enough, rich enough, or with knowledge enough to carry the matter into a court of law, or watch effectually that justice be done. such suits are very costly; the law in such cases is often complicated; a large amount is needed to secure the plaintiff against loss should he not have costs awarded him; and landowners, knowing that these difficulties prevent their being opposed when they inclose the tempting ground adjoining their park, and give a little bit of it to all neighbours likely to be troublesome, too often exercise a power which there is no one at hand to prevent. even the metropolitan commons, which might have been thought to be already secured by the metropolitan commons act of , are not absolutely safe. no one now would apply for leave to inclose one of these _in toto_, but there is hardly a company advocating a scheme for a reservoir or sewage farm, sidings for a railway or what not, that does not cast longing eyes on the cheap common land, one little bit of which it is supposed will hardly be missed. accordingly, application is made to parliament for compulsory power to take a small portion. so our metropolitan commons even may be nibbled away, and polluted and spoilt by the proximity of objectionable buildings or works. no less than five such schemes came before the public in affecting barnes, mitcham, and hampstead. the reader will perceive from what has been said that three distinct dangers threaten our common land:-- st. that due use should not be made of the powers given by the act of last year, to promote regulation rather than inclosure, and that in the separate schemes about to be presented to parliament no weight whatever should be given to the growing importance of wild open spaces free to all. nd. that illegal inclosure should take place unnoticed, or be unopposed, for want of legal knowledge or money to organise resistance. rd. that the commons already protected by the metropolitan commons act should be injured by the action of bodies applying for compulsory powers of purchase for small portions of them. it remains only to consider what can be done to meet these three dangers. first. let the public take care that they thoroughly understand the bearings of every scheme submitted to parliament. let due notice be taken that the proportion of land allotted to the public be adequate, and that the situation of it be well selected. much depends also on its character. to revert to the parallel of the disposition of land made by the owner of an estate, who certainly would not place his kitchen-garden in the loveliest part of his park, do not let the nation surrender forest or hillside, but, preserving them intact, apportion for purposes of cultivation the less beautiful, flatter, and probably more productive ground. let the public watch how many of the schemes brought forward relate to regulation, not inclosure. mr. cross announced, as we have said, that his bill was intended to promote regulation; let us watch that its intention is thoroughly fulfilled. the machinery of the act to regulate commons being now provided, it remains for those who care for open space to see that it is not used to promote inclosure. second. the high-handed inclosures for which no parliamentary sanction is sought, are more difficult to meet. the expense of opposing is considerable; the legal questions complicated. few individuals can deal with the problem single-handed. here again, however, happily, the machinery exists ready to our hands. the commons preservation society[ ] was founded twelve years ago with the express object of watching over the interests of the public in the remaining commons of england in parliament and in the courts of law. how much this was needed will be seen when we consider that about , , acres have been inclosed since the reign of queen anne, and that there remain only , , acres of open land, according to the domesday-book, for all present and future needs. the committee of this society gives advice (free from all cost), to those who wish to consult them respecting the course to be adopted when open spaces in their neighbourhood are threatened with inclosure. if the neighbourhood is poor, and legal resistance is the only way to meet the difficulty, the society will, to the best of its means, aid with money and influence. it appears to me that the objects of this society are so important and far-reaching that it ought to be a large national union, every one joining it as members and supporting it to the utmost of their power. it is not a question which ought longer to be left to a comparatively few zealous men; it ought to be supported by, and its machinery used by, everyone who cares to keep the common land open. if legal decisions are to be arrived at, if landowners are to be made to feel that they will be called to account for any inclosures made by them, the matter cannot be left in the hands of individuals, and it is only by combination, and under good legal advice, that the undertakings can be rightly and wisely begun and brought to a successful issue. to meet the third danger--that arising from attempts to obtain compulsory power to purchase small portions of the metropolitan commons supposed to be protected under the act of --it is important (equally as in the case of rural commons) to watch each scheme that may be brought forward, and thus to let parliament see that the matter is one about which the nation cares. the schemes previously referred to, relating to commons at barnes, mitcham, and hampstead, were only defeated by strenuous public opposition. under these schemes it was actually proposed to take four acres of barnes common for a sewage farm, and to widen the railway that crosses it by additional sidings and coal depôts; to cut up mitcham common with additional lines of railway, and to take acres of it for sewage purposes, and to surround and partly undermine hampstead heath with a railway provided with three or four stations situated on some of its prettiest spots! one other point bearing on the question of metropolitan commons may be noted here. whenever the question of their inclosure has come up before the courts of law to be tried, it has been hitherto found that the rights of commoners have been adjudged sufficient to preserve them from inclosure. it is therefore deeply to be regretted that last session the board of works again resorted to their old practice of purchasing these rights; they gave £ , for bostal heath, near woolwich. the purchase was clearly unnecessary in this case, because a decree of the court of chancery exists preventing the inclosure of the heath. the board probably took this step from a dislike to the trouble of defending their scheme for regulation. such a practice must heavily burden the ratepayers of london, already quite sufficiently taxed. and this is done in order to secure for them that which there seems no reason to suppose could not be secured without any such expenditure, open spaces having already been legally preserved without purchase in the cases of epping, coulsden, berkhampstead, and others. it is an old idea of the metropolitan board, and not a harmless one. in , the chairman and members of the board proposed to make the board the central authority to protect and preserve commons; they asked for large taxing powers in order to raise money sufficient to buy up all rights of the lords of the manors and commoners, and to sell parts of the metropolitan commons for building, in order in some degree to recoup the ratepayers. the committee of the house of commons which was then considering the question rejected this scheme of the metropolitan board, holding that the rights of commoners being amply sufficient to keep the commons open, purchase was unnecessary. this opinion has since been repeatedly confirmed by decisions in the law courts. there seems no reason to suppose that hampstead heath, for which the metropolitan board gave nearly £ , , might have not been kept open without purchase had the matter been carried to an issue. the question is an important one as far as the ratepayers are concerned; it is also very important as a matter of precedent. the plan of operation of any body of men which, like the commons preservation society, should examine the rights of the public and uphold them by law, is much to be preferred to the purchase scheme, though this may be more acceptable to large landowners, and have more appearance of magnificence. to sum up. it is by watchful care that every scheme under the new act can be well considered and wisely decided when it is brought before parliament; it is by steady co-operation to bring to a legal issue every unauthorised inclosure that a share in our common land can alone be preserved for the landless classes. shortly--before, perhaps, as a nation, we awake to its importance--will this great question be permanently decided. in england there is a very small and continually decreasing number of landowners. we have no peasant proprietors as in france; and few tenants of small holdings, as in ireland. yet the love of being connected with the land is innate; it deepens a man's attachment to his native country, and adds dignity and simplicity to his character. each family cannot hope to own a small piece of cultivated land as in france--no inaccessible mountain-ranges exist for our people to learn to love as in switzerland--but it may be that in our common-land we are meant to learn an even deeper lesson:--something of the value of those possessions in which each of a large community has a distinct share, yet which each enjoys only by virtue of the share the many have in it; in which separate right is subordinated to the good of all; each tiny bit of which would have no value if the surface were divided amongst the hundreds that use it, yet which when owned together and stretching away into loveliest space of heather or forest becomes the common possession of the neighbourhood, or even of the county and nation. it will give a sense of a common possession to succeeding generations. it will give a share in his country to be inherited by the poorest citizen. it will be a link between the many and through the ages, binding with holy happy recollections those who together have entered into the joys its beauty gives--men and women of different natures, different histories, and different anticipations--into one solemn joyful fellowship, which neither time nor outward change can destroy--as people are bound together by any common memory, or common cause, or common hope. charles dickens and evans, crystal palace press. footnote: [ ] offices, , great college street, westminster. _by the same author._ homes of the london poor. extra fcp. vo, price s. d. "the book should be carefully read by all those whose duties under mr. cross's recent bill are just now commencing."--_medical times._ "we offer her our hearty commendation, and we trust that her little book will have a wide sale. it is not less interesting than instructive."--_builder._ "there are few who have so good a right to be heard on the matter as the author of this volume. she has not only thought long and deeply on the problem to be solved, but she has worked nobly to aid in its solution.... we know nothing in literature of this kind more touching than the simple, unaffected tale of her struggles, disappointments, and triumphs. there is not a word of mere sentimentalism in any one of her papers; she is clear, practical, and definite."--_globe._ "miss octavia hill has grappled successfully with one of the most difficult and disheartening of our social problems."--_nonconformist._ macmillan and co., london. macmillan & co.'s publications. the service of the poor. an enquiry into the reasons for and against the establishment of religious sisterhoods for charitable purposes. by caroline e. stephen. crown vo, s. d. 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