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Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clichd, il est filmd d partir de Tangle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 co: /v- ki ♦ CONDUCT OF ENGLAND TO lEELAND AN ADDRESS DELI VE RED AT BRIGHTON Jan. 30, 1882 BY GOLDWIN SMITH • ITonbon MACMILLAN AND CO. 1882 4^ J-— «( >"V, ^^^r «. i f«p ^, < «ii i ♦. m OCT 1 (X I.OVDOX I IMIISTRD IlY gPOTTISWOlMiK 1\X1) lO., NKW-STIIF.ET BQIMnB .•Nil PAIU.IAUKST STIIKtT prose, . v •; '• • •• ; ^> THE CONDUCT OF ENGLAND TO IRELAND. luRLAND may seem at this moment to lie a problem for staten- men rather than for a student ; but it is one al)out which the student has sometiiing to tell the statesman. The clue is to be found in geography and history. Before entering on the subject in a practical way, however, it see. ns necessary to fix our morality. I have a profound respect for the genius of Carlyle as a historical writer, as a poet in prose, and as a humorist. His moral philosophy, if so serious a name can be applied to anything so fantastic, I cannot respect. In rebuking the optimism of democracy and the superstition of the Ballot-box, he has no doubt done good ; but his worship of despotic force is a hideous anachronism, and his doctrine that migbt makes right, is, to borrow a phrase from his own vocabulary, * an everlasting lie.' The soul of man morally civilised will have none of it, but flings it to the wor- shippers of Moloch, or of hundred-handed idols. However, Carlyle himself was a man of genius : if he worshipped a truly heroic, though imperfect, character, such as Cromwell, or even a brilliant buccaneer such as Frederic, he did not grovel before such an idol as Henry VIII. It is with his imitators that it is most difficult to have patience. Eccentric genius is always cursed in imitations. If the great cynic is in purgatory for his Reminiscences, he is reading the falsi- fication of history in the interest of tyrant- worship by some of his disciples, or the outbreaks of emasculate petulance which others of them take for displays of strength. Certain Car- lylesque histories of English rule in Ireland seem to have been * ' 1 1 written with the express object of goading the Irisli to rel)ellion against a power presented as one of insolence and wrong. If such was their purpose, they have not altogether failed of tlielr effect. My own point of view, and, I have no doubt, yours, is that of ordinary moralily. We abjure the doctrine that a stronj^ nation is entitled, by virtue of its strength, to subjugate a weak nation,' if it finds the accession of territory convenient. We recognise the law of righteousness. We hold that the union between Grreat Britain and Ireland, to bo justified, must be shown to be good for both the partners. Tliat, as matters now stand, it is good for both partners, and could not be dissolved without calamitous results to both, is my conviction, for which I shall try to give my grounds, I say as matters now stand. Had it been possible for Ireland to remain from the outset independent, and for the two nations to grow up sic^e by side separate, but in amity, tliat, I heartily admit, would have been best. But this was not to be, and could hardly have been. Tlie geographical relation of the smaller island to the larger was such as to make conquest, in the age of universal war and rapine, almost a certainty. Unfortu- nately the same relation made it almost equally certain tliat conquest would, in tins case, assume its most pernicious foim. The genius of political evil spread his dark wing over the nation in its very cradle. We are apt to consider the case of Ireland rather too much by itself. Four remnants of tho Celtic population were left in existence when the tide of Saxon conquest had reached the full. The remnant in Cornwall has long since been thoroughly incorporated, nothing beyond a strong county-feeling being preserved. The extension of Wesleyanism among the Cornish men helped to complete the process. The Celts of Wales, a much larger mass, and sheltered not by mere hills, but by mountains, held out much longer. Even now Wales retains her own language. She has a popular Church of her own, Calvinistic Methodism ; and in the relations of that Church and of the Celtic people to the Anglican establishment, and the English proprietary, she presents a certain analogy to the case of Ireland. But she is Protestant, ber na,tive language is surely, though slowly, dying under the intluence of education and ■W' Li le Irish to rehellion ice and wrong, if ther failed of their doubt, yours, is that rine that a strong suhj ugote a weak f convenient. We Id that the union justified, must be at, as matters now d not be dissolveif victiou, for which been possible for nt, and for the two in amity, tliat, I this was not to be, ical relation of the !:e conquest, in the 'tainty. Unfortu- lally certain that it pernicious form, rk wing over the i rather too much •ulation were left t had reached the 3 been thoroughly nty-feeling being nong the Cornish 'elts of Wales, a ere hills, but by )W Wales retains rch of her own. " that Church and (shment, and the alogy to the case mguage is surely, f education and A railroads; her mountain barriers have become the resorts of English pleasure-seekers ; above all, she is separated from England by no sea. Her complete incorporation is at hand. After the union of Scotland with England, down to 1745, the Scottish Highlands remained a separate country with a political and social organisation, a language and a costume of thei/ own. But in 1745 the clan-system and the rule of its chieftains were broken ; Presbyterianism extended itself to the Highlands, though in a form rather more enthusiastic, and more suited to the Celt than tljat which prevailed among tlie Saxons of the Lowlands. With religion the literary language made way, and what aow icuiains of Highland isolation belongs, not to the political but to the picturesque. As in the case of Wales, the mountains, once ramparts of race, are now attractions to the tourist or the sportsman, and, instead of guarding seclusion, hasten incorporation. Neither the land of the Cymry nor the land of the Gael was severed from that of the Saxon by the sea. What makes the Irish question is St. George's Channel. No legislator or publicist is doing more to solve the problem than those Mail Packet boats between Holyhead and Dublin, the most beauti- ful things in the way of steam afloat, which cut or rather shoot over the roughest sea almost with the certainty and punctuality of a railway train. If sea-sickness could be abolished, a great step towards the consolidation of the union would be made. Unluckily, that is a problem before which medical science folds its hands in despair. The sea exempted Ireland both from Roman and from Saxon conquest. British Christianity found a refuge in Erin when the sword of the sons of Woden extirpated it in England, and it even became the parent of a civilisation essentially eccle- siastical in character, and wonderfully brilliant for the age, though, like precocity in general, shortlived, of which the monu- ments are the illuminated Book of Kells, the mysterious Kound Towers, and the ruins which mark the nosv lonely and melan- choly site of Clonmacnoise. Missionary enterprise was active, as well as ecclesiastical learning, architecture, and decorative art. But the Church in Ireland, amidst the general barbarism of the wild clans, was as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. il K Tho chieftains Uaiiipled on the clergy, disregunled spiritual priviU'ges and iminuuitivs, tirated Church offices an appt-ndugeg of their chieftainries. The U-adtrs of the clergy atretclied their hands to the Papacy as the tntelary power of their order, and to the Norman who was the religious li-geman and the soldier of the Popes. In the Saxon Chronicle we find the remarkahle assertion, that had William the Conciueror lived two years longer, he would have won Ireland without stroke of sword. He would have won it through an alliance with the Irish ecclesiastics, who, after his death continued their corre- spondence — Irish patriotism would say their intrigues — with the English Primates, and in the end brought about the Aii-^lo- Norman conciuest of Ireland. That enterprise was the com- plement of the Anglo-Norman (.'onquest of England ; both were at once conquests and crusades, the Pope blessing the arms which brought under his spiritual dominion a national and independent church ; a church which, in the case of Ireland, was not only national and independent, but heterodox, the Irish having preserved the old Brito-Celtic form of Christianity, though it is an anichronism to pretend that they were Pro- testants. The Reforming, that is Romanising Synod of Cashel, held under the auspices of the Norman conqueror of Ireland, was the counterpart of tlie Synod of Winchester, held under the auspices of the Norman conqueror of England. Romanism, which, when the English turned Protestants, became the reli- gion of Irish patriotism, was at first the religion of the invader ; while the religion of the patriot was the old Christianity of Celtic Britain. Let no patriot priest of Ire- land hope to cast doubt on the authenticity of Adrian's missive, or to dispute the fact that the Church of Rome delivered Ireland to the Conqueror. It is impossible to con- ceive an event for which a Protestant Englishman at the present day has less to answer. It would have been well — comparatively well, at least — had the imfulfilled contingency at which the Saxon chronicler glances been fulfilled, and had the subjugation of Ireland, as well as that of England, been achieved by the hand of William; for William's personal powers, suspending the anarchic tendencies of feudalism, enabled him to complete conquest and to organise dominion. Unlike at Has hearted race — ? or V 'races }iH appeiitlages le clergy stretc-I.ed iry F'ower of their igious livgemun and ironicle we find the Jie CoiKjueror lived d wirhout stroke of n alliance with the tinued their oone- eir intrigues— with it about the Anj^io- 'I'ise was the com- England; both wore blessing the arms ^n a national and le case of Ireland, lit heterodox, the rm of Christianity, at they were Pro- g Synod of Cashel, iqueror of Ireland, hester, held under land. Romanism, , became the reli- e religion of the ■iot was the old •iot priest of Ire- icity of Adrian's Church of Rome npossible to con- iglishman at the lave been well — lied contingency ulfiUed, and had >f England, been illiam's personal s of feudalism, janise dominion. ■i Unlike historical optimists, I bewail the victory of tlie Norman at Hastings, and curse the spiritual ambition of that stony- hearted monk who sent forth the robber against an unoffending ,ace — a race wliose independence, though rude, was full of promise, and had produced Alfred. I take my stand by the side of Harold on the fatal ridge, and mourn over the ruin of the nation, the institutions, the language which fell with the patriot king. English, as v 11 as Irish history, has its tears. But the result in this case was at least a United Kingdom, with an aristocracy which, tliough at first alien in 'ace, though long oppressive, and still baneful, was from he '^ot in its extension national, became so at length in char i,nd, by its straggles with the Crown, gave birth to libi y. In the case of Ireland, the Plantagenet monarchy took but a feeble and fitful hold of the enterprise ; the work was left to feudalism, which had commenced it in the person of Strongbow, and the fatal product of that anarchic and desultory force was not a dominion, but a military colony or pale, occupying but a small portion of the island, and waging a deadly war of race with the clans which continued masters of the rest. The native fast- nesses, the bogs and hills, were not subdued, because it was not worth the while of private adventure to subdue them. Ireland was far from the centre of the Anglo-Norman power ; Wales, through which the passage lay, was itself unsubdued ; while between struggles with the barons and foreign wars the monarchy had always other business on hand. Of the Anglo-Norman Pale, Ascendency, Exclusion, Alien Landlordism, Absenteeism, and the whole train of Irish woes, are the ofifspring more or less direct. Incomplete conquest is the phrase which sums up these calamities. It is well to keep this in mind. Even supposing that the Englishman is to bear the sins of the Norman, that Protestants are to bear the sins of the Papacy, that the children to the third and fourth generation are to bear the sins of the fathers, many more than three or four generations have passed since the grant of Pope Adrian and the invasion of Strongbow. Ic is well also to remember that Ireland was a party to her own subjugation. Not only was she betrayed by her clergy, she betrayed herself. Not only did the ambition of Irish ecclesiastics conspire with that of Norman ecclesiastics for the intervention \ [ fi 8 of I{i)mc, but it was the iovcii^m! of iin Irisli diit-f tliiit iiivitpdj Sliongbow to hfluntl, providutl llic iuviulor with mitivc illlie^•, ,1 jiiul opened tl»e j^nite to comiuest. This, again, reniiiiilH (is tluit I if Ireland, in connection with Kngliind, has haii a disiiHtroua bihtory, she might, if left in her savagt; independence, havH luuj J a history no les8 disastrouH. What she haH suffercid, we know ; '| what Bhe might have snffered, we know not. We sec tlpit 1 page of the book of fate in which actual events are wriU(>n,fe and a dark page in the present ca«e unciuestionaltly it Ih: the page of unfidfiUed contingencies is a blank ; had it li»'en tilled it might have been not less dark. When Stronj^hjw 1 landed, the island was divided among a number of warring cluiis. | Strongbow's ally, the chieftain Derniot, is described by (iirahhis, the chronicler of the day, as ' tall and huge ; warlike and dining, with a voice hoarse from shouting in battle ; desiring to l)e feared rather than loved ; an oppressor of the noble, a raiser up of the low; tyrannical ' li cliii'f that, invited <'!• with native alliof,] fiviii, rciniiuls us tluit liiH hud ii (lisustromi cpcndence, havH liad 8Uff.M-(!d, we know ; not. We see that ovcntH are wiitt.ii, n(iu('stionahly it is; blank; liad it ht-vn When Str(tn;;lijw her of waninj,' clans. ■scribed hy (I iial(hiii, warlike and dan'nj,', desiring to befcartd e, a raiser up of tin; ested by stranj^crs ; id every man's hand y, having thrown a >pcd his hands vvitii ind, seizing a hoad ly, tore oti" the nose ve been rough ami live been reduced to N'oriTian invader or is much divided hv times, hardly less ion and productions arge scale to coiu- r progress and the entral government after a tough con- ^ be siu-e that every X power of order, II in foreign aid. Drtimate for Irish ntic vision of her the Plantagenets, between their feuds wltli the Harons, crusades, war.! with Scotland and with France, had too much on their bands to follow up tljo work which had been most imperfectly and superHcially done by the founder of their line in Ireland. Crecy and I'oicticrs brought the Monarchy an accession of strength and pride which, among its other conseqtiences, incited and enabled it to appear on the Irish scene in the person of Uichard II. with truly royal power. Hut Richard was as weak as the >b)narcliy was strong, and from his second expedition was recalled by njbelliou at home. During the wars of the Koses Ircdand was practically abandoned : the English pale was reduced to a very narrow circle round the tomb in which Strongbow still sleeps victorious : some of the English, l)y the contagious love of lawlessness, were turned into Irish, and adopted clan organi- sation and habits ; an Irish Chief was reported as so powerful that all Ireland could not govern him, and the only course possible was to let him govern all Ireland. In those days it was that the Earl of Kildare, having committed an act of sacrilege by burning down a Cathedral, pleaded as his excuse that he thought the Archbishop was in it. I^ut out of the wreck of Feudalism in the wars of the Koses came forth the Ab)narchy of the Tudors, a despotism under Parliamentary forms, centralised as far as was possible, in that age, and commanding, if not exactly a standing army, paid bodies of regular troops, with a train of artillery. Now the concpiest of Ireland was pushed in earnest. Henry VII., that English Louis XL, had asserted the legislative supremacy of England over the Irish Parliament by what was called Poyning's Act, afterwards ratitied and enforced by Hanoverian legislation. His successors eariied their arms into Ireland with as much vigour, perhaps, as the desperate struggle in which after the Reformation they became involved with the Catholic powers would allow. A hideous process the Tudor conquest of Ireland was, and sicken- ing are its annals ; for the natives were regarded and treated as savages, as in truth they were, and hunted down in the spirit of jMr. Roebuck's saying, that the first business of the Colonist is to clear the land of wild animals, the most noxious of which is the wild man. Not only the sword and famine, but poison, was sometimes used in tlie work. Quarter was given on neither I 10 side, nor was faith kept on either. The gentle author of the! ■Faerie Queene,' who was one of the English adverturers in| Ireland, recomraends that campaigns shall be made against the| Irish kern in winter when the air is sharp and bitter to blood | through their naked sides and legs; nor does he shrink fromi the use of famine as an engine of war. The eagles of English adventure winged their bold way to the Spanish main, the vultures descended upon Ireland. At| this period it was that the lands, which the clans held in tribal ownership, were confiscated, on a w^t scale, by the cruel and rapacious pedantry of Anglo-Norman law, for what the con- queror styled the treason of the chiefs, and the foundation was laid for the unsettled state of Irish titles, always disquieted by the popular memory of their wrongful origin, and for a long agrarian war. Fanaticism lent its bitterness to the land feud, and the odium of an alien establishment was added to the odium of an alien proprietary. The English having broken with the Papacy, the Irish, from antagonism of race, became intensely Papal, and, to fill up the measure of her woes, Ireland was drawn into the vortex of the great European conflict between the Catholic and the Protestant powers, in which she fared as the weak always fare when they are drawn into the quarrels of the strong. But the agrarian struggle has always been primary, the religious struggle always secondary. There has been an enmity of race, there has been an enmity of religion ; but at the rcot of all Irish enmities, and of all Irish difficulties, has always been the question of the land. Of happier tendency in the long run was the settlement of the north of Ireland, by an agricultural and industrial colony of Scotch, who brought with them the energy and the thrift, as well as the Protestantism, of their country. This is Ulster, which Fenians always overlook, but which, if they were left alone with it, would speedily press itself on their attention, as it lias already more than once done. How often in America does one pick up one's ears at the mention of some remarkable instance of Irish enterprise and success, and learn on further inquiry that the man is an Irishman from Ulster ! James I. is the universal butt : it is just to him to say that if he had the faults of a pedagogue, he had also some of the I 11 rood points of a man whose mind haa been opened and retined by learning. To that extent he deserved the flatteries of kcon, whose large ideas of statesmanship he was nor, unqualified ko appreciate. He wished to civilise Ireland ; he wished to extend to her the benefit of English institutions ; in fancying that English institutions were capable of universal application, nthout distinction of race, political tiaining, or social condition, the royal pedant was not alone, nor did his delusion die rith him. The Irish Parliament, reconstructed by his wisdom, ms but an equivocal success. The first division took place on the election of the Speaker. The majority went into the lobby ; in their absence the minority elected their own Speaker, and seated him in the cliair. The majority returned to the House ind seated its candidate in the other Speaker's lap. Now comes Strafford and rules Ireland, as a vizier, ably and [ivell. He introduces the linen trade, about the only instance >f success attending a trade which has been introduced and lot sprung up of itself. But he wanted money to raise the Ibrce which was to crush English liberty, and to get it he had recourse to another sweeping confiscation of land. That, and pe first stirrings of the English Revolution, holding out an )pportunity and communicating the contagion of unrest, Eome Wso working by means of Jesuit intrigue, brought on a horror phich transcends all other horrors even in Irish history, the rising and massacre of 1641. To doubt that there was a lassacre and a hideous one is preposterous. The number has been enormously overstated : but Clarendon, who probably had liis information from Ormond, and who is by no means inclined to exaggerate the wrongs of Irish Protestants, most of them l^uritans and Koundheads, says that 40,000 persons perished. [L'hey perished by deaths the most cruel that frenzied hate and Vengeance could inflict, and well might wailing phantoms launt the accursed spots and the ghosts of tho murdered be leard to shriek from beneath the bridge of Port|adown. There |s no use in denying that the Irish, like the French Celt, how- Bver lovable and winning in his milder mood, is, when |iransported by vindictive passion, a fearful savage : New ^ork knows i^ as well as Ireland. Those who remember the feeling excited iu England by Cawjipore, may realise, in some s 'fi !^ 12 degree, tbe f(^eling excited by Portpadovvn. Then followed weltering chaos of civil war, if war is the name for such uj strife, between three parties, the insurgent Irish, the Royalis!^| and the Puritans, Rome sending to t)ie insurgent cause a viceroy of sanguinary anarchy in the person of a Legate. The EngUshI Parliament had enough to do at home : it was obliged to turn i over the Irish war in effect to private adventure, paying the ) adventurers with assignments, in tlie nature of scrip, upon the lands to be conquered from the rebels. The work in England I done, Cromv^ell came down on the Irish hydra with a mighty, but \ not with an exterminating or even with a merciless hand. Even in the matter of religion, Puritan as he was, he was more tolerant than most Puritans, incomparably more tolerant than the Church of the St. Bartholomew, of the Savoy massacre, of| the autos da fe. He would not, in those days he could not, allow Mass to be publicly celebrated ; but he made no in- quisition into conscience, he attempted no forcible conversion. The terrible blows which he struck at Drogheda and Wexford are glorified by the hero-worshipper as rebukes to rose-water surgery : by the hero himself they are deplored as measures which only stern necessity could excuse. Carlyle fails to notice that, by the laws of war in those days, a garrison which did not surrender on summons but compelled the besieger to storm was held disentitled to quarter, while the Spaniards in the low countries, and the Catholic Imperialists in Germany, extended military execution even to the inhabitants of towns taken by storm. He fails, also, to notice that those to whom, at Drog- heda and Wexford, quarter was refused, had themselves refused quarter. The Papal Legate Kinuccini reports with exultation in his despatches that the Catholic insurgents after a victory took no prisoners, but put all the vanquished to the sword. In the long night of Irish history, the single gleam of light, before the rise of the Liberal party in England, is the adminis- tration of Cromwell, the truest and grandest of liiberals, though he was compelled by the exigencies of his position and his cause to hold the sword, and held not the sword in vain. In the legislative union of Ireland as well as Scotland with England, lie anticipated by a century and a half the work of Pitt, without the corruption to wliich Pitt was driven, and |of their Imaking |giving t Icution o pf this I jpr relig: ijompara •l)rovoca< |ind for ;, as the this latf las don forces c .■>--.; wrfsatt^f-ii.'* ti. Then followed a le name for such n Irish, tlie Royalist irgent cause a viceroy ■gate. The English was obliged to turn venture, paying the i of scrip, upon the e work in England a with a mighty, but I erciless hand. Even was, he was more more tolerant than i Savoy massacre, of days he could not, ut he made no in- forcible conversion, j^heda and Wexford bukes to rose-water >plored as measures Jarlyle fails to notice rrison which did not esieger'to storm was aniards in the low Germany, extended s of towus taken by to whom, at Drog- I themselves refu-sed orts with exultation ents after a victory id to the sword, ugle gleam of light, and, is the adminis- ndest of laberals, of his position and b the sword in vain. il as Scotland with a half the work of tt was driven, and 13 ?hich has left a lasting stain on the transaction. By the hand jf his able and upright son, Henry, he introduced the most Enlightened measures of legal and general reform. With the Bye of a true statesman he saw that, as he said, Ireland was a jlank paper, on which improvements might be tried which )rejudice would not suffer to be tried in England. By the legislative Union he would have put an end to the treatment )f Ireland as a foreign nation, and stifled in its birth the iiabolical policy of killing Irish manufactures and trade. It is ilmost agonising to think what twenty or even ten years more )f the Protector might have done. The science of history, if it ispires to prediction, must learn to foresee the appearance of jreat men and to measure the length of their lives. In times to come, perhaps, the restoration of the Stuarts cill be kept as a national fast. They failed to turn out the >omwellian landowners in Ireland, who, after some tough wrestling, held their own, and, though aliens to the natives in race, religion, and feeling, wore at least residents and improvers ^iof their lands. But the Stuarts repealed the Union, thus imaking Ireland again a foreign country to England, and . ^giving the signal for that narrow-minded and iniquitous perse- fcution of Irish trade, which is really the most unredeemed part Jof this evil story, for wrong-doing which arises from political ipr religious passion may be to some extent redeemed by the . liomparative grandeur of the motives, as well as by mutual jprovocation. The one chance for the improvement of Ireland iind for the existence of good relations between the two countries |.as the growth of Irish industry, which has not failed, even at this late hour, to produce its effect, but in its greatest centres las done much to allay political discontent and to weaken the forces of disunion. At the same time, Catholic Ireland, re- loved by Repeal from the control even of a Cavalier Parliament ind governed absolutely under constitutional forms by the .viceroys of the Stuarts, became to her utter bane and ruin the privy workshop of Stuart conspiracy, the clandestine re- iruiting ground and drill-yard of the forces by which, in sonj unction with the money and arms of the French despot, the Stuarts hoped to root out Protestantism and liberty in Great iBritain. That she was put to this use was her misfortune 14 rather than her fault : yet the historical fact remains. English Protestiintiism and freedom saw an Irish army in the service of James II., and the Jesuits encamped at their gates ; they saw a native Irish Parliament, under the villainous guidance of Tyrconnell, passing sweeping acts of attainder against all men of Eno-lish bloud and Protestant religion ; they saw the Irish fighting side by side with the troops of the Bourbon tyrant and his fanatical bishops on the morrow of the Dragonnade.s and the massacres of the Cevennes. They, and liberty witli them, were saved almost by miracle. After their victory, they dealt out a cruel measure of penal repression to the religion which had identified itself with a crusade of reactionary despots against national independence and human freedom. In lands where the Protestants, instead of being victorious, were vanquished by the Catholic powers, their lot was not merely social repression and political disfranchise- ment; they were butchered, driven into exile, sent to the galleys, or burned at the stake ; and in their persecution, we may be sure, every Irish priest in those days rejoiced. The blame of all that Ireland suffered in consequence of the attempt of the Stuarts against liberty rests mainly, not on England, but on the Stuarts themselves, on Louis XIV., and on the other Catholics who conspired with them, including the unhappy Catholics of Ireland. The result, however, was the reduction of the Celtic Irish, during the first half of the eighteenth century, to the condition of helots — religious, political, and social. As the century of Voltaire and Rousseau wore on, religious tolerance, or, to speak more truly, indifference, gained ground ; and the fetters of ! the Catholics were gradually loosened, the sceptic Chesterfield, as viceroy, taking a leading part in the relaxation. The Anglican Bishops, however, through whom the English Govern- ment usually managed the country, struggled, as in England, against every concession, not only to the Roman Catholics, but to the Presbyterians of the North, the sinews of the Protestant interest as well as the most loyal adherents of the British Crown, and thereby sowed the seeds of revolt in Ireland, besides sending across the Atlantic exiles filled with the bitter memory of per- secution, and ready to take part in the American Revolution. 15 It is difficult to read witli patience tlie history of Episcopal government when we think wiiat it cost the nation, and what characters for the most part were the Bishops by whom it was exercised. But the religious, or even the political question, it must be repeated, was the smallest item in the sum of evils. The largest items were those connected with the land. The people multiplied with the recklessness which always attends degradation, and which the Catholic religion, if it does not encourage, certainly does nothing to prevent. The country is a grass country, unfitted, much of it, for the growing of grain, and therefore not capable of producing a large amount of food, except in the low and precarious form of the potato. There was no emigration, for the Celt at least, either to Great Britain or to the Colonies, tliough the Catholic powers made Ireland their recruiting ground, and France especially used up a good many of the young men in her Irish brigade. There were no manufactures or mines, while upon the woollen trade and Irish trade in general the malignant jealousy of English commerce inexorably laid its fell embargo. The result was, what it would have been in a n')bit warren, closely paled in, and visited by occasional droughts, as the counterparts of the periodical failures of the potato. It was a fearful illustra- tion of the Malthusian law operating in its naked severity without any corrective influence. Multitudes perished by famine, while others, upon the brink of famine, lived upon one meal a day of potatoes mixed with seaweed. Swift, in a horribly elaborate piece of pleasantry, proposed that the peasants should kill and eat their own children. But the land, wretched as was the subsistence on it, was the sole livelihood of the people. Therefore they clung to it and fought for it with the tenacity of despair. Hence, Irish agrarianism, with its deadly guerilla warfare, its secret societies, its infernal cruelties, its hideous annals of savagery and crime. The landlords, meanwhile, had become as a class lost to duty and worthless. They were a crew of spendthrift, drunken, duelling profligates, and at the same time incredibly insolent and tyrannical in their behaviour to the poor. Many of them became absentees, and squandered in the pleasure cities of England the rents which middlemen wrung for them out of a famishing peasantry. The middlemen, wm^ ..i-.^vk-' /•' I ( [! H M 10 of course, were as hard as a millstone ; they ground the pe'i?'ii:t ruthlessly, not even speaking a kind word to soften extortion ; and thus absenteeism added fresh bitterness and increased horrors to agrarian war. Agrarian war and nothing else, or hardly anything else, it was, and is, so far as the people were or are concerned, though the landlords being aliens in race and in religion, the conflict has always had, and still retains, a political and religiov.s tinge. There was a political movement going on at tlie same time, but this, it is important to mark, was not among the people of the oppressed, but among those of '^he dominant race. It was au insurrection of the Irish ParKamfc:;t, a Parliament of ascendency and privilege, against the legislati\e control of the Parliament of Great Britain, and the administrative control of the British Crown. It was begun by the spleen of Swift, who hated Ireland and despised her people \vith all his cankered heart, but wanted to spite the Government, which had refused to make an obscene atheist a bishop. A colour of patriotism was given to the movement by the insane trade policy which, under the pressure of the British mercharits, the Parliament of Great Britain per- sisted in maintaining, by the abuses of the Irish pension list, and the general mismanagement of Irish affairs. But its main object was that of a selfish and corrupt oligarchy, which wanted to have all the power and all the plunder in its own hands. If the political disabilities of the Catholics were relaxed, it was not because privilege had become liberal or national, but because, severed from England and placed in antagonism to her, it found itself too weak to stand alone. The Castle in its worst hour could not be more ready to give bribes than the Patriot leaders of the Parliament with few excep- tions were to take them. Patriotism, with most of these men, was simply an instrument for squeezing patronage out of the Government. They had amongst them, it is true, a large measure of that eloquence, of which the condition, besides a lively imagination and a copious flow of words, is freedom from the restraint of good sense, veracity, and self-respect. Gratton was the best of them, and Gratton talked much brilliant nonsense. Their debates were orgies of declamation, stimulated by the wine \\liich they drank in oceans, breaking out into the 17 most outrageous personalities, and often ending in duels Everybody got drunk, everybody was in debt, even the highest functionary of the law was a duellist. It is easy to sympathise with the wistful look which the aspiring youth of Ireland casts at the empty Parliament House on College Grreen, but it would not be easy to sympathise with any desire to people those Halls again with the ranting and canting placehunters of the Irish Parliament before the Union. The American Revolution, and the achievement of American Independence, aided like everything else that tended to dis- ruption by the folly of the British Parliament, the corruption of an aristocratic Government, and the interested bigotry of the hierarchy, brought the nationalist movement in Ireland to a head. The patriots took arms, formed themselves into a national militia, under the name of Volunteers, and by their menacing attitude extorted from England, depressed by defeat in the American war, the concession of legislative independence, yor twenty years Ireland had a Parliament of her own, free to legislate at its will, and checked only in an indirect and clandestine way by Castle management, and the influence of Government in elections. The net upshot of the experiment was not the reign of glory and felicity seen by the enraptured eye of Gratton, but the rebellion of 1798. The rebellion of 1798 began not among the peasantry of the Celtic and Catholic provinces, but among the rationalists and free-thin k'^rs of the North, who sympathised with the French Revolution. The Catholic priesthood of Ireland were as far as possible from sympathising with the French Revo- lution, which, in their eyes, was atheist. The peasants were as little free-thinking as those of La Vendee, and there was not in them enough of political life to move them to a political revolution. But the political agitation in the North set the agrarian agitation in the rest of the island blazing. Then all the elements of discord and devilry, the hatred of race and the hatred of religion, as well as the sleep- less hostility between rack-renter and rack-rented, burst forth, much as they had in 1641, and there followed about as hideous a reign of all that is worst in man, and one about as unredeemed either by gr' it objects or great figures, as any in the annals of B jHH mmtmm 18 i: I evil. The Orange gentry and yeomanry, including, no doubt, many a patriot Volunteer, went about over large districts, flogging, picketing, pitch-capping, and half-hanging the ever detested Catholic and Celt. It is useless for any heroic advocate of flogging and pitch-capping to attempt to ohake tlie testimony of sucli witnesses as Sir Ralph Abercromby and Lord Cornwallis al)out the conduct of these men. Nor did the savage peasantry fail when they rose to perpetrate the name- less atrocities of galley slaves who have broken their chains. All this took place, be it observed, not under the Union, but in an Ireland which was enjoying legislative independence ; and though, 'hanks to a Liberal policy, the antagonisms whicli produced that sanguinary chaos have been mitigated, they are not yet extinct. If Hoche had succeeded in landing, as, but for the merest accidents of weather, he certainly would, Ireland might have tried for a few years the fraternity of French libera- tors ; and that experience also might have been instructive. This was the end of the independent nationality of Ireland. A Parliament of the two races which had been butchering and torturing each other with worse than savage fury, a Parliament of the half-hangers and the half-hanged of the pitch-cappers and the pitch-capped, would have been such a political com- bination as the world had never known. A far less sagacious tye than that of Pitt would have seen the necessity of the Union. Pitt is commonly taken to have been a very strong man. A man of high bearing he was, and in a certain sense courageous, but it may be doubted whether he was very strong. Had he been, he would probably have carried out the Union as Cromwell did in a straightforward way, as a measure of plain necesiiity : he would not have descended to corruption in order to purchase the votes of a more than venal oligarchy, which, had it been handled with determination, would not have dared, isolated and hated as it was, to lift a finger against the Government. To corruption of the very vilest kind, prostituting honours as well as misapplying public money, Pitt did descend, and it is instructive to remember that not a few titles styled of nobility had i-heii origin in a transaction worse than any ordinary swindling.* * Of the character ' f Irish politicians before the Union, and of those with whom Pitt had to deal, an illustration is given by Mr. Massey, in his History of 19 Not only with corruption wa? the Union tainted but with breach of public faith. The fact is past dispute that Pitt held out to the Catholics hopes ai )unting morally to a promise I of emancipation. He wished to redeem his pledge. Had he been allowed to do so then, in the accepted hour, and with the grace of unforced concession, from what a train of calamities might the Empire have been saved ! George III. forbade, and Pitt lacked resolution to overrule the Royal will ; in truth, the fatal ! flaw in his own constitutional title to the Premiership, into i which he had been thrust by Royal intrigue, was enough to paralyse him in any conflict with the King. It was not the fault of poor old George III. that he, with an intellect scarcely equal to the lowest office, was called upon to fill the highest. But when we consider what the nation paid for his unfitness — j when we put together the results of the war with the American ; Colonies, that with the French Republic, the postponement of [justice to the Catholics of Ireland, and the obstruction for half j a century of all reforms — we shall keenly realise the benefits of personal Government and feel duly grateful to those who have [just been trying to revive it. No moral validity can belong to a compact effected by such [means as were employed to carry the Union. So much must be frankly conceded to those who demand its abrogation. The I England, from a confidential report made to Pitt by the Irish GoTernment on the I state of parties and interests in the Irish House of Commons. H. H., son-in-law to Lord A., and brought into Parliament by him. Studies [the law; wishes to be a Commissioner of barracks or in some similar place. I Would go into orders and take a living. H. D., brother to Lord C. Applied for offici ; but, as no specific promise [could be mada, has lately voted in opposition. Easy to be had if thought jexpedient. A silent, gloomy man. L. M., refuses to accept £600 per annum ; states very high pretensions from tliis skill in House of Commons management; expects £1,000 per annum. N.B. — [Be careful of him. T. N., has been in the army and is now on half-pay, wishes a troop of [dragoons on full pay. States his pretensions to be fifteen years' service in [Parliament. N.B. — Would prefer office to military promotion ; but already has [and has long bad a pension. Character, especially on the side of truth, not [fr.vourable. R. P., independent but well disposed to Government. His four sisters have pensions, and his object is a living for his brother. T. P., brother to Lord L., and brought in by him ; a captain in the navy, fishes for some sinecure employment. H 2 20 Union stands now, not on tl)at tainted agreement, but on the proof, historical and political, of its necessity; on its eighty | years of prescription ; on its beneficial consequences to both { countries ; on the evils and dangers to both which would be ; entailed by its repeal. The Act of Union is an old parchment, : which anybody is free to tear in pieces. The Union is a vital \ object, to be upheld and defended to the uttermost by those i who are sincerely convinced of its value. The story has been traced down to the time of the Union.! So far it is a dark story — about as dark a story as any in Ijuman annals. But let us once more remind ourselves that if Ireland had been left to herself, with her own turbulent chiefs and brawling clans ; with her impulsive, excit« able, and, when excited, fearfully savage people; with her economical disadvantages ; with the perils of her geographical relation to a more powerful neighbour ; amidst the fierce eddies of European politics and the religious wars of the Reformation ; there might have been a story not less dark. To usurp an Irish privilege, Tara's Halls, which never existed, might have seen tragedies of their own. England, too, during those six centuries, had her tides of calamity. We cannot annul the past ; nor is the present responsible for it. No living Englishman, no father or grandfather — we might almost Bay no great-grandfather — of any living Englishman had any- thing more to do with the enactment of the penal laws, or with the imposition of restrictions on Irish trade, than any living Irishman or his father or grandfather had with the massacre of 1641 or the attempt of James II. on the life of liberty. England has stood long enough in sackcloth and ashes before every rhe- torical avenger of bygone wrongs. I take my stand on the utmost verge of living responsibility, at the period when, the struggle with Napoleon being over, and the force of reaction being spent, the English people themselves began to recover their liberties and to exercise some control over their own affulrs. I ask what, since that period, has been the behaviour of England to Ireland. Fifteen or twenty years ago I was the guest of Guizot at Val Richer, where, withdrawn in the evening of his stormy day from political strife to historical studies and to the domestic happi- ness of which there was no lovelier picture than the old states- 1 lan's ho evolutio he disj lave left lore a C ;o suppc [Ireland, for the 1 [that thei the Statt tiou, I Si science. Church ( I said ; years ha J of the I is one of the inde i which hi deliberai I say tha Who country carried 'i enured i Emanci] upon th( his late J! Parliam< I been res I begun t( I Municip I Ireland ; I establisl ^ power a 1 Great E eminent of tithes great qi «^ 21 eemeiit, but on the i Hity ; on its eighty | nsequences to both )th which would be 8 an old parchment, le Union is a vital uttermost by those time of the Union. rk a story as any e remind ourselves If, with her own ler impulsive, excit* ( people; with her of her geographical amidst the fierce ligious wars of the story not less dark, vhich never existed, England, too, during imity. We cannot lonsible for it. No r — we might almost Inglishman had any- penal laws, or with de, than any living 'ith the massacre of of liberty. England les before every rhe- ' stand on the utmost I when, the struggle eaction being spent, er their liberties and atTbirs. I ask what, F England to Ireland. it of Guizot at Val his stormy day from the domestic happi- than the old states- lan's home, he looked calmly forth tipou a world in the turmoil of revolution. He was a good friend to England, but no Anglomaniac. 'he disputes about Tahiti and the Spanish marriages must Ihnve left their trace ; and though a Protestant he was so much Imore a Conservative statesman than a sectarian as to be inclined Ito support the temporal power of the Pope. We talked of I Ireland, and M. Guizot said : * The conduct of England to Ireland for the last thirty years has been admirable.' I reminded him ithat there was still one capital grievance to be redressed ; that (the State Cluirch of the minority must go; with that reserva- ' tiou, I said that I, as an Englishman, could, with a clear con- science, accept the compliment. ' Yes,' he replied, * the State : Church of the minority must go, but otherwise, I repeat what i I said ; the conduct of England to Ireland for the last thirty ! years has been admirable.' On one side is the hyperbolic fury I of the Irish orator, with that gift of foaming rhetoric whicli I is one of the curses of hi.s country, denouncing the unparalleled, I the indescribable, the inconceivable tyranny of the Government )t which has just passed the Land Act : on the other side is the I deliberate and emphatic judgment of the impartial statesman. i I say that the facts of history are on the side of the statesman. • When, after its long depression, the popular party in this country raised its head, what was the first measure which it • carried ? It was Catholic Emancipation, a reform which enured mainly to the benefit of Ireland. Ostensibly Catholic , Emancipation was the work of Tories, but it was forced upon them by the Liberal movement, at the head of which, in his later days, was Canning. This was before the reform of i Parliament, before the electoral liberties of Englishmen had I been restored to them, when Liberalism had just awakened and l)egun to make its influence felt. Of Parliamentary Keform, of :: Municipal Reform, all the substantial benefits were extended to f Ireland ; and to signalise the political equality which had been f established, Irish votes in the House of Commons long kept in i power a Government against which there was a majority in I Great Britain. The Tithe Commutation Act again was pre- J eminently an Irish Reform : in Ireland alone the cruel scandal i of tithes collected with the bayonet had been seen. There are two great questions on which improvement in Ireland has greatly 1 i M outstripped improvement in the other two kingdoms, religious equality and public education. KccleHinstical privilege in Ireland has been abolished, wtiile in England and Scotland it still exists. Long before England, at least, had given herself I anything like a sy em of public education, she had given one 1 to Ireland, and was maintaining it, not out of local rates, | but out of the national purse If an Irish Catholic aseerti a that, in the matter of popular education, the Union lias kept his country back, I would ask him to compare her state, in this respect, with that of Spain, Portugal, the South of Italy, or any other country which has been under the control of the Catholic clergy, and to tell us the result of the comparison. There are nations in Europe which, though by profession Catholic, are really free-thinking, and ruled by Governments emancipated from the influence of the priesthood : these I put out of the question ; but I say that among communities really Catholic, and subject to priestly rule, there has not been one which in regard to political and religious liberty, or in regard to popular education, would bear comparison with Ireland. In effecting these reforms, the English people, represented by the Liberal party, has had to struggle against the obstructive force of Tory reaction, with which Irish spleen and impatience are now, not for the first time, in alliance. It has had also to struggle against the character and the conduct of the Irish representation iu the House of Commons. For more than one session the Galway contract was enough to cast a spell over the Irish members, and prevent them from co-operating with British Liberals in any elTorts to do justice to their country. Had Irishmen been Scotchmen, disestablishment would not have been put off till 1869. Have Irishmen for the last half-century had any real ground for complaint on the score of national equality ? Have not the civil, the military, the naval services been as open to them as to natives of the other kingdoms ? Have they not found the way clear to high command and to high honour ? Is not the Indian Civil Service full of Irishmen, while their kinsmen are yelling with joy over everything that threatens destruction to the Indian Empire ? Is any social circle closed against Irish merit and distinction ? Have any commercial it was I was th< i formed 1 Sullivai most 11 Englisl Commi of theii name., I peasant ,J moor, r as it w 4 His CO ■i stitute young i oentur Crown- shot F spirac) which 28 kingdoms, religioui stical privilege in nd and Scotland it , had given herself she had given one out of local ratcH, iflh Catholic aHsertg •n, the Union has ompare her state, in the South of Italy, the control of the of the comparison. ugh by profession id by Governments jthood : these I put communities really ! has not been one berty, or in regard Q with Ireland. In represented by the he obstructive force and impatience are It has had also to mduct of the Irish ^or more than one jast a spell over the jrating with British leir country. Had it would not have ury had any real al equality ? Have !8 been as open to I? Have they not 1 to high honour ? shmen, while their ing that threatens social circle closed /e any commercial i I restrictions l>een retained on Irish trade? Have not tho [markets of England, beyond comparison the Ijest in the world, long since been thrown perfectly open both to tho Irish seller and the Irish buyer? There are Irishmen who will toll you that it is British jealousy of Irish trade that keeps tiie rock at the entrance of Cork Harlwur. In fiscal arrangements, has any wrong been wilfully done to Ireland ? Has she not, on the contrary, lieen .illowed to plead the past as a title to fiscal consideration in more than one case ? Has she not her full proportion of representatives for her population ? If there is anything still amiss in regard to her franchise, are not English Lil)eral8 perfectly willing to set it right? Home Rule is a separate question. Apart from that, where is the Irish grievance, political, ecclesiastical, social, or fiscal, which the English people have not redressed or shown themselves ready, nay, eager, to redrtss ? When Ireland was visited by famine, was there any backward- ness in coming to her relief? Abuse was heaped on England by Irish animosity, of course, on that as on all occasions, but it was merited neither by parsimony nor by coldness. Not only was the public purse opened, but private associations were formed in England, and embassies of succour were sent. Mr, Sullivan, the Home Ruler, says in his 'New Ireland': ' B'ore- most in this blessed work were the Society of Friends, the English members of that body co-operating with the Central Committee in Dublin. Amongst the most active and fearless of their representatives was a young Yorkshire Quaker, whose namCj I doubt not, is still warmly remembered by Connemara peasants. He drove from village to village, he walked bog and moor, rowed the lake and climbed the mountain, fought death, as it were, hand to hand in brave resolution to save the people. His correspondence from the scene of his labours would con- stitute in itself a graphic memorial of the Irish famine. That young Yorkshire Quaker of 1847 was destined, a quarter of a century later, to be known to the Empire as a Minister of the Crown— the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, M.P.' This is Buck- shot Forster, who, for upholding law against plunder and con- spiracy, receives daily threats of assassination, besides abuse which would be exaggerated if it were applied to Nero. 24 No Irishman, who has undertaken a good work in Ireland, has had reason to say that English hearts were of stone ; nor has religion any more than race stood in the way. The Irish Catholic Apostle of Temperance, Father Mathew, met with a support equally enthusiastic on both sides of St. George's Channel ; and in his last illness, as we are told by the writer just quoted, he found more solace and relief under the tender care and affectionate attentions of Protestant friends in Liverpool, Mr. and Mrs. Rathbone, than amidst the balmy breezes, the vineyards, and the orange groves of Madeira. Then as to the Land Question. Irishmen speak as if English malice had imposed landlordism on Ireland. Are there no landlords in England ? In Ireland, before the days of land- lords proper, were there not tyrannical and coshering chiefs, who with their tails of marauding followers preyed without limit upon the people ? I do not want to understate the evils which have arisen in both countries from the retention of primo- geniture and entail. The case has been worse in Ireland than in England, because the feudal system was more alien and still more unsuited economically to that country than to this, and because, by the aggregation of landed property, and especially by the union of Irish with English estates in the hands of the great families, absenteeism has been engendered and increased. Absenteeism is a great evil. It is perfectly true that some of the best managed estates are those of absenliees ; but good management does not make up for the want of a rural chief, least of all among a peasantry so per- sonal in their feelings and attachments as the Irish. We ought to have got rid of primogeniture and entail ; this was the first and most obvious thing to be done, before entering on that most questionable and perilous kind of legislation which threatens the foundations of commercial society, by interfering retrospectively with contracts. It is almost laughable to see a feudal rule of succession existing by the side of agrarian legislation about as drastic as any since the time of the Gracchi. The responsi- bility for this does not rest on the English people ; it rests on territorial aristocracy, the yoke of which the Irisli people, in- stead of helping the English people to break, are now doing their best to rivet on both nations. But what has the general I work in Ireland, rere of stone ; nor e way. The Irish thew, met with a of St. George's x)ld by the writer under the tender Jtant friends in nidst the balmy )f Madeira, nen speak as if eland. Are there the days of land- coshering chiefs, preyed without derstate the evils tention of primo- ?orse in Ireland was more alien country than to landed property, English estates eeism has been i a great evil, aged estates are 1 not make up for •easantry so per- rish. We ought his was the first 'ing on that most ich threatens the ? retrospectively a feudal rule of slation about as The responsi- 'ple ; it rests on rish people, in- are now doing has the general 25 course of land legislation been ? Has it not, if landlordism is an evil, been far more beneficial to Ireland than to England ? First, there was the Encumbered Estates Act, which relieved Ireland of a spendthrift and indebted proprietary, unable to do I its duty to the people, and at the same time disentailed and '! threw into a free market a vast amount of land, the mass of ' which was bought by Irishmen. A cry was raised that the ledger principle was being introduced, instead of the personal and more kindly relation between landlord and tenant. No legislator can secure to any country the benefits of two opposite systems at once ; but Mr. Sullivan, while he does not deny the hardships sometimes incident to strictness, empha- tically declares that the establishment of the stricter system has been socially, as well as economically, one of the most valuable of reforms. 'It is not conducive,' he says, *to a manly inde- J pendence that the occupier should be permanently behindhand with his rent, that is to gay, beholden to the favour and suf- ferance of his lord. Much of the subjection and the slavishness of peasant life in the old Ireland grew out of this habitual arrear, > and one must honestly rejoice if it be changed in the new.' A few years ago came the Irisb Land Act, setting aside the ■ ledger principle and the ordinary principles of commerce, to give the Irish tenant a security of tenure and a property in his own improvements, which the English tenant does not yet possess. And now we have another Land Act, not only giving security of tenure and compensation for improvements, but cancelling existing contracts in every case where they are disad- vantageous to the tenant. In America such a measure could not . have been passed, because there is an article of the Constitution forbidding absolutely any legislation which would break a contract. It is, in truth, not easy to defend the Second Land Bill on •; any grounds but those of the very roughest expediency, since any -■i historical claims in the nature of status arising out of the history of the tenures had been settled by the former Land Act, which placed everything distinctly on the ground of contract, and under which capital had been largely invested in Irish ! land with ths direct and explicit sanction of the State. Great ^ risk has been run for the benefit of the Irish peasantry of letting 26^ in agrarianism and confiscation with a flood. Those who are not socialists could hardly have been reconciled to such a course had it not been for the failure of the Irish landowners as a class to perform the duties which the holders of every kind of property must perform, to render it capable of being protected by the State. With regard, then, to the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland, the Imperial Legislature has | gone as far as any legislature retaining a shadow of respect for property could go. There are some who would have it abolish land-ownership altogether, on the ground that the land is the gift of the Creator to humanity at large, which no man ought to be permitted to appropriate, a doctrine which would render it incumbent on the Irish farmer at once to share hia farm with the labourer, to whom, at present, he is, at least, as much of a lord as the land owner is to him. But it is time to call attention to the fact that neither the relation between landlord and tenant, nor anything with which a legislature, even if it were composed of Land Leaguers, could deal, is the main root of the evil. The main root of the evil is the rapid multiplication of the people on a land of which a small portion only is fit for growing wheat, especially in the face of present competition, of which a large portion is hardly fit for growing grain of any kind, and the resources of which, in the shape of minerals and coal, whatever their extent (and as regards coal, I suspect exaggerated estimates have by some been formed), have, at all events, not yet been developed. This it is that puts up the rents, because the people, multiplying beyond measure, bid against each other desperately for the land, and undertake to pay more than they can possibly make. The Irish peasants have rack-rented themselves. Kill off every land- lord, and in a few years the suffering will be worse than ever, because the rent is something to come and go on, and a land- lord, if he is worth anything, acts as a sort of provident fund in bad times. If the Irish liad been left to themselves, and there had been no outlet for them, the result would have been what lias been already described. They would have perished like rabbits in a confined warren. Refuge has been found for more than two millions of them in England and her colonies, for three times that number, at least, in colonies originally founded by England, that Eng up in th( study ol for the and disti people, a the fami the time and pru( restrictic perhaps earth is mean b« the chil bread, dence, if is fitted less in more th effect of English difficult! Highlan wars, if and at t schools. Wales 1 same ti: Roe things econom Roman history, Let utterec voice 1 holding •e'i i Those who are d to such a course landowners as a of everj kind of ^^ ' being protected relations between 1 Legislature has ow of respect for d have it abolish t the land is the which no mau fine which would )nce to share his tie is, at least, as But it is time to relation between t legislature, evcu deal, is the maiu -^il is the rapid h a small portion in the face of ion is hardly lit t>uices of which, heir extent (and es have by some developed. This jple, multiplying tely for the land, ibly make. The ill off every land- vorse than ever, on, and a land- lovident fund in selves, and there e been what lias shod like rabbits for more than lonies, for three ally founded by 27 England. If, then, emigrants, who are always complaining that England has robbed them of their country, had been pent up in their country, what would have been their fate ? The ptudy of Irish history must lead us to feel great respect for the Catholic clergy, who, through centuries of darkness and distress, were the guides, comforters, and teachers of theii people, and have unquestionably been successful in upholding the family, and those laws of morality on which it rests. But the time has come when they must teach their flocks thrift and prudence. Far be it from me to advocate the imnatural restrictions placed on the growth of population in France, and perhaps elsewhere. To be fruitful, multiply, and people the earth is the law of nature and of moral health. But there is a mean between French repression and a hovel swarming with the children of a premature marriage, for whom there is no bread. Peasant proprietorship is a powerful incentive to pru- dence, if we could only feel sure that a grass country like Ireland is fitted for small farms. Parliaments, at all events, are power- less in the case ; a Parliament on College Green would do no more than a Parliament at Westminster. The only possible effect of a repeal of the Union would be partly to close the English labour-market against Irish emigrants. The agrarian difficulties of Ireland would have had their counterpart in the Highlands, when population ceased to be kept down by clan wars, if the Highlands had not been depleted by emigration, and at the same time trained to thrift by Protestantism and its schools. They would have had their counterpart in Wales, if Wales had not been saved by the same agencies, and at the same time by her coal, copper, and iron works. Roman Catholic countries have their characteristics. In things spiritual, it may be, they are foremost; in things economical they are not. Ireland is Roman Catholic. Irish Roman Catholicism, as has beeu said, is one of the accidents of history, but it is not the fault of the English Government. Let Ireland go — that is what I have heard uttered or half- uttered in several quarters during the last six months ! Is the voice that of a moral misgiving as to the righteousness of holding Ireland in the Union apparently against her will ? If it is, I heartily respect it. Is it the voice of desjjoudency or ; \ ! ') ! I 28 disgust ? If it is, I do not respect it, at least I submit that it ought not to be heard. I am Anti-Imperialist to the core. I would not let India go, because she would now be left to anarchy, but I wish she had never been ours. I would let all military dependencies go which are not really necessary for the protection of our trade. Bather than have everlasting enmity with Spain, I would consider at least whether Gibraltar might not be exchanged for Ceuta. On all adult colonies I would bestow nationality instead of keeping them in a state of de- pendency, which is enfeebling, debasing, and corrupting to them, while it brings to the mother country no real power, no com- mercial privilege, no benefit whatever. I am Anti-Imperialist, I repeat, to the core, and firmly convinced that political Unions not dictated by nature are condemned by true wisdoxu, and caa be sources of nothing but discord, unhappiness, and weakness. To let Ireland go in peace, after what has happened, would be difficult. It is one thing never to have been married, another to be divorced. For some time at all events, the relation would be one not of mere independence, but of enmity. Still, if we do not feel sure that it is good for Ireland to be in the Union, and if she wants to be released, in Heaven's name let her go. I will drop the first condition, and say, even though you do feel sure that it is good foi Ireland to be in the Union, if the deliberate wish of the whole or anything like the whole of her people is separation, separated let her be. But first let us be well advised as to the fact. The dis- unionists say that their voice is the voice of the Irish people. That it is not the voice of the whole Irish people is certain. Ulster is for the Union; and though the nationalists choose to leave her out of sight, they would find when they came to deal with her that she counted for a good deal. Even in the three Celtic and Catholic provinces there is a Unionist element strong when reckoned by weight, though not when reckoned by tale, stronger perhaps even when reckoned by tale than at a period of social terrorism, of which the Irish are sadly susceptible, may appear. There is, it may safely be said, a far larger Union party in Ireland than there was in the Southern States when the Americans took arms to put down secession. Great Britain owes a duty to the Irish Unionists, and if separation took 29 1 1 submit that it t to the core. I I now be left to I would let all r necessary for the iverlasting enmity ' Gribraltar might colonies I would in a state of de- orrupting to them, il power, no com- Anti-Imperialist, it political Unions J wisdoxn, and cau ss, and weakness. happened, would ve been married, all events, the ice, but of enmity. r Ireland to be in in Heaven's name >n, and say, even iland to be in the anything like the t her be. c fact. The dis- f the Irish people, people is certaiu. ationalists choose len they came to eal. Even in the Unionist element when reckoned by by tale than at a ! sadly susceptible, L far larger Union hern States when Q. Great Britain separation took place, and they were oppressed by the majority in Ireland, she would have to intervene, with arms if necessary, for their protecti^ i. The political movement wears just now an appearance of strength, because it has connected itself with the agrarian move- ment. The agrarian movement, appealing not merely to the senti- ment or passions of the peasantry, but to their pockets and their bellies, has always been really strong. It has always been going on with more or less of violence, taking the form of a low, smouldering civil war between classes waged on the part of the peasantry by means of secret societies, and marked by outrage not only of the fiercest and most bloody, but of the most hideous and fiendish kind — of the kind which ranks the per- petrators witli the Red Indian. It has continued to rage, notwithstanding all the measures of improvement, political or religious, the authors of which have been disappointed by the results, because they did not see that the central evil had not been touched. It has generated among the peasantry a perverse morality, which not only condones but applauds agrarian crime, and baffles justice by silencing wit- nesses and making the juryman an accomplice. Its intensity is also proved by the mutual fidelity which it produces among the conspirators, whereas of the political Fenians it has said that where three of them meet there is a spy. Nothing in the annals of class war exceeds the history of the agrarian war in Ireland. It has been the parent of a blacl heroism and a lurid romance. Among the papers of Sir Robert Peel, about the date when he was wavering on the Catholic question, I found a story of agrarian murder which may well have impressed his mind. Whiteboys came to the house of a middleman or a tithe proctor at night. The man was in a room on the ground floor. In a room above were his wife and their little girl. The woman heard the Whiteboys enter, and said to the little girl, ' Child, these men have come to kill your father, and when they have killed him, they will come up here and kill me. I will put you in that closet where there is a hole in the door, through which you can look, and I will stir up the fi'*e that there may be light for you to see. Keep quiet, do not say a word, but look well at the men and swear to them when you see them in r,o I i ■ court.' The Whiteboys having killed the man came up and killed the woman ; the little girl looked on in silence through the hole in the closet door, swore to the murderers in court, and they were hanged upon her evidence. The agrarian movement, I repeat, is, and always has been, strong. Would that we were certainly at the end of it yet, that there was no likelihood of another struggle for whatever may remain of the rent, which, as the proprietor will be more than ever a stranger, will, I fear, be regarded by the farmers more than ever as a tax paid to aliens. But the political movement since Catholic Emancipation, at all events, has not been strong, and has always, at bottom, been losing force, as the political grievances were successively removed, though its apparent activity and its liveliness have been increased by tlie spread of popular education, by the development of the popular press, by the revolutionary agitation in Europe, and by the other circumstances, including telegraphic communication, which have stimulated excitement, kindled demagogic am- bition, and rendered the atmosphere more electric in the political world at large. O'Connell, triumphant on the question of Catholic Emancipation, failed ignominiously when he took up Repeal. The rising under Smith O'Brien in 1848 ended farcically, though all the spirits of revolution were abroad. That in 1867 ended more farcically still. Some of the leaders on those occasions, such as Darcy McGree and Gavan Duffy, afterwards became loyal citizens of the empire. In the political part of the present agitation there is not an ounce of military force. Nothing can make it formidable but our own party divisions, which cut the sinews of Government, and the hybrid character of our institutions, which in conflict with a public peril put forth neither the force of a real monarchy nor the force of a Republic. One hour of the Commonwealth would bring this conflict to an end. Great causes produce great men ; the only approach to a great man ever produced by the political taovement in Ireland is O'Connell, in whom, after all, there was a sinister element of falsehood. The men of 1 848, though they had among them talent as well as genuine en- thusiasm, were by no means great in themselves. Yet they were great in comparison with their successors. Dynamite, iritriol, Jelirious Veil as just beet 'are not ^f extor .^n its d ^demand, i^eason ; . yn a atJ fthan it lin fact ''ilfii Feni; '/jStatcs, 1 -^loney f .love wit ,;inother '^even tl ,4inquiry '|aa well ^'pendenc mnder p glad to pay und there ai also mei keep th dynami 'object. The fir War, a: volunte lecrosst loafers, great hi enterpi events by low elector m nmn 81 man came up and in silence through derers in court, and d always has been, the end of it yet uggle for whatever rietor will be more ed by the farmers But the political all events, has not sen losing force, as emoved, though its 1 increased by tlie lent of the popular Jrope, and by the c communication, i demagogic am- J electric in the ant on the question isly when he took m in 1848 ended tion were abroad, ome of the leaders and Gavan Duffy, empire. In the 5 is not an ounce idable but our own ^ernment, and the in conflict with a a real monarchy le Commonwealth ises produce great • produced by the 1 whom, after all, 'he men of 1 848, I as genuine en- lelves. Yet they Rors. Dynamite, dtriol, infernal machines, together with slanderous and almost lelirious abuse poured upon the whole English people, as fwell as upon ministers and members of Parliament, who have Just been devoting their whole energies to the good of Ireland, 'lire not signs of strength but of irritated weakness. Instead ^f extorting concession they ought to confirm- the community fin its determination not to yield. Let us give ear to any 'demand, however unwelcome, which is urged in the accents of iteason ; but not to malignity in a state of frenzy. Malignity in a state of frenzy knows no more what is for its own good than it knows what is for ours. The political movement in fact would probably have died, had it not been for the rise of Fenianism in the United States. It is from the United ^States, not from Ireland herself, that almost the whole of the Imoney for rebellion is drawn. We cannot help admiring the love with which the heart of the Irish emigrant glows for his mother country ; unselfish sentiment does honour to a race even though it may be misguided. But observation and inquiry have satisfied me that the Irish character in America, as well as at home, while strong in affection is weak in inde- pendence, and that many of these people subscribe to Fenianism under pressure, and, if they were left to themselves, would be 'glad to keep their hardly earned money in their pockets. They pay under threat of social Boycotting. That among the leaders there are sincere enthusiasts need not be denied ; but there are also men who live by the trade, and who get up sensations to keep the money flowing. I have little doubt that much of the dynamite and infernal machine diablerie is devised with this object. Twice the American Fenians have invaded Canada. The first time they came with some old soldiers of the Civil War, and gained a slight advantage in a skirmish with a raw volunteer regiment, but on the approach of regulars they at once recrossed the line. The second time they came with a lot of loafers, whom they had hired at a dollar a day, and retired in a great hurry before the Canadian Militia could get near them. Both enterprises were crazy in their conception, and the second at all events was comic in its result. Some of the money is subscribed by low American politicians, buying the Irish vote, to whose electoral exigencies we are hardly bound to sacrifice our Union, •-M, 32 p! I ! ! t i From this quarter probably come the largest nominal subscrip- tions, though I am credibly assured that they are not always more than nominal. Among the native Americans generally, I say with confidence, there is not the slightest sympathy with Fenianism. From them, Mr. Parnell, when he visited the States, called forth no response. Secession has greatly modified the traditional sentiment of the Americans on the subject of rebellion, and taught them to confine their sympathy to in- surrections which are justified by hopelene wrong. They know that so far from being an obdurate tyrant the Parliament of Great Britain is doing all in its power for Ireland. Nor do they owe any political gratitude to the Irish, who, while their labour has been inestimable and indispensable, have in politics been always by their unlucky star ranged on the wrong side, have formed the rank and file of corruption, and worst of all, the main support of Slavery. Citizens of New York have not yet forgotten the Irish rising in the midst of the Civil War, and the savage atrocities which were then committed on hapless negroes in their streets, any more than the Irish have forgotten the stem severity with which when the coramvmity had gathered its forces the insurrection was put down. The people of the United States allow the Fenians to talk : they allow everybody to talk ; perfect freedom of meeting and of speech is their settled principle; they will not adopt at the instance of a foreign Government repressive measures which they never adopt for themselves. But depend upon it, if Fenianism attempts to break the law of the Republic, the law will be enforced with a firm hand and with the cordial approbation of the people. If you ever see anything quoted from New York journals which seems to contradict what I have said, remember that New York journals have Irish subscribers, and that dis- cretion, sometimes the better part of valour in war, may also be sometimes the better part of independence in the presi . "Who does not now rejoice that we have kept peace and amity with America ? Who wishes now that the councils of Toryism and the Southern Club had prevailed ? What would be our position with Ireland in a flame, if the Americans, instead of being, as they are, full of kind feeling towards the old country, were burning with unappeased resentment, eager to pour money 38 into Fenian coffers, and ready to connive at Fenian enterprises ? I understand why a Tory wislios to estrange us from the Ke- public, though he is muclj niistakeu if lie thinks that American Kopublicans are propagandists, and shrinks from close relations with Ihem on that account: they are, I should say, if any- tliing, too little propagandist, and too well content that they should have what they deem the paragon of constitutions to themselves. But how can there be a difference of opinion among Liberals as to tlie relations which ought to exist between tlie Old England and the New ? Is not the foundation of the New England the grandest of all the achievements of the Old ? Are not our American kinsmen propagating over that Continent, to the honour and glory of their mother country, not her race and language only, but her political character, her leading in- stitutions, her modes of thought? The last evil memories of the old quarrel between the two branches of our race are now in the grave of the past ; their knell was the sound of the cannon saluting the British flag at Yorktown. The two Englands are in heart one again, and they are being daily drawn closer to each other by commerce, by literature, by social intercourse, by all the agencies which are rapidly bridging over the Atlantic. I was in the United States in the midst of the late civil war, and incensed as the people were, and had good cause for being, by the depredations of the Alabama, and still more by the language of British journals, I could even then see love of the old country at the bottom of their hearts. They felt un kind- ness from her, as they would have felt it from no other nation. With other countries you may have diplomatic connexions, more or less cordial, more or less stable, which, formed by interest, will by the first divergence of interests be dissolved. With the Americans you can have friendship, and, trust me, hearty friendship, friendship which will prove its value, not only in your prosperous hour, but at your need. They are said to be ruled by the dollar. Commerce is the game of life, which they play with eagerness, often with more eagerness than they ought ; but, unless I greatly misread them, no people on earth are more governed by sentiment than they are. If their sentiment in- cludes national pride, so does ours, and interference with them on their own Continent — the Continent of which they are and c i U(:, ;u must he tlie tutohiry power— ofTend them, as similar interfer- ence hy them in our proper sphere of action wouhl offend us. They have no business to be miiddling here, and (ireat Britain lias no business to be meddling? there. Her political meddlings with America from first to last are a record of disaster. Seize then the advantage offered in a propitious hour. Grasp frankly and firndy the hand of the English Republic, the child and the representative of your own glorious though sliortlived Commonwealth. Instead of viewing her high fortunes with a jealous eye, and weakly trying to mar them, accept them, accept her power and her greatness as your own. Do this decisivel} and do it now. Halt not between two policies, one of friendship, the other of antagonism, missing the fruits of both. Abandon the vain project of building up on the American Continent an anti-American Empire. Nature has p. it her ban upon it ; it will surely prove abortive ; it will bring knighthoods and perhaps gain to a few colonial politicians ; to the British people both here and in North America it will bring nothing but evil. Once for all have done with it, and with all the waste that it entails. Take in place of it a real and lasting accession of strength, a support which will not fail. In this world of rivalry, intrigue, treachery among nations and Governments, secure to England, as now you may, one hearty and true ally. In saying that the political movement is weak, I do not mean to deny that there is widespread disaffection in Ireland, or to say that the disaffection is not dangerous ; it undoubtedly adds venom to the agrarian agitation. It has produced a national literature of Fenianism, in which all the heroes of history, oratory, and poetry are rebels, and which forms one of the worst features of the situation. Had Royalty in times past done ItB gracious duty by spending part of the year in Ireland, the state of feeling among the people would have been far less bad. This is an uncourtly remark, but it is true; its truth has been affirmed by every Irish friend of the Union without exception to whom I have spoken on the subject, and most emphatically by those who understood Ireland best. The political attach- ments of the Irishmen are still personal : he has not yet been trained either in his own country or in the United States to 85 ;ir interfcr- ofFend IIS. eat Hritiiiii meddlings ter. Seizo iir. Gras[) c, the child shortlived ines with a cept them, Do this olicies, Olio e fruits of ip on the ure hiia p,it will ])rin<>" Joliticiaiis ; "ica it will th it, and it a real ill not fail, ations and one hearty I do not n Ireland, douhtedly a national f history, 16 of the past done land, the less had. has been exception hatically i attach- i^et been States to the love of principles and institutions: his instincts are still those of the clansman whose heart craves for a chief. Koyalty might have been his chief; but thrice only, and for ;\ very short time on each occasion, have the Irish people seen their Sovereign since Ihe battle of the Boyno. The void left in Irish seatiment lias been filled, as it was sure to be, by other idols. Yet wlien Koyalty did come it was received with an enthusiasm >7hich ought to have made the path of duty pleasant ; and certainly tlie Phoenix Park is not the most repulsive place of exUe. Kxcuses may be framed for the neglect of Ireland by British sovereigns, but tliere is a strong feeling among the people of England that the duties of the highest place, like the duties of other places, ought to be done. Of course nobody advises Buyalty now to visit Ireland — the motive would be apparent : it is too late. We must be thankful for the good that has been, done by the displays of Koyal courtesy and sympathy in the case of the United States. It has unhappily been necessary to employ what is called coercion. All Liberals deplore it ; but the name is misplaced. Coercion, in reality, it is not : it is the removal of coercion ; it is the removal of the coercion exercised by a terrorist organi- sation, indicting at its lawlesj will penalties compared with which a short imprisonment is trifling, for the purpose of preventing debtors from paying just debts, which they were able to pay, and the whole people from availing themselves of the boon which was proffered them by Parliament, and of which they did, by tens of thousands, eagerly avail themselves as soon as the obstruction was removed. To get justice done to the Irish people on the land question was not the object of the leaders; their object was to prevent justice from being done; they wanted to keep agrarian discontent alive, in order that it might furnish fuel to the fire of political revolution. They were seeking what could be attained only through civil war ; they were acting in open alliance with the avowed enemies of the country in America ; and from those enemies, I repeat, not from Ireland itself, their fund was mainly derived. If ever the community was warranted in taking measures of self- defence, it was warranted in this case. After all, nothing has been done beyond the temporary withdrawal of the leading \ wnmassaaaa 36 conspirators from the scene, if indeed they can be said to liave been withdrawn from the scene, while they are left, as tmfortunately they are, in the heart of the agitation, instead of being talcen out of the island. This was no very extreme or atrocious measure when society was openly threatened with civil war. It is needless to say that the Government has done nothing unconstitutional ; it has used the powers which it was constitutionally authorised and enjoined by Parliament to uhc in the emergency which Pailiament undoubtedly had in view. So long as the executive simply obeys the Legislature, its action is in accordance with the Constitution. The arrests are called a scandal to Liberalism : a grief and a deep grief to Liberal- ism they are, a scandal they are not. A Government is not bound to allow itself to be overturned because it is founded on freedom and justice. The Americans did not think that the popular character of their institutions was any reason why they should shrink from upholding them against rebellion. There is, and probably will, for some time to come, be work for robust Liberalism in this unsettled 'orld. The policeman cannot yet throw down his trunche )n. If people will not of themselves respect the laws which the community makes, they must be compelled to respect them. The use of force will involve no breach of principle so long as the sole object is to make citizens obey the law, and so long as discussion of the law, with a view to its constitutional amendment, remains free. The second of these conditions, as well as the first, has been observed in the present case. There has been no interference with freedom of discussion, or even with constitutional agita- tion. Nothing has been put down except incitements to breaches of the law, to violence, and to rebellion. The Act of Union is like any other Act of Parliament ; it must stand upon its merits, and if it is proved to be pernicious, it must fall. People ought to be and are at liberty to argue or agitate peace- fully in favour of its repeal or alteration ; but they are not, nor while civil Government exists will they be, at liberty to levy civil war. An attempt to levy civil war may be justifiable and meritorious in case of misgovernment, for which there is no other remedy ; but those who make the attempt must be prepared for resistance on the part of the Government 1 and those w upheld. H capable of tlu l)y Irish pas vent an outl can be more the field, s troops agai overthrow. by m wo necessary, t' provided tl composed o president, object of tri to do this, i It is in impossible, through th( Feniani Boycotting, infernal ra be owned, struction. with a firre of liberty ' cause of integrity, : all count ri minority I stopping t furtheran( it, iind av di'liberati' than to ci reduction national could be in the i: 87 >;hi and those who think that the (Jovernmont in worthy of heing; jiphtthl. If the MiniHtry and the friends of the Union were ciipahleof the fiendinh MachiavoUiHm with which they are charged hy irinh pafwion, instead of doing all in their power to pre- vent an outbreal<, they wonhl aUow it to take place ; for nothing can Ih3 more certain than that an appearance of the League in the field, such as would warrant the Government in using troops against it, would immediately be followed by its final overthrow. At one moment it seemed as if nuspension of trial by jury would be necessary in aj^rarian cases. If it ever is necessary, there will be no breach of principle in resorting to it, jjrovided that a fair tribunal, such as a commission of Assize composed of men of character and station with a judge as president, not martial law, is instituted in its place. The object of trial by jury is to protect lil(! and property : if it ceases to do this, its usefulness and its sacredness for the time are gone. It is in fact already suspended when conviction Ijecomes impossible, and when robbery and murder stalk with impunity through the land. Fenianism, on the present occasion, l)eside3 terrorism and Hoycotting, and agrarian minder, and maiming of cattle, and infernal machines, and carding, has found another and, it must be owned, powerful engine of annoyance, Parliamentary Ob- struction. That, too, will have to be put down, and put down with a firm hand, whatever alteration of forms or abridgment of liberty of speech the process may involve. This is not the cause of Great Bribiin alone. Obstruction threatens the integrity, nay, the existence of Parliamentary institutions, in all countries. How is the machine to act anywhere if a small minority like the Parnellites are always to liave the power of stopping the wheels ? The privilege of speech is given for the fiutherance of deliberation ; it is forfeited by those who abuse it, and avow their intention of abusing it, for the hindrance of deliberation. It is better, no doubt, always to strike the guilty than to curtail general liberties: but few will deplore a certain reduction of that redundancy of speech which is swamping the national councils. Some would be glad if the minute-glass could 1)6 added to the Cloture. There seems reason to fear that in the impending conflict Revolution, using obstruction as its til E' 'I [ 38 engine, may receive the covert aid of Reaction. The Party system is on its trial. If faction prevails, so far as to make the professed upholders of order, at a moment of great public peril, league themselves with disunion against union, with rebellion against national government, with the subverters against the defenders of the dignity and life of the House of Commons, the death-warrant of the system is signed. The Conservatives have, during the last thirty years, been undergoing a training which was not likely to increase their loyalty to Parliamentary institutions, but the *^rainiiig has not been shared by the English people. An attempt of the Tory party to weaken and embarrass Govern- ment on this occasion would be more than unpatriotic, when we consider that the Tory party is that of the landlords, and when we also consider what a desperate client Irish landlordism is, and how it has deserted its own cause. Prompt and united action on the part of the landlords at the outset might, as the best judges say, have dissipated the storm. But they threw themselves helplessly on the Government. They seemed to think only of their hunting, like the doomed King of France on the eve of the Eevolution. No Irishman who listens to his reason, and not to his resent- ment, can doubt that the same hands which have given Disestab- lishment and the Land Act are ready to give any ^ isible and rational measure of Home Rule. Tiiose who hold, as I do, thnt central institutions ought to be based on local institutions, and that a large measure of legislative power on local questions ought to be given to local councils, subject always to the supreme authority of the great council of the nation, would be ready to go considerable lengths in that direction. No doubt there are many Irish matters, as well as many Scotch matters, which might well be dealt with in the country to which they belong. There is no use in dragging everything to West- minster. I would go so far as to place public education among local questions, ridding the central parliament thereby of the religious difficulties which that subject involves. If Munster and Connaught did not decide right at first, perhaps they would in the end, and they would then be satisfied with the decision. But legislative union on national questions must be preserved. Of all the plans proposed, the worst is that of two indepen constitution legislatures temper in take differei The crown, Rulers have willing part strain. Tiu strictly loca because eve What W( |,e ? Who question ? ever seen, encounter the governi something 1 civil war to What objec present to t as a nation? Norman in but there > is no nami perhaps ain in the ihv* publican in them. A succession outcome ol and freethi by the pri sections w( has more physical ai Ulster wet hands to S ])c given. ■Ml . iHI The Party ) make the iblic peril, rebellion igainst the Qinons, the tives have, which was istitutions, sh people. ss Grovern- otic, when lords, and mdlordisiu ind united jht, as the hey threw seemed to of France his resent- 1 Disestab- xsible and I do, that tions, and questions ys to the would be No doubt I matters, liich they to West- education it thereby olves. If i, perhaps fied with ons must s that of 39 two independent legislatures under the same crown. Under the constitutional system the legislature is the government ; two legislatures would be two governments, which might, and in the temper in which they would set out almost certainly would, take diflFerent courses on all subjects, including peace and war. The crown, instead of a golden link, as some of the Home Rulers have called it, would be a dog collar, coupling two un- willing partners, and it would give way under the first serious strain. Taxation, as well as supreme legislation, for any but strictly local objects, must be left in the national parliament because everything follows the power of the purse. What would Ireland, separated from England and Scotland, ])e ? Who can give anything like a definite answer to that question ? No Home Ruler whose writings or speeches I have ever seen. We can understand a patriot being willing to encounter the evils of civil war and revolution, if he deems the government intolerable, and if he also sees his way to something l)etter l)eyon(l. But who can wisli to rush through civil war to chaos ? What would be the form of government ? What object on the morrow of the revolution could the victors present to the allegiance of the Irish people ? No such thing as a national government of Ireland ever existed. Before the Norman invasion, there was perhaps a tendency to unification, but there was nothing more. There is no royal house, there is no name dear to the hearts of the people. The Fenians perhaps aim at an Irish Republic, but the mass of the peasantry in the three Celtic and Catholic provinces is unripe for Re- publican institutions, and would probably feel no attachment to them. A series of ephemeral dictators, pulled down in rapid succession by the jealousy of rivals, would most iiKely be the outcome of that experiment. But the Fenians as revolutionists and freethinkers would find themselves opposed at the outset by the priesthood and all wliom the priesthood leads. Botli sections would have an antagonist in Protestant Ulster, who has more than once shown herself, with- her Scottish foice, pliysical and moral, able to cope with the rest of the island. If Ulster were hard pressed in the struggle, she would stretch her liands to Scotland and England for aid, which would as certainly ])c given. Irish disunionists hardly realize the fact that after ! .'M <. ij I I - '! ' 40 :. the separation, England would have botli legally and practically all the freedom of action pertaining to a foreign power. Fear of the Irish vote would fetter her leaders no more. She would be at liberty if she was prtvoked to close or restrict her markets, for Irish products and for Irish labour. She would be at liberty to set limits to Irish immigration, and tlius to relieve herself of the political danger to which she is in increasing measure exposed from the formation of great Irish settlements in this country. She would be at liberty to press any demands slio pleased, and, if they were rejected, to enforce them with her arms. In truth, of the inducements to separation not the least, are upon her side. There are some who say, half in earnest, let Ireland go, leave her to licr own anarcliic force, let her try what independence is, let her pass through a few years of embroilment and confusion : she will then be glad to return to the Union, and satisfied to remain quietly in it for the future. The policy would be cruel, but it is not certain that it would Ije unwise. Ireland has a distinct boundary, but she can hardly be said to have any other element of a separate nationality. English is already the language of almost all, and will soon be that of all her people. In race, religion, political character, there is as little unity as there can well be among any popidation shut in by the same seas. In respect of language, at any rate, Wales is more a country by itself than Ireland, and the Welsh Princes belong to a less remote period of history than the Irish Kings. The very leader of the Nationalists on this occasion is English in name and blood. Be not weary of well-doing. Remember, in half a century of popular government, how nj^uch has been effected, what a mountain of abuses, restrictions, monopolies, wrongs, and absurdities has been cleared away. In face of what difficulties has this been achieved ! what prophecies of ruin have all along been uttered by reaction or timidity, and how one after another have those prophecies been belied ! In the case of England and Scotland, the fruits of a Liberal policy are visible in a wealthier, a happier, a better, a more united, and a more loyal people. In the case of Ireland they are not yet so clearly visible ; yet they are there. The Ireland of 1882, tliougli not mmmm r 41 what we should wish her to be, is a very different Ireland from that of the last century, or of the first quarter of the present. Catholic exclusion, the penal code, the State Church of the minority are gone ; in their place reign elective government, religious liberty, equality before the law. A system of public education, founded on perfect toleration of all creeds, and inferior perhaps to none in excellence, has been established. The Land Law has been reformed, and again reformed on prin- ciples of exceptional liberality to the tenant. Wealth has in- creased, notwithstanding all the hindrances put in the way of its growth by turbulence; the deposits both in the savings' banks and in the ordinary banks bear witness to the fact. Pauperism has greatly declined. Outrage, on the average, has declined also, though we happen just now to be in a crisis of it. Under the happy influence of equal justice, religious rancour has notably abated ; the change has been most remarkable in this respect since I first saw Ireland. Influential classes, which injustice in former days put on the side of revolution, are now at heart ranged on the side of order and the Union, though social terrorism may prevent them from giving it their open support. The garrison of Ascendency, political, ecclesiastical, and territorial, has step by step been disbanded ; an operation fraught with danger, because those who are deprived of privilege are always prone in their wrath to swell the ranks of disaffec- tion, which yet has been accomplished with success. If the results of political, religious, and educational reform seem disappoint- ing, it is, as I have said before, because the main question is not the franchise, or the Church, or the public school, but the land. With that question a Liberal Parliament and a Liberal Crovernment are now struggling ; while its inherent difficulties are increased by Tory reaction on the one side and by Fenian revolution on the otuer. Of all the tasks imposed by the accumulated errors and wrongs of ages, this was the most arduous and the most perilous. Yet hope, begins to dawn upon the effort. Only let the nation stand firmly against Tory and Fenian alike, and against both united, if they mean to conspire, in support of the leaders whom it has chosen, and to whose hands it has committed this momentous work. If sepa- ration even now were to take place, what has been done would s ^«f. 42 not have been done in vain. Ireland would go forth an honour to England, not a scandal and a reproach, as she would have been if their connection had been severed sixty years ago. Ii any one doubts it, I challenge him once more to compare the state of Ireland with that of any other Roman Catholic; country in the world. But of separation let there be no thought ; none at least till Parliament harf done its utmost with the Land Question and failed. Let us hope, as it is reasonable to hope, that where so much has been accomplished, the last and crown- ing enterprise will not miscarry. Settle the Land Question, and that which alone lends strength to political discontent, to conspiracy, to disunion, will be gone. Passion will not subside in an hour, but it will subside, and good feeling will take its place. The day may come when there will be no more talk of Englaud and Scotland governing Ireland well or ill, because Ireland, in partnership with England and Scotland, will be governing herself, and contributing her share to the common greatness and the common progress ; when the Union will be ratified not only by necessity, but by free conviction and good will ; when the march of wealth and prosperity will no more be arrested by discord, but the resources of the Island will be developed in peace, and the villas of opulence perhaps will stud the lovely shores, where now the assassin prowls and property cannot sleep secure ; when the long series of Liberal triumphs will be crowned by the sight of an Ireland no longer distracted, disaflFected, and reproachful, no longer brooding over the wrongs and sufferings of the past, but resting peacefully, happily, and in unforced union at her consort's side. The life of a nation is long, and though by us this consummation may not be witnessed, it may be witnessed by our children. SiioUiiitoode