A, M, SULLIVAN, THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ?6 T TflE T AFFLICTED. 20,000 PRESCRIPTIONS Embracing the Treatment of every known disease by the most eminent medical men of England and Ire- land. The above have been carefully preserved and tabulated by a qualified dispenser of forty years' standing, who has already received the grateful testimony of hundreds who have by his means been able to obtain advice and assist- ance utterly beyond the means of the business classes. Each prescription is duly authenticated, bearing the name of the practitioner, to whose standing reference can be made. State age and ailment, enclosing thirteen penny stamps for Copy of Prescription and full instructions. MEDIS, i care of HARUISON AND COMPANY, 12, Southampton Street, Strand, London, TV.C. NEW IRELAND: POLITICAL SKETCHES AND PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF 0f A. M. (SULLIVAN. SEVENTH EDITION. GLASGOW: CAMERON & FERGUSON, 88 WEST NILE STREET. LONDON : 4 SALISBURY COURT, FLEET STREET. LONDON: PRINTED BY SMYTH & YERWORTH, HOLBOKX BUILDINGS, E.C. PREFACE fM WITHIN considerably less than half a century, changes social' and ^ political, accomplishing a veritable revolution, have takeu place ' in Ireland. ]n the following pages I have undertaken, not so ^ much to picture them in all their phases, or to write a formal 2= history of the period, as to supply, chiefly from personal observa- -,- tion, a series of sketches or narratives which may perhaps assist in the readier and more correct appreciation of visible results. I have, indeed, been mindful of the fact that these volumes; would be published, and, if I may say it, be read, in England ; yet I decided not to write them either " for " or " at " the English people, but to tell my story in my own way, and from my own point of view. I do not pretend to be dispassionate. I have f, 1 borne as will be seen in what follows an active part in some of the stormiest scenes of Irish public life for at least a quarber ', , of a century ; and I wish to hold my place as a man of decided" ,-< views and strong convictions. I trust, however, it may be found '-"> that I have taken thought of the responsibilities which devolve- Gk upon one who attempts a contribution, no matter how humble, to the history of his time, not to the controversies of politics or polemics. I avow, perhaps, too bold an ambition in expressing the hope that these chapters may assist in promoting that better ,j understanding and kindlier feeling between the New England r and the New Ireland which patriotic hearts on either shore must -. assuredly desire. No lighter consideration, no hope less high, 3C has led me to undertake them. ALEXANDER M. SULLIVAN.. IXMSDON, September 25, 1877. 387912 CONTENTS. FAGB X. LOOKING BACK ....... 1 II. " THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD "....." 7 III. O'CONNELL AND REPEAL . / 1IW*/..' ... 18 IV. THE RIBBON CONFEDERACY . . . . . .33 V. FATHER MATHEW . . . .... 46 . VI. " THE BLACK FORTY-SEVEN " ..... 57 ' VII. " YOUNG IRELAND " 68 ' "VIIL "FORTY-EIGHT" . 82 1, IX. AFTER-SCENES . * . . . . . .98' X. THE CRIMSON STAIN 104 f XL " LOCHABER NO MORE I " ...... 117 ( XII. THE ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT 12 ,' "XHI. THE TENANT LEAGUE . 143 ! XIV. " THE BRASS BAND " 156 XV. THE SUICIDE BANKER ..,..".. 168 XVI. THE ARBUTHNOT ABDUCTION ..... 182 | XVII. THE PHCENIX CONSPIRACY 195 ; XVIII. PAPAL IRELAND 205 XIX. THE FATE OF GLENVEIH . . . . .218 XX. THE FENIAN MOVEMENT 232 XXI. A TROUBLED TIME 247: XXII. THE RICHMOND ESCAPE ...... 257 XXIII. INSURRECTION! 270 XXIV. THE SCAFFOLD AND THE CELL . . 284 XXV. "DELENDA EST CARTHAGO 1 " 298 XXVI. DISESTABLISHMENT . .... 313 a vi CONTENTS. PAOE XXVII. LoNoroRD 327 XXVIII. "HOME RULE" 339 XXIX. THE KERRY ELECTION 351 XXX. BALLYCOHEY 363 XXXI. THE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH 373 XXXII. IRELAND AT WESTMINSTER 381 XXXIII. Loss AND GAIN .389 SEQUEL. I. GATHERING CLOUDS 395 II. "OBSTRUCTION" 410 III. THE LAND LEAGUE 429 IV. AGRARIAN REVOLUTION ... , 441 NEW IRELAND. CHAPTER L LOOKING BACK. THR years that reach from the fifth to the eighth decade of this century cover an eventful time in general history. They have brought great changes on every hand for nations and peoples. Even where no clash of arms has sounded, other forces have effected revolutions ; other causes have been at work to destroy the Old and set up the New. Ancient landmarks have been overthrown; long-treasured customs, habits, and traditions swept away ; and in instances not a few the whole face of society has been altered, for better or for worse. In Ireland this period has witnessed some startling transformations. It may, indeed, be said that the old Ireland the Ireland of Forty Years Ago can now be seen no more. Eevisiting recently the scenes of my early life, I realised more vividly than ever the changes which thirty years had effected. I sailed once more over the blue waters of the bay on which I was, so to say, cradled ; climbed the hills and trod the rugged defiles of Glengariffe and Beara, by paths and passes learnt in childhood and remembered still. The material scene in all its wild beauty and savage grandeur was unchanged; but it was plain that a new order of things had arisen. New faces were around me new manners, habits, and social usages. The Gaelic salutations were few : it was in the English tongue that A fine day, sir," took the place of " God save you," in the Irish. " My foot " was indeed " on my native heath," yet I felt in a sense a stranger. Not there, but in Boston and Milwaukee and San Francisco, could be found the survivors of the hardy fishermen and simple mountaineers amongst whom I grew to boyhood. Yet, natural regrets apart, I owned that all the B 2 NEW IRELAND. change was not disaster. Much indeed had been lost, but much had been gained. Was all that I saw, all that I missed, a reflection or figure in miniature of what had taken place throughout the island-? Unquestionably this district and its people had long played a typical part, so to speak, in the vicissitudes of our national life. The extreme south-west of Ireland, the Atlantic angle formed by West Cork and Kerry, long has had a peculiar interest for the student of Irish history, social and political. Mr. Froucle gives it unusual prominence as the scene of what he considers charac- teristic incidents in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the last formidable struggle of the Gaelic princes for native sovereignty, this region performed in the south very much the part which Donegal played in the north ; the three men under whom the final campaign of 1595-1599 was fought being Hugh O'Neill, Prince of Tyrone, Hugh O'Donnell, Prince of Tyrcon- nell, and Donal O'Sullivan, Chieftain of Beara. In that struggle Spain was the ally of the Irish Chiefs, and the proximity of the Carbery and Beara headlands to the Iberian peninsula the facilities offered by their deep bays and ready harbours for the landing of expeditions, envoys, arms, and sub- sidies gave to the district that importance which it retained down to 1796, when it was the scene of the attempted or rather intended French invasion under Hoche. Declared forfeit in 1607, on the conclusion of the campaign above referred to, con- fiscated again in 1641, and a third time in 1691, Beara at length passed totally from the O'Sullivans. The last notable member of the disinherited family* entered the service of France with the Iristi army under Sarsfield, on the capitulation of Limerick. The clansmen scowled on the new landlords, who, indeed, for very long after never ventured upon even a visit to the place. From 1700 to 1770, as Mr. Froude has very graphically described, Bautry and the surrounding bays were the great outlets through which, in defiance of the utmost power and vigilance of the Government, shiploads of recruits for the Irish Brigade (culled " wild geese " in the bills of lading) and cargoes of wool (at the time forbidden to be exported) were despatched to France, Spain, and the Low Countries. In the smuggling or exportation of contraband fleeces and importation of silk, brandy, and tobacco, the population pushed * His sister was wife of Colonel MacMahon, of the same service, direct ancestor of Marshal Patrick MacMuhoa, Duke of Mugentu, President of the French Republic. LOOKING BACK. 3 a lucrative and exciting trade down very nearly to the close of the last century, when it may be said to have totally disappeared. Henceforward they devoted themselves exclusively and ener- getically to a combination of fishing and petty agriculture; their characters, manners, habits and traditions, their virtues and their vices, more or less impressed by the antecedent history which I have endeavoured thus briefly to sketch. It is amongst this class, the rural population, that the most striking changes have been wrought all over Ireland within the present generation. The Irish peasant of forty years ago his home, his habits, manners, dress ; his wit and humour, his tender feeling, his angry passions, his inveterate prejudices all these have been portrayed with more or less of exaggeration a hundred times. Caricature has done its worst with the subject; but justice has sometimes touched the theme. One of the changes most pleasing in our time is the fact that in England the clumsy " stage Irishman " of former days is no longer rapturously declared to be the very acme of truthful delineation. The Irish are keenly sensitive to ridicule or derision ; and to see the national character travestied in miserable novel or brutal farce the Irish peasant pictured as a compound of idiot and buffoon for the merriment of the master race, was an exasperation more fruitful of hatred between the peoples than the fiercest invective of those " agitators " whom it has been the fashion to credit with the exclusive manufacture of Irish sedition. Banim and Griffin, Mrs. Hall and Carleton, have left pictures of Irish life and character which on the whole cannot be sur- passed for fidelity and effectiveness. The only class which none of them have photographed for us are the cottier fishermen com- munities that thirty years ago crowded the coasts of Connaught and Munster. These have almost entirely vanished. The Irish Fishery Commissioners year by year bewail their disappearance ; the royal and mercantile navy miss the hardy and fearless seamen so easily picked up along these harbours, trained from childhood to combat wave and wind. Deep-sea fishing properly so called, was hardly attempted, the boats and gear to be found around the western coast being quite inadequate for the purpose. Kinsale and Cape Clear boasted some fine " hookers " engaged in the ling and cod fishery ; but six-oared herring-seine boats were the craft most generally in use. The crews tilled small farms or rocky patches of potato-ground when the moonlight was too bright for fishing ; and on the potatoes thus raised, and a reserve of the fish for home use, they altogether depended for subsistence. Between B 2 4 NEW IRELAND. Cape Clear and Dursey Island a little piloting was sometimes done ; albeit very little knowledge of compass or quadrant existed amongst the " pilots." One of them told me how nearly he missed a " splendid job " five pounds' worth because he could not " box the compass " for the captain of a West-indiaman homeward bound. "Not box the compass!" exclaimed the- captain. " You a pilot !" " Oh, sir, I mean, sir, I cannot do it in English. You see, sir, we all speak Irish in our village on shore, barrin' a little English that me and the boys picks up, ye see, from being after the ships." " Well," said the captain, after a pause, " let me hear you do it in Irish." He, correctly enough, reflected that in almost any language one could detect whether the words would follow with such similarity of sound as north, north-and-by-east, north- north-east, north-east-by-north, and so on. But old Jack Downing was just as sharp as the captain was keen. Often and often at Mrs. Crowley's public-house on shore he had heard sailors " box the compass" ; and though he could not attempt the task, he knew how it sounded to the ear. " Yes, to be sure, sir ; I'll do it for you in Irish," and he forth- with began in homely Gaelic to recite "My grandfather my grandmother my grandfather's grandmother Eiy grand- mother's grandfather my great great grandfather my " "Stop, stop," shouted the captain perfectly convinced. " I see, my poor fellow,! had wronged you : take charge of the ship." Few sights could be more picturesque than the ceremony by which in our bay the fishing season was formally opened. Selecting an auspicious day, unusually calm and fine, the boats, from every creek and inlet for miles around, assembled at a given point, and then, in solemn procession, rowed out to sea, the leading boat carrying the priest of the district. Arrived at the distant fishing-ground, the clergyman vested himself, an altar was improvised on the stern-sheets, the attendant fleet drew around, and every head was bared and bowed while the mass was said. I have seen this " mass on the ocean " when not a breeze stirred, and the tinkle of the little bell or the murmur of the priest's voice was the only sound that reached the ear ; the blue hills of Bantry faint on the horizon behind us, and nothing nearer beyond than the American shore ! Where are all these now ? The " mass on the ocean " is a thing of the past, heard of and seen no more ; one of the old customs gono apparently for ever. The fishermen the fine big-framed fellows, LOOKING BACK. 5 of tarry hands and storm-stained faces ? The workhouse or the grave holds all who are not dockside men on the Thames or the Mersey, on the Hudson or the Mississippi. The boats ? I saw nearly all that remains of them when I last visited the little cove that in my early days scarce sufficed to hold the fleet at low water, skeleton ribs protruding here and thre from the sand, or shattered hulks helplessly mouldering under the trees that drooped into the tide when at the full. Off the western coast of Ireland are several islands the inhabi- tants of which, previous to the present generation, never quitted, never cared to quit their prison homes. The mainland Ireland was to them a vast continent, where astounding marvels were, it was said, to be seen. Torry Island (" Innis-Torragh " Isle of Towers), off Donegal, retains at the present day, to a large degree, this isolation. It is still governed by a fisherman king, elected by the community of three or four hundred souls. Quite recently, I believe, a police barrack, as well as a coast-guard station, has been placed there ; but the " king " is, after all, the authority most deferred to. Strange to say, the present potentate of Torry is a Protestant, and the only professor of that creed (outside the police barrack and the coast-guard lodge) on the island. Technically, or theoretically, Torry belonged to some barony on the neighbouring mainland ; but until a couple of years ago no one dreamed of asserting this legal fact by calling on the Torrymen to pay baronial cess for making roads in the county on the other side of " the sound." They made their own roads, they used none other, and for none other would they pay. So spake the " king." The cess collector proceeded to gather a flotilla for an invasion, with purpose as resolute as that of the Norman William assembling his galleys in the roadstead of St. Valery. Happily the authorities, anxious to avoid a conflict with a com- munity so peculiar and so largely recommended to kindly sympathies, devised some compromise which averted hostilities. Serious crime was, and I believe is, almost unknown amongst these islanders. In Torry the first illegitimate birth known within the memory of the oldest inhabitant occurred about twenty years ago, and caused much commotion and dismay. A Torry girl bad been to farm service on the mainland, and returned home t import the first moral stain of such a nature ever affixed on the character of her native island. The whole community met. under the presidency of the " king," and with one voice decreed "banishment to Ireland for the hapless offender. When strong enough to bear removal, she and the infant were rowed across the 6 NEW IRELAND. eound. The neighbours gave her gifts and presents to help her in the future; but she was to return to lorry no more. The present Bishop of Kerry, the Most Eev. Dr. Moriarty, told me he was making a visitation of his diocese, in the neighbour- hood of the Blasket Islands, in 1856. The opportunity was seized by a young islander, who was desirous of getting married, to cross to the mainland and obtain a dispensation from his lordship, rendered necessary by some circumstance in the case. He had never crossed before, and he was all wonderment at what he saw. The bishop thought it right to assure himself as to the knowledge on the islander's part of, at all events, the cardinal points of the Christian doctrine. " How many gods are there, my good boy ? " his lordship asked in Irish. " Well, great and holy priest," replied the islander, " in Blasketmore we have but one : but 'tis very likely there may be more than that in this great big world here." Father Casey was directed to give the Blasketmore man a few days' catechetical instruction, and then admit him to the matrimonial bond. This class the Atlantic coast and island men, from Cape Clear to Malin Head suffered severely, were almost swept away, by the famine of 1847 ; a brave and hardy race, favourably dis- tinguished in many respects from the peasantry of the midland counties. Their isolation saved them from the conflicts that dis- organised the agrarian system in other portions of the kingdom. Their hard lot, their humble life, offered little temptation to envy or cupidity. The ocean was their principal " farm," and on this no landlord could raise a rent. The war of class and race and creed, that betimes raged elsewhere in Ireland, never touched these communities. Every man was their neighbour, and every stranger was a friend. Even at the present day, though greatly weakened by the ordeal of the past thirty years, they present an interesting study, as perhaps the truest relics we now possess of the Celtic peasantry in the Ireland of old times. Looking back upon those scenes, recalling such memories, I am not Stoic enough to contemplate unmoved the picture pre- sented to my view. Yet it is needful to remember that in these- retrospects justice is not always done to the present; a true value is rarely placed on the advance which, amidst combat and striving that often appear fruitless, and suffering and sacrifice that seem beyond compensation, is nevertheless being well esta- blished throughout the world, all along the line of civilisation. "THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD? CHAPTER IL "THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD." FIFTY years ago the schoolmaster was not abroad in Ireland. Indeed, in the previous century he had better not have been, if he wished to avoid conviction for felony under the 8th of Anne, cap. iii. sec. 16. In most of the rural parishes of Ireland not half a century ago, the man who could read a newspaper or write a letter was a distinguished individual, a useful and im- portant functionary. He was the philosopher of the district. He wrote the letters for all the parish, and he read the replies for the neighbours who received them. After mass on Sunday, if haply the parish priest was rich enough to take a newspaper, the same public benefactor read from Father Tom's last-but-one weekly or bi-weekly broadsheet the news of what was going on in the world. If the weather was fine, seated on the green- sodded fence on rainy days, perched on the anvil in the neigh- bouring smithy he gave forth to the eager and wondering crowd the latest speech of O'Connell or Shell, Peel or Stanley. Occasionally the parochial letter- writer and public reader was, as in Italy even at the present day, a sort of professional, charging a fee for his services. Some of these practitioners had set forms for letters of a certain classification, whence perhaps arose the idea of the " Complete Letter-writer " as a publication.* In these performances lengthy words, or those strange and new in sound, were highly valued. A word of four syllables was supposed to be twice as powerful as one of two. A parochial letter-writer in Bearhaven who used to boast that he had *' broken " i.e., procured the dismissal of three gangers and removed two sub-inspectors was once retained to indite a com- plaint against a policeman. He read out to his awe-struck clients as the finish of a sentence " he being supereminently obnoxious to the people." "Do you hear that," said he, laying down the * One of my colleagues in the Nation office showed me not long since a letter which came from a youthful correspondent in Clare, who wanted "Mr. Editor" to recommend to him "A complete Letter-writer on Love or Business ; '" adding by way of postscript, " N.I3. Love preferred at present." 8 NEW IRELAND. pen for a moment, and looking around with an air of pride and triumph : " supereminently ! That one word alone is enough to take the jacket off him !" That a few of these learned letter-writers survive here and there in Ireland I have had evidence from time to time in the course of my editorial experiences in Dublin. Out of quite a store of such curiosities I quote two communications sent for publication to one of my journals. The first deals with " Sunday- ! closing " : SIR, It is an indubitable fact, absolutely impervious to the ratiocina- tion of any syllogistic political economist, that the solicitude of British re- presentatives for the auriferous progress of the excise divests them of every sentiment of philanthropy, of all consideration for the social misery, the moral derogation, and the domestic indigence of the infatuated frequenters of public-houses on Sundays. But to deviate from general principles to facts in particular, I think that a moiety of Irish publicans seem to hare but little scrupulous regard to the dictates of conscience in deriving benefits from the ruination of their customers. That the publican's till is the receptacle of a large amount of the wealth of the country is clearly demonstrated by the fact of their wives being a vivid panorama of bon ton, and actually living to all appearances in perpetual anticipation of the various vicissitudes of fashion. Indeed some alcoholic vendor! rather disingenu- ously carry on a magnetic system of lucrative appropriation through the medium of an exquisite barmaid, whose commercial smile of inexpressible blandiloquence is invariably calculated to stimulate the extravagant pro- pensities of the young and industrious artisan. Respectfully yours, SATURN. Of another, from the same correspondent, devoted to the vexed question of "Connemara Proselytism," I quote the opening portion : Cong, April 12, 1874. SIR, I sincerely tiust I will not be considered an animated definition of the mediocral abilities existing betweea the sublime and the ridiculous when I say that a Catholic Irishman whose solicitude for the annihilation of the various considerations appertaining to sectarian animosities may have induced him to entertain a profound repugnance to all kinds of reli- gious discussions, can have no earthly objection to class amongst the most ostensible of Ireland's grievances the odious prevalence in the isolated dis- tricts of an accumulation of stipendiary bible-readers, whose terrestrial ideas of the sanctimonious are orthodoxly proved to be by no means dia- metrical to the dictates of a pecuniary inspiration by their indefatigable efforts to propagate the grand tenet that the celestial felicity of a defunct Papist can only be achieved through the medium of sundry scriptural quo- tations, and the quondam system of immeasurable doses of infallible broth. "THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD." 9 Having fortuitously encountered one of these sublunary gentlemen, I, being unable to surmount the difficulties of an analytical excavation of the Scriptures, felt myself under the sternly imperative necessity of having recourse to a perfunctory subterfuge that precipitated his biblical interpo- lations into a chaotic state of chimerical amalgamation. ******** These erudite contributions were, alas ! not given to the public eye ; but my colleague, who withheld them from print> was care- ful to hand them to me for a place in my portfolio of literary treasures. It was illiteracy, not ignorance in a degrading sense, that prevailed forty years ago in Ireland. The Irish peasant was naturally intelligent ; was not deficient in knowledge of things necessary for his avocations, and above all he was, in a simple, rustic way, courteous and polite. The great butt of taunt and sarcasm throughout the parish was an " ignoramus " one who was clumsy, ill-mannered, or stupid.* It was a calamity, the evil effects of which will long outlive even the best efforts to retrieve them, that at the period when in other countries, and especially in England and Scotland, popular education was being developed and extended into a public system, in Ireland the legislature of the day was passing statute after statute to prohibit and punish any acceptable education what- soever university, intermediate, or primary for nine-tenths of the population. That is to say, the bulk of the population being Catholic, penal laws against Catholic schools laws which made it felony for a Catholic to act as teacher, usher, or monitor, and civil death for a Catholic child to be taught by any such masters were virtually a prohibition of education to the mass of the people. No useful purpose can be served by a dismal parade in these pages of the enactments that throughout nearly the whole * One of the changes most noticeable in the Irish peasant who has been o America and has returned home is a disregard of and contempt for little courtesies that he has come to believe were servilities. In a land of liberty and republican equality he learned to reflect with shame how he touched his hat to a social superior at home. 'Twas a slavish custom, he thinks, and he throws it off, assuming instead what he means to be an assertive independence and equality, that too often is merely rudeness. No doubt in Ireland there was to be seen downright and painful servility; cringing, cowering slaves standing on the roadside with bare heads, in falling rain or sleet, while some squireen lashed them with his tongue. But between this and the genuine politeness of the Irish peasant of the better type the difference was wide and plain. 10 NEW IRELAND. of the last century effected that dreadful proscription. Statute after statute, penalty after penalty, was rained upon the people. Still crouching 'neath the sheltering hedge, or stretched on mountain fern, The teacher and his pupils met, feloniously, to learn ! The man who thoughtlessly, or unaware of the facts, points blame or scorn at the Irish for their " ignorance, " little knows what he is about. In whatever else they may be amenable to reproach or censure, in the matter of education the Irish are not culprits but victims. As early as 1783 the legislature commenced repealing the severest of these enactments against Catholic teaching in Ireland; by 1830 they had nearly all been swept away ; and in the year following the late Lord Derby, at that time Mr. Stanley, Irish Chief Secretary, proposed and established the present State-school system. By this a Government board of commissioners was- established in Dublin to superintend and administer primary education throughout Ireland. No Government schools were set up or newly established ; but local patrons or managers of primary schools were invited to attach themselves to the Board and obtain a yearly grant of funds by conforming to the rules of the new system. To schools so placed under or in connection with their authority the commissioners granted school-requisites at reduced price, and a contribution toward the teachers' salaries. On the other hand, such schools were subject to visitation and report on the part of Government inspectors, and any infringement of the fundamental regulations forfeited the grant. There had not been wanting efforts enough previously to supply Ireland Avith public schools; but they were seminaries which the Catholic Irish could not be induced to enter. There were the Eoyal Free Schools in 1608, Erasmus Smith's Schools in 1733 ; the London Hibernian Society Schools in 1811, besides quite a number of others. They all aimed more or less energeti- cally at " weaning the Irish youth from Popery ; " and the Irish youth, still more energetically refusing to be so weaned, stopped away en masse. In the sad choice between loss of school education on the one hand and sacrifice of religious convictions on the other, Irish parents preferred the former for their children. It was not that they cared little for education ; they passionately worshipped! it yearned for it, as the blind may long to see the wonders of the earth and skies which they hear of but cannot realise. They dared the penalties of the 7 Will. III. cap. iv. sec. 1 which made it civil death for a Popish child to be sent to a school in foreign "THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD? 11 parts. Contraband scholars often were the return cargoes of the- smuggling craft that nightly ran silks and brandies into Irish creeks and bays in the early part of the last century. The Irish yalued education much, but they loved religion more. Over the Irish national-school system established by Mr. Stanley in 1831 *a fierce controversy has raged for some years. In one respect at all events, and indeed in many more respects than one, it has been a marvellous success, despite circumstances which have greatly marred and circumscribed its operations. That is to say, although that scheme rather painfully baulked the Irish of that which after such severe suffering and sacrifice- they had some reason to expect namely, a system of public education as much in accordance with their religious convictions as the Scottish and English systems were with those of tho Scotch and English peoples they nevertheless " attorned ** to it ; and for the first time in Anglo-Irish annals, Irish children in thousands flocked into the Government schools. Mr. Stanley stands in history as the author of the scheme ;, but as a matter of fact, Lord Cloncurry it was who de-vised and suggested it, the Irish Secretary coming slowly to espouse the- project. When he did undertake the question, however, he dealt with it firmly ; and not only went as far towards a complete solution as he might dare at the moment, but even exceeded in boldness what others in his place'would probably have proposed. He doubtless reflected that he was doing the best that was- practicable at the time, and that in any event his scheme would be welcomed as a blessed boon compared with the pre-existing state of things in Ireland. On the one hand, all previous ex- periments aimed more or less directly at converting the Irish from Catholicism ; on the other hand, the Irish demanded a public-school system at least as denominational as the English or Scottish system. His proposal was to forbid proselytism, but to exchide all denominationalism ; " combined literary and separate religious instruction." At a fixed or particular hour Scripture- lessons, catechism exercises, or other religions instruction might be given by the teacher, or any one else authorised by the parent so to do; but throughout the rest of the day, diiring school-hours proper, nothing in the nature of religious instruc- tion was allowed. In the early years of the system (hardly in consonance with the strict letter oi its rules) an attempt was made to go some way towards what would be called the teaching of " common Christianity." A scriptural " General Lesson " was framed by order of the commissioners, hung up in every 12 NEW ICELAND. school, and ordered to be read aloud by teacher and pupils every day. In the early manuals portions of Bible history were given ; and the Most Rev. Dr. Whately, Protestant archbishop of Dublin (one of the commissioners), compiled a book of religious instruc- tion, called " Lessons on the Truths of Christianity," which the Board made a class-book in the schools. But* soon this ticklish experiment broke down ; the common religious teaching was abandoned, and the system was contracted more and more within its strictly non-religious basis. Secular schools were utterly repugnant to the " denominational " principles of the Catholics. Still, the system was so great a boon, compared with any previous plan or proposal, that the Catholic prelates, with but few exceptions,* decided that to reject it would be wrong, and might, moreover, seem like an obstruction of education on their part. The scheme, no doubt, was not theirs ; the State was acting on its own view, for State reasons and with State funds. They would accept that system under reserve, make the most of it, and hope eventually to have it developed into something nearer to their own convictions. Mr. Stanley's experiment had to bear the disadvantage inci- dental to compromises. Protestant society, and this included very nearly the whole of the landed proprietary, felt indignant. To give education to these Catholic millions, unless an education that would help to lead them from spiritual slavery and super- stition, could have but an evil ending, if it was not indeed a sin. No aid would they give, by local subscriptions, to such an apos- tacy from Bible principles. The Catholics, on the other hand, as we have seen, had their grievance. "The Government tell us," they said, "that this is what we must have; it is their choice, not ours. Well, let them pay for it." Between these two complaints the Irish national education system has been left almost entirely dependent on the State grant for means of sup- port ; local effort, local aid, being of hardly appreciable extent. The unfortunate school-teachers have been great sufferers by this state of things. On 25 or 30 a year, a young woman of fair education, exemplary character, and respectable position was expected to clothe and support herself, and teach from day to day in a school to and from which, in the country districts, she had to walk three or four miles in summer's sun and winter's rain. At the present day and the salaries have been greatly * The Most Rev. Dr. MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, from the ontset resolutely refused to approve or accept the new system. " THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD:' 13 improved within the past ten years the emoluments of Irish national school-teachers do not average 50 a year. It was a gigantic enterprise to establish and bring to its present dimensions and comparative efficiency the Irish national- school organisation. Those who are engaged in school-board work in England find how arduous is the task of constructing a new system even in wealthy cities and towns, where schools of some sort already exist. But all over three-fcrarths of Ireland everything had to be undertaken db initio, and under the most formidable disadvantages and discouragements. Where were school-houses to be found ? Where were teachers to be obtained ? Above all, where were the funds to come from ? The Govern- ment grant, slender enough at best, was to be given to " aid " an " established " school. How were the schools to be estab- lished ? Happily one now sees when travelling through Ireland many neat and tidy little school-houses with slated roofs and boarded floors. But the first "national schools" were woful make- shifts : thatched cabins with earthen floors, miserable and cheer- less in winter, deathly in their effects on the health of teacher and pupil. To set up even one of these in a considerable district was at first a great achievement. I have myself seen children of from six to sixteen years of age trudging (bare-footed, of course) over bog and moor, crag and pathway, to such a school distant four or five miles in some instances seven miles from their homes ! The Education Commissioners, by more adequate parliamentary grants placed at their disposal, have been able to do a great deal in helping the erection of better school-houses; but the im- provement now noticeable is almost entirely due to the toilsome and unwearied exertions of the clergy, who are, as a general rule, the local patrons or managers under the Board. The instances are also increasing every year where the landed proprietor of the district has largely or wholly, at his own cost, erected suitable national school-houses on the estate. Perhaps the most notable improvement, however, is that for which the Irish schools are indebted to the generosity of one man Mr. Vere Foster. In one of those numerous pedestrian tours through Ireland which Mr. Foster has for a quarter of a century been accustomed to take, on some benevolent or philanthropic purpose bent, he was struck with the fact which I have above alluded to the wretched discomfort and unhealthiness of the damp earthen floor in schools frequented by barefooted children. Keeping for the It NEW IRELAND. while his purpose to himself, he quietly noted down the dimensions of each such school throughout the country, and when his tour was completed, had a boarded floor supplied at his own cost to every one of them.* During the first dozen years of its existence the Irish national- school system, although supposed to be, as we have seen, quite ^undenominational, was, in practice, denominational. In few of the schools was the attendance " mixed. " In Ulster, Protestant managers established schools in which a Catholic child was never seen ; in the other provinces, Catholic managers (generally the parish priests) established schools in which a Protestant pr.pil never entered. In fact, in numberless parishes there were no Protestant youth to enter or to abstain. It soon became too patent an absurdity that out of respect for the conscience of the theoretic or imaginary but non-existent child of a different persuasion this " legal fiction " for which the parish had never a realisation the whole school should be conducted from year's end to year's end, as if he was in the flesh and verily present. After a while, teachers and managers disregarded the theory ; and for a long time, despite the letter of the Board rules, wherever the schools were exclusively Protestant or exclusively Catholic in attendance, they were actually conducted as denominational schools. In Ulster, the Bible was freely read at all hours ; in the sotTth, the Catholic catechism mingled in the whole day's exercises. It is not unlikely, indeed, that the commissioners rather -winked at all this, and thought it wise to let the system be accepted to let it take root and grow any how. Once it was firmly established they could tighten up both rule and practice. I witnessed on one occasion, some years after the tightening- up process had gone into play, a curious illustration of tlie working of the system. In King's Inn Street, Dublin, in the midst of a very poor .and wretched Catholic population, some of the zealous pro- selytising Protestant societies established a school "under the Board," and duly received a Board grant. They kept within the Board rules as to the liours for religious instruction, yet were able to bring the ragged little Papists under scriptural class teaching all the same ; for a breakfast or lunch was given along with it. In * The author of this generous net is one of the most remarkable men in Ireland. He may be encountered betimes, simply attired in Irish home- spun grey, with knapsack strapped on his bnck, and a stout blackthorn in his hand, walking by easy str.ges through some remote county : silently devising or effecting some scheme worthy of " Howard the Good." "THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD." 15 fact, when I visited the school, the soup-boilers were downstairs in the basement in full performance. The Catholic clergy soon heard of these operations carried on under the eegis of the national Board system. They remonstrated, but the Board could do nothing ; its rules were not violated. It was, however, pointed out to the reverend complainants that they too could set up a Board school in the district ; which indeed they did, by taking the opposite house in the street, so that within a perch of one another there were two "national schools" arrayed in denominational duel. I heard of all this, and decided to see it for myself. When I visited " No. 2," or the Catholic school, which was taught by nuns, it was the rule hour for " religious instruc- tion." I was astonished to see a beautiful little oratory at the end of the room, wreathed with flowers, and lighted up with tapers, while the children were singing in chorus a Catholic hymn. "How on earth do the Board allow you to have this oratory ?" I asked of the sister in charge. " It is forbidden to have any religious picture, symbol, or sign, and the practice of silently bowing the head in mental prayer, at the stroke of the clock, has been declared against the rules ; yet here you have outstripped all these?" " Oh, not at all," replied the nun; "just wait a while till the rule hour for resumption of school strikes, and you shall see." "Sure enough, at stroke of the clock a transformation that rather surprised me took place. Folding doors that I had not noticed were at once closed in on the oratory ; a top fell over it, steps were drawn out in front, and lo ! nothing appeared but a teacher's rostrum I I hardly knew what to say what feelings were uppermost at the first moment; but a very little reflection satisfied me that it could hardly have a good moral effect on children to see the " secular " and " religious " lines drawn so sharply as that. I crossed the street to the Protestant school and entered into conversation with the teacher there. He grievously complained of the opposition establishment over the way, and spoke feelingly of the reduction which it had effected in his daily attendance. " The worst of it is, sir, we discovered that the young rascals used to come here to us in the morning and take our breakfast, and then make off across the street to the nuns." " Did you then strike them off the roll ? " " We daren't, but we tried to identify the individual pupils who so acted, and stopped their breakfast on them. However, we have come upon a plan now which baffles them completely." 16 NEW IltELAND. "What is that?" " Why, sir, we don't give the breakfast till school and Scripture class are over at three o'clock" For many years the Protestant clergy and laity held entirely aloof from the national schools. They would not countenance a system of popular education that was not religious and scrip- tural. At all events a school without an open Bible one in which the Bible would be padlocked and unpadlocked at certain hours they would not have. If with some of them the objec- tion partook of regret that opportunity for effecting conversions among the Catholics would be so far given up, there can be no question but that on the other hand with the bulk of the Pro- testant clergy and laity it proceeded from an upright conscien- tious principle, and had reference solely or mainly to considera- tion for the youth of their own communion. Many overtures were made, many negotiations tried, for a long time in vain, to secure their adhesion. One great stumbling-block for them was a rule which forbade the teacher to allow a pupil while at school to be present at religious instruction different from the creed in which he was entered on the school register, unless the pupil was so present with his parents' ascertained permission. The Protestant clergyman, otherwise disposed to work with the national Board, stopped invincibly at this point. " My ordina- tion vows," he said, " and my own sense of duty forbid me to take any one by the shoulder and remove him, lest he should hear me preach the gospel. I am quite ready to say that I will not compel any pupil in my school, if under the Board, to be so present, let him absent himself if he will ; but if he be present I shall certainly not turn him off." The Education Board on its part pleaded that it was upon the faith that their children ran no risk or chance whatever of being present at religious teachings not their own, within the school, that the masses of the Irish people had been induced to come into the system. From 1844 to 1847 this controversy went on, the correspondence on behalf of the Protestant clergy being most ably conducted by the late Archdeacon Stopford, of Meath, and in September 1847 the following compromise was eventually arranged between him and the Board : Thenceforth no teacher need prevent a child from being present at religious instruction contrary to his registered creed ; but whenever a pupil was for the first time so present, the teacher was to send to the parent a filled-up printed ticket noti- fying that fact. On this new rule popularly known as "the " THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD." 17 Stopford Bule " a large section of the episcopalian Protestant clergy and nearly all of the Presbyterians came in; but at exactly the same point, and on the same ground, there burst forth that complaint of broken faith and demand for denomina- tional capitation grants which the Catholics have ever since been pressing so vehemently. Such was in brief the early history, such the rise and progress, of the national-education system in Ireland. It was not till ten or twelve years after the actual date of its establishment that even the first faint signs of its work became noticeable outside the school-door threshold. But those who moved among the people, or narrowly watched the phases of their life, began as early as 1845 to note by a thousand symptoms that " the schoolmaster was abroad." From 1845 to the present day the national schools have been turning out a yearly crop of thousands, yea tens of thousands, of youth. The average standard of proficiency attained, especially in rural districts, is even still very low, owing to the short and broken periods for which children are allowed to attend school rather than help to earn for home by work in the fields. But slight as the actual achieve- ment may be in a strictly educational point of view, socia'ly and politically considered, nothing short of a revolution has !>!*> effected. There is now scarcely a farmhouse or working n ,*? home in all the land in which the boy or girl of fifteen, or tu young man or woman of twenty-five, cannot read the newspope* for " the old people," and transact their correspondence. Or j amusing friend the parish letter-writer has almost disappeared. His occupation is gone. For public news the peasant no longer relies on the Sunday gossip after mass. For political views ho is no longer absolutely dependent on the advice and guidance of Father Tom. He may never find counsellor more devoted and faithful; the political course he may now follow may be more rash or more profitable, more wise or more wrong ; but for good or ill it will be his own. He will still, indeed, trust largely to those whom he judges worthy of his confidence, and largely follow their lead ; but not in the same way as of yore. Not all at once will one perceive how many and how vast are the changes which flow from these altered circumstances. It is, I repeat, nothing less than a revolution that the humble little thatch-roofed national school or, let me more accurately say, the national school supplemented by a cheap popular literature has effected in Ireland. Political leadership, in the sense in which it prevailed in our fathers' time, is gone for ever would be o 18 NEW IRELAND. simply impossible now. And "with the old-time leadership of one magnificent genius, or one well-trusted class, there have also disappeared many of the old-time modes and habits of political life and action. It is utterly astonishing how few persons seem io realise or to have noticed these changes so palpably though so silently wrought under their very eyes during the last thirty years. Every day we hear some one whose memory dwells ardently on the period of Eeform or Emancipation or Eepeal, telling us what should be done now, and how done, because it was done, and so done, then. As well might he tell us of the times of Brian Boru. Be it for better or be it for worse, a new Ireland has arisen since then. CHAPTER IIL AND REPEAL. 1'fai prominent figure, the leading character, in Irish life five \-Q thirty years ago was Daniel O'Connell. As we look back tipon that period we see his great form flung upon the Irish sky !ike that of some Titan towering above the race of men. In Ireland he is fondly styled "the Liberator; "in England known as the " Irish Agitator." In Eome his memory is held in benediction as that of a " champion of the Church." Hardly yet, long as he has lain in the national mausoleum at Glasnevin, have prejudice and passion ceased to struggle over his bier, and allowed him to be dispassionately contemplated as an historical character. No man can be named who at any time in Irish affairs at- tained to such popularity as that which was O'Connell's in 1844, when he may be said to have reached the zenith of his power. Like other master characters in history, he carved out his own career, and attained to eminence by virtue of his own strong will, by the force of commanding genius. He inherited no lordly title ; he succeeded to no great territorial influence. He belonged to an ancient and honoured Celtic family in West Kerry, and was expectant heir to an uncle "Old Hunting-Cap" who would have left him considerable means had the future tribune not married for love, and displeased the wealthy old squire. He O'CONNELL AND HE PEAL. 19 entered the Irish bar. It is a singular fact that the only men who within the last hundred years became really great popular leaders in Ireland were barristers, who first won popular con- fidence and popular influence by their forensic abilities ; namely, Daniel O'Connell and Isaac Butt. The bar, in any country pos- sessing such an institution, must always to a great extent con- tribute " leaders of public opinion." From its ranks are most likely to come, unless abnormal influences prevail, the men most able to plead and press a public cause. In Ireland, however, there have been greater and exceptional reasons to bring the advocate into the forefront as the political leader. The man who could " run a coach and four through any act of Parlia- ment," as O'Connell boasted he could do ; who could put down the Attorney-General and baffle the Crown, who was ready to take the brief of the weak against the strong, to compel justice for the poor, was inevitably marked out for popularity amongst a people like the Irish. His skill, his learning, his eloquence, his ingenuity, were all tested, exhibited, and proved before their eyes. Moreover, in no generation has Ireland been without the exciting spectacle of State trials or political prosecutions. The accused stepped from the dock to the scaffold, from the cell to the convict ship, bequeathing names and memories destined to immortality in rustic ballad or fireside story, and the advocate 'who defended them, ^especially if supposed to sympathise with them, became a hero. When one speaks of O'Connell's popularity, however, a qualifi- cation or distinction needs to be noted. It was almost ex clusively confined to one section of the nation, though no doubt, counting heads, that was the overwhelming preponderance of the nation. Not only was O'Connell un popular with the Irish Pro- testants, lie was absolutely a terror to them. Many other Irish national leaders before his time, in his time, and since, might be named whose following was somewhat distributed through the various sections, creeds, and classes of Irishmen ; notably Henry Grattan, John Martin, and Isaac Butt. But to the Protestants of his day O'Connell seemed a combination of Guy Fawkes, the Pre- tender, and the Pope of Kome. White his trial was proceeding, or rather concluding, in 1844, an old gentleman named Ffolliott a good type of the staunch old Tory of tkat day in Ireland lay dying in a southern county. " Do you res't all your hopes on the merits of your Saviour, Mr. Ffolliott ?" said the rector, who stood by his bedside. Yes, I do, all," murmured the dying man. o 2 V ,, tiEW IRELAND. are you .directing all your thoughts at this moment to Jerusalem, Mr. Ffolliott ?" > Yf And nowhere .else." " Above all, I trust you forgive every one, and feel at peace- vvithallmen?" ' ' With all mankind," responded the genial old foxhunter. There was a solemn pause. " Mr. Halliday," he half whispered, " is the Dublin mail in yet * " Yes, sir, about an hour ago." The dying man roused himself instantly, and with sharp eager- ness asked, " How about the trials ? Is O'Connell convicted ?" " Found guilty, sir." "Thanks be to God!" was the last pious ejaculation of the- worthy old squire. All this love and confidence, all this fear and hatred, had been earned by O'Connell in his " Emancipation " career, which ex- tended from 1810, when he may be said to have entered public life, to 1829, when he vanquished utterly and completely the hostile power of the Peel- Wellington Government. From 1830 to 1840 he was engaged in the scarcely less important struggles which ensued on the Tithe question and Municipal Eeform corollaries, BO to speak, of Catholic Emancipation. On the subject of Eepeal O'Connell's first public speech was de- livered; and this question, not Catholic Emancipation, attracted" his earliest sympathies. To many ears the statement will sound strange and startling, but it is historical fact, that at that time the ultra-Protestant and Tory party in Ireland were the great agitators for Eepeal of the Union. The Anti-Union resolutions- of the Orange lodges would fill pages of print. The Protestant bankers and merchants of Dublin vied with the Protestant nobility and gentry of the provinces in denouncing the Union. Never for a moment did its effectuation cause an altered view of the transaction. As there was no disguiso made of the heavy sums paid for the votes requisite to secure a ministerial majority, the people viewed the transaction very much as New York citizens regarded a " presentment " of Tweed's Grand Jury, thirteen of whom he kept in his pay; a bold and successful fraud in the guise of law. The Catholics at this time could hardly be said to be participants in general political affairs; still, although their bishops* were more than suspected of Unionist sentiments, the * Pitt had promised them that Catholic Emancipation should be one of the first acts passed in the Imperial Parliament ; but of course the promise was not fulfilled. VCONSELL AND REPEAL. 21 feelings of the general body were enthusiastically with their Protestant fellow-countrymen. The movement for Repeal of the Union was really begun in IjSlO by a requisition from the Grand Jurors of Dublin to the High Sheriffs, Sir Edward Stanley and Sir James Eiddall, calling upon them to convene a public meeting of "the freemen and freeholders of Dublin" for the purpose of petitioning Parliament to repeal the hateful and injurious act. At this meeting, held on the 18th of September 1810, the ultra-Protestant and Tory merchants and gentry of Dublin launched the movement which O'Connell, thirty years after, made his own. How, then, it may be asked, did the question happen to lose its -strongly Protestant character ? How did young O'Connell and his co-religionists come to devote themselves first to Emancipation rather than Kepeal ? O'Connell often subsequently expressed his regret that he and they had not, in 1810, thrown themselves to the side of the Protestant Repealers, and looked for Emancipation to an Irish rather than to an imperial legislature. " Restore the penal laws, if you will ; but repeal the Union " was his vehement exclamation in after years. But in 1810 the Irish Catholics had abundant offers of assistance for Emancipation from a powerful party in the imperial Parliament; while in that assembly no party would help either Protestant or Catholic Irishmen with Repeal. The consideration was strongly attractive to strive first for what was nearest at hand, or was most practicable of attainment. The "English Liberal party persuaded the Irish Catholic leaders to go for Emancipation, which was " already half carried," and in which they could aid them. " First gain equality as citizens," *aid persuasive counsellors, " and then, if you will, use your powers as free men to co-operate with your Protestant fellow- countrymen, in their eiforts for Repeal." In this view O'Connell acquiesced. He little thought that amidst the fierce fires of the struggle for religious equality the Protestant movement for Repeal was to disappear! When Emancipation was won; when the Tithe grievance was moderated, and the Protestant rector no more went forth with armed men to seize "every tenth sheaf" from the Catholic peasants' haggard; when the municipal corporations of the country were, like Parliament itself, opened to Catholics, and citizenship was at length secured, O'Connell felt that the time had come for a still greater question than any of these ; one upon which he fondly, but erroneously, imagined he could unite Catholic and Protestant 22 NEW IRELAND. Irishmen. He looked around for the Eepeal Protestants; bui they were gone. There was no avoiding the determination which he then adopted to take into his own hands the banner which the- Protestant chiefs had fixing down. Although a study of all the- circumstances, by the light of subsequent experience, shows o>s that the leader who won Catholic Emancipation could not have been the man to carry Eepeal, no other course was honourably open to O'Connell and the Irish Catholics. Had they adopted as their motto " Eest and be thankful "; having won religious rights* had they stopped there, the Protestants would be able for ever to taunt them with having belied the solemn declarations of 1810, which pledged them to consecrate their first efforts as free meni to the non-sectarian question of a national legislature. " These Catholics," it would be said, "think only of their Church. Having freed their Church, they are satisfied, and leave their country to shift for itself." When he launcJied his Eepeal agitation O'Connell strove hard to propitiate Irish Protestantism ; but he strove in vain. He saw but too well that in the new struggle there must be a blending: of creeds; that the movement must be national not sectional, or it would fail. But it became plain that the very circumstances that gave to him his unrivalled power with the masses fatally- disqualified him here. The time was all too near a struggle- so desperate and bitter as that in which he and his despised " Popish bogtrotters " had vanquished the haughty Protestant aristocracy of the island. When they saw the man who had; stormed and carried the strongholds of exclusive Protestant power coming forward at last to claim the restoration of the- Irish Parliament (though a claim which they themselves had been most vehemently raising previously) they went frantic- with alarm. " He now," they cried, " wants a Popish parlia- ment, to doom us all to the gibbet and stake !" And so, for the first time in their history, they became Unionists, through fear of " Dan O'Connell and the Pope !" O'Connell soon found how great a change thirty or forty years had made in the attitude of parties and the bearing of public- questions. In 1805 or 1810, or even in 1820, it was but a com- paratively short and easy step to revert to the familiar institu- tion, so recently overthrown, of King, Lords, and Commons oS Ireland. " Eepeal " meant simply the repeal of an Act of Parlia- ment a few years old ; a proceeding which would replace things as they stood, as it were, but yesterday. No new machinery O'CONNELL AND REPEAL. 23 he needed. It was merely that once more, as before, the Viceroy would proceed in state from Dublin Castl e to the Parliament House inollege Green, and read the royal speech to the peers and commoners of Ireland. A few years of illegal interregnum would be forgotten in the general joy. Every- thing would go on as it did previously. There would be the Fame franchises, the same representation, the same forms, the same domestic and international relations. Bat after forty years had passed, it was found this could not be- said. Things had happened in the interval which rendered a. return to the old arrangements, pure and simple, an impossibility. The very reforms which O'Connell had been throughout those- forty years labouring to accomplish forbade a restoration of the- old forms and institutions. Catholic Emancipation enabled Catholics to sit in Parliament, whereas in the Irish legislature none but Protestants could Lave a place. The Beform Bill of" 1832 revolutionised the old franchise and representative systems, and elections to an Irish parliament on any but the new ones- would be out of the question. It was clear that new arrangements- would have to be made; that a mere repeal of the Union Act, throwing things back upon their old forms of existence, would be- absurd if not impracticable. O'Connell's demand therefore meant a great deal more than Eepeal ; for he claimed not merely to annul the Act of Union, but: to supplant or supplement the ancient forms and franchises,, checks and counterchecks, by the important changes which an- imperial legislature had in the interval decreed and effected,. This gave the Government a clever advantage in argument. " In an exclusively Protestant Irish parliament," they said, " England, as a Protestant country, had a certain amount of security for the connection ; but under a new arrangement to allow the pre-Union powers to an Irish parliament predomin- antly Catholic would afford no such guarantee." In any case the Government party would have resisted the demand for Eepeal but this demand for Eepeal and something more they were sure- to combat with all the greater determination. O'Connell felt the difficulty, and vainly sought to parry it by declaring he would be satisfied that Catholic Emancipation should be undone if it stood in the way ; but this was not to be- seriously entertained. One can hardly credit that the Catholics would submit to it. He had only to push on with his agitation as best he could, laying absurd stress on what he called " the- golden link of the crown," and claiming that the two parliaments- 24 NEW IRELAND. (Irish and British) would soon come to an amicable arrangement on all points of common interest. Perhaps they might ; perhaps they might not. The imperialists, however, were not likely to commit themselves to the hazard of what a predominantly Catholic Irish parliament might or might not do with powers as wide or vague as those possessed by the Protestant Irish parliament of 1782. There can be no doubt that had O'Connell adopted the course taken by the Home Eulers of 1870, and proposed those inter' national arrangements, compromises, adjustments, and guaran- tees explicitly beforehand, he would have considerably allayed the apprehensions and disarmed the hostility which so invincibly encountered his -movement. At its outset, on the 4th of May 1840, he issued a Eeport (of a Committee of the National Asso- ciation of Ireland) suggesting " a proposal to be converted into a law for the reconstruction of the House of Commons of Ireland," which, very naturally, showed " Eepeal " to be Eepeal phis Catholic Emancipation, Electoral and Corporate Eeform, etc. But he entirely avoided proposal or definition as to common management of common or imperial affairs. The affection and gratitude of the Irish people for " the Liberator " and well he earned both at their hands will not allow much freedom in criticising his plans or his policy, his conduct or his character. In that character there were some features and elements that would not command admiration in these later days, but which nevertheless went to make up his qualifications for the task he undertook. He was the man for his age and time; the man for the special work and mission which he was assigned to fulfil. In many respects he would be -sadly out of place in the public life of 1877 ; but no man of 1877 could accomplish the herculean labours of his career. True greatness of soul and courage indomitable alone could have carried him through the difficulties which he cheerfully faced and triumphantly encountered. Forlorn indeed were the fortunes of the Irish Catholics when, surrendering brilliant professional prospects, and sacrificing every other ambition, he devoted his life to the formidable enterprise of effecting their redemption. When he entered public affairs, and for a long time afterwards, he was the object of dislike and hostility on the part of many of the Catholic prelates and most of the Catholic gentry in Ireland. They denounced him as a " demagogue." Again and again our " upper class " Catholics assured the Government of the day and the people of England that the " extreme " ideas of CTCONNELL AND REPEAL. 25 violent agitators about Emancipation were to them, as moderate men and loyal citizens, positively distressing. A hundred years and more of the Penal Code had done its work with these men. They trembled lest new commotions might wrest from them the comparative tolerance they now enjoyed. " Your Grace will, I hope, not deem me accountable for the foolishness of those who address me as 'My Lord,'" wrote a Catholic archbishop of O'Connell's time to the Duke of Wellington. Leave to live seemed a great deal to men whose youth had seen the " discoverer " and the " priest-hunter " at work.* O'Connell, whose eloquence was massive and rugged, some- times coarse, and rarely classical, answered back the Catholic aristocracy with vituperation and scorn for their slavishness and cowardice. The bishops he studiously passed by. He had at * " Discoverers " were men who prowled through the country seeking out grounds for the filing of " bills of discovery," as they were called, against Papists holding property ; or against Protestants who held lands in secret trust for Papist neighbours. It is said the ancestral estates of the Bryans of Jenkinstown, a prominent and wealthy Catholic family, were preserved from confiscation throughout the whole of the eighteenth century by the chivalrous honour and fidelity of the Marquises of Ormonde, who were Protestants. These held the title deeds in their own names from father to son through a hundred years, secretly handing over the rents, until the Bryans at last were free by law openly to hold and enjoy their broad domains. It was in this way, by the noble conduct of individual Protestants in an age of dreadful edicts, that nearly every acre of ancient Catholic estates, of any that survive to our time, was saved to the " Popish " proprietors. "Priest-hunters" were a class who made a livelihood by earning the rewards for hunting up concealed priests. The western and northern counties of Ireland abounded thirty years ago with the traditions of these priest-hunts. In my own native district every tourist to Glengariffe is shown the Priest's Leap Mountain, or " Leam-a-thagart." Here according to local tradition, which had no more pious and awe- struck believer than myself, a great miracle was wrought. A holy priest, who had long eluded the search of those who sought his blood, was riding along a lonely bridle- path which still exists, when he was suddenly confronted by the " Shanna soggarth." " Aha ! your reverence, I have you at last," laughed the pur- suer. But the priest, taking out his breviary, read three words in Latin, and struck spurs into the horse, which sprang through the air and never came down till he reached Donemark Wood, six miles distant, where the mark of his knees and of the priest's thumb and four fingers are still to be seen in the rock on which he alighted. Many a time and oft I have seen these proofs of the story, and I do not greatly rejoice in the day when I realised that the ra\n-drip from an age 4 oak had worn those marks in thtt stone. 26 NEW IRELAND. his back a few of the Catholic gentry, nearly all the Catholic? mercantile and middle classes, many of the secular or parochial clergy, and the religions orders to a man. As for the humbler classes, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that every man, woman, and child was ready to die for him. Some of his most distinguished colleagues of the Emanci- pation campaign refused to follow .him into the Bepeal move- ment, or soon fell off from it. Others, largely from personal devotion as well as political conviction, kept their places by his side. It was tame work, however, some of tliem protested, com- pared with the " old times," when after every banquet or public meeting there was generally, somehow, an invitation to "meet'* some one in " the Fifteen Acres, be the same more or less." O'Connell, after the fatal encounter in which he shot D'Esterre, made and kept a solemn vow never more to send or accept a challenge a circumstance which had a powerful influence im banishing political duelling from Ireland. This non-combatant style of agitation was viewed with great disgust by such men as the O'Gorman Mahon, who had been " out " HO less than thirteen times. O'Connell one day at the Eepeal Association delivered a speech in reply to a political attack designed to bring about a " message," in which he reaffirmed his resolution to accept no challenge during the rest of his life ; making at the same time some exceedingly pious observations on the sinful- ness of the practice he had relinquished. " Mr. Chairman,"' said the O'Gorman Mahou, when O'Connell had sat down,, " I think it may be useful to state that / have made no such resolution : God forbid! " * * About three years ago we were startled in Ireland by the reappearance of this typical veteran of the Emancipation and Repeal times. For a quarter of a century no one had seen or heard of him ; when lo ! his tall, soldierly figure, broad-shouldered and erect as an uplifted lance with snow-white hair copiously flowing over his shoulders appeared like a vision in our midst, at the Home- Rule Conference of 1S7;>. On that occasion he was one of a dozen guests dining with a leading Home Rule member of Parliament; two Catholic clergymen being of the number. Our conversation turned on those strange times when a mnn was liable any day to be called to meet death for some fancied ground ef challenge in- a political speech.; and especially the number of occasions on which our friend Colonel the O'Gornian Mahon bad to nice such an ordeal. To do hii justice he himself was rigidly reticent ; seemed not to relisli these re- ferences to his duelling experiences at all. One of the clergymen th ught the colonel's feelings might have been wounded by our strong cens - of duelling, and he proceeded to soothe matters a little : 0' CONN ELL AND EEPEAL. 27' In the course of O'Connell's career there first appeared in the- Irish political arena a figure, an element of force, which more- than any other has excited the English imagination " the Irish priest in politics." That figure as we beheld it some thirty years ago, will henceforth be seen no more. Not one of all the wondrous changes which time has wrought marks more strongly the difference between the old Ireland and the new than the altered attitude, position, and attributes of the priest in politics. He has not quitted the arena. No hostile action, no subsidence of confidence has affected him. But he stands in new utterly and completely new relations, politically speaking, towards the people. Those who have looked at this historical character from a distance have strangely misread it. To Englishmen the despotic power wielded by the Irish priest in politics the* implicit way in which the people obeyed and followed him could but seem a woful spectacle of clerical tyranny on the one- hand and slavish subserviency on the other. But that power and that obedience arose out of the peculiar circumstances of the- time ; and as out of and with them they arose, so with them they have passed away. When O'Connell, the young, daring, duel-fighting, eloquent,. and fearless lawyer, took up the cause of the Catholic serfs, timidity or selfishness on the part of the few better-class co- religionists had left the people, so to speak, derelict. The abstract justice of their cause, the cruel weight of their fetters,, had indeed won for them the sympathies of great and noble men in a legislature exclusively Protestant; but they were talked of and pleaded for very much as the negroes were talked of and pleaded for by Wilberforce or Horace Greeley. Whether they really were or were not men and brothers was a great part of "I can well understand, however," said he, '"how, in a time when- society enforced such a shocking code, a man might feel, as it were, com- pelled left no choice, when subjected to a challenge. Refusal meant; disgrace, social ostracism. In fact the blame attaching to a man who, not sending but receiving a challenge, went out under this .sense of compulsion, . was, to say the least" The colonel could stand this no longer. " Gentlemen," said he, rising t<> his feet, " I feel bound to declare on my honour as a gentleman that though, unfortunately, as I may say, I have been many times a principa.. in a hostile meeting, never once did I receive a challenge. / always was thy- challenger!" A roar of laughter at the discomfiture of the reverend friend, who was, as he thought, suggesting a charitable exculpation of tho> colonel, hailed the resentful disclaimer of the old campaigner. 28 NEW IRELAND. the question. What ought to be done, or might be done, for them was constantly debated. The man and brother arising in his chains and stalking into the political arena to do something for himself startled every one like a portentous apparition. What happened then was exactly what would have happened had the Irish been Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, or epis- copalian Protestants in the same plight, instead of Catholics. Usually, even in a country where education and political rights are widely diffused, the middle and upper classes become the political leaders of the people around them whose national and Teligious sympathies are more or less their own. In such a state of things, the appearance of the clergyman as a political leader in a special and prominent way would, very naturally, be a cause for wonder. But this was not the case with the Catholic masses in Ireland forty years ago. No identity of feeling, political or religious, linked them and the gentry class in a community of interest. They were unlettered, unenfranchised, bereft of the natural leaders of a people. In every parish, however, there was one man (and in many only one man) of their own way of thinking who had education and ability, was independent of Government, and was devoted to them nay recommended to their confidence by a thousand considerations. He was not only clergyman and pastor; he was local lawgiver and arbitrator, monitor and judge, counsellor and adviser the one advocate and protector whose every energy they well knew would readily 'be devoted to their weal. If haply in one parish out of ten there were to be found a Catholic or two of the gentleman class, when the novel idea of the people moving in political affairs was pro- pounded these propertied few cowered in alarm, and trembled lest the Government should be angry. The priest, was the one man whom the simple and unschooled but resolute peasant felt he might endow with an unrestricted proxy. Experience soon came to tell him that by implicitly trusting and obeying this political proxy-holder, rights were won and disabilities swept away in the devious and difficult ways of public conflict. The priests themselves, who at first very reluctantly (and most often despite the displeasure of their pusillanimous bishops) assumed these new functions and responsibilities, began, to grow more bold and confident under the incitements and encouragement of O'Connell. At length they became the agency through which lie organised and moved the whole kingdom. They thought for their flocks ; acted and spoke for them ; told them what to do, and it was done ; how to vote, and so they voted ; who in ff CON NELL AND REPEAL. 29> . the big world outside was their foe, and him they hated ; who- their friend, and him they blessed. Enormous was the power thus thrown into the hands of the Irish priests. The result certainly was not at all unmixed good. Abuses inevitably came. In some cases, few indeed, the possession of such authority led to arrogance and despotism. In) others its exercise was so mingled with what was of spiritual character, that evils of no small magnitude arose to the view of thoughtful politicians looking on. Yet must impartial judgment declare that never in political affairs was influence so great,, on the whole so unselfishly and so faithfully used in the interests of those for whom it was possessed. It was a prerogative that could only have arisen under abnormal conditions of society ; a power that could not be coexistent with widely diffused education and self-reliant political action on the part of the people. Necessity called it forth ; with necessity it disappeared. Under such circumstances, sustained by such allies, O'Connell, the object of popular worship and aristocratic aversion, pushed on his agitation. The movement, as he shaped and guided it, must inevitably have fallen with his own life, so large a part of it was he. His policy was to maintain in Ireland a state of things which was neither peace nor war ; that baulked the commander- in-chief and harassed the prime minister. Strange to say, though rousing the people to the utmost pitch of excitement, the- dominant anxiety of his soul was to keep them out of the meshes of the law to avert collision, so that he, their leader, might fight the law within the law. By such tactics he had won Emancipa- tion; by a repetition of them he hoped to carry Eepeal. But the strain was too great on the energies of a nation to keep up a tension so severe as that which this policy involved. It was politics at high pressure, an excitement difficult to be maintained. Irishmen had not yet learned how much superior to the exertion of enthusiasm is the less demonstrative but more telling strength of patient plodding perseverance. O'Connell again and again promised his followers success- absolute and infallible success on the sole condition of obeying his directions, and in an hour of weakness or rashness, he- announced that " within six months " Eepeal would be won. In that moment it was all over with O'Connell and Eepeal. The Government needed but to tide over a year or two, and the great tribune was discredited, the spell of his influence broken. But they did more. They boldly assumed the offensive, resorting to- some steps which would hardly be tolerated by public opinion . ,-30 NEW IRELAND. in onr time. Chi the threshold of the movement the Lord Lieutenant of the day announced that no Repealer would be appointed to a Government situation. Twas a keen thrust this, but not mortal ; it had no very appreciable effect. Later on, how- ever, came the extreme course of summarily dismissing from the commission of the peace every county magistrate who identified himself in any "way with Repeal politics. To parry this blow, O'Connell set up popular arbitration courts all over the kingdom, leaving the petty sessions bench " high and dry." The Govern- ment announced that they were determined to put down Repeal ; O'Connell answered by defying them. He called a monster meeting to petition the Queen on the plains of Cloetarf, me- morable as the site of the great battle in which Ard-Bi Brian I. overthrew the Danish power in 1014. The Government, in the dusk of the evening preceding the appointed day, issued a pro- clamation forbidding the assemblage, and the hour of meeting found the city occupied by horse, foot, and artillery. By strenuous' exertions the Repeal leader and his friends were able, during the night and morning, to intercept the tens of thousands of people from the surrounding counties marching to the spot, where, had they arrived, a collision was inevitable. O'Connell charged the executive with designing a Peterloo on a monster scale, and threatened to impeach Peel, Wellington, and Earl de Grey. They retorted by dealing him a still heavier blow. They arrested him and some of his principal associates his son, John O'Connell; Charles Gavan Duffy, of the Nation ; Dr. Gray, of the Freeman; Tom Steele; T. M. Ray; R, Barrett, -of the Pilot ; the Rev. Mr. Tyrrell and the Rev. Mr. Tierncy on a charge of seditious conspiracy. Eighteen hundred and forty-four, the " Repeal year," as O'Connell, six months before, boastfiilly said it should be called found the great tribune a prisoner in Richmond jail. In selecting the jury at his trial, it was discovered that several leaves or slips of the long panel list had been lost, the Crown lawyers said; stolen, the traversers declared. The Attorney General contended that it made no great matter; there were names enough to go on with. The court agreed with him : the trial proceeded, the accused were found guilty and sentenced to various fines and terms of imprisonment. A writ of error was carried to the House of Lords, mainly on the point as to the lost ' or stolen slips of the jury list. "What the Irish judges solemnly decided to be trivial and immaterial the law-lords at Westminster declared to be all-important and of the vital essence of trial VCONNELL AND REPEAL. 31 by jury- " "Were such things to be allowed," Lord Denman said, "trial by jury -would become a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." The conviction was quashed, and O'Connell and his fellow-prisoners were borne from prison in a triumphal proces- sion, eclipsing any public demonstration ever previously seen in Ireland. So much merely epitomises the history of that eventful time. Behind and alongside of all this, however, there were causes and influences at work which of themselves were certain to eventuate in important political changes. By 1846 a transition period had dawned in Irish politics. Already the schools and the newspapers were beginning to make themselves felt. O'Connell became aware that there was growing u,p around him a new generation, who chafed under the benevolent despotism of his leadership, and who objected to his canon of " implicit obedience " unless they had first reasoned out matters. He was now an old man, no longer the dashing, high-spirited young Kerryman of Emancipa- tion days ; he trembled for the possible indiscretions of these fiery orators and seditiously patriotic poets who were rapidly infusing their bold spirit into the multitude. In his own hot youth he could praise Tell and Hofer, and erstwhile glow with admiration for the three hundred at Thermopylfe. But, sore wounded by the failure of his promises, the defeat of his policy, and oppressed with gloomy misgivings as to the possibility of averting much longer a collision between the people and the Government, he could not endure these things now. He called the young orators and poets the "war party," but he did them wrong. Not one of them at that date dreamt of war or a resort to physical force. Solicitous for the legal safety of the Eepeal Association, he drew up test resolutions, which implied! y, if not expressly, condemned as wrongful any and every effort, in any age or time, clime or country, to redress political wrongs by armed resort. These resolutions were aimed at the men already known as the " Young Ireland " party, intellectually the flower of the Eepeal movement ; men whose genius adorned, and whose labours elevated and refined, Irish politics. They offered readily to subscribe such resolutions as applied to their own aims and purposes ; but they refused, they said, to stigmatise the men of other times and other struggles. With this O'Connell would not be content, and an expulsion or secession, destined to have enduring effects on Irish politics, rent the Repeal Association in twain. To the superficial view of most English politicians all this was 82 NEW IRELAND. merely " an Irish row," a political squabble. In like events oo curring in Belgium or Italy or France the philosophy of politics would be studied. The supreme advantages which sometimes indubitably attend the concentration of political power and authority in the hands of one man are purchased by heavy hazards and penalties. When age has weakened the master mind, dissidence becomes more and more intolerable, adulation more and more pleasing in his ears. Obsequiousness is called fidelity ; honest independence is suspected as disloyalty. The grand old tribune of the Irish people, failing physically and mentally, became the sport of whispered jealousies and sus- picions. Accustomed to wield unquestioned authority and to receive implicit obedience, he could see, under the inspirations then swaying him, in the disciples of the new school of thought merely so many plotting aspirants envious of his throne. But, apart from all this, a calamity was now at hand beneath which everything was to go down. The famine of 1846-47 swept the land like a storm of destruction. At such a moment political agitation or political organisation would be as much out of place as amongst the terrified occupants of a raft, or the victims in a house on fire. The wild scramble for life, for mere existence, overmastered every other purpose. It seemed as if society would be resolved into its first elements. Aghast, appalled, O'Connell gazed on the ruin of the cause the de- struction of the people he had given his life to serve. In tlio agony of his soul he flung himself into the one supreme effort to save them. No more he thundered defiance. He wept, he prayed he cried aloud, "0 God! thy faithful people perish I" The struggle was too much. The great heart and the grand brain gave way. Mournfu'ty, despairingly the old man sank into the tomb. He had lived too long ; he had seen the wreck cf all he loved. To Kome, toEome he would bend his way; he would see the successor of St. Peter and visit the shrines of the Apostles before he might die. Not so God willed that it should be. At " Genoa the Superb " he halted on the way ; " to rest a little," he said. The attendants saw that his great rest was at hand. On the 15th of May 1847 all was over : the " Irish Liberator " was no more. Gloomy ending to a great career ! Concurrence of fatalities ! One now can see that even before the first shadow of famine fell upon the scene a catastrophe was inevitable. The great organisa- tion that so largely embodied the national hopes and purposes was yirhiallv at an end. After the Young Ireland secession the- THE RIBBON CONFEDERACY. 33 Government had need no more to concern itself with its once formidable foe. O'ConnelFs power in the future was broken. But nothing could take from his brow the laurels of the past. He had played his part ; he had nobly done his allotted work. " I ought to have fallen at "Waterloo," said Napoleon regretfully at St. Helena. O'Connell ought to have died in " Twenty-nine ;" or perhaps on the great day of Tara, in Eighteen hundred and forty-three. CHAPTEE IV. THE RIBBON CONFEDERACY. THROUGHOUT the half-century extending from 1820 to 1870, a secret oath-bound agrarian confederacy, known as the " Kibbon Society," was the constant affliction and recurring terror of the landed classes of Ireland. The Vehmgericht itself was not more dreaded. The Mania did not more mysteriously baffle and defy suppression. The lord in his castle, the peasant in his hut, were alike made to feel the existence of its hateful power. I think it can be sho^m that for more than a hundred years ever since the commencement of the last century secret agrarian confederacies of one sort or another have existed in Ireland, all having their source and origin in the miseries and feuds incidental to a vicious land system. Few of them, how- ever, attained to the dimensions of the Eibbon Conspiracy; none of them lived so long. It is assuredly strange indeed, almost incredible that although the existence of this organisation was, in a general way, as well and as widely known as the fact that Queen Victoria reigned, or that Daniel O'Connell was once a living man ; although the story of its crimes has thrilled judge and jury, and parliamentary committees have filled ponderous blue-books with evidence of its proceedings, there is to this hour the widest con- flict of assertion and conclusion as to what exactly were its real aims, its origin, structure, character, and purpose. The most prevalent idea is that it related solely or mainly to transactions in land, and was " non-political," that is, had no design against the Government; but this impression can be the result of no very special knowledge or investigation of the subject. Whatever Eibbonisni developed into subsequently, it 34 NEW IRELAND. is the fact that at an early stage it was held out to be " political " in the sense above referred to. It would, perhaps, be more correct to say that in some parts of Ireland, or at some period of its existence, it professed to be an organisation of that character ; for I long ago satisfied myself that the Bibbonism of one period was not the Eibbonism of another ; that the version of its aims and character prevalent amongst its own members in one county or district differed widely from that existing elsewhere. In Ulster it professed to be a defensive or retaliatory league against Orangeism. In Munster it was at first a combination against 'tithe-proctors. In Connaught it was an organisation against rack-renting and evictions. In Leinster it often was mere trade-unionism, dictating by its mandates and enforcing by its vengeance the employment or dismissal of workmen, stewards, and even domestics. This latter phase generally preceded the disappearance of the system in a particular locality, and was evidently the lowest and basest form to which it sank or rotted in decay. Everywhere and at all times Eibbonism had, no dorJ > J -, certain general forms or features in common. Some of thcK- were very remarkable. In the first place, although at one time, and in some localities, it affected to be a political organisation for national designs, there cannot be found in the records of its proceedings evidence or trace of participation in them by any persons of social position or education above a very humble grade; and I need hardly remark that at no period of Irish history could this be said of really political conspiracies. The Eibbon Society seems to have been wholly confined to small farmers, cottiers, labourers, and, in the towns, petty shop- keepers, in whose houses the " lodges " were held. Its documents, correspondence, rules, passwords, and addresses betray in most instances the grossest illiteracy; although the construction and management of the organisation exhibited much cleverness, activity, vigilance, and resource. The next singular fact is that although from the inception, or first appearance, of Eib- bonism the Catholic clergy waged a determined war upon it denouncing it from the altar, and going so far as to refuse the sacraments to its adherents the society was exclusively Catholic. Under no circumstances would a Protestant be admitted to membership; nay, any person nearly related to, or connected with, a Protestant was disqualified. This is about the only feature which seems to have been universally prevalent and invincibly retain? d in the hundred forms f Irish Eibbonism. The fact has, however, led to some utterly erroneous ideas as to the TEE RIBBON CONFEDERACY. 35 alleged sanguinary sectarian designs of the organisation, and has encouraged the concoction of some rather stupidly forged " Eibbon oaths." One of these was cited by Mr. Monk in the House of Commons, on the 18th of March 1871, and ran as follows : By virtue of the oath I have taken I will aid and assist with all my mind and strength when called upon, to massacre Protestants and cut away heretics, burn British churches, and abolish Protestant kings and princes, and all others except the Church of Rome and this system. * * * And I also feel bound to believe that there is no absolution to be had from the Pope of Rome or any other authority belonging to that Church, or that which is to come, from any breac^ f this test. The spuriousness of this production was instantly perceived and pointed out in Ireland. The person who composed it was not only not a Catholic (as a Eibbonman would necessarily have been), but he was ignorant of the way in which Catholics invari- ably refer to topics touched on in the alleged oath. They never speak or write of their own Church as " that " Church ; and the " Pope of Eome " is a Protestant, not a Catholic, phrase in Ire- land. An Irish peasant would scarcely know what was meant by a " British church." Indeed, the Irish Chief Secretary (Lord Hartington) admitted that though the police had found a copy of such an oath in a house near Mullingar, its authenticity was not accepted in Dublin Castle. Of genuine Eibbon oaths those the nse of which in the lodges was actually deposed to there is a confusing plenty; and a contrast of these will amply corroborate my statement that the real origin, character, and aims of the combination have baffled discovery ; or that there were various Eibbon systems radically differing one from another. Between 1820 and 1870 there have foeen put in evidence, or sworn to in " informations," more than a score of irreconcilable Eibbon oaths. Some, for instance, set out by pledging the most devoted fealty to the Queen ; others by swearing allegiance to " Daniel O'Connell, real King of Ireland, and his eldest son, Maurice O'Connell, our Chief Commander." Of these two oaths, or classes of oaths, various versions have been given, not merely by " approvers " in the witness-box, but from written documents seized at lodge meetings. The expla- nation of all this very probably is that the local officials of the society in many places added some words of their own. The general features of the oath seemed to be to keep the secrets of the society ; implicit obedience to its officers ; readiness to assemble and execute commands " at two hours' notice ;" pledge D 2 36 NEW IliELAND. to assist any fellow-member being beaten or ill-treated. In several versions the oath contained a clause binding the members "never to drink to excess so as to endanger the divulging of secrets." Not long since I was shown a printed report (now, I believe, very rare) of the trial in Dublin in 1840 of Eichard Jones, the first high officer indeed I believe the first member of the Eibbon Society whom the Government were able to convict, after nearly twenty years of fruitless endeavours to grapple with the system. In this publication frequent reference is made to a book found on the prisoner, in which he had copied in short-hand characters most of his secret correspondence with the lodges and lodge officers, as well as the signs, passwords, rules, and regulations of the society. The Government did not divulge on the trial all that the book contained; but they caused to be executed for their private information a full copy of its contents, probably the most complete and authentic revelation they were able to obtain, before or since, of the character, designs and transactions of the Eibbon Society. Government documents are not always carefully kept. That identical manuscript translation of Jones's secret book is this moment in my possession.* Jones was clerk to a salesmaster in Smithfield Market, Dublin, and filled the office of general secretary for Ireland in the Eibbon system. In truth he appears to have been the ruling spirit of the society. A perusal of this correspondence certainly shows that Eibbonism was then being established with political aims or pretensions. Jones, who, though a man of humble education, plainly possessed considerable ability and force of character, appears on the face of these communications to have been nothing of the vulgar and venal villain which most Eibbon organisers are assumed to have been. .From first to last he is energetically repressing discords, counselling union, and directing the expul- sion of bad and doubtful characters. I find no trace of selfish gain or profit to himself quite the contrary in the whole story ; while as to the aims of the confederacy, though on this point there is wondrous vagueness and confusion, these letters are full of allusions essentially political in their character. To " free Ireland " to " liberate our country "to " unite all Eoman Catholics," are again and again mentioned, incidentally, as the great objects of the society. On the 24th of April 1838, Jones, * I believe that documents of even a much more startling character have been dispersed through the waste-paper shops of Dublin since the death of a well-known Castle official a few years ago. THE EIBBON CONFEDERACY. 37 writing to an official of the society in England, says, " Send us word immediately what is the determination of the friends belonging to the Hibernians in Liverpool. If they act for the welfare of their native land they will join with those persons whose wish it is to see their native land free. The motto of every honest Irishman should be ' Unite and free your native land.' " Nay, strange to say, I find in one of Jones's letters not read on the trial an observation which sounds curiously at the present moment. " The hour of England's difficulty is at hand," he tells them: "the Kussian bear is drawing near to her in India." Again, oil the 21st of May 1838, Andrew Dardis and Eichard Jones, the grand master and grand secretary, write to a lodge master in the country, " We are happy to hear that the men of your county that were heretofore opposed to the in- terests of our native land are to meet you on the 27th for the purpose of causing unity of feeling." In fine, it is abundantly clea.r that, in some hazy general way, the Ribbonmen of this period were induced to believe that the organisation was a political conspiracy against the Government, and not the mere agrarian combination which it subsequently proved to be. The name " Ribbon" Society was not attached to it until about 1826. It was previously known as " Liberty Men " ; the " Religious Liberty System " ; the " United Sons of Irish Freedom " ; " Sons of the Shamrock " ; and by other names. From an early period there were rival Ribbon organisations bitterly opposing one another ; and Jones's great concern seems to have been to put down this contention and effect a fusion. The Government were fairly perplexed by the conflicting accounts sent in from time to time by the magistrates and police as to the society. Most of all were they bewildered by the stories supplied by their paid agents or " informers " in the ranks of the organisation. These latter were numerous enough, and their information, estimated as to quantity, was well worth the pay given for it ; but the Government declared that in scarcely a single case or a single particular were they able to place any reliance on these stories. The informants seem to have known very little that could be made evidence, but to have invented a ^reat deal. Mr. Barnes, a stipendiary magistrate greatly trusted by the Government, writes as follows to the Chief Secretary as to one of these informants, whose stories the Lord Lieutenant wished him to probe : This man has been known to me since the month of October last ; and from my knowledge of him I have no hesitation in designating him one of 387013 38 NEW IRELAND. the jiost consummate and specious villains in all Ireland. He was formerly a policeman, and discharged for misconduct ; a Protestant, and turned to mass for the purpose, as he stated to me, of becoming a Ribbonman ana betraying their secrets ; was in my employment between four and five? months as a secret agent to get me information; received in that time- upwards of fifteen pounds from me, and ended our connection by stating, and offering to swear to his statement, that he himself was one of the party who murdered Morrison (Lord Lorton's bailiff), tendering himself to inc as an approver, and claiming the " reward and pardon " offered by the proclamation. Knowing this statement to be false, I determined to have nothing more to do with tke fellow, and accordingly ceased all communica- tion with him. Other magistrates were not quite so strait-laced as Mr. Barnes, and this " consummate and specious vilkin " found ready em- ployment elsewhere as a police agent for the " detection " of Rib- bonism. In this process there is but too much reason to conclude that he pursued a course unfortunately not rare in connection with secret associations in Ireland namely, that he em-oiled members and organised or perpetrated outrages himself, then " divulged " to the authorities, and swore to conviction against his dupes and accomplices.* A Mr. Hill Bowan, stipendiary magistrate, who seems to have made the discovery of Kibbonism his special labour, supplied the most copious information on the subject. In many respects he was, clearly, over-credulous. Even the Government con- sidered him given to exaggeration : yet his revelations no doubt contained a great deal of truth. According to him, the society was the " Society of Confidential Eibbonmen." He gravely narrates how one of his informants no doubt belonging to the class above referred to testified that it was first formed by Lord Ed-ward Fitzgerald, in 1798 ; that " its present objects were to dethrone the Queen ; to place Daniel O'Connell, the member * Mr. Faucett, Provost of Sligo, writes to the Lord Lieutenant of one of these informants whom he was asked to report :von privately: "He is a. doubtful sort of person, on whose uncorroborated testimony no reliance should be placed ; and it appears to me his object is to get or earn money by his information." Mr. Brownrigg, provincial inspector of constabulary, reporting another of them says : " He is a man of very bad character." Of yet another "I have been informed by persons on whom reliance can be placed that he is a man of the very worst character." Of another the stipendiary magistrate (Mr. O'Brien) says : " Mr. Jones admitted there could not be any use made of his evidence. Mr. Brownrigg and I came to the conclusion that he was not telling one word of truth, but that his, abject was to get money." Numerous sui:h cases might be cited. THE EIBBON CONFEDERACY. 39 of Parliament for Dublin, as Catholic king of Ireland in her stead ; to put down and destroy the Protestant religion in Ireland ; and to restore the forfeited estates that were usurped by Oliver Cromwell, a list of which is kept by the Catholic priests, to their owners." The society extended all over Ireland, and was governed by a body called " the Grand Eibband Lodge of Ireland," this body being comprised of representatives of the different county organisations. Quarterly returns of the number of members were made by every parish. Over each parish there was a " Parochial Committee " of twelve, including the " Parish Master." A delegate from each such committee in a barony formed the " Baronial Lodge." All orders of the society were to be obeyed under penalty of death. The members in each county were known to each other by signs and passwords, which were issued by the grand lodge every month, but changed as often as the existing or current passes ("goods" they were called) might be discovered by the police. There were salutation phrases and " quarrelling words ; " that is, words which two men engaged in strife might use to ascertain whether they were not " brethren," and so bound to desist. Some of these grips and passwords ran as follows : \ (For October.) Observation. The winter is approaching. Reply. It is time to expect it. 0. Our foe is found out. . Our guardians are watchful. (At night.) 0. The night is sharp. JK. It is time to expect it. (Quarrelling.) 0. You make a mistake. . I am sorry for it. (Sign.) The right hand to the right knee. The left thumb in the breeches' pocket. It will be Roted that the opening observation is always of a harmless commonplace -nature, which if addressed to a stranger could occasion no suspicion. " The winter is approaching " is a remark not out of course in October. If the immediate response is * It is time to expect it," the first speaker has reason to think 40 NEW IRELAND. he is talking to a brother Eibbonman. To make sure, he pro- ceeds with a remark not likely to be understood unless by a fellow-member : " Our foe is found out." A reply declaring that " Our guardians are watchful " establishes brotherhood between the parties. The " quarrelling words " are similarly explained. Here are other forms : 0. The days are getting long. R. The life of man is getting short. 0. Have you got any news ? R. They are doing well in Canada.* (Quarrelling.) 0. Don't be fond of quarrelling. R. By no means. Even at that time, forty years ago, Russia figured so largely in public politics as to find a place in these passwords : 0. What is your opinion of the times ? E. I think the markets are on a rise. 0. Foreign war is the cause of it. R. It's the Russians wish to tyrannise. May the sons of Erin wherever they be Continue ever in loyalty. (Xight-word.) Q. What is the age of the moon? A. Really I don't know. (Sign.) Right hand rubbed across the forehead. To be answered by the left hand down the pocKet. The opening observation was, as I have pointed out, invariably harmless, and skilfully referred to some passing topic. Thus the troubles of the Melbourne ministry are brought in : G. What do you think of the Government ? S. They are much divided. 0. May Patrick's sons all persevere. R. To gain the rights of Granu Aile.* Down to quite a recent period it was not unusual for persons in a rank of life far above the Eibbonmen to be indebted to some friendly member for protection and assistance by "loan" of * The Canadian rebellion of M. Papineau was proceeding at the time, t One of the figurative names of Ireland ; actually the Gaelic for Grace O'Malley. THE RIBBON CONFEDERACY. 41 the sign or password. The late Sir John Gray told me that when contesting Monaghan county in 1852, he found that his opponents in a particular district had purchased the support of the Kibbon- men as an election mob, and that passage through the town to the place of meeting would be denied him. He realised fully the dangers of appearing in the midst of these men ; but in his last moments of despair a friend in need turned up. He was waited upon by a mysterious personage, who told him it. would be " a disgrace to Ireland if the patriotic editor of the Freeman's Journal was bludgeoned in the street, or compelled to hide in his hotel." He thereupon confided to Sir John the current Eibbon signs, the first of which happened to be simply the drawing of the fingers of the right hand across the mouth. Sir John hesitated for an instant. Was this a trap to lure him into the midst of his enemies ? He quickly dismissed the thought, and boldy sallied forth ; his companions in the hotel, ignorant of the aegis confided to him, vainly endeavouring to dissuade him. A yell burst from the mob around the door when he emerged into the street, and hundreds of sticks rose in the air. He quietly lifted his hand to his mouth and gave the sign. " For barely a second," said he, telling me the story, " there flashed through my mind a horrible uncertainty; but by a supreme effort I main- tained myself, and betrayed no symptom of alarm. Suddenly every voice was hushed, every weapon was lowered, and a passage was opened out for me in the crowd, amidst which I quietly walked to the court-house, where the meeting was proceeding." I myself have known instances in the course of what I call the rot of the system where the support or opposition of the Eibbon- men during an election was quite a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Mr. Kichard Swift, who was returned member of Par- liament for Sligo county in 1852 one of the most faithful and worthy Englishmen who ever espoused the public service of Ireland lost his re-election in 1857 notoriously because he refused to give a sum of money privately demanded as black-mail by the lodges. In other cases, I feel bound to admit, the Ribbonmen adopted a less venal course. They scorned to fight for pay. But alas ! when one comes to review the actual results of the Eibbon system in Ireland to survey its bloody work throughout those fifty years how frightful is the prospect ! It has been said, and probably with some truth, that it has been too much the habit to attribute erroneously to the Eibbon organisation every atrocity committed in the country, every deed of blood 42 NEW ICELAND. apparently arising out of agrarian combination or conspiracy. An emphatic denial, and challenge to proofs, have been given to- st ories of midnight trials and sentences of death at lodge meetings. Very possibly the records of lodge meetings afford no such proof, though there is abundant evidence that at such assemblages threatening notices and warnings were ordered to be served and domiciliary visits for terrorising purposes were decreed. But vain is all pretence that the Eibbon Society did not become, whatever the original design or intentions of its members may have been, a hideous organisation of outrage and murder. It is one of the inherent evils of oath-bound secret societies of this kind, where implicit obedience to secret superiors is sworn, that thoy may very easily and quickly drop to the lowest level of demorali- sation, and become associations for the wreaking of mere personal: vengeance. Men who set themselves to the work of assassination on any pretence, speedily become so depraved that life-taking- ceases to have enormity in their eyes. There was a period when Eibbon outrages had, at all events, conceivable provocation; but there came a time when they sickened the public conscience by their wantonness. The vengeance of the society was ruthless and terrible. Some forty years ago the Catholic peasantry of Longford county were panic-stricken by the commencement of what looked like a settled design for their extermination, in order that a Protestant " plantation " might be established in their stead. Lord Lorton was accountable in the largest degree for this alarm, and the lamentable consequences which resulted. He commenced considerable evictions of his Catholic tenantry under circumstances of great hardship ; handing over the farms thus cleared, in several consecutive instances, to Protestant new- comers. Popular panic no doubt exaggerated much as to what had been done and was intended ; but enough was patent on the face of his proceedings to account for the wild excitement which arose. That excitement culminated in one of the most astonishing chapters of savage vengeance of which there is record in Ireland. Defending himself and explaining his course of action subsequently, Lord Lorton told the fate of the nine Protestant tenants Brock, Diamond, Moorehead, Cole, Cathcart, Eollins, (another) Diamond, (another) Moorehead, and Morrison whom he had planted on the evicted farms : " What became of Brock?" "He was murdered, a very short time after he had taken possession, close by his house, about six o'clock in the evening." "What became of Diamond ?" TEE RIBBON CONFEDERACY. 43 " Diamond was attacked and very much, injured. He is now in a disabled state." " What became of Alexander Moorehcad ? " " He had all his cattle destroyed in January." " What became of Cole ? " "On his way to purchase stock he was stabbed and beaten in a most savage manner. His life was despaired of." " What became of Cathcart ?:" " On four different occasions he was fired at, and ultimately was shot dead near his own dwelling'." " What became of Eollins? " " Eollins and the second Diamond lived together. Their stock was taken away, and was found killed, skinned, and buried in bog holes." " What became of Hugh Moorehead ? " " He was murdered while sitting round the fire in the evening with his little family." " What became of William Morrison ?, " " He was murdered. An armed party attacked and murdered him in a house in Drumlish." This terrible recapitulation enables one to realise the bloody work of agrarian combinations. To me it certainly is peculiarly revolting because of the religious element which mingles in the story. Yet there is another side of the picture to be looked at. The guilt of one party is not lessened by the culpability of the other ; but each has to be viewed. I have given in the words of that nobleman himself Lord Lorton's thrilling recital of the assassins' vengeance. Were I to set forth the accounts of his lordship's proceedings from the lips of the Ballinamuck tenantry, it would be a record of great barbarity. The relations between him. and these people seem to have become, in thait evil time, those of deadly and implacable war. A document under his own hand, issued a year before the razing of .Balli- naniuck (referred to below), and relied upon ri;--a "justification" of that ruthless and shocking proceeding, gives some idea of Lord Lorton's temper: " W 7 hen murders and other barbarous acts of violence are com- mitted upon any part of the property, and convictions do not take place at the ensuing assizes, the occupiers of the lands on the leases expiring will be ejected." That is, to say,, wholesale eviction which meant ruin and death for the wretched people was to follow, unless "at the ssizes " the Crown proseculed and convicted for murder 44 NEW IRELAND. or other outrage. The edicts of William Eufus were more considerate than this. Lord Lorton was as good as his threat. Publicly and sincerely he afterwards expressed his sorrow for the vengeance he wreaked in a moment of passion ; but it was too late: he had done that which no repentance could undo. He ordered the whole population of Ballinamuck to be swept away, and the entire village to be razed to the ground. It was done. That scene will never be forgotten in Longford. A Protestant landlord and magistrate in Sligo county -one who was himself, many years ago, " posted " for assassination by the Eibbon authorities assured me that the frightful severity of the law, as administered at the time the excessive penalties, and the vengeful spirit in which they were inflicted had much to do in driving the rural population into this lawless and savage state. " I have known," said he, " a man to be executed for- breaking the hasp of a door and rescuing a mule belonging to himself that had been seized and impounded." This was what was called salutary vigour. He added that in more instances than one within his own knowledge the crimes of the Eibbonmen, abominable as they were, had been preceded by heartless provocations. The way, as my friend described it to me, in which the body of a man murdered in that neighbourhood was discovered was truly remarkable. This man, Madden by name a sullen, daring, reckless fellow united nearly every avocation that could render him odious to the people. He had been a tithe-proctor, brutal and unfeeling in his razzias. He was rent-warner and bailiff. He knew the surrounding population hated him, and he defiantly displayed his hate of them. It was decided at some midnight council that Madden should be put to death. Parties of two or three lay in wait for him on several occasions, but he happened not to pass by the way which they expected. At length no less than thirty-six men, divided into four separate parties of nine each, were told off and posted at every possible path by which he could reach his house, returning from the market town. One of these bands encountered the wretched man, and murdered him, not many perches from his own door. While the body was yet warm nay, horrible to relate, while life yet throbbed in it they buried it in a corner of a freshly-ploughed field close at hand, leaving not a trace of their bloody deed visible to tell the tale. Madden was missed. The hue and cry was raised. The police scoured the whole country-side, searched every house, examined every bush and fence, all in vain. No clue could THE RIBBON CONFEDERACY. 45 be found. It seemed as if the deed was to be for ever shrouded in impenetrable mystery. One day the daughter of the murdered man was passing from one field to another, and mounted an old dry-built stone wall. It gave way beneath her, and she fell heavily forward. To save herself, as she came with a shock to the ground, she put out her hand. As it sunk in the soft soil it touched and grasped the hand of her father's buried corpse ! The unfortunate man seems to have struggled in his bloody grave after the murderers had quitted the scene. He had thrust one of his hands upward to within a few inches of the surface ! From 1835 to 1855 the Eibbon organization was at its greatest strength. For the last fifteen or twenty years it has been gradually disappearing from the greater part of Ireland, yet, strange to say, betimes intensifying, in a baser and more malig- nant form than ever, in one or two localities. With the emigra- tion of the labouring classes it was carried abroad, to England and to America. At one time the most formidable lodges were in Lancashire, whither, it is said, the headquarters were removed for safety. It manifestly adapted itself to the necessities or requirements of the class whence its ranks were recruited; for while at home in Ireland it affected to right the wrongs of tenants and farm-labourers against landlords and bailiffs in England it offered to its members the advantages of a league offensive and defensive in a species of trades-union terrorism. Likely enough some sort of combination was found to be almost a necessity by the labouring Irish at one stage of their existence in England, when the effect of their appearance in the labour market drew upon them the fierce hostility of the lower classes around them. But all this has passed away ; and the few traces of demoralised Eibbonism that may yet be found lingering are, in nearly every case, miserable leagues for the lowest and worst of purposes, in which Irishman slays Irishman, and leave to live or to obtain employment in a particular district is regulated by the secret tribunal. Eibbonism has been killed off has found existence impossible according as a healthier public opinion has grown amongst the masses. Here, again, the school and the newspaper have proved powerful agencies of moral and political regeneration. This curse of Ireland is doomed to disappear before the onward march of intelligence and patriotism. NEW IRELAND. CHAPTER V. FATHER MATHEW. *" Two suns," we are told, "do not sMne in the one firmament"; yet the same period of Irish history beheld side by side with Daniel O'Connell, at the zenith of his fame, his great country- man and contemporary, Theobald Mathew, " the Apostle of Temperance." In widely different characters, however, these two men won eminence and praise. One was a political leader; the other was a moral reformer. The one commanded the allegiance of a party in the State ; the other received the homage of all. There is scarcely a country in the civilised world in which the memory of Father Mathew is not revered. Wherever good men are labouring for the elevation of humanity, the story of his career is an incentive to brave endeavour ; and how far his work has perished with or survived him is t question which excites solicitude. Theobald Mathew was born on the 10th of October 1790, at Thomastown House, near Cashel, in Tipperary, at that time the -seat of George Mathew, Earl of Llandaff. The Mathews, or JMathew family, of Welsh origin, appear to have been settled in 'Tipperary ever since the civil war of 1641. In 1650 one of its members, Captain George Mathews, then recently married to Lady Cahir, held Cahir Castle for the king, but after a brave re- sistance capitulated to the forces of Cromwell ; the Protector, in a letter under his own hand, bearing testimony to the gallantry of the defence. At an early age young Theobald was sent to Maynooth to l)e educated for the Catholic priesthood ; but an infraction of dis- cipline the entertainment of some fellow-students in his rooms at forbidden hours, I believe led to his retirement from the college. He completed his ecclesiastical training, however, at the Capuchin College, Kilkenny, and was ordained in 1814. After a few years .of clerical labour in the city of. St. Canice, he was moved by his superiors to the Cork friary of the order, where he devoted himself with more than ordinary zeal to the duties of his position. In the burst of success which hailed Father Mathew's crusade FATHER MATHEW. 47 against intoxicating drink, people came to regard him as the orginator or parent of the iemperance movement ; yet this was not so. He was a recruit, brought slowly to espouse the cause which but for his adhesion might have perished in Ireland. As early at all events as 1836, there was in Cork a little band of men who had embraced the doctrine of total abstinence from alcoholic beverages. They were chiefly Protestants ; some of the most active among them belonging to a religious denomination the members of which have been leaders in nearly every social and moral reform, and every humane or philanthropic effort, within my memory in Ireland the Society of Friends. When it was whispered around that men not yet in a lunatic asylum had taken up the notion that human life was possible without alcoholic drink, the wits of Cork laughed heartily at the craze. The believers in it were popularly regarded very much as the Shaker community seem to be in, this year of grace eighteen hundred and seventy-seven. They were verily the " peculiar people " of that date. After a while, undeterred by the derision which they knew awaited them, they ventured upon public addresses, usually in some little school-room or meeting- house hid away in the back lanes. Hither came stray listeners to hear what it was all like, and to see with their own eyes the fanatics and fools who thought men could do without Beamish and Crawford's porter, or Wyse's whisky. Many " came to scoff," but few indeed " remained to pray." There is, perhaps, not a city in the empire so dominated by sarcasms as Cork. Every well-known character has a soubriquet fastened on him by some one of the local wits. Every incident is viewed from its comic side. In the Momonian capital, to be laughed at is to be suppressed, and this cold-water business was overwhelmed by ridicule. Toiling laboriously amidst the squalor and poverty of the poorest quarter of Cork city, the young Capuchin wa,s at this time laying the foundation for that marvellous personal influence which afterwards formed so great a part of his power. He was not content with discharging the ordinary duties of his sacred calling, although these were in themselves severe and trying. He pushed entirely outside the strictly spiritual sphere. He set up schools infant and adult, Sunday and week-day ; rented a loft here and a third-floor there, wherein he established industrial teaching; the girls being taught various knitting and needle-work occupations, the boys such trades as seemed most suitable. Then there was not a dispensary or an hospital, not an alms society or room-keepers' 48 NEW IRELAND. aid fund, in Cork, that he was not in the thick of the work, pushing on every good endeavour, and constantly devising some new experiment in the same direction. Before long the name of the young friar was a household word ; his untiring activity, his noble unselfishness, his ardent anxiety for upraising the moral and social condition of the wretched masses, were the theme of every tongue. These labours inevitably brought him into association with good and philanthropic men of every creed and every grade ; and the charm of his manner, his bright, genial, kindly nature, his unaffected simplicity and single-mindedness, soon rendered him as great a favourite with Protestants as with his own co-religionists. Amongst the former were some of the total abstinence advo- cates, notably the leading " fanatic " of the movement, a man whose name is still warmly remembered by his fellow-merchants and fellow-citizens of Cork William Martin. Long had this sturdy " Quaker " and his gallant band preached the new evangel of abstinence from alcohol; but they felt that, though the Catholic masses around them respected them greatly and viewed them kindly, no one but a Catholic of influence and popularity could really give the movement headway amongst the people. One day while honest " Bill Martin " and Father Mathew were making their morning visitation of an hospital, the constantly- suggested theme of the miseries which drink brought on the- people came uppermost. Mr. Martin, in a burst of passionate grief or invective, suddenly stopped and turned to his com- panion, exclaiming, " Oh, Theobald Mathew, Theobald Mathew, what thou couldst do if thou wouldst only take up this work of banishing the fiend that desolates the houses of thy people so!" The young Capuchin seemed as if struck by some mysterious power. He remained silent, walked moodily on till he parted from his Quaker companion, then went home, pondering words which all that day and all through the night seemed still t ring in his ears, " Oh, Theobald Mathew, what thvu couldst do if thou wouldst but take up this work ! " If there was one man in Cork city who pre-eminently had tried every other way of rescuing and uplifting the people, it was he. What had he not done, what had he not tried, and yet did not this drink curse start up at every turn to baffle and defeat his every endeavour ? But was not William Martin's scheme a mad and impracticably idea? Was it not already consigned to failure by the good- FATHEB MAT HEW. 4& humoured laughter of the city ? Could he indeed do what his- friend believed ? For some days Father Mathew considered the whole subject seriously. One morning, as he rose from his knees in his little oratory, he exclaimed aloud, " Here goes, in the name of God."* An hour afterwards he was in the office of William Martin^ " Friend William," said he, " I have come to tell you a piece of news. I mean to join your temperance society to-night." The honest-souled Quaker rushed over, flung his arms round the neck of that young Popish friar, kissed him like a child, and cried out, " Thank God ! thank God ! " Thus entered Father Mathew on that work with which his name is so memorably associated ; thus began that wonderful moral revolution which was soon to startle the kingdom. The news that the popular young Capuchin had taken up with " the teetotal men " soon spread in Cork. All at once it set people thinking, for Father Mathew had always been espe- cially practical, not visionary, in his schemes and efforts for social improvement and moral reform. Crowds came to hear what he might have to say on the subject. Before many weeks the en- rolment of adherents attained considerable volume, and the direction of the work passed gradually into his own hands. Indeed he early decided, after consultation with the first friends of the movement, to establish an organisation, or rather an enrolment, under his own presidency, which he did on the 10th of April 1838. The fame of his labours and of his success filled the city. Every street, every lane and alley, every large workshop, ha*d its- story of the marvellous change from misery and want to comfort and happiness wrought in some particular case by "joining Father Mathew." Every locality had its illustration ; every one knew some wretched drunkard's home that had been converted, as if by the wand of a magician, into a scene of humble content- ment and smiling plenty. The working classes seemed quite staggered by the indubitable proofs that not only could men live and move and have their being without John Barleycorn's aid, but that health, happiness, and prosperity seemed to be within the easy reach of all who shunned him. The crowds who had found these blessings under the temperance banner were imbued with a grateful enthusiasm. They shouted far and * This incident is rather differently narrated by the late Mr. Maguire, M.P., in his charming volume " Father Mathew: a Biography.". I^iiavo preferred to give it as told to myself in early boyhood. NEW IRELAND. wide the story of their 'redemption. They hurried to every sufferer with the tidings of hope and joy. Each convert became a fiery apostle in his own way, and before the second anni- versary of Father Mathew's lifting of the standard had come round, he found himself at the head of a movement evidently -destined to a great future. There can be no question that the temperance reformation of Father Mathew's time in Ireland was largely the outcome of an enthusiasm which could not altogether 'last. Its novelty was a .great attraction. That is to say, men saw around them the rich fruits of a widely-embraced reform that had been preached and ^accepted among them for the first time. Not yet had reaction or reverse warned them that there was any but a bright side to the picture. Not yet had the terrible lesson been learnt that " taking the pledge " did not settle the question for aye. As yet the vow retained its pristine force and solemnity. As yet the dispiriting and demoralising spectacle of thousands relapsing .again and again had not overthrown popular confidence in the efficacy of the movement. The period between 1889 and 1845 beheld, however, its un- -checked and unbroken triumph. The wonders that had been .accomplished in Cork, of course, were noised throughout the .neighbouring counties; invitations were pressed on Father Mathew by the local clergy, soliciting his presence so that the blessing which his work was diffusing might be shared by their people. It may be asked, Why should not these clergymen have them- selves administered the total abstinence pledge, as they might have done ? Why were Father Mathew's actual presence and personal advocacy so essential ? If pious and eloquent exhorta- tion could prevail on men to join in a movement, the good results of which were so startlingly demonstrated, were there not hundreds of priests and laymen, eloquent and earnest, ready to .epread the crusade ? The truth is that much of Father Mathew's success was owing to his marvellous personal influence the almost magical effect of his personal exhortations. Futhermore, the prestige of his name, -an-i the eclat with which he was welcomed in each locality, gave impression to his missionary appearance and vastly increased his power. He was not what would be called a great orator ; it was not what we know as eloquence that enabled him to bend to his will the multitudes that thronged around him. 1 was little more than twelve years of age when I first heard FATHER MATEEW. &l Father Mathew, and I can still remember the impressions thea created. They were, I am confident, similar to the emotions ex- perienced by most of those whose good fortune it was to havo listened at any time to the " Apostle of Temperance." I was moved not so much by his words as by some indescribable in- fluence or charm which he seemed to exercise over his audience. His voice was exceedingly sweet and musical, and capable of /great inflections. His features were pleasing and handsome, .and when he smiled, sunshine diffused itself around. There was an air of dignity and tenderness indescribable about him, and the earnestness with which he spoke, the intense feeling he dis- played was irresistible. When such a man preached among a people so susceptible as the Celtic Irish a cause so just and holy preached it out of the fulness of a hea-rt abounding with love for them, with compassion for their sorrows and solicitude for their happiness who can wonder that the whole nation rose at his words as Christendom answered to the call of Peter the Hermit? It was indeed a " crusade " Father Mathew preached. When ver he visited a town or city, the population for a score miles .all round turned out en masse. At Limerick so vast was the as- - semblage that a troop of dragoons passing along the quay got "jammed" in the crowd, and were literally pushed into the river t>y the surging of the multitude. Railways were at the time scarcely known in Ireland, and Father Mathew travelled by the onail coach, out of which circumstance a formidable State griev- ance arose. If the inhabitants of a town or village happened to hear that the famous Capuchin was a passenger, they waylaid the vehicle " stopped her Majesty's mail," in fact and refused to let it proceed till he had administered the pledge to them. It was a time when political feeling ran high and strong in Ireland. It was the period of O'Connell's Repeal agitation and of all the accompanying excitement of that movement. Yet, etrange to say, Orange and Green alike waved a greeting to Father Mathew; Whig, Tory, and Repealer sounded his praise; and nowhere in all Ireland could he have received a welcome more cordial and enthusiastic than that which was extended to Mm, " Popish friar " as he was, by the Protestants of Ulster. He had been warned not to carry out his purpose of visiting that province ; the Orangemen, it was declared, could not stand the sight of a Catholic priest received with public festive display in their midst. What really happened was that the dreaded - Orangemen came out in grand procession to join in the ovation. E 2 52 NEW IRELAND. When Father Mathew saw their flags hung out at Cootehill on church and kirk, he rightly appreciated the spirit of the display,, and called for " three cheers " for them ! A Catholic clergyman calling for a cordial salutation of the Orange banner, and a Catholic assemblage heartily responding, was something almost inconceivable. It had never occurred before in Ireland ; I am afraid it has never occurred since. In 1843 he visited England, landing at Liverpool, and pro- ceeding by way of Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York, to London. At each of these places he remained a day or two, ad- ministering the pledge to tens of thousands. In London he was fated to encounter the only attempt ever made to offer him insult and violence. The publicans of the great metropolis were wroth with the audacity of this endeavour to bring the temperance movement to their doors. They determined to put Father Mathew down ; but they were too skilful to expose their real motive of opposition by openly raising the cry of " trade interests in danger." For weeks the tap-room loungers and beery roughs of the metropolis were harangued over the counter about the "Popish Irish priest" who was coming to overthrow their liberties. The result was that at more than one place in the city, on Father Mathew's appearance an infuriate rabble assailed the platform, compelling him to desist^ or else to administer the pledge under protection of the police. At Bermondsey the publicans' mob hooted and pelted him, and some of them were detected in an attempt secretly to cut the ropes of the platform scaffolding. It was at the same place and on the same occasion, I believe, that they marched to interrupt him in a procession singularly, let me rather say disgracefully, equipped. The co- hort of tap-room roughs were wreathed from head to foot in hop-leaves ; each one bore a can of beer in one hand and a stave in the other. In this fashion they invaded the temperance meeting,, whereupon, as might be expected, a violent conflict ensued, ter- initiated only by the timely arrivaf of a strong body of police. Despite all such opposition, Father Mathew pursued his- labours in London. He had the satisfaction, before leaving, of knowing that he had laid broad and deep the foundations of a great reformation amongst, at all events, his own fellow-country- men and co-religionists in the great city. During his stay the most flattering attentions were poured upon him by the best and greatest men of England. The Protestant Bishop of Norwich' invited him to visit that town and accept the hospitalities of the palace. Lord Stanhope pressed a like welcome to Chevening ;. FATHER MATHEW. 53 and at Lord Lansdowne's the " Irish Popish friar " received the cordial greeting of the Duke of Wellington, Lord Brougham, and many other notabilities. He did not relish this "lionising," but he accepted these demonstrations as a valuable moral aid and encouragement to his work. Mr. Maguire tells a story I had not heard before, which is quite characteristic of Father Mathew's simplicity. He was being taken in to dinner by some noble host in London, when he recognised in one of the attend- ant servants a man whom he had formerly known as a humble but devoted member of the temperance society in Cork city. Father Mathew rushed over to him, shook him heartily by the hand, and earnestly inquired after his welfare, above all whether he still was faithful to his " pledge." The honoured guest of the evening claiming acquaintance in this way with one of the domestics must have sadly astonished some of the company. But Father Mathew saw only in poor James or Thomas " a man and a brother " in the ranks of the great cause. It may be estimated that in 1845 the temperance movement had attained to its topmost height in Ireland. What had it to show for itself? What were its visible fruits by this time? It is no exaggeration to say it had effected an astonishing trans- formation. It could not bring to Ireland that prosperity and wealth which flow from increased production or multiplied resources. The condition of the bulk of the population was at best, as the world soon afterwards came to know, terribly pre- carious. But subject to this reservation, it may be said that never had a people made within the same space of time such strides from hardship to comparative comfort, from improvidence to thrift, from the crimes of inebriate passion to the ordered habits of sobriety and industry. I speak of what I saw. The temper- ance movement had not, I repeat, removed the deep-lying political causes of Irish poverty and crime; but it brought to the humblest some amelioration of his lot; it banished from thousands of homes afflictions that politics (as we use the phrase) could neither create nor cure ; it visibly diffused the feeling of self-respect and the virtue of self-reliance among the people. We all could note its influence, not only in their personal habits, but in their dress, in their manners, and in the greater neatness and tidiness of their homes. To this purport came testimony from every side. The magistracy and police told of crime greatly diminished. The clergy told of churches better filled with sincere and earnest worshippers. Traders rejoiced to find vast was the increase in popular expenditure on articles of 64 NEW IRELAND. food and clothing or of home or personal comfort; There is official evidence in abundance on the point. As early as 1840 the Lord Lieutenant 'of Ireland, in a public letter, said : " To the benefit which the temperance pledge has conferred upon Ireland, in the improved habits of the people, and in the diminution of outrage, his Excellency bears grateful testimony." Like declarations might be cited from executive officials throughout the later years up to 1845. The police returns for the period are equally striking; but so many circumstances have to be weighed and calculated when considering the fluctuations in " criminal statistics " in Ireland, that as a general rule I lay little stress on what they show. Still, it is rather convincing to- find that the annual committals to prison in the seven years from 1839 to 1845, with a rapidly increasing population, show a steady decrease from twelve thousand to seven thousand ; that the capital sentences in each year declined gradually from sixty- six to fourteen ; and that the penal convictions sank from nine hundred in 1839 to five hundred in 1845. Of one interest in the country no doubt the movement made a wreck ; the whisky trade was for the time almost annihilated. In this connection two remarkable facts deserve to be especially noted: firstly, that members of Father Mathew*s own family were large distillers, and were amongst the first to suffer ruin by the success of his labours ; secondly, that from first to last no complaint, invective, or opposition ever was directed against Father Mathew by those of his countrymen whose fortunes he thus overwhelmed. Nay, amongst the warmest eulogies that cheered his career may be fo'jind the utterances of Irish manu- facturers and vendors of alcoholic drink.* But times of gloom and sorrow were now at hand for Father Mathew and for Ireland. Already a canker care was gnawing- at that once light and joyous heart. Troubles and embarrass- ments, beneath which, alas! he was eventually to sink, were secretly crushing the mind and energies of Father Mathew. Alone single-handed he had for seven years conducted a movement, had established, extended, and maintained an organi- sation such as no managing executive in these days could work without enormous pecuniary resources ; and regular revenues for * It is right to say that a like generous and unselfish spirit still exists among the same classes in many parts of Ireland. No men more heartily praise the good effects of the voluntary "Sunday closing" adopted throughout Wexford than the licensed traders themselves, as a general- rule, do iu that county. FATHER MATHEW. 55 &3E purpose he had none whatever. He seemed ta take little- ^cought of financial ways and means, but pushed on eagerly with the work ; freely incurring all incidental obligations> and raising- funds on his own responsibility as best he could. To each one of the hundreds of thousands to whom he ad- ministered the piedge an enrolment card and medal were given ; in truth the people seemed to think it no binding vow without this visible token. Each member was supposed to pay a shilling for these symbols of enrolment ; but as a matter of fact not more than half the .number so paid. On the contrary, too often so wretched T.IS the plight of the hapless victim of intemperance who knelt before him, that Father Hathew's generous hand was out- reached not only with a blessing but a dole. In 1845 he was in debt to medal manufacturers and others on behalf of the temperance movement some 5000. He had long groaned under the burden unknown to the world, unwilling, I believe, to disclose the source on which he relied for sometime liquidating these claims. Lady Elizabeth Mathew, his earliest and most constant friend, had intimated to him her intention of bequeath- ing him a substantial token of her admiration for his work and esteem for himself. Like many another generous purpose of a- similar character, this was doomed to be unfulfilled. Death called too suddenly on the intending benefactress, and Father Mathew found himself haunted by the tortures that dog the- debtor's path. That the country would have freely come to his relief in this matter, as an obvious act of duty and of gratitude, siirely cajmot be doubted; but coincidently with the revelation of his em- barrassments came events that paralysed the public mind. The famine, that stupendous calamity which no one can recall without a shudder, had burst on the hapless land: In the fierce struggle for existence, the desperate effort to save the people, every other public duty was suspended ; and Father Mathew's labours from 1846 to 1850 were one prolonged combat with the terrible scourge- that desolated the country. Bravely, uncomplainingly, unfalter- ingly he worked on, amidst the wreck of every hope, the overthrow of. all he loved and prized. In May 1847 he was nominated by the- clergy of Cork for the then vacant mitre of that diocese ; but the choice was not confirmed at Home, and a new disappointment tried his sinking soul. In the same year the Government, aware of his embarrassed circumstances, bestowed on him a grant of 300 a year, which he forthwith devoted to paying for an insurance on his life to indemnify his creditors. Mental and 56 NEW IRELAND. physical wear and tear snch as he endured proved too much for even his once splendid constitution. In the spring of 1848 he was attacked by paralysis ; an ominous premonition. Although he recovered in a few weeks, and in the following year visited America, where he remained till the close of 1851, he was never again the same man. In February 1852 paralysis assailed him for the second time, and from that date forward all friends could see that active life for him was over. In October 1851 he went to Madeira, and tried for a year what balm its breezes might bring. Next year he came home, and found, I verily believe, more solace and relief under the tender care and affec- tionate attentions of Protestant friends in Liverpool, Mr. and Mrs. Eathbone, than amidst the vineyards and orange groves of the sunny southern isle. In 1856 he came, or rather was brought, to Queenstown. He himself by this time felt that the end was not far off, and he fain would die amidst the familiar faces and scenes of home. On the 8th of December 1856 a wail of sorrow in the crowded streets of Cork city told that one fondly loved, yea, idolised, by the people, was no more. Not Ireland alone, but all Christendom, mourned a true hero in " the Apostle of Temperance." I have said that the astonishing success of the temperance movement from 1838 to 1845 was largely the product of en- thusiasm, and was certain to be followed by a reaction. Even if no unusual misfortune had befallen, some such retrocession would, I am confident, have been suffered, but nothing that would have seriously impaked the reformation which Father Mathew had wrought. Few words are needed to explain how such an event as the famine wrecked this great work, as it did many another noble enterprise, moral and material, at the time. It was as if a great wave submerged the island, burying, obliterating, or sweeping away everything. When that fearful deluge subsided, and the mountain-tops began to reappear, a scene of utter desolation came to view. The circumstances under which the drink-curse arose anew amongst the Irish people are painfully reproachful to our law- makers and administrators. There were scores, probably hun- dreds, of districts in Ireland from which drink-shops had long totally disappeared ; and had there been at the time any statut- able conservation of this " free-soil " area, three-fourths of Father Mathew's work would have endured to the present hour. But what happened within my own experience and observation was this : When the Government relief works were set on foot all " TEE BLACK FORTY-SEVEN." over the kingdom, close by every pay-office or depot there sta. into operation a meal-store and a whisky-shop; nay, often the pay-clerks and road staff lodged in the latter, and made it "headquarters." Only too well the wretched people knew what the firewater would do for them; it would bring them oblivion or excitement, in which the horror and despair around them would be forgotten for a while. In many a tale of shipwreck we read with wonder that at the last dread moment the crew broached the spirit casks and drank till delirium came. In Ireland the starving people seemed possessed by some similar infatuation when once more the fatal lure was set up before them. In the track of the Government relief staff, and specially " licensed " by law, the drink-shops reappeared, and, to a large extent, reconquered what they had lost. Not wholly, however. There are thousands of men in Ireland to-day who " took the pledge from Father Mathew " and hold by it still. There are cities and towns in which the flag has never been hauled down, and where its adherents are now as numerous as ever. To the movement of Father Mathew is owing, moreoever, that public opinion in favour of temperance effort, that parliamentary vote in favour of temperance legislation, which Ireland has so notably and so steadily exhibited. The pure-souled and great-hearted Capuchin has not lived and laboured in vain. CHAPTEE VI. "THE BLACK FORTY-SEVEN." THERE is probably no subject on which such painful misun- derstanding and bitter recrimination have prevailed between the peoples of England and Ireland as the Irish famine. The enmities and antagonisms arising out of other histo.rnal events were at all events comprehensible. The havoc and devastation which ensued upon the Eoyalist-Cromwellian war of 1641-1650, the confiscations and proscriptions which followed the Stuart struggle in 1690, the insurrection of 1798, and the overthrow of the Irish constitution in 1800, were causes of ire, on the one side or the other, as to the reality of which there was at least no controversy. But it was not so in this case. The 58 NEW IRELAND. English people, remembering only the sympathy and compassion which they felt, the splendid contributions -which they freely bestowed in that sad time, are shocked and angered beyond endurance when they hear Irishmen refer to the famine as a " slaughter." In Ireland, on the other hand, the burning memory of horrors which more prompt and competent action on the part of the ruling authorities might have considerably averted, seems to overwhelm all other recollection, and the noble gene- rosity of the English people appears to be forgotten in a frenzy of reproach against the English Government of that day. I know not whether the time has even yet arrived when that theme can be fairly treated, and when a calm and just apportionment of blame and merit may be attempted. To-day,, full thirty years after the event, I tremble to contemplate it. In 1841 the population of Ireland was 8,175,124 souls., By 1845 it had probably reached to nearly nine millions. The- increase had been fairly continuous for at least a century, and had become rapid between 1820 and 1840. To any one looking, beneath the surface the condition of the country was painfully precarious. Nine millions of a, population living, at best in a light-hearted and hopeful hand-to-mouth contentment, totally dependent on the hazards of one crop, destitute of manu- facturing industries, and utterly without reserve or resource to fall back upon in time of reverse; what did all this mean but a state of tilings critical and alarming in the extreme ? Yet- no one seemed conscious of danger. The potato crop had been abundant for four or five years, and respite from dearth and distress was comparative happiness and prosperity. Moreover,, the temperance movement had come to make the " good times " still better. Everything looked bright. No one concerned him- self to discover how slender and treacherous was the foundation for this general hopefulness and confidence. Yet signs of the coming storm had been given. Partial famine caused by failing harvests had indeed been intermittent in Ireland, and quite recently warnings that ought not to have been mistaken or neglected had given notice that the esculent which formed the sole dependence of the peasant millions was subject to some mysterious blight. In 1844 it was stricken in America, but in Ireland the yield was healthy and plentiful as ever. The harvest of 1845 promised to be the richest gathered for many years. Suddenly, in one short month, in one week it might be said, the withering breath of a simoom seemed to sweep the land, blasting all in its path. I myself saw whole tracts- " THE BLACK FORTY-SEVEN." 5J> of potato growth changed in one night from smiling luxuriance to a shrivelled and blackened waste. A. shout of alarm arose. But the buoyant nature of the Celtic peasant did not yet give- way. The crop was so profuse that it was expected the healthy portion would reach an average result^ Winter revealed the alarming fact that the tubers had rotted in pit and store-house. Nevertheless the farmers, like hapless men who double their stakes to recover losses, made only the more strenuous exertions to till a larger breadth in 1846. Although already feeling the- pinch of sore distress, if not actual famine, they worked as if for dear life ; they begged and borrowed on any terms the means whereby to crop the land once more. The pawn-offices were choked with the humble finery that had shone at the village dance or christening feast; the banks and local money-lenders were besieged with appeals for credit. Meals were stinted, backs were bared. Anything, anything to tide over the interval. to the harvest of " Forty-six." Q God, it is a dreadful thought that all this effort was but more surely leading them to ruin! It was this harvest of Forty-six that sealed their doom. Not partially but completely, utterly, hopelessly it perished. As in the previous year, all promised brightly up to the close of July. Then, suddenly, in a night, whole areas were blighted; and this time, alas! no- portion of the crop escaped. A cry of agony and despair went up all over the land. The last desperate stake for life had been played, and all was lost. The doomed people realised but too well what was before* them. Last year's premonitory sufferings had exhausted them ;. and now ? they must die ! My native district figures largely in the gloomy record of that dreadful time. I saw the horrible phantasmagoria would God it were but that ! pass before my eyes. Blank stolid dismay, a sort of stupor, fell upon the people, contrasting remarkably with the fierce energy put forth a year before. It was no uncommon sight to see the cottier and his little family seated on the garden fence gazing all day long in moody silence at the blighted plot that had been their last hope. Nothing could arouse them. You spoke ; they answered not. You tried to cheer them; they shook their heads. I never saw so sudden and so> terrible a transformation. When first in the autumn of 1845 the partial blight appeared, wise voices were raised in warning to the Government that a* frightful catastrophe was at hand; yet even then began that 60 NEW ICELAND. fatal circumlocution and inaptness which it maddens one to think of. It would be utter injustice to deny that the Govern- ment made exertions which judged by ordinary emergencies would be prompt and considerable. But judged by the awful magnitude of the evil then at hand or actually befallen, they were fatally tardy and inadequate. When at length the executive did hurry, the blunders of precipitancy outdid the disasters of excessive deliberation. In truth the Irish famine was one of those stupendous calami- ties which the rules and formulae of ordinary constitutional administration were unable to cope with, and which could be efficiently encountered only by the concentration ot plenary powers and resources in some competent " despotism " located in the scene of disaster. It was easy to foresee the result of an attempt to deal " at long range " with such an evil to manage it from Downing Street, London, according to orthodox routine. Again and again the Government were warned, not by heedless orators or popular leaders, but by men of the highest position and soundest repute in Ireland, that even with the very best intentions on their part, mistake and failure must abound in any attempt to grapple with the famine by the ordinary machinery of Government. Many efforts, bold and able efforts, were made by the Government and by Parliament eighteen months subse- quently I refer especially to the measures taken in the session of 18-17. But, unfortunately, everything seemed to come too late. Delay made all the difference. In October 1845 the Irish Mansion House Belief Committee implored the Government to call Parliament together and throw open the ports. The Govern- ment refused. Again and again the terrible urgency of the case, the magnitude of the disaster at hand, was pressed on the executive. It was the obstinate refusal of the Government to listen to such remonstrances and entreaties, and the sad verification subsequently of such apprehensions, that implanted in the Irish mind the bitter memories which still occasionally find vent in passionate accusation of " England." Not but the Government had many and weighty arguments in behalf of the course they took. Firstly, they feared exaggeration, and waited for official investigation and report.* Even when * The truth is, the fight over the Corn Law question in England at the time was peculiarly unfortunate for Ireland ; because the protectionist press and politicians felt it a duty strenuously to deny there was any danger of famine, lest such a circumstance should be made a pretext for Free Trade. Thus the Duke of Richmond, on the 9th of December 1845, " THE BLACK FORTY-SEVEN? 61 official testimony was forthcoming, the Cabinet in London erred as the Irish peasantry did, in trusting somewhat that the harvest of 1846 would change gloom to joy. When the worst came in 1846-47, much precious time was lost through misunderstand- ing and recrimination between the Irish landlords and the executive; charges of neglect of duties on one hand, and of incapacity on the other, passing freely to and fro. No doubt the Government feared waste, prodigality, and abuse if it placed absolute power and unlimited supplies in the hands of an Irish board ; and one must allow that, to a commercial-minded people, the violations of the doctrines of political economy involved in every suggestion and demand shouted across the Channel from Ireland were very alarming. Yet in the end it was found all too late, unfortunately that those doctrines were inap- plicable in such a case. They had to be flung aside in 1847. Had they been discarded a year or two sooner a million of lives might have been saved. The situation bristled with difficulties. " Do not demoralise the people by pauper doles, but give them employment," said one counsellor. " Beware how you interfere with the labour market," answered another. " It is no use voting millions to be paid away on relief works while you allow the price of food to be run up four hundred per cent. ; set up Government depots for sale of food at reasonable price," cried many wise and far- seeing men. " Utterly opposed to the teachings of Adam Smith," responded Lord John Eussell. At first the establishment of public soup-kitchens under local relief committees, subsidised by Government, was relied upon to arrest the famine. I doubt if the world ever saw so hijge a demoralisation, so great a degradation, visited upon a once high- spirited and sensitive people. All over the country large iron boilers were set up in which what was called " soup " was concocted ; speaking at the Agricultural Protection Society, said : " With respect to the cry of ' Famine,' he believed that it was perfectly illusory, and no man of repectability could have put it in good faith if he had been acquainted with the facts within the knowledge of their society." At Warwick, on the 31st of December, Mr. Newdegate carried a resolu- tion testifying against " the fallacy and mischief of the reports of a de- ficient harvest," and affirming that " there was no reasonable ground for apprehending a scarcity of food." Like declarations abounded in England up to a late period of the famine,, and, no doubt, considerably retarded the prompt action of the Government. 62 NEW 1 RELAX!). later OB Indian-meal stirabout was boiled. Around there boilers -on the roadside there daily moaned and shrieked and fought -and scuffled crowds of gaunt, cadaverous creatures that once had been men and women made in the image of God. The feeding of dogs in a kennel was far more decent and orderly. I - once thought a?, and often bitterly said, in public and in private that never, never would our people recover the shame- ful humiliation of that brutal public soup-boiler scheme. I frequently stood and watched the scene till tears blinded me and I almost choked with grief and passion. It was heart-breaking, almost maddening, to see ; but help for it there was none. The Irish poor-law system early broke down under the strain -which the famine imposed. Until 1846 the workhouses were shunned and detested by the Irish poor. Eelief of destitution had always been regarded by the Irish as a sort of religious -duty or fraternal succour. Poverty was a misfortune, not a -crime. When, however, relief was offered, on the penal condition of an imprisonment that sundered the family tie, and which, by destroying home, howsoever humble, shut out all hope of future recovery, it was indignantly spurned. Scores of times I have seen some poor widow before the workhouse board clasp her little children tightly to her heart and sob aloud, "No, no, your honour. If they are to be parted from me I'll not come in. I'll beg the wide world with them." But soon beneath the devouring pangs of starvation even this holy affection had to give way, and the famishing people poured into the workhouses, which quickly choked with the dying and the dead. Such privations had been endured in every case before this hated ordeal was faced, that the people entered the Bastile merely to die. .The parting scenes of husband and wife, father and mother and children, at the board-room door would melt a heart of stone. Too well they felt it was to be an eternal sever- ance, and that this loving embrace was to be their last on earth. The warders tore them asunder the husband from the wife "the mother from the child for "discipline" required that it should be so. But, with the famine fever in every ward, and the air around them laden with disease and death, they knew their fate, and parted like victims at the foot of the guillotine. It was not long until the workhouses overflowed and could admit no more. Eapidly as the death-rate made vacancies, the pressure of applicants overpowered all resources. Worse still, 'bankruptcy came on many a union. In some the poor-rate rose to -.twenty-two shillings on the pound, and very nearly the entire " TEE BLACK FORTY-SEVEN." 63 rural population of several were needing relief. In a few cases, I &m sorry to say, the horrible idea seemed to seize the landowners on the boards that all rates would be ineffectual, and -that, as their imposition would result only in ruining " property," it was as well to " let things take their course." Happily an act of Parlia- ment was passed in 1846 which gave the poor-law commissioner, 7 ; in Dublin power to deal with cases of delay or refusal to make adequate provision for maintenance of the workhouse. All such boards were abolished by sealed order, and paid vice- guardians were appointed in their place. To these, as well as to elected boards willing to face their duty, the commissioners were empowered to advance, by way of loan, secured on the lands within the union, funds sufficient to carry on the poor-law system. Had it not been for this arrangement, the workhouses would have closed altogether in many parts of the country. The conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine jperiod has been variously described, and has been, I believe, generally condemned. I consider the censure visited on them too sweeping. I hold it to be in some respects cruelly unjust. On many of them no blame too heavy could possibly fall. A large number were permanent absentees; their ranks were swelled by several who early fled the post of duty at home cowardly and selfish deserters of a brave and faithful people. Of those who remained, some may have grown callous ; it is im- possible to contest authentic instances of brutal heartlessness iiere and there. But granting all that has to be entered on the dark debtor side, the overwhelming balance is the other way. The bulk of the resident Irish landlords manfully did their best in that dread hour.* If they did too little compared with what ihe landlord class in England would have done in similar case, it was because little was in their power. The famine found most * No adequate tribute has ever been paid to the memory of those Irish landlords and they were men of every party and creed who perished martyrs to duty in that awful time ; who did not fly the plague-reeking -workhouse or fever-tainted court. Their names would make a goodly roll of honour. The people of Bantry still mourn for Mr. Richard White of Inchiclogh,' cousin of Lord Bantry, who early fell in this way. Mr. Martin, M.P. " Dick Martin," Prince of Connemara caught fever while acting as a magistrate, and was swept away. One of the most touching stories I ever heard was that told me by an eyie-witness of how Mr. Nolan of Ballinderry (father of Captain J. P. Nolan, M.P.), braving the deadly typhus in Tuam workhouse, was struck down, amidst the grief of a people who mourn him to this day. 64 NEW IRELAND. of the resident landed gentry of Ireland on the brink of ruin. They were heritors of estates heavily overweighted with the debts of a bygone generation. Broad lands and lordly mansions were held by them on settlements and conditions that allowed small scope for the exercise of individual liberality. To these landowners the failure of one year's rental receipts meant mort- gage foreclosure and hopeless ruin. Yet cases might be named by the score in which such men scorned to avert by pressure on their suffering tenantry the fate they saw impending over them. They " went down with the ship." In the autumn of 1846 relief works were set on foot, the Government having received parliamentary authority to grant baronial loans for such undertakings. There might have been found many ways of applying these funds in reproductive em- ployment, but the modes decided on were draining and road- making. Of course it was not possible to provide very rapidly the engineering staff requisite for surveying and laying out so many thousands of new roads all over the country ; but eventu- ally the scheme was somehow hurried into operation. The result was in every sense deplorable failure. The wretched people were by this time too wasted and emaciated to work. The endeavour to do so under an inclement winter sky only hastened death. They tottered at daybreak to the roll-call ; vainly tried to wheel the barrow or ply the pick, but fainted away on the " cutting," or lay down on the wayside to rise no more. As for the " roads " on which so much money was wasted, and on which so many lives were sacrificed, hardly any of them were finished. Miles of grass-grown earthworks throughout the country now mark their course and commemorate for posterity one of the gigantic blunders of the famine time. The first remarkable sign of the havoc which death was making was the decline and disappearance of funerals. Amongst the Irish people a funeral was always a great display, and participation in the procession was for all neighbours and friends a sacred duty. A " poor " funeral that is, one thinly attended was considered disrespectful to the deceased and re- proachful to the living. The humblest peasant was borne to- the grave by a parochial cortege. But one could observe in the summer of '46 that, as funerals became more frequent, there was a rapid decline in the number of attendants, until at length persons were stopped on the road and requested to assist in conveying the coffin a little way further. Soon, alas ! neither coffin nor shroud could be supplied. Daily in the street and OB " THE BLACK FOETY-SEVEX." 65 the footway some poor creature lay down as if to sleep, and presently was stiff and stark. In our district it was a common occurrence to find on opening the front door in early morning, leaning against it, the corpse of some victim who in the night- time had "rested" in its shelter. We raised a public sub- . scription, and employed two men with horse and cart to go around each day and gather up the dead. One by one they were taken to a great pit at Ardnabrahair Abbey and dropped through the hinged bottom of a " trap-coffin " into a common grave below. In the remoter rural districts even this rude sepulture was impossible. In the field and by the ditch side the victims lay as they fell, till some charitable hand was found to cover them with the adjacent soil. It was the fever which supervened on the famine that wrought the greatest slaughter and spread the greatest terror. For this destroyer when it came spared no class, rich or poor. As long as it was "the hunger" alone that raged, it was no deadly peril to visit the sufferers ; but not so now. To come within the reach of this contagion was certain death. Whole families perished unvisited and unassisted. By levelling above their corpses the sheeling in which they died, the neighbours gave them a grave.* No pen can trace nor tongue relate the countless deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice which this dreadful visitation called forth on the part, pre-eminently, of two classes in the community the Catholic clergy and the dispensary doctors of Ireland. I have named the Catholic clergy, not that those of the Protes- tant denominations did not furnish many instances of devotion fully as striking,! but because on the former obviously fell the * I myself assisted in such a task under heartrending circumstances ia June 1847. t The Protestant curate of my native parish in 1847 was the Rev. Alexander Ben HalloweLl, subsequently rector of Clonakilty. There were comparatively few ef his own flock in a way to suffer from the famine ; but he dared death daily in his desperate efforts to save the perishing /reatures around him. A poor hunchback named Richard O'Brien lay dying of the plague in a deserted hovel at a place called " the Custom Gap." Mr. Hallowell passing by, heard the moans and went in. A shock- ing sight met his view. On some rotten straw in a dark ceruer lay poor " Dick " naked, except for a few rags across his body. Mr. Hallowell rushed to the door and saw a young friend on the road : " Hun, run with this shilling and buy me some wine," he cried. Then he re-entered the hovel, stripped off his own clothes, and with own hands put upon the plague-stricken hunchback tho flannel vest and drawers and the shirt of which he had just divested himself. I know this to be true. / was the " yonng friend " who went for and brought the wine. 66 NEW IRELAND. brunt of the trial. For them there was no flinching. A call to administer the last rites of religion to the inmate of a plague- ward or fever-shed must be, and is, obeyed by the Catholic priest, though death to himself be the well-known consequence. The fatality amongst the two classes I have mentioned, clergymen and doctors, was lamentable. Christian heroes, martyrs for humanity, their names are blazoned on no courtly roll ; yet shall they shine upon an eternal page, brighter than the stars ! But even this dark cloud of the Irish famine had its silver lining. If it is painful to recall the disastrous errors of irresolu- tion and panic, one can linger gratefully over memories of Samaritan philanthropy, of efficacious generosity, of tenderest sympathy. The people of England behaved nobly ; and as- suredly not less munificent were the citizens of the great American Republic, which had already become the home of thousands of the Irish race. From every considerable town in England there poured subscriptions, amounting in the aggregate to hundreds of thousands of pounds. From America came a truly touching demonstration of national sympathy. Some citizens of the States contributed two shiploads of breadstiiffg, and the American Government decided to furnish the ships which should bring the offering to the Irish shore. Accordingly two war-vessels, the Macedonian and the Jamestown frigates, having had their armaments removed, their " gun-decks " dis- placed and cargo bulk-heads put up, were filled to the gunwale with best American flour and biscuits, and despatched on their errand of mercy. It happened that just previously the British naval authorities had rather strictly refused the loan of a ship for a like purpose, as 'being quite opposed to all departmental regulations (which, to be sure, it was), and a good deal of angry feeling was called forth by the refusal. Yet had it a requiting contrast in the despatch from England, by voluntary associations there, of several deputations or embassies of succour, charged to visit personally the districts in Ireland most severely afflicted, and to distribute with their own hands the benefactions they brought. Foremost in this blessed work were the Society of Friends, the English members of that body co-operating with its central Since the earlier editions of this book were published I have heard with sincere regret that Mr. Hallowell, whom I had stated to be alire and resident in Lancashire, died recently, leaving a widow and children almost totally unprovided for! TEE BLACK FORTY-SEVEN" 67 -committee in Dublin. Amongst the most active and fearless of their representatives was a young Yorkshire Quaker, whose mame, 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 voung " Yorkshire Quaker " of 1847 was destined a quarter of a century later to be known to the empire as a minister of the Oown the Eight Hon. W. E. Forster, M.P. In truth, until the appearance a few years since of the Eev. Mr. O'Eorke's excellent volume, the ' History of the Irish Famine,' the only competent record of the events of that time was the ' Eeport of the Society of Friends' Irish Eelief Committee.' It is a remarkable fact that the traveller who now visits the west and south of Ireland, and seeks to gather from the people reminis- cences of the famine time, will find praise and blame a good -deal mingled as to nearly every other relief agency of the period ; but naught save grateful recollection of the unostentatious, kindly, prompt, generous, and efficacious actioii of the Friends' committee. Fondly as the Catholic Irish revere the memory of their own priests who suffered with and died for them in that fearful time, they give a place in their prayers to the " good Quakers, God bless them," Jonathan Pini, Eichard Allen, Eichard Webb, and William Edward Forster. The Irish famine of 1847 had results, social and political, that constitute it one of the most important events in Irish history for more than two hundred years. It is impossible for any one who knew the country previous to that period, and who has thoughtfully studied it since, to avoid the conclusion that so much has been destroyed, or so greatly changed, that the Ireland of old times will be seen no more. The losses will, I would fain hope, be in a great degree re- paired ; the gains entirely retained. Yet much that was precious was engulfed, I fear, beyond recovery. " Here are twenty miles of country, sir," said a dispensary doctor to me, " and before the famine there was not a padlock from end to end of it." Under the pressure of hanger, ravenous creatures prowled around barn and storehouse, stealing corn, potatoes, cabbage, turnips anything, in a word, that might be oaten. Later on the fields had to be watched, gun in hand, or the eeed was tooted up and devoured raw. This state of thigs struck a fatal F 2 G8 NW IRELAND. blow at some of the most beautiful traits of Irish, rural life. It destroyed the simple confidence that bolted no door ; it banished for ever a custom which throughout the island was of almost universal obligation the housing for the night, with cheerful welcome, of any poor wayfarer who claimed hospitality. Fear of " the fever," even where no apprehension of robbery was entertained, closed every door, and the custom, once killed off, has not revived. A thousand kindly usages and neighbourly courtesies were swept away. When sauve qui pent had re- sounded throughout a country for three years of alarm and disaster, human nature becomes contracted in its sympathies, and "every one for himself" becomes a maxim of life and conduct long after. The open-handed, open-hearted ways of the rural population have been visibly affected by the "Forty-seven" ordeal. Their ancient sports and pastimes everywhere dis- appeared, and in many parts of Ireland have never returned. The outdoor games, the hurling-match, and the village dance are seen no more. With the greater seriousness of character which the famine period has imprinted on the Irish people, some notable changes for the better must be recognised. Providence, forethought, economy are studied and valued as they never were before. There is more method, strictness, and punctuality in business transactions. There is a graver sense of responsibility on all hands. For the first time the future seems to be earnestly thought of, and its possible vicissitudes kept in view. More steadiness of purpose, more firmness and determination of character, mark the Irish peasantry of the new era. God has willed that in the midst of such awful sufferings some share of blessings should fall on the sorely shattered nation. CHAPTEK VH. "TOTTNG IBELAND." FLETCHEK of Saltoun is credited with the saying, " Let me make the ballads, and let whoso will make the laws." No doubt it was through ballads popular feeling was moved and developed in those days. If Fletcher lived now he would say, " Let me use the printing-press, and let who pleases be premier." " YOUNG IRELAND. 1 ' 69 Whoever attentively studies the changes in Irish political life in its modes of thought and action within the past forty years, must assign an important place amongst the factors in those changes to that school of politician-litterateurs known as " Young Ireland." Their name and fate as a party are, unfor- tunately for them, so generally associated with one disastrous incident of their political career the insurrectionary attempt of 1848 that an erroneous idea is acquired of their real status, aims, and policy ; an unjust estimate is formed of their labours. "Young Ireland," so called, was a section or offshoot of O'Connell's Eepeal party, the latter being antithetically designated " Old Ireland." " Young " and " Old," however, they were alike Eepealers; that is, their great political object, the cardinal doctrine of their creed, was the repossession by Ireland of the native legislature wrenched from her by Pitt in 1800. But many notable circumstances marked the Young Irelanders as a totally new school in Irish politics. They first, within our generation, essayed as a party the task of purifying the political atmosphere, of rendering Irish parliamentary action something better and nobler than a scramble for place, or an abject servi- tude of faction. They first, as a party, taught the doctrine that the people should be appealed to in their intelligence rather than impelled through their prejudices. They boldly proclaimed that individual responsibility and self-reliance should take the place of utter dependence on leaders, lay or clerical. They first seized upon the printing-press and the school as the great agencies of popular enfranchisement. The motto on their banner epitomised their creed, and indicated the means and end of their policy : " Educate that you may be free." Forty years ago the typical Irisn representative was still in a large degree the swaggering, horse-racing, duel-fighting, hard- drinking, spendthrift style of patriot portrayed by the pen of Charles Lever. The time had not yet come when personal integrity and purity of private life and character were weighed in estimating a man's title to public confidence and esteem. The " popular member " in those days was returned by a com- bination of patriotic enthusiasm and religious influence, sup- plemented by the necessary amount of bribery and intimidation. As to these, " the other side began first " of course ; and then the distribution of five-pound notes and whisky ad libitum on the one hand, and the breaking of skulls with shil lelaghs on the other, completed the popular victory. Moroever, the " patronage * customarily vested in a member of Parliament at the time was 70 NEW IRELAND. extensive in small things. The post office and the revenue, the army and the navy, were, to a great extent, the spoil of party. The minister flung patronage to his lobby adherents ; and these shared or dispensed it amongst their hustings' partisans. Poli- tical icaependence, as we understand it, was unknown. The schools had not yet sent forth their youthful battalions; the newspaper was an expensive luxury. The reading-room and mechanics' institute were not yet born. The lecture was un- known. Yet in all respects it may be said that tilings were "on the turn," when an event in 1842 ushered in a new era. The Repeal Association of O'Connell was worked in large part by his " Old Guard " of the Catholic Emancipation cam- paign; men who were, more or less, of the old school. But the movement early attracted to it some of the most gifted and brilliant of the young men who were just then emerging from college and university life into the bustle and activity of aa exciting time in public affairs. Affinity of tastes, college com- panionship, community of feeling, brought these youthful Ee- pealers together as a distinct "set" or section in the associa- tion. Their minds were fresh from the study of classic models in civic virtue, in love of country, in public heroism. They became inspired with the great ambition of giving a new cha- racter, a purer tone, and a bolder direction to the national movement. Three of these young men Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Osbome Davis, and John Blake Dillon were strolling in the Phoenix Park one fine summer evening in 1842. They discussed the prospects of the Eepeal cause and the calibre of the men directing it; the newspaper press, such as it was, and O'Connell's relations with that section of it which supported the association. They complained that there was no attempt at the intellectual development or political education of the popular mind, and dwelt upon the fact that in a few years mora the public schools would be sending forth some tens of thousands of young people able to read and write. They debated the great question,. " What was to lie done ? " They answered that question by agreeing that the first thing necessary was to start a weekly newspaper as the exponent and policy of a new school of politics. Duffy was already a journalist Though young in years he filled an honourable place in public confidence as editor of the tidfatt Vindicator. He was the man to whom they looked to play the leading part in this ambitious scheme. Seated YOUNG IRELAND." 71 under a tree in the Phoenix Park, the three friends decided to start the Nation newspaper, which issued its first number on the 15th of October 1842. The journal thus founded was destined to play an important part in the subsequent political history of Ireland. It was not a newspaper so much as a great popular educator a counsellor and guide. Its office was a sort of bureau of national affairs, political, literary, industrial, and artistic. Its editorial room was the rendezvous of the "youthful enthusiasts," as the old school politicians called them ; orators, poets, writers, artists. In the pages of the Nation fervid prose- and thrilling verse, literary essay and historical ballad, were all pressed into the service of Irish nationality. The effect was beyond all anticipation. The country seemed to awaken to a new life " a soul had come into Erin." Emboldened by the success of this first overt act, they struck out into other fields of labour, and determined to supply Ireland with a cheap popular literature, at nee entertaining and educa- tional. ' Duffy's Library of Ireland/ a monthly issue of shilling volumes, was the result. Even if they had done no more, this would be no unworthy monument of their zeal for the moral and intellectual as well as the political education of the people. They were pre-eminently the party of religious tolerance. The leading idea in what may be called their home policy was to break down the antagonism between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. In this they were long before their time. The experiment, however, was bravely tried. In many a song and many an essay they preached the union of classes and creeds. What matter that at different shrines We pray unto one God ? What matter that at different times Our fathers won this sod ? In fortune and in name we're bound By stronger links than steel ; And neither can be safe or sound But in the other's weal. * * * * * And oh ! it were a gallant deed To show before mankind How every race and erery creed JPght be by love combined 72 NEW IRELANU. Might be combined, yet not forget The fountains whence they rose, As filled by many a rirulet The stately Shannon flows. Thus pleaded Davis in the Nation. More boldly still he addressed himself to his fellow-Protestants of Ulster the Orange- men of the North : Rusty the swords our fathers unsheathed, William and James are turned to clay ; Long did we till the wrath they bequeathed ; Red was the crop and bitter the pay. Freedom fled us ; Knives misled us ; Under the feet of the foeman we lay ; But in their spite The Irish unite, For Orange and Green'will carry the day. All in vain. As remote as the millennium seemed the day when Orange and Green would cease to wave over opposing hosts arrayed in deadly, hate and fiercest hostility. Meantime, with a vigour that quite astonished observers, the Young Irelanders addressed themselves to the equally formidable task of reforming certain of tke ideas and usages of Irish politics. They execrated place-begging ; denied that " good appointments for Catholics " should be considered the showering of blessings on Ireland ; and denounced the practice of " popular members " of shady character presenting stained-glass windows and altar gongs to the Catholic chapels whenever a general election was at hand. Above all, they dared to say that the traffic in tidewaiterships and postmasterships and treasury clerkships was demoralising, and should be put down. It was little less than a revolution these men attempted in the whole system of Irish politics. O'Connell himself they greatly revered ; they accepted his policy, were loyal to his authority, were grateful for his services. But they waged unconcealed war with the class of men who, in a great degree, surrounded him, and with the low tone of public morality which then seemed prevalent. The regenerated Ireland of their dreams was not to arise under such influences as these. They preached the need of better men and a bolder policy, and strongly impressed on the people that if they valued national liberty they must cultivate the virtues without which such a blessing would fly their grasp. " YOUNG IRELAND." 73 * For Freedom comes from God's right hand, And needs a godly train ; Tis righteous men can make our land A Nation once again. So sang the bard of the party. So spoke all its orators. Such was Young Ireland in its early career. Of the men who founded or constituted that party more than thirty years ago few now survive. Nearly all have passed away ; and Their graves are severed far and wide I By mountain, stream, and sea. Duffy now Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, of Melbourne has been Prime Minister of Victoria, and is perhaps the ablest and most statesmanlike man at present in public life at the antipodes. Darcy McGee, foully slain by an assassin's bullet at Ottawa in 1868, had also won, as a minister of the Crown in the free self-governed Dominion of Canada, a notable recognition of his splendid abilities. Meagher, the silver-tongued orator of Young Ireland, after a career full of vicissitudes, was United States Governor of Montana territory when he accidentally perished in the rapids of the Missouri. Davis died early, yet not before he had filled Ireland with admiration for his genius and love for his virtues. Dillon died in 1866, member of Parliament for Tipperary county. Martin and Eonayne are recent losses, having fallen in harness as parliamentary repre- sentatives. Mitchel, irreconcilable and defiant to the last, re- turned to Ireland in 1875, and died " in the arms of victory " as " member for Tipperary." O'Brien, the leader of the party, sleeps in the family mausoleum at Bathronan; but on the most prominent site in the Irish metropolis his countrymen have raised a noble statue to perpetuate his memory. Richard O'Gonnan enjoys in New York fame and fortune honourably achieved in the land of his adoption. Kevin Izod O'Dohcrty is now a prominent member of the Queensland legislature. Michael Doheny, a man of rare gifts as a writer and speaker, died sadly in New York. Eichard Dalton Williams, the gentle bard of many an exquisite lay, reposes in a distant Louisiana grave. Denny Lane, poet and politician, happily still thinks and feels for Ireland in his pleasant home by the Lee. Beside these there might be named a goodly company of the less political and more literary type: John O'Hagan, now judge of a county court in Ireland; Samuel Ferguson, now Deputy Keeper of the Bolls; Denis Florence MacCarthy, D. MacNevin, 74 NEW IRELAND. Kev. Charles Meehan, John Edward Pigot, Michael J. Barry, James Clarence Mangan, and John Kells Ingram, LL.D., now a fellow of Trinity College, whose famous lyric, " Who fears to> speak of Ninety-eight ? " is the best known of all the seditious- poetry of Young Ireland. But the roll were incomplete indeed if from it were omitted three women who gave to Irish National poetry of the Young; Ireland era its most striking characteristics : " Eva/' " Mary," and " Speranza." Eva Mary Kelly was the daughter of a county Galway gentle- man, and could have been little more than a girl when the contributions bearing her pseudonym began to attract attention. A good idea of the Young Ireland poetry at all events of the Young Ireland poetesses may lie gathered from one of her early contributions 'The People's Chief: The storms of enfranchised passions rise as the roice of the eagle screaming, 'And we scatter now to the earth's four winds the memory of our dreaming I The cloud* but veil the lightning's bolt Sibylline murmurs ring In hollow tones from out the depths the People seek their King ! Come forth, come forth, Anointed One ! nor blazon nor honours bearing > Xo " ancient line " be thy seal or sign, the crown of Humanity wearing- Spring out, as lucent fountains spring, exulting from the ground Arise as Adam rose from God, with strengtli and knowledge crowned t The leader of the world's wide host guiding our aspirations, Wear thou the seamless garb of Truth sitting among the nations ! Thy foot is on the empty forms around in shivers cast ( We crush ye with the scorn of scorn exuvial of the past ! Come forth, come forth, Man of men! to the cry of the gathering nations ; We watch on tow'r, we watch on the hill, pouring oxir invocations Our souls are sick of sounds and shades, that mock our shame and grief, "We hurl the Dagons from their seats, and call the lawful Chief! Come forth, come forth, Man of men ! to the frenzy of our imploring The winged despair that no man can bear, up to the heavens soaring Come ! Faith and Hope, and Love and Trust, upon their centre rock, The wailing millions summon thee, amid the earthquake shock ! We've kept the weary watch of years, with a wild and heart-wrung yearning, But the star of the Advent we sought in rain, calmly and purely burning j False meteors flashed across the sky, and falsely led us on ; The parting of the strife is ceme the spell is o'er and gone I " YOUXG IRELAND? 75 The future's closed gates are now on their ponderous hinges jarring, And there comee a sound as of winds and waves each with the other warring, And forward bends the list'ning world, as to their eager ken From out that dark and mystic land appears the Man of men ! Kevin O'Doherty (already mentioned) was at this time a young medical student in Dublin. From admiring "Eva's" poetry he took to admiring, that is, loving, herself. The outbreak of 1848, however, brought a rude interruption to Kevin's. suit. He- was writing unmistakably seditious prose while "Eva" was assailing the constituted authorities in rebel verse. Kevin was arrested and brought to trial. Twice the jury disagreed. The day before his third arraignment he was offered a virtual pardon a merely nominal sentence if he would plead guilty. He sent for " Eva," and told her of the proposition. " It may seem as if I did not feel the certainty of losing you, perhaps for ever," said he ; " but I don't like this idea of pleading guilty. Say what shall I do ? " " Do ? " answered the poetess ; " why, be a man, and face the worst. I'll wait /or you, however long the sentence may be." Next day fortune deserted Kevin. The jury found him guilty. The judge assigned him ten years r transportation. "Eva" was allowed to see him once more in the cell to say adieu. She whispered in his ear, " Be you faithful. ril wait. " And she did. Years fled by, and the young exile- was at length allowed once more to tread Irish soil. Two days after he landed at Kingstown " Eva " was his bride. Less happy was the romance of " Mary's " fate. She was a Munster lady, Miss Ellen Downing by name, and, like " Eva," formed an attachment for one of the Young Ireland writers. In " Forty-eight " he became a fugitive. Alas, in foreign climes he learned to forget home vows. " Mary " sank under the blow. She put by the lyre, and in utter seclusion from the world lingered for a while; but ere long the spring flowers bloomed on her grave. " Speranza " then Miss Elgee, now Lady Wilde was in- comparably the most brilliant of the galaxy. She was the grand-daughter of the Venerable Archdeacon Elgee, Protestant rector of Wexford, and sister of the Hon. Judge Elgee, of New Orleans. Young, beautiful, highly educated, endowed with rarest gifts of intellect, her personal attractions, her culti- vated mind, her originality and force of character, made her a central figure in Dublin society thirty years ago. In 1851 she married Sir William Eobert Wilde, by whose death recently 76 NEW IRELAND. Ireland has lost one of its most distinguished archaeologists. Down to almost a recent period Lady Wilde continued her contributions to Irish national literature; ever and anon strik- ing a chord in the old strain; always singing of hope and courage and truth. One of the last contributions I received from her hand for publication in the Nation affords a good illustration of the spirit which animated all "Speranza's" poems. Death had been busy just then striking down some of the most trusted of the Irish National leaders, and many circumstances led me to express one day in writing to her my utter dishearten- ment as to the outlook in Irish politics. A post or two sub- sequently brought me from Lady Wilde this address to he! countrymen: Has the line of the patriots ended, The race of the heroes failed, That the bow of the mighty, unbended, Falls slack from the hands of the quailed? Or do graves lie too thick in the grass For the chariot of Progress to pass ? Did the men of the past ever falter ? The stainless in name and fame ; They flung life's best gifts on the altar To kindle the sacrifice flame, Till it rose like a pillar of light, Leading up from Egyptian night. Oh I hearts all aflame with the daring Of youth leaping forth into life ! Have ye courage to lift up, unfeariitg, The banner fallen low in the strife, From hands faint through life's deepest los, And bleeding from nails of the cross ? Can ye work on as they worked unaided, When all but honour seemed lost ; And give to your country, as they did, All, without counting the cost ? For the children have risen since then Up to the height of men. Now swear by those jale martyr-faces All worn by the furrows of tears, By the lost youth no morrow replaces^ By all their long wasted years, By the fires trod out on each hearth, When the Exiles were driven forth ; " YOUNG IEELAND? 77 By the young lives so vainly given. By the raven hair blanched to gr;.j, By the strong spirits crushed and rivea, By the noble aims faded away, By their brows, as the brows of a king, Crowned by the circlet of suffering To strive as they strove, yet retrieving The Cause from all shadow of blame, In the Congress of Peoples achieving A place for our nation and name ; Not by war between brothers in blood, But by glory made perfect through good. Wa are blind, not discerning the promise, 'Tis the sword of the Spirit that kills ; Give us Light, and the fetters fall from us, For the strong soul is free when it wills , Not our wrongs but our sins make the cloud That darkens the land like a shroud. With this sword like an archangel's gleaming, Go war against Evil and Sin, 'Gainst the falsehood and meanness and seeming That stifle the true life within. Your bonds are the bonds of the soul, Strike them off, and you spring to the goal ! men who have passed through the furnace, Assayed like the gold, and as pure ! By your strength can the weakest gain firmness, The strongest may learn to endure, When once they have chosen their part, Though the sword may drive home to each heart. martyrs ! The scorners may trample On broken hearts strewed in their path ! But the young race, all flushed by example, Will awake to the duties it hath, And rekindle your own torch of Truth With the passionate splendours of youth ! It was not as a poet Lady Wilde first became a contributor to the Nation. Some exceedingly able letters having appeared in that journal signed " John Fanshawe Ellis," the editor, Mr. Duffy, ex- pressed, in the " Notices to Correspondents," a desire to meet " Mr. Ellis." By return of post he was informed that he could do so- by calling on a certain evening at an address which was duly specified. He went, and found himself at the residence of Mrs. Elgee, then a widow lady, in the person of whose daughter, Miss 78 NEW IRELAND. Jane Frances Elgee, he discovered " Mr. John Fanshawe Ellis," the "Speranza"of future fame. In truth. Lady Wilde could rouse the soul by thrilling prose as well as by impassioned song. In 1848 she was the Madame Roland of the Irish Gironde. When the struggle was over, and Gavan Duffy was on trial for high treason, amongst the articles read against him was one from the suppressed number of the Nation, entitled Jacta Alca E*t. It was without example as a revolutionary appeal. Exquisitely beautiful as a piece of writing, it glowed with fiery incentive. It was in fact a prose-poem, a wild war-song, in which Ireland was called upon that day in the face of earth and heaven to in- voke the ultima ratio of oppressed nations. The Attorney- General read the article amidst breathless silence. At its close there was a murmur of emotion in the densely crowded court, when suddenly a cry from the ladies' gallery startled every one. " I am the culprit, if crime it be," was spoken in a woman's voice. It was the voice of queenly " Speranza." The article was from her pen. The recognised leader, at all events the political chief, of the Young Ireland party was William Smith O'Brien. He was a Protestant gentleman of high character and influential position in Clare ; his brother, Lord Inchiquin (at that time Sir Lucius O'Brien), being nearest male relative to the Marquis of Tho- mond. The family is undoubtedly of ancient and illustrious lineage, tracing in authenticated line from King Brian I., monarch of Ireland, whose overthrow of the Danish power at Clontarf was an event of European interest and importance in the eleventh century. In the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First most of the Irish chieftains who from time to time sub- mitted or "attorned" to the English power undertook to accept English titles, and to give up their children (their next heirs, at all events) to be educated as Government " wards." The young hostages, for such in truth they were, in every case were brought up Protestants, so that few of the existing representatives of the ancient Milesian chieftainries now pro- fess the Catholic faith. Early in the seventeenth century an English coronet sat on the brows of the Thomond chieftain. In the civil war of 1641 Morrough O'Brien, Earl of Thomcnd, espoused Cromwell's side, and was the terror of the Munster royalists. It was he who cannonaded and set fire to the Cathedral of Cashel magnificent even now in its ruins. William Smith O'-Brien was born in 1803, and was educated at "YOUNG IRELAND." 79 Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He early entered Parliament for one of what may be called the family seats as a staunch Conservative. Though strong Tories, and actively op- posing O'Connell in his Emancipation agitation, the ThomoL'd O'Briens were intensely Irish, and were extremely popular in Clare and Limerick. From 1826 to 1843 Smith O'Brien pursued in Parliament the career of an Irish " country-gentleman " Con- servative, of rather liberal or popular inclinations, devoting himself actively to what would be called practical legislation affecting the material interests of Ireland. In 1843 he startled the country by publicly giving in his adhesion to the Eepeal movement, stating that seventeen years' patient trial of the London Parliament had brought him conscientiously to this determination. By this step he not alone severed himself for ever in public affairs from his lifetime associates and friends, but suffered estrangement in his own family, which he felt most acutely. He was, however, a man of invincible purpose, absolutely destitute of fear or vacillation in what he conceived to be the path of duty. He was the very soul of honour and truth. I doubt that Ireland ever knew a higher type of public virtue and personal integrity than William Smith O'Brien. Yet he lacked many essential qualifications of a great political leader. It was not because of his abilities, but of his virtues and of his command- ing social position, that he rose to be the chief of an Irish party. He was proud, almost haughty, dignified and reserved in man- ner. His Conservatism never wholly abandoned him. Early associations left an indelible imprint on his character, opinions, and principles. He had a horror of revolutionary doctrines. No man in all the land seemed less likely to figure subsequently in history as a rebel chief. His accession to the Repeal movement was the great event of the time. He was hailed as " the second man in Ireland," O'Connell being the first. I doubt that the old " Catholic Emancipation party," O'Connell 's immediate following, ever took cordially to him ; but he soon became the head of the literary and educational party in the Eepeal ranks, whose independence of thought and boldness of speech were daily alarming the Libe- rator. When at length matters came to a crisis in the associa- tion, and the secession described in a previous chapter took place, O'Brien, though greatly regretting the incident, withdrew with " Young Ireland,'" and thenceforth took .his place as the recognised and responsible leader of the party. I first met William Smith O'Brien in July 1848, three weeks 80 NEW ICELAND. before the catastrophe which consigned him to a traitor's doom. He was engaged in a tour of the south-western and southern counties, evidently anxious to satisfy himself as to the real state of public feeling, and, I have no doubt, the physical resources of the national party. He was to arrive at Glengariffe on his way, via Bantry, to a great parade or review of the Confederate dubs in Cork. The men of our coasts and mountains decided to give him a royal reception, and in a style characteristic of an aquatic community. Not only the fishing fleet of Bantry, but the boats of every seaside hamlet on creek and inlet for miles around, were to accompany him across the bay from Glengariffe to Bantry ; a little fore-and-aft-schooner yacht of my father's having the envied honour of conveying the distinguished visitor. With flowing sheet we crossed the open bay, and reached the eastward point of "Whiddy Island, that shields from ocean billow and gale the haven of Bantry. The instant we rounded the island there met our view a scene I shall never forget. A flotilla of some hundreds of boats here awaited us. Every crew had gone ashore and pulled green boughs from the trees, and fastened them upright on the gunwales, so that each boat was like a floating bower. "When the Independence, quickly turning the point, shot into sight, there burst from the fleet a deafening shout, the bands struck up, the oarsmen gave way with a will ; we pulled our fore-stay-sail aback so as to slow for them, and the whole procession crossed the harbour's wide expanse like Birnam Wood marching on Dunsinane. When next I met O'Brien it was in 1857 a sad chapter of Irish history had been added to the national annals. Thence- forth, to the hour of his death, we were closely associated as political and personal friends ; but in the young Ireland period, my only personal intercourse with, or experience of, him was that of the memorable scene I have just described.* One of the notable grounds of difference between the two sections of Eepealers in O'Connell's association was the complaint of the Young Irelanders that the National movement was being * How warmly he remembered it, evea amidst the gloom of a conviction for high treason, was shown -by his forwarding to me from his cell in Rich- mond jail the music of a favourite song, with this inscription : " Presented to Alexander M. Sullivan by William S. O'Brien, in remembrance of his excursion by water from Glengariffe to Bantry, on board the yacht Independence, in July, 1848 ; when this song was sung by a young lady. "Richmond Prison; March, 1849." " YOUNG IRELAND." 81 conducted with too much of a religious bias ; that is to say, in a way which seemed to assume that every patriotic Irishman must necessarily be a Catholic. O'Connell made the platform of the association ring with denmnciations of every measure, prospect, or principle inimical to Catholic feeling. The Catholic Young Irelanders said that in a Catholic association this would be right and proper ; but they asserted that in a public organi- sation, explicitly restricted to a purely political purpose, and in which Protestants and Catholics were alike engaged, it was out of place, and quite wrong. The contention over this issue grew very bitter. Out of it arose the imputation of "free- thinking " doctrines which some persons long sought to fasten on the Young Ireland party. Hard things were said on both sides. The Old Irelanders- anathematised the young men as infidels ; the Young Irelanders- denounced the old as bigots. The point involved was by no- means trivial ; it was of the first magnitude ; it was vital for the future of Ireland: namely, whether combined effort between Protestant and Catholic Irishmen in purely political affairs was to be rendered impracticable. Although some of the " Young " party pushed their arguments in language that par- took far too much of latitudinarianism, it is now recognised and confessed that on this occasion they defended a position the loss or surrender of which would have been simply disastrous. The utmost they were able to do at the time was to make a stout fight. Not until many years afterwards was the principle- they thus contended for proclaimed and adopted as unquestioned and unquestionable in Irish affairs. Had they not fought for # then, a wall of brass might now be dividing into hostile camps Protestant and Catholic Irishmen. But their whole career was one of struggle, unrequited by a single ray of immediate victory. Their break with O'Connell drew down on them long- enduring unpopularity. Their reprehensions of parliamentary corruption caused them to be derided as Utopian purists. Their fight for religious tolerance exposed them to charges of in- fidelity. Their educational propaganda was scoffed at as boyish bubble-blowing. On nearly every point of their programme they seemed to fail. That is to say, they were wrecked as a party before leaf or blossom appeared, to indicate that the seed they had planted with so much toil had not perished for ever. But we of to-day reap the fruits of their labours. They were tke precursors of a better time. $2 NEW IRELAND. CHAPTEE Till. " FORTY-EIGHT." EIGHTEEN hundred and forty-eight has been called, by Lord Nomianby I believe, the " Year of EC volutions." It is certain that history supplies us with no similar spectacle of general and almost simultaneous outbreak in the capitals of Europe. The ideal "principles" of 1789 found at the time admirers and sympathisers in many lands; but so far from the overthrow of the French monarchy immediately calling forth lake events elsewhere, Christendom stood aghast at the dread spectacle in Paris of men who At Death's reeking altar like furies caressing The Young Hope of Freedom baptised it in blood. There can be no doubt, however, that from the Place de la Bastille were scattered eventually over Europe ideas and doc- trines which, ever since, have been in part the watchwords of human Liberty, and in part the shibboleths of anarchy and crime. The French revolution of February 1848 was no such " bolt "from the blue " as some have considered it. There were storm- bashes all around, gloom on every hand, and distant peals by the Adriatic. In November 1847 Austria commenced to occupy the Italian States ; taking possession of Parma, Modena, and Eeggio. Early in January 1848 there was an outbreak at Leghorn. On the 12th Palermo revolted against King Ferdinand, and a *' constitution " was conceded. On the loth the Emperor of Austria announced that he would make " no further con- cessions," and two days later Eadctzky issued an order of the day commanding his troops to prepare for an immediate struggle. On the 29th the Constitution of 1812 was proclaimed in Naples, and on the 30th the Duke of Modena fled his capital. On the 8th of February the King of Sardinia followed the example set in Naples, and granted a " constitution." On the llth the Grand Duke of Tuscany did the same. On the 22nd anartial law was proclaimed in Lombarcly ; and on the same day Messina "was bombarded by the Neapolitan troops. These events, it will be seen, bring us up to the very eve of the day on which Louis Philippe was swept from the French " FOE TY-?I&tiT." - ' 83 throne ; yet it was in the midst of such ominous signs that the " citizen king " and his infatuated ministers were rushing blindly on their fate. On the 26th of December 1847 the first of the "reform banquets" was held at Eouen; 1800 persons attending. At this- as at numerous similar demonstrations the toast of the king's health was omitted. On the 12th of February M. Guizot declared in the French Chamber against reform or concession. On the 21st the Paris reform banquet was proclaimed. On the 22nd the impeachment of M. Guizot was proposed in the Chamber, but the motion was triumphantly -defeated ; that " astute and far-seeing minister," as he was universally considered, laughing outright at the absurd and impotent proceeding. Within forty-eight hours he and his a-oyal master were fugitives, and the monarchy of July was no more! Scarcely had the astounding news from Paris burst upon us, when all around the European horizon, north, south, east, and west, the flames of revolution leaped to the sky. The crash of falling thrones, the roar of cannon, the shouts of popular victory, filled the air. A fierce contngion seemed to spread all -over the Continent. The Holy Alliance was in the dust, and a thousand voices from Milan to Berlin proclaimed that the deliverance of subject peoples was at hand. Ireland could not escape the fever of the hour. It found her in circumstances that seemed to leave her little choice but to ;yield to its influence. Eighteen months previously the severance between " Old " and " Young " Ireland had occurred. There were now two Eepeal organisations.; one, the original association founded by 'O'Connell, now feebly conducted by his son ; the other, the *' Irish Confederation " started by the seceding Young Irelanders, or " Confederates," as they came to be designated at this period. The secession, it will be remembered, although it had more real causes, was ostensibly provoked or produced by O'ConnelPs .attempt to e^act from all Repealers a declaration reprehending physical force. Although the Young Irelanders had on that occasion refused to sign a declaration which, as they contended, logically struck at some of the best and bravest mex in the world's history, they really were at one with O'Connell as to reliance on moral and political influences alone for the achieve- ment of Irish aims. No doubt they believed in the moral Influence of physical resources and inculcated this doctrine with a,n earnestness that could not fail to alarm the old tribune. o 2 s* yew IRELAND. Scarcely, however, had the seceders the party of the Left, so to- speak, in the Bepeal Association attempted to carry on art agitation independently as the Irish Confederation, than it became evident there was an " Extreme Left " as well as a " Left Centre." Amidst the maddening scenes of Forty-six andi Forty-seven a real ' ' physical force party " began to be heard of, chiefly in wild declarations that it were better the people should perish arms in hand than rot away in thousands under a famine regime. No one seriously regarded these passionate exclama- tions at the time. Towards the close of 1847, however, conflict on the subject became inevitable. Mr. John Mitchel, one of the editors of the Nation newspaper, declared the time had come for calling upon the Irish people to face an armed struggle. Such a course was entirely opposed to the principles and policy of the- journal to which he was attached, and was utterly condemned by Gavan Duffy and Darcy McGee, Mitchel's editorial colleagues. He retired from the Nation, and the controversy was carried* into the council-room of the Confederation. In the light of events that soon after became public history the statement must seem strange, yet true it is, that the most able and vehement opponents of Mitchel's physical force propositions were Smith O'Brien, John B. Dillon, Gavan Duffy, T. F. Meagher r Eichard O'Gorman, Michael Doheny, Darcy McGee the very men who, a few months later, were prisoners in dungeon bound f or fugitives on the hill-side, for participation in an Irish insur- rection ! John Mitchel the first man who, since Robert Emmet perished on the scaffold in 1803, preached an Irish insurrection and the total severance of Ireland from the British Crown was the son of the Kev. John Mitchel, Unitarian Minister of Dungiven, county Derry. He was born in 1815, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Like many another Trinity student, he early became a contributor to the Nation newspaper ; and in 1845, on the death of Thomas Davis., accepted an editorial position on that journal, in conjunction with Charles Gavan Duffy and Thomas Darcy McGee. The stem Unitarian Ulsterman soon developed a decided bent in favour of what half a century before would be called " French principles." He was republican and revolutionary. At all events, during the scenes of the famine period he quite drew away from the policy advocated by his colleagues, and eventually called upon the Irish Confeder- ation to declare for a war of independence. He it was who revived the " Separatist " or revolutionary party in Irish politics,. " FOR TY-EIGHT." 85 From 1803 up to 1845 no such party had any recognised or visible existence. There was, beyond question, disaffection in the country, a constantly maintained protest against, or passive resistance to, the existing state of things ; but no one dreamed of a political aim beyond Kepeal of the Union as a constitutional object to be attained by constitutional means. The era of revolt and rebellion seemed gone for ever. John Mitchel, however, thrust utterly aside the doctrines of loyalty and legality. He declared that constitutionalism was demoralising the country. By " blood and iron " alone could Ireland be saved. These violent doctrines were abhorrent to Smith O'Brien, and indeed to nearly every one of the Confederation leaders. O'Brien declared that either he or Mitchel must quit the organisation. The question was publicly debated for two days at full meetings, and on the 5th of February 1848 the " war " party were utterly outvoted, and retired from the Confederation. Seven days after- wards John Mitchel, as if rendered desperate by this repre- hension of his doctrines, started a weekly newspaper called the United Irishman to openly preach his policy of insurrection. He was regarded as a madman. Young Irelanders and Old Irelanders alike laughed in derision or shouted in anger at this proceeding. But events were now near, which, all unforeseen as they were by Mitchel and by his opponents, were destined to put the desperate game completely into his hands. The third number of the new journal had barely appeared when news of the French revolution burst on an astonished world. It set Ireland in a blaze. Each day added to the excitement. Every post brought tidings of some popular rising, invariably crowned with victory. Every bulletin, whether from Paris, Berlin, or Vienna, told the same story, preached, as it were, the same lesson : barricades in the streets, overthrow of the Government, triumph of the people. It may be doubted if the United Irishman would have lived through a third month but for this astounding turn of affairs. Now its every utterance was rapturously hailed by a wildly excited multitude. What need to trace what may be easily understood Ireland was irresistibly swept into the vortex of revolution. The popular leaders, who a month previously had publicly defeated Mitchel's pleadings for war, now caught the prevalent passion. Struck foy the events they beheld, and the examples set on every side, they verily believed that Ireland had but to " go and do like- wise," and the boon of national liberty would be conceded by England, probably without a blow. 86 NEW IRELAND, Confederate " clubs " now sprang tip all over the conutry, ancfe arming and drilling were openly carried on. Mitchel's journal' week by week laboured with fierce energy to hurry the conflict. The editor addressed letters through its pages to Lord Cla- rendon, the Irish Viceroy, styling him " Her Majesty's Execu- tioner General and General Butcher of Ireland." He published instructions as to street warfare ; noted the " Berlin system," and the " Milanese system," and the " Viennese system " ; highly praised molten lead, croekeryware, broken bottles, and even cold vitriol, as good things for citizens, male or female, to fling from windows and housetops on hostile troops operating below. Of course Mitchel knew that this could not possibly be toAeraterV His calculation was that the Government must surely seize him, but that before he could be struck down and his paper- be suppressed he would liiive. rendered revolution inevitable. The Confederation leaders had indeed embraced the idea of an armed struggle, yet the divergence of principles between- them and the Mitchel party was wide almost as ever. They seemed marching together on the one road, but it was hardly so. For a long time O'Brien and his friends held to a hope that eventually concession and arrangement between the Government and Ireland would avert c*llision. Mitchel, on the other hand,, feared nothing more than compromise of any kind. They would fain proceed soberly upon the model of Washington and the Colonies ; he was for following the example of Louis Blanc and the boulevards of Paris. The ideal struggle of their plans, if" struggle there must be, was a well -prepared and carefully ordered appeal to arms,* and so they would wait till au- tumn, when the harvest would be gathered in. " Eose-water * A private letter written from his cell in Newgate prison by Gavan. Duffy to O'Brien in the week preceding the outbreak, and found in O'Brien's portmanteau after his arrest, brings out very curiously these- views : "I am glad to learn you are about to commence a series of meetings in M ouster. There is no halfway hoaee for you; you will be the head of : the movement, loyally obeyed ; and 'thifr revolution will l*e conducted with order and clemency, or the mere anarchists will prevail with the people,, and our revolution will be a bloody chaos. You have at present Lafayette's- place as painted by Lamartine, and I believe have fallen into Lafayette's- error of not using it to all its effect and in all its resources. I am well aware that you do not desire to lead or influence others ; but I believe- with Lamartine that that feeling-, which is a high civic virtue, is a vice m< revolutions." " FOR TY-E1GHT* 87 revolutionists," Mitchel scornfully called them. " Fools, idiots,"" exclaimed one of his lieutenants ; " they will wait till muskets. are showered down to them from heaven, and angels sent to pull the triggers." Behind all this argument for preparation and delay there- undoubtedly existed what may be called the " conservative " ideas and principles, which some of the leading Confederates enter- tained. O'Brien stormed against " the Reds," as he called the- more desperate and impatient men. They, on the other hand, denounced him as an " aristocrat " at heart, and a man whose weakness would be the ruin of the whole enterprise. Speaking with myself years afterwards, he referred bitterly to the re- proaches cast upon him, for his alleged " punctiliousness " and excessive alarm as to anti-social excesses. " I was ready to give my life in a fair fight for a nation's rights," said he; "but I was not willing to head a jacquerie" But if the whilom Young Irelandef s were thus split into two- sections, led respectively by O'lirien and Mitchel, there was a third party to be taken into account, the O'Connellite Ee- pealera. These were as hostile to the revolutionists both "rose-water" and "vitriol" as were the life-long partisans of imperial rule. On the occasion of a public banquet given to O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchel in the city of Limerick in March 1818, an O'Connellite mob surrounded the hall and assailed the company in a scene of riot and bloodshed. The- immediate cause of this astonishing proceeding was an attack on the memory of O'Connell in Mitchel's paper, the dead tribune having been contumeliously referred to for his " degrading and demoralising moral force doctrines." One important class in Ireland a class long accustomed to- move with or head the people throughout all this time set themselves invincibly against the contemplated insurrection: the Catholic clergy. They had from the first, as a body, re- garded the Young Irolanders with suspicion. They fancied they saw in this movement too much that was akin to the work of the Continental revolutionists, and greatly as they disliked the domination of England, they would prefer it a thousand times to such " liberty " as the Carbonari would proclaim. At this time, 1848, the power of the Catholic priests was unbroken,, was stronger than ever. The famine soenes, in which their love for the people was attested by heroism and self-saerifice- such as the world had never seen surpassed, had given them. an influence which none could question or withstand. Their 88 NEW IRELAND. antagonism was fatal to the movement more surely and infallibly fatal to it than all the power of the British Crown. Lord Clarendon, though fully aware that the war-policy Young Icelanders were comparatively weak in numbers, evi- dently judged that an outbreak once begun might have an alarming development. He determined to strike quickly and strike hard. On the 21st of March O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchel were arrested, the first two charged with seditious speeches, Mitchel with seditious -writings. The prosecutions against O'Brien and Meagher on this indictment failed through disagreement of the juries. As to Mitchel, before his trial by the ordinary course of procedure for sedition could be held, the Government passed through Parliament a new law called the " Treason Felony Act," which gave greater facilities for dealing with such offences. On the 22nd of May he was arraigned under the new act in Green Street Court-house, Dublin, and on the 26th was found guilty. The Mitchelite party had determined and avowed that his conviction any attempt to remove him from Dublin as a con- vict should lie the signal for a rising, and now the event had befallen. There can be no question that had they carried out their resolution a desperate and bloody conflict would have ensued. Mitchel possessed in a remarkable degree the power of inspiring personal attachment and devotion; and there were thousands of men in Dublin who would have given their lives to rescue him. The Government were aware of this, and oc- cupied themselves in preparations for an outbreak in the metro- polis. The Confederation leaders, however, who considered that any resort to arms before the autumn would be disastrous, strained every energy in dissuading the Mitchel ites from the contemplated course of action. The whole of the day previous to the conviction was spent in private negotiations, interviews, arguments, and appeals. This labour vras prolonged far into the night, and it was only an hour or two before morning dawned on the 27th of May 1848 that Dublin was saved from the horrors of a sanguinary struggle. The friends of Mitchel never concealed their displeasure at the countermand thus effected by the O'Brien party, and pro- phesied that the opportunity for a successful commencement of the mational struggle had been blindly and culpably sacrificed. The consent of the Dublin clubs to abandon the rescue or rising on this occasion was obtained, however, only on the solemn undertaking of the Confederation chiefs that in the second " FOR TV-EIGHT." 89 week of August the standard of insurrection would absolutely be unfurled. A rumour that some such dissuasion was being attempted that Smith O'Brien and his friends were opposed to the intended conflict spread through Dublin late on the evening of the 26th of May, and painful uncertainty and apprehension agitated the city next morning. The Government, though well informed through spies of everything that was passing, took measures in preparation for all possible eventualities. Mitchel was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation beyond the eeas. The court was densely crowded with his personal and political friends and former fellow-students of Trinity College. He heard the sentence with composure, and then a silence as of the tomb fell on the throng as it was seen he was about to speak. He addressed the court in defiant tones. " My lords," said he, "I knew I was setting my life on that cast. The course which I have opened is only commenced. The Eoman who saw his hand burning to ashes before the tyrant promised that three hundred should follow out his enterprise. Can I not promise for one for two for three ay, for hundreds?" As he uttered these closing words he pointed first to John Martin, then to Devin Eeilly, next to Thomas Francis Meagher, and so on to the throng of associates whom he saw crowding the galleries. A thundering cry rang through the building, " Promise for me, Mitchel ! Promise for me ! " and a rush was made to embrace him ere they should see him no more. The officers in wild dismay thought it meant a rescue. Arms were drawn ; bugles in the street outside sounded the alarm ; troops hurried up. A number of police flung themselves on Mitchel, lore him from the embrace of his excited friends, and hurried him through the wicket that leads from the dock to the cells beneath. It may be pronounced that in that moment the Irish in- surrectionary movement of 1848 was put down. At an early hour that morning the war-sloop Shearwater was drawn close to the north wall jetty at Dublin Quay. There she lay, with fires lighted and steam up, waiting the freight that was being prepared for her in Green Street Court-house. Scarcely had Mitchel been removed from the dock than he was heavily manacled, strong chains passing from his wrists to his ankles. Thus fettered he was hurried into a police van waiting outside the gateway, surrounded by dragoons with eabres drawn. At a signal the cavalcade dashed off, and skilfully 90 NEW IRELAND. making a detour of tlie city so as to avoid the streets wherein hostile crowds might have been assembled or barricades erected, they reached the Shearwater at the wharf. Mitchel was carried on board, and had scarcely touched the deck when the paddles were put in motion, the steamer swiftly sped to sea, and in a few hours the hills of Ireland had faded from view. The news of his conviction and sentence, the astounding intelligence that he was really gone, birst like a thunderclap on the clubs throughout the provinces. A cry of rage went up, and the Confederation chiefs were fiercely denounced for what was called their fatal cowardice. Confidence in their determination vanished. Unfortunately, from this date forward there was for them no retreating. They now flung themselves into the provinces, traversing the counties from east to west, addressing meetings, inspecting club organisations, inquiring as to armament, and exhorting the people to be ready for the fray. Of course the Government was not either inattentive or inactive. Troops were poured into the country; barracks were improvised, garrisons strengthened, gunboats moved mto the rivers, flying camps established ; every military disposition was made for encountering the insurrection. In all their calculations the Confederate leaders had re -.koned upon two months for preparation, which would bring them, to the middle of August. By no legal process of arrest or prosecution known to them could their conviction be effected in a shorter space of time. Never once did they take into contemplation the possibility (and to men dealing with so terrible a problem it ought to have been an obvious contin- gency) that the Government would dispense with the slow and tedious forms of ordinary procediire, and grasp them quickly with avenging hand. While O'Brien and Dillon and Meagher, O'Gorman and McGee, were scattered through the country, arranging for the rising, lo ! the news reached Dublin one day in the last week of July that the previous evening the Government had passed through Parliament a bill for sus- pending the Habeas Corpus Act. That night proclamations were issued for the arrest of the Confederate leaders, and considerable rewards were offered for their apprehension. This news found O'Brien at Ballinkeele, in Wexford county. He moved rapidly from thence through Kilkenny into Tipperary, for the purpose of gathering, in the latter county, a considerable force with which to march upon Kilkenny city this having been selected as the spot whence a provisional government " FOR TY-EIGIIT." 91 was to issue its manifesto, calling Ireland to arms. Before any such purpose could be effected, he found himself surrounded; by flying detachments of military and police. Between some of these and a body of the peasantry, who had assembled to escort him at the village of Ballingary, a conflict ensued, the result of which showed him the utter hopelessness of the attempted! rising, and in fact suppressed it there and then. As the people were gathering in thousands and they would have assembled in numbers more than sufficient to have defeated any force that could then have been brought against him the Catholic clergy appeared on the scene. They rushed amidst the multitude, imploring them to desist from such an enterprise, pointing out the unpreparedness of the country, and demonstrating the- too palpable fact that the Government were in a position to- quench in blood any insurrectionary movement. " Where are your arms ? " they said ; there were no arms. " Where is your commissariat?" the multitude were absolutely without food. "Where are your artillery, your cavalry? Where are your leaders, your generals, your officers? What is your plan of" campaign ? Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Dillon are noble-minded men ;, but they are not men of military qualification. Are you not rushing to certain destruction?" These exhortations, poured forth with a vehemence almost indescribable, had a profound effect. The gathering thousands melted slowly away, and O'Brien, dismayed, astounded, and sick at heart, found himself at the head, not of 50,000 stalwart Tipperary men, armed and. equipped for a national struggle, but a few hundred half-clad and wholly unarmed peasantry. Scarcely had they set fortb when they encountered one of the police detachments. A skirmish took place. The police retreated into a substantially built farmhouse close by, which, situated as it was, they could, have held against ten times their own force of military men without artillery. The attempt of the peasantry to storm it was disastrous, as O'Brien forbade imperatively the execution of the only resort which could have compelled its evacuation.. Three of his subordinates had brought up loads of hay and straw to fire the building. It was the house of a widow, whose- five children were at the moment within. She rushed to- the Eebel Chief, flung herself on her knees and asked him if" he was going to stain his name and cause by an act so bar- barous as the destruction of her little ones. O'Brien imme- diately ordered the combustibles to be thrown aside, although a deadly fusilade from the police force within was at ii. to NEW IH EL AND. moment decimating his followers. These, disgusted with a tenderness of feeling which they considered out of place on such an occasion, abandoned the siege of the building, and dis- persed homewards. Ere the evening fell, O'Brien, accompanied by two or three faithful adherents, was a fugitive in the defiles of the Kilnamanagh mountains. No better success awaited his subordinates elsewhere. In May they had prevented a rising ; :now they found the country would not rise at their call. Soon after Mitchel's transportation, Duffy was arrested in Dublin, and on the 28th of July armed police broke into the Nation office, seized the number of the paper being then printed, smashed up the types, and carried off to the Castle .all the documents they could find. Throughout the country arrests and seizures of arms were made on all hands. Every day the Hue and Cry contained new proclamations and new lists of fugitives personally described. There was no longer any question of resistance. Never was collapse more complete. The fatal war-fever that came in a day vanished almost as rapidly. Suddenly every one appeared astounded at the mad- ness of what had been contemplated; but somehow very few seemed to have perceived it a month before. Throughout the remaining months of the year Ireland was given over to the gloomy scenes of special commissions, state trials, and death-sentences. Of the leaders or prominent actors in this abortive insurrection, O'Brien, Meagher, MacManus, Martin, and O'Doherty were convicted ; Dillon, O'Gorman, and Doheny succeeded in accomplishing their escape to America. O'Brien, Meagher, and MacManus, with one of their devoted companions in danger, Patrick O'Donoghue by name, having been convicted of high treason, were sentenced to death; but by authority of a specially passed act of Parliament, the bar- barous penalty of hanging, disembowelling, and quartering, to which they were formally adjudged, was commuted into transportation beyond the seas for life. Duffy was thrice brought to trial; but although the Crown made desperate efforts to effect his conviction, the prosecution each time broke down, baffled by the splendid abilities of the defence conducted by Mr. Isaac Butt, Q.C. Eventually the proceedings against him were abandoned. Of less important participators numbers were convicted, and hundreds fled the country never to return. "Forty-eight" cost Ireland dearly not alone in the sacrifice of some of her best and noblest sons, led to immolate themselves AFTER-SCENES. 93 in such desperate enterprise as revolution, but in the terrible reaction, the prostration, the terrorism, the disorganisation that ensued. Through many a long and dreary year the country suffered for the delirium of that time. CHAPTEE IX. AFTER-SCENES. A SHOT fired from that farmhouse fortalice at Ballingary on the 29th of July went very near to diverting, in a remarkable manner, the current of recent Irish history. In the deadly fire which the police directed on the insurgents, a bullet struck a young Kilkenny engineer student (who was acting as aide or lieutenant to O'Brien), badly shattering his leg, and otherwise dis- abling him. Disregarding his wound, he refused to retire till the titter failure of the attack was evident, and the people were in full' retreat. Then he was borne from the spot and hurried off to the mountains, where, hidden in a peasant sheeling, he lay till he was so far recovered as to be able to continue his flight. His name was James Stephens. That bullet missed the life of the future leader and chief of the Fenian conspiracy. He and Michael Doheny linked their fortunes as fugitives ; and of all the narratives of escape that might be told of that un- happy time stories of painful sufferings, of keen privations, of desperate hazards, and almost fatal dangers theirs unques- tionably would be the most astonishing. For two months they were hunted over mountain and moor, through the southern and south-western seaboard counties ; hiding in the heather and the- bogside, or sheltered in some peasant's hut, sentinelled in their brief and feverish slumbers by the humble owner of the dwell- ing. Frequently the closeness of pursuit compelled them to- double back on the district it had cost them much suffering to get over ; and often, in order to reach a point directly distant but an hour's walk, they had to make a detour of several miles. Their great anxiety was to reach some harbour whence a boat might put them off to a passing ship. Doheny tells of their endeavours to cross the Knockmeldoun Mountains, and how on the southern side of those lofty hills they came on the famous 34 NEW IRELAND. Trappist monastery of 3Ielleray : " It -wins Sunday ; the cold and -wet of the previous evening had given way to calm and sunshine, .and we made rapid way along the slopes of the Comerahs. The greatest difficulty we experienced was in passing deep raviues. The steep ascent and descent were usually wooded and covered with furze and briars. Far below gurgled a rapid and swollen mountain stream, which we crossed without undressing, and always experienced the greatest relief from the cold running water. But toiling our upward way through trees and thorny shrubs was excessively fatiguing. About three o'clock in the afternoon we reached the picturesque grounds of Mount Melleray Abbey. We had then travelled thirty miles of mountain with- out any food. The well-known hospitality of the brothers was .a great temptation to men in our situation, pressed by toil and hunger ; but we felt that we possibly might compromise the abbot and brethren, and we determined on not making ourselves known. We entered the beautiful chapel of the abbey and as- cended the gallery while vespers were being sung. We found we were alone on the gallery, and had an opportunity of changing our stockings and wiping the blood from our feet. We remained upwards of an hour, and then set out but little refreshed. 1 ' Skirting Cork city they passed westward to the wild mountain regions of Bantry, Glengariffe, and Kenmare. Dohcny's literary habits and poetic inspirations were not to be suppressed, if indeed the latter were not rather aroused into greater activity, by the sufferings and perils of an outlaw's life. In the course of this flight he penned several of his most touching ballads, jotting down the words on the back of an old letter, or on the margin of a newspaper. In one of these poems, addressed to [Ireland, and written in a hut on the Glengariffe mountainside Joewails the fate of himself and comrades : * * * * * Twas told of thee the world around, 'Twas hoped from thee by all, That with one gallant sunward bound Thou'dst burst long ages' thrall. The moment came, alas ! and those Who perilled all for thee Were cursed and branded as thy foes ; A cuisla gal ma chree. ***** Fve run the outlaw's brief career, And borne his load of ill AFTER-SCENES. 95 The troubled rest, the ceaseless fear With fixed sustaining; will ; And should his last dark chance befall^ Even that will welcome be ; In death I'll love thee most of all A cuisla gal ma chree. In one of his gloomiest and most despondent hours news had reached him of the lamentable privations endured by Mrs. Doheny in her endeavours to track him through the hills he wrote ' The Outlaw's Wife,' of which the following is the first etanza : Sadly silent she sits with her head on her hand, While she prays in her heart to the Ruler above To protect and to guide to some happier land The joy of her soul and the spouse of her love ; And she nxirks by her pulses so wikl in their play The slow progress of time as it straggles along ; And she lists to the wind as 'tis moaning away, And she deems it the chaunt of some funeral song. At Kenmare Doheny and Stephens met the friendly hearts and hands that were eventually to effect their rescue. I believe I name publicly for the first time the family to whom those hapless fugitives were thus indebted the kinsmen and friends of Mr. MacCarthy Downing, now member of Parliament for Cork county. Indeed, I believe that honourable gentleman himself was most directly instrumental in arranging the escape. Stephens was got off to France as a servant, accompanying a lady of the family. Doheny went on board the Sabrina steamer at Cork quay driving some bullocks which he was to accompany to Bristol. From the latter city he easily made his way to London, and thence to Paris, where not only Stephens, his late companion, but others of the escaped Confederate leaders gave him an enthusiastic welcome. He proceeded soon after to America, and settled in New York ; but Fortune did not smile on him, though if a genial nature and a generous heart could have commanded wealth, Doheny should have been a millionaire. He died in 1862. Two little children, boys of three and five years respectively, accompanied much of their mother's wanderings w r hile the father was a fugitive in 1848. Eighteen hundred and sixty-seven found them grown to man's estate, and inmates of Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, for complicity in the Fenian conspiracy ! 96 NEW ICELAND. It is a singular fact that none of the numerous insurgent fugitives who were hiding or flying all over the country were betrayed to their pursuers. There was a price upon each head a tempting reward for apprehension or information aud minute personal descriptions of the accused, as given in the Hu& and Cry, were profusely distributed to assist in identification.* They had perforce to demand shelter and rest from the poorest of the poor ; the famine still lingered in the land ; and in no case- were the peasants at a loss to guess who these applicants for concealment were. The wretched owners of hovels where some of them were housed for days were utterly destitute. I myself knew one such instance. Dermeen Lynch, of Dromgarriff, be- neath whose roof Doheny and Stephens were hidden and fed for two days, was a recipient of out-door relief. Dermeen knew very well he had but to give a signal to the police sergeant in the Glen below, and 300 " wealth untold " in his estimation was within his grasp. But his sorest trouble was lest harm should overtake them while under his roof. I often talked with him and his wife over it all afterwards. He was terribly sorry * Some of these descriptions in the Government Hue and Cry were certainly remarkable literary efforts. "Thomas D. Wright," one of the Xipperary insurgents, is set down as "very talkative, and thinks himself a great politician ; supposed to he at present in the City or Cove of Cork, as he sailed to America from Liverpool on the 13th of August last." "John Sexton" was described as having "two blue eyes and blind of one- of them " ; but in a subsequent issue this was corrected, and he wns- pictured as a man "with one blue eye and blind of one eye." "J.eim Lee " is declared to have " brown eyes which appears as if he had shaved his whiskers." The following is copied verbatim et literatim from the Hue and Cry of December 2, 1848: "Description of a woman name unknown who stands charged with having on the 26 Nov. at Ballyhenry in the- Barony of Ikerin entered the dwelling-house of Thomas Sweeny and threatened to blow the contents of a pistol through James Hendy wha lived in the next house to said Sweeny but who happened to be from home at the time : She is twenty-three years of age five feet nine inches high, stout make, fair complexion, fair hair, grey eyes ; wore a felt hat, blue body coat, dark trousers, and striped vest, a native of the county Tipperary." In 1857, while travelling in America, I found myself a welcome guest in a charming little frame-work villa near Binghampton, at the junction of the Susquehanna and the Chenango rivers. My host, then a happy and prosperous member of the American bar, was the identical "Thomas D. Wright " who, according to the Hue and Cry of August 1848, wa " supposed to be at present in the City or Cove of Cork " because " h# sailed to America " three weeks previously. A1VER-SCENE8. 97 they ever came, and very glad when they went away ; but while they were 011 his floor he would die rather than " sell " them. It was said that the father of Thomas Francis Meagher a wealthy Waterford merchant, who greatly deplored " Tom's" rebellious politics employed four brigantines to cruise off the southern and western coasts to facilitate his escape. But he never got far from the scene of the outbreak in Tipperary. He certainly might have made good his way out of the country had he cared to put forth any great exertion so to do ; but seeing how completely the attempt he was engaged in had failed, he thought a prompt and decisive acquiescence in that result on the part of the leaders and their adherents would avert much public disturbance and personal suffering. He thought also that such a course on the part of the leaders, like himself, as yet at large, might secure better terms for those who had been cap- tured. Accordingly from his asylum in the mountains he carried on, through an influential Catholic clergyman of the district, a correspondence or negotiation with ihe Government, offering to surrender and to advise his friends to a like course, on certain conditions assured for O'Brien. These efforts came to naught. On the night of the 12th of August a police patrol on the road from Cashel to Holycross passed three pedestrians. The usual friendly salutations were exchanged between the parties, and each went its way. Suddenly it occurred to the police officer that there was something beyond the common in the voice and manner of the traveller who had spoken to him. He turned back and overtook the party. He wished to question one of them privately, but the individual thus accosted resented such a course. " Whatever you have to say to me must be said in the hearing of my friends," he exclaimed. " I have to call upon you, then, in the Queen's name to tell me who ye are," said the sergeant, adding rather apologetically, "You know these are troubled times, gentlemen, and we are obliged to be particular." " All quite right, my friend," replied the spokesman of the party. " I am Thomas Francis Meagher." " I," said one of his companions, " am Maurice Eichard Leyne " ;* " And I," added the other, " am Patrick O'Donoghue." * Leyne was a fine dashing young fellow ; genial, generous, chivalrous. He was a rslatire of O'Connell, and was the only member of that family who aided with the Young Ireland party against the great tribune. In July 1854 he died, I might almost say in my arms, not far from the scene of this arrest. The day after we had buried him in the churchyard of Thurles, two of his brothers and myself strolled to Holycross, distant a 98 NEW IKELAND. Dillon, after severe sufferings, got on board an emigrant ship sailing from Gal way to New York. He was disguised as a' Catholic priest. Some clerical friend fully equipped him in| suitable attire, and presented him with a missal, which, by the way, it was remarked he read (or pretended to be reading) a great deal oftener than a veritable clergyman would think of doing. On board the same ship, utterly unknown to him, was a personal friend, another of the fugitives, who was equally ignorant of Dillon's presence Mr. Patrick J. Smyth, now member of Parliament for Westmeath. The vessel had been to sea for some days when Dillon was alarmed by noticing one of the steerage passengers a man dressed as a cattle-drover eyeing him in a decidedly suspicious manner. " It is a detec- tive," thought the pseudo priest ; " he recognises me, and I am lost." Next day his embarrassment was intensified by finding the countryman, ever and anon, throwing rather familiar glances and furtive nods and winks at him. Eventually, coming close up to him on one pretext or another, the cattle-drover, in a hoarse under-breath, hurriedly whispered, "All right, Tm Smyth." Dillon started back in utter amazement, exclaiming, " Smyth ! " " Hush ! " responded the other, we may be watched "; and they separated in the style of priest and peasant, Dillon ostentatiously giving the " countryman " a parting benediction. But a new trouble fell on " his reverence." Amongst the emigrants were a youthful pair of lovers, who, much mistrusting what uncertainties might befall in the great land beyond, three miles, to see the ruined abbey of that name. "We rested awhile and took some refreshment in the neat little wayside inn at the abbey gate- One of my companions, whose resemblance to his brother Maurice was remarkable, entered into conversation with the proprietress as she birsie4 herself in attending to us. After a while she looked earnestly at him. " If you please, sir, are you anything to the gentleman that was buried in town yesterday ? " she inquired. " Yes," he replied ; " why do you ask ?* Her eyes filled with tears. " Oh, you are so like him, as he sat there, where you are sitting this blessed minute, and asked me for a little bread and milk, the evening before he and Mr. Meagher and the other gentleman were took by the police on the road beyond ! " And the por woman sobbed outright as she gave us several particulars of their movements on that day and night. Two years ago, passing through Thurles, I sought the grave of my friend Leyne. The grass was high in the rank soil ; only after long search I found the spot. Above it stood a simple slab, on which some kindly hand had placed his name and an apt quotation, " He whose virtues deserved a temple, now scarce commands a stone." AFTER-SCENES. 99 -suddenly conceived the idea of getting married there and then on board ; " seeing as how there was a priest in the ship, just ready to hand." They applied to Dillon to perform the ceremony. His dismay was inconceivable. He most piously exhorted them to wait till they landed. No. " With the blessing of God, now was the time." He invented a dozen excuses, all in vain, until he fortunately bethought him of the plea that he had not " faculties" from his bishop that woiild avail in such a peculiar case* An accident divulged his secret. One day the sea ran high and the ship pitched and rolled violently. At dinner his re- verence sat on the right hand of the captain, and was being helped to some mutton, when the ship suddenly lurched and flung dish, joint, and gravy full into his bosom. He bounced from his seat with a thundering oath, followed by a string of most unpriestly expletives, quite forgetting himself, till he saw the company staring at him in a strange way. The captain 'especially, who shouted in laughter, seemed enlightened by the incident. " Ah, my dear sir," said he to Dillon, " I have had my suspicions for some time. I can guess what you are. Be not afraid. You are safe from fear or harm." From that day forth Dillon and Smyth resumed their real character, and were the object of kindliest attention from the honest English sailor. Richard O'Gorman " Young Eichard " escaped in a ship sailing from Limerick to Constantinople. His father, Eichard O'Gorman, senior, was a wealthy Dublin merchant, who took a leading part in the Catholic Emancipation and Eepeal move- ments. The Irish metropolis boasted no man more esteemed for his personal virtues ; none who stood higher in commercial or political integrity. The old gentleman seceded along with the Young Irelanders from O'Connell, and was a member of the Irish Confederation. He was not, however, swept off his feet by the revolutionary " tidal wave " in February, and was, I believe, utterly opposed to the course of action into which his friends and associates keener stroke still, his only son along with them were rashly hurried. At Constantinople young O'Gorman and Jiis friend John O'Donnell lay concealed until they were able to obtain passports to Algiers. John O'Mahony, a gentleman farmer of Kilbeheny, Tipperary, whose high treason contribution was an attempt to effect a rising during the progress of Smith O'Brien's trial, sailed from Bonmahon to Wales, and thence by way of London to Paris. MacManus was a prosperous for- warding agent in. Liverpool when he suddenly quitted the H 2 1UU NEW IRELAND. countinghouse and rushed across to Ireland to join Smith O'Brien, as whose second in command he figured at Ballingary Common. He succeeded in baffling all the vigilance of pursuit and getting on board an emigrant ship, the N. D. Chase, bound from Liverpool to America. With joyful heart he saw her put to sea ; but unhappily for him some trifling mishap caused the captain to run for Queenstown. A merchant's clerk in Liverpool had, a week previously, robbed his employers, and was supposed to have got off in this ship. She was boarded in Queeustown harbour by the police in quest of the absconding clerk. Tho passengers were paraded ; the clerk was not found, but a Liver- pool policeman quickly recognised a much more valuable prize in Terence Bellew MacManus. There is in many respects a dismal sameness about state trials for high treason, and yot they seem to hare a weird interest for spectator and for reader. Meagre and terse as are the reports which we possess of the so-called trials in which the last of the Tudors rid themselves of supposed or real " traitors," they have a gloomy fascination all their own, and portray for us more faithfully than many more elaborate efforts do the condition of public affairs at that time. It may be truly said that for four weeks, extending from the 23rd of September to the 21st of October, the attention of Ireland was riveted on the Tipperary County Court-house in Clonmel, where the insurgent leaders William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, and Terence Bellew MacManus were on trial for their lives. O'Brien was defended by Mr. Whiteside, Q.C. (after- wards Lord Chief Justice of the Que*n' Bench), Mr. Francis Fitzgerald, Q.C., and Sir Coleman O'Loghlen, QC. Meagher was defended by Mr. Whiteside, Q.C., and Mr. Isaac Butt y Q.C. ; MacManus by the same bar. Of their conviction there could have been little doubt. No skill of advocacy could struggle against the facts of the ease. But there was at least one incident of the trials which created an unprecedented sensa- tion. It became known that the defence intended to subpoena Major-General Sir Charles Napier and th Prime Minister, Lord John Eussell. What was this for ? It was for a purpose the ' effectuation of which, though subsequently found to be technically forbidden by the rules of eridence, would certainly have thrown a startling light upon the conduct and fate of the men in the dock. General Napier was summoned to give up a letter in his possession proving that men at that moment holding office as ministers of the Crown, Lord John Kussell, the first AFTER-SCENES. 101 minister, included, had in 1831-32 secretly devised and arranged for a proceeding precisely similar to that for which these prisoners were now on trial, namely, a resort to arms, a popular rising, w order to compel the Government to yield the popular demands. It was, to be sure, pretty well known that at that period the English Eeform leaders were under the impression the threat- ened "march of Birmingham on London" might have to fee carried out ; but that they had gone so far as to arrange detaik of the revolutionary movement, and had selected the military men on whom they relied to take command of the insurgents, was a story which staggered all belief. Yet so it was. In truth, the course adopted by the Irish Kepeal Confederates in 1848 was in many respects almost identical with that adopted by the English Keform Confederates in 1831 and 1832. In the summer of 1831 the Lords threw out the Eeform Bill, and the Eeform Ministry appealed to the country in a general election. Not alone in this direction was their appeal energeti- cally pushed. It was also decided that failing any other means an armed revolution was to clear the road blocked up by the obstructive House of Peers. Political clubs or " unions " were established all over the country, the " National Political Union " of London being the head centre. Every Englishman between twenty-five and forty-five was called on to enrol himself, and to learn "how to resist oppression." The great object was to effect what the Times' of that date called " a national arma- ment for a reform of law." So much was open, public, known to the world. But something of what was passing behind the scenes is revealed in the following > " secret and confidential" letter of Lord Melbourne's private secretary, Mr. Thomas Young, to General C. J. Napier, written from the Home office (" H. 0.") on the date which it bears : H. O., June 25, '32. Mr DEAB NAPIER, Sir H. Bunbury told me of your wise determination not to become " a parliament man," at least for the present. The offer was very tempt- ing, and you have the more merit in declining. I refrained from writing to you while the matter was undecided, for I did not wish to obtrude my opinion ; but I felt that reason was against your acceptance, as your health, your purse, and your comfort would all hare suffered by your attendance in the House of Commons. The History must hare been laid aside. You could not, moreover, have been a calm and silent member, but would have been exerting yourself to push onward the movement faster than it probably will march, or than, perhaps, all things considered, it is desirable that it should march. 102 NEW IE EL AND. ^ Let us go back a moment. The display of energy, and a readiness to act, on the part of the people- when the Duke of W was on the eve of coming in, was greater fai than I expected. I speak not of the Cockneys, but of the men in th north Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham. Are you aware that in th event of a fight you were to be invited to take the command at Birming ham ? Parkes got a frank from me for you with that view, but had no occasion to send it. Had he written I should have fired a despatch at you. with my friendly and anxious counsel and entreaty to keep you quiet and not to stir from Freshford. It is not well to enter early into revolutions the first fall victims. What do you think would have happened? The Reformers Place, &c. talked big to me, and felt assured of success. The- run upon the banks, and the barricading of the populous country towns*, would have brought matters to a crisis ; a week they, the Reformers,, thought would finish the business. They meant so to agitate here that no- soldiers could have been spared from London ; and the army is too small elsewhere to have put down the rebels. In Scotland I believe the most effectual blow would have been struck ; and it seems difficult to have resisted the popular movement. The Tories, however, say the Duke- would have succeeded. No doubt the discipline under which soldiers live mig-ht have proved a stronger element than the public enthusiasm, i.e. r unless the latter was universal or extensive, and then it would have carried all before it. The task would have been to bring back society to- its former quiet state. Thank God we have been spared the trial ; but as a matter o/ speculation, tell me what you think would have been the result ? Am I right in my conjecture that you would have refused the Birmingham invite, and kept your sword in its scabbard? Yours ever truly, T. Y. Thanks for your first volume Jones has come back better. This was very much the plan O'Brien, Meagher, and Dillon seemed to have in view. By keeping the metropolis in a state of excitement, menace, and alarm, the chief portion of the troops would be detained therein, while " the barricading of the popu- lous towns," would have brought matters to a crisis in the- provinces. They too thought it would be "difficult to have resisted the popular movement," and that " public enthusiasm "" "would have carried all before it." None of them, however, could now exclaim, " Thank God, we have been spared the trial." They were not spared it, and the result to them was ruin. As to "my dear Napier," the Eeform Confederates in tho "H 0." mistook their man. Sir Charles was much of aEadical, but he was more of a soldier. He had very stern ideas of discipline and loyalty, and he quite fired up on receipt of " T. Y.'s " astounding communication, in which he was so cleverly "felt" as to whether he would not have drawn his sword as AFTER-SCENES. 108 an insurgent commander. He replied in terms of strong indig- nation. He called the proposition an insult to his honour as a soldier and his loyalty as a subject. As to the communication being "confidential," he repelled any obligation of confidence between him and " conspirators." He would, however, he said, make no public use of the letter unless in one event, namely, if ever any of the men who were concerned in this 1831 busi- ness attempted to prosecute others for similar designs, he would told himself at liberty to hand over the letter as a punishment on its authors, and a warning to all whom it might concern. This event exactly had arisen, and Sir Charles at once gave "T. Y.'s" letter to the public. It was not allowed to be put in evidence at Clonmel. Two wrongs do not make a right. In the eye of the law it could be no excuse for William Smith O'Brien that Lord Melbourne or Mr. Attwood, or Lord John Eussell or Mr. Young, had intended if necessary to do in 1831 what he conspired to at- tempt in 1848. So O'Brien and Meagher, and MacManus and O'Donoghue, having been found guilty of high treason, were sentenced to be hanged, beheaded, disembowelled, and quartered. The revelations of the " T. Y." letter had, however, one striking result they rendered impossible the execution of this death-sentence. Although in Spain the successful rebel of Monday who is the prime minister of Tuesday orders the un- successful conspirator of Wednesday to be shot on Thursday, it was felt that for " T. Y.'s " friends to advise the Queen's sig- nature to O'Brien's death-warrant would be too much for public opinion. There was a legal difficulty in the way of avoiding such a terrible event ; but ex post facto legislation is quite common and very convenient in Irish affairs. A special act was passed whereby the capital sentences were commuted in each case to penal servitude beyond the seas for life; and on the 29th of July, 1849, the first anniversary of the abortive rising, the war-brig Swiftmre sailed from Kingstown harbour, bearing O'Brien, Meagher, MacManus, and O'Donoghue to the convict settlements of Australia. 104 NEW IRELAND. CHAPTER X. THE CRIMSON STAIN. ' AT eleven o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, 1st of March, 1848, three murderers were led out to die in front of Clonmel jail. Around the scaffold were assembled a dense throng of people, townsmen and peasants, men and women; every eye strained on the three gibbets and the three looped cords that swayed in the morning breeze. In all the crowd no voice denied that these men deserved their doom. The crime was black ; the evidence clear ; the conviction just And yet, even before the dismal procession of the condemned came into view, pitying exclamations might be heard bewailing that they should peris"h thus " so young.' 1 Close by the scaffold glittered the bayonets of two companies of the 47th, and on the flank the drawn sabres of the 4th Light Dragoons. It was plain that the authorities did not choose to trust merely to the strong party of police which occupied the other side to guard against eventualities. A murmur from the crowd directed attention to a figure which appeared on the scaffold. It was the hangman. He coolly examined the ropes, and looked to the noose of each to see whether it ran smoothly. He tried the drops or traps, and shot the bolts to ascertain whether they were clear and free. So far the people gazed silently, as these performances were gone through ; but when they saw him pull out of his pocket a piece of soap or grease and apply it to the ropes, a yell of indignation arose, and he disappeared through the doorway into the jail amidst a storm of execration. Soon the prison bell began to toll, and as the death-knell sounded, the crowd fell on their knees. Through the doorway leading to the scaffold there emerged the tall figure of Father John Power (the present Catholic Bishop of Waterford), in surplice and soutane ; his voice, reciting the office for the dying, reaching to the farthest bound of the hushed multitude. Then came the prisoners three young men ; two of them brothers ; and foul as was their crime, one now could understand the compassion of the women in the crowd. They were really fine- looking young peasants; the eldest could hardly have been THE CRIMSON STAIN. ' 105 twenty-three. The brothers, Henry and Philip Cody, were to be executed for the murder of Laurence Madden, nine months before ; and John Lonergan " the widow's son," as he was de- signated by the witnesses on the trial for shooting Mr. William Eae, J.P., at Kockwell. The executioner first put the rope 1 around the neck of Lonergan, who asked the people all to pray for him. Henry Cody, who stood at the narrow doorway, saw the process which was so soon to be gone through with himself As if in answer to Lonergan's appeal, he cried aloud, " Lord Jesus, have mercy on us! Lord, have mercy on him! Lord, have mercy on us!" Then the hangman approached the younger Cody, and, having put the cap on his face, began to place the noose on his neck. In so doing, it is thought, he made some observation which reached Henry's ear. At sound of the voice he started as if pierced by an arrow. He ceased praying, and was observed to tremble from head to foot. The fact is, it was currently reported, though I believe quite ground- lessly, that the man who acted as executioner was the identical Crown witness who had, as the people expressed it, " sworn away the lives " of the hapless brothers. That he marvellously resembled him is, at all events, indubitable ; and whether the elder Cody had heard the rumour, or recognised, as he fancied, the voice of the "approver," there is now no knowing; but plainly, he believed this was the man. He sprang at the hang- man, and, with his bound and manacled hands, smote him again and again. Then he seized him, dragged him to the front, and by main force tried to fling him over the railing of the scaffold. It was an awful, a horrible sight ! Murderer and hangman gripped in deadly struggle ; the latter screaming aloud for mercy and for help. Beyond doubt, Cody, even with arms strapped and pinioned, would have succeeded in his deadly purpose had not some of the warders rushed over. The younger brother heard the struggle, and knew something unusual had happened ; but, having the cap over his face, he could not see. Father Power, fearful lest he might know what it was, kept resolutely at his side, fervently pouring prayers and exhortations into hig ear. At last, Philip heard Henry's voice in the struggle, and despite all the priest could do, he managed to tear the covering from his face, when lo ! he saw his brother and the hangman in frightful encounter. He tried to rush to Henry's aid, but Father Power flung his arms around him. " Oh ! my child, my child ! for the sake of that Jesus, your God who gave Himself to his executioners, do not, do not. Oh, think of the Sou of God oh, 106" NEW IRELAND. think you are going to meet your Creator and Judge ! " and the good priest, fairly overcome, sobbed aloud. Then the unhappy young man let his head fall on Father Power's shoulder, and he too cried like a child: " Oh, Henry ! Henry! My brother! My brother ! Oh, God ! Oh, God ! " Eye-witnesses of that scene speak of it to-day only with a shudder. The idea of launching into the presence of God men with souls aflame with passion of deadliest hate and vengeance was something dreadful to contemplate; and Father Power- appealed to the sheriff to postpone for a while the execution. That gentleman himself, utterly shocked and indeed overcome, would willingly have complied, but there was a legal compulsion then and there to carry out the law ; and the brothers, who for a moment had been taken to the rear of the scaffold, were again brought forward. The people, who throughout had given way to the deepest emotion women crying and wailing, others praying aloud, and several fainting thought, for, a moment, the execution would be put off. When they saw the condemned led out again, a roar of grief and anger rose from the crowd, but at a gesture from Father Power they suddenly hushed, and once more sank on their knees. The three men were held on the traps; the bolts were drawn, and justice was vindicated, under circumstances such as I hope may never be paralleled in our land. This was but one day's work out of several of a similar character in that spring of 1848. The assizes that year were heavy, and Tipperary, unfortunately, had contributed a gloomy calendar. The peasantry of that county, physically one of the finest peoples in the world, have strong characteristics, strangely mixed vices and "virtues. They are hot and passionate ; brave and high-spirited ; deadly in their vengeance ; generous, hos- pitable; ready to repay kindness with kindness, hate with hate, violence with violence. When not under the influence of passion, " more fearful than the storm that sweeps their hills," they are one of the most peaceable, orderly, and moral popu- lations in the empire. There seems to be hardly any middle character in Tipperary assizes. The calendar is either a blank, as to serious offences, or is black with crimes that tell how- lightly human life is valued where revenge reduces men to savagery. Many of the most serious of these outbursts in that county had their origin in provocation in which technical law and actual justice were wofully antagonised ; and the facts that most deeply shock one in contemplating the subject th& THE CRIMSON STAIN. 107 cowardly selfishness or guilty connivance of eye-witnesses of murder, or the sympathy and shelter extended to the assassin are the evil and accursed fruit of a system which had made the people look upon " law " as an enemy, not a protector. It is now some twenty years ago since, on the occasion of an execution for murder in Tipperary which agitated all Ireland the hanging of the brothers Cormack for the murder of Mr. Ellis,. of Templemore I decided to go down specially to visit the scene of the crime ; being anxious to satisfy myself as to the- controversy then raging in reference to the innocence or guilt of the execiited men. During my stay I was the guest of a gentleman whose friendship was a passport to the intimate con- fidence of the peasantry. I spent some time in driving and riding with him through the county; and not only did I ascertain the real history of the particular case I came to in- vestigate, but I gathered from sources accessible to few a goodly store of information on the whole subject of the land feud im Tipperary. It was very evident that nothing less than a states of war, sullenly smouldering or fiercely bursting into flame, had prevailed for half a century between class and class in that county. The later troubles commenced with nocturnal raids for arms. Long before they took the shape of personal violence or direct attempt on life, the disturbances in Tipperary seemed to have entirely for their object the possession of such guns, pistols, or blunderbusses as could be obtained by attacking the houses of the gentry. Every night the country was scoured by parties of men demanding arms, and taking them by force where refused. As might have been easily foreseen, this very speedily and inevitably led to life-taking on both sides ; and then, blood once spilt, a dreadful state of things ensued. The audacity and daring of the peasantry in some of these attacks Was truly marvellous. They publicly erected a barricade across the mail-coach road in the parish of Boherlahan, near Clonoulty, in order to rob, not the mail bag or its contents, but the arms of the mail guard. The fact that the coach was known to have a dragoon escort, so far from deterring them, only offered a greater inducement to the enterprise ; for the dragoons carried sabres and carbines. Two of the peasantry, a man named Lahy, and another named Ryan, were told off the night before to encounter the dragoons while two others attacked the coach. At the first volley one of the dragoons fell dead. The other fled. The coach guards made more resolute defence. For five minutes a deadly fire was maintained between them and the assailants ; 108 NEW IRELAND. but eventually the latter prevailed, and all the guns and pistols in the coach, eleven stand of arms, were handed over. Strange to say, none of the attacking party were seriously wounded, though beside the dragoon who was killed some of the guards and two of the passengers suffered more or less severely. Listening tc these narratives from eye-witnesses, and in some instances, I more than suspect, participators, what most perplexed and confounded me was the way in which, in the midst of some episode of law- lessness and sanguinary violence, some trait of fidelity, or act of generosity, would appear " like a fly in amber." The " servant boy," who would go out at night " in turn " to rob other houses, would quite resolutely defend his own master's residence against his companions ; on the ground that it was " not fair " to ap- proach a door entrusted to his care. The house of a Mr. Fawcett, a Protestant gentleman farmer near Cashel, was attacked, of all days in the year, on a Christmas-day. The gentleman himself was away in Dublin ; and the place was in charge of his son, aged twenty, and a servant-boy named Gorman. A servant-girl saw a party of men coming up the lawn, and, guessing their errand, she rushed in and gave the alarm. Gorman recognised them well enough. He had been " out " with them many a night on similar work ; but now he was in charge of " the master's" property, and he would defend it. He and young Fawcett barricaded the hall door and windows. Some of the assailants got in through the rear of the house, but a cross-door in the hall barred their way to where the guns which they wanted were kept. This they sought to force; Gorman ex- postulating and threatening to fire. They seem not to have credited this, and persisted, when, finding the door likely to yield, he aimed through a small fan-light at the top and mortally wounded the chief assailant, a young man named Buckley. The party fled, carrying their disabled leader ; but eventually they found that escape was impossible with a wounded man, streaming with blood, in their arms. What were they to do ? They hid him in some brushwood near a running stream, telling him on no account to make a noise, and promising that they would return for him at night. He endured great agony from thirst, and his resolution giving way, he cried aloud for water. Some women coming from mass heard the moans, and discovering where he lay, brought him some water in his hat. This done, lie implored them to " pass on, and say nothing/' They knew what was meant, and silently went their way. When night fell his companions returned with a door on which to bring him THE CRIMSON STAIN. 10& home ; but as they were fording the Suir at Ballycamus they discovered that ic was a corpse they were bearing. He was dead! Deciding not to shock his poor mother by bringing the body to the door, they concealed it in a brake, setting watches to guard it day and night till they could give it suitable interment. By this time of course tidings of the attack on Mr. Fawcett's house had reached the authorities, and Mr. Wilcos, E.M., and Captain Long, J.P., of Longfield, with a strong party of police, commenced to search from house to house for a wounded man, so as to get a clue to his companions. Gorman, who had shot Buckley, and who knew him well, de- clared that all the assailants were utter strangers. Buckley's companions made a levy on the associates throughout the barony, and raised 50 for his mother, to whom they broke the news of his fate. "When the magistrates asked her where her son was, she said he had gone to seek work near Cahir. Buckley had a grand midnight funeral ; but some one " peached ;" Captain Long got word of the burial, and next night, at the head of a party of police, came to disinter the body and examine it. Some one, however, peached on the police, too, for an hour before they arrived at the graveyard, the coffin had been dug up by Buckley's comrades and carrried off to the mountains. It is a positive fact that for two months this chase after the corpse went on ; four or five times it was buried, and as often hurriedly disinterred. At length the search had to be given up, and one night Buckley was borne back to his father's grave at Ballyshehan, where he has since lain. The dismal sequel to this strange story is that Captain Long, for having exerted himself so actively in the endeavour to discover Buckley's associates, was shot dead in his own house some few months subsequently. " Cut " Quinlan is a name that will long be remembered in Tipperary. Two brothers Quinlan, Michael and " Cut " the latter a soubriquet lived in the parish of Anacarthy, not far , from the Limerick Junction railway station. They held a small farm from a Mr. Black. On the same estate lived four brothers named Hennessy, one of whom filled the dangerous office of " rent-warner " to Mr. Black. The Quinlans were evicted, and they suspected the Hennessys had led Mr. Black to the act a suspicion strengthened to conviction when the land from which they had been dispossessed was given to the Hennessys. In that hour a frightful purpose took possession of " Cut." It was nothing less than a resolve to pursue to death every one of the 110 NEW IRELAND. Henncssys. The rent-warner, Denis, was sliot about three months after the eviction of the Quinlans. Tom Ilennessy was waylaid and murdered on the public road from Anacarthy to Graffon. No evidence could be found to connect " Cut " with either crime, though no one doubted his guilt. Davy Ilennessy, seeing that destruction awaited the family, emigrated to America. Here, however, he was encountered and shot dead by the younger Quinlan. What became of the fourth Hennessy I never heard, " Cut " Quinlan now gave himself up to a career of desperation, constituting himself a sort of general avenger against bailiffs, agents, landlords, and all other " oppressors " in the county. A peasant widow in considerable distress had her scanty house- hold goods and farm stock seized for poor-rate. Three keepers who were in charge of the seizure were spending the night in the parlour of the house, when suddenly about midnight the window was dashed in and the bloodthirsty " Cut" sprang into the room. The bailiffs knew they had no mercy to expect, and tried to make for the door. He shot one dead. Another in his terror attempted to escape up the chimney. The murderer pulled him down by the feet and blew out his brains with a pistol-shot. The third by this time had jumped through the window and got out. Quinlan followed, overtook, and shot him. No one survived to tell the bloody tale to judge or jury, and the assassin walked abroad unpunished. At length " Cut " began to find that popular feeling had been decidedly revolted by his career, and things were getting un- comfortable for him. He disappeared, no one for some time knew whither. Eventually letters reached Anacarthy to say that " Cut " had enlisted in the service of the Queen, and was now in India. Years flew by. Sobraon, Aliwal, and Chillian- \vallah had stirred the heart of England, and the glory-crowned iroops of Great Britain came home to receive a nation's welcome. In their ranks returned " Cut " Quinlan. He had fought through the Sutlej campaign ; had distinguished himself as the most daring and courageous, and. incredible as it sounds, one of the best-conducted men in the regiment ! He took his discharge from the army, and came back to Tipperary, where it soon became notorious that he was once more the leader in every outrage. One day Father Mullaly, parish priest of Anacarthy, was riding home from a sick call, when he overtook " Cut." " Quinlan," said he, " I heard you conducted yourself well in India. I wish to God you had stayed there, for your own sake and every one else's ! " THE CRIMSON STAIN. Ill "Shure, yer reverence, where should one come to but his Ttativc piaco?" " Ah, Quinlan, the place for one to come to is where he will not revolt God and man with crime." " Crime ! yer reverence ! Crime ! is it me " " Silence, sir ; don't attempt this trifling with me. You know well, Quinlan, the life you've been leading. You have escaped the law for want of evidence, but you won't escape God. His justice will not be baulked. Wretched man, you have been in the thick of battle in India. While bullets rained around you God spared you, perhaps to give you yet another chance of repentance. I had hoped when you came home that I should see you a reformed man. I am your pastor ; God will require of me an account of your soul, will ask what efforts I have made to bring you to the paths of virtue. Oh, wretched man! I implore of you, by the merciful God whose forbearance you are outraging, give up your course of crime. Come to the tribunal of penance, and by hearty sorrow and honest life endeavour to repair the scandal you have given." During the delivery of this appeal " Cut " looked on every side to see if he could escape by a run ; but he knew Father Mullaly well.; and furthermore he knew Father Mullaly's cob could take fence and dyke like a greyhound. He could not fly, and had to listen. "Well, Quinlan, will you make up your mind to come to confession, in the name of God ? " " Well, yer reverence, shure 'tis you that can spake hard to a boy, only I know you mane it for good." " But will you come ? Answer me, sir." " Oh! will I, is it ? Well, do ye see, sir of course 'tis right I should go to my duty." " But will you promise ?" There was a long pause. " I will, yer reverence." " But when ? next Saturday ? " " Ah, now, Father Mullaly, you're coming too hard on me entirely. There are raysons why I can't go." " Eeasons why you can't become reconciled with Almighty God, by repenting your past crimes and resolving to amend in the future?" " Well now, yer reverence, the fact of it is there's a thief of a "cotchman beyant there that I " 112 NEW IRELAND. " What, sir what ! You don't mean to tell me to my face that you meditate more crime " Oh no, yer reverence ; I only mane I'm not able yet to say I forgive these infernal Scotchmen who come over here taking ten or twenty farms from honest people ; begor, taking a whole country-side for a sheep-walk, and the people turned out to die. No, Father Mullaly, I won't go to confession, for I can't say 'tis a sin I'd be sorry for to shoot a Scotchman." The parish priest, undaunted, returned to the attack, and pressed " Cut " so hard that at length he promised faithfully he would come to confession and " make his peace with God " on Saturday. On that day Father Mullaly, sitting in his confessional, saw " Cut " enter the chapel and kneel on the floor in a secluded spot. The priest waited and waited, till two hours flew by. He could see Quinlan in fervent prayer, beating his breast, and actually wetting the floor with his tears. But he made no sign towards approaching the confessional. At length Father Mullaly had to come away, leaving Quinlan still bowed on the floor. A fortnight later they met once more, and the parish priest was beginning to reproach " Cut," when the latter exclaimed, "Say nothing to me to-day, yer reverence. I'm going on Monday." Monday came, and the former scene was repeated with like result. Quinlan prayed for hours, but avoided the confession. Nearly two months elapsed before his reverence was able to catch sight of " Cut," who, in fact, was avoiding him. At last they accidentally encountered. " Cut," said the priest, " I ask you no more. Go now your path of crime. I have done my best, and I leave you to God. You are a coward and a liar." Quinlan jumped with a spasm of passion, and his eyes flashed fire. Curbing himself, however, he said, " No, no, Father Mullaly ; no. You never were more wrong in your life. I am neither a coward nor "a liar, but I know that I'd be bound in confession to give up shooting bad landlords, and that I never will, so good-bye." Father Mullaly saw " Cut " no more. But as long as the fox. runs he is trapped at last. Quinlan was caught almost red- handed in a murderous attack, and was tried for it at Clonmel assizes. He wrote to Chatham, where his former regiment was now stationed, and told a piteous tale of innocence to his captain, ''leseeching him by the memory of certain past services to come THE CRIMSON STAIN. 113 over to Clontnel and " speak for him " in court. According to my informants, who were, I believe, present on the occasion when the trial came on, "Cut" paid little attention to the proceedings, but from time to time swept the audience with anxious eye. As the case was concluding Quinlan's former captain hurriedly entered and took a seat in the grand jury box. " My lord," said the prisoner, " I have one witness. Hear his story, and say am I likely to be the man whom these other people think they can identify as a murderer." The officer was sworn, and told of " Cut " what I have already mentioned : his exemplary conduct, his steadiness, his undaunted bravery. " Most of the time he was my own servant," he continued, " and a truer soldier never lived. My lord, I owe my life to his fidelity and heroism. On the day of Sobraon, when shot and shell flew like hail, I fell amidst a heap of our brave fellows torn by the enemy's fire. When no man of ordinary courage would face that storm of death, this faithful fellow rushed in, careless of his life, found me where I lay, and bore me in his arms from the field. Thank God I am here to-day, I hope to save his life. He would be incapable of the crime laid to his charge." Alas for the inconsistencies of human nature of Tipperary human nature, at all events. The jury knew " Cut " better and longer than the captain did. The evidence satisfied them of his guilt, and they were otherwise aware of his desperate career. They found him guilty of manslaughter, and he was transported for life beyond the seas ! Here, surely, was a strange amalgam. Up to the day of his eviction this man had lived the ordinary uneventful life of a peasant. From that hour forth he seemed, like the character in Sue's story, to " see blood." He would dare almost inevit- able death to save his English master. He would refuse every entreaty of his religious pastor and life-time friend imploring him to turn from a course of merciless vengeance and revolting crime. It must be said that thirty or forty years ago the administra- tion of justice in these cases partook very often of the rough and ready style. The evil idea of " striking terror," and the practice of relying too largely on the evidence of " approvers " often perjured villains who had been themselves the real criminals led frequently to the worst results. One cannot spend a night amidst the fireside group in a Tipperary farm house, as I have frequently done, without hearing stories of men I 114 NEW IKELAND. hanged for offences of -which they were wholly innocent ; the identification being stupidly wrong ; the peasantry will tell you it was wilfully false. I was inclined to think there might be some proclivity to such an impression on the part of the population ; but I am bound to say evidence irrefragable con- vinced me that justice blundered sadly in some of those displays of precipitancy and passion, miscalled salutary vigour. Agrarian crime has not totally disappeared. Evils so deep- rooted are not soon or easily expelled. Ever and anon even still we are startled and horrified by some incident reminding us of gloomy days we had fondly hoped were gone for ever. But & thousand signs proclaim that though in Ireland, as in England, and in every country, crime in various shapes will last, in some degree, as long as human passion, yet agrarian outrages, as we used to know them formerly ghastly campaigns in a sort of civil war will soon belong entirely to the past of Irish history. How the system which produced them received its death-blow is a story that will come in its proper place. But it is the sad fact that thirty years ago Ireland passed through some of the most terrible episodes of that dismal struggle. Two things astonish most persons who, from a distance, contemplate agrarian crime in Ireland. The first is the negative or positive sympathy on the part of the rural population that appears to surround the criminals ; or, at all events, the absence of any co-operation with the law in its pursuit of them. The second is a fact I have glanced at in the case of Tipperary, namely, that a district the scene of such violence is, at other intervals and in other respects, peaceable, orderly, and law- abiding. In the course of many years' observation, I satisfied myself those outrages I do not speak of isolated acts of agrarian crime, but of those tempests that, for a time, raged in particular districts had a sort of class history ; certain features or characteristics; certain originating causes that might be discerned more or less in all of them. Not in every particular case certainly, but in most of them, study reveals something like this movement in a vicious circle. A district formerly disturbed has been peaceable for some time. Landlord and tenant have got along very fairly in a sort of truce, armed or unarmed, negatively hostile or positively friendly. After a while some agent less considerate than those around him conceives an " improvement," an increase of renf, a few new " rules of the estate," a batch of evictions on tho title. In the general Quietude the thing may be done without THE CRIMSON STAIN. 115 much noise or resistance, and he succeeds. His example is followed and extended. Other agents or landlords go on pushing to its utmost limits technical legal right as opposed to actual equity. Some one, more reckless than all the rest, leads the way. He intimates that he knows how to deal with these people. " Firmness," he says, will do it all, and he ostenta- tiously carries revolvers in his coat pocket. A sullen, gloomy calm, which every one accustomed to Irish life well knows to be the herald of a storm, seems to assure him of immunity. He is fired at, but happily escapes. Now, he " must make an example." He will not be cowed by would-be assassins. Out the threatened tenants must go. One day the news flashes through ! the country that this gentleman has been shot dead under I circumstances of great brutality. A shudder of horror goes i through one section of the community. A shout of joy or a [muttered exclamation of approval * is sent forth by another. One portion of the press devotes itself to invectives against the murderers and their sympathisers ; another to denunciations of I the conduct on the victim's part out of which this tragedy |.arose. Every threatened tenant in the locality and throughout i the country sees in the assassin an avenger. The blow he has ! struck is a deterrent that will save hundreds. The police are i refused all assistance in efforts to capture him ; and, sheltered jby the people, he escapes. It is at this point all the harm, all the woful moral rot and 'social disruption, commences. It is just here all the mischief i which arises from an antithesis of law and justice sets in. ; Emboldened by the escape of this assassin, or encouraged by the sympathy manifested for his guilty deed, some wretch with far less cause of complaint than he had, and who, but for this example murder, would have shrunk from such an act, now strikes at some other life. Another and another follow, oa .slighter and slighter provocation, as the moral atmosphere becomes more and more tainted by what has gone before, until, * A near relative of a young friend of mine owns a shop for the sale of general merchandise in a large town in the county Mayo.. One market- day the shop was unusually full of country people, when suddenly some strange stir was noticed among them. Every man in the throng was- observed, one by one, to lift his hat, and heard to ejaculate in a low voice, quite reverentially, " Glory be to God !" " What has happened what are you all praying for ? " said the proprietress to one of them. " Oh ! glory be to God, ma'am, did you not hear the news ? " he replied ; " the greatest tyrant in the county Mayo was shot this morning ! " 12 116 NEW IRELAND, eventually, every cowardly miscreant who has a personal grudge to satiate swells the list of atrocities ; and crimes are multiplied* which disgust and affright even those who hailed the first shot with a fatal approval. At length the hangman's work is found to be in accord with the popular conscience. The landlords and agents have fought the fight of their class unflinchingly ; but they heartily wish the storm had never been raised. The farmers contend that the first case was one of frightful provoca- tion, but agree that the thing has led to bad work all round. Both sides now have had enough of it. The shootings and the hangings die out, and for another period of years there is peace and tranquillity in the district. I have seen all this, again and again, pass before my eyes. Of course the programme was not, in every particular, the same- in every case ; occasionally a murder for which the human mind could conceive no palliation began the accursed business ;, but in what may be called the more serious outbursts of agrarian violence, the general course of the dismal story was very much as I have described it. As a rule, the first tragedy was one which had some terrible provocation behind it. As a rule, the later outrages were the very wantonness of ruffianism aud crime. I know of no Irish topic on which candid, truthful, and independent writing and speaking ire more rare than this of agrarian crime. The outrages in many cases were so fearful that no one durst speak a word as to their having had some cause, without exposing himself to a charge of palliating or- sympathising with them. On the other hand, the provocation often was so monstrous that if one execrated the crime as it deserved to be, he was supposed to be callously indifferent to' the avidity, the greed, the heartlessness that led up to it. Thus, thirty years ago, nay, twenty years ago, or less, the- creation of a healthy public opinion on the subject was impossi- ble. We stood arrayed, one and all of us, in one or other of" two hostile camps : that of the landlords, in apparent approval of merciless evictions; or that of the tenants, in apparent sympathy with red-handed murder. Yet, occasionally on both sides there must have been many a good man, many a true patriot, who in his secret heart bewailed the terrible state of things that thus convulsed and affrighted society ; and who yearned for the day when the page of Ireland's story would be blotted no more by this Crimson Staiu. "LOQHABER NO MOJSE1" 117 CHAPTEK XL " LOCHABEK NO MORE ! " -A HIGHLAND friend whose people were swept away by the great '" Sutherland Clearances;" describing to me some of the scenes in that great dispersion, often dwelt with emotion on the spectacle of the evicted clansmen marching through the glens on their way to exile, their pipers playing, as a last farewell, "' Lochaber no more ! " Lochaber no more ! Lochaber no more ! We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more ! I sympathised with his story; I shared all his feelings. I had seen my own countrymen march in like sorrowful procession on their way to the emigrant ship. Not alone in one district, however, but all over the island, were such scenes to be wit- nessed in Ireland from 1847 to 1857. Within that decade of .years nearly a million of people were " cleared " off the island by eviction and emigration. A bitter memory is held in Ireland of the "Famine Clear- ances," as they are called. There was much in them that was heartless and deplorable ; much also that was unfortunately unavoidable. Three years of dreadful privation had annihilated the resources of the agricultural population. In 1848, through- out whole districts, the tenant-farmers the weak and wasted few who survived hunger and plague were without means to till the soil. The exhaustion of the tenant class involved, in numerous cases, the ruin of the landlords. A tenantry unable to crop the land were of course unable to pay a rent. Many of them, so far from being in a position to pay, rather required the landlord's assistance to enable them to live. Apart from all question as to the disposition of the Irish landlords to yield such aid, it is the indubitable fact that, as a class, they were utterly unable to afford it. Some of them nearly extinguished their own interest in their estates by borrow- ing money in 1848, 1849, and 1850, to pull the tenants through. Too many of the Irish landlords acted differently; and for the course they adopted they were not the only persons to 118 NEW IRELAND. Wame. The English press at this juncture embraced the ideas that the Irish Famine, if properly availed of, would prove a great blessing. Providence, it was declared, had sent this valuable opportunity for settling the vexed question of Irish misery and discontent. Nothing could have been done with the wretched population that had hitherto squatted on the land. They were too poor to expend any capital in developing the resources of the soil. They were too ignorant to farm it scientifically. Besides, they were too numerous. Why incur ruinous expense to save or continue a class of landholders so- undesirable and injurious ? Eather behold in what has happened an indication of the design of Providence. Ireland needs to be' colonised with thrifty Scotch and scientific English farmers;' men with means ; men with modern ideas. Thus pleaded and urged a thousand voices on the English shore ; and to impecunious Irish landlords the suggestion seemed. a heavenly revelation. English tenants paid higher rents than. Irish, and paid them punctually. English " colonists " would so farm the land as to increase its worth fourfold. English farmers had a proper idea of land-tenure, and would quit their holdings on demand. No more worry with half-pauperised and discontented fellows always behind with their rent, always wanting a reduction, and never willing to pay an increase! No more annoyance from tenant-right agitators and seditious newspapers ; no more dread of Bibbonite mandates and Kockite warnings ! Blessed hour ! El Dorado was in sight ! To men circumstanced as the Irish landlords were in 1848, these allurements were sure to prove irresistible. They tanned the theme and substance of essay, speech, and lecture in England at the time. Some writers put the matter a little kindly for the Irish, and regretted that the regeneration of the country had to be accomplished at a price so painful. Others, unhappily, made no secret of their joy and exultation. Here was the opportunity to make an end of the Irish difficulty. The famine had providentially cleared the way for a great and grand work, if England was but equal to the occasion. Now was the time to plant Ireland with a British population. One now can afford to doubt that the men who spoke and wrote in this way ever weighed the effect and consequences of such language on a people like the Irish. I recall it in a purely historical spirit, to identify it as the first visible origin and. cause of a state of things which disagreeably challenges English attention ; the desperate bitterness, the deadly hatred of Bug- "LOCHABER NO MORE!" 119* land, which the emigrant thousands carried with them from Ireland to America. To many an Englishman that hostile- spirit must seem almost inexplicable. " If Irishmen have had to emigrate," they say, " it was for their own good and advan- tage; why should they hate England for that? Englishmen also emigrate in thousands every day." There is no need to dwell upon the painful circumstances that distinguish the Irish exodus from the adventurous emigration of Germans or Swedes or Englishmen. The Irishman who comes to tell the story of these famine-evictions, and the emigration-panic which followed,, finds himself, in truth, face to face with the origin of Irish- American Fenianism. It may be that, even if the tempting idea of " colonisation "" had never affected their minds, a certain section of the Irish landlords would have had to pursue, in a greater or less de- gree, the course they followed. What were they to do ? Penni- less lords of penniless tenants, it seemed a miserable necessity that they should sacrifice the latter; as one drowning mart drives another from a plank insufficient to support them both. Be this as it may, in the track of the Irish Famine came such wholesale " clearances " as never had been known in the history of land-tenure. Of course no rents had been paid because none could be paid :by a great part of the Irish tenantry during the famine years, and the holdings were technically forfeit to the landlord for " non-payment of rent." At a later stage,, even in cases where no rent was due, evictions were carried out all the same, to "clear" the land, and change the farms to sheep-walks and bullock-ranges. The quarter-session courts now presented a strange spectacle. The business of these tribunals swelled to enormous dimensions, from two classes of cases, actions against farmers for meal, seed-corn, and cash lent, and ejectment processes. I have seen the latter literally in piles or sheaves on the desk before the clerk, and listened for hours to the dull monotony of " calling " and " marking " the cases. No defences were attempted ; none could be maintained. Then came the really painful stage of the proceedings the evictions. With the English farmer, as a rule, the termination of his tenancy is, I believe, little more inconvenient or distressing than the ordinary " Michaelmas flitting " of a town resident from one house to another. He has hired the use of a farm with all its appurtenances, fixtures, and conveniences, furnished in good order by the landlord, just as one might engage a fishing-boat 120 NEW IRELAND. by the week or by the day, or rent a shooting, with cosy box or mountain lodge, for a season. Very far different is the case with the Irish tenant. As a rule, his farm has been to him and his forefathers for generations a fixed and cherished home. Every bush and brake, every shrub and tree, every meadow- path or grassy knoll, has some association for him which is, as it were, a part of his existence. Whatever there is on or above the surface of the earth in the shape of house or office or steading, of fence or road, or gate or stile, has been created by the tenant's hand. Under this humble thatch roof he first drew breath, and has grown to manhood. Hither he brought the fair young girl he won as wife. Here have his little children been born. This farm-plot is his whole dominion, his world, his all ; he is verily a part of it, like the ash or the oak that has sprung from its soil. Removal in his case is a tearing up by the roots, where transplantation is death. The attachment of the Irish peasant to his farm is something almost impossible to be comprehended by those who have not spent their lives amongst the class, and seen from day to day the depth and force and intensity of these liorne feelings. > An Irish eviction, therefore, it may well be supposed, is a scene to try the sternest nature. I know sheriffs and sub- sheriffs who have protested to me that, odious and distressing as were the duties they had to perform at an execution on the public scaffold, far more painful to their feelings were those which i fell to their lot in carrying out an eviction, where, as in the case of these " clearances," the houses had to be levelled. The anger of the elements affords no warrant for respite or reprieve. In hail or thunder, rain or snow, out the inmate must go. The bed-ridden grandsire, the infant in the cradle, the sick, the aged, and the dying, must alike be thrust forth, though other roof or home the world has naught for them, and the stormy sky must be their canopy during the night at hand. This is no fancy i picture. It is bxt a brief and simple outline sketch of realities witnessed all over Ireland in the ten years that followed the . famine. I recall the words of an eye-witness, describing one of these scenes : " Seven hundred human beings/' says the Most Eev. Dr. Nulty, Catholic Bishop of Meath, " were driven from their homes on this one day. There was not a shilling of rent due on the estate at the time, except by one man. The sheriffs' assistants employed on the occasion to extinguish the hearths and demolish the homes of those honest, industrious men worked away with a will at their awful calling until evening fell. At "LOCHABER NO MORE /" 121 length an incident occurred that varied the monotony of the grim and ghastly ruin which they were spreading all around. They stored suddenly and recoiled, panic-stricken with terror, from two dwellings which they were directed to destroy with the rest. They had just learned that typhus fever held these houses in its grasp, and had already brought death to some of their inmates. They therefore supplicated the agent to spare these houses a little longer ; but he was inexorable, and insisted that they should come down. He ordered a large winnowing- sheet to be secured over the beds in which the fever-victims lay fortunately they happened to be delirious at the time and then directed the houses to be unroofed cautiously and slowly. I administered the last sacrament of the Church to four of these fever- victims next day, and save the above-mentioned winnowing- sheet, there was not then a roof nearer to me than the canopy of heaven. The scene of that eviction day I must remember all my life long. The wailing of women, the screams, the terror, the consternation of children, the speechless agony of men, wrung tears of grief from all who saw them. I saw the officers and men of a large police force who were obliged to attend on the occasion cry like children. The heavy rains that usually attend the autumnal equinoxes descended in cold copious torrents throughout the night, and at once revealed to the houseless sufferers the awful realities of their condition. I visited them next morning, and rode from place to place administering to them all the comfort and consolation I could. The landed pro- prietors in a circle all round, and for many miles in every direction, warned their tenantry against admitting them to even a single night's shelter. Many of these poor people were unable to emigrate. After battling in vain with privation and pesti- lence, they at last graduated from the workhouse to the tomb, and in little more than three years nearly a fourth of them lay , quietly in their graves." \ To such an extent was this demolition of houses carried,* that a certain kind of skill was acquired in the work ; and gangs of men accustomed so to wield pick and crowbar became a special feature for the time in the labour market. After a while the whole posse sheriff, sub-sheriff, agent, bailiffs, and attendant policemen came to be designated the " Crowbar Brigade," a * On the 22nd of March 1848, Mr. Poulett Scrope, M.P., in the House x)f Commons, called attention to the grossly illegal way in which this \vholesale levelling of tenants' houses was being carried ut in Ireland; the evictions being, he stated, " mostly at nightfall ! " 122 NEW IliELAND. name of evil memory, at mention of which to this day many a* peasant's heart will chill in Ireland. Soon, indeed, hand-labour became too slow in the work or house-levelling, and accordingly scientific improvement and mechanical ingenuity were called in. To Mr. Scully, a Catholic landlord in Tipperary, belongs the credit of inventing a machine for the cheaper and more expeditious unroofing and demolishing of tenants' homes. I never saw it myself, but friends who- watched the invention in operation described it to me. It con- sisted of massive iron levers, hooks, and chains, to which horses were yoked. By deftly fixing the hooks and levers at the proper points of the rafters, at one crack of the whip and pull of the horses the roof was brought away. By some similarly skilful gripping of coign-stones, the house-walls were torn to pieces. It was found that two of these machines enabled a sheriff to evict ten times as many peasant families in a day as could be got through by a crowbar brigade of fifty men. Mr. Scully took no special advantage of his invention. He neither registered it nor patented it, but gave it freely for the general good of his fellow-landlords. I am told that not a dozen years ago it was seen in full swing in a southern county. But even in ruin and desolation, " home " the home that was seemed to have a fascination for the evicted people. They lingered long about the spot, until driven away by force, or com- pelled by sheer starvation to wander off into the " wide, wide world." They threw up rude tents or " sheelings " by the road- side branches of trees or bits of plank snatched from the debris of the levelled houses being laid against the hedge or fence,, and covered with pieces of old sheets or with fern-leaves and grass sods. In such poor shelter the children and the women crouched ; the men slept under the sky. A friend told me that driving through Clare county in '49 he passed several encamp- ments of evicted tenants thus established on the roadside. He said there must have been hundreds of men, women, and children in all, and that they seemed to have been in these huts for some time. In the county Mayo these wayside camps were nearly as numerous as in Clare ; but in the former county, in a few instances at least, neighbouring properties eventually afforded a foothold to the poor outcasts, and saved them from the workhouse. It is only just to mention that, harsh and heartless as the fact men- tioned by Dr. Nulty must sound (the mandate of the surrounding landlords forbidding their tenants to house or shelter the evicted ones), it had, if not in that particular case, in others, this ex- "LOCRABER NO MORE!" 123' planation behind it viz., that where holdings -were already small enough there was no room for sub-dividing ; and no land- lord wished to have the ruined and pauperised population of other townlands fastened as a possible poor-law burden on his own. The instances were not numerous in which any such asylum was allowed, and the vast multitude for such they were in the- aggregate gradually separated into two classes. All who were able to emigrate that is to say, all who either possessed, or were able to borrow or beg, the necessary means found their way to Australia, America, or Great Britain. Those who could not command even the few pounds that the passage to England would cost, made for the nearest town, where for a while they eked out a miserable existence as day-labourers, soon sunk to mendicancy, and eventually disappeared into the workhouse, never to lift their heads or own a home again. The departure of an emigrant cavalcade was a saddening sight. English travellers on Irish railways have sometimes been startled as the train entered a provincial station to hear a loud wail burst from a dense throng on the platform. While the porters with desperate haste are trundling into the luggage-van numerous painted deal boxes, a wild scene of leave-taking is proceeding. It is an emigrant farewell. The emigrants, weeping bitterly, kiss, over and over, every neighbour and friend, man, woman,, and child, who has come to see them for the last time. But the keen pang is where some member of the family is departing, leaving the rest to be sent for by him or her out of the first earnings in exile., The husband goes, trusting the wife and little ones to some relative or friend, till he can pay their passage out from the other Jside. Or it is a son or daughter who parts from the old father and mother, and tells them they shall not long be left behind. A deafening wail resounds as the station bell gives the signal of starting. I have seen grey-haired peasants so clutch and cling to the departing child at this last moment that only the utmost force of three or four friends could tear them asunder. The porters have to use some violence- before the train moves off, the crowd so presses against door and window. When at length it moves away, amidst a scene of passionate grief, hundreds run along the fields beside the line- to catch yet another glimpse of the friends they shall see no- more.* * At Cahirmore, some six miles west of Castletown Bearhaven, one day in June 1847 I was walking along the fields that reach the cliff on the- 124 NEW ICELAND. Besides or between the landlords who at every sacrifice sus- tained and retained their tenantry, and those who, by choice or necessity, abandoned them to their fate or flung them on the world, there was a third class, who adopted a middle course. They did not help the tenantry to weather the storm and live on in the old places, but they assisted them in going away gave them enough money to pay the passage fare to the American or English shore. The character and merits of this transaction were very mixed. In some cases it was generous conduct ; in others it was a hard bargain, struck in the hour of the tenant's helplessness. Which feeling preponderated? Whether the landlord blessed his good fortune when, for so small a price, he /got rid of ruined tenants and probable poor-rate burden on his estate, and had free possession of cleared farms besides, or whether he was a man who honestly and sincerely felt that he was' doing the best for them and for himself that they could never pull through at home, and might do well in Australia or America is a question I have never yet been able to determine to my own satisfaction. Some landlords, no doubt, were swayed by one class of consideration, some by the other. But with every desire to take the brightest view of this " assisted emigra- tion " proceeding, and to presume the best as to motives, I could see that hardly any of these landlords enabled the pauperised fugitives to do more than reach the foreign shore. Not one of them seemed to consider for a moment how the English people would like to have tens of thousands of rude, unsophisticated, unskilled, unlettered Irish peasants flung penniless on the quays -of Liverpool or the docksides of London. Not one of them seemed to care what might be the result if the hundreds of thousands who streamed across the Atlantic should fail to find employment the day they" landed at Boston or New York. Hundreds of these Irish emigrants crossed the Atlantic with barely the tattered clothes on their back, and without a shilling to purchase even one day's food on landing. I know of my own knowledge that several borrowed the seven shillings and six- Atlantic shore, when I saw, running along the path that skirts the edge, a young peasant, sobbing, and waving his cap to a ship in full sail a mile off the land. For a while I was utterly at a loss to understand what it meant ; but on inquiry I found this was an emigrant ship that had just sailed from Castletown, and his sister was on board. The breeze was light, and the vessel made little way ; and the poor fellow had run along the shore for miles to wave a farewell, on chance that his sister might be gazing towards home! t "LOCHABER NO MORE!" k 125 pence that took them as deck passengers across the Channel to England, trusting to the hazard of getting something to do the day, nay, the hour, they landed at Bristol, London, or Liverpool,, if they were not to go without bed or food their first night on English soil. " Thanks be to God, they have fired in the air ! " says the Cork waiter to the English visitor in one of Lever's stories. Two Irish gentlemen having quarrelled in the hotel coffee-room, a duel with pistols was arranged to come off on the spot there and then. To the delight of their friends, however, and of the' .assembled waiters, napkin on arm, they "fired in the air," that is, through the ceiling, and nearly shot the Englishman in " No. 10 " overhead. Very like this " firing in the air " was the c^n- duct of the Irish landlords who sent off their pauperised tenantry and cottiers to England and America. " Thanks be to G^J, they are gone ! " was, no doubt, the happy reflection of many a benevolent landlord at that time. But gone whither, and to- what fate ? Gone from possibly burdening or inconveniencing him ; but what of the possible burden and inconvenience to the social systems into which this mass of strange material was thus flung? Often as I stood and watched these departing groups I tried. to think what it might be that they could do in " the land they were going to." What were they fitted for ? Many of them had never seen a town of ten thousand inhabitants ; and in a large city,, even in their own country, they would be helpless and bewildered as a flock of sheep on a busy highway. What was before them in the midst of London or New York ? What im- pressions would they create in the minds of a strange city people? What species of skill, what branch of industry, did they bring with them, to command employment and insure a. welcome ? Few of them could read ; some of them, accustomed to speak the native Gaelic, knew little of the English tongue. Their rustic manners would expose them to derision, their want of education to contempt, on the part of those who would not know, or pause to consider, that in the hapless land they left the schoolmaster had been proscribed by law for two hundred years. Wofully were they handicapped. Nearly everything was against them. Their past ways of life, so far from training them in aught for these new circumstances, in nearly every way unfitted them for the change. I speak in all this of the peasant or cottier emigrants. Min- gling in the vast throng went thousands, no doubt, who, happily 0.26 NEW IRELAND. for them as it afterwards proved, possessed education, skill, and occasionally moderate means for a start in life on the other side; members of respectable and once prosperous families that had been ruined in the famine time. Nay, there sailed in the steerage of the emigrant ships many a fair young girl, going to face a servant's lot in a foreign land, who at home had once had .servants to attend her every want; and many a fine young fellow ready to engage as groom who learnt that business, so to speak, as a gentleman's son in the hunting-field. In the cities and towns of Great Britain and America there are to-day hundreds of Irishmen, some having risen to position and for- tune, others still toiling on in some humble sphere, who landed on the new shore friendless and forlorn, from the wreck of happy and affluent homes. But as to the vast bulk of uncultured peasants, victims of this wholesale expulsion, their fate was and could but be de- plorable. Landing in such masses, everything around them so strange, so new, and sometimes so hostile, they inevitably herded together, making a distinct colony or " quarter " in the city where they settled. Destitute as they were, their necessities drove them to the lowest and most squalid lanes and alleys of the big towns. At home in their native valleys poverty Avas. free from horrors that mingled with it here, namely, contact with debasing city crime. The children of these wretched emigrants grew up amidst terrible contaminations. The police- court records soon began to show an array of Celtic patronymics. " The low Irish " grew to be a phrase of scorn in the community around them; and they, repaying scorn with hatred, became, . as it were, the Arabs of the place, " their hand against every man's hand, and every man's hand against them." This dismal picture, painfully true of many a case a quarter of a century ago, is now happily rare. A brighter and better state of things is rapidly making its appearance. But, for my own part, I can never forget the mournful impressions made upon me more than tAventy years ago Avhen investigating the condition of the labouring Irish in Staffordshire and in Lanca- shire, in Boston and in New York. I knew that these poor countrymen of mine were of better and nobler material than the strangers around them imagined ; that they were the victims of circumstances. I saw and I deplored their vices and their 1 failings; saw that their native Irish virtues, their simple, kindly, generous nature, had almost totally disappeared in the cruel transplantation. "LOCHABER NO MORE!" 127 The Irish exodus had one awful concomitant, which, in the Irish memory of that time, fills nearly as large a space as the famine itself. The people, flying from fever-tainted hovel and workhouse, carried the plague with them on board. Each vessel became a floating charnel-house. Day by day the American public was thrilled by the ghastly tale of ships arriving off the harbours reeking with typhus and cholera ; the track they had followed across the ocean strewn with the corpses flung over- board on the way. Speaking in the House of Commons on the llth of February 1848, Mr. Labouchere referred to one year's havoc on board the ships sailing to Canada and New Brunswick alone in the following words : " Out of 106,000 emigrants who during the last twelve months cressed the Atlantic for Canada and New Brunswick, 6100 perished on the voyage, 4100 on their arrival, 5200 in the hospitals, and 1900 in the towns to which they repaired. The total mortality was no less than 17 per cent, of the total number emigrating to those places; the number of deaths being 17,800." In all the great ports of America and Canada huge quarantine hospitals had to be hastily erected. Into these every day newly arriving plague-ships poured what survived of their human freight, for whom room was as rapidly made in those wards by the havoc of death. Whole families disappeared between land and land, as sailors say. Frequently the adults were swept away, the children alone surviving. It was impossible in every case to ascertain the names of the sufferers, and often all clue to identification was lost. The public authorities, or the nobly humane organisations that had established those lazar-houscs, found themselves towards the close of their labours in charge of hundreds of orphan children, of whom name and parentage alike were now impossible to be traced. About eight years ago I was waited upon in Dublin by one of these waifs, now a man of considerable wealth and honourable position. He had come across the Atlantic in pursuit of a purpose to which he is devoting years of his life an endeavour to obtain some clue to his family, who perished in one of the great shore hospitals in 1849. Piously he treasures a few pieces of a red-painted emigrant box, which he believes belonged to his father. Eagerly he travels from place to place in Clare and Kerry and Galway, to see if he may dig from the tomb of that terrible past the secret lost to Mm, I fear, for ever ! " From Grosse Island, the great charnel-house of victimised humanity " (says the Official Eeport of the Montreal Emigrant 128 NEW IRELAND. Society for 1847) " up to Port Sarnia, and along the borders of our magnificient river ; upon the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie wherever the tide of emigration has extended, are to be found the final resting-places of the sons and daughters of Erin ; one unbroken chain of graves, where repose fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, in one commingled heap, without a tear bedewing the soil or a stone marking the spot. Twenty thousand and upwards have thus gone down to their graves." I do not know that the history of our time has a parallel for this Irish exodus. The Germans, to be sure, have emigrated in vast numbers ; and, like the Irish, seem to form distinct com- munities where they settle. But many circumstances distinguish the Irish case from any that can be recalled. Other emigrations were, more or less, the gradual and steady overflow of a popula- tion cheerfully willing to go. This was the forcible expulsion; or panic rush of a stricken people, and was attended by frightful scenes of suffering and death. Irishmen, moreover, feel that their country has not had a chance of fair play, if I may so ex- press it, in a state of things which sent out into the world the. one section of the population least qualified to encounter it, and the one section least likely to impress strangers with favourable and high ideas of Ireland and the Irish. At this present hour there are English men and women who think all Irishmen wear " caubeeris," with pipes stuck in the rim, and carrying a reaping- hook under their flannel vest. If only the corresponding class of the English nation, when it had a peasant class, were ssen by foreign peoples, as rude a conception might be formed of the. typical Englishman. Yet, the first terrible ordeal over, the Irish emigration is be- ginning to bear some good and useful fruit. Disadvantageous-, as was their start in the race, the expatriated Celts are decidedly pulling up, and are striding well to the front in many a land. They are acquiring skill, are turning to good account their naturally quick intelligence. In some places, unfortunately, the vices engendered of ignorance and poverty still drag them, down and keep them low ; but in most instances they have con- quered the respect and secured the kindly regard of their em- ployers, neighbours, and fellow-workmen. The sad circum- stances under which the great body of them crossed the seas have indelibly stamped one remarkable characteristic on the Irish emigrants : they are a distinct people. Like the children of Israel, " by the waters of Babylon they sit down and weep when they remember Sion." In joy or sorrow, in adversity or THE ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT. 129 prosperity, they always have a corner in their hearts for Ireland ; a secretly treasured memory of that railway parting- scene, or of the last fond look they turned on the native valley, tiio ruined cottage, the lonely hawthorn-tree. Often in their dreams they clasp again the hands they wrung that day, ere they set forth for an eternal exile, to behold "Lochaber no more ! " CHAPTEK XH. THB ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT. " KINGSTON, Kingston, you black-whiskered, good-natured fellow, I am happy to see you in this friendly country." Such was the characteristic salutation that broke from George IV. as he stepped on the Irish shore at Howth on the 12th of August 1821, and recognised amongst the crowd assembled to greet him the frank, genial, and warm-hearted Earl of Kingston. The king little thought that day that the " black-whiskered, good-natured " nobleman who stood before him splendid type of an Irish country gentleman, brave, generous, hospitable, kindly to his tenantry, beloved by his dependants was fated to be the last of his name and race who would tread in pride the ancestral halls of Mitchelstown. Yet so it was to be. His next heir was to see the ruin of that noble house, the wreck of that princely fortune, once the boast of southern Ireland. The traveller from Cork to Dublin, as he nears the Limerick Junction, sees on his right hand, rising boldly from a fertile plain, a chain of lofty mountains. Even when viewed from the railway, one can notice that they are pierced by many a deep gorge and picturesque glen. These are the Galtees, one of the noblest mountain groups in Ireland perhaps in Europe. The district has an eventful history. Its deep fastnesses, its trackless hills, its winding defiles, made it the refuge of the native Irish when vanquished on the plains. " A natural fortress of liberty," one of our historians calls it. The Desmond Geraldines ipsis Hibernicis Hiberniores Were its lords through- out the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The crumbling waile of their numerous castle strongholds still form notable features K 130 NEW IRELAND. in the landscape for miles around. Early in Vhe seventeenth, century the extensive possessions of this branch of the Fitzgeraids passed to the Fentons of Mitchelstown, one of whom married the daughter of " The "White Knight," Fitzgerald of Clongibbon. Very little later on the sole heiress of the Fentons married Johs. King, whose grandfather, Sir John King, had obtained from Charles II. considerable estates in the county Eoscommon. He was the ancestor of the " black-whiskered, good-natured " Lord ' Kingston, and of Captain E. E. King Harrnan, M.P. for Sligo (1877), to whom these Eoscommon estates have descended. South and west of the Galtees rise the mountains of Knock- meldoun. The valley between is one of the loveliest in all Munster. At its head stands Mitchelstown Castle. From my boyhood I had heard of the magnificence of this mountain palace of the Kingston family, and of the natural beauties sur- rounding. But when I visited the place in 1860 the events I am about to narrate had befallen, and their princely home knew the Kingstons no more. A writer in the Daily News, nearly ten years previously, had drawn a picture of the scene full of feeling and fidelity, some portion of which I shall reproduce in pre- ference to any sketch of my own. "From afar off," he says, " as soon as the traveller enters the beautiful valley which bears its name, the towers and battlements of Mitchelstown are dis- tinguished, rising above the surrounding woods, and affording an idea of magnificence quite uncommon to this country. With a liberality very uncommon in Great Britain, the gates are at all hours open to the public. It is said that nothing delighted Lord Kingston so much as to see .people enjoying themselves in his demesne. In England the passage of a vehicle through a park would be considered by most proprietors an annoying and unwelcome intrusion. At Mitehelstown Lord Kingstown would scarcely permit a carriage to enter without rushing out to greet its occupants, and to invite them to make a survey of his castle and its grounds. " In harmony with the feelings of the noble owner, the drive from the lodge gates to the entrance portal of the castle is a short and pleasant one. No long and chilling avenue affosds the visitor time for preparation. A lawn and pleasure-ground are passed, and the castle stands before you in all its princely grandeur. It consists of a pile of castellated buildings, extensive and elegantly proportioned, and built of stone of the purest white, quarried from the hills on the estate. Nothing can be more simple in arrangement than the interior of this castle. A THE ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT. 131 noble flight of steps leads from the entrance door into a gallery 150 feet in length. At the other end of this gallery a corre- sponding flight of marble stairs leads to the upper chambers. The gallery is lighted by ranges of oriel and other windows to the north. On the south are fireplaces of Italian marble, with stoves of knightly character and blazon, designed expressly for the castle. Between these fireplaces are doors, which open into the suite of rooms which form the saloons of reception. Over- head are two ranges of bedchambers, sixty principal and twenty inferior bedrooms. On an emergency as many as a hundred persons have, without difficulty, been accommodated with chambers in the mansion. Concealed by a shrubbery, to the south of the building, are the exterior offices. The stables of the Douglas, made famous by Sir Walter Scott, did not boast more ample accommodation. Four-and-twenty steeds may here be kept ready for war or chase. The gardens of Mitchelstown have long been celebrated; the noble earl himself took especial pleasure in them. It is indeed a remarkable sight to see the long range of graperies thrown open. As far as the eye can see, festoons of grapes are pendant ; some are of rare sorts. The black Hamburg grape is brought to the utmost perfection here, and there is one vine which, in point of size, both of Tine and fruit, is said to rival the famed produce of the vine at Hampton Court. There is also a lodge expressly devoted for the reception of picnic parties, who from time immemorial have been per- mitted the free range of all the grounds and gardens, and inspection of the castle upon application at the door. Many a family fault and failing may be considered amply redeemed by this liberal attention to the stranger. When Englishmen hear of noblemen's seats which there is a difficulty in visiting, they may remember the case of Mitchelstown, where every visitor, of -whatever station, was provided for, welcomed, and even invited to return." One day, however, a heavy blow fell on Mitchelstown Castle .and its generous-hearted lord. I shall let the same kindly Englishman tell the story, although he was misled, as I shall show, in one or two particulars : " The present proprietor of the estate was distinguished for Ms hospitality. It would have been, under other circumstances, .a noble trait in his character. Lord Kingston did that which the wealthier noblemen of England arc far too slow to do. He invited to Mitchelstown, without distinction of rank or title, all who could derive enjoyment from it. ' If you are a scholar/ K 2 132 NEW IRELAND. said the noble lord, ' yon shall be conducted to scenes renowned 1 in history ; if you are a lover of the picturesque, you shall hare a room commanding a dozen prospects ; if you are a sportsman, the horse and hound invite you to follow them ; or there are hills abounding with grouse, and streams alive with trout. Bring- your gun, your rod, your pencil, or your book, you shall be equally welcome and equally gratified. Come and visit me at Mitchelstown.' " It was in the midst of one of these hospitable gatherings that the last blow was struck at the descendant of Clongibbon, A cruel blow it was, and deservedly execrated will be the man who struck it. It was a Saturday evening ; a hundred guests- were preparing for the dinner-table at Mitchelstown, after the sports and enjoyments of the day. At this moment there rode up to the door an unexpected visitor. He was an attorney of the neighbourhood, to whose hands Lord Kingston had confided the direction of some of his affairs. A debt for the costs appertaining to these proceedings had been met by a bond, upon which judgment had been entered up. The bond only awaited execution, but there was no apprehension that the- money would be pressed for. When the attorney arrived, he was welcomed by Lord Kingston with his usual hospitality. He accepted an invitation to remain the night, and he partook of the hospitality of the castle and quaffed its wine to the health and happiness of his host. "On the following morning, when Lord Kingston and his party were about to repair to the adjacent church, the attorney- excused himself on the plea of indisposition. During the absence of the guests he was observed admiring the grandeur of the rooms. He examined the furniture, the books, the plate upon the sideboards, the chandeliers pendant from the ceilings. Early in the day he took his departure. Lord Kingston little augured what would follow it. " A day or two after, Lord Kingston was visited at Mitchels- 'town by a gentleman well known to him, who requested th& favour of a private interview. It was the sheriff of the county. He came, he said, on a most unpleasant duty. An execution had been issued at the suit of the attorney, and he had received notice to put it in immediate force, together with particulars of furniture and other articles within the castle on which levy could be made, and which he was called upon to seize. The sheriff assured Lord Kingston the execution should be put in cuch a way as would give him least annoyance. The officer, ho THE ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT. 133 said, could be treated as a servant, and he trusted tliat tho matter would be so arranged that he would be very speedily withdrawn. " The sheriff withdrew to summon the officer, whom, in delicacy to Lord Kingston, he had left without the bounds of the demesne. Whilst he was absent, Lord Kingston hastily called some of his friends together and consulted with them. Some of the least judicious recommended him to close the doors. The noble lord was ill-advised enough to act on this suggestion. The castle doors were barred, and the earl and such of the party as remained his guests determined to stand out a siege. " The sheriff had behaved in the spirit of a gentleman, and even of a friend. It was now his duty to act as administrator of the law. He closely invested the castle and its grounds, directing his officers to obtain possession in any way they could. For nearly a fortnight the siege continued. During that time several councils of war were called within the building. At length the more moderate prevailed ; they advised Lord Kingston to surrender at discretion. No succour was at hand, and the present proceedings, they suggested, would only increase the irritation which these proceedings had produced on both sides. It was accordingly determined to admit the officers. Late on the evening of that day Lord Kingston drove away for the last time from the home of his ancestors, and the sheriff's men were summoned in to take possession of the castle and its property." This story, so sympathetically told, was sadly true ; but my information lays tho date of its occurrence some few years anterior to the time here indicated. I rather think the seizure thus described took place in 1845 or 1847, at the instance of a Mr. J. W. Sherlock, solicitor of Fermoy. The final execution was levied in 1849, at the instance of a family group, of whom we shall hear more in a subsequent chapter the Sadleir-Scully family. The foreclosed mortgage on which the Kingston estates were sold out in 1850 had been made to Thomas Joseph Eyre, "William Stourton, James Scully, and James Sadleir. Mr. Eyre appointed his relative, Mr. John Sadleir, M.P. for Carlow borough, receiver over the estates. Mr. Sadleir organised a land company to purchase the property. The shares in this company later on passed mainly into the hands of two of the directors, of whom Mr. Nathaniel Buckley, a Lancashire manufacturer, was one. Mr. Buckley bought out, or otherwise arranged with, his colleague, and became lord of the place, appointing as his agent 134 NEW IRKLAtiO. Mr. Patten S. Bridge, who, on the crash of the Sadleir Bank m 1856, was manager of the Thurles branch. Deplorable incidents of recent occurrence have given a gloomy notoriety, for the passing moment, to this same Mitchelstown estate, and have brought into distressing prominence the names of Mr. Buckley and Mr. Patten S. Bridge.* Towards the close of 1847, or early in 1848, it became noised about in Ireland that the Government contemplated a scheme for removing the debt-loaded landlord class in Ireland. The necessity for some such step, its usefulness, its national im- portance, none could deny, and none more freely admitted than the Irish proprietors themselves. Without touching on the broader and deeper question of the abstract utility of facilitating the transfer of land and its sale in small parcels, there were in Ireland peculiar reasons why such a project must be beneficial. A large section of the landlord class were little better than nominal proprietors. A mountain-load of mortgages or a net- work of settlements rendered them powerless to attempt or carry out any of the numerous reforms and improvements which a really free and independent owner might arrange with his tenantry. Many an Irish gentleman, with a nominal rent- roll of thousands or tens of thousands a year, possessed in reality to his own use scarcely so many hundreds. To not a few of the class the hollowness and unreality of their position had become intolerable. The lord of some ancient mansion or ivied castle, with estates that reached in miles on either hand, often envied the humble merchant of 500 a year, who had no state to main- tain, no retinue to support, no false position in society to uphold. "With men so circumstanced, indulgence to their tenantry was almost impossible, and the temptation to cupidity, to rack- renting, and to extortion was strong and ever pressing. It was true statesmanship to afford a cure for evils so serious and so > complicated. The Irish Encumbered Estates Act, regarded in I this sense, was one of the greatest legislative boons ever con- ferred on Ireland. In its actual results, good and evil, hurt 'and service, cause for satisfaction and cause for regret are considerably mingled. In some very important particulars the expectations and designs of its promoters have been disappointed and contradicted. . But when every allowance has been made, * Twice within tha past two years. Mr. Bridge has been murderously waylaid. On the last occasion a regular fusilade was exchanged between his armed escort of police 'and the assassins. Mr. Bridge escaped, but his coachman was shot dead. TEE ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT. 135 there still is to be said that a great and incalculable gain has been achieved, though at somewhat of painful price. The measure, excellent in itself, was proposed and presented to Ireland at such a time and under such circumstances as to give it a decidedly sinister aspect. To no man, to no class of men, can a sentence of abolition or extinction be welcome at any time. " Life is sweet." But when men feel that special ad- vantage is taken of a special misfortune in order to encompass their destruction, for no matter how great a public good if they are "struck when down" they regard the proceeding with a peculiar bitterness. Thus felt many an Irish landlord the proposal of the Encumbered Estates Act. It came upon him, he would say, when he needed rather indulgence, considera- tion, and aid. It caught him in a moment of helplessness and exhaustion. Whatever chance he might have of retrieving his position at any other time, he had none now. Landed property was a drug in the market. On many estates no rents had been paid during the famine. On some the poor-rates had reached twenty shillings in the pound of yearly valuation. To challenge Irish landlords at such a moment with the stern ultimatum of " Pay or quit " was naked destruction. To visit upon them at the close of the famine the penalty for inherited indebtedness and embarrassment was, in many cases, sacrificing the innocent for the sins of their forefathers sacrificing them under circum- stances of peculiar hardship and injustice. In fine, the En- cumbered Estates Act ought to have been passed long years before in some period of tranquillity and. comparative plenty. Enacted when it was, it could but wear an aspect of harshness or hostility; could accomplish its unquestionably useful aims only at the cost of excessive sacrifice and suffering. What were those aims ? They were stated in one way, had one meaning, in the bill brought into Parliament; they were stated very differently in the leading organs of English public opinion. On the face of the Government measure one could read fairly enough a proposal to enable a court specially con- stituted to order the sale of estates encumbered by indebtedness, on the petition so praying of any person sufficiently interested as owner or creditor ; all statutes, settlements, deeds,, or covenants to the contrary notwithstanding ; to the end that debts justly due might be paid so. far as the property could answer them ; that a proprietary emancipated from the injurious restraints of family settlements and the crushing burdens of family debts might be brought to the aid of the Irish land system ; and that 136 NEW IRELAND. a concise, simple, and indefeasible form of title might be sul> stituted for the voluminous, confused, and ponderous legal scrolls in which title to landed property was hitherto set forth. So manifestly useful were such proposals, so valuable to any country a tribunal with such powers, that one is at a loss to understand why (as some of the Irish peers and members of Parliament asked at the time) the bill was not applied to England and Scotland, and was to extend to Ireland alone. The comments and glossary of some English newspapers seemed to supply an answer to this very natural interrogatory, but it was one not calculated to recommend the bill in Ireland. "We were told to read between the lines of the Government measure a plan for the more sure effectuation of the new plantation. Not alone were the Irish tenantry to be replaced by English and lowland-Scotch "colonists," but the Irish landlords also were to be cleared off, an English proprietary being established in their stead. " English capital " was at last to flow into Ireland in the purchase of these estates. The dream of Eliza- beth and James and Charles was to be accomplished in the reign of Victoria. The island was to be peopled by a new race ; was to be anglicised " from the centre to the sea." In truth, between evictions and emigration on the one hand, and the working of the Encumbered Estates Court on the other, so it seemed that it would be. "In a few years more," said the London Times, " a Celtic Irishman will be as rare in Connernara as is the Bed Indian on the shores of Manhattan." If the bullock being led to the abattoir could understand and be consoled by remarks upon the excellent sirloin and juicy steak Tvhich he was sure to furnish, so ought the Irish landlords and tenants to have taken kindly the able speeches and learned leading articles which declared they were being slaughtered for the public good. But they had not a philosophy equal to this lofty view of things, and they called it hard names. In the early days of February 1848 the Irish Encumbered Estates Bill was introduced into the House of Lords. On the 24th of February it was read a second time. Through the months of March and April it lay perdu, the Government and the country apparently being engrossed with the more exciting and exigent topics of the period. On the 8th of May, however, the Lords suddenly resumed consideration of the bill, and, making up for lost time, passed it through all remaining stages in two or three days ! A week subsequently it was introduced in the Commons, and on the 18th of May was read a second TH'ts EI'CUMBERED ESTATES ACT. 137 time with less of debate than would now be given to a parish gas-bill. Not an Irish member seems to have opened his lips at this stage on a measure which was designed and calculated to effect the most momentous changes in Ireland ! On the 4th of July Sir Lucius O'Brien, afterwards Lord Inchiquin, then member for Clare, raised a rather protracted debate by an amendment proposing to extend the bill to England a sugges- tion strongly opposed and easily defeated by the Government. On the 13th of July the bill went through committee. On the 24th of July 1848 it passed the third reading, and in a few days more was law. On the 21st of October 1849 the first " Petition for Sale " was filed under the new act ; and there soon set in a state of things which most people foresaw : a rush of creditors to the court, an inevitable sacrifice of property. As in a commercial panic, men who at first had never dreamed of selling, beholding the hourly increasing depreciation, rushed wildly in and accelerated the downward tendency of prices. In this storm many a noble fortune was wrecked, many an ancient and honoured family went down. Estates that would have been well able to pay twice the encumbrances laid upon them, if property was at all near its ordinary level of value, now failed to realise enough to meet the mortgages, and the proprietors were devoted to ruin. I have already told or quoted the story of the Kingston estates. The history of the early operations of the new court is full of such episodes. Second only to Lord Kingston's case in the sympathy which it called forth was that of Lord Gort. Amongst the names retained in Irish popular memory of the men who stood by " ever-glorious Grattan," in the last days of the Irish parliament, that of Colonel the Right Hon. Charles Vereker, M.P., is honourably placed. Hurriedly called to the field by the alarm of a French landing at Killala, he was put in command of the first troops assembled to resist the eastward march of the Franco-Irish force ; and he it was who, at Coloony, near Sligo, first reversed the disgrace of the British flight at Castlebar. For this he was made Viscount Gort, taking his title from the neat little town which adjoined the family demesne at Lough Cooter Castle.* The French were finally * The Right Hon. Colonel Vereker of Coloony had the peerage granted to his uncle John Prendergast of Gort, whose heir he was, and, whose property he inherited, with special remainder to himself. He accordingly . 38 NEW IRELAND. defeated by Lord Lake at Ballinamuck, and Colonel Vereker returned from the camp to the senate ; from a fight for his king against Humbert, to a fight for his country against Pitt. His name figures to the last in the division-lists against the Union. In 1850 his son, John P. Vereker, was owner of the castle and estates -when the thunderbolt that laid even prouder houses low fell heavily and undeservedly on his. Lough Cooter Castle, one of the " show places " of the western counties, stands on the edge of the lake from which it takes its name, two miles from the town of Gort, in Galway county. The castle is quite modern, having been erected at a cost of about 80,000 by the second viscount, from plans by Nash, the re- novator and architect of the newly added portion of Windsor Castle. It is described as built in " the severe Gothic " style The walls are of massive solidity, and constructed of beautifully- chiselled limestone. The lake covers an area of nearly eight square miles, and is studded with wooded islands. One of these has been for years the home of innumerable herons and cormorants ; perhaps the only instance on record of an island ia a fresh-water lake being inhabited by the latter birds. The Gort river flows out of the lake, and, at a romantic glen known a& " the Punchbowl," distant about a mile, falls into a deep rocky abyss, totally disappearing underground till it reaches Canno- houn. Here it rushes out of a rocky cavern, and thence flows through Gort, where it turns several mills, and falling, again makes its way appearing and sinking several times through the sands into Kinvarra Bay, six miles from Gort. The Gort unsettled estates lay under a debt in all of about 60,000. In 1842 they wera valued, for family arrangement purposes, at 150,000, but were always considered to be worth much more. Eighteen hundred and forty-seven found Lord Gort a resident landlord, bravely doing his duty ; refusing io fly, scorning to abandon- his tenantry. " His lordship," says one of the Irish newspapers, " was always opposed to the clearance system, which he characterised as merciless and unjustifiable,, and endeavoured practically to prove that a resident landlord, by availing himself of the opportunities that occurred from time to time, could consolidate the farms on his estates, and introduce every modern improvement, without desolating a single happy inherited the title on his uncle's death as second viscount. The flight, referred to was called "the races of Castlebar," and as such is still referred to in the neighbourhood. THE ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT. 13& homestead or alienating the affections of his tenantry." The famine came ; rents could not be paid, and Lord Gort would not resort to heartless means of attempting to extort them. The interest on the mortgage fell in arrear; the mortgagee, taking- advantage of a clause in his mortgage-deed, discharged the* local land-agent, and appointed in his stead a London attorney, who, I believe, had never seen the place, and never visited it even when acting as receiver over it. A petition for sale of the property was lodged in Chancery, whence the proceedings were transferred to the new court created by the Encumbered Estates Act. One may imagine the feelings of Lord Gort and his- family, for they but too well knew what a forced sale of landed property at such a moment meant. Their worst fears were realised. They saw their beautiful home their castle and lake and lands swept away ; sold at panic prices. An estate that should have left them a handsome income beyond every con- ceivable claim was unable to free the mortgage ! Eight well they knew as indeed subsequently happened that in a few- years these ancestral acres, thus torn from them for ever, woulcl be sold again at very nearly double their present price. Thir- teen years' purchase was, I believe, the highest given at this sale. Many lots were sold at five. Some portions of the property recently resold have fetched twenty-five and twenty-seven! Lough Cooter Castle, worth from 50,000 to 60,000, was sold for 17,000. The fortunate purchaser Mrs. Ball, Superioress of the Religious Order of Loretto, Dublin, who intended con- verting it into a novitiate house for the order resold it soon after for 24,000. Lot 1, valuation 560 a year, realised but 3,000. Lot 2, valuation 155, brought 600. The Board of Ordnance bought Lord Gort's profit-rent of 80, out of the Gort cavalry barracks, the valuation being 283 a year, for 1450. The constabulary barracks and other premises, valued at 123, fetched 700. The town-lands, valued at 579 a year, were bought by the mortgagee for 2,800, or less than five years r purchase. No wonder that sympathy with the Yereker family was wide and general. The day they quitted Lough Cooter, the people surrounded them with every demonstration of attach- ment and respect, and waved them, along the road, a sorrowful farewell ! I should have hesitated, indeed, to touch on a subject so full of pain as this must ever be to that family, were it not that fortunate circumstances have, happily, since then retrieved those unmerited disasters, and restored, or rather retained, to them. NEW IRELAND. the status which for a moment seemed so cruelly overthrown. In East Cowes Castle (adjoining Osborne), the present seat of ihe Gort family, they must find much to remind them of, and recompense them for, the equally beautiful spot once their homo on Lough Cooter : though I doubt not they would rather see from the castle-windows the island-studded Irish lough tham "the flashing waters of the Solent. It is a curious coincidence "that East Cowes Castle and Lough Cooter Castle were erected from designs from the same hand, the former having been built by Nash for his own residence. At the beginning of the present century, the Prince Eegent and Lord Gort were on a visit there, ~when the latter said to the host, " How I wish I could transport this castle to the banks of Lough Cooter ! " " Give me 50,000 and I'll do it for you," replied Nash. The viscount took him at his word ; and Nash built the Irish castle, which, however, eventually cost more than 20,000 beyond the sum first named. By what a strange revolution of fortune it has come to pass that the family should lose the one and find their home in the other mansion ! The catastrophes incidental to the early operations of the Encumbered Estates Act were sure to prejudice Irish opinion against it, and to obscure from view the merits and advantages of the system it inaugurated. So far from the famine period being an " opportunity " for such a measure, that was just the time when it ought to have been withheld. Forced into opera- tion under circumstances so abnormal, it worked, during the first five years of its labours, the minimum of benefit with ihe maximum of suffering and sacrifice. From 1855 to 1875 the functions of the new court have had a fairer scope,* and its "work has been more justly appreciated ; and no one in Ireland would deny the advantage of a system which so largely frees and simplifies the transfer of land. I subjoin an exhibit of the proceedings from the filing of the first petition, 25th of October 18-19, to 31st of August 1857, being the concluding day of tho seventh " session " of the commission : i. Number of petitions presented, including those for partition and exchange, as well as for sale ..... 4161 (Of the above, about 800 were supplemental, drawn, and dismissed petitions.) * By a supplementary or extending act the Irish Landed Estates Act in 18r>8 the powers of the court were extended to include properties not encumbered. THE ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT. Ifl 2. Number of absolute orders for sale . . . . . 3341 3. Number of matters in which owners presented petitions . . 1245- (Of the first 100 petitions, six were presented by owners. Of the last 100 petitions, the owners of estates presented fifty- three.) 4. Number of matters in which owners were bankrupts or in- solvents . . .' .r* "'"''' . . . . 357 (In very many other cases, the owners of estates became bankrupts or insolvents after the petitions were presented, and the proceedings were subsequently carried on in the name of their assignees.) 5. Number of conveyances executed by the commissioners . . 7283 6. Number of estates or parts of estates sold by provincial auction, subsequently confirmed by the commissioners . 338- By private proposal, accepted by the commissioners. The remainder of the premises comprised in the above 7283 conveyances were all sold by public auction, in court, before the commissioners. 7. Number of lots, viz : By public auction, in court . . . . . 7270 By provincial auction . . ), m,'. ' iV '. 1436 By private contract ,-''-'< ... . . 1621 10,327 When the same person became the purchaser of several lots he generally had them included in the same conveyance. 8. Number of boxes containing upwards of 250,000 documents and muniments of title, deposited in the Record (Mice -,.. i ; '. 2395- 9. Number of cases which had been pending in the Court of Chancery before being brought into the Encumbered Estates Court . . . V ... |/. ^ ,...';.' 1267 10. Number of Irish purchasers . * ','.' ' .';-" ' j' . - y 7180* 11. Number of English, Scotch, and foreign purchasers V 1 " , gg^ 12. Amount of purchase-money paid by English, Scotch, and foreign purchasers . . . 2,836,225 O 13. Gross proceeds of sale to 31st August, 1857 : By public auction, in court . '^i. ',''!. 13,941,207 10 By provincial auction . . '',/'. 2,824,381 O By private contract , . ^ ' >; i' U: 3,710,36718 4- 20,475,956 8 4 The largest estate sold -within that period the largest ever sold by the court was that of the Earl of Portarlington, which realised 700,000. Very nearly the next in extent was that of Lord Mountcashel 61,711 acres, with a yearly rental of 18,500 which was sold for 240,000. Lord Mountcashel, who con- 112 *t AW IRELAND. sidered himself fixated with peculiar harshness and injustice by the petitioners, was greatly angered with Mr. Commissioner Hargreave, before whom the sale was consummated. The commissioner, as is well remembered in Dublin, was a very small-sized gentleman, and his office was situate on the bed- room story of the house 14 Henrietta Street, at that time used as the Landed Estates Court. Lord Mountcashel, during the proceedings, was heard to exclaim that it was bad enough to have his estates confiscated, but to be " sold up by a dwarf in a garret " was more than he could endure ! Since 1860 the transactions in the court have considerably changed in character. Adverse petitions by encumbrancers grow fewer, and applications by owners themselves, anxious to simplify title and to disentangle family settlements and arrange- ments, grow more and more frequent. The tribunal once viewed with such gloomy aversion is now regarded with something akin to national favour. The anticipations and prophecies about " English capital " have all proved illusory. It will be noticed from the statistics given above that up to August 1857, [out of 7489 purchasers, 7180 were Irish ; only 309 were " English, Scotch, or foreigners." Out of 20,475,956 realised by the court up to the same date, more than five-sixths of the amount, or 17,639,731, was Irish capital, invested by Irish purchasers ; and although I am unable io verify the exact figures of the interval since then, I believe Hie proportion between Irish and non-Irish purchasers remains very much the same to the present time. English capital has preferred Turkish bonds and Honduras loans. The tenantry in many instances complain that they have gained little and lost much in the change from the old masters to the new. The latter are chiefly mercantile men who have saved money in trade, and invest it for a safe percentage. They import what the country people depreciatingly call "the ledger and day-book principle " into the management of their purchases, which contrasts unfavourably in their minds with the more elastic system of the old owners. Although not blind to the * In one respect the Encumbered Estates Act wrought grievous disaster, and it may now be plainly said downright plunder, iipnn the tenant- occupiers. The protection or recognition of occupancy right compen- sation for wrongful disturbance tardily accorded by the Gladstone Land Act of 1870, was not law in 1850; and consequently tenant-property -amounting to, at least, three millions sterling has been confiscated. The property created in and on the soil by tenant industry was sold to pay the landlord's creditors. The new landlord " bought on the rental," recognised no claim " not in the bond," and made the tenaiit pay au increased rent OH ais own outlay I FEE TENANT LEAQV. 143 hardships which often attend this greater strictness, I consider the new system has introduced few more valuable reforms than this, which enforces method, punctuality, and precision in the half-yearly settlements between landlord and tenant in Ireland. It is not conducive to a manly independence that the occupier should be permanently " behindhand with his rent " ; that is to say, beholden to the favour and sufferance 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. CHAPTEK XIII. THE TENANT LEAGUE. TT was not to be expected that the enormous dimensions to which the " Famine clearances " had attained would fail to evoke some protest of public opinion. By 1850 the eviction scenes had filled the land with uneasiness and alarm. The theory that had for a while lulled the country into a sort of tolerance of them namely, that clearances and emigration would make things " better for those who went, and for those who remained" gave place to apprehensions that intensified every day. As early as the spring of 1849, public meetings began to give a voice to the general sentiment, and ero many months the whole island was in moral revolt. Not one province .alone not one geographical section alone, as had hitherto been the case declared for resistance. The sturdy Presbyterians of Down and Antrim and Berry were as resolute as the quick- blooded Catholic Celts of Cork and Mayo and Tipperary. For the first time in fifty years Ulster held out a hand to Munster in fraternal grasp. The ruin that had desolated the other provinces was beginning its work of destruction in the north. In studying the Irish land question, one is confronted in, limine by what is called the " Ulster custom," or the " Ulster tenant-right." To this custom, or right, Ulster is admittedly indebted for the exceptional prosperity and contentment of its agricultural population. To the absence of that custom the denial of any such right elsewhere in Ireland may be most largely attributed the dismal contrast which has prevailed in these respects. This Ulster system has within the past century fceen somewhat encroached upon, and now varies in different 144 NEW IRELAND. parts of the province, and even on different properties of the same owner. It grew out of the spirit more than the letter of the charters and grants under which Ulster was " planted " in the reign of James I. Substantially it was a right of continuous occupancy by the tenant, at a fair rent ; one not raised by reason of any value added to the soil by the tenant's industry or outlay. This right of occupancy grew to be in the aggregate a vast property, according as the tenants improved the soil and increased the value of their holdings. The tenant-right of many properties exceeded in value the fee-simple purchase. A property, be it supposed, the fair value of which, exclusive of tenant's improvements, was judged to be 10,000 a year, or 250,000 in all, half a century ago, had, by the labour and capital of the tenants expended thereupon, become value for 20,000 a year, or 500,000. Of this the landlord still owned but his 250,000 ; the other 250,000 belonged to the tenantry ; was recognised to be as fully and legally theirs as the landlord's fee-simple was his. This tenant-right was bought and sold daily; that is, the out-going aold to the in-coming tenant his interest in the farm. On a farm of fifty acres an Ulster tenant has often obtained twenty years', sometimes thirty years', purchase of the margin between his rent and the valuation,, probably a sum of 3000. If a landlord wished to evict a tenant, he could do so by buying up from him the tenant-right of the farm. He could, of course, evict for non-payment of rent, or other reasons ; but in every such ease he was bound to hand over in cash to the evicted tenant any balance remaining out of the marketable value of the tenant-right of the holding after de- ducting the amount of rent, costs, or damages legally due. Or (very much the same in effect) the landlord might say to the tenant : " You are not paying your rent ; you are wasting your farm; you must quit; go sell as best you can your tenant- right ; pay me my claims, and go." Under this system unknown, or rather unrecognised by law, utside of Ulster that province bloomed like a garden, and became the home of thrift and plenty, of contentment and prosperity, even before the energy of its people, applied to manufacturing industries, had opened for them new paths to wealth. How was it that this system, so fruitful in good result, was established in one province alone ? Why have the efforts of the tenant class elsewhere to obtain like rights been so steadily and Tehemently resisted ? The answer is neither pleasant to tell nor agreeable to Lear. THE TENANT LEAGUE. 145 Because Ulster was a " Plantation colony;" because in Ulster the plantation landlords got their lands on implied or expressed condition of " planting " them rooting a population in the soil ; wherea? elsewhere the policy of the time was to unplant, to uproot, to clear away the Popish natives. Even where, in the other provinces, in course of time the uprooting became too odious or too dangerous, there still remained this much of its essence, in strong contrast to " the Ulster custom," namely, the axiom that the tenant had no right of continuous occupancy, held only from year to year on the landlord's sufferance, and was not regarded in law as owning a shilling's worth of even, his own outlay. If he drained or improved, so that bog-land worth two shillings an acre was made corn-land worth as many pounds, the landlord was legally entitled to call that improve- ment 7w's, and to make that tenant pay 2 an acre for that land. What could come of such a system as this, the cruel opposite of the " Ulster right," but a state of agriculture and a state of society the reverse of that which smiled on the northern pro- vince 1 Negligence in place of thrift ; squalor in place of comfort and neatness ; hovels in place of houses ; * insecurity, mistrust, ill-will, hostility between landlord and tenant; a hatred of the Government, and a deadly hostility to the law, that drew this line of distinction, this line of oppression and wrong, between the Protestant north and the Popish south. If happily the evils one would have thought inevitable were not everywhere visible, it was in spite of the system, not because of it. If the landlord did not in every case appropriate in the shape of a raised rent the fruits of the tenant's industry, it was "because that particular landlord or family was more honest than the law. In a differently constituted community in a country where proprietor and cultivator were of one race and faith, boasted of the same nationality, and were on the whole moved by the same political aims this system might perhaps work but little evil ; although the empowering of one class to profit by wronging another generally produces social conflict. But in the Celtic * There can be no doubt that the wretchedness of Irish peasant homes, their grievous disregard of comfort, neatness, or cleanliness, was derived almost entirely from the idea that improvement would invoke a rise of rent. When I was a boy I was full of a glowing zeal for " cottage flower- gardens " and removal of threshold dung-heaps ; but my exhortation* were all to no purpose. I was extinguished by the remark : " Begor, sir, if we make the place so nate as that, the agint will say we are able to pay more rint " L 14G NEW IRELAND. Catholic pixmnces of Ireland, where the soil was, as a rule, given over to be owned by men of one nation and creed, and tilled by men of another race and faith; where lord and peasant represented conqueror and conquered, what was such a code calculated to bring forth ? Besides, it was not merely that the farmers of Munster, Con- naught, and Leinster saw equity made to be the law in tne Protestant corner of the island, but that, moreover, this same right of continuous occupancy, at a fair rent or " lord's tribute," was, in truth, their own ancient Celtic tenure, to which they clung with inyeterate tenacity. The subjection of Ireland to the English Crown the confiscations of six centuries meant, in their minds, change of masters to whom rent was payable ; but never a change which annihilated their right to occupy the land on payment of its rent. In theory of law, no doubt, the new system came in when the Brehon Code disappeared in 1607 ; but for two centuries afterwards the full nature and ex- tent of the change as to land tenure was not recognised by the agricultural population. The treaty between England and Ireland, concluded on the capitulation of Limerick in 1691, contained many hard terms, though it secured some valuable rights for the latter country, which, though the pact was broken on the other side, never drew hostile sword again for more than a hundred years. Had the masses of the population, however, realised that it was not merely a change of landlords, but a loss of right to live upon the soil, that the revolution brought for them, they would have bathed the island in blood before they submitted. As it was, according as the dreadful reality slowly dawned on them, they resisted it in their isolated, disorganised, and lawless way, by the rude and horrible warfare known in our sad annals as " agrarian outrage." The " Eapparees " and " Tories " of the last century the " Whitefeet," the " Terryalts,** the " Eockites," the *' Defenders," the " Eibbonmen " of a later period all these agrarian combinations and conspiracies were merely so many phases in what has been aptly called " a low form of civil war." But, it may be asked, how should Ulster tenants, blessed with o secure a tenure, and with property so well protected, suffer "by the ills which led to "clearances" elsewhere in 1849 and 1850 ? The answer and explanation bring into view a feature or result of the Ulster system which few persons, even in that province itself, seem to have perceived. The Ulster custom was almost exclusively beneficial for the tenant as long as things went well ; but if a series of adverse seasons came, and the value THE TENANT LEAGUE. 14T ; of farm-holdings fell, the loss was exclusively his. Before tbi, landlord's interest could be affected to the extent of a shilling, the tenant-right, equal in value to the fee-simple, should first be consumed. The rent was alw-ays a first lien on that tenant- Tight ; and as long as at an auction it would fetch a penny more than the rent, the landlord was in no way to suffer by " bad times." Of course there were to be found several Ulster land- lords who in '48, '49, and '50 disdained to stand in this way on their undoubted right, and who stepped forward voluntarily to -assist their tenantry ; but as a matter of fact the whole of the famine losses came out of the margin of value which, in the form of tenant-right interest, stood between the landlords and any touch of disaster. The occasion, moreover, was seized by some of the northern landlords to buy up in hard bargains of the necessitous tenant, or to encroach upon and cramp and squeeze the ancient rights of which the Ulster farmers were so proud ; so that in 1850 the Derry Standard and Banner of Ulster newspapers were as " seditiously " violent in language as the Nation, the Cork Examiner, or the Freeman's Journal. Following upon the public meetings came the formation of what were called " Tenant Protection Societies." The first in point of time was established in Callan, county Kilkenny, where two young curates of the Catholic Church Eev. Thomas O'Shea and Eev. Matthew Keeffe had, by their passionate eloquence and earnest enthusiasm, aroused the whole population. But the north, the men of Ulster, led by the honoured veteran of the tenant's cause, William Shannon Crawford, M.P., early took the front. It was not alone in their press and on their platforms the Ulster Presbyterians agitated tenant-right ; they imported it into their strictly ecclesiastical assemblages or synods, much to the horror of some of the elders. When the Eev. Mr. Eogers, of Comber, moved a resolution in the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster (May 1850), that a petition be presented to Parliament in favour of tenant-right, Dr. Cooke said it was dreadful. Not i!hat he was less ardent as a tenant-righter than the youngest >of them; but he had heard "rank communism" preached by .some of the reverend brethren around them. Mr. Potter, of Islandmagee, asked him what he meant the Land question was intimately connected with the moral and religious condition of their people. Dr. Cooke replied that some of the brethren, had committed communism by " attacks on the nobility and aristocracy of the land, thus violating the word of God, which says, ' Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of my people ; ' " 'which he interpreted there and then to mean, not merely the i 2 148 NEW IRELAND. Queen, but all concerned in governing the country. This was* rather too much for the synod. Eev. Mr. EOGERS. " With regard to the Socialist doctrines 1 alleged to have been taught by tenant-right advocates, I shall just say that for the last two hundred years Socialism has been all on the other side (hear, hear). The entire outlay of the- tenant-farmers has gone periodically into the pockets of the landlords. A small minority have swallowed up the property of nine-tenths of the province " Dr. COOKE. " Now, here it is ; we have Socialism preachedv here in the synod ! " Mr. KOGEBS. " I state a fact. It would seem to be forgotten, by some members that the poor man has property which should be as fully secured as that of the rich." Eventually, by a large majority, the synod resolved : " That the synod do petition Parliament that whatever measure they may adopt to adjust the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland, such measure shall secure to the tenant-farmers of Ulster, in all its integrity, the prescriptive usage of that province, known by the name of tenant-right." Then came the adoption of the petition referred to, when/ ground was for the first time boldly taken by those Presybterian clergymen on an issue which at the present hour, in 1877 ' f occupies the attention of Parliament the extension by law to the rest of Ireland of rights and securities analogous to those ofi the Ulster custom. Dr. Cooke in grief declared that this was- what came of the public sin of Presbyterian ministers being seen on the one political platform with Eomish priests. Then : Mr. EOGEBS. " There has been a serious objection raised against me in reference to my conduct because I have co- operated with Popish priests. I may have been wrong in sa doing ; and all I wish to say on the subject is that in doing it I was only following the example of Dr. Cooke. Dr. COOKE. "I defy you to show I ever co-operated with one. Where or when was it ? " Mr. EOGEBS. " Precisely in reference to the site of the Queen's- College. I was present at a meeting at which Dr. Cooke and Dr. Denvir, Catholic bishop, were both present." This dreadful imputation, however, the venerable old clergy- man was able to disprove ; but he could not shake the determina- tion of the synod to pass its approval of the great agitation, now proceeding out of doors. The evil which so appalled Dr. Cooke Presbyterian and THE TENANT LEAGUE. 149 Catholic clergymen co-operating on the same platform was soon to obtain wide dimensions. The necessity for a central -authority to take charge of the new movement had become deeply felt ; and it was a very obvions advantage to organise in one great association the numerous tenant societies, and like local bodies, so far working independently all over the island. On the 27th of April 1850, the following announcement appeared an the Irish newspapers : A conference is about to be summoned in Dublin in which the tenant societies of the four provinces will have an opportunity of comparing their -views and taking measures together. The parties who have united in summoning it belong to all sections of the popular party, and have nothing v in common but a desire to bring this question to a satisfactory settlement. .Their circular is about being sent to all existing tenant societies, to the .popular journalists, and to the most active and influential friends of tenaut- xight in localities which have not yet been organised. The circular was signed by three prominent representative men, of as many different creeds Dr. (subsequently Sir John) Gray, proprietor and editor of the Freeman's Journal, Church of England Protestant; Samuel McCurdy Greer, barrister-at-law (subsequently member for Derry county), Ulster Presbyterian ; and Frederick Lucas, proprietor and editor of the Tablet, Catholic. "The proposal was enthusiastically approved throughout the kingdom. In every province and every county there was, .. during the early summer months, but the one subject of public effort, anxiety and interest the forthcoming Tenant Conference. On the 6th of August 1850, a truly remarkable assemblage ' filled to overflowing the City Assembly House, William Street, Dublin, the use of which was specially voted by the Civic -Council. The sharp Scottish accent of Ulster mingled with the Abroad Doric of Munster. Presbyterian ministers greeted " Popish priests " with fraternal fervour. Mr. James Godkin, editor of ihe staunch covenanting Derry Standard (a gentleman whose .signal literary abilities have been consistently devoted to the impartial service of Irish interests), sat side by side with John 'Francis Maguire of the Ultramontane Cork Examiner. Magis- trates and landlords were there ; while of tenant delegates every province sent up a great array. By general acclaim an Ulster Presbyterian journalist, James McKnight, LL.D.,* editor of the * It is but a year since Dr. McKnight closed a long life of honourable labour in the service of his co-religionists and countrymen of Ulster. In learning and ability, as well as in high personal character, he stood .amongst the front rank of Irish press-men. 150 NEW IRELAND. Banner of Ulster, was voted to the chair. The conference sat for four days. Resolutions were adopted declaring that " a fair valuation of rent between landlord and tenant in Ireland " was indispensable ; that " the tenant should not be disturbed in his .possession so long as he paid such rent;" and that "the tenant .should have a right to sell his interest with all its incidents at the highest market value." Early in its deliberations the Conference was confronted with a subject of some difficulty. During the famine years there had accrued all over the country arrears of rent, which, even where mot pressed for and made the excuse for immediate eviction, re- mained "on the books" against the tenantry, hanging over them like a sword of Damocles. It was felt that a really wise -national Government would declare " arrears " which had thus accrued by a dreadful visitation of Providence, prolonged through three or four years a public burden to be discharged or commuted by the State. The Conference was clearly of opinion that it would be vain trying to settle the Irish Laud question if, by reason of these "famine arrears," the whole tenantry might at any moment be overwhelmed. Eventually this resolution was adopted : That in any valuation which shall be made before the 31st December r the valuators shall, on the demand of either landlord or tenant, inquire -into the arrears of rent due by the tenant ; shall estimate the amount which during the famine years would have been due and payable for rent under a valuation, if such had been made, according to the prices and circumstances of same years, and also the amount which during the same period has actually been paid for rent to the landlord ; shall award the balance, if any, to be the arrears then due ; and that the amount so awarded for arrears be payable by instalments at such period as shall be fixed by the valuators, and shall be recoverable in all respects as if it were rent. On the third day a new organisation was established, callei, "The Irish Tenant League." On the fourth a Council was- chosen, consisting of 120 gentlemen from the four provinces, and the Conference separated, having contributed to Irish political history within this generation one of its most notable events. Many leading men in England quickly realised the import of what had been done. The Conference had barely closed its sittings when Mr. John Bright drew attention to the subject in the House of Commons : ,. The noble lord at the head of the Government had referred to a few- THE TENANT LEAGUE. 151 bills; amongst the rest to the Landlord and Tenant Bill. That subject), was now a matter of the first importance, not alone as regarded the people of Ireland, but with regard to what had just taken place (hear r hear). A Conference had been sitting in Dublin of earnest men from all parts of Ireland (hear, hear). Now, sir (continued the honourable gentle- man), without agreeing in all that has been said .nd done by that Conference,, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact of its importance, and that it will be- the means of evoking a more formidable agitation than has been witnessed for many years (hear, hear). Instead of the agitation being confined, as- heretofore, to the Roman Catholics and their clergy, Protestant and Dis- senting clergymen seem to be amalgamated with Roman Catholics at present ; indeed there seems an amalgamation of all sects on this question r and I think it time the House should resolutely legislate on it (hear r 'hear). That was August 1850. John Bright was before his time- Twenty years subsequently after feelings had been embittered, hopes betrayed, homes wrecked, families scattered, and passions roused to fury the House of Commons found a minister of the Crown acting on the advice thus tendered by the member for Eochdale. Through the summer and autumn of 1850 the country flung- itself into the new movement with energy, enthusiasm, and unanimity. But a parliamentary policy requires a parliamentary party to carry it into effect, and the Tenant League had as yet no such party. The Irish representation of that time was but a miserable parody of reality. Elected in the dismal years of famine and insurrection, panic and despair when the people recked as little who scrambled on the hustings as how the idle- breezes blew the Irish members of 1850 represented little more than the personal views and interests of the individuals them- selves. The cowering reaction, the political prostration, that followed the fever of 1848, was sadly reflected in their array. It was by accident that the League could reckon on the support of even half a dozen men of genuine earnestness and sincerity amongst them. The only hope of that organisation was that by efficient agitation they might create a public opinion which would at the next opportunity send to Parliament men of ability and integrity devoted to the tenant's cause. The Irish Liberal members, such as they were, regarded the Land League with no great favour. It was plainly calculated to put them in a dilemma. They believed in attaching themselves to the official Liberals of Westminster regions ; to the powers who dispensed patronage and pay, emoluments, titles, and distinctions. T<> serve Lord John. Eussell, to obey his whips, until some day a 152 NEW IRELAND. governorship of the Leeward Islands or an embassy to Timbuctoo might reward his patriotism, was the great aim and purpose of an Irish Liberal member in tho^se days. But these troublesome tenant-right fellows were going on lines which were incompatible with this. The tenant-right demands were not favoured by the Government; were likely to be opposed by Lord John. What was an Irish Liberal to do ? Break with the ministry, and lose all chance of a place or reject the tenant-right shibboleth, and lose all chance of re-election? The resolution taken by most men of this type was to "trim"; to hold with the tenant- righters as far as was judiciously requisite ; but to break with the Treasury bench on no account. There were men in the ranks of the League who saw all this ; who accurately measured and weighed the worth of adhesion on the part of such public representatives ; and who rightly judged that the real danger and weakness of the popular move- ment would begin when they affected to embrace it. Out of the intense earnestness of the Leaguers their soul- felt conviction that they were fighting a life and death struggle for the Irish race grew the policy or doctrine known in recent Irish politics as " Independent Opposition." It declared that so momentous was this issue, all others for the time must give way to it; and that to every ministry who refused or hesitated to settle a question so vital for Ireland, uncompromising opposition should be given by Irish members. This doctrine made its appearance in 1851. It was the teaching of what were called " extreme " tenant-righters, and was not liked at all by the old- school politicians. The idea of Irish Catholic and Liberal members acting with the Tory opposition under any conceivable circumstances was too startling a novelty for them. Dr. Cooke was not more alarmed by the vision of Presbyterian ministers co-operating with Popish priests. Nevertheless, so thoroughly did the public judgment eventually approve the proposition, that it became an article of the national faith. As in a distant mountain tarn or valley stream we find the source of some great river which divides nation from nation, so jiere we have the first appearance in Anglo-Irish politics of a policy which even at the present day separates the Irish popular representation in Parliament from imperial parties. Hitherto the policy and practice of that body had been to attach them- selves to and form a portion of the general " Liberal party " in the House of Commons. The Tories were regarded as the " natural enemies " of Catholic Irishmen ; the Whigs their only THE TENANT LEAGUE. 153 possible protectors; albeit these patrons exhibited betimes a rather contumelious regard for their Irish auxiliaries. But now solus populi, supremo, lex nothing that Whigs or Tories could do, short of saving the people from destruction, was to determine the support or assistance of Irish representatives. While the Presbyterian North and Catholic South were thus clasping hands, and marching on side by side, there burst upon Ireland a storm in which they were to be hopelessly sundered. 'On the 4th of November 1850, Lord John Eussell, the Liberal Premier, issued his celebrated " Durham Letter." The organisa- tion of the Catholic Church in England had just been restored to its parochial and diocesan form. The prelates, in place of being " bishops in partibus infidelium," were to be bishops of the districts actually under their charge ; Westminster, Nottingham, Liverpool, or Southwark, as the case might be. " Any one can stir up England with the Pope " used to be said in joke. It was now proved to be a fact in good earnest. The idea got abroad that in some way or another this arrangement would derogate from the Queen's authority, and overthrow the national liberties. '*' Brass money and wooden shoes " were to be brought back. The Pope was to be installed at Windsor; and the worst days of " Bloody Mary " would return. This, no doubt, was the sensitiveness, the exaggerated sensitiveness, of a Protestant nation alarmed by anything that looked like the re-imposition of a spiritual authority it had thrown off. In the panic of the moment Englishmen totally overlooked the fact which subse- quently so embarrassed them, that in Ireland this same parochial and diocesan system already prevailed had never been given up. The Most Eev. Dr. Murray, the Catholic Arch- bishop of Dublin, had been addressed by that title in official Government communications, and as such was received at court ; yet no one had ever discovered that Queen Victoria was in danger, or the fabric of British power shaken to its base. When nations and peoples are moved by panic or alarm, there, is an end for the time to reasoning. There were men in England; some of its leading statesmen who realised the absurdity and consequent mischief of this " No Popery " cry, and who foresaw that in a few years their country, ashamed of its foolish fears and undignified passion, would be undoing what it now was rushing to do. There were others who " went with the stream" ; who saw that from the palace to the cottage the conviction had spread that this was " papal aggression," and must at all 'hazards be resisted and punished. The Premier, the leader of 154 NEW IRELAND. the Liberal party, in a letter to the Bishop of Durham, gave the- signal for war, and instantly there broke forth all over the land' STich a storm of religions fury and strife as had not been known since the days of the Lord George Gordon Eiots. Protestant and Catholic drew apart scowled and glowered at each other; lifelong friendships were snapped ; neighbour was arrayed against neighbour ; each side impiited the most desperate designs to the other, and " To your tents, Israel ! " became the cry on all hands. Here was a fatal trial for the Tenant League a crnel blow to the new companionship of Protestant, and Catholic Irishmen in effort for the common good. Parliament opened on the 4th of February 1851. Two days subsequently Lord John Eussell introduced the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, rendering the assumption of territorial titles by the- Catholic Bishops illegal, and punishable with heavy penalties.. On the 14th the Government were unable to command a. majority of more than fourteen votes on a hostile motion by Mr. Disraeli,* and a " ministerial crisis " ensued. After no less than five ineffectual attempts to form a new ministry, the Whigs returned to office in the first week of March. In the ensuing session the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was passed into law. During the whole of that year it was the one subject which occupied the public mind. When the Parliament came to enact punishment for the new arrangement in England, it was con- fronted by the awkward fact that such " ecclesiastical titles " had always existed, and had been always recognised, on the west- ern side of St. George's Channel. What was to be done ? The Act of Union fused the Irish and English Protestant Churches into one indivisible and indissoluble body " The United. Church of England and Ireland." If it was an " aggression iir on this Church to have a Catholic bishop of Liverpool, so must it be to have a Catholic bishop of Cork. Yet what had the latter dignitary done that he should now be punished for using Ms lawful and accustomed designation ? What had the- Catholics of Ireland done to draw down upon them this penal law ? The dilemma was not pleasant for English legislators ;. * " That the seyerc distress which continues to exist in the United King-- dom among that important class of her Majesty's subjects the owners and occupiers of land, and which is justly lamented in her Majesty's speech,, renders it the duty of ministers to introduce without delay such measures as may be most effectual for the relief thereof." Ayes, 267 y, noes, 281. THE TENANT LEA G UE. 155* but they were not in a mood to stop at trifles they extended; the act to Ireland ! The Catholic leaders in the tenant-right movement saw with grief that an issue had' arisen which would surely dominate the Land question, and would split North from South; yet throughout all this time they manfully held on to the platform on < which Protestant and Catholic had vowed to unite. On Friday,, ... the 20th of February 1852,. the Whig ministry were defeated by a majority of eleven on their Militia Bill. Lord Derby took office as head of a Tory administration, and announced that Par- liament would be dissolved in the approaching summer. The news was wildly welcomed in Ireland. Here was the- opportunity for the League the general election for which they had so long prayed and waited ! With a fierce energy the tenant- righters flung themselves into the struggle. Since 1829 no such desperate efforts had been put forth. All the earthly hopes of the Irish people seemed fixed on the return of an honest and independent Irish party to Parliament, so that the work of " the Crowbar Brigade " might be arrested, and tenant homesteads be saved from confiscation and ruin. There was no "vote by ballot" then; and the hapless tenant who went against the landlord's candidate dared certain doom. As it turned out, a civil war could scarcely have brought heavier penalties on the people than those which followed upon this general election of 1852. At the close of the polls some fifty tenant-right members* men professing allegiance to the principles of the League, and : < elected on such professions were seated for Irish constituencies. In the first flush of popular joy and triumph, over this result, no one ventured to sift the so-called gains and speculate how many of these men were sincere,, and how many had shouted with the people only to betray their confidence. A goodly stride, however, had undoubtedly been taken towards reforming- ., the personnel of the Irish popular representation. Amongst the , men who entered Parliament for the first time on this occasion ; were the two to whose genius a-nd abilities, fidelity and devotion,, the League was most largely indebted dharles Gavan Duffy and Frederick Lucas. With them, there also appeared John Francis Maguire, Patrick M'Mahon, Tristram Kennedy,. Kichard Swift, John Brady, and others whose names have since become more or less familiar in Irish politics. A Liberal-Conservative, who had previously sat for Harwich, was returned for the- .150 NEW IRELAND. borough of Youghal, and is thus referred to in the Nation of the 17th of July 1852: In Youghal, Isaac Butt, the Irishman, has beaten Fortescue, the son of .-an English Whip peer. We are delighted that Mr. Butt sits in an Irish :seat. Though he be a Conservatire, his heart is genuinely Irish, and as a inan of noble talents he is an honour to his country. All over the island there was rejoicing. Ireland, turning from theories of physical force and insurrection, was now to see "what constitutional effort could do. In August 1852 the tenant?- Tight movement was at the zenith of its power. How it fell, how it was overthrown, can best be told in the story which traces the romantic and tragic career of John Sadleir. CHAPTEE XIV. "THE BRASS BAND." 'THE destruction of the popular movement of 1850-1852, com- -pleting as it did the overthrow of popular confidence in constitutional politics, led to consequences utterly deplorable. Indissolubly associated in the gloomy memories of that time are the names of John Sadleir and William Keogh. John Sadleir was born in Tipperary some sixty years ago. Amongst the few Catholic families of position in that county, the Scullys and the Sadleirs held a good place, the first-named especially, and in the last generation the two had been linked by marriage. At an early age yoiing John was apprenticed to a solicitor, and in due time entered upon practice in that branch 4 of the law. He was early distinguished for abilities, even '' beyond those called forth in his profession, and for an ambition ' that could not fail to lead him eventually to some high position, i He decided to make for the great metropolis, where a wide field V was open to such talents as he commanded. In London he V pursued the special avocation of " parliamentary agent," and what with his Irish connection and his masterly skill, he rose rapidly. He soon soared higher and entered the circles of finance; his clear vision had discerned a road to results it " THE BRASS BAND." 157 would have seemed madness just then to mention. His family the Sadleirs and Scullys and Keatingcs were monoid men, and were widely known as such throughout his native county. Seeing what he could do with money in the great world of London, and well knowing that the Irish banking- systems had not yet been brought to the doors of the people so as to tap the humble hoards of the farming classes, he deter- mined to set up a local bank ; and so the " Tipperary Joint- Stock Bank" was established. It became a great success. "Wherever a branch was set up it supplanted that venerable institution the " old stocking " as a receptacle for savings or depository of marriage portions. From the Shannon to the Suir, " Sadleir's bank " was regarded with as much confidence as " the old lady of Threadneedle Street " commands from her votaries. Yet from what I could ever learn, it performed only half the functions of a bank. It received all; it lent little. John, in fact, had other use for the money in London beside lending it to Paddy Eyan to buy cattle, or lorn Dwyer to drain his land. He was rising hand over hand, amongst the highest and boldest of speculative financiers. Ihe time came for a new step in his ambitious scheme. Public life was to play its part in his designs. The imperial Parliament was to supply him with an arena for distinction. Not only would he enter it, but,, determined to become a power therein, he would surround him- self with a family band, as th6 nucleus of a party of which he should be leader. Amidst the gloom of the famine years he found the opportunity for effecting this portion of his scheme. In the general election of 1847 he was returned for the borough of Carlow ; his cousin Eobert Keatinge for Waterford county ; and his cousin Frank Scully for Tipperary. In 1850 he occupied an enviable position. The repute of his wealth, the extent of his influence, above all, the worship of his success, was on every lip. Whatever he took in hand succeeded; whatever he- touched turned to gold. He was, every one said, one of your eminently practical politicians ; no mere agitator, but a man of sagacity and prudence, whose name alone guaranteed the sound- ness of a scheme or the wisdom of a suggestion. He was a decided Liberal and an ardent Catholic, and very soon made his mark among the Irish members. Side by side with him, in the same year, there entered" Parliament, for the borough of Athlone, a man equally re- markable in his own way Mr. William Keogh. Although some mysterious affinity seemed to bring the men together, ancl 158 NEW IRELAND. linked them in a joint career, they were dissimilar as possible in many respects. Mr. Eeogh was a barrister-at-law, but, unlike Sadleir, had been no success at his profession though not for want of splendid abilities. The one man was a model of financial punctuality and business exactness ; the other certainly was not. Mr. Sadleir was a man of few words, strict and stern, reserved, and almost sententious ; Mr. Keogh was the life .and soul of every circle in which he moved, ever brimming- over with animal spirits, full of 'bonhomie, sparkling with wit, and abounding with jovial good-nature. He was a most per- suasive speaker. His voice was rich, powerful, and capable of every inflection. His manner was intensely earnest. His social qualities, his intellectual gifts, made him a universal favourite; jet from the very first, despite his emotional patriotism and captivating eloquence, there were people who doubted his political sincerity. His whole position and circumstances, to their minds, too obviously suggested that the prize of public life for him must be some gift from the hand of the Government adequate as the price of such a convert. The outburst of the " Papal Aggression " storm in England was hailed with different feelings by the Sadleir group and by the Tenant League leaders. The latter had just built up a 'platform of united action for Protestant and Catholic Irishmen, .and here had this fatal issue come to rend them asunder. The former saw with joy that in this new agitation, which bade fair to extinguish the League, they could get the country completely into their own hands. England went wild with " Xo Popery " fanaticism ; Ireland was aflame with alarm and passion. Pro- iestant and Catholic were daily becoming more and more hope- lessly antagonised. The Catholics in the Tenant League strove manfully to make head against the current. A proposition to establish a " Catholic Defence Association " was openly opposed by Duffy in the Nation. In the flames of religious bigotry, he . said, the hopes of Ireland would perish. Knaves and hypocrites, he declared, would rant and rave as tremendous Catholics, and lash the multitude into madness about " Our holy Church," in order that they might effect the destruction of a popular move- ment, which threatened to sweep away speculative politicians. We shall not serve the Church the more, he prophesied, but we shall lose the Land, He pleaded in vain. Challenged as the Irish Catholics were by the penal legislation of Lord John Bussell's Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, it was not in human nature to lie still and take no measures for defensive warfare. John " THE BRASS SAND." 159 ^Sadleir and his party sprang into the front rank of the Catholic 'defence movement. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was en- -countered with the most determined opposition. " The Pope's Brass Band," the English press called the score of Irish Liberals who fought the bill so vehemently ; " the Irish Brigade " -they were proudly and fondly designated at home. Their conduct' was the theme of praise by Irish .Catholic firesides. Blessings were invoked on those devoted and heroic men, the brave defenders of the Catholic religion ; but, above all, benedictions were showered on the most defiant and dauntless, the most able .and eloquent of the band Mr. William Keogh. The obnoxious bill was passed. The " Brigade " returned home to receive a nation's gratitude. A worthless array, verily, were they for the most part. Some few, unquestionably, were men of high principle and sterling honesty ; others were mere political backs, sordid and selfish; while the Sadleir group, skilful, eloquent, influential, now virtually masters of the situation, were playing a bold and ambitious game. On Tuesday, 23rd of August 1851, an aggregate meeting of the Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland was held in the Eotunda, Dublin, to protest against the Titles Bill, and to take measures for Catholic defence. The Most Eev. Dr. Cullen, at that time Archbishop of Armagh, filled the chair. Thero was a great array of Catholic bishops and clergy, as well as of Catholic noblemen and members of Parliament. Mr. John Sadleir, M.P., was one of the honorary secretaries to the meeting ; his cousin Mr. Vincent Scully was one of the speakers, and Mr. W. Kcogh, M.P., was another. The latter gentleman delighted the assem- blage by his eloquent denunciation of the Penal Act, which had just received the royal assent. He, for one, would trample on and defy the law. He drew from his pocket a copy of the new statute, and, holding it forth, said, "I now, as one of her Majesty's counsel, holding the act of Parliament in my hand, unhesitatingly give his proper title to the Lord Archbishop of .Armagh." He then went on to promise that he and his friends -would have the hostile act repealed if the people of Ireland would but send them a few more parliamentary colleagues. " "We will have no terms," said he, " with any minister, no matter who he may be, until he repeals that act of Parliament, and every other which places the Eoman Catholic on a lower plat- form than his Protestant fellow-subject." Despite the marked favour which they had won from the Catholic prelates, clergy, and people, and notwithstanding the 160 NEW in ELAND. violence of their protestations, Messrs. Sadleir and Keogh were- the objects of suspicion and mistrust on the part of a few keen observers of passing affairs in Ireland. It was noted that Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Cardwell, and many leading Peelites had resisted the " No Popery " scare in England, and had fought against the Titles Bill in Parlia- ment. Amongst these statesmen, accurately enough, some- persons saw a possible cabinet of the future, and already some idea that the Sadleir group were operating in view of such a con- tingency was whispered about. A base calumny, a cruel sus- picion, an assassin stab, Mr. Keogh proclaimed it to be. The three leading popular journalists of Ireland Mr. Duffy, of the Nation ; Dr. Gray, of the Freeman ; and Mr. Lucas, of the Tablet were very plainly imbued with some such conviction, and between them and the Sadleir party a deadly dislike smouldered. The latter, however, were the popular idols of the hour. On the 28th of October 1851, Mr. Keogh was enter- tained by his constituents at a public banquet, which partook rather of the character of a national demonstration. No hall in Athlonewas large enough to accommodate the gathering, which was held in a huge pavilion, erected, I believe, on the cathedral grounds. The guest of the evening, after an effusive eulogium on Archbishop MacHale, who was present, alluded to the in- sinuations above referred to. In language the earnestness and solemnity of which touched every heart he repelled them. " Whigs or Tories," said he, " Peelites or Protectionists are alt the same to me. I will fight for my religion and my country, scorning and defying calumny. I declare, in the most solemn- manner, before this august assembly, I shall not regard any party. I know that the road I take does not lead to preferment. I do not belong to the Whigs ; I do not belong to the Tories. Here, in the presence of my constituents and my country and I hope I am not so base a man as to make an avowal which could be contradicted to-morrow if I was capable of doinfr that which is insinuated against me I solemnly declare if there was a Peelite administration in office to-morrow it would be nothing to me. I will not support any party which does not make it the firet ingredient of their political existence to repeal the Ecclesiastical Titles Act." In like solemn manner he pledged 1 his troth that he would oppose, or not support, any party which did not undertake to settle the Land question and abolisk the Established Church. Finally, he turned at the Irish land- lords, whom he denounced as " a heartless aristocracy " " th " THE BliASS BAND." 161 mosr; iieartless, the most thriftless, and the most indefensible landocracy on the face of the earth." Those who were present say that no one who heard the speaker, and looked into his face, as, glowing with indignation, he made these protestations, could have been so unfeeling as to doubt him. Doubted, nay, openly denounced, he and the rest of the Sadleir following nevertheless were in the Nation and Tablet ; Duffy and Lucas having thus early received some private proofs that the Brigade meant to be in the market on the first favnnr- able opportunity. .Early in 185'J a vacancy occurred in Cork county, and another of Mr. Sadleir's cousins, Mr. V. Scully, appeared as a candidate. The more honest and keen-sighted of the Tenant League party in the locality did not take very kindly to him, but Mr. Keogh went down specially to campaign for him, and the full strength of the Sadleir party was put forth. There was a public meeting in Cork city on the 8th of March 1852, to consider the merits of the Liberal candidates, and Mr. McCarthy Downing whose public influence, in at all events the West Eiding, was admitted to be paramount seeing Mr. Keogh present, boldly " belled the cat " as follows : I will tell the meeting fairly and honestly that I believe the Irish Brigade are not sincere advocates of the tenant-right question. I state that, and I believe it is in the presence of two of them. I attended two great meetings in the Music Hall in Dublin, at the inauguration of the Tenant League, at my own expense, when a deputation waited upon the Brigade to attend the meeting, and I protest I never saw a beast drawn to the slaughter- house by the butcher to receive the knife with more difficulty than there was in bringing to that meeting the members of the Irish Brigade. Then up rose Mr. Keogh; and never, perhaps, were his marvellous gifts more requisite than at this critical moment. The future fate and fortunes of his leader and party hung on the turn affairs might take at this meeting ; an open challenge and public charge having been thus flung doAvn against them. There were a few hostile cries when he stood up ; but silence was after a while obtained. With flushed countenance and heaving breast, he burst forth in these words : " Great God ! " he exclaimed, " in this assemblage of Irishmen have you found that those who are most ready to take every pledge have been the most sincere in perseverance to the end, or have you not rather seen that they who, like myself, went into Parliament perfectly unpledged, not supported by the popular voice, but in the face of popular acclaim, when the II 162 NEW ICELAND. time for trial comes are not found wanting ? I declared myself in tne presence of the bishops of Ireland, and of my colleagues in Parliament, that let the minister of the day be "who he may let him be the Earl of Derby, let him be Sir James Graham, or Lord John Russell it was all the same to us, and so help me God, no matter who the minister may be, no matter who the party in power may be, I will support neither that minister nor that party, unless he comes into power prepared to carry the measures which universal popular Ireland demands. I have abandoned my own profession to join in cementing and forming an Irish parliamentary party. That has been my ambition. It may be a base one, I think it an honourable one. I have seconded the proposition of Mr. Sharman Crawford in the House of Commons. I have met the minister upon it to the utmost extent of my limited abilities, at a moment when disunion was not expected. So help me God ! upon that and every other question to which I have given niy adhesion, I will be and I know I may say that every one of ray friends is as determined- as myself an unflinching, undeviating, unalterable supporter of it." No wonder the assemblage that had listened as if spellbound while he spoke, sprang to their feet, and with vociferous cheering atoned for the previous doubts of the man whose oath had now sealed his public principles. Alas ! barely nine months later on he went over bodily to the minister of the day, and took office under an administration which neither repealed the Titles Act, abolished the Established Church, nor settled the Land question ! John Sadleir had marked well the power wielded against him by Duffy, Gray, and Lucas in the metropolitan press. The opposition of the Nation, the Freeman, and the Tablet alone seemed to stand between him and the complete command of Irish popular politics. The Catholic bishops, almost to a man, and the great majority of the priests, believed confidently ia him and Mr. Keogh, and regarded the suggested suspicions or open imputations of the Nation and Tablet as the mischievous hostility of extreme and violent politicians. Still, it was highly dangerous for him to go forward with these three fortresses unreduced on his flank. He determined to silence them effect- ually ; to destroy them. By this time he had become almost a millionaire. Fifty thousand pounds flung boldly into the estab- lishment of opposition journals would soon dispose of the Nation, Tablet, arid Freeman. Ere long Dublin rang with the news that " THE BRASS BAND." 163 a gigantic newspaper scheme was being launched, " regardless of expense," by Mr. Sadleir. The leader of the Irish Brigade, the Defender of the Church, the man of success, had now de- cided to break ground in a new direction, and establish a real, genuine, ortkodox Catholic press for the million. Commodious premises were taken ; powerful machinery and extensive plant "were purchased ; and an editor, who was given out to be a sort of lay pontiff, Mr. William Bernard MacCabe, was brought over from London. The new weekly, called the Weekly Telegraph, was first to clear the ground of the Nation and Tablet, before the new daily tackled the Freeman. Perhaps ere that time Dr. Gray, intimidated by the beggary brought on Duffy and Lucas, would knock under to the great power of Sadleirism. If not, he too could be mopped out. Never was there a more daring and comprehensive design to "bring the whole popular opinion and political influence of a country into the grasp of one bold and ambitious man ! The Telegraph was issued at half the price of the existing Catholic weeklies threepence ; and as money was literally lavished on its production and dissemination, it went broadcast through the land. It pandered to the fiercest bigotry. Its *' catholicity " was of that bellicose and extravagant character which was deemed best calculated at a time of such widespread religious animosities to delight and excite the masses. It swept the island. It penetrated into hamlets and homes where the Nation or the Tablet had never been seen. The editor, a gentleman of great ability, contrived to make his readers believe that the Pope and John Sadleir were the two great authorities of the Catholic Church ; one was its infallible head, the other its invincible defender. But those bad Catholics, Duffy and Lucas, were thwarting the noble efforts of Mr. Sadleir and his devoted colleagues to serve the Church; as for Gray, of the Freeman, he was a heretic, and nothing but evil could emanate from him. The newspaper move of the banker- politician, however, was a little over-reaching. It set a great many persons a-thinking, and alarmed not a few. As for the Nation and Tablet, they bore the shock of attack bravely in spirit, but neither proprietor had a bank' at his back, and both journals were almost fatally crippled in the unequal struggle. In the spring of 1852 on the 2nd of April the Most Piev. Dr. Cullen, for a short time previously Archbishop of Armagh, was, by the all but unanimous vote of the clergy, nominated fur Mfl 164: NEW IRELAND. the archbishopric of Dublin. The nomination was cordially approved at Home, and there entered on his new sphere of duties a man who has ever since played an important part in Irish affairs. He had spent the greater part of his clerical life in Italy, and for many years had been Eector of the Irish college in Eome. He early gained the special confidence and favour of Cardinal Barnabo, Prefect of the Propaganda, and was very warmly esteemed by Pio Nono himself. His manhood was largely passed, his principles were formed, in an atmosphere quite unlike that of Ireland. In Italy popular politics and national aspirations were made synonymous with principles and. designs very naturally abhorrent to him. All the bent of his mind was with authority, and against resistance to the con- stituted powers. He had seen the evil work which revolutionism had wrought elsewhere, and there was but the one safe road, he thought, for him to take ; namely, to beware of all who inclined to tumult, violence, or sedition, and to side with those who put the interests of the Catholic religion before and beyond every other. There never entered upon the duties of such an import- ant position as his a man more single-minded, more devoid of personal ambition or thought of self, more wholly wrapped in the one great purpose of advancing the interests of the Church. He was a strict disciplinarian, and it soon became evident that he had been chosen at Eome for a great and far-reaching purpose of disciplinary transformation in Irish Catholic affairs. Self- denying himself, he expected self-denial from all who served the altar; obedient, full of reverence for authority, he con- sidered obedience the first duty of a cleric. He might have- been one of the early Fathers, transferred from the fifth to the nineteenth century. His grave exterior, his passionless manner,, his strong ideas of authority and discipline, did not fit well th& Irish character, customs, and habits. He was more Eoman than Irish, and his design of bringing the Irish Church into- stricter conformity to the Eoman model necessarily invaded many old feelings and incurred for him not a few conflicts amongst the Irish clergy. "A gloomy fanatic," "a narrow- minded churchman," the ultra-Protestant journals unfairly de- clared him to be ; and even his own people, owing to the calm gravity of his manner, and the austerity of his piety, regarded him more with veneration than familiar affection. Yet in all this only one side of his character was read, and justice was not done his inner nature, which was kindly, and often generous- Ho could unbend betimes, and few could exhibit a " THE BRASS BAND." 165 appreciation for genuine wit or humour.* Yet a certain air of reserve and monasticism always surrounded him; and one could see that he looked out on all the world from the stand- point of an ecclesiastic. Dr. Cullen almost inevitably gravitated towards the Sadleir party as the special champions of the Church, and away from those who looked to such a dangerous paper as the Nation for guidance. He knew what " Young Italy " meant ; and " Young Ireland " he believed to be an imitation of the Italian party. .Nor was he without grounds for suck an impression. The writers in the Nation at one time warmly wrote up Mazzini and his co-labourers of the Carbonari; a position, however, soon after publicly and emphatically abandoned by Mr. Duffy, and repudiated by his successors. Still, it was not difficult for Mr. Sadleir 's ecclesiastical friends to persuade the new arch- bishop that the men who preferred a Tenant League to a Catholic Defence Association, and who advocated a union of Protestants and Catholics in public affairs, were the heterodox party; while Messrs. Sadleir and Keogh were the friends of * Many stories circulate in Dublin, some of questionable authenticity, as -to his adventures in those early reforming days. He resided for some time with the parochial clergy in the presbytery attached to the pro-cathedral >iu Marlberough Street. He soon established a rule that every one not on sick visitation duty should be within doors by ten o'clock at night. The ten o'clock rule was by degrees a little infringed, whenever the curates were spending, as was their wont, an evening with some friendly family in the neighbourhood. The arcnbishop imagined he occasionally heard footsteps creeping cautiously upstairs long after " ten o'clock," and one evening, to the consternation of the reverend father whose turn it was to lock up, he announced his intention of performing this duty himself. *' Go up to bed, Father John," said he, in tones of sympathy ; " you look a little fatigued. I'll wait for whoever is out." In vain Father John declared he was not tired ; in feet he felt quite fresh, so to speak, and waiting up a little would do him all the good in the world. The arch- bishop would have his way ; and Father John went off to his room mutter- Ing of the catastrophe that awaited two of his friends who were sure not to be in before eleven. It was past this hour when they tapped softly at the big door, which was cautiously opened from within. One of them, putting in his head, inquired in a whisper " Is Paul in bed ? " " No," said the archbishop in a similar whisper, " he's here." Laughing heartily at their confusion he let them in, locked the door, and, wishing them good- night, told them to go to bed. To their amazement, the archbishop next morning acted as if the incident had never occurred ; and when at the story got about none enjoyed it more mirthfully than he did 166 NEW IRELAND. order and the defenders of religion. In the events which -were now at hand, this attitude of the Catholic archbishop of Dublin was of marked importance. Parliament was dissolved on the 1st of July, and the efforts of the past six months culminated on the hustings. There- were four parties engaged in the combat : the Tories who fought "solid," as they always do; the Whigs; the Tenant Leaguers, and the Catholic Defenders. In several places the latter two came into open conflict ; and generally it was evident that the Whigs, the Catholic Defence people, and the Brigade men were one and the same party. Nevertheless, when the lists were closed, it was found that the Leaguers had virtually carried the island. No Catholic Defence Whig was able to- secure his return without taking the Tenant-Bight pledge; while in nearly every place the League candidates triumphed. Their only important defeat was in Monaghan, where Dr. Gray was narrowly beaten. Frederick Lucas was returned for Meath, Gavan Duffy for NQW Boss, John Francis Maguare for Dungarvan, and, above all in importance, George Henry Moore, a member of the dissolved Parliament, already marked out as a master of men in the popular ranks, was again elected for Mayo. On the other hand, Mr. Sadleir and his three cousins, Frank and Vincent Scully and Robert Keatinge, were re-elected; so was Mr. Keogh ; and Mr. Sadleir's brother James came in for Tipperary; all finding it requisite to hoist the Tenant-Bight colours beside the misused papal banner which they waved in the people's eyes. It was in the course of this campaign that Mr. Keogh, addressing a mob in Westmeath, in the interest of his friend Captain Magau, delivered a speech containing at least one suggestion, which listening Bibbonmen were not likely to forget. " Boys," said ke, " the days are now long, and the nights are short. In winter the days will be short and the nights will be long; and then let everyone remember who voted for Sir Bichard Levinge."* But though Mr. Keogh was the man who figured most before the public, the unseen Von Moltke of the whole scheme' was John Sadleir. Already he saw victory at hand. The result of the general elections gave a narrow majority to the Liberal * Mr. Keogh subsequently declared he had no recollection whatever of this; and a special friend of his was adduced who "did not hear it;" but several affidavits or declarations were quoted bj Lord Egliutoun from persons who were present and heard the words. " THE BRASS BAND? 167 Party. The Tories could not hold office. The Kussell Whigs, without the Irish vote, were eqiially powerless. A coalition ministry embracing the PeelitQ Conservatives and anti-Eccle- siastical Titles Bill Liberals was the only possible administra- tion. Already in imagination the banker-politician grasped a coronet as the price of the Irish Brigade ! In Ireland the joy of the people over the return of so large an array of Tenant-Eight members was unbounded. It was for Gavan Duffy, especially, a short-lived triumph over his as- sailants of the revolutionary school. A faithful and independent band of representatives, he declared, would be worth more to Ireland in her existing condition than armies in the tented field. It did seem as if the Irish people had settled down at last to the design of fighting out their political issues with the weapons of the franchise and the forces of public opinion. On Wednesday, 8th of September 1852, a general conference of Irish members of Parliament favourable to tenant-right, convened by the League, was held in Dublin. Every Liberal member sitting for an Irish seat, with one or two exceptions, was present ; forty in all. The following resolution as the basis of their future parliamentary policy and action was adopted with but one* dissentient voice : Resolved ; that in the opinion of this conference it is essential to the proper management of this cause that the members of Parliament who hare been returned on tenant-right principles should hold themselves per- fectly independent of, and in opposition to, all Governments which do not make it part of their policy, and a Cabinet question, to give to the tenantry of Ireland a measure embodying the principles of Mr. .Sharman Crawford's bill. On the 4th of November 1852, the new Parliament opened. At 4 a.m., Friday, 17th of December, the Derby Government was defeated in the Commons by a majority of nineteen. On the 20th ministers resigned, and Lord Aberdeen was called upon to form a Cabinet. A shout went up from Ireland. A thrill of the wildest ex- citement shook the island from the centre to the sea. Now jor and triumph now torturing doubt now the very agony of suspense, prevailed. What would the Irish party do? Here was the crisis which was to shame their oaths or prove them true. No Liberal or composite administration was possible without them, and their demand was one no minister had ever- * Mr. Burke Roche, afterwards Lord Fermay. 168 NEW IRELAND. denied to be jusi What would the Irish members do ? The fate of the new ministry, the fate of Ireland, was in their hands. As terrible deeds are said to be sometimes preceded by a mysterious apprehension, so in the last week of that old year a vague gloom chilled every heart. The news from London was panted for, hour by hour. At length the blow fell. Tidings of treason and disaster came. The Brigade was sold to Lord Aberdeen ! John Sadleir was Lord of the Treasury ! William Keogh was Irish Solicitor-General ! Edmond O'Flaherty was Commissioner of Income-Tax ! And so on. The English people, fortunately accustomed for centuries to exercise the functions of political life, may well be unable to comprehend the paralysis which followed this blow in Ireland. The merchant of many ships may bear with composure the wreck of one. But here was an argosy freighted with the last and most precious hopes of a people already on the verge of ruin and despair, scuttled before their eyes by the men who had called on the Most High God to witness their fidelity. The Irish tenantry had played their last stake and lost. A despairing stupor like to that of the famine time shrouded the land. Notices to quit fell " like snowflakes " all over the counties where the hapless farmers had " refused the landlord " and voted for a Brigadier. But the banker-politician had won. His accustomed success had attended him. He was not as yet a peer ; but he was a Treasury Lord. From their seat on the Treasury bench, he and his comrade, " the Solicitor-General," could smile calmly at the accusing countenances of Duffy and Moore and Lucas. The New Year's chimes rang in the triumph of John Sadleir's daring ambition. Did no dismal minor tone, like mournful funeral knell, presage the sequel that was now so near at hand ? CHAPTEE XV. THE 8UICIDB BANKER. SIDE by side with the political movements and events that landed Mr. Sadleir on the Treasury .bench, financial schemes of the most ambitious character had occupied his mind. He early noted how fortunes might be made out of the ruin of Irish THE SUICIDE BANKER. 169 landed proprietors in the Encumbered Estates Court. He got up a " Land Company " to purchase the properties just then l>eing sold at from seven to thirteen years' rental, with a view to reselling them subsequently at the advance which he knew would take place. His connection with the Tipperary Bank brought him into association with the magnates of Lombard Street; and ere long he was Chairman of the London and County Joint-Stock Bank. Higher, still higher, grew his aims ; bolder and more daring his schemes and speculations. He was in Italian, American, and Spanish Bailways. He was deep in iron ; and at one time, it is said, he owned every cargo of sugar in port or at sea between England and the Indies. Amidst the hoarse roar of denunciation which hailed the desertion of the Brigade to Lord Aberdeen's camp, there came the bold assurances of the Weekly Telegraph that all was right. ^Nay, virtuous indignation was manifested at the injustice of condemning those gentlemen before their explanation had been heard. They were in no hurry to offer any ; but substantially iheir story was this : " Lord Aberdeen has not repealed the Titles Act, nor undertaken to do so; but he is the Catholic's friend. He fought against the ' No Popery ' penal legislators ; lie is on terms of respect and regard with our bishops. He has not passed a tenant-right bill, nor undertaken to do so ; but he wishes the cause well, and will probably deal with the question. To oppose such a man we should act side by side with our deadly enemies, the Tories. His accession to power is the virtual defeat of Lord John Eussell, who passed the Titles Bill, and of Lord Derby, who assisted it." The Tenant League was rent in twain by the Sadleir de- fection. Not merely the League, the country at large, was split into fiercely hostile parties, one making the heavens rescrund with execrations of the forsworn Brigadiers, the other as stbrmily defending them. At this point of Irish political .history,: the political influence and authority of the Catholic bishops received a shock which has considerably influenced Irish affairs down to the present day. Mr. Sadleir and Mr. Keogh had of course to present them- selves for re-election in their boroughs of Carlow and Athlone. The Leaguers flung themselves with energy into the work of defeating them. In both places it was found that the Catholic prelates and clergy supported the Brigade leaders. This news created consternation. A deputation consisting of Frederick 170 NEW IRELAND. Lucas, M.P., Oeo. H. Moore, M.P., Eev. T. iO'Shea, C.C., and' Eev. Dr. Kearney, P.P., on the part of the Tenant League, pro- ceeded to Carlow to oppose Mr. Sadleir. The local clergy denounced them as intruders, and they had to quit the town. It was still worse at Athlone, where every one was overjoyed at Mr. Keogh's good fortune. Stunned, alarmed at the probable effects of this approval of a disregard for public obligations, tho League leaders appealed to the Catholic bishops and clergy of Ireland to speak out promptly, and say was it conducive to public morality that pledges so solemnly and explicitly made to the people should be violated on the first opportunity with the sanction of Catholic ecclesiastics. From the Most Eev. Dr, MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, came a ready and emphatic response. Standing as he did at the head of the Irish epis- copacy in political weight and influence, it was not unnaturally expected that a pronouncement from " the Lion of the Fold of Judah," as O'Connell had designated him, would have been, accepted as decisive. No Catholic prelate in Ireland kad filled so large a place as he in Irish affairs for more than a quarter of a century ; none at all approached him in popularity. He had been fondly looked up to by the Irish Catholic millions as an. episcopal O'Connell ; a guide who was " always right," a champion whom nothing could dismay. He addressed a public letter to Mr. G. H. Moore, M.P., on the question of the day, " as a clear case of conscience which, when stripped of all other relations of policy, or expediency, or private interest, or prophecies of increased good, or probabilities of qualified evil, with which it is sought to obscure and confound it, is too clear for debate or conflicting decisions." Then he went on to say : On the strict and religious obligation of fidelity to such covenants there can be no controversy an obligation the more sacred and binding in proportion to the numbers committed to such engagement, and to the magnitude and sacroduess of the interests which they involve. Dissolve- the binding power of suck contracts, and you loosen the firmest bonds by which society is kept together. The Catholic bishops of Meath and Killala expressed them- selves to a like effect. But at the points of critical importance, in the boroughs where the rejection of the Brigade leaders might have had a telling effect on the controversy, it happened, for- tunately for them, that the local bishops indorsed their course. This conflict between ecclesiastical authorities on a grave- question of public morality greatly scandalised the people.. THE SUICIDE BANKER. 171 Every one looked for a declaration from the new Archbishop of Dublin, the Papal Legate. None came. Soon his silence* received a dark construction. His uncle, the Eev. James Maher, P.P., was one of Mr. Sadleir's strongest supporters in Carlow ; and it became manifest that Dr. Cullen's influence, in Ireland and at Home, was certain to be given, negatively or positively, on the side of Lord Aberdeen. This was partly his own judgment on things as they presented themselves to his view. But there was a whisper at the time of rather curious negotiations privately pushed between London, Vienna, and Eome, as to the claims of the new Premier on " the Catholic vote " in the House of Commons ; and these stories, rightly or wrongly, were con- nected with the attitude which Dr. Cullen assumed in the subsequent events. It seemed for a moment as if almost a schism would ensue in the Irish Catholic Church over the issue thus precipitated. An open war raged between the sections of the clergy and people who ranged themselves under the- banners of Dr. MacHale and of Dr. Cullen respectively. The latter maintained a severe silence, but he might_ as well have openly espoused the cause of Mr. Sadleir and Mr. Keogh ; for the Tablet and Nation treated him as the really formidable protector of those gentlemen. No more violent, no more pain- ful, internecine conflict agitated Irish politics in the presents century than that which arose out of this clerical and episcopal condonation and reprobation of the Keogh-Sadleir defection from the Tenant League. Mr. Sadleir was opposed in Carlow by a Tory, Mr. Alexander. The Freeman, the Nation, and the Tablet exhorted the people to vote for Alexander, all Tory as he was, rather than for the new Lord of the Treasury. The Weekly Telegraph and the Eveninrj Post cried out in horror against this unholy union of Orange Tories and renegade Catholics in opposition to the protege of the bishop, the favourite of the priests, the champion of the Pope, the bosom friend of Lord Aberdeen. After a severe contest, Mr. Sadleir was rejected by an adverse majority of six votes. In Athlone, however, Mr. Keogh was not only triumphant, but the Catholic bishop, Dr^Browne, ostentatiously identified him- self with the laudable advancement of so good a son of the Church. Soon after a vacancy was found for the Lord of the Treasury in Sligo, where by shameless bribery and terrorism he headed tha poll. A parliamentary committee said so it had ' been ; but as Mr. Sadleir was held to have no personal knowledge- of those crimes, his t#at was secure. 172 NEW ICELAND. In Ireland, centuries of a cruel penal code had kept Catholics from every post of prominence or distinction in the public ad- ministration. The Emancipation Act had, indeed, declared them no longer ineligible for such offices by reason of religious faith; but (as Mr. Peel at the time pointed out to some un- necessarily alarmed Protestants) declaring men not disqualified was one thing, actually appointing them was another. From 1829 to 1849 the Emancipation Act was little more than an Abstract declaration, for any substantial change that the people could see in the old regime. " Catholic appointments " came to be regarded as t'he great test of Government liberality. The placing of Catholics in important public offices, especially as judges on the bench, was looked upon as the practical application of the Emancipation Act ; and the ministry who should make the act a reality would be ranked very nearly as highly as those who had enacted it as a theory. In Dublin, at Vienna, and at Eome, Lord Aberdeen, through able and astute Catholic intfr- mediaries, pledged himself to this view; and unquestionably lie meant it. What greater proof, it was asked, could he give of his feelings and intentions on this point than the fact of singling out for high positions under his administration the most prominent and demonstrative Irish opponents of the Titles Bill the men whose ultra-Catholicism had rendered them most obnoxious to English Protestant prejudices ? This aspect of the transaction unquestionably impressed many of the Irish bishops irresistibly. And they persuaded themselves that, even on the tenant question, Lod Aberdeen's dispositions were likely to go beyond anything otherwise prac- ticable. Moreover, the new political idea or rule ot " indepen- dence of and opposition to all administrations " was too great And too sudden a change from the traditional alliance of the Irish popular party with the English Liberals. The Irish members had indeed " resolved " it at the conference, but not more than a third of their number really meant it. The vrrench was too severe. On its very first application the new rule broke down. The popular mind had not been educated yet beyond the one point of always opposing the Tories, " who never gave Catholics anything ! " The League leaders, especially the League journalists Duffy, Gray, and Lucas, denounced the idea that for the sake of " Catholics in office " the Land question, which involved interests of ^rotestants and Catholics alike, should be sacrificed. They held up to public odium and eternal reprobation every man, THE SUIU1DE BANKER. 173 archbishop, bishop, priest, or layman who directly or indirectly approved or sustained the Brigade treason. The " Sadleirite prelates," as they were offensively termed, struck back with hard and sharp blows. Too-demonstrative priests were re- moved to remote parishes, and even called upon to " abstain from political strife." Eventually the leading provincial priests (chiefly from the diocese of Meath), accustomed to attend the meetings in Dublin whereat "the Brigade traitors" and their episcopal and other supporters were denounced, found them- selves prohibited, by an order from Eome, from further par- ticipation in such demonstrations. All this was set down mainly to Dr. Cullen's account. His voice was known to be all-powerful at the Propaganda. The parochial clergy took alarm. He was suspected of a deep design to overthrow the considerable independence which hitherto they enjoyed. It was said that " provincial statutes " had been for- warded by him for approval to Borne, whereby the platform utterances of a priest should be confined to his own parish. Hitherto in the selection of Catholic prelates the custom had been for the diocesan parish priests to select by ballot three persons diynus, dignior, and diynisstmus, according as they stood on the vote whose names were forwarded to Eome, and one of them almost invariably received the appointment. Dr. Cullen was credited with the purpose of abolishing this ancient custom, and of recommending the Holy See to assert its un- questionable right of nomination independently of the parish priests.* A deep discontent spread throughout the island. At length it was decided to appeal to Eome against his proceedings. This was a very serious, an almost unprecedented, course for Irish Catholics to take. An appeal to Eome against the Papal Legate ! To complain of him that he was curbing with strong hand the political action of clerics ! This was unlikely to be deemed an offence by the Vatican authorities. The intricacies of Irish politics, the tangled skein of the League-Brigade dispute, could hardly be unravelled and comprehended by such a tribunal. Nevertheless, well knowing it was one that never yet denied justice to the weakest or the humblest, even against the lofty and the strong, the aggrieved priests of the tenant-right * This change has, as a matter of fact, been ever since in a great measure applied. In several instances the nominations of the parochial clergy have been passed over, and the bishops directly appointed from Rome. 174 NEW IRELAND. movement drew up a formal Memorial or complaint for presentation to the Pope. But who -would sign it ? Who would present it ? Who was in a position to prosecute it ; to proceed to the Eternal City .and there attend and await the myriad tedious stages and processes of investigation ? After a good deal of time had been consumed by reason of these difficulties and obstructions, the "Memorial was at length duly signed, and Mr. Lucas, M.P., 3ditor of the Tablet, was chosen to proceed to Borne as the : representative of the complainants before the Apostolic Chair. He went on a forlorn hope. He was kindly received. The .grave impeachment which he brought was decreed a careful consideration. But the whole proceeding was a mournful mistake. Months went by. Weary waiting in Eome and -despairing news from Ireland told heavily on the spirits and on the health of the loyal-hearted Lucas. He had to return to England, leaving the Memorial to its fate. When we heard that he lay ill at Staincs, those who knew the man intimately, and had marked the consuming anxiety witli which he had fought out this quarrel, felt that a great and noble heart "had been broken in an unequal combat. The news from Ireland was simply this, that the Irish parliamentary party was. a wreck ; that the League was fatally shattered, the country utterly disheartened and despairing. The great movement around which the hopes of a nation had centred was irre- trievably ruined. The League organisation, indeed, refusing to surrender, made gallant effort for some few years further, and a small band of the Irish members, amongst the faithless faithful found Cavan Duffy, G. H. Moore, P. M'Mahon, J. A. ZBlake, J. F. Maguire, Tristram Kennedy, John Brady, and others fought bravely on. But it was more to make a stand for honour than with hope of victory. Mr. Sadleir had carried the day. No sooner did Gavan Duffy realise that the Memorial to Rome I was likely to come to naught than he determined to bid Ireland ' farewell. No man had staked more largely on the success of i this movement ; none lost more heavily by its overthrow. He, * at all events, had cleared his soul; he had done his part. He had given to the service of Ireland the best years of his life, without avail. He would now call upon younger men, who might hope where he could not, to take his place, if they would ; while, for himself, he sought a new home, and began life onco more at five and thirty, in far Australia. In 1854 there passed through Parliament tie most statesman- THE SUICIDE BANKER. 175 'like scheme of British legislation for half a centnry the act whereby the Australian Colonies were granted Home Eule. Mr. Duffy took a deep interest and an active part in all the discussions on this important measure. He added to it some of its wisest provisions, and saved it from faults that might have seriously marred its success. Few imagined at the time that he was destined to be, ere long, engaged in practically applying that scheme as First Minister of the Crown in free, self-governed Victoria ! For a moment it seemed as if he had been too precipitate in meditating self- expatriation. Towards the close of 1853 an ominous event occurred. The first faint sign of a fissure .appeared in the edifice of Mr. Sadleirs political and financial fortunes ! In his unsuccessful attempt at re-election for Carlow borough he had used unscrupulously and illegally the resources of his bank (which had a branch in the town) and the mechanism of biSs, bonds, debts, executions, and seizures, to influence the result. He usually took care to have a sufficient number of the electors in his power through some such means. On the morning of the election an unfortunate man named Bowling, suspected of an intention to vote for Mr. Alexander, was un- lawfully arrested on Borne judgment which Mr. Sadleir produced against him. Bowling brought an action for false imprisonment in the Court of Exchequer, Bublin, in November 1853. The revelations in the case were damning against the Lord of the Treasury. He came into the witness-box, however, and, as it was well expressed, " denied everything, and disowned every- body." So bold and desperate was his evidence that the jury had no option but to find against Bowling or declare Mr. .Sadleir a perjurer. They disbelieved Mr. Sadleir, and gave Dowling a verdict! The sensation created in Bublin at the time by this event was considerable ; hardly less serious was the excitement it caused in some of the political and financial circles of London. In a few weeks it became known that after such a verdict the lordship of the Treasury could not be retained. In January 1854 Mr. Sadleir " resigned." Resigned ! The tid* had turned with the banker-politician, -and, all unknown to the world, was now bearing him irresistibly to ruin. In March a sinister rumour crept around, that Mr. Sadleir, so far from being a millionaire, was at the moment in financial difficulty. The story, however, was scoffed at. and received 176 NEW IRELAND. what seemed ample refutation in new proofs displayed of hig- vast financial resources. In June people began to inqure in a cynical way, Where was Mr. Edmond O'Flaherty ? Mr.. O'Flaherty was the Brigadier who had been made Commissioner of Income-Tax ; a peculiarly intimate friend, confidant, and political manager of Messrs. Sadleir and Keogh ; another of those " good Catholics " whom it was so beneficial to Ireland to have placed in high office. Where was he, indeed ? The authorities at Scotftnd Yard grew anxious on the point, when it was dis- covered ene morning that the " Commissioner of Income-Tax " had fled to parts unknown, leaving bills in circulation, some of them with forged signatures, amounting in the aggregate to about 15,000. Men stared in wonder, and asked, Who next ? Mr. O'Flaherty's relations with other of the Brigade politicians suggested painful uncertainty as to further disclosures. He was a special prot-ey& of the Duke of Newcastle, with whom he was on visiting terms. There is little doubt that he was the negotiator of the recent political transactions between his friends and the Aberdeen. Government. And now he was a fugitive from justice ! Parliament opened on the 23rd of January 1855. Mr. Eoe- buck at once gave notice that he would move for a committee to inquire into the condition of the army before tebastopol, and into the conduct of the Government departments responsible.. On hearing this notice read, Lord John Eussell withdrew from the ministry, and " upset the coach again." Six days sub- sequently, the 29th of January, the coalition administration, was defeated on Mr. Koebuck's motion by the large majority of 157, in a house of 453. On the ]st of February Lord Aberdeen resigned. Between the 2nd and 5th Lord John Eussell and Lord Derby had each in turn tried and failed to form a Cabinet. On the Gth Lord Palmerston became Premier, with a reconstruc- tion of the late administration. Mr. Keogh had been Irish Solicitor-General; Mr. Brewster being Attorney-General. Of course it was concluded that their resignation of office would follow upon that of the Government. Mr. Brewsler did so resign, under the belief that his junior colleague was doing the sazne ; but he found that his act had merely made a vacancy for Mr. Keogh, who quietly held on, and stepped into the Attorney- Gen era' ship. There was a story current :u the Four Courts at the time that Mr. Keogh had cleverly " sold " Mr. Brewster in the proceeding had deliberately misled and outwitted him; but I never believed it, as the latter gentleman would, in any THE SUICIDE BANKER. 177 event, have acted on the strict lines of usage, and resigned with his chief. On the 4th of August 1855, Mr. Gavan Duffy announced, by a farewell address in the Nation, that he was about to throw up his seat in Parliament and leave Ireland for ever! The news chilled the country like a signal of despair. Mr. Duffy's first idea, I believe, was that the whole staff of the Nation should accompany him, and that they should re-establish that journal under happier auspices in the southern hemisphere. But this project was abandoned. He found a few hearts who would hope and strive on at home, dismal as was the outlook then, in the belief that some day Ireland would come to life, and would arise once more. Mr. John Gashel Hoey, a long-time colleague and friend, who had served him with ability and fidelity, and whose brilliant gifts and dauntless courage had been amply tested in years of difficulty and struggle, stepped into Mr. Duffy's place as editor in chief; I succeeded to the second position, and Mr. M. Clery, a nobly honest and true-soul ed young Irishman, undertook the business management of the property.* Mr. Duffy's valedictory address described in moving- language the events of the past six years, and the present cir- cumstances of Ireland. A change might come, he said and that it might he fondly prayed ; but unless and until the existing conditions altered, " there was no more hope for Ire- land than for a corpse on the dissecting-table." Gloomy new a came crowding in. On the 22nd of October Frederick Lucas died at Staines. On the 6th of November Gavan Duffy sailed for Australia. It seemed the extinction of national politics in Ireland. I have said that in 1854 the tide had turned with John Sadleir. Alas ! Throughout that year, and all the weary days of 1855, unknown to even his nearest and dearest friends, he was suffering tortures indescribable! Some of his colossal speculations had turned out adversely; and he had misap- propriated the last shilling of the Tipperary Bank. Another venture, he thinks, may recoup all it only leads to deeper ruin ! He must go on : he cannot turn back now. But where are funds to be reached for further wild endeavours ? All calmly as ever he trod the lobby of the House of Commons. No eye could detect on that impassive countenance of his that * Mr. Hoey and Mr. Clery retired in 1857, from which date up to 1876 I remained sole proprietor and responsible editor. 178 NEW IRELAND. there was aught but the satisfaction of success within. His political associates joked with him over Gavan Duffy's " poli- tical funeral." They effusively felicitated him on the signal overthrow and final dispersion of his adversaries. " Ireland is now all your own, John," said one of them; "you have con- quered all along the line. You must -be as happy as a king ! " He smiled hi?, cold sad smile, and said, Yes, to he sure he was. At home in Ireland his own journal, and all the Liberal Govern- ment organs, were never tired of sounding his praise and proclaiming his triumph, over the dead Lucas and the exiled Duffy. Nightly, after leaving the House of Commons, John Sadleir sat up late in the private study of his town house, 11 Glo'ster Terrace, Hyde Park. Morning often dawned and found him at his lonely labours. "What were they ^ In the stillness and secrecy of those midnight hours John Sadleir, the man of success, the millionaire, the Lord of the Treasury that had been, the peer of the realm that was to be, was occupied in forging deeds, conveyances, and bills for hundreds of thousands of pounds ! Still, accumulating disaster overpowered even these resources of fraud. In the second week of February 1856, some one of his numerous desperate financial expedients happened to mis- carry for a day ; and the drafts of the Tipperary Bank were dishonoured at Glyn's. The news came with a stunning shock on most people ; but quickly, next day, an announcement was issued that it was all a mistake ; the drafts presented anew had been duly met, and the mischance would not again befall. The alarm, however, had reached Ireland, and at several of the branches something akin to a run took place. If only a panic could be averted, and twenty or thirty thousand pounds ob- tained, all might be saved. So, at least, declared Mr. James Sadleir, M.P., who was in charge of affairs in Ireland, tele- graphing to John on the morning of Saturday, 16th of February.* Twenty or thirty thousand pounds ! Once it was a bagatelle in liis estimation ; but now ! He had lain on no bed the night before. All haggard and excited this message found him. James little knew all when he thus lightly spoke of twenty or thirty thousand pounds, by way of reassuring his hapless brother. * " Feb. 16, 1856. Telegram from James Sadleir, 30 Merrion Square South, Dublin, to John Sadleir, Esq., M.P., Reform Club, London : All right at all the branches ; only a few small things refused there. If from thirty thousand over here on Monday morning all is safe." TEE SUICIDE BANKER. 179 'The wretched man strove in vain to devise some yet unex- hausted means of raising this money. He had already gone so far, so perilously far, that there was no possible quarter in -which earnest application might not lead to suspicions that would invoke discovery ! He drove into the city. Mr. "VVilkin- '.. son, of Nicholas Lane, telling the sad affair subsequently, says : "" He came to me on the morning of Saturday, and suggested ihat I could raise some money with the view of assisting the Tipperary Bank. He showed me some telegraphic messages he had received from Ireland on the subject of their wants. He had several schemes by which he thought I could assist him in raising money ; but after going into them, I told him I could not help him, the schemes being such as I could not recommend or adopt. He then became very excited, put his hand to his head, and said, ' Good God ! if the Tipperary Bank should fail the fault will be entirely mine, and I shall have been the ruin of hundreds and thousands.' He walked about the office in a Tery excited state, and urged me to try and help him, because, lie said, he could not live to see the pain and ruin inflicted on others by the cessation of the bank. The interview ended in this, that I was unable to assist him in his plans to raise money." In this case, what he feared in so many others exactly occtirred. Mr. Wilkinson had previously advanced him large sums, for which, to be sure, Mr. Sadleir, on request, had given security- one of those numerous title-deeds which he had fabricated -during the past year. Mr. Wilkinson that same Saturday night -despatched his partner, Mr. Stevens, to Dublin, to look after the matter. On Monday this gentleman found that the deed was a forgery. But by that time a still more dreadful tale was "known to all the world. There is reason to think John Sadleir knew of Mr. Stevens'g ; start for Dublin before ten o'clock that evening. His intimate friend, Mr. N orris, solicitor, of Bedford Row, called on him about half-past ten, and remained half an hour. The fact was discussed between thorn that the Tipperary Bank must stop .payment on Monday morning. John Sadleir sat him down, all alone, in that study, and " callous must be the heart that can contemplate him, in that | hour and not compassionate his agony. All was over ; he must ! "die. He was yet, indeed, in the prime and vigour of manhood, i " Considerably above the middle height," says one who kne\r i liiim well, "his figure was youthful, but his face that was 2 180 NEW IRELAND. indeed remarkable. Strongly marked, sallow, eyes and hair intensely black, and the lines of the mouth worn into deep channels." The busy schemes, the lofty ambitions, the daring speculations, were ended now. The poorest cottier on a Tipperary hillside might look the morrow in the face and cling to life ; but for him, the envied man of thousands, the morning- sun must rise in vain. He seized a pen, and devoted half an hour to letter-writing. Oh that woful correspondence of the* despairing soul with those whom it loves, and is to lose for ever ! Then he took a small silver tankard from the sideboard, and put it in his breast pocket, beside a small phial which he had purchased early in that fatal day. As he passed through, the hall and took his hat from the stand, he told the butler not to wait up for him. He went out, and closed the door behind him with a firm hand. The clocks were striking twelve ; 'twas Sunday morning ; God's holy day had come. Ah, far away on the Suirt side were an aged father and mother, with whom ar child he often trod the path to early mass, when Sunday bells were music to his ear ! And now ! oh fatal lure of wealth ! oh damned, mocking fiend ! to this, to this it had come at last \ He dare not think of God, or friend, or home Next morning, on a little mound on Hampstead Heath, the passers by noticed a gentleman stretched as if in sleep. A. silver tankard had fallen from his hand and lay upon the ground. It smelt strongly of prussic acid. A crowd soon gathered; the police arrived ; they lifted up the body, all stiff and stark. It was the corpse of John Sadleir, the banker. On Monday the news flashed through the kingdom. There was alarm in London ; there was wild panic in Ireland. The Tipperary Bank closed its doors; the country people flocked into the towns. They surrounded and attacked the branches ; the poor victims imagined their money must be within, and they got crowbars, picks, and spades to force the walls and " dig it out." The scenes of mad despair which the streets of Thurles and Tipperary saw that day would melt a heart of adamant. Old men went about like maniacs, confused and hysterical ; widows knelt in the street and, aloud, asked God was it true they were beggared for ever. Even the poor-law unions, which had kept their accounts in the bank, lost all, and had not a. shilling to buy the paupers' dinner the day the branch door* closed. The letters which the unhappy suicide penned that Saturday TEE SUICIDE BANKER. 181 .night reveal much of the terrible story so long hidden from the world. The following was addressed to his cousin, Eobert Heatinge : 11 Glo'ster Terrace, 16 February, 1856. DEAR ROBERT, To what infamy have I come step by step heaping .crime upon crime and now I find myself the author of numberless crimes of a diabolical character and the cause of ruin and misery and disgrace to thousands ay, to tens of thousands. Oh how I feel for those on whom all this ruin must fall ! I could bear all punishment, but I could never bear to witness the sufferings of those on whom I have brought such ruin. It must be better that I should not live. No one has been privy to my crimes they sprung from my own cursed brain alone. I have swindled and deceived without the knowledge of any one. Stevens and Norris are both innocent and have no knowledge of the fabrication of deeds and forgeries by me and which I have sought to go on in the horrid hope of retrieving. It was a sad day for all when I came to London. I can give but little aid to unravel accounts and transactions. There are serious questions as to my interest in the Grand Junction and other undertakings. Much will be lost to the creditors if these cases are not fairly treated. The Grand Junction, the East Kent and the Swiss Railways, the Rome line, the Coal Co., are all liable to be entirely lost now so far as my assets are concerned. I authorise you to take possession of all my letters, papers, property, &c., &c., in this house and at Wilkinson's, and 18 Cannon Street. Return my brother his letters to me and all other papers. The prayers of one so wicked could not avail or I would seek to pray for those I leave after me and who will have to suffer such agony, and all owing to my criminal acts. Oh that I never quitted Ireland ! Oh that I had resisted the first attempts to launch me into speculations. If I had had less talents of a worthless kind and more firmness I might have remained as I once was, honest and truthful and I would have lived to see my dear Father and Mother in their old age. I weep and weep now, but what can that avail ? J. SADLEIR. Robert Keatinge, Esq., M.P., Shamroque Lodge, Clapham. Banks, railways, assurance associations, land rgmpanies, every undertaking with which he had been connected, were flung into dismay, and for months fresh revelations of fraud, forgery, and robbery came daily and hourly to view. By the month of April the total of such discoveries had reached 1,250,000. While the three kingdoms were ringing with this frightful story, and the career of the Sadleir party was being recalled and narrated like some tale of a band of mediaeval banditti, a piece 182 NEW ICELAND. of news almost as astounding burst on us all. Mr. Keogh was- elevated to the bench, clothed with the ermine, as puisne judge- of the Common Pleas! In the days that were now close at hand, the agents of revolutionary conspiracy found no more irresistible argument in pushing their terrible propaganda amongst the people than a reference to this transaction, and to the story of " Sadleir's Brigade." CHAPTER XVI. THE ARBUTHNOT ABDUCTION. ON Sunday the 2nd of July 1854, I was standing with some- friends outside the ivied gateway of Holy Cross Abbey, county Tipperary. We were examining a curiously sculptured stone of the sixteenth century, built into the wall close by the northern end of the bridge which here spans the Suir, when a cry or shout on the other side of the river, and the noise of a horse in rapid gallop, attracted our attention. Looking quickly around, we had barely time to get out of the way when there dashed by us at furious speed a police orderly, his horse all flecked with foam, and mud spattered to the top of his shako. What was it ? Not another " rising," surely ? "A landlord shot, as sure as we live!" exclaimed one of our party; and standing where we did, on Tipperary soil, in the midst of a famous shooting district, no guess could have been more natural under all the circumstances. After a while we turned into the abbey, and having spent an, hour amidst the ruined aisles of King Donald's church, and the shattered tombs of prince and lord, we forgot for a moment the hurried horseman, and came away. It was only when we returned to Thurles, after a brisk walk of three miles, we had an explanation of the incident at the bridge. u Did you hear the news, sir did you hear the news ? Garden of Barnane; the country is up in pursuit of him; all the- police are out, and the mounted men are giving the alarm,, and " ' But what has he done ? " THE AllBUTHNOT ABDUCTION. 183 " Done, sir ! Didn't you hear ? Miss Arbuthnot the young- English lady, a sister of Mrs. Gough, that he was mad in love with, they say sure he tried to carry her off; and f icre was a bloody battle between his men, all armed, and the people de- , fending her, and he was beat, but an orderly has brought word to our sub-inspector that they say he was took an hour ago, oa the road below at Farney." Could we credit our ears ? An abduction ! Had the worst days' of the last century come back on us once more ? An, abduction, and by Mr. Garden of Barnane, one of the magnates of the county, a great landlord, grand juror, magistrate, deputy- lieutenant ! Before nightfall the town was all excitement over the story, which was told in a hundred versions. True it was- that an event destined to startle the kingdom from end to end had just befallen within a few miles of where we stood. " For years past," said the Times two days subsequently, " no event of any political cast has created greater excitement than the ad- venturous attempt of the lord of Barnane to possess himself "by means beyond the pale of the law, of a bride possessed of all the requisites, personal and pecuniary, which were but too frequently irresistible for the philosophy of the Celtic- temperament." About three miles from Clonmel, tho beautifully environed' capital of southern Tipperary, stands Eathronan House. The road to Cashel leads due north for two miles, when, at Kathronan Church, it turns sharply to the left and west. Here it skirts- for a mile the southern boundary of Eathronan demesne, after which it turns again northwards. On this road is the avenue- entrance to Eathronan House, the gate lodge being half a mile from the little church already referred to. In 1854 Eathronan was the residence of Captain the Honourable George Gough, eldest son of Field Marshal Lord Gough, the hero of Sobraon. Captain Gough had married an English lady, daughter of Mr. George Arbuthnot, of Elderslie, Surrey, and at this time- two sisters of Mrs. Gough, Laura, the elder, and Eleanor, the younger, resided with her. The fame of these fair Saxons, filled the county. They were young, handsome, and accom- plished. When I add that they were heiresses to considerable fortunes, it will be at once admitted they were fascinating and irresistible. So at least thought all the young gallants of the " upper ten " in Tipperary. Eleanor fairly turned the heads of several of them ; yet her heart was obdurate ; she was im- partially civil and cold to all. Amongst these suitors was " the* 164 NEW IRELAND. lord of Barnane," Mr. John Garden.* He had met her at Marlfield, the charming residence of Mr. Bagwell, long time member for Clonmel, and soon the North Eiding squire was the most desperately in love of all. He followed her everywhere. Wherever she appeared at archery meet or at flower-show, at concert, evening party, or county ball there was he, like one under a spell, having eyes for nothing and nobody but her. Between him and Captain Gough there existed the friendly and social relations of one county gentleman with another constantly met in the hunting-field and the grand jury room; but the families were not intimate in their intercourse. At length Mr. Garden formally" proposed for the hand of the Englisk maiden. He was refused refused under circumstances that not alone wounded his feelings, but caused him to believe that he owed his repulse, not so much to any aversion on the part of the young lady, as to unfair opposition on the part of her family. Once this idea took possession of him, there was no displacing it. Trifles light as air were viewed as corroboration ; a fancied glance as she passed him in the street, a flourish of Tier whip as she drove by in the pony-phaeton, were embraced as so many signals that she really loved him, but was under restraint. The plain truth was she cared not a jot for the lord of Barnane. Very likely she may have been for a while a little pleased with or rain of his attentions ; but she did all that a young girl eould well do, without being painfully rude, to repress any closer advances once things became serious. The ladies of Eathronan House were in the habit of attending divine service on Wednesdays at Fethard, a town distant north- ward six or seven miles. On Wednesday, the 28th of June 1854, from one reason or another, Miss Eleanor and Mrs. Gough stayed at home, and the elder Miss Aibuthnot, Laura, and a young lady friend, Miss Linden, were driven to the church at Tethard by a servant named Hoare. While he was engaged in stabling the horse during the time of service, Hoare was accosted "by Mr. John Garden's confidential " man," Kainsberry, who was very inquisitive, and asked quite a number of pumping questions about the young ladies. He elicited from Hoare, at all even**, the fact that Miss Eleanor was not of the party. Eeturning home, the ladies encountered on the road, at a place called Market Hill, Mr. Garden, who was on horseback, and it was * He was cousin of Sir John Garden, of th'e Priory, Templemore, and was called " Woodcock Garden," so often had he beem fired at when at en period of his life he was carrying out extensive evictions. THE ARBUTHNOT ABDUCTION. 185 observed that drawn up close by was a carriage. Furthermore, Hoare noticed that soon after the Eathronan phaeton passed a -car drove up, containing Eainsberry and four other men, who 'joined the attendants of the carriage in the by-way. These circumstances, however, seem to have aroused no particular suspicions at the time. Next day there was the Midsummer Flower Show at Clonmel, ihe favoured annual rendezvous of the county gentry, or rather of the county ladies. Mr. Garden was early on the ground. He sauntered through the marquees, and strolled along the stands ; but the bloom of June roses had no charm for him. His eyes sought only the flower of Eathronan. In the afternoon she appeared. He accosted her; asked how her sister was. She bowed, answered that her sister was very well, and passed on. All effort to engage her in conversation was baffled. On the following Sunday, 2nd of July 1854, Mrs. Gough, Miss Arbuthnot, Miss Eleanor Arbuthnot, and Miss Linden attended divine worship at Eathronan ; Captain Gough being all this time absent in Dublin. The party were driven to the church on an Irish " outside " car. As they entered the churchyard they saw standing behind a tombstone, as if idly waiting the commencement of the service, Mr. Garden of Barnane. Con- sidering the incident of Wednesday, the meeting at the flower show, and, above all, the fact that Eathronan was not the church which ordinarily he would attend, they must have felt liis presence to be only a new demonstration of that "haunting" process of which they had by this time become painfully con- scious. As a matter of fact, he attracted general notice, nearly every one understanding that he came to have a look at " Miss Eleanor." During devotions he exhibited not a trace of nervous- ness, excitement, or anxiety. He withdrew at the close of the regular service ; but as this was Sacrament Sunday the Kathronan ladies waited to communicate, and consequently did not leave at the same time. The morning had been so fine that the ladies left home, as "I have mentioned, in an open vehicle ; but scarcely had they -entered the church when heavy showers came on. The coach- man, James Dwyer, quick in thought, drove back to Eathronan (distant three-quarters of a mile), put up the outside jaunting- car, and returned with what is called a " covered car " in its stead. This is a description of vehicle which is entered at "the back, the passengers sitting on each side vis-a-vis within 186 NEW ICELAND. Bywer little dreamt how much was soon to turn on this change* of "traps." There had meantime drawn up outside the Eathronan demesne gateway a carriage, to which were harnessed a dashing- pair of thoroughbreds. Six strange men were observed loitering about close by; and on the road outside the entrance to ther churchyard a groom led two saddle-horses. "When Mr. Garden quitted the church he mounted one of them, and rode up to where the carriage stood. He spoke a few hurried words, on which the coachman gripped his reins, and the six "guards," or attendants, at once closed in. Mr. Carden got off his horse, and earnestly examined the housings of the two magnificent animals yoked to the carriage. Every strap and buckle, band and trace, was minutely and carefully scrutinised and tested. The exami- nation concluded, he again mounted and rode back towards th& church. He met Captain Gough's covered car returning with the ladies. He at once wheeled round and closely followed it,, his horse's head being barely a few feet from the end of the- vehicle. Dwyer, the coachman, as he neared the gateway, saw the strange carriage and the attendants, and knew that behind was riding Mr. John Carden of Barnane, the importunate suitor of " the young mistress.". Some thought that all was not right flashed like lightning through his mind. He had not time to work the problem out to any very clear conclusion ; but as ho neared the gate, he, with a sort of instinctive alarm, shook the 1 rein and cried to his horse-. Before a touch of his whip could fall, the six men dashed forward, seized, and stopped the car. Then first he recognised in their leader Eainsberry, and divined what was up. He sprang from the driving seat, exclaiming,. " Eainsberry, you .villain, let go my horse; you'll pay dear for this ! " A blow on the head from a skull-cracker tumbled Dwyer to the ground. Eainsberry shouted out : " Cut, cut ! Knives, knives ! " One of the band pulled from beneath his coat a large garden knife, freshly sharpened, and with one- stroke severed the reins of the Eathronan horse ; another and another, and the traces hung on the road. This was but the- work of a few seconds years of terror and agony they seemed to the screaming victims in the car. At the instant the vehicle was stoptxvi Mr. Carden jumped from his horse, rushed over,, and grasped at Eleanor Arbuthnot. But the whole chapter of accidents were in her favour that day. She happened to be- farthest in; he could touch her only by reaching across Miss* TILE ARBUTHNOT ABDUCTION. 18r Linden, who, sitting on the same seat, was next the door. the ladies been on the outside car which bore them to church, in- the morning, one pull from their assailant would have Brought - any of them to his feet. But, placed as they now were, they were considerably sheltered from attack; and before Eleanor- could be reached the other three had to be pulled out and. disposed of. All four showed fight in the most determined manner, fully realising what was on foot. Mr. Garden suc- ceeded for a moment in gripping Eleanor. ' With desperate- energy he pulled and strained to drag her out. Laura held her- back, and Miss Linden, drawing her clenched fist with all the force she could command, struck the undefended face of the- deputy-lieutenant a smashing blow. Blood spurted from his- nose and streamed down his face, covering his shirt front and vest. He loosed his hold and turned sharply on his lady assailant. In vain she shrieked and struggled; he tore her furiously from her hold, and flung her on the side of the road. Mrs. Gough, whose condition of health at the time made a scene like this almost certain death for her, sprang as best^she- could out of the car, and rushed through the avenue towards the house, screaming for help. A young peasant, named McGrath, was the first to arrive on the scene. He saw Captain, Gough's herd at some distance, and shouted to him to hurry that there was murder going on. Then, with genuine Tipperary vehemence, he dashed into the fray. Had it been a struggle altogether between men, McGrath would doubtless have been perplexed which side to espouse, lest he might by any mischance be striking in behalf of " law and order " the police, the magis- trates, the landlords, or that concatenation of them all, " the Government." But he saw women attacked, and he could make no mistake in hitting hard at their assailants.* Mr. Caidei returned to the car after hurling Miss Linden aside, and renewed his endeavours to drag Eleanor Arbuthnot from hex- seat. " Eleanor ! Eleanor ! " he exclaimed, " it is you I want. I know I shall hang for this. My life will be the price!" Laura yet remained with her ; and he found he must get rid of the elder sister as he had disposed of Miss Linden. After a long contest he succeeded, and there now remained in the- vehicle but the one whose capture was the object of all his. efforts. The hapless girl had seen her companions and pro- * He is, I believe, still alive, and now in a very respectable position, . Miss Arbuthnot presented him with a handsome gold watch, i-uiubly inscribed ; and Lord Gough obtained for him a situation in the 188 NEW ICELAND. tectors one by one torn from her side, and now her turn had come. Bravely, nobly, all undaunted, would she fight to the last ! She put her arm through a leather hanging-strap that "was fixed beside the window, and held on for dear life. She struggled frantically against the powerful savage, who wildly pulled and tore at her with all his force. Several times had he succeeded but for the interference, at the most critical moment, of some one of her few defenders outside; for all this time a deadly encounter was proceeding on the road. McGrath, his head literally gashed with wounds ; Dwyer the coachman, and Smithwick the herd, also bleeding profusely, were, ever and .anon, despite the greater numbers of their foes, able to make a dash at Mr. Garden, and drive him from his hold. But, by the testimony of all who saw that scene, not one of them fought so daringly as Miss Linden. Again and again she was flung to the .ground by Mr. Garden ; as often did she spring to her feet and clutch him by the throat, tear his hair by the handful, and pound his face till it bled anew ! Gasping, breathless, almost fainting he had received a fearful blow of a stone on the temple from McGrath Mr. Garden cried to his followers, " Cowards ! cowards ! come on. Why don't you fire ? why don't you fire ? " But happily they would not fire, though in the carriage close by firearms had been provided. The only one of them who seemed ready to proceed to extremities was Eainsberry. The others, as they subsequently complained, had been told that Miss Eleanor Arbuthnot was to be a con- .senting party to the abduction. "When they saw the turn the .affair had taken, they wished to be well out of it. Every moment showed them more clearly that their necks were being run into halters ; and every moment also lessened their chance -of escape. Help was now approaching ; shouts were heard in the distance. The maddening thought forced itself on Mr. arden that he had failed, and must fly. Not readily, however, could he be got to realise the astounding fact. His attendants almost forced him into the carriage, and like arrow from the bended bow, off it flew, two of the finest blood horses in all Munster straining in the traces. Clonmel was the first to receive the alarm, and quickly Mr- St. James's, and protect the men who were with me." 190 NEW ICELAND. All, however, was over now. His desperate game was played and lost. He was led a prisoner to Cashel jail.* So incredible did it seem that such an outrage as this could happen in our country in the middle of the nineteenth century, that when the first reports appeared in the Dublin newspapers there were many readers who derided the story as a sensational fiction. It WHS only when every day and hour subsequently "brought irresistible corroboration that men universally accepted as a i'act the astounding narrative.f The particulars that came later to hand intensified the general excitement. It became known that the measures Mr. Garden had concerted for the .abduction of Miss Eleanor Arbuthnot had occupied his attention for a long period, and had involved a considerable expenditure. He had, it was stated, decided upon conveying her to the shore -of Gal way Bay (distant some fifty miles), where he had a steamer chartered for the purpose of taking her off to sea; relays of horses being placed along the entire route from Templemore to Galway. The vessel with steam up was lying off the shore, and it was sta,ted to be his intention to sail direct for London. .These preparations cost him a sum of about 7000. On Thursday the 27th of July 1854 the Tipperary South Biding assizes were opened in Clonmel by the Eight Honourable Judge Ball. Hardly within the memory of the oldest inhabitant was there such a throng of the county families as filled the town upon that day ; for the sensational trial of Mr. John Garden was to be the great item of the calendar. The Honourable George O'Callaghan, high Sheriff, was in a state bordering on frenzy for several days previously. Ladies, young, old, and neuter, hunted ~him remorselessly from post to pillar with unappeasable demands for admission tickets. He piteously explained that a consider- able enlargement of the county court-house was impracticable -. at such short notice ; and that he feared the judge would not 'listen to the idea of conducting the trial on the racecourse or in * One of the carriage-horses, worth a hundred and fifty guineas, dropped dead on the road, ere they had proceeded more than a mile -towards the town. t The curious influence of example in crimes of a peculiar nature was soon exemplified in this case. Within a week or two abductions suddenly reappeared in several parts of the country. A few days after the Rath- a-onan attempt a Tipperary policeman carried off a respectable young girl from her friends ; and at Cork John Walsh, a printer, was committed for -the abduction of Mary Spillane, a girl under eighteen years of age, who 'was entitled to a good fortune on attaining her majority. THE ARBUTENOT ABDUCTION. 191 the fair green. All to no purpose. Every fair persecutor was very sure she would take up little room " hardly any at all " and could easily, " if he pleased," be provided with a nook whence she could see that poor mad creature Mr. Garden, dear soul, who had " loved not wisely but too well," and so forth ; and it was nothing but downright ill-nature, to be resented to the day of his death, for him the high sheriff, or Sam Going, his surly " sub," to say the places were already assigned. He fled the town was " not at home " to inquirers ; but they pushed their way into his study all the same. Then he took to his bed, and gave out that he was very ill a combination of measles and whooping-cough, with a touch of scarlatina, the Chronicle news- paper said it was ; but the delightful beings would penetrate to the side of his couch, and while he groaned out from under the counterpane that except the dock there was not an inch of space undisposed of, they gave '.him " bits of their mind " in return, which they assured him he would never be allowed to foiget ! It is not to be concluded that the sterner sex were at all less earnest in their persecutions. But it was not Mr. Garden they wanted to see. " One glimpse at that lovely, that heroic girl," was begged and scrambled for with wild enthusiasm. "Sure .you can see her some other time," expostulated poor Mr. Going. The result of such observations on his part was his ex- clusion from " society " in the South Riding for several seasons .afterwards. Jamque dies infanda aderat. Old Judge Ball, grandly pre- ceded by halberdiers and pikemen and trumpeters, and attended by the truly unhappy sheriff " in state," went down to the court- "house. The Honourable Cornwallis Maude, foreman of the : grand jury, having listened to his lordship's opening address, retired with his brethren for a while. Soon they returned into court with a "true bill" against their long-time friend and fellow-magistrate, Mr. John Garden, for the forcible abduction of Miss Eleanor Arbuthnot of Eathronan. It was known that -great legal contention would arise as to whether Mr. Garden could be said in law to have effected the " abduction," as he had not succeeded in removing the young lady from the car. To guard against mishap the Crown sent up minor indictments for attempted abduction and for aggravated assault. On these also true bills were returned. The jury acquitted the prisoner on the charge of abduction. Next day he was arraigned for the attempt to abduct, and was found guilty. A third time, on the ifollowing Monday, he was put on trial for a felonious assault on 192 NEW IRELAND. Smithwick, the Eathronan herd. This was very generally felf to be an overdoing of the business by the prosecution, and sympathy with the prisoner was openly expressed on all sides. "When the jury this time handed down a verdict of " not guilty," there was " loud cheering " in the court ; " the ladies waving their handkerchiefs." More astonishing was the fact that the crowd assembled outside the building belonging to a. class with whom Mr. Garden, as a landlord, was no great favourite gave vent to like demonstrations. Before sentence was passed he obtained permission from the judge to make some observations, and he addressed the court with great ability,, exhibiting considerable tact, delicacy, and judgment in all he said. He disclaimed earnestly, and I verily believe with per- fect truth, the unworthy motives as to personal resentment, malice, or gain that had been imputed to him. He solemnly declared that he had not " the slightest idea or knowledge of the delicate state of Mrs. Gough's health." " If I had been aware of it," he added, " I certainly would have forbidden the making of any such criminal attempt." Lastly, he indignantly repelled the idea that the drugs found in the carriage were intended for the purpose of producing insensibility. This address was listened to with breathless attention, and beyond all question elicited much feeling for the man against whom but a brief week before every voice was raised. The judge, however, took a justly stern view of the facts, and sen- tenced Mr. Garden to two years' imprisonment with hard labour in the county jail. On the following day the Ti^>perary Free Press announced that already the unfortunate "lord of Barnane," clothed in prison garb, had commenced the dreary expiation invoked upon him by a passion which even this ordeal was not to extinguish. Three years rolled by. Every one seemed to have forgotten : the Eathronan episode, when suddenly in the newspapers there appeared the startling heading, "Mr. John Garden again!: Further attempts on Miss Arbuthnot !" In these sensational announcements he was somewhat wronged ; yet the story was strange enough in its simple truth. Imprisonment, humiliation, mental and physical suffering, public- scorn, the relentless hostility of her friends, had failed to shake Mr. Garden's infatuation for Miss Arbuthnot. He followed her unseen. He inquired about her movements, and seemed happy only when, at all events, near the spot of earth which she irra- diated. The young lady, on the other hand, suffered the- TEE AEBUTHNOT ABDUCTION. 193 exquisite torture of ever-present apprehension. She knew her tormentor was around. He had managed to reach her presence and speak to her once at least subsequently to his release, having followed her to Elderslie in Surrey. On this occasion his excited manner quite affrighted her. In October 1858 she was staying with her sister, now Lady Gough, at St. Helen's, near Blackrcck, co. Dublin, when the woman who kept the gate lodge one morn- ing reported an alarming story. For two or three days con- secutively a well-dressed female had been calling at the lodge, mquiring as to Miss Eleanor's movements at what times she went out, and whether she ever walked by herself in the demesne. At length so the lodge-keeper averred the mysterious stranger revealed that she came from Mr. Garden, and that a large sum of money would be given if he were assisted to an interview with the young lady in the house or grounds. This was not the only story which reached Miss Arbuthnot. She was told her de- mented persecutor had declared that when the Gough family went to live at Loughcooter Castle (recently purchased by them), " which was a lonely place, he could easily carry her off." Things seemed to be getting serious ; so on the next visit of Mr. Garden's female ambassador to the gate lodge, she was seized and handed over to the police. Informations were sworn against Mr. Garden, who was forthwith arrested and called upon to give substantial securities that he would not molest or annoy Miss Eleanor Arbuthnot. Once more we were in the midst of the old excite- ment. The police court at Kingstown was this time the scene of a protracted trial. It became evident there had been a good deal of panic exaggeration on the part of the lodge-keeper. It was equally clear there had been much crafty duplicity practised by the female ambassador. She had been formerly a domestic in the employ of Miss Arbuthnot's family, and recently saw her advantage in engaging as housekeeper to Mr. Garden. She knew his weakness, and flattered it. She pretended to have interviews with Miss Eleanor, and brought him cheering messages. In short, the magistrate saw that on this occasion Mr. Garden was very nearly " as much sinned against as sinning." Nevertheless he deemed it prudent to bind him in heavy penalties to be of the peace the space of one year a requirement which he resignedly fulfilled. That year flew by, and many more, and still he trod his solitary path through life unshaken in the conviction that Eleanor Arbuthnot loved the man she publicly spurned. The fact that she never married another perhaps strengthened his hallucination. It is said he more than once travelled secretly to o NEW IRELAND. L^aghcooter to catch, unseen, one glimpse of her on the road, or in the grounds, and then returned as he went. Tipperary, the North Riding especially, is fnll of the mo.<*t astonishing stories of this remarkable character. At the time of the abduction he *was about fifty-four years of age. He was a "ompactly built, -muscular man ; about five feet six inches in ': eight; haughty, perhaps it might be said overbearing, with 'rangers, and not given to forming friendsliips. Yet 'he was warmly regarded by his dependants ; and, fiercely stem as was his dealing with some of his tenantry, many of them those who xperienced his better qualities spoke and speak of him in the lighest terms. He was educated in England; and on attaining his majority found his property had been "under the courts," as the people say under & Chancery receiver for several years, owing to litigation. The tenants, making -some pretext out of rhis state of things, thought to escape paying him the rent. Ho oame home to Bamane, summoned them all to meet him on a siven day, and announced to them his ultimatum rent or land, 'ay or quit. They had the repute of being a desperate lot, and f ! ;ey apparently relied cm this to intimidate him. The rent they would not pay ; the land they "would keep ; having reasons, they said, to justify the former resolve, and determination to maintain the latter. But they knownot their man. He said nothing more nst then, but forthwith proceeded to put Barnane Castle into fortress condition. Blacksmiths and carpenters were set to work to make the -doors and window-shutters bullet-proof ; and when this was done a goodly stock of provisions was laid in. Local tradition asserts that he had the stairs cut away, and the m- n rior of the castle so arranged that if the -first story was forced ; .'e could retreat to the next, and, by prilling up a ladder, citt off all communication. He now commenced operations in the law- courts. Ejectment decrees were taken out against the tenants, id tlte work of eviction began. It was open war between him and them, I am told that when any of " the enemy'" surrendered, e not only restored them to their land, bat treated them liberally s to terms. Those who refused to submit 'were remorselessly xpelled. Of course he was shot at again and again ; but, with ; iraculous good fortune, always escaped. His-plnck, his daring, extorted the admiration of friend and foe. One -day, as lie was riding along the road towards Kcnogh, he was fired at hy two men in an adjoining -field. He faced his horse round, and although it was truly a stiff jump, cleared the fence at a bound, galloped ofter his would-be assassins, struck one of thm senseless with a TUL PIKENIX CONSPIRACY. 195 t>low from his loaded riding-whip, then overtook the other, dis- mounted, and, after a desperate struggle, captured him. He deliberately took off the stirrup-leathers, and with them bound his prisoners, and .marched them into Nenagh jail. They wero tried for the crime, convicted on his -evidence, and hanged. It was, I believe, daring this " war " f hat the insurgent tenantry in a body marched on the castle, but found him so securely "barricaded that he could not be ;got at. They, however, had prepared lo take revenge on 11101-111 another "way. They brought with them a number of horses and ploughs, and now com- menced to plough .up the beautiful and extensive lavrn before the hall-deor. Mr. '.Garden had n flwivel-rnomited -cannon on tl 10 top of the castle;; 'he loaded it wiiih grape-shot in view c-" the ploughing party, ontllhca -sang ^out to them ;that they had ten. minutes to depart. IBhey imwoked'in five, and galloped off. In the last few years of his life his eccentricity took a .curious turn. He converted the castle into a vast ihotol, and erected very extensive -and costly Turkish baths. I am not sure that .he ever threw the establishment open to the public in the ordinary way, "but visitors or tourists passing the WOT were, I am told, Tory hospitably received. Some -six years ago he was attacked with po;ple::y , and never Taln'ed. His death once moa-e recalled Ms name to -public notice-, and "with, all his failings, the.general senti- ment was .one of compassion and regret for one eo strangely compounded of merit and demerit. I know not who .succeeded to ;his estates, or whether the .castle and its beautiful grounds are visited as of yoyo; ^bntfor many ageneration yot tocome the story of his life and adventures most of all the Eadlir-anan ab- ductioa will .thrill listening groups aronnd '.the firesides of Tipperary. CHAPTER X 35HE l^KENIK CO356PIKACT. IP the absence of political .life and nction rauld fep called tranquillit3 r /or torpor be deemed repose, Ireland .from 18a2 to 1858 enjoyed that : ])eaoeful rest, that .cesgation from ^agitai ion, which so noany- authorities declared to be fee one 'thing wanting .for kcr prosperity and happiness. With the overthrow and o 2 196 NEW IRELAND. ruin of the Tenant-right movement in 1852 there set in a state of things which ought to have gladdened the hearts of all such monitors. Never before, since the Emancipation campaign of 1829, had Ireland been without some popular organisation or public movement that gave a voice to the national aspirations. This political activity, which to many eyes seemed so deplorable, at one time occupied itself with Catholic Emancipation, at another with Corporate Keform, at another with the Tithe question ; for a long period with Eepeal, for a short one with Land tenure. But now the temple of Janus was closed. Political action ceased. The last endeavour of the Irish masses to accomplish ameliorations within the lines of the constitution had been baffled and crashed. By skilful exercise of " patron- age " the Government had bought off the leaders and exploded the hopes and plans of the Tenant Leaguers. No direct political defeat could have accomplished so complete a dis- persion of the popular organisation. It was not merely that the people were driven beaten from the parliamentary field, but that they were routed under circumstances which forbade a rally. Their faith in one another, their confidence in leaders, their reliance on constitutional effort all, all were swept away. To the eye of the superficial observer, Ireland was in 1856 more really and completely " pacified " than at any period since the time of Strongbow. Bepeal was buried. Disaffection had dis- appeared. Nationality was unmentioned. Not a shout was raised. Not even a village tenant-right club survived. The people no longer interested themselves in politics. "Who went into or who went out of Parliament concerned them not. The " agitator's " voice was heard no more. All was silence. Best and peace, some called it. Sullen indifference and moody despair others judged it to be. I do not believe that in the darkest days of the eighteenth century a lower level of public spirit, a lower tone of political morality, prevailed in Ireland tham at this time. The chill of disappointment, the shock of recent events, drove into retire- ment the best elements of public society. The fierce violence and unsparing passion with which the controversies and re- sentments arising out of those events were pursued belonged less to regular political combat than to a savage guerilla war- fare. In such a state of circumstances public life was almost wholly abandoned to the self-seeking and adventurous. Good faith, honesty, consistency, sincerity in political affairs, we^ cynically scoffed at and derided. " Every one for himself and THE PHCENIX CONSPIRACY. 19? the Castle for us all " was the motto of the hour. The political arena was regarded simply as a mart in which everything went to the highest bidder ; and the speculator who netted the most gains was the man most applauded. Such was political Ireland in 1856. The schism which split the ranks of the Young Ireland or Confederate party in 1848 referred to in a previous chapter never was really closed. The principles developed on each hand in that controversy were very distinct and strongly marked. The bulk of the national party, though swept into insurrection amidst the fever of '48, held the views of O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, Duffy, 'Gorman, and Doheny, expressed in the Confederation debate of the 4th of February in that year. They never based their policy on revolution. It was regarded as a contingency not to be shrunk from if absolutely forced upon them, but one so remote as to be beyond the range of practical concern. The minority embraced revolution, not merely as a possible contingency, but as the only one to be con- templated and prepared for. They laid the failure of the in- surrection upon the " rosewater " policy of Duffy and O'Brien. The wounded pride, the bitter mortification, with which the result of that attempt was attended for them, intensified their feelings. They would not accept what had taken place as any test whatever of their policy, principles, or plans. The loaded gun had miserably missed fire ; that was all. When they found Gavan Duffy, on his release from prison, in the revived Nation, falling back on a constitutional and parliamentary policy, their anger and scorn were very .bitter. They assailed him with taunt and invective; but he carried the country along with him, and O'Brien, Meagher, O'Doherty, and other of the State prisoners indorsed and approved his course. The Separatists, few in numbers, were put to silence for the time ; but they con- tinued to regard with undisguised hostility the line of policy which the Nation pursued. Through all the course of Irish politics from 1848 downwards, the divergence and conflict of these two sections of the National party may be traced, and have to be kept in mind. Half the blunders of English politicians, in dealing with the passing incidents of domestic Irish affairs, arise from ignorance of this state of things. A correct appreciation of it supplies a key to many apparently perplexing problems. The Constitutional Nationalists, looking to Henry Grattan as their founder, and the Revolutionary Nationalists, or Separatists, taking Wolfe 198 NEW IRELAND. Tone as theirs-, have operated, and still operate, sometimes together, often- ia conflict, in Irish polities, down to the present day: Amidst the fervour with which the people embraced the- Tenant-right agitation of 1850, the separatist and revolutionary principles, momentarily embraced a few years before, seemed almost extinguished in Ireland; but abroad in America and elsewhere the refugees of the '48 movement, with one or two- important exceptions, invincibly retained the violent determina- tions of that time. Two of these refugees, Mr. John O'Mahony and Mr. James Stephens, had settled for some time in Paris sifter their escape from Ireland in 184.8-. They there fell into* the society of men who, during the " year of revolutions," in various parts of Europe, from Vienna to Rome, had played a part much like their own ; and soon, in what may be called the- central training-school of European revolutionism, they learnt that the way to begin was by a secret society. After a residence of a few years in the French capital, O'Mahony proceeded to* America. Stephens quietly returned to Ireland, and engaged himself a.9 private tutor to a gentleman residing near Killarncy. Before parting, they had both arrived at the conclusion that if ever their principles were to have another opportunity of pro- mulgation in Ireland-, it hould bo in accordance with the skilful tactics they had learned in Paris. But they grievously feared that what they execrated as the retrograde movement of the* popular party at home, under Duffy's guidance, had rendered, any such contingency hopelessly remote. They little thought how near it was -at hand. The overthrow and virtual suppression of the Tenant League, utterly breaking the hope of the people ia such political efforts, cleared the field and removed the obstacles which the dreaming- conspirators thus deplored. With joy they saw the people abandon public- politics, and well knew how, brooding in despair, they would weigh the miseries contested elections had brought on their heads against the worst that could befall them on a more violent course; The " calm " of Irish politics from '52 to '58, that so delighted superficial observers, was in truth the worst symptom in the course of half a century. Still, the disheartenmcnt was so great, the revulsion of feeling so complete, that although the people had given up constitutional efforts, it was by no means clear they would care to try any other. For a long while no- opportunity presented itself of launching the revolutionary experiment. THE PHCENIX. CONSPIRACY. 199 lathe summer of 1857 Mr. Smith O'Brien who had previously been liberated from his confinement at Hobart Town, on con- dition of not returning to Ireland was allowed to return under an unconditional amnesty. His former status was fully restored in every respect, except a special exclusion from his otherwise rightful rank and title as brother of a peer ; his eldest brother having quite recently, on the death of the Marquis of Thomond, become Lord Inchiquin. Almost the only sign of popular interest in politics which could be noted in Ireland at the time was the satisfaction which his return called forth, and the tender to him forthwith of the representation of an Irish constituency in Parliament. He, however, refused to resume any prominent position in active public, life, although he by no means dis- claimed a deep feeling; of interest in Irish questions. He devoted the summer of 1858 to a quiet tour- through the country, evidently curious to see what changes the ten eventful years just past had brought about. In several places he was welcomed with manifestations of respect and affection, though he avoided and seemed to deprecate " public demonstrations " of any sort. At Clonmel, the town in which he had been sentenced to execution as a traitor, he was presented with an address, to which he delivered, a reply marked by that quiet dignity and that inflexibility of public principle which were with him old characteristics. He referred sadly to- the incidents of '48, but proudly affirmed that the convictions and principles for which he was then ready to lay down his life the right of Ireland to her native constitutional 1 form of government were firm and unshaken as ever. This- avowal called forth a remarkable article in the Times remarkable, read by the light of events near at hand. The great English journal declared the roar of this toothless lion need disturb no one. Irish disaffection was dead and buried; would never trouble England more. The tranquillity, the contentment, the loyalty of the Irish people showed that the days of agitators and rebels were past, never to return. While the Timxs; exultant in these assumed facts, was pelting them tauntingly at O'Brien, the Government in Dublin Castle were making preparations to pounce upon a new conspiracy. "Within a month we were once more in the midst of procla- mations, police razzias, arrests, and State trials. The outbreak of the Indian mutiny had greatly excited the revolutionary party among Irishmen at home and in America. It looked like the beginning of a protracted and perilous struggle 2t NEW IRELAND. for England ; perhaps of her overthrow. On this occasion, as during the Crimean war, Ireland was denuded of troops. Here, they reflected, were two signal opportunities for revolt lost through want of preparation. It was determined forthwith to make a beginning with the long-meditated project of a secret society. Some young men mercantile assistants and others in the town of Skibbereen had, about this time, established a political club or reading-room, called the Phoenix National and Literary Society. It might have gone the way of many a similar institu- tion, and never been heard of beyond the local precincts, but for a visit which Mr. James Stephens paid to that neighbourhood in May 1858. He had been struck by the rathtr independent and defiant spirit of some observations reported from one of its meetings, and judged that among tfeese men he would find material for the work he had in hand. Foremost in a sort of careless audacity and resolute will was one, already quite popular, or, as " the "authorities " in Skibbereen would say, a " ringleader," with young men of his class Jeremiah Donovan. He was not only given to Gaelic studies, but he exhibited a love for historico-genealogical research which was quite alarming to the local gentry. He very shortly resumed the " " to his name; and, as his people belonged to Eoss, he adopted the distinguishing Gaelic affix " Eossa,"* thenceforward signing his name one now well known in Ireland, England, and Scotland " Jeremiah O'Donovan, Kossa." One evening in May 1858, O'Donovan or " Eossa," as it may be more convenient to call him, although he was not generally known Ly this affix for some time after was waited upon by a companion who had something important to communicate under the seal of secrecy. A mysterious " stranger " had come to town on a startling mission. The Irishmen in America, he declared, had resolved to aid the aen at home in achieving the independence of Ireland, and the aid was to consist of arms and of men. Eossa goes on to tell the rest : " If we had a certain number of men sworn to fight, there would be an equal number of arms in Ireland for these men when enrolled, and an invading force of from five to ten thousand men before the start. The arms were to be in the country before the men would be asked to stir ; they would not be given into their hands, but were to * Subdivisions of Irish families or clans were sometimes distinguished, one from another, in this way ; as " O'Connor, Kerry," " O'Sullivan, Bear (or Beara)," &C. THE PHCENIX CONSPIRACY. 201 be kept in hiding-places until the appointed time, when every Centre could take his men to the spot and get the weapons. As soon as we had enrolled the men willing to fight, we were to get military instructors to teach us how to do as soldiers." Nothing could possibly have been more to the heart of Eossa than this enterprise. He jumped at it, he says, " and next day I inoculated a few others, whom I told to go and do likewise." Before a month had elapsed, out of one hundred young men on the books of the " Literary Society," ninety had been sworn into this secret organisation. Such was the start of Fenianism. The " mysterious stranger " was Mr. James Stephens. Mr. Stephens well enough knew that the National party, so far as it was represented by the Nation newspaper by Smith O'Brien and Gavan Duffy would resent this effort; that, in fact, the feud between the two sections was sure to be resuscitated over such a project. Ordinarily it would be impossible to make much headway with a national or popular movement, open or secret, which the Nation opposed ; but there were reasons for making light of any such difficulty now. The breakdown of Mr. Duffy's parliamentary policy, through the Sadleir-Keogh betrayal, was not unnaturally presumed to have weakened the influence of the Nation ; and I, who had but a short time previously succeeded to Mr. Duffy's position in the Nation office, was young, little known, and devoid of his great experience and influence. In the south-western angle of the island, formed by portions of Cork and Kerry, a very brisk enrolment went on ; the " secrecy," however, being absurdly inefficient. In the course of the summer I was made aware that some persons had been freely using the name of Mr. Smith O'Brien, of Mr. John Mitchel, myself, and others, in mysterious whispers about the power of the movement, and the approval given to it. Whether such idle stories were worth contradicting was doubtful ; yet it seemed a serious moral responsibility to remain silent. I could not tell what Mr. Mitchei's views might be he was in America but I thought it likely he would favour such a scheme.* The views of the other gentlemen of Smith O'Brien especially I well knew to be utterly averse to anything of the kind. Mean- while a new urgency appeared. The Catholic Bishop of Kerry, the Most Eev. Dr. Moriarty, called upon me one day to say that within the past hour he had heard from a Government official a minute account of the " Phoenix Society " conspiracy in his * In this I was wrong, as I afterwards discovered. 202 NEW IRELAND. diocese. " It is no use pooh-poohing such -work," said he, " the Government are preparing to treat it seriously, and are in possession of full information. A friendly warning in the Nation may disperse the whole danger, and bring these young men back to reason. At all events, you will save others from being involved in the catastrophe." Other newspapers had already been making public references to the subject ; still I disliked the role of " alarmist." I consulted with Mr. John B. Dillon, Mr. Eevin O'Doherty, and other such friends near at hand ; and wrote -to Mr. Smith O'Brien, stating the case, and asking him what I ought to do whether more harm than- good might come of any public intervention. The first-named gentleman deemed disclaiming unnecessary, and doubted the- wisdom or efficacy of public interference. The Catholic clergy, however, throughout the whole district affected by the secret organisation, had determined to intervene at once and severely. Simultaneously from the altars of the Catholic churches the whole business was vehemently denounced, and the people warned to withdraw from and shun it. Mr. O'Brien's answer to my confidential communication was a letter, which he wished to be instantly published, it being his opinion that we were bound to reprehend all attempts to identify the Irish National cause with such an organisation. I hesitated no longer ; I not only published Mr. C^Brien's letter, as he desired, but in strong terms appealed to patriotic Irishmen to avoid the hopeless perils and the demoralising effects of secret societies.. I was, in the same sense as the National leaders had ever been, as " seditious " as any of them in my hostility to the imperial scheme of destroying our national autonomy, but I had not studied in vain the history of secret oath-bound associations. I. regarded them with horror. I knew all that could be said as- to their advantages in revolutionising a country ; but even i , the firmest and best of hands they had a direct tendency to demoralisation, and were often, on the whole, more perilous to , society than open tyranny. In joining issue on this occasion with- the hidden chiefs of the movement, I knew I was setting a great deal on the cast; yet I did not know all. No action of all my life bore consequences more full of suffering and sacrifice- for me thair did this throughout subsequent years. Conducting such a journal as the Nation, I had HO choice as to silence. An equivocal attitude would have been despicably mean andt cowardly. I was called upon to speak and act, under not only the public but the conscientious constraint of duty, and I did THE PHOZNIX CONSPIRACY. 203 go. The result proved that the influence of the Nation had been underrated 1 ; or perhaps I should say, its influence in co- operation with the' appeals of the Catholic clergy. The enrol- ment was stopped-, and- it seemed- for a while as if the movement had been relinquished. So great had been the effect of the firm but friendly remonstrances addressed to the people, that I verily believed we should hear no more of the Phoenix Society. Not so, however. The Government, having long previously got its hand upon the business, was not willing, to forego the- sensational performance of crushing a conspiracy against its. power. On the 3rd- of December 1858 a vice-regal proclamation appeared, declaring- that such a public danger existed. In a few days after a simultaneous raid was made upon the Phccnix men in Skibbereen, Bantry, Kenmare, and Killarney,. The kingdom was alarmed anew by the spectacle of terrorising arrests and State prosecutions. This was very generally re- garded as "'forcing- an open gate," and the severities visited upon some of the prisoners young men of excellent character,, and many of them warmly regarded in their native districts excited considerable public sympathy. The Government, how- ever, seemed determined to treat the affair in a tery serious spirit. A special commission was issued for the counties of Kerry and Cork; ih each of which some score of prisoners awaited trial. In March 1859 ; the whole array of Crown counsel, led by the Attorney-Generar, Mr. Whiteside, SEP., commenced proceedings at Trafee. The first prisoner arraigned was a national school teacher named Daniel O'Sullivan.*' The trial, which was v-ery protracted, was signalised by the remarkably able defence of the prisoner by Mr. Thomas O'Hagan, Q.C., some ten or eleven years subsequently Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and now Baron O'Hagan. f The story disclosed by the- **Tt was- a coincidence that .the informer whose evidence was adduced to convict him bor the same name. f By one act of his legislative career Lord O'Hagan may truly be said to have writ his name large oa the page of our modern history.. No matt of this generation has done more to surround the law and its administmtioni with popular confidence and respect than he by his great measure of Jury Eeform. The Irish people were thereby assured for the first time that jury manipulation was not to render a Crown prosecution a game with- loaded dice. When Lord O'Hagan's Act first wnt into operation, sonic- jars and hitches occurred; and partisans of the old system called out "failure." But it has long since become the object of universal praise, as- a great and statesmanlike piece of legislation. 204 NEW IRELAND. Crown was simply that in the districts already mentioned numbers of young men were sworn into a secret society such as Eossa describes, and that small parties of them were in the habit of going through military drill, chiefly at night time, but sometimes in the day. Beyond this stage the business had not progressed, and as far as could be known the organisation had not extended elsewhere in Ireland. The leader was a mysterious personage, referred to generally as " the Seavac " Gaelic for hawk, and pronounced " Sheuk '' but pretty well known to be none other than Mr. Stephens. The jury disagreed, and the further trials were postponed. At the next Kerry assizes, the prisoner O'Sullivan, finding the Crown empanelling an exclu- sively Protestant jury ordering every Catholic who came to the book to " stand by " declined to proceed with any defence. He said this was not " trial by jiiry," as supposed in law, and he would not recognise it as such by defence. The proceedings, consequently, were tame and brief. He was at once found guilty, and sentenced to ten years' penal servitude.* When, some months later on, the trial of the Cork prisoners approached, their counsel and other friends urged them strongly to plead guilty. In the first place, the funds publicly collected to insure fair legal advocacy for the accused had been consumed by the protracted trial of O'Sullivaa at Tralee. In the next place, it was represented to them that in consideration of such a course on their part the Crown would certainly be content to record the conviction and liberate them "to appear when called on " ; and, moreover, would probably commute the sentence on their comrade O'Sullivan. On an undertaking or promise to this latter effect very tardily complied with by the Government afterwards the suggestion or compromise was adopted. Eossa and his companions pleaded guilty, and were released. The excitement which the prosecutions occasioned passed away : no more was heard of the Phoenix enrolment. The attempt, such as it was, very evidently was abandoned. We all felicitated ourselves that the curtain fell on no worse results, no wider mischief, no more protracted punishments. Foolish was the best of our wisdom in thinking this was the end. We had seen only the first act in the astonishing drama of Irish Fenianism. * Between 1848 and 1 858 " transportation beyond the seas " was abolished, and penal servitude took its place as a punishment. PAPAL IRELAND. 205 CHAPTER XVIII. PAPAL IRELAND. Or all Catholic nations or countries in the world the Tyrol alone excepted Ireland is perhaps the most Papal, the most ' Ultramontane." In designations bestowed by Eoman Pontiffs others hold high rank. The King of France was called " the Eldest Son of the Church"; the King of Spain is "His Most Catholic Majesty " ; and the Sovereign of England to this day retains a Papal title Avhich declares the bearer to be Defender of the Eoman doctrines against Protestantism. But these titles represent little of reality now. In most cases what are called " Catholic nations " are merely countries in which Catholicity continues to be the State religion, and is the form of frith professed by the bulk of the population. In Ireland, on the other hand, religious conviction what may be called active Catholicism marks the population ; enters into their daily life and thought and action. The churches are crowded as well by men as by women ; and in every sacrament and ceremony of their religion participation is extensive and earnest, Eeverence for the sacerdotal character is so deep and strong as to be called " superstitious " by observers who belong to a different faith ; and devotion to the Pope, attachment to the Eoman See, is probably more intense in Ireland than in any other part of the habitable globe, " the Leonine City " itself not excluded. In 1859 the Irish people found themselves in a strange dilemma, between sympathy with France on the one hand, and apprehensions for the Pope on the other. At the New Year's receptions in the Tuileries, the Emperor Napoleon, by a remark to Baron Hiibner, regretting that the relations between France and Austria were not more satisfactory, set all Europe in a ferment. War war between France and Italy and Austria was plainly at hand. England offered her accustomed mediation, which was, of course, accepted by all the parties, not one of whom, however, slackened its preparations, or dreamt for a moment of desisting. Three months were given to diplomatic fooling, till the campaign season might be reached ; each side 20C XEW IRELAND. trying how to manoeuvre the other into an appearance of " aggression." At length, on the 9th of April, fifty thousand men set out from Vienna for Lombardy, and next day sixty thousand more followed. On the 21st an Austrian ultimatum was despatched to Turin, calling on Piedmont to disarm the menacing forces it had been assembling for some time. To this Victor-Emmanuel replied on the 25th "by an address to his army, declaring hostilities against Austria. Count Cavour had mean- while telegraphed to the French Emperor, " Help ! Help ! The Austrians are upon us ! " In less than twenty-four hours the French army marched from Paris for Italy. On the same day the Austrians at one point, and the Sardinians at another, crossed the Ticino. In a brief campaign the Austrians were driven within the Quadrilateral. Montebcllo was fought on the 20th May, Pulestro on the 31st, Magenta on the 4th of June, and Solferino on 1he 24th. Suddenly, in the midst of victories, Napoleon stepped and proffered peace. The Treaty of Villa- franca, on the llth of July, subsequently ratified at Zurich, closed the Italian war of 1859. From May to July a curious struggle of sympathies prevailed in Ireland. The Catholic prelates and clergy denounced the conduct of the Emperor Napoleon as utterly perfidious. His majesty's assurances of safety and protection for the Pope "were likened to the embraces of a Judas ; for that when Francis- Joseph had been crushed, Pio Nono's -turn for attack and destruction would come, they emphatically predicted. Still popular feeling in Ireland followed the French flag, especially when it was found that a Franco-Irishman, General Patrick MacMahon, was placed in command of a division. The news of the battle of Magenta that MacMahon had turned the tide of victory, had saved the French emperor, and had been named Marshal of France and Duke of Magenta for so memorable an achievement evoked boundless joy in Ireland. Bonfires blazed on the hills of Clare, the ancient home of his ancestors. His name l>cca,me a popular watchword all over the island. In the Nation we published, from searches in the public archives at home and in France, an authentic record of his family, from the capitulation of Limerick to the victory of Hagenta.* A pro- * " Patrick MaeMahon, of Torrodile, in the county of Limerick, was married to Margaret, daughter ol John O'SulHvr.n. of Bantry, in the county of Cork, of the House of O'SullivanBeare. Honourably identified with the cause of the last of the Stuarts, he sheathed his sword at the Treaty of Limerick, and retired, with his wife ' a lady,' say the -records, ' of the PAPAL IRELAND. 207 position that our people should present the Franco-Irish marshal with a sword of honour was responded to >vith unexampled enthusiasm. Five hundred pounds were called for ; nearly seven rarest beauty and virtue ' to the friendly shores of France. Here his son, John MacMahon, of Autun. married an heiress, and was .created Count d'Equilly. On the 26th of September 1749, the Count applied to the Irish Government of that day accompanying his application with the necessary fees, &c., far the officers of ' Ulster King-at-Aims ' to have his genealogy, together with the records, &c,, of his family, duly .authenticated, collected, and recorded with all necessary verification, in order that his children and their posterity in France might have .all-sufficient proof of the proud fact thart they were Irish. All this was accordingly done, as may be seen in the records in Birmingham Tower, Dublin Castle, countersigned by the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and the various other requisite signatures. In those records he is described as of 'the noble family, paternally, .of MacMahon of Clonderala (in Clare), .and maternally of the noble family of 0'Su.llivau Beare.' He was thfi grandfather of the Marshal Duke of Magenta. The Count's genealogy commences in the middle of the fifteenth century, and traces him through eight generations as follows.: Terence MacMahon, proprietor of Cloindernla, married Helena, daughter of Maurice Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, died 14-72, and was interred in the Monastery of Ashelin, in Munster. He w^s succeeded by his son Donatus MacMahon, who married Honora O'Brien, of the noble family of Thomond ; and his son, Terence MacMahon, Esq., -married Joanna, daughter of John MacXamara, Esq., of Dohaghtin, eemmouly styled ' f MacNamara Reagh,' and had a son Bernard MacMahon, Esq., whose wife was Margarita, daughter of Donatus O'Brien af'Daugh. Mortogh MacMahon, son of Bernard, married Eleonorw, daughter of William O'Nelan of Emri, colonel of a regiment of horse in the army of Charles I., and was father oFTrlaurice MacMahon, Esq., whose wife Helena was daughter of Maurice Fitzgerald, Esq., of Ballinoe, Knight of Glinn. Mortogh MacMahon, son of Maurice, married Helena, daughter of Emanuel MacSheehy, Esq., of Bally linan, and was father of the above -named Patrick MacMahon, who married Margarita, daughter of John O'Sulliran, Esq., mother of John, first Count d'Equilly. The descent of the Count MacMahon, maternally, through the GSulliv;rns is as follows : TVIortogh O'Stillivan Beare, of Bantry, in the county of Cork, married Maryann, daughter of James Lord Desmond, and flying was interred, 1541, in the Convent of Friars Minors, Cork. His son, John O'Sullivan, of Bantry, married Joanna, daughter of Gerald de Coureev, Baron of Kinsale, nnd died 1578, leaving Daniel O'Suflivan, Esq., his son, who married Anna, daughter of Christopher O'Briscoll, oT Baltimore, in the county Cork, Esq., and died at Madrid, leaving his son John O'Sullivan, of Bantry, Esq., who married Margaret, daughter of James O'Donovau, of Roscarbery, Esq. Bartholomew. O'Sullivan, son of John, was colonel in the army of James. II. at the siege cf Limerick, and married Helena, daughter of Thomas I'itzmaurice, Baron of Kerry, by whom heliad Major John O'Sullivan of Bantry, who married 208 NEW ICELAND. hundred were subscribed ; and a really magnificent sword and scabbard were manufactured, from designs specially furnished by an Irish artist, Mr. E. Fitzpatrick. The Marshal, on being made aware of the proposed compliment, intimated that, subject to the requisite permission of the Emperor, he would be truly happy to receive this mark of regard from his anciens compatriotes, as he styled the Irish people.* The Emperor, in a very marked way, assented, and on the 2nd of September 1860, my brother, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, and Dr. George Sigerson, a deputation from the Irish committee, proceeded to France to make the formal presentation. The Marshal was at the time in command at Chalons, and to honour the arrival of the Irish deputation on such an errand the camp was en fete. The formal presentation took place at head-quarters. An address, engrossed in Irish and French, and signed on behalf of the Dublin committee by The O'Donoghue, M.P., chairman, and by Mr. P. J. Smyth and Mr. T. D. Sullivan, hon. secretaries, was read by one of the deputation. The Marshal was visibly affected, and with a voice betraying considerable emotion, he replied as follows f : " Gentlemen, I am most deeply touched by the sentiments which you have just expressed to me ; and I pray that you will tell the Irish whom you represent how grateful I feel for the testimony of esteem and sympathy which you offer me in their name. This testimony, by its spontaneous character, proves to me that Green Erin has preserved those chivalrous ideas, that vivacity, and that warmth of heart which have ever distinguished her. Honoria, daughter of Robert MacCarty, of ' Castro Leonino (Castle! y on s), in the county of Cork, Esq., grandson of Daniel MacCarty, Lord of Glancare, and Margaret, his wife, daughter of Donogh Lord Desmond, and died 1731.' Their daughter was Margarita, who married Patrick MacMahon, Esq., of Torrodile." * " Je dois commencer par vous dire que je suis excessivement reconnais- sant de ce temoignage d'interet de la part d'anciens compatriotes avec lesquels je n'ai eu depuis longtemps que des rapports indirects." f " Messieurs, Je suis on ne peut plus touche des sentiments que TOUS vencz de m'exprimer, et je vous prie de dire aux Irlandais que vous represent ez oombien je suis reconnaissant du temoignage d'estime et sympathie que vous m'offrez en leur nom. Ce temoignage par sa spontaneite m'a prouve que La Verte Erinn avait conserved ces ide'es chevaleresques, cette vivacitt, et cette chaleur tie creur qni 1'ont de tout temps distingue 1 . " Je laisserai, un jour, a mon fils aine, Patrice, cette magnifique e.pee. Elle sera pour lui, comme elle est pour moi, un gage nouveau des liens. - > duivuiit 1'unir & jamais au noble pays de ses ancetres." PAPAL ICELAND. 209 w I will leave one day to my eldest son, Patrick, this magnificent sword. It will be for him, as it is for myself, a new pledge of those close ties which should unite him for ever to the noble country of his ancestors." The deputation, together with some friends who had accom- panied them from Paris, were entertained at a splendid banquet, to which he had invited to meet them quite a number of French officers and noblemen of Irish lineage Commandant Dillon, General O'Farrell, General Sutton de Clonard men whose names proclaimed at least their Irish origin, although Ireland they had never seen. The hero of Magenta proved to be quite conversant with Irish history, poetry, and literature. " C'etait un pays tout-a-fait poetique," said he, addressing a French general ; " it was a land of poetry, which character it has not even yet lost; its ancient laws were often written in verse, and the bards ranked next to royalty." That he could turn a joke with quick humour was shown by his play upon the French word " eau " and the Irish prenominat "0." "He had been making particular inquiries," says a member of the deputation, " about the signification of the ' C ' and ' Mac ' ; and on their origin being explained to him, he men- tioned that some persons, when they saw his name, said, ' That is a Scotch name.' This, he said, was absurd, of course ; but were there not other names in Ireland having Mac prefixed ? He was answered there were many such Mac Carthy, Mac Guire, &c. ; but that it was, indeed, remarkable enough that the Scots showed such a predilection for the 'Mac.' 'O's' were plenty in Ireland, whilst ' il n'y a pas d'O en Ecosse.' " ' Comment,' exclaimed the Marshal, with a sparkle of genuine fun in his eye ' comment, malgre ses lacs ?' " There is good reason to believe that Napoleon the Third halted at Villafranca because he found himself in the toils of a man who was his master in every art of diplomacy and politics Count Cavour. The Emperor had dreams and schemes of com- promise, and thought he could assign limits to the bold designs of the Turin organiser, by whom from first to last he was baffled, outwitted, and beaten. Even while Napoleon was theorising over his project of an Italian Confederation with the Pope at its head, Cavour, determined to defeat it, was secretly spreading his agencies and operations throughout the entire peninsula. On the 20th of October Victor-Emmanuel openly rejected the Villafranca plan, declaring he was engaged to the Italian people. In the same month was announced the division 210 NEW IRELAND. of the territory so far secured. Savoy and Nice were to fall to the French emperor, as compensation; Lombardy, theRomagna, Parma, and Modena being appropriated by the Sardinian king. But was annexation to stop even at this point ? A feeling of uneasiness and apprehension -spread through Ireland. The new- year, 1860, found the island heaving with excitement. That on one ground or another the -Pope would be ' openly attacked and further despoiled was now the universal conviction, and -monster , meetings to tender him sympathy and support were held in, every province and county. Subscriptions in his aid poured in from every parish and diocese in the kingdom. They amounted in the aggregate to a vast sum.; but the depth and force of popular feeling which these sixpences and shillings of the poor represented, even more 'than did the splendid contribu- tions of the rich and aristocratic classes, gave a grave importance to this extraordinary upheaval of religious emotion. On this subject there was displayed one of the most violent cor.fiw;ts of English- and Irish popular opinion which I have ever . noted. In England the Italian movement evoked the wannest admiration. It was hailed as the onward march of liberty, the overthrow of oppression. In Ireland it was denounced as the rapacity of a dishonest neighbouring state, sapping and -under- mining the pontifical .power, and now planning an -open seizure of the prey. Englishmen were disgusted that the Irish should, out of fanatical worship of the Pope, desire to prevent the Komans from being free. Irishmen were angered to see how filibustering raids were subsidised in England against an aged and peaceful Pontiff, the head of Christendom, while a few _years previously Great -Britain had spent millions of money and shed rivers of blood to .uphold the ;head of Mahomedanism. The artillery of journalism waged a furious duel across the channel. "Every people has a right to choose its own form of govern- ment," said the English press. "Then let us -choose ours," answered the Irish. " The Romans have a right to rebel," said the one. " But there is no question -of the Romans rebelling," responded the other ; " it is a question of the Piedmontese in- vading the Pope's dominions." In short, the dispute resdlved itself briefly into this, that in England the reality of oppression and disaffection in the Pope's 'dominions was /fully 'believed in ; while in Ireland, the discontent was declared to -be mainly a commodity produced by .Sardinian agencies for Sardinian ends that is to say, for annexation purposes. Each .party acted accordingly. Jrom England went pnbKo PAPAL ICELAND. 211 addresses, money, and men to help Victor-Emmanuel and Gari- baldi. From Ireland went addresses and money, but not yet .men, to defend the Roman Pontiff against the threatened attack. Not yet men ; but soon the cry was raised,, Why not men also ? One of the popular journals, the Dundalk Democrat, declared, that Ireland's best offering to the Supreme Pontiff at this crisis would be an Irish brigade. I had myself for some time pre- viously been vainly urging the same view on Irish ecclesiastical dignitaries whom I knew to be in intimate correspondence with Borne. I found I was dealing with a wofully conservative body of men. They quite started, affrighted, from the use of anything like force or violence even in self-defence. I believe my views and propositions were forwarded to or mentioned at Home, but they were rather discouragingly received. Monsignor De Merode was then the pontifical minister of military affairs. He early foresaw that to the arbitrament of the battle-field this whole business must some 'day .come; .and he strained every nerve to prepare for such a contingency. Only in a slow and halting and reluctant way could he obtain assent to his views at the Vatican, where Cardinal Antonelli, persuaded that resistance single-handed would be hopeless, was altogether for relying on " the Christian Powers." Pio Nono -himself -was, moreover, to the last more or less averse to military preparation .or 'demonstra- tion. He was a man of prayer ; Cardinal Antonelli was a -man of diplomacy; Monsignor d.e Merode believed that Count Cavour cared little for either, and that, taking to the sword, he could be stopped only by the sword, if at.alL At last we heard that General Lamoriciere had been offered and had accepted the chief command of the pontifical army nominally twenty thousand, in reality about ten thousand, men. To those in -any degree behind the scenes this Meant that Monsignor de Merode ,had at length carried the day, and that an effort would be made to organise a force 'for the defence of the Poman territory. One day, early in March 18GO, two gentlemen -enfered my office in Lower Abbey Street, Dublin. One was a friend whom I knew to be deeply interested in the now critical affairs of the pontifical Government ; the other was a stranger, apparently a foreigner. " Here," said .my friend, "is a .-gentleman who shares some of those views you have teen EO hotly urging about .de- fending Piome." I found m my unknown visitor Count Charles Mac Donnell, of Vienna, trusted attac-he of .Field-Marshal <3oiant Nugent, and a chamberlain of the 'Holy Father. If ever 212 NEW JEELAND. chivalrous devotion to a fallen cause was personified, it was in this loyal and brave-hearted gentleman. He reminded me of those Highland chieftains whose attachment to the Stuarts, romantic and tragical, evokes sympathy and admiration in every generous breast. Had he lived in the thirteenth century, he would have been a crusader knight ; in 1641 he would have been a Cavalier ; in 1745 he would have been at the side of Prince Charles Edward on the fatal field of Culloden. He came to see what Ireland would do what aid she would contribute in the military defence of the Eoman patrimony. " We know in Borne," said he, " that Garibaldi, with the connivance and secret assistance of the Turin Government, is organising an aggressive expedition, but whether to strike at Naples or at us in the first instance we cannot tell. In any case we shall be attacked this summer. What will Ireland do for us ?" " In the improbable event of the Government allowing volun- teering, as in the case of Donna Maria," I answered, " you can have thirty thousand men ; if, as is most likely, they give no permission, but no active opposition, you will probably get ten thousand : if they actively prevent, nothing can be done. In my opinion, unless the proceeding is too glaring and open, Lord Palmerston will not raise a conflict, in view of Lord Ellen- borough's letter and the ' million of muskets ' movement on the other side in England. But the chief difficulty will be our owi* bishops. They will be adverse or neutral. Not one of them believes the little army of Lamoriciere can cope with the over- powering odds of Sardinia." The Count pulled from his breast a scarlet morocco letter- case, and in five minutes satisfied me that abundant assurance had been secretly given at Rome by some of the crowned heads of Europe that if Monsignor de Merode could, without French or Austrian intervention, defeat invasion by Garibaldian ir- regulars, Sardinia would be prevented from attacking. This threw a new light on the situation. I think I can assert that it was upon the faith of those private assurances the whole of General Lamoriciere's movements were planned in 1860. My friend the Count was intensely Austrian, and hated Napoleon with a deadly hatred. " He is a liar," he said, " and the truth is not in him. He will not keep his word ; but others will keep theirs." I could see very early that the mortal jealousy between France and Austria would prove the real peril of Pio Nono. We set off on a tour through the provinces, to sound our way as to what might be dono, and how best to do it. I was pain- PAPAL IRELAND. 213 fully anxious that the Count should be out of the country as soon as possible ; or, at all events, that he should send his red des- patch-case away, for it contained one or two autograph letters which, if lost, or on any pretext seized, would have raised an awkward diplomatic storm on the Continent. But he would " complete his mission " at all hazards ; and he did. Within less than a month from his departure the first band of pontifical volunteers left Ireland. Before the end of July nearly two thousand men had proceeded in small parties across the continent of Europe, and reached the Eoman States. Deep mistrust of the Emperor Napoleon at first forbade the hazard of sending men through France, and accordingly the route selected was by way of Belgium and Austria. The line from Bodenbach to Trieste and Ancona was under the charge of Count Mac Donnell ; the portion reaching from Ireland to Bodenbach was under the au- thority of a committee or directorate in Dublin, consisting ol three or four gentlemen, in whose labours I bore some part. Only one of them may I name he is now no more and of him I can sincerely affirm that the pontifical Power had never fallen if all who owed it allegiance served it with the deep-hearted love and devotion of Laurence Canon Forde. The expedition which Count Mac Donnell had predicted 01 mentioned in March proved a reality. On the 4th of April an outbreak took place at Palermo, and on the 5th of May the famous " Thousand " of Garibaldi sailed from Genoa. From that date to the beginning of September Europe witnessed the unchecked victorious progress of that force. By the 28th of July they had conquered Sicily. On the 8th of September General Garibaldi, M. Dumas, pere, and Mr. Edwin James, his chief non-military colleagues in the campaign, entered Naples without opposition ; Francis II. having retired to Gaeta. Next day Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed king in the Neapolitan capital. The endeavour of Generals Lamoriciere and Kanzler to hurriedly organise a really efficient military system was a work of almost hopeless difficulty. Papal Rome was not a belligerent Power. Its so-called army, or Swiss guard, were little more than a police force. Nevertheless, by the month of August Lamoricit-re declared himself confident of encountering and defeating the now imminent attack of the victorious Garibaldians penetrating from the Neapolitan side. Meanwhile a formidable Sardinian force was being assembled on the northern frontier, under Generals Cialdini and Fanti. To the very last the French emperor sent tranquillising assurances, on the faith of Turin declarations, that 21* 3TEW IRELAND. no hostile movement against the pontifical territory was in- tended; * that this army was assembled to "repress disorder"' should the . Ga-ribaldian movement in the south extend. Sud- denly, on the 9th of September 1860, Cardinal Antonelli re- ceived from Count Cavour a demand for the disbandment or I.ainoriciere's force. Without awaiting reply, the corps of Gen- erals Fanti and Cialdini burst across the frontier, took Lamori- ciere in flank and rear, and cut in pieces the formation he had effected for attack from a different quarter. In a brief and dis- astrous campaign, in which, hopelessly outnumbered and taken by surprise, it never had a chance, the pontifical army was defeated at every point. This crash found the Irish, mostly unarmed, in process of drill at Ancona, Spoleto, Perugia, and Foligno. Their organisation into a battalion, called the " Battalion of St. Patrick," under the command of Major Myles "W. O'E-eilly (the present member of Parliament for Longford county), had barely been effected; but their equipment was not yet ac- complished. Lamoriciero seemed stunned by the news of the- Piedmontese invasion. Marching out of Spoleto at midnight of the 14th, he made a desperate effort to gather his forces for a dash to Ancona ; the Piedmontese commander being evidently determined to cut him off. Strange as it may sound at this day,, even at that moment the Papal general believed, and had received reason to believe, that if he could hold the enemy at bay for a week or two the French emperor would come to his aid ! At Macerata, ou the 17th, he effected a junction with General Pimodan. Pushing on next day, he found General Cialdini lying across his course in strong position at Castelfidardo. Hera was- fought the really decisive battle- of the campaign. Lacaori- * " At the beginning of the month of September your excellency communicated to me tiie assurances given, by the French ambassador on behalof Piedmont, that not only that Power would not invade our territory,. "tint tlj.it it would even oppose the invasion by any bands of volunteers which were farming orer our frontiers. The measures adopted against Colonel Nieotara, who had assembled 2-OCO men in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, and who wished to throw them on our coasts,, were additionally promised to us ; and it appeared that it was in the direction of Naples that we had to fear an invasion. Already at several intervals the embarkation, of troops in Sicily and in the Calabria was announced as intending to attack us in the direction of the Marches; and after the occupation of Naples bv General Garibaldi everything led us to believe that our southern provinces would be shortly invaded. " Ojjiciai Report by General Lainuriciere to t.\u Pontifical Ministry of War. PAPAL IRELAND. 215 ciere succeeded in cutting liis way through to Anoona, at the head of a troop of chasseurs; but his army was annihilated. Meanwhile General Fanti's corps had attacked and taken Perugia on the 15th, and summoned Spoleto to .surrender on the 17th. The: town, or rather the "Eoeca," was held by Major O'Ecilly and three hundred Irishmen, besides some few Franco- Beiges, AustriaiiSj Swiss, and native Italians. Quite a formid- able controversy was raised by some of the English newspapers ever this capture of Spoleto from the Irish ; but the signal gal- lantry of the defence has been attested by authorities on whose testimony Major O'Eeilly and his three hundred. Irishmen may proudly rest their reputation ; namely, General Brignone, the commander of the attacking force, and General Lamoriciere, one of the first soldiers in Europe., The former in the articles of capitulation says : The officers and soldiers shall be treated in all respects with that urbanity and that respect which befit honourable and brave troops, as they have proved themselves to be in to-day's fight. On the 28th of September Ancona, besieged by land and sea, its defences laid in ruins by a continuous bombardment, surren- dered to Admiral Persano, whose recently published correspond- ence throws a startling light on the secret history of this campaign. Whether the Irish companies in this ill-fated struggle displayed at all events '' the ancient courage of their race." is a question that keenly touches the national honour. Happily its decision does not rest merely on the frank and modest report of their com- mander, nor yet on the eulogies of the Papal minister of war. No one will deny that General Lamoriciere was a competent military authority as to the bearing and conduct of soldiers. In his official report he makes severe reflections on some small portion of the troops who served under his command ; but of the Irish he never speaks save in praise. He bears special testimony to their bravery at Perugia, at Spoleto, at Castelfidardo, and at Ancona. " At Perugia," he says, " one Irish company " (the total Irish force present) " and the greater part of the battalion of the 2nd Eegiment of the Line alone showed themselves determined to do their duty." At Spoleto, he says, the Irish "defended them- selves with great gallantry." At Castelfidardo, he says, " two howitzers were move Shadows " is one of the most picturesque ocean inlets on onr coasts. It steals southward past Buncrana and historic Kath- rnullen, tiR ! it reaches Letterkenny on the one side, and lovely Fauhn on the other; as if the sea had burst into a series of Tyrolean valleys. But there is not a scene amongst them all to- match, the weird beauty and savage grandeur of lone Glenveih! The western, or Atlantic, shore of Donegal is indented by a, narrow estuary,, which penetrates some five or six miles in a north-easterly direction, until, at a place called Doochery, it meets the G-weebarra river. The gorge through which estuary and river now is but the south-western section of a singular chain of valleys, which reach in a direct line from G-weebara Bay to Glen Lough, a distance of more than tAventy miles. The middle section is Gleaveih, so called ; or, as it ought to be,. Glenbah the Glen of Silver Birches. It is truly a most romantic spot. The mountains rise boldly to a height of over a thousand feet on either side, and are clothed in great part with indigenous forest; while sleeping calmly in the vale below, following its gentle windings, broadening and narrowing as the- Mils give room, is the lake Lougli Veih. The mountain district around is of the wildest character. Thirty years- ago it was inhabited by a people such as oner might meet amidst the crags of the Interthal or Passeyr; some- times passionate, always hospitable: frugal, hardy, inured to toil. They eked, out a poor existence less by their little farm- plots than, by rearing on the mountains young stock, which at the suitable seasons they sold to the comfortable and prosperous Presbyterian plantation men of Eaphoe and Lifford districts. Little more than twenty years ago there chanced to pass tlirough Dcrryveih,* as the immediate district is called, on sporting purposes bent, Mr. John George Adair, of Bellgrove,, in Queen's county. He was so struck, he says, with the charms of the scenery, that he determined to become proprietor of the- place. Between August 1857 and May 1858 he succeeded in purchasing a great part in lee-simple, and a fee-farm interest in a further portion. It was an evil day for the mountaineers when Mr. Adair first set eye on their home. Notwithstanding the storm of terrible accusations which that gentleman soon, after poured upon them, and the disturbance, conflict, and: crime which attended upon or arose out of his proprietorial proceedings, the fact is significant that at the period of his. * " Derryreih," " Loughveih," and "Glenveih" mean respectively the- wood or forest, the lake, and the glen of silver birches. 220 NEW IRELAND. purchase, and ever subsequently, the Glenveih peasantry were on the best and kindliest relations with their landlords; and that the surrounding gentry, and the clergy of all religious denominations, to the very last spoke and speak of them in terms of warmest sympathy and compassion. No sooner, however, does Mr. Adair enter on the scene than a sad and startling change appears. The picture drawn by the previous and surrounding landlords, of a simple, kindly, and peaceable peasantry, gives way to one sketched by Mr. Adair of a lawless, violent, thieving, murderous gang, whose extirpation is a mission which has devolved on him in the interests of " society." The first act of the new landlord was ominous of what was to follow. The purchases were completed by the 30th of April, when what was called the Gartan estates passed to him "from Mr. Cornwall. In May he began operations by the erection of a police barrack, and close to it, under the cover of its guns, a " pound " or prison for seized cattle. I knew a little of Mr. Adair. He had been, if not a member of the Tenant League, a tenant-right candidate for Parliament in 1852. In these proceedings of his I have never regarded him as a man who coldly planned bar- barity, or designed injustice, when he entered upon the career of landlord in Donegal. Nay, I incline to believe he meant to use kindly, according to his own ideas, the despotic power which he claimed. But a thwarted despot soon forgets benevolent intentions, and thinks only of asserting his power, and of crushing without mercy those who war against it. The police barrack and the pound were the first indications of the spirit of Mr. Adair's rule. I am not aware that the old landlord had need of these institutions. The people at all events looked askance at them ; and on the threshold of his proceedings Mr. Adair was prejudiced in their eyes. The 21st of August fcmnd that gentleman on the hills, gun in hand, shooting over the lands upon which Mr. Johnson, the late landlord, was alone understood to possess the right of sporting. The tenants, headed by one James Corrin, either by express order from Mr. Johnson or under some idea of duty towards him, resisted Mr. Adair's attempt to shoot the lands, and a ratMIr angry conflict or scuffle ensued. Mr. Adair indicted Corrin and the other tenants for this " assault " ; but the real nature of the aifray is sufficiently attested by the fact that on the 23rd of October the grand jury threw out the bills; and next Michaelmas term Corrin significantly enough, through the attorney of his landlord, Mr. Johnson filed an action for assault and battery TEE FATE OF GLENVEIH. 221 and malicious prosecution against Mr. Adair. On the iGth and 17th of February next year, 1859, the action came to trial before the Lord Chief Baron in Dublin. It resulted in a verdict that Mr. Adair had committed an assault, but that it had been in exercise of a lawful right of sporting. Next ensuing term Corrin served notice for a new trial in the superior courts, and so the litigation went on. Out of this dispute this paltry quarrel of Mr. Adair with poor mountaineers, defending, as they believed, the rights of an old landlord sprang events that will never be forgotten in Donegal. From Easter to midsummer it was open war between the great man and the poor peasants; the latter, however, being warmly befriended by the neighbouring magistrates and land- lords, Colonel Humfrey especially. On the 2nd of July Mr. Adair had several of the tenants arrested and brought before him at Glenveih, the wretched people being marched sixty miles to and from prisons ; yet five days afterwards they were dis- charged by two resident and two local magistrates at Church Hill petty sessions. At length he determined to put himself, at any cost, in a position which would give him absolute dominion over these audacious peasants. In October 1859 he bought up the fee-farm interest of the remainder of Derryveih, 11,956 acres, through Mr. T. C. Trench, at a rent above the total payable by the tenants. By this time between the purchase, on the 22nd of August 1857, from Mr. Pitt Skipton, the 29th of April 1858, from Colonel Humfrey and Mr. Johnson, the 30th of April, the Gartan estate from Mr. Cornwall, and the 10th of October, 1859, from Mr. Johnson ho had become absolute monarch of nearly ninety square miles of country. This eager anxiety to buy more and more as time went on was assuredly inconsistent with the idea subsequently put forward by Mr. Adair, that it was an affliction to him to be the landlord of such a people. Just about the time this gentleman appeared in those parts, Western Donegal was going through hard times and bitter conflict over " Scotch sheep." Some two or three of the pro- prietors had conceived the idea or, more probably, had been weakly persuaded by Scotch farm stewards that fortunes might be made out of those wild mountains, now used solely by the cottiers for grazing a few goats, heifers, and sheep. By taking up the mountains wholly or in part from the people, and extensively stocking them with imported blackfaced sheep, these landlords were led to believe that thousands a year might 222 NEW in EL AND. be cleared in profit. The attempt to deprive the people of tho mountains led to deplorable conflict, suffering, and loss. The benevolent pretext of " squaring the farms " sometimes, no doubt, a genuine and well-meant motive, but occasionally an excuse for dexterously cheating the people did not avail. While the cottiers and the landlords were fighting over the question, lo ! the Scotch shepherds announced that the black- faced sheep were disappearing from the hills stolen by the hostile inhabitants, it \vas of course assumed. Search of the tenants' houses failed to verify this conclusion. Some few Iraces of such thefts were found here and there, but not in any extent to account for the disappearance of EO many hundred .sheep. Soon what had happened became more clear. The dead bodies of the sheep were found in scores all over the hills killed by the lawless natives, it was now concluded. Pre- sentments for the value of the sheep thus assumed to have been '" maliciously destroyed " were levied on the districts. Still tho destruction, or rather the mysterious disappearance, of tho sheep went on. The more it did, the more heavy the penalty was made ; and the more sweeping the presentments, the more extensive grew the destruction ! At last it occurred to one of the Crown officials that there was something suspicious in all this. He noted that whereas the sheep imported from Scotland cost from seven shillings and sixpence to ten shillings a head, on the mountain they were presented for at seventeen and sixpence to twenty-five shillings. It occurred to him that while this went on, sheep-losing would flourish. Suspicion once aroused, strange facts came to light. "The houses of the shepherds themselves were searched, and mutton in rather too generous abundance was found. Then :serious investigation was prosecuted, when it was incontestably established that the sheep had perished in large numbers from stress of weather, still more extensively from falling over crags and precipices, and to some comparatively small extent by the surreptitious .supply of the shepherds' tables. Shortly came the remarkable fact of the going judges of assize indignantly refusing to fiat these monstrous claims, and denouncing the whole proceeding.* Mirabile dictu, when the presentments were stopped, the blackfaced sheep importation fell through ! * August 1, 18GO. After the v-crdiet of the jury at Liflbrd assizes had declared the sheq> to have perished as I have describe;!, the judge, Chief Justice Munahan.s.'iid, " I am as satisiied as I am of my very existence that those shecji were not maliciously killed." THE FATE OF GLEN VE HI. 223 But in the interval what suffering had been visited en the wretched people ! The " levies " had reduced them, poor as they were at best, to a plight which migkt have excited the com- passion of a Kurd marauder. I travelled 'all the way from Dublin to investigate the facts for myself in the spring of 1858. I was much excited by all that I saw and heard, and I took an active, perhaps an angry, part in the public agitation -which ensued. No Bulgarian hn't after a raid of Bashi-bazouks, or Armenian hovel after a Cossack foray, could present a more wretched spectacle of desolation than did those Donegal shcelings After the levies load swept the district. Yet what the poor people seemed to feel as acutely as the seizure and cam ting -off of their little stock their heifers and goats, and pigs a-nd poultry, nay, their bedsteads, and pots, and pans was that tltey were held up to the world as tliieves and sheep-stealers. I dare say some sheep had been stolen, but certainly not in any sense by a general system or with popular sympathy. It -seemed to one that isome one or two undoubted instances of "theft r destruction at the first suggested the evil system, which soon was adopted, nstabulary sixty-six sheep have 'been found dad from the inclemency of the weather, as there was no mark of injury on them. But soon, unfortunately, he was to have, still weightier cause for resentment; a more terrible impulsion to anger and passion. On the morning of the I3th of November, his manager, James Hurray, left Glenvoih Cottage. He was never seen alive after- warcls. On the 15th his body was found on the mountains, with marks of violence, which the coroner's jury declared to 224 NEW IS EL AND. have been given by a murderer's hand. The only witness examined (beside a surgeon) was a Scotch assistant shepherd, Dugald Eankin ; and his bias against the Glenveih people was supposed to be strong.* Mr. Adair, as he gazed on the corpse of his servant murdered, as he verily believed, for stern dis- charge of his duties revolved in his mind a terrible determina- tion. He grouped together a catalogue of, as it seemed to him, persistent and widespread crimes. Two of his dogs had been poisoned, though the presentment sessions refused to admit the act was malicious. An outhouse at Gartan Glebe was found to- be on fire while he was a guest with the Rev. Mr. Maturin. Two hundred of his sheep had been killed on the mountains, though the magistrates would insist it was by accident or tem- pest. And now his manager had been foully slain. He would show these people that he would conquer. He would make them feel how terrible his vengeance could be. The resolution formed by Mr. Adair was to sweep away the whole population of Derryveih , chiefly concentrated, I believe, in a little hamlet on the Lough Gartan side of the nill.f He- applied for and received a special force of police to protect his herd and himself, in view of the desperate undertaking upon which he was now entering. A parliamentary return issued in May 1861 makes some curious revelations as to Mr. Adair's quarrels with the executive in Dublin Castle over the cost and efficiency of this protective garrison. In truth, despite the heavy case he was able to adduce, the Government, authorities, the tecal magistrates, the clergy, Protestant and Cathojic, the police inspectors, all manifested clearly their sorrow, alarm, or resentment at the monstrous proceeding he contemplated nothing less than the expulsion of hundreds of innocent people, men and women, the aged and the young, in vengeance for the crime of some undiscovered individual. The neighbouring land- lords seemed to regard him as a deadly combustible planted in their midst ; a gentleman whose " sense of duty " had resulted in plunging their county into a condition which caused them vexation and uneasiness. The magistrates of the district, * On the 1st of March Eankin was carried to jail at Strabane, for presenting a pistol at a man named Gallagher and wounding Constable Patrick Morgan. t Derryveih mountain divides the two lakes of Lough Glenveih, or Lough Veih, and Lough Derryveih, or Lough Gartan. At Gartan, St. Coluruba, or Columbkille, was born A.D. 521. THE FATE OF GLENVEIH. 22* assembled at Church Hill, felt the situation so strongly that they passed the folio-wing resolution : Resolved, That the outrages complained of have, in our opinion, arisen from causes unconnected with anj matter having relation to the adjoining estates, hitherto and now in a state of perfect tranquillity. Mr. Dillon, the resident magistrate, -writing to the Under Secretary for Ireland, Sir Thomas Larcom, asks, " Is it my duty and that of the police to stasd by and give protection while the houses arc being levelled ?" The Protestant rector, the Rev. Mr. Maturin, -writing to the Dublin Daily Express, after Mr. Adair's vengeance had been wreaked, says : The presumption is as strong that the persons who commiUed the murder were not connected with the district. ... I could mention other reasons certainly suspicions nnd somewhat mysterious. . . . What would be Sir. Adiiir'e feelings if it were found out hereafter that the murder was committed by persons in no way connected vrith the Derryveih tenantry now exterminated on account of it, and whose wailings might then, without avail, for ever ring in his ears ? Indeed, although the hapless mountaineers were, I believe, exclusively Catholic, this kindly hearted and estimable Pro- testant clergyman flung himself into the forefront of every effort to save them. He and the Catholic priest of the district, the Eev. Mr. Kair, drew up and forwarded to Mr. Adair a joint letter, in which they felt confident they would not appeal in vain to his mercy. They bore the strongest testimony to the virtuous character and the kindly and peaceable nature of the threatened people, whom they had known all their lives ; and emphatically denied that any suspicion of complicity in Murray's murder could justly bo laid against them. Mr. Adair's reply was stern and inexorable. lie recited all the outrages, real and fancied. With the deepest regret for what he considered a necessity, he was determined to evict the inhabitants of that part of the property. Some of known good character he would not disturb. To such as had brought good characters from the reverend appellants he bad offered mountain holdings, with leases, elsewhere. I need follow his plea no further. Th man who conceives himself to be " a saviour of society " has a pious justification for any extremity of conduct. News of the storm about to burst upon them reached the people early in February 1861. Some realised its terrible im- port ; but the majority did not. As a matter of fact, up to the 22G NEW IRELAND. hour of the evictions, few of them would believe that sucn a menace would or could be earned out. In this remote and. lonely region nothing they had ever heard suggested the pos- session of such a power by any one. They owed no rent. They had done no man wrong. Mr. Adair, on the 4th of February, called into Dublin Castle, and there quietly swore an information, that being about to serve ejectment notices on his tenants, he believed the life of the bailiff would be unsafe without an armed escort. The resident magistrate, Mr. Considine, who gave the escort, says the ejectments " were served by Mr. Adair's gamekeeper without the least hindrance being offered by the tenantry." In fact, it is curious to notice the fatal calm which hung over the valley itself, while, unknown to its doomed people, the "outer world " the magistrates and police officials, nay, the executive in Dublin were in no little excitement and apprehension as the evil day drew near. The correspondence between the various officials and public departments, as to the drafting and concentration of police detachments and military companies, fills several pages of a blue-book. The dispositions and arrangements were almost as formidable as if Derryvcih had to be stormed and carried from an intrenched army. Mr. Cruikshank, the sub-sheriff, writing to Sir Thomas Larcom, Under Secretary, gays that besides two hundred constabulary being drafted from various parts, he will require some military with tents and baggage to be sent from Dublin : I have therefore to request that one officer and thirty rank and file be ordered to meet me at Lough Barra, on Monday the 8th instant, at twelve o'clock, in aid of the civil power. If the party leave Dublin by rail on Friday morning, they will reach Strabane at four o'clock, wait there that night ; march next day to Letterkenny, a distance of fourteen Irish miles, rest there Sunday, and meet me and the constabulary early on Monday. As it is likely the force will be employed Monday and Tuesday and part of Wednesday, I would suggest for your consideration the prudence, if not necessity, of the soldiers being provided with tents, as it will be impossible in a mountain country such as Glenveih to get for them accommodation for the night ; and after remaining some time under arms they could not march back to Letterkenny, nearly ten Irish miles, and return the next day. On the night of Sunday, the 7th of April, the several detach- ments had closed in around the place, occupying or command- ing the only available entrances or passes. Still the hapless people, in fatal confidence, slumbered on. It -was like the sleep of the Macdonalds oh the night before Glencoe. In tne early morning of Monday, the 8th of Apr; 1 1861, the THE FATE OF GLENVEIIL 227 sight of the redcoats and the glitter of bayonets at the southern entrance to the valley gave signal of alarm ; and from house to house, and hill to hill, along Lough Gartan side, a halloo was sent afar. Soon there rose on the morning air a wail that chilled oven the sternest heart. The poor people came out of their cabins in groups, and looked at the approaching force, and there burst froai the women and children a cry of agony that pierced the heavens. The special correspondent of the Dcrry Standard, a leading Presbyterian journal in the neighbouring county, gives the following account of what he. saw : " The first eviction was one peculiarly distressing, and the terrible reality of the law suddenly burst with surprise on the spec- tators. Having arrived at Lough Barra, the police were halted, and the sheriff, with a small escort, proceeded to the house of a widow named W Award, aged GO years, living with whom were six daughters and a son. Long before the house was reached loud cries were heard piercing the air, and soon the figures of "the poor widow and her daughters were observed oiitside the house, where they gave vent to their grief in strains of touching agony. Forced to discharge an unpleasant duty, the sheriff entered the house and delivered up possession to Mr. Adair's steward, whereupon six men, who had been brought from a distance, immediately fell to to level the house to the ground. The scene then became indescribable. The bereaved widow and her daughters were frantic with despair. Throwing themselves on the ground they became almost insensible, and, bursting out in the old Irish wail then heard by many for the first time their terrifying cries resounded along the mountain side for many miles. They had been deprived of the little spot made dear to them by associations of the past and with bleak poverty before them, and only the blue sky to shelter them, they natu- rally lost all hope, and those who witnessed their agony will never forget the sight. No one could stand by unmoved. Every heart was touched, and tears of sympathy flowed from many. In a short time we withdrew from the scene, leaving the widow and her orphans surrounded by a small group of neighbours, who could only express their sympathy for the homeless, without possessing the power to relieve them. During that and the next two days the entire holdings in the lands mentioned above were visited, and it was not until an advanced hour on Wednesday the evictions were finished. In all the evictions the distress of the poor people was equal to that depicted in the first case. Dearly did they cling to their homes Q 2 228 NEW ICELAND. till the last moment, and while the male population bestirred themselves in clearing the houses of what scanty furniture they contained, the women and children remained within till the sheriff's bailiff warned them out, and even then it was with difficulty they could tear themselves away from the scenes of happier days. In many cases they bade an affectionate adieu to their former peaceable but now desolate homes. One old man, near the fourscore years and ten, on leaving his house for fhe last time reverently kissed the doorposts, with all the imjiassiontd tenderness o/ an emigrant leaving his native land. His wife and children followed his example, and in agonised silence the afflicted family stood by and watched the destruction of their dwelling. In another case an old man, aged ninety, who was lying ill in bed, was brought out of the house in order that formal possession might be taken, but re-admitted for a week to- permit of his removal. In nearly every house there was some- one far advanced in age many of them tottering to the grave while the sobs of helpless children took hold of every heart. "When dispossessed, the families grouped themselves on the ground, beside the ruins of their late homes, having no place of refuge near. The dumb animals refused to leave the wallsteads, and in some cases were with difficulty rescued from the falling timbers. As night set in the scene became fearfully sad. Passing along the base of the mountain the spectator might have observed near to each house its former inmates crouching round a turf fire, close by a hedge; and as a drizzling rain poured upon them they found no cover, and were entirely ex- posed to it but only sought to warm their famished bodies. Many of them were but miserably clad, and on all sides the greatest desolation was apparent. I learned afterwards that the great majority of them lay out all night, either behind the hedges or in a little wood which skirts the lake ; they had no other alternative. I believe many of them intend resorting to the poorhouse. There these poor starving people remain on the cold bleak mountains, no one caring for them, whether they live or die. 'Tis horrible to think of, but more horrible to behold." This news reached me in Dublin. I had been striving hard for these poor people. I had, especially since my visit to a neighbouring district three years before, felt the deepest, the most earnest interest in them. I am not ashamed to p.iy, even now, that I wept like a child. But idle weeping could wail nothing for the victims. "What should we do? They THE FATE OF GLENVEIE. 229 must not perish. They must be saved. So vowed some friends who felt as deeply as I did their unmerited fate. Public opinion was gtirred to its depths by this terrible event. Our journals called at once for public aid, and it was promptly forthcoming. A local committee of relief was organised, and an appeal to Christian hearts all over the world was issued. This remarkable document bore the signatures of the Catholic bishop, the Most Eev. Dr. McGettigan ; the Episcopalian Protestant rector, Eev. Mr. Maturin ; the Presbyterian minister, Eev. Mr. Jack ; and the Catholic parish priest, Kev. Mr. Kair. It told the whole story, and refuted in warm language the aspersions and accusations that had been used as a pretext for the desolation. The appeal was most liberally answered at home. Men of all ranks and classes, creeds and parties, poured in their contri- butions. But the crowning act of rescue was the work of Irishmen far away under the Southern Cross. The (Australian) Donegal Celtic Belief Committee, established in Melbourne mainly by the exertions of the late Hon. Michael O'Grady, M.L.C., to whom I had early written on the subject decided to bring out, to "happy homes and altars free," these victims of a heartless wrong. Ample funds were at once supplied, and an official agent of the Victorian Government was despatched to make special arrangements in conjunction with the local committee in Ireland for effecting this generous purpose. The news created a great sensation in Donegal. The poor people were sought out and collected. Some by this time had sunk beneath their sufferings. One man named Bradley had lost his reason under the shock. Other cases were nearly as heart- rending. There were old men who would keep wandering over the hills in view of their ruined homes, full of the idea that some day Mr. Adair might let them return, but who at last had to be borne to the distant workhouse hospital to die. With a strange mixture of joy and sadness the survivors heard that friends in Australia had paid their way to a new and better land. On the day they were to set out for the railway station, e/i route for Liverpool, a strange scene was witnessed. The cavalcade was accompanied by a concourse of neighbours and sympathisers. They had to pass within a short distance of the .ancient burial-ground, where " the rude forefathers " of the valley slept. They halted, turned aside, and proceeded to the grass-grown cemetery. Here in a body they knelt, flung them- selves on the graves of their relatives, which they reverently kissed again and again, and raised for the last time the Irish 230 NEW IRELAND. eaoive, or funeral wail. Then some of them pulling tufts of grass which they placed in their bosoms they resumed their way on the road to exile. At Dublin I saw them as they halted between tho arrival of their train and the departure of the cross- channel boat for Liverpool. As they marched through the? streets to a restaurant, where dinner had been provided for thorn, they excited the greatest curiosity and interest. " The emigrants, male and female," said one of the city papers, " presented an appearance well calculated to excite admiration and sympathy. A finer body of men and women never left any country. In stature tall, with handsome and well-shaped features full of kindly expression, they filled the breast of every spectator with regret that such a people should be lost to us for ever." They were being accompanied as far as Liverpool by the Rev. James M'Fadden, a fine-hear.ted young priest who had laboured devotedly for them from the first hour of their mis- fortunes. I quote from the same journal the following account of his farewell address, a scene w-hich it was impossible to behold unmoved : When dinner had concluded, Rer. Mr. M'Fadden, amidst the most solemn stillness, briefly addressed the nssembhige ; and it was a most touching sight. He spoke in the Gaelic tongue, the language of their homes ami firesides, ere Adair hud levelled the one and quenched the other for ever. As the young priest spoke, his own voice full of emotion, the painful silence all around soon became broken by the sobs of women, and tears flowed freely down many a cheek. H reminded them that that iras their lait meal partaken of on Irish soil; that in a few hours they would have lefS Ireland for ever. He spoke of their old homes amidst the Donegal hills, of the happy days passed in the now silent and desolate valley of Derryveih ;v of tha pence and happiness that they had known then, because they were- contented, and wore free from temptations- and dangers of which the busy- world was full. He reminded them of their simple lives the Sunday- mass, so regularly attended ; the confession ; the consolations of faith, ilnny a cheek was wet as he alluded to how they would be missed by the priest whose flock they were. But, most of all, their lot was sorrowful in the fact that, while other emigrants left behind them parents and relatives- over whom the old rooftree remained, they, alas ! left theirs xinder no shelter of a homo they left them wanderers and outcasts, trusting to workhouse fare or wayside charity. But (said he) you are going to a better land, a free country, where there are no tyrants, because there are no slares. Friends have reached out their hands to you ; those friends await you on the shore of that better land. And here, too, in this dty, hearts equally true and kindly have mot you. 'Let yeur last word on Irisl* ground be to thank the good gentleman who now stands by my side,, Mr. Alexander M. Sullivan. He it is who has, amidst all his muaeroua> THE FATE OF GLENVEIH. 231 cares of business, found time to make these arrangements to meet yonr wants and make you comfortable in passing through this citv. Busy as this day has been with him, there he was to meet us at the train, and here he has been attending to you as if you were members of his own family. But it is only part of a long work of goodness done for the people of Donegal .since first on that memorable Christmas Eve he raised the first call for our relief. He has never since taken his hand from the work he began that .day. Let us, with our last words, thank him and his frieads who have met us this evening, and cared for xis so well. And now, dear brothers, we shall be departing. Before you take your foot off your native land, promise me here that you will, above all things, be faithful tf> yvn God, and attend to your religious duties, under whatever cii-curnstance.s you may be placed (sobs, and cries of " We will, we will "). Never neglect your night and moraing prayers, and never omit to approach the Bkwe 1 Eucharist, at least at Christmas ami Easter. And, boys, don't forget poor old Ireland, (intense emotion, and cries of " :NeTr never, God knows !") don't forget the old people at home, boys. Sure they will be counting the diiys till a letter comes from you. And they'll be praying for you, and we will all pray God to be with you. Standing on. the qnay at Dublin I bade these poor people last adieu, and prayed that God might requite them under happier skies for the cruel calamities that had befallen them at home. Six months later Mr. O'Grady wrote to me a detailed account of their progress. Every one of them was " doing well," he said ; " a credit to the old land." In the autumn of last year I revisited Donegal. I sat upon the shore of that lonely lako, and looked down the shadowed valley. On a jutting point, beneath the lofty slope of the wooded mountain, Mr. Adair has built a castle. It may be that the charms which Selkirk could not discover in solitude delight him in " this desolate place." No doubt " the enchanting beauty " which he said first drew him to the spot is unimpaired to the view Glenveih is and ever will be beautiful. But for my part, as I gazed upon the scene, iny sense of enjoyment was mingled with memories full of pain. My thoughts wandered back to that terrible April morning on Gartan side. In fancy I heard rolling across those hills the widow's wail, the women's parting cry. I thought of the farewell at the graves ; of the crowd upon the fore-deck of that steamer. Again I marked their tears, their sobs. Once more, above the paddle's plash and the seamen's bustling shout, I thought I heard the wafted prayer of " Got took to journalism that Kickham was called upon to assume a post of prominence. John O'Leary was unquestionably one of the ablest and most remarkable men in the conspiracy. Intellectiially and politically he was of the type of Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, and John Mitchel. An eye-witness describing him in the dock, when on * The wkite dust and glare of the sun in the Portland convict quarries havo. I regret to saj, almost totally ruined his sight ; and when last I met him his hearing was so far gone that it was by the manual alphabet he? was- spoken to, although ho replied br roice as usual. THE FENIAN MOVEMENT 235 lii.s trial in 1865, says, " ho stepped to the front with a flash of fire in his dark eyes and a scowl on his features, looking hatred mid defiance on judges, lawyers, jurymen, and all the rest of" them. All eyes were fixed on him ; for he was one of those persons whose exterior attracts attention and indicates a cha- racter above the common. He was tall, slightly built, and of gentlemanly deportment. Every feature of his thin angular face gave token of great intellectual energy and determination ; its pallid hue was rendered almost death-like by contrast with his long black hair and flowing moustache and beard. Easy it was to see that when the Government placed John O'Leary in the dock they had caged a proud spirit and an able and resolute- enemy." He was born in Tipperary town, of a family holding a good position, and inherited on the death of his parents, to- his share, a small property of some three or four hundred pounds a year. He was a graduate of the Queen's University, having taken out his medical degree in the Queen's College, Cork. He resided for some time in Paris, where his mind, his tastes, his manners, opinions, and principles received impress and shape discernible in his subsequent career. He also visited America, and there formed the acquaintance of the men who were plan- ning and devising the Fenian movement. He was a man of culture, and of considerable literary abilities. I met him on a few occasions at the houee of Dr. Kevin Izod O'Doherty, whose- wife, the poetess " Eva," was his coxisin. He was reserved, sententious, almost cynical ; keenly observant, sharply critical, full of restrained passion. Thomas Clarke Luby was ateo a native of Tipperary ; bnt, unlike his colleagiies, he was a Protestant ; his uncle, the Eev. Dr. Luby, being one of the Senior Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin. Mr. Luby was no new hand at seditious effort. Young is he was in 1848, he was then an active member of what may be called the extreme revolutionist, or Mitchelite, party. From 1849 to 1854 he occupied himself occasionally as a contributor to the press, and sometimes as a collegiate tutor. In 1855 he became associate editor of the Irish Tribune, a semi-revolutionary journal, which the late Mason Jones and other advanced Irish Nationalists published for some short time in Dublin. His politics were a great affliction to relatives Avho were in a position to advance him, and who would have done so \i he would but give up such dangerous doctrines. He preferred to striiggle on for himself, holding by his principles, such as they were. This, course he pursued unfalteringly to the last. 23G NEW IRELAND. On the American side the movement was projected under the direction of John O'Mahony, Michael Doheny, and Colonel Corcoran, of the Sixty-ninth (Irish) New York regiment; the first named being supreme. The original plan, described already in O'Donovan Eossa's words, was still pursued. The Irish in America were to be enrolled in " circles," or groiips, like the Irish at home. But the functions of the former were chiefly to supply " the home organisation," as it was called, with funds, arms, and military commanders. Later on, the American section decided furthermore to co-operate with the home movement by an attack on the British dominions near at hand, and by the despatch of privateers. Each " circle " was presided over by an officer called a Centre. Mr. O'Mahony was Head Centre. He it was who designated his branch of the organisation by the name of " Fenians." He was much given to Gaelic studies, and lived or dreamed a great deal in ancient Ireland.* The Irish national militia, seventeen centuries ago, were called the " Fiana Erion," or Fenians, from Fenius, Fin, or Fion, their famous commander. After this force O'Mahony called the Irish- American enrolment. Mr. Stephens, however, preferred for the home section the name of " Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood ; " .shortened into " the I. B. B.," by which brief designation it was generally referred to by the members. In Ireland the enrolment also was in circles or groups ; the officers being styled A's, B's, and C's, according to their rank. Mr. Stephens exercised supreme and absolute authority in the home organisation. His official title was the " C. O. I. B.," or Central Organiser of the Irish Eepublic. He willed and declared a republic to be erected in Ireland ; and, accordingly, the oath of initiation bound each member to yield allegiance to " the Irish republic now virtually established." f When a person authorised by him had sworn in not more than fifty members in a locality, they were constituted a " circle," of which such person then became the B or Centre. In due time it would be his duty, when the C. 0. I. E. sent him a drill-master, to see that his men were safely and secretly taught military exercises. Meanwhile he and his circle were to act in a general way for the furtherance of the movement ; by * He executed the admirable translation of Keatings' ' History of Ireland,' published by Harerty ef. New York. f Very evidently many of the rank and file were not quite clear as to wiiat the word u virtually " meaut ; for much Merriment arose during some of the trials when the approvers declared they were sworn to obey "the Irish republic now virtuously established." THE FENIAN MOVEMENT. 267 organising new circles, by discouraging and repressing pubKe meetings of a "distracting" character, and by putting down public men or journals who in any way hindered or opposed the organisation. There were, in 1858, on the storting of this enterprise, several Irish-American newspapers ardently devoted to the cause of Irish nationality. In New York city alone there were at least two ; one was the Irish Neivx, established by Thomas Francis Mcagher; the other, the Irish American, then, as now, the leading organ of Irish Nationalism in the United States. Even with these journals the Fenian leaders quarrelled as strongly as with the Nation ; so they decided to establish a special organ of the movement, which accordingly appeared as the Phoenix newspaper, in New York. In this journal they struck out vigorously, right, left, and centre, at everything and everybody supposed to be inimical to their undertaking. They had no- need to waste words in rousing the ire of their readers against England. The Irish in America the maddened fugitives of the dreadful famine and eviction times hated the British power with quenchless hate. The obstacles that most concerned! the secret leaders arose from the opposition given to their scheme by the Catholic clergy and the open-policy, or anti- Fenian Nationalists. The Catholic Church condemns oath- bound secret societies especially if directed to the subversion of the civil power, or the overthrow of religion for several reasons. Firstly, regarding the sanctity of an oath, it denies that any one who chooses can, for any purpose he pleases, formally administer or impose that solemn obligation. Secondly, having regard to the safety of society, of public order, of morals and religion it prohibits the erection of any such barrier between the objects and operations of a society, and authoritative- examination and judgment. Over this critical and important issue the Fenian movement on its very threshold was plunged into a bitter war with the ecclesiastical authorities of the Catholic Church. " The priest has no right to interfere in or dictate our politics," said the Fenian leaders ; " ours is a political movement ; they must not question us or impede us." " You cannot be admitted to the sacraments until you give up and repent of illicit oaths," responded the Catholic priests ; " and if you contumaciously continue in membership of an oath- bound secret society, you are liable to excommunication." " Do you hear this ? we are cursed by the Church for loving our country!" exclaimed the Fenians; and so for the first five 238 NEW IRELAND. vears, from 1860 to 1865, the struggle between the Catholic clergy and the Fenian organisers was fierce, violent, and unsparing. A really active " B," or Fenian centre, had need to "be a man who cared little for the priest's denunciations, and who could persuade the people it was " the Maynooth oath and the gold of England " that made Father Tom so ready to " curse " the cause. The priests, accordingly, complained that the pro- pagators of Fenianism were men who paid little regard to clerical authority, and shunned the practices of faith. One can -see how, out of antagonistic views thus pressed, the quarrel eventuated in the Fenians denouncing the priests as deadly foes of Irish Rationality, and the priests denouncing the Fenians as enemies of the Church; men who would overthrow the altar and destroy society. Very similar was the conflict between the secret organisation -and the non-Fenian or anti-Fenian Nationalists ; the great object of the Fenian leaders being that the people should have no alternative patriotic effort between embracing their enter- prise and siding with imperial subjugation. Indeed, a reference to the pages of the Fenian newspapers, and to the public -chronicles of the period, will show that the movement during the four years following 1860 was directed loss against the English Government than against those Irish Nationalists, priests and laymen, whose influence was supposed to impede the organisation. The official organ, or gazette, thus established in New York, waged war all round, and roused up antagonisms innumerable. A weekly column, or department, was devoted to a " Hue and Cry," giving descriptions of " informers " and other obnoxious persons, to be looked after a hint not likely to be neglected on the other side of the Atlantic. Here is a sample : ROCK'S HUE-AX D-CRY. THE BLACK LIST. CALLAGHAX, PAT, Callan, county Kilkenny. Five feet six in height; stout, and squarely built; 27 years of age supposed to lie in New Zealand. CAK.OLAX, BALLYNAIIINCII, county Down. Five feet seven in height; 60 years of age ; blue eyes, grey hair, and long, thin features supposed to be prowling round Belfast. . WILLIAM kvEnrrr. ... is about 45 years of age, five feet ten inches in height, with a lank body, apparently possessing the flexibility of a bamboo, and suggesting the idea that it was with reluctance Nature threw him on the earth as an iucumbrance. . . . Poor wretch ! Nature, at his birth, wa* THE FENIAN MOVEMENT. niggard of her bounties. He may depend 011 it, I Jock has . long memory, ;and that his police are watchful of the movements of the spy. MICHAEL BUEKE. The fellow needs no further notice from Rock. He is mad, and lodged in a Dr. Osborne's asylum. Number One What a grim moral follows the history of his "information." Had he not sold himself 1'ur gold, he would have been to-day in no lunatic asylum. There were every week official " Decrees " and " General Orders"; and a secret committee with an ominous name, tho "" Committee of Public Safety," was charged to mark all men who had " striven to injure the organisation by word or deed." Much more serious was the fact that, for the first time in Irish annals, assassination was publicly lauded as a patriotic duty. With horror we read such articles as the following : At home there is no bold voice raised from press or pulpit against the extermination of the people. There are complaints innumerable there tire remonstrances and arguments to show it is wrong, ruiaous, inexpedient, to shovel the people from their holdings into the poorhouse and ditches ; but it is folly to argue the question, more especially when the press designates as foul, atrocious murder the slaying of one of those arch xterminators, who is to the district he owns as a wild be^st at large. , It is only by retaliation and reprisal that the Irish landlord can be brought to a sense of justice. Everything else is unavailing. This language of the official organ was followed up by a newspaper in California, published by a Mr. Thomas Mooney. He weekly advertised a reward of 100 for any one who would murder a particular gentleman in the county Mayo, whom he pointed out by name. About this time, a man named Beckham, an infamous wretch who murdered for hire, was hanged for the assassination of a Mr. Fitzgerald in the county Limerick under the most brutal circumstances. Mooney, in an article abusing the degenerate and feeble National leaders in Ireland Smith O'Brien and Sullivan of the Nation in particular declared that " one Beckham was worth fifty Smith O'Briens." What Ireland wanted was men who would not shrink from Beckham's work. I am convinced that the men in Ireland on whom subsequently fell the penalty of membership in the Fenian organisation would be incapable of approving these incentives ; but they made no sign and spoke no word in public at the time to save the ancient and honourable cause of Irish nationality from identification with them. For me, in view of public teachings like these, put forward in the name of Irish patriotism, silence impossible. In the Nation I gave utterance, no doubt very 240 NEW ICELAND. strongly, to tlie indignation which I felt ; and declared for myself and those whom I might be held to represent, that we would rather see Ireland reduced to a cinder than " liberated " by men who advocated such principles. The result, as might be expected, was a very hurricane of menace and denunciation hurled at my devoted head. Mr. Mooney addressed to me, through the pages of his newspaper, a letter of throe columns or ten feet in length, reiterating very emphatically the doctrines I had reprobated. I quote a few sentences : I am thoroughly of opinion, sir, that words or crass are not of the slightest avail against England, or agaiust her pickets and videttes io. Ireland that is to say, the crow-bar landlords. Nothing 1'Ut biltlets, sir, will avail : and therefore I recommend my countrymen to shoot the landlord house-levellers as we shoot robbers or rats, at night or in the day, on the roadside or in the market-place! That I offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the head of Major- Brabazon is most true. True, I declared that the killing of said Brabazoa was " patriotic, noble, and righteous." Then he describes at full length a case of barbarous evio by Major Brat5azon, aad proceeds : Shoot him ! Yes. The life of a peasant is as valuable as the life of a peer. If the pttjlt oppress the peasant by force of arms, break into and break down his honn^j let him be slain wheresoever he shall be caught. You have dubbed me a prophet of landlord assassination : I accept th distinction. Let them look ont ! It is the intention of many a valiant Irishman to return to Ireland to shoot down the inhuman scoundrels,. whose acts we have noted, and whose names we have registered. But though you do not approve my plan of putting down the Saxon* power, you are, you say, ready for a fair fight. " Blood," you say, " may- yet perhaps be spilled in fair fyht. The arms employed for the winning- of Irish freedom shall not be the kni-fe or the blunderbuss of the assassin,. and no stain of that blood which cries to heaven for vengennce shall be found upon our flag when its full breadth of green and gold is flung open to the wind." A very pretty poetic paragraph, sir but poetry only. A "fair fight" with the Saxon, quotha! Hast thou read the history of the Saxons? These be the men to whom you beg of us to ofler " fair fight " ; they armed to the teeth, supplied with artillery, shot and shell, and we elabo- ately disarmed by the .cowardly wretches ! Bah ! Bah ! I say. No longer, Sullivan, be officer of mine. It was not, however, the Pltcenix in New York, nor Express in San Francisco, that did the most effective work for THE FENIA N M CEMENT. 241 the Fenian movement in Ireland. That movement was to a considerable extent established and propagated by the uncon- sciously rendered aid of the English newspapers, chiefly the Times and the Daily News. In 1859 and 1860 the Italian question was the subject of the hour. The English people, the English press, plunged hotly into the work of encouraging the subjects of Pio Nono and Francis-Joseph and Ferdinand to conspire and rebel. So eager were the London journals to press the Komans or Venetians or Sicilians into revolt that they were blind to the work which their words, doctrines, pleadings, and incentives were, at that very moment, doing in Ireland. Every weapon which Mr. Stephens needed for the purposes of his secret society was deftly fashioned for him and put into his hand by the Daily News, the Sun or the Times, by Lord John Eussell or Lord Ellenborough. Not merely were the Eomagnols told that every people had a right to choose their own rulers, to depose the old and set up the new, but they were told that the amount of provocation or justification for such a course, how often or when they might adopt it, was for themselves and no one else to pronounce. Said the Times : That government should be for the good of the governed, and that whenever rulers wilfully and persistently postpone the good of their subjects, either to the interests of foreign states, er to abstract theories of religion or politics, the people have a right to throw off the yoke, are principles which have been too often admitted and acted upon to be any longer questioned. But who should judge all this ? Here is the reply supplied \>j the great English journal : The destiny of a nation ought to bo determined, not by the opinions of other nations, but by the opinion of the nation itself. To decide whether they are well governed or not, or rather whether the degree of extortion, corruption, and cruelty to which they are subject is sufficieut to justify armed resistance, is for those who live under that government not for those who, beiug exempt from its oppression, feel a sentimental or a theological interest in its continuance. The Daily News was equally explicit : Europe has over and over again affirmed that one principle on wh.'ch the Italian question depends, and to which the inhabitants of Central Italy appeal the right of a people to choose its own rulers. On the same point the Times : England has not scrupled to avow her opinion, that the people ef the 242 NEW Roman States, like every other prople, hr.ve .1 right to choose the form of their own government, and the persons m whose hands that government shall be placed. The Swn, declared : As free Englishmen we assert the rights of the Romans, and of all nations, to have governors of their own choice. The English Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lord John Russell, speaking at Aberdeen, enforced the same doctrine. A passage in the Queen's speech affirmed it. Lord Ellenborough lioped the Pope's subjects would appeal to arms as the only way in which Ihey could assert their right : J will hope that, stimulated by the insults to Italy which are conveyed in the demands France is about to mnkc in the Congress, -they will rise to vindicate their right to choose their own government, aud clutch the arms by which alone it can be secured. Out of these declarations arose in Ireland a movement Tvhich the popular journals designated " Taking England at her -word." The Ration proposed that a National Petition in the following form should be presented to the Queen : That petitioners have seen with deep concern the recognition of the ri^ht of everv people to change or choose their rulers and form of government, which is contained in the speech delivered by your Majesty at the opening of the present session of Parliament ; and also contained in the speech de- livered on a recent occasion at Aberdeen by your Majesty's Foreign Secretary, as well as in the speeches of many other statesmen and persons of high position in England, and in the writings of the mo*i influestJU English newspapers. That by the general approval with which those speeches and writings hare been received in 'England, and more especially by the course of pos:~y pursued by your Majesty's Government in reference to the late ptl events in Central Italy, the Sovereign, th Ministry, the Press, and IVsiole ef England have, ia the most distinct and public manner, declared uWir approval of the principle, that every people who believe themselves in be ill-governed have a right to change the system of government which is displeasing to them, and to substitute for it one of their ov,-n choice"; which choice may be declared by a majority of the votes which shall be given on submitting the question to a universal suffrage. Thai, as is well known to your Majesty, from petitions emanating from meetings at which millions of your Majesty's subjects attended, as well as from other events at various times, which petitioners deem it unnecessary to specify a very strong desire exists amongst the Irish people to obtain, ?B plate of the ptcsejit system of government ia Ireland, a restoration of TEE FENIAN MOVEMENT. 243 their native parliament, and their legislative independence. That petitioner* re confident the overwhelming majority of the Irish people ardently desire this restoration of their national constitution, of which they believe they were unjustly deprived; yet, as your Majesty's advisers may have led you to believe that this desire for a domestic legislature is entertained hy only a minority of the population, petitioners bohcdd in the proceeding so highly approved of by your Majesty's ministers viz., a, popular vote by ballot and universal suffrage a means by which the real wishes of the majority of your Majesty's Irish subjects may be unmistakably ascertained. Your petitioners, therefore, pray that your Majesty may be graciously pleased to direct and authorise a public vote by ballot and universal suffrage in Ireland, to make known the wishes of tb.fi people, whether for a native government and legislative independence, or for the existing system of government by the Imperial Parliament. Petitioners trust that their re- quest will be considered stronger, not weaker, in your Majesty's estimation, for being made respectfully, peacefully, asd without violence, instead of beingmarkedby such proceeding* ijs have $cc.ma'd during the recent p.aliticaj changes in, Italy, which have been so largely approved by your Majesty's ministers. ^nd petitioners, as in duty bo.und, will ever pray. This petition received the signatures- of over half a million of adult Irishmen. It was duly presented. It was never answered. Still the English people went on declaring that a " vote of the .population " Avas the way to test the legitimacy or oppressive- ness of a government. Still the English newspapers went on adjuring sulig'ect peoples to strike if they would be free. Every Fenian organiser had these quotations on his tongue. The fate of the National Petition was pointed to; the contemptuous silence of the Sovereign was called disdain for a people who would not clutch the arms Avhereby alone their right to choose their own gofsrnment could be secured. One article' there was in the London Times~~a, magnificent outburst of scathing taunt and passionate invective whieL played a remarkable part in the Fenian operations. It was the .gospel of orgamsers. A glance at it will .show that it was just to their hand : It i/i finite time that all the struggling nationalities should clearly un- vas 264 -YA'Tr IRELAND. prosecuted. On Thursday, the 9th of November, Mrs. Stephens was observed to leave Fairficld House and proceed towards Dublin. She was dogged through the city and back to her home by female spies. The police now decided that the man they wanted was within their power. On Friday evening the house was stealthily surrounded and watched by a number of detectives. Many circumstances convinced them the conspirator was within. That the struggle to capture him would be desperate and bloody was the conviction in every mind. About an hour before dawn on Saturday morning, the whole of the " G" division of police, under the personal command of Colonel Lake, C.B., surrounded the house. Six divisional inspectors scaled the garden wall and knocked at the back door of the house. A voice which two of them recognised as that of Stephens, Asked from within: "Who is there? Is that Corrigan?" meaning, it would seem, the gardener, who usually came to his work at an early hour in the morning. The answer was, " Police." " I cannot let you in. I am undressed," said the C. 0. 1. B. " If you do not open this instant, we will burst the door," rejoined Inspector Hughes. Stephens, who was in his night-dress, ran through the hall to the front door, looked out, and saw that the house was sur- rounded. He returned to the back door, undid the bolts, and rushed upstairs to his bedroom. He was quickly and closely followed by the police, who suspected some deep design in in the city. Breslin retires to his room in the prison, and Byrne- resumes his duty patrol ! At five o'clock in the morning Mr. Philpots, deputy governor, was excitedly called by Byrne, who, faithlul and vigilant officer- that he was, reported that he had found two tables ia the yard close by the boundary wall, and much he feared that something- had gone wrong.* They ran to the governor and aroused him. All hurried to the corridor where the Fenians ought to be. Lo ! one of the cell doors ajar, and the " C. 0. 1. E." flown. All the- others Luby, Kickham, O'Leary, Eossa were safe and sound,, but ths man of men for them was gone ! Mr. Marquess asked McLeod if he had heard any noise. Yes, he had, about one o'clock in the morning ; he heard some one open the end door, come to Stephens's cell, and unlock it. " Why did you not pull your gong, as I told you to do ? "' asked the distracted governor. " Because I knew whoever was doing this was likely to be armed, and could open my cell also, and take my life," was the intelligent and indeed conclusive answer. At no time probably since Emmet's insurrection were the Irish executive authorities thrown into such dismay and con- fusion as on this. occasion. They now realised what it was to- deal with a secret society. Whom could they trust? Hovr could they measure their danger '? Very evidently the ground beneath them was mined in all directions. Uncertainty magni- fied every danger. Meantime the most desperate efforts were made to recapture Stephens. Cavalry scoured the country round. Police, scattered all over the city, particularly in sus- pected neighbourhoods, ransacked houses, tore down wains- coting, ripped up flooring, searched garrets, cellars, coalholes.. Telegrams went flying all over the kingdom; steamers were stopped and the passengers examined. Gunboats put to sea and overhauled and searched fishing-smacks and coasters- Flaming placards appeared with "One thousand pounds re- ward" in large letters announcing the escape, and offering & high price for the lost one. The " C. O. I. E." was all this time,. * A few days later on Byrne was arrested. A copy of the Fenian oath.. and other seditious documents were found in his desk within the prison ;. but the Crown would not bring home to him the charge of aiding Stephcns's escape. Breslin remained unsuspected in the prison service for several months subsequently, when he took leave of absence, fled to America, aai there proudly avowed all. 270 SEW IRELAND. and for a long period subsequently, secreted in the house of a Mrs. Butler of Summer Hill, a woman of humble means.* She knew her peril in sheltering him. She knew what would be her reward in surrendering him. She was poor, and could any moment earn 1000 by giving merely a hint to the authorities. Stephens confided himself implicitly into her hands, and he did not trust her in vain. One Sunday evening about three months afterwards a hand- some open carriage-and-four drove through the streets of the Irish metropolis, two stalwart footmen seated in the dickey behind. Two gentlemen reclined lazily on the cushioned seat within. They proceeded northwards th rough Maliihide and towards Balbriggan. Near the latter place, clo: ; e by the sea, the carriage stopped. One of the occupants got out, walked down to the shore, where a boat was in waiting. He entered, and was pulled off to a lugger in the offing. The carriage re- turned to Dublin. The "coachman," "postilion,'' '-'footmen," and companion were all picked men of the " I. E. B.," and were armed to the teeth. The gentleman placed on board the lugger, now speeding down Channel with flowing sheet for France, was James Stephens, the "' Central Organiser of the Irish .Bepublic," CHAPTER XXIII. 'm;[t IXSUURECTION ! FOR three woary years Ireland endured the perils and paiiie of /a smouldering insurrection. Stephens's decree as to the " year of action '' came to naught ; 1865 went oi\t gloomily enough, but without the expected convulsion. Still every one could discern -that the danger had by no means blown over. The Fenians, it was well known, were making strenuous efforts to repair the gaps made in their ranks, and to recover themselves for a stroke in force. The two years which followed the first arrests were little else than a protracted struggle between the Govern- ment and the secret organisation. The former was striking out vehemently, smashing through circles, pouncing on councils, seizing centres, destroying communications, raiding right and * She died a few years ago in a public hospital of the city. INSURRECTION! 271 left through the shattered lines of the " I. E. B." The latter, on the other hand, undeterred, by disaster, went on, clinging desperately and doggedly to the work of reconstruction. As fast as seizures swept off leaders, others stepped into the vacant, posts. Court-house, dock, and. prison van were filled and emptied again and again. Assize and commission, commission and assize, took their dismal turn. The deadly duel went on.' It seemed interminable. T. C. Lub.y was the first of the prisoners brought to the bar. His trial lasted for four days from the 28th of November to 'the 1st of December 1865, inclusiA r e. He had for his leading counsel Mr. Isaac Butt, whose masterly abilities in previous State trials, the theme of national praise, were displayed even .more conspicuously now. But there was no struggling against the overwhelming evidence of documents preserved by the conspirators themselves. The " Clonmel letter " and the "" executive commission " sealed the doom of the three men who were incontestably the ablest and most prominent of the Fenian leaders. Luby was found guilty and condemned to penal servitude for twenty years. While the jury in his case were ^absent from Court deliberating on their verdict, O'Leary was put to the bar. On the 6th of December his trial closed with a conviction and a sentence of twenty years' penal servitude. Next came Kossa. He dismissed the lawyers, and announced "that he meant to conduct his own defence. Never was such a scene witnessed in that court-house ! " He cross-examined the informers in fierce fashion," says an eye-witness ; " he badgered the detectives, he questioned the police, he debated with the "Crown lawyers, he argued with the judges, he fought with the Orown side all round. But it was when the last of the witnesses had gone off the table that he set to the work in good earnest. He took up the various publications that had been put in evidence against him, and claimed his legal right to read them all through. One of them was the file of the Irish People for the whole term of its existence! Horror sat upon the faces of judges, jurymen, sheriffs, lawyers, turnkeys, and all, when the prisoner gravely informed them that as a compromise he would not insist upon reading the advertisements! The fight went on throughout the live-long day, till the usual hour of adjourn- -nient had come and gone, and the prisoner himself was feeling ^parched and weary and exhausted. Observing that the lights were being now renewed, and that their lordships appeared, satisfied to sit out the night, he anxiously inquired if the 272 NEW IRELAND. proceedings were not to be adjourned till morning. " Proceed', sir," was the stern reply of the judge, who knew that tho physical powers of the prisoner could not hold out much longer. " A regular Norbury ! " gasped O'Donovan. " It's like a '98 trial." " You had better proceed, sir, with propriety ," exclaimed the judge. " When do you propose stopping, my lord ? " again inquired the prisoner. " Proceed, sir," was the reiterated reply. O'Donovan could stand it no longer. He had been reading and speaking for eight hours and a half. With one final protest, he sat down, exclaiming that " English- law might now take its course." On the day following this remarkable scene Eossa was sentenced to penal servitude for life ; an excess of punishment over that assigned to his colleagues, arising out of the fact that he had been adjudged guilty on a like charge in 1858, and had then been released on bond of " good behaviour," and an under- taking to appear for sentence when called on. Many of the prisoners were military men, and to these trial by the civil tribunals was rigidly denied. The courts-martial had a grim sensation of their own ; for flogging was often portion, of the sentence inflicted; and that revolting spectacle, -which no one who has ever looked on it would willingly behold again, shocked the Dublin public from time to time. It was not the power and arms of the British Government alone that operated to disorganise and destroy the Fenian movement. Dissension and revolt amongst its leaders broke its- power. Before two years Stephens was the object of fierce denunciation from his own followers, and John O'Mahony was deposed and degraded by the Senate of the American Branch, over which he had so long presided. In each case the dethroned or impeached leaders had numerous partisans, so that the- unity of the organisation on each side of the Atlantic was at am end. Stephens, having remained a short time in France, after his- escape from Ireland, proceeded to America, and sought to bring the sundered sections of the brotherhood there under his own sole authority. But although in Ireland he was still believed in and obeyed implicitly as ever, already amongst the circles on the other side his pretensions and his abilities were being severely canvassed. He found but few willing to constitute- him a dictator, and this he would be or nothing. The more- resolute and influential Fenian party in the States discarded him altogether ; and, on the policy of " striking England where* INSURRECTION ! 273 they could," attempted the daring design of an invasion of Canada. This was of course utterly frustrated by the inter- ference of the American Government; and a loud outcry was raised by the Irish that they had been cheated by the Washington authorities. The promises or intimations held out when recruits were needed during the Civil "War were now found to be merely skilful lures to catch an ardent and soldierly race more full of courage than of wisdom. This Canadian failure was used by Stephens to the reproach of those who had declined his direction, and now he said he would show them the right road. He would return to Ireland and unfurl the flag of revolution. Once more lie emphatically declared for "this year." At a public meeting in Jones' Wood, New York, he reiterated the pledge, sealing his declaration with a solemn oath. This announcement, made in the autumn of 1866, plunged Ireland anew into the whirl of startling rumours and wild alarms. The insurrection, or attempted insurrection, of 1867 was one of those desperate and insensate proceedings into which men involved in a ruined cause sometimes madly plunge, rather than bow to the disgrace and dishonour of defeat without a blow. Stephens spent all the latter half of 1866 in endeavours to raise money in America for the newly promised rising. Again and again he announced that 1866 would not pass away without the, tocsin call to arms, and that he, James Stephens, would bo on Irish soil to perish or conquer. Sinister insinuations began to creep about that he would do nothing of what he vowed ; but these were silenced by announcements in November that he had left America and sailed for Ireland. Then indeed the Irish Government stood to arms. Then did alarm once more paralyse all minds. It seemed as if the worst reality would be less painful than this prolonged uncertainty and recurring panic. War steamers cruised around the island. Every harbour and landing-place was watched. Every fishing-boat was searched. Every passenger was scrutinised. Each morning people scanned the papers eagerly to learn if the Eebel Chief had yet been discovered. As the last week of 1866 approached, the public apprehension became almost unbearable. Until the great clock of the General Post Office had chimed midnight on the 31st of December, and Christ Church bells rang in the new year, the belief that an explosion was at hand could not be shaken. Stephens had not stirred from America. All this time ho was secreted in tho house of a friend in Brooklyn. He did not T 274: NEW IRELAND. venture on Irish soil either to conquer or to perish. Ho realised, the hopelessness of the attempt he had sworn to undertime, and preferred to face the rage and scorn of his followers rather than the perils that awaited him in Ireland. He had no ambition to occupy a cell beside Luby and Kickham in Millbank or Woking. In truth, the Irish Fenian Chief may be said at this point to have disappeared from the scene. Scorning to defend himself, he has ever since remained silent alike under blame and praise. Intolerant, unscrupulous, and relentless himself in his day of power, he has been the "victim of many a wrong and been pursued by many a hate in his fall. The absurd exaggeration of his abilities which once prevailed has been followed by a monstrously unjust depreciation of them. He was a born con- spirator ; and though comrades and subordinates have changed idolatry for execration, Stephens must be ranked as one of the ablest, most skilful, and most dangerous revolutionists of our time. The shouts of derision which arose over this Stephens fiasco cut like daggers to the hearts of the men in Ireland and America who clung with invincible tenacity to the fatal purpose of an armed struggle. At every check and reverse which befell the Fenian enterprise the English newspapers wrote confidently of its " collapse " and "termination." "The end of it" was announced and gravely written upon a score of times between 1865 and 18G8, and morals and lessons were preached from what was regarded as a past transaction. While a general chorus of felicitation was being raised in the press over this the " really final disappearance " of the Fenian spectre, the Government became aware, early in 1867, that " the men at home," discard- ing reliance ou American aid (beyond the assistance of the numerous military staff still concealed in the country), meant to strike at last. At a secret council of delegates held in Dublin, the 12th of of February was fixed on for a simultaneous rising; and word to this intent was sent throughout the island. A day or two previous to this date it was decided to postpone proceedings to the 5th of March. The countermand failed to reach in time the Fenian captain in command at Cahirciveen ; and on Wednesday, 13th of February, the news rang out that West Kerry was ftflame. From Killarney came word that the wires westward were all cut ; that a mounted policeman carrying despatches had been captured and shot; that coast-guard stations and police barracks had. been disarmed, and that the Irerah hills INSURRECTION! 275 "" swarmed " with men. Much of this was exaggeration ; but the worst was believed for the time. The gentry of the neighbour- hood flocked into Killarney, bringing their wives and children, -and many of them their plate, jewels, and otker valuables. They took possession of the railway hotel,, and, assisted by some einilitary and police, set about fortifying it. A stock of pro- visions was laid in. The ladies made bags which the gentlemen filled with sand and piled in the windows. Arms wore distri- buted, sentries posted, scouts sent out, and urgent appeals foi .aid were telegraphed to Dublin Castle. Meantime from Dublin, Cork, and Limerick military hastened to the place, as many as three express trains being despatched with troops from- the -Curragh camp within twenty-four hours of the alarm. What had really happened was that the Cahirciveen insurrectionary -contingent, unaware of the countermand that had reached all other places, marched out on the night of the 12th, to meet, as they believed, the forces from neighbouring districts. It Avas -only after they had approached Killarney that they discovered how the facts lay, and they forthwith dispersed as best they could. The district being so wild .and mountainous, and com- munication so difficult, it was a week before the Government .authorities could realise that all was over that.Iverah, as that portion of the county is called, was not in the possession of a powerful rebel force. Headed by the local gentry, parties of .military and police commenced the " surrounding " of mountains, ,-and the "beating" of woods supposed to conceal forces as numerous and desperate as those roused by the whistle of Roderick Vich Alpine Dhu. Ever and anon as a wild deer broke from his cover in the fern a shout would arise. " Here ihey are !" Bugles sounded ; the troops closed in for a dash at ; the enemy ; but found he was only the antlered lord of the glen ! Elsewhere, work much more serious had very nearly followed upon a like failure in the Fenian countermand. It was resolved that the circles of Lancashire should co- operate with the Dublin movement by a proceeding which for daring and audacity could hardly be. excelled. They had infor- mation that Chester Castle contained some 20,000 stand of arms, . besides accoutrements and aammuation to a large extent, and that the place had only a nominal garrison. A Eenian military ^council in Liverpool decided to attack Chester Castle, seize the ..arms, cut the telegraph wires, " impress " tbc railway rolliug- . stock, load trains with men and arms, and make ibr Holyhead. .Here they were to seize all the steamers in port, and speed for T 2 276 NEW IRELAND. Dublin, in the expectation of landing in that city before intelli- gence of their astounding feat could possibly have reached. Ireland ! It is now admitted that they would have succeeded, at all' events so far as capturing Chester Castle, were it not that at the secret council which sat to complete the arrangements there was' present John Joseph Corydon, one of Stephens's most trusted agents, high in the confidence of the conspirators and deep in the pay of the Government. Corydon carried the news of the projected attack on Chester to Major Gregg, Chief Constable of' Liverpool. It was subsequently alleged, but disputed, that nearly a whole day was lost by the authorities through their utter incredulity as to this sensational story. Certainly it was only within a few hours of the time fixed for the attack that its imminence was realized. By all the morning trains from Manchester, Bolton, Warrington, &c., numbers of able-bodied Irishmen were observed to arrive at Chester. They lounged care- lessly about in small parties, and seemed to be awaiting others. Suddenly the chief constable of Chester and the colonel of the military received telegrams which must have taken their breath away. The guards on the Castle were instantly doubled ; the police marched out; mounted expresses dashed off in all directions. Soon troops began to arrive from Birkeuhead as fast as special trains could bring them. Yery quickly the loitering groups were observed to disperse, on some whispered message- reaching them. They poured into every train returning to the towns they had left in the morning. They had got word that the plot was "blown upon" by some traitor, and must be abandoned. Some of them were observed to fling revolvers into the Dee. A large party took the train to Holyhead, and the North- wall boat to Dublin. The moment they touched Irish ground they were arrested and marched off to Kilmainham prison. Before our ipinds had recovered from the perplexity and con- fusion which these events created, we found ourselves in the midst of the long-threatened and gloomily apprehended "rising." On the night of Monday the 4th or morning of Tuesday tlie 5tli l>f March 1867, the Fenian circles took the field. Cork, Tipper- ary, Dublin, Louth, Limerick, Clare, and "Waterford alone re- sponded in any appreciable degree to the revolutionary summons. For two days previously it was little secret that the event was at hand. Young men took leave of friends ; clerks closed up their accounts, so that no imputation on their honesty might INSURRECTION! 277 arise ; and on the evening of Monday crowds of men between the ages of seventeen and fifty were noticed thronging the churches. The outbreak was crushed in its birth. The Govern- ment, through Corydon, knew of the most secret and important arrangements beforehand. The dismay and demoralisation .produced in the insurgent ranks by the clear signs and proofs thai some one high in position amongst them must be betraying ' everything did more than bullet or sword to disperse and quell the movement. The Limerick Junction station, on the Great Southern and Western Eailway, was recognised as a point oi considerable strategic importance ; and as it was in the heart oi the most disaffected district in Ireland Tipperary, Cork, and .Limerick it offered great advantages as the centre of operations in the south. Brigadier- General Massey was appointed to take command of the insurrection at this point. He had been .awaiting in Cork the signal for action. On the evening of the 4th of March he took his place in the up mail train and reached the junction about twelve o'clock. As he stepped out of the .railway carriage he found himself in the grasp of four detectives as many loaded revolvers being pointed at his head. He gave one hurried glance around, and saw that the platform was occupied by military under arms. Then this man who had faced death a hundred times amidst the carnage of the American civil war, ftll senseless in a swoon ! In a few moments he was hurried ofl to Dublin under a strong guard, the authorities being fully aware of the value of their capture.* This stroke practically disposed -of the south of Ireland. Ere morning the news had spread that the position on which the numerous local bodies were to converge was occupied by Government troops, horse, foot, and artillery ; worse still, that General Massey was a prisoner, and by this time filled a dungeon in Dublin Castle. The effect was what might be expected. Mustering groups broke up ; bodies on their way to the rendezvous turned back and sought home again. In ., "Kilmallock, county Limerick, a serious conflict took place. An armed band, numbering about two hundred men, took possession ,, t| * Great was the astonishment of every one when a few weeks subsequently < dt was told that General Massey had turned Queen's evidence. In a sens* he had ; but he was no spy who remained in ranks he meant to betray. His story is that, finding some one of five men who held the whole conspiracy .in their hands (he did not then know it was Corydon) was evidently betraying it, he, pondering the case in his cell, came to the conclusion that the sooner the whole business was burst up and stopped the less victim* -would there be. 278 NEW IRELAND. of the town, the police retreating to their barracks a strong- building, well able to stand a siege. While one party of the in- surgents kept up a brisk fire on the barracks, another proceeded through the town, and searching every house seized all the arms that could be found. A circumstance ever since remembered to their credit ia the locality deserves notice : There \rcre tw banks in the place, each containing a large sum of money in gold, errver, and notes ; yet although any guns or pistols on the 1 bank premises were brought away, not a penny of the money was touched. In fact, private property was most scrupulously respected, although the town was for n time completely in their hands.* About ten o'clock in the forenoon a party of armed constabulary from Kilfinane arrived unexpectedly on the rear of the assailants at the barrack, and quickly compelled them to fly- In this affray several lives were lost. The police, being under cover, escaped with scarcely any casitalty. The manager of one of the banks, who it was said drew a revolver on the rebel captain* was fired at and wounded by the latter. One of the insurgents who was lulled was utterly unknownin the neighbourhood ; and. the people subsequently raised over Ink grave " a stone without a name." This lamentable encounter at Krlmallock was persisted in notwithstanding the fact that news of the disaster at the junction had caused numbers of the insurgents to disperse. The truth is the arrest on the previous evening of Mr. W. fi- O'Sullivan (now senior member of Parliament for Limerick), one of the most popular men in that district, had caused strong indignation and excitement amongst the people. He was be- lieved to be unconnected with the Fenian society, and his arrest was regarded as an act of wanton and arbitrary severity. But for the exasperation arising out of this incident, it was thought by many Kilmallock might have been spared the painfully- prominent part it played in the " rising " of '67. In the metropolis the attempt at insurrection was an utter failure. From eight o'clock in the evening until an hour before midnight bodies of men, young and old, streamed out of the city by all its southern outlets. The residents along the several routes in many cases stood at the doors watching the throng go- by, and vainly asking what it was all about. Of course the police and the Government knew ; and such non-Fenian civilians as also happened to divine what was afoot marvelled greatly to * A sum of ten pounds found in a letter seized on a captured police orderly was " confiscated " ; the distinction being evidently drawn between* what they considered Government money an 1 private funds. IN SUll SECTION! 270 note that the police in no Tray interfered with the intending- insurgents. It afterwards transpired that SIT Hugh Rose,, coinmander-in-chief, gave the word to let all who would go out, and he would take wire how they got in. That is to say, he preferred to deal with the difficulty in the open, and not in the- streets of a crowded city. A phwe called Tallaght, about four or five miles due south of Dublin, and lying at the base of a chain of mountains stretching into "Wicklow, Kildare, and Carlow, was named as the rebel rendezvous, General Halpin being in command. The very simple expedient of preventing any assemblage at all of receiving the first comers with a deadly volley, and causing all others approaching to know that the gathering was already disastrously dispersed very effec- tually disposed of the insurgent plan. It was a most complete collapse. Not one fourth of the number who set out for the place ever reached Tallaght at all. Had they once got together, no doubt a severe struggle and a deplorable loss of life might have resulted. Happily only two men were killed, and a dozen or more wounded. A party marching from Kingstown captured the police barracks at Stepaside and Glencullen, disarming the policemen, but offering them no further harm. This band, like- all the others, on arriving near Tallaght, met fugitive groups announcing that all was over. By a little after midnight further attempt was universally abandoned. Of the two or three thousand men who had quitted Dublin in the evening hundreds were arrested on the canal bridges, whereby alone they could re-cnfor the city, while others, scattering through the hills, endeavouring to escape by way of Kildare or "Wick-low,, were pursued in all directions by the royal lancers and dragoons. In the neighbourhood of Cork city the rising attained to its. most formidable dimensions, if, indeed, it could have been said to be formidable even for a moment anywhere. At Midleton, Castlemartyr, Ballyknockane, and other places, the police barracks were attacked. In most cases the police, defending themselves with great courage against what for aught they knew might have been overwhelming forces, put their assailants to flight. In some instances, however, the insurgents were successful, and again it is to be noted that they used their brief hour of triumph humanely and honourably. At Bally- kuockane, where the celebrated Captain Mackay was in com- mand, they surrounded the barrack and demanded its surrender in the name of the Irish Republic. " The police fired," says a trustworthy account, " and the fire was returned. Then the in- 280 NEW IRELAND. surgents broke in the door and set fire to the lower part of the barrack. Still the police held out. 'Surrender!' cried the insurgents ; ' you want to commit suicide, but we don't want to commit mvrder.' One of the policemen then cried out that a little girl, his daughter, was inside, und asked if the attacking party would allow her to be passed out. Of course they would, gladly ; and the little girl was taken out of the window with all tenderness, and given up to her mother, who had chanced to be outside the barrack when the attack commenced. At this time a Catholic clergyman, the Bev. Mr. Neville, came on the spot. He asked the insurgent leader whether, if the police surrendered, any harm woiild be done to them. ' Here is my revolver,' said Captain Mackay ; ' let the contents of it be put through me if one of them should be injured.' " Tipperary was bound to be in the front if fighting was going on. General T. F. Burke was commander here. But in Tip- perary the story was the same as in Dublin, in Limerick, in Cork, and in Drogheda. The insurgents were utterly destitute of armament or equipment that could enable them for a moment to withstand' disciplined forces. Courage, fortitude, endurance, the hapless people indubitably displayed ; but as to preparation or resource, a more lunatic attempt at revolution the world never saw. I have so far attributed the easy quelling of this insurrection to the fact that the Government, through their spies, were virtually behind the scenes, and were able to anticipate and check every move of their foes. But it is a public fact, very singular in its nature, that the elements, in a large degree, con- tributed to this result a circumstance imiversally remarked upon at the time. On the evening of the 5th of March these set in all over Ireland a snowstorm for which there hns been no parallel since, and was none for half a century before For five days, with scarcely a moment's intermission, froi*. leaden skies the flakes came down, until in some places snow lay three and four feet deep. Eoads were impassable, and on the mountains a Siberian spectacle met the view. The troops on service suffered severely ; cavalry horses perished in numbers. But, after all, the troops had safe and comfortable barracks or billets to rest in at night ; whereas a guerilla war- fare, involving life on the unsheltered hill-side, was the main reliance of the insurgents. There was no attempting to cope with this fearful downpour, accompanied as it was by a piercing hurricane. Jubilant after-dinner citizens in Dublin, reclining INSURRECTION I 281 (before a blazing fire, rubbed their hands and recalled how .in the days of Philip's Armada and Hoche's expedition the heavens themselves fortunately seemed to fight on the side of England. News of the rising was flashed by Atlantic cable to America, .and as that wonderful wire never minimises a sensation, the American papers teemed with accounts unbridled in their ex- exaggeration and extravagance. Ireland was in arms ! Nearly the whole of the southern province was in the hands of the in- surgents ! The smoke of battle clouded every Irish hill ! The red cross of St. George still flew over Dublin Castle, but else- where, east and west, it was sorely pressed ! Notwithstanding the sickening disheartenment which previous Fenian attempts and failures had produced, the Irish millions in the States were filled with excitement and sympathy. Wise friends cried out to " Wait a week." A fortnight's later news toned down the telegraphic story a good deal ; still there were hearts bounding for the fray, beyond all possibility of restraint. On the 12th of April 18G7 there lay off Sandyhook a brigan- tine of about two hundred tons burden, loaded and ready tc put to sea. The freight she had received consisted of " pianos," "sewing-machines," and " wine in casks;" at least, piano-cases, sewing-machine cases, and wine-barrels filled her hold. The goods were all directed and consigned to a merchant firm MI Cuba. This was the good ship Jackndl, well known in the West India trade, and flying the Stars and Stripes at her main. On the date above mentioned a party of forty or fifty men, almost all of whom had been officers or privates in the American .army, got on board a small steamer at one of the New York wharves, and started as if for a trip down the bay. They carried no luggage whatever, and there was nothing about their movements to excite particular attention. They reached Sandy- hook, and rounded to under the stern of the Jackndl. The " excursionists " boarded her, and the steamer returned without them to New York. That night the Jacknell set sail, steering towards the West Indies. Her real destination was Ireland: "her errand to assist the insurrection. The piano-cases held no .pianos ; the barrels contained no wine ; but deftly packed in them were five thousand stand of arms, three pieces of field artillery, and two hundred thousand cartridges. The party consisted of General J. E. Kerrigan, Colonel S. E. Tresilian, Colonel John Warren, Colonel Nagle, Lieutenant Augustine E. Costello, Captain Kavanagh, and a number of others. Having 282 - NEW IRELAND. steered for twenty-four hours to the southward, they changed' their course and hooded for Ireland. On the 2'Jth of April,, being Easter Sunday, scaled orders were opened, commission;-:, were distributed, the Irish Sunburst * was hoisted and hailed with a salute from their three field-pieces, the vessel's name was changed to the Erin's Hvpe, and all on board kept high, festival. An astonishing enterprise it was truly, to set out across the Atlantic in this liUJc brigaatine for a hostile landing on the Irish coast, watched as it was at every point by cruisers on the sea, and coast-guard sentinels on shore! Their destina- was Sligo Bay, which they reached on the 20th of May. They stood on and off for a day or two, uutil they were boarded by an agent from their friends on shore. His account of the true state of affairs widely contrasted with the flaming telegrams of the New York Herald that had hurried them on this mission. A landing iu Sligo he told them was impossible, but they were, he said, to make an effort to get the arms and ammunition on shore somewhere on the southern coast. Meantime intelligence had reached the Government that a suspicious-looking craft was hovering off the western harbours. Quickly the Queenstown and Valentia gunboats were on the alert, and for a fortnight the Er tit's Hope had a perilous time of it running the gauntlet night, and day. By this time she had been sixty-two days at sea, and the stock of water and provisions on board was nearly exhausted.. There was nothing for it but to land the bulk of the party forth- with, and return to America with as many as the rations would support on the voyage. Off Helvick Head, near Dungarvan,. they hailed a fishing-boat, and when she came alongside some thirty of the party, to the fishermen's great surprise, jmii]>cd in. The JackntU turned to sea, and the boatmen rowed the strangers on shore. Their landing was observed by a coast-guard look- out ; messages were despatched to the police-stations around and ere many hours every man of the J^ckneH detachment w,-i.-: lodged in a prison. All that the Government really knew, how- ever, was that the proceeding was mysterious mid suspicious. The men were unarmed. The Helvick landing was as yet un- connected with the appearance of the vessd in Sligo Bay ; and. for weeks (during which time the prisoners wore carefully guarded in Kilmainhani prison) the whole subject occasioned the greatest perplexity in Dublin Castle. At length under skilful treatment the reticence of one of the captives gave way. He disclosed all to the Government, and at the ensuing; * The ancient Irish war-banner a goldun sunblaze on a crrecn standard. INS UJi SECTION ! 283 commission the whole of his companions stood indicted fox . treason-felony. Two important legal points were raised on the trials which ensued. Firstly, whether any hostile act had been committed > within British jurisdiction; secondly, whether American citizens of Irish birth would have their American status recognised, and be allowed a mixed jury. Colonel Warren, a native of Clonakilty, in Cork county, but a duly naturalised citizen of the United. States, was the first put on his trial. When the jiiry came to be empanelled, Mr. Heron, Q.C., produced the prisoner's naturalisa- tion papers, and claimed for him a jury mcdiatate linguas. The presiding judge fully realised the gravity of the point which he was about to decide: but the 'law as it then stood was clear;, no subject of the British Crown could divest himself of allegiance ; and so he ruled. An ordinary jury was sworn, whereupon : Prisoner. " As a citizen of the:United States I protest against being arraigned at this bar." The Chief Baron. " We cannot hoar any statement from you BOW ; your counsel will speak for you if necessary." Prisoner. " My citizenship is ignored, and I have instructed my counsel to withdraw. The Government of the United States has now become the principal." The prisoner's counsel withdrew, Colonel Warren refusing to make any defence. He was convicted, and on Saturday, IGth of November 1867, was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude. His youthful comrade, Lieutenant Augustine Costello, was next arraigned. He likewise was found guilty, and consigned to- twelve years of a similar punislunent. These proceedings led to one of the most important alterations of British law effected in our time. The ancient and funda-- naental maxim of perpetual allegiance had been resolutely held to and maintained by England through centuries. The American Government, on the other hand, though it had meanly abandoned Colonel Warren, found it indispensable to vindicate the position he had asserted on his trial. The whole fabric of American power stood upon that doctrine; and once more England and America were in utter conflict upon its application. Happily,, instead of resorting to the arbitrament of battle, as in 1812, the two Governments entered into active negotiations with a view to adjusting so serious a difficulty. The United States had nothing to change. It was for England to alter her law of" allegiance ; and so she did. In 1870, the Act 33 and 34 Viet. cap. 1'i, known (in Ireland, at least) as the "Warren and. .284 NEW IltELAND. -Costello Act," was passed through Parliament; and now a British-born subject may, by certain formalities, divest himself -of his birth-allegiance, and adopt another citizenship. With the close of the Jacknell trials we all fondly hoped there was an end of this sad and weary work of seizures and arrests, of outbreaks and alarms. A mournful disappointment awaited iUS. CHAPTER XXIV. THE SCAFFOLD AND THE CELL. "No incidents, probably, in the struggles of Irish disaffection within this century more deeply incensed the English people than two which occurred towards the close of 1867. These were the Manchester Rescue and the Clerkenwell Explosion. It is not astonishing that the latter outrage should leave behind a bitter memory.* The slaughter of innocent citizens ; little ones maimed and disfigured for life ; families decimated and homes ruined these are things no mind can calmly dwell upon. Yet there is no good end to be served by making the crime, at best atrocious, more hideous than truth warrants. Gross stiipidity on the part of a few miserable Irish labourers men Mindly ignorant of the full power and reach of a gunpowder explosion not design or thought of hurting life or limb, was accountable for that bloody scene. Had the man whose rescue was to be accomplished by " driving a hole through the boundary wall " been inside at the spot where his would-be liberators were told he was to be, he would have been blown into eternity. The consequences that resulted from their act the effect of that explosion on the neighbouring dwellings never once crossed * On the 13th of December 1867 a barrel containing gunpowder was exploded against the outer wall of Clerkenwell Prison, London, by Fenian sympathisers, with a view of driving a hole through the wall, inside which at that time a Fenian prisoner, named Burke, was expected to be 'exercising. The whole of the wall for sixty yards was blown in with a fearful crash. Some tenement houses on the opposite side of the street, inhabited by very poor people, were demolished ; twelve persons being filled and one hundred and twenty maimed or wounded. THE SCAFFOLD AND THE CELL. 28- the imaginations of the wretched perpetrators. Yet even when so much is said for truth and justice, the affair is one from which a sensitive mind recoils, and anything like excuse of which were almost criminal. The Manchester Eescue, howevel', thougk classed in the same category "the murder of Sergeant Brett," as it is called by most Englishmen was of a wholly different complexion. That" the life of Sergeant Brett was lost on that occasion is most true and most lamentable. That it was lost by misadventure, not sacrificed by design, those best qualified to know assert, and the Irish people fervently believe. That three lives were offered up on the scaffold to avenge that one, is a fact on public record. On the fall or deposition of James Stephens from the leader- ship of the Fenian party, his place was taken by Colonel Thomas J. Kelly. He it was who, after the arrests at Fairfield House, assumed the command of Fenian affairs in Ireland. He, moreover, planned, directed, and personally superintended the rescue of Stephensrfrom Richmond, and his subsequent escape to France. After the rising of March 1867, Kelly remained' some six months or more in Dublin, and towards the close of ' October crossed to Manchester^ to attend a council of the English " centres." Shortly before daybreak on the morning of the llth of September, policemen on duty in Oak Street, Manchester, noticed four men loitering suspiciously in the neighbourhood of a ready-made clothing shop. From expressions which they overheard, the police concluded that these men were bent on some illegal purpose, and attempted to arrest them. In the struggle which ensued two of the suspects escaped. The remaining two were brought next day before the magistrates, but nothing could be proved against them. They gave ther names of Williams and White respectively; said they were" American citizens, and claimed their discharge. The magistrate was about to sentence them, under the Vagrancy Act, to two or three days' imprisonment, when one of the detective force applied for a week's remand, as he suspected the prisoners might have some connection with Fenianism. The application was granted ; and ere nightfall it was known by the police that in " Williams " and " White " they held in their grasp Colonel' Kelly, the Fenian leader, and Captain Deasy, his assistant. The arrests caused great commotion amongst the Fenian circles of Manchester and surrounding towns. Secret councils were held, and, after much deliberation, the desperate resolve: was taken to intercept the van conveying the prisoners from the :286 NEW IRELAND. -court, to overpower the guard, and liberate the Fenian chiefs. On Wednesday, the 18th of September, the prisoners were again brought up, duly identified, as Kelly and Deasy, and once more remanded. Before they had left the court, telegrams reached : from Dublin Castle and the Home Office, London, warning the k Manchester authorities that a plot was on foot for the rescue ol the prisoners. The warning, if not derided, was doubted. The magistrates, however, knowing that these men had numerous adherents in Manchester, thought it might be wise to take some precautions. Kelly ana Deasy were liandcuffed and locked in separate compartments in the van ; and twelve policemen, instead of three, the usual guard, were ordered to accompany it. Five sat on the broad box-seat, two on the step behind, and fovu followed in a cab ; one, Sergeant Brett, sat within the van. The prisoners in the vehicle beside the two Fenian leaders were three women and a boy aged twelve. At half-past three the van drove off for the county jail at Salford, distant about two miles. Under the railway arch which spa^s Hyde Itoad at Bellevue a man darted into the middle of the road, raised a pistol, and shouted to the drivers to pull up. At the same moment a party of about thirty men, powerfully built, and armed with revolvers, sprang over the wall beside the road, surrounded the van, and seized the horses, one of which they shot. The police, being unarmed, made little resistance, and .speedily took to flight. The rescuers produced hatchets, hammers, and crowbars, with which they sought to hew 01 burst open the van. It was slower work than they imagined, And soon the police returned accompanied by a considerable crowd. Some twenty of the rescuing party formed a ring around the van, and with pistols pointed kept back the police- men and the crowd, over whose heads shots were fired from time to time, while the others continued their endeavours to force the van. They shouted to Brett, through a ventilator over the door, if he had the keys to give them up. He could not see what was taking place outside, but at the very first he divined the nature of the attack. With devoted fidelity and courage he refused to surrender the keys. Anxious to obtain a glimpse of the assailing party, he stooped and looked out through the keyhole. The voice of some one in command out- side almost at the same moment cried out, " Blow it open ; put .your pistol to the keyhole and blow it open! " The muzzle of a revolver was put to the keyhole, and the trigger pulled. Brett, anside, fell mortally wounded. The femaJo prisoners, screaming THE SCAFFOLD AND THE CELL. 287 aoudly, cried, " He's killed ! " and lifted him up. Again a voice at the ventilator was heard demanding the keys, which one of 'the women took from Brett's pocket and handed out. Then " a pale-faced young man " entered the van, unlocked the compart- ments in which Kelly and Deasy were secured, and brought them out. The rescued prisoners were hurried away across the fields by one or two attendants, the rescuers preventing pursuit. Not until their leaders were completely out of sight did they take thought of their own safety. Then they dispersed in all directions. They were pursued by the policemen and the crowd, which had now swelled considerably. Many of them were captured, and were severely beaten by their infuriate 'Captors. One of them, recognised as the young man who had .entered the van to liberate Kelly, and who was afterwards identified as William Philip Allen, was knocked down by a blow of a brick, then kicked and stoned while he lay on the ground. Several of tlio prisoners when brought into town were streaming with blood, from violence dome them in this way during or after capture. That evening Manchester was filled -with consternation. The story of the rescue, with many ex- aggerations, spread like wildfire. The people thronged the streets, discussing the alarming topic. The police, inflamed with passion and wounded in pride, burst in strong bodies upon the Irish quarters of the town, making wholesale arrests in a spirit of fury. The anger and panic of Manchester spread next jnorning through all broad Britain. The national pride was "wounded, the national safety invaded ; the national authority liad been bearded, defied, and for the rnomeiit defeated, by a handful of rebel Irish in the very heart of an English city. A roar Avent up from all the land for swift, condign, and ample punishment. One cannot greatly wonder now at what then took place in England. Panic and passion reigned supreme. Eumours of new plots and attacks still more daring and dangerous filled every city. Garrisons were strengthened ; prison guards were doubled ; special constables were sworn in. Manchester and the surrounding towns, well known to contain a large Irish population, were especially excited, and the Irish in those places had a hard time of it. In the midst of such a storm of anger, .alarm, and passion, a Special Commission was issued for the trial of the llcscue prisoners. \Ve in Ireland saw at once that this was doom for those men, innocent or guilty ; that a fair, calm, and dispassionate trial at such a moment was out of the NEW IRELAND. Heartrending appeals reached us from the families" of men absolutely innocent of any knowledge of the outrage, but who had been arrested by the police in the swoop on Irish homes which set in for days subsequently. Hope of justice there was little or none; for in the prevailing temper of the English mind "blood for blood" was the cry on all hands. Many circumstances corroborated these fears. When the pri- soners were brought before the magistrates for committal, on the 25th of October, they were put to the bar in irons. Such a. sight had not been seen in an English court of justice for many a year. Mr. Jones, as an Englishman, and as counsel for the prisoners, indignantly protested against it. The bench decided' that the handcuffs should be retained, and the audience burst into applause. Mr. Jones flung down his brief and quitted the- court ; the junior counsel for the accused, however, remained. On Monday the 28th of October, William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, Thomas Maguire, Michael O'Brien (alias Gould), and Edward Condon (alias Shore), were arraigned for the wilful murder of Sergeant Brett. That the men who really belonged to that rescuing party were legally guilty of construc- tive murder, no matter which one of them fired the shot by which Brett feH, is plain and clear to any one acquainted with the simplest principles of law. But the moral guilt, heavy enough in any case, would be very different if, instead of mis- chance, cold-blooded design had led to Brett's murder. The Crown alleged that he was deliberately aimed at and shot through the open ventilator over the van door. The principal if not the only evidence supporting this theory was that of a disrepvitable female thief who was in the van on the way to her third town of imprisonment for robbery. The solemn assertion of men who were present is that Brett was shot by the bullet which entered through the keyhole, as he was turning away after glancing at the scene outside. The evidence on the trial, especially as to identification, was of a wild' and reckless character, as the Government afterwards discovered. The five men were nevertheless found guilty. They were arraigned and tried together on the one indictment, and were convicted on the one trial, in the one verdict ; a point upon which much sub- sequently turned. They were, all five, sentenced to be hanged on the 23rd of November. Before sentence they each addressed the court. In calmer mood Englishmen themselves would own the force of the protests they raised against what they called' "the rotten evidence" and "the panic passion "of their trial. THE SCAFFOLD AND THE CELL. 289 They all deplored earnestly the death of Brett. Some of them vehemently denied that they were even present at the affray. "No man in this court," said Allen, "regrets the death of Sergeant Brett more than I do, and I positively say, in the presence of the Almighty and ever-living God, that I am inno- cent ay, as innocent as any man in this court. I don't say this for the sake of mercy: I want no mercy I'll have no mercy. I'll die, as many thousands have died, for the sake of their beloved land, and in defence of it." Maguire denounced the reckless swearing of the witnesses ; said he had served the Queen faithfully as a marine, was loyal to her still, and bore a high character from his commanding officer. Condon was the last to speak. He solemnly asseverated, as a dying man, that he was not even present at the rescue. "I do not accuse the jury," he said, "but I believe they were prejudiced. I don't accuse them of wilfully wishing to convict, but prejudice has induced them to convict when they otherwise would not have clone. We have been found guilty, and, as a matter of course, we accept our death. We are not afraid to die at least I am not." " Nor I," " Nor I," broke from the others all. He went on I only trust that those who are to be tried after us will have a fair trial, and that our blood will satisfy the craving which I understand exists. Yon will soon send us before God, and I am perfectly prepared to go. I hare nothing to regret, or to retract, or take back. 1 can only say, " GOD SATE IllELANIX" As he spoke these words, his companions, with one step, simultaneously advanced to the front of the dock, and lifting their faces and extending their hands upwards, cried out earnestly, "God save Ireland!" That exclamation has since been made a national watchword in Ireland. Before many days had followed the trial, a feeling began to be entertained in England that it was of dubious character, and that the correctness of the verdict was open to grave question. The newspaper reporters who had attended on behalf of the London and provincial press felt this so strongly as to Maguire, that they adopted the unusual course of sending to the Home Office a document declaring their deep conviction that the evidence and verdict were utterly wrong as regards him. After some days spent in inquiry, the Government admitted the truth of this startling impeachment, and pardoned Maguire. Friends of humanity and justice among the English people now took U 2 ( JO NEW IRELAND. courage and spoke out. They eaid that on evidence and a verdict thus confessed to be tainted and untenable, it would be monstrous to take human life. Let the prisoners, they said, be punished as heavily as may be, short of taking life, impossible to be restored if hereafter error be discovered. Soon news was published that Condon was reprieved pending further con- sideration. The general conviction now spread that a like announcement was at hand as to the others ; a result attributed to the exertions of courageous and philanthropic Englishmen in Manchester and London. In Ireland, where the whole pro- ceedings were followed with absorbing interest, a like conclusion was very widely entertained. Still it was evident that a powerful section of English public opinion demanded a sacrifice. The pardon of Maguire, the reprieve of Condon, were called lamentable exhibitions of weakness and vacillation. If dis- affection and assassination were not to have a triumph ; if life and property were to be protected, law and order asserted and avenged, these men must hang upon the gallows-tree. These views prevailed. In anticipation of the event at hand, the Government ordered large bodies of troops to the cities and towns throughout England where a dangerous Irish element was supposed to exist. Manchester, as was observed at the time, resembled a, place besieged. Special constables were enrolled in largo numbers, and military occupied all the positions deemed strategically important in and around the jail. Early on the evening of the 22nd, a crowd commenced to assemble outside the prison wall. Their couduet throughout the night was very bad ; several times the jail authorities caused them to be re- moved, as their shouts, yells, and songs of triumph disturbed the doomed men inside preparing for eternity. "Breakdown dances " were performed, and comic songs were varied with verses of ' God Save the Queen ' or ' Eule Britannia,' for the " Fenian murderers " inside to hear. The last evening of their lives happily was solaced by the receipt of a letter, couched in kindly and touching words, and enclosing 100 " for the families they would leave behind," from the Dowager Marchioness of Queensberry. " From the first," says a published account, " the prisoners exhibited a deep, fervid, religious spirit which could scarcely have been surpassed." In the cold grey morning of the 23rd of November, 1867, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were led out to die. Such n. con- course had never before attended a Manchester execution as THE SCAFFOLD AND THE CELL. 291 thronged around the jail. Long files of bayonets reached on all sides. A temporary platform ran some length at each end of the scaffold, but inside the prison wall, and was occupied by detachments of the 72nd Highlanders, who stooped behind the masonry, with the muzzles of the loaded rifles resting on the top. Even the savage crowd hushed for a moment at the death-bell's toll, and soon the condemned appeared. Allen came first. He was deadly pale, but walked with firm and steady tread. Next came Larkin, greatly overcome, and trembling with emotion. Last stepped forth O'Brien, whose firm and dignified bearing was the admiration of all who beheld him. Before he was placed upon the trap he moved to where his two comrades stood capped and pinioned, with fatal cord around each neck, and kissed them lovingly. They were greatly affected, and all three embraced one another tenderly. The bolt was drawn ; the three bodies fell, struggled convulsively for a few minutes, .and all was over. 'When on that Saturday morning the news was flashed to Ireland, " Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were hanged at eight o'clock in front of Salford jail," surprise, dismay, grief, and rago filled every breast. Men gasped, astounded, and asked could this dreadful tale be true. Others, more- violently moved, went about with flushed cheek and darkened brow, clenching their teeth in silent passion. Men who even up to this period had been more or less in conflict with Fenianism were overpowered by this blow. For what, they asked, was this deed in Manchester but an act of political vengeance, another cruel tragedy in the long struggle between Irish revolt and English power ? In the afternoon came fuller accounts of the execution, containing one sentence which stung the Irish people most keenly " The bodies of the three mwderern u-ere buried in quicklime in unconsecrattd ground within the jail." Murderers, indeed! Buried in quicklime!* Here was a stroke which went home; a barbed and poisoned arrow that pierced the heart of Ireland. This branding of their inanimate bodies with infamy, this denial of Christian burial in consecrated earth, wounded the most sensitive feelings of Irishmen. Next day, Sunday, the news reac-hed the provinces, and in hundreds of clrurchcs, at the morning mass, tho priest, his voice broken with emotion, asked the congregation to pray God's inercy on * Of course if the rescue was not a political incident, and if those men were mere rollers and murderers, this was the ordinary course. But to deny the exclusively political character ef the crime were absurd. if 2 202 NEW IRELAND. the souls of the three victims. The answer was a wail of grief, and many wept outright when the story of their execu- tion was told. I never knew Ireland to be more deeply moved by mingled feelings of grief and anger. It was not the death of the prisoners; although from what has been stated their execution was an utter surprise, and deemed a frightful severity. When men, arms in hand, attempt such a deed as Kelly's rescue, they must be prepared and content to abide the penalty, though, it be death itself. It was the conviction that these men, innocent or guilty, had not had a fair trial ; that the cause of Irish nationality was meant to be struck at and humiliated in their persons ; and above all, the attempt to class them as vulgar murderers, not political culprits, and to offer indignity to their remains, that led to the wondrous upheaval of Irish feeling which now startled the empire. All over Ireland announcements appeared that funeral pro- cessions commemorative of the " Manchester Martyrs " would be held. The selection of funeral displays rather than public meetings marked exactly the peculiar feature of the Manchester proceedings which it was intended to resent. Cork led the way by announcing a monster demonstration for the 1st of December ; and on that day most of the cities and towns in the south of Ireland witnessed the singular spectacle of " funerals " hearses, mourners, craped banners, and muffled drums -where there were no dead. The Sth of December was fixed for the metropolitan display, as well as for some twenty or thirty others throughout the island. John Martin hurried up to Dublin to lead the procession there. The O'Donoghue was announced to head the demonstration in Killarney. For the first time during years the distinction between Fenian and non-Fenian Nationalists seemed to disappear, and the national or popular element came unitedly and in full force to the front. The Dublin procession was a marvellous display. Tlie day was cold, wet, and gloomy; yet it was computed that a hundred and fifty thousand persons participated in the demonstration, sixty thousand of them marching in line over a route some three or four mile* in length. As the three hearses, bearing the names of the executed toen, passed through the streets, the multitudes that lined the way fell on their knees, every head was bared, and not a sound was heard save the solemn note* of the ' Dead March in Saul ' from the bands, or the sobs that burst occasionally from the crowd. At the cemetery gate the processionists formed into a rast assemblage, which was addressed by Mr. Martin in feeling THE SCAFFOLD AND THE CELL. 293 and forcible language, expressive' of the national sentiment OH. the Manchester execution. At the close, once more all heads were bared, a prayer was offered, and the mourning thousands peacefully sought their homes. The section of the press that had goaded the Government to extremities at Manchester, by demands for what they designated a policy of " vigour," now called loudly for the suppression of these funerals as "seditious demonstrations," nay, "rampant exhibitions of sympathy with murder." On the 12th of December, four days after the Dublin procession, a viceregal proclamation was issued declaring the funerals to be illegal, and calling on all magistrates and peace officers to suppress the same. Within two days summonses were issued against Mr. John Martin and other members of the Dublin funeral com- mittee. The accused were committed for trial at the Commission to open on the 10th of February 1868, bail being taken for their appearance. Twelve days subsequently a second stroke was dealt at the leaders of the demonstration ; and I, having marched at its head, arm-and-arm with Mr. Martin, found myself no\v called upon to take my place by his side in the dock. The Manchester scene called forth the stormiest passion and fiercest invective in the Irish national press. The execution was denounced as "judicial murder." " The jailor and the hangman " were declared to be " now the twin guardians of British rule in Ireland." My own journals were amongst the most violent in expression of the prevalent emotion. In poem, prose, and picture we held up the tragic deed as a crime, and called upon the Irish people to encounter the attempt to brand the victims as " murderers " with demonstrations of sorrow for their fate and admiration for their heroism. Towards the close *f December rumours went round that the work of the approaching commission was to be swelled, not alone by State trials for seditious funeral processions, but by press prosecutions also. In the interval between my committal and the opening of the commission business called me to Paris. One night while there I was roused out of bed by a telegram from Dublin, calling on me to start for home instantly, or a warrant would be issued for my arrest, on a prosecution against the Weekly News. Of this journal I was the proprietor, but not the editor. Strange t^ say, up to that moment I had not read what had been written in it on the subject of th executions, so engrossed was I, in the midst of the prevailing excitement, with the conduct of the Nation, the direction of which journal lay in my own hands. 294 NEW IRELAND. I hastened home, and arrived barely in time to present myself in conrt. I heard the articles read against me ; owned in my heart that they -were " pretty strong " ; but- so deeply did I feel upon that sad business that I -would have gone to the scaffold itself, if need were, rather than flinch, as the issue was now raised. Once again I was committed for trial ; and on the loth of February, surrendering to my bail, I stood at the bar in Green Street to answer to the Queen for my conduct as a journalist. The best exertions of the able and gifted gentlemen who acted as my counsel were of no avail. After a protracted trial, I was found guilty ; sentence being deferred pending the result of the second prosecution. On Thursday morning, the 20th of February 1868, "John Martin, Alexander M. Sullivan, James J. Lalor, and Thomas Bracken " stood at the bar arraigned for that they, " being malicious, seditious, and ill-disposed persons, and intending to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the realm," and so forth, did assemble seditiously. We joined in our challenges, and took trial together. Mr. Lalor and Mr. Bracken vrere defended by counsel ; the speech of Mr. Michael Groan for the former being an exceedingly able and conclusive argument against an attempt in one of the counts of the indictment to constitute the national emblem and colour of Ireland u " party " badge, and make the wearing of the green a crime. Mr. Martin and I, dispensing, on many grounds, with professional advocacy, had decided to speak for ourselves, and it was privately arranged between us that he should take precedence. "When, however, the evidence had closed, and the moment came for him to rise, his strength seemed to fail him ; he entreated me to take his place, and to give him until morning for rest and preparation. Of course I obeyed. His simplest wish was law to me. For years we had worked side by side in public life ; side by side in peril are now. With heavy heart I reflected that his feeble frame would never stand a second term of prison punishment. Yes, I would speak, and on that instant I To save his life, mayhap, the precious life of a friend I loved ; to defend my own character and vindicate my principles, I would fling all my soul into one supreme c*brt to move that jury with the justice of our cause. I rose, and for a moment or two stood silent, scarcely able to find utterance. I could not only feel but hear the throbbing of my heart. I painfully realised all tfce danger and responsibility of my position. The court was densely crowded. In the gallery beyond sat my wife, ray father, my brothers, and devoted friends not a lew who would gladly have THE SCAFFOLD AND THE CELL. 295 taken rny place to set me free. The judges, Mr. Justice Fitzgerald arid Mr. Raron Deasy, who had conducted my previous trial and this one with singular impartiality and judicial dignity, seemed io feel for my embarrassment, and extended to me all indulgence nnd consideration. At length I was well under weigh; and once fairly started I was perfectly at ease. After a while, inspired rather than deterred by the circumstances surrounding me, I struck boldly into an argument upon the whole ground covered by the issues raised in the prosecution. As I went on, night fell; the lamps were lighted. Outside the building a crowd, unable to obtain admittance, filled the street. Despite the efforts of the police neither angiy nor severe, poor fellows, to tell the truth the throng inside frequently burst into cheers, which the people outside repeated, knowing only that it was one of the traversers who was being applauded. I spoke without notes or assistance of any kind, my mind being full of the case. As I concluded, feeling very much like a man " shooting Niagara," I became aware that a great roar of cheering had broken forth; that scores of hands were grasping at and clutching me ; and that John Martin had his arms around me. I was borne outside, to receive a thousand felicitations, and to ihear from many a voice the prophecy, " No verdict" A true prophecy it proved to be. Next evening the trial closed. The jury were charged, and retired. An hour went by, jind another. Still they came not. At length they return to ask a question, the tenor of which is adverse to the Crown. The crowd wait till they retire, then break into cheers. By-and-by the jury are sev.t for. They " cannot agree," and are discharged. " Victory ! " cry the enthusiastic multitude in the streets, and the news is telegraphed all orer Ireland. Yes, it was victory ; but not rescue for me. Next morning I came to the bar to hear my sentence under the conviction for the press offence. Mr. .Justice Fitzgerald spoke it in words as full of considerate kindliness as on such an occasion well could be. At the close of a brief address, he said: I assure you that it is with j*reat, witli deep regret, that it becomes my duty to announce to you the sentence of the law. My learned colleague .and myself hare considered this case most aniiously. We have considered it with a vie\T that if \ve erred at all it should be on the side of leniency ; but notwithstanding, tha sentence must be such as will for a considerable time withdraw you from public life. I regret this the more when I recollect -that you have proved yourself in this court a man possessed of eminent ability ; an ability that I would much wish was exerted in the same way 296 XEW IRELAND. in another cause ; and not only that, hut I nm aware from the public prints that you have devoted your time, or at least a considerable portion of it, and the talents with which you are gifted, to the public service, to advance the cause of education, and promote the claims of charity. But notwith- standing, we have * duty to perform to the public for the repression of similar oll'ences. It is not my wish or desire to prolong this scene, which to me is extremely painful, nor to say one word that would give unnecessary offence ; but in the simplest language to announce to you the sentence or* the law. That sentence is that you be imprisoned for a period of six calendar months from the present time; and further that you at the end of thnt time give security, yourself in 500 and two sureties in 250 each, to be of good behaviour for a period of two years ; and in default of such security being given, that yon be further imprisoned for a second period of six calendar months. I was borne to the cell beneath the court, where I bade adieu to my family; and a few hours subsequently I entered the portals of Richmond as a prisoner. As a prisoner ! The jiidge, when sentencing me, had alluded in kindly spirit to some labours of mine in " the public service," as he expressed it. I had for some years taken ap active interest and somewhat of a prominent part in civic affairs; and any position of honour or trust which my fellow-citizens could well confer upon me they had not hesitated to bestow. Amongst the rest, I had been for some time past elected from year to year on the Board of Superintendence of the City Prisons ; so that I found myself about to fill a cell in a jail over which I had for some years been a ruling authority.* Not even while I was being weighed and measured, and having the colour of my eyes and hair duly entered in the register, did I greatly feel the- difference between this and one of my ordinary visits to the place. It was only when, later on, a moment came which the governor with great delicacy put off as long as possible when,, after " sauntering," as it were, to a cell upstairs, and having talked with me a good deal about prison affairs, as of old, he at last said, " Well, I must new say good-bye," aad turned into- the corridor, leaving me Mitnd when I heard the bang of the- heavy iron door that shut me in, and listened to the bolt of the lock shot through the reality of the situation seemed suddenly to burst upon me ! I gave one glance around the narrow space with its floor of stone, and window heavily barred. What T * On the eve of the election for 1868, as my trials were pending, I considered it proper to decline office for that year ; but when the period of my imprisonment was over I was elected to my former place, as l>sfore. THE SCAFFOLD AND THE CELL. 297 Was this only a dream a scene in an acted play or could it be, oh heaven! that to-night at Belficld Park my little child would call for me in rain ? My wife ! my parents ! I sat upoa the rude prison pallet, and felt for an instant as if my heart would break. Suddenly I sprang to my feet. " Hold ! " I exclaimed, almost aloud, " is this my fortitude ? How light is my lot, how trivial must my sufferings, mental or physical, be, compared with those borne by better men, whenever or wherever, in any age or clime, a struggle for national liberty is pressed ! " I felt almost ashamed of my momentary weakness, and resolved to accept with composure the penalty I had incurred. After all, as I avowed in my speech on the trial,* the man who enters into conflict with the civil power is bound to weigh the consequences. At that moment Mr. William Johnson of Ballykilbeg (now member of Parliament for Bel fast),. the intrepid leader of Ulster Oraugeism, was being carried to the county jail of Down to undergo a like punishment for defying an act of Parliament which he believed to be an infringement of con- stitutional liberty. Why should I complain ? He who strikes must not wail if he is struck in the combat. A recently pissed act of Parliament had abolished all distinc- tion between misdemeanant prisoners ; so that a public journalist convicted for political writings was classified for treatment with the vulgar herd of crime. This was a great outrage. In my case, however, everything short of violent illegality was done by the public authorities to mitigate such a cruel state of things. Every officer in the prison, from Captain Boyd, the governor, down to the youngest warder, strove by demonstrations of respect and kindliness to rob my imprisonment of all humilia- tion. I became aware that Lord Mayo, the Irish Secretary, evinced the liveliest personal interest in the efforts to avert from me the indignities and severities to which the classification otherwise would have subjected me. Nevertheless, it was a weary time ; a prolonged suffering. Cellular imprisonment, especially Tinder " the solitary system," as in my case, is torture to men of active habits and nervous temperament. For such men the cell of the " silent system " is the antechamber of the lunatic ward.f * " It is the first and most original condition of society, that a man shall subordinate his public acts to the welfare of the community, or at least acknowledge the right of those amongst xvhom his lot is cast to judge hiim on such an issue as this. Freely I acknowledge that right." ' f The rules forbade prisoners to " whistle or sing." Music was one f the gre.it charms of home for me, and I longed to hear some. I induced a 298 NEW IRELAND. On the morning of Sunday, the 31st of May 1868, Captain Boyd entered the day-room ; he held an open letter in his hand. " ' Hew beautiful are the feet of him that bringeth glad' tidings of good things!'" he exclaimed his face radiant with pleasure. " What is it, captain?" " The, order for your release " he replied. Oh, blessed liberty ! Oh, luxury ineffable of walking freely through green fields, and .listening to the song of birds ! Next day I re-entered the world. In those few months great changes had taken place. The "troubled rest and ceaseless fear " of the Fenian fever were all over. Great events had come upon the scene. A night of anguish and suffering was ended for Ireland. Daylight gleamed in the eastern skies. CHAPTER XXV. "DBLENDA EST CARTHAGO!" OVER the disestablishment of the Irish Protestant Church was fought the last great battle between the " Liberal " and " Con- servative " parties in Ireland ; their last, as the two combatants friend to smuggle in for me a little " musical box " ; at least I beeged it might be so small as not to be overheard outside my cell. Unfortunately, meaning to be Yery kind, he brought me a rather large 011$, and with a novel mode of stop. I set it to play. Horror of horrors ! It seemed as loud as Dan Godfrey's band ! I' tried to stop it. Ill Tain. In a few minutes I heard the \var-der approaching. "What was to be done ? I seized the mischievous thing, and thought to break it up. I rushed to my camp-bed, rolled the instrument in the bedclothes, as it went banging away at the 'Overture to William Tell.' The warder stoppud outside my cell door "Do row hear some music, sir ?" "Ahem ! yes that is, something like music." " It seems just outside the wall, sir. What on enrth can it be ?" " Oh, some confounded Italian organ-grinder is always in the neighbour- hood." " Bcdad, sir, I think, maybe, it's one of the city bands marching out to serenade you ! " I n*ver triiwl that musical box atar had in a few years created an impression which I once would have deemed impossible to be effected. That newspaper is gone ; but this I can affirm, that the men who laboured in its pages accomplished a service the magnitude of which was fully known only to those who were behind the scenes in Irish politics. They did not indeed wholly bridge over the chasm of hatred which gaped dark and wide between Ireland and Eng!ani; but they laid the foundations for a work which happier times may perhaps see honourably completed. From- " DELENDA EST CARTE A GO!" 303 the period of their efforts may be dated the beginning of those friendly relations between the Irish and English work ing class-as in some of the cities and towns of Great Britain which is notice- able in these later days, and which is so marked in contrast to the hostility of previous times. Facts within my own know- ledge and experience justify me in classing the influence of that short-lived English newspaper as one of the foremost agencies in a notable change of Irish feeling and opinion. There seemed many reasons why the Irish bishops and clergy should make some such movement as that to which they were urged. By this time even those amongst them who were most responsible for the destruction of the tenant-right organisation in 1852 had come to mourn that achievement as a lamentable and most disastrous error. Gladly would they now restore what they had then pulled down. But where now were they to iind a man whom they could trust, and whom the people would follow, as a national leader? Gavan Duffy was in exile, and George Henry Moore, refusing every compromise, had quitted politics for the time, angered, embittered, and implacable. One man of equal repute with these, though wanting their experience of parliamentary politics, there still remained : Mr. John B. Dillon. Iii the movements of 1843 and 1848, as mentioned in a previous chapter, Mr. Dllon had played a conspicuous part.* By friend and foe he was esteemed for his many noble qualities. In 1856, with the tacit assent of the Government, he returned from exile, and, utterly ^eschewing politics, resumed his pro- fessional avocations. It was only in 1863 he was induced by considerable persuasion to re-enter public life, so far as to allow himself to be elected to the Dublin Municipal Council. In the autumn of 1864 he was strongly pressed, and he eventually con- sented, to accept the leadership of such an Irish movement as has been above referred to ; one which would enjoy the patron- age of the Catholic bishops and receive the co-operation of the English Radicals. * In July 1848, at one of the secret councils of the Young Ireland chiefs almost the last they held before their ill-fated " rising" Dillon, grave, dignified, and thoughtful as usual, listened calmly te the debate. When it ame to his turn to speak he most strongly opposed a resort to arms under the circumstances ef the time. At this a feather-headed enthusiast of the party flared up wildly, and spoke of Dillon's soJber warning as "timorous shrinking." He was answered only by a sorrowful smile from the brave man who a week after was on the hill-side at Killenaule sword in hand (and for eight years subsequently was an eiile), while the braggart sub- sided at the first whisper of danger, and lay still till the storm blew over. 304 NEW IRELAND. The two Irishmen, however, who most largely contributed to the great purpose of Disestablishment were Mr. W. J. O'Neill Daunt of Kilcascan Castle, county Cork, and Sir John Gray, M.P., editor and proprietor of the Freeman's Journal, the leading daily organ of popular opinion in Ireland. Mr. Daunt indeed might be called the father of the movement in Ireland. For nearly half a century he had been associated in the great poli- tical efforts of the time, and was one of the most widely esteemed and respected of Irish popular leaders. At an early age he entered Irish politics, and while yet a young man became quite a prominent figure in the Eepeal Association. He devoted him- self to literature, and was the author of several novels, chiefly illustrative of Irish social and political life. From 1845 to 1860 he took little or no part in political affairs ; but in 1861 he commenced, almost single-handed, to arouse public opinion against the Irish State Church. He became an active corres- pondent of Mr. Carvell Williams, Secretary of the Liberation Society; and in conjunction with that gentleman, in a large degree, directed the course of the agitation from the beginning to the close. Sir John Gray, M.P., whose ' Irish Church Commission ' * may be said to have rendered Disestablishment inevitable, had filled a leading position and played an active part in Irish politics for more than thirty years previously. He was a Protestant in religion ; a Kepealer and Liberal in politics. He was one of the State prisoners (along with O'Connell) in 1844, and fought in the forefront of the Tenant League campaign from 1850 to 1856. To the Irish metropolis, over the civic affairs of which he virtually ruled for twenty years, he was a public benefactor. When he espoused a cause, he served it with all his heart. Immediately on his election for Kilkenny city in 18G5 he flung himself into the agitation for Disestablishment ; and assuredly never did public man devote himself with more inde- fatigable energy to a public question than he did at this important crisis to the cause of religious equality, f It was a hazardous experiment to attempt the renewal of par- liamentary agitation in Ireland at the time. The Fenian leaders * An exhaustive and exceedingly able series of reports on the history, position, revenues, organisation, and congregational strength of the Estab- lished Church in Ireland, which he issued frem time to time ia tke Freeman's Journal. f Sir John Gray died in 1876. His loss was heartily regretted by men of every class and party in Irish public life. "DELENDA EST CARTHAGO!" 305 had, as we have seen, proclaimed it a cardinal point of doctrine and practice that legal or constitutional efforts were " demoralis- ing," and mnst not be allowed. They had stormed platforms and dispersed meetings in assertion of this view. The Orange- men, too, had to be taken into account on this occasion. When it was announced that the new association was to be inaugurated at a public meeting convened by the Lord Mayor, threats came from the opposite poles of political passion ; and it seemed quite uncertain whether a Fenian riot or an Orange riot, or an Orange- Fenian riot, was to break up the demonstration. On the 28th of December 18G4 the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland held a special sitting to express their condemnation of the proposed meeting, and to denounce the conduct of the Lord Mayor in convening it. They flung in his face his oath of office as a Catholic, in which the following passage occurred : I do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present Church Establishment as settled by law within this realm ; and I do solemnly swear that I never will exercise any privilege to which I am or may become entitled to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant Government in the United Kingdom. From the other quarter, the Fenian camp, came the subjoined handbill, distributed in thousands through the city : No SURRENDER. Nationalists, An attempt at a revival of the slavish organisation that leaves you bondsmen and whining slaves to-day is about being tried on in Ireland once more by a clique of un-God-fearing (s*c), place-hunting, cowardly political agitators composed of rack-renting landlords, briefless barristers, anti-Irish bishops, parish priests, curates, and hireling, renegade, prejured press-men. Will you, 18,000 Dublin Nationalists, tolerate this West-British faction to demoralise your manhood again? Never! "Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry." Whether it was that the Orangemen trusted to the Fenians to do the work, while the Fenians relied on the Orangemen for the duty, was never clearly explained, but, strange to say, the meeting was held without let or hindrance, disorder or disturbance. The Most Rev. Dr. Culjen proposed the first resolution, declaring war a gainst the Establishment. The most important incident of the day, however, was the reading of the subjoined letter, which laid down the terms of the alliance that eventually led to the overthrow of the State Church in Ireland : MY DEAR LOUD MAYOR, Rochdale > Dec - 23 ' 1864 ' I have to thank your committee for their friendly invitation to their approaching meeting, although I shall not be able to avail myself of X 306 NE W III EL A ND. it. I am glad to see that an effort is to b made to force oiisome politico! adrance in your country. The objects you aim at are good, and I hope you may succeed. On tha question of landlord and tenant I think you should go farther and seek to do more. What ysu want iu Ireland is to break down the laws of primogeniture and ntuil, so that in course of time by a graduiil nnd just process the Irish people may become the possessor.- of the soil of Ireland. A legal security for tenants' improvements will be of great Talue, but the true remedy for your great grierance is to base the laws whitth affect the Ir.nd npon sound principles of political ecouomv. With regard to the State Church, that is an institution so evil and so odious under the circumstances of your country that it makes one almost hopeless of Irish freedom from it that Irishmen have borne it so long. The whole Liberal party in Great Britain will doubtless join with you in demanding the removal of a wrong which has no equal in the character of .1 national insult in any other civilised and Christian country in the world. If the- popular party in Ireland would adopt as its policy " Free Land and Free Church, "and would unite with th.3 popular party in England and Scotland for the advance of liberal measures, and especially for the promotion of an honest a-mendment of the representation, I am confident that great and beneficial changes might be made within a few years. We have on our. side numbers and opinion; but we want a more distinct policy and a better organisation; and these, I hope, to some extent, your meeting may supply- -Yours very truly, Jou;{ j^^ The terms which this letter so formally proposed were fully accepted by those to whom the offer was made. The National Association of Ireland adopted " Free Land and Free Church " as its policy. But only under the chastening influences of adversity were the parliamentary chiefs of English Liberalism brought to embrace it as theirs. It was only after they had been stripped of power and thrust from office, mid had borne the bitter- ness of many a defeat, that misfortune eventually led them ta discover in Disestablishment a way to victory, honour, and fame. The House of Commons had long been familiar with the Irish Church motion, which, in one shape or another, made its appear- ance from time to time. The English Nonconformists, under Mr. Miall or Mr. Dillwyn, aidtd by the Irish Catholic Liberals, had their occasional field-day on the subject. Up to 18G5 only a very languid interest was excited by these efforts ; and the- utmost that could be extracted from even the most friendly administration was an occasional civil word, or an oracitlar reference to what might perchance be possible in the paulo-post- future of British politics. On the 28th of March 1865, on a resolution offered by Mr. Dillwyn, there ensued a debate in the House of Commons, in the course of which appeared the iirsfc " DELENDA EST CARTHAGO I " 307 faint gleam of wliat was dawning on Mr. Gladstone's mind. The -Government, speaking through Sir George Grey, repelled the motion decisively enough, but Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, changed the " never " of previous years into a .significant " not yet." The Irish Church motion of I860, moved on the 10th of April by Sir John Gray, brought out the fact that the administration had taken a few paces forward on the subject. On this occasion the Government did not exactly oppose the motion, though they did not accede to it. Mr. Chichester Fortescue, the Irish Chief Secretary, improved somewhat upon Mr. Gladstone's " not yet" by wishing the cause of Disestablish- ment " God-speed." Two months later on in Juno I860 the Liberal party was not merely defeated but wrecked ; the Russell- Gladstone ministry, deserted and assailed by the reactionary Whig section of their followers (known throughout the incident as the " Adullamite Cave "), fell from power, and a Conservative administration, under Lord Derby as Premier, and Mr. Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer, assumed the seals of office. Meanwhile the Irish " National Association " was not a success. Although supported by a great array of episcopal power, it never in any marked degree attracted popular sympathy or support. 'Public feeling in Ireland was strongly in favour of the objects it had proposed; but the objection to fusing with the English Whig-Liberal party for any object seemed all but insuperable. Mr. Gladstone was no doubt favourably regarded ; but Mr. Lowe was more than mistrusted, while Earl Russell, as the author of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, was the object of downright hostility. There was, however, one man confessedly among English Liberals whom no one could call a Whig, and whom all admired for his sterling independence ; a man who stood almost alone among the leading English orators and statesmen of his time in this, that -when his voice was raised to denounce oppression and wrong, wherever prevailing, he did not shrink from including Ireland in the scope of his sympathies. That man was John Bright. In the summer of 1866 there occurred to Mr. J. B. Dillon the happy thought of entertaining Mr. Bright at a national bunquet in Dublin. On the 21st of August a formal and public invitation signed by twenty-three of the Irish members was forwarded to Mr. Bright, to which on the 1st of September he returned an answer accepting the proposed compliment. No other project -could have been devised which at the time would have rallied or reassembled to the same extent the hitherto divided and hostile -elements of Irish popular politics; .yet at first it seemed a 308 NEW ICELAND. hazardous experiment. Not without some doubts and misgivings were the circulars issued which convened a private conference to consider the matter at the Imperial Hotel in Dublin. The response, however, was more than encouraging. All sections of the Irish popular party cordially concurred in the proposal. In the course of thirty years' experience of Irish politics, I never knew anything to exceed the personal bitterness of language which the proposal ioftte John Bright called forth in the Irish Conservative journals. Not only was he the object of the fiercest invective, but a very palpable endeavour was made to excite against him personal violence. In the Government organs Lord Derby had come into office in June there was a continuous effort to set the Fenians at the Bright banquet, and induce them to break it up. To many of the committee this seemed no insignificant peril ; and their fears were increased a hundredfold by a lamentable event which for a time threatened to overwhelm the project. This was the death, after barely a few days' illness, of Mr. Dillon, the moving spirit of the whole proceeding. He* was known to have considerable influence with the Fenian party, or rather it was well known that most of the leaders and nearly all the " rank and file " of that party shared the feelings of respect and affection in which he was held by the bulk of his countrymen. He himself had not been free from uneasiness as to attempts at disturbance ; and now that he was gone the probabilities of such a misfortune were greatly increased. I did not share these apprehensions as regards any serious interference by Fenians ; but I did fully expect that, incited by the extreme ascendancy newspapers, persons of a different stamp would purchase tickets with a view so to condiict themselves at the banquet as to mar its effect and give the much-desired pretext for declaring it a failure. That some open insult or affront would ba offered to Mr. Bright by such emissaries, I as well as my colleagues on the committee felt quite convinced. Up to the decease of Mr. Dillon I had not taken any very special or prominent part in the preparations, but for many reasons I now undertook the chief responsibility for the arrangements within the banqiiet-room, on the sole condition that I should be joined by two friends whom I selected, and that we should be free to take such steps as we might deem requisite to maintain order. This l>eing settled, I took good care to diffuse in the proper quarters a notification that we intended to " make it hot " for disturbers, and that the man who entered the banquet-hall with purpose to insult our guest (as was but too plainly threatened in somo of the Tory DEL END A EST CARTE A GO!" 309 papers) must be prepared for all consequences. I drew a plan or diagram by which the room was to be seated, each chair numbered, and each table indicated by a coloured banner. We, moreover, had an alphabetical register kept of the name and address of every ticket-holder, with the number of his assigned seat. By this means we could tell in what exact spot a suspicious: visitor would be placed, and could arrange accordingly. Never was check-mate more complete. About a dozen intending ticket- purchasers turned away " disgusted " with this new fangled idea of having their names, addresses, and occupations registered on numbered seat. We knew these gentlemen well, and knew what they meant to do; but pretending to regard them as admirers of John Bright, we " confidentially " whispered to them the motive of our arrangement. They " changed their minds,'* and bought no tickets. The banquet was held 'on the 30th of October, and was a* success beyond all anticipation. It was the great event of the- year. No more splendid assemblage, none more influential or numerous, had gathered at a political dinner in Ireland within our generation. The chair, which would have been filled by our lamented friend Mr. Dillon, was occupied by The O'Donoghue, M.P., then at the zenith of his popularity. Mr. Bright received an ovation rarely equalled in warmth and enthusiasm. While he was speaking, amidst breathless silence, a voice suddenly interrupted with some rude observation. On any other occasion the incident might have passed unnoticed, but now the rumour of a " black bottle " scene * was in every one's mind, and the merest trifle was enough to create alarm. I knew by reference to the marked plan in my pocket that the interrupter was very unlikely to be present with evil intent, yet I feared what might occur if a panic set in. Two stewards remonstrated with him ; but he seemed beyond his own control. A second and a third time he shouted some incoherent observation, when, on a pre-arranged signal, four athletic stewards whi pped him bodily out of his seat, and bore him gently out of the room. The thing was done so swiftly, quietly, and smoothly that it * On the 14th of December 1822, on the occasion of the Marquis Wellesley, Lord Lieutenant, Tisiting the Theatre Royal, Dublin, an or- ganised disturbance on the part of the Orangemen took place, in resent- ment of his Excellency's sympathy with Catholic Emancipation. The affray is always referred t as the "black bottle" riot; a black bottle haying been Hung at the Yiceroy by an Orangeman in the top gallery. 310 NEW IRELAND. was all over in a few seconds. Then there burst forth a cheer so loud and long that one might have thought something of great importance had been accomplished. It meant that the assemblage realised how completely the threat of an anti-Bright disturbance nad collapsed in the face of a little energy and determination. With the fall of the Eussell-Gladstonc ministry in Juno 18G6 there set in a two-years' spell of such parliamentary confusion and vacillation as had not been known since Lord Melbourne's time. The Tory ministry were too weak to rule; the Liberal opposi- tion too feeble and too hopelessly disintegrated to displace them. In the House of Lords Lord 'Derby led a flowing majority, but in the Commons Mr. Disraeli had to deal with chaos come again. It was impossible to tell from day to day with anything like certainty in what lobby, with ministers or against them, a majority would be found voting. Kow it was one way, anon another. Amidst a state of circumstances so adverse the great question of Eeform worked its way to a remarkable conclusion. Mr. Disraeli would contend that he was the real friend of a popular franchise ; but it was with gloomy fears the Beformcrs saw him undertake to fondle what they declared he meant to strangle. He was, however, a facile foe. He adapted his policy to the peculiarities of the situation. He took defeats in a most Christian spirit, and became all things to all majorities. Even- tually, to his own great surprise (veiled under well-feigned satisfaction), he found himself the author of the most radical suffrage bill ever passed under the auspices of a British Cabin^. Throughout this period, from the summer of 18GG to the end of 1BG7, the English Liberal party in Parliament, rent by discord and weakened by defection, presented a pitiable spectacle. Mr. Gladstone at one time seemed about to retire in disgust from the leadership of the broken and dispirited array. In vain was an issue sought on which they might be rallied as of old in a compact body. On no domestic (English) question that could be devised or discerned was it found practicable to reunite them ; and what caused most dismay on the opposition benches was the conviction that were any such question to be discovered, Mr. Disraeli would not improbably " eut them out " by espousing it himself. The Tory leader who, in order to hold on by the Treasury bench, had passed a Household Suffrage Bill was not a man to stick at trifles. When the outlook seemed darkest, however, a light arose over the path of the Liberals, and it came from Ireland. " DELENDA EST CAR Til A 00!" 311 An incident, apparently trivial, in the council chamber of the Dublin Corporation a year or two before had brought about results which led right up to Disestablishment. On the threshold of the new movement in Ireland the extreme section of the Irish Conservative party resorted to a course of action which many of them subsequently bewailed as most un- wise and impolitic as the real beginning of their overthrew. Taking their cue from the manifesto of the Grand Lodge on the 28th of December 18G4, they sought to stop the Catholics by means of the odious " Catholic Oath." It was known that several prominent Catholic politicians, peers and commoners, had felt themselves precluded from joining in any Disestablish- ment agitation or debate by this clause in " the Catholic oaths." In the case of Catholics becoming members of a civic corporation there was this painful aggravation of the grievance, that Pro- iexiants were required to take no oath at, all, while Catholics, and Catholics alone, were, so to speak, put on their knees at the bar, and compelled to swear fealty to the Church Establishment. Many good and honourable men explained it away satisfactorily to their consciences ; but for my own part I felt that I could not subscribe to such an oath ; and when I was elected to a seat in the Municipal Council of Dublin in 1S62, I decided to refuse it. The penalty which I inc.urrad by such a course was a fine ot 500 and disqualification. I judged that one of two results would ensue from my refusal : either I should pass unsworn without challenge or interference, and all other Catholics sub- sequently elected would do the same, and the obnoxious law would become a dead letter ; or else I should be prosecuted, and the imposition of fine and punishment upon m would so arouse public opinion as to the insulting character of such tests that Parliament would assuredly sweep them away. On perfecting before Mr. Henry, town clerk, the statutory declaration as to my property qualification, that gentleman in- timated to me that there now remained for me only to " go- before a magistrate, take the oath, and sign the roll/'' " There is Alderman Bonsall just gone upstairs," said I ; " has Jie taken the oath ?" [I knew well he had not ; for the alderman was a leading Tory of a very Orange hue.] "Oh, he need not take it; he is not a Catholic," replied Mr. Henry. "Well, Mr. Town Clerk," I rejoined, "call upon me4o take the oath when Alderman Bonsall is sworn, brat not till then. If he is free, so must I be." 312 NEW IRELAND. T took my seat unsworn, and for some period \vas not molested. At length I was denounced to justice in the Daily Express for a violation of the statute in this case made and pro- vided ; and one morning as the council was about to assemble I was informed that the Lord Mayor had been officially called upon to give me into custody, or to take other requisite steps, if I spoke or voted as a councillor that day. The Lord Mayor was the Hon. John P. Verekcr, son of Lord Gort, a staunch Conservative, a man of broad and generous spirit. He called me aside and told me of the demand that had been made upon him. " Well, my lord, do your duty," I said, " and let not our personal friendship put you in any official difficulty on my account. I have measured the consequences of my course, and must face them." " Oh," he replied, " I have given the parties my answer." " And what is that ?" " That I have no official knowledge of your religious creed, having never examined you in the decrees of the Council of Trent, the Thirty-nine Articles, or the Westminster Confession of Faith." I heard no more just then of the threatened penalty or the unsworn oaths. On the 1st of January 18G6 the civic council were in the act of passing to Alderman MacSwiney, the outgoing Lord Mayor who had presided at the inaugural meeting of the National, Association, the customary vote of thanks on the close of his year of office, when a Conservative councillor, Mr. Pilkington, jumped suddenly to his feet, and objected to the vote, on the distinct ground that the outgoing dignitary had been false to his oath in respect of the Church by law established. This charge of public perjury against the man who had barely laid down the wand of office as chief magistrate of the city and perjury on such grounds ! flung the council into the wildest indignation. Of course the imputation was fiercely resented, scornfully repelled; but the Conservatives followed it up by reading the ipsissima verba of the oath relied upon to sustain their accusation. The vote was passed, but the Catholic and Liberal members vowed that the matter should nor rest there. Out of doors the effect was equally strong. A cry arose for the sweeping away of these offensive barriers Ix-itween citizens of different creeds. The municipal council itself formally com- menced an agitation against " Obnoxious Oaths." A special meeting was convened with great display to debate the question DISESTABLISHMENT. 313 By unanimous resolution it was ordered that a petition praying for the abolition of these invidious test declarations should bo presented at the bar of the House of Commons by the Lord Mayor in state. The other municipalities of Ireland caught the excitement. Deputatipns, addresses, petitions, resolutions, on the "Obnoxious Oaths," kept the public mind in a ferment. The ascendancy yoke that, as John Bright complained, seemed to have lain so lightly on Irish necks now grew intolerable. The opportunity that so long had been sought for and waited for had come at last. It was decided to break ground against the Church by an attack on the Test Oaths. The Grand Orange Lodge on that 28th of December 1864, and Mr. Pilldngton on the 1st of January 1866, had applied a torch to the pile they thought to defend ! Over the Catholic Oaths Bill from the session of 1866 to that of 1867, the great battle that was soon to corue in earnest was fought in miniature, and fought on ground the most favourable that could have been found for the attacking party. The oaths were manifestly indefensible. Mr. Disraeli saw it, felt it, virtually confessed it ; but every one knew that they were now assailed as the outposts of the Church, and so the abolition was doggedly resisted. In two sessions consecutively the Commons passed the measure ; as often did it fail in the House of Lords. Eighteen hundred and sixty-seven found the Establishment outposts intact, but the movement against them had served the purpose of the assailants as effectually as capture would have done. Events of considerable importance had, as we shall see, occurred meantime. All over the land " Delenda est Carthago " was the cry. The moment had arrived for the storming of the stronghold ! CHAPTER XXVL DISESTABLISHMENT. WHEN the first inevitable burst of indignation and anger called forth in England by the Fenian conspiracy had a little subsided, there began to dawn on the minds of the English people an idea that there must after all be " something rotten " in the state of Ireland. This was perplexing; because it was in utter con- 314 NEW IliELAND. tradiction to all that the authorities upon whom they most relied had told them about that country. They had been assured that whatever might have heen the case in the past, Ireland " now " had no cause of complaint ; she was loyal and contented, h.appy, wealthy, and prosperous, with pigs abounding and bullocks thriving. At no time were these assurances so frequently and so strongly indulged in as during the years immediately preceding the Fenian outbreak. " The land laws ? They are excellent ; ' tenant right ' means ' landlord wrong.' The Church ? No grievance at all ; this is a Protestant roilm, and Roman Catholic ascendancy is what the Irish priests are really after. Home legislation ? A cry for the moon ; we cannot break up the em- pire. Education ? The Irish have the schools we know to lie the best for them ; whereas they had none previously." Thus the story ran. If an honest Irishman had the temerity to hint a doubt of it dared to say there was any discontent, in Ireland, or any reason why there should be he was savagely set upon, called an incendiary, and denounced as a calumniator.* In the midst of such declarations came the Fenian conspiracy, with its sad and horrible incidents in Manchester and London. At first, of course, Englishmen thought only of vindicating the outraged majesty of the law ; but when it had been vindicated when the executioner had done his work, and the chain gangs at Portland and Chatham had been reinforced by political convicts, there began to creep through England a doubt that the news- papers and the viceroys and the chief secretaries could have been all right as to Ireland " now " having no cause of complaint. A * So late as the 23rd of May 1867 an Irish member (Mr. J. F. Maguire), haviug ventured to blame the existing state of things, was thus answered in the House of Commons by Mr. Roebuck, M.P. : "The honourable gentleman rushes into the whole subject of Irish grievances. Now, in the first place, I will make an admission: that up to 18:29 nothing could have been worse than the gorernment of Ireland. I will allow that. But from that time to this the House has been doing all it could to aJleviate the physical, the constitutional, and the moral injuries of Ireland. There hare, however, been obstacles, and among the chief of those is the language used by the IIOH. gentlemim (cheers). Can hon. members think that their poor uneducated, miserable countrymen in Ireland will sea the truth when they themselves, here in this House, and before the people of Kiigland, dare to say that we are unjust to Ireland ? Why, I say that a more foul calumny, a more gigantic falsehood, was never uttered." And this was within less than a year of llr. Gladstone's Disestablish- ment Resolutions! DISESTABLISHMENT. 315 serious doubt truly. The consoling array of pig statistics and green crop extension and fat stt>ck multiplication had been to English expectation as equivocal in prophecy as the witches' promise to the Thane of Fife. The better nature of Englishmen was touched and aroused by the spectacle opened to their contemplation in this lamentable Fenian business. They were much impreseed by the exhibition of such reckless fanaticism, mingled with patriotic self-iinmokv tiou. But more, much more, were they moved by the serious circumstance that the Irish multitude who had rejected, con- demned, or refused to join the Fenian scheme wero clearly none the less in moral revolt against the state of tilings around them.. All over Britain a murmur, soon to be a cry, arose that there' must be a cause for political symptoms so plain and terrible as these. When once 'the English nation, awaking to the existence- of an evil, exclaims that " Something must be done/' old wrongs and venerable anomalies, one and all, have need to tremble ; for the " something " that is done is often that only which happens to be nearest to hand, or is selected almost at haphazard. " What can we do for Ireland ? " was the question uttered in good faith and with just intent by thousands of Englishmen. " What are the grievances which we can remedy for our Irish fellow-subjects ? We cannot listen to their demands for national autonomy, but whatever else we do for them that will be for their good (or rather that we shall consider to be for their good), shall be done." -' ' * The growth of these ideas and feelings throughout England, long before it had reached this decisive stage, was noted 1 -y the leading members of the English Liberation Society. They saw a grand opportunity, and promptly turned it to account. They poured through the land invectives against the Irish Law Church. They said to Englishmen : " You desire to know what ails Ireland. Here it is. You desire to befriend Ireland, to end misgovern- ment and make reparation for the past ; you want to know what to do. Do this. Sweep away this cruel oppression, this fruitful- source of heartburning and strife. Abolish this hateful caste, this sectarian garrison, -which has only made Irishmen hate you when they might have learned to love you. Tell the Catholic- millions of Ireland that henceforth all creeds are equal in the- eye of the law, and, possessing religious equality, they will be- come happy nd contented citizens of the empire." To Englishmen in the mood 'of the time it was a thrice- weicome voice that spoke so opportunely and so well. Some no 316 NEW IK EL AND. doubt there were who did not like the Liberation Society or its designs in England ; but tft-is Disestablishment was to be over there in Ireland, not at their own doors. They cried aloud, " Let it be done." Less sagacious men than the Liberal leaders in England could .see what all these signs proclaimed. The time was ripe for a bold and great policy. On the Irish Church question the Con- servative leader durst not venture to compete with them. Here was the ground on which to engage and overthrow him. Here was a policy on which the Liberal party could be reconstructed -and endowed with new life and power. No " caves " would be formed, no mutinies attempted, on this line of march. The united Liberalism of England, Ireland, and Scotland would go forward with one heart and one mind on this issue. On the 7th of April 1867, Sir John Gray, following up his motion of the previous year, moved the House of Commons to declare that on the 27th insi it would resolve itself into a com- xnittee on the Irish Church. Even at this date Mr. Gladstone was hesitant, and supported the "previous question," with which ihe motion was encountered ; but, strange to say, he did not cast Ms vote on either side. Two months later the coming storm was sufficiently discerned, and the House of Lords determined upon the feeble expedient of a " royal commission." It was nioved for on the 21th of June 18C7, and appointed on the 30th of October following, Earl Stanhope being chairman. Between the summer of 1867 and the spring of 4868 the country passed through the sharpest crisis of the Fenian alarms; the Man- chester Eescue and executions, the attempt to seize Chester Castle, and the Irish risings, had one after another aroused ex- citement and panic. The state of Ireland between conspiracy and insurrection on the one hand, and suspension of all consti- tutional government on the other was a European scandal. On Tuesday the 10th of March 1868, a great debate which extended over four days was commenced in the House of Commons, on a motion by Mr. J. F. Maguire for a committee to consider th condition of that country. It was upon this occasion that Mr. ^Gladstone at length plunged across the Eubicon. On the fourth iay of the debate, the IGth of March 1868, he declared that th time had come when the Irish Church Establishment must fall. On his announcement that he would forthwith himself present the issue definitely to the House, both the resolution and amend- ment were withdrawn ; and on the 23rd of March he introduced his memorable " Resolutions." The debate formally opened on DISESTABLISHMENT. 317 the 30th of March, when ministers were overthrown, the motion to go into committee on the resolutions being carried by a vote of 331 to 270. The debate in the committee was prosecuted with equal vigour. It lasted over eleven nights, closing at 3 a.m. on the morning of the 1st of May 1808, when the first resolution was carried by a vote of 330 to 265. Four days afterwards Mr. Disraeli announced that ministers had tendered their resignation, but that the Queen wished them to retain office " until the state of public business would admit of a dissolution," which would accordingly take place in the autumn. It was a clever stroke to hold on to office throughout the dissolution ; all the advantages of official power, usually considered to be worth thirty votes in a general election, thus being secured. On the 7th of May the second and third of Mr. Gladstone's resolutions were carried in committee. On the IGth, just as they were being finally affirmed by the House, Lord Stanhope's commission of the previous year, which every- body seemed to have forgotten, appeared with their report on the Irish Church, recommending the abolition of half a dozen bishoprics, and sundry minor " reforms." It evoked a shout of derision. The time had passed for half-measures. Like the abdication of Louis Philippe in the revolution of February '48, the proposal was hailed with a cry of " Too late ! too late !" On the 13th of May Mr. Gladstone introduced the " Sus- pensory Bill," to prevent new interests being created pending Disestablishment. On the '22nd it was read by a vote of 312 to 258. It went triumphantly through the Commons, and was brought into the House of Lords on the 18th of June, where, after a debate of three days' duration, it was, on the 25th, rejected by a vote of 192 to 97. This was the last stroke of an expiring power ; an elmllition of puerile and impotent hostility. On the 31st of July 1868 Parliament was prorogued ; on the llth of November it was dissolved by proclamation, and ministers " appealed to the country." The interval between the passage of Mr. Gladstone's resolutions in May and the disso- lution in November had l>een devoted to the most strenuous preparations for the struggle. Already the Liberal party had begun to reap the fruits of their new policy. Already they had txchanged disunion for. unanimity, weakness for strength. Though office had been withheld from them, power was once more theirs. Once more they had, by sweeping majorities, defeated their opponents in the parliamentary lists. With a fierce energy they now prepared to overwhelm them at the hustings. 3-13 NEW IRELAND. The Irish Protestants stripped to the fight with great spirit,, although they must Lave felt that they were on the side of a lost cause. In Ulster, no doubt, their proceedings were dis- figured by characteristic bombast and threat. The line taken; by the Orangemen in that province was that the coronation oath forbade the Queen to allow Disestablishment, and that she- would be perjured if she signed the bill ; that it would be an overthrow of our Protestant constitution in Church and S.tate ; \ that " the men of Ulster," who had driven James II. from the throne for like attempts, were ready and determined as ever now in the game good cause. The Eev. Mr. Flanagan, chaplain in the Orange Society, addressing a vast concourse of his fellow-members, publicly warned all whom it might concern that " the men of Ulster " had ere now kicked a crown into the- Boyne. No one, however, attached any importance to all this. For a long time it has been accepted as the harmless traditional prerogative of " Ulster," as the Orange societies call themselves. to intimate to the British nation that it is on the qui viv, and that when Ulster is on the watch England may be easy in her mind ; that Ulster is and ever has teen the mainstay and pro- tector of the realm ; that it was Ulster and not England that made the glorious Bevolution; and that several hundreds of thousands of Ulstormen are always ready to march somewhere- against somebody, to uphold England as long as she behaves herself well and is true to the principles of 1690.* This, however, was only amongst a section of the Irish Church Protestants ; by no means the most influential section, though it certainly may be the noisiest. As a general rule, a grave and earnest spirit was displayed. No moro serious, no more ablo defence conld hare been made for any political institution than that which the Irish Conservatives put forth on behalf of their Church in 1868. Although as against the bulk of their own countrymen they had no case, against the British Parliament they certainly established one that "was unanswerable. Most Englishmen regarded and discussed their plea solely as it- affected the one issue just then befoi-e them, and never gave a thought further to it once that issue was decided by the passing of the Disestablishment Bill. But the arguments upon that * During the Crimean War of 1854 and the Indian Mutiny of 1857 they were appealed to in some Irish newspapers to send out a body of even two- r three thousand men a couple of regiments out of all these " hundreds- of thousands," but not a corporal's guard volunteered from the lodges. DISESTABLISHMENT. 319 ease the pamphlets, the speeches, the essays, the letters "were -destined to haye singular and important results not generally foreseen in England at the time. They led to subsequent events which, to the view of the ordinary English observer, appeared to be totally new ; quite independent of the question thus dis- posed of; but beneath the surface they were connected with it, and arose from it like the dip and crop of geological strata. That defence of the Irish Church was based mainly on the Act of Union. There were of course other grounds -plenty of them; but one by one they were evaeuated as untenable under the fire of argument, logic, and fact poured against them from the other side. Here alone the Church party were confessedly in a strong position. The fifth article of the Act of Union 'between England and Ir> 'and solemnly declared the main- tenance for ever of the Irish Church Establishment, or rather 1;he incorporation of that Establishment with the English as " the United Church of England and Ireland," to be a " funda- mental and essential " stipulation and condition. The English language could not more explicitly set forth a solemn and perpetual covenant between two parties than this article set forth the contract between the Episcopal Protestants of Ireland .and the Imperial Parliament.* By the Act of Union there were to be not two Establishments but one Establishment "the Established Church of England and Ireland " ; the then pre- viously existing Irish Establishment being merged and absorbed into this one, the maintenance of which for ever was thus stipulated. It was not open to an English minister to treat them now as two. Together as one they were to stand or fall or rather for ever to stand ; for as to falling, the Union was to fall too if the Establishment so guaranteed should ever fail to bo maintained. Of course there were many splendid efforts of argument and eloquence, as well as many learned disquisitions and much legal casuistry, forthcoming on the Liberal or Dis- establishment side, to show how Parliament could break the * " Article 5th. That the Churches of England and Ireland as now by law established be united into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be -called 'the United Church of England and Ireland,' and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and govea-nment of the said United Church shall be and shall remain in full force for ever as the same are HOW by law es- tablisked for the Church of England, and the continuance and preservation of the said United Church as the Established' Church of England and Ireland shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union." 320 NEW I It EL AND. pact thus relied upon ; but nothing could get over the explicit declaration that this stipulation was to be "fundamental and essential " to the Union. Once it was gone the Union was no more. The Church defenders admittedly had the best case; but Mr. Gladstone had the logic of big battalions on his side. It cannot be wondered at that all this flung the Irish Protestant mind back upon the period at which the Union compact was formed, and tended to raise the question whether Irish Protes- tants would not have fared better if they had not entered into that treaty, but had made terms with the Irish people. These thoughts and reflections found frequent utterance in the speeches of the Irish Church party, especially in protests addressed by them to England. " There are many of us," they said, " who, keeping faith with you as long as you kept it with us, have, on this account, accepted and acted on the theory that Ireland was merged by the Union. You teach us otherwise now. Do not complain hereafter if we act accordingly." Neither in Ireland nor in England was this latter intimation much believed in or attended to at the time. " They do not mean it," said the Irish Catholics. " It is but an idle menace," said the English Liberals. It was indeed an exciting time when, avowedly, on this one question the three kingdoms were summoned to the polls in the autumn of 18G8. In Ireland the days of 1829 seemed to have come again. All the feelings, passions, antagonisms of that era burst forth anew. There were but two parties in the island those who fought for Disestablishment and those who fought against it. All were for the moment either Liberals or Con- servatives. Even the Fenians who had spilled the blood of their own countrymen and fellow-Nationalists in putting down public meetings and forbidding any popular manifestations of a non-Separatist character fell into the ranks on the Liberal side, or else maintained a " benevolent neutrality." The Nation, on behalf of the Repeal or Constitutional-Nationalist party, though ever since 1852 maintaining an invincible opposition to "Whig-Liberalism, now formally proclaimed that in this great crisis every friend of civil and religious liberty must march shoulder to shoulder. The Liberals had not had such an auspicious time in Ireland for thirty years. One day, in the thick of the battle, the door of my room was rather violently pushed open, and a friend whom I knew to be actively engaged in the elections stepped hurriedly in. " I have something of the utmost urgency and importance to DISESTABLISHMENT. 321 put before you," he said. " You have it in your power now not alone to pay off the ascendancy men for their last base attempt against you, but you can furthermore strike a stunning blow for Disestablishment. Are you ready and willing? " As he eagerly put his question he gave me a slap on the shoulder, as much as to say, " Of course you are." The " base attempt " against me to which he alluded was a proceeding which gave rise to very heated feelings in Dublin, and which I must say incensed and embittered myself at the time. While in the previous month of May I lay fast bound under bolts and bars as a political prisoner in Eichmond, notice was publicly given of the intention of my fellow- members of the municipal council to nominate me as Lord Mayor for the ensuing year. Instantly on learning this fact, I declined, in the most positive manner, the honour thus proposed to be conferred upon me; which indeed could only have been meant as a demonstration of personal and public feeling in view of my imprisonment. I received, however, from the leading members of the Conservative party the kindliest assurances that if I wished to allow the nomination it would be unopposed by them ; would be, in fact, unanimous. That these declarations were given in good faith, that any compliment which I would accept and was in their power consistently to offer would be readily extended to me, was attested by their frank and generous conduct towards me at all times previously. Nevertheless, so fierce and high did party feeling run under the influence of the Disestablishment excitement, that in November an attempt was made, by order of the Conservative party managers, to invalidate my seat in the council, and to strike my name off the burgess roll, on the ground that I was for registration purposes " dead in law," or " resident " nowhere during my incarceration. A .eugthy legal argument decided the case in my favour ; but the txisort to such a proceeding, though it could hardly be called * a blow below the belt " in party warfare, had unquestionably a most bitter and exasperating influence on local feeling. "Now you can pay those fellows off," said my friend.' " In what way ?" " Will you stand for a seat?" "Pooh! I have answered that sort of question often enough within the past five years, and in two instances recently to your own knowledge. No, I will not." " But in this case you can do a lasting service to the cause ' t Y 322 NEW IRELAND. you will either carry the scat for yourself, or else save four others we may otherwise lose. Don't yon be writing in the Nation about the duty of exertion and sacrifice at this crisis, if you yoxir.<-:e1f will not do this." " But, even apart from personal disinclination, the Nation has never said that a hard-working journalist is bound to spend a thousand pounds for the honour and glory of rendering laborious service at \Yestminster. Men of ambition, men of fortune, or men with personal advantages in view, may do so. I will not." " I am instructed to place 1500 at jour disposal for your election expenses/' " And what seat do you Avast me to contest ? " " Dublim county." " Dublin fiddlesticks ! You are not serious ! " But he was. The state of the case as he put it was this : The Government (House of Commons) " wkip," Colonel Taylor, was member for Dublin county. He was the official chief of the Tory election campaigners. Deeming his own seat perfectly secure up to this time it was not menaced his hands were free, and he was making use of them in pushing attack or directing defence throughout the country. There were at least three or four of the boroughs in the provinces which the Liberals could carry if the Tory electioneering head centre could be called oft' to serious self-defence in Dublin, but " if not, not." No trivial nttack, no palpable feint, would suffice. The " villa-voters," us they are called, around the Irish metropolis are largely composed of middle-class Tory gentlemen, or petty gentry who own little properties r rent-charges, entitling them to vote in distant boroughs or counties. They like to reside near " the Coort," where, as Thackeray puts it, they may sometimes figure at " the Castle " and see " their sovereign," leastways, " his Excellency." It was discovered that if these friends of Church and State wer won by the Liberals. If, on the other hand, they left Dublin to its fate, and went to the country to vote, Colonel Taylor wouA. inevitably be ousted. The thing was very closely examined, and nicely calculated. The conclusion was obvious. Dublin county must be attacked in force. If carried, the victory would be of importance. If lost, four or five other seats would thereby bo gained. " But who supplies the 7 500 ?" I inquired. DISESTABLISHMENT. 323 " Ask no questions. I thick you ought to have confidence- in me that your principles or your honour will not be com- promised." " Not consciously, I am sure ; but if the funds are supplied by men of my own principles, what need of reticence ? If not, 1 have need to pause." " They are not men of your national politics ; but they are as ardent as you in this Disestablishment fight. They feel that you,, and you alone, can carry Dublin county at this moment." " On my own principles ?" " Certainly." I assented, subject to consultation with some friends. I after- wards found that 500 was to be supplied by a gentleman of very high position and character who had been a member of the late Euescll-Gladstoae Government ; and 1000 by a gentleman of whom I had never previously heard, but who was at that moment a Gladstone candidate in Louth county Mr. M. O'Eeilly Dease. I declined the proposition. " To-day," I said, " these gentlemen and I arc no doubt fighting side by si do, but to-morrow or next day I may find it to be my duty to differ with them or to- censure or oppose them or some one of them. Nay, if I carried the seat I might hare to vote against them in the House of Commons. I can't touch the affair. But I'll tell you what I'll do; let some one else be found to stand. I'll fling myself heartily into the fight on his behalf, and give to him all the- influence which you seem to think I could command, or the enthusiasm I might excite for myself in Dublin county." About three o'clock in the morning on the 17th of November I was roused out of bed by a violent ringing of the hall-door bell. I was the first to rush to the door, where I found Mr. Meado, solicitor and conducting agent of Mr. De^e, who had, he said, posted by car all the iray from the county Louth on important; and urgent business with me. I hurriedly dressed myself, and there, through hours that reached towards the dawn, we fought out the whole subject once more. My humility, never I suppose too great, was barely able to resist the "flattering tale" he- urged. The gentleman associated with Mr. Deaso in this matter, lie said, was, as I knew, qualified to speak for the whole of tiia Liberal party ; and never would this important service be for- gotten for me. He, Mr. Meado, was now authorised to say, in reference to my suggestion of selecting some one else, that for me alone would the money be forthcoming. If the advantages y 2 i-24 NEW IK EL AND. of this grand stroke were lost to the cause of religious equality, I alone would be reproached hereafter. There were but two days between us and the nomination. I had hardly ever felt so squeezed. Eventually I agreed that if some one of two gentlemen whom I undertook to name the Hon. Judge Little or Mr. P. P. MacSwiney did not consent to fight Colonel Taylor, I would do so myself. On the other hand, if either of them undertook to stand, the money was to be at their service as freely as it would have been at mine. We lost a day vainly trying to persuade Judge Little, and Mr. MacSwiney could give us no answer till he had consiilted his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin. As by this time it seemed I was " in for it," I sat down and wrote out my election address to the free and independent electors, so as to have it ready for publication. Mr. MacSwiney's final reply was to reach its at the Central Liberal Committee offices, St. Andrew's Street, before 10 p.m. 1 found the room crowded with the elite of the Irish Liberal party ; men usually amongst the gravest in sober commercial or professional circles were now as full of excitement as the youngest enthusiast. The coup in the county was the great topic. Mr. MacSwiney came in. He was rather disposed to stand, but he hesitated. There was, he pleaded, no time for the requisite arrangements or preparations. " What do you want ? " " I have not thought about a proposer or seconder." " Here are half a dozen in the room," said Mr. Heron. " There is no time to have friends at Kilmainham in the morning; and ' the show of hands' is a great deal." " Trust me for that," said Mr. Devitt " Then I have not my election address written, and it ought to be in the morning papers." " Here is one for you" said I, pulling my own out of my pocket and thrusting it into his hand. " I'd like to read it over, and submit it to a few " "Oh, nonsense, man; sign your name there, and let us instantly have the printers at work." He was good enough to say it was "just the thing." Anyhorr there was no time to compose anoWier; and on the election address so curiously supplied Dublin county election of 1868 was contested. Some of us did not get to bed at all that night, there much to be done in the few hours at our command. man, with a mysterious air, pulled on his top-coat and said he DISESTABLISHMENT. 325 Must go off to secure a_ sufficient attendance of " the nobility and gentry of our noble county " for the much-desired " show of hands." But I noted that it was to the unaristocratic locality of Eingsend that he drove for that p\irpose. I understood it all mext morning when I found myself addressing as " Gentlemen, electors of this great county," a court-house full of rather piratical-looking gentlemen in sou'- westers and guernsey jackets. 'Colonel Taylor drove up to the hustings at ten in the morning} .looking decidely fluttered. He had heard the news ; he had just read Mr. MacSwiney's address in the Freeman ; yet he ^would fain think it all a practical joke, merely an attempt to "" take a rise out of him." About a score of his friends, ladies .and gentlemen, in gala attire, came on the scene, to witness as -they thought the pleasing sight of a "walk-over." At first 'they were utterly unable to comprehend what they saw and heard on entering the court. When they gathered the astound- ing fact that a " Radical " candidate was about to be proposed there and then, their indignation was ungovernable. The Tory magnates waxed positively furious with rage. The assemblage of Mr. Devitt's " nobility and gentry " in the body of the court (the whole lot costing us three pounds ten and sixpence) was the most cruel stroke of all. They secured us not only the show of hands such hands ! but the shout of voices oh, what voices ! The fellows seemed to think we ought to give them the word to seize Colonel Taylor and his friends bodily and cast them into the mill-race close by. We made great display of " moderating " tlem, well knowing that the most maddening wound we could inflict on our haughty opponents was the idea of being beholden to us for a hearing on that hustings where for generations their class had ruled omnipotent. If anything was required to satisfy one of the absurdity of open nominations and hustings and " show of hands," it was supplied by that scene. Into the few days within which the county had to be polled ^the Liberals put the concentrated work and energy of their metropolitan forces. It was only on the day after the nomina- tion that the genuine Earnestness of the attempt was realised by the Church party. Then almost a panic prevailed, and " not a man can lie spared " was the watchword. This meant for us that our victory would be elsewhere ; and so it was. When on the polling day Colonel Taylor and Mr. Hamilton were going in triumphantly, they seemed to wonder why we were not crest- fallen, or rather why we seemed so jubilant. They did not know that we had in our pockets telegrams proclaiming that 326 NEW IRELAND. our diversion in Dublin county had saved or v,-on some half a dozen seats elsewhere for the ca,use of religious equality. In three weeks the battle was virtually over, and Mr. Disraeli hauled down his flag. On the 2nd of December he gave up the- seals, and Mr. Gladstone was called to office. On the 9feh the- new Cabinet was installed; on the next day Parliament open.'d. By the 2L)th the ministerial re-elections were over, and. an ad- journment took place to the 16th of February following. On the 1st of March 1869 Mr. Gladstone introduced the bill to disestablish the Irish Church. On the 18th the debate on the second reading commenced. It closed on the 23rd, when ministers were found to have the overwhelming majority of 118 votes, or 368 to 2-50. On the 31st of May the bill passed tlio third reading by a vote of 361 to 24-7. For a time there was intense anxiety and apprehension as to the probable action of fee House of Lords, in which it was well known there was a majority hostile to the measure, if only they dared to vote against it. Humours of conflict between the two- chambers, of a probable prorogation and " creation of peers," and other disquieting stories abounded. In Ireland we felt confident the lords would throw out the bill ; and we looked for serious results. A consciousness of the danger involved in such a course, however, brought wisdom to the peers. " July the Twelfth," as the Orangemen's ballad has it, they read the- bill a third and last time; and all was over. Disestablishment was an accomplished fact. Fuit Ilium. On the 26th of July 1869 the Irish Church Bill received the royal assent. Protests, solemn, earnest, passionate denuncia- tions loud and long and bitter burst from the vanquished defenders ; but their exclamations were drowned in the general rejoicing. The dissenting diurches gave praise that the day of subjection was at an end. A Triduum was celebrated in the Catholic Pro-Cathodral of Dublin. The municipal council of the Irish metropolis, with unusual formality and impressive- ness, voted an address of thanks and congratulation to Mr.. Gladstone.* Everywhere men realised that a great event almost a revolution had occurred. But few indeed saw at the moment that the indirect, or rather reflex, action and influence of that event was to effect the important changes which ensued. The overthrow of religious ascendancy in Ireland was a great * If I say that it faithfully expressed the enthusiastic feeling of the Irish, people at the time, I may perhaps be guWty of undue partiality, inasmuch as the framing of its terms was entirely committed to me, and my draft* was adopted by acclamation. LONGFORD. 3:% work; but another achievement came with it. For the first time in history the English People, were set a-thinking inquiring, reading, investigating, and reasoning upon the general Irish question. Previously they had turned away from the worry and heart-break of such a perplexing and vexatious study, and .gave a proxy to their Government to think for them and act for them in dealing with Ireland. What the Government told them, they accepted without inquiry; what the Government asked of them, they gave with alacrity. They thought it hard that they should always have to be doing something for Ireland, and always needing to punisli or repress her; but " the Government knew what was best." The Disestablishment campaign, however, filled England with genuine interest in Irish history ; and Englishmen that is, the bulk of the people awoke to the idea that the Irish wore not, perhaps, after all a wholly intractable and perverse race, nor wholly accountable for the failings and shortcomings they displayed. In shoi't, the Newspaper and the School had becni doing their work east as well as west of St. George's Sea ; and side by side with the New Ireland a iNew England also had arisen / CHAPTER XXVII. LONGFORD. .,,"-.. ;;'< :j !!<} i > 'uo*' fri ,;./ ( .i;n-6'Jt:;V{ THE Church was disestablished. England had "broken with Irish Protestantism." In the course of the great campaign we had heard what Irish Protestants in this event would do ; amd now all eyes were turned upon them. They had made a ixrnve but tmavailing fight, and if they now gave way to the language of mortification and resentment, they had, from their own point of view, many reasons for such feelings. Some of the Church -Conservative journals were very bitter. The pacification of Ireland, the banishment of disaffection, had been largely relied upon as an object and prophesied as a result of Disestablish- ment; and now the fondest hope of the exasperated Church party seemed to be that the ministerial arguments and expecta- tions in this respect might be utterly falsified. Every symptom of disorder or disturbance was hailed with delight. Anything like a revival of Fenianism would have been a god-send. As it was, every ebullition of disaffection or Nationalism that appeared 328 NEW IRELAND. was magnified and made the most of. The Fenians, to their amazement, found themselves referred to as " fine manly fellows," "more honest any day than that caitiff Gladstone."' The movement in favour of amnesty to the political prisoners, which sprung up about this time, was the chief consolation forthcoming. " Behold ! " cried the Express and Mail, " you- thought to tranquillise Ireland by sacrificing oar Church ; see how you have failed ! " Every denunciation hurled by amnesty speakers at the Government was gleefully reproduced. Every threatening letter posted on a bailiff's door was paraded. In fact, it seemed as if there was not a blackthorn flourished nor a> hen-roost robbed in all the lad that some Tory paper did not quote the awful fact as one of the " fruits of Disestablishment." Amidst all this unreason and absurdity of irritation, however, a serious growth of thought was silently working its way in the- minds of many Irish Protestants. The recent debates and arguments on the status and rights of the Irish Church had cast men back a good deal on the Union period wherein those rights were laid down under covenant. Necessarily the debates in the- Irish Parliament were read up. The speeches of Grattan and Plunket, and Saurin and Curran were constantly referred to. Irish Protestants felt a glow of pride as the reflection came- that these men were their co-religionists. "While the Church newspapers were noisily railing at Gladstone, and threatening England with an Ireland less satisfied than ever, a serious purpose was forming in the minds of men who contemplated the situation from a higher level than that of a mere party platform. It may be doubted that there ever was a time since 1800 when Irish Protestants as a body believed that Irish affairs could, be better understood and cared for in a London legislature- than in an Irish parliament. Concern for their rights, privileges,, and possessions as a minority in the midst of a dangerous Catholic majority, was the real reason why they supported the Union system. In that system, absorbed into the triple kingdom as a whole, they were a majority ; endowed with the strength, the status, the rights of a majority. The worst blunders or shortcomings of London legislation were better for them, and more acceptable, than the hazards to their religion and property^ involved in an Irish parliament returned and dominated by "the priests." Were they but reasonably assured against separation from the empire, against confiscation of their properties, and against "the yoke of Borne," they would be found almost to a man demanding the restoration of the- LONGFORD. 329 national legislature in College Green. Ah, if these Irish millions were not so blindly led by their priests in politics, what a movement might now be possible ; but no man durst trust himself to a parliament elected by fanatics who would vote black white at the bidding of their clergy ! Such were the thoughts surging through the minds of many Irish Protestants in the autumn of 1869. Suddenly a remarkable event challenged their wonder, and enabled them to realise the fact that they lived no longer in the Ireland of old times. In December 1869, Mr. Gladstone raised to the peerage Colonel Fulke Greville-Nugent, of Clonyn, county Westmeath, member of Parliament for Longford county. Colonel Greville- Nugent was much respected as a landlord, and as a Liberal in politics had discharged his public duties fairly and honourably. For thirty years Longford was a seat which, to put it plainly, was in the gift of the Catholic clergy. They had in fierce struggle wrested it from the Conservative landlords in O'Connell's time, and firmly held it ever since. They almost invariably fought along with and for the Liberal landlords ; but that they could beat these as well as the Tory magnates they proved in 1862, when they rejected Colonel White (now Lord Annaly), a long-time friend and leading Liberal, because he accepted office under Lord Palmerston. They entertained the warmest regard for Colonel Greville-Nugent a Protestant, it may be noted; and it is said that before he accepted the coronet he was privately assured in their name that, as a token of their feelings towards him, his seat for the county would be passed to any member of his family he might name. He selected one of his younger sons, Captain Beginald Greville-Nugent, to succeed liim. It never once occurred to the new peer nor to the Catholic clergy that this mode of giving away parliamentary seats, though at one time not only possible but customary in Ireland, belonged to an order of things that had silently passed away. Shortly before one of the most remarkable elections on record had taken place in Tipperary. In the summer of 1869 the agitation for an amnesty to the Fenian prisoners had, from a very modest l>egmning, attained to formidable power. Monster meetings, very nearly as vast of those which O'Connell addressed & quarter of a century before, now assembled to hear Mr. Butt plead in earnest tones for the men who had loved Ireland " not wisely but too well." When in the autumn news came that Government had formally refused the appeal for clemency, there was considerable exasperation. A touch of their former violence 330 NE W I EEL A ND. and intolerance seemed to return to the Fenians; for, making' ungrateful requital of the popular sympathy they had received,. they invaded and broke up several tenant-right meetings,, refusing to allow any such demonstrations, seeing that those for the prisoners had been- fruitless ! At this juncture a vacancy was created in the representation of Tipperary by the death of Mr. Charles Moore of Mooresforfc. There was S'>me perplexity and delay in selecting a popular or Liberal candidate ; and at length Mr. Denis Caulfield Heron, Q.C., was invited, and consented to stand. Almost at the last moment some one suggested that it would bs a very effective rejoinder to the- refusal of amnesty if one of the prisoners were elected to the- vacant scat ! This was just the sort of proceeding calculated to- strike the fancy of Tipperary. Although at first the proposition vras treated more as a joke than a reality, it was taken up seriously by the "advanced Nationalists" in the county; and O'Donovan Eossa, as the most defiant of " the men in jail," was chosen to be the candidate. The Catholic clergy tvied to dissuade the people from what they considered a fruitless and absurd proceeding ; but to vote against Eossa seemed like a stroke at amnesty, and the bulk of the electors decided to abstain or else cast a voice for " the prisoner-candidate." Out of twelve thousand on the register only about two thousand came to the poll ; but of these a decided majority 1051 to 898 voted for Rossa. Within a few days of the Tipperary Eossa election came the Longford vacancy. There were rumours that in Longford ffoe example of Tipperary would be followed; and as a matter of fact it was for a moment contemplated by the friends of the- prisoners to put forward Thomas Clarke Luby as candidate. Men supposed to lc especi-ally acquainted with popular feeling in Longford were consulted, and they emphatically declared that while sympathy fov amnesty "was strong, anything like a, Fenian demonstration would be entirely opposed to the general sentiment. It would be violently resisted by the Catholic clergy,, and be regretted or condemned by non-Fenian Nationalists.. To a young gentleman of Longford town, Mr. James Behan. Murtagh, a member of an extensive and wealthy manufacturing ; firm in the west of Ireland, this decision, and all the important results that followed upon it, were most largely due. He was- widely popular in the county. Whether as a member of the- county cricket club, bat in hand, or at a hurling match with' the peasantry, or twirling a blackthorn in a " little misunder- standing "at fair or market, he was equally at home. He took- LONGFORD. 331 strong ground against any course that would inevitably challenge a conflict with tlie clergy ; but was decidedly for unfurling the National flag. Why not, he asked, give up this idea of running a Fenian prisoner, and put forward a National candidate around whom all might rally in the name of Ireland ? Why mot start John Martin? The esteem in which he was generally held, his pure and unsullied character, has sufferings and sacrifices, marked him out as a man by whose side patriotic Irishmen, priests and laymen, would readily stand. The fact of Mr. Martin's absence in America at the moment, Mr. Mnrtagh pointed out, would but make the compliment to him more striking and the political event more significant. The suggestion was accepted. The idea of proposing a Fenian prisoner was relinquished. The men of Longford undertook to propose Mr. Martin,; the extreme party not only acquiescing "but promising to work for him as heartily as for a man of iheir own. The proceedings had reacted this stage before I was .made aware of them. One morning in the first week of December 1809, 1 received a hurried despatch from J. B. Muiiagh " John Martin is to be our man. We announce you, as his most trusted friend, to appear on his behalf. Help us all you can. Come down at ouce." Next post came a letter to say they were about to wait upon the Catholic clergy, whose best wishes they were sanguine of securing. Their astonishment was great on learn- ing that these reverend gentlemen had some idea of putting forward young Mr. Grevdlle^Nugent. The fact that they were virtually pledged to him had promised him the seat did not come out for a few days subsequently. Here arose a singular complication, a conflict that was eventually carried to the bitterest extremes. It is very likely that had the clergy thought any considerable section of the laity desired the return of John Martin, they would have hesitated some of them would 'before .they involved themselves in tho complimentary bestowal of the ;seat on Mr. Nugent. It is more than probable that had the National party known at first how far the clergy were really committed to Mr. Nugent, they would have " thought three times " before they < raised a contest, incensed as they might feel at such a proceeding. Which side was now to give way* *' Oh," said the Nationalists, " on the public announcement of .John Martin's candidature the opinion of the country will so unmistakably manifest itself, that the monstrous idea of pitting an unknown youth against him will be abandoned." " Oh,'* said the priests, " we are the depositories of power. The seat is 332 XEW lit EL AND. in our hands. The moment -we put forward our man, the- hopelessness of opposing him will be so patent that the others will retire." I saw what was likely to arise out of this difficulty, and I made great exertions to compose it. Not that I could be for a moment indifferent between the two candidates ; but I hoped that by temperately putting before the clergy the serious issues involved, they would either withdraw Mr. Nugent, or, in a. friendly spirit, let the people poll for John Martin if so minded.* Unfortunately they took a high and haughty tone. For sufficient- reasons they had selected Mr. Nugent, and they would put down any attempt to thwart their action. This Martin candi- dature, they said, was " Fenianism," and they would crush it under foot. The priests of Longford would show their power. " But even suppose you vote for your man, and support him. fairly, you surely do not mean that we who love and revere John Martin, and wish to see this honour conferred on him,, are not free to push his candidature ? " " "We will let you see that," said the clergy. Here in the face of the empire was an issue raised the- importance of which to Ireland was serious. Here was the- critical moment to verify or refute the story that Irish Catholics would blindly vote at the priests' dictation. No one raised any question as to the public and personal merits of the two- candidates. The idea of weighing young Mr. Greville-Nugent against John Martin was too absurd, and it was not attempted on either side. The whole case was narrowed to the one point accepting Mr. Greville-Nugent because the priests had so determined it ; rejecting John Martin at the bidding of the- Longford clergy. " Fight, fight ! " I cried, when the answer of haughty defiance- was reported to me. " It will be a war as cruel as one between, father and son, brother and brother ; but we must fight to the last gasp. No retreat, no compromise now. These men do not see that surrender on our part would corroborate one of the most fatal imputations against them and against us, namely, that we woiild ' vote black white ' at their bidding. If we yield on this point, what Protestant Irishman can trust us as fellow- citizens? If we poll but a dozen men, we must meet this issue foot to foot. It is not now so much a question of returning John Martin, as of asserting an important public principle." * This latter course was adopted with the best results by the Catholicr clergy of Meath in an almost identical difficulty some time afterwards. , LONGFORD. 333 It was with a good deal of incredulity that Protestants watched the early stages of this Longford business. That it would end in the submission of the National party to the clergy they quite concluded. That the people would persevere ; that the Catholic laity would, for an Ulster Presbyterian candidate, dare to en- counter their own clergy on the hustings and in the polling- booth, was something too improbable to be seriously dwelt upon. Had not the Catholic priests for thirty years been virtually the returning officers of Irish Liberal constituencies ? The Catholic gentry had no doubt occasionally disputed supremacy with them ; but when had the rank and file of the electors themselves ever claimed the right to independent action ? Was it not an accepted custom in Irish politics that the priests selected the candidate, and the people voted at their bidding ? One section of the community, beyond all others, fastened on Longford an eager gaze ; watched every move of this singular event with breathless anxiety. It was to bo for them the solution of a critical problem; the decision of a momentous, question. Irish Protestants, whom recent events had so power- fully affected, had been brought as it were to the very threshold of National opinions, looked on amazed and expectant. Could it be that their terror of " priestly dictation " was about to be dispelled ? Could it be that on a purely political issue Catholics would claim and assert, even against their own clergy, an inde- pendence of action which Protestants themselves could roi exceed? If this were so, an important political combination was near at hand. It was so. Neither the Irish Protestants nor the Longford Catholic clergy were fully conscious of the change from the Ireland of 1840 to the Ireland of 1870. The quarrels of long-time friends are often the most bitter of all. This contest between priest and people was fought with a fierceness which surpassed the struggles between Tory land- lordism and popular power. The clergy put forth their utmost exertions ; and they earned with them the bulk of the rural electors. The Catholic Liberals amongst the gentry of course were with Lord Greville to a man. The local Conservatives, perplexed and half incredulous, were neutral, or else supported the Martin side. Some of them took this latter course to spite the priests and Mr. Gladstone ; many did so from sincere and honourable sympathy with the principles of tolerance and civil liberty which in their judgment underlay the conflict. ' I had been all my life on the side of the Catholic clergy. On 334 NEW IRELAND. nearly every public issue in Irish politics till now I had fought where they led. I was " Ultramontane " in the most extivmo application of that term. I honoured and admired the spirit in which on the whole the Catholic priests had exercised the poli- tical leadership or influence which historical circurr stances had placed in their hands. I had resisted, and would ever resist, attempts to exclude them from political action, or to deny their right to be largely deferred to in public affairs. All I hoped from the Longford clergy now was that they would, on the question of John Martin or Reginald Greville-Xugent, grant us the right to differ. My hope was rudely dispelled. I had the pleasure of hearing myself denounced by them as a " Gari- baklian," an " Orangeman." Of course to none but the most ignorant of the population could such stories be told ; and these, poor fellows, their feelings intensely aroused by the idea of "Dublin Orangemen" coming to "attack" their clergy, burst upon the Martin meetings in savage fury. " Away with the Garibaldian crew who want to murder our clergy! Greville for ever ! " The mobs were not all on one side ; nor was all the violence of language and action. The county from end to end wars the scene of disorder and conflict. The people, however, seemed TO take to it rather familiarly. Work was suspended. Blackthorns jancl shillelaghs were in request. Sticking-plaster was exten- sively worn. It was hazardous to walk street or highway at night, as some patrolling party was sure to be encountered, who sang out " Greville ? " or " Martin ? " If the wayfarer responded sympathetically, all was well. If not, a scientific touch on the cranium laid him recumbent to study the pending political issues. My brother informed me that he found "committee rooms" were places where piles of "weapons" wore kept for defensive and offensive operations. One night he arrived at the village of Ballymahon, to meet the " committee " and go over the registry. The " committee" had all, evidently, been through the surgery. They discussed whisky punch, and told of some "beautiful practice '' they had seen on the part of a few "Eath- clinc boys : ' a day or two previously. Suddenly there was a quick and heavy tramping on the stairs. The door of the room was burst open, and young John Murtagh rushed in. Deigning BO glance or greeting, he tore oif his top-coat, exclaiming " Sticks ! Sticks!" In an instant every committee man had sprung to a corner of the room where some " neat timber " stood, seized a black- LONGFORD. 335 thorn, and dashed downstairs and into the street. For half an hour or so it was evident that stiff -work was going on. Then, as usual, most vexatiously, the police interfered, and interrupted an exceedingly satisfactory encounter.* In every Irish election the street ballad-singer is as important a power as the platform orator or the village band, and I never knew ai**Irish election poet that did not invoke the " Shan Van Vocht." Literally this phrase means the " Poor Old Woman,'* the words poor and old being applied in a tenderly sympathetic- sense; but for centuries the "Shan Van Vocht" has been a, figurative allusion to Ireland, and used as a refrain in popular ballads innumerable. Of course the streets and roads, the fairs and markets, of Longford resounded with ballads, chiefly " Mar- tinite/' the bard occasionally coming in for a touch of martyr- dom. One of theso lays, the production of a local genius, has survived in my possession, and I quote a few sample verses: Still on nomination day, Says the Shan Van Vocht, Faith 'twas better than a piny, Says the Shan Van Vocht ; On Longford Bridge the fight When Drumlish in its might Was by Martin's put to flight. Says tha Shan Van Voelit. * At the town of Granard a sort of challenge battle between tha Grevillites and Martinites was to come oft'. The parties assembled, to the- number of two or three thousand on each side ; but to their great dis- comfiture a large force of foot and mounted police occupied the town, and so- marched and countermarched as to prerent the combatants from getting within reach of each other. After the clay had been nearly " wasted " iu this way, the leaders on each side contrived to throw signals of parley to one another. They quietly slipped away for a moment, and met iu a " boreen " close by. " This is too bad." "Oh, shameful !" "No chance with these peeler fellows." " None. 'Tin disgusting ! " "I'll tell you what. There's a loyely spot, the big meadow on the- Edgeworthstown road, half a mile from us. Let us pretend to separate and go home, but agree to meet there in half an hour ! " " Beautiful ! Just the thing ! " They parted, and tried the manceurre agreed upon ; but it was no use ^ the police were up to it, and the belligerents had to disperse homewards- in good earnest, declaring " these peelers " a grea* nuisance ! 338 NEW IRELAND. It was mighty edifying, Says the Shan Van Vocht, To see sticks and stones a-flying, Says the Shan Van Vocht ; And religion went astray, With Father Felix in the fray, Till he had to run away, Says the Shan Van Vocht. Oh ! the bould men of Rathcline, Says the Shan Van Voeht, On that morning they did shine. Says the Shan Van Vocht ; And the boys from Curraghroe, With Cloudra men in a rw, Oh ! 'tis they the stones can throw, Says the Shan Van Vocht. The funds required for the Martin candidature were contrf- buted by public subscriptions, which poured in from all parts of Ireland. It \vas notable that a great portion came from the Catholic clergy. They deplored the error of their reverend brethren in Longford ; they grieved intensely over the conflict we had raised, but quite saw that of two evils acquiescence in that error would be much the greater. As a body they had ever exercised the popular proxy wisely and unselfishly. They wonld fearlessly brave popular caprice or unreason ; but they ambitioned no dominance, they shrank from the idea of wielding the clerical power in opposition to the legitimate freedom of their flocks. And even as regards the priests of Longford, it must be remembered /or them that they fought very much on a point of honour towards Lord Greville. They were no bigois. The man for whom they risked and lost so much in this conflict was " Protestant of the Protestants." Thursday, the 80th of December 18C9, was nomination day, and on the previous evening, accompanied by Mr. Byan, a Dublin merchant who warmly sympathised in the Longford con- test, I set out from Dublin in order to represent Mr. Martin at the proceedings. Telegrams represented Longford town as " safe for Martin," and the secretary of the Amnesty Association in Dublin would insist on sending down along with us a brass band, with gorgeous baton and big drum complete. It was tea o'clock at night when we reached the town, and above the noise of wheel and engine we could hear loud shouting as the train pulled up. On the platform, with faces full of anxiety and alarm, were my LO\GFOHD. 337 brother, Mr. Hanly, conducting solicitor for Mr. Martin, and a few other friends. With them, evidently looking out for me, were some of the railway officials. " What's up ? " I cried. " Up ! The station is surrounded by a Grevillite mob. The town is in their possession. Word was wired to the enemy from Dublin that you and Mr. Ryan were coming. Keep quiet ; we must see what course to adopt." Yells outside the station, and a thundering of sticks on the gate, lent force to the story. A moment's reflection showed the best course to be a start at once along with the other passenger arrivals for the various hotels. To remain behind was to increase the danger. Mr. Ryan and I jumped into a cab and drove off. A howling mob, sticks in hand, surged around, peered into our faces, but happily, not recognising us, let us pass on. We reached our hotel in safety. Only then did the thought strike me what of my brother and Mr. Hanly ? " They will be murdered if they attempt to leave the station," I cried. " And then there are the unfortunate bandsmen whom Nolan, confound him, would insist on sending down." " Oh, be sure they will be kept there till morning," re- joined Mr. Ryan. " Don't be alarmed." Soon we heard shouts approaching, and the noise of a drum. After a while the street outside the window presented a strange sight. The mob had discovered the band trying to escape by a back way from the station, had set upon and beaten the musicians, and captured and smashed the instruments. The disjecta membra were now being triumphally borne through the town as trophies. While I was gazing in amazement, at the scene, my brother and friends entered the room, streaming with blood from wounds on the head. They had, they said, fortunately escaped very j well on the whole. The chase after the poor bandsmen had j diverted attention from them, and they had got very nearly to I the door before they were recognised. Next morning the mobs that had bivouacked through the night around large fires in the streets prepared for the great encounter the fight for the court- house, so as to secure the " show of hands." At one time it seemed as if a pitched battle would be fought outside that building. Stones flew through the air ; the crash of windows and the shouts of combatants were heard on all sides. The resident magistrates and county inspector of police behaved with great coolness and temper. Mr. Miirtagh, Mr. 338 NEW IRELAND. Hauly, my brother, and myself succeeded in reaching where they stood. I proposed to Mr. Talbot, K.M. (now Commissioner of ^Metropolitan Police), that if he would see fair play exercised as to the admission of Mr. Martin's friends into the court-house, we would call on the Martin party to cease all conflict and retire from the town. He cheerfully assented, and we flung ourselves between the combatants. I doubt if I ever had such clor-e escape of fatal injury in all my life as duxing those five minutes. We- succeeded. A line of military, with fixed bayonets, was drawn around the court-house, and detachments of Grevillites and Martinites admitted in turn. The former, however, succeeded in having the best of it When I came forward to speak for Mr. Martin, drawing short sticks from under their vests, the Gre- villites in the body of the court dashed at the hustings with ravage cries. It certainly was oratory under difficulties. Every period in my speech was marked by a crash npou the woodea panelling in front of where I stood, and by the sweep of half a dozen bludgeons reaching much nearer to my head than was at all calculated to increase my composure. The clergy conquered at the polls. John Martin's candidature was defeated by an overwhelming majority. Mr. Greville-lv'ugent was returned by 1478 votes to 411. The day was lost, yet won. The object we had striven for was virtually attained. Every one realised the importance of the struggle. The event was unique in Irish politics. Many of us Catholic Nationalists who fought the fight soiTOwed to think that the adversaries with whom this conflict had been waged were our own priests, whom we truly loved. But we fell that one of the first conditions of our national existence was at stake. Common action for our common country would be impassible between us and our Protestant fellow- citizens if we had surrendered on the issue raised in this struggle. A calumny on the great body of the Catholic clergy would receive a certain measure of corroboration a distorted view of their action in politics would be strengthened if we allowed the error of the Longford priests to prevail unquestioned in the face of Ireland. We looked into the future, and we felt that time would vindicate our motives and prove the wisdom of our policy. Nor had we long to -wait for striking results. Irish Protestants, hesitating no further in distrust or doubt, called aloud to the Catholic millions that the time had come for reconciliation and union. Witii a quickness that was marvellous the acerbities of sectarian antagonisms seemed to vanish. Already from Protestant lips came the shout of " Home Eule !" "HOME RULE.' 30 D CHAPTER XXVIII. "HOME KULE." Ow the evening of Thursday, the 19th of May 1870, a strange assemblage was gathered in the great room of the Bilton Hotel, Dublin. It was a private meeting of some of the leading mer- chants and professional men of the metroplis, of various political and religious opinions, to exchange views upon the condition of Ireland. Glancing around the room, one might ask if the millennium had arrived. Here were men of the most opposite parties, men who never before met in politics save as irreconcil- able foes. The Orangeman and the Ultramontane, the staunch Conservative and the sturdy Liberal, the Nationalist Repealer and the Imperial Unionist, the Fenian sympathiser and the- devoted loyalist, sat in free and friendly counsel, discussing a question which any time for fifty years previously would liavo instantly sundered such men into a dozen factions arrayed in stormy conflict. It was one of those meetings axiom at ically held to be " impossible " in Ireland, as may be understood by a glance over the subjoined list of those who composed it. I indicate in most instances the religious and political opinions of fche gentlemen named, and include a few who were added to constitute a " Committee on Resolutions." .* The Rt. Hon. Edward Purdon, Lord Mayor, Mansion House, Protestant Conservative. Sir John Barrington, ex-Lord Mayor, D.L., Great Britain Street, Prot. Cons. E. H. Kinahan, J.P., ex-High Sheriff, Merrion Square, Tory. James V. Mackey, J.P., Beresford Place, Orangeman. James W. Mackey, ex-Lord Mayor, J.P., 40 Westmoreland Street, Catholic Liberal. Sir William Wilde, Merrion Square, F.R.C.S.L, Prot. Cons. James Martin, J.P., ex-High Sheriff; North Wall, Cath. Lib. Cornelius Denehy, T.C., J.P.> Mountjoy Square, Cath. Lib. W. L. Erson, J.P., Great Charles Street, Or. Rev. Joseph E. Galbraith, F.T.C.D., Trinity College, Prot. Cons. Isaac Butt, Q.C., Eccles Street, Prot. Nationalist. R. B. Butt, Eccles Street, Prot. Nat. 'S. W. Boyle, Banker, College Green, Tory. William Campbell, 20 Gardiner's Place, Cath. Lib. William DanieJ, Mary Street, Cath. Lib. 7. 2 3-13 NEW IRELAND. William De.iker, P.L.G., Eden Quay, Prot. Cons. Alderman Gre^g. Sackville Street, Prot. Cons. Alderman Hamilton, Frederick Street, Cath. Repealer. W. W. Harris, LL.D., ei-High Sheriff of the county Armagh, Eccles Street, Prot. Cons. Edward M. Hodson, Capel Street, Prot. Cons. W. H. Kerr, Capel Street, Prot. Cons. Major Knox, D.L., Fitzwilliam Square (proprietor of Irish Times), Prot, Cons. Graham Lemon, Town Commissioner of Clontarf, Yew Park, Prot. Cons.. J. F. Lombard, J.P., South Hill, Cath. Repealer. W. P. J. McDermott, Great Britain Street, Cath. Rep. Alexander McNeale, 104 Gardiner Street, Prot. Cons. W. Maher, T.C., P.L.G., Clontarf, Cath. Rep. Alderman Manning, J.P., Grafton Street, Prot. Cons. John Martin, Kilbroney, " Forty-eight " Nationalist, Presbyterian. L>r. Maunsell, Parliament Street (editor of Evening Mail), Tory. George Meyers, Richmond Street, Or. J. Nolan, Sackville Street (Secretary Fenian Amnesty Association), Catlu. Nat. James O'Connor, Abbey Street (late of Irish People), Cath. Feniaa. Anthony O'Neill, T.C., North Strand, Cath. Rep. Thomas Ryan, Great Brunswick Street, Cath. Nat. J. H. Sawyer, M.D., Stephen's Green, Prot. Nat. James Rei'lly, P.L.G., Pill Lane, Cath. Nat. Alderman Plunket, James's Street, Cath. Nat. Rep. The Venerable Archdeacon Goold, D.D., M.B., Prot. Tory. A. M. Sullivan, Abbey Street, Cath. Nat. Rep. Peter Talty, Henry Street. Cath. Rep. William Shaw, M.P., Beaumont, Cork (President of Munster Bank),. Prot. Lib. Captain Edward R. King-Harman, J.P., Creevaghmore, county of Long- ford, Prot. Cons. Hon. Lawrence Harman King-Harman, D.L., Newcastle, county of Long- ford, Prot. Cons. George Austin, Town Commissioner of Clontarf, Winstonville. Prot.. Cons. Dr. Barry, Rathmines, Cath. Lib. George Beatty, Henrietta Street, Prot. Cons. Joseph Begg, Capel Street, Cath. Nat. (Treasurer of Fenian Amnesty Association). Robert Callow, Alderman, Westland Row. Edward Carrigan, Bachelor's Walk, Cath. Lib. Charles Connolly, Rogerson's Quay, Cath. Lib. D. B. Cronin, Nassau Street, Cath. Fenian. John Wallis, T.C., Bachelor's Walk, Prot. Con*. "HOMEBULE* 3iT P. Walsh, Merrion Row, Cath. Nat. John Webster, Monkstown, Prot. Cons. George F. Shaw, F.T.C.D., Trinity College, Prot. Coot. P. J. Smyth, Dalkey, Cath. Nat. Repealer. George E. Stephens, Blackball Place, Prot. Cons. Henry H. Stewart, M.D., Eccles Street, Prot. Cons. L. J. O'Shea, J.P., Margaret Place, Cath. Rep. Alfred Webb, Abbey Street, Nat., "Friend." " What can we do for Ireland ?" they asked. The Protestant Conservatives spoke up. Some of them were men of large pro- perty as country gentlemen ; others were amongst the wealthiest and most influential merchants of the metropolis. " It is im- possible for us," they said, " to view the events of the past five- years without feeling it incumbent on us, as we value the wel- fare of our country and regard the safety and security of all we possess, to make some step towards a reconciliation or agreement with the National sentiment. In that sentiment, as we under- stand it, there is much we can never assent to. Some of the designs associated with it shall ever encounter our resistance. But we have never concealed from ourselves, and indeed have never denied, that in the main the aspiration for national autonomy is one which has sound reason and justice, as well as historical right, behind it. We wish to be frank and clear we will have no part in disloyal plans ; we will have no separation from England. But we feel that the scheme of one parliament for all purposes, imperial and local, has been a failure ; that' the attempt to force consolidation on the Irish people, to destroy their national individuality, has been simply disastrous. How- ever attractive in theory for imperial statesmen, that project has utterly broken down in fact and reality. It has cost us- perpetual insecurity, recurrent insurrection. It may suit Eng- lish politicians to cling to the experiment still, and pursue it through another fifty years, always ' just going to succeed this time '; but for us Irish Protestants whose lot is cast in this country, and whose all in the world is within these seas, it is time to think whether we cannot take into our own hands the- solution of this problem. We want peace, we want security, we* want loyalty to the throne, we want connection with England ; but we will no longer have our domestic affairs committed to a, London parliament. The question is whether we can agree? upon an arrangement that would harmonise those national aspirations in which we largely participate, with that imperial! connection which we desire to retain." 342 NEW IRELAND. Such was the tenor and substance of a discussion or conversa- tion which extended upwards of an hour. The probability of certain taunts being levelled, at them was discoursed upon. " It will be said we are uttering these sentiments now oiit of spito against England for disestablishing our Church " (which was quite true of some of them). " As to that, we freely say two considerations have hitherto ruled us : Firstly, to the covenant with England in reference to our Church we certainly were faithful. Some of us regretted that bargain, and boldly avow, now that England has violated it, that wo feel more free as Irishmen, and shall be none the worse as Protestants. Secondly, we did entertain, no doubt, an apprehension as to how Roman Catholics, who are numerically the bulk of this nation, might exercise their political power under the pressure of ecclesiastical authority. As to the first consideration, the Act of Union is now dissolved; the covenant has been torn up. As to the second, reading the signs of the times, we believe we may fearlessly dismiss the suspicions and apprehensions that have hitherto caused us to mistrust our Eoman Catholic country- men." Sitting silently observant of this remarkable scene was a man who perhaps more than any other living Irishman held in his hands the political destinies of the country at that moment. Isaac Butt was bom at Glenfm, county Donegal, in 1815, being the son of the Protestant rector of that place. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he rapidly rose to distinction. He had barely passed his majority when he was elected to the professorship of political economy in the university of Dublin. He was called to the bar in November 1838, and made a Queen's Counsel in 1844, one of the few Irish advocates who wore " silk " at the age of twenty-nine. From his earliest college days he was .a politician, and thirty years ago was the rising hope of the Irish Protestant Conservative party. He was their youthful champion, selected in 1844 to do battle against O'Connell himself in a great four-day debate on Repeal in the Dublin Corporation. All Tory as young Butt was, he had a thoroughly Irish heart, and an ' intense love of the principles of liberty. In the debate with O'Coiiuell, it is remarkable to note that he confined himself almost entirely to an argument that the Union experiment had not been fully tried. At the close of the encounter his great .antagonist, after paying a high tribute to his genius, prophesied that Is:.ac Butt would one day be found " in the ranks of the Irish people." Early in 1852 he was invited by the English "HOME RULE." 313* Conservatives to stand for Harwich, which, borough, he repre- sented up to the dissolution in the summer of that year, when,' lie was, as we have noted elsewhere, returned for Youghal. At the bar he attained to a high position. He took a leading part in all the great trials, civil and political, from 1844 to the State- prosecutions jtist concluded. He for a time gave himself up* almost exclusively to a parliamentary career. In 1864, however, he was called from London to Ireland to conduct one of the : most important mercantile causes of the poriod. At its close, instead of returning to parliamentary pursuits, ho ceased to* attend the House of Commons, and devoted himself more closely than ever to professional labours. In 1865 he stood facile- princess in the front rank of Irish advocates. The Feniau prisoners, beset by many and serious difficulties as to their defence, turned to him as one whose name alone was a tower of strength. Not in vain did they appeal to his chivalrous generosity, his love of constitutional liberty, his sympathy with those fcruggling against the severities of power. Ho flung him- self with ardour to their side ; and once his feelings were aroused and his sympathies enlisted in their fate, he never gave, them up. For the greater part of four years, sacrificing to a considerable- extent a splendid practice in more lucrative engagements, he- buried himself, so to speak, in the prolonged and desperate- effort of their defence. No wonder that* in 1868 he had earned their gratitude and won their confidence. Four years of such sad work meanwhile wrought powerfully with his sympathetic- nature. In 1869 he accepted the position of President of tho Amnesty Association, and soon became the one great figure in Irish popular politics. Immediately on the fall of the Irish Church he saw what was coming in Ireland. He knew the feelings the fears, the hopes, the questionings that surged in the breasts of his fellow-Protes- , tants. He determined to use the great power which now rested i with him in an endeavour to close for ever the era of revolt and t bloodshed; to unite in a common work of patriotism Irishmen long divided by class and creed distinctions; and to establish between Ireland and England a union of friendship and justice- which might defy the shocks of time. At this Bilton Hotel conference he listened long to the utter- ances of his fellow-Protestants; many of them the familiar associates of his college days. He marked their fears about disloyalty ; their apprehensions that the Fenians and the Piom- anists would be content with nothing less than separation. He* 344 NEW IRELAND. rose to his feet and spoke with great earnestness. " It is we it is our inaction, our desertion of the people and the country, the abdication of our position and duties, that have cast these men into the eddies and -whirlpools of rebellion," he said. " If you are but ready to lead them by constitutional courses to their legitimate national rights, they are ready to follow you. Trust me, we have all grievously wronged the Irish Catholics, priests and laymen. As for the men whom misgovernment has driven into revolt, I say for them that if they cannot aid you they will not thwart your experiment. Arise ! Be bold ! Have faith ; have confidence, and you will save Ireland ; not Ireland alone, but England also ! " He concluded by proposing That it is the opinion of this meeting that the true remedy for the evils of Ireland is the establishment of an Irish parliament with full control over our domestic affairs. The chairman put the resolution to the meeting. " As many as are of opinion that this resolution do pass say ' Ay.' " A shout of ' Ay ' rang through the room. " The contrary will say 4 No.' " Not a dissentient voice was heard. Then every one, greatly astonished, burst into a cheer; the first heard that .evening, so grave and earnest and almost solemn had been the tone of the deliberations. This was the birth of the Irish Home Eule movement. A " Committee on Eesolutions," comprising all the partici- pators in the private conference, was charged with the difficult .and delicate tusk of formulating the national demand which they proposed to recommend to tlie country. They carefully dis- claimcd for themselves any representative character, or any right to speak or act in the name of Ireland. They proposed merely to ascertain what support such a scheme as they meditated .might command, with the view of eventually submitting it to some formal assembly competent to speak with the national authority. In due time the Committee reported the following as the fundamental resolutions f an organisation to be called " The Home Government Association of Ireland." I. This association is formed for the purpose of obtaining for Ireland the right of self-government by means of a national parliament. II. It is hereby declared, as the essential principle ef this association, .that the objects, and THE ONLY OBJtcrs, contemplated by its organiswtion re : To obtain for our country the right and privilege of managing our own "HOME RULE." 345- affairs, by a parliament assembled in Ireland, composed of her Majesty the sovereign, and her successors, and the Lords and Commons of Ireland ; To secure for that parliament, under a federal arrangement, the right ofi legislating for and regulating all matters relating to, the internal affairs of Ireland, and control over Irish resources and revenues, subject to the obligation of contributing our just proportion of the- imperial expenditure ; To leave to an imperial parliament the power of dealing with all questions affecting the imperial crown and government, legislation regarding the colonies and other dependencies of the crown, the- relations of the United Empire with foreign states, and all matters- appertaining to the defence and the stability of the empire at large. To attain such an adjustment of the relations between the two countries, without any interference with the prerogatives of the crown, or any disturbance of the principles of the constitution. III. The association invites the co-operation of all Irishmen who are- willing to join in seeking for Ireland a federal arrangement based upon* these general principles. .,0, .. IV. The association will endeavour to forward the object it has in view,, by using all legitimate means of influencing public sentiment, both in; Ireland and Great Britain, by taking all opportunities of instructing and informing public opinion, and by seeking to unite Irishmen of all creeds and classes in one national movement, in support of the great national object hereby contemplated. V. It is declared to be an essential principle of the association that ? . while every member is understood by joining it to concur in its general; object and plan of action, no person so joining is committed to any political opinion, except the advisability of seeking for Ireland the amount of self- government contemplated in the objects of the association. This was not "Repeal," as O'Connell's scheme was loosely and imperfectly called. O'Connell entirely avoided any plan of international arrangement as to common (or imperial)' affairs. By " Eepeal " he caused, the people to understand the one simple fact that the illegal overthrow of the Irish constitution in 1800 was to be undone. But in 1844 he knew right well that reverting to the state of things previous to 1800? would in many respects be impossible, and in others mischievous.. He sketched out an elaborate scheme for the reconstruction of the Irish legislative body, appropriating all the improvements and gains of the interval ; but as to the critical points of an Irish ministry, and unity of imperial administration, he never attempted to outline or define any plan. Such vagueness, while' n the one hand it saved him from attack on details as well as principles, on the other gave room for Protestant alarm and apprehension. 346 NEW ICELAND. Tliis; new plan of the Home Government Association took the other course. It attempted to suggest or indicate the nature of the arrangements under which the unity of the empire might be secured equally with Irish management of Irish affaire. In this sense it was at once less and more than " Kepeal." The pre-Union system had two serious faults ; one hazardous to the ^English connection, the other perilous to Irish liberties. The voting of Irish supplies, not merely for domestic but general and imperial purposes ; the voting of men, money, or material for the navy and the army, lay altogether with the Irish parlia- .iment. This was a state of things too uncertain and dangerous for British ministers to be really content with. It was a per- petual inducement, in the interests of imperial unity and safety, to a consolidation of the parliaments. On the other hand, the Irish parliament had no responsible ministry. Its vote was as powerless to remove a cabinet as to stir tjic Hill of Howth. The result was a standing menace to the freedom of the assembly. The ministry might openly engage (as it often did) in the most violent and corrupt attempts to purchase a majority in the chamber, and yet the chamber itself could by no vote of '" want of confidence " remove that ministry from power. The great feature in the Home Government Association scheme was, on the one hand, it offered to surrender the Irish -control over imperial supplies ; and on the other, claimed a re- sponsible Irish administration. All that related to imperial concerns was left to the imperial legislature ; all that related to domestic Irish affairs was daisied, for an Irish parliament. But what are " local " and what are " imperial " affairs ? asked hostile critics, anxious to draw Mr. Butt into a battle on details. That may or may not be a difficult point of arrangement between "the countries when they come to adjust such matters, was his re A ly ; such points have been easily settled elsewhere, and they will not defy the ability of English and Irish statesmen when the time arrives for considering them here. Conscious of the difficulties surrounding them, the leaders of the new society pushed their way very diffidently and tentatively -at first. They were assailed from the opposite poles of politics by the Imperialist Conservatives and the Catholic Liberals. I The Catholic bishops and clergy, full of gratitude to Mr. Gladstone .for the great work he had just accomplished, could hardly be "j expected to regard with patience a proceeding which looked so like a mere Tory trick. It was all an Orange plot, they thought, to spite the Liberal Government that had settled the Church ~"HOME RULE." 347 question, and was about to settle the Education question. The- Tory imperialists, on the other hand, were filled with alarm. This new association was, they declared, a device of the Jesuits, to lay hold of Protestants at such a moment and apprentice them to sedition and disloyalty. " You are in the toils of Orangeism," cried the Whig Evening Post to the Catholics. " You are the dupes of Cardinal Cullen," cried the Conservative Daily Express to the Protestants. The new movement made steady progress. The mistrust and hostility of the Catholic Liberals, especially of the Catholic clergy, proved to be its most serious hindrance. The popular sentiment, however, went at once and strongly with the associa- tion ; and four " bye-elections," which occurred in 1871, gave striking proof of the depth and force of the national feeling. These were the return of Mr. John Martin for Meath, Mr. Mitchell-Henry for Gal way, Mr. P. J. Smyth for Westnieath, and crowning all, Mr. Butt for Limerick. Mr. Martin's opponent was the Hon. Mr. Plunkett, brother of Lord Fingall, a Catholic nobleman warmly esteemed by the whole Catholic community. The Catholic clergy had espoused Mr. Plunkett's candidature before Mr. Martin's had been suggested. On the appearance of the latter they at once announced that they would do their best fairly for the man to whom they were pledged, but would have no quarrel with their people if the latter honestly and freely preferred John Martin. Few persons bettered Mr. Martin had any chance of success ; least of all did Mr. Plunkett. On the hust- ings the former gentleman declared he had no ambition to enter Parliament, and would rather Mr. Plunkett went iu unopposed, " if only he would declare for Home Rule " ; in which case he, Mr. Martin, would retire on the instant. Mr. Plunkett laughed in a good-natured and kindly way at this offer of a scat which he regarded as already his own. Great, however, was his dismay to find at the close of the booths that the derided Home Ruler ' polled two votes to his one ; and that John Martin was Knight of the Shire for " Royal Meath." Scarcely less encouraging to the Home Eulers was the election, in Galway, considering the man whose adhesion it signalised. ' Mr. Mitchell-Henry was son of Mr. Alexander Henry, one of the merchant-princes of Manchester, for many years member of Parliament for South Lancashire. Mr. Henry, senior, was an Irishman ; the family have occupied aa honourable position in Ulster for two centuries. Some of them settled in America ; Patrick Henry of the Revolution, and Alexander Henry, the well- 348 NEW IRELAND. known philanthropist of Philadelphia, were relatives of the late member for South Lancashire. Mr. Mitchell-Henry, who was born in 1826, early devoted himself to medical science, and for fifteen years was consulting surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital. On the death of his father in 1862 he inherited a considerable fortune, and retired from professional practice. He was greatly struck with the beauty of the scenery at Kylemore, in Gal way. He purchased the entire district, and built there Kylemore Castle ; one of the wonders of the west a fairy palace in the Connemara Highlands. He became not only attached to the place but to the people. Protestant as he was, in the midst of a strongly Celtic and Catholic peasantry, he found that his re- ligious opinions raised no barrier between him and the confidence and affections of this simple and kindly race. Ere long his sympathy with the people, his uprightness, his liberality, were the theme of praise in even the humblest homes, from Clifden to Lough Corrib. He was known to be a man of considerable intellectual ability, great independence and firmness of character. When he issued his address for Galway county in February 1871, as an advocate for domestic legislation, and was returned without a contest, the incident created quite a stir in the world of Irish politics. In the following June a vacancy occurred in the representation of Westmeath county, and Mr. P. J. Smyth, a leading member of the Home Government Association, offered himself as a candidate. Mr. Smyth was one of the Confederate fugitives in 1848. He escaped to America, as mentioned in a previous chapter, and in that country devoted himself for some time to journalism. In 1854 some ardent friends of the Irish State prisoners (Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Mitchel, &c., then undergoing their sentences in Australia) struck by the successful escape of MacManus, formed a plan and found the requisite funds for effecting the rescue of the others, one by one. Mr. Smyth was selected as the agent to carry out this daring purpose ; and the result amply justified the confidence thus placed in his courage and devotion. He proceeded to Australia, where he arranged and personally ' conducted the escapes of Meagher and Mitchel. Ho was on his way thither a third time, I believe, to bring off O'Brien, when a pardon reached the latter gentleman. In 1856 Mr. Smyth re- turned to Ireland and soon after joined the Irish press, later on entering the legal profession as barrister. He was a man of marked ability, a polished orator, and an able writer ; and his uncontested return on this occasion for Westmeath, following "HOME RULE? 349 as it did upon the Meatli and Galway elections, gave the new association a notable triumph. In September came the crowning victory of the year, in the unopposed return for Limerick of Mr. Butt, already the re- cognised leader of the movement. As if irritated by these events, Irish Liberalism towards the end of 1871 seemed to pull itself together for a serious resistance to the Home Eule " craze," as it was called. In the opening part of 1872 we found ourselves hard pressed in many places. We could note by many signs that the expectation of a Catholic University scheme at the hands of Mr. Gladstone was having a powerful effect with some of the Catholic bishops and clergy. Important organs of public opinion known to be influenced by leading members of the episcopacy began to draw off from the movement, and to say that the demand for Home Eule was no doubt very right and just, but it was " inopportune." One thing at a time. Until the Catholic Education question had been settled nothing else should be taken in hand. Home Eule ought to be " postponed." At this the Protestants in the new association started like men on whom suddenly flashes the recollection of gloomy w-arnings. Was not this what had been prophesied to them? Were the Catholics going to betray the cause ? The answer came from Kerry and Galway counties. In December 1871, on the death of the Earl of Kenmare, his son, Viscount Castlerosse, then member of Parliament for Kerry, succeeded to the peerage and estates. The Kenmare family are "Catholics. They are resident landlords a class happily numer- ous in Kerry and have long been esteemed as amongst the best 'of the good by the people around them. For nearly thirty years there had been no contest for the representation of that county. The territorial magnates of the two great political parties, Liberal and Conservative, by a tacit or express compact peace- : ably divided the representation between them. One of the two county seats went to the Liberal-Conservative, Mr. Herbert of Muckross, and was transmitted from sire to son. The other was the family seat of the Catholic Liberal Earl of Kenmare, long 'held by the next heir to the coronet. It seemed to be quite clearly understood that a port of offensive and defensive alliance existed between both parties, to the end that the combined forces of Liberal and Conservative landlordism would resist any attempt of third parties to disturb this arrangement. When towards the close of 1871 Lord Castlerosse became 350 NEW IK EL AND. Earl of Kcnmare, his eldest son was quite too young to take the scat he vacated as county member; and accordingly he selected, as the family representative, his consin, Mr James Arthur Dease, a highly respected and influential Catholic gentleman resident in Wcstmcath. Usually this transfer would, be a matter of course ; but now it was the turn of Kerry to show that a New Ireland had come into existence. From various parts of the county aroso reclamations against thia mode of disposing of the representation. It was submitted that the people were not to be ignored in this fashion. The Ireland of to-day was not the Ireland of thirty years ago. .Lord Keninare they greatly respected ; but a political trust was not to be treated as a family appanage. They would select a candidate for themselves; and lie should be one who in the namo of Kerry, the county of O'Cormell, would proclaim the unalterable determination of the Irish people to recover their constitutional liberties. ooth to say these manifestations in Kerry occasioned at first uneasiness rather than satisfaction among the Home Euie leaders in Dublin ; so adverse did they think the chances of any successful movement under existing circumstances in that county; aud so damaging would a heavy blow at that critical juncture in all likelihood have been. The men of Kerry, how- ever, are a sensitive and high-spirited people. Their pride was touched; their patriotism was roused. They selected as their standard-bearer a young Protestant gentleman baroiy returned from Oxford, and -not more than a month or two past his majority Eoland Ponsonby Bleunerhassett, of Kells, near Cahirciveeu. A shout of contemptuous derision burst from the Whig- Liberal Catholics all over Ireland. What ! Dream of opposing the nominee of Lord Keiimare in Kerry! True to the spirit of the alliance compact, the Tory and Whig landlords of the county assembled, and in a combined body co7istitutecl them- selves an election committee for Mr. Dease. At their head stood the Catholic Bishop, the Most Eev. Dr. Moriarty. Undeterred, nay incited, by all this, the great body of the Catholic clergy, aiid the people almost to a man, espoused tho cause of " Blennerhassett and Home Eule." The Liberal press and politicians all over the kingdom, confident that victory was in their hands, loudly proclaimed that this was to be the great test election between Liberalism and Home Eule, centralisation and nationality ; and they invited the empire to watch the result.. THE KERRY ELEQTION. 351 By the middle of January 1872 the struggle had assumed, national significance and importance. The London ])aily Ttlff/raph declared we were " on the evo of a very critical test." The J)aity News said, " The contest is already exciting an amount of interest in Ireland hardly equalled there since O'Connell contested the county of Clare." ..." On the whole there are in Kerry all the materials of a struggle the result of which every English statesman must regard as important, if not indeed momentous." On the 20th of January 1872, the Home Rule Council in Dublin was specially convened to consider urgent appeals from Kerry for the personal presence and assistance of some of its mem- bers. The council decided that the fate of the whole movement seemed so largely involved in the issue that the entire energies -and resources of the organisation must be put forth. A de- putation consisting of the Eev. Joseph A. Galbraith, Fellow of Trinity College, A. M. Sullivan, and John Ovcrington Blttnden was warned to proceed forthwith to Kerry. It was "death or glory." They were charged to return " bearing their shields, or iborne upon them." CEAPTEE XXIX. THE KERRY ELECTION. "" WELL, Sullivan, this is a serious pull that is before us," said the Fellow of Trinity gravely as we seated ourselves in the Killarney train, on Friday evening, the 26,th of January 1872. Trinity College has played a great part in the history of Ireland. It was founded as an exclusively and, if I mny no ex- press it, aggressively Protestant institution, some three hundred years ago. It was the intellectual citadel ef Protestant ascen- dancy ; and many a time and oft have the Irish Catholics heard the hard dicta of intolerance shouted from its portal. Yet to this day there is scarcely a man of generous mind or breadth of view amongst them who is not proud of " Old Trinity " ; proud to mark the high place it holds amidst the schools of Europe ; but above all, to note the illustrious men it has sent forth, in Arts, Letters, Science, Politics, to lift the name and fame of Ireland. For at least forty or fifty years it has been not only strongly Conservative but imperialist ; yet the spirits of C. attan 352 NEW in EL AND. and Flood and Plunket haunt the old scones. Ever and anon Trinity contributes to the struggles of Irish nationality some of its ablest and most gifted champions; men who ate the links that bind creeds and classes in community of public feeling and action, and prevent Irish politics from becoming a mere war of race and religion. Two such men were my companions on this journey. One of them was especially notable. The Eev. Joseph A. Galbraith, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, filled from the first hour a foremost place in the new movement of constitutional nationality. His scientific attain- ments made his name familiar beyond the limits of our realm; and amongst the Protestant Conservatives whom the events of recent years had brought into association with popular politics, there was scarcely one whose adhesion had a greater effect on social and public opinion in Ireland. How much he was esteemed and trusted by his co-religionists was shown by the fact of his being elected year by year to one of the highest honorary positions in connection with the Church Synod and the " Governing Body" of the Protestant Church in Ireland. He was one of the gentlemen present at the Bilton Hotel Conference on the 19th of May 1870, and although by nature intensely averse to the bustle and turmoil of public life, he faced boldly the labours incidental to a prominent position in the new political organisation. Being requested to proceed along- with Mr. Blunden and myself, as representatives of the associa- tion in the Kerry campaign, he cheerfully complied, and we now were en route for the scene of action. We slept at Killarney that night, and proceeded next morning' to Tralee, where a great open-air demonstration was to be held, in favour of the national candidate. We found the county town in a state of passion, denouncing the conduct of the borough member, who had " gone over to the enemy." Alas ! it was The O'Donoghue, the popular idol of yesterday, the eloquent advocate^ of Irish independence! It was as if Hofer had suddenly appeared in Botzen, dressed in Bavarian livery, leading the- Munich riflemen. This was a heavy blow ; a sore trial ; but save in the pain of feeling, the anguish almost, which it occasioned the people, who had so devotedly loved the now converted leader, it was without effect. Twenty-five years ago such a man would have carried his county or borough with him, as a Highland Chief would carry his clan from the one camp to the other. Now the secession of The O'Donoghue was worth scarcely a dozen votes to the Earl of Kenniare. THE KEEKY ELECTION. 353 Mr. Blonnerhassett, accompanied by an immense concourse, with bands and banners, awaited our arrival at the station. It was "with much difficulty we could save Mr. Galbraith from being carried off bodily and " chaired " on their shoulders by the enthusiastic Popish Kerry men. It surely was a strange sight, this Kerry election fight of 1872. Here was one of the most Catholic counties in Ireland rallying, priests and people, on the side of this young Protestant, Eoland Blennerhassett ; opposing a Catholic candidate, the relative of a Catholic noble- man whom they one and all personally esteemed ! With nearly ererything to deter them, they pressed on. Leagued against them was the entire landlord power of the county, Whig and Tory, Catholic and Protestant, with barely a few exceptions. Their bishop, Dr. Moriarty, and seTeral of their parish priests were violently opposing them. The O'Connell family went also with Lord Kenmare. On the other side there was, however the great fact that the majority of the Kerry priests were enthusiastically with the people. The national sentiment all over the kingdom was at their back. Most important of all, the leading organ of popular opinion in the south of Ireland, the Cork Examiner of Mr. John Francis Maguire, M.P., and the Cork Daily Ihrald, scarcely less influential in its circulation, were thoroughly on the popular side. Had it been otherwise as to the local press, had Mr. Maguire helped us less heartily, the Kerry election might not have been won. He was at this time the leading journalist and politician of Munster, and had for years been a prominent figure among the Irish members in the House of Commons. John Francis Maguire was born in Cork city in 1815. He was called to the bar in 1843. Long previously, however, his natural inclinations and tastes led him to literature and journalism. In 1841 he founded the Cork Examiner, which in a few years became one of the most im- portant and influential journals in Ireland. He was an especial favourite and intimate friend of Father Mathew, and in the Temperance and Repeal movements from 1841 to 1846 he was an active participator. In 1852 he was returned to Parliament for the borough of Dungarvan, which he had twice previously unsuccessfully contested; once in 1847 against Eichard Lalor Sheil, and once in 1851 against the Hon. Ashley Ponsonby. He remained member for Dungarvan from 1852 to 1866, when he was returned for his native city, the representation of which lie held thenceforth until his death in November 1872. His eloquence, his energy, his marked ability, brought him early into 2 A 354: NEW 1 EEL AND. the front rank of the Irish representation. He took an active part in the Tenant League movement ; and on the disruption caused by the Keogb-Sadleir episode, he was found with Lucas and Moore and Duffy vainly endcaveuring to repair the ruin that had fallen on the tenants' cause. In 1852 he was elected Mayor of Cork, and was the author and chief promoter of the Industrial Exhibition held'that year in the city. In the midst of a busy and toilsome career, Mr. Maguire found time for some contributions to literature. His best-known work, which earned him the marked personal friendship of Pio No-no, was 'Borne and its Rulers,' first .published in 1857 ; ' The Irish in America ' and a ' Life of Father Mathew ' came next ; the latter one of the most interesting pieces of biography written in our day. Although an ardent Liberal, and slow to lend himself to new political ventures -he had seen the rise and fall of not a few Mr. Maguire at an eai-ly stage of the Home Rule movement gave it a firm and argumentative support. Xo sooner had the Kerry contest assumed the proportions of a national struggle than he threw himself with all the energy of his nature into a fight 'which he preseieritly foretold would be, as the Daily News said, " important, if not indeed momentous." Mr. Galbraith had to return to Dublin in a few days ; but even before he left we could form an opinion of the prospects of the fray. " Tell them all in Dublin," I said, " that here I mean to stay to the end. These are a noble people. There is victory ahead." I did not praise them too highly, nor estimate too hopefully the result before us. I had often seen popular feeling displayed in election contests, but nothing to equal tlu's. "What struck me as the strangest part of it all was the popularity of Mr. Blenner- hassett, or " Mr. Hassett " as he was called. He must have been personally almost unknown to the bulk of his fellow-countrymen. His father a landed proprietor in the west of Kerry, where the family settled in the reign of Elizabeth had died while he was a child, and he was but a youth when sent away to Oxford, University. Yet the peasantry spoke of Mm and to him in the language of homely affection. The " canvass " was a triumphal progress. As he drove along the road the people would quit fields and houses, stand by the wayside waving green boughs and shouting salutations, or else run by the carriage just to press his hand. " Ten votes in this townland for you, M-r. Hassett. Home Eule for ever !" " You needn't trouble about our parish, sir. Father Michael God bless him I and all of us are THE KERRY ELECTION. 3(55 with you." As -we passed through, a little village beyond Killorglin, the few people of the hamlet who had votes rushed around to " give their names " a proceeding they seemed to think necessary. One peasant -woman came forward with tears in her eyes. " I have no vote that I can give you, Mr. Hassctt ; 'but I give you my prayers every day that God and the blessed Virgin may be on your side!" The most primitive attempts at festal display met our view in the wild parts of the county. "When- ever the news reached that at no matter what hour of the night or day we were to pass the way, signal-men were posted on hill and crag ; and often in the dead of night we could hear the shout passing from house to house along mountain and valley " Home Eule ! Home Eule ! " A-t a place between Dingle and Tralee, niiles from a second human habitation, a peasant boy of fourteen, lame and using a crutch, stood by the roadside closo by his father's cabin. From early morning having 'heard we were to pass either going or returning he had watched and waited. He had erected what he meant as a "banner." Two tall osier rods were fastened in the .ground, and from one on the top, placed laterally, hung a piece of some v?hite linen garment. On this during the previous weok ho had laboriously drawn with ink or blacking sundry national emblems, and in largo letters " Hurra for Blennerhassett and Home Bule." That "Mr. Hassett " would see this, was his sole -ambition ; but when we pulled up and, gazing at the " banner," praised his artistic skill, lie looked as if unable to contain himself with happiness 'and pride. For a full fortnight it 'rained as only in Kerry it can rain. But the people seemed amphibious, and we of the " deputation"* soon acquired the local habit of disregarding tempest and flood. Every night, at Oakville the residence of Mr. Sandcs, a young cousin of "Mr. Hassett" a huge turf fire was lighted, before which our ulsters, dreadnoughts, rugs, and wrappers were hung to dry. Xcxt morning; they we-re in requisition once more, and saturated anew in a few 'hours. All seemed . ji rig fairly through the county when one evening on reaching Oakville a piece of news to me most disquieting awaited us. Our young 'host was a lover tif Ihe chase, and proud of his hunters. At the County Club the disputes as to horseflesh were mingled with the question of Home Eulo or * Mr. Florence HacCarthy, J.P., of Glencurra, Cork county, joined us oon after llr. Galbraith's return to Dublin. 2x2 356 NEW IRELAND. Liberalism, Blennerhassett or Dease. That day a contention had arisen between Mr. Sandes and a leading " Deasite" as to the rival merits of a bay mare belonging to one and a chesnut korse owned by the other. " I'll tell you what it is," said Mr. Sandes ; " I'll run you a two mile steeplechase for a hundred puineas, if you like, and I'll call my horse Home Kule do you will yours Deasite ; each to ride his own horse." No true Kerry nan could refuse such a challenge. I don't know at what figure fehe stakes were eventually fixed, but I do know that all over Kerry men took sides and betted as earnestly on this race as if the fate of the election hung on it which, indeed, we greatly feared was in some degree the case. " What hare you done ! " we exclaimed in vexation. " Staked a the hazard of a horse-race the result of all our toil ! You know what a people the Irish peasantry are you know how victory or defeat in a matter of this sort will impress them you know " " I know all, so much the better ; for I'm going to win this race as sure as my name is Tom Sandes." And he did win it in right gallant style ; took fence and dyke without fall or fault, and rode in triumphantly, leaving " Deasite " nowhere ! This seemed conclusive with the people. Now it was clear we were to head the poll Had not the " Home Eule " horse woa the day ? Still, some of us, accustomed of old to elections, knew that popular feeling did not always mean votes in the booth when landlord pressure was severely exercised ; and as the nomination day drew near we found that the most relentless coercion was being used on some of the largest properties in the county. Nightly councils were held in our central committee-room; reports from the various districts were weighed and discussed ; baronial lists eagerly scanned and compared. That at the last moment the people would have to succumb to the bailiffs message was a gloomy thought which hourly pressed more heavily on many a mind. To make matters worse, Mr. Blennerhassett's health broke down under the fatigues of the past four weeks, and we more than feared he would be unable to appear at the hustings. He did so appear only by an effort. The nomination was a great scene. The territorial lords of the county assembled in proud array. Much were they angered and astounded to think they beheld a day when they should be thus opposed and defied on their own ground. Our man made an admirable THE KERRY ELECTION. 3S7 speech, temperate, firm, eloquent, full of lofty patriotism. One of his supporters, however, struck out severely at some of the landlord party present, and we could see that the attack in- furiated the whole body. They left the court-house and quitted the town, each for his own locality, swearing that now indeed should we feel their power. I knew what was at hand ; that during the next forty-eight hours it would be " the rush within the ropes " with both parties. The nomination was on Tuesday the 6th of February. Next day, for many reasons, and more particularly on account of Mr. Blennerhassett's absence through illness, I decided to remain at headquarters in Tralee, and take supreme control into my own hands. Soon came pouring in telegrams addressed to Mr. Blennerhassett in the language of excitement and alarm ; " All our force* are overthrown here. The landlord and the bailiff's are out like raging lions." " Desperate work here. Landlords neutral up to this, now personally canvassing against us." I not only opened the first of these messages, but opened every one of them throughout the day. I stuffed them deliberately into my pocket, and breathed not a word about them to Mr. Blennerhassefct or anybody else, beyond replying to each of them, " Quite prepared for and ex- pected it. We are doing the same on our side. Take to the field every man of you, and work for your lives day and night till Friday." I well knew how fatal the effect of panic or dis- heartenment might be at such a moment, and I did not spare the telegraph wires that day in arousing the feelings and exciting the confidence and courage of our friends. From Galway most opportunely came news thart could hardly fail to have a critical effect on our side. In that county a contest little less important, and much more severe in many respects, was being fought by Captam John Philip Nolan, Home Ruler, against Major Le Poer Trench, son of Lord Clancarty, Liberal- Conservative. Very much ou/t of personal regard for Lord Clancarty and for Major Trench himself, for whom a kindly feeling was very general in the county (but still more " to put down Home Eule "), the principal Whig and Tory landlords united in that gallant gentleman's behalf, and a struggle painful and violent beyond precedent resulted. The day following our Kerry nomination the startling and truly welcome news arrived that Captain Nolan had won by the enormous majority of 2578 to 658, or nearly four to one ! The effect in Kerry was, as might be supposed, all-important. "Galway is ours! Now, Kerry, show what you can do ! " resounded on all sidep 358 NEW IRELAND. Meantime troops, horse and foot, were being poured into the* county. The landlords hired vacant buildings, courts, or yards in which to secure their tenants tho night before the poll. In* virtue of. their power as magistrates they requisitioned detach- ments of foot and lancers for the purpose -of " escorting " those voters to the booths. The. streets of Tralce rang with the- bugles or echoed to the drums of military arriving by train or departing for Dingle, Liskwcl, Cahirciveon, Castleisland, &c.. All this intensified the prevailing excitement, and on Wednesday night a horseman arrived from one of tho remoter districts bring- ing news that filled ma with; concern. The mountaineers had seen. " the army " pass, and knew their errand. All over a great part of Iverah and Magonihy preparations were going on that night to destroy the bridges, cut up the roads, and render the return of the escorts to tho polling-booths impossible. " Oh ! for the love of God," I said> " tell Mm to ride back with all his speed! Tell every friend we are sure of. the pell, and that our only danger now would be a.^etiiiwi. I implore of you all not to lot a finger be raised thai could tkns put the victory into our- enemies' hands!" Only with tho utmost difficulty could I impress this view upon the volunteer couriers ; and it was with a mind full of uneasiness and apprehension that the night before the poll I set out.foi-Killarney (onr, opponents' strong- hold), of which district I determined to take charge. It was tough- work all that morning of Friday the 9th of" February in the Kilkirney. booths ; and as the tallies swelled against us here (but hero-only, as we fully. calculated), the crowds which about noon filled the streets became excited, uneasy, and anxious. I was rushed at whenever seen, and eagerly questioned. " We're bate here, sir ; but how. is it beyond ?" " All right, boys. We are doing, here what I came to see- done. Wa'U hear fromiistowel at; one o'clock." Then, drawing on. hope,. the crowd would raise a cheer, which made the circuit of the town. Some of tho scenes in the booths were truly " racy of the soil."" In many casea the voter, assuming aa aiir ofden.se stupidity,, pretended to forget the name of, Mr. Doaso, or else gave- the name of the landlord or agent. In this.-eYent, of. course,, tho -vote was, lost, which was exactly whairthe sharp witted rustic wanted. " What is .your name?" " My name,. is it, sur?" " Yes, sir, your name;" "Och, than, begor, av' its me name,. I'll never deny it." THE KERRY ELECTION. 359 A pause. " Come, sir, go clown if you will not proceed." Here the agent's eye is caught menacingly fixed on him. " Arrah, shure, every one knows me name. What need you ax me ? " " What is it, sir? last time." " Y7hat is it ? Dan Mahony, thanks be to God." " Daniel Mahony, for whom do you vote ? " " For who do I wote, is it.? " A long, a very long pause. " Come, sir, I'll take the next man." Dan looks at the agent as if to say, " Blame me not. I'm doing my best." Then with an effort: "I wote for what's-his-name, you know, that me landlord wants me to wote for." " That won't do, sir, and I ean't waste any more time with you. Clerk, take the next man." Here Mr. Dease's attorney makes an. effort to whisper " Dease," but is collared by young Mr: Wright, who is in charge on our side. " No prompting, sir. I protest." Dan Mahony scratches his head in well-feigned perplexity, and as if for life or death, shouts "I wote for Daly!" A shriek from the attorneys. A gxoan frow the agent. Dan ia hustled out of the booth, exclaiming as he goes, " I woted for me landlord's man ! " He turns round, the. street corner and meets some neighbours on the look-out for him., "All right, boys. Hassett and Home Eule for ever ! Hurroo !" I heard several such electors^vote for- "Lord Kenmare," one or two for " Mr. Gallwey, and. there he, is there this blessed minnit, thanks be to God!" Mr. GalLwey being, agent to the Kenmare estates, and a good and kindly one too.. Indeed, throughout the whole election I never met a tenant on the Kenmare or Herbert properties who did. not speak in the highest terms of landlord and agent ia each case. I was standing at a polling-place, under a. shed in the butter- market when old Sir James- O'Connell of Lake View (brother of the Liberator), a most extraordinary and eccentric octogenarian, entered, leading or bringing on each side of hiiu a co'untryman, whom he held by the coat-flap.. Marching up to a police officer he said: " I want a few of your -men to go over, there for some of my tenants. 1 ' 3GO NEW IRELAND. "Do you mean, Sir James, that they are in danger of assault ? " " I mean that the crowd would assist them to run away." " Oh, Sir James, we can't do anything like that ; but if there is danger of assault or interference " " Well, then, will you mind these for me while I go myself ?" The officer shook his head. " Well not let any one harm them, Sir James ; that's all we can do." The old gentleman paused, looked at the two " free and in- dependent " voters, whom he still affectionately held fast, and eventually said, " I'll poll them first, to make sure." He put up ene. " For whom do you vote ?" " For Sir James O'Connell !" " Oh you bla'guard ! Oh you stupid ass ! Oh you infernal but, halloa! policeman! Hey! I say where is that other man I had by my side this minute ? Police ! Police ! " The assembled throng shrieked with laughter. The other voter had flitted, and as a matter of fact they told me he came up half an hour later and polled for Blennerhassett ! About half-past one o'clock I left the booths and proceeded to the telegraph office. The people in the streets easily guessed my errand, and made way, crushing closely after me, however, and surrounding the post office in a great mass. Three tele- grams soon reached me: one from Cahirciveen " A hundred majority here " ; one from Tralee " Two hundred majority here, and Kemnare all right " ; one from Listowel " Seven hundred majority here." I felt as if I should spring over Mangerton. I rushed to the door with the open telegrams in my hands, but before I could speak a word, quick as lightning-flash the people read it all in my face. They burst forth into the most frantic demonstrations of joy. They shouted, they cheered, they flung their hats ia th air ; they rushed in a body to the court-house where polling by this time was virtually over. As the noise was heard swelling up the street every oiie within knew what it meant, and gave up for the day all further exertion. Soon the word went round" the Home Ruler was in by over seven hundred. I left Killarney in the full tide of rejoicing, and took the train to Tralee. The scene at the latter town was still more exciting. The majorities everywhere were even greater at the close than had been telegraphed to me. On the hills around we could see the signal-fires that spread the news fuom the Shannon tc THE KERRY ELECTION. 361 Dunkcrron. Next day and night as our friends in charge at the outlying stations came in, they brought the most astonishing stories of adventure and episode. The scale was turned in our favour at Tralee by two incidents : first, the defection to us of " the Spa voters " ; secondly, the dispersion of " the Dingle con- tingent," chiefly a body of Lord Ventry's men. The Spa was a parish or district some miles outside Tralee, the tenantry of which had all been " secured " by the land agent, and were quite despaired of by us. The night before the poll the bailiffs had warned every man of them to be at the cross-roads in the morning at ten o'clock sharp to meet " the master," and march to Tralee for the poll. At ten o'clock " the master " rode down to the appointed spot, like Marshal Ney going to head his battalions. He found no tenantry awaiting him. " I am a little too soon," he reflected, and he rode his horse up and down the road for ten or fifteen minutes. Half an hour passed, and he became uneasy. A fsw peasants had been lounging about in "the neighbourhood, watching "his honour" with comical ex- pression on their faces. One of them now came up. " May be it's for the tinants your honour is waiting ? " " Yes, my good man ; yes, the lazy rascals. Do you see any of them coming yet ? " "Coming, your honour? Faith, 'tis at eight o'clock this morning they all left this with Father Eugene O'Sullivan at their head, and they're in Tralee an hour ago." Dashing spurs into his horse he went at full gallop in-to the town, and arrived just in time to see the last of the Spa men, over a hundred in number, polling for Blennerhassett. From Dingle, distant some twenty miles, a great avalanche was to have overwhelmed us. The story of " the Dingle con- tingent " was told me in great delight. Mr. De Moleyns, it seems, had gathered as many conveyances as would transport a small army corps, and quite a formidable body of cavalry had pro- ceeded to Dingle to escort the cavalcade. When it started for Tralee it was fully a quarter of a mile in length ; Mr. De Moleyns tiding proudly at its head. After it had gone some miles he turned back to make some inquiry at the rear of the procession. Great was his dismay to behold the last five or six cars empty. " Where are the voters who were on these cars ? " he stormily shouted at the drivers. " The wothers, Captain ? Some of them slipped down there to walk a bit of the road, and faix we're thinking that they're not coming at all." 302 NEW IRELAND. "Halt! halt!" he cried; and, foil of rage, galloped to the head of the cavalcade. Ho called on the officer in command of the cavalry to halt for a. while, and detail a portion of his men for duty in the rear ; when, lo ! ho now noticed that half a dozen cars at the front, had, in his brief absence, totally lost their occupants. According to my informants!, Mr: De Moleyns, losing all temper, more forcibly than politely accused the officer of want of vigilance and neglect of duty; whereupon the latter sharply replied : " What, sir ! do you think I and my men have come here to be your bailiffs ? I am here to protect these men, if they want protection;, not to treat them as prisoners. And now, sar, I give you notice I will halt my men no more. Beady, men ! Forward:! March ! " By this time fully a third of the voters had escaped. There was nothing for it but to push n. At the village of Castle- gregory, however, the severest ordeal a^ited them. Here they found the entire population of tlio place, men, women,, and children, occupying the road; the old parish priest standing in the middle of the highway, his grey hair floating in the wind. The villagers, chiefly the woKien, well knowing- how the voters felt, poured out to them adjurations and appeals^ The priest, in a few brief sentences, reached every heart "Ah:, sons of ."Kerry," KT.id he, " where is your pride asd manhood, to be dragged like prisoners or carted like cattle in this way ? And for what ? That you may gire the lie. t your own conscience, and give a stab to your country, poor Ireland ! " With one wild shout the voters sprang from, the caars and disappeared in the body of the crowd. The grand, "Bingle*cavalcadc" was a wreck, and Mr. T>& Moleyns, sad at heart, rode into Tralee at the head of an' immense array of empty cars.. For genuine fun and ingenuity perlxvps the palm must be awarded to Cahircivparts of the country to escape the ravages of the four or five armies that were maiauding the land. The unfortunate men with their families, deprived of all means of subsistence, were literally fed by the weekly allowance of bread granted them by Ormond ; and they soon had occasion to perceive how much reason there was for gratitude to Colonel Jones and the Puritans. They petitioned for leave to continue to use the Prayer Book instead of the Directory, and were refused as " ill and unworthy preaching ministers"; they petitioned for bread, and wero told that " if they wanted State pay they should do the State some service and enlist."* The degradation of the Episcopalians was now complete. The churches were given up to the soldiery for wreck and ruin ; and it is impossible to conceive that there an have been any ministrations of religion anywhere outside tke cities and garrison towns. This state of religious havoe cam* to an end with the fall of the Commonwealth ; and the Kestosa- tion in 1660 replaced Church matters as they in effect continued * Rev. Dr. Russell and Mr. Prendergast's ' Report on the Carte Manuscripts,' pp. 104, 105, im 32nd Report of Irish Public Record Offiee, 1871. THE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 377 down to the Whig Church Temporalities Act in 1833. Crom- well's reservation of the tithes and Church lands, and his short leases, facilitated the restitution of the endowment, which was abundantly supplemented by the Act of Settlement out of the forfeited lands of the Catholics ; and the State Church was once again made wealthy and lordly. Passing over the intermediate period from the Restoration to Lord Grey's Whig ministry, we come to the statistics of the first Irish Church Temporalities Act in 1833. Lord Althorp, the Home Secretary, then informed Parliament that the Irish benefices were at that time 1401, 4 archbishops and 18 bishops, 22 dioceses ; the net income of tlie prelates 130,000 a year, the total Church revenue ?32,000 a year ; and that there were 57 churches in which no service had been performed for three years. The act, besides abolishing the parish cess, suppressed 2 arch- bishoprics, 8 bishoprics, the unused churches, and handed over the amount of income, about 113,000 a year, to the then ap- pointed Ecclesiastical Commission for the supply of Church requisites throughout the country. In 1867 the late Lord Derby, who, as Irish Secretary, helped to carry the act of 1833, issued a commission to report on the temporalities of the Irish Church, and that commission reported 2 archbishops, 10 bishops, 32 deans, 33 archdeacons, 1509 incumbents and 500 curates, 1518 benefices ; the net incoime f the prelates 58,031, and the total income of the Church 618,984 a year. So matters stood with tha Episcopal Protestant Church of Ireland in 1868. When in the following year Mr. Gladstone's great act became law, the Church was found to contain 2059 -annuitants, mainly clergy, together with a few laymen con- nected with the cathedrals as vicars-horal. To these annuities io the amount of 590,892 were payable. The Church had also possession of various sums, the amount not easy to determine, arising out of private endowments, together with the glebes, episcopal palaces, and churches. By the act of Disestablishment she was deprived of all except the churhes. In lieu of the private endowments a sum f 500,000 was granted; while glebes and bishops' houses we* made purchasable on certain easy terms prescribed by tke act. IH dealing with the an- nuitants, the simple principle was adopted of paying every man his due as long as he lived. In order to avoid the long and tedious process which would otherwise have to be undertaken by the Treasury, certain terms of commutation were offered ; viz., the payment of the eapatal smm for each annuitant's case 378 NEW IRELAND. depending on his age, the Government offices' rate of mortality and value of money 3i per cent., to which was finally added 12' per cent, on the capital snms thus estimated in consideration of supposed better average life of clergy, and of the expenses of management. On receipt of these sums, the clergy consenting to the extent of three-fourths of their number in each diocese, the Representative Body, chaptered by the Crown, was to undertake the payment of the annuities. After consideration, the bishops and clergy with the exception of about a hundred of their number accepted these terms; in consequence of which the Bepresentative Body has received in the shape of advances from the Treasury through the Irish Church Temporalities Commission, sums for commutation ^f annuities amounting to 7,563,144. The number of annuitants was 2059 ; annuities payable, 590,892 ; commutation capital, 7,563,144 ; interest of money 3 3 percent; years' purchase, 12- 8; average age, 56 It will be seen that a return of 8 per cent, on the commutation capital would pay the annuities. It was anticipated that by judicious investment 4 per cent, coiild be earned. The principle enforced by those who led the movement which ended in inducing the clergy to commute for their incomes, and take the- Bepresentative Body as their paymaster instead of the Treasury,, may be thus stated : " If you consent to commute, and if we can induce the laity to subscribe an annual sum equal to the other 4 per cent., we shall be able to save the capital, to pay your annuities, and prevent the entire burden of supporting religion from falling on our descendants." To the laity they addressed. the same language, saying in addition : " Under the act you are entitled to the life service* of your clergy without paying them a penny. If you adopt a selfish policy, and say " (as some did), " ' We will enjoy this benefit ; and let those that come after take care of themselves,' a burden will be thrown on Irish Protestants which will be difficult to bear; for the day must come when the last penny will have to be sold out to pay the last man of the annuitants." These arguments prevailed, and, as will be seen, the Irish Protestant laity have done their duty manfully by their Church.* When the act was framed it was foreseen that there would be a considerable reduction in the number of the clergy, and ac- cordingly all the annuitants were enabled to enter into terms with the representative Body by which their services might be dispensed with, and in consideration a certain portion of the * The great defaulters were the absentee Protestant land proprietors. THE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 37l> capital sum corresponding to their annuities would go to the: ^Representative Body for Church purposes. Under this authority ' a Table of Compositions was framed, OH the principle that an ' annuitant of 35 years of age should get eue-third, one of 65 and '] upwards two-thirds, of his commutation capital ; the sum in- creasing by one-ninetieth for each year of age between these limits ; and going down by a ninetieth for ages below 35. Under this table a considerable number of the annuitants compounded .;. as may be judged from the fact that between compounders and deaths during the seven years from 1870 to 1877 the number of annuitants has been reduced to 1052. By the operation of composition there was of course a large reduction in the com- mutation capital, a corresponding reduction in annuities payable, . and a large Composition Balance accquired for Church purposes, amounting at present to about 1,300,000. At first i-t was intended to administer the whole finance of the Church from one centre in Dublin ; but on better reflection a kind of "Home Eule" or "Federal plan" has been adopted. Each diocese manages its own affairs, subject to certain general principles, under the control of the Kepresentative Body, which meet once a month in Dublin. This Body consists of 48 elected and 12 coopted members. Election and cooption take place - every year ; but members once elected or coopted hold their places for three years. All money collected under these schemes is sent up to headquarters, and paid out again as stipends (under warrants drawn on the Bank of Ireland) to the proper parties, . as directed by the several diocesan councils. During the last seven years the laity have contributed in this way 1,610,703, of which 37,500 was received from England. In addition to this must be counted all the sums expended in each locality by the select vestries of each parish for care of churches. Estimating this at the moderate sum of 80 each for 1243 parishes, tho present number, this would represent a further contribution of" 596,640 ; so that in all the laity have contributed within the last seven years 2,207,343 a fact which deserves to be widely known to the credit of the Protestants of Ireland. The opera- tion of these " Diocesan Schemes " consists mainly in forming a " Stipend Fund " for f aturc purposes. Several " unions " of parishes have been effected for economy, but very few if any have been suppressed. Many and wido were the speculations as to how Disestablish- ment would affect the doctrine and rubrics of the Irish Pro- testant Church. Although legislatively united in 1800, and ,380 NEW IK EL AND. .declared to be "one and indivisible," the English and Irish Churches were never, since 1640, identical in the nature and spirit of their Protestantism. The former was on the whole Lutheran or High Church; the latter was on the whole Calvin ist or Low Church. In England the Bestoration almost effaced the charac- ieristics of Puritan Protestantism. In Ireland that event made little change, and Irish Protestantism visibly retains to this day the imprint it received at the Cromwellian period. Legislative regulation created a uniformity between the two bodies sure to be modified on such an opportunity as that presented by Dis- establishment. For the last fou-r or five years the Church Synod in Dublin has been engaged in the critical and serious purpose f revision. To any one who could regard with levity the labours of earnest and conscientious men engaged in such a work, the debates, often angry and stormy, sometimes truly comical in their episodes, would afford great scope for sarcasm. _A.n extreme party seemed plainly bent on " revising " the Book of Common Prayer into a blank, and reforming the Kefonnatiom in the most sweeping manner. The episcopal office and clerical haraeter seemed to them remaining relics of antique Romanism. The supernatural in sacramental subjects they appeared to re- -gard as merely superstitious. Several times did a secession seem inevitable. More than once did Dr. Trench in mournful tone .point out the logical tendency of some of the changes proposed. -Nevertheless it may be said that the middle party has carried its way, and moderated everything. The three principal questions discussed have been (1) the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed ; (2) the baptismal service (" seeing that this child is now regenerate ") ; and (3) the Ordinal the words " Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of 'God." The last two were left untouched after much discussion. As to the first, it was in one year's Synod carried that the damnatory clauses should be altogether omitted, as forming no part of the articles of belief. Ultimately the Creed was loft untouched in its place, but the mandatory rubric requiring it to be read thirteen times in the year in the public ser v ice was removed. The Episcopal Protestant Church of Ireland has lost nothing, and has gained much, especially in its freedom of action, by Disestablishment Yet what a revolution, what a change from the Old Ireland to the New does this one event alone bring to our view ! There is no conviction deeper or stronger in the English to-day fhan was the conviction forty years ago nay, ICELAND AT WESTMINSTER. 38H twenty years ago that England would spend her last shilling and fire her last gun in maintaining the State connection and ascendancy of the Protestant Church in Ireland. What over- throw of the empire was not such a frightful event as Dis- establishment supposed to involve! It has come to pass, and lo ! the empire stands ! CHAPTER XXXIL IRELAND AT WESTMINSTER. THE Kerry election fulfilled in its effects the anticipations of English and Irish public opinion. It was accepted on all hands as a decisive event. Every one realised that it marked an important turning-point in Irish politics, that an entirely new era was at hand. The time had now come for the Home Government Associa- tion which had always declared itself to be merely the precursor of a really authoritative national body to summon the country as it were into council, and let Ireland discuss and formulate the national programme. Hitherto the members of that organisation were only a party, pushing their propaganda so far no doubt with overwhelming success. But there were other parties in the country. There were the old Eepeal party, the Liberal party, the Land party, the Catholic Education partythe latter supposed to inchide most of the bishops ; and above all there was the Fenian party, broken, disrupted, and weakened, but not destroyed. None of them had the mandate of the country authorising it to lead the way. In the autumn of 1873 the Council of the Home Government Association decided to co-operate in calling a great National Conference to consider the question of Home Rule. There was hestitation and debate for some time as to whether it should be governed by an " open " requisition that is, one expressing no opinion on the subject or scheme to be considered or by one which would in itself be a National Declaration. I was amongst those who favoured the former view ; but Mr. Butt, who was on the other side, prevailed. He argued with much force that no matter what pains might be taken to render the Conference an influential and representative assembly, the English press might .382 NEW IRELAND. still say its utterance "was or.ly tl\e decision of pome three or four hundred individuals; whereas a National Requisition, signed by ten thousand persons of position and influence, affirm- ing the Home Rule scheme, would in itself be a great authority. In October 1873, accordingly, a requisition was circulated < through the post to members of corporations, town commis- sioners, and other popularly elected representatives, magis- trates, clergymen, members of Parliament, &c., in the following terms : We, the undersigned, feel bound to declare our conviction that it is necessary to the peace and prosperity of Ireland, and would be cpnducive to the strength and stability of the United Kingdom, that the right of domestic legislation on all Irish afl'airs should be restored to our country ; and that it is desirable that Irishmen should unite to obtain that restoration upon the following principles. The principles of the Home Government Association, as given in a previous chapter, were then set forth, and the Requisition concluded in these words : \Ve hereby invite a Con-ferejice to be held at such time and place as may be found generally most convenient, of all those favourable to the above principles, to consider the best and most expedient means of carrying them into practical efieet. The desire being to obtain not so much a long list of unknown names as the signatures of representative persons, or men in 'whatsoever position known to command either social or popular influence,, the document was not left at public places, or indis- criminately circulated. Nevertheless, in a few weeks it received the signatures not of merely ten thousand such persons, as was hoped for, but twenty-five 'thousand. Every class and creed, very profession, every representative body, was represented in that vast array. As Mr. Butt anticipated, it was very generally felt that such a Declaration was in itself a national authorisation. On Tuesday the 18th of November 1873, and on the three next succeeding days, the Conference assembled in the great circular hall of the Rotunda a place of meeting selected not merely because of its size, but for its historic associations. There it was that the celebrated Convention of the Irish Volun- teers, under the Earl of Charlemont, held their deliberations in 1783. For nearly a century that hall had been the scene of the most striking and important political displays. There was in EL Ay D AT WESTMINSTER. 383 dot an orator or patriot whose name survives in the history of the past century whose voice had not echoed within those walls. ^Nearly nine hundred delegates or members, gathered from every county in the kingdom, attended on this occasion; and the galleries thrown open to the public, capable of accommodating six hundred persons, were crowded throughout the four days' session with ladies and gentlemen, many of whom had como long distances in order to be present. With one voice the presidency of this important assembly was conferred on Mr. William SliaWj M.P., a Protestant gentle- man of high character, a banker and leading merchant in Cork city. There was much curiosity as to what the tone and temper of the proceedings would be. Some of the leading Liberal organs in London told their readers all about it two days before the chair was taken. There would be " a Donnybrook row in ihe first hour of the sitting." The Conference certainly was not what is called " a Quakers' meeting" ; there was free and active discussion ; every point under consideration was canvassed closely. But the British Parliament in its best days was never more orderly, with a really important national subject under debate, from first to last. Throughout the four days no divi- sion was challenged on any resolution but one, and against that a solitary voice was raised. With scarcely an alteration, the principles and programme of the Home Government Association were affirmed by national authority, and that organisation there- Tipon being dissolved, a new one, " The Irish Home Eule League," was established to take charge of the national movement. By the early part of December this body was organised. The Christmas holidays were now close at hand ; it was necessary to postpone for a few weeks the commencement of active operations, but it was decided to open the new year with a vigorous registry campaign all over the kingdom. By the middle of January 1874, a series of reports on. the condition of the several constituencies were forthcoming. From these :it was clear that by attention to the registries in tho ensuing summer and autumn, seventy-two Home Eule members out of one hundred and three Irish representatives might certainly be .returned at the next general election. That the session about io open in February would be the last of the existing Parlia- ment, that there would be a dissolution in the autumn, was .accepted as a certainty. The only fear which now troubled the League was that the elections might be taken in the early .summer, before the next revision of the parliamentary voters' lists. In this case the opportunity would be half lost ; not more 384 NEW IH EL AND. than thirty seats, it was thought, could bo carried. A stunning surprise was about to burst upon us all ! 'On Saturday morning, the 24th of January 1874, the an- nouncement was flashed throughout the kingdom that Mr. Gladstone had " dissolved " ! Not a whisper of such a determina- tion on his part had been heard even the previous day. It was \ only after midnight that a favoured few learned the astonishing i fact by telegraph. The coup was so sudden that it staggered every one, friend and foe. To us of the Home Eule League it ; brought something like dismay. Here we were, caught at utter disadvantage ; no registries completed, no constitiiencies or- ganised, no candidates selected. Yet never did men encounter so sudden and serious an emergency more resolutely than the council of the League faced this trial. They " stripped to the work," and may be said to have sat en permanence from two o'clock on Sunday the 25th of January till Saturday the 14th of February. They issued an " Address to the People of Ireland," telling them that under the circumstances of this surprise every constituency must only fight its own battle, and let a grand en- thusiasm compensate for want of preparation. It was a furious combat. One formidable difficulty soon embarrassed the Homo Kulers a want of suitable candidates. The League Council had set out with refusing to supply or "recommend" any, preferring to let each locality select for itself. This idea, how- ever, had to be abandoned. From north, south, east, and west came the importunate appeal, " Send us a candidate." " Can- didates ! candidates !" was the cry. " Here is our county going adrift for want of a candidate ! " " Is our borough to be lost in this way for want of a candidate ? Send us any one who is a Home Euler !" Anything like choice as to ability had to be given up as hopeless; the only qualification required being honesty of adherence to Home Eule. Nothing could better ex- emplify the temper of the Irish constituencies the inexorable ~ determination to grasp a candidate of some sort, or any sort, i who would declare for Hoie Kule than what occurred in Waterford county. That constituency was overwhelmingly Home Eule, yet in the utter want of candidates there was nothing for it but to allow the late members, Lord Charles Beresford, Conso-vative, and Sir John Esmonde, Liberal, to be re-elected unopposed. The people were indignant. An un- known London " carpet-bagger," whoso name has escaped my memory, ran across one day from Paddington and issued bright green placards announcing; himself effusively as a candidate in favour of Home Eule. He was hailed with rapture. The League IRELAND AT WESTMINSTER. 385 denounced his candidature, and issued an address beseeching the electors not to be fooled by so offensive and barefaced a trick. Neither Lord Charles Beresford nor Sir John Esmonde was a Home Ruler, but they both were honourable men in public life. There was a friendly regard for Lord Charles as brother of the Marqxiis of Waterford. Sir John Esmonde was by marriage the representative of Henry Grattan's family, which counted for much with Irishmen. To reject either of these gentlemen for a Man in the Moon " Home Ruler" from London Bridge would have been monstrous. Every exertion was accordingly used by the League leaders to expose the transaction. However, the clever Cockney polled several hundred votes as a " Home Ruler." It was a serious reflection how far men retui'ned in such haste and at such haphazard as this would be found to supply the elements requisite for the formation of a really influential and effective parliamentary party. How many of them would be half-heai'ted men, Liberals who hoisted Home Rule to secure re-election? How many of them would be extreme men, who would tire of a Fabian policy and soon ciy out that moderation and constitutionalism had failed ? How many of them would exhibit a fatal complaisance lest they might be thought " extreme" ? How many would lack the intelligence or manly courage to adopt a moderate course, lest it might be thought " unpopular" ? Would a party so returned exhibit unity, cohesion, strength ; or would they prove to be " a heap of uncemented sand" ? These were pressing anxieties in many a breast throughout that time. At length the desperate struggle was over ; the last return was made, and men, drawing breath, looked around to see how the day had gone. A great shout went up from Ireland. " Victory ! Victory !'"' was the cry from end to end of the land. For the first time, under the shield of the ballot, a national representation freely elected by the people had been returned ; and for the first time since the overthrow of the Irish Par- liament in 1800 a clear and strong majority of the national representation were arrayed in solemn league and covenant to restore it. None were more astonished than the Home Rule leaders at the extent of their success. Under the dis- advantages of " the Gladstone surprise," they had hoped to return between thirty and forty men. They had carried 2o 386 NEW IRELAND. about sixty seats.* In the previous Parliament there sat for Irish constituencies fifty-five Liberals, thirty-eight Conserva- tives, and ten Home Rulers. The new elections returned twelve Liberals, thirty-one Conservatives, and sixty Home Kulers. Ulster sent two Home Rulers and five Liberals for seats previously held by Conservatives. The two Ulster Home Kulers were returned by Cavan county. The pros- perous capital of northern Protestanism, Belfast, furnished one of these gentlemen, Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar, late chair- man of the Belfast Water Commissioners. The other, Mr. Charles Joseph Fay, belonged to an old and influential Catholic family in the county. The successful Liberals in the same province were Mr. Sharman Crawford, returned for the county Down son of that Mr. William Sharman Crawford, M.P., referred to in a previous chapter as the veteran leader of the Protestant Tenant Kight party ; Mr. Taylor for Coleraine ; Mr. Dickson, who came in for historic Dungannon both of these gentlemen being large manufac- turers in the north; Mr. Hugh Law, Q.C., and Mr. Richard Smyth for Deny county. Mr. Law held an eminent posi- tion at the bar, and was Solicitor-General for Ireland. Mr. Smyth was a presbyterian clergyman, had been moderator of the General Assembly a few years previously, and was just then Professor of Oriental Languages in the Presbyterian College of Deny. Of the Irish Home Rulers, eleven were Protestants, and forty-eight Catholics ; of the Liberals nine were Protestants, three Catholics ; all the Conservatives were Protestants. It may be doubted that any constituency in Ireland made greater sacrifice in demonstration of its Home Rule convictions than the town of Drogheda. Its repre- sentation was sought by Mr. Benjamin Whitworth, a Protes- tant Liberal gentleman. He was a leading merchant in Manchester, but was connected with Drogheda by family, by birth, and by the ties of numerous benefits conferred on the town as an employer and a citizen. Mr. Whitworth would be strongly in favour of Home Rule if he were sure it did not involve separation. He feared it did, and so he would not declare * They suffered hut two defeats. In Monnghan county Mr John Madden of Hilton Park, Conservative Home Ruler, failed to obtain election ; and in Tralee borough The O'Donoghue, as an an anti-Home Rule Liberal, defeated Mr. Daly, Mayor of Cork, the Home Rule candidate, by three rotes. I believe the majority of votes actually given was against The O'Donoghue ; but through informality in mark- ing some of the ballot papers he -was " counted in" by throe votes. IRELAND AT WESTMINSTER. 387 for the one question now supreme in the popular estimation. The disappointment, the regret, of the Drogheda people was something astonishing. There was not a man in the universe they would rather elect "if he would but say the one word." Had Mr. Whitworth been like too many politicians, he might easily have managed the difficulty by a slippery or ambiguous phrase ; but he was too honest for that. The constituency on their part were too regardful of duty and principle to give way. A deputation went up to the League for "a candidate," and roundly swore they would not leave Dublin without one. With some difficulty they found a gentleman who consented to stand, and they placed him at the head of the poll. I think I may say the next most striking exemplification of the intensity of the popular feeling was displayed in my own election by the county of Louth, for which 1 was returned by a majority of two to one over the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, now Lord Carlingford. Mr. Fortescue was one of the leaders and chiefs of the Liberal party. He was a man of recognised ability, and filled a prominent place not only in Irish but imperial politics. He was a Cabinet minister in the Gladstone administration at the time of this contest ; and as Chief Secretary for Ireland, virtually governed the country. For no less than twenty-seven years consecutively he had represented Louth. He was a brother of Lord Clermont, one of the mostextensive landowners, one of the best and kindliest, in the county. Personally no man had a higher position or stronger claims. But he had passed the severest Coercion. Bill ever imposed upon Ireland, and was of course opposed to Home Rule. The Louth contest was naturally considered one of the most important in the whole campaign. Its result, the defeat of such a man as Mr. Fortescue, created a profound sensation. While Home Rule was placed first and beyond all public measures or subjects, there were three others which went to make up what may be called the national platform at this election : Amendment of the Gladstone Land Act ; Denomi- national Education ; and an Amnesty for the Political Prisoners. These three questions commanded the individual supnort of the Home Rule members in nearly every case. It was singular to note how largely Irish Protestanism had, on this occasion, as so often before, furnished leaders to the national movement. The Home Rule chief, par excellence, was Isaac Butt, and beside him there were John Martin, Mitchell- 388 WEW niELAND Henry, William Shaw, and Sir John Gray ; all Protestants. Equally remarkable was the fact that the most Catholic, or, as it would be said, " Ultramontane," constituencies elected Protestant Home Rulers. Those who believe that Irish Catholics import religious exclusiveness into politics, or doubt that Protestant lord and Catholic peasant might mingle in community of feeling as Irishmen, should see Lord Francis Conyngham in the midst of the " frieze coats " of Clare, the object of loyal confidence, hearty affection, and personal devotion. The dissolution of 1874 was a disastrous coup for the great leader of English Liberalism. It resulted in the over- throw of his party. The new parliament opened with a, Conservative ministry not only in office but in power. Mr. Disraeli found himself at the head of three hundred and sixty devoted followers ; while not more than about two hundred and forty stood beneath the banner of the late Premier. As to the remaining sixty, a state of things previously unknown was about to present itself. Imme- diately on the conclusion of the elections, the Irish Home Eule members assembled in the council-chamber of the City Hall, Dublin, and after deliberation earnest and prolonged adopted resolutions constituting themselves " a separate and distinct party in the House of Commons." In truth it was upon this understanding, expressed or implied, they were one and all returned. They forthwith proceeded to make the requisite arrangements to such an end. Nine of their body were elected to act as an executive council. Secretaries and ' whips" were duly appointed. Motions and measures were agreed upon for introduction. Thus constituted, marshalled, and organised, the Irish Home Rulers took their seats in the imperial Parliament. Serious and difficult was the work those men had entcml on. It had been no light and easy task to bring the Irish millions anew to give their confidence to constitutional endeavours. The resorts of physical force they did not indeed believe in, else the Fenian enterprise had been more formidable ; but not a great deal more brightly had they at first regarded the prospects of parliamentary action. Behind that Home Rule party at Westminster stood those millions, hoping, doubting, fearing ; eagerly and narrowly watching every move ; ready to reciprocate conciliation, but danger- ously quick to resent hostility. The bulk of the nation was LOSS AND GAIN. 38$ fairly willing to try out a reasonably patient, persevering policy, but there was a section who hoped nothing from. Parliament, and who would rejoice to find the English mem- bers voting down everything with an undiscriminating " No !'' The Home Rule leaders knew the nature of the elements they had to deal with, and were fully aware that events might throw the game into the hands of the more extreme and impatient section of their people. They decided to offer a bridge to the opposing forces of Irisk demand and English refusal. Apart from the question of Home Rule, which they knew would require much time, they resolved to lay before the House of Commons several schemes of practical legislation, the merits of which could hardly be contested, and the success of which might fairly be expected. The concession of these would, on the one hand, lead the English people gradually to look into the nature of Irish claims, and, on the other hand, lead the Irish people to place more confi- dence in constitutional effort. It was probably the best and wisest policy such a party could devise. * You will gain nothing by it," said some amongst them ; " you will accomplish nothing by this moderation. You will be blindly voted down all the same. It is a policy of combat you should set yourselves to pursue." " We shall try that, if we must ; but not if we can avoid it," answered the Home Rule chiefs. Amidst such circumstances, beset by such difficulties, inspired by such hopes, facing so grave a problem, the Irish Home Rule party pushed forward from 1874 to 1877, the exponent* of a new policy, the representatives of a New Ireland at Westminster. CHAPTER XXXIII. LOSS AND GAIN. TK that well-known and once seditious ballad "The wearing of the Green," an anxious query is pressed as to how it fares with Ireland And how does she stand ? So may we, ere we close the record and quit our theme, ask how stands Ireland in 1877. In what is she most changed ? What is the loss or gain between the old time and the new ? 390 NEW IRELAND. Although, contrasted with the development of nations in the long enjoyment of healthy life, the progress of Ireland material and intellectual, social, industrial, educational, and political maybe found sadly slow, and in some respects cruelly retarded, yet, compared with her own dismal historic standards, she has made great strides within the present generation. The really important fact is, that with the little she has gained she has done more, and bids fair to accomplish relatively greater things, than any nation of them all. Serious and heavy are the material losses to be weighed in taking a balance and estimating gains upon this period. The country that has lost in thirty years one-third of its popula- tion a million by famine, and two millions by despairing flight must have received a well-nigh mortal wound. No gloziag fallacies, no heartless theories, have availed to stamp upon the Irish Famine and Exodus any character less dark than that of utter calamity. Yet Ireland has survived the blow. Economically and industrially its weakening effects will long be visible ; but the vitality of the nation has triumphantly asserted itself. Despite all disaster and diffi- culty, Ireland is marching on. It is not easy to arrive at accurate conclusions as to the extent of Ireland's material progress between 1845 and 1875. The necessary records were not in existence, or were very defective, thirty years ago ; arid some of the tests and comparisons frequently applied are most fallacious. That progress depends almost entirely on agriculture ; manufac- turing industry being still but little known. For some years past many signs attest that the agricultural classes ia Ireland have made considerable advance, and a decided increase in the national wealth has been thus acquired. But hardly anyone seems to notice the important fact that this, has arisen less from extension of earning power, or of pro- ductive area, than from a rise in the price of certain agricultural products. A considerable increase in the price of coal a few years ago brought extravagantly " good times " to the colliers and mine owners while it lasted, though the out- put was no greater than before. If nothing occur to send back the prices of beef and mutton, milk and butter, eggs and poultry, Ireland will have established a substantial gain in material prosperity. But this present glow of " good prices " is too commonly confounded with the solid LOSS AND GAIN. 391 increase of wealth that results from increased productive- ness. It is in great part perilously adventitious. There are, however, numerous indications that the respite from hard- ship, the comparative comfort, which the farming classes have thus experienced has been turned by them to great account. These few years of better circumstances, to- gether with the influence of certain other changes, educa- tional and political, in the country, have had a startling effect on the agricultural population. Never again, without such struggle as may astonish the kingdom, will they submit to the serfdom and destitution of old tames. The educational progress and attainments of Ireland within the past thirty years will bear no comparison with what has been accomplished in Belgium, America, Germany, France, Scotland, England, or Switzerland. But the effect .and influence on Ireland of the measui-e of educational gain achieved within that period has been incalculable. It has, as I have already said, revolutionised the country. The educational facilities and opportunities within the reach of the Irish people are still especially as regards intermediate .and university education " miserably bad. scandalously bad." The Government holds to its determination to force on the Irish millions a scheme admittedly out of accord with their conscientious convictions ; and thus the precious aid which popular sympathy and national enthusiasm would bring is utterly lost to our primary- school systam. As to university and intermediate education in Ireland, the condi- tion of affairs is a reproach to the nineteenth century. It is truly lamentable that in such a matter as education the policy of force majeure should still be pursued towards a people to whom such a huge arrear of educational restitution is due. This is hardly the way to majce requital to Ireland for a cen- tury of laws that hunted down the schoolmaster and put a price upon his head. One of the best and brightest changes visible in Ireland is the almost total disappearance of sectarian animosities, and the kindly mingling of creeds and classes in the duties of everyday life. Even still, no doubt, in one particular corner of the island, there linger traces of the old and evil spirit beneath whose accursed influence man spilled the blood of his fellow-man in the outraged name of Religion. But even in Ulster these insensate feuds are steadily giving way. Such passions do not suddenly subside. Long after 392 NEW IRELAND. better and nobler feelings have gained the mastery, the fitful spasms of expiring fanaticism will occasionally present their ghastly spectacle ; but the end is none the less inevitably at hand. In Derry city the annual displays that formerly involved periodical wreck and bloodshed have for the past five or six years, with scarcely an exception, been celebrated amidst declarations and demonstrations of mutual tolerance and good feeling. In Belfast and one or two of the neighbouring towns no such happy re- sult has as yet been safely assured ; but in these places the local leaders on each side have many difficulties- to contend with. Every party and faction has its camp- followers and irregulars, who, amenable to no discipline, often stain by their excesses, and compromise by their assaults, the cause which they pretend to serve. Every season it becomes more and more plain that Ulster Orange- man and Ulster Catholic are equally desirous of terminating a state of things which was the scandal of Ireland and the- reproach of Christianity. Elsewhere, throughout the remaining provinces of the- kingdom, concord, tolerance, and kindly feeling largely prevail. The coincidence whereby the lines of religious demarcation correspond, as a general rule, with the political in Ireland Protestant being generally synonymous with Conservative, and Catholic with Liberal is very unfor- tunate ; for often a conflict seems to be sectarian when, in fact, it is only political. On the whole, the painfully sharp distinctions and classifications of old times have softened down ; and the different social classes and religious denominations no longer resemble so many warring tribes encamped upon the land. It is, however, in the domain of politics that the most serious changes are to be noted in Ireland, Tho gravity and importance of those changes will be recognised only when they are studied in the twofold aspect of their effect on Ireland herself, and their effect on England. There never was a period until now, since the passing of the Union, in which the Irish representation was not amenable to the influences, and more or less subject to the authority, of the governing parties, Liberal or Conservative the ministerial or ex-ministerial chiefs in London. Had it been otherwise, many a time it might have been a serious peril for England to have had a hundred aud five Irishmen LOSS AND GAIN. 893 with their hands on the lever of imperial affairs at West- minster. As it was, they were merely so many imperial Whigs and Tories, whose action in the main was directed and controlled by the Melbournes or Lyndhursts, Russells or Peels, Stanleys or Aberdeens, of the hour. If the con- tinuance or discontinuance of such a system now lay wholly or mainly in the choice of the repi-esentatives themselves, its abandonment during a year or two might be a matter of little moment, as a merely temporary variation. But a change, a radical change, has been brought about under very critical circumstances. It is only within the past thirty or forty years that in Ireland the bulk of the people, long kept outside the pale of the constitution, may be said to have actively entered public life. That is to say, the political influence of Ireland, such as it was, even so recently as thirty years ago, was exercised in their name and on their behalf, not by the people them- selves. Ten years ago the franchise was placed practically within their reach, yet its use was then, to them, too full of deadly peril to make the possession a boon. Five years ago, however, came a measure which, as if by the flash of a magician's wand, has changed the whole aspect of Irish politics. The ballot has brought, for the first time, the in- fluence and the will of the Irish people directly to bear on the assembly at Westminster. With a marvellous rapidity they have realised the great agencies now within their con- trol. With rather sudden energy they have cast aside the tutelage of former days. The political power of Ireland has passed for aye from the custody of leaders, managers, and proxy- holders, in the sense in which they held it and used it of old. The statesmen who have to deal with the Ireland of to-day will find that they are face to face with new elements, new forms and forces, social, economic and political. It becomes of the first importance to appreciate the temper and tendency, the bent and purpose, of those millions whom, the School, the Newspaper, the Franchise, and the Ballot have made masters of the situation in Ireland. Equally necessary is it to take into view the one hundred and seventy thousand Irish voters in the cities and towns of Britain, daily prepar- ing themselves for more complete and resolute co-operatkm with the efforts of their countrymen at home. As long as the working classes of England were unenfranchised, these vast bodies of Celtic material accumulated between the Tay 2 D 391 NEW IRELAND. and the Thames were of little account. But as ever}' day ;the influence of those classes increases as the franchise is. extended, and school board, poor-law, municipal, and parliamentary elections admit the masses of the people to the exercise of public power the men whom Irish land- lordism swept in thousands from their native valleys in the western island will as a consequence be heard from. They are placed in all the great centres of public opinion and political activity ; and some of the most momentous issucs- . of the near future will be largely determined, one way or another, by their aid. Not in a year, nor in two years, will they be able to constitute or organize themselves, and ex- hibit perfect discipline and trained intelligence; but all this is plainly ahead is merely a matter of time. No graver anxiety can weigh upon the mind of a patriotic Irishman contemplating these things than that which sur- rounds the question as to how, and in what temper, the Irish people at home and in England may use the powers- within their reach. Here and there, we may be sure, some errors of impulse, unreason, or passion will occasionally be seen ; and that impatience of result so characteristic of our race greatly but not wholly reformed of late will at times break forth. Above all, it must be borne in mind that,, like the party of Kossuth sullenly watching the endeavours of Francis Deak ten years ago in Hungary, there are men in Ireland, in America, and in England few, but not less de- termined, some of them more desperate than ever who hope in the breakdown of public effort to have another chance for the resorts of violence. But there are abundant proofs that the great body of the Irish people, in sober but resolute pur- pose, are determined to work out their national policy by the- agencies of piiblic opinion and the weapons of political , power. And assuredly no happier circumstance has cheered 1 the outlook of Irish politics in our century than the daily ; increasing exchange of sympathies, and the more loudly avowed sentiments of reconciliation and friendship, between the peoples of Ireland and of Great Britain. What the veil of the future may hide is not given to man- to know. Enough for us that in skies long darkened and torn by cloud and storm thrice-blessed sigus of peace and hope appear. The future is with God. A SEQUEL. attend as Grand Jurors at the approaching Assize, Mr. Parnell at once rejoined (I quote from Hansard) : " OBSTRUCTION:'' 417 Mr. Parnell thought the business of the nation should be attended to be- fore the local affairs of counties in Ireland, and thus the attendance at the Grand Juries was no reason for postponing the committee. This was his start. The English Bill went into committee on the 1st March. Mr. Newdegate, Mr. Hardcastle, Mr. Leighton, and other members, strove, by amendment, to secure that the Justices of each county should have reports made to them by the Prison Visitors, so that any undue severity might come to light. Mr. Parnell, in a speech of fourteen lines, sustained this effort; and he and his friends voted in the minority of 59 in the division, on which, as I remember, Mr. Newdegate was teller. It was the same with Mr. Hardcastle's amendment as to " Dilapidated or unsuitable Prisons," Mr. Parnell speaking barely one sentence in support, but voting steadily for all improve- ments. Having worked on up to half-past twelve, the Government reported progress, and proposed to begin some new business in tlie shape of a money vote of 350,000. This was a different story. Mr. Parnell at once " objected to the House being called upon to go into committee (on a money vote) after half-past twelve o'clock," and moved an adjournment, which Mr. Biggar seconded. On a word of explanation from Sir Stafford Northcote, however, the motion was at once withdrawn. On the 22nd March the Prison Bill Clauses were on again, Mr. II. B. Sheridan, and a number of other English members, moving humane and useful amendments, the Irish members heartily, but briefly, supporting them. All were voted down. On the 26th of March the Clauses again were on, and the same course was followed. An amendment by Mr. Newdegate led to a lively discussion, in which Mr. Cross, Mr. Eoebuck, Mr. Sheridan, Sir W. Eraser, Sir H. James, Mr. Whitbread, Mr. Walter, Mr. Dodson, Mr. Rodwell, Mr. Biggar, Sir W. Barttelot, Sergeant Simon, and Mr. Parnell spoke. The latter said : He (Mr Parnell) had himself drawn up an amendment much the same as that recommended by Sir Walter Barttelot. The prisons of England in the olden time, before the labours of Howard, were a scandal to the civilized world, and, notwithstanding the labours of that eminent man, and the reforms introduced, too many cases of tyranny aud bullying on the part of officials occurred even now. He then proceeded, in support of his argument, to read 2 E 418 NEW IRELAND. rather long- extracts from affidavits in the case of a prisoner who had been barbarously experimented on under the erroneous suspicion that he was shamming 1 paralysis. On the Chairman pointing- out that he was travelling- beyond a mere reference, he eventually desisted, but not till the House had begun to show strong temper. Things went no smoother through a long- and arduous sitting. Feeling- grew hot between the "interloping-" Irish members and the majority, especially on a proposal (sug-gested by Sergeant Simon) to protect Habeas Corpus prisoners. In every division and there were many, for work was pushed hard fifty or sixty English members (some of them Conserva- tives) were in the same lobby with Mr. Parnell and his friends, a strong- proof that the points contested were of some substantial merit. At length, at quarter past one in the morning, Dr. Kenenlly having moved an amendment in a long and weary speech, to which Mr. Cross replied Mr. Biggar moved to report prepress. It was a late hour, and it -was evident the House ^ras not disposed to give attention to the discussion. On the front bench opposite he saw several cabinet ministers asleep,* and thej' certainly had not heard the speech of the Home Secretary. Sergeant Simon appealed to the hon. member for Cavan " not to persist in his motion," but Mr. Monk thought his proposal " a not unreasonable one," and Mr. Dillwyn also supported it. The majority, however, had taken it into their heads that Biggar (whom even already they loved not, and who certainly loved' not them) must be punished for alluding to the sjmnber of the jaded ministers, and, with every exclamation of anger, they shouted for a division. Their outcries were defiantly answered. A division there was ayes, 10; noes, 138. Another adjournment motion, and another, and another, followed hot foot ; Mr. Parnell repelling all expostulations of friends, English and Irish (myself included), who, although desirous of voting 1 with him on useful motions, saw that this was purely a matter of temper and passion. For nearly two hours a bitter fight went on, until at three o'clock in the morning the Govern- ment had their way. I have so far described, from my own recollection, or from the official reports, the opening scenes on the Prisons' Bill ; because they faithfully tell the story of how all the * This was quite true "OBSTRUCTION." trouble came about. At first the House seemed as if it could hardly take as seriously meant this appearance of Messrs. Parnell, Big-gar, O'Connor Power, O'Donnell, and O'Gorman in the role of matter-of-fact legislators. But those who were at the trouble to look into the subject saw, with some surprise, that Parnell's amendments were every one aimed at some undoubted blot, and were -drawn with considerable skill.* Not one man in ten, not one man in twenty, however, gave any special thought to the matter,, and so when, after the first two or three nights (" which might be excused"), the majority found those Irish fellows still going on ("and on an English bill, too"), the temper of the assembly broke loose. They evidently could not understand such novel intervention of Irish members as meant for anything- but obstruction. When Parnell rose to speak they sought to put him down, at first by merely crying " divide, divide," but subsequently by openly moan- ing and groaning at him. To this/ after somft time, he retorted (or else one of his comrades did for him) by ob- serving that " If hon. gentlemen were not in a mood to allow the motion to be fully discussed, the debate had better be adjourned;" and then an adjournment motion was made- amidst shouts of rage, threats, and execrations. The bulk of the Irish Party held aloof from him. Several of them, however, bitterly remembering the work of the "thundering majorities" during the past three years, and, sick of the inactive and non-combatant policy of their con- stituted leader, gave him substantial aid in all but what they considered his purely retaliatory or obstructive motions. Mr. Butt was known to view his conduct with great dis- pleasure, and one day early in April, ere yet things had gone very far, it occurred to some members of the Govern- ment to convey to the Irish leader a complaint of the conduct of his young men. This was coupled with dexterous praise of his own "noble regard" for "the dignity of Parliament." The old man was immensely flattered at the idea of being invoked as a power by the House of Commons. He came down one night, and, rising in the midst of one of Mr. Parnell's contests with the majority, denounced such ^conduct in tones of indignation and anger. The House burst into rapturous cheers. Mr. Butt suddenly became an object * The Sjjcctator, the Pall Mall Gazette, aiid other journals observed upon this fact. 420 NEW IRELAND. of admiration. The London newspapers, that previously had scarcely a friendly word for him as leader of the Home Rule Party, all at once saw in him a man of amazing merits. To the wonder of everybody, however, of Mr. Butt himself especially, the " young men," instead of shrinking abashed and docile, faced up to their titular leader, and told him bluntly they meant to hold their ground, and, as General Grant said, " to fight it out on this line." Mr. Parnell was now fairly on the path.* Day by day he seemed to acquire more and more confidence in himself. He intervened more firmly : "grew more troublesome," the majority would say. Day by day the House (not always without reason) grew less and less patient with him ; often (without sufficient cause) more sharp with him, more hostile to him. He had not as yet acquired that mastery of the rules and forms of procedure which later on was the wonder of everybody ; and just now, often tripping in these things, he was pulled up by the Speaker and Chairman. Every such rebuke from the Chair was joyously hailed by the House * I have already briefly sketched the family history, and described the entrance into public affairs, of the man who, from this point forward. Las to bo regarded as the predominant figure and moving spirit in New Ireland. A word or two of his personal characteristics. What " The Ulaek Douglas" was in ancient Scottish history a name to frighten children with Mr. C. S. Parnell has, in some measure, become here in England; while in Ireland he has (chiefly by reason of the Government efforts to s:rike him down) become the most popular and the most powerful public man known in Irish politics for forty years. And yet not only does he lack qualities pre- viously thought essential to such popularity, but to an almost inconceivable degree he avoids or scorns all arts or efforts to attract it. In everything but convictions and resolutions, a more un-Irish, that is to say un-Cehic, man it woul with the cry; and now Mr. Parnell and his associates began to get short shrift from the Speaker and Chairman. They were pounced upon, snapped up, stopped in unfinished^ sentences, and forbidden to use language which Members of the House and Ministers of the Crown use every day, and which such men have freely used for centuries. On one occasion Mr. O'Connor Power called an opponent's- speech " hypercritical." The House thought he had said " hypocritical." Even if he had, the phrase was quite- parliamentary, as any reader of Mr. Disraeli's or Mr. Eoe- buck's speeches will see. But he had not used the word at all. Nevertheless the Chairman came down upon him. L quote the official report : Mr. O'Connor Power was understood to describe the. speech of the lioru member for Bury as " hypocritical." (Cries of " Order.") The Chairman said that the expression used by the hon. member for Mayo was unparliamentary. Mr. O'C. Power said that what he said or intended to say was, not that the speech was hypocritical, but hypercritical. His voice, however, was drowned in shouts of "withdraw! withdraw ! " Nevertheless, five minutes la/er (Hansard's Report) Mr. Locke referred, with some indignation, to the conduct of the hon. member for Dungarvan (Mr O'Donnell), whose expressions of defereuce to* the authority of the Chair only pretended to be sincere. "OBSTRUCTION." 423" Here was hypocritical conduct plainly charged. Mn Parnell asked the Chairman if such an imputation was parlia- 'mentary? The Chairman said the expression was not necessarily unparliamentary, unless it imputed personal insincerity to the lion, member. There were, to my knowledge, English members present who, staggered by this gross contrast of ruling, rushed into -the lobby, and declared they would not, after that, take further part against Parnell, much as they were opposed to him. The Irishmen soon seemed to throw up all expectation of impartiality in the Chair. It turned out, for instance, that it was quite right for an English member to charge others with " abusing the forms of the House," but it was censurable for an Irish member to complain of " the intimidation to which many members of the House resorted against him." On 25th Julyj Mr. Leonard Courtenay, Mr. E. Jenkins, .and others, amidst open clamour and harrying interruptions, had addressed the committee on the unlucky " South Africa Bill" (which Englishmen now heartily wish had never been heard of), when Mr. Monk said that lion, members v.-ho had addressed the committee were abusing the forms of the House. Mr. Jenkins, with much heat., rose and said Sir, I rise to order. I deny that I have abused the forms of the House. I move that those words be taken down. Mr. Purnell I second that motion. I think the limits of forbearance have been passed. (Hear, hear.) I say that i think the limits of forbear- ance have been passed in regard' to the language winch hon. members opposite have thought proper to address to me, and to those who act with ine. The Chancellor of the Exchiquer I move that these words be taken down also that "the limits of forbearance h;ivo been passed in regard to the language used towards the hon. member." The Chairman It appears to me that the words of the hon. member for Gloucester (Mr. Monk) were not in themselves a breach of order. So that matter was ruled. Next came the alleged offence of Mr. Parnell. The Chairman "The hon. member (Mr. ParneK) is not in order in accusing hon. members of this llouse of intimidation, lie must withdraw that expression. (Cheers.) Mr. Parnell, amidst indescribable outcries and excitement, 424 NEW IRELAND. vainly attempting 1 to explain, had to disclaim the applications put on his words. Need it be pointed out that complaints of pressure and intimidation by members or sections of the louse are constantly made in debate, and have been so \ made for hundreds of years. Amidst a galling cross-fire of interruptions, moans, mur- murs, and audible taunts, to " mind himself," the member for Meath proceeded to speak against the mischievous and' blundering South Africa Bill. Mr. Parnell said the treatment of the white and native races was a subject of great importance. This Bill ought not, therefore, to be passed in its present shape, and no further time should be lost in discussing it. The hon. member was proceeding to refer to the subject of the white and' native races in Africa, when The Chairman reminded the hon. member that he was travelling beyond the question. Mr. Parnell said he bowed to the ruling of the Chair, and" proceeded to explain that he thought the Bill so bad and so- mischievous for the White Colonists and Native Races, that he would oppose and resist it by all the means at his dis- posal. Hansard says : The hon. member, who spoke amidst much confusion,* and who wa twice called to order by the Chair, was understood to say As it was with,. Ireland so it was with the South African Colonies ; yet Irish members* were asked to assist the Government in carrying out their selfish and in- considerate policy. Therefore, as an Irishman, coming from a country which had experienced, to the fullest extent, the results of English in- terference in its affairs, and the consequence of English cruelty and. tyranny, ho felt a special satisfaction in preventing and thwarting the intentions of the Government in respect to this Bill The House sprang at him. Had he declared his intention.- to decapitate the sovereign, instead of stating a determina- tion perfectly lawful and parliamentary, he could hardly have been more violently taken. In a trice Sir Stafford Northcote was at the table. He moved that the words be taken down. They were taken down. He moved that all further business be stopped, and the Speaker sent for ; and so it was done. From all parts of the House men came running * This is Hansard's mild way of referring to attempts of the House to< drown Mr. Parnell's voice by conversation, coughs, exclamations, cries and groans. I am pained to say the scene was most discreditable .met unfortunate. "OBSTRUCTION." 425 in on the news that something- awful had happened. The Speaker came. Sir Stafford Northcote, one of the fairest and the most equably-minded men, and truly one of the most honourable men that ever led the House of Commons, was long- since off his feet, like every one else, in these deplorable scenes. In grave tones, as if it went without saying- that an offence of terrible magnitude had been committed, he moved that Mr. Parnell "be suspended till Friday next." The Speaker called on the culprit to make known " what he had to say wh} sentence of suspension should not be passed upon him." .A prisoner in the dock thus challenged at such a moment gets some latitude. This man got none ; quite the other way. In the very act of his defence he was heckled, baited, tripped up, jostled, and struck at. The House of Commons the fairest and the kindliest assembly in the world, unless when its temper or its prejudices are violently aroused can v make a most unchivalrous and undignified exhibition of itself -at times. It certainly did so on this occasion. Parnell pale, nervous, his voice quivering with suppressed passion -stood erect with hife arms folded, fire flashing in his eye. In calm and measured tones he began. He was listened to for a moment in the utmost silence, but soon he was broken in oipon at every sentence, by angry or scornful taunting cries. Having said that "successive Governments" had behaved in a particular way, the Speaker, interrupting, told him he must not thus " use words of menace to this House;" a difference too plain to need pointing out. Whereupon Mr. Parnell I do not know whether these were words of menace, but I -have no intention of offering any words of menace to this House or to any- >body else. I shall not follow the example set me in that respect in these .last few days by the English press, and certainly, as I think, on the part -of members of this House. (" Onler, order.") Mr. J. R. Yorke The hon. member has repeated that he has been sub- jected to menaces on the part of members of this House. 1 move that the words be taken down. They were taken down ; that is, Mr. Yorke's version of them. Mr. Parnell Let me know, Sir, what those words are? ("Order, order/) Mr. J. R. Torke The hon. member stated that he "had been subjected . 4o menaces on the part of members of this House." i Mr. Parnell I did not use those words. Bir Charles Russell I rise, Sir, to say the words quoted were used. 426 KE\V IRELAND. ' It will be noticed that the Hansard short-hand writer,,, above quoted, shows that these were not Mr. Parnell's= words. Even had they been, they were perfectly parlia- mentary that is to say, when used by other members. Mr. Mac little children on his knee while engaged ill compassing that father's destruction. THE LAND LEAGUE. 433 mother and sister now resided. An enthusiastic greeting- awaited him there also. The principal men of the old Fenian movement crowded around him. They were now very much broken into fractions, more or less opposed to one another, and all more or less disorganised and inactive. But they all had a high regard for Davitt, and were anxious to know what he meant to do. Would he take up the threads of Fenianism where they were broken off eight or ten years before, and devote himself to work on the old lines, or would he retire into private life and henceforth apply himself to his own personal advancement? He seems to have taken a sagacious and practical view of the situation. Whatever the abstract merits of Fenianism or Home Rule might be, the first duty of the hour, in view of the adverse turn which agricultural affairs had taken, was, lie considered, to grapple boldly with the Land Question, and to secure the existence of an Irish people on the soil of Ireland. This was a task in which he conceived the idea of combining all the existing elements of political force, parliamentary and non-parliamentary, Home Rule and non- Home Rule, Fenian and non-Fenian. He would, until the people had first been planted firmly in the land, raise none of those issues. Without either deprecating or endorsing any of them, he would let the future take care of itself as to those things. He would put an end to peddling and tinkering with the Land Question, and go boldly for a total sweeping away of the system known in Ireland as " Land- lordism," and for the creation of a national peasant-pro- prietary. No more of these intermittent quarrels over "abatements" or "valuations," no more eviction campaigns or landlord shootings, no more agitations or debates or Bills or motions ; but a clean sweep of the whole business. The people of Ireland should, in a real sense, be made owners of the land of Ireland. Some of the Fenian sections entered into his views ; others vehemently opposed them, and in fact denounced him, bitterly declaring that if by this means the Irish people were weaned from the good sound doctrine of the sword, and the sword alone, the rooted and secured peasant pro- prietors would become contented slaves, and fall away from national aspirations. Pavitt, manifestly, disbelieved these prognostications as to Irish tenants made secure and pros- perous becoming less patriotic as Irishmen ; but, be that as 2P 434 HEW IRELAND. it might, he contended that it was a matter to be decided by the free will of the Irish people themselves whenever the- time arrived for testing- the question. Having- secured the g-ood-will, if not actual co-operation^ of a fair number of influential friends amongst the Advanced Irishmen in the States, he returned to Ireland ; for the- question still remained whether this New Departure, with its novel eclecticism, would take at home. How would the Home Rulers like to see a movement pushed to the front, that might, for a time at all events, hide away their own ? How would the remnants of the Fenian battalions broken, disrupted, scattered, weakened, but not destroyed take to a course of action which was to be open and above-board,, avoiding violence and illegality, and working only by the ordinary modes of political warfare? Above all and this seemed his greatest obstacle how would the public men, the Catholic clergy, and the existing Tenant-Eight organisa- tions (all pledged to a joint-proprietary-interest or Landlord- and-Tenant scheme of settlement) receive a project, the first principle of which was to decry and contemn as utterly in- adequate " the Three F's,"* till now the maximum of the tenants' demands? Davitt faced all these difficulties. After much quiet, patient, unobtrusive but arduous labour, he de- termined to raise the standard in his native country, and almost on the site of the ruined hearth that, thirty years- ago, was his father's home. This he did by organising the demonstration above referred to, held at Irishtown on the 28th of April, 1879. He himself was prevented from being- present by missing a railway train, but the meeting was at- tended and addressed by Mr. Daly, of Castlebar (who pre- sided); by Mr. O'Connor Power, M.P. ; Mr. John Ferguson, of Glasgow; Mr. Thomas Brennan, and Mr. J. J. Louden, B.L. This was the beginning of the Irish .Land War of 1879- 1882. The affair at once attracted attention, although at the moment those not behind the scenes little knew its real im- port ancl gravity. The Irishtown rally was followed by others of the same character in the same province. The evidences of discipline in the way bodies of men marched, and cavalcades of horsemen rode, to the meetings were very remarkable ; and the boldness of the language used, ' Fixed Tenures, Fair ileuts, arid Free Sale. THE LAND LEAGUE. 435' the daring-, not to say "revolutionary," theories as to land- ownership put forward, seemed to strike the public ear as sutter extravagance. Yet, indeed, these theories were in fnost part the principles of John Stuart Mill, and other well-known Economists, of which Mr. Ferguson, for one, had always been an able and earnest disciple. But there was, unquestionably, a- great deal of "wild" talk and raw theorising 1 , on the part of some of the speakers, on sub- jects of which it may most truly be said that " a little ' learning is a dangerous thing." The principal doctrine promulgated was " The Land for the People," which, gener- ally speaking, was advocated in a rather fallacious and sophistical manner. The farmers a-ppeared to understand that they half -a million or more out of five and a-half millions of Irishmen were " the people " to whom the land belonged ; although, according to the doctrine of primary natural rights urged by the speakers, the other five millions had proportionably a much stronger claim than the tenant- farmers in actual occupation. In my opinion this propa- ganda would have failed to make headway but for a marvellous concurrence of surrounding circumstances. Not merely one or two not merely a dozen or a score, but literally an overwhelming aggregation of incidents and considerations happened at that moment to effect a com- bined influence which made inevitable the revolution that was soon to astonish England and the world. There were, for instance, the famine memories I have above alluded to ; the national school and the penny newspaper had done their work ; the comparatively Conservative influence of the Catholic clergy was no longer all-powerful ; American ideas that is to say, Republican and Democratic principles .and theories derived from the weekly correspondence of relatives in the States, from the Irish- American newspaper weekly sent home by them, and from returned emigrants, now filled the homes of Irish farmers and peasants and artisans. Then there was the scoffing hostility of Parlia- ment, the failure of Mr. Butt's moderate policy in the House of Commons, and the rise of the Parnell party, with its terner purpose and more combative action. Above all, there was the alarm of impendhg > ruin the failure of crops, the merciless, rack-rents and consequent insolvency, with .gloomy visions of the notice-to-quit, the Itabere, the evic- tion, the road-side, the workhouse, or the grave. These 436 NEW IRELAND. were but a few of the crowding considerations and in- fluences which combined to bring 1 matters to a head at this point of time in Ireland. At first the Irish members took no part in the new agrarian movement. They watched it anxiously. Some of them knew Mr. Parnell certainly did that it was not a matter to be lightly embraced. All of them knew that un- less the Government could be got promptly and earnestly to take action as to the prevalent agricultural distress, and the alarming prospects in Ireland, a failure of the coming- crop would lead to consequences little dreamt of just then by Irish landlords. All efforts to call forth such action from the Government were vain, though every day's mail brought to Irish members intelligence of an ominous; character. At length, on the 27th May, 1879, finding that Parliament was being adjourned for the Whitsuntide reces* without anything being done, it was resolved to raise a final protest and warning. As what took place on this occasion has now a historical importance "rising in judgment," as it does, against the Government for what has since occurred I quote textually from Hansard a few sentences from the speeches of the Irish members : Mr. O'Donnell said he rose for the purpose of calling attention to t.lie> deplorable and unendurable condition of the landed interests in Ireland. The Land Bill of the liight Hon. gentleman, the member for Greenwich; (Mr Gladstone), WHS a monument of the good intentions of that KightHon.. gentleman rather than of the capacity of English parties to deal with Irisb questions. He then proceeded to entreat the attention of the Govern- ment and of Parliament to the troubles that were gathering- in Ireland. Mr. Justin M'Oarthy said he was perfectly certain that the distress ia Ireland had become so sreat as to render an attempt by Parliament to deal with the question imperative acd unavoidable. They (i}ie Iri^h members) heard from fanners, from priests, and peasants alike that the crisis was. imminent, urgent, and even perilous. Crisis ! Urgent ! Perilous ! The House angrily resented! the idea. This was exaggeration and menace. Mr. O'Connor Power (after complaining that the Government was doing- nothing on the Land Question) said How long did they think the Irish people would submit to have their grievances postponed for the con- venience of the Government? If Parliament did not come forward, within THE LAND LEAGUE. 437 a reasonable time, with some measure of legislation calculated to relieve the depression of the present state of agriculture in Ireland, scenes would, arise in Ireland that would be far more dangerous to the rights of property, and to the order and trauquillity wliich should prevail in that couutry, that, any that Ireland had been afflicted with in her long struggle witli the- ignorance, if not incompetency, of the English Parliament. It' those warn- ings were now unheeded, and Parliament should plead for further delay,, the consequences must be fixed on their own shoulders. Warning ! Consequences ! This was " wasting the time, of the House." There were going to be no consequence* in Ireland ! Mr. A. M. Sullivan said there could be no doubt that there was alarming- distress among the agricultural interests, not only of Ireland, but of Great. Britain, lie would neither express, nor join in expressing, any wholesale- indictment against the landlords of Ireland. They fell, in his opinion, far- short in many respects; but he had never failed to admit that in their- errors and shortcomings they might be the creatures of circumstances, and that they possessed a great many excellent qualities which were not always remembered. .... There was yet sufficient time to grapple* with the evil. Then Mr. Parnell spoke : Mr. Parnell said he knew from experience that great agricultural distress, prevailed in Ireland. He was talking the other day with a cess-collector who told him that he had never had such difficulty, since 1847, in getting- moriey from the farmers He would not prolong the discus- sion on that occasion ; but unless the Government were ready to afford" some opportunities for the consideration of these subjects after Whitsun- tide, and unless they intended, at all events, to do something in the direc- tion of the recommendations of Mr. Shaw l.efovro's Committee, the question* 1 was one which would have to be taken up by the Irish members in a firms and determined fashion. It was one which deeply affected their con- stituencies, and even if they were disposed to hang back a little on the- subject, the constituencies would not allow them. " At all events, something in the direction of the recom- mendations of Mr. Shaw Lefevre's Committee." So cheap,, Bo moderate, was the offer then ! Mr. Mitchell Henry said it was only natural that his hon. friend, Mr_ O'Donnell, should ask for some declaration on the subject. The Irish members were in earnest on this question. They knew their own minds- on it, and they were backed by five millions of people across the water. They were determined to vindicate their rights, by quiet and orderly means. if possible, but they were prepared, if need be, to resort to all the meau. Which the House had put into their hands. 438 NEW IRELAND. No stronger warning- could be placed on the record. All to no purpose. Mr. Lowther rose to reply, and, of course, fiddled while Rome was burning. In smooth and jaunty tone he pooh-poohed the whole business. There was, in- deed, "some" depression in the agriculture of Ireland, but He was glad to think that that depression, although undoubted, was -neither so prevalent nor so acute as the depression existing in other parts of the United Kingdom. Seldom did an English minister speak a sentence destined -,- to have more memorable results. In that moment Mr. James Lowther sealed the doom of Irish Landlordism. Mr. Parnell's resolve was instantly formed. For weeks past he had been pressingly urged to take up the new Land cam- paign, with its watchword of war a outrance, against land- lordism ; but he had clung to the idea that a less radical course might yet be found effectual. He saw now that there was nothing for it but Davitt's scheme, with all its desperate concomitants of fierce struggle and terrible sacrifice. Yes, he \rould cross the Rubicon. He proceeded to Ireland, announced to Davitt his resolve, and put himself at the head of the movement. On the 8th of June, 1879, he appeared side by side with Davitt at the Westport meeting ; and here it was that, in the course of his speech, he uttered the sentence which subsequently be- came so notable " Keep a firm grip of your homesteads." From thenceforth, in conjunction with Davitt, he pushed the agitation vigorously. On the 21st October, in response to a circular from him, a meeting was held in Dublin of tenant-farmer delegates .and friends, whereat was founded "The Irish National Land League." The principles and purposes of the 'Organisation were set forth, in the following resolutions : V I. That the objects of the League are, first, to bring about a reduction of rack-rents; second, to facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the >' soil by the occupiers. v II. That the objects of the League can be best attained (1) by promoting organisation among the tenant-farmers ; (2) by defending those who may Toe threatened with eviction for refusing to pay unjust rents; (3) by facilitating the working of the Bright Clauses of the Land Act duriug the winter; and (4) by obtaining such reform in the laws relating to land as will enabin every tenant to become the owner of his holding by paying a ifair reiit for u limited iiumber of years. THE LAND LEAGUE. 435' On that daj was founded the most powerful political organisation Ireland has known for half a century ; probably for a much longer period of history. Mr. Parnell was elected president, Mr. Patrick Egan treasurer, and Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. Thomas Brennan honorary secretaries. | As Mayo was the cradle of .the movement, the men who, like young Thomas Brennan, had borne the brunt of toil "* and danger in its early struggles in the western counties. ^ naturally formed the staff of the new organisation. Para oil ' and Davitt were no doubt the names most prominently before the world as leaders ; but for its astonishing success it was largely indebted to men who, at that time, were less widely known to the general public. Next to Michael Davitt, the man whose indomitable energy and activity and wondrous organising skill most considerably built up its- power was Mr. Patrick Egan. He seldom or never made a. speech he aspired to no display on the platform ; but he was a joint-strategist of the whole campaign, and, perhaps, excepting Davitt, the most resolute and invincible spirit amongst them all. The allegation so constantly made against the League that it was " veiled Fenianism," obviously had. its origin in the fact that men known to possess the confi- dence of an influential section of the "Nationalist" party- were put in posts of confidence, and were amongst the most active in the real direction of affairs. But in one respect,, at all events, this course was the most obvious conceivable,, and was exceedingly serviceable. The dominant idea of the- whole scheme was to bring in to this open movement men, from each and all of the various schools of political action, constitutional or unconstitutional, hitherto working in isolatedi or antagonistic formations. "The Land" was a strong- card for any one of them to hold. It is manifest botlv Fenian and Ribbon organisations would grudge its exclusive possession to this new association, and that the latter would f try to avert their absolute hostility, and secure their co- operation. Indeed, I believe a duticulty of this nature was, , throughout, one of the most delicate and critical troubles of the whole business. At the very moment when the Govern- ment press were denouncing the League as veiled Fenianism or disguised Ribbonism, it was, behind the scenes, hard set to allay Fenian and Ribbonite hostility, and convert it into, good will, if not co-operation. It is easy to discern how such co-operation might become very embarrassing ; for irs 440 NEW IRELAND. *ill countries the members of secret political organisations have, from the very intensity of their own convictions, a tendency to convert co-operation into domination, and to "become impatient or intolerant of others. How far in some country district Kibbonism may have got a pull on a League branch, or how far in some other place the Fenians may have obtained the controlling influence, it is, in my judgment, impossible with certainty to say. AVhat can truly be affirmed Is that the men whose names are given above, and especially Michael Davitt, long strove honourably and loyally to keep -the League on the lines of its own open course, and, on the -whole, marvellously succeeded. I doubt they would have so succeeded but for the steadying and strengthening influence of the Catholic Clergy, who, after *ome hesitation, boldly joined all over the country. Their hesi- tation was not very blameable, if, indeed, it was not natural and justifiable. The platform oratory was occasionally, as I liave said, a little wild ; and one or two of the speakers were fond of running in, under cover of Land speeches, doctrines or, rather, phrases and passages that smacked too much of Belleville and Montmartre for Catholic feeling to approve. But, in truth, nothing sinister underlay these little flights of *' sunburstery," as John Mitchel would say, although it was .absurdly sought to make them the pretext for a cry of " Socialism." The Catholic Clergy wisely concluded that, for the good they could do, and the mischiefs they might -hinder, it was lh2ir duty to fling themselves into the move- ment. No class in Ireland had a deeper or a more real fervour in the cause of the land-serf ; none had had such terrible experience of the miseries the League came to sweep -away " Now o Never now and for ever." The organisation, although at first making little headway -elsewhere, spread rapidly in the West of Ireland. " Keep A firm grip of your homesteads" became the watchword shouted from a hundred hills echoed in thousands of hearts aflame with mingled alarm and hope. A strange -.ally, a ghastly aid, came now to enforce the exhortation. AGRARIAN REVOL UTION. 441 CHAPTER IV. AGRARIAN REVOLUTION. BY the middle of August indeed even earlier it was plainr that throughout two-thirds of Ireland the harvest of 1879" was gone ; utterly, irretrievably gone. The potato crop, which in 1876 had produced 12,400,000, and in 1877 liad' fallen to 5,200,000, this year fell to 3,300,000; and' although the other items of produce did not make an exhibit quite so disastrous as this, they yet were of the same dismal character. After three years of fear, three years- of accelerating apprehensions, three years of desperate effort, the black worst had befallen. Famine was at. hand. Mr. Parnell early saw that the League must, for the moment, convert itself into a Relief organisation. He con- ceived the bold design of sailing for America, and, in the course of a public tour through the States, at one and the. same time enlisting sympathy and co-operatiou for the League in its Anti-landlord campaign, and obtaining material aid in money and food for the starving people at home. He succeeded in persuading Mr. John Dillon to accompany him in this important enterprise. Long before Mr. Parnell had in this way taken up the subject, Mr. Dillon had been of opinion that it was upon this question of the Land the. National struggle would essentially have to be fought out. Fragile health, and an aversion to parade or publicity, luuf hitherto kept him from appearance on what is called the- political platform ; but, young as he was, those who knew him best had felt that if he lived he would some day contribute to Irish public life a spirit as bold, and a soul as pure, ns ever served the Irish cause. He was the second son of the late Mr. John Blake Dillon, Member of Parliament for Tipperary, whose part in the events of 1848 and 1868 I have in preceding Chapters briefly mentioned.* " Young John,"" * See Chapters ix. and xx^. -4-12 -VEir IRELAND. ;as we used to call him, was educated at the Catholic University of Ireland, and studied Medicine and Surgery in the Medical Schools of Dublin. He never practised at his profession, owing to his rather precarious condition of health, and spent most of the interval between his college days and 1878 in the various Mediterranean and home "health-resorts" Mentone, San Remo, Pau, GlengarriiTe, and Torquay. Tall, slightly-built, with jet black hair, deeply-set, dark-brown eyes, and dark complexion his earnest, thoughtful, studious character and habits seemed stamped on his countenance. Owing to the violence of hi3 expressions on one or two occasions in speeches made in the House of Commons and in Ireland, the character of John Dillon is, or until .very recently was, utterly mis- understood in England. Mr. Gladstone more correctly appraised it, when, on a memorable occasion in September last, he paid a high tribute to his rectitude of purpose and sincerity of patriotism. On the 14th December, 1870, Messrs. Parnell and Dillon sailed from Qucenstown for America. They were greeted in New York with public and official reception, and in all the chief cities of the Union Avere welcomed with military parade and popular enthusiasm as the Ambassadors of Ireland to America. A few weeks later they were joined by Mr. T. M. Ilealy. Mr. Ilealy was just then known to the outer world only as " Private Secretary to Mr. Parnell," but he was destined ere long to make his mark as never perhaps did man before in the British Parliament almost courting its hatred by an unconcealed scorn and rude defiance, yet conquering its secret homage for abilities impossible not to recognise. An honour, never but once before, since the days of Washington, vouchsafed by the Congress of the United States to any man, citizen or stranger, was extended to Mr. Parnell ; he was invited to address the Chamber on the Case of Ireland. From State to State, from town to town, he and his colleagues sped ; .speaking to immense and enthusiastic masses of people. In three months they obtained not far from < 250,000 dollars for the relief of distress in Ireland, besides ,'. come thousands for the political purposes of the Land i League. They obtained something much more serious. This ' embassy, it may be said, resulted in the introduction of a A GR. UUAN REVOLUTION. 443 new and important factor into Irish, or rather into British,, politics, namely, a strong 1 , a permanent and systematised supply of financial support for political purposes in Ireland. Already, the power of that factor has been remarkably felt; and in my opinion neither British Statesmen nor Irish politicians have realised the full force of this- novel element in the Irish-English politics of the near future. Meantime, throughout all the western districts of Ire- land, scenes harrowing- and heart-rending- beyond descrip- tion were to be witnessed. The cry of anguish and despair rose on every breeze. It was like a ghastly recurrence of "Forty-Seven." In the schools as some of the teachers,, with moistened eyes, told the story to me the terrible state of affairs at home could be read in the pinched and haggard countenances of the children. Enquiry revealed the fact in thousands and thousands of cases, that they came to school every morning without a morsel of food since the previous day, and couid at best only hope for their share once a day of whatever the father or mother might beg or borrow from others nearly as poor as themselves. Next, the teachers observed the clothing, on the little girls especially,, getting lanker and thinner, as the under-garments, few at best, went, shred by shred, to the village pawn-shop. Day by day, teacher and monitor could mark the gradual effects of gnawing hunger on the little faces, until one by one they were missed altogether from the school and added to the cemetery. I will give here, verbatim et literatim, one of the many letters addressed to myself at this sad crisis. It is, at all events, a literary curiosity ; but in truth it has a value far higher than that, for any man who would desire to study the Irish agrarian revolution : ****** Oct The 20 1879 A. .41. Sullivan M.P. Esq. Honerd sir a Faruior from the west of 'Ireland takes the 'liberty oE Writing those few lines. A supernaterall power compells me to address you and lay my Greeviances before you that you -might be to roe as tho angel was to Jeeoup to saive Him from His toofold enemy I Hold 7 acers of land from * * * * . his Brother called for rent on the 5 of sep I asked Him to com and see my land and Value It Him Self He refused L 444 FEW IRELAND. shoed Him 40 liills in the bank that enabled me to liv these 23 yenres sent 1 2 6d per acer of a rise was put as a forth 4 Grinding stone about my neck In vain was it for me to spak to Him He toled me why did I ceep it I tolod Him my Father was 82 yeares and my Mother uow dead 78 Iff I 'left them I cud not Hav luck aney Whare I went all I Had in this 'Woreld was one pownd nine. I Gave It to Him I toled Him I saw in the "Weekly news that Gave 20 per sent on tlie march rent and 10 on areares The less you reed of that paper the beter for You was my aneor 1 pay 4 pownds a acer for 5 acers and for 7 18 pownds and 7 diferant rates am valued in my smal Holding 16 16s and still pay 12 pownds over that High valuation I am not able to pay this time and will not fiend mersy from my master I am a living skelliton and desentry is seting in from Black potetas and sup of milk He livs on spist beef and best cf wine. -Hevens is there Justis atall to be Had. my site is wak from cuteperk shoos, when I caled en 1 tremble as a man Guilty of morder that it might be a prosses as I owe 3 yeares Guanane 2 years inaile and what beried my mother 2 yeares a gow inn all 24 pownds I Had to pay 20 pownds in the Bank on the 29 sep got last march to pay rent and precnre seed and som inaile to lir on. them 20 pownds are 20 pownds of my flesh, now He will proses me and Giv me notise to quit on the first of november He will trow me and my aged Father and youug wife and first boren son on the rod side. ~would it be any use to call on 3 respectibal men to value my land. Iff the damond from Hell cam He would say inyistis and would put me downe to Half what I pay I end not by one stich of clowes this 16 yeares frends cloding me. Had I been a comen polder this 30 yeares I would be Hnpy ded ore alive today I am rechedly miserabill my life is a bordon to me. my Honneribal Brother A. M. Sullivan not in misery hut in Irish blod direct me what to doo in this oure of my misery Inn Honer of Jesps christ crusefid for us as it is He Hou directs me to lay my case before You and His blessing will overtak you in this life and in the next One million ibenidictions on yon and youres and doo som thing for me. I cannot by a calicou short for my Father ore wife ore for my self, the are in ribens I 53>d to let my servant boy gow I cud not pay Him and He would not liv on the dite I cud Giv Him I allways was a loyal subgect to Her masesty but my land master wants to mak me a rebel a out law and a assen. o God of mersy mak A. M. Sullivan a moses to youre opressed servant and a mersy will be oure porsion for ever, faire rents perpety of tainer free sailo is Is all we want not to be oure own land masters atall. 5 from Hare to Clifden cud not by there Holdens Never epak for the Grass farmer He maied a 'forten in days gon by He raised the land on menn of my class that Had nothing to liv on but oure tillig 3 bad Harvists this the worst I ever saw Has parolised all oure labours. Tune and destruction is oure lot 3 of my naibours Has 30 acers att 30 pounds valued at 21 pounds. I pay 28 for seven befar wors land I never till liv to see the day of justis for I cud not Hold onthecurentis sweeping AGRARIAN REVOLUTION. 445 me past to be Branded with the Galway Unian on my Hips. I cud Gett a man to write this as I sbud to Irelands most Gifted sou but 1 dare not doo ow. for the Lov of cure God and His spotless mother ansor this attonce nd youre reward will be a crowue Eternaley in Hc-ven I remain youre obediaut servant The " process " was a veritable terror the message of approaching destruction. And now the issue of those missives against the beggared and starving people grew to enormous proportions. As Mr. Gladstone once well ex- pressed it, they fell like "snow-flakes" on the districts least able to pay ; processes for rent that the landlords well knew the land had not earned. At a place called Carraroe, in onnemara, on the 5th of January, 1880, bailiffs made their appearance with sheaves of these documents, escorted by a detachment of armed police. The wretched peasants took alarm, and, assembling in haste, confronted the invading force. The women most of the male inhabitants happened to be away harvesting in England at the time exhibited a fierce daring absolutely without precedent till then in these agrarian affrays. They flung themselves before the bayonets and barred the way to the threatened homesteads. A bloody conflict ensued, the police freely using their arms, and the women displaying utter recklessness of life. In the result the people were victorious. The invaders had to retreat, leaving the processes unserved. This was the Lexington of the agrarian revolution in Ireland. From that day forth the whole procedure of eviction, step by step, inch by inch, was contested, ob- structed, resisted. The women of Carraroe struck the first blow in the war against Rent. Throughout all the West of Ireland the anomalous sight was daily seen of village relief committees feeding the , people, while the village constabulary were convoying bailiffs and process-servers over roads and mountain-tracks often wetted with the people's blood. By January no less * I omit for obvious reasons the name of the locality, and the names of the landlord and tenant. A generous-hearted English gentleman one, in The Dublin newspapers almost scoffed at it. Nevertheless,, on the opening of the Dublin Law Courts in November, in- formations were exhibited in the Queen's Bench against Charles Stewart Parnell, M.P. ; John Dillon, M.P. ; T. D. Sullivan, M.P. ; Thomas Sexton, M.P. ; Joseph G. Biggar r M.P. members of the Land League Executive Patrick Egan, honorary treasurer; Thomas Brennan, hon. secretary; and M. P. Boyton, Mathew Harris, P. J. Sheridan, John W. Walsh, and M. M. O'Sullivan, "organisers;" together with Mr. P. J. Gordon and John W. Nally, holding no> official position in the organisation. This was the first act of war on the part of the Cabinet against the Irish Land movement. If it had been the only one, I am convinced all might yet have been pulled through. From November to January the State Trials formed the one all-engrossing topic ; the anti-landlordism agitation being, nevertheless, pressed as fiercely as ever. The trial was held " at Bar" before the Lords- Justices Fitzgerald and |)arry, and opened on the 28th of December, 1880. The charge against the traversers was seditious conspiracy; a conspiracy to. " impoverish landlords " and to induce tenants not to pay AGRARIAN REVOLUTION, .455 " debts they had contracted to pay namely, rent." On such a charge, before any fair jury in the wc-rld, thej r must have been acquitted ; for manifestly their object was mi more to impoverish landlords than was Wilberforce's to impoverish planters ; and as to Irish rents being 1 " contract" debts, Royal Commissions had, over and over again, re- ported that there was no really free contract in Irish rents. After a trial lasting- nineteen days the Government narrow]j~ escaped a crushing 1 defeat. The jury were discharged being unable to agree ; ten being for acquittal, and twc for conviction. The ten whose finding was against the Government were men of various political and religious beliefs. " First fall in favour of the League ! " The enthusiasm all over Ireland was unbounded. But long ere the trial was done, the centre of public in- terest and anxiety had been transferred from Dublin to "Westminster. Parliament opened on the 6th of January, 1881. It was to be an Irish session, and the programme was Coercion first and Land Reform to follow. Not alone Coercion but Coercion to be bolted. The good old times when the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended in a day were to be rivalled. An Algerine Code was to be swept through the House, and the Land League broken up at a blow. This was stunning news. Any such sudden destruction of the open organisation could have but one result the Ribbonite and other secret organisations, with whom even as things stood the League had had a troublesome and ticklish time of it, would have possession of the field ; and under the excitement of any sudden seizure of the League offices, officials, and funds, the wisest of us all could not forecast the consequences. This Coercion Bill was in every sense a deplorable mistake, and would in any case have been opposed. But had the Government first put forward their Land Bill or even placed the two measures side by side on the table the scenes that subsequently ensued would have been almost certainly avoided. Now, face to face with a Bill which, well they knew, would intensify the mischief of the situation and which, if. not delayed in passing, might lead to still worse consequences the Irish members felt that the resources of Parliamentary warfare must at all hazard? be exhausted in contesting its progress. 45fi NEW IRELAND. Over that Coercion Bill there yaged for four weeks a struggle such as Parliament had never before witnessed dogged, desperate, violent, hateful. The united forces of the Liberal ministerialists and Conservative opposition on one side ; a handful of Irishmen on the other. Four or five hundred men bent on forcing Coercion through in a day ; thirty or forty determined at any price to secure the time which serious circumstances made essential. That majority seemed to allow itself but one view of the conflict ; " Coercion was necessary to put down crime ; here are these Irishmen resisting Coercion ; they are there- fore the friends of crime, the foes of good government, the enemies of society ; away with them, away with them." As justification for their coercive proceedings, the Government got up a Return of " Outrages " in Ireland. The figures made an astonishing array ; but astonishment gave way to derision, and indeed to anger, when it was discovered that, to suit the purposes of the Return, the most trumpery offences were set down as outrages by Mr. Forster's officials. Nay, in some cases each such offence was subdivided into two or three, so as to swell the total. It was as if Tom Doolan had gone to the widow Mulligan's house and beaten her step-son for calling him " names." The box in the ear or stroke of a stick was set down as one " outrage ; " the threat to do it again was set down as another ; the breaking of a pane of glass in the course of the scuffle was a third ; and the upset of a pail of milk was a fourth. When Mr. Labouchere, M.P., first called attention to this style of piling up the agony, the House of Commons could scarcely credit it; but Mr. Forster, in mysterious and solemn tones, intimated that there was more than met the eye in these apparently trivial matters of panes of glass and pails of milk ; and he could not answer for the peace of Ireland if such crimes were underrated by the House. On these occasions, and on all occasions, the Liberal members answered to every appeal and every argument " Mr. Gladstone is a good man : Mr. Forster is another. They tell us the Bill will only touch village ruffians and midnight marauders. Divide, divide, divide." That Coercion Bill of 1881 fated to be such a miserable failure for all useful purposes cost the Empire an unhappy price. In the struggle to force it through, the time- honoured and proudly-treasured liberties, privileges, usages, AC PARIAN REVOLUTION. 457 sand traditions of Parliament were strained, torn, and 'eventually trampled under foot. Louis Napoleon's doctrine of breaking 1 the law to repress opposition the specious -excuse for every coup (V etat was espoused and practised by the Speaker ; and his undisguised illegality had a subsequent approval nearly as overwhelming- as was Napoleon's plebiscite. I doubt that any incident within my recollections of public life pained me more than Speaker Brand's adoption of the doctrine of the end justifying- the means. I had well known and warmly admired him as a man who was an honour to the greatest and proudest legislative assembly in the world ; dignified, impartial, courteous, scrupulously just; a model Speaker. When he lost his head, I could but feel that personal character, even when highest and purest, is a slender guarantee against temptations to seize and use despotic power, or to strain and violate the laws, on the dangerous ground of a passing provocation. At length the conflict came to an end. The Coercion Bill was passed, and the Land Bill was in view. On the 7th of April, 1881, Mr. Gladstone introduced the long- 'foidden measure in a speech listened to with breathless anxiety by a House crowded from floor to ceiling. It .abolished for ever the landlordism that had been a curse to Ireland ; namely, the landlordism of avarice, the landlordism of dominion, and the landlordism of caprice. The long- scourged tenantry of Ireland might now sing aloud with the freed bondsmen of Port Royal : " . We 1at ni*ht sUrea, To-day, the Lord's fie; meu.*' As I sat there and listened to the words of the Premier, I felt as if I had, after the cruel toils and privations of the desert, been at length vouchsafed a glimpse of the Promised Land. My mind went back to the struggles of past times. I thought of Sharman-Crawford and Frederick Lucas ; of Moore, and MacMahon, and Maguire, friends of my early .years, all gone down into the grave with hearts outworn or broken in the weary conflict and of Duffy, happily alive to behold this triumph of a cause, the flag of which he so gallantly uplifted thirty years before. It was, in my udjment, a great and noble measure ; a charter of freedom 458 NEW IRELAND. for the long-oppressed tenantry of Ireland. That it fell' short or missed its mark in some particulars I could clearly discern ; and that unless amended in these respects it would so far disappoint the manifest design of its authors, I early foretold. But seldom in the history of the world had the course of human legislation witnessed a more wise and elevated purpose than that proclaimed in every page of this scheme. Short of the compulsory expropriation of a landlord class at a swoop, it would be difficult to devise a bolder proposition in the interests of justice and equity ; nor could any man suggest on the whole a more prudent com- promise of a question involved and complicated beyond all precedent. That is to say, if it was not now too late for a. joint-interest or landlord-and-tenant system, on even the most just and liberal basis, here surely was its best form. It was now the mischief of the wretched Coercion Bill came into play. Had the mind of Ireland, the reason of Ireland, been clear and calm and free at such a moment, this measure would have been hailed with hearty acclaim. Efforts to amend its faults and expunge its errors, no doubt there would in any case have been ; but they would have- been pressed in the spirit of sympathetic appreciation. The mournful fact, however, was that exasperation and passion raged in every heart across the water, and the Bill was- scowled at. Mr. Gladstone, with dogged obstinacy, would persist in thrusting his Coercion policy before his remedial gift ; and now the black and odious code of January obscured or darkened the boon of April in the eyes of the Irish people. The Land Bill got no fair play from the Land League. Not merely was it decried, denounced, and scorned, but its contents or provisions were shamefully misrepre- sented. To say a good word for it was rank heresy in the popular ranks. To call it a mockery and a fraud was the orthodox profession of faith. Through all the summer months, the fight over the Land Bill went on, Mr. Parnell seeking to fasten in its every clause and every line some further advantage for the tenant ; the landlord party, on the other hand, fighting fiercely against every provision that benefited him. There was scarcely an amendment moved by the Irish members that subsequent experience, short as it has been, 'has not triumphantly vindicated as wise and necessary ; and Mr. Gladstone laid up much trouble for himself in the future by A GRARIAN RE VOL UTION. 459- the hostility he then evinced to improvements thus sug- gested. Again and again he was warned that unless he dealt with the question of Arrears that is, the arrears of rent not earned by the land during the recent disastrous- harvests the elements of misery, disorder, and strife would still confront him in Ireland, and seriously mar the pacifica- tion aimed at in the Bill. Vain were all such warnings. Nearly the whole of one sitting was consumed in our efforts to persuade him that the Purchase Clauses, meritorious as they were, would nevertheless fail unless extended. Mr. Gladstone was deaf to all argument, to all entreaty. Twelve months of civil commotion, of social war, of strife, outrage, tumult, and bloodshed were required to bring him, in May, 1882, to the view which the Irish members offered to his acceptance in May, 1881. This was on his part no- want of generous purpose, no lack of manly sympathy for the people whom he was at the moment labouring to free. That bloody year was one of the many penalties the Empire has to pay for the system of legislating for Ireland by English rather than bv Irish ideas. On the 29th of July, 1881, the Irish Land Bill was read a third time in the Commons, and sent to the House of Lords. It had, on the whole, been greatly improved in the stages of discussion. The landlord forces, who, throughout, were well and skilfully led by the Right Hon. Edward Gibson the most popular, the most capable, and the most successful Irishman representing Irish Toryism in that Assembly were able to inflict on it some ugly wounds ; but these disfigurements were more than compensated for by valuable amendments, the work of Mr. Parnell, Mr. T. M. Healy, and Mr. Charles Russell. By this time the ungracious- spirit in which so many of my colleagues had encountered the measure had considerably subsided ; and I cannot tt.mk there was one amongst them who did not render secret or open homage to the indomitable spirit, the unwearied attention, and the marvellous grasp of his subject displayed by the illustrious statesman whose name was to be for ever associated with it. There was, moreover, by his side one faithful colleague, on whom fell the brunt of the work, and whose brave spirit and sympathetic nature left their imprint indelibly on the Bill ; and to him there went up from the whole body of the Irish popular representatives, without distinction of creed or section, a hearty tribute of 460 NEW IRELAND. respect and admiration. This was the Right Hon. Hugh Law, M.P., then Attorney-General, at present Lord- Chancellor of Ireland. And now the Bill was " in the Lords ; " the Peers of England were face to face with a Revolution, the full import of which they but too deeply realised. What now liad availed them their message of war a year before the rejection of the Disturbance Bill ! What now had come of their dogged resistance for scores of years to every proposal of amelioration or reform ! They had read in vain the story of the Sybiline Books. In 1825, in 1835, in 1841, in 1845, 1847, and 1848, in 1850 and 1851, in 1854, 1855, and 1857, in 1875, 1876, and 1877, they could have had a pact of peace and reconciliation and security and friendship with the Irish people, at a price so cheap that now they dare hardly reflect on the madness of their refusals ! As each generation of Irishmen rose to manhood, harder and harder terms were set ; and still was compromise haughtily spurned. The inevitable result was now at hand. Feudal landlordism was to fall. Lord Salisbury for a moment cheered the hearts of his followers by loud vows of defiance and combat without surrender. " Hollow! hollow! hollow!" One night he and his landlord majority went through the masquerade of "rectifying" the Bill. They cut, and hacked, and hewed it to pieces with as much pretence of earnestness as if they did not know what was to be the end. The Commons sub- stantially restored the mutilations and sent back the Bill; while oat of doors a low, deep murmur, as of distant thunder, told of the gathering storm in which popular wrath might find a voice. It was the Nation against a Class. After a short parley as to terms of surrender, Lord Salisbury hauled down the flag ; Landlordism capitulated ; and the world once more beheld a grand and beneficent Revolu- tion accomplished without roar of cannon or crash of war. Between that memorable day, the 22nd of August, 1881, on which the Irish Land Bill became law, and the 15th of May, 1882, on which the English Minister introduced to Parliament its needed complement, there stretches a chapter of Irish history which at the present moment one cannot undertake to trace. Angered at the inimical spirit in AGRARIAN HE VOLUTION. 461 which the Land League leaders unfortunately greeted his great measure, and absurdly alarmed at the idea that they would or could hinder its acceptance by the Irish people, Mr. Gladstone authorised the Irish Secretary to deliver Ireland over to a bitterness of despotism for which Europe has scarcely a parallel. Mr. Forster appears to have persuaded himself, and promised his chief that by a stern policy of " thorough," by a sufficient spell of Mouravieff administration, he would break the spirit of the people, and silence in terror every murmur of complaint. He got his will. With what result ? He found Ireland alarmed and disturbed. He left it a volcano of human passions on one side, a Bastile of Government vengeance and caprice on the other. The " village ruffians" and "midnight marauders" went apparently untouched nay, multiplied in numbers and increased in insolence of crime ; while innocent men by the hundred men of upright and stainless lives the first citizens of the land mayors, magistrates, members of Parliament, public representatives of every degree were seized and flung into the jails, on mere suspicion, without accusation, evidence, investigation, or proof. The legiti- mate political action and public life of the country was suppressed, and its leaders driven into exile or thrown into prison; and now the inevitable result appeared. The Secret Societies became masters of the situation. Crime grew rampant. Each week of Mr. Forster's administration the bloody record swelled and grew. The owls in the Eastern story prayed long life for the Caliph that made cities into ruins. The Ribbonmen and the Fenians prayed a long day of rule for the man who gave them such a free field, and the effects of whose policy worked so well to prevent friendship and to excite hatred between Ireland and England. At length the public opinion of England arose from its horrid torpor. The evidence of facts in Ireland became too plain. Coercion was not only a failure, it had been a disaster. Suddenly one day Ireland awoke in joy to learn that Mr. Gladstone had turned from his dread experiment to courses more congenial to his nature. Mr. Forster was re-called ; the prison doors were unbarred ; the Land Act was to be made complete; the "arrears" victims were to be saved ; a peasant proprietary was to become a reality. It seemed too much of happiness a moment too bright to last. 462 NEW IRELAND. The men to whom this blessed change was ruin, the men for whose designs this reconciliation was utter overthrow, were not to be thus baffled without a blow. How to turn away the spirit of amity, how to bring back the reign of hatred and fury, was the problem for them. They sought its solution, alas! in an act designed to roll, as it were, a sea of blood between the two nations. On the evening of Saturday, the 6th of May, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish, the new Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Mr. T. H. Burke, the Under-Secretary, were set upon by a band of assassins on the high road of the Phoanix Park, Dublin, in full view of the Vice-Regal Lodge, and fouMy butchered. For a moment it seemed as if God willed that this accursed crime should but accomplish the defeat of its diabolical purpose. The bloody deed roused all Ireland to horror and sympathy. The cowardly slaughter of two unarmed and inoffensive men the, base Atrocity of thus slaying an amiable and kindly noble- man who had barely landed on the Irish shore, olive-branch in hand convulsed the kingdom with pangs of grief and shame. Then was seen a spectacle, strange, new, un- paralleled. What the sword of conquest or the severity of power could not accomplish, what the boons of reparative legislation had never wholly gained, seemed to have been purchased in this sacrifice of innocent blood. Ireland knelt by the side of that friendly stranger's bier, and reached out her hand to England as it never had been reached before. Over the grave of the man who represented a policy of reconciliation and justice, the tears and the hearts of two peoples mingled, who long had warred in anger and in hate. Here was an opportunity for such a fusion of feeling, such a grasp of friendship between the two countries, as had not arisen since the memorable settlement of 1782. Never before in our time had any Government such a chance for putting itself at one with Irish national senti- ment. The popular leaders proclaimed their determination to take the field against crime, and to lead forth the popular array in behalf of public order, because justice henceforth was to be the law. The Government had opened the prison doors, had proclaimed aloud the abandonment f Coercion, and the advent of relief for the victims of oppres- sion. It needed but a firm front and an honourable persever- AGRARIAN RE VOL UTION. 4G3 ance in this direction on both sides, and an era of happiness and peace might have closed a long- and dreary strife. Yet it was at this juncture, and under such circumstances, the Government decided on introducing 1 into Parliament a Coercion Bill for Ireland, which was frankly declared to be the worst and most desperate measure of its class ever conceived in the gloomy annals of despotic times. Never was sky so fair more swiftly changed to gloom. Once more one hears on every side mutterings of passion, or else the sad accents of depression, disappointment, and despair. Englishmen and Irishmen alike give way for an instant to the dismal conviction that a relentless fate has doomed the two nations to a conflict irrepressible. Not 43O. Not so. For my own part, even at a moment as trying as this, and in the face of an outlook as dark as is the present, I refuse to surrender the convictions, the feelings, the aspirations with which I closed my record in 1877. I do not underrate the force of the angry storm which seems to have been so suddenly, so cruelly, so wantonly let loose. Beneath its shock many an argosy of precious hopes may go down. But in my thirty years' experience of Irish public life I have learnt the folly and the mischief of crying "All is lost" in crises of difficulty or disaster that do but call upon true men to be calm, and firm, and steadfast. Be the gloom of the present time short or long, it will not avail to hide great facts or subvert noble principles that are, as I maintain, inevitably fastening a brighter and better future for Ireland and for England. LONDON, 22nd May, 1882. THE END. THIS VALUABLE PREPARATION, originally discovered by the Patented in 1874 has, after years of the most crucial testing at home ami abroad, been brought before the Public, and proves itself a most wonderful perfect remedy for the cure of BURNS, SCALDS, CHILBLAINS, WOUNDS, SORES, etc. It h;is met with most unprecedented successes, and its sterling qualities have recommended themselves to many Hospitals, in which, both in London and the Provinces, it is in daily use. Its action is instantaneous, and altogether dispenses with the old, expensive, and objectionable treatment of oiled silks, etc. Testimonials from many leading Physicians, Surgeons and others, confirm our experience, and speak to its efficacy in most serious cases. One trial will secure it a place in every household. Accidents may occur at any time ; and this specific will allay the pain as soon as applied. Reasons why everyone should keep the IMPERIAL OTTOMAN HEALER. Because It is pronounced by the Medical profession to be the best thing ever intro- duced, as Testimonials from many of them prove, for Burns, Scalds Chilblains, Wounds, Sores, etc. It never fails to give instant relief. Many cases have been cured which were considered hopeless. ,, Tendency to disfigurement is obviated by its use. It effects the most speedy cures ever known. A child can apply it as well as an adult. Accidents may occur at any moment. It is a necessity in every house, and when you have It close at hand it: often saves much suffering possibly life itself. ,i It is so cheap everyone can afford a bottle. If you try one bottle you will never be without it. TESTIMONIALS. Metropolitan Free Hospital, Spitalfields. I have had opportunities of using the " IMPERIAL OTTOMAN HEALER" in several cases of Burns and Scalds, and have been much pleased with the results obtained. I have found it very useful in burns of the second and third degree. It diminishes the discharge and friction, and effects more rapid healing than any application with which I am acquainted. In my opinion it is a most valuable pra- WILLIAM H. LINE, B.A., M.D., M.R.C.S , House Surgeon. November, 1881. Salop Infirmary, Shrewsbury, January 24, 1882. SIR, I have much pleasure in bearing testimony to the value of your " IMPERIAL OTTOMAN HEALER." It supplies a want long felt in the Medical Profession, doing away altogether with the old and injurious system of dressing scalds and burns. la those cases in which I used it, there has been an entire absence of pain and exhaust- ing discharges, and I have also noticed that the tissues forming beneath the protect* ing film have not the tendency to contract and produce those grave disfigurements, which up to the present time have been such a source of anxiety to the medical attendant. I am. sir. faithfully yours, To Mr. Han-is. G. D. COLLINS, House Surgeon. Sold by all Patent Medicine Vendors, in bottles only, bearing the words " Harris 1 Patent Ottoman Healer^ at 1/1, 2/6, and 10/G each. Wholesale of HARRIS & Co., 53, Cheapsicb, London, E.C CAMERON AND FERGUSON'S POPULAR PUBLICATION'S. MICHAEL DWYER, The Insurgent Captain of the Wicklow Mountains. By J. T. CAMPION, M.D. Crown 8vo, pictorial enamelled cover. Price 6d ; or post free for 7d in stamps. MERVYN GREY ; or, Life in the Royal Irish Constabulary. By W. J. MONTGOMERY. ^Crown Svo. Price Is ; post free. Is 2d in stamps. GERALD AND AUGUSTA; or, the Irish Aristocracy. A Novel Crown Svo. Price Is; or post free, Is 2d in stamps. THE MISLETOE AND THE SHAMROCK : A National Tale. Crown Svo. Price Is ; post free, Is 2d in stamps. THE LAST STRUGGLES OF THE IRISH SEA SMUGGLERS ; A Romance of the Wicklow Coast. By Dr CAMPION. Price 6d ; or post free for 7d in stamps. JFITZHERN; or, The Rover of the Irish Seas. A Story of Galway Bay. By F. CLINTON HARRINGTON. Pictorial enamelled cover. Price Gd ; or post free for 7d in stamps. THE HEARTS OF STEEL ; or, The Celt and the Saxon. An Irish Historical Tale of the Last Century. Pictorial col. cover. Price 6d ; post free for 7d in stamps. <5ALLOPING 0' HOG AN ; or, The Rapparee Captains. A Romance of th Days of Sarsfield. Pictorial cover. Price Gd ; post free, 7d in stamps. THE IRISH GIRL; or, The True Love and the False. Crown Svo. Price 6d ; or free by post for 7d in stamps. THE SONGS OF SWEET IRELAND : A Collection of the Genuine Songs of Erin's true Minstrels. Price 6d; or post free for 7d in stamps. THE GiiEEN FLAG OF IRELAND SONG BOOK : A Selection of Songs and Ballads of the dear old Land. Price Gd ; or post free for Til in stamps. THE EXILE OF ERIN SONG BOOK : A Collection of Irish National and Patriotic Song*. Price Gd ; or post free for 7d in stamps. THE RISING OF THE MOON, and other National Songs and Poems. By JOHN K. CASEY (LEO\ Green cloth, Price Is ; or post free for Is 2d in stamps : or in illustrated cover, printed in colours, price Gd ; or post free for 7d in stamps. IRISH POEMS AND LEGENDS, Historical and Traditionary. By T. C. IRWIN. Foolscap Svo. Green cloth, Price Is; or post free for Is 2d in stamps ; or in enamelled paper cover, price Gd ; or post free for 7d in stamps. NATIONAL AND HISTORICAL BALLADS OF IRELAND. Fool- scap Svo. Price Is ; post free. Is 2d in stamps. OLD FOLK LORE OF IRELAND. By LAGENIENSIS. Crown Svo, cloth, extra gilt edges. Price 2s Gd; post free, 2s lOd in stamps. THE BOOK OF IRISH READINGS. By J. A. M AIR. Foolscap Svo, ^pictorial cover. Price Is ; post free, Is 2d in stamps. OLIVER OPTIC'S "LAKE SHORE" SERIES Foolscap 8ro, 160 pages, neatly bound in Cloth, la; Post Free, \s 2d in Slcun.pt. THROUGH BY DAYLIGHT ; or, The Young Engineer. LIGHTNING EXPRESS; or, The Rival Academies. ON TIME ; or. The Young Captain of the Ucayga Steamer. SWITCH OFF ; or, The War of the Students. BRAKE UP; or, The Young Peacemakers. BEAR AND FORBEAR ; or, The Young Skipper of Lake Ucayga. Also, each of the above Books done up in Elegantly Illustrated Coloured Covers, 6d; Post Free, 7d in Stamps. CAMERON AND FERGUSON'S POPULAR PUBLICATIONS. THE FEL01S T 'S TRACK. A Narrative of '48. By MICHAEL DOHKNY. Crown 8vo, pictorial cover, Is; post free, Is 2d in stamps. Cloth, 2s ; pot free, 2s 4d in stamps. MITCHEL'S (JOHN) JAIL JOURNAL; or, Five Years in British Prisons. Crown Svo, pictorial cover, Is ; post free, Is 2d in stamps. Cloth, 2s ; post free, 2s 4d in stamps. MEMOIR OF BRIGADIER -GENERAL THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER, his Political and Military Career. By Captain W. F. LYONS. Crown Svo, cover illustrated with Portrait. Price Is; or post, free for Is 2d in stamps. In extra cloth, Portrait on toned paper, price 2s ; or post free for 2s 4d in stamps. FAITH AND FATHPJRLAND. Lectures and Sermons by the Very Kev. THOMAS N. BCRKE. Crown Svo, extra cloth, gilt. Price 2s; or post free for 2s 4d in stamps. Presentation Edition, printed on toned paper, cloth elegant, gilt edges. Price 3s 6d ; or post free for 3s lOd in stamps. Cheaper Edition, enamelled cover. Price Is ; or post free for Is 2d in stamps. REFUTATION OF FROUDE, AND OTHER LECTURES. By the Very Rev. THOMAS N. BURKE. Crown Svo, extra cloth, gilt. Price 2s ; or post free for 2s 4d in stamps. Presentation Edition, printed on toned paper, cloth elegant, gilt edges. Price 3s 6d ; or post free for 3s lOd in stamps. Cheaper Edition, Portrait on cover. Price Is ; or post free for Is 2d in stamps. SONGS OF THE RISING NATION, and other Poems. By ELLEN FORRESTER, and her Son, A. M. FORRESTER. Crown Svo, extra cloth. Price 3s ; or post free for 3s 4d in stamps. THE POETICAL WORKS OF LADY WILDE (SPERANZA). Price Is; or post free for Is 2d in stamps. Superior edition, cloth gilt. Price 2s ; or post free for 2s 4d in stamps, BILLY BLUFF AND THE SQUIRE: A Picture of Ulster in 1796. Price 6d ; post free, 7d in stamps. THE IRISH LEGEND OF M 'DONNELL AND THE NORMAN DE BORGOS. Fcap. Svo, pictorial enamelled boards. Price Is; or post free for Is 2d in stamps. SAINTS AND SINNERS. By W. J. O'NEIL DAUNT. Crown Svo. Price Is ; post free, Is 2d in stamps. DICK MASSEY; A Tale of the Irish Evictions. Strikingly illustrative of the Irish Land Question. By T. O'NEILL RUSSELL. Foolscap Svo, enamelled pictorial boards. Price Is; or post free for Is 2d in stamps. DONAL DUN O'BYRNE ; A Tale of the Rising in Wexford in 1798. By DENIS HOLLAND. Foolscap Svo, enamelled pictorial boards. Price Is; or post free for Is 2d in stamps. THE GREEN AND THE RED; or, Historical Tales and Legends of Ireland. Crown Svo, boards. Price Is; or post free for Is 2d in stamps. M 'HENRY'S IRISH TALES ; containing " The Insurgent Chief " and the " Hearts of Steel." Crown Svo, green enamelled boards. Price Is ; post free for Is 2d in stamps. DR CAMPION'S IRISH TALES; containing "Michael Dwyer," "The Last Struggles of the Irish Sea Smugglers," and Minor Tales. Crown Svo, green enamelled boards. Price Is; or post free for Is 2d in stamps. THE BOOK OF IRISH ANECDOTES; containing Sparkles from the Wit and Humour of Swift, Currau, O'Leary, ami O'Connell. Foolscap Svo, pictorial cover. Price 6d ; or post free for 7d in stamps. CAMERON & FERGUSON'S 'J FOR LAVATORY PURPOSES. MEDICATED, DISINFECTING, PERFUMED, PREVENTS PILES. APPROVED BY THE FACULTY. Too little attention is paid to the sort of paper in household use. Printed Paper is poisonous and most dangerous. The "HYGIENIC" Paper combines qualities adapting it perfectly to its purpose. It contains no irritant: it dissolves easily in water, and does not obstruct the pipes. It contains also a powerful disinfectant, and prevents the injurious effects of Sewer Gas. ANALYST'S REPORT "I have examined a sample of 'HYGIENIC' Paper sent by Messrs Cameron & Ferguson, and find it quite free from irritant substances of any kind. It contains only a minute proportion of the Mineral substances which are necessarily incident to the manufacture of any Paper, and which do not in any way interfere with its utility. I am of opinion this Paper is well adapted for the purpose intended." "JAMES M. MILNE, Ph. D., Public Analyxtfor the County of Fife, and tlie Burghs of Airdrie and Ardrossan, fyc. PRICE ONE SHILLING PER PACKET. Sold by all Chemists, Stationers, Perfumers, Family Grceers, and Italian Warehousemen. Wholesale and Export only by CAMERON & FERGUSONj GLASGOW AND LONDON, POPULAR PUBLICATIONS. CAMERON & FERGUSON, GLASGOW AND LONDON. Popular Publications Relating to Ireland. ;NEW IRELAND : POLITICAL SKETCHES AND PERSONAL RE- MINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS OF IRISH PUBLIC LIFE. By A. M. SULLIVAN. Crown Svo. 470 pages. Illustrated cover, Price Is: post free. Is 3d in stamps; or bound in cloth, L's ; post free, 2s 4d. THE CONFEDERATE CHIEFTAINS; A Historical Tale of the Irish Insurrection of 1641. By Mrs SADLIEIS. Super. Roy. Svo. Extra greea cloth, Price 3s Gd : post free, 4s in stamps ; or in illustrated boards, 2s Gd; p"St free, 3s in stumps. THE HISTORY OF IRELAND, from the Siege of Limerick to the Present Time, By JOHN MITCHEL. Demy Svo, 576 pages, green cloth. Price 4s ; or post free for 4s 9d in stamps. People's Edition, do.. Coloured Emblematical Cover, Price Is 6d ; post free, 2s in stamps. THE HISTORY OF IRELAND, from the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics. By the Hon. THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE, B.C.L. Crown Svo, 7GS pages, extra green cloth, full gilt back. Price 5s ; or post free for 6s in stamps. BARIUNGTON'S (SIR JONAH) SKETCHES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS OWN TIMES. Crown Svo, cloth, 3s Gd ; post free, 3s lOd. Coloured pictorial boards. 2s Gd ; post free, 2s lOd. HISTOKY OF THE HUSH REBELLION OF 17HS. By C. H. TRELISG. Crown Svo, cloth. Price 3s 6d ; post free, 3s lOd. Coloured pictorial boards, 2s Gd. THE HISTORY OF THE IRISH BRIGADES in the Service of France, from the Revolution in Great Britain and Ireland, under James II., to the Revolution in France, under Louis XVI. Ry JOHN CORNELIUS O'CALLAGHAN. Demy Svo, extra green cloth, with full-page Illustra- tions. Price 10s Gd ; or post free for 11s Sd in stamps. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. By T. C. LUBY, T.C.D. Demy Svo, 544 pages, extra cloth. Price 4s Gd; or post free for 5s 3d in stamps. THE IRISH BRIGADE AND ITS CAMPAIGNS in the great Ameri- can War. A record of Ireland's modern glory. By Captain D. P. CONYNGHAM, A.D.C. Crown Svo. Price Is ; or post free for Is 2d in stamps. In extra green cloth, gilt back. Price 3s ; or post free for 3s 5d in stamps. LIFE OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. By THOMAS MOORE. Crown Svo, pictorial cover, Is; post free, Is 2d in stamps. Cloth, 2s ; post free. 2s 4d in stamps. LIFE OF THEOBALD WOLFE TONE. Written by Himself. Crown Svo, pictorial cover, Is ; post free, Is 2d in stamps. Cloth, 2s ; post free, 2s 4d in stamps. CAMERON AND FERGUSON'S POPULAR PUBLICATIONS. Historical Romances and High-Class Fiction. Price Is ; Post Free for Is %d in Stamps. M 'HENRY'S IRISH TALES : Containing "The Insurgent Chief" and " Hearts of Steel." Crown Svo, green enamelled boards. ROMANCES OF THE HEROISM OF SCOTLAND : containing "The Scottish Chiefs," and " fet Clair of the Isles." Crown Svo, pictorial enamelled boards. THE GREEN AND THE RED ; or, Historical Tales and Legends of Ireland. Crown Svo, pictorial enamelled boards. M'DONNELL AND THE NORMAN DE BORGOS. Foolscap Svo, pictorial enamelled boards. DONAL DUN O'BYENE ; or, The Insurgent Captain of the Wicklow Mountain. By DENIS HOLLAND. Foolscap Svo, 224 pp., pictorial enamelled boards. DR CAMPION'S IRISH TALES; containing "Michael Dwyer," "The Last Struggles of the Irish Sea Smugglers," and Minor Tales. Crown Svo, green enamelled boards. FLORA MACDONALD ; or, The Wanderings of Prince Charlie : A Romance of the White Cockade. Crown Svo, coloured pictorial covers. SAINTS AND SINNERS. By W. J. O'N. DAUNT. Crown Svo, pictorial cover. KEPT HIS TRUST ; or, The Doctor's Household. Crown Svo, pictorial cover. THE PHANTOM OF THE FOREST. Crown Svo, pictorial cover. DICK MASSEY : A Tale of the Irish Evictions. By T. O'NfiiL RUSSELL. Foolscap Svo, 200 pp., pictorial boards. STERN AS FATE. By Mrs SOUTHWORTH. Crown Svo, pictorial cover. SYBIL BERNERS ; or. Tried for Her Life : A Sequel to " Stern as Fate." By Mrs E. D. E. N. &DUTHWORTH. Crown Svo, illustrated cover, in colours. HOPE VENNARD ; or, Stephen Dane's Secret. By the Author of " Kept His Trust." Crown Svo, illustrated cover, printed in colours. LUCIA AND HER PROBLEM ; or, The Tempest of the Heart. By the Author of "Kept His Trust." Crown Svo, illustrated cover, printed in colours. THE PLANTER'S BRIDE ; or, Scenes in the North and South. MABEL'S MISTAKE. By ANN S. STEPHENS. THE MILLS OF THE GODS : A Novel. By Mrs J. H. TWELLS. GERALD AND AUGUSTA ; or, The Irish Aristocracy : A Novel. THE MISTLETOE AND THE SHAMROCK: A National Tale. MERVYN GREY; or, Life in the R. I. Constabulary. By J. W. MONTGOMERY. YANKEE COMIC TALES. By Major JONES. BLANCHE OF BRANDYWINE ; or, September 11, 1777: A Romance of the Revolution. By GEORGE LIPPARD. ROMANCES OF SOLDIER LIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. By H. i S. WYXNE. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 'ora L9 l A 001 238 740 3 DA 950 S94n 1877