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EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
" We know onr duty to our Sovereign, and are loyal : we also know our 
 duty to ourselves, and are resolved to be free."— Deciarai ion of Dungannon 
 Volunteers, 1782. 
 
 " You may make the Union binding as a law, but you can never make it 
 obligatory on conscience. It will be obeyed as long as England is strong ; but 
 resistance to it will be in the abstract a duty, and the exhibition of that 
 resistance will be merely a question of prudence."— Right Hoit. William 
 Baubik. 
 
 " Union is Irish alienation."— Bight Hov. Hevbt Gsattait. 
 
 " Union is not unity. Heterogeneous and repugnant things may be arbi- 
 trarily tied together, but this is not unity. Closer contact elicits the repugnances 
 which rend all external bonds asunder."— Caedikai. MAWNiifG. 
 
 " Independence sends life through all the veins of a nation."— Gold wiw 
 Smith. 
 
EIGHTY- FIVE YEARS 
 
 OF 
 
 IRISH HISTORY. 
 
 1800—1885. 
 
 WILLIAM JOSEPH O'NEILL DAUNT. 
 
 Nebj iEUttiott. 
 
 TO WHICH A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER IS ADDED, 
 BRINGING DOWN THE NARRATIVE TO 1887. 
 
 LOITDON : 
 
 WAKD AND DOWNEY, 
 
 12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEX, W.C. 
 
 1888. 
 [^All rights reserved.'] 
 
CEASLBS SICKXK8 UTS EVAITS, 
 CBT3TAL PALA.CH PBBSB. 
 
 LOAN STACK 
 
 29 ':i^^ 
 

 MA't aJ 
 
 PREFACE TO FIRST EDITIOK 
 
 The enactment of the Legislative Union in 1800 has been 
 followed by almost incessant agitation to obtain its repeal. 
 The desire of the Irish people to recover their right of 
 domestic legislation is as natural as a sick man's desire for 
 restoration to health. Ireland's vital need is Self-Govern- 
 ment; the exclusive control and development of her own 
 resources. " Placed," says the late Kobert Holmes, *' on the 
 ■western skirt of Europe, with three-fourths of her shores 
 washed by the Atlantic, after the discovery of a new world 
 had opened to European enterprise new objects of adventure 
 and new sources of aggrandisement, Ireland seemed destined 
 to be an important connecting link in the intercourse between 
 the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Independent of the 
 discovery of America, and the new field thereby opened for 
 commercial enterprise, the situation of Ireland seemed pecu- 
 liarly fitted for maritime pre-eminence. . . . Ireland, too, 
 had before her many glorious examples of what free States, 
 very inferior to her in extent of territory and other natural 
 advantages, could achieve by commercial daring. The powers 
 of independent existence seemed to be marked in her struc- 
 ture in such bold characters by nature, that it required the 
 unceasing efforts of an active and malignant policy to defeat 
 the obvious purposes of Creation." * 
 
 That active and malignant policy was never more per- 
 niciously exercised than in its efforts, first to corrupt, and 
 
 * " The Case of Ireland Stated." By Robert Holmes, Esq. 1847. 
 
 329 
 
"vi Preface. 
 
 then to suppress, the Irish Legislature. To emancipate our 
 country from its deadly influence is the purpose which has 
 never been absent from the Irish mind for eighty-five years. 
 It is a purpose consistent with the most devoted loyalty 
 to the Crown. Its achievement would give strength and 
 stability to Irish Constitutional loyalty by removing that 
 fruitful source of discontent — the denial to Ireland of her 
 indefeasible right of Self-Government. 
 
 In the following pages I have traced our exertions to 
 recover that right — exertions in which I have been an 
 humble but zealous participator. 
 
 During the recent debates that have followed Mr. 
 Gladstone's introduction of the Government of Ireland Bill, 
 an effervescent Orange member referred to the rebellion of 
 1798 as the result of Grattan's Constitution. "It was Pitt 
 who did it," exclaimed Mr. Gladstone. This utterance of 
 the Premier is extremely valuable. There is in England a 
 nearly universal unacquaintance with the real character of 
 the Union, as well as of the sanguinary means employed to 
 achieve it. Therefore it is important that the English people 
 should learn, on the high authority of the Premier, that the 
 Act of Union is not only leprous with corruption but 
 encrusted with blood — with the blood of the multitudes who, 
 on both sides, fell in the rebellion which was deliberately 
 provoked and fomented by Pitt and his agents as an indis- 
 pensable preliminary to the destruction of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment. It was indeed Pitt who did it. 
 
 It is inspiriting to hear Mr. Gladstone sympathetically 
 quoting from Grattan such a sentence as this : " I demand 
 the continued severance of the Parliaments with a view to 
 the continued and everlasting unity of the Empire." 
 
 •' Was that," continued Mr. Gladstone, " a flight of 
 rhetoric, an audacious paradox 1 !No, it was the statement 
 of a problem which other countries have solved, and under 
 circumstances much more difficult than ours." 
 
 Mr. Stansfeld is equally explicit in his recognition of the 
 just claim of Ireland to autonomy. " Ireland," says the 
 right hon. gentleman, "is a nation, and the denial of her 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 nationality is an insult to her people." And again : " I 
 believe in nationality — I believe in Irish nationality." 
 
 Such a declaration from a Cabinet Minister shows a vast 
 change from the time w^hen Lord John Russell coldly spoke 
 •of substituting vrhat he called *' Imperial nationality " for 
 Irish nationality ; or when Sir Robert Peel styled the legis- 
 lative Union a *' compact " too deeply rooted in the Consti- 
 tution to suflfer disturbance. 
 
 Our cause has many elements of strength. The first is 
 its plain justice. The second is the great and rapid progress 
 of English opinion in our favour, which progress has been 
 accelerated by the Parnellite organisation in and out of the 
 House of Commons. A third omen of our strength is, I 
 think, the hostility of the Orange party; for it is a simple 
 fact that their hostility has been usually followed by the 
 triumph of whatever measure they opposed. They tried to 
 prevent Her Majesty's accession to the Throne, and to make 
 the Duke of Cumberland King. The traitorous plot fell 
 through, and Her Majesty reigns. They declared that they 
 never would permit the Emancipation of the Catholics — the 
 Catholics were, of course, emancipated. They would not 
 tolerate Municipal Reform. Orange opposition had its usual 
 result — Municipal Reform was triumphantly carried. Then 
 came Disestablishment of the State Church — Orange thunder 
 shook the firmament. " No surrender " was shouted from 
 every Orange platform. As on all previous occasions. Orange 
 hostility was followed by the exhibition of Orange impotence 
 — the State Church was disestablished. They now assail 
 Home Rule with the menaces to which we are accustomed ; 
 they are to shake the torch of civil war all over Ireland with 
 terrific glare; ditches are to be lined with heroes bearing 
 rifles and Bibles — in short. Orange opposition is to be as 
 formidable to Home Rule as it has been to the Queen's 
 accession, and to all the other measures unpalatable to 
 Orange prejudice. Mr. Gladstone accurately appreciates the 
 value of their threats. " If," he says, " upon any occasion, 
 by any individual or section, violent measures have been 
 threatened in certain emergencies, I think the best compliment 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 I can pay to those who have threatened us is to take 
 no notice whatever of the threats, but to treat them as 
 momentary ebullitions." 
 
 It is especially interesting at the present juncture to look 
 back at the time of the Union, at the acts and objects of its 
 promoters and of their opponents, and at the successive 
 agitations to shake off an unnatural and irritating yoke — 
 a yoke as repulsive to the feelings of the great majority of 
 the Irish nation as it is injurious to their material interests. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 A REVIEWER in Blackwood notices that the present work is sub- 
 stantially an enlarged reproduction of *' Ireland and her Agitators," 
 originally published in 1845, and suggests that I should state that 
 this is the case. I accept the suggestion of my critic ; the more 
 readily as it gives me an opportunity of mentioning that the afore- 
 said work, and also my " Pwsonal Recollections of O'Connell," have 
 been extensively plagiarised bj Mr. C, M» OfKoeffe, ia his " Life aoid 
 Times of O'Connell." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 RECORDS OF THE UNION PERIOD .... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 HOW THE REBELLION OP 1798 WAS PROVOKED . . 9 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 PARLIAMENTARY CORRUPTION IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND 29 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 HOW IRISH DISCONTENT IS VIEWED BY SOME ENGLISH 
 
 WRITERS 40 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE DIPLOMACY OF MARQUIS CORNWALLIS ... 44 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 REPEAL ACTION — SECTARIAN OBSTRUCTION ... 53 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE EMANCIPATION STRUGGLE 66 
 
Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER Ylir. 
 
 FAaK 
 
 THE ZEAL OF A PACIFICATOR ..... 81 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 ANTI-TITHE AGITATION OP 1831-2 . . . .90 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE DISESTABLISHMENT CAMPAIGN .... 98 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 STATE CHURCH ARGUMENTS EXAMINED . . . 102 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 PROGRESS OP THE ANTI-TITHE MOVEMENT . . .120 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 THE REPEAL CAMPAIGN OF 1832 130 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 ELECTIONEERING AGITATION IN 1832 . . . .144 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 NATIONAL COUNCIL CONVENED BY o'CONNELL IN 1833 . 154 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 IRISH POLICY OF THE FIRST REFORMED PARLIAMENT . 162 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 RESULTS OF THE COERCION ACT OF 1833 . . .166 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 THE REPEAL DEBATE OP 1834 177 
 
Contents. xi 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 o'connell's final effort for repeal . . .192 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 •GRADUAL PROGRESS OF THE REPEAL ASSOCIATION . 199 
 
 • CHAPTER XXI. 
 PROPAGATION OF REPEAL BY MISSIONS . . . 205 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 THE YOUNG IRELANDERS COME PROMINENTLY FORWARD 219 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 REPEAL DEBATED IN THE DUBLIN CORPORATION . . 228 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 THE MONSTER MEETINGS OF 1843 .... 234 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 MILITARY PREPARATIONS TO OPPOSE THE REPEALERS . 241 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 IMPRISONMENT OF O'CONNELL AND HIS FRIENDS IN 1844 247 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 ■CAREER OF A ROMANTIC AGITATOR . . . .260 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 •CONDITION OF THE REPEAL MOVEMENT AFTER THE LIBE- 
 RATION OF THE PRISONERS 269 
 
xii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ON NATIONAL CL 
 GOVERNMENT . , 280 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ENGLISH POLITICIANS ON NATIONAL CLAIMS TO SELF- 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 SUCCESSIVE AGITATIONS AGAINST POPULAR GRIEVANCES. 290 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 FORMATION OF BUTT's HOME GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION 298 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 PUBLIC CONFERENCE ON HOME GOVERNMENT . . 304 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1874 .... 308 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 MR. PARNELL'S QUALIFICATIONS FOR LEADERSHIP . .312 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 THE QUESTION OF REPEAL EXAMINED . . . .319 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 THE GLADSTONIAN FRANCHISE — HOME RULE PROPOSED 356 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS APPENDIX. 
 THE FINANCIAL GRIEVANCES OF IRELAND . . . 369 
 
 A LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIII. . .391 
 
EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS 
 
 OF 
 
 IRISH HISTORY, 1800-1885. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RECORDS OF THE UNIOX PERIOD. 
 
 Among the traditionary anecdotes of the Union struggle, it 
 is told that when Lord Castlereagh visited Mr. Shapland 
 Carew, the Member for the County Wexford, in order to 
 offer him a peerage and some other more substantial 
 advantages, as inducements to vote for the Legislative 
 Union, Mr. Carew indignantly exclaimed : "I will expose 
 your insolent offer in the House of Commons to-night; I 
 will get up in my place and charge you with the barefaced 
 attempt to corrupt a legislator." 
 
 Castlereagh coolly replied : " Do so, if you will. But if 
 you do, I will immediately get up and contradict you in 
 presence of the House. I will declare, upon my honour, 
 that you have uttered a falsehood; and I shall follow up 
 that declaration by demanding satisfaction as soon as we are 
 beyond the reach of the Serjeant-at-Arms." 
 
 Mr. Carew, it is said, desired the noble Secretary of State 
 to get out of his house with all possible expedition, on pain 
 of being kicked down the hall-door steps by his footman. 
 Castlereagh accordingly withdrew ; but Carew did not exe- 
 cute his threat of exposing the transaction to the House. It 
 were idle to speculate on the motives w^hich induced him to 
 practise that forbearance. The incident vividly illustrates 
 the desperate and unprincipled determination with which 
 the Government and. its tool pursued their object. 
 
2 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 The Irish aristocracy and gentry of that period were a 
 race of men who lived high, drank hard, fought duels, and 
 often pursued a career of reckless extravagance. These 
 habits were generated by their situation, which rendered 
 them, to a very considerable extent, the irresponsible 
 monopolists of local power. They largely partook of the 
 national taste for splendour and magnificence — a taste which, 
 duly regulated, tends to adorn the land and to refine and 
 civilise the people; but which, in the circumstances then 
 affecting the upper classes in Ireland, ensnared its votaries 
 into that wasteful and ruinous expenditure which threw so 
 many of their number upon the worst expedients of political 
 corruption to retrieve their shattered fortunes. 
 
 The penal laws had wrought a most disastrous separation 
 of the people from .the gentry. The dominant Protestant 
 party — the jovial, fox-hunting, claret-drinking squirearchy- 
 all looked down on their Catholic countrymen as a totally 
 inferior race of beings, intended by God Almighty for the 
 inheritance of serfdom, and with whom it would be a degra- 
 dation to suppose they could have the least community of 
 interest. They were trained from the cradle to look thus 
 scornfully on the Catholics. Contempt was a doctrine of 
 their political Bible. 
 
 On the part of the Catholics, the moral consequences of 
 the penal gulf that divided them from their more favoured 
 countrymen were various, according to the varying disposi- 
 tions of men. There was, amongst some, the reaction of 
 deep and deadly hate. Others were awed into a social 
 idolatry of Protestants. I knew one most respectable and 
 very wealthy Catholic merchant who declared that when a 
 boy at school, about the year 1780, he felt overwhelmed and 
 bewildered at the honour of being permitted to play marbles 
 with a Protestant schoolfellow. Every Protestant cobbler 
 and tinker conceived himself superior to the Catholic of 
 ancient lineage and ample inheritance. No wonder that 
 there should have been offensive assumption on the one side, 
 and rankling animosity as well as degrading servility on the 
 other, when the law placed all the good things of the State 
 in the hands of the few, and excluded the many from all 
 participation in place, power, and emolument. 
 
 The Protestant aristocracy of Ireland wanted that whole- 
 some check, that strong guarantee of political honesty, which 
 would have arisen from contact with and representative 
 dependence on the people. A whole people never can be 
 
Protestant Patriotism in 1779 and 1782. 3 
 
 "bribed. But the people — the Catholic masses of Ireland — 
 were a political nonentity for nearly the whole century. 
 They formed no element of power, no ingredient in the 
 speculating politician's calculations ; a Lord Chancellor an- 
 nounced that the law of the land assumed their non-existence. 
 And even after some of the restrictions on Catholics had 
 been removed, the sentiment of Protestant contempt survived 
 in full force, preventing that cordial coalition, that thorough 
 mutual understanding between the two classes, which alone 
 could have availed to defeat the ministerial assault on Irish 
 legislative independence. 
 
 The Protestant nobility and squirearchy, half fearing and 
 entirely despising their disfranchised countrymen, had for a 
 long time looked upon themselves rather in the light of an 
 English garrison occupying the country than as the legiti- 
 mate aristocracy of Ireland. The notorious Doctor Patrick 
 Duigenan, in a speech against the Catholic claims delivered 
 in the House of Commons, 4th February, 1793, said: "In 
 truth the Protestants in Ireland are but a British garrison in 
 an enemy's country."* Yet, despite the colossal power of 
 corruption, and the pernicious influence of religious bigotry, 
 the very circumstance of their residing in, and making laws 
 for, Ireland, had begun to produce its natural results on the 
 minds of her domestic rulers about the time of the American 
 war. The spark of patriotism had ignited the Protestant 
 heart, and blazed up with dazzling brilliancy in the memorable 
 and successful struggle of the Irish volunteers for Free 
 Trade in 1779, and for constitutional independence in 1782. 
 
 But— fatal error! — the Catholics were not incorporated 
 into the Constitution. Glorious and imposing was the super- 
 structure ; but it was fated to perish, because its foundations 
 were too narrow to sustain its weight. It did not rest on 
 the broad basis of the people. Yet the Catholics had done 
 their best to assist in achieving the triumph of that period. 
 Doctor Duigenan, in the speech already cited,! bears the 
 following testimony : " The Catholics," he says, " not only 
 mixed with Protestants in most of the volunteer corps 
 throughout the kingdom, were regimented, carried arms 
 publicly, and learned military tactics, but they formed them- 
 selves into large and numerous corps, well armed, accoutred, 
 ^nd instructed in military exercise, and marched, and 
 
 * Speech, p. 51. I possess the Doctor's oration in the shape of a 
 pamphlet published at the time, 
 t Pages 23, 24. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 appeared in military array on all occasions as other volunteer?* 
 I saw myself a corps of Dublin volunteers, called the Irish 
 Brigade, nineteen in twenty of which were Catholics, march 
 through the city of Dublin, and close to the gates of the 
 Castle, the residence of His ^Majesty's Lieutenant, along with 
 other volunteers, to be reviewed in His Majesty's Phoenix 
 Park." 
 
 Elsewhere, in the same speech, the Doctor says : 
 " Thousands of Irish Catholics carried arms during the 
 season of volunteering without having procured any license 
 whatever."* 
 
 This evidence of the active part borne by the Catholics 
 in the national struggle to recover the Irish Constitution 
 occurs in a speech directed against the admission of th& 
 Catholics to any of the privileges of the Constitution they 
 had helped to establish. Sir Jonah Barrington, in recording 
 the activity of the Catholics in the volunteer organisation, 
 adds that they placed themselves under the command of 
 Protestant officers.t 
 
 The Protestant patriotism of 1782 was a gallant and a 
 goodly display; yet it presented some anomalous features. 
 There was in it a great deal real, and something illusory. It 
 was a curious sight, that of men in arms to enfranchise their 
 country, yet resolved to perpetuate the disfranchisement of 
 the great body of its inhabitants ; men in arms to assert the 
 honour and dignity of Ireland, yet entertaining a cordial 
 contempt for five out of every six of its people. In truth, 
 the Protestants had been so long accustomed to omit the 
 Catholics from their political arithmetic that they had learned 
 to look upon themselves — being then about one-sixth — as 
 forming the sum total of the Irish nation. The thunder of 
 Grattan had not yet shaken the strongholds of their bigotry. 
 Their ambition culminated in the establishment of a free 
 Constitution, of whose political benefits they were to be the 
 monopolists. 
 
 Another anomaly was to be found in the fact that the 
 bitterest enemies of Catholic Emancipation were sometimes 
 the most strenuous champions of theoretic Irish independence. 
 At a meeting of some of the friends of the volunteer move- 
 ment, held in their house in Grafton Street, which Flood, 
 Grattan, and Bartholomew Hoare attended, Flood, whose 
 hostility to the Catholic claims was inflexible, proposed to 
 
 • Page 49. f " Rise and Fall of the IriBh Nation," chap. xvi. 
 
An Irish Squirearcli. 5 
 
 his confreres a plan of total separation from England. Grattan 
 said : "If you persevere in your proposition, I certainly shall 
 not oppose it here ; but I shall quit this room, and proceed 
 at once to the Castle — to my Sovereign's Castle — and there 
 disclose the treason, and denounce the traitor." 
 
 Yet Flood, the separatist, could not tolerate the notion of 
 emancipating the Catholics; whilst Grattan, the zealous 
 friend of the Catholics, and the champion of a free Irish 
 Parliament in connection with the British Crown, denounced 
 the ultra patriotism of the Protestant ascendency statesman, 
 as treason. Flood, I need not add, withdrew his propositi(,n.* 
 
 Emancipation, under an Irish Parliament, would have 
 speedily blended all classes of religionists in one political 
 mass. But the Catholics continued unemancipated ; the 
 Protestants remained a separate and exclusive band, distinct 
 from, and rarely sympathising with, their fellow-countrymen. 
 Thus placed far aloof from the people, there was little to 
 countervail the corrupting influence of a profligate Court with 
 which they were brought into close contact, and which 
 derived immense facilities of corruption from the number of 
 pocket-boroughs in the Irish House of Commons. With an 
 unreformed Parliament and an unemancipated people, the 
 distributors of place and pension enjoyed an easy sway. The 
 pension list was swollen to an enormous magnitude; the 
 number of sinecures incessantly augmented; and parlia- 
 mentary profligacy came at last to be so general, that men 
 lost all sense of its shame through the force of its prevalence. 
 
 Whilst the Government thus practised corruption on the 
 largest scale, there were social vices peculiar to the period 
 which extensively prevailed among the upper ranks. Of 
 these practices the principal were duelling and drinking, 
 which were carried to an excess happily now almost incredible. 
 Take, for a specimen, Mr. Bagenal of Dunleckny, in the 
 County Carlow — King Bagenal, as he was called throughout 
 his extensive territories; and within their bounds no monarch 
 was ever more absolute. Of high Norman lineage, of manners 
 elegant, fascinating, polished by extensive intercourse with 
 the great world, of princely income and of boundless hospi- 
 tality, Mr. Bagenal possessed all the qualities and attributes 
 calculated to procure for him popularity with every class. A 
 terrestrial paradise was Dunleckny for all lovers of good wine, 
 
 * This anecdote was told me by O'Connell, to whom it had been 
 narrated by Bartholomew Hoare, one of the persons present on 
 the occasion referred to. 
 
6 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 good horses, good dogs, and good society. His stud wa? 
 magnificent, and he had a large number of capital hunters at 
 the service of visitors who were not provided with steeds of 
 their own. He derived great delight from encouraging the 
 young men who frequented his house to hunt, drink, and 
 solve points of honour at twelve paces. His politics were 
 popular; he was mover of the grant of £50,000 to Grattan 
 in 1782. He was at that time Member for the County 
 Carlo w. 
 
 Enthroned at Dunleckny, he gathered round him a host 
 of spirits congenial to his own. He had a tender affection 
 for pistols ; a brace of which implements, loaded, were often 
 laid before him on the dinner-table. After dinner the claret 
 was produced in an unbroached cask ; Bagenal's practice was 
 to tap the cask with a bullet from one of his pistols, whilst 
 he kept the other pistol in terrorem for any of the convives^^ 
 who should fail in doing ample justice to the wine. 
 
 Nothing could be more impressive than the bland, 
 fatherly, affectionate air with which the old gentleman used 
 to impart to his junior guests the results of his own ex- 
 perience, and the moral lessons which should regulate their 
 conduct through life. 
 
 "In truth, my young friends, it behoves a youth entering 
 the world to make a character for himself. Eespect will 
 only be accorded to character. A young man must show his 
 proofs. I am not a quarrelsome person — I never was — I 
 hate your mere duellist; but experience of the world tells me 
 there are knotty points of which the only solution is the 
 saw-handle. Rest upon your pistols, my boys ! Occasions 
 will arise in which the use of them is absolutely indispensable- 
 to character. A man, I repeat, must show his proofs — in: 
 this world courage will never be taken upon trust. I protest 
 to heaven, my dear young friends, that I advise you exactly 
 as I should advise my own son." 
 
 And having thus discharged his conscience, he would 
 look blandly round upon his guests with the most patriarchal 
 air imaginable. 
 
 His practice accorded with his precept. Some pigs, the 
 property of a gentleman who had recently settled near 
 Dunleckny, strayed into an enclosure of King Bagenal's 
 and rooted up a flower-knot. The incensed monarch ordered 
 that the porcine trespassers should be shorn of their ears and 
 tails; and he transmitted the severed appendages to the^ 
 owner of the swine with an intimation that he, too, deserved 
 
A SquirearcWs Wixtth. 7 
 
 to have his ears docked ; and that only that he had not got a 
 tail, he (King Bagenal) would sever the caudal member from 
 his dorsal extremity. ''Now," quoth Bagenal, "if he's a 
 gentleman he must burn powder after such a message as 
 that." 
 
 Nor was he disappointed. A challenge was given by 
 the owner of the pigs. Bagenal accepted it with alacrity, 
 only stipulating that as he was old and feeble, being then in 
 his seventy-ninth year, he should fight sitting in his arm- 
 chair ; and that as his infirmities prevented early rising, the 
 meeting should take place in the afternoon. "Time was," 
 said the old man with a sigh, "that I would have risen 
 before daylight to fight at sunrise, but we cannot do these 
 things at seventy-eight. Well, heaven's will be done." 
 
 They fought at twelve paces. Bagenal wounded his 
 antagonist severely; the arm of the chair in which he sat 
 was shattered, but he escaped unhurt ; and he ended the day 
 with a glorious carouse, tapping the claret, we may presume, 
 as usual, by firing a pistol at the cask. 
 
 The traditions of Dunleckny allege that when Bagenal, 
 in the course of his tour through Europe, visited the petty 
 Court of Mecklenburg Strelitz, the Grand Duke, charmed 
 ■with his magnificence and the reputation of his wealth, 
 made him an ofi'er of the hand of the fair Charlotte, who, 
 being politely rejected by King Bagenal, was afterwards 
 accepted by King George III. 
 
 Such was the lord of Dunleckny, and such was many an 
 Irish squire of the day. Kecklessness characterised the 
 time. And yet there was a polished courtesy, a high-bred 
 grace in the manners of men who imagined that to shoot, or 
 to be shot at, on " the sod," was an indispensable ingredient 
 in the character of a gentleman. Look at Bagenal, nearly 
 fourscore, seated at the head of his table. You observe the 
 refined urbanity of his manner, and the dignified air which 
 is enhanced, not impaired, by the weight of years. You 
 draw near to participate in the instructions of this ancient 
 moralist. What a shock — half ludicrous, half horrible — to 
 find that he inculcates the necessity of practice with the 
 hair-triggers as the grand primary virtue which forms the 
 gentleman ! 
 
 At a somewhat later period the same extravagant ideas 
 prevailed. At a contested election for the County of Cork, 
 the well-known "Bully Egan " fought fourteen duels. 
 Pugnacious barristers, whose knowledge of law was not very 
 
8 EiglLtij-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 profound, sometimes made large sums of money at elections 
 where fighting counsel were required. Elections in those 
 days often lasted a fortnight or three weeks. Indeed they 
 occasionally lasted longer. It is stated that Lord Castle- 
 reagh's first elections for the County Down lasted for forty- 
 two days, and cost £G0,000. Contests thus protracted might 
 average, if party or personal animosity ran high, from one 
 to two duels a day. It accordingly was the policy of the 
 candidates to select good shots for their counsel. Within 
 the present century Mr. Thomas O'Meara was agent at a 
 Clare election, where he conducted the business of his client 
 in a style so pacific as to excite the astonishment of a friend 
 who was aware of his fire-eating propensities. "Why, Tom," 
 said his friend, "you are marvellously quiet. How does it 
 happen that you haven't got into any rumpus?" "Because 
 my client does not pay me fighting price," replied Tom, with 
 the most business-like air in the world. The tariff included 
 two scales of payment for election counsel, the talking price 
 and the fighting price. 
 
 These delirious notions were undoubtedly the indirect 
 results of the anomalous position of the "Protestant garrison" 
 in Ireland ; of their immense and irresponsible social power, 
 and of the lax, devil-may-care morality systematically acted 
 on in the government of the country by successive adminis- 
 trations. 
 
 At an election for the County of Wexford in 1810, when 
 Messrs. Alcock and Colclough were rival candidates, some 
 tenants of a friend of Alcock declared their intention of 
 voting for Colclough. " Eeceive their votes at your peril ! " 
 exclaimed Alcock. Colclough replied that he had not asked 
 their votes, and that he certainly would not be bullied into 
 rejecting them. Alcock thereupon challenged Colclough to 
 fight. They met on the next day; the crowd who assembled 
 on the ground included many magistrates; Colclough was 
 shot through the heart, and Alcock, having thus got rid of 
 his opponent, was duly returned for the county. He was 
 tried at the next assizes for the murder of Colclough. Baron 
 Smith publicly protested against finding him guilty, and 
 the jury unanimously acquitted him. 
 
The Union not morally hinding. 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW THE REBELLION OF 1798 WAS PROVOKED. 
 
 " Of that system of coercion which preceded the late insurrection 
 in Ireland, of the bumiDg of villages, hanging their inhabitants, 
 transporting persons suspected without trial, strangling and whipping 
 to extort confession, and billeting the military at free quarters in 
 districts in which individuals had been disorderly, his lordship 
 (Charlemont) has been uniformly the declared enemy." — Memoir of 
 Lord Charlemont in ^^ Public Characters of 1798." Dublin, 1799. 
 
 The motto I have prefixed to this chapter describes the 
 mode taken by the agents of Pitt's Government to lash 
 Ireland into that rebellion which was used as one of the 
 arguments against our legislative independence. The rebellion, 
 which the authorities "made to explode" (the words are 
 Lord Castlereagh's), was deliberately provoked, in order to 
 give England a pretext for filling Ireland with troops to 
 crush out popular opposition to the Union. While military 
 force was thus employed to destroy our Constitution, bribery 
 on a scale of unprecedented magnitude was employed to 
 purchase votes for the Union in the Houses of Parliament. 
 
 It is sometimes weakly urged that the venality of the 
 last Irish Parliament is a perpetual disqualifier of the Irish 
 people from the right of self-legislation. It might as well be 
 said that the owner of an estate was disqualified from the 
 rights of possession by the rascality of his agent. The Irish 
 people had nothing to do with the venality of their legislators. 
 The sin was not theirs, nor should its punishment be visited 
 on them. And in the last grand struggle, the men who 
 really were their representatives — the men who were returned 
 for open, popular constituencies — nearly all voted against 
 the ministerial project, and for the preservation of the Irish 
 Parliament. 
 
 In glancing, however rapidly, at the Eepeal agitation, we 
 should not lose sight of that which is ever uppermost in the 
 mind of every Irish Repealer — namely, that the Union is 
 the ofi'spring of conjoined fraud and force ; that the means 
 by which it was achieved were such as would inevitably 
 vitiate any private transaction between two individuals. 
 That Lord Castlereagh found many nominees for pocket- 
 boroughs, many placemen, and every staff officer* in a 
 
 * Except Colonel O'Donnell. 
 
10 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History, 
 
 Parliameiifc which had been dexterously packed for the 
 question, who were not so impracticable as Mr. Shapland 
 Carew, was by no means the worst feature in the case. 
 The machinery of crime which was to effectuate the Union 
 had been long in preparation. With respect to the turbulent 
 condition of Ireland for some years prior to the Union — with 
 respect to the share the Government had in producing that 
 turbulence, I shall not enter into lengthened details. 
 
 The following brief statements must suffice : 
 
 The Government goaded the people to rebellion, in order 
 that the popular strength might be paralysed by civil war 
 and its attendant horrors, so as to enable Mr. Pitt to force 
 the Legislative Union on a prostrate and divided people. So 
 far back as 1792, Edmund Burke had used these remarkable 
 words : " By what I learn, the Castle considers the outlawry 
 (or at least what I look upon as such) of the great mass of the 
 people of Ireland as an unalterable maxim in the government 
 of Ireland." 
 
 The Presbyterian population, principally fixed in Ulster, 
 demanded a Eeform of the House of Commons. The 
 Catholics, outnumbering all the other bodies of religionists, 
 demanded the full rights of citizenship. The Nationalists of 
 all creeds who composed the confederation of United Irish- 
 men would at the outset have been perfectly satisfied by the 
 concession of these just demands. It appears from Tone's 
 autobiography that the Irish public did not ask for separation 
 from England; for he tells us that when he published a 
 pamphlet in which separation was propounded, he found that 
 the public mind had not advanced to that point ; " and my 
 pamphlet," he adds, "made not the smallest impression." * 
 
 The efficacy of a thorou^:;!! reform in allaying discontent 
 is stated also by Arthur O'Connor to the secret committees 
 of the Lords and Commons by whom he was examined in 
 1798. His words are these ; 
 
 " Restore the vital principle of the Constitution which 
 you have destroyed, by restoring to the people the choice of 
 representatives who shall control the executive by frugal 
 grants of the public money, and by exacting a rigid account 
 of the expenditure. Let the people have representatives they 
 can call friends — men in whom they can place confidence — 
 men they have really chosen — men chosen for such a time 
 that if they should attempt to betray them they may speedily 
 
 * " Life and Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone," p. 33. McCormiok'a 
 edition. 
 
Reform icould have allayed Discontent. 11 
 
 have an opportunity of discarding them. Give them such a 
 House of Commons, and I will answer for the tranquillity of 
 the country." 
 
 Eut the tranquillity of the country just then would not 
 have suited Pitt's designs against Ireland. 
 
 *' Pitt," says Thorold Rogers, " permitted in Ireland a 
 reign of terror hardly less atrocious, though better concerted, 
 than the massacres of September, and the fusillade at 
 Lyons." 
 
 The reign of terror, the intolerable persecution of the 
 people, was indispensable to create and intensify the mutual 
 distrust of the Catholic and Protestant communities, whose 
 combination was essentially necessary to defeat the machina- 
 tions of their common enemy. For in the confusion of a 
 popular outbreak, nothing could be easier than to give the 
 appearance of a war of religion to the inevitable outrages on 
 either side. England could then take advantage of the 
 dissensions her manoeuvres had inflamed. She could assume 
 the position of a coercive mediator, and say, " As you Irish 
 are maddened by your religious hatreds, we must take you 
 in hand and protect you from each other." 
 
 To extinguish sectarian animosity was one of the leading 
 objects of "The United Irishmen." "All we wanted," says 
 Arthur O'Connor, " was to create a House of Commons which 
 should represent the whole people of Ireland ; and for that 
 purpose we strove to dispel all religious distinctions from our 
 political union." * 
 
 To exasperate the friends of Reform, not only by an 
 insolent rejection of their claims, but also by a shameless 
 perseverance in the practice of parliamentary corruption, 
 became a settled part of the policy of the Government. It 
 was likewise resolved to exasperate the Catholics, who, 
 according to Tone, required nothing more than equal justice 
 to render them thoroughly peaceable and loyal. I quote the 
 words of Tone, who, the reader will remember, was a 
 Protestant : 
 
 " The Dissenters," he says, " from the early character of 
 their sect, were mostly Republicans from principle. The 
 great mass of the Catholics only became so from oppression 
 and persecution. Had they not been goaded by tyranny in 
 every hour and in every act of their lives, had they been 
 
 * " Memoir : being a Eeport of the Examinations of Messrs. 
 Emmett, O'Connor, and MacNeviu, before the Secret Committees of 
 the Lords and Commons," Published by themselves j p. 62. 
 
1^ Eigldy-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 freely admitted to an equal share in tlie benefits of the Irish 
 Constitution, they would have become, by the very spirit of 
 their religion, the most peaceable, obedient, orderly, and well- 
 affectioned subjects of the empire. Their proud and old 
 gentry, and their clergy, inclined even rather to feudal and 
 chivalrous, and somewhat to Tory principles, than to Demo- 
 cracy. But common sufferings now united them in a common 
 hatred of the Government, and desire for its subversion."* 
 
 Opposed to the just demands of Eeform and Catholic 
 Emancipation were the powerful parties who enjoyed the 
 great pecuniary profits of parliamentary corruption, and the 
 monopoly of office and of political influence which Reform 
 and Emancipation would necessarily terminate. The mo- 
 nopolists and bigots were supported by the whole power of 
 the English Government against the great majority of their 
 fellow-countrymen. In such a state of things it was not 
 difficult for an able and unscrupulous Minister to embroil 
 this kingdom in a civil war, the results of which might 
 facilitate his favourite scheme of a Union. By encouraging 
 political profligacy in the Irish Parliament, he might hope to 
 render that body unpopular with the Irish nation. By 
 playing off contending parties against each other, and in- 
 flaming their mutual hostility, he might make the Catholics 
 look upon the rule of an English Parliament as a smaller evil 
 than the Orange brutality to which he took good care they 
 should be subjected at home. 
 
 The Report of the Secret Committee of the Irish House 
 of Commons, printed "by authority'' in 1798, affirms that 
 by the original papers seized at Belfast in the month of April, 
 1797, the numbers of United Irishmen in the province of Ulster 
 alone were stated to amount to nearly 100,000. Throughout 
 the writings of Wolfe Tone we find Ulster invariably 
 named as the first and best-prepared province in the 
 revolutionary movement, of which the nucleus was in Belfast. 
 It seems to have been considered by the English Cabinet that 
 the Catholics would be more effectually stimulated to unite 
 with the Northern conspirators, by alternating their " out- 
 lawry " with promises of speedy and complete emancipation ; 
 by then suddenly dispelling the hopes thus excited, and 
 recurring to a system of barbarous persecution. 
 
 This game was adroitly played. On the 15th of October, 
 1794, the illustrious Grattan had an interview with Pitt on 
 
 ♦ " Life of Tone," ut supra, p. 90. 
 
PiWs Duplicihj. 13 
 
 Irish affairs. "Mr. Grattan," says his son, ''stated to him 
 what his party desired, and mentioned the measures that he 
 thought Ireland required. The essential one was the Catholic 
 question." With regard to the Catholic question, Mr. Pitt 
 used these words : " JS"ot to bring it forward as a Government 
 measure; but if Government were pressed, to yield it."* 
 Mr. Grattan observes that this was unquestionably a con- 
 cession of the Catholic question, for Pitt well knew the 
 question would be pressed. We have Earl Fitzwilliam's 
 authority for the fact that Pitt and his Cabinet empowered 
 his lordship, when accepting the Yiceroyalty of Ireland, to 
 support the claims of the Catholics. In his letter to the Earl 
 of Carlisle he says : " It was at the same time resolved that 
 if the Catholics should appear determined to stir the business, 
 and to bring it before Parliament, I was to give it a handsome 
 support on the part of the G[overnmen]t."+ Pitt, in fact, 
 included the full emancipation of the Catholics in the 
 programme settled between the King's Ministry and Earl 
 Eitzwilliam, previously to that nobleman's departure from 
 London to assume the reins of government in Ireland. 
 And Earl Eitzwilliam tells us that on no other terms would 
 he have accepted the office of Viceroy. How completely he 
 fell into the trap laid by Pitt, how thoroughly he credited the 
 sincerity of Pitt's insincere declarations in favour of the 
 Catholics, can best be learned from his lordship's own words. 
 He says : " From a full consideration of the real merits of the 
 case, as well as from every information I had been able to 
 collect of the state and temper of Ireland from the year 1793, 
 I was decidedly of opinion that not only sound policy, but 
 justice, required on the part of Great Britain, that the work 
 which was left imperfect at that period ought to be completed, 
 and the Catholics relieved from every remaining disqualifi- 
 cation. In this opinion the Duke of P[ortlan]d uniformly 
 concurred with me; and when this question came under 
 discussion previous to my departure for Ireland, I found the 
 Cabinet, with Mr. P[itt] at their head, strongly impressed with 
 the same conviction. Had I found it otherwise, I never 
 would have undertaken the g[overnmen]t." J 
 
 * " Life of Grattan," by his Son, vol. ir. p. 177. 
 
 + Earl Fitzwilliam's "Letter to the Earl of Carlisle," p. 4. 
 Dublin, 1795. 
 
 X Letter, pp. 2, 3. The Duke of Portland was then principal 
 Secretary of State for the Home Department j Mr. Pitt was 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
14 Eiglity-fiv& Tears of Irish History. 
 
 It is quite clear that Earl Fitzwilliam considered himself 
 the authorised herald of Emancipation to the Irish Catholics. 
 But Pitt had no other intention than driving the Catholics to 
 desperation by disappointing the hopes thus treacherously- 
 excited. On the 8th of February, 1795, the Duke of Portland 
 wrote to the Viceroy that Emancipation was to be postponed, 
 and that its postponement would be "the means of doin^j a 
 greater service to the British Empire than it has been capable 
 of receiving since the Kevolution, or, at least, since the 
 [Scotch] Union." * The " greater service " thus indicated 
 was the destruction of the Irish Parliament. 
 
 The reader will remember that, in 1792, Mr. Burke said 
 that the treatment received by the Catholics amounted, in 
 his judgment, to outlawry. In 1795 Lord Fitzwilliam, 
 during his short Viceroyalty, warned Pitt's Cabinet, in a 
 letter to the Duke of Portland, that the course pursued by 
 Pitt would, if persevered in, ''raise a flame in the country 
 that nothing short of arms would be able to keep down ; '"+ 
 and in his Letter, already cited, to the Earl of Carlisle, he 
 asks, in reference to the ministerial policy, '* must the Minister 
 of England boldly face, I had almost said the certainty of 
 driving this kingdom into a rebellion, and open another 
 breach for ruin and destruction to break in upon us T' | 
 
 Lord Fitzwilliam's remonstrances do honour to his heart 
 and to his statesmanship. He might, however, have spared 
 them. A rebellion was just what Pitt wanted. The mutual 
 atrocities it would produce were certain to inflame the 
 reciprocal animosities of the belligerents to a pitch of fury, 
 and furnish a convenient pretext for introducing martial law, 
 and overwhelming the kingdom with troops. Under the 
 reign of terror thus established the task of destroying the 
 Irish Parliament would be comparatively easy. 
 
 Pitt calculated that if Emancipation were persistently 
 denied to the Catholics in the Irish Legislature, their 
 support of a Union might be purchased by holding out a 
 hope that the Imperial Parliament would enfranchise them. 
 Reports of this project having got into circulation, an aggre- 
 gate meeting of Catholics, held in Dublin on the 9th of 
 A-pril, 1795, passed the following resolution : 
 
 * " Letter to the Earl of Carlisle," p. 14. 
 
 t In Earl Fitzwilliam's Letter to Lord Carlisle, he states that he 
 addressed that warning to the Duke of Portland. 
 
 X " Letter to the Earl of Carlisle," p. 24. The word " certainty " 
 is italioised by his lordship. 
 
Pitt 'provolhcs tlie Rebellion of '98. 15 
 
 "Resolved unanimously, That we are sincerely and 
 unalterably attached to the rights, liberties, and independi^nce 
 of our native country ; and we pledge ourselves, collectively 
 and individually, to resist even our own emancipation, if 
 proposed to be conceded on the ignominious terms of acqui- 
 escence in the fatal measure of an Union with the sister 
 kingdom." 
 
 Of the pretended assent of the English Cabinet to Ca- 
 tholic Emancipation, and the disastrous result of retracting 
 that assent, Sir Laurence Parsons thus expressed himself in 
 the Irish House of Commons on the 2nd of March, 1795 : 
 
 " If the British Cabinet had held out an assent and had 
 afterwards retracted, if the demon of darkness should come 
 from the infernal regions upon earth and throw a firebrand 
 among the people, he could not do more to promote mischief. 
 The hopes of the public were raised, and in one instant they 
 
 were blasted He protested to God that in all the 
 
 history he had read, he had never met with a parallel of 
 such infatuation as that by which he (Mr. Pitt) appeared to 
 be led. Let him persevere, and you must increase j^our army 
 to myriads; every man must have five or six dragoons in 
 his house." 
 
 It was not infatuation, except so far as infatuation 
 consists in deliberate and systematic vrickedness. To 
 provoke rebellion was the object of Pitt's policy ; and the 
 exasperation of the Catholics, excited by political disappoint- 
 ment, contributed to the success of that policy. 
 
 On the 29th of January, 1799, when the ministerial 
 scheme of Union had sufficiently ripened, the Duke of Port- 
 land wrote to Lord Castlereagh: "Catholic Emancipation 
 must not be granted but through the medium of an Union, 
 and by means of an united Parliament."* Next day (30tli) 
 the Duke wrote more strongly to the same eff"ect. • The 
 Viceroy (Marquis Cornwallis) had previously written to the 
 Duke of Portland, "Were the Catholic question to be now 
 earried, the great argument for an Union would be lost, at 
 least so far as the Catholics are concerned." + 
 
 Here we have the key to the "service" which Pitt's 
 Cabinet expected to derive from postponing the concession 
 of the Catholic claims which Lord Eitzwilliam was instructed 
 to support in 1795, and which Pitt, in 1794, had directly 
 led Grattan to expect. 
 
 * " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 69. f Ibid, 
 
16 Eiglity-Jive Tears of Irish History. 
 
 A rebellion was deemed a useful means of laying waste 
 the strength of this kingdom. But the desired outbreak was 
 not to be left to the chance of mere political exasperation. 
 Stronger provocatives than the breach of ministerial promises 
 "were to be applied to the Catholics. 
 
 Lord Fitzwilliam, a man of high honour, could not act 
 on Pitt's infernal policy. He was of course recalled. Of 
 the effects of that recall upon the public mind, a contem- 
 porary writer says : 
 
 "The nation again seemed to sink into despondency. 
 The houses, shops, etc., in every street through which he 
 passed, were all shut upon the memorable day on which he 
 sailed for England; and at noonday a solemn silence and 
 melancholy mourning marked the metropolis, and seemed to 
 indicate the sad catastrophe which has since befallen that ill- 
 fated country."* 
 
 Discontent was fearfully increased by the system of 
 torture put in practice against the people in various districts. 
 The following evidence, given by Lord Gosford, describes 
 that system as it existed in 1795 and 1796 : 
 
 "A persecution," says his lord3hip,t "accompanied with 
 all the circumstances of ferocious cruelty, is now raging in 
 this country. Neither age, nor sex, nor even acknowledged 
 innocence can excite mercy. The only crime which the 
 wretched objects are charged with is the profession of the 
 Roman Catholic faith. A lawless banditti have constituted 
 themselves judges of this new delinquency, and the sentence 
 they pronounce is equally concise and terrible ; it is nothing 
 less than confiscation of property and immediate banishment. 
 It would be painful to detail the horrors of this proscription 
 — a proscription that exceeds, in the number of its victims, 
 every example of ancient and modern history. For, when 
 have we heard or read of more than half the inhabitants of a 
 populous country being deprived of the fruits of their 
 industry, and driven to seek shelter for themselves and their 
 families where chance may guide them ? These horrors are 
 now acting with impunity. The spirit of justice, without 
 which law is tyranny, has disappeared in this countr3\" 
 
 The persecution Lord Gosford describes took place in 
 1795. 
 
 * Memoir of Earl Fitzwilliam in " Public Characters of 1799 and 
 1800," p. 272. 
 
 t Address of Lord Gosford to the Magistracy of Armagh, printed 
 in the Dublin Journal, 5th January, 1796. 
 
Persecution of the Peo;ple. 17 
 
 So far Pitt's policy had borne its intended fruit. 
 
 The late Lord Holland, speaking of the recall of Earl 
 Fitzwilliam from the Viceroyalty, says : 
 
 " His recall was hailed as a triumph by the Orange 
 faction, and they contrived about the same time to get rid of 
 Mr. Secretary Pelham, who, though somewhat time-serving, 
 was a good-natured and a prudent man. Indeed, surrounded 
 as they were with burning cottages, tortured backs, and 
 frequent executions, they were yet full of their sneers at 
 ■what they whimsically termed ' the clemency ' of the 
 Government, and the weak character of their Viceroy, 
 Lord Camden. . . . The fact is incontrovertible that the 
 people of Ireland were driven to resistance, which possibly 
 they meditated before, by the free quarters and excesses of 
 the soldiery, which were such as are not permitted in 
 civilised warfare, even in an enemy's country." * 
 
 The evidence of the Protestant Bishop of Down (Right 
 Eev. Doctor Dickson) illustrative of some of the particular 
 features of the system, is thus given by Lord Holland in the 
 work now quoted : 
 
 "Dr. Dickson assured me that he had seen families, 
 returning peaceably from mass, assailed without provocation 
 by drunken troops and yeomanry, and the wives and 
 daughters exposed to every species of indignity, brutality, 
 and outrage, from which neither his remonstrances, nor those 
 of other Protestant gentlemen, could rescue them. The 
 subsequent Indemnity Acts deprived of redress the victims 
 of this wide-spread cruelty." 
 
 Of particular outrages committed on the people by the 
 armed agents of power, the following quotation from Lord 
 Moira will furnish illustrative specimens : 
 
 " I have," says Lord Moira, " known a man, in order to 
 extort confession of a supposed crime, or of that of some 
 neighbour, picketed till he actually fainted ; picketed a 
 second time till he fainted again; and when he came to 
 himself, picketed a third time till he once more fainted ; 
 and all this upon mere suspicion. Men had been taken and 
 hung up till they were half dead, and afterwards threatened 
 with a repetition of this treatment unless they made a con- 
 fession of their imputed guilt." f 
 
 * " Memoirs of the Whig Party during my Time," by Lord 
 Holland, edited by his Son. Longmans, 1852. 
 
 t St)eech of Lord Moira in the British House of Lords, 22 ad 
 November, 1797. 
 
 
 
18 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 The picketing mode of torture consisted in suspending 
 the victim by his arms, while his foot had nothing to rest on 
 but the point of a sharpened stake. Horrible as was the 
 tyranny described by Lord Moira, yet it seems that he did 
 not tell the worst cases, for on the 2nd of December, 1797^ 
 he wrote as follows to the Hon. Valentine Lawless : * 
 
 *' You have truly observed that in my recital I suppressed 
 many of the grossest instances of outrage, with the details of 
 which I could not but be acquainted." 
 
 Lord Moira took care to state that the crimes he described 
 were not isolated outrages. " These," said he, " were not 
 particular acts of cruelty, but formed part of the new system." 
 
 The object of that system was to carry the Union. 
 
 The late General Cockburn gives, in his " Letters " 
 (p. 47), an account of the documents prepared to enable Lord 
 Moira to substantiate his statements, and he adds : " They 
 (the documents) contained details of the most horrible out- 
 rages on the people, of cruelty and foul deeds, that perhaps, 
 after all, it may be as well to have now efifaced from Irish 
 records of violence; and though the people in many cases 
 were driven to retaliation, it was not before murder, burning, 
 destruction of property (often on suspicion of being suspected) 
 and flogging, drove them to desperation." 
 
 I add the testimony of Henry Grattan. On the 26th of 
 February, 1796, he said in the Irish House of Commons that 
 it was " a persecution conceived in the bitterness of bigotry, 
 carried on with the most ferocious barbarity by a banditti, 
 who, being of the religion of the State, had committed with 
 greater audacity and confidence the most horrid murders, 
 and had proceeded from robbery and massacre to extermin^ 
 tion." 
 
 The outrages referred to in the above passage were chiefly 
 committed in the County Armagh. Grattan, in an address 
 to his fellow-citizens in 1797, enumerates among the crimes 
 with which he charges Government, "the order to the 
 military to act without waiting for the civil power ; the 
 imprisonment of the middle orders without law ; the de- 
 taining them in prison without bringing them to trial; the 
 transporting them without law; burning their houses; 
 burning their villages; murdering them; crimes many of 
 which are public, and many are committed which are con- 
 cealed by the suppression of a free press by military force . . ► 
 
 * ritzpatriok's "Life of Lord Clonourry," p. 150. 
 
Persecution of the People. 19 
 
 finally, the introduction of practices not only unknown to 
 law, but unknown to civilised and Christian countries." 
 
 Plowden tells us in his " History of Ireland," that in the 
 beginning of 1796, "it was generally believed that 7,000 
 Catholics had been forced or burned out of the county of 
 Armagh, and that the ferocious banditti who had expelled 
 them had been encouraged_, connived at, and protected by the 
 Government." * 
 
 In the examination of the United Irishmen by the Secret 
 Committees of the Lords and Commons the Lord Chancellor 
 asks Emmett, "What caused the late rebellion'?" To which 
 question Emmett answers, ''The free quarters, the house- 
 burnings, the tortures, and the military executions, in the 
 counties of Kildare, Carlo w, and Wicklow." f 
 
 Arthur O'Connor, in his examination before the Secret 
 Committees of the Lords and Commons in 1798, complains 
 of " the uniform system of coercion and opposition which 
 had been pursued from 1793 by the Irish Government 
 against the Irish people ; " and on being asked to state the 
 object contemplated by the United Irishmen in organising 
 their society, he answers in the following words: "AVe saw 
 with sorrow that the cruelties practised by the Irish Govern- 
 ment had raised a dreadful spirit of revenge in the hearts 
 of the people ; we saw with horror that to answer their 
 immediate views, the Irish Government had revived the old 
 religious feuds ; we were most anxious to have such authority 
 as the organisation afforded, constituted to prevent the 
 dreadful transports of popular fury." 
 
 A member of the Committee (apparently Lord Castlereagh) 
 remarks that " Government had nothing to do with the 
 Orange system, or their oath of extermination." To which 
 O'Connor thus replies : *' You, my lord (Castlereagh), from 
 the station you fill, must be sensible that the executive of 
 any country has it in its power to collect a vast mass of 
 information, and you must know from the secret nature, and 
 the zeal of the Union, that its executive must have had the 
 most minute information of every act of the Irish Govern- 
 ment. As one of the executive, it came to my knowledge 
 that considerable sums of money were expended throughout 
 the nation in endeavouring to extend the Orange system, and 
 that the Orange oath of extermination was administered. 
 When these facts are coupled, not only with the general 
 
 * Plowden's "History of Ireland," vol. ii. p. 377. 
 t See Madden's " United Irishmen," First Series, p. 111. 
 
 2 
 
20 Eighty -five Years of Irish Hidory. 
 
 impunity that has been uniformly extended towards all the 
 acts of this infernal association, but [with] the marked 
 encouragement its members have received from Government, 
 I find it impossible to exculpate the Government from being 
 the parent and protector of these sworn extirpators." * 
 
 O'Connors reasoning on this point is irresistible. The 
 Government were merely carrying out Pitt's policy. Of that 
 policy Lord Holland's opinion may be learned from the 
 following passage in the work already quoted : " My ap- 
 probation," says his lordship, " of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's 
 actions remains unaltered and unshaken. His country was 
 bleeding under one of the hardest tyrannies that our times 
 have witnessed." 
 
 As to the administration of the law, it was not very easy 
 for the people to repose confidence in its justice when such 
 an incident as the following could occur. In the spring of 
 1797, Solicitor-General Toler, afterwards Lord I^orbury, 
 presided during the illness of one of the judges in the 
 criminal court at the assizes for the County Kildare. Captain 
 Frazer, a Scotchman, was prosecuted for the murder of a 
 peasant named Christopher Dixon, under the following 
 circumstances : Part of the County of Kildare, near Carberry, 
 was at that time proclaimed. Other parts were exempt from 
 proclamation. There was a flying camp in the proclaimed 
 part, consisting of the Prazer Fencibles, under the command 
 of Captain Frazer. One night, on his return through 
 Cloncurry to the camp from a jovial dinner-party at Maynooth, 
 Frazer saw Dixon repairing a cart by the roadside. Thinking 
 that he was in his own proclaimed district, he seized Dixon 
 for being out after sunset, and made him mount behind the 
 orderly dragoon in attendance, with the purpose of taking 
 him to the camp to flog. Passing a turnpike-gate, Dixon 
 asserted that the proclamation did not extend to the district 
 in which he had been found, at the same time appealing to 
 the gatekeeper to confirm his assertion. The gatekeeper said 
 that the district in question had not been proclaimed ; upon 
 which Dixon descended from the crupper of the orderly's 
 horse and went towards home. Frazer and the dragoon 
 furiously pursued him, and gave him sixteen wounds, of 
 which seven or eight were mortal. A coroner's jury returned 
 a verdict of " Wilful Murder " against the homicides. A 
 neighbouring magistrate, Mr. Thomas Ryan, endeavoured to 
 
 ♦ Madden's " United Irishmen," Second Series, 8vo, pp. 818, 319. 
 
A Judicial Dilemma. 21 
 
 take Frazer, but his soldiers resisted. Mr. Ryan reported 
 the facts to Lord Clonciirry, who was then in Dublin, and 
 who directed his son, the Hon. Valentine Lawless, to visit 
 the Commander of the Forces, Lord Carhampton, in order to 
 demand the body of Frazer in pursuance of the provisions 
 of the Mutiny Act. Mr. Lawless made the demand in 
 presence of Mr. Ryan, and of Colonel (afterwards General 
 Sir George) Cockburn. Lord Carhampton refused to give up 
 Frazer. Mr. Lawless thereupon told his lordship that Frazer 
 was ipso facto cashiered. 
 
 At the assizes Frazer went voluntarily to be tried. His 
 approach to the Court House was a sort of ovation, for he 
 was attended by a military band playing "Croppies, lie 
 down." 
 
 Mr. Toler presided. On the bench beside him sat the 
 Duke of Leinster and the unfortunate Lord Edward Fitzgerald. 
 The facts of the case were distinctly proved by unexception- 
 able witnesses. There were many persons examined who 
 deposed to the good and peaceful character of the deceased, 
 his exemption from all " treasonable " machinations, and his 
 general habits of morality and industry. There were also 
 witnesses upon the other side who testified to the admirable 
 character of Captain Frazer and the orderly dragoon, investing 
 them especially with the military virtues. 
 
 Mr. Toler charged home for an acquittal. He regretted 
 the homicide — it was very unfortunate — good, respectable 
 man — worthy character, and so forth — witnesses of unim- 
 peachable credit had said so. " There had, however, been 
 witnesses who gave a most admirable character to the gallant 
 captain in the dock, which the jury could by no means over- 
 look — he was a brave and faithful soldier to his King — loyal 
 — devoted — in a word, the sort of person needed in this 
 unhappy country at the present time. The occurrence for 
 which he was tried was most deeply to be deplored; he 
 would not disparage the deceased ; he would only say that if 
 he had been as good as the witnesses for the prosecution had 
 represented him, he was well out of a wicked world. If, on 
 the contrary, he were a firebrand " (here Toler looked sig- 
 nificantly at Mr. Lawless), " the world was well rid of him." 
 
 A judicial dilemma well worthy of record. The jury 
 acquitted Captain Frazer.* 
 
 * I possess the above narrative in the handwriting of Valentine, 
 second Lord Cloncurry, by whom it was kindly given to me with the 
 purpose of being used in the first edition of "Ireland and Her 
 
22 Eiglity-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 I shall add a few incidents — the results of the Govern- 
 mental policy of the period — recorded in the narrative of 
 Miles Byrne, a native of the County Wexford ; one of those 
 men who were goaded by intolerable persecution to join the 
 insurgents. He subsequently went to France, and ended his 
 days as chef-de-bataillon in the French service. I give the 
 title of Miles Byrne's work below.* 
 
 " Flogging, half-hanging, picketing," says Colonel Byrne, 
 •*were mild tortures in comparison of the pitch-caps that 
 were applied to those who happened to wear their hair short, 
 called croppies. The head being completely singed, a cap 
 made of strong linen well imbued with boiling pitch was so 
 closely put on that it could not be taken ofif without bringing 
 off a part of the skin and flesh from the head. In many 
 instances the tortured victim had one of his ears cut off." f 
 
 "In short, the state of the country previous to the 
 insurrection is not to be imagined, except by those who 
 witnessed the atrocities of every description committed by 
 the military and the Orangemen who were let loose on the 
 unfortunate, defenceless, and unarmed population." J 
 
 Byrne mentions that among the " Loyalists " most active 
 in applying the pitch-cap was a clergyman named Owens. 
 This reverend gentleman was afterwards seized at Gorey by 
 the rebels, who applied the pitch-cap to himself. 
 
 Among the more zealous and prominent Orangemen 
 whose deeds are recorded by Byrne, Mr. Hunter Gowan of 
 Mount Nebo, and Captain Beaumont of Hyde Park, hold a 
 principal place. Of the former Byrne gives the following 
 anecdote : " Hunter Gowan, Justice of the Peace, captain of 
 a corps of yeoman cavalry, knowing that Patrick Bruslaun, 
 a near neighbour of his, and with whom he had always lived 
 on the most friendly terms, was confined to bed with a 
 wound, rode to Bruslaun's house, knocked at the door, and 
 asked Mrs. Bruslaun in the kindest manner respecting her 
 husband's health. * You see,' said he, pointing to his troops 
 drawn up at a distance from the house, ' I would not let my 
 men approach lest they might do any mischief. Conduct 
 me to your husband's room; I want to have a chat with 
 
 Agitators." For the infamous character of Lord Carhampton, see 
 Fitzgerald's "Sliam Squire," and tlie sequel to that work. 
 
 * " Memoirs of Miles Byrne," Chef-de-bafaiUon in the service of 
 France, OflBopr of the Legion of Honour, Ktiight of St. Louis, etc. 
 Edited by his Widow. Paris : Gustavo Bossange et Compagnie, 
 25, Quai Voltaire, 18(33. Th6 work is in three volumes. 
 
 + Ibid., vol. i. p. 32. J Ibid., p. 34. 
 
Loyal Zeal of Captain Beaumont. 23 
 
 poor Pat.' She, not having the least suspicion of what was 
 to follow, ushered Gowan to her husband's bedside. He put 
 out his hand, and after exchanging some words with poor 
 Bruslaun, deliberately took out his pistol and shot him 
 through the heart. Turning round on his heel, he said to 
 the unfortunate woman, ' You will now be saved the trouble 
 of nursing your damned rebel Popish husband.' These 
 details I had from Mrs. Bruslaun's lips ; and how many more 
 of the same kind could I not add to them, were it of any use 
 now to look back to that awful epoch of English tyranny and 
 slaughter in Ireland." * 
 
 Of Captain Beaumont's loyal zeal we are given the 
 following instance ; the victims upon this occasion were the 
 writer's uncle and cousin, Mr. Breen of Castletown and his 
 son. " Captain Beaumont of Hyde Park had both him and 
 his son murdered in the presence of my aunt Breen and her 
 four daughters, on the lawn before the hall door. Beau- 
 mont, who was escorted by a detachment of cavalry, 
 knocked at the door and asked to see my uncle, 
 with whom he was on the most friendly terms. As soon as 
 Mr. Breen came out, Beaumont's first question was : ' Are 
 your sons Pat and IVIiles at home ? ' ' Certainly ; where 
 should they be 1 ' was the answer of the poor father. ' Well, 
 let them appear, or those men who accompany me won't 
 believe it.' When they came out, the father, and the eldest 
 ■son Pat, were placed on their knees and immediately shot. 
 Miles, who was only sixteen years of age, was sent prisoner 
 to Arklow, and from thence aboard a guard-ship in the Bay 
 of Dublin. No pen can describe the state of my unfortunate 
 .aunt and her four daughters at this awful moment. To add 
 to their misery, one of the assassins had the brutality to tell 
 the eldest daughter, Mrs. Kinsla, who had been married but 
 a year or two before, that she would find something else to 
 weep over when she returned home. She had come but half- 
 an-hour before to visit her family, her own place being but a 
 short mile from her father's house. As the monster told her, 
 when she went home she found her husband lying dead in 
 ■the courtyard, and a young child of a few months old in his 
 arms. The unfortunate man had taken it out of its cradle, 
 thinking that the sight of the poor infant might soften 
 Beaumont's heart and incline him to mercy. But this stanch 
 ^supporter of the Protestant ascendency could not let so good 
 
 * "Memoirs of Miles Byrne," vol. i. pp. 236, 237. 
 
24 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 an opportunity pass of proving his loyalty to his king by 
 thus exterminating a Catholic neighbour." * 
 
 Most persons who know anything of the rebellion of 
 1798 have heard of Father John Murphy, parish priest of 
 Monageer and Boulevogue, who held a command among the 
 Wexford insurgents, f 
 
 Colonel Byrne tells us that Father Murphy, like many 
 other priests, had seriously advised the people to surrender 
 their weapons to the Government. But on the 26th of May, 
 1798, a party of yeomanry scoured the parish, burning and 
 destroying all before them. When Father Murphy saw his 
 chapel and his house in flames, as well as many other houses 
 in the parish, his patience was exhausted, and in reply to the 
 crowd who gathered round him for advice, *'he answered 
 abruptly that they had better die courageously in the field 
 than be butchered in their houses ; that for his own part, if 
 he had any brave men to join him, he was resolved to sell 
 his life dearly." J 
 
 In addition to these testimonies, we have the Marquis 
 Cornwallis's direct and positive assertion (which I shall quote 
 at length in a future chapter of this work) that the country 
 had been driven into rebellion by violence and cruelty.§ 
 His Excellency had previously described the violence as 
 displaying itself in the burning of houses, the murder of the 
 inhabitants, the infliction of torture by flogging, and universal 
 rape and robbery. || 
 
 Those who brand with every epithet of ignominy the 
 names and principles of the insurgents of 1798, should ask 
 themselves whether such elaborate pains had ever been taken 
 in any other country to goad a reluctant people into insurrec- 
 tion % With the cup of hope held brimful to the lips, to be 
 rudely dashed aside the next moment; with a regularly 
 organised system of torture, with a social condition 
 of frightful insecurity ; without any protection from the 
 
 * " Memoirs of Miles Byrne," vol. i. p. 254, et seq. 
 
 t This is the Father Murphy of whom the editor of the 
 *' Cornwallia Correspondence " gives the following character : " A 
 thorough ruflSan — the worst possible specimen of a reckless dema- 
 gogue. He persuaded his infuriated followers that he was invulner- 
 able, and used to show them bullets which he said he had caught in 
 his hands." 
 
 X " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. i. p. 46. 
 
 § His Excellency wrote this on the 16th November, 179D. 
 ** Correspondence," vol. iii. pp. 144, 145. 
 
 II Ibid., iii. 89. 
 
" W7w fears to spealc of Ninety-eight?'* 25 
 
 established tribunals of the law — whither were the people to 
 turn for succour^ To the so-called tribunals of justice'? A 
 sanguinary buffoon upon the Bench might openly recommend 
 the impunity of their murderers in a harangue of solemn 
 banter. Should they turn to the Government for help ] The 
 Government had a direct interest in their sufferings and 
 turbulence. Where, then, were the people to look for the 
 removal of their grievances "? They were absolutely driven to 
 their own rude, undisciplined, and inefficient warfare. The 
 blazing cottage — the tortured peasant — the violated wife or 
 daughter — the familiar outrages on property and life — the 
 demoniac license of which they were the victims, literally left 
 them no alternative but rebellion. Instead of their outliDreak 
 in 1798 being a subject of astonishment, the real wonder 
 would have been, if, with such intolerable provocation, they 
 had not resorted to arms. Good men may now regard their 
 struggles with the feeling expressed in the celebrated lines of 
 a Protestant Fellow of Trinity College : 
 
 Who fears to speak of ninety-eight ? 
 
 Who blushes at the name ? 
 When cowards mock the patriot's fate, 
 
 Who hangs his head for shamo ? 
 
 No. The true shame and sin were with the Government, 
 whose oppressive crimes compelled a peace-loving people to 
 take the field in their own defence. 
 
 The country at length became embroiled enough to satisfy 
 the most ardent aspirations of Pitt, Clare, and Castlereagh. 
 Troops were poured in, to the number of 137,590.* Among 
 other proofs of the complicity of the Government is the 
 damning fact that they might have prevented the rebellion 
 by arresting its leaders at any moment during thirteen months 
 immediately preceding the outbreak. The Appendix marked 
 , JS'o. XIV. of the Report of the Secret Committee of the 
 House of Comm.ons, printed by the authority of Government 
 in 1798, is prefaced with the following words : 
 
 " The information contained in this number of the 
 Appendix was received from IS'icholas Maguan, of Saintfield, 
 in the county of Down, who was himself a member of the 
 Provincial and County Committees, and also a colonel in the 
 military system of United Irishmen. He was present at each 
 
 * These figures are taken from a speech delivered by Lord 
 Castlereagh on the 18th of February, 17^9, prefacing a motion on 
 military Estimates. 
 
26 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 of the meetings of which an account is here given ; and from 
 time to time, immediately after each meeting, communicated 
 what passed thereat to the Rev. John Clelland, a magistrate 
 of said county." * 
 
 Mr. Clelland was land-agent to Lord Castlereagh's family, 
 and through him the Government received the fullest informa- 
 tion respecting the machinery of the impending insurrection, 
 the names of its leaders, and their plans and movements. He 
 is shown to have received communications from Maguan im- 
 mediately after each meeting. Now, the meeting, of which an 
 account is first given in Appendix No. XIV., was held on 
 the 14th of April, 1797, or about thirteen months before the 
 Kebellion broke out. It is clear that at any time during that 
 period the Government could have prevented the explosion by 
 the simple act of taking the leaders into custody. But the 
 reader has seen that the quiet prevention of an outbreak was 
 inconsistent with their guilty policy. Their plan was to con- 
 vulse the frame of society to its centre ; to create mutual 
 hatred and terror between the Protestant and Catholic inhabi- 
 tants of the land j to paralyse both into a total incapacity to 
 resist the Union ; to promote the burnings, the murders, the 
 unspeakable atrocities which forced the people to rebel ; to 
 coerce both Protestants and Catholics with an irresistible 
 army of occupation ; and then, by means of gigantic and un- 
 precedented bribery, to corrupt the Parliament (which had 
 been dexterously packed for the occasion) to vote its own 
 extinction. 
 
 They must have been short-sighted statesmen who calcu- 
 lated that an Union thus produced by force and bribery could 
 ever be maintained by any other means than force and bribery. 
 They must have known but little of human nature if they 
 imagined that a people whose legislature had been made the 
 subject of a regular J)urchase and sale could ever acquiesce 
 in that traffic. They must have known nothing of the Irish 
 nature if they expected that the series of demoniac crimes 
 which culminated in the destruction of the Irish Parliament 
 could ever be effaced from the national memory ; or that the 
 recollection would ever be unaccompanied with the resolve 
 
 * " Report of the Secret Committees," printed by authority. Ifc 
 should be observed that the examinatious of Arthur O'Connor, 
 Samuel Neilson.and Thomas Addis Emmett were so greatly abridged 
 in the Government publication, that those gentlemen took means to 
 publish them in full. I possess both their publication and that of 
 the Government. 
 
Insolence of Lord Chancellor Clare. 27 
 
 to recover, whenever God should send us the means, the 
 Constitution of which we were wickedly plundered. 
 
 And it was an Union thus achieved that Mr. Pitt described 
 as a compact voluntarily entered into on the part of Ireland. 
 Mr. Under-Secretary Conke did not venture to deny that 
 Ireland was dissatisfied with the hateful measure ; but then 
 he predicted that when once fast clutched in the embraces of 
 England, " dissatisfaction would sink into acquiescence, and 
 acquiescence soften into content." 
 
 The fallacy of this prediction has been shown by the 
 incessant agitation for Home Government from 1800 to the 
 present day. 
 
 Amongst the Irish Parliamentary Unionists the most 
 prominent leader was Lord Chancellor Clare. His only 
 motive was the hope of personal aggrandisement. He had, 
 by his commanding talents and great strength of character, 
 acquired a dictatorship in the Irish House of Lords. Over 
 the imbecile puppets" who formed the majority of that assembly 
 he domineered with the most insolent tyranny; and he in- 
 dulged in visions of the vastlj^ enlarged power with which a 
 dictatorship in the British Parliament would invest him. It 
 never occurred to him that he should not be equally dominant 
 there as he was in the Upper House of the Irish Legislature. 
 
 Clare had a species of intellect not uncommon amongst 
 the leaders of the French Eevolution, of which the leading 
 trait was its strong but ill-directed energy. His bigotry 
 against the Catholics was intense. In private society he 
 seldom named them without some contemptuous epithet. He 
 threw all his abilities into the struggle for the Union. In 
 order to give the reader some idea of the habitual insolence 
 with which he bullied the Irish peers, I shall quote the 
 following audacious attack made by him on the Earl of 
 Charlemont, the Marquis of Downshire, and some other lords, 
 who ventured to oppose the Union : 
 
 " If loud and confident report," said Lord Clare, " is to 
 have credit, a consular exchequer has been opened for foul 
 and undisguised bribery. I know that subscriptions are 
 openly solicited in the streets of the metropolis to a fund for 
 defeating the measure of Union. I will not believe that the 
 persons to whom I have been obliged to allude can be parties to 
 it. One of them, a noble earl" (Charlemont) "I see in his 
 place ; he is a very young man, and I call upon him as he fears to 
 have his entry into public life marked with dishonour ; I call 
 upon him as he fears to live with the broad mark of infamy 
 
28 Eujhty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 on his forehead and to transmit it indelibly to his posterity, 
 to stand up in his place and acquit himself before his peers of 
 this foul imputation. I call upon him publicly to disavow all 
 knowledge of the existence of such a fund ; or if he cannot 
 disavow it, to state explicitly any honest purpose to which it 
 can be applied. If it can exist, I trust there are sufficient 
 remains of sense and honour in the Irish nation to cut off the 
 corrupted sources of these vile abominations." 
 
 Here, indeed, was " Satan lecturing against sin." In order 
 properly to appreciate the brazen audacity of this insolent 
 attack, it must be remembered that he who thus denounced 
 the imputed iniquities of the patriotic party, was himself the 
 employe of a Government who were openly and shamelessly 
 practising every art of corruption in favour of their measure. 
 
 The work entitled " Public Characters of 1799-1800," 
 thus speaks of Lord Clare's parliamentary tactics : " His 
 firmness, his confidence in his own powers, and the bold tone 
 in which he hurled defiance at his parliamentary opponents 
 on every question connected with legal or constitutional 
 knowledge, often appalled the minor members of opposition, 
 and sometimes kept even their chiefs at bay. These qualities, 
 however, did not always constitute a sure defence. The 
 repulse, which on one memorable evening of debate he 
 experienced on the part of the present Lord, then Mr. O'Neill 
 of Shane's Castle, whose manly and honest mind caught fire 
 at the haughty and dictatorial language with which the 
 Attorney- General had dared to address him, is remembered by 
 those who were then conversant in the politics of the day, 
 and probably will not soon be forgotten." 
 
 Although Pitt had used Lord Clare in effecting the 
 Union, yet, when the nefarious work was done, he heartily 
 despised his Irish utensil. Clare fancied that attacks on his 
 own country would receive the applause of the English 
 House of Lords. In the "Life of Grattan" it is recorded 
 that when Clare, in that assembl}^, dealt out his sweeping 
 censures upon Ireland, " uttering very violent principles in a 
 very violent and intemperate manner," Pitt, who had been 
 listening for some time, at length turned to Wilberforce, who 
 stood next him, and exclaimed : "Good God ! did you ever, 
 in all your life, hear so great a rascal as that 1 " 
 
 Clare, whose ambitious spirit was inflated with arrogance 
 and success, soon tried the experiment of insulting the peers 
 of England. He called the Whig lords Jacobins. The Duke 
 of Bedford flung back the insult with the sj)irit that 
 beseemed a British peer. "We would not," said he, "bear 
 
Parliamentarij Corruption in England and Ireland. 29 
 
 such language from our equals; far less will we endure it 
 from the upstart pride of chance nobility." 
 
 The feeling of the whole House was with the Duke. 
 Clare had not the poor consolation of sympathy or pity from 
 any man, even of his own political party. His influence, 
 once almost omnipotent, was now extinct. He returned, 
 mortified and broken-hearted, to the country he had betrayed 
 and ruined, cursing the part he had taken in promoting the 
 Union. "There was a time," he said, with great bitterness, 
 '* when no appointment could be made without my sanction ; 
 now I am unable to make so much as a clerk in the Excise." 
 
 He tried to dissipate his chagrin by violent equestrian 
 exercise. His death was hastened by a severe hurt he 
 received while riding in the Phoenix Park. He died in 
 January, 1802, expressing in his last hours deep though 
 unavailing remorse for his criminal co-operation with Pitt 
 against the Irish Constitution. His fall may be regarded as 
 a signal instance of the retributive justice of Providence. 
 
 Of his lineage the following account is given in the 
 publication already quoted : " He is removed but two degrees 
 from a man in the humblest walk of society — a Catholic 
 peasant — whose life was distinguished only by a gradual 
 transition from extreme poverty to an honourable com- 
 petency; and that, too, acquired by useful industry." 
 
 By his criminal political career he gained a peerage, 
 which is now extinct. The so-called honours, for which he 
 bartered the vital interests of his country, have passed away. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY CORRUPTION IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND. 
 
 How did they pass this Union ? 
 
 By perjury and fraud. 
 By slaves who sold, for place or gold. 
 
 Their country and their God ; 
 By all the savage acts that yet 
 
 Have followed England's track, 
 The pitch-cap and the bayonet, 
 
 The gibbet and the rack. 
 And thus was passed the Union 
 
 By Pitt and Castlereagh ; 
 Could Satan send for such an end 
 
 Moi-e worthy souls than they ? 
 
 Spirit of the Nation. 
 
 A Scotch essayist on Irish politics once expressed his 
 curiosity to know by what magic William Pitt induced the 
 
30 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 minor members of the Irish peerage to consent to the Union. 
 The great lords who had influence in the House of Commons 
 were bought over on intelligible principles. The Earl of 
 Shannon, for example, was paid £45,000 for his adhesion. 
 Besides, the chiefs of the peerage could look forward to 
 seats in the Imperial Parliament as Irish representative 
 peers ; whereas the smaller lords, in losing their Irish 
 privilege of hereditary legislation, lost all that made their 
 titles anything better than nicknames ; whilst they had little 
 or no chance of election to the central Legislature. 
 
 It certainly seems, at first sight, surprising that a consider- 
 able body of hereditary legislators should slavishly surrender 
 the proudest privilege of the citizen, and receive for it no 
 equivalent. Their act was an abandonment, apparently, of 
 personal and national dignity. In 1785 Lord Lansdowne, 
 in the British House of Lords, expressed his belief that an 
 act of such degrading self-disfranchisement was impossible. 
 An Union having been then casually mentioned, his lord- 
 ship spoke of "the id6a of an Union as a thing that was 
 impracticable. High-minded and jealous," he said, " as were 
 the people of Ireland, we must first learn whether they will 
 consent to give up their distinct Empire, their Parliament, 
 and all the honours which belonged to them." In point of 
 fact the people of Ireland not only never did consent to the 
 scandalous surrender, but opposed it to the utmost of their 
 power, i^early all the unbribed intellect of Ireland was 
 against it. Our surprise at the share of the Irish House of 
 Lords in enacting the Union is, however, diminished when 
 we analyse the composition of the peers and examine their 
 habits. 
 
 Let us first do all honour to the gallant band who, 
 headed by the Duke of Leinster and the Earl of Charlemont, 
 resisted the Union to the last. The Lords' Protest against 
 the Union is a noble document, full of sagacity and patriotism. 
 Alas ! those who signed it were in a minority. 
 
 With respect to the rest of the peers, if we look into the 
 Irish peerage list, we shall find that more than half of those 
 existing in 1800 had received their creations from the then 
 reigning monarch, George III. Of these men, thus person- 
 ally bound to the Court, a considerable number were in- 
 debted for their elevation to the grossest political dishonesty. 
 They cared nothing for their country, except for the purpose 
 of trafficking upon it. Corruption had been carried to such 
 an extent as to justify Grattaii's indignant complaint that 
 
Analysis of the Irish Peerage. 31 
 
 the Minister's familiar practice was to purchase the me-mbers 
 of one House with the money obtained by selling seats in 
 the other. 
 
 Again, a great portion of the Irish peers had nothing 
 Irish about them but their titles. They had not a foot of 
 property in the kingdom. They never entered it. They 
 had no more compunction in voting for the extinction of the 
 Irish Parliament than they would have had in voting away 
 an Otaheitan Legislature. Take up a Dublin almanack for 
 the year 1800, and run your eye over the peerage list ; you 
 will find many of the peers possessing also English titles and 
 English residences. Exclusively of these, you will find that 
 out of fifty-seven viscounts, there were no less than eighteen 
 who had got no Irish residence at all. Kun your eye over 
 the barons, and you will find that out of sixty-five, there 
 were in that year no less than thirty-four whose connexions, 
 residences, and property were altogether English. 
 
 Again, some of the most bustling and prominent peers 
 then residing in Ireland were either English lawyers, or the 
 sons of Englishmen who had been thrust upon the Irish 
 Bench, and thence into the Irish peerage. These men had 
 not yet acquired Irish sentiments or feelings ; they were still 
 essentially foreigners ; they rejoiced at an opportunity to 
 strike a blow at Ireland. 
 
 Amongst those whom a descent of some half-dozen 
 generations entitled to call themselves Irish, the greater 
 number had so habitually looked on politics as a game to be 
 played for the purpose of personal aggrandisement, that they 
 had no conception of anything like political principle. There 
 was a thorough moral recklessness about them which rendered 
 them quite ready for any act of political desperation, 
 provided it did not tend to enlarge the power of the people. 
 Their personal habits necessarily fostered this recklessness. 
 Their profusion and extravagance were great ; and some of 
 them — not a few — resorted to modes of raising the wind 
 which showed that they mingled few scruples with their 
 system of financial pneumatics. There was, withal, a strong 
 dash of odd drollery in the brazen shamelessness of their 
 expedients. 
 
 A curious specimen of this order of men was Lord 
 
 M y. His title was the result of some dexterous traffic 
 
 in parliamentary votes. His manners were eminently 
 fascinating, and his habits social. He had a favourite saying 
 that a gentleman could never live upon his rents; a man 
 
32 Eighty-five Years of Irish Hlstoiy. 
 
 who depended on his rents had money only upon two days in 
 the year, the 25th of March and the 29th of September. 
 He accordingly left no expedient untried to furnish himself 
 with money every other day too. 
 
 It chanced that when Lord Kerry's house in St. Stephen's 
 Green was for sale, a lady named Keating was desirous to 
 purchase a pew in St. Anne's Church appertaining to that 
 mansion. Mrs. Keating erroneously took it into her head 
 
 that the pew belonged to Lord M y ; she accordingly 
 
 visited his lordship to propose herself as a purchaser. 
 
 "My dear madam," said he, **I have not got any pew, 
 that I know of, in St. Anne's Church." 
 
 " Oh, my lord, I assure you that you have ; and if you 
 have got no objection, I am desirous to purchase it." 
 
 Lord M y started no farther difficulty. A large sum 
 
 was accordingly fixed on, and in order to make her bargain 
 as secure as possible, Mrs. Keating got the agreement of sale 
 drawn out in the most stringent form by an attorney. She 
 paid the money to Lord M y ; and on the following Sun- 
 day she marched up to the pew to take possession, rustling in 
 the stateliness of brocades and silks. The beadle refused to 
 let her into the pew. 
 
 " Sir," said the lady, " this pew is mine." 
 
 "Yours, madam r' 
 
 " Yes ; I have bought it from Lord M y." 
 
 " Madam, this is the Kerry pew ; I do assure you Lord 
 M y never had a pew in this church." 
 
 Mrs. Keating saw at once she had been cheated, and on 
 the following day she went to his lordship to try if she could 
 get back her money. 
 
 " My lord, I have come to you to say that the pew in St. 
 Anne's " 
 
 "My dear madam, I'll sell you twenty more pews if you 
 have any fancy for them." 
 
 "Oh, my lord, you are facetious. I have come to 
 acquaint you it was all a mistake ; you never had a pew in 
 that church." 
 
 " Hah ! so I think I told you at first." 
 
 "And I trust, my lord," pursued Mrs. Keating, "you 
 will refund me the money I paid you for it." 
 
 " The money ? Really, my dear madam, I am sorry to 
 say that is quite impossible — the money's gone long ago." 
 
 " But — my lord — your lordship's character " 
 
 " That's gone too ! " said Lord M y, laughing with 
 
 good-humoured nonchalance. 
 
A Noble Colonel of Militia. 33 
 
 I have already said that this nobleman's financial opera- 
 tions were systematically extended to every opportunity of 
 gain that could possibly be grasped at. He was colonel of a 
 militia regiment ; and, contrary to all precedent, he regularly 
 sold the commissions, and pocketed the money. The Lord 
 Lieutenant resolved to call him to an account for his mal- 
 practices, and for that purpose invited him to dine at the 
 Castle, where all the other colonels of militia regiments then 
 in Dublin had also been invited to meet him. After dinner 
 the Viceroy stated that he had heard with great pain an 
 accusation — indeed, he could hardly believe it — -but it had 
 been positively said that the colonel of a militia regiment 
 actually sold the commissions. 
 
 The company looked aghast at this atrocity, and the 
 innocent colonels forthwith began to exculpate them- 
 selves. "I have never done so." " I have never sold any." 
 
 *• Nor I." The disclaimers were general. Lord M y 
 
 resolved to put a bold face on the matter. 
 
 " I always sell the commissions in my regiment," said 
 he, with the air of a man who announced a practice rather 
 meritorious. All present seemed astonished at this frank 
 avowal. 
 
 "How can you defend such a practice?" asked the Lord 
 Lieutenant. 
 
 "Very easily, my lord. Has not your Excellency always 
 told us to assimilate our regiments as much as possible to 
 the troops of the Line V 
 "Yes, undoubtedly." 
 
 "Well, they sell the commissions in the Line, and I 
 thought that the best point at which to begin the assimilation." 
 It is told of this nobleman, that when he was dying he 
 "was attended by a clergyman, wdio remonstrated with him on 
 the scandalous exploits of his past life, and strongly urged 
 him to repent. " Repent 1 " echoed the dying sinner ; " I 
 don't see what I have got to repent of ; I don't remember 
 that I ever denied myself anything." 
 
 We may well suppose that such a personage would have 
 readily voted for the Union, or for anything else. 
 
 Mr. , a wealthy merchant, had aristocratic aspirings. 
 
 Having amassed great wealth in trade, as well by lucky hits 
 as by persevering industry, he resolved to add a peerage to 
 his acquisitions. A bargain was made with the Irish 
 Minister ; the ambitious merchant was to be created a baron 
 for the stipulated payment of .£20,000. The patent was 
 forthwith made out, and the new peer took his seat in due . 
 
 D 
 
34 Eirjhty-jive Years of Ii'isTi History. 
 
 form. The Government never entertained a doubt that his 
 lordship would faithfully pay them the price of his new 
 honours; and in this happy confidence they gave him his 
 coronet without first securing the money for it. Six months 
 passed, during which the Castle took for granted that the 
 new baron would fulfil his engagement at his earliest con- 
 venience. At length the secretary wrote a "private and 
 confidential " epistle, to give his lordship's memory a gentle 
 refresher. 
 
 The noble lord made short work of the matter. He wrote 
 back, denying all recollection of the engagement referred to, 
 expressing great indignation that anybody should presume to 
 accuse him of being a party to the sale or purchase of a 
 peerage ; and threatening, should the claim be renewed, to 
 impeach the Minister in Parliament for so grossly unconsti- 
 tutional a proceeding. The Government were outwitted, and 
 the ex-merchant got his coronet, as perhaps he had got other 
 things also, without paying for it. 
 
 Many such scamps were to be found in the Irish House 
 of Lords ; and English lucubrators upon Irish affairs trium- 
 phantly point to their unprincipled conduct, and ask — as if 
 the question were conclusive against Repeal — " Would you 
 revive such a Parliament 1"* 
 
 No, certainly. We seek not to revive corruption. We 
 desire to restore the Irish Parliament, cleansed, purified, and 
 placed beyond the reach of all corrupt influences. The 
 
 unprincipled class, moreover, to which Lord M y and 
 
 Lord belonged, cannot in any fairness be quoted against 
 
 Irish claims or Irish rights. That class was manufactured 
 by England in this country. It was prevented by English 
 power and English artifice from becoming fully identified 
 with Irish interests. When England, therefore, upbraids us 
 with its moral rottenness, we retort that she was the instigator 
 of its political crimes — that those crimes were disastrous to 
 the great mass of the Irish people, wh- • had no participation 
 in them ; and that the disgrace, consequently, rests not on 
 
 * Among the aristocratio eccentricities of the time was the Earl 
 of Belvedere's ■penchant for people who had hideous noses. He is 
 said to have given au annual entertainment called the Nosey Dinner, 
 the guests being all remarkable for their large, red noses, or for 
 some other sort of nasal deformity. His lordship's great delight 
 was to invite two opposite proprietors of outlandish noses to take 
 wine with each other, and to watoh tho oonverging iaolinatioa of 
 their hideous profiles. 
 
English Parliamentary Corruption. 35 
 
 us, but on England herself, and on the individual criminals 
 -vvho yielded t-> her seductions in this country. 
 
 The corruption of the Irish Parliament is also often 
 ■mentioned by our English censors as if English Parliaments 
 had always been immaculate, and as if Ireland alone 
 presented specimens of senatorial profligacy. English history, 
 however, informs us that this species of iniquity has occa- 
 sionally flourished in the Parliament of England, Lingard, 
 for instance, says that when Charles II. received, in January, 
 1677, a portion of his annual pension from the King of 
 Erance, the whole sum was immediately expended on the 
 purchase of votes in the English House of Commons ; the 
 result of which traffic gave the Court, upon questions of 
 finance, a majority of about thirty voices. But English 
 senators did not restrict themselves to a market so limited as 
 the English Court. 
 
 " It seemed," says Lingard, " as if the votes of the 
 Members of Parliament were exposed for sale to all the 
 Powers of Europe. Some received bribes from the Lord 
 Treasurer on account of the King ; some from the Dutch, 
 Spanish, and Imperial ambassadors in favour of the con- 
 federates ; some even from Louis at the very time when they 
 loudly declaimed against Louis as the great enemy of their 
 religion and liberties." In 1678 a test was proposed for the 
 discovery of such Members of Parliament as had received 
 bribes or any other consideration for their votes, either 
 from the English or any other Government. " The popular 
 leaders," says Lingard, '• spoke warmly in its favour ; but 
 before the last division took place, about an hundred mem- 
 bers slipped out of the House, and the motion was lost by a 
 majority of fourteen." * 
 
 Lord Macaulay calls the management by corruption of 
 the English Parliaments of that period, and of much more 
 recent times, " one of the most important parts of the busi- 
 ness of a Minister ; " and, speaking of the long period between 
 the reigns of Charles II. and George III., he says that it 
 was " as notorious that there was a market for votes at the 
 Treasury as that there was a market for cattle at Smitbfield." f 
 
 Mr. Lecky, in his " History of England in the Eighteenth 
 Century," % quotes the following passage from Sir E. May's 
 " Constitutional History," i. 317 : 
 
 * Lingard's " History of England," ad annos 1676, 1678. 
 + Macaulay's " History of England," vol. iii. pp. 541, 546 (8vo ed.) 
 t Lecky's "England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i. p. 436. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 Eighty -five Years of Irisli History. 
 
 "Great suras of secret service money were usually expended 
 in direct bribery ; and places and pensions were multiplied 
 to such an extent that it is on record that out of 550 mem- 
 bers there were in the first Parliament of George I. no less 
 than 271, and in the first Parliament of George II. no less 
 than 257, holding offices, pensions, or sinecures." 
 
 Mr. Lecky, speaking of Sir Robert Walpole, says : " He 
 (Walpole) governed by means of an assembly which was 
 saturated with corruption, and he fully acquiesced in its 
 conditions and resisted every attempt to improve it. He 
 appears to have cordially accepted the maxim that Govern- 
 ment must be carried on by corruption or by force, and he 
 deliberately made the former the basis of his rule. . . . He 
 employed the vast patronage of the Crown uniformly and 
 steadily with the single view of sustaining his political 
 position, and there can be no doubt that a large proportion of 
 the immense expenditure of secret service money during his 
 administration was devoted to the direct purchase of Members 
 of Parliament. ... If corruption did not begin with 
 Walpole, it is equally certain that it did not end with him. 
 His expenditure of secret service money, large as it was, 
 never equalled in an equal space of time the expenditure 
 of Bute."* 
 
 English politicians sometimes say that the Irish Parlia- 
 ment was so corrupt that it deserved extinction. To reason 
 thus is to confound the turpitude of particular Parliaments 
 with the existence of Parliament. It is to deprive the Irish 
 people of their birthright because certain parliamentary 
 majorities have been base and venal. Would the gentlemen 
 who reason in this way apply the same logic to England? 
 Would they argue that the English Parliament ought to be 
 annihilated, and the English people deprived of self-govern- 
 ment because English senators sold their votes to Dutch, 
 French, Spanish, German, and native purchasers, and because 
 the notoriety of the traffic equalled that of the public cattle- 
 market 1 
 
 If the Union struggle in the Irish Parliament developed 
 on the one hand the political depravity which England liad 
 laboured so hard to produce, it also displayed on the other 
 hand many brilliant examples of the most stainless and 
 unpurchasable honesty. Every effort to debauch the Legis- 
 lature had for a series of years been systematically made by 
 
 * Leckj^'s " England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i. pp. 365, 
 867, 368. 
 
An Honest Minority. 37 
 
 the Government ; and yet in 1799 the first attempt to carry 
 the Union was defeated by men Avho might have made for 
 themselves whatever terms they pleased with the Minister. 
 And in 1800, after every possible exertion to pack the 
 Parliament had been resorted to, there still remained 115 
 members, a tried and trusty band, who, although in a minority, 
 were yet miraculously numerous when we remember the 
 enormous powers of corruption which the Government derived 
 from the number of close boroughs, and from their other 
 resources. Of the men who were returned by the people 
 a majority stood firm to their trust. The traitors were chiefly 
 found among those men whom private influence had intro- 
 duced into the Legislature. 
 
 The Viceroy could not help entertaining respect for the 
 -anti-Unionists. On the 24th of May, 1799, he writes to 
 General Ross : * " There is an opposition in Parliament to 
 the measure of Union, formidable in character and talents." 
 
 The English Cabinet did not think that their Irish 
 •confederates were sufficiently active in pressing forward the 
 Union. Lord Castlereagh, in a letter to John King, Esq., 
 dated 7th of March, 1800, thus accounts for their imputed 
 slowness : " It will be in the first place considered that we 
 have a minority consisting of 120 members, well combined 
 and united, that many of them are men of the first weight 
 and talent in the House, that 37 of them are members for 
 counties, that great endeavours have been used to inflame the 
 kingdom, that petitions from 26 counties have been procured, 
 that the city of Dublin is almost unanimous against it, and, 
 with such an opposition so circumstanced and supported, it 
 is evident much management must be used."t 
 
 When Lord Castlereagh boasted that the Union, by 
 extinguishing a great number of pocket-boroughs, would 
 operate as a measure of parliamentary reform, Charles 
 Xendal Bushe immediately retorted that Lord Castlereagh's 
 Union majority were to be found among the members for 
 those very constituencies which his lordship proposed to 
 abolish as a punishment for their impurity; and that it 
 would be impossible for him to select one hundred members 
 for the greater constituencies, amongst whom he would not 
 find himself in a minority. *' What, then," asked Bushe, 
 *' results from his own confession % This — that he is about 
 to carry the Union against that part of the Parliament which 
 
 * " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 101. f Ibid. 
 
38 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 he allows to be pure, and by the instrumentality of that part 
 ■which he alleges to be corrupt. He does not merely state 
 this as a matter of candour, but as a matter of boast. He 
 glories in cutting off the rotten limb, and amputating the 
 ■withered branch of Parliament, and yet, with that withered 
 branch he beats down the Constitution." 
 
 Out of doors there was a nearly universal detestation of 
 the Union, which would have been effectual in defeating it 
 if it were not for the overpowering military force in the hands 
 of the Government. 
 
 I have not sought to conceal the faults or vices of the 
 Irish Parliament. It was an unreformed borough Parlia- 
 ment ■; and to the evils resulting from its construction must 
 be added the mischief flowing from its sectarian bigotry 
 during the long period between the restoration of King 
 Charles II. and the relaxation of the penal laws. Yet, not- 
 ■withstanding these very serious drawbacks, it is a fact of the 
 highest importance that from the moment when, in 1782, this 
 unreformed, bigoted Parliament acquired freedom from the 
 usurped claims of England to legislate for Ireland, the 
 prosperity of Ireland sprang forward at a bound, and its 
 progress is attested by a host of unimpeachable witnesses, to- 
 ■whose evidence I shall advert in a subsequent chapter of this 
 work. It is scarcely possible to conceive more effectual obstruc- 
 tions to the beneficial action of a free, resident Legislature 
 than those which arise from the sectarian intolerance of its 
 members, and from the prevalence of a close-borough system. 
 Yet the Irish Parliament, despite those obstructions, conferred 
 essential benefits on the country — benefits which greatly 
 countervailed its evils. It kept the money of the country at 
 home. It enacted several good measures. The individual 
 interests of its members necessarily often ran in the same 
 groove -with the interests of the country ; so that personal 
 selfishness occasionally came in aid of patriotism. The very 
 facts of residence and of discharging at home the high 
 functions of Irish legislators produced in many of them 
 sentiments of patriotic pride and of national honour. The 
 general results appeared in tlie astonishing advance of trade, 
 commerce, manufactures, and agriculture — an advance which 
 forms a strong and melancholy contrast with the general 
 decay that followed the Union, and the present condition of 
 our tlying population. By the Union, England obtained the 
 dishonest control of the whole resources of Ireland ; but she 
 also obtained the lasting hatred of the people whose 
 
The Union a Disintegrating Measure. 39 
 
 Legislature she had first corrupted and tlien destroyed. The 
 Union laid a sure foundation for Irish discontent and 
 disafiection. It disposed the people to look anywhere for 
 friendship rather than to the power that had robbed them of 
 their birthright by an act that capped the climax of in- 
 numerable deeds of aggression. Great national crimes have 
 seldom been forgiven by the injured parties. Oblivion of 
 wrong is best promoted by ample and honourable restitution. 
 Restitution is, in our case, absolutely indispensable to our 
 national prosperity and dignity. "Keep knocking at the 
 Union," were among the last words of Grattan to Lord 
 Cloncurry. " Come it soon, or come it late," said O'Connell, 
 "my deliberate conviction is that if the Union is not 
 peacefully repealed, a sanguinary separation will be the 
 ultimate result." This is pretty much what Saurin said on 
 the 27th of February, 1800. "I consider," said he, "the 
 present measure (of Union) as most dangerous .to that 
 connection " (with Great Britain). " My opinion has been 
 uniformly that it is a project to change an union and con- 
 nection of safety and independence for an union of insecurity 
 and dependence." Mr. (afterwards Earl Grey) said in the 
 English House of Commons on the 7th of February, 1800: 
 *' Though you should be able to carry the measure, yet the 
 people of Ireland would wait for an opportunity of recovering 
 their rights, which, they will say, were taken from them by 
 force." 
 
 I conclude this chapter with the following incident. On the 
 night when the fatal measure passed the House of Commons, a 
 large crowd, who had assembled in College Green, waited 
 until Mr. Speaker Foster, the leader of the anti-Unionists, 
 quitted the House. They took otf their hats and followed 
 him, sad, silent, and uncovered, to his residence in Moles- 
 worth Street. Ere he entered the house, he turned round, 
 and sadly and solemnly bowed to the people, who then 
 dispersed. Xo word was exchanged between the Speaker and 
 the crowd. All felt the deadening pressure of a terrible 
 national calamity. It was a sorrow too profound for 
 utterance. 
 
40 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 HOW IRISH DISCONTENT IS VIEWED BY SOME ENGLISH 
 WRITERS. 
 
 "If it (the balancing check) keeps the three estates of Parliament 
 together, all in their just proportion in each kingdom, why not 
 depend on the same principle operating in the same way, and keep- 
 ing the two Legislatures of both kingdoms in their jusc relations to 
 each other, so as tjaat their mixed powers, like those of the mixed 
 Government, shall, by their separate exertions so checked, preserve 
 the symmetry and union of the whole machine of the Empire, which 
 a theoretic or unwise merging of the one into the other might so 
 affect as to render incapable of working ? " — Eight Hon. John 
 Foster, 1799. 
 
 It is in the highest degree desirable that England and 
 Ireland should entertain mutual sentiments of friendship, 
 and that both should willingly occupy their appropriate 
 positions as constituent parts of a great Empire. It is in 
 the highest degree desirable that all the inhabitants of 
 Ireland should have reason to render to the throne of these 
 kingdoms the homage of hearty and unqualified loyalty. 
 
 Ireland is dissatisfied with her position. While the 
 Union, in its present shape, exists, Irish discontent will be 
 ineradicable. It is an inquiry worthy of a statesman whether 
 the position of Ireland is such as she ought to occupy ; whether 
 it is compatible with her rights, with her interests, and with 
 her honour. And if it be compatible with none of these, 
 it is worth inquiry whether a more satisfactory position 
 could not be substituted for one which results in national 
 suffering, in unnatural emigration, and in extensive disaffec- 
 tion. 
 
 The present condition of Ireland is a scandal to the 
 civilised world, a curse to its inhabitants, and a disgrace to 
 the Imperial Government. If experience can teach any- 
 thing, the whole experience of the Union unquestionably 
 teaches that Imperial legislation is incompetent to render 
 Ireland prosperous and happy. 
 
 When Irish discontent is spoken of, English writers 
 sometimes suppose that it is merely a traditionary sentiment 
 still lingering in the national mind — the surviving result of 
 injustice that has long since passed away. For instance, the 
 Times, in an article on Fenianisni in September, 1865, thus 
 deals with the existing discontent : **The greater our former 
 
Is Irish Discontent a mere Sentiment ? 41 
 
 injustice to Ireland, the easier it is to account for existing 
 discontent without assuming any present injustice. If there 
 be any such present injustice, let it be pointed out. Unless 
 it be the maintenance of the Irish Church, we know not 
 where to look for it ; and assuredly no English interest will 
 be allowed to protect this institution if Ireland be united in 
 demanding its abolition." 
 
 When the Times named the State Church as the only in- 
 justice subsisting in 1865, it forgot a greater and more 
 grievous wrong — the Legislative Union. The State Church 
 has since then been disestablished, and partially disendowed. 
 It was doubtless a wrong of great magnitude, and created a 
 severance of feeling between the two great sections of Irish 
 people which has survived its disestablishment. I wish with 
 all my heart that the words " Protestant " and " Catholic," as 
 symbols of political party, could be obliterated from our 
 vocabulary. The State Church was bad ; but the Union is 
 far worse. 
 
 The Saturday Review also says that injustice to Ireland is 
 merely a matter of past history. It admits, indeed, that 
 grievances existed at a former period. *' But to our minds," 
 it proceeds to say, "all that is passed now. We have turned 
 over a new leaf. We have for some years tried to govern 
 Ireland as a part of England, as justly, as patiently, as mildly 
 as we could. The case for an aggrieved, a separate, an alien 
 Ireland has passed away." 
 
 This self-complacent journal is unable to comprehend 
 why discontent exists in Ireland. " We have," it seems to 
 say, " done our best for your ungrateful nation. We have 
 destroyed your Parliament, and yet you are not satisfied. 
 We have thereby trebled the absentee drain, extinguishing 
 numberless home sources of industrial profit, yet you are not 
 satisfied. We extort from your poverty an enormous tribute 
 — yet you are not satisfied. We make you pay a smart 
 share of our own pre-Union debt-charge — yet you are not 
 satisfied. We have drawn off to England the Irish surplus 
 revenue, which the Act of Union promised should be appro- 
 priated to Irish purposes exclusively — yet you are not 
 satisfied. We meet your demand for the redress of these 
 grievances with chicanery and insolence ; we call you sturdy 
 beggars, and we mystify financial statements — yet you are 
 not satisfied. We have got hold of your manufacture market 
 — yet you are not satisfied. We have governed you in such 
 a mode that your race seems in a fair way of being expelled 
 
42 Eighty-jive Tears of Irish History, 
 
 from their native country, much to the delight of the leading 
 organ of British opinion; yet you are not satisfied. O 
 incorrigible nation of grumlder.-*, how is it ])ossible you can 
 be discontented or ungrateful when we lavish such blessings 
 on you 1 For, look you ! this is governing Ireland as if she 
 were part of England." 
 
 Tiie free paraphrase I have given of the words of the 
 Saturday Renew, shows, not unfairly, the contrast between 
 English opinion and Irish fact. The journalist innocently 
 says, " We have for some years tried to govern Ireland as a^ 
 part of England." The expi^riment has not brought prosperity 
 to Ireland. Kor is it possible that it could. Eor Ireland is 
 not a part of England. God has stamped upon her the 
 indestructible features of national individuality. Self -Legis- 
 lation is her vital need. 
 
 To govern her, therefore, as a part of England, is, in effect^ 
 to govern her for the benefit of England and not for her own 
 benefit. We protest against that ruinous spoliation of her 
 wealth, that insulting suppression of her individuality, which 
 are termed " governing her as a part of England," We 
 demand that she shall be governed as a distinct nation, with 
 separate needs and separate rights, in accordance with the 
 principles of the Irish Constitution of 1782, which, notwith- 
 standing great obstructive influences, diffused unexampled 
 pro-^perity through the nation during the period of its 
 continuance. 
 
 In a part of the article of the Saturday Review to which 
 I have referred, the writer, speaking of a projected Fenian 
 invasion of Canada, says, " Fortunately the Canadians, by an 
 overwhelming majority, are firmly attached to British rule.'* 
 So they well may be. For the Canadians enjoy a free 
 Parliament, and the uncontrolled regulation of their national 
 interests. They are not robbed of their revenue for British 
 uses. But Canadian attachment to Great Britain would 
 sustain a rude shock if the Imperial Government attempted 
 to rule Canada on the present Irish model; if it tried to 
 govern Canada " as a part of England " — in other words, ta 
 destroy her Legislature, rifle her exchequer, and in every 
 department of the State make English prejudice, English, 
 theory, or English sentiment supersede Canadian opinion. 
 When in 18138 Lord Durham went to Canada to quell 
 disaffection in the only statesmanlike way in which disaffec- 
 tion can be quelled — that is to say, by removing the grievances 
 that causcMl it — he asked aquOHiion which we in Ireland may 
 appropriately ask : What principle of the British Constitu- 
 
Repeal is not Dismemlerment. 45 
 
 tion holds good in a country where the people's money is 
 taken from them without the people's consent '? In Ireland 
 our money is taken by the English Parliament without our 
 consent ; and the income-tax was imposed on us against the 
 votes of a larire majority of the Irish representatives. 
 
 Lord Durham's remelyfor Canadian wrongs was pre- 
 cisely that which we claim for Irish wrongs. He advised 
 that complete internal self-government should be given to the 
 colonists ; that the government of Canada should be put as 
 much as possible into the hands of the colonists themselves. 
 His advice was adopted ; the Canadians got Home Rule ; and 
 the result shows a Transatlantic population transformed by 
 that just and statesmanlike concession from a nation of in- 
 surgents into a nation of as loyal subjects to Her Majesty as 
 can be found in any part of her dominions. 
 
 Among the most rational notions I have seen expressed 
 by English journalists on Irish affairs is the following dictum 
 of the Pall Mall Gazette, in an article on Eenianism in 
 September, 1865 : " The real prospect for Ireland is that of 
 becoming in course of time a cis-Atlantic Lower Canada. It 
 will no more amalgamate heartily with England than oil with 
 water ; but there is no reason why we should not be perfectly 
 good friends, and very useful and convenient neighbours." 
 
 Xot the least reason, if Ireland were treated as Canada is 
 treated. Not the least reason, if Ireland had but the fair 
 play of self -legislation, which is her indefea ible right. To 
 call this dismemberment is to suppose that Foster, Grattan, 
 Saurin, Ponsonby, and the other great opponents of the 
 Union, were enemies of British connexion, instead of being, 
 as they were, its firm friends. 
 
 The instinct of every Irishman — unless he is influenced 
 by sectarian animosities and fears — will impel him not only 
 to abhor the destruction of his country's Legislature, but to 
 hate the destroyer also. There never was a greater blunder 
 than to call the Union a bond of international affection. 
 When I was a boy of ten years old, I was told by my seniors 
 that we once had a Parliament in Ireland and that English 
 intluence extinguished it. I candidly acknowledge that my 
 immediate impulse was to regard England with resentful 
 abhorrence. Eeligious prejudices had nothing to do with the 
 matter, for I was born of a Protestant family. I do not 
 state this from the absurd notion that any importance attaches 
 to myself or my sentiments. I make the avowal because it 
 records and explains my individual participation in a senti- 
 ment that at this moment actuates millions at home, in. 
 
44 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 America, and in the Colonies, and which, by its general 
 diffusion, assumes an aspect that is anything but contemptible. 
 
 Security of tenure for the tenant farmers, extinction of 
 tithe rent-cliarge, which the Land Act of 1881 deprives the 
 landlords of the means to pay — these, and other minor 
 measures of relief would mitigate some of the external 
 symptoms of the national malady. But nothing short of the 
 restoration of the Irish Constitution — of the Government of 
 the Irish people by the Queen, Lords, and Commons of 
 Ireland— can reach the root of the disease. 
 
 *' We may hope," said Grattan in 1780, "to dazzle with 
 illuminations, and we may sicken with addresses, but the 
 public imagination will never rest, nor will the public heart 
 be well at ease — never! so long as the Parliament of England 
 exercises or claims a legislation over this country." 
 
 And in his closing speech in 1800 against the Union, he 
 predicts that although, for the present, the forces of military 
 terror and corruption may overthrow the Irish Constitution, 
 yet the country will at some future time throw off the in- 
 cubus of foreign legislation and re-establish her rights. 
 
 " I do not give up the country : I see her in a swoon, but 
 she is not dead ; though in her tomb she lies helpless and 
 motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on 
 her cheek a glow of beauty — 
 
 " Thou art not conquered ; beauty's ensign yet 
 Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, 
 And Death's pale flag is not advanced there. 
 
 " While a plank of the vessel sticks together, I will not 
 leave her. Let the courtier present his flimsy sail, and carry 
 the light bark of his faith with every new breath of wind ; I 
 will remain anchored here with fidelity to the fortunes of my 
 country, faithful to her freedom, faithful to her fall." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DIPLOMACY OP MARQUIS C0RNWALU3. 
 
 As we are men and Irishmen, 
 
 Scorn for his curst alliance ; 
 As we are men and Irishmen, 
 
 Unto his throat defiance. 
 
 Banim. 
 
 The Union having been accomplished, the prevalent desire 
 amongst the Irish people was, of course, to obtain its repeal. 
 
Were the Catholics Unionists ? 45 
 
 For a few years no great effort was made for this purpose. 
 The army of occupation, under the terror of which it had 
 been forced upon Ireland, was to a great extent still con- 
 tinued in the country. 
 
 But the national desire for Repeal is coeval with the 
 Union itself. It was not possible that a nation should sit 
 quietly down in contented acquiescence in its own serv^itnde. 
 A sullen sentiment of enmity to England smouldered in the 
 public mind. Men brooded angrily over the enormous crimes 
 the English Government had committed against their country; 
 and they felt (to use the language of Saurin, a lawyer of the 
 highest ability) that " the exhibition of resistance to the 
 measure became merely a question of prudence." 
 
 Ere I pass to later periods, let me pause for a few 
 moments to notice a misrepresentation. It is frequently said 
 that the Catholics supported the Union. The Catholics, as 
 a body, are free from the imputed guilt. At a Catholic 
 aggregate meeting held in Dublin in 1795, the Catholic 
 leaders unanimously passed a resolution that they would 
 collectively and individually resist even their own emanci- 
 pation, "if proposed to be conceded on the ignominious terms 
 of an Union with the sister kingdom." Imbued with this 
 sentiment, O'Connell, in his maiden speech, delivered at a 
 Catholic meetinc,' held at the Royal Exchange, Dublin, to 
 oppose the Union, on the 13th of January, 1800, declared 
 that he would prefer the re-enactment of the whole penal 
 code to the destruction of the Irish Parliament. On the 
 15th of January, the patriotic conduct of the Dublin Catholics 
 was referred to in the House of Commons by Grattan, who 
 said : " If she (Ireland) perish, they (the Catholics) will have 
 done their utmost to save her. . . . They will have flung 
 out their last setting glories and sunk with their country." 
 
 The Viceroy, Marquis Cornwallis, had made many 
 attempts to gain Catholic support for the Union, and he had 
 at one time flattered himself with hopes of success. But on 
 the 12th of December, 1798, he wrote as follows to Major- 
 General Ross : 
 
 *' The opposition to the Union increases daily in and 
 about Dublin ; and I am afraid, from conversations which I 
 have had with persons much connected with them, that I 
 was too sanguine when I hoped for the good inclinations of 
 the Catholics." 
 
 His failure to cajole the Catholic body is again mentioned 
 in the following passage of a letter he addressed to the Duke 
 
46 Eigldy-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 of Portland, dated 2nd of January, 17 09: "The Catholics, 
 as a body, still adhere to their reserv^e on the measure of 
 Union. The very temperate and liberal sentiments at first 
 -entertained or expressed, by some of that body, were by no 
 means adopted by the Catholics who met at Lord Fingal's, 
 and professed to speak for the party at large." * 
 
 On the 12th of April, 1799, Mr. Secretary Cooke wrote 
 to AVilliam Wickham, Esq., as follows: "The Catholics 
 think it (the Union) will put an end to their ambitious 
 hopes, however it may give them ease and equality." f 
 
 I find in an interesting compilation entitled " The Very 
 Eev. Dr. Renehan's Collections on Irish Church History," 
 the following incidental notice of Catholic hostility to the 
 Union : 
 
 " 1799, July 1. — Dr. Bray (Catholic Archbishop of 
 Cashel), in reply to urgent appeals to procure discreetly 
 Catholic signatures in favour of the Union in Tipperary and 
 Waterford, says that Lord Castlereagh, at whose instance 
 this application was made, should know that he, as a Catholic 
 Bishop, had little influence. The Union might prove to be a 
 useful measure ; but bishops injure their own character and 
 the cause of religion hy interfering against the wishes of the 
 people. It is plain that Dr. Bray intended this answer as a 
 polite refusal. A few days after, he received a letter from 
 the Archbishop of Tuam, expressing his fears lest some 
 ecclesiastics should be seduced by the Government into 
 approval of its measures, particularly the Union, from which 
 he anticipated the worst evils." J 
 
 Despite martial law and Governmental interference to 
 obstruct anti-Union petitions and to procure signatures 
 in favour of the Union, we know that the signatures 
 against it were 707,000, whilst those in its favour did not at 
 any time exceed 5,000. Now, when we reflect that out of 
 the 5,000,000 who then inhabited Ireland, 4,000,000 were 
 Calliolics, and also that the whole number of pro-Union 
 petitioners, Protestants and all, was not greater tlian 5,000, is 
 it not clear that the Catholic body stands exculpated from 
 the ignominy of having supported the disfranchisement of 
 Ireland^ Lord Cornwallis, while trying to persuade the 
 Bishop of Lichfield that, excepting Dublin, the general sense 
 
 * " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 28. The meeting at 
 Lord Fingal's was held 13th of December, 1798. 
 t Ihid., p. 87. 
 X Renehan's " Collections," vol. i. p. 375. 
 
O^ConneU opposes the Union in 1800. 47 
 
 of Ireland was favourable to the Union, inadvertently adds : 
 *'It is, however, easy for men of influence to obtain addresses 
 and resolutions on either side." * If so, how did it happen, 
 that notwithstanding the alleged popularity of the Union, 
 the men of influence who favoured it could only stimulate 
 5,000 persons to sign petitions in its behalf ; whilst the men 
 of influence on the other side could muster an array of 
 707,000 petitioners^ Lord Cornwallis discloses the truth. 
 On the 31st of January, 1800, he writes to Major-General 
 Eoss : " The Roman Catholics, for whom I have not been 
 able to obtain the slightest token of favour, are joining the 
 standard of opposition." 
 
 To these proofs that the Catholics were not accomplices 
 in the disfranchisement of Ireland I add the following 
 extract from Daniel O'Connell's anti-Union speech, delivered 
 on the 13th of January, 1800 : " There was no man present," 
 said O'Connell, " but was acquainted with the industry with 
 which it was circulated that the Catholics were favourable to 
 the Union. In vain did multitudes of that body, in 
 different capacities, express their disapprobation of the 
 measure ; in vain did they concur with others of their fellow 
 subjects in expressing their abhorrence of it — as freemen or 
 freeholders, as electors of counties or inhabitants of cities- 
 still the calumny was repeated ; it was printed in journal after 
 journal ; it was published in pamphlet after pamphlet ; it was 
 circulated with activity in private companies ; it was boldly 
 and loudly proclaimed in public assemblies. ... In vain 
 did the Catholics individually resist the torrent. Their future 
 efforts, as individuals, would be equally vain and fruitless ; 
 they must then oppose it collectively." 
 
 I have quoted the above testimonies in order to rescue the 
 character of the Irish Catholics from a disgraceful accusation. 
 That accusation, I presume, originated in the fact that the 
 •Government succeeded in cajoling a few Catholic prelates to 
 sanction their measure, and that Lords Kenmare and Fingal 
 were ready to surrender their country. I think the episcopal 
 traitors did not exceed ten. Sir Jonah Barrington says: 
 
 * " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 169. It is to be 
 noted that in the accounts we possess of the public transactions of 
 the period, the nutnber of signatures to pro-Union petitions is some- 
 times set down at 5,000, and sometimes at 3,000; but as ic is also 
 stated that several of the petitions prayed, not for the enactment of 
 the Union, but only thar. it might be discussed, I dare say the 
 apparent discrepancy may be explained by assigning 2,000 of the 
 signatures to the latter class of petitions. 
 
48 Eighty five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 " The Bishops Troy, Lanigan, and others, deluded by the 
 Viceroy, sold their country, and basely betrayed their flocks 
 by promoting the Union. But," Sir Jonah adds, "the great 
 body of Catholics were tine to their country." * This can be 
 affirmed alike of the laity, the priesthood, and the majority of 
 the Bishops. 
 
 The Protestants were not more favourable to the Union 
 than their Catholic brethren. There were numberless 
 resolutions of grand juries. Orange guilds, and Orange lodges^ 
 denouncing the project in the strongest language. Saurin 
 declared that although the Union "might be made binding 
 as a law, it could never become obligatory upon conscience ; 
 and that resistance to it would be in the abstract a duty." 
 Numbers of the Protestant ascendency party were inaccessible 
 to the bribes of the Minister. Their political integrity 
 deserves honourable record, and enduring national gratitude. 
 Sir Frederick Falkiner had four executions in his house at 
 Abbotstown on the very day on which he rejected a large 
 offer of money from Lord Castlereagh. There were numerous 
 other instances of noble and disinterested patriotism amongst 
 the leaders of Orangeism. 
 
 The Government had tried to delude both parties — the 
 Catholics, by holding out hopes of their emancipation from 
 the Imperial Parliament ; the Protestants, by instilling into 
 their minds a belief that the Union would render emancipa- 
 tion either impossible, or, if it should be granted, innocuous 
 to Protestant ascendency. It must be observed that in the 
 beginning of 1795 there was no active or extensive hostility 
 entertained by the Irish Protestants to Catholic emancipation. 
 But the machinations of the English Government had been 
 so successful in reviving and inflaming the animosities of sects 
 and parties (animosities rendered inveterate by the horrors 
 of the rebellion), that in 1800 the liberal and generous 
 feelings which had influenced the Protestants five years 
 previously were to a large extent superseded by a stolid 
 hatred of the Catholics, and a tierce resolve to resist their 
 admission to any political privileges. George III. adopted 
 the notion that under an Union emancipation would become 
 impossible. In his published correspondence with Pitt, he 
 tells that Minister that he had consented to the Union in 
 the full belief that it would "shut the door" for ever 
 against the Catholic claims. It required much dexterity on 
 
 * Barrington's ** Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation," chap, xxvii. 
 
Amhidexter Policy of Pitt. 49 
 
 the part of the Viceroy and his agents to infuse into the 
 minds of the rival parties these opposite beliefs. Lord 
 Cornwallis was, as we have seen, instructed by Pitt to assure 
 the Catholics that the success of the Union was essential to 
 the success of Emancipation. At the same time his sub- 
 ordinate ally, Mr. Secretary Cooke, while amusing the 
 Catholics with some indistinct hope of "additional privi- 
 leges " (which he did not specify), assured the Protestants 
 in the same paragraph that under an Union " the Catholics 
 could not force their claims with hostility against the whole 
 power of Great Britain and Ireland."* 
 
 Of Mr. Pitt's ambiguous utterances Mr. Speaker Foster 
 said : " Mr. Pitt's language is of such a nature that one 
 would imagine he had the two religions on either side of 
 him, and one was not to hear what he said to the other, "f 
 
 Lord Cornwallis's task was to create among the Catholics 
 a conviction that their claims would be much strengthened 
 by incorporation with England. But what was the Viceroy's 
 own conviction ] Let him answer the question himself : 
 
 "The claims of the Catholics will certainly be much 
 weakened by their incorporation into the mass of British 
 subjects."! 
 
 This he wrote to the Duke of Portland at the very time 
 when he was labouring to convince the Catholics that the 
 Imperial Parliament would emancipate them. So it did, 
 twenty-nine years later ; and so it would not have done at 
 that, or probably at any other time, had not O'Connell's 
 agitation created a belief in the Duke of Wellington's mind 
 that the only alternatives were concession or civil war. 
 
 It is interesting to notice the doubts of success which 
 Lord Cornwallis occasionally felt. In a pamphlet by a 
 barrister named Weld, the author, speaking of the bribed 
 supporters of the Union, says, " their penitential tears fall 
 fast upon the wages of apostasy." 
 
 This reluctance to perform the execrable task for which 
 they took payment is seen by Lord Cornwallis, who writes 
 to the Bishop of Lichtield, on the 24th of January, 1800 : 
 " There can, I think, now be no great doubt of our Par- 
 liamentary success, although I believe that a great number 
 
 * Mr. Secretary Cooke's " Arguments for and against an Union 
 Considered," p. 30. 
 
 t Mr. Foster's Speech, 11th April, 1799. 
 
 Ij: Letter to the Duke of Portland, 24th December, 1798, " Corn- 
 wrallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 22. 
 
 B 
 
50 Eiglity-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 of our friends are not sincere well-wishers to the measuro 
 of Union." The Viceroy was right. Those men had not 
 virtue to resist the wages of iniquity ; yet their lingering 
 amor patrice would have been rejoiced if their country had 
 escaped the blow of the executioner. 
 
 Again, the Viceroy writes to General Eoss on the 4th 
 of February, 1800 : " God only knows how the business 
 will terminate ; but it is so hard to struggle against private 
 interests, and the pride and prejudices of a nation, that I 
 shall never feel confident of success till the Union is^ 
 actually carried."* 
 
 This admission that he was fighting a hard battle against 
 the pride and prejudices of a nation, contrasts rather 
 curiously with his statements in other parts of his corre- 
 spondence that the national sentiment was in his favour. 
 On the 18th of April, writing to General Ross on the 
 parliamentary supporters of the Union, His Excellency 
 says : " I believe that half of our majority would be at 
 least as much delighted as any of our opponents, if th& 
 measure were defeated. "t 
 
 In fact they well knew that the measure struck a mortal 
 blow at the best interests of their country, as well as at 
 their own personal consequence. But the seduction of 
 enormous bribes prevailed so far as to secure a majority 
 for the Government in 1800. On the 27th of February in 
 that year, Mr. Saurin described that majority as " consisting 
 almost entirely of gentlemen holding offices or places at the- 
 pleasure of the Crown ; of adventurers from the bar, of 
 adventurers from the British army, of men who would have 
 no scruple to subject the property of this kingdom, in which 
 they have no share, to a foreign Parliament ; to traffic the 
 independence of Ireland for a personal independence for 
 theniselves." 
 
 In the English Parliament, Mr. (afterwards Earl) Grey 
 thus described the Union majority in the Irish House of 
 Commons : " There are 300 members in all. . . . One hun- 
 dred and sixty-two voted in favour of tlie Union ; of these 
 116 were placemen ; some of them were English generals on 
 the Statf, without a foot of ground in Ireland, and com- 
 pletely dependent on the Government." 
 
 The Union being carried against the will of nearly every 
 inhabitant of Ireland, Proteslant and Catholic, it appeared 
 
 * " Oornwallia Correspon.lence," vol. iii. pp. 169, 177. 
 t Ibid., vol. iii. pp. 228, 252. 
 
Pitt tricks the Catholics. 51 
 
 to the Government politic to conciliate the Protestants, as 
 being the stronger party. Pitt indeed made a show of 
 retiring from office, because the King's prejudices prevented 
 him from carrying a Catholic Relief Bill. Eut he soon 
 resumed office, having — as Lord Hawkesbury at a later 
 period * publicly declared in the House of Lords — made a 
 voluntary pledge that he never again would bring the 
 Catholic question under the consideration of His Majesty. 
 And in 1805 he positively refused to present a petition for 
 Emancipation to the House of Commons, or even to lay it 
 on the table of the House ; he went so far as to say that if 
 the petition should be presented by any other Ministerial 
 member, he would feel it his duty to resist it. At the same 
 time he politely informed the deputation who brought the 
 petition, " that the confidence of so very respectable a body 
 as the Catholics of Ireland was highly gratifying to him." 
 
 The confidence of the great body of Irish Catholics, Mr. 
 Pitt had never possessed ; and the few gentlemen (ten Bishops 
 included) who styled themselves "Catholic leaders," and who 
 were weak enough, or base enough, to consent to the Union 
 in the hope of its being immediately followed by Catholic 
 Emancipation, and in the hope, also, of episcopal pensions 
 from the Government — those gentlemen deserved their dis- 
 appointment. They deserved it for their folly in trusting 
 the vague, indefinite intimations of Pitt and others that the 
 English Parliament would immediately remove their political 
 disabilities. They deserved it for their unprincipled readi- 
 ness to sacrifice the legislative independence of their country 
 for any consideration whatever. 
 
 No doubt there were multitudes who rejoiced in believing 
 with King George III. that the Union had "shut the door" 
 for ever against the claims of the Catholics. Those claims 
 seemed for a while to be forgotten. The Government allowed 
 the Irish Protestants to monopolise the local control of the 
 country as the most effectual means of reconciling them to 
 the Union. They had the Castle, the courts, the public 
 offices, and the enormous revenues of the State Church. 
 They had everything that remained after the suppression of 
 the Legislature. Yet this monopoly did not avail to ex- 
 tinguish altogether the national sentiment that had grown up 
 under the influence of home legislation. 
 
 Grattan, the illustrious founder of the Constitution of 
 
 • Marcli 26th, 1S07. 
 
52 Eighty-five Years of Irish History, 
 
 1782, retired on the enactment of the Union into private 
 life, from which he did not emerge until 1805, when he was 
 returned to the Imperial Parliament for the borough of 
 Malton. On the first appearance of so distinguished an 
 orator on the boards of St. Stephen's, there was necessarily- 
 great curiosity excited. There were in his style of speaking 
 some marked peculiarities, and also in his voice some 
 Hibernian inflections, which called forth an incipient titter 
 of derision from certain of his English auditors. These 
 symptoms, however, were checked by Pitt, who nodded his 
 approval of the style and manner of the speaker. 
 
 What a type of Ireland's degradation ! Her most 
 honoured and venerable patriot exposed to the sneers of 
 a foreign assembly, and indebted for exemption from insult 
 to the patronising approbation of the bitter and triumphant 
 enemy of his country ! It was in the speech he then 
 delivered that Grattan, in alluding to the fallen fortunes of 
 Ireland, used the touching words, " I sat by her cradle ; I 
 follow her hearse." 
 
 In 1805 several of the guilds of Dublin met to prepare 
 petitions for the repeal of the Union. The Stationers' 
 Company met at their hall in Capel Street, and appointed a 
 Committee of nine to draw up their petition. They were 
 probably encouraged to commence the good work by Grattan's 
 return to the English House of Commons. The Orange 
 Corporation of Dublin followed the example of the guilds in 
 1810, and confided their petition for Repeal to Grattan and 
 Sir Robert Shaw, father, I believe, of the gentleman who for 
 many years was the Recorder of Dublin. Both these gentle- 
 men promised to support the Repeal, and Grattan emphatically 
 said : " Whenever the question shall come before Parliament, 
 I shall prove myself an Irishman ; and that Irishman whose 
 first and last passion is his native country." 
 
 It is curious to hear modern Orangemen and Tories 
 denouncing Repeal as being no better than treason, when 
 we remember that Repeal was proposed in 1810 by the most 
 ultra-Orange municipality in the kingdom. The example of 
 Repeal agitation was then given by that body, whose anti- 
 Catholic prejudices were so violent and inflexible, that it 
 admitted only five Catholics to be freemen of the city of 
 Dublin during the period of forty-eight years, from 1793, 
 when the Catholics became legally admissible, to 1841, when 
 the Orange Corporation was dissolved by the Municipal 
 Reform Act. Mr. Butt, while still a Tory, once arraigned 
 
Rejpeal Action — Sectarian Obstruction. 53 
 
 the Repealers as traitors in a speech at the Rotunda. He 
 apparently forgot that his ancient friends and clients, the 
 Orange Corporation, should necessarily be involved in this 
 censure. The " treason " of Repeal was long enshrined in 
 the Orange sanctuary in William Street, and many a true 
 Orange knee was bent in that temple before the altar of the 
 national divinity. Shall we ever see the Orangemen return 
 to their ancient anti-Uiiion principles 1 Shall we ever see 
 them adopt the political faith which seeks not the ascendency 
 of a class or sect, but the greatness, the prosperity, the 
 dignity of the whole Irish nation 1 
 
 I have mentioned that during the forty-eight years from 
 1793, when Catholics became legally eligible, to 1841, when 
 the Corporate Reform Act disbanded the Orange Corporation, 
 the Dublin corporators only admitted five Catholics as 
 members of their body. Contrast their intolerance with 
 the liberal conduct of the reformed Corporation of Dublin, 
 in which there is an important majority of Catholics. Since 
 1841 to the year 1882, this reformed Corporation, in which 
 Catholics predominate, has seventeen times elected a Pro- 
 testant Lord Mayor ; besides conferring on Protestants the 
 situations of City Treasurer, City Engineer and Borough 
 Surveyor, Assistant Engineer, Medical Officer of Health and 
 City Analyst, Overseer of Waterworks, Superintendent of 
 Fire Brigade, and Assistant-Superintendent. The names of 
 these gentlemen will be found in the Appendix. The moral 
 of the contrast is plain. 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 REPEAL ACTION — SECTARIAN OBSTRUCTION. 
 
 And will ye bear, my brother men. 
 
 To see your altars trampled down ? 
 Sbiill Christ's great heart bleed out again 
 
 Beneath the scoffer's spear and frown ? 
 
 Spirit of the Nation. 
 
 In 1810 public meetings were held in sustainment of the 
 Repeal, and in order to encourage the Corporation. George 
 111. became ill, prior to his madness, and the loyal corporators 
 suspended their agitation lest they should embarrass the 
 royal invalid. In 1813 the Repeal demand was renewed in 
 Dublin, and the Repealers of all creeds held a meeting to 
 
54 Eighty -five Years of Irish History, 
 
 promote their object. O'Connell, who had joined the move- 
 ment in 1810, now acjain came forwarrl, and exerted himself 
 in conformity with the earliest declaration he ever had made 
 of his political principles. In 1822 Mr. Lucius Concannon, 
 a member of the House of Commons, gave notice of a motion 
 for the Kepeal of the Union. Mr. (afterwards Sir Eobert) 
 Peel inquired "if the honourable gentleman could seriously 
 ask the House to violate that solemn compact ] " Just as if 
 a measure, which was literally forced upon Ireland at the 
 point of the bayonet, could be rationally called a compact ! 
 From that period forward the Eejieal was constantly mooted 
 in private society. In 1824 Lord Cloncurry wrote a letter, 
 which was read by O'Connell at the Catholic Association, 
 recommending the Catholics to abandon for a time the 
 struggle for Emancipation, and to coalesce with the Pro- 
 testants in a struggle for Eepeal. But this advice was 
 premature ; the Protestants of Ireland could not just then 
 have been induced to combine with the Catholics for that or 
 any other purpose. The demon of religious hatred was in 
 the ascendant. Catholicity was familiarly designated " the 
 beast " and "the accursed thing," by Protestant controvertists ; 
 and the more bigoted Protestant preachers inculcated en- 
 venomed hostility to the creed of the Catholics as a Christian 
 duty paramount to all others. When sectarian hate is 
 incessantly enforced it is speedily transferred from the creed 
 of misbelievers to their persons. Those who recollect the 
 exertions of the Biblical party in 1824, 1825, and 1826, 
 have reason to rejoice that their pernicious activity has been 
 to a considerable extent relaxed. The controversial excite- 
 ment through the country was actually frightful The 
 Protestants were taught to look on the religion of the 
 Catholics as a grand magazine of immorality, intidelity, and 
 rebellion ; while the Catholics, in their turn, regarded their 
 enthusiastic assailants as the victims of a s]uritual insanity 
 derived from an infernal source, and as disastrous in its 
 social results as it was bizarre in its exhibition. The kindly 
 charities of friendship were annihilated ; ancient intimacies 
 were broken up ; hatred was mitigated only by a sentiment 
 of scornful compassion.* 
 
 * Lord Farnham was a lending patron of these Biblical exploits. 
 One cannot help regarding with a feeling of melancholy interest the 
 ciiriouR scenes to which tlie system of patronising proselytes from 
 Popery gave rise. I knew more than one Protestant clergyman, 
 remote from the heudqiiarters of religioufa exciiement, who had 
 
Controversial Crusade — Its Results. 55 
 
 Snch were too frequently the mutual feelings of tlie two 
 great sections of the Irish commuuitv — the one party having 
 the immense preponderance in number, the other in wealth. 
 Mr. Plunket, then Attorney-General, had declared that " the 
 <;auldron was already boiling over in Ireland ; and that it 
 "was not requisite that a polemic contest should be thrown 
 into it."* 
 
 The advice was wasted. Many motives impelled the 
 Biblical party to persevere. First of all, to do them every 
 justice, there were some fanatics among their number who 
 conscientiously believed that they were divinely commissioned 
 to dispel the gross darkness of Popery. They were, as they 
 conceived, authorised to walk forth, wielding "the sword of 
 the Spirit, which is the Word of God." Then there were the 
 political speculators, w^ho looked on the furious theological 
 
 teen asked by distressed wretches, " How much will I get from your 
 reverence if I turn Protestant?" The universal conviction on the 
 minds of the lower order of Catholics was that nobody "turned," as 
 they called it, except for lucre, and that an enormous fund existed, 
 under the control of the Protestant leaders, for buying up the 
 religious belief of all Papists who were willing to conform. Weekly 
 bulletins of the number of new converts from Popery were placarded 
 on the walls, or suspended from the necks of persons who were hired 
 to perambulate the public streets. Fourteen hundred and eighty- 
 three converts were at one time announced as the fruit of Lord 
 Farnham's exertions in Cavan ; but when Archbishop Magee went 
 down to confirm them their number had shrunk to forty-two. Lord 
 Farnham was doubtless a sincere enthusiast ; but his fanatical folly 
 was excessive, and he was greatly imposed on. He kept open house 
 for the crowds of proselytes, who were furnished with soup, 
 potatoes, and in some instances with clothes. Pauper Protestants 
 are said to have sometimes enjoyed his hospitality under the pretext 
 of being " converts " from Popery ; and it is said that such Catholics 
 as thought they could escape recognition among the multitude of 
 strange faces, contrived to be " converted" three or four times over, 
 in order to prolong the substantial advantage of being fed in a dear 
 season at the noble lord's cost. When the supply of food, etc., wa* 
 discontinued, they returned to their former Church. This Lord 
 Farnham had been a determined opponent of the Union in IbOO; 
 xind, not long before his death, he declared at a Conservative 
 meeting that his hostility to Eepeal arose from a religious, and not 
 at all from a political motive. Alas ! Lord Farnham was not the 
 only man in whom sectaiian fanaticism spoiled a good patriot. 
 
 * But although Mr. Plunket said this, he is also stated — I do not 
 know with what accuracy — to have helped to set the cauldron 
 boiling by advising Dr. Magee, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, 
 to institute a controversial movement against the Catholic leligion, 
 which it was hoped would produce numerous conversions to i*ro- 
 testaniism. 
 
66 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 excitement as affording a useful diversion of men's minds 
 from the grievances of tithes and legal disabilities to the 
 abstract topics of purgatory, transubstantiation, and Saint 
 Peter's supremacy, Again, it was hoped and expected by 
 others that the ceaseless abuse launched at Popery would 
 disincline Protestants to become emancipators, and possibly 
 withdraw from the Catholics the political support of many 
 who had already joined them. 
 
 It is probable that some of the Liberal members of 
 Parliament, at that period, had but little sincerity in their 
 emancipating zeal. The profession of Liberal politics effected 
 two things for them — it obtained an agreeable popularity^ 
 and also what they considered the honour of seats in Parlia- 
 ment. Such persons voted for the Catholics year after year, 
 entertaining, I verily believe, a full conviction that Emanci- 
 pation would never be conceded. They thus enjoyed the 
 cheap distinction of being senators on the easy terms of 
 supporting a measure for which they cherished no affection, 
 but of whose defeat they indulged in a comforting certainty. 
 How ludicrously disappointed must such men have been 
 when Peel and Wellington suddenly became champions of 
 Emancipation in 1829 ! 
 
 Religious jealousy and sectarian distrust, like the poisonous 
 exhalations of the upas tree, blighted and withered the 
 natural, inborn sentiment of nationality in many a well- 
 meaning man. When Lord Cloncurry, in the letter already 
 alluded to, publicly advocated Repeal, a worthy Protestant 
 gentleman said to me that it would be an excellent thing if 
 we had a Parliament of our own in Ireland — " but then," he 
 added, " the Papists are so numerous they would soon get 
 the upper hand." I asked him what harm their emancipa- 
 tion would do him or any one 1 His reply was to the effect 
 that they would rival the Protestants in everything; if a 
 Papist was more eloquent or a better lawyer than a Protestant, 
 he might get the start of the Protestant in Parliament, or he 
 might be promoted to the Bench, while the Protestant of 
 inferior talent lost the race. As matters stood, the Protestant 
 could not bo beaten in the race, for the Papist could not 
 run ; an advantage that should not be surrendered on any 
 account. 
 
 I mention this trifling incident because it illustrates the 
 sort of jealous feeling which operated, not only to enlist 
 Protestants against the Catholic claims, but also to smother 
 their national spirit as Irishmen. The mischievous efficacy 
 
Open versus Secret Agitation. 57 
 
 of this jealous terror will loe more apparent when I add that 
 the gentleman in question had been connected with the 
 United Irishmen in 1797. The impressions received from 
 that connexion were effaced by the malign influence of 
 sectarian partisanship. And yet there was no great bitterness, 
 nor was there any personal hostility in his politics. He did 
 not hate Catholics ; he was not unkind to them in his land- 
 lord capacity ; but he had taken up the notion that the 
 doctrine of absolution authorised crime. He had accurately 
 expressed the sentiment that actuated thousands — a sturdy 
 resolve to sustain the monopoly the Protestants had got, not 
 only to preserve a party advantage, but from a belief that 
 the spiritual merits of Protestantism entitled its professors to 
 that monopoly. 
 
 Meanwhile, O'Connell worked the Catholic question in- 
 defatigably. He was an inexhaustible declaimcr, and as- 
 tonishingly fertile in argument, in expedient, and in topics of 
 excitement. There had been from the commencement of his 
 career this novel feature in his agitation — there was nothing 
 gecret in it: no locked doors, no secret committees, no hidden 
 springs, no machinery to which he would not at any moment 
 have admitted the whole corps of Government inspectors. 
 Former political leaders had conceived that secrecy was an 
 indispensable element of success. But O'Connell early saw 
 the perils of every scheme of which concealment formed a 
 part. The very fact of supposing a junto secret would 
 necessarily induce ill-regulated spirits to give utterance to 
 illegal or treasonable sentiments. There was the presumed 
 protection of silence. Then there instantly arose the danger 
 of treachery ; any rascal who was sufficiently base to betray 
 his associates, any Reynolds or Newell, might instantly 
 compromise the safety of the entire association by revealing 
 the indiscretion, or the illegality, or the treason, of a single 
 member. O'Connell's sagacity swept away all such danger. 
 By resolving to hide nothing, his associates were sure to say 
 and do nothing that required to be hidden. 
 
 O'Connell's immediate predecessor as a Catholic leader 
 was John Keogh, a Dublin merchant. Keogh was far ad- 
 vanced in years at the time when O'Connell first became very 
 celebrated ; and it is believed that the old leader felt jealous 
 of the popular talents as well as of the influence acquired by 
 the younger one. It is certain that he sought to persuade 
 O'Connell that the Catholics, instead of continuing their 
 agitation, should relapse into silence and inertion, and try 
 
o8 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 the effect of regarding the Government with a surly, awe- 
 inspiring frown, indicative of hostility too deeply rooted to 
 petition or negotiate. Keogh, in fact, proposed and carried 
 a resolution to that effect at a public meeting at which his 
 rival attended. O'Connell proposed and carried a counter 
 resolution to that effect at the same meeting, which pledged 
 the Catholics to unremitting activity. 
 
 Nothing could have gratified the Government more than 
 the adoption by the Catholics of Keogh's advice. It would 
 have released them from the annual parliamentary bore of 
 the Catholic question. It would have retarded the success 
 of that question incalculably. The policy of endeavouring 
 to scare a hostile Government by a grim and silent scowl, 
 was too melodramatic to avail on the political stage. 
 
 O'Connell, of course, persevered. In 1813 he was called 
 " an agitator with ulterior views." He immediately accepted 
 the designation, and declared that the ulterior object he had 
 in view was the Eepeal of the Union. When urged at a 
 much later period to postpone the agitation of the Catholic 
 claims to that of Repeal, he refused to comply, alleging as 
 his reason that Emancipation, by removing one great subject 
 of national difference, would facilitate the junction of all 
 Irishmen to regain their national independence. O'Connell 
 undoubtedly entertained at that time too favourable a notion 
 •of the patriotism of the Orange party. He did not anticipate 
 the stubborn, inflexible, enduring Orange bigotry which has 
 survived the emancipation of the Catholics, and thus outlived 
 the chief pretext for its exercise. No doubt there were other 
 pretexts too ; there were the corporations and the iniquitous 
 Church Establishment ; the former have been taken from the 
 Orangemen ; but the so-called " disendowment " of the State 
 Church has been so partially effected that it is in truth a re- 
 endowment, not indeed of its original magnitude, but suffi- 
 ciently large to make the Church a profitable institution to 
 its officers, who are principally subsidised at the expense of 
 the nation. So long as an anti-national institution is sup- 
 ported at the national expense, so long will the party that 
 gains by its existence refuse to co-operate with the general 
 mass of their countrymen. 
 
 John Keogh's belief in the inutility of political agitation 
 is instructive. Lord Fingal was latterly impressed with that 
 belief, and alleged it as his reason for declining to preside at 
 a Catholic meeting in Dublin. How often have I — how 
 often have all whose memory extends back to the latter 
 
Necessity of Perseverance. 59 
 
 years of the Catholic strug.ofle — heard from all sides the 
 exclamation, " Oh ! they will never get Emancipation ! The 
 Government never Avill grant it ! How are the Catholics to 
 frighten the Government into concession*? O'Connell is 
 wasting his time ; he has been haranguing for nearly thirty- 
 years, and has bronght his dupes no nearer to it yet." 
 
 Thus do we hear the struggles of Ireland for domestic 
 legislation denounced as a delusion, and in much the same 
 language. That our claim should be derided by our enemies 
 is natural. Among its friends — that is to say among the 
 great bulk of the people of Ireland — there is too often an 
 impatience of persevering agitation, a disposition to relinquish 
 a pursuit that is not speedily successful. To all fickle patriots 
 I would observe, firstly, that the object to be gained — namely, 
 the restoration of the Irish Parliament in connection with 
 the Crown of Great Britain — is our indefeasible right, and is 
 vitally necessary to our national prosperity. It is a political 
 pearl beyond price. Secondly, I would remind them that 
 the pursuit of Catholic Emancipation occupied fifty-one 
 years. The first relaxation of the penal laws occurred in 
 1778 ; the admission of Catholics to the Bench and to 
 Parliament was not gained until 1829. Fifty-one years! 
 Here is a lesson for impatient patriots. During that pro- 
 tracted period how many were the dreary intervals of hope- 
 less depression ! How often did ultimate success appear 
 desperate ! How many a heart was weary of the long, long 
 struggle, which often seemed a vain and feeble protest against 
 omnipotent hostility ! Yet for fifty-one years the friends of 
 the Catholic cause struggled on with varying fortunes, until 
 at last success crowned their persevering efforts. And we 
 must not forget that some of the worst enactments of the 
 penal code had become law more than fourscore years before 
 the earliest legal mitigation of that code's severity. 
 
 Hence we may learn a lesson of unfaltering perseverance 
 in pursuit of Eepeal. I do not underrate the difficulties of 
 the task. England is now strong, and we are weak. Yet it 
 is quite possible that political complications may arise which 
 would render it worth England's while to purchase the 
 fidelity of Ireland at the expense of that grand act of resti- 
 tution. Eepeal of the Union has ever had, has now, and 
 €ver will have, the great strength of incontrovertible justice 
 and right. Let the people of Ireland be ever on the watch 
 for a time when Imperial expediency may enforce from our 
 julers the concession of our righteous claim to self-legislation 
 
60 Eighty-jive Years of Irish History. 
 
 Fenianism in America, despite its blunders and the glaring 
 rascality of some of its leaders, is a portent too mighty 
 to be despised. It is an exhibition to the world of the 
 insatiable resentment of a people expelled by misgovern- 
 ment, fiscal and political, from the land which " the Lord 
 their God had given them " to inhabit. When, after 1798, 
 the Marquis Cornwallis was congratulated because " the 
 rebels were all crossing the Atlantic," His Excellency 
 answered : " I would rather have three rebels to deal with in 
 Ireland than one in America." Fenianism, as we have seen 
 its exhibition in America, showed a great waste of power. 
 The Fenians possess the raw material of great strength ; 
 but their strength is neutralised by mistakes in their pro- 
 gramme, and by the turpitude of scheming leaders, who 
 have filled their own pockets by trafficking on popular 
 credulity. 
 
 The hatred entertained to England by the expatriated 
 Irish, whom the Union has expelled from their native land 
 by stripping it of the means of supporting them, has 
 occasionally puzzled English commentators on Irish affairs. 
 But the fact can be easily explained. England first cor- 
 rupted the Irish Parliament, and then destroyed it. The 
 destruction of home government was necessarily followed by 
 national decay. Dei)rived by the competition of English 
 capital of the resource of manufacturing industry, the great 
 bulk of the people were thrown on the land as their sole 
 means of subsistence. Mr. Mitchell Henry, member for the 
 County Galvvay, stated in the English House of Commons 
 on the 9th of February, 1880, that there were no more than 
 273 manufactories in Ireland, and that these included the 
 flax-mills at Belfast. He added that the manufactories only 
 gave employment to 80,000 persons in a population that then 
 exceeded five millions. The people, almost exclusively de- 
 pendent on the land for the means of existence, were in num- 
 berless instances persecuted by rapacious landlords, whose 
 insatiable greed was often accompanied with fierce sectarian 
 hatred of the tenants whom they fleeced. The landlords 
 were generally Protestants. The tenants were generally 
 Catholics. The whole ecclesiastical State revenues of 
 Ireland had been wrenched by English power from the 
 Catholics and given to the members of the English religion, 
 whose ministers, naturally drawn towards the power that 
 had given them the revenues, and as naturally hating the 
 Catholic people who were wronged by that gigantic fraud, 
 
Sectarian Insolence. 61 
 
 occasionally stimulated the religious zeal of their flocks by- 
 such utterances as the following : 
 
 "Again, sir," said the Keverend Francis Gervais at 
 a meeting at Dungannon, held on Tuesday, 9th of December, 
 1828, "1 consider the religion of Rome as under the curse 
 of the Almighty, distinctly denounced against it, and that 
 the time is at hand when the Divine judgment will fall 
 on it, and everything connected with it — political institutions 
 as well as others." 
 
 The report says these sentiments evoked " great ap- 
 plause." 
 
 In July, 1843, Doctor Robert Daly, Protestant Bishop 
 of Cashel, delivered a charge to his clergy, principally against 
 the Tractarians, in which his lordship thus expressed himself : 
 
 " It was said by a shrewd and pious man that Popery 
 was the masterpiece of Satan^ and that he never would bring 
 into the world a second scheme of evil equal to it in cunning 
 and mischief; and the scheme now introduced (Puseyism) is 
 not another — it is only a modification of the Popish views." 
 
 Isaac Butt, in his admirable " Plea for the Celtic Race," 
 cites the following passage from a speech delivered at a great 
 Protestant meeting in 1834 by the Reverend Marcus 
 Beresford, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh : 
 
 " I trust that every good and faithful minister of his 
 God would sooner have potatoes and salt, surrounded with 
 Protestants, than to live like princes, surrounded with 
 Papists." 
 
 It will be admitted that such utterances as these were 
 not calculated to promote friendly feelings between the 
 Protestant landlords and the Catholic peasantry. En- 
 thusiastic clergymen vied with each other in assailing the 
 popular creed. 
 
 The absence of manufactures necessarily caused a great 
 subdivision of land. The interests of the landlords sutiered 
 from the overcrowding of their estates with human beings 
 for whom there was no manufacturing outlet, and whose 
 numbers exceeded the capacity of the land, as it w^as then 
 cultivated, to support them. The system of clearing estates 
 of their human inhabitants was vigorously acted on. The 
 late Mr. Sharman Crawford showed, from parliamentary 
 returns, that in the five years from 1838 to 1843 inclusive, 
 ejectment proceedings had been taken against 356,985 persons; 
 and he said he was prepared to show that the extermination 
 of the people was going on in a rapidly increasing ratio. He 
 
62 El gilt ij -Jive Years of Irish History. 
 
 called it "a dreadful and heartless persecution." The crowv 
 har brigade has been actively employed from that day t& 
 tliis ; and between its operations, and the general im- 
 poverishment of Ireland resulting from the want of home 
 government, our population, which in 1841 was 8,196,597, 
 has sunk in 1885 to 4,900,000. Lord Macaulay instances as a 
 .proof of the destructive effects of war that the Prussian popu- 
 lation was diminished ten per cent, by the wars of Frederick 
 the Great. The Irish po[)ulation has lost more than thirty 
 per cent, under the Union since 1841 ; and if it be said 
 that it increased between 1800 and 1841, we reply that 
 it . multiplied in misery during that period. There were 
 not then the modern facilities for emigration, and the Union 
 starved our people in their own country, ^ow that magnifi- 
 cent steamers waft them cheaply and swiftly across the 
 Atlantic, they emigrate, bearing in their hearts an ineradi- 
 cable hatred of the power that has driven them into exile. 
 
 Can we conceive . a condition of things more calculated 
 to demoralise a nation, or to engender international animosity ? 
 Mr. Godkin, editor of a New York journal, contributes to the 
 NineterMh Centunjiov August, 1882, the following testimony 
 of Irish feeling towards the English Government : 
 
 " I confess," he says, " I have until recently under- 
 estimated the strength and permanence of Irish hatred of 
 England, which the English hatred of Irishmen has at last 
 produced. ... In America it is apparently cultivated by the 
 Iri.sh as a sort of religion, and is transmitted to the second 
 generation, which knows Ireland only by hearsay. . . . The 
 Irishman in this country and his son and grandson are tor- 
 mented neither by landlord nor police, and never see an 
 Englishman or the English flag, and yet they hate the 
 English Government with a kind of frenzy." 
 
 This American writer ascribes Irish antipathy to England 
 to the habitual hatred and contempt of Ireland which pervade 
 English literature and conversation. That cause doubtless 
 operates ; but a much more potent cause exists in the material 
 injury and insult inflicted on Ireland by the Union. That 
 measure permanently dislocated the social frame of Ireland, 
 checked the growth of manufactures, intensified the mutual 
 enmity of classes, overspread the land with pauperism by 
 draining it of public revenue and private income, and became 
 the prolific parent of crime by pntdncing a hideous condition 
 of social and political distortion and disease. 
 
 I respectfully suggest to the Irish in America and in the 
 
Nationalists truly Constitutional. 63 
 
 Colonies, that in order to achieve legislative freedom for 
 Ireland, they must renounce every principle that repels the 
 great body of the Irish Repealers at home. They aie some- 
 times accused of intending to substitute a republic for the 
 Irish throne of Queen Victoria. It is our ardent desire that 
 Her Majesty should govern Ireland through an Irish Ministry 
 and an Irish Legislature, just as Francis Joseph now governs 
 Hungary through a Hungarian Ministry and a Hungarian 
 Legislature, The Fenians — I speak of the multitude of Irish- 
 American emigrants, not of some ten or twelve dishonest 
 leaders — must bear in mind that the Irish Eepealers inherit 
 the constitutional principles of 1782, by which the legis- 
 lative independence of Ireland was combined with untainted 
 loyalty to the sovereign of these realms. Any deviation 
 from these principles must be fatal to an alliance between 
 them and us ; fatal to the strength which such an alliance, 
 if wisely formed, would constitute. 
 
 Caicidated as the Legislative Union is to alienate Irish- 
 men from the English connexion, it is not unnatuial that 
 our exiles who have sought refuge in the American Republic 
 from the wrongs inflicted by that measure, should sympathise 
 in the Republican principles of the land of their adoption. But 
 it does not therefore follow that they will not loyally and 
 faithfully adhere to the Royal Constitution of Ireland when 
 the Home Government Bill shall have removed the evil of 
 foreign legislation, and re-established on a stable basis our 
 exclusive right to legislate for our country. Their unanimous 
 support of Mr. Gladstone's Bill sufficiently indicates their 
 sentiments. 
 
 Engli>h writers have complained that they now have 
 two Irelands to deal with, one on each side of the Atlantic. 
 This is true; and in order that these two Irelands should 
 effectively combine for the recovery of their rights, the 
 Ireland now in exile must carefully shape her course in 
 accordance with the principles and exigencies of the Ireland 
 at home.* 
 
 It is needless to point out the political contingencies in 
 which British statesmen may find it their true policy to give 
 Ireland that contentment which can alone result from our 
 possessing the sole control of our national concerns. War- 
 clouds are blackening in various quarters of the horizon. It is 
 vitally important to the integrity of the Empire, that in the 
 
 * There are also other Irelands growiug up in Canada, Australia, 
 and other British colonies. 
 
64 Eight y-jive Tears of Irish History, 
 
 event of foreign war, Ireland should be the fast and firm 
 friend of England. There is but one way of making her so, 
 and that is by the restoration of her stolen property, her 
 power of self-legislation — in a word, by repealing the Union. 
 
 All this is of course unpalatable to the English lust of 
 domination. But we in Ireland have our own experience of 
 that domination. In an article on Fenianism in 1867, the 
 Times asserted with sad truth that England " does but hold 
 Ireland in the very hollow of her hand." Much more 
 recently the Economist* in an article on Secret Societies, 
 repeated the same statement in these words: "It is the 
 English people who hold Ireland.'* 
 
 True : we are strangled in the English gripe, and the 
 results of this Imperial piessure are disclosed by the special 
 correspondent of the Times, who writes from Cork to that 
 journal on the 23rd of March, 1867. "In the country 
 districts," says the Times correspondent, " the depopulation 
 of Ireland is not brought to one's notice so forcibly as in the 
 towns. The peasant's cabin, when its last occupant has 
 gone across the blue water, is pulled down, and no trace is 
 left that it ever existed. But town dwellings Uo let' and 
 empty shops remain, sad witnesses of a population that has 
 been and is not. To the Irishman this is a trite subject ; 
 the English traveller, accustomed at home to the rapid 
 growth of numerous small towns in most of the counties he 
 visits, is startled in this country by the almost uniform 
 decay of towns, both small and great." 
 
 Yes ; Ireland is held, as the Times says, in the very 
 hollow of the hand of England ; and the deadly consequence 
 of that unnatural position appears in the evanishment of her 
 people and in the decay recorded by the Tme*' correspondent. 
 It is well to bear in mind that when we were not held in the 
 hollow of her hand — when, after 1782, we enjoyed for some 
 years the priceless blessing of self-government — every ele- 
 ment of national prosperity developed itself with a force 
 which, contrasted with our present degraded and despoiled 
 condition, demonstrates the absolute necessity of domestic 
 legislation. 
 
 " It is the English people," says the Economist^ " who 
 hold Ireland." 
 
 This is the explanation of the ulcerated state of Ireland. 
 The English people have no more right to hold Ireland than 
 
 • The Economist, quoted in the Irish Times, Ist of July, 1882. 
 
Ancient and Modern Depopidation. 65 
 
 the Frencli or German people have to hold England. No 
 condition can be more unnatural, more provocative of crime, 
 more prolific of turbulence, more conducive to misery, than 
 that of a nation gripped fast in the talons of another. 
 
 The extermination of great masses of the Irish people 
 appears, from time to time, to have been a favourite object 
 of English statesmanship. In the reign of Elizabeth, Lord 
 Deputy Gray so conducted the Government that, as Leland 
 informs us, the Queen was assured "that little was left 
 in Ireland for Her Majesty to reign over but ashes and 
 carcases."* 
 
 The Government raid on human life is thus described 
 by Mr. Froude :t 
 
 " In 'the stately days of great Elizabeth,' the murder of 
 women and children appears to have been the every-day 
 occupation of the English police in Ireland; and accounts 
 of atrocities, to the full as bad as that at Glencoe, were sent 
 in on half a sheet of letter-paper, and were endorsed like 
 any other documents with a brevity which shows that such 
 things were too common to deserve criticism or attract 
 attention." 
 
 In Mr. Prendergast's " Cromwellian Settlement," the 
 author says : " Ireland now lay void as a wilderness. Five- 
 sixths of her people had perished." | 
 
 In the gracious reign of Queen Victoria more than three 
 millions of the Irish race have been got rid of between 
 1846 and 1885. This is being held in the very hollow of 
 the hand of England. The diminution still goes on ; and so 
 long as we enjoy that affectionate pressure, the same result 
 may be expected. The modus operandi has indeed been 
 changed from ancient times. In the days of Elizabeth and 
 Cromwell there were sanguinary raids against the people, 
 and troops were employed in destroying the green corn and 
 carrying off the cattle in order to starve out the Irish race. 
 The people perished because their means of support were 
 destroyed or abstracted. And the people of our own time 
 perish or emigrate precisely because their means of support 
 are taken away from them — not, indeed, by the coarse, rudo 
 methods of a former age, but by the equally effectual methods 
 devised by modern statesmanship. The Union, with its 
 
 * Leland, book iv, chap. 2. 
 
 + See his article in Fraser's Magazine for March, 1865, **How 
 Ireland was Governed in the Sixteenth Century." 
 X Page 146. 
 
 W 
 
66 Eighty -five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 consequent drain of Irish wealth in absentee taxes and 
 absentee rental, and its destruction of the nascent manufac- 
 turing industries of Ireland by irresistible British competi- 
 tion, achieves the thinning out of our race which was 
 formerly wrought by the sword. It deprives Ireland of 
 the means of supporting the Irish ; and it thus effectually 
 replaces the murderous policy of Elizabeth and Cromwell. 
 The work once performed by military violence is now accom- 
 plished by an economic process, and under legal, peaceful, 
 and constitutional forms. 
 
 An Irishman who believes in the retributive justice of 
 Providence may well be excused for doubting if such a 
 system of iniquity is destined to be perpetual. Quousquey 
 Domine, quousque 1 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE EMANCIPATION STRUGGLE. 
 
 "I think the character of the Irish Protestants not radically 
 bad ; on the contrary, they have a considerable share of good-nature. 
 If they could be once got to think the Catholics were human 
 creatures, and that they lost no job by thinking them such, I am 
 convinced they would soon, very soon indeed, be led to show some 
 regard for their country." — Edmcnd Burke. 
 
 During the struggle for Emancipation it must often have 
 sorely galled the Catholic leaders to encounter the patronising 
 condescension of Protestant nobodies, who took airs of pro- 
 tection and arrogated high consideration in virtue of being 
 emancipators. Prompt payment in servility was expected 
 for the assuasive courtesies which seemed to claim a measure- 
 less superiority over the Catholic 'proteges on whom they 
 were bestowed. "We have now shaken off our chains," 
 said Sheil after Emancipation ; " and one of the blessings of 
 freedom is release from petty and contemptible political 
 patronage. If a Protestant vouchsafed to be present at any 
 of our meetings, it was, ' Hurrah for the Protestant gentle- 
 man ! Three cheers for the Protestant gentleman ! A chair 
 for the Protestant gentleman ! ' And this subserviency, 
 readily tendered by some, was perhaps the most provoking 
 small nuisance of our grievances." 
 
 A species of humiliating advocacy consisted in alleging 
 
Grattan—aConnell—Tlie Veto. 67 
 
 that although the religion of the Papists was damnable, 
 idolatrous, diabolical, degrading, and so forth, yet its 
 "wretched votaries might be safely admitted to political 
 equality, inasmuch as the preponderating Protestant strength 
 of the Empire would always avail to counteract any mischief 
 that might be devised by the Papists. Nay, Emancipation 
 might possibly be instrumental in converting the Papists to 
 a purer faith ; inasmuch as their legal disqualifications 
 rendered perseverance in Popery a point of honour with 
 its professors, whereas admission to equality of privilege 
 would remove the suspicion which might otherwise attach to 
 their motives in conforming to Protestantism. 
 
 Among the parliamentary advocates of Emancipation 
 who took the occasion of supporting the Catholic claims to 
 vituperate the Catholic religion was Mr. Perceval. He 
 delivered a speech in which the ultra-virulent abuse of 
 Catholicity was only to be equalled by the language of some 
 orator at Exeter Hall, on a grand anti-Papal field-day; at 
 the same time recommending the repeal of all disqualifying 
 laws as conducive to the religious enlightenment of the 
 Catholics. It scarcely needs be said that advocates of 
 Mr. Perceval's class were among the politicians who would 
 have clogged Emancipation with the royal veto on the 
 appointment of Catholic Bishops. On this one point — that 
 is, in supporting the veto — the illustrious Grattan went 
 wrong. Mr. Daniel Owen Maddyn, in a work on Irish 
 politics, upbraids O'Connell with having " laboured to make 
 the venerable Grattan as unpopular as possible." 
 
 The accusation, when translated into the language of 
 simple truth, merely means that Mr. O'Connell, with 
 characteristic sagacity, opposed every scheme of accompanying 
 Emancipation with measures calculated to secularise the 
 Catholic Church in the slightest degree, or to bind up the 
 priests in the trammels of the State. Grattan would have 
 taken Emancipation, though encumbered with the veto ; and 
 although a Roman Catholic may condemn such a policy, yet 
 lie scarcely can blame Grattan for adopting it. Grattan was 
 a Protestant, and, of course, could not fairly be expected to 
 possess the watchful solicitude for the independence of 
 Catholic spiritualities which should animate an intelligent 
 Catholic, anxious as well for the religious interests of his 
 Church as for the political freedom of his countrymen. In 
 truth, the only point on which O'Connell differed from 
 dattan was the question of the veto. 
 
 p 2 
 
68 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 But if Grattan needed any apology for the part h& 
 adopted, he could have found it in the fact that among the 
 Catholics of note were some men who conceived that 
 Emancipation should be purchased at the expense of 
 handing over to the Government the appointment of the 
 Catholic Bishops under the name of a veto. One of these 
 Liberal Catholics was the late Chief Baron Wolfe, then a 
 rising barrister on the Munster Circuit. He came into 
 collision with O'Connell on this subject at a public meeting 
 held in a church in Limerick, and made a powerful and 
 effective speech from the front of the gallery in favour of the 
 veto. O'Connell, in reply, told the story of the sheep who 
 were thriving under the protection of their dogs, when an 
 address, recommending them to get rid of their dogs, was 
 presented by the wolves. He said that the leading Wolfe 
 came forward to the front of the gallery, and persuaded the 
 sheep to give up their dogs ; that they obeyed him, and were 
 instantly devoured ; and he then expressed a hope that the 
 Catholics of Ireland would be warned by so impressive an 
 example against the insidious advice of any Wolfe who might 
 try to seduce them to give up their proved and faithful guides 
 and protectors. The hit was received with roars of applause, 
 and the vetoists were routed. 
 
 Among the Protestant emancipators who combined 
 patronage with insult, was the statesman immortalised in 
 Disraeli's "Coningsby" under the pseudonym of Nicholas 
 Rigby, a dexterous and lucky adventurer, of whose career a 
 few brief incidents may not be uninteresting. 
 
 Rigby's father held a Government office near Dublin, 
 and gave his son a college education. The young gentleman, 
 whose critical taste was early on the outlook for subjects to 
 dissect, published a metrical satire on the corps dramatique 
 of the Theatre Royal, as it existed under the management of 
 Mr. Frederick Jones. This production saw the light in 1804, 
 and was entitled " Familiar Epistles to Frederick Jones, Esq." 
 The authorship was not avowed until after the work had 
 passed through two editions. The versification was easy and 
 correct ; the personal sketches flippant and piquant ; the 
 text, in short, was good of its kind, but the notes which 
 encumbered every page were of helpless dulness, which 
 quality was rendered the more striking by the perpetual and 
 clumsy attempts of the author to be pointed and brilliant. 
 
 The dreary and ponderous pleasantry of Rigby's notes, 
 irresistibly reminded the reader of the stupid German com- 
 
A Theatrical Critic. 69 
 
 memorated by Boswell, who, being charmed by the exuberant 
 spirits of some humorist, endeavoured, when alone, to 
 emulate his friend's vivacity by jumping over the tables and 
 chairs, explaining the purpose of this saltatory exercise to an 
 acquaintance who surprised him in the midst of his antics by 
 saying, " J^apprends d'etre vif." Rigby's prosaic efforts to 
 be vif were clumsy failures. But there was really a good 
 deal of pungent sarcasm in his verses.* The amusing per- 
 sonalities of the " Familiar Epistles," rendered the book very 
 popular in Dublin, and a good deal of interest was excited to 
 discover the author. So long as the Epistles were anonymous, 
 several of the small literati acquired a transient importance 
 from imputations of the authorship — imputations which some 
 of them encouraged. But at length the real poet came forth 
 to claim his laurels ; and Mr. *' Nicholas Rigby " immediately 
 began to lionise on the strength of his literary glories. 
 Literary ladies asked him to their assemblies ; dinner-giving 
 dilettanti invited to their tables the young satirist who had 
 revealed so just an appreciation of the scientific gourmandise 
 of Frederick Jones. The "Familiar Epistles " soon rendered 
 
 E.g. , the sketch of Richard Jones : 
 
 But who is this, all boots and breeches, 
 Cravat and cape, and spurs and switches, 
 Grin and grimace, and shrugs and capers, 
 And affectation, spleen, and vapours ? 
 Oh, Mr. E-ichard Jones, your humble ! 
 Prithee give o'er to mouth and mumble. 
 Stand still, speak plain, and let us hear 
 What was intended for the ear ; 
 For, faith ! without the timely aid 
 Of bills, no parts you've ever played. 
 
 Another sketch : 
 
 Next Williams comes, the rude and rough, 
 
 With face most whimsically gruff ; 
 
 Aping the careless sons of ocean, 
 
 He scorns each fine and easy motion. 
 
 Tight to his sides his elbows pins. 
 
 And dabbles with his hands like fins. 
 
 Would he display the greatest woe, 
 
 He slaps his breast and points his toe. 
 
 Is merriment to be expressed ? 
 
 He points his toe and slaps his breast. 
 
 His turns are swings, his step a jump, 
 
 His feelings fits, his touch a thump ; 
 
 And violent in all his parts, 
 
 He speaks by gusts and moves by starts. 
 
70 FAghty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 their author more familiar with champagne and turtle-soup 
 than perhaps he had previously been. 
 
 One of the personages who bestowed their attentions on 
 young Rigby was the late eccentric Baron Smith, father of 
 Thomas Berry Cusack Smith, Attorney-General for Ireland 
 at the time of the State trials of O'Connell and others, and 
 subsequently Master of the Rolls. I have heard that the 
 Baron warmly admired the sportive rhymes of Rigby ; but 
 however this may be, he bestowed some flattering attentions 
 on their author, and affectionately invited him to his country- 
 seat. 
 
 The Baron was proverbial for his oddity. Possessed of 
 an acute and metaphysical mind^ his great intellectual jDowers^ 
 were often distorted by unaccountable caprice. One of his 
 traits was the suddenness of his attachments and dislikes, the- 
 lightning rapidity with which he could adopt and discard an 
 acquaintance. He would ask you to spend a month at his 
 house with an air of affectionate cordiality. If you accepted 
 the invitation, and seemed disposed to take your host at his 
 word, you would speedily receive an unequivocal hint that 
 the sooner you ended your visit the better. 
 
 He tried the experiment on Rigby. He asked him to 
 stay for a month. Rigby accepted the Baron's hospitality, 
 and was received with the blandest courtesy. For the first 
 two days everything was couleur de rose. The Baron was 
 enchanting ; his guest was delighted with his condescension. 
 Rigby was introduced to the company who filled the house 
 as a young gentleman of extraordinary genius, and his host's 
 most particular friend. 
 
 On the third day things were changed. The Baron, 
 scarcely deigned to glance in the direction of Rigby ; or, if 
 he did look towards the place where Rigby sat, it was with 
 that wandering gaze that seems unconscious of the presence 
 of its object. Rigby stood his ground unmoved. He, on 
 his part, seemed unconscious of any alteration in the manner 
 of the Baron. He rattled away, quite at his ease ; lavished 
 his stores of entertaining small talk on the company, who 
 were charmed with the Baron's agreeable guest. At dinner 
 the Baron did not speak to him ; treated him with marked 
 and supercilious coldness ; and indicated by the mute 
 eloquence of manner that Rigby had exhausted his welcome.. 
 
 Next day Rigby took liis usual place at the breakfast- 
 table, conversed with delightful animation, and wore the 
 appearance of a man so well satisfied with his quarters that 
 
An Intrepid Adventurer. 71 
 
 he had not the least notion of changirig them. The Baron, 
 finding that silence had no effect in dislodging his perti- 
 nacious guest, at last determined to speak out. Meeting 
 him alone in the domain soon after hreakfast, he thus 
 addressed him : " I had hoped, Mr. Eigby, that you would 
 have spared me the pain of telling you what I think that my 
 manner sufficiently indicated — that your visit is no longer 
 agreeable. Is it possible you cannot have discovered this 1 " 
 
 "Of course I have discovered it," returned Rigby. 
 " You do not suppose me such a fool as not to have perceived 
 that you became capriciously rude — from what cause I am 
 wholly unable to guess. But this I know, that you invited 
 me to stay for a month, and for a month I ivill stay. Your 
 station in the world is fixed, but mine is not. Before I 
 quitted Dublin I boasted among all my acquaintance of the 
 flattering invitation you gave me. ' I told them I was going 
 to spend a month with you. If I returned at the end of a 
 few days I should be their laughing-stock ; my social position 
 would be seriously damaged, and my prospects would be 
 more or less injured. No, no. You certainly cannot be 
 serious. Baron, in the intention of converting your kindness 
 into a source of mischief to me." 
 
 These words, spoken in a tone of civil but resolute 
 impudence, tickled the Baron's fancy ; he saw that his guest 
 was no every-day character, and, being an admirer of 
 originality, he broke into a good-humoured fit of laughter, and 
 permitted Rigby to remain until the month was expired. 
 
 The anecdote is very characteristic of the energetic per- 
 severance which has marked through life the politician 
 celebrated in Disraeli's novel as '' The Eight Honourable 
 Nicholas Eigby." 
 
 Eigby's next adventure of importance was his return to 
 Parliament. There was an election for the borough of 
 Downpatrick.* The contest was expected to be very close. 
 One of the candidates was detained by an accident, and 
 his friends, in order to prevent his rival from getting ahead 
 of him, set up Eigby — who happened to be in the town — as 
 a stalking-horse. Eigby was proposed and seconded — 
 harangued the electors against time — a poll was demanded, 
 and one vote was given, which with the votes of the proposer 
 and seconder, gave him three of the voices of the electors of 
 the borough. Just at this stage of the proceedings the hond 
 
 * Query — should this be Athlone ? 
 
72 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 fide candidate arrived. Rigby retired from the hustings, but 
 made no formal resignation of his claims. Fierce raged the 
 contest. There was on both sides a tremendous expenditure 
 of bribery. The election ended in the triumph of the man 
 who bribed the highest; and in due course of time his 
 antagonist petitioned against his return. The sitting member 
 was unseated for gross and corrupt bribery ; but the petitioner 
 was not seated, for bribery to a great extent was clearly 
 proved to have been committed by him also. 
 
 There had been, however, a third candidate, who had 
 committed no bribery — a candidate who had got three votes. 
 The committee accordingly reported that "^^Nicholas Kigby, 
 Esquire," had been duly returned for the borough. This 
 decision astonished the public, who had looked on Rigby's 
 standing for the borough as a mere electioneering ruse, and 
 who, in fact, had forgotten the circumstance in the interest 
 excited by the more important candidates. 
 
 Here was a frolic of fortune. It is not every day that 
 senatorial honours are flung at men's heads, and Kigby 
 determined to make the most of his sudden and unlooked-for 
 elevation. The gentleman as whose locum tenens he had 
 been originally proposed to the electors wrote him a very 
 friendly letter, requesting he would resign his seat, as the 
 writer wished to offer himself again for the borough. But 
 Rigby resolved to keep what he had got. What, resign his 
 seat ? How, in point of justice to his constituents, or con- 
 sistently with his sacred duty to the country, could he 
 surrender the important trust the electors had kindly confided 
 to his hands 1 Forbid it honour ! conscience ! patriotism ! 
 Rigby's friend was compelled to submit to Rigby's virtuous 
 determination. 
 
 Our hero, in the year 1808, published a pamphlet, 
 entitled, "A Sketch of the State of Ireland, Past and 
 Present," in which he bestowed a species of contemptuous 
 advocacy on the Catholic claims. His arguments went to 
 support Emancipation on the ground of its being too 
 insignificant a boon to be worth refusing. He styled it " an 
 almost empty privilege." He held the opinion that Emanci- 
 pation would facilitate conversions to Protestantism. 
 
 " Trade," he wrote, " when free, finds its level. So will 
 religion. The majority will no more persist — when it is not 
 a point of honour to do so — in the worse faith than it would 
 in the worse trade. Councils decide that the Confession of 
 Augsburg is heresy, and Parliaments vote that Popery is 
 
Uncivil Advocacy. 73 
 
 superstition, and both impotently. No man will ever be 
 converted when his religion is also his party. Eut expedient 
 as Catholic Emancipation is, I think it only expedient, and 
 concede it not without the following conditions." 
 
 He then enumerated four conditions, of which the most 
 important were the payment of the priesthood by the State, 
 the approval of the prelates by the Crown, and the dis- 
 franchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders. Curious 
 timidity, that sought these protective conditions, in return 
 for conceding " an almost empty privilege " ! 
 
 It is creditable to our hero that in his " Sketch of the 
 State of Ireland" he has anticipated the aphorism that 
 acquired for the late Under-Secretary Drummond such 
 extensive popularity. " A landlord," said Rigby, *' is not a 
 mere land merchant ; he has duties to perform as well as 
 rents to receive, and from his neglect of the former springs 
 his difficulty in the latter, and the general misery and dis- 
 traction of the country. The combinations of the peasantry 
 against this short-sighted monopoly are natural and fatal." 
 
 Candidly and boldly expressed. This evidence, coming 
 from such a quarter, is worth something. Rigby had pre- 
 viously given an accurate description of the rack-rent system. 
 He, however, took care, more suo, to insult the objects of his 
 advocacy : " The peasantry of Ireland are generally of the 
 Roman Catholic religion, but utterly and disgracefully 
 ignorant ; few of them can read — fewer write." (Thanks to 
 the Protestant Code that had made their education penal — but 
 Rigby does not tell us so.) He goes on: "The Irish 
 language, a barbarous jargon, is generally, and in some districts 
 exclusively, spoken ; and with it are retained customs and 
 superstitions as barbarous. Popish legends and pagan 
 traditions are confounded and revered." He elsewhere calls 
 the people " utterly dark and blind." 
 
 I have mentioned Baron Smith. That wayward func- 
 tionary was a member of the Irish Parliament, and supported 
 the Union with a zeal which in due time was rewarded with 
 elevation to the Bench. In 1799 he issued an ingenious 
 pamphlet, entitled " An Address to the People of Ireland," 
 recommendatory of the Union, He went largely into the 
 question of the competence of Parliament to annihilate itself, 
 which competence most of the anti-Unionists denied. He told 
 the Catholics that he did not know whether an Union would 
 better their chance of admission to the Senate, but suggested 
 that at any rate it would not diminish it. On the question of 
 
74 EigMy-jive Tears of Irish History. 
 
 commercial advantages he availed himself extensively of the 
 petitio prindpii, assuming, as if it were an incontrovertible 
 axiom, that the incorporation of the Legislatures would, ipso 
 facto, incorporate the nations, extinguish their reciprocal 
 jealousies, and identify their interests. How far he was 
 sincere in the profession of these views it would now be 
 useless to inquire. But as a sample of the readiness with 
 which he accepted, or pretended to accept, empty professions 
 for substantial securities, it is not uninteresting to record 
 that he quotes the following passage from a speech of " that 
 enlightened Minister," as he calls him, Mr. Pitt, to prove that 
 Irish commercial and manufacturing interests would sustain 
 no injury after an Union from English rivalry or jealousy : 
 
 "I will say," said Mr. Pitt, "that for a hundred years 
 this country (England) has followed a very narrow policy 
 with regard to Ireland. It manifested a very absurd jealousy 
 concerning the growth, produce, and manufacture of several 
 articles. I say that these jealousies will be buried by the 
 plan (of Union) which is now to be brought before you." 
 Having quoted the above words, Mr. Smith exclaims : *' I 
 can entertain no fears that the statesman who thinks thus 
 liberally and speaks thus frankly, will, after an Union, make 
 the influence of all Irish members submit to the mechanics of 
 a single English town." 
 
 The English policy towards Ireland, described by Mr. 
 Pitt as '* very narrow," has more recently been described by 
 Lord Dufferin in one of his letters to the Times in the 
 following vigorous language : " From Queen Elizabeth's reign 
 to the Union," says Lord Dufferin (he should have said from 
 Queen Elizabeth's reign until 1779), "the various commercial 
 confraternities of Great Britain never for a moment relaxed 
 their relentless grip on the trades of Ireland. One by one, 
 each of our nascent industries was either strangled in its birth, 
 or handed over, gagged and bound, to the jealous custody of 
 the rival interest in England, until at last every fountain of 
 wealth was hermetically sealed." 
 
 But Mr. Pitt's frank and liberal acknowledgment that this 
 policy was " narrow," and his generous promise that an Union 
 would render such narrowness impossible, inspired the 
 confiding breast of Mr. William Smith with implicit and 
 unlimited trust in Great Britain. It is not thus, however, 
 that men bestow their confidence in private life. Suppose, 
 for example, that Brown says to Robinson : " My excellent 
 friend, I acknowledge that I have always robbed and swindled 
 
Commercial Restrictions. 75 
 
 you, I have counter-worked your honest industry, deprived 
 you of a market, and done my utmost to starve your wife 
 and beggar your children. All this, I confess, was very 
 narrow policy. But, my beloved Kobinson, let us henceforth 
 join forces. Give me, O friend of my heart ! the key of your 
 strong box and the control of your estate ; and you shall see 
 with what noble and affectionate generosity I shall treat you 
 for the future." If Brown, having plundered Eobinson, thus 
 addressed him, and if Robinson gave Brown the control of his 
 estate and the key of his strong-box, we should certainly set 
 down Robinson as a lunatic. 
 
 Pitt had admitted the past hostility, which, in truth, was 
 undeniable. The leopard cannot easily change his spots. 
 There was absolutely nothing in the Union to extinguish that 
 hostility. On the contrary, there was everything to increase 
 and perpetuate it. The Union invested our hereditary enemy 
 with legislative power over Ireland. Irish commercial, 
 manufacturing, and trading interests were then prosperous, 
 because the Volunteers had won Free Trade for Ireland 
 in 1779. Prior to that period, the British Parliament, 
 deriving strength from the religious divisions of this country, 
 had usurped the power of enacting prohibitory statutes and 
 enforcing embargoes. British statesmen might calculate that 
 after an Union the destruction of Irish industrial interests, 
 which the prohibitory statutes and embargoes of a former 
 period had achieved, could thenceforth be effected by the 
 enormous hemorrhage of Irish income, whereby Ireland 
 would be deprived at once of her domestic markets, and of 
 the capital which is indispensably necessary to create or 
 perpetuate manufacturing establishments."* 
 
 * The English jealousy of Irish prosperity sometimes peeps out 
 in the shape of an apology for any suggestion that might seem 
 calculated to promote Irish interests. The following appeared in 
 the Dublin Evening Mail in September, 1861: — "The dread of a 
 cotton famine has so demented the Lancastrians that one, writing in 
 their behalf to the Daily Neivs, advises a recourse to Irish linen as 
 a temporary substitute. But the audacity of the proposal is so 
 glaring that an apology is found necessary for counselling anything 
 so desperate. * Without wishing ' (says this friendly gentleman) 
 * in any way to promote Irish interests, I venture to suggest, at this dull 
 season, whether Irish linen might not in many cases be used instead 
 of cotton ? ' If Irish linen could be grown near Glasgow or Preston, 
 there might be no objection ; but to encourage its manufacture on 
 the West of St. George's Channel is only to be justified by the 
 urgent pressure of necessity. Such inadvertent admissions betray 
 the jealousy with which the efforts of this country to achieve a 
 
76 Eighty-jive Years of Irish History. 
 
 Baron Smith did not like the agitators. He got into the 
 habit of introducing political dissertations into his charges to 
 grand juries. A speaker at some public dinner at Tullamore 
 in 1833, had said that ''Catholicity now held aloft her high 
 and palmy head, unshaken by the stormy blasts of persecu- 
 tion." The Baron thought this bombast worth quoting and 
 censuring in one of his charges. He used to come into court 
 at two o'clock in the afternoon ; and, when opening the 
 commission, he carried a vast manuscript, the terror of grand 
 jurors. This was his charge ; and even although his auditors 
 in the grand jury-box might concur in the political views 
 which he announced, yet it is said that they were wont to 
 cast many a weary glance at the ponderous composition, 
 whilst the Baron perused page after page of a document 
 which, to their impatience, appeared to be interminable. 
 
 It should be stated, to the Baron's honour, that as a 
 judge he was humane, considerate, and painstaking. He 
 went to the trouble of studying the Irish language in order 
 to render himself independent of interpreters when witnesses 
 were unable to speak English. Of his views on Catholic 
 Emancipation I cannot speak with certainty. He tells us in 
 his " Address to the People of Ireland " that he supported 
 the Catholic claims in 1795; but it is clear that he con- 
 sidered that the preservation of the State Church Establish- 
 ment and of Protestant ascendency should be carefully 
 provided for in any measure of Catholic concession. I 
 presume he held views on the Catholic question not 
 dissimilar from those expressed by Rigby. 
 
 Advocacy which was blended with a lofty assumption of 
 superiority, or with actual insult, could scarcely be acceptable 
 to the Catholics. This sort of insolent patronage was 
 symptomatic of the general Protestant feeling of contempt 
 for Papists which I have already noticed.* In truth, this 
 was to some extent the fault of the Catholics themselves. I 
 have known a Catholic family of respectable station seize, 
 with alacrity which seemed servile, the proffered acquaintance 
 of Protestant neighbours who, at least in the article of 
 wealth, were in no respect their superiors. Similar instances 
 
 commercial independence for herself are regarded by a great portion 
 of the trading community in England." — Dublin Evening Mail, 
 quoted in the Cork Examiner, 12th September, 1861. 
 
 * I once asked a baron (the eon of an Union peer) whether any 
 of his relatives were Catholics. " Oh, none," he replied, *• except 
 the bastards." 
 
Social Influence of the Penal Laws. 77 
 
 are consistent with my knowledge. A Protestant lady of 
 fashion, angry with a female friend (also a Protestant) for 
 introducing her to some ineligible acquaintance, exclaimed 
 that she Avould avenge the affront by inviting the parish 
 priest to meet the offending fair one at her house. This 
 mode of punishing an affront, by inflicting the parish priest 
 on the offender, was thoroughly expressive of the Protestant 
 estimate of Catholic society. 
 
 Without disparaging the Catholic gentry, it must be 
 owned that as a class they were inferior to the Protestants 
 in all the refinements of polished life. Exceptions, no doubt, 
 there were ; but such was the general fact. The penal laws 
 were the cause of this inferiority. It is uttering an obvious 
 truism to say that the exclusive possession of power, official 
 dignity, and political station, must necessarily have imparted 
 to the habits and manners of the favoured class all the 
 social ease which results from the consciousness of com- 
 mand. Their peculiar advantages placed within their 
 reach every facility of refinement. Their monopoly of so 
 many other valuable things gave them almost a monopoly of 
 civilisation. It was a proverb, even so late as the first 
 quarter of the present century, that you might know a 
 Catholic in the street by his crouching appearance. The 
 iron of the penal laws had entered into the souls of the 
 people, and branded their manners with strong marks of 
 their inferiority. The subservient spirit has long since passed 
 away ; but I am not quite sure that in other respects 
 Catholic society has yet fully acquired the polish which, from 
 the causes already stated, is to be found amongst the upper 
 classes of Protestants. 
 
 On .the other hand, there is no vulgarity so odious, so 
 offensive, so pestilent, as that of the Orange squireen. It is 
 the ingrained vulgarity of mind, of soul, of sentiment. It is 
 the loathsome emanation of " malice, hatred, and all un- 
 charitableness " in all its coarseness and deformity, unchecked 
 and unconcealed by the conventional amenities of civilised 
 life. 
 
 Decipit exemplar imitabile vitlis. 
 
 The squireen class could imitate the bigotry of their betters, 
 but they could not imitate the graces of manner which 
 sometimes invested the aristocratic bigot with something of 
 a chivalrous and dignified air. 
 
 The Irish noUease and leading gentry of the last century 
 
78 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 lived magnificently. The edifices they erected, both in town 
 and country, the scale of their household establishments, 
 their equipages, were magnificent. In their manners there 
 was Fair grand; their very rascality was of magnificent 
 dimensions. There was no paltry peddling about them. 
 You could hardly have found one of them capable of selling 
 himself, like the Scotch Lord Banfi*, for the paltry trifle of 
 eleven guineas. The abandon, the laisser-aller principle was 
 carried amongst them to the greatest extent compatible with 
 social politeness. Whatever was bad, bigoted, or unnational 
 in the aristocracy was duly adopted and improved on by 
 their industrious imitators, the small squires. Whatever 
 tended to mitigate the evils of bigotry was beyond the 
 imitation of the squireen class, because it was beyond their 
 comprehension. How deeply are the Catholics of Ireland 
 indebted to O'Connell for removing from them the galling 
 indignities entailed by their political inferiority to such a 
 thoroughly contemptible class ! 
 
 An amusing volume might be written on the exploits of 
 the Orange squires in Ireland. 
 
 Vulgarity of soul was of course often found among the 
 possessors of thousands a year, as well as of hundreds. The 
 squireen magistracy were a curious generation. While the 
 smaller sort of justices occasionally rendered their judicial 
 decisions auxiliary to the replenishing of their poultry-yards, 
 those whose wealth gave them greater weight were in fre- 
 quent communication with the Castle, recommending "strong 
 measures " to keep down the people, such as the increase of 
 the constabulary or military force, the proclaiming of the 
 disturbed districts, the enforcement of the Insurrection Act, 
 or the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. Complaints against 
 obnoxious individuals were frequently made in these com- 
 munications. The Government were earwigged by the 
 "Loyalists," as the oppressors of the people thought fit 
 to term themselves ; and doubtless many a poor devil who 
 never dreamed of plots or conspiracies, has been indicated 
 to the executive as concerned in revolutionary projects. 
 
 One ludicrous instance of this species of volunteer 
 espionage is deserving of record. The officious informant of 
 the Government flew at higher game than ordinary. He was 
 a magistrate, a grand juror, a man of family and fortune. 
 The object of his attack was also a magistrate and grand 
 jaror, and of lineage and station at least equal to his own. 
 They were both " good Loyalists." The former gentleman 
 
Magisterial Rivalry. 79 
 
 timused his leisure hours with a corps of cavalry yeomanry 
 of which he was captain, and which he seemed to consider 
 indispensable to the stability of British connexion. 
 
 These dignitaries quarrelled with each other. It was a 
 private dispute — I do not know its nature ; perhaps it con- 
 cerned the comparative merits of th'eir foxhounds. The 
 Accusing Angel (whom I shall call Mr. A.) conceived that 
 the most exquisite revenge he could take would be to procure 
 the dismissal of his foe (Mr. B.) from the commission of the 
 peace. 
 
 Mr. A. was in constant communication with the Govern- 
 ment. He wrote frequent letters to the Viceroy or his 
 secretary, expatiating on the demoniac disposition of the 
 people, on the perpetual perils besetting the well-affected, 
 and in especial on his own great merits. The literary 
 qualities of his correspondence must have amused the official 
 critics at Dublin Castle, for his orthography was unfettered 
 by the usual rules, and he sometimes introduced a colloquial 
 oath by way of giving additional emphasis to his statements. 
 His despatches, with some such announcements as these, 
 
 that " By ! the country was in a truly aweful situation" 
 
 — that " they ought to look sharpe to Mr. Murtogh 
 O'Guggerty," etc., had been usually received with such 
 respectful consideration by official persons that at last he 
 began to consider himself all-powerful with the Irish 
 Administration. His correspondence was private and confi- 
 dential ; so that he revelled in the double confidence of 
 power and secrecy. 
 
 He accordingly wrote to apprise the Lord Lieutenant 
 that Mr. B. was a political hypocrite, who, while wearing the 
 outward marks and tokens of loyalty, was destitute of its 
 inward and spiritual graces. One specific accusation, of 
 which I was informed by Mr. B.'s son, was that persons of 
 disloyal politics were hospitably entertained at his father's 
 table. Mr. B. was represented as a dangerous character, who 
 ought promptly to be struck off the list of magistrates. 
 Mr. A. did not entertain a doubt that the return of the post 
 would bring with it a supersedeas for his enemy from the 
 Lord Chancellor ; and he chuckled with anticipated ecstasy 
 over B.'s mortification, and his ignorance of the quarter 
 whence the arrow was aimed. 
 
 Although they had quarrelled, yet they had not quite 
 discontinued their acquaintance. Mr. A., therefore, was not 
 very much astonished when he saw Mr. B. 
 
80 Eighty --five Years of Irish History. 
 
 approaching his house on horseback. "Perhaps," thought 
 he, " B. is coming to make up matters, if he can. I wonder 
 has he heard of his dismissal yet 1 " 
 
 The visitor, seeing the man of the house on his hall-door 
 steps, hastened forward, reached the mansion in a few 
 moments, sprang from his saddle, and, horsewhip in one hand, 
 presented with the other a written paper, saying : 
 
 *' There, sir, is the copy of a document signed with your 
 name, which I have received from Dublin Castle by this 
 morning's post. It foully and falsely accuses me of being a 
 disloyal subject, and demands my dismissal from the magis- 
 tracy. I have come to ask whether you are the author 
 of this rascally document 1 " 
 
 Mr. A. was so thunder-stricken at the suddenness, the 
 total unexpectedness, of such an accusation, that he was 
 quite at a loss what to answer. He stammered out an 
 admission that he had written the letter. 
 
 "Then," said B., "walk into the house this instant^ and 
 write a contradiction of it, which I shall dictate." 
 
 Mr. A. could not choose but comply. B. immediately 
 dictated a very full and unqualified contradiction, which A. 
 duly wrote, and of which, the instant it was written, B. 
 took possession. He then quitted the house with scant 
 ceremony, and despatched to the Chancellor the exculpation 
 he had extorted from his accuser. Of course he was not 
 dismissed from the magistracy. Nor was his accuser dis- 
 missed ; the Government probably attributing his escapade 
 to an exuberance of loyal zeal. 
 
 Of the accusing justice the following anecdote was told 
 me by a beneficed clergyman of the Established Church. 
 His worship had an inveterate habit of profane swearing. 
 At a meeting of magistrates, presided over by the Protestant 
 rector of the parish, who was also a magistrate, he, as usual, 
 gave emphasis to his opinion by a blasphemous oath. The 
 rector, scandalised at the impiety, said : " I shall fine you 
 tenpence, sir, for swearing in Court." 
 
 " Here it is, by ! " said the other, handing up the 
 
 tenpenny-piece (it was before the days of the shillings) and 
 accompanying the coin with a repetition of the blasphemy. 
 
 "Another fin.Q for that," said the rector. The justice 
 tendered a second tenpenny with a similar profane accom- 
 paniment. And so on, the magistrate swearing, and the 
 rector fining him, until he had emitted some eight or ten 
 oaths, and got rid of a corresponding number of tenpennies. 
 
The Zeal of a Pacificator. 81 
 
 His worship probably considered the affair an excellent 
 joke. 
 
 This gentleman was the juror who, at the Cork assizes, 
 presented to the Court, in the character of foreman, the 
 verdict of " guilty," which he had spelled " gilty." 
 
 " That's badly spelled," said the counsel for the defence,'^ 
 who was near the box, and seized the paper in transitu. 
 
 " How shall I mend it ? " inquired the foreman, abashed 
 and confused at this public censure. 
 
 " Put n, o, t, before it," returned the counsel, handing 
 back the paper for the emendation, which the former imme- 
 diately made, in bewildered unconsciousness of the important 
 nature of the change. 
 
 " There — that will do," said the counsel, taking the 
 amended document, and handing up " Not Gilty " to the 
 Court. A fortunate interposition. The juror in question 
 had a mania for hanging. He had, in his impetuous haste, 
 handed in the issue paper without consulting his brethren of 
 the jury-box. But if the prisoner in that instance escaped 
 •death, in how many instances were the miserable victims 
 sacrificed? A verdict of guilty was easily obtained from 
 jurors who belonged to a class that deemed accusation suffi- 
 cient to establish criminality, and with whom the received 
 policy was that of hanging the accused, " to make an 
 example, and to preserve the quiet of the country." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ZEAL OF A PACIFICATOR. 
 
 A maa lie was, to all the country dear. 
 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 Tbere occurred in 1816 an incident strikingly illustrative 
 of the Protestant ascendency policy of making examples to 
 preserve the quiet of the country. 
 
 The gentleman who officiated as peace-preserver on the 
 occasion to which I now allude, was the Rev. John 
 Hamilton, Protestant Curate of Roscrea, in the King's 
 County, and a magistrate. The reverend gentleman had 
 been transplanted to Roscrea from the County Fermanagh. 
 In politics he was an enthusiastic Orangeman ; his per- 
 
 * Harry Deane Grady. 
 
82 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 sonal disposition appears to have been romantic and ad- 
 venturous. 
 
 Mr. Hamilton, on receiving his appointment to the 
 magistracy, promised, as he afterwards boasted, to distin- 
 guish himself by his zeal in discharging the duties of his 
 office. He speedily set about redeeming his promise. The 
 Monaghan militia commanded by Colonel Kerr, were at 
 that time quartered in Roscrea. They were all of red- 
 hot Orange principles ; and it was the familiar practice of 
 the reverend gentleman to obtain from the commanding 
 officer parties of the men, who scoured the country, firing 
 shots, playing party tunes, and thus exhibiting their ardent 
 loyalty in a sort of irregular ovation of perpetual recurrence. 
 But these triumphant feux-de-joie, and the accompanying 
 martial music, could not long furnish serious occupation to a 
 spirit so adventurous as that of the Rev. John Hamilton. 
 
 There resided at Roscrea two highly respectable Catholic 
 distillers, the Messrs. Daniel and Stephen Egan. There was 
 also in that town a rival distiller named Birch, a wealthy 
 Protestant, in whose family the reverend gentleman had 
 officiated as tutor for some time after his appointment as 
 curate. 
 
 It occurred to the Rev. Mr. Hamilton, J. P., to evince his 
 magisterial zeal by implicating the Messrs. Egan in a 
 criminal conspiracy to murder the Protestant gentry of 
 the neighbourhood. He possibly also desired to serve the 
 commercial interests of his patron, Mr. Birch, by getting 
 the rival manufacturers of whisky hanged. He was bust- 
 ling, active, and artful ; and finding in many of his neigh- 
 bours the ready credulity of prejudice, he soon succeeded in 
 creating serious alarm in their minds. He procured the aid 
 of a confederate named Dyer, wlio was groom or stableman 
 in the employment of Mr. Birch (the reverend gentleman's 
 patron) ; and Dyer, being duly drilled by Mr. Hamilton, swore 
 informations, bearing that several persons engaged in the 
 murderous conspiracy aforesaid, occasionally rendezvoused in 
 a valley called the Cockpit, situated in the domain of the 
 Hon. Francis Aldborough Prittie, M.P., for the purpose of 
 concerting their organisation, and also of practising the 
 manoeuvres of military exercise. 
 
 Matters were not yet ripe enough to explode the plot 
 against the Egan family. An assistant for Dyer was procured 
 from Dublin, a dexterous practitioner in informations, named 
 Halfpenny, alias Halpin. Ho was then iu the police, an 
 
An Ingenious Device. 83 
 
 attache of Major Sirr's office. He had, in 1798, displayed great 
 activity as an informer. On this man's arrival at Roscrea, 
 he was taken into the councils of the Rev. Mr. Hamilton. 
 
 That reverend gentleman, his wife, and. Halpin, dressed 
 up a straw figure in a suit of Mr. Hamilton's clothes. They 
 placed this figure in a sitting attitude, at a table in a parlour 
 on the ground floor of Mr. Hamilton's house ; its back was 
 turned towards the window; on the table before it was ex- 
 panded a large Bible ; a pair of candles stood upon the 
 table, From without, the appearance of the pantomime was 
 precisely that of the reverend pastor of the Roscrea Pro- 
 testants, deeply immersed in the study of the AVord of God. 
 The scenic illusion in the parlour being thus prepared, the 
 reverend gentleman furnished a pistol to Halpin, who, with 
 Dyer, had received his instructions to fire through the window 
 at the stuffed figure. A man named Quinlan was inveigled 
 to join the shooting party. Dyer and Halpin, in obedience 
 to Mr. Hamilton's injunctions, fired through the sash at that 
 reverend gentleman's straw representative, the window 
 shutters having been left open for that purpose. The figure 
 was hit in the back with a bullet — the Bible was dislodged 
 — two bullets struck the opposite wall. 
 
 Dire was the commotion that instantly prevailed through 
 the town. The shout rang from mouth to mouth that the 
 excellent pastor had been fired at whilst studying the Bible. 
 He had escaped — hurrah ! — by the special interposition of 
 Providence. His preservation was, doubtless, miraculous; 
 but who could say that the same overriding care would be 
 vouchsafed to the other Protestant inhabitants, whose lives 
 were equally menaced by the Popish conspiracy which had 
 thus been mercifully baulked of its first intended victim % The 
 Protestants clearly must defend themselves. 
 
 The drums beat to arms. Parties of the Monaghan 
 militia paraded the streets. , In half-an-hour the Messrs. 
 Egan, who were quietly sitting with some friends, were 
 arrested by a piquet, and conveyed to the guard-house, 
 where they were detained for a whole night on a charge of 
 conspiring to murder the Rev. Mr. Hamilton. These events 
 all took place on the night of the 28th December, 1815. 
 
 I«[ext morning the two Egans were bailed out with great 
 difficulty by the strenuous exertions of their friends. For 
 some days a calm succeeded, interrupted only by the 
 occasional nocturnal visits of Mr. Hamilton and the police 
 to Mr. Egan's house, under pretext of searching for arms. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 It was surmised — I pretend not to say with what truth — 
 that the Government felt rather disinclined to follow up the 
 prosecution in consequence of the excellent character always 
 borne by the parties accused. But Lord Norbury and the 
 Earl of Eosse so vehemently urged the prosecution, that the 
 scruples, if any, of the Government were overruled. A fresh 
 witness to sustain the accusation was procured in the person 
 of one Hickey, brother-in-law of the first witness, Dyer. 
 
 Meanwhile, the rampant delight of the Orange inhabitants 
 of Roscrea was evinced in the most noisy and extravagant 
 manner. Colonel Kerr was an active partisan of the Rev. 
 Mr. Hamilton. He permitted the tattoo to be beaten through 
 the town every evening, the drums being followed by a large 
 military escort, at whose head the reverend gentleman osten- 
 tatiously strutted, arrayed in an orange cloak, and wearing 
 round his waist a belt studded with pistols. This melo- 
 dramatic exhibition was enlivened by such tunes as " Boyne 
 Water," and ''Protestant Boys," played on the military 
 fifes. 
 
 On the morning following the attack on the stuffed 
 figure, the Hon. Mr. Prittie, son of Lord Dunally, visited 
 the Rev. Mr. Hamilton to inquire the particulars, and asked 
 him whether his (Mr. H.'s) son had not had a great escai3e 1 
 
 " Yes, sir," replied Mr. Hamilton. 
 
 '•' Where were you sitting,^' demanded Mr. Prittie, " ichen 
 the slwt was fired at you ? " 
 
 " There, sir" answered Mr. Hamilton, pointing to a table 
 in the room. Mr. Hamilton thus sought to confirm Mr. 
 Prittie in the belief which that gentleman had, in common 
 with the public, then adopted — namely, ihat the shot had 
 been actually fired at himself. This attempt at deception 
 should be carefully borne in mind, because it neutralises the 
 defence which the reverend gentleman set up for his conduct 
 at a subsequent stage of the affair. 
 
 On the nth of January, 1816, the Messrs. Egan were 
 arrested under a warrant of the Rev. Mr. Hamilton's. They 
 Avere placed in the custody of a party of soldiers and marched 
 to the inn, where they found some eight or ten persons in 
 custody on the charge of being also involved in the murderous 
 conspiracy. The last-named parties were confined for the 
 night in the guard room. 
 
 At ten o'clock on the following forenoon all the prisoners 
 set out for Clonmel, which is forty miles distant from Roscrea, 
 escorted by a largo ])ody of military and police. The Egans 
 
An Insidious Suggestion. 85 
 
 travelled in a chaise which proceeded at a footpace ; the other 
 prisoners walked, handcuffed, after the carriage. The first 
 day's journey was to Templemore. It was rendered extremely 
 fatiguing by the slowness of the pace and the inclemency of 
 the weather. The rain poured down in torrents, and the 
 prisoners, on arriving at Templemore, were conducted to a 
 miserable den without a fireplace, appropriately named the 
 Black Hole, in which they would have spent the night but 
 for the humane interposition of Sir John Garden, who 
 obtained for them the accommodation of the inn. 
 
 Next day they proceeded to Cashel, where they were 
 consigned to a small, dreary, damp apartment, without any 
 sort of furniture. They applied for permission to occupy 
 the inn, but met a refusal on the plea that the disturbed 
 state of the country would render compliance dangerous. It 
 was, however, resolved to forward them at once to Clonmel. 
 
 A curious incident occurred within a few miles of that 
 town. Two of the escort appeared to quarrel with each 
 other, and in the course of the dispute they fell from their 
 horses. The steeds, released from their riders, ran away, 
 and the whole escort, with the exception of a single police- 
 man, made off in pursuit of them. The solitary guard ap- 
 proached the Egans and strenuously urged them to escape. 
 *' I will follow my comrades," said he, " in pursuit of the 
 runaway horses, and you can then act as you please." But 
 the prisoners, apprehensive of some trick, rejected the 
 advice thus urgently offered, and quietly awaited the return 
 of the party of police. 
 
 Arrived at Clonmel, they were met in jail by the Rev. 
 Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Corker Wright,* a magistrate, who 
 had sedulously interested himself in the prosecution. Mr. 
 Wrigiit on the following morning visited the prisoners, 
 
 * This Mr. Corker Wright's house, near Shinrone, was the scene 
 of a bloody tragedy in 1815. A party had been got up to attack the 
 house, it is supposed with his knowledge, and arranged by his 
 steward, Hoey. At all events, the plan was fully known before it 
 was acted upon ; for a party of soldiers were in the house awaiting 
 the assailants, in company with whom it is alleged that they marched 
 for a part of the way. Arriving before the assailants, the soldiers 
 were stationed on the stairhead. The aggressors entered without 
 any opposition. One of them, lighting a candle, exposed the whole 
 party to the soldiers, who immediately fired and killed them all. 
 Kot a man was left to disclose the agency by which the attack was 
 concerted. The bodies were paraded on cars through the neigh- 
 bouring villages on the following day, as trophies of the victory 
 obtained by Mr. Corker Wright. 
 
86 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 affecting great friendliness, and strongly advised them to 
 confess all they knew of the "conspiracy," promising to 
 exert his influence to procure their pardon. Of course an 
 indignant disclaimer of all knowledge of any conspiracy was 
 the only reply elicited hy this treacherous suggestion. The 
 Egans were then invited to see the various apartments of 
 the jail. In one room they were shown the hangman 
 busily preparing ropes for the next execution. But this 
 sight failed to scare them into the false and foolish act of 
 self-crimination. 
 
 In a few days the special commission -was opened by 
 Lord Norbury and Baron George. The Crown Prosecutor 
 was Charles Kendal Bushe, then Solicitor-General, and 
 afterwards Lord Chief Justice. The public augured very 
 gloomily for the prisoners when it was known that Lord 
 Norbury was to try the case. Norbury had a terrible 
 reputation for severity. "We'll have great hanging next 
 assizes — Lord Norbury's to come," was a phrase that 
 familiarly heralded his lordship's approach to assize towns 
 on the circuit. 
 
 Two witnesses came from Eoscrea to bear testimony to 
 the excellent character of the Egans. One of these was the 
 Eev. Mr. L'Estrange, Protestant Eector of Eoscrea. The 
 other was a Protestant layman, Mr. William Smith, who 
 informed the prisoners that shortly previous to the firing at 
 the straw parson through the window, he had been present 
 at a dinner-party given by Mr. Birch, of Eoscrea, at the 
 Eev. Mr. Hamilton's instance. It was there stated that the 
 Egans were accused, on Dyer's sworn informations, of 
 drilling men in the domain of the Hon. Mr. Prittie, for 
 treasonable purposes ; and Mr. Smith was then told that he 
 should be apprised of the mode in which it was intended to 
 proceed against them, provided that he took an oath to keep 
 secret the particulars. Mr. Smith rejected this condition, 
 stating his conviction that the Egans were incapable of the 
 imputed criminal acts; and that, to his own personal 
 knowledge, Dyer had sworn falsely, inasmuch as the Egans 
 were in another place at the very time when they were 
 sworn by that person to have been drilling men in Mr. 
 Prittie's grounds. 
 
 Dyer was of course the principal witness. He gave his 
 evidence with great self-possession and dexterity. He 
 deposed to several meetings for military exercise in Mr. 
 Prittie's domain. He was obliged to confess, on cross- 
 
Failure of the Conspiracy. 87 
 
 •examination, that he was in receipt of five shillings a week 
 for suppressing his evidence against one Francis Cotton,"*^ 
 on a trial in which the said Cotton had been charged with 
 the murder of a man named Quigley. The admission of 
 his own infamy in compounding the felony of murder, 
 necessarily deprived his evidence against the Egans of 
 weight with the jury. Contradictions in his testimony were 
 also elicited on cross-examination. 
 
 The Rev. John Hamilton was the next witness. The 
 trick of the stuffed figure had transpired, and as he knew 
 that a cross-examination on the subject awaited him, he 
 resolved to put a bold face on the matter. Accordingly, in 
 his direct evidence, he spoke of the effigy as a stratagem, 
 employed for the purpose of ascertaining if Dyer's previous 
 informations were true; but on his cross-examination he 
 was constrained to admit that he had left the Government, 
 as well as several of his brother magistrates, under the 
 impression that the firing at the effigy was an actual firing 
 .at his person. The reader will remember that, when Mr. 
 Prittie, on the morning following the attack on the straw 
 figure, said to the Rev. Mr. Hamilton, in that gentleman's 
 house, "AVhere were you sitting lulien the shot was fired at 
 you ? '* Mr. Hamilton answered, " There, sir," pointing to 
 a table in the room, and thus attempting to confirm, in 
 Mr. Prittie's mind, the belief that he had been actually 
 £ied at. 
 
 When the reverend gentleman's testimony closed, the 
 •court-house rang with execrations, and the judges had some 
 -difficulty in restoring order. 
 
 Halpin, and Dyer's brother-in-law, Hickey, were next 
 examined. Halpin gave his evidence with the composure 
 and readiness of an expert informer. He inculpated Quinlan 
 in the guilt of firing at Mr. Hamilton's effigy, under the 
 belief that the effigy was the reverend gentleman himself. 
 Hickey's evidence tended to exonerate Quinlan from having 
 iired ; but he swore that Mr. Stephen Egan had administered 
 to him an oath to assist any one who should attempt to take 
 Mr. Hamilton's life. 
 
 The infamous nature of the prosecution being manifest, 
 the jury, without the least hesitation, unanimously acquitted 
 the prisoners. Lord Norbury, deprived of an opportunity 
 of hanging anybody, escaped from the Court under the 
 
 * This Cotton, and also Djer, were subseq[uently in the employ- 
 jnent of Mr. Birch, the distiller, at Roscrea. 
 
88 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 pretext of sudden indisposition, leaving Baron George alone 
 on the bench. 
 
 Dyer, with the concurrence of the learned Baron, was 
 placed in the dock by the order of the Solicitor-General, and 
 indicted for wilful and corrupt perjury. But the grand jury, 
 thinking, perhaps, that he might be useful on sorae future 
 occasion, committed the disgraceful act of ignoring the Bill.* 
 
 The liberated prisoners were warmly congratulated by 
 their numerous friends. They had a narrow escape. Had 
 the Rev. Mr. Hamilton's dexterity of execution been equal 
 to the ingenuity of his invention, it would have fared hardly 
 with them. He wanted only the opportunity to become 
 a second Titus Gates. It was a romantic experiment, 
 doubtless — that of the Orange divine who 
 
 Stuffed a figure of himself — 
 
 Delicious thought ! — and had it shot at, 
 
 To bring some Papists to the shelf, 
 Who could not otherwise be got at.f 
 
 The Egans on their return were obliged to enter Roscrea 
 by a back lane, in order to avoid the sanguinary ferocity of 
 about one hundred of the Monaghan militia who had turned 
 out, half intoxicated, ready for a desperate riot. There 
 were also a large number of Orangemen, armed and pre- 
 pared for mischief, who excited alarm by firing squibs 
 through the town. Colonel Kerr was with some difficulty 
 induced, by the strong remonstrance of a military gentleman, 
 to draw the soldiers into the barracks. Mr. Hamilton 
 published a pamphlet in his own vindication. He ex- 
 patiated on his magisterial zeal — on the innocent nature of 
 the exploit of getting men to fire at the effigy, which exploit, 
 he loudly protested, was merely an ingenious device resorted 
 to with the view of ascertaining whether designs against his 
 life were really harboured by the persons whom Dyer had 
 accused. He disclaimed having represented to the Govern- 
 ment that the firing at the effigy was a firing at his own 
 person; he alleged that he had made Major Sirr privy to 
 the trick, and that he had requested the Major to convey 
 that information to the Castle authorities. If he did so at 
 all, it was somewhat of the latest. 
 
 * In 1844 Dyer was still living at Roscrea; he was then old, and 
 Feemed penitent for his former awful crimes. The witness Hickey 
 was sent out of the country on the failure of Hamilton's plot by the 
 parties who employed him, and is supposed to have gone to America. 
 
 t "Fudge Family in Paris." 
 
Virtuous Agonies of George IV. 89 
 
 The most amusing part of Mr, Hamilton's pamphlet is his 
 solemn complaint that the Messrs. Egan showed no gratitude 
 to Colonel Kerr. He was also dissatisfied with Peel, who 
 was then Irish Secretary. " It is evident," says the ill-used 
 clergyman, " that Mr. Peel's sole object was to vindicate 
 the Lord Chancellor for not superseding me, and that he had 
 no wish to defend me on my own account." 
 
 One would think that Mr. Peel, in all conscience, had 
 quite enough to do to palliate the retention of such a person 
 in the magistracy, without entering on a defence of his 
 machinations against the Egan family. 
 
 My account of the transactions described in this chapter 
 is derived from a manuscript narrative lent me by one of the 
 Egan family. Alderman Egan of Dublin, and a pamphlet 
 published by the Kev. Mr. Hamilton. 
 
 When we look back upon those dreary times ; when we 
 contemplate the social and political depression of the 
 Catholics, and the supremacy of their enemies in all the 
 departments of the State ; when we think of the enormous 
 influence possessed by a virulent faction ; the vast array of 
 selfish interest, deeply-rooted prejudice, and impenetrable 
 ignorance, which had to be encountered and overcome ; it is 
 difficult to form an adequate estimate of the political merits 
 of that leader whose voice inspired the timid and spiritless, 
 whose sagacity restrained the intemperate and rash, and 
 whose influence combined together the millions in that 
 memorable organisation which wrung from reluctant bigotry 
 the concession of the Catholic rights. O'Connell stated that 
 a majority of the very House of Commons which in 1829 
 enacted Emancipation, had been returned in 1826 on pledges 
 to resist that measure. As to the King, Lord Eldon has 
 portrayed His Majesty's virtuous agonies at being compelled 
 to give the royal assent to the Eelief Bill. " What can I 
 do ?" exclaimed the disconsolate monarch. "What can I 
 now fall back upon? I am miserable — wretched. My 
 situation is dreadful — nobody about me to advise with. If 
 I do give my assent I'll go to the baths abroad, and from 
 thence to Hanover ; I'll return no more to England ; I'll 
 make no Roman Catholic peers — I will not do what this Bill 
 will enable me to do — I'll return no more. Let them get a 
 
 Catholic King in Clarence The people will see that I 
 
 did not wish this." 
 
 The Great Agitator triumphed, pro hue vicCy over King, 
 Lords, and Commons. 
 
^0 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 ANTI-TITHE AGITATION OF 1831-2. 
 
 He vowed before the captive's God to break the captive's chain, 
 To bind the broken heart, and set the captive free again. 
 
 Anon. 
 
 O'Connell's transition from the lawyer to tlie statesman was 
 a change for which his long course of political agitation had 
 prepared him. He intimately knew the people whom he 
 was now to combine for the revival of the national Legis- 
 lature, and whose scattered strength he was to consolidate. 
 The Catholic Association was pronounced to be an imperium 
 in imperio of vast magnitude and influence. And so it truly 
 was. Eut the Repeal Association which O'Connell founded 
 •on the 15th of April, 1840, gradually swelled to larger dimen- 
 sions than its predecessor. In 1843 it surpassed the Catholic 
 Association in the number of its members, in the extent of 
 its funds, in the steady enthusiasm of its friends, and in the 
 exquisite perfection of detail with which its organisation 
 reached every nook and corner of the country. 
 
 The sentiment of nationality had ever been a ruling idea 
 in O'Connell's mind. It broke forth at first in his memorable 
 declaration prior to the passing of the Union, that he would 
 rather behold the re-enactment of the penal code than con- 
 sent to the destruction of the Irish Parliament. "With that 
 declaration most of his subsequent acts have been consistent. 
 That he who fleshed his maiden sword in opposition to the 
 Union should devote his matured abilities to the repeal of 
 that measure was naturally to be expected. He struck the 
 right chord ; the sympathies of his countrymen responded. 
 In September and October, ] 830, he addressed four letters to 
 the Irish public on the subject of Repeal. Those letters 
 produced a deep and general sensation ; and if public ad- 
 hesion to the cause was not then as universally declared as at 
 a later period, the reason why men paused was the great 
 magnitude of the measure, which led even those who most 
 ardently desired it to fear that it was impracticable. 
 
 O'Connell's appeal to his countrymen was readily re- 
 sponded to. But it is a total mistake to suppose that such 
 response originated solely in the leader's influence. It 
 originated in the deeply-rooted conviction in men's minds 
 that they were the worse for the suppression of their native 
 
Opposition to Tithes. 91 
 
 Legislature and -would be the better for its restoration. 
 What O'Connell openly uttered every man had felt before. 
 The leader did no more than rehearse the popular sentiment. 
 
 By-and-by public meetings began to spring up in different 
 quarters. The opposition to the tithe-impost at that time 
 convulsed every parish in the land ; and the two great 
 questions of the Repeal of the Union and the Disendowment 
 of the State Church were soon agitated together on nearly 
 every rural platform. 
 
 The landlords in great numbers espoused the anti-tithe 
 cause. Protestantism they affectionately loved, but the 
 cheaper they could have it the better. Best of all if they 
 could enjoy it gratis. I knew in 1823 a landlord of Con- 
 servative politics in collusion with his own Catholic tenant 
 to defeat the exorbitant demands of the rector. The reverend 
 gentleman claimed his tithe ; but the landlord, by collusive 
 distresses for rent, contrived for some time to outwit him. 
 The landlord, disgusted at the grasping propensities of the 
 rector, dropped his acquaintance, and the alienation con- 
 tinued for some years. It is said that the same landlord lay 
 in ambush with a gun to shoot the parson's proctor, Avho 
 presumed to enter his Protestant premises in order to make a 
 valuation of the growing crops, and that the angry gentleman 
 was only restrained from some deed of violence by the strong 
 remonstrances of a friend on the consequences which the act 
 must have entailed on the perpetrator. I knew all the 
 parties. The anecdote was given me as a fact ; but I think 
 it must have originated in an angry threat which was inter- 
 preted too literally. Even thus modified, the story indicates 
 a feeling of rage against the tithe system. In fact, a great 
 proportion of the Protestant proprietary hated that system as 
 intensely as the Catholics did ; as intensely as it had been 
 hated by their own Protestant predecessors, the members of 
 the Irish House of Commons, who in 1735 passed the 
 memorable Agistment Resolution that exempted all pasture- 
 lands from the claims of the State clergy, and threw the 
 burden of tithe exclusively on tillage.* 
 
 * This Eesolution is generally described as having thrown the 
 burden of tithes from the Protestant aristocracy on the Catholic 
 tenantry. It indeed relieved the owner of pasture-land; but this 
 relief imposed no additional burden on the owner of tillage. The 
 man who tilled his land paid neither more nor less tithe after than 
 ■before the passing of the Agistment Eesolution. Moreover, tillage, 
 in the early part of the eighteenth century, was so little practised 
 in Ireland that the Legislature, not twenty years previously to the 
 
92 Eighty-five Tears of Irish Eist&ry, 
 
 " Do-vvn with the tithes," then, was the cry of many a 
 Protestant landlord in 18'31 and 1832. With some it was a 
 purely selfish cry — a cry of men who simply preferred not 
 ])aying money to paying it, and who dignified their conduct 
 Avith the sounding phrases of "indignant resistance to an. 
 unjust and abominable impost," "sympathy in the sufferings 
 of a Catholic people compelled to pay a Protestant priesf}- 
 hood," and similar expressions of generous and lofty principle. 
 Unjust and abominable was the impost, doubtless ; and a 
 flagrant spoliation of the Catholics, from whom the Church 
 property had originally been torn, and on whom, consequently, 
 the support of two Churches was thrown by the egregious 
 malversation of the ecclesiastical State revenues ; but the 
 animus of some of the anti-tithe landlords in 1832 was rather 
 selfish than national. Many, however, were actuated by a 
 purer motive. 
 
 There was another section of the Protestant landlords, 
 more important in respect of their wealth and position, and 
 including many of the nobility, who rallied round the parsons 
 at their utmost need, paid their own tithes, compelled (where 
 they could) their tenants to pay theirs, and entered into large 
 subscriptions to enable the parsons to recover all arrears by 
 legal process. 
 
 The anti-national Church Establishment, thus supported 
 at home, and backed from without by the power of England, 
 outlived a storm of well-earned popular vengeance that shook 
 every stone and timber in the edifice. It -vvas an institution 
 totally indefensible on any ground of justice, honesty, or 
 common sense. The remark is now trite that Ireland is the 
 only country on the face of the earth, in which the whole 
 ecclesiastical State revenues have been grasped by the pastors 
 of a small fractional part of the population. Such a monstrous 
 outrage on the great principles of equity, and on the great 
 majority of any nation, may be elsewhere vainly sought, either 
 in or out of Christendom. In truth, it was an outrage which, 
 no thoroughly free country would submit to for a single day. 
 It has now been disestablished and partially disendowed; but 
 what is termed its disendowment has been so adroitly 
 managed, that the tithes, under the name of tithe rent-charge, 
 
 extinction of tithe of agistment, had passed a law to compel every 
 occupier of a hundred acres to keep at least five acres tilled. 
 Grazing was general, and the Catholic tenant who grazed his land 
 partook of the exemption secured to pasture by the Resolution 
 of 1735. 
 
Political Object of the State Church. 93 
 
 still remain an oppressive burden on the landed property of 
 Ireland. 
 
 The anti-Irish State Church has been so important a factor 
 in Irish affairs, that a short retrospective view of its origin, of 
 the objects of its authors, and of the results of its establish- 
 ment, becomes necessary in a general sketch of the condition 
 of Ireland. 
 
 Bacon recommended the "princelie policie" of fomenting 
 the internal divisions of the Irish people as a means to facili- 
 tate their subjugation. It was ^^ Divide et impera" A more 
 effective mode of carrying out this policy could scarcely be 
 devised than the violent confiscation of the old Catholic 
 ecclesiastical State revenues of the kingdom, and the trans- 
 ference of those revenues to an alien hierarchy, chiefly im- 
 ported from England, and whose mission, accredited by the 
 English Government, was to uproot, if they could, the ancient 
 creed of the people whose Church property had been seized 
 by the apostles of the new religion. 
 
 Whether that religion was right or wrong, I do not here 
 discuss. I have only to do with its political results. The 
 Irish were universally Catholics in the sixteenth century, as 
 their ancestors had been from the days of Saint Patrick. 
 Spenser, writing in 1596, says: "They be all papists by 
 profession." The Rev. Maziere Brady has shown by the 
 evidence of the highest Elizabethan functionaries,* that the 
 instruments of the new apostolate were "fines, imprison- 
 ments, tortures, and death, unscrupulously employed by the 
 ecclesiastical as well as the civil agents in that alleged refor- 
 mation." '^oi was their violence accompanied by the ascetic 
 virtues which might have given an air ol sincerity to the 
 boisterous apostleship of the agents of the Reformation. 
 Spenser deplores their immorality ; he says : 
 
 " The clergy there (excepting the grave Fathers which are 
 in high place about the State, and some few others which 
 are lately planted in their new college) are generally bad, 
 licentious, and most disordered." — Vi'eio of the State of 
 Ireland. 
 
 Sir William Drury (April 16th, 1577) mentions "the 
 students of Ireland that are in Louvain, and come from 
 thence." At that time our ecclesiastical students were under 
 the necessity of seeking their education in foreign lands ; and 
 when they returned to keep the lamp of religion from extinc- 
 
 * Preface to " State Papers concerning the Irish Church in the 
 Time of Queen Elizabeth," edited by the Rev. Maziere Brady. 
 
94 Eirjlity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 tion in their own country, they did so at the risk of their 
 lives. Spenser marvels at their zeal, and in a well-known 
 passage contrasts it with the sloth of the Reformed ministers. 
 
 *'It is," he says, "great wonder to see the odds which is 
 between the zeal of Popish priests, and the ministers of the 
 Gospel ; for they spare not to come out of Spain, from 
 Eome, and from Remes, by long toil and dangerous travel- 
 ling hither, lohere they know peril of death awaiteth them, 
 and no reward or riches is to be found, only to draw the 
 people into the Church of. Rome ; whereas some of our idle 
 ministers, having a way for credit and estimation thereby 
 opened unto them, without pains, and without peril, will 
 neither for the same, nor any love of God, nor zeal of 
 Religion, nor for all the good they may do by winning souls 
 to God, be drawn forth from their warm nests to look out 
 into God's harvest, which is even ready for the sickle, and 
 all the fields yellow long ago." * 
 
 The comparative ideas of religious toleration respectively 
 held by the Irish Catholics and the Protestant Government 
 in Spenser's time, are incidentally revealed in the above 
 passage. The Catholic priests were in "peril of death'' 
 from Protestant intolerance, while the Protestant ministers 
 could, had they so pleased, have assailed the old faith of the 
 kingdom " without peril " from Catholic violence. It is, 
 and always has been, a glorious trait in the character of our 
 Catholic countrymen that their unshaken fidelity to their 
 own religion is associated with the utmost tolerance of the 
 religion of others. 
 
 Spenser says the Protestant preachers could " do small 
 good " in converting the Irish, until the Irish " be restrained 
 from sending their young men abroad to other universities 
 beyond the sea, as Remes, Doway, Lovain, and the like." 
 
 A religion which emanated from England, and which 
 was enforced in Ireland by " fines, imprisonments, tortures, 
 and death," was naturally productive of two important con- 
 sequences. It excited the abhorrence of the people to whom 
 it was introduced by this species of sanguinary apostleship ; 
 and its position as a new and hostile element in Irish 
 politics inevitably generated in its followers a strong anti- 
 national sentiment, which is unfortunately inherited by too- 
 many of their successors at the present time. 
 
 In truth, no other results could have been reasonably 
 expected. The new clergy, subsidised with the spoils 
 * Spenser's View of the State o/IreZo7vd,pp. 210, 211,12mo edition, 1750, 
 
The English Church in Ireland. 95 
 
 •wrenched from the old Church, could not, by the most 
 tortuous exercise of sophistical ingenuity, have contrived to 
 consider themselves anything else than intruders. When 
 they looked around they saw a flock by whom their ministry 
 ■was repudiated. Looking over to England they there beheld 
 the power that sustained them in possession of the spoils of 
 the Irish Catholic Church, in defiance of the natural resent- 
 ment of the Irish Catholic population. Occupying such a 
 position, it was inevitable that their affections should be 
 given to England who supported their usurpation, and with- 
 drawn from the Irish people to whom that usurpation was 
 abhorrent. In November^ 1626, the assembled Protestant 
 hierarchy, having successfully ousted the Catholic Church 
 from its ancient temporalities, issued the following declara- 
 tion against tolerating the creed of the people they had 
 robbed : 
 
 " The religion of the Papists is superstitious and idola- 
 trous j tlieir faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical j their 
 Church, in respect of both, apostatical. To give them, 
 therefore, a toleration, or to consent that they may freely 
 exercise their religion, and profess their faith and doctrine, 
 is a grievous sin ; and that in two respects : for, first, it is to 
 make ourselves accessory not only to their superstitions, 
 idolatries, and heresies, and, in a word, to all the abomina- 
 tions of Popery; but also (which is a condition of the 
 former) to the perdition of the seduced people which perish 
 in the deluge of the Catholic apostasy." 
 
 In its nature the English Church thus established in 
 Ireland was a potent engine of national discord. The 
 practice which from the date of its origin had prevailed 
 of largely importing English clergymen to occupy its bene- 
 fices, excited the wrath of the Protestant settlers, who had 
 got confiscated estates, and who deemed themselves entitled 
 to monopolise Church patronage for the benefit of their 
 families. Ecclesiastical incomes were in many cases rendered 
 more attractive because they did not involve the necessity of 
 residence. The incumbents were frequently non-resident. 
 In many instances they had the excellent plea for non- 
 residence afforded by the fact that their parishes contained 
 no Protestants. They had no flocks requiring their ministry, 
 and they knew that their prospects of preferment would be 
 bettered by residence in Dublin. 
 
 Pluralities were numerous. In 1764 the County Clare 
 contained seventy-six parishes, of which sixty-two were 
 
96 E'ujhty-jice Years of Irish History. 
 
 sinecures. The whole seventy-six parishes paid tithe to 
 fourteen rectors, many of whom habitually lived in the 
 metropolis. No doubt they never were missed by their 
 Catholic parishioners. Without the slightest disparagement 
 of the many excellent persons belonging to the Anglican 
 religion, it cannot be denied that its existence as a State 
 Church in Ireland was a grim burlesque on ecclesiastical 
 establishments. 
 
 But the grim burlesque was so useful to the policy of 
 divide et impera that in 1800 its preservation was specially 
 provided for as an article of the Union ; and the Union was 
 defended on the express groimd that it would render the 
 grim burlesque impregnable. That nine or ten per cent, of 
 the inhabitants of Ireland should style their Church the 
 Irish Church was ludicrous. Mr. Under-Secretary Cooke 
 accordingly argued that an Union would remove the anomaly 
 by incorporating the people of this kingdom with their 
 English neighbours, and thus converting the Irish Catholic 
 majority into an Imperial Catholic minority. " With the 
 Union," said he, " Ireland would be in a nahtral sitaaHon ; 
 for all the Protestants of the Empire being united, she 
 would have the proportion of fourteen to three in favour of 
 her [Church] Establishment, whereas at present there is a 
 proportion of three to one against it." 
 
 This is a good sample of Unionist reasoning. The 
 autonomy of Ireland was to be demolished, and her vital 
 rights were to be trampled in the dust, in order to per- 
 petuate the oppressive ascendency of the alien Church 
 Establishment. And this monstrous subversion of all 
 national and moral right was called putting Ireland in " a 
 natural situation." The Catholics, however, could not see 
 th.it the wicked suppression of the Irish Parliament ren- 
 dered it a whit less dishonest to tax them for Protestant 
 purposes. 
 
 riie practice of bringing over Englishmen to enjoy the 
 ecclesiastical revenues of Ireland had been to a great extent 
 discontinued during the present century ; and the State 
 Church became a fruitful preserve for the junior members of 
 the Irish landed aristocracy. Before the Composition Acts 
 came into force the income divided among the ministers, 
 great and small, of the Establishment, was probably a 
 million per annum. After the enactment of the 1st and 2nd 
 Victoria, chapter 109, which converted the tithe into a rent- 
 charge, payable by the landlords to the rectors, and recover- 
 
Protestant Nationality. 97 
 
 able by them from the tenants, the gross income of the State 
 Church has been calculated by the Eev. Maziere Erady at 
 £700,000 per anunm. 
 
 Before I come to the period of Disestablishment, I wish 
 to note some instances in which nobility of heart, and the 
 instinct of honourable nationality, enabled Irish Protestants 
 to escape from the demoralising influence of an establishment 
 which was eminently calculated to make its followers bad 
 Irishmen. Foremost among these stands Henry G rattan, a 
 Protestant, whose belief Avas sincere and fervent, and who 
 declared that his first and last passion was his native country. 
 The fact was, that Home Legislation, except where English 
 intrigue corrupted it, had the strongest tendency to generate 
 national feeling among the Irish Protestants ; and national 
 feeling gravitated towards the inclusion of the Catholics in 
 all constitutional privileges. Among the Protestant friends 
 of Catholic Emancipation must be reckoned Plunket, Sir 
 Lawrence Parsons, the Protestant Eishop of Derry,* Curran, 
 Wolfe Tone, Valentine Lord Cloncurry, Lord Edward Eitz- 
 gerald, the Emmetts, Arthur O'Connor, Hamilton Rowan; 
 the Eelfast Volunteers, who, so far back as 1783, had 
 instructed their deputies to the Dublin Convention to 
 support the unqualified emancipation of the Catholics ; f the 
 numerous Protestants in the body of United Irishmen ; the 
 students of the Protestant University of Dublin, who, in 
 their noble address to Grattan in April, 1795, expressed 
 their hope "that the harmony and strength of Ireland will 
 be founded on the solid basis of Catholic Emancipation ; " 
 and, I may add, on the authority of Earl Fitzwilliam, a 
 majority of the Protestants of Ireland, many of whom asked 
 for, and few in 1795 opposed, the repeal of all the then 
 remaining Catholic disqualifications. Such was the state of 
 good feeling, fraught with the promise of national prosperity 
 and happiness, which was destroyed by the machinations of 
 Pitt and his agents. 
 
 * Earl of Bristol in the English peerage. 
 
 + " Life of Wolfe Tone," p. 50 (M'Cormick's edition). Tone states 
 (p. 77) that twelve Belfast citizens subscribed £250 each to establish 
 a journal called the Northern Star, in which Catholic Emancipation 
 was advocated. 
 
98 Eiglity-jive Tears of Irish History. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE DISESTABLISHMENT CAMPAIGX. 
 
 " I well remember a phrase used by one not a foe to Church 
 Establishments — I mean Mr. Burke : ' Don't talk of its being a 
 Church! It is a wholesale robbery!'" — Lord Brougham (1838), 
 on the Anti-Irish Church. 
 
 I HAVE recorded the general outbreak against tithes in the 
 years 1831 and 1832. The English Parliament gave the 
 anti-Irish State Church a new lease of its life by transferring 
 the liability of payment from the occupying tenant to his 
 immediate landlord. The Act (1st and 2nd Victoria, chapter 
 109) to which I have already adverted, empowered the land- 
 lord to recover the tithe rent-charge from the tenant in the 
 shape of additional rent. This was sometimes done. There 
 were numerous instances in which it could not be done; 
 instances where the landlord found it difficult enough to obtain 
 his original rent. The law assumed that he could recover 
 the whole of an equivalent to the rector's tithe, and enabled 
 him to retain twenty-five per cent, of such rent-charge to 
 compensate his trouble in becoming that reverend gentle- 
 man's tithe proctor. But it was frequently impossible to 
 obtain more than the seventy-five per cent, from the tenant ; 
 so that in every such case the landlord got nothing for his 
 trouble and liability. 
 
 In May, 1856, Mr. Miall, Member of Parliament for 
 Kochdale, submitted to the House of Commons a resolution 
 declaratory of the justice and expediency of impartially dis- 
 endowing all churches in Ireland, and of apply ingi their 
 revenues to purposes of secular utility. He was in a minority 
 of 93 in a House of 312. There were twenty-six pairs. The 
 English Dissenters felt themselves aggrieved by being com- 
 pelled to contribute to the support of the Established Church 
 from which they or their ancestors had seceded. They 
 therefore proclaimed the principle of voluntaryism; which 
 principle had been preached from a thousand Irish platforms 
 during the anti-tithe movement of 1831 and 1832. Our 
 English allies also knew that in order to emancipate them- 
 selves from the incubus of State Churchism, they should 
 first, by an active union with the Irish Catholics, effect the 
 disestablishment, and, as they hoped, the disendowment of 
 the anti-Irish State Church. Their eflforts were responded to 
 
Progress of the Anti-State Church Movement. 99 
 
 in Ireland by a meeting held at Clonakilty in the County 
 Cork, on the 15th of August, 1856, at which resolutions 
 were unanimously passed, expressing thorough approbation of 
 the principles announced by Mr. Miall, gratitude for his 
 advocacy, and promising to co-operate with his party in 
 effecting the overthrow of the pernicious institution which 
 he assailed. 
 
 The progressive steps of our agitation may be briefly 
 summarised. The English voluntaries were active, intelligent, 
 and indefatigable. Their alliance was indispensable to 
 success. Yet, in seeking to promote that alliance, I en- 
 countered some difiiculties. A Catholic Member of Parlia- 
 ment whose assistance I solicited, seemed averse to the 
 proposed co-operation, not only because he deemed the 
 theological principles of the English voluntaries violently 
 anti-Catholic, but because whenever any measure affecting 
 Catholic interests came before the House of Commons, their 
 parliamentary representatives invariably " went into the 
 wrong lobby." The objection thus started was by no means 
 confined to the gentleman who made it. There was, how- 
 ever, a more practical and rational view of the question 
 taken by an eminent Catholic dignitary, the Most Reverend 
 Doctor Leahy, Archbishop of Cashelj he saw the great 
 importance of accepting the assistance of the English volun- 
 taries. I was honoured with much of his correspondence at 
 the time when the English alliance was debated ; and to his 
 Grace's influence I consider the adoption of that alliance by 
 the Irish Catholic hierarchy is chiefly attributable. 
 
 Shortly after the Clonakilty meeting I was visited by 
 Mr. C. J. Foster, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee 
 ■of the Liberation Society. He was accredited by a letter 
 from Mr. Miall, who introduced him as his alter ego. On 
 both gentlemen I impressed the necessity of keeping attacks 
 ■on Maynooth as much as possible in the background; not 
 that the disendowment of Maynooth was to be relinquished, 
 but that as heretofore every attack on that college had been 
 made on purely sectarian grounds, it would be hard to 
 separate an aggression on it, in ordinary Catholic apprehen- 
 sion, from an assault on the Catholic religion; even although 
 the present assault was not at all sectarian, but merely 
 directed against it as an endowed institution. 
 
 The agitation went on, slowly at first, but gradually 
 acquiring momentum. Something more than eight years after 
 the Clonakilty meeting, an association was formed in 
 
 H 2 
 
100 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 December, 1864-, for the threefold purpose of obtaining 
 educational justice for the Catholics, a satisfactory settlement 
 of the land question, and Disendowment of the anti-Irish 
 Church. Our inaugural meeting was held in the Dublin 
 Eotunda. Many Catholic prelates were present. To Arch- 
 bishop (afterwards Cardinal) Cullen and myself was committed 
 the Disendowment question. The Archbishop's resolution 
 condemned the existing malversation of Church property in 
 Ireland. My resolution affirmed the principle of voluntaryism, 
 and disclaimed all desire on the part of the Catholics to 
 acquire sectarian ascendency. Thenceforth the agitation 
 proceeded with vigour. The English Liberationists were 
 invaluable auxiliaries ; held numerous meetings, disseminated 
 pamphlets written with distinguished ability, while their able, 
 accomplished, energetic secretary, Mr. Carvell Williams, 
 essentially contributed by his personal exertions to prepare 
 the public mind in England for the impending change. The 
 question had now advanced so far that Sir John Gray, M.P. 
 for Kilkenny, and proprietor of the Freeman^s Journal, was 
 induced to give it the support of his influential newspaper. 
 He also issued a commission to inquire into the local details 
 of the ecclesiastical anomaly in the different parts of the 
 kingdom. Meanwhile petitions to Parliament for the abolition 
 of State-Churchism were circulated for signature by the 
 National Association, of which Alderman M'Swiney, Lord 
 Mayor of Dublin in 1864, was one of the principal founders. 
 These were extensively signed ; and the signatures would 
 have been greatly more numerous only for a strong popular 
 distrust in the utility of asking the foreign Parliament for 
 any measure of national justice. 
 
 In 1867, Sir John Gray introduced the question into the 
 House of Commons in an able speech. His motion was 
 supported by 183 votes against 195. His defeat by only 
 twelve votes showed the great progress the anti-State Church 
 cause had made, and encouraged the English voluntaries to 
 redouble their efforts in behalf of Disestablishment. Early in 
 1868, Mr. Gladstone moved his celebrated Resolutions in the 
 same direction. He was supported by 331 Ayes against 276 
 Noes. There were twelve pairs. Mr. Gladstone then 
 introduced a Bill for suspending appointments to any Church 
 benefices in Ireland which might become vacant prior to the 
 final legislation of the following year. The Bill was easily 
 carried in the House of Commons, but it was thrown out by 
 the House of Lords on the 29th of June, 1868, by 192 votes 
 
Mr. Gladstone's Disestablishment Bill. 101 
 
 to 97. A dissolution of Parliament soon followed. At the 
 ensuing general election the Disestablishment of the State 
 Church was made the principal test at every hustings. A 
 large anti-State Church majority was returned to the House 
 of Commons. The Bill was easily carried by Mr. Gladstone, 
 and was then sent up to the Lords, by whom its provisions 
 were so much mutilated that if it had passed as they 
 returned it to the Commons, it would have increased, instead 
 of diminishing, the ecclesiastical grievance. 
 
 A compromise between the conflicting parties followed the 
 adverse action of the Lords. The Bill, as finally passed, 
 dissolves the Union effected in 1800 between the anti-Irish 
 State Church and the Church of England ; dissolves the 
 connection between the former and the State ; protects the 
 life-interests of its clergy ; enables them to capitalise their 
 incomes at a given rate of purchase, the Treasury advancing 
 the money ; appropriates the surplus of Irish ecclesiastical 
 property to such secular uses as Parliament shall direct ; and 
 it provides for the total extinction of the tithes in fifty-two 
 years from the date at which the landlords shall have gone 
 through the form of what is termed " purchasing " them. 
 
 An impression extensively prevailed among the Irish 
 landlords that the tithes, or tithe rent-charge, would expire in 
 fifty-two years from the 1st of January, 1871, the day on 
 which tlie Act came into operation. This was a mistake. 
 Mr. Gladstone, with characteristic ingenuity, had introduced 
 into the Act a clause which rendered the form of " purchase" 
 a condition precedent of expiry ; so that the payer of tithe 
 rent-charge " purchasing " it now, or at any future period, is 
 not credited in the purchase-money with one farthing of the 
 hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pounds he shall have paid 
 for tithe rent-charge since 1871. The fifty-two years are to 
 be computed from the date of the purchase, not from the 
 date of the Act. Thus an important obstacle has been 
 placed in the way of extinction; as numerous landlords, 
 unaware that the form of " purchase " was required by the 
 Act, continued to pay the tithe rent-charge in the belief 
 that the annual payment of the impost for fifty-two years 
 would extinguish it at the end of that period.* 
 
 * The 32ad section of the Act requires " purchase." The Com- 
 missioners sell at twenty-two-and-a-half years' purchase, with the 
 ■alternative of fif ty-two annual payments as stated in the text. 
 
102 Eighty-iive Tears of Irish History^ 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 STATE CHURCH ARGUMENTS EXAMINED. 
 
 " In parishes where there were no Protestants, or but the fewest, 
 and which yielded their hundreds of pounds a year in tithes for 
 dignitaries and incumbents, non-resident, and without duties, 
 there were hundreds and thousands of Roman Catholics. That 
 there was a tithe war is not to be wondered at ; the only wonder is 
 that any Protestant church was left standing, or any Protestant 
 clergyman's life spared." — The Irish Churchy by Herbert S. Skeats, 
 an English Dissenter, p. 26. 
 
 It is not uninteresting to record the pleas assigned by the- 
 friends of the ex-State Church for the preservation of that 
 unprecedented injustice. Before entering on this retrospect, 
 however, I wish to show the reader the view in which the 
 injustice presented itself to a Dublin Quaker, Mr. James H. 
 "Webb, who seems to have been a rope-maker in St. Audeon's 
 parish. The rector of the parish, the Eev. James Howie, 
 ha;d seized certain goods in Mr. Webb's warehouse in satis^ 
 faction of parochial dues; on which the aggrieved Quaker- 
 addressed the following matter-of-fact appeal, "To the in- 
 habitants of St. Audeon's parish belonging to the sect called 
 the Church of England : 
 
 " 10, Corn Market, Dec. 7, 1848. 
 
 ** Dear Friends ; 
 
 "Well and truly may your pastor, James Howie, 
 declare that ' he has done that which he ought not to have 
 done ; ' for he has taken advantage of an Act of Parliament 
 to take my property without giving me value. His collector 
 called on me and made a demand of 18s. 6d. for certain 
 prayers, sermons, &c., performed by James Howie; but as I 
 had never employed him for such a purpose I declined paying 
 the demand. On the 28th of November the collector, Joseph 
 Conway, again called, in company with two bailiffs and two 
 policemen, and on my again refusing his demand he carried. 
 away two pounds fifteen shillings' worth of my goods. I think 
 it right that you should be aware that the person to whom 
 you look for spiritual instruction makes out his livelihood 
 by thus disobeying the simplest commands of Christ, and 
 I ask you how you can bo benefited by the teachings of 
 such a man? It is as disgraceful to have other people'* 
 property taken for your religion as it would be to have it 
 
The Aggrieved Quaker. 103 
 
 taken for your "bread and butter. If you require such a 
 person, you ought to make up a sum which would enable 
 him to live honestly. It is well you should know that 
 the same James Howie, by his collector, &c., took from me 
 last June six pounds' worth of cords, for prayers, sermons, 
 &c., valued by him at twenty-eight shillings. 
 
 ' ' Yours truly, 
 
 '' James H. Webb." 
 
 The terse, shrewd way in which the aggrieved Quaker 
 puts his case may be taken to epitomise the national wrong, 
 so far as its dishonesty was concerned. The pecuniary in- 
 justice, however, was the least of the evils engendered by the 
 alien Church. It was a fertile source of irritation by which 
 the social frame was grievously disjointed. It was impossible 
 that the classes who were affected by the ecclesiastical out- 
 rage — those whom it benefited, and those whom it injured — 
 could regard each other with the cordial friendliness essential 
 to the national interests. 
 
 Let us here recapitulate the principal pretexts put forth 
 in behalf of the anti-Irish Establishment. 
 
 I. It was urged by the transcendental pietists of the 
 Protestant party, that the State, is bound to provide for 
 the dissemination of true Christian knowledge among the 
 community. 
 
 But those gentlemen had been in the habit of vociferating 
 that "the Bible alone" is the sole arbiter of controversy. 
 Yet here they made the State, and not the Bible, the arbiter 
 of what is, and what is not, true Christian doctrine. It may 
 be asked what authority the State, as such, possesses to define 
 theological doctrines, and in virtue of such definition to tax 
 the public of all creeds for their diff'usion'? The State in 
 England has been Koman Catholic, has been Puritan, has 
 been High Church Anglican, has been Latitudinarian. If the 
 State have the right to hand over the national ecclesiastical 
 endowments to the clergy who happen to accept its theological 
 views, then it will follow that as often as the Government 
 sees fit to change its religious belief, it may lawfully en- 
 force a corresponding change^^in the destination of Church 
 property. 
 
 II. The argument was sometimes put in this way : "The 
 State is entitled to offer religious truth to the acceptance of 
 the nation." 
 
 The nation, it was answered, has at least as good a right to 
 
104 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 deny, as the State has to affirm, that the commodity thus offered 
 is religious truth. The State had been making that offer to 
 the Irish people (at their bitter expense) for more than three 
 centuries ; and the people, strong in their own religious faith, 
 persisted in believing that the article offered by the State 
 was a counterfeit. Even if it were assumed that the Irish 
 people erred in so believing, yet who, unless he were stone- 
 blind from prejudice, could deny that a species of State- 
 apostleship which the experience of three centuries had 
 shown to be efficacious only in irritating, not converting, 
 stood ipso facto self-condemned % 
 
 I desire in this work to keep clear of all doctrinal con- 
 troversy. But without entering upon any, it may be observed 
 that independently of all doctrinal grounds for rejecting the 
 State Church, there is the significant fact that it is scantily 
 believed in by large numbers of its own ministers. The 
 Irish State clergy perpetually claimed identification with the 
 State Church in England. The Union, they said, had 
 incorporated the two Establishments. The Churches were 
 "no longer twain, but one flesh." The Irish Protestant 
 clergy imagined that they strengthened their position by 
 hooking themselves on to the Anglican Establishment. But 
 for several generations great numbers of the English State 
 clergy had been clamouring against the hard necessity of 
 subscribing their own doctrinal code. In 1772, and again 
 in 1815, petitions from numerous Churchmen for exemption 
 from what they called " the grievance " of subscription to 
 the Thirty-nine Articles, were presented to Parliament. If 
 the reverend petitioners really believed the Articles, they 
 could not have termed their subscription a grievance. The 
 Irish State clergy were apparently hard run for support when 
 they sought strength in identification with a Church which 
 was officered by a host of clerical unbelievers. 
 
 On the 15th of January, 1863, a meeting of 300 
 " evangelical " clergymen of the English Church was held at 
 Bishop Wilson's Memorial Hall, Islington. At that meeting 
 the Rev. Hugh Stowell thus delivered himself : " The as- 
 tounding fact was now developed that numbers had avowed 
 themselves believers in the Revelation of God, had actually 
 taken upon themselves to teach that Revelation, and were 
 yet all the while hollow of heart and unsettled in conviction." 
 The reverend cliairman of the meeting thus indicated the 
 species of doctrine taught by these " numbers " of clerical 
 dissidents : " The peculiarity of our present position is this, 
 
Mr. Buxton's Ad. 105 
 
 that the sceptical sentiments of the present day proceed, not 
 from the school of Paine or Voltaire, but from those who 
 are within the pale of our National Church — from men who, 
 by their station and profession, are pledged to uphold them- 
 selves, and to teach to others, the doctrines of our holy 
 religion." * 
 
 On the 9th of June, 1863, Mr, Buxton, M.P., brought 
 Bill into Parliament to abolish the necessity of subscription 
 to the Thirty-nine Articles. He acted at the instance 
 ministers of the Anglican religion and candidates for ordina- 
 tion, who, as he described their pitiable case, felt their 
 consciences tormented by the dire necessity of declaring 
 their belief in doctrines in which they did not believe.t 
 
 Yet the Anglo-Irish Protestant clergy claimed to retain 
 their grasp on the whole ecclesiastical State revenues of 
 Catholic Ireland, on the pretext of diffusing among us a 
 doctrinal code which their clerical brethren in England were 
 trying to fling off as an intolerable burden on their con- 
 sciences. To some extent the recalcitrant clergy were 
 successful. By the Act, 28th and 29th Victoria, chap, 
 cxxii., entitled, "An Act to amend the Law as to the 
 Subscriptions and Declarations to be made and Oaths 
 to be taken by the Clergy of the Established Church of 
 England and Ireland," a less stringent form of Declaration 
 of Assent is substituted for the previous forms of Declaration 
 and Subscription. The short title of the Act is, " The 
 Clerical Subscription Act," and it is dated 5th July, 1865. 
 I cannot see that the dissident clergy have gained much by 
 the change. Although the language in which profession of 
 belief is henceforth to be made is undoubtedly to some 
 extent relaxed, yet it still is, in express terms, a *' Declaration 
 of Assent " ; which cannot, I think, be satisfactorily used by 
 men whose real sentiment is Dissent. But whether the 
 State clergy believed, or disbelieved, or doubted, or denied, 
 the truth of their own religion, the Irish nation for more 
 than three centuries have been taxed for the support of that 
 religion; the Act ^of Union professed to perpetuate its 
 grasp on the national purse; and the 32nd section of 
 Mr. Gladstone's Act of Disestablishment has dexterously 
 thrown an obstacle in the way of the final extinction of the 
 burden. 
 
 III. It was said in defence of the Establishment, " The 
 
 * London Liberator, Ist February, 1863. 
 t Ibid., 1st July, 1863. 
 
 :.ii 
 
lOG Eighty -five Years of Irish History, 
 
 earliest Christians of Ireland were Protestants, whose belief 
 was the same as that of the modern Anglo-Irish parsons. 
 The parsons, therefore, are entitled, in virtue of their spiritual 
 descent from the Irish Protestant Christians aforesaid, to 
 enjoy the Church temporalities of Ireland." 
 
 To this plea we answered : firstly, that the statement 
 was untrue ; and secondly, that if it had been true, it could 
 not establish any right to the national Church revenues on 
 the part of the Protestant clergy of the present day. 
 
 The statement is untrue. For proofs of its untruth I 
 refer the reader to a book by the Rev. Dr. Eock, entitled, 
 *'A Letter to Lord John Manners," sold by Dolman, of 
 London. Dr. Rock's book overflows with irresistible demon- 
 strations. A volume on the same subject by the Rev. Mr. 
 Gaffney, sold by Duffy, Dublin, may also be consulted with 
 advantage. A work by the Rev. Dr. Moran* is also worth 
 the careful study of those who are interested in the history 
 of the early Irish Church. Independently of the direct proofs 
 contained in the works now referred to, there are historical 
 statements made by the Rev. J. H. Todd, of Trinity College, 
 in his "Life of St. Patrick," which seem wholly incompatible 
 with the theory of early Irish Protestantism ; and which are 
 the more remarkable, inasmuch as Dr. Todd rejects the 
 Roman origin of St. Patrick's mission. 
 
 Dr. Todd says: "The deadly hatred of England and of 
 anything English, which has for so many centuries unfor- 
 tunately rankled in the native Irish heart, was not at first 
 created by any difference in religion." f 
 
 This is an important statement. The creed of the 
 English invaders was admittedly Roman Catholic. Kow, if 
 the creed of the native Irish had not been also Roman 
 Catholic, it is plain that religious dissensions between the 
 two parties, exasperated by their national antipathies, must 
 have widely prevailed through the kingdom. But while 
 history is full of the struggles for political power between 
 English and Irish, it is silent as to any theological warfare 
 between them. The only rational solution of this silence 
 consists in the fact that their creed was the same. 
 
 Accordingly, Dr. Todd candidly says : " There were two 
 Churches in Ireland, separated from each other, icithout any^ 
 
 . * " Essay on the Orij?in, Doctrines, and Discipline of the Early 
 Irish Church," by the Rev. Dr. Moran, Vico-llector of the Irish 
 College, Kome. Dublin : Duffy, 18G4. 
 
 t " Life of St. Patrick," Introduction, p. 242. 
 
Dr. Todd's Life of St Patrick: 107 
 
 essential difference of discipline or doctrine, at a period long 
 previous to the Eeformation." * 
 
 Observe the important admission, " without any essential 
 difference of discipline or doctrine." Now, one of these 
 two Churches, or, more accurately speaking, these two 
 hierarchies, is admitted on all hands to have been Eoman 
 Catholic. The other hierarchy, therefore, which did not 
 differ essentially from Roman Catholic discipline or doctrine,, 
 cannot possibly have symbolised with the modern Pro- 
 testant anti-Irish Church, which differs most essentially from 
 both. 
 
 The doctrinal and disciplinary identity of the ancient 
 Irish and Anglo-Irish hierarchies is further shown by Dr. 
 Todd, who says : "At a subsequent period, when the Anglo- 
 Irish Church had accepted the Reformation,t the 'mere Irish' 
 clergy were found to have become practically extinct. Their 
 Episcopacy had merged into, or become identified with, the 
 Episcopacy ichich icas recognised by the latv." — Ibid., p. 242. 
 
 This quiet identification into one body of the two 
 
 * " Life of St. Patrick," Introduction, p. 241. 
 
 f Which alleged acceptance is disproved by the Eev. Maziere 
 Brady, D.D., and rejected as a monstrous historical error by so 
 earnest a Protestant as Mr. Froude. Immediately following the 
 passage last cited in the text, Dr. Todd, speaking of the post- 
 Eeformation period, says: "Missionary bishops and priests, there- 
 fore, ordained abroad, were sent into Ireland to support the interests 
 of Rome; and from them is derived a third Church, in close 
 communion with the See of Rome, which has now assumed the form 
 and dimensions of a national established religion" (p. 242). What 
 Dr. Todd here calls " a third Church " was precisely the same great 
 mass of Irish and Anglo-Irish Catholics whom he admits to have 
 been in communion with Rome up to the date of the Reformation. 
 He seems, by the words, "a third church," to ignore the lay element 
 of the Church, which constitutes the great body of its members, 
 and which formed neither a third nor a second Church, but remained 
 unchanged in its hereditary fidelity to Rome. It is true that the 
 ferocity of the Reformed Government deprived the Catholic people 
 of home education for their clergy, who were therefore compelled to 
 pursue their ecclesiastical studies in foreign seminaries, whence 
 they returned to preach the old faith in Ireland, where, according to 
 Edmund Spenser, "peril of death" awaited them. But the people 
 of Ireland were, and are, unable to understand how the tricks which 
 the secular power played with religion in the sixteenth century could 
 destroy their own inherited identity with the Church of their 
 ancestors, even supposing that the alleged conversion of nearly all 
 their bishops to Protestantism were historically true, instead of 
 being, as it is, totally destitute of historical foundation. 
 
 Dr. Todd's work displays much research and possesses great 
 interest, even for readers who do not acquiesce in all his views. 
 
108 Eiglity-five Tears of Irish Histonj, 
 
 hierarchies shows that their religious belief was identical. 
 This is evident when we consider the impossibility of such 
 identification, or common merger into one hierarchy, of two 
 Churches having different creeds. For instance, the identi- 
 fication of the present Anglican Church in Ireland with the 
 Irish Roman Catholic Church is impossible. Fancy the Most 
 Rev. Dr. Trench, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, 
 celebrating mass ^in the Church of the Conception; or 
 Cardinal Cullen preaching up the Thirty-nine Articles in 
 St. Patrick's Cathedral ! But Dr. Todd informs us that 
 such an identification of the ancient Irish Church and the 
 Anglo-Irish Roman Catholic Church had actually occurred 
 before the Reformation ; an identification which could not 
 have occurred unless their religious belief had been pre- 
 viously identical. 
 
 But it may be suggested that the English invaders had, 
 perhaps, infused their Roman Catholic notions into the minds 
 of the Irish. 
 
 To such a supposition Dr. Todd supplies the answer when 
 he tells us of " the deadly hatred of England and of every- 
 thing English which for so many centuries unfortunately 
 rankled in the Irish heart." That deadly hatred would have 
 necessarily extended to any English religious opinions not 
 previously held by the Irish themselves. The Irish were not 
 likely to accept the apostleship of invaders whom they held 
 in mortal abhorrence. The inference is inevitable; the Irish 
 did not receive, and could not possibly have received, their 
 undoubted Roman Catholic belief from England. Whence, 
 then, did they derive that belief ? There is but one answer 
 — they derived it from the original founders of Irish Chris- 
 tianity. In fact, the difference between the early Irish and 
 Anglo-Irish hierarchies was purely political or national, and 
 not at all doctrinal.* 
 
 * Among the proofs of the connection of the early Irish Church 
 with Rome is a rule, or canon, contained in the ancient Book of the 
 Canons of Armagh, which enjoins that disputed matters, which C(juld 
 not be settled by the local ecclesiastical authorities, should be 
 referred to the Roman See for final adjudication. Here is the 
 canon as translated by the late Professor Eugene O'Curry : " More- 
 over, if any case should arise of extreme diflBculty, and beyond 
 the knowledge of all the nations of the Scots [t.e., the Irish, who 
 were then called Scoti], it is to be duly referred to the chair of the 
 Archbishop of the Gaedhill— that is to say, of Patrick — and the 
 jurisdiction of the Bishop (of Armagh). But if such a case as afore- 
 said, of a matter of issue, cannot be easily disposed of [by him] with 
 his counsellors la that [investigation], we have decreed that it he sent 
 
Tlie Claim of the Anti-Irish Clergy. 109 
 
 But in truth, the question whether the Church of Saint 
 Patrick was Catholic or Protestant, was totally irrelevant to 
 the claims of the anti-Irish State Church. Even if Saint 
 Palladius and Saint Patrick had taught the Thirty-nine 
 Articles, and converted the Irish of the fifth century to 
 Anglican Protestantism, the modern Protestant hierarchy 
 would not have been a whit the nearer establishing a righteous 
 title to our national ecclesiastical revenues. For, in the first 
 place, the legislator of our day has to deal, not with the fifth 
 century, but with the nineteenth. Again, if the aboriginal 
 Irish parsons of those early times were Protestants, they must 
 have been an exquisitely good-for-nothing set of gentlemen, 
 since it is clear that they suffered the whole nation to slip 
 through their fingers into the hands of the Popish priests. 
 On the modern " evangelical" hypothesis, those early pastors 
 must have been given the Church-revenues as the salary for 
 teaching Protestantism to the Irish people. But they did not 
 keep their part of the bargain, for they suffered all their 
 flocks to lapse into Catholicity. They did not give value for 
 the money, and they consequently became disentitled to 
 claim it. 
 
 How preposterous, then, to assert for the anti-Irish clergy 
 of the present day, a right as derived from a long extinct 
 generation of parsons, who, if they ever existed at all, mani- 
 festly forfeited all title to Ireland's Church property some 
 thousand or twelve hundred years ago ! Were such a plea 
 valid, it would follow by parity of reasoning that if all the 
 original holders of Irish Church property had been Moham- 
 medans, then a hierarchy of Turkish muftis would, at the 
 present day, have a rightful claim to our ecclesiastical State 
 revenues. 
 
 IV. It was strenuously urged that as nearly all the Irish 
 Roman Catholic Bishops at the period of the Reformation 
 accepted Protestantism, they became entitled, in virtue of 
 their corporate identity, to carry the Church property into the 
 new creed of their adoption. 
 
 But, firstly, the story of their conversion is a figment. 
 The Rev. Maziere Brady and the Rev. Dr. Moran have con- 
 to the apostolic seat — that is to say, to the Chair of the Apostle Peter 
 having the authority of the city of Rome. 
 
 " These are the persons who decreed concerning this matter, viz., 
 Anxilius, <Patrick, Secundinus, and Benignus." See " O'Curry's 
 Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History," 
 pp. 373, 611. DubliQ : Duffy, 1861. 
 
110 Eighty-five Years of IritJi History. 
 
 -clusively disproved it. Next, if the whole Catholic hierarchy 
 of the Elizabethan period had adopted Protestantism, I do 
 not see how their conversion could have justified them in 
 carrying into the Protestant Church the Catholic ecclesiastical 
 property of which they had been given the use on condition 
 of their fidelity to the Catholic Church. On the contrary, it 
 seems clear that by deserting Catholicity they w^ould have 
 forfeited their sole original right to enjoy the Catholic endow- 
 ments. Suppose the whole English hierarchy were suddenly 
 to become Anabaptists to-morrow, would they have a moral 
 right, in virtue of their corporate identity, to carry the whole 
 national Church property of England into the Anabaptist 
 communion 1 
 
 V. It was urged that the disendowment of the anti-Irish 
 State Church would invalidate or shake the title to all other 
 kinds of property. Sir Hugh (afterwards Earl) Cairns ex- 
 presses the objection in the following words : " It was utterly 
 impossible they could attempt to destroy any kind of property 
 in the country without loosening the security of property of 
 every kind. . . . They could not confiscate benefices without 
 loosening the bonds that secured property of every kind in 
 the kingdom." 
 
 I quote the following answer to the above objection from 
 the report of a speech which I delivered at the National 
 Association of Ireland on the day of its inauguration : 
 
 " Just as if the ecclesiastical endowments, which Grattau 
 called the ' salary of prayer,' stood on the same basis with 
 private property ! The law creates the endowments. Eut 
 the law only protects other kinds of property. The revenues 
 instituted by the State as the salary or remuneration for the 
 performance of certain specific public functions, are legiti- 
 mately liable to interference on the part of the State that 
 created them. But this gives no precedent for interference 
 with property which the State did not create; property 
 acquired from industry, inheritance, or gift. So much for 
 the principle. Then, as to the fact. AU this bugbear about 
 loosening the security of secular property if the ecclesiastical 
 revenues were meddled with — all these menaces were dinned 
 in our ears when Parliament, about thirty years ago, struck 
 twenty-five per cent, ofif the Irish tithe rent-charge. But 
 what private property was loosened or lessened by extin- 
 guishing one-fourth of the parochial revenues of the Irish 
 State clergy ] Can Sir Hugh Cairns, can any man show that 
 private property was shaken or diminished to the extent of 
 
On loTiom does the Incidence of Tithe fall? Ill 
 
 one farthing by what the learned gentleman would doubtless 
 call the confiscation of a fourth part of the Irish benefices 1 " * 
 
 VI. It was asked, "Would you make the tithe rent- 
 charge a present to the landlords by a simple act of disen- 
 dowment 1 " 
 
 When this question was asked, the landlords occupied a 
 position very different from that in which the Land Act of 
 1881 has placed them. It was at that time fair to answer 
 that the revenues of the State Church should be secularised, 
 and applied to public uses of general benefit. Mr. Miall 
 proposed that the tithe rent-charge should be sold to the 
 landlords at ten years' purchase. It was also suggested that 
 the poor-rate should be partially paid from the tithe rent- 
 charge. The State Church property was a great national 
 trust fund ; and honesty imperatively demanded that it 
 should be appropriated so as to benefit the whole Irish nation. 
 Now, we said that although it was the trust estate of all, it 
 was dishonestly monopolised by a small fractional part of the 
 people. The Catholics had been robbed of it in the sixteenth 
 century, and the robbery was perpetuated on hypocritical 
 pretexts and defended by shallow and insulting sophistry. 
 Eestitution, we said, could be made in either of two ways — 
 by reinvesting the Catholic Church with the ecclesiastical 
 revenues ; or by appropriating those revenues to secular objects 
 for the benefit of the whole people. The former mode was 
 heartily deprecated (and for excellent reasons) by nearly aU 
 the Irish Catholics. The latter mode, as matters then stood, 
 commended itself as being an efi"ectual and satisfactory mode 
 of restitution. 
 
 I say, as matters then stood; for matters stand quite 
 otherwise now with the Irish landlords. This we shall see 
 when the next plea in behalf of the State Church comes to 
 be examined. 
 
 VII. It was said, by way of showing that the Catholics 
 had no right to complain, that the incidence of tithe, or tithe 
 rent-charge, fell upon the landlords, who were chiefly Protes- 
 tants, and not upon the tenants, who were chiefly Catholics. 
 
 This was in most cases a delusion. The English Parlia- 
 
 * Page 14 of my speech, which was printed as a pamphlet by the 
 English Liberation Society, from whom it can be had at 2, Serjeants' 
 Inn, Fleet Street, London. Nobody can pretend that the recent 
 agitation against excessive rents had any connection with the dis- 
 establishment of the State Church. It arose from various other 
 causes, of which one was the existence of the rack-renting system. 
 
112 Eighty-five Tears of Irish Histonj. 
 
 ment took care to leave the burthen of tithe rent-charge on 
 the tenants, by enabling the landlords to exact the amount 
 from them in the shape of additional rent. Only the impost, 
 when paid by the tenants, was to be called " rent," and not 
 *' tithe ; " and was recoverable as rent by the landlords. 
 Compositions for tithe had frequently been made by the 
 tenants with the Protestant rectors. It was not unusual,, 
 while the system of "middle-men" prevailed, that two, 
 three, sometimes even four lessees and sub-lessees were inter- 
 posed between the head landlord and the actual occupier of 
 the land. To enable the landlords, when saddled with tithe 
 rent- charge, to extract it from their subordinate lessees and 
 sub-lessees, the Act 1st and 2nd Victoria, chap, cix., provided 
 a process of recovery which is thus described in the marginal 
 summary of the 10th section of the Act : 
 
 *' If any person who would have been liable to tithe- 
 composition hold mediately or immediately under the person 
 liable to such rent-charge, the amount of such rent-charge may 
 he recovered as rent from the next tenant and so dowmcards to 
 the person primarily liable." 
 
 Thus the occupying tenants were reached by the parsons, 
 not indeed directly as of yore, but by the device of trans- 
 forming the landlords into tithe-proctors. The tenants paid 
 the impost to the rectors through the receivership of the land- 
 lords, instead of paying it as formerly through the receivership 
 of the old tithe- proctors. To be sure the name was changed ; 
 but " a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ; " and the 
 tithe, whether styled rent, or rent-charge, or modus, or what- 
 ever else you please, had as foul a stench in the nostrils of 
 justice as in the days of Captain Rock and the tithe-riots. 
 
 Many landlords added the tithe rent-charge to the pre- 
 viously reserved rent. In all such cases the burden fell 
 upon their tenants, in full accordance with the spirit of the 
 Act to which I have referred. But there also were many 
 cases in which the landlords found it extremely difficult, 
 occasionally even impossible, to obtain the tithe rent-charge 
 from their tenants; and of course in such cases the burden 
 unquestionably fell upon themselves. It was, and is, paid in 
 sucii cases from their rents, unassisted by the additional rent 
 which Parliament empowered them to extract from their 
 tenantry. 
 
 An erroneous impression prevailed in some quarters that 
 the Rent-charge Act conferred a boon upon the landlords, 
 because, in rendering them responsible to the rectors for the 
 
The Land Act as affecting Tithe Rent-charge. 113 
 
 tithe, it professed to allow them to retain twenty-five per 
 •cent, for collecting and handing to the clergy the remaining 
 seventy-five per cent. Judging from my own experience, 
 from my knowledge of the country, and from my communica- 
 tions with other landlords, 1 feel certain that very few land- 
 lords, if any, pocketed a farthing of the twenty-five per cent. 
 The tithe rent -charge was paid out of a gross rental which 
 was greatly diminished by the repeal of the corn laws, while 
 the septennial valuation of the impost was measured by com- 
 parison with the standard of high prices that preceded that 
 repeal. 
 
 So stood matters up to 1881. Bat the Land Act of that 
 year has essentially changed the position of the landlords, 
 and largely increased the grievance of the impost. The 
 Land Courts, constituted by the Act, have, on the average of 
 Ireland, reduced the rents of landlords by from twenty to 
 twenty-five per cent. This reduction of the rental cuts away 
 the source from which the Rent-charge Act empowered the 
 landlords to obtain the tithe rent-charge for which they were 
 responsible to the rectors, and since Disestablishment, to the 
 Commissioners of Church Temporalities. 
 
 Let us suppose the case of a landlord whose original 
 rental was £1,000 per annum, and the tithe rent-charge on 
 whose estate was £100 per annum. The Rent-charge Act 
 enabled him to recover .£1,100 per annum from his tenants; 
 at the same time requiring him to hand the tithe rent-charge 
 to the rector from the additional £100 per annum. But 
 now comes the Land Act of 1881. The landlord is brought 
 into court. A judicial rent is fixed. The Court takes 
 twenty or twenty-five per cent., often more, from the rent ; 
 thus sweeping off much more than the portion of the land- 
 lord's income which had been previously appropriated to the 
 payment of tithe rent-charge. The tithe rent-charge is 
 •extorted, while the means of paying it is taken away by the 
 law. A plainer case of injustice than this one can hardly 
 conceive. If the English Parliament were actuated by a 
 spirit of fair play, that body would advance from the 
 Treasury a sufficient sum to buy off the anti-Irish clergy. 
 They advanced twenty millions of money to buy off the 
 slave-owners, an excellent precedent to follow in the present 
 case. In point of justice England ought to pay the cost of 
 purchasing out her clergy in Ireland, inasmuch as it was 
 England that forced Protestantism on the Irish people. 
 England committed the wrong by which Ireland for three 
 
 I 
 
114 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 centuries had been fleeced and otherwise afflicted ; and Eng- 
 land, having now discovered that the imposition of the 
 Anglican Church on Ireland teas a wrong, should emphasize 
 her penitence by paying the pecuniary penalty. This, how- 
 ever, has not been done. The negro slaves were not required 
 to repay the .£20,000,000 advanced from the Imperial 
 treasury for their emancipation. The Irish landowners ai'e 
 required to recoup that treasury for the cash advanced for 
 Disestablishment. 
 
 VIII. Some Protestant clergymen pleaded that the 
 State Church revenues of Ireland were little enough for the 
 support of their order ; and on this ground they deprecated 
 reduction or alienation. For ministering to a small fractional 
 part of the Irish people they were not ashamed to claim the 
 whole ecclesiastical State property of the country. It was, 
 they said, little enough. It was, as I have remarked, about 
 JB700,000 a year.* If this were little enough for the Church 
 purposes of a fraction, let us ask to what annual sum should 
 the payment of the Irish clergy of all denominations, rated 
 on the same scale, amounts If the State Church clergy, 
 with flocks not more than eleven or twelve per cent, of the 
 •whole, required £700,000, then the collective Irish clergy 
 of all denominations would have needed something about 
 six millions sterling per annum. It was lucky for Ireland 
 that her Catholic priests and her Presbyterian ministers 
 had less inflated notions than the State Church clergy enter- 
 tained respecting the pecuniary value of their ministrations. 
 
 I have now noticed a few of the current sophisms which 
 were employed to defend the infliction of a Protestant State 
 Church on Catholic Ireland. As an institution of the State,. 
 it was a marvellous system of incorporated fraud and in- 
 solence. It robbed the people and it insulted their religion. 
 When its advocates, clerical and lay, had exhausted their 
 eloquence in sounding its praises, we had only to look it in 
 the face — to look at its shameless monopoly of a nation's 
 Church property for the benefit of a small and wealthy 
 minority — in order to condemn it as an abominable outrage 
 
 * The Rev. Maziere Brady, in a letter to the Times, March, 1867, 
 having enumerated various items of Church revenues and Church 
 property omitted from an annual income of £420,000, which Lord 
 Dufferin appeared to think was the whole, says : ** If those sums^ 
 were added to the £420,000 a year of which Lord Dufferin spoke, 
 the total would, perhaps, exceed £700,000; but in the absence of 
 any reliable return, it is impossible to calculate with certainty th& 
 present revenues of the Establishment." 
 
The Real Uses of the Anti-Irish Church. 115 
 
 on every principle of justice and of honest policy. English- 
 men were often asked to make our case their own ; to tell 
 us what they would think of a Koman Catholic Church 
 Establishment quartered by law on every parish of Protestant 
 England ; of fiery Roman Catholic polemics extorting pay- 
 ment from English Protestant flocks for ferocious vituperation 
 of Protestantism % -^ 
 
 Why, it may be asked, was the anti-Irish State Church so 
 long upheld by English statesmen ? Why did they persist 
 for three centuries in inflicting on us a wrong to which the 
 English nation would not submit for an hour 1 
 
 The true answer, I doubt not, is to be found in the 
 traditionary Irish statecraft of English parties — in the belief 
 that Ireland could not be governed without a plentiful 
 application of exasperating injustice. To keep Ireland down, 
 it was deemed necessary to perpetuate the distractions and 
 miseries of her people. The policy was not new. " Some of 
 her (Elizabeth's) counsellors," says Leland, " appear to have 
 conceived an odious jealousy which reconciled them to the 
 distractions and miseries of Ireland, 'Should we exert 
 ourselves,' said they, * in reducing this country to order and 
 civility, it must soon acquire power, consequence, and riches. 
 The inhabitants will thus be alienated from England ; they 
 will cast themselves into the arms of some foreign power, or 
 perhaps erect themselves into an independent and separate 
 State. Let us therefore connive at their disorders ; for a 
 weak and disordered people never can attempt to detach 
 themselves from the crown of England.' " — Leland's History 
 of Ireland, book iv., chap. 3. 
 
 In the species of statecraft here described by the historian, 
 we discern the policy that inspired the establishment of an 
 anti-national State Church of Ireland. " Let us connive at 
 their disorders." It would tax human wit to connive at our 
 disorders more effectually than by forcing on the country a 
 corporate incubus of which social hatred and heart-burning 
 were the necessary consequences ; which generated an angry 
 sense of wrong on the one side, and a sentiment of arrogant 
 superiority on the other. With such a social gangrene among 
 
 * It would be most nnjust to inculpate all the Protestant clergy 
 of j Ireland as firebrand polemics. Great numbers of them were 
 incapable of the insulting malpractices referred to in the text, and 
 were personally very estimable; but there were also many whose 
 controversial zeal rendered them intolerable nuisances. All alike 
 were in a false position. 
 
 I 2 
 
116 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 us, it cannot be a matter of surprise that a thousand acrid 
 humours diffused their poison through the nation's veins, and 
 kept the body politic in a chronic condition of disease. 
 
 This was the true purpose and mission of the anti-Irish 
 State Church. 
 
 Before I close this chapter I shall say a few words on the 
 proposals which previously to Disestablishment had been 
 from time to time suggested, to purchase the clergy by 
 pensions, or glebes, or some other sort of State endowment. 
 
 Statesmen regard the endowment of any Church by the 
 State in the light of a bribe to the clergy. Thus, Lord 
 Castlereagh speculated on purchasing the support of the 
 Presbyterian clergy for the Union by an augmentation of the 
 Regium Donum. On the 23rd of November, 1798, he wrote 
 as follows to William Wickham, Esq. : 
 
 " Of late they (the Presbyterians) are rather tired of the 
 treason in which they had very deeply embarked ; perhaps 
 they may be inclined to compromise with the Union ; some 
 additional provision for the clergy, connecting the Church more 
 closely with the CrowJi, looidd probably disarm the opposition, 
 if not secure the support, of that body." * 
 
 In the recently published " Correspondence of Earl 
 Grey," t we find the following passage in a letter addressed 
 by Sir Herbert Taylor to that nobleman : " Your lordship is 
 aware that I was private secretary to King George III., when 
 the correspondence took place with the Administration of 
 which you were a member, on the Catholic question, and I 
 was of course privy to all that passed (His Majesty being 
 blind), and had opportunities of learning his sentiments not 
 consigned to paper. I am almost confident that he more than 
 once said that he should not object to a proposition for 
 giving a stipend to the Roman Catholic clergy, and that 
 he observed that no better expedient could be found for 
 reducing the influence of the Pope in Ireland, and transferring 
 their dependence to the Government from which they would 
 derive their means of support. I have heard the late Duke 
 of York express the same opinion ; and the King assures me 
 that the late Mr. Perceval had frequently stated it to him as 
 an arrangement he should be glad to effect." 
 
 It is needless to observe that the Catholic clergy give no 
 
 * " Cornwallis Corroapondenoe," vol. ii. p. 247. 
 
 t " The Correspondence of Earl Grey with King William IV. and 
 with Sir Herbert Taylor." Edited by Henry, Earl Grey. London : 
 John Murray, 1867> 
 
Proposed Allocation of Church Endoivments. 117 
 
 allegiance to the Pope inconsistent with their temporal 
 allegiance to their sovereign. What demands our attention is 
 this — that the project of giving them a pension was considered 
 in the light of a bribe by its authors — a bribe which was to 
 buy them off from certain principles which it was presumed 
 that they held. And in the light of a bribe would any 
 possible scheme of endowing the Catholic clergy of Ireland by 
 an English and Protestant State be inevitably regarded — not 
 only by the Government, but, what is more important, by the 
 people of Ireland. If the clergy of the people became the 
 paid officers of the English Government, they would utterly 
 and finally forfeit the confidence of their flocks. We shudder 
 to contemplate the scenes of anarchy and irreligion which 
 would follow from such a loosing of the bands that now unite 
 the people and their pastors. Let us hope that in the wisdom, 
 the honesty, and the Christian fidelity of the priesthood, a 
 sufficient security exists against such a terrible result. 
 
 In Cardinal Cullen's Pastoral at the beginning of Lent, 
 1866, he said, with reference to the pensioning project, 
 " Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.^^ Now, in whatever shape 
 the dona may be ofi'ered, whether in glebes, in pensions, or in 
 any other mode whatsoever, it is certain that the ofier would 
 be meant as a bribe to purchase off the priesthood from the 
 national interests of their country. Eoth English Whigs and 
 English Tories — combined in hostility to Mr. Gladstone's 
 Home Government measure — are resolved on preserving the 
 Legislative Union as long as they can. That is to say, they 
 will do their best to perpetuate the legislative disfranchisement 
 of Ireland ; to prolong a system that deprives her of the sole 
 control of her own national interests, and that gives to Great 
 Britain about nine parts in eleven of the formal control 
 of those interests, and in real fact, the whole of it; to 
 prolong a system that results in the wholesale spoliation of 
 the wealth which God has bestowed upon our island, and in 
 the consequent depopulation that afflicts almost to madness 
 every man who has a heart to feel for the wrongs of his 
 expatriated brethren, and a conscience to abhor the diabolical 
 wickedness of plundering a country of its riches and driving 
 out the inhabitants. 
 
 All this the Union does, and the people of Ireland know 
 it. How could they retain their confidence in a priesthood 
 capable of accepting any species of endowment from a 
 Government resolved to perpetuate that Union 1 
 
 The scheme of dividing the national ecclesiastical en- 
 
118 Eighty -five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 dowments between the Protestant and Catholic Churches 
 was started by a gentleman whose personal character, position, 
 and abilities entitled him to our respect. I publicly stated 
 my objections to this scheme. The attempt would have 
 been extremely impolitic, for it would have turned against 
 us our only reliable allies, the English voluntaries. Desirous, 
 as a matter of principle, to obtain the disendowment of the 
 State Church in England, from which they or their progeni- 
 tors had gone forth, and irritated by being made to contribute 
 to its support, they knew that the ultimate success of their 
 attack on it would be much facilitated by the overthrow of 
 the State Church in Ireland. Hence, in working for us 
 they worked for themselves. To attempt an endowment 
 for Irish Catholicity would have deservedly forfeited their 
 support. Moreover, such an attempt would have entailed 
 upon our cause the weakness of division. For the mass 
 of Irish Catholics would not have deserted the voluntary 
 banner under which they had previously rallied, in order to 
 fraternise with the claimants for Catholic endowment. Our 
 agitation would have been encumbered with miserable by- 
 battles between the friends of total Disendowment and the 
 gentlemen (few, though indefatigable) who demanded the 
 division of the spoil between the Churches. Thus, we 
 should have furnished to the Whigs a plausible pretext for 
 leaving the giant evil undisturbed. They would have been 
 only too glad of an opportunity of telling us that until we 
 were agreed among ourselves as to the proper remedy, they 
 would deem it inexpedient to interfere with existing 
 arrangements. 
 
 We proclaimed that the Irish Catholic Church in Ireland 
 had thriven and flourished for more than three centuries on the 
 voluntary system; that it had struck its roots deep into the 
 hearts of the Irish people, not only unsustained by, but in de- 
 fiance of, the powers of this world. We said that among the 
 human motives which act in harmony with the principle of 
 Divine faith, supporting that principle and in turn receiving 
 strength from it, a leading motive was the deep, enduring, 
 passionate love of country that burns in the hearts of our people. 
 We warned the claimants for Catholic endowments from the 
 alien State against the terrible experiment of separating our 
 devotion to the Catholic Church from our Irish nationality. 
 " Let no fantastic theorist," we said, " seek to reduce us to 
 the awful alternative of abandoning our accustomed ecclesias- 
 tical obedience ; or of rendering that obedience to a hierarchy 
 
Spiritual Danger of State Endoicment. 119 
 
 who would have forfeited our confidence by accepting en- 
 dowments from a Power that, whether nationally or re- 
 ligiously, cannot possibly have any common sympathy with 
 Catholic Ireland." 
 
 There was not, however, much real chance that the 
 advocates of a State endowment for the Irish Catholic 
 Church would succeed in their movement, which was chiefly 
 supported by one bishop, a lay gentleman of much poetic 
 talent, and a handful of West-British Whigs. Against their 
 scheme was the vast and powerful array of British volun- 
 taries ; the British anti-Papal multitude, who would have 
 resented the endowment of " Popery " as treason to Pro- 
 testantism ; and, finally, the great body of Irish Catholics, 
 clerical as well as lay, who felt that the union between the 
 clergy and their flock would be rudely shaken by placing 
 the former under pecuniary obligations to the alien Govern- 
 ment. During the prevalence of the Penian conspiracy, an 
 intelligent priest in the south of Ireland, conversing with me 
 on the efforts the Catholic clergy had made to check 
 Penianism, said : " The people were just hanging on to us — 
 we could hardly hold them in ; but if they had been able to 
 point to an endowment in our hands we could not have held 
 them in at all." 
 
 Of the general principle of State endowment of religion 
 I shall here say nothing. But of its particular application 
 by the Protestant Government of another country to our 
 national Church, I will say this : Every Church which is 
 endowed by the State must to some extent rely upon 
 temporal support ; but " the vital power of religion is 
 generally found to exist in an inverse ratio to its reliance on 
 temporal support." * 
 
 This is at any rate true of Catholicity in Ireland. And 
 may God defend us, and defend our remotest posterity from 
 the fatal pecuniary alliance between our national Church 
 .and an alien, uncongenial Government ! 
 
 * Rev. H. B. Liddon. 
 
120 Eighty-five Years of Irish HistorTj. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 PROGRESS OF THE ANTI-TITHE MOVEMENT, 
 
 Then who's the wretch that basely spurns 
 
 The ties of country, kindred, friends j 
 That barters every nobler aim 
 
 For sordid views — for private ends ? 
 One slave alone on earth you'll find 
 
 Through Nature's universal span, 
 So lost to virtue, dead to shame : 
 
 The Anti-Irish Irishman. 
 
 Spirit of the Natioiu 
 
 I HAVE said that ** Repeal " and " l^o Tithes " were associated 
 on the platforms. The journals in the State Church interest, 
 and the speakers and writers, lay and clerical, by whom that 
 interest was defended, generally represented Repeal as a 
 purely Popish scheme, designed to overthrow Protestantism, 
 and fraught with peril to the properties and persons of 
 Protestants. The true merits and facts of the question were 
 carefully suppressed ; the most baseless falsehoods were boldly 
 affirmed and reiterated ; the fanatical engine was incessantly 
 worked ; and a profound impression was made on the credulity, 
 the ignorance, and the religious prejudices of a large class of 
 Protestants. 
 
 So far as concerns the miserable wrangling of adverse 
 religionists, let it pass for what it is worth. A ferocious 
 polemical divine imagines that he has discharged a telling 
 shot when he has let off some fanatical impertinence about 
 "idolatry," or " wafer-gods," or "the priest-ridden people." 
 Well, he has been impertinent ; what matter 1 None, surely 
 — unless we get too much of his impertinence. I bear no 
 enmity to any man for calling me a limb of Antichrist, and 
 telling me I must go to the devil as a follower of the Pope. 
 Certainly such language is not civil, and I am convinced it is 
 not true. But there is little wisdom in quarrelling with men 
 for mere incivility, or for a mistaken view of my chances of 
 salvation. It is impossible to conceive anything more in- 
 trinsically unimportant than the anti-Catholic speculations 
 and incivilities of our polemical assailants. "Antichrist" 
 shouted at a Catholic by some delirious enthusiast should no 
 
 more excite his wrath than " d n your blood " from a 
 
 drunken trooper. But the case is altered when abuse of our 
 faith becomes the watchword of a powerful party. When it 
 
"A Missionary Church." 121 
 
 becomes the rallying cry of men who avail themselves of the 
 spirit it excites to assail our pockets or abridge our liberties, 
 we are called on to resent it ; to resist the party who use 
 their fanaticism as an engine wherewith to work out our 
 oppression. 
 
 It was preposterous to talk of the anti-Irish Church 
 Establishment as a religious institution. Of the personal 
 piety or of the doctrinal convictions of its numerous estimable 
 members, I say nothing disrespectful. I speak of it solely as 
 a State Institution. During the period of its Establishment 
 it was in Catholic eyes a political instrument designed and 
 calculated to create and intensify class animosities. I fear 
 that a good deal of the bitterness which it engendered has 
 survived its Disestablishment.* 
 
 Its advocates defended it on the plea of its being what 
 they termed " a Missionary Church." It was supposed to 
 have a mission from the State to convert the Catholics, 
 Erom a Protestant standpoint it cannot seem, in this sense, 
 valuable ; for it has not converted the Catholics of Ireland to 
 the Protestant religion. They were but as three to one 
 during part of the last century ; now they are seven to one 
 as compared with the Protestants of the Episcopal Church — 
 poor evidence of its missionary efficacy. 
 
 Had it diffused through the land the Christian fruits of 
 peace, goodwill, and mutual tolerance 1 There for three 
 centuries it stood — hating and hated, plundering and ex- 
 ecrated ; in past times prolific of tears, outrage, and wailings ; 
 in our own day prolific of bitter politico-sectarian animosity 
 between classes who ought to have one common interest as 
 Irishmen. The people regarded it as a monument of English 
 power and Irish degradation. 
 
 * In a paper entitled "Eitualism in its Missionary Aspect," by 
 an Anglican clergyman — the Rev. Dr. Littledale — that reverend 
 gentleman sajs of the State Church in Ireland : *' Though called 
 by some of its panegyrists a Missionary Church, how completely it 
 has broken down in dealing with the Roman Catholic population 
 need not be insisted on. It is enough to say that even if the reports 
 of the proselytising societies were as true as they are unscrupulously 
 mendacious, the results would be a very poor return for three 
 centuries of monopoly." — The Church and the World : Essays on 
 Questions of the Day. By various writers. First Series. Edited by 
 the Rev. Orby Shipley, M.A. Second Edition. London : Longmans. 
 
 Archdeacon Stopford, in order to demonstrate the vast success of 
 the State Church in converting the Irish from Catholicity, published 
 in 1853 in his work called "Income and Requirements of the Irish 
 Church," a table professing to give the number of State Protestants 
 
122 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 These were the qualities that constituted its real value in 
 the estimation of our Whig and Tory rulers. The Whigs, 
 when out of office, had often made political capital by 
 denouncing it as an intolerable grievance. The Whigs, 
 when in office, were accustomed to look with complacent 
 philosophy at the intolerable grievance, and would to this 
 day have continued equally sympathetic and equally inactive, 
 if the English Liberation Society had not forced the question 
 on the notice of the nation and of its rulers by such a vigorous 
 and persistent agitation that the Government were at last 
 compelled to abate the great scandal by complete Disestablish- 
 ment, and by a partial and inadequate Disendowment. 
 
 Looking back on the anti-Irish Church, on its English 
 origin and its historical sympathies, it would be impossible 
 to conceive a more useful auxiliary to English Whigs and 
 Tories in the misgovernment and robbery of Ireland. It 
 held out ri,ch rewards to an important class to sustain in 
 every possible mode the (so-called) interests of Imperial 
 England as opposed to those of their native country. The 
 injury of being thus rendered subservient to the powerful 
 rivalry of another land became the more galling, when, as in 
 the case of Ireland, the depressed nation was compelled to 
 be the paymaster of those officers who enforced and per- 
 petuated its own servitude. A man who supposed he could 
 smooth his path to station and salary by crying, " Up with 
 England ! Down with Ireland ! " found the inducement to 
 anti-national politics much augmented, when to the motive 
 of self-interest was added the stimulant of sectarian partizan- 
 ship. 
 
 That such a wealthy exclusive institution as the State 
 
 in forty-eight selected parishes in 1834 and 1851 respectively, by 
 which he made it appear that the Protestant inhabitants were greatly 
 increased by conversions, and amounted in 1851 to no less than 
 12,372 persons. Mr. Herbert Skeats, in his excellent pamphlet 
 styled " The Irish Church ; a Historical and Statistical Review," 
 follows the Archdeacon through each of his forty-eight parishes, and 
 finds, by comparing the Archdeacon's figures with the figures of the 
 (then) last census, that if there were really 12,372 Protestants in 
 those parishes in 1851, there must have been '* the most alarming 
 declension, in ten years, of the number of converts, or of members 
 of the Established Church, that has probably taken place in any part 
 of Ireland or in any other country." And well might Mr. Skeats say 
 so, for the census of 1861 only gave a total of 6,939 State Protestants 
 in the parishes in question. The other alternative suggested by 
 Mr. Skeats is probably the true one — namely, that the Archdeacon's 
 ■statement was inaccurate. 
 
An Anti-national Lecture. 123 
 
 Churcli should have kept a considerable portion of the 
 Protestant body from merging into the great national mass, 
 is not greatly to be wondered at. Keligious bigotry, 
 combined with pecuniary profit, has availed to perpetuate 
 the original hostility to Ireland of the Elizabethan, Crom- 
 wellian, and Williamite adventurers in the breasts of their 
 descendants of the present day. This long-cherished hatred 
 of a domestic faction to their countrymen has no parallel in 
 any other country. You will find all Frenchmen, of what- 
 ever party in the State, zealous for the glory of France ; all 
 Germans ardent for the honour of Germany ; Spaniards for 
 Spain, and so on. It is in Ireland only that you will hear 
 from the lips of her unnatural children the frequent expres- 
 sions, " this odious land ! " " this detestable people ! " " Eng- 
 land will drag her triumphant cannon over your prostrate 
 carcases if you dare to resist ; " * with innumerable similar 
 ebullitions of venomous hatred of the unoflFending people 
 among whom their lot is cast, and whose only crime is that 
 they agitate for the common liberties of their revilers and 
 themselves. I recollect reading some years since in a 
 Limerick paper a letter written by an English gentleman 
 named Potter, who had spent some time in Ireland, and who 
 had expressed his surprise that all the Irish Protestants he 
 met seemed to him to have been trained to hate their native 
 country. A trivial circumstance will illustrate the satanic 
 activity with which, under the pretext of religion, hatred of 
 the Irish Catholic peasantry is instilled into the Protestant 
 mind. I chanced to converse with a young lady who had 
 been carefully brought up under parsonic influences. She 
 abused our poor country-folk as a set of ferocious and 
 immoral savages. Of course she had derived that impres- 
 sion from her intercourse with teachers and companions. I 
 tried to undeceive her, and stated one or two reasons to 
 show she was mistaken. 
 
 " Ah ! " said she, " I wish you had been the other night 
 
 at the lecture we heard from the Rev. Mr. ! He said 
 
 the country people were a dreadful set, and told us how, 
 when going among them, his life had been more than once 
 in danger from the ferocity of fellows who were hounded at 
 him by the priests. I can tell you he was well cheered." 
 
 I have no doubt he was well cheered. On my fair 
 friend's table was a "religious" work, in which it was 
 
 * I found this anti-national brag in the report of a speech 
 delivered bv Mr. Emerson Tennent. 
 
124 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 affirmed that the Irish Catholics considered it a greater sin 
 " to eat meat on Friday, than to murder a Protestant for a 
 consideration." These details may seem trivial. But such 
 prejudices are not trivial in their consequences when kneaded 
 into the minds of possibly well-meaning people, the current 
 of whose affections has been thereby turned from the land 
 that supplies them with their means of living, and from the 
 people whom they ought to love. 
 
 What, I ask, is the inexhaustible fountain of this pesti- 
 lential hatred of Ireland by Irishmen"^ What feeds the 
 stream of ceaseless calumny, insult, and political enmity] 
 Prior to the Disestablishment of the English Church in Ire- 
 land, the obvious answer to this query was — the anti-Irish 
 State Church, acting through the interests it affected. Since 
 Disestablishment we must ascribe the anti-national feeling 
 partly to the bigotry bequeathed by that pernicious institu- 
 tion to its disestablished successor, but also in some measure 
 to the violent onslaught on the whole body of Irish land- 
 lords got up by Mr. Parnell, which fatally widened the 
 traditionary chasm between them and the people — a chasm 
 which we, of the Repeal Association and the Home Rule 
 League, had laboured hard to close. 
 
 Despite the lapse of ages, despite even the connexions 
 formed by marriage with many of the native families, the 
 hostile spirit of the invader is as fresh, as vivid, in the 
 modern descendants of the ruthless soldiery of Essex or 
 St. Leger, of the sanguinary fanatics of the Commonwealth, 
 or of the military settlers of the Williamite era, as it was 
 some centuries ago in the breasts of their forefathers. They 
 have never become blended with the people. I have heard 
 language redolent of the most contemptuous and envenomed 
 hostility to the national population of Ireland proceeding 
 from tongues whose rich Hibernian brogue contrasted 
 ludicrously with the anti-Hibernian sentiments they uttered. 
 Even the ignorant Orange tradesman still fancies himself a 
 sort of Englishman in virtue of his English creed, and the 
 long habit, not yet extinguished by emancipation, of regard- 
 ing its profession as a badge of social superiority. 
 
 To any dispassionate observer at a distance, not aware of 
 the source of the unnatural hostility of Ireland's domestic 
 enemies to their country, how strange, how unaccountable 
 must that hostility appear ! How strange that no national 
 yearnings should be excited in their minds by the hallowed 
 associations of home, the ties of kindred, the casting of their 
 
Anti-Irish Irislimen. 125 
 
 lot in the old land of their birth ; that the blending of their 
 forefathers' dust for many a generation with Irish earth, 
 should yet leave the living descendant as aUen in feeling — 
 nay, as hostile, as if no such associations existed to bind his 
 heart to his fatherland ! Strange that the mystic voices of 
 the breeze that stirs the sycamores over his ancestors' graves 
 should not whisper to his spirit to love Ireland — to strive 
 for her liberties ! Strange that he should have no pride of 
 country ; that not only is he destitute of the ordinary senti- 
 ment of patriotism indigenous to every other land on earth, 
 but that from his tongue should emanate the bitterest 
 insults to Ireland and her sons — from his brain should 
 proceed the wickedest devices to enthral his own country- 
 men ! I once heard a jovial Irish squire of Cromwellian 
 descent, whose estate lay in as peaceable a district as any in 
 the world, exclaim that if it were not for the personal super- 
 vision his property required from him, he would quit " this 
 abominable country and go to live in England." An orator 
 named Harte proclaimed at a meeting of the Dublin Con- 
 servative Society some years ago, that " it was perfectly 
 notorious to every man who heard him, that to be a Pro- 
 testant in Ireland was sufficient to render life insecure." 
 These instances are not isolated. The party who display 
 this astounding hatred of their country are indefatigable in 
 their calumnies. The inspiring source of that hatred is 
 clearly discernible in the pseudo-religious character of their 
 attacks. Take two instances which accidentally met my eye 
 some years ago ; they are both typical. The first of these is 
 an extract from the Cork Constitution newspaper of July 
 27th, 1844. It is headed : 
 
 " DOINGS IN DINGLE. 
 
 " On Sunday last, the Kev. Mr. Brasbie read his public 
 recantation from the errors of Popery in Dingle Church. 
 The fact of a priest abjuring Popery caused great excite- 
 ment ; and the magistrates, having got full notice that the 
 mob were determined to execute lynch law on the priest on 
 his road to the church, took full precautions to preserve the 
 peace. Before service commenced, the townspeople were 
 astonished to see the Hon. Captain Plunket, of H.M. steamer 
 JStromhoIi, march into the town from Yentry with a force of 
 about one hundred men, including the marine artillery and 
 marines, with drums and colours. This fine body of men, 
 
126 Eighty -five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 armed to the teeth, having joined the seamen and marines of 
 H.M. brigantine Lynx, under command of Captain Nott, 
 presented such an imposing appearance that, we need not 
 say, everything passed off very quietly. The coastguard 
 from the surrounding stations were marched to church, fully 
 armed, and conveyed the reverend gentleman to the house 
 of the Eev. Mr. Gayer, where he at present remains. Mr. 
 Gillman, our active sub-inspector, had all his police ready to 
 turn out at a moment's notice. Dingle for the last twenty 
 years never presented such a force." 
 
 Lord Aberdeen, about that period, apologised in Parlia- 
 ment for the non-transmission of a marine force to Morocco, 
 as Her Majesty's war vessels were on duty on the coast of 
 Ireland. His lordship ought to have explained the tremendous 
 nature of the duty which deprived the Mediterranean of the 
 presence of the British flag. He should have announced 
 that the Stromholi and the Lynx were required to assist the 
 "missionary Church" (as the Evening Mail delighted to 
 term the Establishment) in the acquisition of the Eev. Mr. 
 Brasbie to her fold. 
 
 The whole paragraph is redolent of Irish State Churchism. 
 The transition from Popish error to Protestant truth is 
 performed by the beat of drums and the flourish of military 
 colours. The triumph of having caught a priest who will 
 renounce holy water and purgatory is combined with the 
 congenial triumph of saying to the mob, " My lads, we have 
 100 marines all armed to the teeth, who will make smithereens 
 of any man who dares to wag a finger." The orthodox 
 parade of " such a force as Dingle had not seen for twenty 
 years," is requisite to give due eclat to the Rev. Mr. Brasbie's 
 exchange of Pope Gregory XVI. for Pope Victoria as the 
 head of his Church; and, moreover, to protect the sacred 
 person of the convert from the truculence of the "mob," 
 who in all probability did not care three straws for the 
 exploits of the reverend gentleman. 
 
 The other instance is the allegation by the Rev. Mr. 
 Nangle, of Achill, that eleven Achillonians had attempted to 
 induce one Francis M'Hugh to enter into a conspiracy to 
 burn Mr. Nangle's House. That reverend gentleman also 
 printed in the Achill Herald (of which he was the editor) a 
 statement that the Catholics of the island had conspired to 
 break into his dwelling, and strangle the inhabitants. His 
 charge of meditated murder and arson elicited from Mr. 
 S. C. ^Hall, the well-known writer, an indignant letter to 
 
How to get English Gold for ^^ Missions." 127 
 
 the Times, from which the following paragraph is an 
 extract : 
 
 " The intention of the conspirators (writes the Eev. E. 
 Wangle in his own newspaper, the Achill Herald — fruitful 
 source of incalculable mischief !) was to have come down in 
 considerable force at night, to have entered by one of the 
 senior missionary's {i.e. Mr. ISTangle's) houses, to have 
 strangled him and the other heads of the mission in their 
 beds, and, after robbing them, to burn their dwellings. 
 
 " Rely on it, sir, there is not a shadow of foundation for 
 this ' horrible plot.' For the sake of mercy and justice, lend 
 your powerful aid to prevent so foul a slander from obtaining 
 credit in this country. 
 
 " Without meaning to insinuate that this cock-and-bull 
 story of conspiracy to murder wholesale has been got up for 
 the occasion, I may at least say that it occurs at a lucky 
 moment for the colony, inasmuch as within the next month 
 the Rev. E. Nangle will make his customary round of visits 
 to several English towns, and deliver his annual oration at 
 Exeter Hall ; the result of which, once a year, is a freightage 
 of English gold to his small colony at Achill. I append my 
 name, which you will either print or withhold at your 
 pleasure. 
 
 "S. C. Hall." 
 " Jan. 8th, 1884." 
 
 Mr. Hall is not only a Protestant, but a Conservative. I 
 mention his religious and political opinions, not that his 
 personal truth and honour are in the slightest degree thereby 
 affected, but because there are readers who will more readily 
 accept the testimony of a gentleman who holds his views than 
 if it were the evidence of a Catholic nationalist. In fact it 
 is extremely difficult to suppose that Mr. Nangle believed in 
 the truth of his serious accusations. They were, of course, 
 interspersed with affecting expressions of pious regret at the 
 dense spiritual blindness of the people. Mr. JSTangle prose- 
 cuted the alleged culprits. The charge of attempting to 
 involve M'Hugh in a conspiracy to burn the house was 
 sworn to at the Mayo assizes of July, 1844, by that person 
 himself, who appeared to be a convert, probably of Mr. 
 ^angle's manufacture. His sworn testimony was rejected 
 by Judge Jackson as totally incredible.* 
 
 * Mr. Hall's appreciation of the moral merits of the onslaught 
 on the faith of the Achill Catholics, sustained by English contri- 
 
128 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 The work of pious slander is incessant. In July, 1863, 
 a circular address was issued from " The Metropolitan House, 
 Bachelor's Walk, Dublin," to the Protestant employers of 
 Ireland. It is headed with the words, "Assassination — Self- 
 Preservation," and seems to have been chiefly meant to work 
 upon the nervous fears of ladies, inasmuch as it commences, 
 "Dear Madam." I copy the first and last paragraphs of 
 this most characteristic document : 
 
 " The assassinations that are taking, and have taken 
 place, almost daily, in our unhappy, but alas ! too notorious 
 country, prove beyond a shadow of doubt that it is neither 
 safe nor prudent for landlords to employ Roman Catholics as 
 domestic or farm-servants, or to locate them on their lands 
 as small farmers or stewards. To illustrate this statement 
 by numerous examples would be to waste your time, and 
 trifle with the most serious evil of the age in which we 
 live." 
 
 The address goes on to urge, as the best means of 
 preservation from Popish assassins, the employment of 
 " Protestants only who are in favour of British connexion." 
 Roman Catholics, indeed, may be employed ; but only " in 
 stations unaccompanied by risk and personal danger." They 
 are to be shown a holy and edifying example, and to be 
 taught to live " in the constant practice of godliness, 
 industry, and every Christian virtue." 
 
 Having thus exhorted the Protestant employers to keep 
 their dangerous neighbours at a prudent distance, the address 
 concludes as follows : " This method of self-preservation 
 would, we are convinced, be found a golden rule — a royal 
 road to domestic safety, security, and protection, for Pro- 
 testants individually and collectively. It would check the 
 assassination and decimation of our gentry; and it would 
 
 butions of money, may be learned from the following passage of 
 his "Tour through Ireland," p. 400. "It was impossible," says 
 Mr. Hall, " not to appreciate the magnanimity of the poor, miserable, 
 utterly destitute, and absolutely starving inhabitants of Achill, who 
 were at the time of our visit enduring privations at which humanity 
 shudders — and to know that by walking a couple of miles and 'pro. 
 Jessing to change their religion they would be instantly supplied 
 with food, clothes, and lodging. Yet these hungry thousands — for 
 it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that nine-tenths of the 
 population of the island were, in the month of July last, entirely 
 without food — preferred patiently to endure their sufferings rather 
 than submit to what they considered a degradation. Such fortitude 
 we do believe to be without parallel in the history of any ' ignorant 
 and unenlightened ' people einoe the creation of the world." 
 
Some Good may result from Evil. 129 
 
 reflect its blessings on those who are not of our communion. 
 It would elevate our class, edify the Church, receive the 
 approval of the Most High, and attract the attention of the 
 civilised and uncivilised inhabitants of Great Britain, 
 of Europe, and of the World. 
 
 *' Your very humble servant in Christ Jesus, 
 
 " The Secretary, 
 " Employment and Aid Society for Protestants. 
 " July, 1863." 
 
 This address was intended for private circulation ; but a 
 copy of it accidentally reached the hands of Mr. A. M. 
 Sullivan, the able and patriotic editor of the Nation^ in 
 which journal that gentleman published it on the 15tli of 
 August, 1863. 
 
 One mode of keeping up the sectarian excitement was by 
 displaying anti-Catholic placards in the streets. This was 
 for a long period constantly and offensively done. An 
 English gentleman, one of the most illustrious of the Oxford 
 converts, wrote to me from Dublin that if the Catholics 
 were to retaliate with anti-Protestant placards, a state of 
 things would be produced which would probably compel 
 the Government to put a stop to that species of warfare. 
 There were controversial handbills profusely scattered over 
 the country — thrown upon the highways, flung into the 
 fields, and pasted upon walls. The piers of my entrance- 
 gate were thus decorated. Whether any of the handbills 
 displayed talent, I am unable to say. The attempts at 
 argument in those which I saw were the veriest sweepings 
 of controversial rubbish. But they attacked ** Popery," 
 helped to exasperate Catholics, and gave an appearance 
 of activity in return for the large sums of money with which 
 the managers of the afi'air^ were subsidised by credulous 
 English fanatics. 
 
 Let me here observe, that, great as has been the evil 
 resulting from religious bigotry, yet the presence of two rival 
 creeds within the land has not been totally without its good. 
 I have heretofore spoken of the Protestant Church with 
 reference exclusively to its temporal Establishment. 
 
 I now speak of it as a religious system, and, as such, it 
 has derived some moral advantage from the presence of 
 antagonist Catholicity. The advantage has been mutual. 
 Two rival Churches will watch and purify each other. iN'ot 
 that this is any justification of religious difi'erences ; not that 
 
 K 
 
130 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 such differences are necessary to preserve religion pure ; but 
 simply that where they happen to exist, God can educe good 
 from the evil of disunion. 
 
 Contrast the morals of the Protestants of the present day 
 with those of their fathers in the heyday of the penal laws, 
 when Catholics were too insignificant to be their rivals — 
 when Protestantism had everything its own way. Then 
 were the golden days of duelling, of drunkenness, of profli- 
 gate cluhs in the metropolis — the Cherokee, the Hellfire, the 
 Pinkers and Sweaters, whose orgies are still preserved in 
 the local traditions of Dublin. Then were the days of 
 gallant, jovial, hard-drinking parsons — men who were paid 
 by the State for talking every Sunday about religion, and 
 who, accordingly, pronounced some cold and formal sentences 
 to small congregations, who, on their part, conceived that 
 they performed a meritorious duty in listening with grave 
 faces to the solemn homilies. Catholicity, however, uprose 
 in renovated strength, shook off its penal bandages, and 
 assumed the attitude of spiritual rivalry. The State Church 
 was alarmed. If the Protestant clergy and their flocks 
 became more bigoted, they certainly became more virtuous. 
 The majority of the parsons of our day are moral and pious. 
 Apart from the drawbacks of anti-Irish prejudice and anti- 
 Catholic slander (in which latter not one-twentieth part of 
 them actively participate) they are in general personally 
 virtuous and exemplary. 
 
 Would to God that Irishmen of all creeds could recognise 
 and rejoice in each other's good qualities ; that they could 
 turn the rivalship of antagonist creeds to its legitimate 
 account — the promotion of religion and morality ; discard 
 all unchristian acerbity, and unite with cordial, mutual 
 trustfulness in the national cause ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE REPEAL CAMPAIGN OP 1832. 
 
 'Tis only to gather 
 
 Our strength and be ready, 
 The son with the father, 
 
 The wild with the steady. 
 In front of the danger, 
 
 To tramp all together ; 
 Defying the stranger 
 
 In hall or in heather. J. De Jean. 
 
 The continued existence of the Union for thirty years had a 
 powerful effect in benumbing nationality among those whose 
 
Roger O'Connor. 131 
 
 religious teachers had inspired them with a suspicion of 
 their countrymen. They had become accustomed to be 
 legislated for by England, and use had rendered them in- 
 sensible to the degradation which had aroused in 1800 the 
 Irish spirit of the very Orangemen. The Union had debased 
 ^nd degraded many of the generation who had .grown up 
 since its enactment. They sneered at the Repealers as 
 Tisionaries, and — prejudging the whole matter in dispute— 
 they flippantly asserted that there was nothing Ireland could 
 :gain from native legislation that she could not also obtain 
 from the Imperial Parliament. 
 
 The Reform agitation of 1831 necessarily excited the 
 English mind to a pitch of intensity. The Irish were busy 
 with their own agitation ; and when Reform had been 
 carried, and some enlargement of the constituencies tem- 
 porarily efi'ected, the Repealers mustered their strength to 
 send members to St. Stephen's who should represent their 
 principles. 
 
 Many Irish agitators, with the prospect of Parliamentary 
 distinction, were speedily in the field. Ere the senatorial 
 vision had crossed their aspiring thoughts, some three or 
 four had acquired more than ordinary notoriety by their 
 agitation. Of these, one of the most conspicuous was 
 Eeargus O'Connor. Feargus was fourth son of Roger 
 O'Connor, who, in 1798, resided at Connorville, near 
 Dunmanway, in the County of Cork. Roger O'Connor was 
 involved in the rebellion of which his brother Arthur was 
 one of the principal leaders. Arthur wished, at the later 
 period of his agitation, to make Ireland a republic on the 
 French model of 1792. He was a thoroughly honest 
 politician. Of his disinterestedness there is conclusive proof 
 in the fact that he deliberately forfeited the splendid in- 
 heritance of his maternal uncle, Lord Longueville, who was 
 childless, and who would have made him his heir on con- 
 dition of his adopting his lordship's politics. Roger's views 
 were monarchical ; I believe he intended to exercise the 
 sovereign authority himself. 
 
 Roger employed his military skill in fortifying Connor- 
 ville to sustain an attack from the King's troops. He 
 planned a trap for them also, of which I had a detailed 
 description from a gentleman who was personally cognisant 
 of the device. 
 
 There were two fronts to Connorville House. From the 
 front that faced the public road the hall-door steps were 
 removed, and the windows of the basement storey on that 
 
 K 2 
 
132 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 side of the house were strongly built up iS^o hostile entry 
 could have been effected upon that front. The other front 
 opened on a large courtyard, nearly surrounded with high 
 buildings. From the eastern side of this courtyard ran a 
 broad, straight avenue, some hundreds of yards in length, 
 between two very lofty walls, overgrown with ivy of ex- 
 traordinary luxuriance. At the extremity of this avenue, 
 farthest from the house, was a high and massive iron gate. 
 The whole length of the avenue was commanded by cannon, 
 which were placed in a shed in the courtyard, and managed 
 by French artillerymen. The massive gate at the eastern 
 end of the avenue was left constantly open, to invite the 
 entrance of his Majesty's troops in the event of a hostile 
 descent upon Connorville. There were men always stationed 
 perdu in the huge ivy bushes at the top of the piers, to lock 
 the gate the instant the military forces should have passed 
 through. The soldiers would thus be caught in a complete 
 trap ; hemmed in by the lofty walls that flanked the avenue, 
 their retreat cut off by the iron gate behind them, and their 
 position fully raked in front by the cannon in the court- 
 yard.* The scheme seemed feasible enough, but it never 
 was realised. The soldiers came to Connorville ; they 
 entered the avenue and courtyard ; but whether the artillery- 
 men had deserted their post, or whether Roger had not 
 completed his intended preparations, certain it is that the 
 redcoats scoured the premises without molestation, and 
 Roger surveyed them from the friendly shade of a holly- 
 tree in which he was ensconced, on a rocky eminence that 
 overlooked the courtyard from the north. He escaped on 
 that occasion ; his capture did not occur for some months 
 after. His subsequent imprisonment at Fort George in 
 Scotland is well known. I possess, in his manuscript, a 
 poetical " Invocation to Sleep," which he composed during 
 his incarceration. It is manifestly an unfinished production; 
 a few lines may serve as a sample of its merits : 
 
 Par from my native land, far from my wife 
 And all my little babes, on Moray Firth 
 
 * This account of Roger O'Connor's preparations was given me 
 by my father. A lady, who professed to recollect Connorville at 
 that period, had, I am told, asserted that the preparations were not 
 actually made. It is, therefore, proper to say that my father may 
 possibly have described to mo a plan which Roger only devised, but 
 did not bring to the point of preparation ; but my impression of the 
 communication I received is Buch as I have given it in the text. 
 
Roger established at Dangan. 133 
 
 Incag'd and barr'd with double bolts I drag 
 
 My weary days and lengthened nights of pain. 
 
 On Sleep, that dull and partial god, I call 
 
 In vain ! Unheard or slighted are my plaints. 
 
 The constant tramp of feet, and watchful cry 
 
 Of " Who comes there ? " the sentry's hollow cough 
 
 Contracted from the midnight cold and damp, 
 
 Assail my ear, still conscious of the sound ; 
 
 The bell's loud voice, which speaks Old Time's decay, 
 
 Is so familiar grown, I still conceit 
 
 That I can tell his numbers by his note. 
 
 O ! for a cup of Lethe's pool to steep 
 
 My weary senses in forgetf ulness. 
 
 When Roger was released from Fort George, he was per- 
 mitted to reside in England, but not for some time to return 
 to Ireland. When at last this restriction was withdrawn, he 
 returned to Ireland, and purchased the magnificent mansion 
 and domain of Dangan Castle, in the County Meatli, the 
 family seat of the Wellesleys. Dangan was long supposed 
 to have been the birthplace of the Duke of Wellington ; 
 but the minute researches of Sir Bernard Burke have con- 
 clusively established that his Grace was born in Mornington 
 House, '^0. 24, Upper Merrion Street, Dublin, which 
 mansion is at present occupied by the Commissioners of 
 Church Temporalities and the Commissioners of the Land 
 Court. The purchase money of Dangan was to remain for 
 some time in Roger O'Connor's hands, bearing interest. 
 
 The following brief notice of Dangan occurs in Arthur 
 Young's "Tour in Ireland," under date 28th of June, 1776 : 
 *' Went in the evening to Lord Mornington's at Dangan, 
 who is making many improvements which he showed me. 
 His plantations are extensive, and he has formed a large 
 water having five or six islands much varied ; and pro- 
 montories of high land shoot so far into it as to form almost 
 distant lakes ; the effect pleasing. There are above 100 acres 
 under water, and his lordship has planned a considerable 
 addition to it." 
 
 The extensive plantations had grown up into lofty woods 
 before Roger became their proprietor. His declared object 
 in becoming the occupant of Dangan was, that he might 
 possess a house fit for the reception of Bonaparte, as he pro- 
 fessed a firm faith in the advent of the Emperor to Ireland. 
 Wellington, however, was less hospitable, and effectually 
 prevented the visit of Napoleon to his hereditary residence. 
 
 Eeargus was born at Connorville in 1796. He resided a 
 good deal with his father at Dangan until that mansion was 
 
134 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 consumed by a fire said to have been accidental. He had, 
 however, been sent to two or three schools, at which he dis- 
 tinguished himself by a number of irregular pranks. At a 
 school in Portarlington he fell desperately in love with the 
 schoolmaster's fascinating daughter, and received a severe 
 paternal admonition on the impropriety of sullying the glory 
 of his illustrious lineage by such a mesalliance. He ran off 
 from his family to England, and amused himself haymaking 
 one summer in Wiltshire. His father was eccentric and 
 imaginative. Feargus early acquired a taste for an ad- 
 venturous life, and politics naturally had a place in his 
 ruminations. In 1822 he resided, with other members of 
 his family, at Fortrobert, a spacious house — now a roofless 
 ruin — on a hill adjoining the domain of Connorville. There 
 he lived a jolly life, enjoying the society afforded by the 
 neighbourhood, to which his entertaining conversation 
 rendered him a welcome acquisition ; playing whist, riding 
 to foxhounds, outrivalling all his competitors in desperate 
 horsemanship ; and giving occasional indications of the spirit 
 within him by attacks on prominent local abuses. He 
 published a pamphlet fiercely denouncing the oppressors of 
 the peasantry — parsons, tithe-proctors, grinding middlemen, 
 jobbing grand-jurors — with especial censure of all magistrates 
 trafiicking in justice. 
 
 As yet Feargus had not tried his rhetorical powers in 
 public. But the exciting political transactions of 1851 and 
 1832 necessarily called forth so active and ardent a spirit. 
 He first appeared at a Whig meeting held in Cork in 
 December, 1831, for the purpose of forwarding Reform of 
 Parliament. Messrs. Jephson, of Mallow ; ^Nicholas Philpot 
 Leader, then member for Kilkenny ; Delacour, a banker ; 
 Stawell, of Kilbrittain ; Baldwin, of Cork ; with some youth- 
 ful scions of the Shannon and Kingston families, and several 
 other Whig notables of the county, were mustered in the old 
 Court-house on the Grand Parade at an early hour. They 
 all rehearsed the usual commonplaces of Beform ; talked in a 
 tone of aristocratic condescension of the claims of the 
 democracy ; announced that in order to establish a right to- 
 full citizenship it was not requisite that men should exhibit 
 rent-rolls and pedigrees ; with a great many equally respec- 
 table political truisms. Up to four o'clock the most amusing 
 speaker was Leader, the member for Kilkenny. He was a 
 stout, thick-set man, with a wild, ferocious eye ; he shouted 
 and bellowed, gesticulated like a harlequin, slapped his- 
 
Public Dinner at Macroom. 135 
 
 thighs, spun nearly round on tiptoe, emphasised remarkahle 
 hits by bobbing down his head within a couple of feet of the 
 floor, roared, stamped, ranted, blustered, and perforce of a 
 thundering expenditure of personal energy, elicited vociferous 
 applause. 
 
 Late in the day Feargus came forward to the front of one 
 of the galleries ; distanced all the Whigs and Eeformers by 
 exclaiming that Repeal alone could save Ireland from ruin ; 
 and certainly so far as concerned the external matters of 
 voice, action, and delivery, he made beyond comparison the 
 best speech of the day. 
 
 Feargus now set himself to work in earnest to attain 
 political leadership. He had not yet contemplated an attack 
 on the representation of the county, for he had not yet seen 
 to what extent the Reform Bill would popularise the con- 
 stituency; but he dearly loved the greeting cheers of the 
 multitude ; he revelled in the consciousness of possessing un- 
 usual volubility; and he had a strong conviction that his 
 popular talents would soon exalt him into a position of 
 political command. 
 
 In the summer of 1832 the anti-tithe agitation extended 
 all over the County of Cork. Feargus was ubiquitous ; 
 Macroom, D unman way, Enniskean, and several other places, 
 were visited in rapid succession. " Fargus," as the country 
 folk familiarly called him, soon ingratiated himself into every 
 one's favour ; and by the frankness and ease of his address, 
 and his great colloquial powers, disarmed the suspicious 
 enmity of many in the middle ranks who had previously 
 anathematised both himself and his cause. 
 
 He soon received the distinction of two or three public 
 entertainments. At Macroom he got a dinner from about 
 three hundred farmers and shopkeepers, at which he, for the 
 first time, publicly announced himself a candidate for the 
 representation. He declared, in accents of afl'ecting pathos, 
 that his advocacy of the people's rights had deprived him of 
 the afi"ections of his nearest relatives. 
 
 " Since I last," said he, " met my friends of Macroom, 
 there has been no smile on my cheek, no comfort in my 
 breast. My nearest relations have turned from me; it is 
 true they recognise me privately, but in public they have 
 wounded my feelings. I leave them to that awful moment 
 when the sacred Monitor shall arouse them to reflection — 
 when he shall tap here " (pointing to his breast), " and cry, 
 Awake ! be judged." 
 
136 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 It behoved the people on whose behalf the sufferings in 
 question were incurred, to apply the salve to the patriotic 
 victim. It especially behoved the tradesmen of Macroom to 
 indemnify him for his sorrows, inasmuch as he claimed the 
 honour of membership with their fraternity in virtue of his 
 having taken part in a meeting held in the large square in 
 that town in the month of June previously. 
 
 The electors in the popular interest had been urged by 
 the Catholic clergy to register their votes, and the shrewd 
 ones began with confidence to augur a very large Liberal 
 majority at the next general election. At the Macroom 
 dinner, as we learn from the Cork Southern Reporter of that 
 date, " the subject of the representation was freely discussed. 
 Mr. O'Connor announced his intention of becoming a candi- 
 date for the County of Cork at the approaching election. He 
 was received with great enthusiasm, and all present confirmed 
 his pretensions by the highest eulogy of his claims and 
 character. A general pledge was made by the company of 
 their support and influence. At the suggestion of the chair- 
 man, a resolution was entered into for the formation of an 
 Independent Club to organise the representative franchise in 
 the county, the better to secure the return of Mr. O'Connor 
 in conjunction with any other popular candidate who should 
 present himself. The conditions laid down for the future 
 candidates were a full support of the Repeal of the Union, 
 total abolition of tithes, vote by ballot, and universal 
 suffrage." 
 
 It was late at night when Feargus rose to announce his 
 resolution to become a candidate for the county. The candles 
 had nearly burned down to their sockets, and threw a dim 
 and doubtful gleam upon the large apartment. A very prosy, 
 windy speaker had occupied a great deal of time in delivering 
 a speech which I cannot better describe than by saying that 
 in matter and structure it resembled an interminable leading 
 article in a tenth-rate country newspaper. Listeners got 
 tired — Feargus was especially impatient ; yet the orator not 
 only prosed on, but seemed to regard his newly-found 
 capacity for public speaking as a subject of particular 
 congratulation. "This," he exclaimed, *' is the first time 
 that I ever made a speech, and I never thought I could have 
 talked so long without stopping — it appears to me that I'm 
 inspired ; " and he continued to give the audience the benefit 
 of his inspiration, either until he had exhausted the afflatus, 
 or until the chairman checked him on the plea that the hour 
 
An Inspired Orator. 137 
 
 ivas now far advanced. The crowd had drawn close to the 
 small dais, or platform, on which were assembled the chair- 
 man, the guest, and two or three other country gentlemen. 
 There was great exultation at the prospect of seeing the 
 popular favourite returned to Parliament. When Feargus 
 announced that he would stand for the county, a rapturous 
 "hurrah!" testified the general delight. The candidate 
 resumed his seat, much pleased with the sympathy of his 
 friends, when a movement was discerned among the throng, 
 as of some stalwart fellow elbowing his way to the front. 
 Feargus rose, and recognised the person who was forcing 
 himself forward ; he was a broad-shouldered, red-haired, 
 athletic Protestant farmer, named Whiting, who bore a 
 strong personal resemblance to the burly candidate himself. 
 
 "Make room for Mr. Whiting," said Peargus in his 
 blandest accents. Eoom was immediately made for his 
 passage. " How are you, my worthy friend ? " continued 
 Peargus, courteously shaking hands with Whiting. *' Would 
 you wish to get on the platform % We've plenty of room for 
 you." 
 
 Whiting accepted the invitation and was given a chair, 
 on which he seated himself. He gazed for some moments 
 at Peargus in mute ecstasy, and then broke forth : " 0, 
 Pargus, Pargus ! is it not the murdher of the world to see 
 you looking after the representation of a county in their 
 English Parliament, instead of enjoying (as by right you 
 ought) the royal crown of Ireland upon that honest red 
 head, as was worn by your ancesthors in the ancient times 
 of ould!" 
 
 Peargus, however, limited his ambition to a seat for the 
 county, despite this stimulating burst of post-prandial enthu- 
 siasm. He smiled assuasively in return for Mr. Whiting's 
 complimentary allusion to his ancestral honours. The scene 
 was amusing, and its effect was heightened by the personal 
 resemblance of the sturdy yeoman and the patriotic orator, 
 who exchanged the most affectionate glances with each 
 other. 
 
 Peargus lashed all jobbers, particularly jobbing magistrates 
 who made a profitable trade of their justice-ship ; " they ate 
 justice, drank justice, lay upon justice, rode justice, wore 
 justice — ay, threadbare ! " 
 
 He complimented the tradesmen of Macroom by whom 
 he was surrounded : " Tradesmen we are all, in fact, from 
 the monarch who fills the throne, and whose trade is that of 
 
138 Eighty -five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 cabinet-making, to the humble chimney-sweeper who loudly 
 proclaims his calling from the house-tops. I am a trades- 
 man of Macroom. I was bound apprentice in the great 
 square on the 10th of June last " (alluding to the anti-tithe 
 meeting held on that day); "and on my show-board shall 
 be Peace, Industry, Union, and Freedom." 
 
 At the Enniskean anti-tithe meeting Feargus gallantly 
 defied the Duke of Wellington. " I did hear that a military 
 force was to have attended. If I saw that force under the 
 command of the great Captain of the age, I would tell him 
 he was in his dotage, and that the power of knowledge was 
 greater than the power of cannon." 
 
 He defended himself from calumnious imputations: 
 " Here I stand in the midst of thousands and tens of thou- 
 sands to whom I have been known from my birth, and I 
 fearlessly ask them if the breath of slander has ever dared 
 to assail my character ] " (" No, no ! " and cheers.) " Have 
 I ever oppressed the meanest individual among you % " 
 (" No, no ! hurrah ! ") "Have I not ever been your adviser 
 and director 1" (" Yes, yes ! hurroo ! ") 
 
 He announced the religious object of his agitation at a 
 dinner given him in Enniskean : " My object is to purify 
 the religion I profess by lopping off its rotten and redundant 
 temporalities"; and he fiercely inquired "whether the 
 religion of the Almighty was to be set in blood 1 " alluding 
 to the fatal tithe affrays. 
 
 At a dinner given in Cork to the late Bishop England, 
 Feargus concluded a vehement speech in these words : " No ! 
 though our sea-bound dungeon were encompassed by the 
 wooden walls of Old England — though the 300,000 pro- 
 mised Cossacks marched through the land with all the 
 emblems of death, the rack, the scaffold, and the axe, yet I 
 would suffer martyrdom ere I would throw up my hat and 
 cry ' All hail ' to him* who dragged my country's Liberator 
 through the streets of the metropolis to answer a charge 
 made crime by proclamation. No ! though stretched upon 
 the rack I would smile terror out of countenance, and die as 
 I have lived — a pure lover of liberty ! " 
 
 The critic in his closet who laughs at this fantastic bom- 
 bast, will scarcely believe that when volubly thrown off, 
 rotundo ore^ and recommended by graceful and emphatic 
 action, and an air of intense earnestness, it not only could 
 
 * The Marquis of Anglesea. 
 
Feargus O'Connor as a Public Speaker. 139 
 
 pass for " fine speaking," but produce to some extent, upon 
 a sympathetie audience, the effect of genuine eloquence. It 
 seems to have found an admirer in the reporter for the Cork 
 Mercantile Chi'onicle, whose comment ran thus : " This 
 splendid effusion of masculine eloquence created a most 
 extraordinary sensation, coming, as it did, like a thunder- 
 clap on all. The talented speaker was long and loudly 
 cheered on resuming his seat ; and we will augur that it 
 will be long before he is forgotten by the people of this 
 city." 
 
 Feargus had now established his fame through the 
 county as *' a fine speaker." In the city of Cork he was 
 generally called " the Rattler." Those who have not heard 
 him in public in his best days, and who have only judged of 
 his abilities by his printed effusions, have frequently done 
 great injustice to his powers. He was remarkably ready and 
 self-possessed. He was capable of producing extraordinary 
 popular effect. He had very great declamatory talent. He 
 had also great defects. As a stimulating orator in a popular 
 assembly he was unexcelled. It is true he dealt largely in 
 bombast, broken metaphor, and inflated language ; but while 
 you listened, those blemishes were lost in the infectious 
 vehemence of his spirited manner ; you were charmed with 
 the melodious voice, the musical cadences, the astonishing 
 volubility, the imposing self-confidence of the man, and the 
 gallant air of bold defiance with which he assailed all 
 oppression and tyranny. The difference between his spoken 
 and printed harangues was surprisingly great. 
 
 He mingled the exciting qualities I have enumerated 
 with a very small amount of argumentative power. He 
 blended the facility of at first acquiring popular influence 
 with a sad incapacity to retain it. He displayed an exhaust- 
 less fund of vituperative vigour in lashing all the parties 
 disliked by the people ; but he was sometimes betrayed, by 
 want of reflection, into receiving and announcing as truths 
 the most incredible exaggerations. For instance, he pro- 
 claimed to a numerous meeting in Bandon that certain 
 portions of the parish of Timoleague paid tithe at the rate 
 of £90 per acre ; and that the fact of that extravagant 
 tithe-charge had been confirmed upon oath before two 
 magistrates. 
 
 During the agitating summer and autumn of 1832, 
 scenes of a highly exciting and picturesque character were 
 constantly exhibited. The meetings for Repeal and No 
 
140 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 Tithes were usually held on Sundays after mass. It was 
 impossible to see without interest the rustic worshippers 
 wending along the glen and down the hill-side, sauntering 
 through " the lone vale of green bracken " beneath the 
 brilliant morning sunshine ; crowding to the Catholic church 
 at the call of the bell ; stragglers from the outskirts of the 
 parish endeavouring to recover lost time by short cuts and 
 increased speed, as they sprang with agility over the 
 ditches. Then there was the muster of the hardy peasants 
 in the churchyard ; the more thoughtless occupying the 
 interval before mass in inquiring the news of the day ; the 
 more devout kneeling apart before the altar rails, or under 
 the rude pictures called the Stations of the Cross ; or in 
 some shaded spot without the sacred edifice, where, un- 
 molested, they might recite a litany or a rosary beneath the 
 shadow of an old hawthorn. Then came the last quick toll 
 of the bell, announcing that divine service was just going to 
 commence ; then the hurried gathering into the church of a 
 crowd that often overflowed its precincts ; the Mass ; the 
 homely discourse in Irish ; and after the " Ite, missa est," 
 an announcement of the meeting of the day. 
 
 The meeting frequently comprised the inhabitants of 
 many parishes. The dark multitudes streamed from the hills 
 to one common centre — many on horseback, but the greater 
 number on foot. There was a proud thrill in every man's 
 breast ; all felt the ennobling consciousness that a nation 
 was peacefully mustering and banding together to assert and 
 recover their rights. The Irish peasantry are not mere clod- 
 poles. Many of them are imaginative and intellectual. 
 They love their native land, and they are proud of it. They 
 are susceptible of every external influence that can heighten 
 the sentiment of patriotism ; and as the multitudes traversed 
 the grand scenery of the parishes on the sea-coast, doubtless 
 many a foot was arrested on the heights which commanded 
 a view of the bold mountain peaks, the magnificent expanse 
 of ocean, the steep clifl's, and the rich green glens often 
 winding from the shore among the hills ; and many a heart 
 felt to its centre that the freedom of such a glorious land 
 was worth any struggle men could make — any peril men 
 could encounter. 
 
 The meeting usually mustered in full strength at the 
 appointed place about three o'clock in the afternoon. The 
 chairman was often a Protestant, whose hatred of tithes was 
 not less intense than that felt by the Catholic concourse 
 
Ecclesiastical Mismanagement. 141 
 
 around him. I only knew of one Protestant gentleman who 
 was said to occupy his post with reluctance. He was a 
 landlord of some hundreds a year. He was deemed a prize 
 by his anti-tithist neighbours, who made many attempts to 
 secure him for their chairman, which he always coquettishly 
 evaded, until it was delicately hinted that in the event of 
 his persisting in refusal, the requisitionists would develop 
 to the Board of Customs certain smuggling transactions 
 in which he had been engaged. The hint was sufficient. 
 
 Mr. consented to preside, and he delivered a 
 
 philippic against the Church temporalities, of which the 
 pungent bitterness amply redeemed his previous apathy. 
 
 Feargus was quite in his element at all these public 
 meetings. The first of them which he attended was, I think, 
 a very large gathering held near Diinmanway on the 29 th of 
 June, 1832, at which my brother, Thomas Wilson Daunt, 
 presided. Feargus delivered himself with a voluble energy 
 which called down tumultuous cheers, and found so much 
 favour with some of his hearers that they declared he was 
 " finer than O'Connell." He hated the Union with cordial 
 bitterness ; he hated the tithes with equal intensity ; and he 
 had stories of ecclesiastical mismanagement at his fingers' 
 ends much better authenticated than the legend of the 
 £90 per acre. He spoke of the parish in which his own 
 residence, Fortrobert, was situated ; told how the rector, 
 Mr. Hamilton, had never set his foot within the parish 
 for thirty-five years; exposed the vestry that had en- 
 larged the clerk's salary because the clerk went to live at a 
 distance from the parish, and required additional payment to 
 remunerate him for the additional road to be travelled on 
 Sundays to his church ; and finally the orator denounced the 
 jolly sexton who kept a house of ill-fame near the church 
 gate. 
 
 Mr. Hamilton, the rector^ resided in a remote part of the 
 kingdom, and never visited the parish. I know nothing of 
 his personal character or of his professional accomplishments, 
 and am therefore unable to say whether his small Protestant 
 flock were losers by his absence. ISTon-residence has often 
 been stigmatised as a grievance. Certainly it withdraws the 
 expenditure of the incumbent's income from the parish. But 
 there have been, and perhaps still are, cases in which the 
 incumbent, when inflamed with anti-Catholic bigotry, is 
 so great a public nuisance, that his absence would be a 
 blessing ; and it would, in such cases, be often worth the 
 
142 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 Catholics' while to subscribe some increase to his revenue on 
 condition of his living elsewhere. 
 
 The people were enchanted with Feargus's scathing 
 exposures of clerical, magisterial, and legislative iniquity; 
 and " Fargus " was unanimously pronounced to be " a devil 
 of a fellow." His manners were excessively conciliating ; in 
 private they were courteous and refined ; in public they 
 were hearty, rattling, and impulsive. He had frolicsome 
 touches of mimicry, nickname, and claptrap ; he now and 
 then let off a telling pun. His courteous demeanour alter- 
 nated with a certain indescribable swagger, which, however, 
 was not in the least degree offensive, and merely indicated 
 the excellent opinion which he entertained of himself, without 
 disparagement to any one else. He was a capital raconteur. 
 His talents as a mimic were considerable. His was not 
 that mere parrot mimicry that imitates sounds only; he was a 
 mimic of sentiment and feeling ; he could take up the whole 
 train of thought as well as the voice, and present you with 
 an exquisitely ludicrous resemblance of mental as well 
 as vocal characteristics. He also excelled in repartee. Ho 
 had strong satirical powers, a formidable readiness in retort, 
 and could pounce with merciless sarcasm on the weak or 
 ludicrous points of an antagonist; so that, whenever any 
 incivility was attempted at his expense, he retaliated with a 
 pungency that made his opponent repent the rash assault. 
 But Feargus, when not attacked, was remarkable for suavity 
 and excellent temper. 
 
 He was fond of puns, and sometimes made them tell. 
 At a meeting which he attended, after having been for some 
 time absent from the country, it chanced that there stood at 
 his right hand a patriotic paper-maker named Kidney. 
 Feargus assured his audience that his absence from home had 
 not altered his politics. *'Here I am," cried he, "unchanged 
 — the same pure lover of liberty you have ever known me, 
 with the same honest heart, and the same stout Kidney 
 too ! " patting his worthy and stalwart neighbour on the 
 shoulder amidst shouts of laughter. 
 
 Feargus's strongest point was his great physical energy. 
 He was indefatigable in his agitation. In all the quarters 
 of the compass, wherever a popular muster of sufficient 
 magnitude was announced, there was usually to be seen the 
 popular agitator with the brawny muscular figure, the big 
 round shoulders, the red curly tresses overhanging the 
 collar of his coat, the cajoling smirk, the insinuating manners, 
 
The Irish Democracy Aristocratic. 143 
 
 €ind. the fluent tongue. His taste in eloquence was not 
 rigorous; his language might, to borrow a Homeric phrase, be 
 termed " poluphloisboios." He was fond of sounding and 
 redundant sentences. He often declared, for example, that 
 the people were "wrecked by disunion, torn by discord, 
 revolutionised by faction." This description of talk rolled 
 off his tongue in continuous torrents. 
 
 He considered it politic to assume towards the Catholic 
 clergy an air of profound and affectionate reverence. He 
 boasted that he had a larger number of clerical acquaintances 
 than any other layman in Ireland. He talked of convening 
 an assembly of the Catholic clergy of the County Cork, 
 at which he was to preside. Eeargus's concio ad clerum 
 would have been a curious deliverance. 
 
 The Whig and Tory squirearchy laughed to derision his 
 prospects of success. They sneered at the rustic meetings, 
 the public dinners got up among the village shopkeepers and 
 farmers. "He had a genteel day of it ! " writes one of them, 
 who was scandalised at the overwhelming preponderance of 
 the frieze coats at a public entertainment given to Feargus. 
 Meanwhile Feargus persevered with continually increasing 
 activity. Some of the advertisements of his movements were 
 headed with the appropriate words in huge types, "Up and 
 doing!" 
 
 Whatever were the merits or defects of his public 
 speaking, his manner and delivery were those of a gentle- 
 man. A clever writer remarks that in the earlier period of 
 his agitation he addressed the people more in the style of a 
 ■chieftain encouraging his gallant clansmen than of a common- 
 place agitator talking down to the level of an unenlightened 
 auditory. The people appreciated his aristocratic demeanour, 
 for the Irish democracy — (and this is a trait in the national 
 character well worth the attention of politicians) — are emi- 
 nently aristocratic in their prepossessions. They love ancient 
 lineage ; they can quickly discern, and they ardently relish 
 the demeanour that should mark the far-descended gentle- 
 man. Those who in O'Connell's time, and still later in the 
 time of Isaac Butt, feared that the Kepeal of the Union 
 would result in democratic anarchy, evinced by that fear 
 their ignorance of the feelings, dispositions, and prejudices 
 which then characterised the Irish nation. Writing of them 
 many years ago, I said that there was not in the Empire a 
 people more desirous to give practical efficacy to the theory of 
 the British Constitution ; to carry into practice the theoretic 
 
144 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 equipoise of Crown, Lords, and Commons. Loving th& 
 liberty of Ireland as their dearest earthly birthright, they 
 rejoiced when they were led in pursuit of it by men of high 
 station and old lineage. Loyal to the Crown (but not to the 
 Legislative Union), they honoured the coronet — those Irish 
 worshippers of freedom. They merely desired to convert the 
 aristocracy from oppressors into protectors. 
 
 But the aristocracy were hard to convert. At that time 
 the State Church existed, offering a bribe of X700,000 per 
 annum to the scions of the Protestant nobility and gentry to 
 support the Legislative Union. There were large parochial 
 incomes; great prizes in the wheel; bishoprics, arch- 
 bishoprics, deaneries. The preservation of the State Church 
 was especially provided for in the Act that destroyed the 
 Irish Parliament. Then there was the spectre of Catholic 
 ascendency ; a spectre as unreal as Pepper's Ghost ; yet held 
 forth from pulpits and platforms to scare the Irish Protestants 
 from nationality. There was also the elaborate ignorance of 
 the facts of Irish history— ignorance in which the Irish 
 Protestants were generally trained, by narratives that repre- 
 sented England as being always in the right, and Ireland 
 always in the wrong. 
 
 Their attitude to their own country was hostile, and few 
 of their number supported O'Connell in his noble efforts to 
 recover the priceless possession of Home Legislation. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 BLBOTIONEBRING AGITATION IN 1832. 
 
 My inmost heart is in your cause. I pray 
 
 God speed your quarrel. Yet my hands are bound ; 
 
 There is a golden fetter that restrains 
 
 The energies that should of right be yours. 
 
 Anon. 
 
 Repeal was now a topic of universal interest. The Rev. 
 Charles Boyton, a Fellow of Trinity College, made several 
 speeches at the Dublin Conservative Society, strongly im- 
 pregnated with Irish nationality. In one of those speeches 
 he ably dissected and exposed the fallacies which even then 
 Mr. Spring Rice had begun to put forth, about the incalcu- 
 lable benefits produced to Ireland by the Union. Mr. Rice 
 had been triumphant in the English House of Commons — 
 that is to say, he had the votes, the majorities, the cheers. 
 
The Reverend Charles Boyton. 145 
 
 which in general await in that assembly the exploits of an 
 Irishman who does the dirty work of England. It was easy 
 to prove to the perfect satisfaction of an English audience 
 that the subjugation of Ireland to England was an overflowing 
 source of prosperity to the former country. His miles of 
 figures, his tables of statistics, his carefully-contrived arith- 
 metical legerdemain, made an imposing show in an assembly 
 whose members cared nothing for the merits of the case, and 
 cared everything for their own grasp on Irish resources. 
 
 But Mr. Eice's statistical jugglery did not prove so 
 convincing to the Irish people. He did not find it so easy 
 to persuade them that their starving population were com- 
 fortably fed; that their unemployed half-naked tradesmen 
 were warmly clothed; that the manufactories crumbling 
 into ruins in many parts of the country were hives of happy 
 thriving industry; that the 14,000 silk-weavers just then 
 stalking unemployed through Dublin were models of pros- 
 perity and comfort ; that the crowded metropolitan mendicity 
 demonstrated the brisk state of trade ; that the insolvency 
 of one-fourth of the number of houses in Dublin indicated 
 the increasing opulence of the metropolis ; that the Dublin 
 people were greatly enriched by the removal to London of 
 all the public Boards ; and that the drain of four millions of 
 absentee rents out of Ireland, and the further drain of Irish 
 public revenue, were a source of remunerative employment 
 and national wealth to the Irish people. 
 
 All these brilliant paradoxes might easily be received as 
 gospel-truths by a body of Englishmen interested only in 
 keeping down Ireland, and wringing all the profit they 
 could out of her poverty ; but the suffering people them- 
 selves felt the poignant addition of insult to injury when 
 they saw the great cause of their sorrows held forth to the 
 world as the fountain of blessings to their country. 
 
 Boyton, despite his Conservatism, felt as an aggrieved 
 Irishman would naturally feel, and in a speech which dis- 
 played full knowledge of the subject, he refuted with con- 
 temptuous sarcasm the fallacies of Mr. Kice. Boyton's mind 
 and body were alike of athletic powers and proportions. He 
 had the reputation of being an able pugilist, and, no doubt, 
 in his reasoning there was many a knock-down blow. The 
 man was in spirit, feeling, and conviction an Irish 
 Nationalist, but he was bound up in the golden fetters of 
 the State Church ; his national vigour was therefore 
 necessarily paralysed. 
 
 L 
 
146 Eiglity-five Years of Insli History. 
 
 A gentleman on terms of intimacy with the leading 
 members of the Eepeal movement made (I believe at the 
 instance of Mr. O'Connell) private overtures to Boyton for 
 a junction between his party and the Repealers. Boy ton's 
 reply was in substance, and nearly in terms^ as follows : 
 *'I would gladly acquiesce in your proposal if I thought 
 there was the slightest probability of its being effectual. 
 But, were I publicly to unite myself with the Repealers. I 
 should only separate myself from my own party; I could 
 not possibly carry them along with me. Sir, they hate you 
 — their enmity is bitter, and cannot be mitigated. I trust 
 I need not say that I do not participate in it ; but I know 
 that any overture of mine to unite them with the O'Connellites 
 would be perfectly fruitless, from the personal hatred they 
 bear to your leader, and their bigoted horror of the great 
 body of his followers." 
 
 The negotiation, of course, fell to the ground ; but 
 Boyton now and then made excellent speeches savouring- 
 strongly of Repeal. One of his best was on the celebrated 
 interview which took place in Cork between the Viceroy* 
 and Dr. Baldwin, a highly respected advocate of national 
 self-government. The Doctor beat the Viceroy hollow in 
 the controversy; and the Viceroy threatened to blockade 
 the Irish ports with four English gun- brigs, and to effect a 
 total suspension of intercourse between England and Ireland. 
 
 " A total suspension of intercourse ! " exclaimed the 
 Rev. Charles Boyton ; " and, supposing the intercourse was 
 suspended, which of the parties would be the worse for it I 
 England, whose exports are articles which derive their 
 value from the great manufacturing skill exerted on materials 
 of small intrinsic worth, or Ireland, whose exports chiefly 
 consist of articles of food — the staff of human life ? If the 
 gallant Viceroy could suspend the intercourse between the 
 countries and prevent our exporting Irish beef, butter, and 
 corn to England, why, I really think that in so awful an 
 extremity we could manage to eat those commodities our- 
 selves. Whereas, it would task the powers of even John 
 Bull to masticate and digest a Sheflield whittle, a Worcester 
 tea-cup, or a Kidderminster carpet." 
 
 Meanwhile, Feargus undertook to enlighten the Viceroy 
 upon Irish affairs in "A Letter from Feargus O'Connor, Esq., 
 Barrister-at-Law, to His Excellency the Marquis of Anglesea.'* 
 
 * The Marquis of Anglesea, 
 
James Ludloio Stawell. 147 
 
 Feargus had been threatened with a prosecution for his 
 political misdeeds ; and in the indictment were included 
 James Ludlow Stawell, of Kilbrittain,* Francis Bernard 
 McCarthy, of Laurel Hill, with some others Avho had made 
 themselves conspicuous by agitation, The principal subject 
 of Feargus's Letter to Lord Anglesea was Feargus himself. 
 He apprised the Viceroy that he (Feargus) was a barrister — 
 a member of one of the most respectable families in the 
 kingdom; that he possessed an unencumbered property 
 beyond his wants ; that when Lord Anglesea had been 
 mobbed some time previously in Dublin, he (Feargus) 
 followed him into Parliament Street and raised his arm in 
 His Excellency's defence. 
 
 He also boasted of an exploit he had performed in 1822; 
 the incident exemplifies the necessity of caution in accepting 
 the assertions of habitual accusers of the Irish people. 
 
 "The parsons," said Feargus, "were then with the 
 people, proclaiming that tithes had nothing to do with the 
 disturbance, and that the cause was to be found in ex- 
 orbitant rents. I convened a meeting of the neighbouring 
 parishes in the Roman Catholic Chapel of Enniskean, at 
 which nine or ten Protestant clergymen attended ; they 
 were principally rectors. They all spoke of the perfect 
 tranquillity their respective parishes enjoyed, and unani- 
 mously signed the resolutions which strongly expressed that 
 tranquillity, under the belief that they would not go farther. 
 I, however, had a duty to perform. I published them in 
 two of our provincial journals; and what will be your 
 lordship's astonishment when I tell you that this publication 
 was deemed by the clergy who attended the meeting a crime 
 for which my head would scarcely have atoned ! Because 
 the declarations made by some of those reverend gentlemen 
 
 * I cannot cursorily mention James Ludlow Stawell without a 
 passing tribute to his memory. He was a sincere Protestant ; he 
 was also a warm-hearted and enlightened Irishman. Descended 
 from an ancient house, and possessed of an ample estate, he felt that 
 he owed an account of his stewardship to the Providence who had 
 bestowed on him the gifts of high birth and large fortune. He 
 honestly and zealously laboured to render those advantages auxiliary 
 to the freedom of his countrymen. He threw himself into their 
 struggle ; they revered and loved him. His useful and honourable 
 career was cut short by sudden death. A feverish cold, of which 
 the inflammatory symptoms were increased by the patient's anxiety 
 about the prosecution, terminated fatally on the third or fourth day. 
 He was deeply regretted by all parties. " Requiescat in pace." 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 at the meeting were diametrically opposite to those made 
 by the same persons with respect to the state of their 
 parishes but a day or two previously." 
 
 Feargus demanded from Lord Anglesea the publication of 
 the informations on which he and his confederates had been 
 charged as conspirators and dangerous persons. 
 
 The prosecution was abandoned by the Government. 
 Stawell died after a few days' illness ; and as his death was 
 generally believed to have been accelerated by the harassing 
 annoyance of the threatened proceedings, it is not improbable 
 that the Government regarded it as a sufficient expiation of 
 the political sins of the whole batch of offenders. But the 
 fact of having been indicted was an additional feather in 
 Feargus's cap. His having incurred the peril of martyrdom 
 increased his popularity. 
 
 The summer and autumn passed away. The registries 
 had been well worked, and in the month of December the 
 general election took place. The second popular candidate 
 for the County Cork was Mr. Garrett Standish Barry, of 
 Lemlara, a Catholic gentleman of private worth, but not 
 adapted for public business. He was brought in for the 
 county under Feargus's wing, being, in truth, indebted 
 for his success to the stirring agitation got up by his active 
 and adventurous colleague. 
 
 The electors from the rural districts now poured into 
 the city. Parties of the frieze coats, each detachment headed 
 by the parish priest, came in for four successive days, the 
 voters from the more remote parts of the county having 
 generally travelled all night. I accompanied one of the 
 nocturnal parties from the district around Dunmanway. 
 
 The night was cold, and the pace was slow. I occupied 
 a seat in a gig belonging to the parish priest, who had called 
 at my house after midnight. Our slow progress was rendered 
 still slower by delays at various points, where accessions of 
 voters from other districts were expected to swell our 
 cavalcade from bohereens and by-roads. My reverend com- 
 panion seemed insensible to the discomforts of a journey 
 performed at a snail's pace under the darkness of a chiU 
 winter's night. His mind was engrossed by the coming 
 struggle, and elated by the prospect of a triumph. On the 
 first day of the election the rival candidates met upon the 
 hustings. Lord Bernard (son of the Earl of Bandon) and the 
 Hon. Kobert Boyle (son of the Earl of Shannon) appeared on 
 the Conservative side. The Hon. Kobert King (afterwards 
 
Feargus 0'Co7inors Election for Corl: 149 
 
 Earl of Kingston) was a candidate in tho Whig interest. 
 Lord Bernard read a short speech from a paper which lay in 
 the bottom of his hat, all about keeping up the tithes and the 
 Union. Feargus made the audience laugh by remarking that 
 if the noble lord had not spoken from his head, he had at any 
 rate spoken from his hat. I do not recollect that Mr. Boyle 
 made a speech. He had published an address to the electors 
 in which he promised nothing — a promise which there was no 
 doubt of his ability to redeem. Mr. King said that if 
 returned he would vote for the discussion of Repeal. Garrett 
 Standish Barry said that if the reformed Parliament in its 
 first session should not give (what he called) justice to Ireland, 
 he would vote for Repeal. He professed unqualified hostility 
 to the tithes. Feargus made an eloquent declamatory speech 
 for full, unqualified, unconditional, immediate Repeal. 
 
 The election terminated on the fifth day in the return of 
 Feargus and Mr. Barry. The announcement of the victory 
 was answered by a hurricane of cheering in the Court-house, 
 which was echoed by the multitude without. Out of the 
 eight seats for the city, the county, and its boroughs, the 
 Tories only obtained one, namely, Bandon, for which the 
 Hon. William Bernard was returned. The Tories were 
 infuriate at the success of their opponents. Speaking of 
 Feargus's triumph, the well-known Hedges-Eyre of Macroom 
 swore deep oaths as he paced the Conservative club-room, 
 that the county was lost, disgraced, destroyed for ever. 
 
 Whatever may have been Feargus's subsequent career, we 
 must do justice to his really gallant achievement of wresting 
 the County Cork from the families who had monopolised the 
 representation prior to 1832. The task required indefatigable 
 energy, a thorough contempt of all difficulties, a facility of 
 rousing the despondent and nearly torpid population with fiery 
 harangues, an undaunted audacity, and a superlative self- 
 confidence. All these qualities Feargus enjoyed in perfection, 
 and without them he never could have displaced the former 
 parliamentary families. The people w^ere fascinated, too, by 
 the marked and respectful deference with which the Protes- 
 tant agitator invariably treated the Catholic priesthood, to 
 whom he never omitted an occasion of paying a well-turned 
 compliment. He bragged loudly and constantly of his own 
 aboriginal extraction ; adverted frequently to the losses his 
 family had sustained in the people's cause ; and succeeded in 
 producing a general conviction that the bold, dashing, voluble, 
 swaggering champion of the people's rights was the heau ideal 
 
150 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 of a popular member of Parliament. Feargus's services were 
 on that occasion very great. The truth is that no other man 
 in Corkshire possessed the combination of qualities requisite to 
 open the county at that period. 
 
 It is usual with the Tory, and often also with the Whig 
 landlords, to accuse the Catholic clergy of unduly influenc- 
 ing the tenant-farmers in their exercise of the franchise. 
 The charge is retorted. Of the multitude of tenants ex- 
 pelled from their holdings it is commonly believed that a 
 large number have been punished by eviction for voting at 
 elections against the will of their landlords, and that, pre- 
 vious to the enactment of the ballot, the tenure of many 
 who still occupied their farms depended on their obedience 
 to the landlord's political commands. The accusers of the 
 priests assumed that if the tenant were uninfluenced by any 
 party, and wholly left to his own free choice, he would by 
 preference give his vote to the landlord's candidate. Those 
 persons forget that the natural sympathies of the priest and 
 of the Catholic tenant-farmer are the same, and consequently 
 that when the priest exhorts the elector to support the 
 advocate of tenant-right, or of Repeal, he only exhorts that 
 elector to act upon his own principles, and to do that which 
 his real inclinations would lead him to do. By investing 
 the humble elector with a vote the Constitution plainly 
 supposes him to have a political opinion. But those who 
 assume that the landlord should be the master of that vote, 
 suppose, on the contrary, that the humble elector has got no 
 political opinion; or else that if he has one, he should 
 sacrifice it to the dictation of another man. If this were 
 the real spirit of the Constitution it would have saved, 
 before the introduction of the ballot, much trouble and 
 much misery if the landlord, instead of driving his tenants 
 to the hustings under terror of his wrath, had been em- 
 powered by law to tender, in his own person, as many votes 
 as he had tenants on the roll of electors. Such a personage 
 might have presented himself at the hustings, saying : " I 
 give you twenty votes, or forty" (as the case might be), 
 " for Mr. So-and-so." The tenants could have remained at 
 home while their landlord did the voting for them ; and 
 they would have escaped the cruel alternative of being 
 compelled to vote for some sturdy supporter of national 
 wrongs, or of being exposed to the vengeance of, possibly, a 
 spiteful and malignant tyrant. 
 
 It would be grievously unjust to the landlords of Ireland 
 
English and L'lsJi Electors contrasted. 151 
 
 to deny tliat there are amongst them many excellent men, 
 who have always respected the electoral liberty of their 
 tenants. But landlords of the opposite stamp were un- 
 happily plentiful. The system of the ballot has sheltered 
 the tenants in most cases from the dangers to which they 
 were exposed under the system of open voting. The pro- 
 tection, however, is incomplete. Some landlords, knowing, 
 or strongly suspecting, that their tenants would vote for a 
 •candidate distasteful to the ruling caste, have prohibited 
 them from voting at all, under the ancient penalty of land- 
 lord displeasure. 
 
 Looking back at the former system, it is interesting to 
 recall the contrast between the English and Irish constitu- 
 encies, as described a good many years ago in the House of 
 Commons by the late Earl of Derby. He said that in 
 England the rural tenants followed the command of their 
 landlords with implicit submission ; that they inquired for 
 my lord's man, or the squire's man, and voted as their 
 masters directed. In the towns venality was the dominant 
 influence. In Ireland, however, notwithstanding the terrible 
 and frequent exercise of landlord power, it was not so easy 
 to drive electors like swine to the market. There was, and 
 is, a much greater spirit of constitutional independence 
 among the Irish electors than among their English larethren. 
 They have more frequently voted, in proportion to their 
 numbers, in accordance with their political preferences. 
 Year after year they had seen before their eyes the bitter 
 penalty of being politically honest ; they had seen the old 
 homesteads of their neighbours levelled to the earth and the 
 miserable inmates turned adrift ; they had seen that the 
 crime of which this was the punishment, was the honest 
 discharge of a trust committed to them by the Constitution, 
 and yet great numbers of them persevered. 
 
 There is in this gallant defiance of local tyranny some- 
 thing grand and high-souled. It stamps the brave peasants 
 with the ineffaceable character of political integrity. They 
 were willing martyrs for their country's freedom. Men who 
 could thus perseveringly and readily incur the bitterest 
 persecution for the sake of principle, stand infinitely higher 
 in the moral and intellectual scale, and are infinitely more 
 capable of the duties of self-government than a people who 
 surrender the Constitutional trust of the franchise at the 
 dictation of another's will, or for the sordid and dishonest 
 .consideration of pelf. Of course there have been in Ireland, 
 
152 . Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 as elsewhere, many instances of corrupt voting, some of 
 which are recorded in this volume. But the Irish electors, 
 taken as a whole, have displayed true nobleness of character, 
 and at no time more conspicuously than in the general elec- 
 tion of 1826, when the forty-shilling freeholders defied the 
 utmost wrath of anti-Catholic landlords and agents, and 
 gave their support to the candidates who were pledged to 
 sustain O'Connell in his struggle for Catholic Emancipation. 
 For this honest and spirited discharge of their electoral duty 
 they were disfranchised by Sir Eobert Peel. At the present 
 time the prevalence of electoral corruption in England has 
 compelled the Government to introduce a Bill (4Gth and 
 47th Victoria) " for the better prevention of corrupt and 
 illegal practices at Parliamentary elections." Instances of 
 scandalous traffic in the franchise were elicited by commis- 
 sions appointed in 1880 to inquire into the extent of the 
 evil. Commenting on these revelations, the London Spec- 
 tator said : " It is not too much to say that they (the Com- 
 missioners) have revealed the existence of constituencies in 
 which the mass of the electors were mere hirelings, and the 
 man who gives an honest vote is a noteworthy person. 
 Even when this extreme has not been reached, and the open 
 transfer of votes for money is still avoided, the evidence 
 shows that the more indirect forms of bribery are practised 
 upon a truly heroic scale."* 
 
 "There is no sign whatever," says the Times, "that 
 Sandwich and Gloucester and Canterbury are shocked in any 
 way at the exposure of their own demerits. Men come for- 
 ward with a smile and a smirk to tell the Commissioners 
 that they have taken bribes from both parties, or that they 
 have put their votes up for sale and have given them to the 
 highest bidders, or have promised them and had the money 
 for them, and have not given them. Their belief seems to 
 be that the common laws of morality are suspended while 
 an election is going on, and that proceedings for which in 
 ordinary times a man would be sent to prison are quite 
 honest at election times. It is in vain that the Commis- 
 sioners attempt to set up another standard. It is much if 
 they can succeed in putting a damper on each joke as it 
 arises. The next barefaced disclosure of fraud or corruption 
 is taken for as good a joke as ever, and is as certainly and as 
 heartily laughed over."t 
 
 * Cited in the Nation, 23rd October, 1880. f Ihid. 
 
Electoral Corruption. 153 
 
 In its issue of the 23rd of October, 1880, the Nation 
 quotes some items of the evidence : 
 
 "At Macclesfield ' voting is frankly treated as a matter of 
 business.' Prices ranged from 3s. 6d. to 15s. a vote. Out 
 of £2,000 distributed by a prominent manager on one side, 
 only £100 is admitted to have been legally spent, while 
 another manager, on the other side, took each voter who 
 came to him into a dark pantry and there made the best 
 bargain he could. ' Out of every six voters, certainly four, 
 and probably five, voted as they were paid.' " 
 
 I have referred to the late Lord Derby's assertion that in 
 England the rural electors generally followed their landlords 
 to the hustings. Apart from bribery, and with reference 
 solely to the landlord influence over electors in England, it 
 must, however, be admitted that the English voters have 
 not the same reason for opposing their landlords that the 
 Irish voters too often have. Whatever be the political party 
 of the English candidate, the elector may be certain at the 
 present day that he is zealous for the honour and power of 
 England. Whig, Tory, or Radical, he will equally desire to 
 uphold the glory of the British Lion. 
 
 But in Ireland the Nationalist elector has been frequently 
 called on to vote for a candidate zealous only for the servitude 
 and subjugation of his country ; eager to revile and disparage 
 her creed and her people ; flippant to announce (as Lord 
 Wicklow did in the days of O'Connell's agitation) that there 
 is not in Ireland the material for self-legislation. He is called 
 on to vote for some person whose political convictions originate 
 in the false, degrading, calumnious, self-stultifying principle 
 that the land of Swift, and Grattan, and Malone, and Flood, 
 and Hussey Burgh, and Burke, and Sheridan, and Bushe, 
 and Foster, and Plunkct, and O'Connell, and many other 
 men whose names shed lustre upon human intellect, is in- 
 habited by a race incapable of making laws to goveni them- 
 selves. The soul of the Irish peasant instinctively spurns 
 the impudent libel on his country. There cannot be a cordial 
 community of feeling between the peasantry and the landlord 
 class until the owners of the soil learn to regard their native 
 land with sentiments of just respect ; until they learn to 
 rejoice in Ireland's honour, to take pride in Ireland's fame, 
 and to feel every insult to their country as an indignity 
 inflicted on themselves. 
 
154 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 I 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 NATIONAL COUNCIL CONVENED BY O'CONNELL IN 1833. 
 
 Each voice should resound through our island ; 
 
 ** You're my neighbour ; bu±, Bull, this is my land ; 
 
 Nature's favourite spot, 
 
 And I'd rather be shot 
 Than surrender the rights of our Island." 
 
 Lysaght's Anti-Union Song. 
 
 O'CoNNELL suggested, in December, 1832, to the meniliers 
 who were pledged to the Repeal of the Union, the expediency 
 of meeting in Dublin to discuss various matters connected 
 with Irish legislation. Between thirty and forty of them 
 assembled in January, 1833, under the denomination of the 
 National Council. The first meeting took place at Home's 
 Hotel, in College Green, directly facing the principal front of 
 our old House of Commons. The proximity was suggestive 
 of some mournful recollections, associated, however, with 
 some high resolves and hopes. The forms of a legislative 
 assembly were strictly observed by the National Council. 
 The first day was chiefly occupied in the examination of 
 Michael Staunton, the able proprietor and editor of the 
 Dublin Register^ on the grievous fiscal wrongs which the 
 Union enabled England to inflict upon this kingdom. On 
 the subsequent days the members met in the Great Room of 
 the Corn Exchange, Burgh Quay ; there were a strangers' 
 gallery and a bar, admission to which was charged the parlia- 
 mentary price of two-and-sixpence. OConnell's object in 
 bringing together this embryo Parliament, was partly to 
 present to the people of Ireland the spectacle of their own 
 legislators deliberating on Irish affairs in the capital of their 
 native land ; to habituate the members to home service ; and 
 thereby to excite both the representatives and the represented 
 to continuous energy in the great national enterprise. 
 
 " The cork," said the Dublin Evening Post, " was flying 
 out of Feargus's high-bottled eloquence;" and at the National 
 Council, as also upon some other public occasions in the 
 capital, Feargus well sustained the reputation he had acquired 
 in the South, of a ready, rattling speaker. 
 
 In Parliament he was not so successful. True, he talked 
 away in the House with his customary fluency; but he failed 
 to impress the public with any strong faith in his senatorial 
 wisdom. He amused the Legislature with local anecdotes, 
 
A Blusterer out-Uustered. 155 
 
 sometimes extremely well told. He amused them also with 
 occasional bursts of exaggerated energy ; as, for example, 
 when in the debate on the Coercion Bill, some foolish 
 English member had blustered about opposing the Eepeal vi 
 et armis, Feargus resolved to outbluster him, which he did 
 somewhat after the following, fashion : 
 
 " The honourable gentleman," said the member for Cork 
 County, " had declared that rather than consent to the Eepeal 
 of the Union he would submit to be pistoled and bayoneted. 
 But he (Mr. Feargus O'Connor) would reply, that rather than 
 submit to the oppression of Ireland, he would readily en- 
 counter swords, bayonets, guns, pistols, blunderbusses, 
 muskets, and firearms of all sorts." 
 
 But to do Feargus justice, he often uttered very good 
 Liberal principles, and he gave occasional expression to bold 
 and spirited sentiments of liberty. He was deficient in 
 logic. His speeches were what the French expressively 
 term inconsequent. 
 
 In 1833 he made an eflbrt to force forward the discussion 
 of Eepeal prematurely in the House of Commons. O'Connell 
 was desirous to keep back the question until the organisation 
 of the Irish Eepealers should have become more effective and 
 general. There had been undoubtedly a great deal of popular 
 noise and excitement ; but O'Connell did not deem that the 
 people had been yet sufficiently organised to enable them to give 
 to their representatives that steady a.nd sustained support out 
 of doors which was absolutely necessary to the success of the 
 question in Parliament. O'Connell, in this cautious policy, 
 could appeal to the authority of the venerable Henry Grattan, 
 who, when in 1810 announcing to the people of Dublin his 
 readiness to advocate Eepeal, at the same time explicitly 
 stated that it would be neither prudent nor possible to bring 
 Eepeal into the House of Commons until the question should 
 be backed by the whole Irish nation. Feargus, however, 
 overlooked all such considerations, and announced to the 
 Eepealers that if O'Connell should decline to lead them, he 
 would himself become their leader. 
 
 Notwithstanding this intrepid announcement, he was 
 fortunately induced to withdraw the notice he had given 
 upon the subject, which, in truth, he was very ill qualified 
 to discuss. He could declaim, indeed, about slavery and 
 liberty, and give vehement utterance to popular feelings and 
 sentiments ; he could accumulate instances of local suffering j 
 And denounce usurpation in sentences of thundering sound ; 
 
156 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 but he knew nothing about the details of the financial 
 swindle involved in the Union, nor could he reason with 
 accuracy on its defects in a Constitutional point of view. 
 He, however, had succeeded in exciting the popular impa- 
 tience for a parliamentary discussion; so that O'Connell 
 found it requisite to bring forward the question in the 
 following session.* Feargus made a very long speech about 
 Eepeal in the debate. The sentiments of course were good, 
 but the logic was nil, and the orator did not touch the 
 marrow of the subject. 
 
 Parliament being dissolved in December, 1834, Feargus 
 was again returned for the County of Cork. In his address 
 to the electors he declared his intention of excluding for the 
 future the new families — namely, the Shannons, Kingstons, 
 and Bandons — from the representation ; and on the hustings 
 he told Lord Bernard that the best blood in his lordship's 
 veins was derived from *' a Kerry strain," a connexion with 
 the O'Connor family. 
 
 Feargus's majority was on this occasion large, but not so 
 overwhelming as it had been at the previous election. The 
 landlord persecution had already begun to work upon the 
 county franchise. A petition against his return was briskly 
 undertaken. He was unseated in June, 1835, and Mr. 
 Longfield, of Longueville, near Mallow, slipped into the 
 representation. 
 
 Feargus had evidently conceived the idea of supplanting 
 O'Connell in the leadership [of the Irish people ; and in 
 furtherance of this project he now published a pamphlet 
 containing numerous allegations of political dishonesty 
 against the Liberator. The pamphlet sold well among 
 the Conservative party, but it necessarily alienated the 
 Repealers of Ireland from its author. 
 
 Before long he formed a connection with a political 
 society in London, of which the Eev. Doctor Wade, a 
 Protestant clergyman, was a member. The principles of 
 this society were those subsequently known as the five points 
 of the Charter, and its members assumed the designation of 
 Chartists. He soon established in Leeds the Northern Star, 
 a weekly newspaper, which was designed to propagate the 
 principles of the society. He had talked the Chartist public 
 into a belief that the new journal would work wonders ; and 
 showers of five-pound notes rained down on the projector to 
 
 • O'Connell's motion was made 22nd April, 1834. 
 
Feargus hecomes a Chartist. 157 
 
 enable him to establish it.* Before long it acquired an 
 enormous circulation. I have heard of 60,000 copies of a 
 single publication being sold by the agent at Manchester; 
 and it is said that — railway conveyance being then far from 
 general — the Post Office authorities were in some cases 
 obliged to hire carts or waggons for its transmission, as it 
 occasionally overflowed the restricted accommodation of the 
 mail coaches. It is long since defunct. While it lasted, 
 many of the traits of the proprietor were amusingly 
 chronicled in its columns. 
 
 One curious mode of extending his influence was by 
 having the infant children of his followers christened by his 
 name. A string of such baptisms was for a long time to be 
 found in the columns of each successive Star, as for example : 
 *' On Monday, the 8th instant, the wife of Ichabod Jenkins, 
 nailer, was delivered of a fine thriving boy, who was christened 
 Feargus O'Connor Ichabod ; " and so on for the best part of 
 a column. Girls were also christened after Feargus. A whole 
 population of Feargus O'Connors, male and female, seemed 
 rapidly springing up ; and the lists of these baptisms were 
 usually headed with the words : " More Young Patriots." 
 
 There was also a religious institution got up under the 
 name of " The Chartist Christian Church ; " and I presume 
 that the Mr. Cooper who combines, in the following extract, 
 the celebration of O'Connor's humility with the baptism of 
 one of the young patriots was a minister of that society. 
 
 " We learn from the Leicester Mercury that Mr. Thomas 
 Cooper, the leader of the O'Connorites in that borough, 
 preached a sermon in the Amphitheatre on Sunday week, 
 from Daniel ii. 34, 35. In the course of his address he 
 said : ' The disciples of truth, and all great men, were humble, 
 and did not like to have others depreciated for the purpose 
 of exalting themselves ; ' and as instances he noticed Sir Isaac 
 Newton, Haydn, Mozart, and Feargus O'Connor. After the 
 sermon he announced that the tragedy of Douglas would be 
 performed on the following Tuesday, and that Hamlet was in 
 preparation. He then baptized a child, ' Feargus O'Connor 
 Cooper Beedham.' " f 
 
 Ordinary agitators had for a long time adopted the system 
 of banners at their public processions. The original genius 
 of Chartism for once discarded such ensigns as stale, flat, 
 
 * So I was told by a person who, at that time, was employed in 
 the oflBce. 
 
 t Dublin Evening Post, 3rd January, 1843. 
 
158 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 and commonplace ; and in lieu thereof startled the crowd at 
 a meeting in Burnley with an infinitely grander conception : 
 " The attention of the multitude was arrested by the ascent 
 of a large balloon, with the words 'Feargus O'Connor '^ 
 inscribed in large characters." 
 
 Banners, however, were admitted into other localities. 
 On a banner at one of O'Connor's processions were inscribed 
 the following stanzas : 
 
 Lo ! he comes ! he comes ! 
 
 Garlands for every shrine ; 
 Sound trumpets — strike the drums ! 
 
 Strew roses — pour the wine ! 
 
 Swell, swell the Dorian flute, 
 
 Triumphal to the sky ; 
 Let the millions' shout salute, 
 
 For The Patriot passes by. 
 
 Feargus now seemed to sweep through the world in the 
 midst of a continuous triumph. Garlands, libations, lo 
 Paeans. It was like the majestic advance of one of Homer's 
 demigods. But Feargus was not exalted by these celestial 
 honours above the old terrestrial mode of dealing with 
 political questions 'par voie du fait ; and accordingly, when 
 confined at a subsequent period in York Castle for certain 
 alleged misdemeanours, he published an "Appeal to the 
 Working Men of Yorkshire" to obstruct by violence the 
 proceedings of a meeting at which O'Connell was expected to 
 be present at Leeds. The appeal was exceedingly vehement, 
 and much of it was eloquently written. He inquired 
 whether, if he were at large, would O'Connell dare to come 
 to Leeds to meet him? And to this query he responded, 
 *' No ! a million times no ! " He then urged the great debt 
 which he said the Yorkshire Chartists owed to himself, and 
 declared that all would be cancelled — nay, infinitely over- 
 paid — if they gave " O'Connor his day, and Dan his wel- 
 come." The conclusion of this eloquent incitement to a row 
 is eminently characteristic : 
 
 " I live and reign," says Feargus, " in the hearts of 
 millions who pant for an opportunity to prove their love, 
 and who will embrace that which is now presented, to 
 convince me of their approbation of my honest endeavours 
 to serve the cause of universal freedom. 
 
 **I am, my friends and brothers, the Tyrant's Captive, 
 the Oppressor's Dread ! the Poor Man's Friend, and the 
 people's Accepted Present, ♦* Feargus O'Connor/' 
 
Incitement to a Riot. 159 
 
 The people did not respond to any great extent to the 
 belligerent call of their Accepted Present. It was supposed, 
 or promised, that 100,000 Chartists would assemble to 
 oppose O'Connell ; but the contemporary journals state that 
 from two to three thousand at the utmost assembled upon 
 Holbeck Moor. 
 
 Feargus, during the earlier part of his imprisonment in 
 York Castle, was treated with atrocious severity. He pub- 
 lishe<l in the newspapers statements of the barbarous in- 
 dignities iuflicted upon him. In a letter to the Times he 
 expressed a fear lest the prison discipline should abridge his 
 existence ; and desired that, in the event of his death, his 
 body should be opened by three surgeons whom he named ; 
 one residing at York, another at Hammersmith, and the 
 third in London. Before he had ended his epistle, however, 
 he evidently thought that it would be better to live for 
 future political squalls than to die in jail for a post-mortem 
 examination. " Adieu, world," he exclaims, " for seventeen 
 months : but, by heaven ! I'll make a storm in you yet." 
 
 In jail he performed some eccentric exploits. On the 
 first Sunday after his arrival he was conducted to the chapel 
 of the prison, where he astonished the congregation and 
 scandalised the parson by bellowing the responses of the- 
 service in stentorian tones. He was not again required to 
 attend the chapel during his imprisonment. 
 
 He early acquired supremacy among the apostles of 
 Chartism. Joining the Chartists as a volunteer, he speedily 
 worked himself into the supreme command, although he had 
 competitors of by no means contemptible ability. A Chartist 
 gentleman once said to me, " He began with us as a disciple, 
 but he soon distanced all of us." 
 
 In the Evening Star, a sort of adjunct to the Northern 
 Star, and, like it, edited for a time by Feargus, an amusing 
 writer published a series of sketches of the Chartist leaders, 
 commencing with a portrait of the Chartist Chief. The 
 writer, describing an interview with Feargus and a Scotch 
 Chartist leader named MacDouall, acquaints us that the latter 
 gentleman claimed a diabolical pedigree. " ' Son of the Devil,' 
 said the gallant little doctor, 'is the meaning of my surname.' 
 * And I am a lineal descendant from Roderick O'Connor, the 
 last King of All Ireland ! ' said Feargus, kindled into a 
 momentary pride of ancestry by this flash of the untameable 
 spirit in the brave Scot. ' There were five Kings of Ireland, 
 all O'Connors, at the same time, but I am lineally descended 
 
160 Eighty -jive Years of Irish History. 
 
 from the Ardrigb, or High King. You see in me a specimen 
 of what my countrymen of the true Milesian descent would 
 all have been, had it not been^for the dwarfing efifects of bad 
 living and ill-treatment.' " 
 
 It would seem that in thus oflfering himself as a specimen 
 of the splendid proportions to which his countrymen might, 
 if unpersecuted, have arrived, Feargus produced on the 
 narrator an impression that he was, in truth, a being of 
 mysterious and undefinable greatness. 
 
 *' From that period," continues the writer, " I have never 
 seen O'Connor without regarding myself as in the presence 
 of a true representative of the ancient Celtic chieftains — 
 beings who depicture themselves to us out of the mist of 
 time as characterised by simple and unaffected majesty of 
 form and deportment, without the adornments of civilisation 
 — the frippery of jewels, crowns, and sceptres." The writer 
 ends by remarking that '' the reality of O'Connor's greatness, 
 as a devotee of principle," overawed his enemies. 
 
 All this was doubtless very complimentary — not more 
 so, however, than Feargus himself could be on an appro- 
 priate occasion. In Dublin lived a Mr. Patrick O'Higgins, 
 who got up a nibbling opposition to O'Connell, and devoted 
 a room at the back of his house to the reception of a few 
 discontented deserters from O'Connellism. Mr. O'Higgins 
 professed himself an ally of Feargus, and promised to propa- 
 gate Chartism in Dublin. Feargus acknowledged his merits 
 in the Star^ and ended an eloquent eulogium by exclaiming: 
 ** Rome had her Brutus — Ireland has her O'Higgins," 
 
 When Joseph Sturge, the Quaker, was candidate for 
 Nottingham on the principles of moral-force Chartism, 
 Feaigus gave him active assistance in the preliminary agita- 
 tion. An aflfray took place in the market square of Not- 
 tingham, in which Feargus displayed strength and valour 
 befitting the descendant of the Ardrigh Roderick; for 
 although beset by numbers on every side, he knocked all 
 down right and left. Next day twenty-one men swore 
 that Feargus had severally knocked each of them down 
 in the riot. The Univers translated the English accounts 
 of the transaction into French, heading the narrative, 
 " Moeurs Electorales Anglaises." 
 
 At one of the meetings for the Nottingham election 
 Feargus exclaimed, "Hurrah for Sturge and Nottingham! 
 or for the Devil, if he supports the Charter." I should like 
 to have seen the quiet Quaker-face of honest Joseph Sturgo 
 
A Diabolical Pedigree. 161 
 
 on being thus hypothetically coupled with the Prince of 
 Darkness by his reckless ally. Perhaps the hurrah for the 
 Devil was intended as a compliment to Doctor MacDouall, 
 who asserted the diabolical derivation of his patronymic. 
 When Charles Gavan Duffy heard that " Son of the Devil " 
 Avas alleged by the Doctor to be the meaning of his name, he 
 drily remarked, " It is a pedigree we see no reason to 
 question." 
 
 The report of O'Connor's meetings and speeches in the 
 Star are full of traits illustrating that wild energy which 
 formed so marked a feature in his character. We are told 
 how he sat down after a two hours' speech so exhausted that 
 tlie perspiration oozed through his dress ; how he said 
 he would work the flesh off his bones or have the Charter ; 
 how he cheered his followers by declaring that he was 
 *' as strong as ten bulls ;" how he described Lane End as the 
 place "where the lads beat the cavalry and made them 
 retreat," adding, "in this town all the people are born marks- 
 men. I learn that a lad of fourteen or fifteen could kill 
 a crow flying with a stone." He was resolved to lose 
 nothing by unnecessary modesty. In one of his addresses to 
 his followers he thus stated his achievements and his con- 
 sequent responsibilities: "I have made the mind of England, 
 and it is my duty now to guide it." 
 
 He was ambitious of the reputation of possessing classical 
 and scientific knowledge, as appears by the following extract 
 from the Manchester Guardian: "Mr. O'Connor next re- 
 ferred to the charge of the Times, that he did not know how 
 to spell ; and challenged any editor of that paper to be 
 examined with him by any Fellow from one of the colleges 
 in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Geometry, Algebra, Arithmetic, 
 etc., and if he (Mr. O'Connor) did not beat him, he would 
 consent to be banished from the country for life." 
 
 In 1847 he was returned to Parliament for Nottingham, 
 defeating Sir John Hobhouse by a majority of over six 
 hundred. In 1848 an enormous Chartist demonstration, 
 in which Eeargus was of course the principal hero, took 
 place in London. Serious disturbances were apprehended, 
 and among the special constables then sworn in, it is said 
 that Louis Napoleon, afterwards Emperor of the Erench, was 
 enrolled. 
 
 Eeargus had instituted a land scheme which elicited a 
 vast number of live-pound subscriptions from members of the 
 Chartist body who believed that the payment of that sum 
 
 M 
 
162 Eiglity-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 would entitle them to profitable settlements on foiir-acre 
 allotments. The scheme broke down, and with it broke 
 down its author's intellect. His insanity displayed itself in 
 a number of strange freaks in the House of Commons and 
 its immediate precincts. He was confined, by order of the 
 House, in one of its apartments for some days. During that 
 period the newspapers gave constant accounts of his con- 
 dition and his actions. From one of those accounts I take 
 the following : "He still indulges in rapid, rambling 
 aberrations ; reciting to his attendants snatches of what 
 he states to be his own poetical compositions — uttering now 
 and then an eloge on the late Sir Kobert Peel, abruptly 
 broken off to descant on the disasters of an old woman and 
 her pig in the bogs of Ballinhassig — of a stud of some twenty 
 long-tailed black horses his brother kept in Ireland — all 
 whimsically interwoven with such canticles as are heard 
 at the Coal-Hole, or by the recital of a litany interlarded with 
 tears on the failure of the unfortunate land-scheme." 
 
 The exhibition was at once grotesque and melancholy. 
 We discern among the shattered fragments of his once 
 strong intellect, faint traces of the facetious humour which 
 in his better days had rendered him an entertaining com- 
 panion. He was removed to the asylum kept by Dr. Take, 
 at Chiswick, and thence, in 1855, to lodgings at dotting 
 Hill Terrace, where he died on the 31st of August in that 
 year, in the sixtieth year of his age. The Chartists of 
 London gave him a grand public funeral. He was buried 
 at Kensal Green Cemetery. His admirers at Nottingham 
 have erected a statue to his memory. 
 
 O'Connell preserved the Irish Eepealers from the alliance 
 with the Chartists which Feargus wanted to effect. O'Connell 
 had no confidence in the leaders, and he condemned the 
 unfair and intolerant policy repeatedly practised by their 
 party, of violently obstructing all meetings held for any 
 other political object than the attainment of the Charter. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 IRISH POLICY OP THE FIRST REFORMED PARUAMENT. 
 
 Justice hath done her unrelenting part, 
 If she indeed be Justice, who drives on, 
 Bloody and blind, the chariot-wheels of death. 
 
 South RT. 
 
 We have been constantly told to expect vast benefits for 
 Ireland from the English Legislature, consequent on the 
 
"A Brutal and Bloody Speech." 163 
 
 "extension of the Parliamentary franchise. We have been 
 told, in like manner, to expect great benefits for Ireland 
 from the Reform Bills of 1831. Our experience of that 
 period does not encourage us to entertain sanguine hopes of 
 any good from that source. The proceedings of the first 
 reformed Parliament furnished a conclusive answer to those 
 Irish Whig-Liberals who opposed Repeal on the plea that 
 Reform in the English Legislature would supersede the 
 necessity for domestic legislation for Ireland. 
 
 The Irish agitation in 1831-2 was not opposed by the 
 Whig Government so long as it could be considered auxiliary 
 to the English agitation for Reform. But as soon as the 
 triumph of Reform was certain, and the Irish agitators were 
 no longer required to subserve English purposes, prosecutions 
 were threatened. Lord Anglesea proclaimed down meetings ; 
 and the Sailor-King was instructed by his Ministers in 1833 
 to express from the throne his "surprise" and "indignation" 
 at the efforts of the Irish to obtain a restoration of their 
 national Legislature, of which they had been deprived by a 
 system of Machiavelian fraud and diabolic crime. 
 
 O'Connell denounced the King's speech as " a brutal and 
 bloody speech — a declaration of war against Ireland." The 
 address, echoing the speech, was of course carried by an 
 enormous majority. The Coercion Bill, for restricting the 
 people of Ireland from meeting to petition Parliament, was 
 shortly afterwards introduced. There was a very full muster 
 of Irish and English members on the night of its intro- 
 duction. Expectation was strongly excited; it had been 
 announced that disclosures of an appalling nature would be 
 made to justify its enactment. Lord Althorp (afterwards 
 Earl Spencer) opened the case for the Government, His 
 delivery was heavy, hesitating, and unimpressive. He 
 laboured under a disadvantage which, in an impartial 
 assembly, would have been fatal — namely, that of requiring 
 implicit belief in a tale of Irish outrages and horrors, in 
 which the names of the informers were to a great extent 
 suppressed. The House was called on to ground coercive 
 legislation upon unauthenticated charges ; and the pretext 
 for withholding the authentication was, that to publish the 
 names of the informers would expose them to personal out- 
 rage from their lawless neighbours. 
 
 The House was perfectly ready to ground coercive legis- 
 lation for Ireland upon anonymous information. It was not 
 nice as to pretexts. It was boldly alleged that praedial out- 
 rage was the result of political agitation, and that in order 
 
 M 2 
 
164 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 to put down the former the latter should he suppressed. 
 Any other origm of pra3dial outrages than political agitation 
 appeared to be ignored by the friends of coercion. 
 
 Lord Althorp's speech was a failure. O'Connell left the- 
 House immediately on its conclusion and remained for some- 
 time in the lobby, offering triumphant congratulations to all 
 the anti-coercion members whom he met, on the wretched 
 exhibition of his lordship. "Did you ever hear anything 
 more miserable"? Why, the Government have literally got 
 no case at all. Bad as the House is, it will be impossible to 
 get them to pass the Bill on such statements. Hurrah ! "" 
 Thus did the Great Dan cheer the members of the Tail and 
 his friends in general, expressing in the most sanguine terms- 
 his conviction that the Government must be defeated. 
 
 By-and-by Mr. Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby) rose. 
 He enjoyed one great advantage — he had an audience 
 stronglj'- predisposed in his favour. But in other respects he 
 laboured under difficulties. He had, in fact, to repair Lord 
 Althorp's failure. He had to restate a series of allegations 
 which had fallen, feeble and dull, from the incompetent lips 
 of the blundering leader. And well did he perform his 
 task. Before he had spoken for five minutes the attention 
 of friend and foe alike was riveted in admiration of the 
 orator's abilities. Clear, rapid, and animated, he scathed 
 the Liberals with the fire of his sarcasm, and combated 
 their arguments Avith his showy and plausible parliamentary 
 logic. The natural graces of his unconstrained and easy 
 action, the vivid glances of his eagle eye, the air of bold and 
 well-sustained defiance which no one could better assume, 
 greatly enhanced the effect of his eloquence. He had 
 gathered up some of the unconsidered sayings of his Irish 
 antagonists, and paraded them before the House wutli wicked 
 ingenuity as indicative of seditious intentions. He closed 
 with a ferocious invective against O'Connell personally, and 
 sat down amidst thunders of Whig and Tory jilaudits. 
 
 Well did he merit the cheers of his party. The rickety 
 and misshapen bantling of Lord Althorp was moulded by 
 the plastic powers of Mr. Stanley into showy proportions- 
 and apparent strength. 
 
 The Bill was obstinately contested. Mr. O'Connell led 
 the opposition, and displayed all the qualities of a great 
 parliamentary debater. An Irish Conservative exclaimed to 
 me with astonishment as the House adjourned one night : 
 " How stoutly Dan battles it out among these English ! '* 
 
f Lord'^CamphelVs Experience of Anti-Irish Feeling. 165 
 
 •O'Connell had, in the course of the evening, thus conchided 
 a fiery invective against the Whigs : " You have brains of 
 lead, and hearts of stone, and fangs of iron ! " He displayed 
 inimitable tact and dexterity in defence, promptitude and 
 vigour in assault, and knocked about Whigs and Tories with 
 an easy exercise of strength which astonished the members 
 who had not previously witnessed such a brilliant display of 
 his abilities. 
 
 Despite the opposition of the friends of Ireland, the Bill 
 finally passed, and the Constitutional privileges that yet 
 remained to the Irish people were temporarily invaded — 
 ostensibly to check prsedial disturbance, but in reality to 
 thwart the agitation for Eepeal. Mr. Stanley had boasted 
 that he would make his Government feared before it should 
 be loved. He did not make it either feared or loved ; he 
 only succeeded in making it hated. 
 
 The crime thus committed against Ireland was aggra- 
 vated by the fact that it emanated from the English Re- 
 formers in the full flush and heyday of their triumph. The 
 first use the friends of English liberty made of their great 
 victory was to crush the Constitutional freedom of their 
 Irish fellow-subjects. What a pregnant lesson to Irishmen ! 
 What a practical commentary on the doctrine of Imperial 
 identification ! Lord Campbell, " who," says Sir Charles 
 Oavan Dufl*y, "associated with Englishmen of every rank 
 in succession during his slow ascent from the position of a 
 writer of paragraphs for the daily papers to be Lord Chan- 
 cellor of England," accounts for his party promoting the 
 Coercion Bill without incurring unpopularity among the 
 people of England in the following manner : 
 
 " They were probably tranquillised by recollecting how 
 essentially Ireland is hated by the English nation, and what 
 a lenient view is taken of any measure which tends to degrade 
 the mass of the Irish population."^ 
 
 Lord Campbell thus attests the contemporaneous existence 
 of that inveterate anti-Irish sentiment among his countrymen, 
 of which we in Ireland have had seven centuries' experience. 
 Mr. Gladstone, in one of his speeches, expressed a desire to 
 attach us to Great Britain " by the silken bonds of love." 
 His past financial operations did not encourage Irish con- 
 fidence in his friendship. He had greatly over-estimated our 
 taxable capacity — he had mercilessly increased our taxation 
 
 * " Life of Lord Campbell," vol. ii. p. 27 ; cited by Sir C. G. 
 Duffy in " Four Years of Irish History," p. 51, 
 
166 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 fifty-two per cent., and given a stimulant to the exodus by- 
 draining the country of the means that ought to circulate at 
 home for the sustentation of our people. In fiscal aff'airs he 
 has shown himself our unscrupulous foe ; but he has given 
 expression to the sentiment that Ireland, in all matters 
 purely local, should be ruled in accordance with the feelings 
 and principles of the Irish people. 
 
 He now seems to be sincerely desirous to atone for all 
 past errors by restoring to the Irish nation their ancient 
 possession of a resident Parliament. If he can succeed in 
 this noble and statesmanlike policy, and if his measure of 
 Home Rule shall contain a just arrangement of the fiscal 
 difficulty, he will have proved himself a real benefactor to- 
 Ireland, entitled to enduring national gratitude. 
 
 It may be observed that on the 18th of March, 1846, Sir 
 James Graham made the following remarkable statement :. 
 *'I think," said Sir James, "it is our bounden duty, ia 
 legislating for Ireland, not to legislate with regard to English 
 feelings, English prejudices, and still less with reference to 
 English law, which has long obtained the sanction of usage 
 in this country. But we are bound to consult Irish feelings, 
 Irish habits, Irish laws, as they have existed for centuries, 
 though they may be at variance with the provisions found 
 in the English statute book."* 
 
 Sir James spoke these words under the pressure of 
 O'Connell's agitation. Mr. Gladstone now attempts to give- 
 practical eff'ect to the principle they announced. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 RESULTS OF THE COERCION ACT OF 1833. 
 
 They came in the morning, scoffing and scorning, 
 Saying : " Were you harassed — were you sore abused ? " 
 O Orange haters ! ye beat the traitors 
 That betrayed our Saviour to the wicked Jews." 
 
 Rochite Song. 
 
 When the Coercion Act "vvas passed by the first Reformed 
 Parliament, the Repealers were angry, but not depressed. 
 If agitation was suspended for a season, its objects and pur- 
 poses survived with undiminished vitality and vigour in the 
 affections of the people. Affairs, however, wore a very droaryr 
 
 * Beporfc in JHoming Chronicle, 19th March, 1846. 
 
A Mystei'ious Curate. 167 
 
 aspect. There was a cessation of the cheering, spirit-stirring 
 activity which had enlivened the previous year, whilst the 
 Catholic tenantry were, in many instances, mercilessly 
 scourged for their anti-tithe and anti-union offences. Eject- 
 ments were served on non-voters as well as on voters by 
 some of the more bigoted landlords of the Tory-evangelic 
 school. I have two cleared districts at this moment before 
 me — that is, districts from which the Catholic tenantry were 
 swept out to make room for a docile Protestant colony. The 
 town lands, respectively named Castletown and Shanavagh, 
 are situated in the County of Cork, and in 1837 were part of 
 the estate of a Union-Earl of high Tory politics and warm 
 evangelic zeal. That noble lord is since dead ; his political 
 and evangelic mantle descended on his son, who is since also 
 deceased, and who, whatever were his politics, was reputed, 
 I doubt not deservedly, to possess an amiable disposition 
 and a character of unimpeachable morality. 
 
 It is right to premise that in the instance now mentioned 
 the landlord appeared to have acted from religious en- 
 thusiasm, not from political resentment; for the ejected 
 occupiers had not registered their votes. But expulsion is 
 the same, whether proceeding from fanatical ardour or 
 political vengeance. I have selected the townlands in 
 question, because, from their proximity to my residence, I 
 had access to the best information respecting them. 
 
 It may not be amiss to devote a few sentences to the past 
 and present memoranda of these districts — the rather as the 
 tale, with a few slight changes, is that of many a spot in 
 Ireland Instruction sometimes lurks in the simple annals 
 of the poor. 
 
 Kinneigh, the parish in which Castletown is situated, is 
 a wild, upland tract, rising into abrupt and rocky eminences 
 abounding in furze and coarse herbage. The hills are savage 
 without grandeur ; there is nothing picturesque in their out- 
 line, and none of them ascend to any considerable elevation. 
 There has, some years since, been erected a handsome 
 Protestant church, which replaces the former barn-like edifice, 
 and in its immediate vicinity stands one of the inexplicable 
 round towers, seventy feet high. This tower is the only 
 thing in the parish worth looking at. A stem old monument 
 it is of days so long gone by that man's memory retains no 
 trace of their annals. 
 
 Having mentioned the church, I may as well waste a few 
 ■words in commemoration of an ancient parson, now deceased, 
 
168 EifjTdy-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 by whom the church-goers of Kinneigh were for a long time 
 illuminated. This gentleman, the Reverend Gilbert Laird, 
 dropped into the parish, no one could tell whence, about the 
 beginning of this century, or perhaps a few years previously. 
 All that the Protestant parishioners knew about the maiter 
 was, that a queer-looking little brown bunch of a man, whose 
 appearance suggested the idea of an enlarged species of 
 hedgehog, suddenly ascended the pulpit one day and delivered 
 a discourse containing nothing about which anybody who 
 heard it could predicate any quality in particular. The slight 
 curiosity which was excited by the first appearance of the 
 new parson died away when it was found that all inquiry as 
 to his origin, birthplace, former associates, or habits, was 
 fruitless. On all those matters he preserved to the end of his 
 days an impenetrable silence. He bore with him due 
 credentials from the absentee rector, so that his title to the 
 curacy was undoubted and unquestionable ; and that, he 
 conceived, was all that his flock were entitled to know. He 
 continued to officiate and to preach. I believe the only efTusion 
 of his pulpit eloquence which survives in the parochial 
 memory was an exhortation to the practice of industry, 
 preached from the sixth chapter of Proverbs: "Go to the 
 ant, thou sluggard ; consider her ways, and learn wisdom ; " 
 and illustrated by a reference to the nursery fable of the 
 *' Idle Grasshopper and the Industrious Ant," with appro])riate 
 amplifications from the preacher himself. Feargus O'Connor, 
 who was one of the Rev. Gilbert Laird's congregation, 
 excelled in his mimicry of this sermon, and often delivered it 
 with great comic power for the amusement of his friends. Ko 
 two human faces could be more dissimilar in form and feature 
 than those of the clergyman and his imitator; but this 
 dissimilarity seemed to vanish, so exquisite was Peargus's 
 presentment of the voice, the manner, and the expression of 
 countenance proper to the reverend original. 
 
 Mr. Laird became a sort of favourite with one or two 
 squires who played backgammon and lived loose, rollicking 
 lives. He rattled the dice with more sociability than he had 
 displayed in any other occupation, and although personally 
 free from vice, he was not the man to annoy his patrons with 
 many troublesome moral remonstrances. By-and-by the 
 queer little man acquired a sort of small popularity, probably 
 because his absurdities furnished matter for mirth. Whimsical 
 stories were told of liim ; people were amused with his odd 
 habits, such as getting his bed thrashed with short flails every 
 
A Singular A7inuitant. 169 
 
 morning by the housemaids, and his sleeping with a bolster 
 at the bed-foot in order to accommodate himself in the event 
 of his choosing to reverse the relative positions of his head 
 and feet during the night. His penurious style of living 
 also supplied matter for irreverent jests. He existed on the 
 smallest possible modicum of his salary as curate ; and the 
 residue he regularly invested in the purchase of a life-annuity. 
 The whole income arising from these investments he invested 
 -again ; so that if the insurance offices had given him ten 
 thousand per cent., they would have still been gainers by 
 their singular annuitant. Thus he went on — investing and 
 reinvesting; and he flattered himself with the hope of 
 •enjoying the income thus created by the time it should reach 
 £500 per annum. 
 
 He continued unmarried until about the age of eighty- 
 seven. He then united himself with a lady who was some 
 fifty years his junior. The union was not happy, for he 
 bitterly reproached the bride with her deception in concealing 
 the malformation of her left foot, which deformity he had 
 not discovered until after the matrimonial knot was irre- 
 vocably fastened. He did not long survive the discovery, 
 and he now reposes in one of the graveyards of the city of 
 Cork. The old gentleman, although far from being a model 
 <;lergyman, yet possessed the negative merit of doing no 
 mischief. 
 
 Such was the pastor to whose care the souls of the 
 Protestants of Kinneigh were for many years committed. 
 While the spiritual interests of his small flock flourished 
 under his tutelage, the temporal concerns of the Catholics 
 were not in a very prosperous condition. It is indeed true 
 that they enjoyed one important advantage —the rector was an 
 absentee, who for many years never visited the parish. He 
 had another benefice in a distant county where he always 
 resided. The Kinneigh farmers were therefore relieved from 
 the vexatious presence of a reverend spy, with his eye 
 perpetually on the outlook for every agricultural production 
 from which tithe could be extorted ; and as the resident 
 curate, Mr. Laird, was a quiet, harmless man, with a fixed 
 salary, he had no interest in prompting his absent principal to 
 harass the farmers by increasing his exactions. They were, 
 however, harassed enough. They held the land from a 
 middleman, named Gillman, who was the immediate tenant 
 of the Earl of Bandon. Some of them eked out their rents 
 from the proceeds of illicit distillation ; and the necessary 
 
170 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 consequence of such a system was the demoralisation of the 
 parish to a considerable extent. The falsehood and chicane 
 indispensable to those who carry on a contraband trade are 
 not the worst results of their illegal occupation. Men who 
 live in defiance of the law become desperate, and blood has 
 been shed in that unhappy district in defence of the pottheen 
 stills. Undoubtedly the whole blame of these evils should not 
 be cast upon the people. Those squires and squireens wha 
 encourage their traffic by becoming their customers, are to a 
 great extent culpable.* 
 
 Let it not, however, be supposed that Castletown was an 
 unmitigated pandemonium of pottheen desperadoes. There 
 were many of the inhabitants who had nothing to do with 
 the stills, and who were of very fair average characters. 
 
 The middleman from whom the people held their farms 
 died, and their leases all expired with him. His term was 
 for his own life ; the town-land at liis death reverted to the 
 Earl of Bandon. Here was a glorious opportunity to plant a 
 Protestant colony. The noble Earl rejoiced with exceeding 
 great joy at the facilities now presented of serving an eject- 
 ment on Idolatry and Wafer-worship, and inducting a 
 colony of true believers into the evacuated district. The 
 number of persons to be expelled, young and old, good, bad, 
 and indifferent, was 247. The expulsion of such a multi- 
 tude excited public interest. The Earl of Mulgrave, then 
 Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, adverted to the circumstance in 
 the House of Lords, and elicited the following reply from the 
 noble proprietor : 
 
 " The Earl of Bandon felt, as the noble Earl had alluded 
 to him in so pointed a manner, it was necessary that he 
 should trouble their lordships with a very few words. The 
 noble Earl had brought a charge against him founded on a 
 newspaper report. He (the Earl of Bandon) was not in the 
 habit of attending to newspaper reports, and he never con- 
 descended to answer them. He thought he had some reason 
 to complain of the noble Earl for advancing so grave a 
 charge against him, founded upon no more authentic infor- 
 
 * An instance in point occurred not long since. A landlord at the 
 quarter sessions of a southern town preferred a number of accusa- 
 tions against a tenant he was anxious to evict. Among the evil 
 deeds imputed to the latter, he was charged by his landlord with 
 keeping an illicit still. The accused turned round to his censor, 
 and, amidst the laughter of the Court, exclaimed : " By virtue of 
 your oath, didn't your honour often find a gallon of pottheen at your 
 honour's hall door ? " His honour was unable to deny the fact. 
 
ExxmJsion of Tenants at Kinneigli. 171 
 
 mation than tliat contained in a newspaper. He would not 
 trouble their lordships by entering into a detail of his 
 arrangements with respect to his own estate (hear, hear). 
 He would only say that those wdiom he was accused, at that 
 inclement season, of having turned adrift in the world, were, 
 all of them, in their respective houses (laughter and cheers). 
 Having made that statement he must repeat that he felt 
 himself rather ill-used by having been called to defend 
 himself from a charge founded on no better authority than 
 that of a newspaper."* 
 
 Lord Eandon's virtuous indignation imposed on Lord 
 Mulgrave, who immediately withdrew the accusation. The 
 natural inference from Lord Bandon's words was, that the 
 tenants were not to be molested. It is true that he did not 
 directly assert that they should not be disturbed, but his 
 complaint of ill-usage at being accused of disturbing or 
 expelling them, was calculated to convey that impression to 
 his audience. The real fact w^as that the tenants had all 
 received notice to quit, but the notices had not then yet 
 taken effect. The time of ejectment soon arrived. The 
 aboriginal occupants were turned out, and new tribes of 
 Hosfords, Applebys, Swantons, Dawleys, and Burchells 
 were introduced. Three of the former tenants were per- 
 mitted to retain a portion of their holdings ; of these a man 
 named Hurley sought favour with the noble proprietor by 
 promising to abjure Popery. The man accordingly went to 
 the Protestant Church, pursuant to his undertaking ; but 
 conceiving that a domestic calamity — the idiotcy of his son 
 — was a mark of the Divine vengeance at his change of 
 religion, he threatened (according to the information I was 
 given at the time) to return to his former creed. Whether 
 he did so I know not. 
 
 The whole machinery of proselytism was put in motion 
 at Castletown and Shanavagh. Keverend personages ex- 
 horted ; readers and teachers besieged the Catholics on high- 
 ways and by-ways ; schools were erected, to which some of 
 the not yet extirpated Papists gave their trembling and 
 reluctant attendance. The noble Earl's family occasionally 
 visited these schools to watch the expansion of the nascent 
 Gospel seed, and to accelerate the process of its ripening by 
 the warmth and light of their countenances. They were, I 
 doubt not, sincere enthusiasts ; and when we consider the 
 
 * Parliamentary Report in Cork Southern Re;porter of 2n(i 
 December, 1837. 
 
172 Eiglitij-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 vast influence their station and fortune, if properly used, 
 might invest them with, it was deplorable to witness the 
 direction their zeal had taken ; to contrast what they have 
 been with what they mi^^ht have been ; to see them in the 
 front rank of the anti-national interest, instead of being the 
 honoured, cherished leaders of their countrymen to national 
 independence. I cannot lielp remarking that there was a 
 time when Francis Bernard, afterwards first Earl of Eaudon, 
 was associated with the people of Ireland in demanding the 
 restoration of the Iri.-h Constitution. On the 25th of 
 March, 1782, at a meeting held in Bandon, he occupied the 
 chair. There were three resolutions passed, of which the 
 last affirmed : 
 
 " That no power on earth can make laws to bind Ireland, 
 except the King, Lords, and Commons thereof. 
 
 (Signed) " G. Stawell, Col., Bandon Cavalry. 
 "F. Bernard, Col., Bandon Infantry." 
 
 Grattan had fired the mind of the nation, and the sacred 
 flame ignited many persons who themselves, or whose 
 descendants, have degenerated into anti-nationalists. 
 
 At Shanavagh, the politico-religious movement produced 
 its natural results. A man named Hurley (a suspicious 
 patronymic, it would seem, in these districts) attended the 
 school with great assiduity, and after a due course of in- 
 struction, professed his willingness to attend the Protestant 
 church. He accordingly became a church-going Protestant, 
 and his new confreres thought that a valuable fish had been 
 hooked. One day a tenant of mine met this convert on the 
 road, and asked him wherefore he had quitted his earlier 
 faith to adopt Protestantism. 
 
 " Musha, God help us ! " responded the convert, " I have 
 got a small family to support, and I thought by turning I 
 could maybe get a lase of the ould ground from Lord 
 Bandon." 
 
 " But you'd lose your poor sowl," remonstrated the other. 
 
 *• Och, maybe not — maybe not. I expect God won't 
 take me so short entirely but that I may quit them all and 
 go back to mass once more afore I die." 
 
 The convert also told my informant, that, by way of an 
 additional safeguard, lie did not give attention to the 
 preaching or prayers of the Protestant .service, but rehearsed 
 his own prayers mentally, while the parson performed the 
 service. 
 
 Some time subsequently to the above conversation (which 
 
An Ambidexter Convert. 17^ 
 
 I took down from the lips of one of tlie parties), Mr. 
 Hurley's duplex policy was curiously exhibited. He fell ill, 
 and being afraid of death, despatched a messenger to bring 
 the parish priest to administer the last rites of the Catholic 
 Church. " But, hark ye ! " added the politic invalid, " tell 
 his Reverence not to come up till after dark, for fear any of 
 the Protestants should see him and tell the minister." 
 
 Mr. Hurley had considered his alternative — death, then 
 Popery and Father O'Sullivan ; but if he shouhl recover, 
 then Protestantism and another attempt to conciliate his 
 landlord's patronage. Father O'Sullivan (then priest of the 
 parish) informed me that he refused to attend him, stating 
 that his pertinacious duplicity at that awful period totally 
 disqualified him from the profitable reception of the rites of 
 the Church.*" He recovered, and continued to attend the 
 Protestant place of worship ; but although he was permitted 
 to remain in his farm, I am not aware that he ol3tained a 
 lease of it. About the period referred to he sent an infant 
 
 * A reviewer, commenting on this narrative, said that it cat 
 two ways, and that the priest must have left Hurley in a state of 
 great ignorance. But Hurley was not iguorant that his conduct was 
 criminal. He was plainly acting against conscience, and the priest 
 had nothing to do with his conduct except to condemn it. 
 
 In 1845 public attention became excited by the case, tried at 
 the Tralee Assizes, of the Eev. Charles Gayer, one of the leaders 
 of a proselytising establishment at Dingle, County Kerry, versus 
 Patrick Kobert Byrne, proprietor of the Kerry Examiner newspaper. 
 The defendant was convicted of what, in the rigid acceptation of 
 the law, was deemed libel ; but the organised system of rank bribery to 
 proselytise the Catholics, which the evidence disclosed, must, I think, 
 have received a salutary check from the publicity thus entailed upon 
 it. Timothy L\ncii, a witness and ci-devant convert, deposed that 
 he got from Mr. Gayer the sum of £12 10s. and two half-crowns as 
 the price of his adhesion. Edward Hussey, another witness, also 
 deposed to having received money from Gayer in consideration of 
 his becoming a Protestant. John Power, a fish-jolter, deposed to 
 having received from Gayer "about £5 or £6 pound" for a similar 
 consideration." Thomas Hogan deposed to having got from Gayer 
 17s. in two different sums, and two pecks of potatoes, and a house 
 rent-free from another proselytiser named Moriarty, in consideiation 
 of which benefits he became a Protestant. James Kearnei', another 
 convert, deposed that the considerations for which he conformed were 
 plentiful employment and good wages from Gayer, and a house and 
 garden rent-free; "he never paid a farthing rent; taxes and all are 
 paid for him ; has a gai-den behind the house the same way, and 
 every one else has the same ; none of them pay any rent." Maurice 
 Power, a second fish-jolter, deposed to having bargained with Gayer 
 to become a Protestant for the price of a horse to carry his fish. 
 These statements were uncontradicted by Gayer, who was in court 
 
174 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 child to the priest to be christened ; the child was smuggled 
 in a covered basket to escape the observation of the 
 Protestants. 
 
 It is but justice to say that the Protestant clergy then, 
 and since, in the parish, have been men of irreproachable 
 morals. They, in t^ommon with their brethren all over the 
 kingdom, were startled at the march of nationality ; they 
 trembled for the stability, if not of their Zion, at least of its 
 temporalities. Hence their itching and uneasy zeal to make 
 an inroad on the enemy's territories. I suppose Mr. Hurley's 
 conversion has been chronicled in some exulting report of 
 the progress of "the Gospel." 
 
 Well, Castletown was now peopled with a Protestant 
 tenantry. Shanavagh also was pretty well dotted with the 
 new settlers. A sort of miniature millennium was to be 
 exhibited amidst the Kinneigh furze-brakes for the edification 
 of the surrounding community. The noble landlord doubtless 
 regarded his work with sentiments of self-applause. But — it 
 is pleasant to be able to say it — the proselytising zeal of past 
 
 during the trial ; and some of them (such as that of the houses being 
 rent-free for converts) were of such a nature as, from the public 
 notoriety of the facts, rendered denial in Kerry impossible. 
 
 It is difficult to resist a smile at the ludicrous character of the 
 proselytising system, thus exhibited on the uncontradicted oaths 
 of competent witnesses ; but the horrible results of that system, the 
 spiritual recklessness which it necessarily engenders, suggest solemn 
 and mournful reflections. The total insensibility to real religious 
 conviction of what nature soever, the organised hypocrisy resulting 
 from the traffic of the people with the " Dingle Mission," appears 
 in the following incident. A batch of Gayer's proselytes, finding 
 their adhesion to the State Church less profitable than they had 
 expected, turned ofE en masse to the Rev. Mr. M'Manus, Presbyterian 
 minister at Miltown, and inquired what terms he would giva them 
 for becoming Presbyterians. 
 
 In Moli^re's Bourgeois Qentilhomme, Coviel denies that Monsieur 
 Jourdain's father was a linendraper. He had, indeed, from dis- 
 interested benevolence, accommodated the public with linens; and 
 the public, from their grateful sense of his kindness, had gracefully 
 and delicately presented him with certain monies. On both sides it 
 was an elevated interchange of practical philanthropy — there was 
 nothing of traffic in the transaction. Precisely thus did Messieurs 
 Gayer and Company deny that they over bribed " converts." True, 
 some pauper Papists, from the force of sudden and simultaneous 
 conviction, came rushing headlong into Protestantism — true, also, the 
 Protestant agents gave money, and free houses, and employment to 
 the converts ; but there was nothing of a quid pro quo in the trans- 
 action. On the one side it was conscientious adoption of religious 
 truth; on the other it was the most exalted benevolence and " mercy 
 to the household of faith." 
 
Irritating Interference. 175 
 
 years has died out at Shanavagli. The displacement of 
 Catholics was not carried to the same extent as at Castle- 
 town. Among the tenants now residing on the land are 
 Catholics, not at present molested by their landlord, who, it 
 is needless to say, cannot be considered responsible for trans- 
 actions that occurred before he succeeded to the property. 
 
 The people in numerous parts of the kingdom feel the 
 paramount necessity of efficient protection from the irritating 
 persecution of which I have given a specimen. The best 
 protection would be found in the principle of nationality. 
 Were that principle well developed in Ireland, it would 
 speedily absorb all wretched sectarian contentions. It would 
 extinguish the pernicious desire to exalt any one sect or 
 Church at the expense of any other. The doings I have 
 briefly recorded are exploits of what is called the English 
 interest in Ireland. The people can never be prosperous or 
 happy until the magnates of the land cherish the Irish interest 
 — which, if they did but know it, is their own true interest — 
 as paramount to every other. 
 
 Every unprejudiced person will concede that the interests 
 of real religion cannot be advanced by the system of 
 evangelical bullyism. That much of the crime and insubor- 
 dination of Ireland has arisen from the extermination — 
 whether pious or profane — of the inhabitants, will be readily 
 admitted, when it is remembered that in the five years from 
 1838 to 1842 inclusive, ejectment proceedings were taken 
 against no less than 356,985 persons, as appears by the 
 parliamentary papers to which the public attention was 
 called in June, 1843, by the late Mr. Sharman Crawford, 
 who then affirmed that the clearing process went on at an 
 increasing ratio. And from that day to this, among the 
 incidents most famihar to those who watch Irish events with 
 anxious interest, are the evictions of the Irish "tenantry, often 
 under circumstances which show that the work of expulsion 
 is prompted by political vengeance or sectarian bigotry. 
 
 It seems a curious and perverse fatality that the possession 
 of the elective franchise, and also the want of it, have alike 
 been fraught with bitter evils to the Irish peasantry. The 
 exercise of the franchise in opposition to the landlord's will 
 has drawn down extermination upon tens of thousands. 
 That the want of the franchise in former days also caused the 
 expulsion of the people from the soil, appears from a state- 
 ment of John Keogh's in the published correspondence of 
 Edmund Burke. 
 
176 Eighty-jive Years of Irish History. 
 
 *' It is a known fact," says Keogh in 1792, the year 
 before the concession of the forty-shilling franchise, "that 
 the Eoraan Catholics have been, and are every day turned 
 out of very beneficial farms, deprived of the maintenance of 
 themselves and their families, have lost their honest occupa- 
 tions, and the exercise (the most beneficial to the State) of 
 ,their industry and capital, because they could not vote at an 
 election, and to make room for those who could. A fortiori 
 they have in multitudes of instances failed to obtain leases, 
 nor can they ever obtain them on equal terms." * 
 
 It was natural that a peasantry thus trained to regard the 
 franchise as conducive to their livelihood, should, on first 
 acquiring it, have used it for several years with greater sub- 
 serviency to landlord dictation than they have done in more 
 recent times. When political corruption was at its greatest 
 height, the landlords occasionally disposed of their elec- 
 tioneering interests to the candidates who bid the highest. 
 The tenants saw that their votes were a subject of traffic by 
 their landlords. An instance of impartial rascality is • re- 
 corded of Mr. B F . He sold the votes of all his 
 
 tenants to two rival candidates, and pocketed the money of 
 both. As he did not indicate to his tenantry the particular 
 candidate for whose success he was desirous, one of the 
 tenants, on behalf of the rest, asked his honour for which of 
 the candidates they should vote ? 
 
 "Faith, boys," answered Mr. F , "you may take 
 
 your choice. I have knocked the highest penny I could out 
 of your votes already, so it would be unhandsome of me to 
 hinder you from selling yourselves now to whoever will bid 
 the best." 
 
 The tenants thanked his honour for his liberal permission, 
 and proceeded as fast as they could to take his advice. 
 
 It is said that at a hotly contested election in the olden 
 
 time, Denis D and his opponent ran so close to each 
 
 other that the numbers were equal — a blacksmith only re- 
 maining unpolled. The blacksmith's horse was for sale. 
 Denis bid twenty guineas ; his rival bid thirty ; so they 
 went on bidding alternately, each bid being an advance of 
 ten guineas, till at last Denis stopped, the horse being 
 knocked down for two hundred guineas to his antagonist, 
 who triumphantly cried to the blacksmith, " Come off and 
 be polled." "Ay," whispered Denis to the blacksmith, 
 
 * Burke's "Correspondence," vol. iv. p. 67. 
 
Tlie Repeal Delate of 1834. 177 
 
 ^' hut rememher ivlio put up the horse to auction for you^ 
 The whisper was effectual — the artisan voted for Denis. 
 
 The expedients used to manufacture voters for an 
 emergency were sometimes very curious. The well-known 
 MacCoghlan, of the King's County, when hard pressed for a 
 batch of electors to turn the scale in an approaching contest, 
 granted freeholds to the requisite number of voters ; the 
 terms of the leases being for the life of one Jack Murphy. 
 The voters were put in possession — the election came on — 
 and MacCoghlan's friend, with the aid of the newly-made 
 freeholders, carried the day. MacCoghlan, however, had not 
 the least notion of allowing the new corps of voters to occupy 
 his ground, now that their services were no longer necessary. 
 He accordingly ended all their leases by shooting Jack 
 Murphy, the common life in all. Be not horrified, good 
 reader : Jack Murphy was an old spavined horse. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE REPEAL DEBATE OF 1834. 
 
 Ireland rests 'mid the rush of progression, 
 
 Like a frozen ship in a frozen sea ; 
 And the changeless stillness of life's stagnation 
 
 Is worse than the wildest waves could be, 
 
 Bending the rocks eternally. 
 
 Trumpet-tongued to a people sleeping, 
 
 Who will speak with magic command, 
 Bidding them rise — these dead men keeping 
 
 Watch by the dead in a silent land ? 
 
 Speranza. 
 
 O'CoNNELL was at last obliged by the pressure of some 
 members of the Tail, as well as by the remonstrances of the 
 Repeal newspapers, to bring the question of Repeal before 
 the foreign House of Commons on the 22nd April, 1834. 
 
 For some days previously Mr. Spring Rice, who was 
 selected as the special champion of the Union, was observed 
 to frisk about the purlieus of St. Stephen's with the smirking 
 self-complacency of anticipated triumph. He knew that he 
 should have an overwhelming majority against O'Connell's 
 motion ; he knew that whatever assertions he might make, 
 however delusive, however contrary to truth, would be 
 
 N 
 
178 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 received with enthusiastic plaudits hy that alien Parliament;- 
 and he had availed himself of his peculiar facilities of 
 reference to official documents to prepare lengthy tabular 
 statements illustrative of what he termed the giant-stride 
 prosperity of Ireland under the Union. With these he ex- 
 pected to demolish O'Connell's allegations of Irish decay. 
 
 The 22nd arrived; the House was crowded with members, 
 the gallery with strangers. 
 
 O'Connell's opening speech rehearsed the outrageous 
 crimes committed by England against Ireland from the 
 earliest date of their connexion. Having, by this historical 
 retrospect, demonstrated the systematic enmity of England 
 to this country, the speaker thence passed to the measure of 
 the Union, dilated on the means by which it was carried, 
 exhibited the falling off in national prosperity which had 
 been its consequence, and concluded by moving for a select 
 committee to inquire and report upon the means by which 
 the destruction of the Irish Parliament was effected ; of the 
 effects of that measure upon Ireland, and upon the labourers 
 in husbandry, and operatives in manufactures in England, 
 and on the probable consequences of continuing the legis- 
 lative Union between both countries. 
 
 O'Connell's able and comprehensive speech occupied five 
 hours. 
 
 On the next day (the 23rd), Mr. Pice delivered hi& 
 reply. He deprecated Mr. O'Connell's references to the 
 English atrocities of former times, as being in their nature- 
 irritating, and irrelevant to the question before the House. 
 
 He alleged the danger of two independent Parliaments- 
 in one Empire, and inferred the likelihood of separation under 
 such a system from the differences on the Eegency Question 
 in 1789. I shall not recapitulate his arguments here, as the- 
 subject will be examined in the Appendix to this work. 
 
 He alleged that the Irish Volunteers had tried to intimi- 
 date the Irish Parliament subsequently to 1782. Well had 
 it been for Ireland if their interference had been potential. 
 What the Volunteers sought was to procure a reform of the 
 Irish House of Commons ; of which measure the principle 
 has been since recognised, and incorporated with the British 
 Constitution by the English Legislature. 
 
 He alleged that the Irish Parliament had been notorious 
 for bribery and corruption. Not more so, certainly, than the 
 English Parliament. Lord Macaulay says that there was 
 a time when the only way in which the Minister could 
 
^'■Giant-stride Prosperity" of a Starving People. 179 
 
 manage the English Parliament was by corruption.* That 
 the Irish Legislature was in this respect culpable only proves 
 that it needed the reform which the Volunteers sought ; not 
 that it ought to be extinguished. To urge the corruption of 
 the unreformed Irish Parliament as a reason for putting an 
 end to it, is extremely like saying that as death puts an end 
 to disease, the best mode of treating a sick man is to kill him 
 outright. Mr. Rice was amusingly impartial in his criticism. 
 He censured the Irish Parliament on the score of its corrup- 
 tion ; he also censured the Volunteers for trying to put an 
 end to that corruption. 
 
 He next quoted Grattan to show that the Irish Parliament 
 had not realised his expectations. But he took care not to 
 quote Grattan's declaration that the Irish Parliament, with 
 all its faults, had done more good for Ireland in fourteen 
 years than the English Parliament had done for England in 
 a century. 
 
 He denied that the rebellion of 1798 had been fomented 
 in order to carry the Union. 
 
 He alleged the parental care of Ireland evinced by the 
 Imperial Parliament; stating that no less than 175 Commis- 
 sions on Irish aifairs had been appointed by the House since 
 the Union. He, however, forgot to state that the immense 
 majority of those Commissions had ended abortively ; and 
 that the Committee of 1825, for which he claimed the merit 
 of carrying Emancipation, was in fact the product of 
 O'Connell's Irish agitation. 
 
 He claimed merit for England in admitting Irish corn and 
 butter duty-free ; as if it were a boon to Ireland to increase 
 the supply of food to English customers and to cheapen its 
 price for them. England has, since then, done the same for 
 all the world ; compelled by the exigencies of the English 
 stomach to import as much food as she can get, and on the 
 cheapest possiljle terms. 
 
 He inferred the giant-stride prosperity of Ireland from 
 her largely increased exports of corn and cattle, omitting to 
 notice that the producers of the corn and cattle were disabled 
 by poverty from consuming the food of their own raising ; 
 and that much of the price received for the exports was 
 again exported to England in the shape of absentee rents 
 and absentee taxes, f 
 
 * " History of England." 
 
 + In truth, a table of exports and imports may afEord no true test 
 of a nation's prosperity. Let me borrow the following illastration 
 
 N 2 
 
180 Eighty-five Years of Irish History, 
 
 Mr. Rice stated some Acts of beneficial tendency which 
 the United Parliament had passed for Ireland. But in 
 claiming credit for the Union on this score he omitted to 
 show that a reformed Irish Legislature would not have passed 
 every one of the good laws in question, and many more into 
 the bargain. 
 
 He produced multitudinous tables to demonstrate the im- 
 proved condition and increased comforts of the Irish people 
 generally after the Union. Cruel mockery ! At the time 
 when he spoke there was the evidence of the Eailway Com- 
 missioners showing that 2,385,000 of the Irish people — being 
 more than one-fourth of our then population — were destitute 
 paupers for thirty weeks in every year. 
 
 He stated many grants made by the Imperial Parliament 
 to Ireland from 1800 to 18o4. But he did not state that the 
 greater part of those grants had been made prior to 1821, in 
 virtue of a stipulation at the time of the Union for their con- 
 tinuance for twenty-one years ; nor did he state that the 
 Imperial Parliament commenced the work of reduction as 
 soon as the stipulated period had expired. And he did not 
 state that the aggregate of the absentee rents and absentee 
 taxes extorted from Ireland largely exceeded the whole of his 
 boasted grants. 
 
 He stated that the consolidation of the Exchequers of 
 England and Ireland in 1817 had been precipitated by the 
 bankruptcy of Ireland. But he did not tell the House that 
 Ireland had been made bankrupt by the fraudulent financial 
 terms of the Union, which had forced her to contract for an 
 expenditure she was totally unable to meet. The reader will 
 
 from my able friend, Mr. Staanton (1844) : " Fifty years ago we 
 manufactured our own cloth ; at present we get cloth from England. 
 Fifty years ago £100 worth of corn sent from Tipperary to Dublin 
 was consumed in Dublin, and was paid for with £100 worth of 
 cloth made in Dublin. Here was a transaction which occasioned 
 no exports or imports. Contrast this transaction with the present 
 condition of affairs. The £100 worth of corn goes from Tipperary 
 — not to Dublin, but to England ; it is paid for with £100 worth of 
 cloth made in England. An item is furnished to Spring Rice's 
 table of exports and imports, and he cries out, ' Hurrah ! I have got 
 a triumphant proof of Irish prosperity.' Bat how stands the fact ? 
 In the former transaction, which exhibited no imports or exports, the 
 Irish corn fed the Irishman, and paid for Irish manufactures. In 
 the latter transaction, which exhibits both an import and an export, 
 the Irish corn feeds the Englishman, and is paid for in English 
 manufactures, while the Irish operative perishes for want of 
 employment." 
 
Tonnage as a Test of Prosperitij. 181 
 
 find in the Appendix a paper in which the nature of the fiscal 
 grievance is examined. 
 
 Mr. Eice quoted the amount of tonnage of the vessels 
 clearing out from Irish ports, in proof of augmented com- 
 mercial wealth ; relying on his hearers' ignorance of the fact 
 that tonnage is frequently a delusive index.* 
 
 He repeated the old fallacy that Irish agitation kept 
 English capital out of the country. Just as if English 
 capitalists were not constantly investing their money in 
 countries where real danger and real obstacles are encountered 
 — in foreign lands, where a single hostile shot between the 
 countries would destroy the security for repayment. 
 "England," says Captain Marryat, "has now titty-five 
 millions sterling invested in American securities, which is 
 a large sum ; and the majority consider that a war will 
 spunge out this debt."t 
 
 At a later period Lord George Bentinck gave the House 
 of Commons a list of English investments in foreign specula- 
 tions, both civil and military. He was urging an advance of 
 money for Irish railways, and contrasting the reluctance of 
 Parliament to give a farthing for that purpose with the lavish 
 profusion displayed by Government as well as by private 
 
 * To illustrate this position I subjoin the followincf table of 
 Dublin tonnage, which I obtained in 1842 from a well-iaformed 
 source. It is close enough to accuracy to serve the purpose of the 
 ai'g anient : 
 
 In 1832 there were about 130 vessels cleared outwards to foreign 
 ports from Dublin. Of these 130 vessels, 
 
 43 were in ballast (timber ships), and 
 52 carried passengers. Thus, 
 95 out of 130 represented no profitable commerce. 
 
 Again, in 1833 there were about 180 vessels cleared out to foreign 
 ports. Of these, 
 
 90 were in ballast, and 
 30 with passengers. Thus, 
 120 out of 180 represented no prolitable commerce. 
 
 Again, in 1834 there were 150 vessels cleared out to foreign 
 ports. Of these, 
 
 64 were in ballast, and 
 49 with passengers. Thus, 
 113 vessels out of 150 betokened no profitable commerce. 
 
 Before a table of tonnage, therefore, can be accepted as a test of 
 commercial prosperity, it is necessary to ascertain the nature of the 
 traflSc which that tonnage represents. Of course a profitable export 
 trade involves large tonnage ; but on the other hand, large tonnage 
 may exist without a profitable export trade. 
 
 + Captain Marryat's " Diary in America," vol. ii. p. 118. Lon Jon, 
 1839. 
 
182 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 speculators in squandering English wealth on the objects he 
 enumerated. " Send it abroad," said his lordship, " as you 
 did some .£70,000,000 for three years to foreign countries, to 
 support their wars and to subsidise foreign nations. Send it 
 abroad, as you did £10,000,000 or £12,000,000 in 1825 ; and 
 invest £7,000,000 sterling in Peruvian mines, Mexican gold, 
 and Mexican silver, as you did in 1825. . . . Sink your 
 capital in no less than twenty-three foreign mining companies. 
 . . . You also sent £13,000,000 to Portugal, and you sunk 
 ^22,000,000 in Spanish Actives, Spanish Passives, and 
 Spanish Deferred. To America in 1836 you sent millions. 
 You got rid of £100,000,000 in this way."* 
 
 The English capitalist can scatter his investments broad- 
 cast all over the globe except in Ireland. Dangers of 
 climate, dangers of war, perils of earth, air, or ocean deter 
 him not. It seems there is only one scarecrow on the face 
 of the earth that has terrors for his adventurous soul ; and 
 that scarecrow is Irish agitation. Mr. Spring Rice affirmed 
 in 1834, with as much parliamentary gravity as if he ex- 
 pected a single human being to believe him, that the 
 capitalists who were undeterred by the vast variety of real 
 and substantial dangers that beset their undertakings in the 
 most remote corners of the globe, were frightened out of 
 Ireland by Irish agitation — that is to say, by the clack of 
 our platform eloquence. Our subsequent experience teaches 
 us a different lesson. There was, for a good many years 
 after the famine, a cessation of what is called Irish agitation. 
 We were nearly as quiet as the graves into which myriads of 
 our countrymen had been precipitated by English misgovern- 
 ment. Did English capital stream into the country, to 
 reward our quiescence, and to verify the prophecies of 
 Mr. Spring Rice? On the contrary, Mr. Gladstone seized 
 the moment of our helpless prostration to add fifty-two per 
 cent, to our previous taxes; which friendly achievement 
 constitutes, I presume, his claim to the enthusiastic con- 
 fidence so warmly expressed by some of his Irish admirers. 
 
 To talk about English capital coming to Ireland is an 
 impudent mockery. We should not want a shilling of 
 English capital if England did not rob us of Irish capital. 
 We are plundered of our own by a ceaseless process of 
 abstraction, and then it is said to us, " Do but keep quiet, 
 and suffer English capital to stream into your island." 
 
 * Speech of Lord George Bentinck in the House of Commons, 
 4th February, 1847. 
 
Mr. Tennenfs Absurdity. 183 
 
 Whatever other reasons may exist to prevent the invest- 
 ment of English capital amongst us, it is certain that the 
 Union, by giving the English manufacturing capitalist the 
 command of the Irish manufacture market, deprives him of 
 at least one motive to expend his capital in establishing 
 manufactures here. He has already got our market. What 
 more does he require 1 From his mill or his factory in 
 Yorkshire or Lancashire he can pour any amount of his 
 fabrics into Irish circulation. Why, then, should he incur 
 the needless risk and expense of establishing a factory in 
 Tipperary or Roscommon 1 
 
 Mr. Eice's oration occupied six hours and a half. At its 
 ■close he was unable to find the amendment to which his 
 long speech was a prelude. Some mirth was excited by his 
 perplexity. The amendment was found on the following 
 day, read by the Speaker, and seconded by Mr. Emerson 
 Tennent in a speech which, pursuant to his invariable habit, 
 he had carefully written out and got by heart. The only 
 ipart of it worth extracting is the following ludicrous speci- 
 men of flippant nonsense : 
 
 " Ireland was, we were told, annihilated and extin- 
 guished by the Union, inasmuch as it then ceased to be a 
 distinct kingdom. But on the same principle, Scotland 
 must likewise have been annihilated when she, in 1707, 
 ceased to be a distinct kingdom on being incorporated with 
 England ; and by a parity of reasoning, if the mere fact of 
 incorporation, by destroying distinctness, involves extinc- 
 tion, England herself must have been extinguished when 
 she became incorporated with the other two," (Loud cheers.) 
 " So that, according to the doctrine of the Repealers, the 
 whole Empire must at this moment be ideal, and exist, like 
 the universe of Berkeley, only in the imagination of its 
 inhabitants." (Renewed cheering.) 
 
 What an index to the discerning sagacity of the House is 
 afforded by the plaudits elicited by Mr. Tennent ! Here, 
 now, are the facts : 
 
 Ireland lost two-thirds of her representation by the 
 Union; England preserved her representation whole and 
 intact. 
 
 Ireland lost the power of legislating for herself ; England 
 retained, unimpaired, the full power of self-legislation, and 
 acquired, in addition, the power of legislating for Ireland. 
 
 Ireland lost the advantage of a resident Legislature and 
 its consequent expenditure ; England lost nothing, and 
 
184 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 acquired the residence not only of the Irish delegates, but 
 of the largely augmented crop of Irish absentees whom the 
 transfer of power to the London Legislature attracted thither. 
 
 And yet a parrot-statesman is cheered by the collective 
 wisdom when he glibly rehearses the absurd proposition that 
 if the Union politically annihilated Ireland, which had lost 
 much and gained nothing, it necessarily also annihilated 
 England, which had gained much and lost nothing. 
 
 Richard Sheil made a brilliant speech in the debate. He 
 had for some time after 1830 coquetted with Repeal. The 
 Great Agitator had made many public appeals to him to join 
 the movement; but vainly, until the general election of 1832 
 necessitated a decisive declaration on the subject, Sheil 
 then declared himself a determined and unqualified Repealer. 
 His accession was hailed with delight by O'Connell, who 
 triumphantly exclaimed : " Richard's himself again." The 
 important recruit proved a powerful ally in the parlia- 
 mentary debate. Of his speech I shall quote one or two 
 
 "At the time of the Union Ireland was charged with 
 the contribution of two-seventeenths.* AYas that fair? Sir 
 John Newport and Lord Plunket both asserted that it was 
 most unfair ; but the fact was far better than the authority 
 of either of them, for it turned out that Ireland was unable 
 to pay it. It was necessary to make up her deficiency by 
 a loan. Where Avas that loan borrowed 1 In England ; 
 and the revenue of Ireland was devoted to paying the 
 interest on that loan to British capitalists." 
 
 Sheil produced great effect by his allusion to the case of 
 Belgium : 
 
 " Now turn to Belgium. Does not the example bear us 
 out? Hear an extract from the Declaration of Belgian 
 Independence. After stating that the Union was obtained 
 by fraud, the document goes on and states that *an enormous 
 debt and expenditure — the only dowry that Holland brought 
 us at the time of our deplorable Union ; taxes, overwhelming 
 by their amount; laws, always voted by the Dutch /or Holland 
 only, and always against Belgium, represented so unequally 
 in the States-General ; the seat of all important establish- 
 ments fixed in Holland; the most ofi'ensive partialities in the 
 
 * Not two-seventeenths of the whole Imperial revenue, but two- 
 seventeenths of that part of it which remained after the debt-charge 
 of each country had been first provided for by separate taxes upon 
 each. 
 
" Truths that lie too deep for Argument.'' 185 
 
 distribution of civil and military employments — in a wordy 
 Belgium treated as a conquered province, as a colony ; every- 
 thing rendered a revolution inevitable.'" (Loud cheers 
 from the Repealers.) ''You fear," continued Mr. Shell, 
 "separation may be the result of Repeal, What may not be^ 
 the result of maintaining the Union % Let a few years ga 
 by ; Catholic and Protestant will become reconciled (their 
 divisions cannot last for ever) ; the popular power will 
 augment; the feelings of the people will be extended to 
 their representatives — the absentee drain will continue — the 
 Church system will still be maintained — the national mind 
 will become one mass of heated and fiery emotion — the same 
 disregard for the feelings and interests of Ireland will be 
 displayed; and then (may God forfend that the event should 
 befall !) if there be an outbreak of popular commotion here ; 
 if the prediction of the Conservatives should be fulfilled, and 
 if your alliance with France, Avhich is as unstable as its 
 dynasty, should give way — then you may have cause to 
 lament, but lament when it will be too late, that you did not 
 give back her Parliament to Ireland." 
 
 Sir Robert Peel followed Shell in a speech of great 
 ability and eloquence, but which partook of the fallacious 
 character necessarily attaching to all that was urged in 
 defence of the Union. He treated the legislative Union as 
 a measure whose necessity was an instinct of the British 
 mind. "There are," he said, "truths which lie too deep for 
 argument ; truths to the establishment of which the evidence 
 of the senses or the feelings of the heart have contributed 
 more than the slow process of reasoning ; which are graven 
 in deeper characters than any that reasoning can either 
 impress or efface." 
 
 This is undeniably true ; and to this class of truths 
 belongs the necessity to Ireland of self-legislation. Reason 
 will enforce that necessity, but the slow process of reasoning 
 is anticipated by the instinctive consciousness that an Irish 
 Legislature, bound to Ireland by the very fact of residence, 
 and the interests of whose members must generally run in the 
 same groove with the interests of their country, is infinitely 
 better qualified to promote Irish prosperity than a Parlia- 
 ment of strangers who inherit the traditionary British 
 feelings towards Ireland of jealousy, hostility, or apathy, 
 and whose idea of Union consists chiefly in taxing Ireland 
 for British uses. All this is intuitively felt by our nation. 
 Sir Robert's above-quoted words are indeed true, but they 
 
186 Eiglity-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 apply in a sense quite opposite to that which he intended. 
 He went on to say : 
 
 "The conviction in favour of tlie Union springs from 
 •every sourco from which conviction in the human mind 
 can arise. Consult your senses, consult your feelings, con- 
 sult reason, history, and experience — they all concur in 
 enforcing the same truth." 
 
 All true, provided that for " the Union " we suhstitute 
 the words " self-government for Ireland." 
 
 He quoted Canning's smart saying, "Repeal the Union! 
 Restore the Heptarchy ! " but he omitted to state that the 
 Repeal of the Union and the restoration of the Heptarchy 
 had been instanced by Canning as absurdities analogous to 
 a reform in Parliament. What Canning had said was, 
 '* Reform the Parliament ! Repeal the Union ! Restore the 
 Heptarchy ! " * Canning, in a debate in the British House of 
 Commonson the Unioninl799, termed Catholic Emancipation 
 "a wild and impracticable measure." These random expressions 
 of statesmen are worth little or nothing. The supposition 
 that the man who would give Ireland a Parliament is bound 
 by his own principles to give separate Governments to Essex 
 and Kent, was unworthy the intellect of Canning. 
 
 Sir Robert next urged that Repeal would be a dismem- 
 berment of the Empire. 
 
 He said that absenteeism was caused, not by the Union, 
 but by "the cursed system of agitation." 
 
 He tried to terrify the Irish Protestants by predicting 
 that they would have real dangers to encounter should 
 Repeal be achieved. Since Sir Robert spoke, the Irish 
 Protestants have had to endure a large share of the general 
 poverty entailed by the Union, as the vast reduction of their 
 numbers, the records of the Encumbered Estates Court, and 
 other records also bear witness. 
 
 He manfully avowed the spirit of British usurpation by 
 declaring that "he, for one, would never consent that to an 
 Irish Parliament should be left the determination of the 
 proportion of the amount that country should contribute in 
 future to defray the general expenses of the State, and con- 
 tribute to the diminution of the general public debt." 
 
 Considering that Ireland, by a system of barefaced fraud, 
 had been swindled into an enormously disproportioned lia- 
 
 * So O'Connell told me. I have not seen the report of Canning's 
 speech containing the passage cited. The speech next referred to I 
 found in an old volume of the Debates of 1799. 
 
The Principle of "Divide et Impera^^ defended. 187 
 
 bility to that same public debt, Sir Eobert's cool avowal of 
 the robber principle, "We will put our hands into your 
 pocket whether yon like it or not," w^as a miracle of im- 
 pudence. It was just the thing to tell effectually with an 
 English audience. 
 
 He denied, in defiance of O'Connell's proofs, that Pitt 
 and Castlereagh had fomented the rebellion of 1798 ; alleging 
 that those statesmen could not have afforded a rebellion at a 
 time of foreign war, and when a mutiny broke out at the 
 Nore. They could, however, afford to pour 137,000 troops 
 into Ireland ; and the forces thus left at their disposal well 
 enabled them to afford a rebellion. 
 
 He defended the application to Ireland of the ruinous 
 and infamous principle of Divide et Impera ; alleging that 
 this principle had protected the two parties from each other ; 
 and that he regarded it as the mediator by which, in all 
 ■domestic quarrels, the fury of both sides had been allayed. 
 
 He quizzed Mr. Feargus O'Connor about the Irish King 
 Roderick, quoting some ancient account of a barbarous 
 •ceremonial at the coronation of the kings of Ireland. Much 
 laughter was excited by this sally. 
 
 He then wound up by a very eloquent allusion to the 
 tremendous conflict which agitated Europe from 1803 to 
 1814, calling the attention of the House to the fact that 
 among the bravest military leaders were the Irish Generals, 
 Ponsonby and Packenham ; that the British Army had been 
 commanded by the Irish Wellington, "wdio, standing with 
 his back to the sea on the rock of Lisbon, saw all Europe 
 in dismay and her liberties jeopardised, but who never 
 •ceased from his glorious labours till he saw the whole Conti- 
 nent emancipated." 
 
 What the Union had to do with the valour of Ponsonby 
 and Packenham, or with the glories of Wellington, it were 
 difficult to tell. I presume that even if the Irish Parliament 
 had continued to exist, England would have readily availed 
 herself of Irish valour and Irish military genius. 
 
 " During that period," said Sir Eobert (namely, from 
 1803 to 1814), "the reins of Government were placed in 
 the hands of a Castlereagh and a Pitt,* and a Grattan was 
 seen to join with a Fox in the deliberations of the Legislature 
 of the country." It is political blasphemy to class the 
 illustrious Grattan in the same category with the execrable 
 patricide Castlereagh. 
 
 * Pitt died in 1806. 
 
188 Eighty-five Years of Iriah History. 
 
 The conclusion of Sir Robert's speech was eloquent : 
 " With the return of a separate Parliament, after the 
 Catholic disabilities had been removed, what might not be 
 expected from the triumphant rancour of religious hatred? 
 It would amount to a complete disbanding of society. Who 
 could set bounds, who could regulate the force of those 
 antagonist powers? Who could so adjust the centrifugal 
 force, if he might so term it, which ought to keep Ireland 
 within her proper orbit in the system of the empire, as to 
 prevent her flying away into the chaos of lawless agitation, 
 or a boundless sea of revolution? (Continued cheers.) To 
 set such boundaries was beyond any power that man could 
 possibly employ. To effect such a state of things required 
 the might of that omniscient and omnipotent Power which 
 in the material world had separated the light from the dark- 
 ness (loud cheers), and prescribed the eternal laws by which 
 the magnificent harmony of the planetary system was 
 arranged and sustained." 
 
 Sir Robert sat down in the midst of a perfect tempest 
 of applause, of which the enthusiasm was not diminished by 
 the shameless libel on the Irish Catholics which he deemed 
 it expedient to pronounce. "Triumphant rancour of re- 
 ligious hatred." The Protestant Parnell, in his " Historical 
 Apology for the Irish Catholics," does their character justice 
 in this respect : " The Irish Roman Catholics bigots ! " he 
 exclaims ; " the Irish Roman Catholics are the only sect that 
 ever resumed power without exercising vengeance." And 
 another Protestant historian, William Cooke Taylor, LL.1)., 
 speaking of the Catholics of Ireland, says : " It is but 
 justice to this maligned body to add, that on the three 
 occasions of their obtaining the upper hand, they never 
 injured a single person in life or limb for professing a 
 religion different from their own,"* 
 
 In truth, one of the most prominent traits in the Irish 
 Catholic character is the absence of religious bigotry. This 
 trait is displayed in the fairness with which Catholic 
 majorities in Corporations elect Protestant Mayors in due 
 rotation. It is manifested in the fact that priests and people 
 prefer Protestant candidates of popular principles to Catholic 
 candidates of unpopular politics. The contests between the 
 Protestant Spaight and the Catholic Ball, between the 
 Protestant White and the Catholic Waldron, between the 
 
 * Taylor's "History of the Civil Wars of Ireland," vol. i. p. 169. 
 
O^Connell luinds up tJie Debate. 189 
 
 Presbyterian John Martin and the Catholic Preston, are 
 instances in point. Our people are steadfastly faithful to 
 the Catholic religion. But their politics are influenced, not 
 by theological predilections, but by their desire for the 
 SUCC3SS of some legitimate political object. It was stated in 
 the debate of 1834, by Mr. Lambert of Wexford (an anti- 
 Eepealer), that the Catholic Bishop of Waterford was pelted 
 with mud in the streets of that city because he Avas not a 
 Repealer. No man of right feeling will approve such an 
 outrage ; but the fact shows that even among the lowest and 
 most violent of the populace religious partisanship was ab- 
 sorbed in national prepossession. The Eepealer was, with 
 them, a character more sacred than the non-repealing prelate. 
 The mitre was unable to protect its venerable wearer from 
 the indignation of those who deemed their nationality out- 
 raged by his non-adhesion to their cause. "Triumphant 
 rancour of religious hatred." Sir Robert, in this outrage 
 upon truth, calculated that his words would influence that 
 class of persons whom a blind, unreasoning hatred of Catholics 
 and Catholicity diverts from the real interests of their 
 country and of themselves. He calculated accurately. 
 
 After some further skirmishing among the smaller fry, 
 the debate was closed by Mr. O'Connell in a speech re- 
 markable for its vigour and vivacity. I extract from it the 
 following passages : 
 
 " I have insisted on the incompetence of the Irish 
 Parliament to create a new Legislature, and I am convinced 
 I was right in that part of my argument. There was nothing 
 to authorise the Parliament of Ireland to dispose of the Irish 
 nation, any more than there was anything to authorise the 
 British Parliament to dispose of the British nation to any 
 other on the face of the globe. As to the fomenting of the 
 rebellion in order to bring about the Union — upon that 
 point I have been perfectly triumphant. 'But why,' said 
 the right hon. baronet, ' should Mr. Pitt and Lord Castlereagh 
 excite a rebellion in Ireland at a time when there was a 
 mutiny at the ISTore "i ' That mutiny had broken out suddenly 
 and unexpectedly. What, therefere, had its existence to do 
 with the fomentation of the rebellion'? The English Ministry 
 did not foresee the mutiny, though they might have con- 
 jectured the outbreak of the rebellion.* Could the Union 
 ever have been carried but for the rebellion 1 What answer 
 
 * They might have more than conjectured it, seeing that it was 
 designedly provoked by their intolerable tyranny. 
 
190 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 could be given to the Keport of the Secret Committee of the- 
 Irish House of Commons, from which it appeared that a 
 person holding the rank of colonel of the United Irishmen, 
 had given to the Government monthly reports of their secret 
 meetings from March,* 1797 "J It was clear from this that 
 the Government were cognisant of the plot, and had it in 
 their power to put it down. But the right hon. gentleman 
 said there were traitorous materials in Ireland. Undoubtedly 
 there were; otherwise there could not have been a rebellion; 
 but those materials were not of a formidable nature. They 
 existed to a certain extent in Leinster and Ulster, and pro- 
 duced two skirmishes, in one of which Lord O'Neill was 
 killed ; but the only really formidable occurrence took place 
 in Wexford. These matters were encouraged — not repressed ; 
 and the Union was brought about by fomenting the re- 
 bellion till it exploded." 
 
 Mr. O'Connell continued in a strain of great animation to- 
 reply to the arguments of several of his opponents seriatim. 
 
 The motion for the Repeal Committee was negatived by 
 an enormous majority, the numbers being 525 against 40, 
 including the tellers. 
 
 Mr. Stanley took no part in the debate. He was 
 probably muzzled by Sir Robert Peel, who, with character- 
 istic policy and caution, contrived that the debate should 
 sustain as little interruption as possible from the indecent 
 shoutings and ferocious yells with which the Irish Members 
 had been assailed during the discussion of the Coercion Bills 
 in the previous year. Mr. Stanley's silence was remarkable. 
 His feelings against the Repeal were very strong ; he had in 
 1833 declared he would "resist it to the death." That he 
 did not now avail himself of the opportunity of renewing 
 that declaration, is probably to be ascribed to the manage- 
 ment of his more cautious leader, who naturally doubted his 
 discretion. 
 
 The ministerial and English journals generally were loud 
 in their glorifications. Spring Rice's speech they pronounced 
 to be an unanswerable manual. No Repealer could in future 
 dare to raise his voice against the demonstrations, clear as 
 light, of the infinite benefits the Union had conferred upon 
 Ireland. The question, they said, was finally set at rest; 
 and they added much more to the same purpose. 
 
 Meanwhile, the result of the debate upon the Irish people 
 
 * This should have been April. 
 
TliG Union our Greatest Grievance. 191 
 
 was precisely what any man who knew the country and its 
 inhabitants must have expected. They saw in the division 
 a fresh proof of English hostility to their rights and of 
 English indifference to their grievances. Mr. Rice's tabular 
 dexterities — his "giant-stride prosperity" on paper, seemed 
 a heartless and insolent mockery to a people of whom every 
 fourth individual was a destitute pauper. The alacrity and 
 fervour with which the House applauded the most hollow 
 fallacies, afforded, to the minds of the Irish nation, fresh 
 evidence of its total ignorance of their condition and its con- 
 sequent incapacity to legislate for their advantage. Our 
 people felt that the Constitution of Ireland was the indis- 
 putable property of the nation, and not of its Parliament, 
 which, consequently, had no authority to sell it in 1800. 
 Their resolve to struggle for the Repeal, to seize whatever 
 opportunities God might send for its achievement, was 
 thenceforth more firmly fixed than ever. 
 
 Both Houses had addressed the King, who replied in an 
 echo of their joint address. The address and the reply con- 
 tained a promise to uphold the Union ; but at the same time 
 a pledge "to remove all just causes of complaint, and to 
 sanction all well-considered measures of improvement." 
 The Irish people were not so foolish as to place the least 
 faith in this pledge of King, Lords, and Commons ; but they 
 acquiesced in O'Connell's policy of testing their truth by the 
 celebrated six years' experiment, at the end of which, as the 
 pledges were demonstratively proved to have been mere 
 delusions, the Repeal Association was established, and the 
 agitation directed once more into its natural and legitimate 
 channel. O'Connell was wrong, in my opinion, to have 
 suspended for six years the national demand. It is scarcely 
 conceivable that he believed the joint pledge of King, Lords, 
 and Commons, " to remove all just causes of complaint." 
 Moreover, the most important cause of just complaint was 
 the refusal to restore the Irish Parliament; our greatest 
 grievance was the Union j and this the King, Lords, and 
 Commons declared they would uphold. 
 
 I shall pass over the six years of Whig ascendency, and 
 the fruitless struggles for that chimera, Equality with England 
 under the Union.* 
 
 There was, to do the Whigs justice, a fair administration 
 of the law ; and their legal appointments were excellent. 
 
 * In the Anti-Union — a most interesting periodical, commenced 
 on the 27th December, 1798, and which reckoned Saurin among its 
 
192 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Resolve ! resolve ! and to be men aspire ; 
 
 Let godlike Reason from her sovereign throne 
 
 Speak the commanding word, "I will," and it is done. 
 
 Thomson. 
 
 The time was now come when O'Connell deemed it right to 
 abandon for ever all attempts to obtain "justice for Ireland" 
 from the English Parliament. He accordingly embarked in 
 his final effort to procure a Repeal of the Union. On the 
 15th of April, 1840, he founded the Repeal Association. 
 Its first meeting Avas held in the Great Room of the Corn 
 Exchange, Burgh Quay, which is capable of accommodating 
 about five hundred persons. The room was not one-fifth 
 part filled; there was a discouraging display of empty 
 benches — a commencement that might well have disheartened 
 a leader less sanguine than O'Connell. He remembered the 
 commencement of the Catholic Association, the seven men 
 who congregated in Coyne's back parlour, in Capel Street, and 
 the magnificent result of that small beginning ; and he 
 confidently looked forward to a yet more brilliant termi- 
 nation of his new enterprise. 
 
 Still the meeting had a very discouraging appearance to 
 those who had not the sagacious forecast of the leader. It 
 seemed as if ths word Repeal had lost its potent magic. 
 But the fact was far otherwise. The thinness of the 
 attendance arose from no apathy as to the national cause. 
 It arose from a strong fear on the part of the Repeal public 
 that the new experiment was not made hojid Jide. Repeal 
 had been temporarily abandoned before. Such might be 
 again its fate. Men dreaded lest O'Connell merely meant to 
 rattle it about the ears of the Government in terrorem^ as a 
 means of compelling them to make minor concessions to 
 Ireland. 
 
 contributors — I find, at p. 63, the following : "It has been asserted 
 that the powers of Irish representatives will be enlarged, and the 
 rights of Irish electors improved, by Irish representatives having 
 two shares in eleven in the direction of affairs relative to their own 
 country only, instead of having the sole disposal of them in them« 
 selves alone." — The other nine shares being in the hands of a jealous 
 rival! Such is the Union. 
 
O^Connell founds the Rejjeal Association. 193 
 
 " As soon," said O'Connell, " as they begin to find out 
 that I am perfectly in earnest, they will come flocking into 
 the Association." 
 
 The chair was taken by Mr. John O'Xeill, of Fitzwilliam 
 Square, a Protestant merchant of great wealth and sterling 
 patriotism. He Lad been in early youth a member of the 
 Yolunteer army of 1782. "I was then," he said to me, 
 "too young to be of much use to Ireland, and now I am too 
 old." But, young or old, his country had always commanded 
 his best services. That good old Protestant patriot is long 
 since dead. He descended to the tomb full of years, and 
 deeply honoured by his fellow-countrymen. 
 
 For more than half-an-hour the few who had congregated 
 at the Corn Exchange anxiously awaited the opening address 
 of the Liberator ; but he still lingered, apparently unwilling 
 to commence, in the hope of a more numerous attendance. 
 But no reinforcement came. There were manifestations of 
 impatience among those who had assembled. O'Connell at 
 length rose, and Avith the air of one deeply impressed with 
 the high and solemn responsibility which he incurred, spoke 
 as follows : 
 
 " My fellow-countrymen, I rise with a deep sense of the 
 awful importance of the step I am about to propose to the 
 Irish people, and a full knowledge of the difficulties by 
 which we are surrounded, and the obstacles we have to 
 contend with. I trust that my heart is pure, and my judg- 
 ment on the present occasion unclouded ; and I declare, in 
 the presence of that God who is to judge me for an eternity 
 of weal or woe, that I have no object in view but the good 
 of my native land, and that I feel in the deepest sense the 
 responsibility I am about to incur. We are about to enter 
 on a struggle that will terminate only in having the most 
 ample justice done to Ireland by placing her on an equality 
 with the sister country,* or by the establishment of our 
 legislative independence. The struggle commences now — it 
 will end only then. We commence under auspices that may 
 afford little prospect of ultimate success to some ; but those 
 
 * I never could understand what is meant by "equality" 
 between Ireland and England under an Union. Said C. J. Fox, on 
 the 7tli of May, 1800, at a meeting of the Whig Club : " It was idle 
 to talk to Ireland of the word union, since there could be no such 
 thing as a real Union on an equal footing between two countries so 
 disproportionate and unequal. Could the Irish believe that in this 
 connection they were to have an equal voice in legislating for 
 England as the English had in legislating for Ireland ? " 
 
 O 
 
194 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 who know the character of the brave, moral, religious, and 
 patient Irish people, cannot be of that opinion. We will, 
 no doubt, be laughed at and derided on all sides, and sneered 
 at by friends who believe everything is impracticable, and 
 opposed by those malignant enemies who will be delighted 
 to find any opportunity of manifesting their hostility. But 
 no matter ; we were derided and laughed at before by persons 
 of this description when we set about the accomplishment of 
 that great moral revolution which won religious freedom for 
 ourselves and others." 
 
 He then referred to the small origin of the Catholic 
 Association, its progress and triumph ; exposed the delusive 
 nature of the Union, and repeated his proofs of the anti-Irish 
 spirit in which laws were made for Ireland by the Imperial 
 Legislature. He promised perseverance. 
 
 '' We have assembled to take part in proceedings that 
 will yet be memorable in the history of our country. Yes, 
 this fifteenth of April will be yet memorable in the annals 
 of Ireland. It shall be referred to as the day on which the 
 flag of Repeal was unfurled ; and I shall fearlessly, legally, 
 and constitutionally keep it unfurled until the day of success 
 shall have arrived, or the grave shall close over me, and on. 
 my tomb shall be inscribed ' He died a Repealer.' . . . We 
 must be up, I say, and stirring. We can do no good by 
 quiescence ; it may do us evil, but it can do us no service. 
 We must take counsel from the French proverb, which says : 
 *Help yourselves, and God will help you.' We must not 
 forget the story of the fellow, who, when the wheel of his 
 cart stuck in the mud, prayed to Jupiter to help him. ' You 
 lazy rascal,' said his godship, 'put your shoulder to the 
 wheel, and get along out of that.' I tell you there is 
 nothing else for us but to help ourselves ; and help ourselves, 
 with the aid of God, we shall." 
 
 Having quoted the well-known denunciations of the 
 Union, pronounced in 1799 and 18U0 by Chirles Kendal 
 Busho (the Chief Justice), and William Conyngham Plunket 
 (the Chancellor), he continued : " These are 
 
 Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. 
 
 I have them here. They shall be spread through the laud 
 in the course of next week for the perusal of the youth of 
 Ireland ; not one of whom, I trust, will be found, whose eye 
 will not glisten with fire, whose young heart will not burn 
 with indignation at the spoliation resorted to by our enemies. 
 
Tlie Union productive of Evil. 195 
 
 There was a bargain, forsootli ! Why, is not the Chief 
 Justice* still living 1 and is he not a witness for me % Is 
 not the Lord Chancellor of Ireland,! with all his Asdrubals 
 or Hannibals, living also to bear his testimony 1 What care 
 I whether he has changed his opinion or no % He was 
 honest then, because he had no sons to quarter on the State. 
 Let him change now if he wish. In his day of virtue he 
 felt and spoke those sentiments which I have read for you. 
 Let him now change them in the day of his power and 
 authority." 
 
 In the opening passage of O'Connell's speech, he had 
 mentioned "justice to Ireland" as an alternative. But how 
 visionary he deemed the prospect of obtaining that ''justice" 
 is evident from the following passage : " If we get that 
 justice we desire, then our Eepeal Association is at an end ; 
 but I know we will not get that justice, and that there is 
 nothing left for us but to pursue vigorously the course we 
 have commenced this day. . . . Why should we for a 
 moment deceive ourselves 1 This justice will not be done to 
 Ireland, and we will at once set ourselves right by declaring 
 that there is a Repeal Association, and that unless the moral 
 miracle be performed of having justice done to us by 
 England, we will never cease until we have a Parliament 
 established in College Green. | 
 
 "Xotone single benefit has the Union conferred upon 
 Ireland, but, on the contrary, it has brought in its train 
 poverty, degradation, and sorrow. When once the public 
 
 * Charles Kendal Bushe. 
 
 f William Conyngham Plunket. 
 
 X As this passage appeared to contaia an admission, even 
 although a hypothetical one, that justice from England could 
 supersede the necessity of Repeal, O'Connell guarded himself from 
 such an objection in a subsequent speech, delivered on the 1st of 
 May, 1840. He explained his meaning in still retaining the 
 semblance of an alternative thus : " I have declared for the Repeal, 
 and from this declaration nothing shall ever take me. It has been 
 said that even in the formation of this society I held out the 
 alternative of justice. Let them do ns justice; let them increase 
 our representatives to 150 in number ; let them remove the Church 
 grievance ; let them increase the franchise — let them do all this, 
 and though they will not have convinced me that Repeal is un- 
 necessary, they will deprive me of the forces by which I hope to 
 
 succeed But who supposes they ever will be brought to do 
 
 us justice ? Not even a dreamer who dreamed soundly in his sleep ; 
 
 no one short of an idiot could be brought to believe it I hold 
 
 •out the alternative, to be sure ; but it is to the English Members of 
 Parliament. The alternative is not for me — it is for them." 
 
 o 2 
 
196 Eighty-five Years of Irisli History. 
 
 mind is aroused, and the evils which we have suffered 
 pointed out to the people, the Union cannot continue. It is 
 not the writing of a single letter, nor the delivery of a single 
 speech, that can effect the Repeal ; it is the concentration of 
 public opinion, directed as a galvanic battery, that will have 
 that effect. That opinion will then become powerful as the 
 lightnings of heaven, destroying everything that may impede 
 its course." 
 
 He concluded by moving the adoption of a set of rules ; 
 the seconder of the motion being Mr. John Redmond, a 
 patriotic citizen. 
 
 So ended the first day's meeting. The Whig Liberals 
 did their best to throw contempt and ridicule on the pro- 
 ceedings. The paucity of the attendance was pointed out 
 with scorn. Those gentlemen said to their acquaintances as 
 they met in the streets, " Dan will never work this question 
 — he is not in earnest — the people don't care about it " — 
 (this was a very favourite allegation) — " he will not be able 
 to get over the priests to help him." The word " Repealer " 
 was pronounced with a derisive curl of the lip by the "genteel" 
 Liberals, who religiously abhorred all treason against Whig- 
 gery. More sagacious men, however, knew that the question 
 was workable. They remembered the popular enthusiasm of 
 1832, and they did not believe that enthusiasm to be a mere 
 fever-fit. 
 
 O'Connell was accused, as a matter of course, of embarking 
 in what he knew and intended to be a delusive agitation. 
 To create an impression that the leader was insincere, was a 
 dexterous mode of damaging the cause. O'Connell, however, 
 had the most intense conviction that success was possible, 
 provided that the parties who were interested in its attain- 
 ment would apply their whole strength to the task. Those 
 parties were the people of Ireland. He had great faith in 
 the manifest truth and common sense of his statements and 
 arguments. Wlien dictating Reports and Addresses to Mr. 
 Ray, the able and energetic Secretary of the Association, he 
 would say : ** Well, Ray, I am acquitting my conscience ; I 
 am giving the people of Ireland an opportunity to have their 
 Parliament restored, and if they do not aid me the fault is 
 their own." 
 
 He held that the Act of Union — which Saurin had pro- 
 nounced to be destitute of any other sanction than coercive 
 force — did not need a formal Act of the Imperial Parliament 
 for its repeal; and he published in May, 1840, a masterly 
 argument to show that Her Majesty possesses the constitu- 
 
Scheme of the Restored Irish Parliament. 197 
 
 tional right of convoking the Irish Parliament in Dublin, 
 notwithstanding the iniquitous suppression of that body by 
 the monster-crime of 1800.* And he believed that it was 
 not impossible to create a condition of public affairs in which 
 Her Majesty's advisers might deem such exercise of her con- 
 stitutional prerogative expedient. 
 
 O'Connell lost no time in placing before the public, in 
 the fullest detail, his plan for the reconstruction of the Irish 
 Parliament. He was resolved to avoid the reproach of a 
 vague, indefinite agitation ; an agitation for the Eepeal of the 
 Union, unaccompanied with a clear, minute statement of the 
 system he proposed to establish. Accordingly he issued, on 
 the 4th of May, 1840, an elaborate scheme for the construc- 
 tion of the restored Irish Parliament ; which, like its sup- 
 pressed predecessor, he proposed should contain 300 members. 
 Of these, 127 were to represent cities and towns, and 173 
 were to represent counties. The local electoral forces he 
 computed on the basis of the population returns of 1831. 
 
 "It may be alleged" (so runs his Report t) " that in pro- 
 posing to give to the agricultural districts 173 members, and 
 to the towns, or mercantile interests, but 127, an undue pro- 
 portion is thus struck between the one and the other. But 
 we think there is no weight in such an objection. There is 
 no antagonism of interest between the mercantile and agricul- 
 tural classes in Ireland ; and we consider that in point of 
 fact the greatest interest our commercial men can have, is in 
 the increase of the number of landed proprietors whose duty 
 or whose ambition would lead them to continue to reside in 
 their respective counties; thus employing the income derived 
 from lands in Ireland, in the consumption of the articles in 
 which our mercantile men principally deal. 
 
 " It may be objected that it is premature to bring before 
 the public the plan for the reconstruction of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment, before we have made more progress towards that com- 
 bination of public opinion from which alone we can hope for 
 success. But we deem it most fair and reasonable, at the 
 earliest possible stage of that agitation, which can terminate 
 only in the Repeal, to submit to the good sense and calm 
 consideration of the people of Ireland, the best mode of re- 
 constituting their House of Commons. At present, our plan 
 can be discussed coolly and dispassionately ; and its defects, 
 
 * The reader will find O'Connell's argument, which he supports 
 by historical references, in the Appendix. 
 
 + First Series of Repeal Reports, printed by Browne, Dublin, 
 1840, p. 51. 
 
198 Eighty-Jive Years of Irish History. 
 
 if any, can be pointed out without creating heat or animosity. 
 !N'ot so, if the period of Repeal were actually at hand. Then 
 local interests would create or magnify objections, and accu- 
 sations of personal or particular motives might be made,, 
 which cannot now be even dreamt of. We have, therefore, 
 deemed it the wisest course to procure the discussion and 
 adoption of a settled plan of reconstruction of the Irish 
 House of Commons, at a period when it can be discussed 
 and adopted without the smallest intermixture of passion, 
 prejudice, or private interest." * 
 
 Thus careful was O'Connell to explain, with the utmost 
 minuteness of detail, what he meant by the Repeal of the 
 Union. It will be observed that in the distribution of seats 
 he proposed to give a predominating influence to the landed 
 interest. If the Irish landlords had been wise enough to 
 throw their strength into his movement. Repeal could have 
 been easily carried; and the landlords would have deservedly 
 possessed, as patriots, that commanding power in their 
 native country, which they have deservedly forfeited as th& 
 servile and degraded supporters of the alien rule that strips 
 their country of its wealth, banishes its people, and largely 
 helps to beggar themselves. But the landlords were in most 
 cases bewildered by a bigoted fear of their Catholic fellow- 
 countrymen, and withheld their assistance from O'ConneU's 
 effort to restore legislative independence and consequent 
 prosperity to the nation in' which Catholics were a majority. 
 Tor a good while after the establishment of the Repeal 
 Association, the English press was wholly, or nearly, silent 
 on the subject. By-and-by the English journalists con- 
 descended to laugh at the Repealers. After their wit was 
 exhausted at our expense, they began to be abusive. The 
 Repealers were denounced as political criminals of the worst 
 description, and floods of coarse vituperation were poured upon 
 them from the copious reservoirs of the Times newspaper^ 
 O'Connell returned the compliments of the Times in these 
 verses : 
 
 Vile press without a parallel, 
 
 Organ meet for fiends of hell, 
 
 Lies thy trade; thy master-sense, 
 
 Bribed and brutal insolence j 
 
 From Puddledock to either sea, 
 
 Toryism stinks of thee. 
 
 * First Series of Repeal Reports, printed by Browne, Dublin,. 
 1840, p. 52. 
 
Gradual Progress of the Repeal Association. 199 
 
 To account for the virulence of these lines I should 
 remind the reader that the Times had termed the Irish 
 nation " a filthy and felonious multitude," and the Catholic 
 clergy a tribe of " surpliced ruffians." 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 GRADUAL PROGRESS OF THE REPEAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 Sncb. men as these, 
 Give grace to holy mysteries, 
 And make the pure oblation rise, 
 A God-accepted sacrifice. 
 
 Anon. 
 
 The Eepeal Association ^tradually expanded. Every week 
 brought fresh recruits. Of these, some few were the ancient 
 relics of a former age — old men Avho in early youth had stood 
 in the ranks of the Volunteer army, and who now, ere they 
 sank into the grave, were glad to enrol themselves once 
 more in the service of their country. I have already named 
 my old Protestant friend, John O'Neill. Another of our 
 patriarchal adjuncts was Eobert M'Clelland, a northern 
 Presbyterian, who, although past eighty, was a regular 
 attendant at the weekly meetings at the Corn Exchange as 
 long as his health permitted him. It would be unjust and 
 ungrateful to omit this mention of those venerable Protestant 
 patriots, whose aid was ever heartily rendered to every move- 
 ment having for its olgect the enlargement of the liberties of 
 Ireland. " Eequiescant in pace." 
 
 Eepeal progressed. The Catholic clergy sent in their 
 adhesions pretty numerously. On one occasion a bishop* 
 and eighty-three of his clergy were enrolled together. There 
 were three great provincial meetings forLeinster, Connaught, 
 and Munster. At the Leinster meeting, which was held 
 near Kilkenny, in October, 1840, a quarter of a million of 
 persons were computed to be present. John O'Connell 
 occupied the chair. It was a grave autumnal day ; there 
 was a quiet beauty in the fertile, undulating landscape, with 
 the city in the middle distance, the proud towers of the 
 Ormonds rising high above the mass of city buildings, and the 
 hills of Mount Leinster and Blackstairs in the far horizon. 
 
 * Right Eev. Dr. Foran, Bishop of Waterford. 
 
200 Eiglity-five Years of Irish Tlistory. 
 
 The muster was a noble display, and was distinguished, like 
 all other meetings for Repeal, by that rigid observance of 
 decorum, preservation of peace, and perfect sobriety, which 
 no great popular gatherings of similar extent in any other 
 nation could exhibit. 
 
 Father Mathew's movement was essentially useful to 
 Repeal. By withdrawing the people from the odious and 
 stultifying vice of inebriety, it raised them in the intellectual 
 scale. Freed from the degrading influences of intoxication, 
 they were the better able to think and to reason. A reasoning, 
 thinking people are not destined to slavery. The arguments 
 in favour of Repeal come so home to the common-sense of 
 Irishmen, that it needs only to rescue the people from habits 
 of intemperance to convert the impulsive and unreasoning 
 shout for liberty into a calculating, sagacious, and well- 
 sustained struggle for legislative independence. The enemies 
 of Ireland, both domestic and English, saw this; and 
 accordingly the temperance movement was made the object 
 of ferocious vituperation. It is amusing to look back at 
 some few of the exploits of the anti-temperance party. 
 Religious fanaticism was of course pressed into the service of 
 drunkenness. A parson named Whitty refused to grant 
 Father Mathew the use of the Rock of Cashel to accommodate 
 his postulants, alleging that " temperance was of the devil." * 
 Another clergyman, named Edgar, residing in the diocese of 
 Derry, declared, in a letter to Mr. Buckingham, the ex- 
 Member for Sheffield, that " teetotalism was highly insulting 
 to the majesty of God;"t at the same time expressing his fear 
 that Mr. Buckingham was affected with the disease in its 
 worst form. The Rev. Mr. Sewell, of Oxford, wrote an 
 article in the Quarterly Review^ entitled "Romanism in 
 Ireland ; " asserting therein that superstition was the chief 
 agency of the temperance movement, and murder its ultimate 
 object. 
 
 Passing from the high priests of inebriety to its prof an er 
 organs, the Protestant Magazine for June, 1841, complacently 
 quoted from the congenial Times the following awful 
 passage : " We cannot but suspect that this temperance 
 movement is, substantially, a sort of Trojan horse, within 
 whose ribs there lurks an overwhelming phalanx, which 
 some of these nights will sally on the sleeping sentinels 
 of Ireland and make it an easy prey." 
 
 • Morning Chronicle, 27th April, 1841. t Ibid. 
 
Orange Hatred of Sohriety. 201 
 
 The Ulster Orangemen were at all events resolved that 
 they should not be caught napping. At Loughgall, a niiinber 
 of Orange farmers entered into a resolution that they would 
 not employ any labourers who had taken the temperance 
 pledge. In other places there were anti-temperance riots, 
 especially at Xewtownhamilton and Lurgan. The Orange- 
 men apparently were not satisfied with the privilege of 
 getting drunk, unless they could deprive their neighbours of 
 the privilege of pledging themselves to sobriety. The Coote- 
 hill Orangemen published a manifesto, redolent of the 
 choicest inspirations of the Orange divinity, exhorting the 
 Protestants to oppose the entrance of Father Mathew into 
 their district, where he proposed to administer the pledge. 
 The document, having first adverted to the priest's threatened 
 advent, proceeded thus: "Insulted Protestants! will, ye, 
 can ye bear it any longer 1 Has the spirit of your fathers, 
 of immortal William, died within you 1 . . , . Arouse ! be 
 steady and courageous. Let not the religion * of your 
 fathers be trampled on by idolaters. Let the spirit of 
 William, that whispers to you at this moment, animate your 
 hearts and souls, and let not the anti-Christian apostle depart 
 from Cootehill in boasted triumph. 
 
 Arise, I say, arise, my boys, and raise your standard high, 
 The man that will not join you now, treat as an enemy ; 
 Fear not O'Connell — Mathew — Devil ! but let your motto be, 
 To put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry, 
 Eemember Gideon's chosen few, 
 The arm that guarded them guards you. 
 
 This delirious melange of politics, bigotry, and truculence, 
 demonstrates the fatal success with which the Whittys 
 and Edgars had instilled into their followers a virulent 
 hostility to national amelioration. The Divine assistance 
 is invoked by the Cootehill devotees to preserve their 
 drunken license. The arm that guarded Gideon's chosen 
 few is expected to guard the Orange Bacchanals from the 
 fatal invasion of temperance. At a later period, however, 
 the spirit of the North became improved. Leading men of 
 all political shades looked with favour upon temperance; 
 and as virtues are gregarious, the same result which attended 
 the success of Father Mathew's movement in the South also 
 marked its progress in the North. As morality and sobriety 
 advanced, nationality kept pace with them. Let the mere 
 
 * Query, the whisky bottle ? 
 
202 Eighty -five Years of Irish Hidory. 
 
 enthusiast, whether Orangeman or Repealer, forswear hi& 
 drunken orgies; the latter will become a more zealous and 
 useful, because a more enlightened and intelligent supporter 
 of national liberty ] the former will be led to inquire whether 
 that which is manifestly good for Ireland can be bad for 
 himself. The result of this inquiry will make him a 
 Repealer. 
 
 The agitation for Eepeal went on, sometimes in places 
 which conjured up interesting historical associations. A 
 Kepeal meeting was held at Carrick-on-Suir, which wa& 
 followed by a public dinner, presided over by a Protestant 
 gentleman, Mr. Power. The dinner took place in an apart- 
 ment at the top of the principal inn. I was told that many 
 persons had wished to obtain a room in the Castle of Carrick- 
 on-Suir for the festivity; but a fear lest Lord Ormond, the 
 proprietor of the Castle, might visit with his vengeance the 
 gentleman who rented the old building as tenant at will, 
 induced the managers of the dinner to select the less 
 commodious apartment in the hotel. 
 
 I chanced that day to be at Carrick, and I walked to see 
 the old Castle. It is beautifully situated in a secluded lawn 
 overhanging the Suir, at the distance of a few hundred yards 
 from the eastern end of the town. I could not ascertain the 
 date of the older, or castellated portion of the edifice ; the 
 more modern part was erected by Thomas Butler, Earl of 
 Ormond, in 15G5, which date is displayed on the wall of the 
 hall, on which, also, there is a rude fresco, representing 
 Queen Elizabeth, with the initials E.R. On the opposite 
 wall there is another fresco, representing the founder, who is 
 said by the tradition of the Castle to have found favour as 
 a lover Avith that princess. The tradition found its way into 
 France, and the family of Lord Galmoye is stated, in a 
 Erench genealogical work, to descend from Her Majesty and 
 her Irish admirer. In Burke's " Peerage and Baronetage for 
 1830," the following very curious notice of the Galmoye 
 family is extracted from the " Dictionnaire de la Noblesse," 
 published at Paris in 1771, second edition, tome iii. : 
 
 " Le comte Thomas de Butler, dit le noir, quelques ann^es 
 apr^? etre all6 en Angleterre, envoya en Irlande un jeune 
 enfant portant son nom, et deja cr6^ Lord Vicomte de 
 Galmoye. II est certain (dit le M6moire envoye sur lequel 
 nous avons dress6 cetto g6n6alogie) que le comte le recon- 
 naissoit pour son fils, et la tradition veut que la reine 
 Elizabeth fdt sa mere; c'est do cet enfant que descendoit 
 
The Old Castle of Carrick-on-Suir. 203 
 
 milord de Galmoye, luort a Paris eu 1740, lieut. -general des 
 armees du roi, cree coiiite de Newcastle en France par le roi 
 Jacques II., dont 11 6tait premier gentilhomme de la 
 chaiiibre," etc. A tradition of the same import prevails in 
 the Irish branch of the family. 
 
 The curious old mansion fouuded by '' Black Tom Butler'" 
 is still habitable.* Its front presents a long row of gables 
 in the fashion of Elizabethan manor-houses, with a large oriel 
 window over the porch. Its large, deserted chambers are 
 just such as spectral personages might readily honour with 
 their visits. I accordingly asked if the house was haunted, 
 and was told by the person who showed it, that in the days 
 of the Ormonds a ghost had been constantly there — a 
 utilitarian ghost, apparently ; for he used to officiate as 
 volunteer shoe-black, and to discharge other duties of 
 domestic labour. 
 
 The largest apartments are in the upper storey. There 
 is a noble drawing-room about sixty feet long, which con- 
 tains two decorated chimneys. Whatever be the worth of 
 the Galmoye tradition, old " Tom Butler," as the guide 
 familiarly called him, was anxious to record his devotion to 
 Elizabeth ; and this he has done by the frequent repetition 
 of Her Majesty's initials and arms in the quaint stucco 
 ornaments of the ceiling. There is another spacious room 
 on the same floor, with an oriel overlooking the river. 
 
 I was inclined to regret that Mr. O'Connell was not 
 entertained in this old stronghold of the Butlers. The old 
 
 * 1842. I have not seen it since. Thomas Butler, the founder 
 of the Elizabethan part of Carriek-on-Suir Castle, was the tenth 
 Earl of Ormoud, and died there in his eighty-eighth year in 1614. 
 He was great-uncle to James, the celebrated Duke of Ormond, who 
 often mentioned his recollection of his aged relative as "a blind old 
 man, haviug a long beard, and wearing his George about his neck 
 ■whether he sat up in his chair or lay down in his bed." In 1632 
 James made a journey from London to Carrick, which, even accord- 
 ing to modern ideas, seems a rapid one. On a Saturday morning 
 in September he left Loudon, and rode post to Acton, within eight 
 miles of Bristol. At 8 ne\t morning he sailed from Bristol to 
 Waterford in a vessel called The Ninth Whelp, and at 9 a.m. on 
 Monday they ran up to Wnterford, whence his lordship immediately 
 took horse for Carrick, which is distant from Waterford only sixteen 
 miles. 
 
 Henry Hyde, second Earl of Clarendon, in a letter to Lord 
 Rochester, dated in 1C86, says of this old seat : "Carrick, an ancient 
 seat belonging to the Duke of Ormond, is, I think, one of the 
 prettiest places I ever saw in my life." — Clarendon's Letters, 
 London, 1828. 
 
204 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 walls speak eloquently to the imagination. There would 
 have been a romantic interest in beholding the great advo- 
 cate of Irish legislative independence working out his mighty- 
 task in the deserted residence of one of the most powerful of 
 Norman-Irish families ; enforcing the right of Ireland to self- 
 government in the ancient halls of Elizabeth's favourite, who 
 performed his share of the duty of riveting the English 
 chain upon his country ; in those halls which at a later 
 period were the habitation of James, Dake of Ormond, who 
 exercised such potent influence, partly for good, but more 
 for evil, on the destinies of Ireland. 
 
 I lingered until twilight in the Castle. The echo of the 
 closing doors sounded weirdly and solemn through the dusky 
 chambers ; it came upon the ear like the voice of ages past. 
 The guide bore in his hand the ponderous old keys, which, 
 to judge from their great size and rude workmanship, might 
 have been coeval with the edifice itself. When I reached 
 the lawn, I turned to look once more at the venerable pile 
 reposing in its solitude and silence, and then retraced my 
 steps to the town. 
 
 At the Repeal dinner, O'Connell said : " I am often 
 asked, how can I expect to obtain Repeal from the Imperial 
 Parliament when I have not been able to obtain minor benefits ? 
 I answer this question by reminding the querists that upon 
 the minor advantages I sought I have not been supported by 
 the whole Irish people ; whereas the Repeal agitation ac- 
 cumulates around me their entire strength. Minor objects 
 were not of sufficient importance to enlist their full energies. 
 The eagle does not catch flies. The eagle spirit of Ireland 
 soars above these individual advantages and perches on the 
 lofty pedestal of national independence." He proceeded to 
 predict the certain attainment of Repeal so soon as universal 
 Ireland should be actively aroused in its behalf ; and he then, 
 in a strain of fervid eloquence, described the long perspective 
 of Irish prosperity which he expected to result from that 
 measure. 
 
 Carrick had its own sad experience of decay since the 
 Union, there having been prior to that measure a thriving 
 woollen trade in the town and its immediate vicinity, giving 
 bread to about 5,000 persons ; whereas now* there is but 
 partial employment for about one hundred persons there. 
 Go where they would, the Repeal agitators had the dismal 
 
 * 1844. 
 
The Viceroy scares the Place-hunters 205 
 
 and terrible advantage of being able to point to the surround- 
 ing crowds instances of decay with which their local experience 
 was familiar — practical fulfilments of John Foster's memorable 
 words : " Where the Parliament is, there will the manu- 
 facturer be also." In Limerick there had been before the Union 
 over a thousand woollen weavers ; the number had shrunk to 
 less than seventy. In Bandon — Protestant Bandon — there 
 had been before the Union a flourishing manufacture of 
 camlets, cords, and stufifs. That trade had all but vanished ; 
 the only branch of the woollen manufacture remaining there 
 when our Repeal missions were organised, being that of frieze 
 for the peasantry. And similar decay had widely overspread 
 the land on all sides.* 
 
 The Viceroy, Lord Ebrington, now made an eff'ort to 
 arrest the progress of Repeal by announcing that no 
 member of the Repeal Association should be appointed to 
 any office in the gift of the Government. This declaration 
 necessarily scared all the place-hunters from joining the 
 movement, and thus preserved it from the adhesion of a good 
 deal of rascality. Lord Ebrington's threat was undignified, 
 but not unnatural. He probably thought that as the Union 
 was originally carried by bribery, Repeal could best be 
 averted by bribing men through their hopes of office to 
 refrain from junction with the agitators. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 PROPAGA-TION OF REPEAL BY MISSIONS. 
 
 Arouse thee, youth ! it is no idle call ; 
 Our rights are leaguered — haste to man the wall; 
 Haste where the old green banner waves on high, 
 Signal of honoured death, or victory. 
 
 Among the public men who played fast and loose on the 
 question of Repeal, was Mr. Sharman Crawford. That 
 gentleman had ably and persistently advocated the cause of 
 the Irish tenant-farmer, and had, by his advocacy, acquired 
 wide and merited popularity. He denounced the crimes 
 committed against the people by exterminating landlords, 
 
 * For copious and authentic details of the general decay see 
 Mr. Secretary Eay's admirable " Report on the Disastrous Effects of 
 the Union on the Woollen, Silk, and Cotton Manufactures." 
 
206 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 and contended for the system of small farms, which he said 
 could be worked with a profit to the tenant by the applica- 
 tion of increased skill in cultivation, while the landlord 
 would possess full security for his rent in the value enjoyed 
 by the tenant. 
 
 O'Connell expected that Crawford would assist the Repeal 
 agitation — an expectation which was not unreasonable, for 
 Crawford, in 1833, had published a pamphlet entitled, "The 
 Expediency and I^ecessity of a Local Legislative Body in 
 Ireland supported by a Reference to Facts and Principles," 
 In page 27 of that pamphlet, its author says : " Sad ex- 
 perience now proves to Ireland, as on former occasions, that 
 England's freedom is Ireland's slavery ; that England's 
 prosperity only dooms Ireland to a more depressed state of 
 misery and political degradation. She finds the same abuses 
 retained — the same disregard of her complaints ; and what 
 renders the case still more hopeless is the general apathy and 
 indifference of the British nation, and the worse than in- 
 difference of the Scotch, towards matters connected with 
 Irish policy." At page 53, speaking of the reformed Parlia- 
 ment of England, Mr. Crawford asks : " Have not the pro- 
 ceedings of that Parliament forced a conviction on many of 
 the most attached friends of British connexion, that the 
 union of the nations can only be upheld by the separation of 
 the Parliaments ^ " 
 
 These extracts afford a fair sample of the general spirit of 
 Mr. Crawford's pamphlet. But on the revival, by O'Connell, 
 of the agitation for Repeal, Mr. Crawford ranged himself 
 among the anti-Repealers. In October, 1841, he published 
 " Observations addressed to the Repealers of Ireland," in 
 which he declared that he would not be " a party to a 
 deln-<ive agitation." He recommended, instead of the pursuit 
 of liepeal, that the Irish should unite with "the aggrieved 
 and unrepresented classes in England and Scotland," in de- 
 manding a new distribution and equalisation of electoral 
 districts all over the United Kingdom. He denied that it 
 was possible for Ireland to possess an independent Parliament 
 in connection with the British Crown. And he censured the 
 patriots of 1782 for establishing "a nominally independent" 
 Irish Parliament, instead of seeking a federative connexion 
 with England on the American principle. 
 
 Mr. Crawford's attacks on the Repealers had a wide 
 circulation. The task of reply was entrusted to me. My 
 answers went the round of the Repeal press in Ireland, and 
 
Repeal Directorate appointed. 207 
 
 were published as a pamphlet both in Dublin and Belfast. 
 As long as O'Connell lived, Mr. Crawford retained his atti- 
 tude of hostility; but after the death of O'Connell he publicly- 
 joined the Protestant Repeal Association which had been 
 instituted at Belfast, recanted his imperialism, and declared 
 his assent to the principles of 1782. But I must not 
 anticipate. 
 
 Hitherto the agitation, although occupying the minds of 
 the people, and engaging much of their support, had not 
 been efficiently organised. To supply this defect, and at the 
 same time to inculcate the principle of nationality in the 
 various rural districts, it was now deemed advisable to send 
 missionaries through the land. The persons selected by the 
 Committee of the Association to discharge this arduous duty 
 were Mr. John O'Connell, third son of the Liberator, who 
 was appointed Repeal Director for Connaught ; Mr. Ray, the 
 Secretary of the Association ; and myself. I was appointed 
 Repeal Director for Leinster. 
 
 On the 12th of September, 1842, we left Dublin for our 
 several routes. Mr. Ray proceeded to Limerick, Munster 
 having been assigned as the district of his labours. As John 
 O'Connell's route and mine for the first and second days lay 
 in the same direction, we travelled together in the canal-boat 
 to Mullingar. At that town we Avaited on the Right Rev. 
 Dr. Cautwell, the bishop of the diocese, who promised his 
 cordial co-operation to the cause in which we were engaged. 
 Next day we proceeded to Bally mahon, where the Bishop of 
 Ardagh had invited a large party of his clergy to meet us. 
 There was much grave and earnest discussion on the subject 
 of the movement. The prelate pledged himself that all the 
 influence he possessed should be placed at the disposal of the 
 Repeal Association. The Bishop of Meath had given a 
 similar pledge, and nobly were their promises redeemed. 
 
 Without the active co-operation of the priesthood, the 
 Repeal cause could never have acquired the commanding 
 position it soon began to occupy. It is not uninteresting to 
 trace the gradation of its progress in the rural districts. 
 Three men, animated with the most ardent desire to promote 
 national freedom, travelled from town to town, from parish 
 to parish. They solicited and obtained the hearty and 
 powerful support of the priests. They assembled their 
 countrymen in the market-place, in the church, on the bleak 
 hill-side ; they told in plain and energetic language the story 
 of England's crime and Ireland's degradation; they enumerated 
 
208 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 the grinding wrongs, the oppressions, and the robberies in- 
 flicted on the ill-starred land, which in losing the power of 
 self-government had lost the power of self-defence ; they 
 asked their countrymen whether this national dishonour 
 should continue ; whether the Irish people should not stretch 
 forth their hands to seize and fashion into strength the rich 
 elements of . power and prosperity that everywhere lay 
 scattered around li They made it a personal question to each 
 individual. They charged it home upon the conscience of 
 each whether he would be a guilty partaker, by his criminal 
 apathy, in the wrongs inflicted by England on his country % 
 They asked, 
 
 " Could the wrong'd realm no arms supply, 
 But the abject tear and the slavish sigh ?" 
 
 They stirred into energetic life the slumbering spirit of old 
 nationhood ; they wakened the political sleeper from his 
 trance. " Repeal " began to be a gathering shout in many a 
 district that had long dozed on in torpid inactivity. The con- 
 nexions of the central institute in Dublin were extended 
 through the land. The pulsations of the heart began to be 
 felt at the extremities ; and the question soon exhibited in 
 the various rural districts a vitality and vigour which as- 
 tonished the whole tribe of anti-Irish gentlemen with wooden 
 heads and stony hearts — men whose diseased and stunted 
 intellects were perfectly incapable of regarding any great 
 public question except through the medium of the narrowest, 
 the paltriest prejudice. 
 
 It was in the rural dwellings of the clergy that the 
 question was now efficiently worked. In the priest's humble 
 home a power was being organised which was destined, as we 
 fondly hoped, to make tyranny reel in high places. And 
 how simple the process ! how easy the details ! Look at that 
 anxious, thoughtful group, gathered round the pastor's table. 
 The shutters are closed, the candles lighted, the faggot blazes 
 brightly on the hearth ; " the autunni breeze's bugle sound " 
 is heard from without ; it has swept from the hills, and its 
 wild voice awakens in the heart a mystic thrill for freedom. 
 The priest tells his guest the effective strength of the district, 
 availing himself, in the detail, of the local information pos- 
 sessed by the parisliioners, or the neighbouring clergy who 
 have assembled at his house. It is then ascertained who 
 will work, who will undertake the duty of Repeal Warden, 
 who will collect the Repeal rent, and who will assume the 
 
The Clergy give their Aid to Bepeal. 209 
 
 charge of particular plough lands if in the country, or wards 
 if in a town. The obstacles are also canvassed ; the hostility 
 
 of Lord So-and-So, or of Captain , his agent, who swears 
 
 he will eject every tenant who gives sixpence to any of 
 O'Connell's devices. Or perhaps there is the anti-Irish 
 Catholic landlord — a greater scourge than the Orange pro- 
 prietor — who, since shuffling off his penal coil in 1829, has 
 affected the courtier and fine gentleman, and conceives that 
 he establishes his claim to aristocratic distinction by mi- 
 micking the tyranny of those by whom his creed is de- 
 nounced as Satanic ; the supple slave of Tory squires ; the 
 petty tyrant of his village, who redeems the vulgarity of 
 going to mass by the severity with which he grinds the 
 unfortunate tenantry who go there along with him. To 
 elude the spiteful vigilance of this most execrable class is a 
 problem which engages the attention of our coterie. The 
 problem is easily solved. 'Wn:iat needs Squire A. or Lord B. 
 know about the tenants' contributions 1 A discreet warden, 
 who can be silent when occasion requires, is appointed to 
 receive their subscriptions ; so that matter is settled. Then 
 speculations arise respecting the possible adhesion of men 
 whose countenance would be advantageous ; they are alleged 
 to have uttered very national sentiments on certain occasions; 
 could they now be got to realise their patriotic declarations % 
 Having arranged all these practical matters, and set the 
 agitation in a working train, the missionary next inquires 
 respecting the past and present state of trade, and the 
 social condition of the people in the district. The infor- 
 mation thus elicited is painful. It reveals the national decay 
 and the popular destitution. Nearly all over Leinster the 
 linen trade — once the great staple — is now only a memory. 
 The inquirer is told that in the immediate vicinity of Clara 
 in the King's County, capital amounting at least to £150,000 
 had been invested in that trade, which is now extinct in 
 that locality. The old men who have joined the priest's 
 party tell the visitor that prior to the Union they remember 
 from forty to fifty head of cattle killed at Christmas by the 
 villagers and farmers, who could then afford to eat beef; whereas 
 now, instead of forty or fifty, not half-a-dozen Christmas 
 cows are consumed by the impoverished people. At MuUin- 
 gar he hears there had been a flourishing linen trade before the 
 Union, and that it is now gone. At Athlone that trade 
 gave bread to from 4,000 to 5,000 persons prior to the 
 Union. There is now no linen trade at Athlone, but there is 
 
 p 
 
210 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 a large poor-house there. The country round Banagher, 
 Ferbane, Ballycumber, and Cloghan, had once been covered 
 over with the linen manufacture. The visitor is told that it 
 has shared the same fate as at Athlone and Mullingar — 
 extinction. 
 
 The numerous deserted mansions, formerly the seats of 
 splendid hospitality, but now decaying from the neglect of 
 their absentee owners, also form a painful item in the 
 missionary's information. On one point a great unanimity 
 prevails — namely, that all these evils, and nearly all other 
 grievances affecting the country, have their source either 
 remotely or immediately in the denial to Ireland of the 
 power of making her own laws, and in the anti-national, 
 anti-Irish spirit which the Union and sectarian bigotry have 
 infused into the aristocracy. There is among the Irish 
 peasantry a natural respect for old descent, an attachment to 
 families whose progenitors for some generations have been 
 lords of the soil. This is a sort of feudal instinct, but it is 
 needless to say that it is uprooted in cases where the lord 
 of the soil is the fierce and reckless enemy of the popular 
 religion, or where he is a heartless, greedy extorter of rack 
 rents, or where he is violently opposed to the national rights 
 of his country. But under a right order of things — an order^ 
 that is to say, in which the aristocracy should exhibit a 
 spirit of religious fair play and of Irish nationality — the 
 Celtic sentiment of just and manly reverence for superiors 
 truly entitled to respect, would be found an element of great 
 practical utility in binding the social frame of Ireland 
 together. This source of strength is suppressed by the 
 present unnatural system. 
 
 Such are the topics that occupy the group in the priest's 
 humble parlour. 
 
 At the Repeal meeting next day, the thousands who 
 assemble round the missionary drink in his words with an 
 eagerness that evinces the depth and fervour with which 
 they are ready to fling themselves into the Constitutional 
 strife. They exhibit intellectual quickness in their just and 
 accurate perception of the points brought before tliem by the 
 speakers. Their appreciation of the arguments addressed to 
 them is clear and instantaneous. They evince this mental 
 power by the judicious mode in which they cheer, or other- 
 wise testify the impression made upon their minds. A 
 striking and honourable feature in the national character is 
 also developed at those gatherings — namely, the profound 
 
Religious Feeling of the Peo;ple. 211 
 
 reverence the Irisli people entertain for religion. If the 
 name of the Deity be pronoimced every hat is raised. If the 
 Divine blessing be invoked on Ireland — if the speaker 
 expresses his reliance on Providence for the ultimate success 
 of the movement, and the consequent greatness and happiness 
 of the land, there follows a deep murmur of reverential 
 acquiescence from the multitude ; there is an earnestness of 
 voice, gesture, and countenance which demonstrates how 
 intense is the reliance of the Irish people on the overruling 
 care of their God. 
 
 There cannot be a more interesting occupation than that 
 of the Eepeal missionary. He penetrates into retired rural 
 districts ; he mingles Avith the people ; he learns from 
 personal inquiry and actual observation to know their con- 
 dition more truly than if he had trusted for information to 
 the monstrous fallacies of Spring Rice and Montgomery 
 Martin.* He finds that condition grievously deteriorated 
 since the time when Arthur Young wrote his "Tour in 
 Ireland." In enlarging his acquaintance with his country- 
 men he augments his indignant horror at their wrongs and 
 his zealous devotion to their service. 
 
 The Catholic churches and the abodes of the priests often 
 afford interesting mementoes of the penal days. In the 
 more remote parishes the house of the pastor is sometimes a 
 thatched cabin adjoining the chapel, which is also thatched ; 
 both nestling in the nook of a hill, or in some retired 
 situation which seems to evidence that concealment from 
 observation was an object with the founder. In the chapel 
 is the old, rough, unpainted woodwork ; there are the deal 
 benches, rails, and altar, clumsy in their construction and 
 brown from age ; the rude, whitewashed walls, the decaying 
 windows, the simple roof that has sheltered the worshippers 
 for four generations from the inclemency of the weather. 
 On the altar is the tiny sacring-bell, which has tinkled 
 perhaps for a century to announce the ** Canon," the '' Eleva- 
 tion," and the '^ Agnus Dei." Relics are these of the dark 
 times of Catholic depression — relics which, notwithstanding 
 their humble appearance in modern estimation, were doubt- 
 less in their day the source of modest pride and triumph to 
 the priests and the flocks who had been accustomed to 
 celebrate their worship in the glen or on the plain, beneath 
 
 * Mr. Staunton, formerly proprietor of the Dublin Register, wrote 
 a trenchant castigation of this impudent quack, in a pamphlet 
 published at the expense of the Eepeal Association. 
 
 p 2 
 
212 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 the chill hlasts of winter or the scorching sun of summer. 
 To them a roof, however rude, under which to adore their 
 Creator, was indeed a luxurious novelty. Then the priest's 
 cabin — containing four miserable closets, two bed-rooms, a 
 parlour, and a kitchen. 
 
 In wet weather the Repealers sometimes got the use of 
 the chapels for their meetings. The rude old walls which 
 had witnessed the timid orisons of a persecuted flock in 
 penal days now echoed to the proud and joyous voice of 
 reviving nationality. 
 
 These remnants of a former period contrast strongly with 
 the spacious and substantial churches raised in later years 
 by the voluntary subscriptions of the people. The Catholic 
 clergy in the wealthier parishes now reside in excellent and 
 comfortable houses. The traveller is forcibly impressed by 
 the contrast between the past and the present. He sees in 
 its obvious moral a powerful evidence of the fidelity with 
 which the Irish people adhered under persecution to the 
 creed which they deemed the best, and of the pious zeal 
 "with which, when disenthralled from penal shackles, they 
 have reared temples to the worship of the Most High God. 
 He sees in it also an evidence of the efficacy of the Voluntary 
 System in support of religious institutions. Small individual 
 contributions from a numerous population can, without 
 severe pressure upon any one, produce great results. 
 
 The missionaries forwarded to the Association weekly 
 reports of their progress. Mr. Ray especially turned his 
 attention to the condition of the peasantry ; and from one of 
 his reports I extract the following passages descriptive of 
 the wretchedness endured by the poorer inhabitants of 
 Charleville, County Cork : 
 
 "At the meeting on Sunday," says Mr. Ray, "the Rev. 
 Mr. Meagher mentioned a most revolting case of destitution 
 connected with this subject, occasioned by the head of a 
 family being thrown out of employment. He was a check- 
 weaver of sober, industrious habits, but reduced to such a 
 state that, after having parted with every article to support 
 nature, his wife actually perished for want ; her helpless babes 
 were lying beside their dead mother unconscious of their loss 
 — the unfortunate man himself in agonised bewilderment. In 
 this condition the Rev. Mr. Meagher found them on Christmas 
 Day. Innumerable appalling cases here and elsewhere might 
 be added of the etfects of that fatal Act which robbed Ireland 
 of her inilustrial occupations, and her people of their spirit 
 and nationality. 
 
Mr. Secretary Ray^s Report from Cltarleville. 213 
 
 "Immediately adjoining Mr. Dudley's in the town there 
 is a row of wretched cabins ; these Avere formerly the happy 
 residences of busy inmates. They are erected on a plot of 
 ground held originally by lease for lives under the Earl of 
 Cork, an absentee nobleman. I understand the lessee, some 
 years ago, consigned the occupying tenants to his lordship, 
 the rents being applotted on their respective holdings. One 
 of the cabins is held by a widow named Dalton ; that and 
 the adjoining one were erected by her late husband — the 
 rent £2 a year. The roof was blown off the latter cabin 
 at the great storm last January, and so it remains. The 
 other is so dilapidated that the rain pours all through. Xext 
 to this is one held by Widow Meehan, at Is. \0d. per year, 
 almost roofless and perfectly untenantable ; her son-in-law 
 died, leaving his wife and an infant, now two years old, an 
 incumbrance upon the poor widow. They are supported 
 chiefly by charity. She told me that she had to pawn her 
 bed-clothes last year to pay the rent, and was never since 
 able to release them, and that she wished she had them now 
 to pawn again, for the present year's rent is due. 
 
 " A man named Clifden held another of these cabins and 
 a small plot at £\ 155. a year. He is a labourer at six- 
 pence a day when he can get work. The surviving life in 
 the original lease was supposed to have died a couple of 
 years since, and possession was taken of the entire range 
 under ejectment process. The day this occurred Clifden 
 had the roof partly stripped, and was in the act of repairing 
 it with new thatch. They had, of course, to quit, and this 
 roof was also blown off by the wind. It was presently 
 discovered that the life in the lease was in being (as the 
 respected lady is still), ^and the tenants were allowed to 
 continue ; but this man with a wife and a number of young 
 children had to hire a miserable cabin at the end of the 
 town, and he is liable to the two rents. The very next hut 
 is still worse ; the roof of this was also blown down by the 
 great storm ; it is held by John Molony, labourer, at 156'. a 
 year ; it is exactly twelve feet square ; the clay walls about 
 six feet high. The poor man made a sort of covering from 
 the old sticks and thatch of the fallen roof, but from its 
 flatness totally incapable of resisting the wet. I found his 
 wife and five of his children huddled together in a corner of 
 this hut, scarcely covered with a few loathsome rags; the 
 youngest was in her arms, the two next had only dirty, 
 coarse, tattered bibs, the others little better ; the two elder 
 boys were out helping their father to dig, etc. This was on 
 
214 Eiglitij-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 Tuesday last ; the two preceding nights had been most wet 
 and inclement, and this unhappy family could get no rest, 
 as there was not a dry spot they could lie on. I observed the 
 remains of an old deal bedstead in a corner, with as much 
 broken straw and rags as would make a bed for a dog ; the 
 floor under it, and indeed through the entire in a complete 
 bog with wet. I asked, was that where they slept 1 The 
 woman said, ' Aye, is it.' * Have the entire family no other 
 sleeping-place?' said I. 'None other.' I could ask no 
 farther questions. They were standing round two or three 
 sods of half-burned turf, trying to dry their rags ; it was so, in 
 fact, with the rest. I did not see in all those places together 
 as much as would equal one good fire. This poor woman 
 told me that up to two months ago the elder children used 
 to attend school, but were now too naked to go there. . . . 
 1 have given a sample of what is prevalent everywhere about 
 the towns and in the rural districts. ' They starve them- 
 selves,' said an intelligent man to me, ' to feed the pigs for 
 the rents.' It is impossible to witness these things without 
 deep sensation." 
 
 Mr. Eay also furnished a report on the fallen condition 
 of Bandon ; but instead of quoting from it, I shall give the 
 following memorandum, which was kindly communicated to 
 me by William Connor Sullivan, Esq., a gentleman who 
 exhibits the practical patriotism of employing sixty persons 
 in a factory he has established in Bandon in connection with 
 his tanning trade, and who, if he could depend on sufficient 
 support, would make an effort to re-establish the cotton mill 
 at Overton near that town. Here is his memorandum : " In 
 1825 the population of Bandon was 14,000, according to 
 Lewis— of these, 7,000 persons were supported by the manu- 
 facture of linen, woollen, ticken, and corduroys, or cotton. 
 In 1861, according to the census, the population had fallen 
 to 6,100. The Overton Mills, which gave employment to 
 2,000 persons, have been long since abandoned, the trade 
 gone, and the buildings dilapidated." 
 
 When some instances of Irish poverty, suffering, and decay 
 were once mentioned in the English House of Lords, the late 
 Duke of Wellington observed that it would not mend the 
 matter to set up a Parliament in Ireland, because there 
 was also deep misery in England, which country did actually 
 enjoy the residence of the Legislature. " There is a Parlia- 
 ment in England ; there is also misery there ; therefore seek 
 not the Repeal of the Union." 
 
Anomalous Condition of Ireland. 215 
 
 Tliere will be a mixture of poverty in every liuman 
 society till the end of time. "The poor you have always 
 with you."* But the Duke's argument implies that the 
 numbers of the poor and the intensity of their privations are 
 not diminished by the presence of the wealthy, and are not 
 increased by withdrawing from among them the great source 
 of expenditure. It is also to be noticed that when his Grace 
 used that argument, a good deal of the misery existing in 
 England was directly traceable to the Irish poverty caused by 
 the Union. The poorer Irish, having no manufactures to 
 employ their surplus hands at home, emigrated in shoals to 
 England, where they lowered the wages of labour in the 
 English market, and frequently dragged down the English 
 operative to the level of their own wretchedness. Had his 
 Grace remembered this, he would perhaps have doubted the 
 soundness of his anti-Repeal inference from the distress 
 existing in certain English districts. 
 
 Every political quack will supply his own nostrum. The 
 social diseases of Ireland are admitted on all hands. You 
 can scarcely find any man of any party who does not laugh to 
 scorn Spring Rice's *' giant-stride prosperity." It was avail- 
 able to call forth a parliamentary cheer, and for a parlia- 
 mentary pretext for opposing Repeal ; but it was the very 
 hyperbole of audacious falsehood ; it was too monstrous to 
 -endure in the real conviction of any human being. The 
 €0cial diseases, I repeat, are admitted on all hands. The 
 •condition of Ireland is professedly anomalous. There is the 
 startling incongruity of an anti-Irish artistocracy enlisted 
 against the just rights of the masses of the people. There is 
 a vast ecclesiastical income still exacted from landlords, from 
 whose rentals an amount in general exceeding the tithe-tax 
 has been taken by the Land Act of 1881. There is a pro- 
 prietary hating the land whence their wealth, their rank, and 
 their social status are exclusively derived. There is a soil 
 proverbial for its fertility, yet inhabited by the yearly 
 diminishing remnants of a people whose poverty is declared 
 by travellers to exceed all they ever had Avitnessed of human 
 destitution elsewhere. There is productive power, which, if 
 developed, and its fruits retained at home, could support in 
 comfort a larger population than ever inhabited the island, 
 yet which cither lies waste, or else is diverted from its natural 
 And legitimate purpose — the support of the Irish people — to 
 
 * Matt. ixvi. 11. 
 
216 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 swell the wealth and greatness of the neighbouring nation 
 that has struck its fangs into our vitals. 
 
 There is the spectacle of a people, who, plucked bare by 
 the Union-drains of many years, and crushed to the dust by 
 famine, were just at that juncture made the subject of new 
 and enormous taxation to liquidate the liabilities of wealthy 
 England. 
 
 That all this leaven should not powerfully work for 
 disaffection, no rational man could expect. We have various 
 nostrums recommended by a multitude of political physician?. 
 But it is not the absentee legislator, nor the cold, utilitarian 
 political economist, nor the clever political speculator who 
 can string together flippant paragraphs, nor the Cockney 
 tourist who posts through Ireland to construct a marketable 
 book from the salient traits which appear on the surface of 
 society — it is not one of these who can prescribe, or even 
 comprehend, an adequate remedy. They have not the 
 requisite knowledge of the people ; and if they had, they 
 have not the hearty sympathies which are requisite to render 
 that knowledge available. Cold, self-sufficient dogmatisers 
 too many of them are, viewing all that they see (and how 
 little is that all !) through the medium of preconceived 
 political theories, nine-tenths of which are inapplicable to the 
 condition of the country. 
 
 He whose intercourse with the people has been extensive 
 and prolonged; who has mingled with his fellow-countrymen 
 on terms of the most unreserved mutual confidence ; who has 
 seen the struggles of the oppressed against the tyranny that 
 would grind them into powder ; who has witnessed the 
 anxious heavings of the nation's breast; who knows the 
 intense sincerity and unalterable determination with which 
 his compatriots are actuated ; who witnesses the persevering 
 efforts of the anti- Irish class to prevent the disenthralment 
 of the people from their bondage ; he who has seen the 
 pernicious antagonism of the two great sections of the Irish 
 nation, is compelled to trace the origin of Irish evils to 
 English influence operating through an alien Legislature and 
 anti-national prejudice, and to recognise in the Kepeal of the 
 Union the only possible cure for the social disease — the only 
 possible guarantee against relapse. 
 
 It is manifest that the bitter hatreds engendered by 
 exclusive political institutions could not, in the present day, 
 survive the restoration of the Irish Legislature. The class 
 who are now infected with a vicious hatred of their country 
 
Holo to nationalise the Domestic Enemij. 217 
 
 would then become nationalised in spite of themselves. 
 They could not help it. The preponderating pressure of the 
 national sentiment, having a Legislature for its organ, would 
 overcome their resistance. Their prejudices would be swept 
 away in the national torrent. They would, despite some 
 contortions and grimaces, be made auxiliary to the national 
 prosperity and greatness. They would at last be amal- 
 gamated with the great mass of Irishmen. 
 
 IS'othing short of the Eepeal of the Union can fulfil the 
 requirements of Ireland. Imagine every minor boon conceded 
 that the most liberal Whig-Kadical could proffer ; imagine 
 tithes abolished, the franchises enlarged, the representation 
 extended, the magistracy popularised, tenant-right conceded ; 
 yet, so long as Ireland possessed no Parliament, we should 
 still have England's robber-hand in our pockets, abstracting 
 our money for her own nses under the pretext of Imperial 
 identification ; we should still be impoverished by the drain 
 of an absentee rental, computed to have often reached four 
 millions sterling a year ; our people would still be driven as 
 if with flaming swords out of their own country by the 
 colossal plunder of the means that should circulate at home 
 for their support ; we should still be subjected to a system 
 devised to substitute cattle and sheep for the human inhabi- 
 tants of Ireland ; we should still remain degraded by the 
 absence of that privilege without which man is a despised 
 slave — the uncontrolled management of our own country for 
 ourselves. Thus, if England were to give us everything 
 else, yet, so long as she withheld from us our Parliament, 
 we should be deprived of that which would be far more 
 valuable than all the rest put together. 
 
 The instinct of nationality cannot be rooted out of the 
 Irish mind ; if its eradication were practicable, it would have 
 long since been effected. What, let us ask, is that instinct? 
 What are its lessons 1 Here are the words of an authority 
 who will at any rate be respected by many who are not well- 
 wishers to Ireland : 
 
 " It is by virtue of a providential design that the human 
 species is found distributed in groups distinct by race and 
 language, and established in certain definite territories, 
 where each has contracted a certain unity of tendencies and 
 of institutions, so that it does not trouble the habitation of 
 another and suffers no interference with its own. God has 
 shown what value man should attach to his nationality 
 when, wishing to punish the Hebrew people, rebellious 
 
218 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 against warnings and chastisements, He inflicted foreign 
 domination on them as the most terrible punishment of all 
 .... The Christian idea does not admit that the social 
 power should issue in the oppression of one individual by 
 another. Conquest cannot legalise the domination of one 
 nation over another, for force is powerless to constitute 
 right." 
 
 Whether the doctrines here enunciated were correctly 
 applicable to the purpose for which they were employed by 
 the author, I do not pronounce. But it is certain that as 
 applied to Ireland they find a cordial echo in the minds of 
 millions of our countrymen at home and in exile. The 
 words I have quoted are taken from a letter addressed by 
 Baron Eicasoli to the Pope, in August, 1861. 
 
 Nationality is the principle which teaches us to take care 
 of the interests of our own country, and to protect ourselves 
 against the aggression of our neighbours. It is not a merely 
 sentimental or romantic idea. It is eminently practical. It 
 teaches us for instance, in Ireland, that the physical and 
 mental gifts bestowed by the Creator on our country and on 
 its inhabitants — the fertility of the island — the wealth which 
 it produces — the intelligence of its people — their industrial 
 capacities, were clearly designed by the Divine Giver for the 
 use and benefit of the Irish nation ; and that the system is 
 wicked and execrable which deprives that nation of the 
 bounties of Providence ; which expels them by the million 
 from the despoiled land, and which grasps for the benefit of 
 England the gifts bestowed by God upon the people whom a 
 multiform, subtle tyranny has hunted into exile. The 
 principle of nationality is the principle of self-protection 
 against such monstrous wrong. It is in the spirit of a friend 
 to the British Empire, not an enemy, that I quote from a 
 very able New York letter in the Dundee Advertiser the 
 following description of the progress of the Irish in America : 
 *' They are building up a mighty nation, and raising up an 
 enemy for their hereditary foe, that will assuredly strangle 
 her at some future day." 
 
 England, in the day of her strength, may deride such 
 predictions. Her scorn, however, is not wise. Despite the 
 follies and blunders of Fenianism, and the crimes of some of 
 its leaders, its animating principle will survive and acquire 
 fresh strength with every shipload of emigrants landed from 
 Ireland on the American coast. It is not reasonable to 
 suppose that the Fenians will always be destitute of leaders 
 
HoiD to make Ireland " loyal, jproud, and happy J' 219 
 
 of ability. A cause that enlists all the Irish in the United 
 States must sooner or later furnish champions endowed with 
 a formidable cajDacity for command. I leave to statesmen to 
 consider the perils probably resulting from the fixed resent- 
 ment that inspires the large and growing community of 
 exiled Irish. There is an effectual mode of extinguishing 
 that hatred. Let England deal with Ireland as Austria dealt 
 with Hungary. Let her undo the hideous crime of 1800. 
 Let our revered Sovereign open in Dublin the first session 
 of the restored Irish Legislature, leaving thenceforth her 
 faithful Irish subjects to possess their own country and 
 develop for themselves its resources in accordance with the 
 claims of justice and with the evident purposes of Providence 
 — let our Queen do this, and Ireland, resuming the pros- 
 perous career which commenced in 1782, and which the 
 Union interrupted, will become the right arm of the Empire 
 — loyal, proud, and happy; contributing to the general 
 prosperity in time of peace, and to the general defence in 
 time of war. Let our Queen do this, and Irish disloyalty, 
 deprived of its pabulum, will at once become a thing of 
 the past. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is doing his utmost to produce that result. 
 Every rational patriot on either side of the Channel should 
 give him every possible support in his noble enterprise. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIL 
 
 THE YOUNG IRELANDERS COME PROMINENTLY FORWARD. 
 
 Trne, my friend, as if an angel said it. 
 
 Would that an angel's pealing voice were thine, 
 Until thy words were rooted and imbedded 
 
 Deep in every Irish heart as mine, 
 Battling for our isle's regeneration. 
 
 Still we know the future holds no chance, 
 Hope, or prospect for this Irish nation, 
 
 Save in trampling down intolerance — 
 Trampling down the bigot's broils, that pandered 
 
 Through the past to England's foulest deeds; 
 Writing broadly on our souls and standard 
 
 This unchanging motto: Deeds, not Creeds. 
 
 A NOTABLE event in the year 1842 was the establishment of 
 the Nation newspaper. 
 
 The proprietor and editor, Mr. (now Sir) Charles Gavan 
 
220 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 Duffy, had previously exhibited the self-reliance of conscious 
 talent in setting up the Belfast Vindicator, despite the dis- 
 couraging predictions of various friends well acquainted 
 with the North, who assured him that the failure of 
 a Repeal journal in Saxonised Ulster was a matter 
 of certainty. Duffy, nothing daunted, persevered in his 
 experiment and speedily reached a circulation of 1,300; 
 establishing a firm footing in the heart of the enemy's 
 quarters. The ability with which the Vindicator was con- 
 ducted soon acquired for its editor a high reputation as a 
 journalist. Mr. Duffy felt before long that his talents 
 required a wider scope for their exercise than could be 
 afforded by the conduct of a provincial journal, however 
 respectable. He resolved to start the Nation. In this new 
 undertaking he encountered discouragement similar to that 
 which had waited on his Northern experiment. Intelligent, 
 observant men, who wished him well, treated his hopes of 
 success as chimerical, asserting, with much colour of proba- 
 bility that the whole ground was preoccupied by the two 
 respectable weekly metropolitan journals which were already 
 the exponents and propagandists of Repeal doctrines. 
 
 The Weekly Freeman^s Journal had been edited in suc- 
 cession by several warm and able advocates of Irish in- 
 dependence. The Weekly Register, conducted by its pro- 
 prietor, Michael Staunton, had acquired great value from the 
 extensive and accurate financial and statistical knowledge 
 profusely scattered through its leading articles. Mr. Staun- 
 ton has been truly called the father of a distinct school — 
 and a most useful one — of Irish politics. He devoted his 
 abilities to the elucidation of the knotty question of inter- 
 national finance — a question the most easily obscured by the 
 ingenuity of official chicane. 
 
 The Nation appeared contemporaneously with the Repeal 
 missions. Its projectors little heeded the vaticinations of 
 timid prophets. In the words of their prospectus, " they 
 were prepared, if they did not find a way open, to try if they 
 could make one." And a way they did make, and that 
 speedily. They were encouraged to their task by the con- 
 viction that since the success of O'Connell's great struggle 
 for civil and religious liberty, a new mind had grown up in 
 Ireland ; a mind filled with new thoughts, new aspirations — 
 panting to achieve new victories. 
 
 The style of the Nation was eminently fervid and 
 earnest; it told home upon the hearts of the people. It 
 
Young Ireland compliments O'Connell. 221 
 
 spoke forth the singleness of purpose and the energy whereby 
 its editor was characterised. One of its attractive features 
 was its poetry. There were many poetical contributors, of 
 whom the principal were Mr. Duffy and Mr. Thomas Osborne 
 Davis, a Protestant barrister. Their minds were stored with 
 the annals of their country — the feuds, the wrongs, the 
 struggles of elder ages — the gallant exhibitions of an often 
 foiled, but never vanquished, spirit of liberty. The thoughts 
 inspired by those annals — now flowing in a dark and venge- 
 ful current — now rushing along in impetuous tumult — now 
 softening into deep and solemn pathos — now concentrated 
 in stern defiance — now soaring aloft upon the buoyant wings 
 of lightsome hope — were thrown into verses glowing with a 
 passionate fervour, that awakened into life every slumbering 
 pulse of Irish patriotism. 
 
 Here is "Young Ireland's" poetical compliment to 
 O'Connell : 
 
 I SAW him at the hour of prayer when morning's earliest dawn 
 Was breaking o'er the mountain-tops — o'er grassy dell and lawn ; 
 When the parting shades of night had fled — when moon and stars 
 
 were gone ; 
 Before a high and gorgeous shrine the Chieftain kneel'd alone. 
 His hands were clasp'd upon his breast, his eye was rais'd above, 
 I heard those full and solemn tones in words of faith and love ; 
 He pray'd that those who wrong'd him might for ever be forgiven ; 
 Oh ! who would say such prayers as these are not receiv'd in 
 
 Heaven ? 
 
 II. 
 
 I saw him next amid the best and noblest of our isle, 
 
 There was the same majestic form, the same heart-kindling smile. 
 
 But grief was on that princely brow — for others still he raourn'd ; 
 
 He gaz'd upon poor fetter'd slaves, and his heart within him burn'd : 
 
 And he vow'd before the captive's God to break the captive's chain. 
 
 To bind the broken heart, and set the captive free again. 
 
 And fit was he our Chief to be in triumph or in need. 
 
 Who never wrong'd his deadliest foe in thought, or word, or deed. 
 
 I saw him when the light of eve had faded from the west, 
 
 Beside the hearth that old man sat, by infant forms caress'd ; 
 
 One hand was gently laid upon his grandchild's clustering hair. 
 
 The other, rais'd to heaven, invok'd a blessing and a prayer. 
 
 And woman's lips were heard to breathe a high and glorious strain — 
 
 Those songs of old that haunt us still, and ever will remain 
 
 Within the heart like treasur'd gems, that bring from mem'ry's cell 
 
 Thoughts of oar youthful days, and friends that we have lov'd so well. 
 
222 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I saw that eagle glance again — the brow was mark'd with care, 
 Though rich and regal were the robes* the nation's Chief doth wear j 
 And many an eye now quail'd with shame and many a cheek now 
 
 glow'd, 
 As he paid them back with words of love for every curse bestow'd. 
 I thought of his unceasing care, his never-ending zeal, 
 I heard the watchword burst from all — the gathering cry — Repeal! 
 And as his eyes were rais'd to heaven, from whence his mission 
 
 came, 
 He stood among the thousands there a monarch save in name. 
 
 I select the following poems, not so much as specimens 
 of poetical excellence, as from the plain exposition they 
 afford of the policy, principles, and objects of their authors. 
 The first is entitled : 
 
 A LAY SERMON. 
 By Charles Gavan Duffy. 
 
 Brothek, do you love your brother ? 
 
 Brother, are you all you seem ? 
 Do you live for more than living ? 
 
 Has your life a law, and scheme ? 
 Are you prompt to bear its duties 
 
 As a brave man may beseem ? 
 
 Brother, shun the mist exhaling, 
 From the fen of pride and doubt ; 
 
 Neither seek the house of bondage, 
 Walling straightened souls about ; 
 
 Bats ! who from their narrow spy-hole 
 Cannot see a world without. 
 
 III. 
 Anchor in no stagnant shallow ; 
 
 Trust the wide and wondrous sea 
 Where the tides are fresh for ever 
 
 And the mighty currents free ; 
 There, perchance, young Columbus, 
 
 Your new world of Truth may be. 
 
 Favour will not make deserving — 
 (Can the sunshine brighten clay ?) 
 
 Slowly must it grow and blossom, 
 Fed by labour and delay ; 
 
 And the fairest bud to promise 
 Bears the taint of quick decay. 
 
 * The municipal robes of Lord Mayor. 
 
Buff if s Lay Sermon. 223 
 
 V. 
 
 You must strive for better guerdons; 
 
 Strive to he the thing you'd seem; 
 Be the thing that God hath made you, 
 
 Channel for no borrowed stream; 
 He hath lent you mind and conscience; 
 
 See you travel in their beam. 
 
 VI. 
 
 See you scale life's misty highlands 
 
 By the light of living truth ; 
 And vrith bosom braced for labour, 
 
 Breast them in your manly youth; 
 So, when age and care have found you, 
 
 Shall your downward path, be smooth. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Fear not on that rugged highway 
 
 Life may want its lawful zest ; 
 Sunny glens are in the mountain 
 
 Where the weary feet may rest, 
 Cooled in streams that gush for ever 
 
 From a loving mother's breast. 
 
 VIII. 
 " Simple heart and simple pleasures," 
 
 So they write life's golden rule ; 
 Honour won by supple baseness. 
 
 State that crowns a cankered fool 
 Gleam as gleam the gold and purple 
 
 On a hot and rancid pool. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Wear no show of wit or science 
 
 But the gems you've won and weighed 
 Thefts, like ivy on a ruin. 
 
 Make the rifts they seem to shade. 
 Are you not a thief and beggar 
 
 In the rarest spoils arrayed ? 
 
 Shadows deck a sunny landscape. 
 Making brighter all the bright ; 
 
 So, my brother, care and danger 
 On a loving nature light. 
 
 Bringing all its latent beauties 
 Out upon the common sight. 
 
 XI. 
 Love the things that God created, 
 
 Make your brother's need your care 
 Scorn and hate repel God's blessings, 
 
 But where love is, they are there. 
 As the moonbeams light the waters. 
 
 Leaving rock and sandbank bare. 
 
224 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Thus, my brother, grow and flourish, 
 
 Fearing none, and loving all ; 
 For the true man needs no patron, 
 
 He shall climb, and never crawl ; 
 Two things fashion their own channel — 
 
 The strong man and the waterfall. 
 
 The next is a song of triumph, by Thomas Davis, at the 
 union of all Irishmen. Davis was sanguine in his expecta- 
 tion that the plain common sense that prompted the recovery 
 of self-legislation for Ireland would overcome the obstinate 
 bigotry of the Orange party; whose interests as Irishmen were 
 equally involved with ours in a measure that would rescue 
 Ireland from the grasp of a hostile power, and restore to her 
 the control of her own resources. He accordingly took for 
 granted the fusion ^vhich he ardently laboured to promote. 
 
 I. 
 Ireland! rejoice, and England! deplore; 
 
 Faction and feud are passing away. 
 'Twas a low voice, but 'tis a loud roar ; 
 Orange and green will carry the day. 
 
 Orange I Orange ! 
 
 Green and Orange I 
 Pitted together in many a fray ; 
 
 Lions in fight, 
 
 And linked in their might. 
 Orange and Green will carry the day. 
 
 Orange ! Orange ! 
 
 Green and Orange I 
 Wave them together o'er mountain and bay ; 
 
 Orange and Green, 
 
 Our King and our Queen, 
 Orange and Green will carry the day. 
 
 II. 
 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 tied us. 
 
 Knaves misled us. 
 Under the feet of the foemen we lay ; 
 
 Riches and strength, 
 
 We'll win them at length, 
 For Orange and Green will carry the day. 
 
 Landlords fool'd us, 
 
 England ruled us. 
 Hounding our passions to make us their prey ; 
 
 But in their spite. 
 
 The Irish «' Unite," 
 And Orange and Green will carry the day. 
 
Davis liopes for Orange Assistance. 225 
 
 III. 
 Fruitful our soil where honest men starve. 
 
 Empty the mart and shipless the bay. 
 Out of our wants the Oligarchs carve ; 
 Foreigners fatten on our decay. 
 
 Disunited, 
 
 Therefore blighted, 
 Ruined and rect by the Englishman's sway j 
 
 Party and creed 
 
 For once have agreed, 
 Orange and Green will carry the day. 
 
 Boyne's old water. 
 
 Red with slaughter, 
 Now is as pure as an infant at play j 
 
 So in our souls 
 
 Its history rolls, 
 And Orange and Green will carry the day. 
 
 IV. 
 English deceit can rule us no more, 
 
 Bigots and knaves are scattered like spray j 
 Deep was the oath the Orangemen swore, 
 *' Orange and green must carry the day." 
 
 Orange ! Orange ! 
 
 Bless the Orange ! 
 Tories and Whigs grew pale with dismay 
 
 When from the North 
 
 Burst the cry forth, 
 " Orange and Green must carry the day." 
 
 No surrender, 
 
 No Pretender, 
 Never to falter and never betray ; 
 
 With an Amen 
 
 We swear it again, 
 Orange and Green shall carry the day. 
 
 Such were the strains that aroused the spirit of Young 
 Ireland, and of Old Ireland also. Their moral was self- 
 reliance, internal union, and the extinction of sectarian 
 animosities. In that moral I thoroughly concurred. We 
 had in the Eepeal Association many Protestant members, of 
 whose conscientious attachment to their own religious belief 
 I never entertained a doubt. Those men had a noble, 
 generous, well- deserved trust in their Catholic countrymen. 
 Enemies themselves to the political ascendency of Pro- 
 testantism, they felt no fears of Catholic ascendency in the 
 event of Kepeal. Their principle, and ours, was the thorough 
 political equality of all. For myself, I must be permitted 
 to say this : I am a Catholic, deeply convinced of the truth 
 of the Catholic faith, and claiming for Catholics the fullest 
 equality of citizenship with Protestants. Yet, while recog- 
 
 Q 
 
226 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 nising the infinite importance of the Catholic faith in a 
 spiritual point of view, I feel that, in a temporal aspect, 
 Home Government is so much more important than Catholic 
 privilege, that if I were reduced to the alternative I should 
 greatly prefer to have Ireland governed hy an exclusively 
 Protestant Irish Parliament than by an exclusively Catholic 
 English or Imperial Legislature. 
 
 On a balance of advantages and disadvantages the scale 
 would immensely preponderate in favour of self-legislation, 
 even although clogged with the drawback of Catholic 
 disability. Should any theological enthusiast find fault with 
 this opinion, I would remind him that the Catholic aggregate 
 meeting, held in Dublin in 1795, unanimously declared that 
 they would resist even their own emancipation if offered as 
 the price of an Union. And O'Connell said something not 
 dissimilar when he announced on the 13th of January, 1800, 
 that he would prefer "the penal code in all its pristine 
 horrors to the Union, as the lesser and more sufferable evil." 
 
 Young Ireland was ardent and eager. Her fiery vehe- 
 mence was a useful ingredient in our great Constitutional 
 warfare, so long as it was tempered with the judgment and 
 experience of her elder friend and namesake. Old Ireland 
 had been the victor in one prolonged and hard-fought contest 
 — a triumph due to her wisdom, her virtue, and her perse- 
 verance. The sagacity of the one, restraining but not 
 extinguishing the impetuous ardour of the other, produced 
 a combination of qualities which would have been resistless 
 in their union, if the demons of jealousy and division, 
 followed by the crushing evils of the famine, had not dashed 
 the councils and paralysed the strength of men whose move- 
 ment, so long as they acted in concert with each other, had 
 so fair a prospect of success. 
 
 Davis's jubilant hopes of an Orange accession to the 
 national cause were premature. It is iiot easy to extirpate 
 the inveterate anti-national venom that festers in the Orange 
 heart. The existence in Ireland of the Orange institution, 
 presents a strange and melancholy spectacle to every intelli- 
 gent lover of his country. It seems at first as unaccountable 
 as it is unnatural, that a body of men should detest the great 
 mass of their countrymen, and glory in the degradation of 
 their country. Elsewhere, we do not see the bitter ani- 
 mosities of a distant century kept alive by noisy and insolent 
 annual celebrations. Those displays, they allege, are intended 
 to assert their " principles ; " which principles are manifested 
 
Davis's Hopes of Orange Aid jpremature. 227 
 
 by outbursts of hatred, malice, and all unobaritableness. 
 Their outbursts are associated with vociferous boasts of their 
 devotion to "a free, open Bible," and loud professions of 
 religious fervour. This pretext of religion suggests the 
 clerical source of their anti-social virulence. Davis not 
 improbably founded his hope of an Orange contingent to the 
 i!^ational ranks on the fact that in 1800 many of the Orange 
 lodges had passed spirited anti-Union resolutions,* and he 
 may have deemed it possible that the anti-Union feeling of 
 that period might survive in the Orangemen of 1842. On 
 the other hand, there was the fact that the Orange institution 
 was founded in 1795 as an anti-Catholic organisation; that 
 the sectarian bigotry of its members was constantly inflamed 
 by furious anti-Catholic sermons from State Church pulpits, 
 and equally furious harangues from Orange platforms ; there 
 was also the important fact that the State clergy, who must 
 have felt their position insecure as monopolists of the whole 
 ecclesiastical State property of a Catholic country, felt 
 interested in stimulating the ferocious zeal of the Orange 
 adherents of the State Church by fiery appeals to their anti- 
 Catholic prejudices; and finally, that the Orangemen, thus 
 influenced, were unlikely to unite in a national movement 
 which appeared to them to be a Catholic movement, because 
 Catholics formed the large majority of the nation. 
 
 I know not what proportion of the Presbyterian com- 
 munity belonged to the Orange institution. Presbyterians 
 
 * The following Resolutions, passed by Orange lodges in 1800, 
 are identical in spirit with many others : 
 "Lodge 391, Wattle Bridge, Co. Fermanagh, 1st of March, 1800. 
 " That, strongly attached to the Constitution of 1782 — a settle- 
 ment ratified in the most unequivocal manner, so far as the faith of 
 nations is binding — we should feel ourselves criminal were we to 
 remain silent while an attempt is made to extinguish it. That, 
 impressed with every loyal sentiment towards our gracious Sovereign, 
 we trust that the measure of a legislative Union, which is contrary 
 to the sense of all Orangemen and the nation at large, will be 
 relinquished. 
 
 "John Moore, Master." 
 
 " Lodge No. 883, at Newtownbarry, IQth February, 1800. 
 " That Orangemen ought to come forward as Orangemen and 
 Irishmen and declare their sentiments against a legislative Union, 
 which now, or at any other time, would be of the most fatal and 
 .pernicious consequences to the real liberty of Ireland. 
 
 " Edmund Beattv, Master. 
 "WiLLOUGHBY Bustard, Dep. 
 " Alex. M'Claughky, Sec." 
 Q 2 
 
228 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 had been extensively involved in the insurrectionary move- 
 ments that preceded the Union. Lord Castlereagh con- 
 templated "an increased provision for their clergy" as a good 
 mode of buying them for the Court. The Regium Donum 
 was accordingly swelled up to a large amount; and the 
 patriotic ardour which had characterised the Presbyterians 
 disappeared. 
 
 The Nation first appeared on the 15th of October, 1842. 
 John O'Connell had, 1 thiuk, returned to town, but Mr. Ray 
 and I were still pursuing our missionary avocations. The- 
 result of the missions on the Repeal Rent was remarkable. 
 The week before we set forth to the provinces the rent wa& 
 £45 14s. 8d The week after our return it reached £235. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 REPEAL DEBATED IN THE DUBLIN COKPORA.TION. 
 
 Acres. — By my valour, then, Sir Lucius, forty yards is a good 
 distance. ... I tell you. Sir Lucius, the farther off he is, the 
 cooler I shall take my aim. 
 
 Sir Lucius. — Faith, then, I suppose you would aim at him best 
 if he were out of sight ? 
 
 Acres. — No, Sir Lucius ; but I should think forty, or eight-and- 
 thirty yards. Do, my dear Sir Lucius, let me bring him down at a 
 long shot. 
 
 The Rivals. 
 
 0*CoNNELL*s next step was to bring the Repeal Question into 
 the Dublin Corporation. Early in February, 1843, he gave 
 notice that on Tuesday, the 21st of the month, he would 
 move a resolution affirmatory of the right of Ireland to a 
 resident Parliament, and the necessity of repealing the Union. 
 
 Shortly prior to the 21st, he suddenly announced the 
 postponement of his motion for a week. The Tory members 
 of the Corporation complained of being unfairly treated. 
 Alderman Butt declared that he had remained in town at 
 much personal inconvenience in order to oppose the motion, 
 and strongly remonstrated against the postponement. O'Con* 
 nell, however, was inexorable, whereupon there was a sort 
 of triumphant growl among the opposite party, who said 
 that he only manoeuvred to get Butt out of town, from a 
 well-grounded fear of discussing the merits of Repeal with 
 80 able an adversary. 
 
 The postponement was useful. Had the discussion taken 
 
Public Quriosity excited, 229 
 
 place on the day originally fixed, it would have passed off as 
 a matter of course, without exciting half the interest it after- 
 wards created. But, by putting it off, an additional fillip 
 was given to the public mind. The anti-Repealers alleged 
 that O'Connell was shrinking from Butt ; the Repealers 
 indignantly denied the accusation. People upon both sides 
 were thus set talking about the matter, and the public 
 curiosity was wound up to a pitch of intensity when the day 
 for the discussion arrived. O'Connell had planned this, in 
 order to give additional eclat to the discomfiture he intended 
 for the anti-Repealers. 
 
 And a signal triumph he achieved. The Unionists had 
 long been in the habit of saying, "O'Connell and his 
 party have always kept out of the way of discussing 
 this question — if we had them face to face we could expose 
 their delusions." They had now got an opportunity of 
 realising their boast. 
 
 The Assembly House in William Street was crowded to 
 the utmost. A vast concourse of people thronged the street 
 without, unable to obtain admittance, yet rooted to the spot 
 by the interest which the question awakened in all breasts. 
 Twice or thrice in the course of the day I passed through the 
 crowd, and the people invariably asked me how Repeal was 
 getting on, and who was speaking now, with as eager an 
 anxiety as if the success of the Repeal in the Dublin Cor- 
 poration would secure its final and immediate triumph. 
 
 O'Connell's opening speech occupied four hours and ten 
 minutes. He had arranged the whole subject under nine 
 distinct propositions. These were : 
 
 I. The capability and capacity of the Irish nation for an 
 independent Legislature. 
 
 II. The perfect right of Ireland to have a domestic 
 Parliament. 
 
 III. That that right was fully established by the 
 transactions of 1782. 
 
 lY. That the most beneficial effects to Ireland resulted 
 from her parliamentary independence. 
 
 V. The utter incompetence of the Irish Parliament to 
 annihilate the Irish Constitution by the Union. 
 
 VI. That the Union was no contract or bargain ; that it 
 was carried by the grossest corruption and bribery, added to 
 force, fraud, and terror. 
 
 VII. That the Union produced the most disastrous 
 results to Ireland. 
 
230 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 YIII. That the Union can be abolished by peaceable and 
 constitutional means without the violation of the law, and 
 without the destruction of property or life. 
 
 IX. That the most salutary results, and none other, must 
 arise from a Kepeal of the Union. 
 
 " These," said O'Connell, " are the nine propositions 
 which I came here to-day to demonstrate. I say to de- 
 monstrate, not as relying on any intellectual powers of my 
 own, or any force of talent, but from the truth and plain- 
 ness of the propositions themselves." 
 
 His speech was luminous and masterly. Notwithstanding 
 its length, the physical vigour of the orator continued unim- 
 paired to the end. The Nation^s description is so accurate- 
 and discriminating that I cannot do better than quote it : 
 
 " O'Connell," says that journal, " may have made more 
 eloquent speeches — speeches more calculated to heat the 
 blood and stir the passions — but he never excelled this one 
 as an elaborate and masterly statement of a great case. 
 The arrangement he adopted was remarkably skilful and 
 judicious. He threw down, as it were, a single proof, and 
 heaped others in succession on the top of it, till they grew 
 up to a gigantic pyramid which all the world might recognise. 
 The effect of this process on the audience was magical. The 
 truth seemed to dawn upon them like the rising sun growing 
 plainer and plainer by degrees, till at length, as he drew 
 near his peroration, it admitted of neither question nor 
 dispute, and men seemed to say to each other with exulting 
 looks, ' This is unanswerable.' " 
 
 Such was the oration Mr. Butt was obliged to reply to. 
 It is not the least disparagement of his great abilities to say 
 that his reply was a failure. There was a case made out for 
 the Repeal which could not be rebutted. In the total 
 absence of legitimate argument he was compelled to resort 
 to small dexterities, such as challenging, not the doctrine 
 that the Irish Parliament was incompetent to effect its own 
 destruction, but the alleged consequences of that doctrine,, 
 which Mr. Butt asserted would invalidate all the Acts of the 
 Imperial Parliament. Mr. Butt also prophesied that as forty 
 years had elapsed since the Union, we might look forward to 
 some future good results from that measure; a prediction 
 which he tried to sustain by alleging that after the lapse of 
 forty years the Scottish Union had begun to bear fruits of 
 benefit to Scotland. Mr. Butt, a few years later, saw reason 
 to change his opinions. In his admirable " Plea for the- 
 
Butfs Reply to O'Connell. 231 
 
 Celtic Race," he admits "tlie decay that unquestionably- 
 followed the Union ; " and instead of retaining the con- 
 fidence which, in 1843, he reposed in the justice of the 
 British Parliament, he writes as follows in a letter on the 
 County Cork election, dated 10th of February, 1867 : "I 
 have lost all faith in what is called parliamentary action. 
 Just measures for Ireland will not be passed by the British 
 Parliament, unless under the pressure of external danger, or 
 the influence of some great and powerful organisation com- 
 bining the Irish people." 
 
 In other words, we have nothing to expect from British 
 justice. Any rights obtained from the British Parliament 
 must be forced out of that assembly by fear or by expediency. 
 So said O'Connell in 1843. So said Butt in 1867. 
 
 To return to his speech in reply to O'Connell. He 
 defended the Anti-Irish Church Establishment on the 
 ground that it was the duty of every State to consecrate 
 itself to God ; just as if the mode of consecrating Ireland to 
 God was to invest the pastors of the eighth or ninth part of 
 the population with a legal power to fleece the whole people ! 
 He strongly urged repose for Ireland ; just as if a wronged 
 and suffering nation ever gained anything by silent acquies- 
 cence in her injuries ! 
 
 Mr. Butt was a man of great intellectual power and of 
 generous impulses. It would indeed have been impossible 
 that, possessing his high qualities of head and heart, and 
 with the experience of the intervening quarter of a century, 
 he should have retained the opinions expressed in his anti- 
 Repeal speech in the Dublin Corporation. 
 
 While he spoke, O'Connell repeatedly exclaimed, " I 
 never made so unanswered a speech ! Why, he doesn't even 
 try to make a case ! " The solution was, that in the midst 
 of an Irish assembly there was no case to be made. Mr. Butt 
 once or twice tried Spring Rice's expedient of alleging our 
 giant-stride prosperity ; but although that line of argument 
 might call down vociferous cheers in the foreign House of Com- 
 mons, it could not elicit one solitary cheer from the Conserva- 
 tive party in the Irish Corporation ; for to all in that assembly 
 the adverse facts were too well and too painfully known. 
 
 The Warder newspaper, of Evangelico-Orange politics, an 
 able organ of the anti-Repeal party, and to which Mr. Butt 
 had been often a literary contributor, in its number for the 
 5th of October, 1844, gave the following emphatic contra- 
 diction of Spring Rice's prosperity case : 
 
232 EigMy-iive Years of Irish History. 
 
 " Squalid half-starvation is the desperate lot of the Irish 
 peasant — destitution which no exertion of his own can 
 relieve ; there is no labour too hard for him — he shrinks 
 from no toil or hardship — but employment there is none for 
 him ; privation and misery which could not be borne for two 
 days by Englishmen without the riot of insurrection, are 
 here endured from weary month to month with a stoical 
 patience." 
 
 So spoke the Tory Warder. It may be easily supposed 
 that the allegation of Irish prosperity did not meet an. 
 encouraging reception from men who, though holding various 
 politics, were yet perfectly cognisant of the dreary facts thus 
 announced on high Protestant authority. I may parentheti- 
 cally remark that in the face of such severe and widely spread 
 privation, the Whig Parliament of 1833 might have dis- 
 covered some other cause of predial outrages than political 
 agitation. 
 
 The Corporation debate was adjourned till the following 
 day, when it was resumed with much ability by other gentle- 
 men. Mr. Staunton's speech was an admirable financial 
 statement. The debate was a second time adjourned. 
 
 On the third day the public anxiety continued unabated. 
 The vicinity of the Assembly House was again densely 
 crowded. Several speakers preceded O'Connell, who rose to 
 reply at two o'clock. Near him sat his two staunch friends, 
 John O'Neill, the Protestant, and Robert M'Clellan, the 
 Presbyterian. The countenances of both those old patriots 
 expressed their triumph at O'Connell's anticipated victory. 
 
 No report, no description, could possibly do justice to 
 that magnificent reply. O'Connell took up in succession all 
 the objections of all his opponents, and dashed them to pieces, 
 one by one. The whole phalanx of Unionists looked like 
 pigmies in the grasp of a giant. The dexterities of Butt 
 shrank and withered into nothing when touched by O'Connell. 
 The consciousness of a great moral triumph seemed to animate 
 his voice, his glance, his gestures. Never had I heard him 
 so eloquent ; never had I witnessed so noble a display of his 
 transcendent powers. 
 
 The House divided on the question ; forty-one members 
 to fifteen affirming the principle of Repeal by a majority of 
 twenty-six. The decisive blow thus struck in the metro- 
 politan Corporation was promptly followed up in all the 
 reformed Corporations in the kingdom. Nothing could be 
 more manifest than the superiority in argument of the 
 
Unionist Pamjplilet of Montgomery Martin. 233 
 
 corporate Eepealers of Dublin. The Evening Mail, whicli 
 had long puffed and blustered on the side of the Unionists, 
 clearly saw that no rational case could be made against 
 Kepeal ; and it therefore, with becoming prudence, gravely- 
 advised the enemies of Irish legislative independence in the 
 Cork Town Council, not to argue the question at all, but 
 simply to record their political servility by silent votes. 
 
 The impulse given to Kepeal throughout the kingdom 
 appeared in a rapid augmentation of the rent. The national 
 question was now enthroned, moreover, in the different 
 municipalities ; and the temper and ability with which it 
 was discussed in those assemblies demonstrated the powerful 
 hold it had taken on the thinking and intelligent mercantile 
 classes of the kingdom. 
 
 But the enemy did not relax his activity. The most 
 daring mis-statements of facts, the most reckless falsifications 
 of the purposes of the Repealers, were profusely circulated 
 by a large portion of the anti-Repeal press ; and with an 
 amount of success proportioned to the ignorance, bigotry, 
 stolidity, or prejudice of each reader. We, whose earnest 
 aim and labour were to raise Ireland from her prostrate 
 condition; to retain for Irishmen the blessings which God 
 has bestowed on their country ; to retain for the country the 
 expenditure of its own wealth, and thereby to rescue the 
 Irish peasant from the squalid half -starvation which the 
 Tory Warder pronounced to be his desperate lot ; to obliterate 
 sectarian distinctions and to place all Irishmen upon a common 
 level of fair play and equal privilege ; we, whose efforts 
 sought the welfare and honour of all, were maligned as dark 
 and dangerous conspirators against the rights of property, 
 against the lives of Protestants, against order and civilisation, 
 against British connection. 
 
 Among the modes adopted to produce false impressions 
 of the question of Repeal, was the circulation of a pamphlet 
 by Mr. Montgomery Martin, entitled "Ireland Before and 
 After the Union with Great Britain." The object of this 
 pamphlet was, of course, to show that Ireland had prospered 
 largely by the destruction of her power of self-legislation. 
 Mr. Martin's production was hailed with a burst of acclama- 
 tion by the anti-Repeal press. The Times led off by saying: 
 *' Mr. Montgomery Martin has published a valuable recital." 
 The Morning Herald said : '* The publication at such a 
 juncture of this so demonstrative a work is invaluable; it 
 will convict the Impostor. To the Government proceedings 
 
234 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 it will give great assistance. It ought to be circulated 
 throughout every town, village, and hamlet in Ireland." 
 And so on, in strains more or less laudatory, through 
 numerous anti-Repeal organs in all the three kingdoms. 
 Mr. Martin had, some time previously, tried to set up a 
 Repeal newspaper in London under the patronage of Mr. 
 O'Connell. He was advised by Mr. O'Connell not to attempt 
 it, inasmuch as the only readers of the paper would be the 
 Irish in England, whose support would not render the 
 experiment remunerative. Mr. Martin, however, persevered;, 
 set up the paper, and called it the Rejgealer. O'Connell's 
 prediction was fulfilled — it did not pay; and Mr. Martin, 
 after publishing a few numbers, desisted from the profitless 
 attempt, and resolved to adopt the opposite side of the 
 question as more probably lucrative. His pen, equally ready 
 to advocate either the Repeal of the Union or the continuance 
 of that measure, was now employed to prove, not only that 
 Ireland had made vast advances since 1800, but that she had 
 been in a state of progressive decay during the existence of 
 her free Constitution. To demonstrate the alleged decay, 
 Mr, Martin exhibited fifteen items of exports, in which, 
 during a carefully selected portion of that period, a decrease 
 had occurred. But he took care to omit nineteen other 
 articles of export (including the staple commodity, linen), in 
 which, during the very same years, there had been a large 
 increase. On the whole thirty-four items, the nineteen and the 
 fifteen taken collectively, there was a large increase. The 
 audacious fraud was exposed by my old friend, Michael 
 Staunton, in a learned and able reply which was published 
 as a pamphlet by the Repeal Association, and widely 
 circulated. I mention the circumstance to show the base- 
 methods that were taken tc deceive the public mind on a 
 question of vital importance to Ireland. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THK MONSTER MEETINGS OP 1843. 
 
 Oh, come, then, Erin, come away ; 
 
 Oh, haste, my love, no longer stay. 
 
 Oh, haste, thy cruel sisier leave ; 
 
 Her words are false, her smiles deceive. 
 
 *' Union," she cries, with vip'rous breath; 
 
 Union with hat — is Erin's death. 
 
 BeauixBi of the Preaa, 
 
 The coming summer and autumn were rendered remarkable 
 by the great gatherings called monster meetings. The 
 
Tlie Great Tara Meeting. 235 
 
 utility of those meetings lay in the evidence they afforded 
 that the voice of the nation was for Repeal. Whig and 
 Tory alike had incessantly asserted that the people cared 
 nothing for Eepeal. The people in 1843 turned out in their 
 multitudinous strength to give the lie to that laboriously 
 reiterated calumny. The whole population were astir. 
 Invitations to attend public meetings in distant quarters 
 poured in upon those who had been chiefly conspicuous in 
 the agitation. The attendance on the weekly meetings of 
 the Association overflowed the capacity of the apartment in 
 which we had been accustomed to assemble. O'Connell 
 resolved on erecting a hall of larger compass ; and on Thurs- 
 day, the 30th of March, 1843, he laid the foundation stone 
 of the new edifice, on which he bestowed the name of 
 Conciliation Hall. 
 
 Meanwhile, meeting followed meeting in the country. 
 O'Connell displayed astonishing mental and physical elas- 
 ticity and vigour. He was then sixty-eight years old; and 
 he flattered himself that when accumulating years should 
 have deprived him of the strength required for his public 
 exertions, he could still, from his closet, regulate the agitation, 
 and guide the men who might occupy, under his instructions, 
 a species of deputy leadership. During all this year the 
 Young Ireland party, whose organ was the Nation newspaper, 
 seemed to work in harmony with the old Agitator ; but in 
 their writings, and especially in their poetry, there rang the 
 clash of arms — there were significant allusions to the sword 
 which O'Connell did not like. He could not control hi& 
 impetuous allies ; but he took comfort by observing that 
 fiery thoughts, which, if expressed in prose, might be legally 
 unsafe, could be clothed in a poetic dress consistently with 
 legal security. He had, with wondrous skill, kept the 
 public mind of a whole generation at a pitch of the highest 
 political excitement, yet restrained it from unconstitutional 
 or illegal action. He feared that the Young Ireland party 
 would stimulate his followers to compromise at once their 
 own safety and the interests of Eepeal by deviations from 
 the old, safe course they had hitherto pursued. But as yet 
 the public saw nothing except mutual confidence and har- 
 mony of action between Old and Young Ireland. 
 
 The greatest of the monster meetings was held on the 
 Hill of Tara in the County Meath, on the 15th of August, 
 1843. In O'Connell's speech occurs the following passage : 
 " We are at Tara of the kings. We are on the spot where 
 the monarchs of Ireland were elected, and where the chief- 
 
536 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 tains of Ireland bound themselves by the sacred pledge of 
 honour and the tie of religion to stand by their native land 
 against the Danes, or any other stranger. This is emphati- 
 cally the spot from which emanated the social power — the 
 legal authority — the right to dominion over the farthest 
 extremities of the island, and the power of concentrating the 
 force of the entire nation for the purpose of national defence. 
 I here protest in the face of my Creator — in the face of 
 Ireland and of God — I protest against the continuance of the 
 unfounded and unjust Union. My proposition to Ireland is 
 that the Union is not binding upon us; it is not binding, 
 I mean, upon conscience — it is void in principle — it is void 
 as matter of right — and it is void in Constitutional law." 
 
 On the day when O'Connell thus addressed a multitude 
 computed by the Nation to consist of 750,000 persons, and 
 which, although that number was probably an over-estimate, 
 yet was undoubtedly an enormous gathering, the people of 
 Clontibret in the County Monaghan held a numerous 
 meeting to which I accepted an invitation. It was presided 
 over by Captain Seaver of Heath Hall, a Protestant gentle- 
 man of fortune, and a convert to Eepeal from Orangeism. 
 On a rising ground at a small distance from our meeting, a 
 party of dragoons were drawn up under the command of an 
 officer. This species of military supervision had become 
 rather usual about that period. The pretext was that a 
 breach of the peace might occur between the Kepealers and 
 the anti-Repealers, requiring military intervention to sup- 
 press it. The red-coats looked lively, and were a picturesque 
 addition to the landscape. The meetings were all perfectly 
 peaceful ; and if the soldiers were on any occasion permitted 
 to approach within hearing of the speakers, they must — if 
 Irish — have been heartily delighted with the doctrines 
 announced, and with the resolutions that expressed the most 
 fervid determination to persevere. 
 
 O'Connell sometimes alluded to the beauties of the 
 scenery. At the Clifden meeting he said : "I love the 
 wild and majestic scenes through which I have this 
 day passed in coming to your meeting. Perhaps I might 
 be justified in saying that Nature did not intend me for 
 a politician, but that, judging from my feelings, I ought 
 rather to have spent my life in the quiet and undisturbed 
 admiration and enjoyment of Nature's beauty and magnifi- 
 cence. The scenery I have this day passed has made me 
 think so. It filled my soul with a thrilling and undefinabl© 
 
Smith O^Brien joins the Association. 257 
 
 sensation to behold that wild and swelling morass encom- 
 passed by cloud-capt and majestic mountains — the regions of 
 the storm and the mist— and the quiet lake surrounded with 
 its high and heath-covered banks, or sometimes embossed 
 among trees, its surface scarcely disturbed by the soft and 
 perfumed autumnal breeze, whilst the tiny waves with 
 which it was ripj)led seemed to smile approbation upon us- 
 as our procession passed along its banks. I love the music 
 of the waters, the silvery echoes of the mountain rill, and 
 the sounds of the torrent rushing over the brow of the 
 precipice. They seem to whisper to my soul the joys of 
 youth, to arouse the energies of manhood, and to dictate to- 
 me a command that I could not refuse to obey — to use every 
 energy of my soul, every power of my mind, every faculty 
 of my being, to make our majestic yet neglected country the 
 garden and the paradise for which Nature has so obviously 
 designed it." 
 
 There were altogether some forty-five monster meetings^ 
 quite enough to develop the genuine sentiments of Ireland 
 upon the Union, were any such evidence wanted. 
 
 On the 20th of October, 1843, Mr. Smith O'Brien ad- 
 dressed a letter to the secretary, enclosing his first sub- 
 scription, and announcing his adhesion to the Repeal Associ- 
 ation. In his letter he said : 
 
 " At this moment, after forty-three years of nominal 
 Union, the afi'ections of the two nations are so entirely 
 alienated from each other, that England trusts for the- 
 maintenance of the connection, not to the attachment of the 
 Irish people, but to the bayonets which menace our bosoms,, 
 and to the cannon which she has planted on all our 
 strongholds." 
 
 On the 23rd of October, Conciliation Hall was formally 
 opened. The accession of Mr. O'Brien was hailed with 
 delight. He had long adhered to the delusive idea that 
 justice to Ireland might be obtained from the united 
 Parliament ; but on the failure of his motion for a parlia- 
 mentary inquiry into Irish grievances, was compelled to 
 despair of any good from such a source. His motion was 
 prefaced with a speech of great ability, fraught with ex- 
 tensive and accurate information as to the wrongs sustained 
 by Ireland. He sought inquiry. As a matter of course it 
 was refused; prosecution of the Irish leaders was resolved 
 on, and William Smith O'Brien tendered his adhesion to the 
 National Association. 
 
238 Eighty-five Years of Irish History, 
 
 A slight outline of his career will interest the Irish 
 public. 
 
 He was horn in October, 1803. His remote ancestors 
 were the royal O'Briens, of whose family Brian Boroimhe 
 was a member. He was the second son of the late Sir 
 Edward O'Brien, Bart., of Dromoland, County Clare, and 
 heir to the estates of his maternal grandfather, Mr. William 
 Smith. He spent three years at Harrow School, and took 
 his degree at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1828 he was 
 brought into Parliament by his father for the borough of 
 Ennis, a close borough to which the O'Brien family and the 
 late Lord Fitzgerald alternately possessed the nomination. 
 He ardently supported the Catholic claims, and enrolled 
 himself a member of the Catholic Association in the year of 
 his return to Parliament. He did not, in the House of 
 Commons, give a regular support to the Tory Ministry, 
 although his father was a politician of the class called 
 Liberal Conservatives ; but after the Duke of Wellington 
 carried Emancipation and lost the support of the ultra-Tories, 
 Mr. O'Brien became a supporter in general of the Government 
 — voting, however, against it upon some questions involving 
 Constitutional principles. In 1831 he lost his seat on the 
 dissolution which followed the defeat of the Whigs on the 
 Eeform Bill. On that measure Mr. O'Brien did not vote, 
 being absent from London, but he voted against General 
 Gascoigne's motion, declaring that the number and proportion 
 of English representatives ought to continue undiminished. 
 In 1832 he was invited to stand for Ennis on the Liberal 
 interest, but having transferred his residence from the 
 County Clare to the County Limerick, he declined the 
 invitation. In 1834 he re-entered Parliament for the 
 County of Limerick, and from that year until 1843 he 
 generally acted with the Liberal Whigs, giving them an 
 independent support, but opposing them whenever he 
 deemed them in the wrong — for example, on the Jamaica 
 question. During their tenure of office he neither asked nor 
 received any favour for himself or his family. 
 
 Such is the outline of Mr. O'Brien's political career prior 
 to 1843. It displays a single-minded consistency in the 
 pursuit of political truth. His motion on behalf of Ireland 
 was couched in the following words : " That this House will 
 resolve itself into a committee for the purpose of taking into 
 consideration the causes of discontent at present prevailing 
 in Ireland, with a view to the redress of grievances, and to 
 
The Viceroy alty Question. 239 
 
 the establishment of a system of just and impartial govern- 
 ment in that part of the United Kingdom." 
 
 The rejection of that motion by the House decided the 
 mover to join the Repeal agitation. He brought to the 
 cause great practical ability, a complete mastery of the 
 details of public business acquired from his long experience 
 in parliamentary committees, and an honest zeal, of which 
 the enthusiasm was at that time tempered by a calm and 
 accurate judgment. His descent from the proudest line in 
 Irish History gratified the Celtic prepossessions of the people ; 
 his social position commanded respect ; and his Protestant 
 creed afforded one more proof, in addition to the many 
 already existing, that Irish nationality is of no particular 
 sect or persuasion ; and that amongst those who own its 
 sacred influence, the most ardent, the most useful, the most 
 active, may be, and have been, Protestants. 
 
 On his junction with the Eepeal Association, he imme- 
 diately founded the parliamentary committee of that body, 
 whose occupation was to watch and report upon all Bills 
 affecting Ireland in their progress through Parliament. The 
 committees of the Association were practical schools of legis- 
 lation. They amassed and disseminated information on 
 matters with which the Irish legislator ought to be familiar. 
 The Repeal leaders devoted their labours not merely to the 
 organising of the people, but to the equally necessary task of 
 diffusing through the land a body of knowledge calculated to 
 exalt and fortify the movement by enlisting the intellect of 
 Ireland as well as her feelings in favour of Home Government. 
 
 One of the topics to which the attention of the Associa- 
 tion was called was the project, from time to time renewed, 
 of abolishing the Viceroyalty. Against that project the As- 
 sociation passed a unanimous resolution. The Viceroyalty, 
 like every human institution, has its defects ; but it is better 
 than any executive system by which it could be replaced. 
 Not a shadow of proof has been given that Ireland would 
 derive any benefit from its abolition. Many of the pretexts 
 for abolishing the office have an ugly resemblance to the 
 pretexts for abolishing the Irish Parliament. Many of them 
 would equally serve for abolishing our Supreme Courts of 
 Judicature and transferring the jurisdiction of the Four 
 Courts to Westminster Hall. We might be told about steam- 
 rails and telegraphic wires. We might be told that the re- 
 tention of a separate judicature was a mark of provincial 
 dependence, and that we should be raised to the level of 
 
240 Eighty-iive Years of Irish History. 
 
 England, and made " an integral member of the Empire " by 
 the extinction of all that gives metropolitan rank to the 
 capital of our country, and national character to our juris- 
 prudence. English egotism is engrossing ; and whenever a 
 scheme for the further spoliation of Ireland is contemplated 
 by the absorption to London of our public institutions or 
 offices, the project of robbery is pretty certain to be repre- 
 sented as *' making Ireland an integral part of the Empire," 
 and exalting us to an equality with England. If the Vice- 
 royalty were abolished, the Supreme Courts of Law and 
 Equity would become the next objects of attack. Significant 
 indications of this have already been given. 
 
 .Some advocates of the abolition of the viceregal office 
 have — in my opinion inconsistently — deplored the evils of 
 Irish absenteeism. They deem it mischievous that the owners 
 of Irish estates should be absentees ; yet they are ready to 
 make an absentee of the Irish Executive. I know no reason 
 why any governmental acts or functions that can be per- 
 formed in Ireland, should be performed out of Ireland. 
 
 The talk we hear about the jobbery, fiunkeyism, and cor- 
 ruption engendered by the viceregal institution supplies no 
 sound argument for abolishing the office. That talk merely 
 means that the Executive has something to give, in the way 
 of either place or countenance, and that for what it can give 
 there will be applicants. The same objection may be made 
 against every executive Government that ever existed, or that 
 ever will exist. 
 
 The Viceroy alty marks our national distinctness, and is a 
 practical acknowledgment that Ireland is sufficiently great to 
 require the permanent presence of the Sovereign's representa- 
 tive. 
 
 The admirable regularity and effective working of the 
 Association at this period were mainly due to the care and 
 ability of its secretary, Mr. Ray. He conducted the multi- 
 tudinous correspondence of the Association, smoothed diffi- 
 culties, disentangled and arranged the most complex details 
 of public business with a quiet, easy mastery, resulting partly 
 from long habit, but far more from natural sagacity. His 
 acquaintance with Irish political subjects was accurate and 
 extensive. He had a singularly tabular mind, well stored 
 with information, historic and statistic ; and he could, at a 
 moment's notice, produce to you any fact or detail you might 
 require from his copious stores. Each item occupied its 
 place in his mental repositories, duly labelled and ticketed. 
 
Efficiency of Mr, Secretary Ray. 241 
 
 An able and efficient officer of tlie Association, he was popular 
 not only from his official merits, but also from his great and 
 well-known private worth. 
 
 Mr. Ray was the originator of the Repeal Reading-rooms. 
 He established them in several towns on his Repeal mission 
 in 1842. The first of these rooms opened was at Newcastle, 
 County Limerick. As the Reading-room system extended, it 
 developed its utility in furnishing local centres to combine 
 and permanently organise the local patriots ; centres where 
 political information could be constantly acquired ; social 
 rallying points for the provincial Repealers where the intellect 
 was exercised and improved ; where habits of morality were 
 strengthened by the inducement afforded to the people to 
 employ their leisure hours in mental recreation instead of 
 sensual indulgence. 
 
 Among the gentlemen who rendered frequent and efficient 
 assistance to O'Connell in getting up meetings, was Maurice 
 Linehan, Esq., the able and accomplished author of a valuable 
 " History of Limerick." A list of the meetings which Mr. 
 Linehan contributed to organise would nearly fill a page. 
 His exertions in this department of the popular service com- 
 menced in 1832, in which year he assisted in promoting the 
 Repeal and anti-tithe demonstrations of Clonmel and Carrick- 
 on-Suir. In 1837, 1838, 1843, and 1844, we find him 
 actively engaged in a similar service at Cork, Mallow, Skib- 
 bereen, and Lismore. He was the principal organiser of the 
 monster meeting held at Thurles in September, 1845, to 
 petition for Repeal, and his graphic pen was frequently em- 
 ployed in describing for the press the popular gatherings 
 assembled by O'Connell. Mr. Linehan may look back with 
 honourable pride on his usual and active part in the national 
 agitation ; for he is staunch to his national principles, and as 
 incapable as ever of comprehending how Ireland can be 
 benefited or exalted by the robbery and degradation of the 
 Union. 
 
 CHAPTER XXy. 
 
 MILITARY PREPARATIONS TO OPPOSE THE REPEALERS. 
 
 The King of France, with twenty thousand men, 
 Marched up the hill, and then marched down again. 
 
 The autumn of 1848 was advancing to its close; three or 
 four monster meetings yet remained to be held. Of these, 
 the Clontarf gathering was fixed for Sunday, the 8th of 
 
 R 
 
242 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 October. The Executive had hitherto looked passively at 
 the agitation. They now resolved on a sudden demonstration 
 of vigour. Late on the afternoon of Saturday, the 7th, 
 a proclamation by the Viceroy, Lord de Grey, was issued 
 from the Castle, prohibiting the intended meeting of the 
 morrow at Clontarf. O'Connell, apprehensive of a sanguinary 
 attack upon the people in case of their disregarding this 
 proclamation, issued a counter-proclamation from the Corn 
 Exchange, enjoining the Kepealers to abandon their purpose 
 of assembling. Messengers were despatched into the country 
 in all directions to meet the people on their way to the 
 metropolis, and to send them back to their respective homes. 
 
 Meanwhile the Government placed Dublin in a state of 
 siege. All the guards at the barracks and at the Castle were 
 doubled ; and for the special protection of Earl de Grey 
 from Kepeal violence, a squadron of dragoons and two- 
 extra companies of foot were quartered in the Lower Castle 
 Yard. Aldborough House was garrisoned with a regiment 
 of infantry ; at night there were patrols established througk 
 the city. The roads in the vicinity were patrolled by parties 
 of mounted police. Three vessels in the river had their guns 
 run out, commanding the spot where the meeting was intended 
 to have been held. The guns at the Pigeon-House Fort 
 were also run out so as to command Clontarf, and prepared 
 for immediate action. The Rhadamanthus and the Dee 
 war-steamers brought the 87th Eoyal Irish Fusiliers to 
 Dublin. The 34th Regiment arrived in Dublin on Sunday 
 morning after a stormy passage from Glasgow, As that 
 regiment marched through the city the multitude heartily 
 cheered them ; the commanding officer mistook the cheer for 
 a hostile indication, and ordered the men to halt and fix 
 bayonets. The crowd cheered again. The officer was wiser 
 the second time, and quietly marched his men to their 
 barrack. 
 
 The 5tb Dragoon Guards were stationed at Clontarf. 
 The men were accoutred for active service — each man and 
 horse being provisioned for twenty-four hours. The 60th 
 Rifles were stationed in their immediate vicinity ; each 
 soldier was served with sixty rounds of ball cartridge. A 
 brigade of the Royal Horse Artillery occupied a position 
 near Clontarf sheds, with four six-pounders limbered and 
 ready for immediate action. There were also the 11th 
 Hussars and the 54th Regiment of Infantry stationed near 
 the sheds. A monster armament was brought against a 
 
Intended Meeting at Clontarf abandoned. 243 
 
 peaceful, unarmed multitude to prevent their petitioning the 
 Legislature for the repeal of a destructive and detested 
 statute. It is impossible not to be struck with the similarity 
 of the means whereby the Union was carried, and those by 
 which it is sustained. Pitt and Castlereagh corrupted and 
 coerced. Ebrington bribed Unionists with the lure of 
 Government patronage ; De Grey brought down troops to 
 overawe the Repealers. Pitt poured 137,000 troops into 
 Ireland to carry the Union. Peel poured in 30,000 bayonets 
 to preserve it. 
 
 The display of military force could not disconcert men 
 who meditated no appeal to arms. The Tories, however, 
 declared that the military occupation of Ireland was indis- 
 pensable to preserve the connection of the countries. What 
 a pregnant commentary on the Union ! The Union which 
 was to have fused, consolidated, identified the nations, so 
 that they were to have no longer been " twain, but one 
 flesh;" this consolidating Union lasts for three-and-forty 
 years, at the end of which period (on the Tory showing) it' 
 requires 30,000 troops to restrain one of the "consolidated' 
 parties from breaking loose from the other ! I repeat, what 
 a pregnant commentary on the Union ! It is the same at the 
 end of eighty-five years. It will be the same as long as the 
 Union lasts. A measure in the highest degree insulting to 
 the national honour, abhorrent to the national sentiment, and 
 pernicious to the national interests, can have no other 
 security for its continuance than the overwhelming brute 
 force of England. 
 
 Meanwhile the Eepealers betrayed no relaxation of zeal 
 or activity. The first weekly meeting of the Association 
 after the Clontarf afi'air was so crowded that the committee 
 were obliged to adjourn it to the theatre in Abbey Street. 
 Prosecutions were threatened, and the public mind was greatly 
 excited. On that day, and on the two following Mondays, 
 the chair was successively occupied by John O'Connell, by 
 myself, and Mr. John Augustus 0'iS"eill of Bunowen Castle, 
 who threw into his address a genuinely Irish spirit of 
 chivalrous devotion to the cause. 
 
 Then came the prosecutions, under the management of 
 the Attorney-General, Mr. Thomas Berry Cusack Smith, son 
 of Baron Smith, whose support of the Union has been 
 noticed in a former chapter of this work. At first the pro- 
 ceedings excited curiosity ; but their dull monotony soon 
 palled upon the public. The traversers kept up their spirits 
 
 R 2 
 
244 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 despite this monster nuisance. Amusement was given by 
 the public perusal of fantastic, amatory, or romantic poetry 
 in Court, from the versical department of the Nation. Mr. 
 Steele was in hopes that the principal witness against him, 
 Mr. Frederick Bond Hughes, would have been discredited by 
 the Court and jury from the following circumstance. Steele 
 was in the habit of writing out his speeches for the news- 
 papers, and introducing whatever additions or changes might 
 occur to him while the pen was in his hand. Mr. Hughes, 
 who was employed by the Government to report the speeches 
 of the Repealers, appeared as a witness for the prosecution of 
 Steele, and swore to his actual delivery of a speech which 
 contained the quotation : 
 
 Behemoth, biggest born of earth, 
 Upheaved his vastness. 
 
 Now, these words had not been delivered by Steele but had 
 been added by him to the report of whatever he had really 
 said. Yet Hughes swore positively to Steele's delivery of 
 the speech as reported with the added passage about Behemoth 
 and his vastness. Steele made an affidavit denying the 
 delivery, and asserting that he had introduced the addition 
 while writing out his speech for the press. But the objection 
 to Mr. Hughes's credibility was overruled by the Court ; and 
 in candour it must be admitted that such a mistake might be 
 made by the witness without any intentional deviation from 
 veracity. The mistake was made the most of, and increased 
 the unpopularity which had already attached to Mr. Hughes 
 as a Crown witness. The owner of an itinerant equestrian 
 troupe, whose name was Hughes, tried to turn the affair to 
 his own account by appending to his placards and advertise- 
 ments the following intimation : " N.B. — No connection with 
 Mr. Frederick Bond Hughes " ; which disclaimer may perhaps 
 have drawn some extra spectators to the equine show. 
 
 The trials went on slowly and wearily. One of the 
 attorneys for the defence made a serio-comic complaint of the 
 Court, the agents, and the defendants, who all seemed en- 
 gaged in a conspiracy to deprive the trial of becoming gravity 
 and dignity. "Heaven help me! "said this gentleman, "I 
 have got no peace among 'em all. I want my clients to swear 
 an affidavit — they've levanted somewhere, and aren't to be 
 found. Well, there's a hurry-scurry after them, and at last 
 they are discovered sitting for their pictures to some vagabond 
 coxcomb of an artist from London. By-and-by I want 
 
Speeches of Shell and Whiteside. 245 
 
 Mr. " (a brother solicitor) ^'on a very pressing matter. 
 
 He's invisible — another hue-and-cry — at length he's caught 
 in a back parlour, with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, 
 strutting up and down in a dignified attitude, and looking as 
 majestic as he can for some other grinning picture-drawing 
 scamp. We go back to the court — the traversers are cracking 
 their jokes among themselves in their box, and my lords are 
 poking their necks over the desk to find out, if they can, 
 what the d — the fun is all about. Counsellor Fitzgibbon 
 does duty by his client, whereupon the Attorney-General 
 jumps up and sends him a three-cocked invitation in open 
 court to come and be shot at twelve paces." 
 
 The most brilliant speeches that enlivened the prolonged 
 monotony of the trial were those of Shell, who defended 
 John O'Connell, and of Whiteside (afterwards Chief 
 Justice), who defended Charles Gavan Duffy. A few 
 days before the delivery of Shell's speech some person 
 expressed to O'Connell a hope that as it was sure to be 
 a splendid display of eloquence it might be carefully 
 reported. O'Connell replied with a smile, "It is in type at 
 this moment in London." From Mr. Whiteside's speech I 
 extract the following passage, which is important as a record 
 of the order of men whom the ennobling influences of native 
 legislation raised up in Ireland : 
 
 "Men have lived amongst us who approached the 
 greatness of antiquity. The imperishable records of their 
 eloquence may keep alive in our hearts a zeal for freedom 
 and a love of country. The comprehensive genius of Flood 
 — the more than mortal energy of Grattan — the splendour 
 of Bushe — the wisdom of Saurin — the learning of Ball — the 
 noble simplicity of Burrowes — the Demosthenic fire of 
 Plunket, and the eloquence of Curran rushing from the 
 heart, and which will sound in the ears of his countrymen 
 for ever. They failed to save the ancient Constitution of 
 Ireland — wit, learning, genius, eloquence, lost their power 
 over the souls of men. With one great exception* our 
 distinguished countrymen have passed away, but their 
 memorials cannot perish with them. While the language 
 lasts their eloquence lives, and their names will be re- 
 membered by a grateful posterity so long as genius shall be 
 honoured and patriotism revered. The Irish people, lastly, 
 demand that the Union shall be repealed, because, they 
 
 * Plunket, who then still lived. 
 
24G Eighty-five Years of Irish History, 
 
 say, their feelings have not been consulted nor their 
 miseries relieved by the Imperial Pi.rliament. Wealth 
 has diminished, they say, amongst us ; before us there is a 
 gloomy prospect and little hope. . . . They have embraced 
 this project of Repeal with ardour. It is their nature, where 
 they feel strongly, to act boldly and to speak passionately." 
 The management of the trial by the Government officers 
 is familiar to the public — the refusal of the caption to the 
 traversers— the defective jury list — the shameless packing of 
 the jury — the admission of a species of evidence against the 
 traversers which was actually condemned as inadmissible at 
 the very same period by the Court of Queen's Bench at 
 Westminster* — the charge by the Lord Chief Justice 
 against "the other side," and, finally, the wrongful 
 imprisonment. 
 
 But the imprisonment was a great point gained for the 
 Orangemen. No matter by what means accomplished, it 
 was the subject of loud exaltation. The traversers were at 
 last in jail, convicted of a " conspiracy," which conspiracy 
 no ten rational men outside the court and jury-box believed 
 to have any existence at all. 
 
 The exclusion of Catholics from the jury list because 
 they were supposed to be Repealers, was defended by Sir 
 James Graham in the following manner: "We wanted," 
 said the right hon. baronet, "to avoid the partiality 
 necessarily arising from preconceived opinions favourable to 
 Repeal on the part of the jurors." 
 
 Did it occur to Sir James that there might be as strong a 
 partiality on the opposite side, arising from the preconceived 
 opinions of jurors adverse to Repeal? 
 
 When a man says, " Don't put Repealers into the jury- 
 box — they will be sure to acquit," it sounds extremely like 
 saying, " Do put anti-Repealers into the jury-box — they will 
 be sure to convict." 
 
 * Viz., the admission of newspaper articles as evidenoe against 
 men who never saw them. 
 
Orange Exultation. 247 
 
 CHAPTEE XXYI. 
 
 IMPRISONMENT OF O'CONNELL AND HIS FRIENDS IN 1844. 
 
 Who he]peth not himself, Fortune disowns ; 
 Who braves all obstacles will win i' th' end. 
 Success crowns perseverance — coward souls 
 Who shrink from work, shall never win work's guerdon. 
 
 Herbert Smith. 
 
 The Orange and Tory party now had their triumph. Truly 
 the Government had deserved success, if a reckless disregard 
 of all decency in their vindictive pursuit could entitle them 
 to victory. 
 
 But the verdict was obtained, no matter how ; and 
 sentence was pronounced, and there was a mighty uproar of 
 delight in all Orangeland. The Mail announced that the 
 'traversers had been hurried to their prison with less eclat 
 than had often attended a coal-porter's wedding. I 
 think it was that journal that jocularly said, " O'Connell 
 has got two feather beds conveyed from his house to the jail 
 — one for himself, and the other, we presume, for Repeal." 
 That Eepeal could survive the incarceration of its leaders 
 was deemed impossible. The cause was extinct ; that was 
 loudly announced ; the Repeal rent would dwindle to 
 nothing. The deluded people, having their eyes opened to 
 the wickedness, folly, and peril of their evil ways by the 
 well-merited punishment of their chiefs, would be scared 
 from any further connection with the movement. They 
 would no longer furnish the sinews of war to a set of men 
 who could not keep their heads out of Sir Robert Peel's net. 
 The leaders were seized ; the flock would scatter. And, 
 above all, the mischievous magic of O'Connell's legal 
 infallibility, which so long had kept the Repealers together, 
 would now be destroyed. The spell was dissolved: the 
 magician would henceforth be powerless. 
 
 Such were the boasts of the anti-Repealers on O'Connell's 
 imprisonment. Bets were laid whether the Repealers would 
 hold their usual meeting on the following Monday. The 
 •Conservative party were firmly convinced that they would 
 not dare to assemble. 
 
 The committee met on the evening of the day that saw 
 O'Connell consigned to a prison. The room was overflowing, 
 and great excitement necessarily prevailed. It was surmised 
 ithat the Government would proclaim down the Association 
 
248 EigJity-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 on the Monday morning, and arrest the principal leaders who 
 were still at large. On the question being discussed as to 
 who should occupy the chair, a post of possible danger^ 
 numerous gentlemen offered themselves; but Mr. Smith 
 O'Brien said that as he conceived that the struggle against 
 despotic power could perhaps be most efifectively made 
 in his person, he claimed the chief post of peril as a 
 particular favour. It was, however, deemed more advisable 
 that Mr. O'Brien should occupy the place usually filled 
 by Mr. O'Connell. 
 
 Monday arrived. It soon became manifest that the 
 Kepsalers were not scared by the recent prosecution. They 
 mustered in such crowds that Conciliation Hall was filled 
 long before the hour announced for the commencement 
 of the day's business, and thousands who could not obtain 
 standing room were obliged to go away. The Tory pre- 
 dictions did not seem likely to be realised. There was 
 no shrinking, either among the leaders or the people. 
 
 The chair was occupied on Monday by Mr. Caleb Powell, 
 of Clonshavoy, the Protestant representative of the County 
 Limerick ; and on Tuesday by another Protestant gentleman. 
 Captain Seaver, of Heath Hall, near Newry. There was a 
 sustained yet quiet energy in the proceedings. There was 
 the most intense enthusiasm combined with the most 
 cautious discretion. Every face expressed firm resolution 
 to encounter all risks that might beset the pursuit of 
 Repeal ; but at the same time to play the game warily 
 as well as firmly. The minds of men were braced and 
 strung for a mighty effort. It was glorious to behold the 
 crowds that filled the national hall at the moment when the 
 thunders of the Government were directed against Ireland^s 
 nationality. The people never assumed a loftier port or 
 a nobler attitude than when they calmly bade defiance to 
 tyrannic power, and opposed the simple might of popular 
 opinion to the chicanery of perverted law and the formidable 
 array of British bayonets. The troops that filled the land, 
 and the monster indictment, alike were unable to scare them 
 from a course recommended by its own intrinsic justice, 
 and endeared to their hearts by the sentiment of honourable 
 national pride. They hailed with delight the entrance of 
 men who were accustomed to take a prominent part in the 
 proceedings. The roof rang again with the joyous accla- 
 mations that greeted their appearance. 
 
 The prosecution did not paralyse the contributors to the 
 
Repeal survives the Prosecution. 249 
 
 Repeal exchequer. There was actually an inconvenient 
 rivalry to hand in money. Each man was eager to pour into 
 the treasury the contribution committed to his care, and thus 
 were several hours successively occupied. The first week's 
 receipts amounted to £2,593 18s. 2^?., which sum was con 
 siderably exceeded on several subsequent occasions. 
 
 Almost immediately on O'Connell's imprisonment the 
 several municipal Corporations of Ireland sent deputies to 
 the metropolis ; where, having been refused admission to the 
 prison for the purpose of presenting addresses to the captives, 
 they assembled at O'Connell's house in Merrion Square, and 
 there agreed on a solemn declaration that Ireland required a 
 domestic Parliament to develop her resources and secure her 
 prosperity. This declaration, emanating not from noisy 
 agitators, but from the very flower of the trading and 
 mercantile community of Ireland, was necessarily calculated 
 to produce a deep impression. 
 
 Whilst these events occurred out of doors, let us take a 
 peep within the prison walls. 
 
 O'Connell, on the evening of his incarceration, had ex- 
 claimed : " Thank God, I am in jail for Ireland." He 
 believed that Peel's false move tended to augment the 
 strength of the national cause. All the prisoners dined 
 together, and the party wore anything but a tragical air. 
 They all enjoyed the exhilaration of spirits arising from a 
 hope that, whatever inconveniences they might sustain, their 
 imprisonment would accelerate the triumph of the cause that 
 was nearest to their hearts. 
 
 They were for the first few days occupied with the bustle 
 of fixing themselves in their new quarters. At last they 
 settled down into something like their usual habits. Charles 
 Gavan Duffy, the editor of the Nation ; Doctor (afterwards 
 Sir John) Gray, the editor of the Freeman ; and Richard 
 Barrett, the editor of the Pilot, found abundant employ- 
 ment in superintending their several journals. The moments 
 unoccupied by business they devoted to study, or to taking 
 exercise in the adjoining garden. Mr. Duffy, under the 
 impression that the imprisonment would last a year, an- 
 nounced his purpose of reading through Carte's "Life of 
 Ormond," in three folio volumes. Mr. Ray still exercised 
 his supervision of the affairs of the Association. John 
 O'Connell wrote his amusing and instructive Repeal Dic- 
 tionary, which appeared in the weekly press, and which 
 I believe was subsequently published in a collected form. 
 
250 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 Steele read Kane's " Industrial Resources of Ireland," and 
 defaced the fair pages of the work with innumerable marks 
 of admiration. Barrett was ready for fun, frisk, joyous 
 frolic of any sort, and more than once kept the incarcerated 
 coterie in roars of laughter by attitudinising and grimacing 
 in a style that would have done honour to Liston. Two of 
 the visitors played the short-armed orator ; the comic force 
 of the pathetic passages being much enhanced by a cambric 
 handkerchief, which the gentleman who performed the action 
 held to the weeping eyes of the gentleman who performed 
 the eloquence. ]N"early all the prisoners contributed to the 
 pages of a jeu d^ esprit called the Prison Gazette, in which 
 they quizzed each other and their friends with merry malice. 
 In short, there never were prisoners who bore so lightly and 
 joyously the hours of imprisonment, or whose deprivation of 
 freedom was more soothed by the kind and sympathetic 
 offices of friends. 
 
 They had access to two gardens. In one of these was a 
 mound with a summer-house on the top. The mound they 
 amused themselves by calling Tara Hill ; the summer-house 
 was termed Conciliation Hall. In the other garden they 
 erected a large marquee, which they styled Mullaghmast, 
 and in this marquee were received the numerous 
 deputations who bore addresses to the " convicts " from the 
 different quarters of the kingdom. I learned from a gentle- 
 man, who was present on one of these occasions, that 
 O'Connell replied to the bearers of an address in the 
 following words : " Tell your friends that my heart is joyful, 
 my spirits are buoyant, my health is excellent, my hopes are 
 high. My imprisonment is not irksome to me, for I feel and 
 know that it will, under Providence, be the means of making 
 our country a nation again. I am glad I am in prison. 
 There wanted but this to my career. I have laboured for 
 Ireland — refused office, honour, and emolument for Ireland — 
 I have prayed and hoped and watched for Ireland — there 
 was yet one thing wanted — that I should be in jail for 
 Ireland. This has now been added to the rest, thanks to 
 our enemies ; and I cordially rejoice at it." 
 
 O'Connell, in the course of that day, was waited on by a 
 party of American tourists. When they arrived, he was 
 standing on the top of " Tara Hill." They doffed their hats 
 and remained at the foot of the mound until desired to walk 
 up. "You are probably more visited here," said one of 
 them, "than if you were at large." "Yes," replied the 
 
Conduct of the Peojgle. 251 
 
 Liberator, "and here I cannot use the excuse of 'not at 
 home.'" 
 
 The progress of Repeal during his imprisonment en- 
 chanted him. ''The people," said he, "are behaving nobly. 
 I was at first a little afraid, despite all my teaching, that at 
 such a trying crisis they would have done either too much 
 or too little — either have been stung into an outbreak, or 
 •else awed into apathy, j^either has happened. Blessed be 
 Ood i the people are acting nobly. What it is to have such 
 a people to lead ! " 
 
 He rejoiced especially over the excellent training of the 
 Eepeal Association ; praised the young talent called forth by 
 the movement, bestowing particular eulogy on MacNevin 
 and Barry. 
 
 " In the days of the Catholic Association," said he, " I 
 used to have more trouble than I can express in keeping 
 down mutiny. I always arrived in town about the 25th of 
 October, and on my arrival I invariably found some jealousies, 
 some squabbles — some fellow trying to be leader, which gave 
 me infinite annoyance. But now all goes right — no man is 
 jealous of any other man ; each does his best for the general 
 cause." 
 
 Speaking of his own pacific policy, he remarked that 
 it was a curious coincidence that the Conal of Ossian should 
 say, " My sword hangs at my side — the blade longs to shine 
 in my hand — but I love the peace of green Erin of the 
 streams." 
 
 The convicted patriots received numerous presents of 
 fresh fruit and flowers. A patriotic confectioner presented 
 them with two monster cakes. Mr. Scriber, of Westmore- 
 land Street, sent them seven musical-boxes to cheer their 
 imprisonment; and it is said that, immediately on the 
 arrival of the harmonious cargo, the prisoners evinced their 
 satisfaction with more musical zeal than taste — by setting 
 the seven boxes all playing together. 
 
 Mr. Steele one day placed a stone, which he dignified 
 with the name of Liach Fail, or the Stone of Destiny, on 
 the side of the mimic Tara Hill in the garden, calling on 
 Dufiy to dofif his hat in honour of the august ceremony. 
 
 With these and similar helps and devices did the 
 prisoners try to cheat the hours of that bondage which, 
 under every circumstance of mitigation, must ever be op- 
 pressive to men of ardent minds and active habits. One 
 day John O'Connell made some remark on the high, gloomy 
 
252 Eighty-five Years of Irish History, 
 
 prison buildings, which exduded the view of the country 
 from the dining-room. " I am better pleased," said his 
 father, "that the view is excluded. To see the hills, and 
 fields, and sea-coast, and to feel that you were debarred from 
 the freedom of walking among them, were a worse affliction 
 than to be deprived altogether of the sight. It would 
 tantalise too much." 
 
 But these little fits of gloom were merely passing clouds. 
 There was great and enduring consolation in the steady 
 progress the Repeal cause seemed to be daily making. The 
 meetings of the Association at this time wore an eminently 
 business-like and practical character. There was no wild, 
 driftless rhapsodising. Men spoke to the purpose, and not 
 at immeasurable length. Their eloquence — the more effective 
 because compressed within reasonable limits — was alternated 
 with the delivery of the vast remittances which showed how 
 stedfastly the nation backed the demand for independence. 
 The money was an index that could not be mistaken of the 
 people's resolve. When a poor and oppressed people give 
 their money, they are ready to give everything else — life 
 itself, if needed — to achieve their object. 
 
 The verdict, sentence, and imprisonment failed to produce 
 the results which had been confidently predicted by the anti- 
 Irish gang who had hounded on Sir Robert Peel to prosecute. 
 It was prophesied : 
 
 Firstly, that a salutary terror would be struck into the 
 souls of the Repealers. "When their leader was made 
 amenable for his crimes to the outraged law, his followers 
 would shrink from exposing, themselves to the like penalty. 
 
 But the Repealers were not so easily terrified. They 
 mustered at Conciliation Hall with greater energy and in 
 larger numbers than ever. 
 
 Secondly, it was thought that if the people could not be 
 immediately scared, their indignation at the legal outrage on 
 their Liberator might at least goad them into a useful emeute ; 
 for which contingency a potent armament had been prepared. 
 R&peal might be drowned in a river of blood. 
 
 But again — the provoking people knew better than to 
 treat their kind friends to an emeute. They were not quite 
 so reckless or impulsive as those sagacious speculators had 
 deemed possible. Instead of taking up pikes, they thronged , 
 Conciliation Hall to supply themselves with Repeal cards. 
 
 Thirdly, there were among the Tory editors and poli- 
 ticians good, benevolent souls, who were sorry to see the 
 
Vitality of Repeal. 253 
 
 knowing managers at the Corn Exchange gull their poor 
 dupes out of the Repeal rent. They had said : " Shut up 
 O'Connell, and the rent will immediately dwindle to nothing. 
 The Irish ' treason ' will lose its supplies." 
 
 But this benevolent hope was also doomed to be dis- 
 appointed. For the fourteen weeks preceding the imprison- 
 ment the Repeal rent had amounted to £6,679 l'2s. Qd. For 
 the fourteen weeks that O'Connell was in jail the JS'ational 
 Treasury swelled up to .£25,712 17s. M. 
 
 Fourthly, it was confidently promised that the imprison- 
 ment would for ever deprive O'Connell of the prestige of 
 legal invulnerability. The people would fly from the 
 impostor, now unmasked by the searching operation of the 
 law. 
 
 But the people were so wickedly obtuse that they did not 
 understand how O'ConnelFs reputation as a lawyer could 
 suffer from a notoriously virulent and one-sided charge, and 
 a verdict so battered and shattered and damaged as to lose 
 all moral weight in the estimation of rational and unpreju- 
 diced men. They did not require any experiments in the 
 Court of Queen's Bench to convince them that twelve hot 
 Tories could easily be got to seize with alacrity on an oppor- 
 tunity of finding O'Connell guilty. Tiie Agitator's legal 
 prestige accordingly remained unimpaired. 
 
 Fifthly, as the glorious result of all the above sagacious 
 speculations. Repeal would be extinct. 
 
 But Repeal turned out to possess an unexpected vitality. 
 To the dismay and astonishment of the prophets, instead of 
 becoming extinct, it towered aloft in new pride and strength; 
 it expanded and fortified its influences ; it assumed, to all 
 outward appearance, an attitude of majesty and power far 
 greater than it had previously exhibited ; it daily received 
 fresh adhesions from important recruits ; it took such a grasp 
 of the national heart that a prudent statesman might have 
 reasonably asked himself whether the refusal of a demand so 
 just, so righteous, so essential to Irish prosperity, and on 
 which the desire of the people was unalterably fixed, could 
 be persevered in without deeply imperilling the integrity of 
 the British Empire 1 
 
 So far, at least as concerned the immediate results of the 
 imprisonment, new force was thereby imparted to the move- 
 ment. The energy of former friends was increased. Our 
 ranks were enlarged by new and valuable auxiliaries. 
 
 Baffled and discomfited by results so different from what 
 
254 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 they had expected, the anti-Irish party began to think that 
 it had been wiser to abstain from meddling with the 
 Nationalists; and that, as Dr. Gray had tersely remarkedy 
 O'Connell could far better afford to remain in prison than 
 Peel could afford to keep him there. 
 
 The prisoners had appealed from the decision of the 
 Court of Queen's Bench to the House of Lords. Such an 
 appeal seemed unpromising enough ; the House of Lords was 
 a foreign assembly ; but the prisoners felt it a duty, not less 
 to their country than to themselves, to try every chance, 
 however improbable, of procuring a reversal of the unjust 
 judgment under which they suffered. The great majority of 
 the English judges was against them. Providentially the 
 ultimate decision lay with five laAV-lords — Lyndhurst, 
 Brougham, Cottenham, Denman, and Campbell — of whom 
 the last-named three respected the Constitutional rights of 
 the Queen's subjects; detested jury-packing and partisan 
 charges ; did not comprehend how a sound and legal judg- 
 ment could be based on an unsound and illegal indictment ; 
 and accordingly, both on the merits of the case and on legal 
 grounds, reversed the judgment of the Irish Court of Queen's 
 Bench. The words of Lord Denman are too important to be 
 omitted from a record, however brief, of the transaction ; 
 they have become historical : " If," said his lordship, " such 
 practices as have taken place in the present instance in 
 Ireland should continue, the trial by jury would become a 
 mockery^ a delusion, and a snare." 
 
 Three law-lords against two decided the matter in favour 
 of the prisoners. They had been thrust into jail with vin- 
 dictive haste. The ultimate Court of Appeal now decided 
 that they should not have been in jail for an instant. The 
 TimeSy in its dismay, made a desperate effort to extract an 
 argument against Repeal from the decision of the Lords. 
 Thus spoke the leading journal : '• It (the decision) will teach 
 the most anti-Saxon of the Irish people — the most vehement 
 instigators to Repeal — the most violent denouncers of 
 England, that the only tribunal where the strict and literal 
 construction of the law is brought to aid the impugners and 
 violators of law, is the highest court of that nation from 
 which Ireland prays to be divorced — that the only place 
 where those who have assailed England and her peerage can 
 have justice meted, is the House of Peers in England." 
 
 The decision of the three honest law-lords taught the 
 Irish no such thing. That there were three Constitutional 
 
Liberation of the Prisoners. 255- 
 
 law-lords out of five was sheer accident. But there was no 
 accident in the Saxon spirit that initiated the prosecution ; 
 no accident in the anti-Irish tendencies of the Court of Queen's- 
 Bench; no accident in the Saxon hate of Ireland which denied 
 the accused throughout the trial the ordinary privileges dic- 
 tated by common justice ; no accident in the fiery speed with 
 which the accused were hurried from the courts to the jail ; 
 DO accident in the decision of a large majority of the 
 English judges, who confirmed the judgment delivered by 
 their Irish brethren in a mode whereof the falsehood and the 
 folly contended for predominance ; no accident in the in- 
 decency with which the laji^-lords were struggling to negative 
 the reversal of judgment pronounced by the Jaw-lords, if 
 they had not been restrained for very shame's sake by Lord 
 Wharncliffe. 
 
 Ko. These things were not accidental; and in them, each 
 and all, did the Irish people recognise the impression of 
 English influence. In them, and not in the lucky accident 
 of a favourable majority (and it was the smallest possible 
 majority) among the English law-lords, do the Irish people 
 find the motives rationally applicable to their dealings with 
 the Legislative Union Statute. 
 
 On the evening of the 6th of September, O'Connell 
 and his fellow-prisoners were liberated. About ten days 
 previously, his intimate friend, Mr. Patrick Fitzpatrick, of 
 Eccles Street, had expressed to him his expectation that the 
 law-lords would confirm the sentence, but that the prisoners 
 would be liberated by the exercise of the Royal prerogative. 
 " You must, in that event," said Mr. Fitzpatrick, " be 
 prepared with instant securities. How large is the amount 
 of bail required 1 " 
 
 O'Connell had forgotten the amount, and descended to 
 the Governor's office to inspect the book. Mr. Fitzpatrick 
 speedily followed, and found O'Connell laughing heartily at 
 the personal description annexed to his name in the book : 
 " Daniel O'Connell — complexion good." The amount of 
 bail was .£5,000 personally, and two securities at <£2,500 
 each, "But it is idle, quite idle to talk of it," said 
 O'Connell; "there is not the least probability — not the 
 smallest shadow of a chance of our being set free. No, my 
 good friend, we shall suffer our full term." * 
 
 In this conviction O'Connell continued until the evening 
 of the 6th. Two messengers from the Corn Exchange rushed 
 
 * Communicated to me by Mr. Fitzpatrick. 
 
256 Eighty -five Years of Irish History, 
 
 simultaneously into the prison with the news, vociferating in 
 such noisy rivalship that their tidings were for a long time 
 unintelligible. At length one of them, per force of better 
 wind, shouted his comrade out of breath, and having reached 
 the corridor leading to O'Connell's apartments, he continued 
 to bellow, " I'm first ! I'm first ! I'm first ! " 
 
 " What is it all about % " demanded Mr. Barrett, who 
 was calmly perambulating the corridor. 
 
 " Only that you're free," cried Edmond O'Hagarty (the 
 messenger). " I'm first ! I'm first ! Hurrah ! Where's the 
 Liberator \ I'm first ! " 
 
 They rushed into a drawing-room where O'Connell was 
 seated between two ladies, O'Hagarty in his noisy delight 
 still shouting, " I'm first ! I'm first ! You're free. Liberator ! 
 Thanks be to God for that same ! The judgment's re- 
 versed." 
 
 " Bah ! not true ; it can't be trae," replied O'Connell 
 C00II3'. 
 
 " But it is true. Liberator." And the messenger showed 
 him the placard which had been printed in London 
 announcing the fact. He examined it attentively, and said 
 to Fitzpatrick : " After all, this may be true," when doubt 
 was dispelled by the sudden appearance of the attorneys for 
 the defence. " On the merits," were the first words of 
 Mr. Ford, who threw his arms round O'Connell's neck and 
 kissed him. O'Connell wore his green velvet Mullaghmast 
 cap, and Ford wore a broad-brimmed beaver hat, oblivious in 
 his ecstacy of the presence of the ladies. " On the merits," 
 he triumphantly repeated; "no technicalities at all — nothing 
 but the merits." 
 
 The news had now spread through the prison, and the 
 other prisoners crowded to the drawing-room to learn their 
 fate. There was a quiet sort of triumph, no boisterous joy 
 amongst the traversers. In the course of the evening 
 O'Connell said to my informant in a tone of deep solemnity : 
 *' Fitzpatrick, the hand of man is not in this. It is the 
 response given by Providence to the prayers of the faithful, 
 stedfast, pious people of Ireland." 
 
 It was near twilight when O'Connell left the prison to 
 return to his house in Merrion Square. As he walked along 
 the streets, the people at first gazed on him in bewildered 
 astonishment. They could scarcely believe the evidence of 
 their eyes. Was O'Connell indeed free? They crowded 
 round him to ascertain the fact ; the crowds augmented ; and 
 
Popular Rejoicing. 257 
 
 by the time he arrived at the western end of Merrion Square, 
 his friends were obliged to form a cordon around him to avert 
 the inconvenient pressure of the delighted multitude. When 
 he placed his foot on his own hall-door step, to re-enter the 
 home from which he had for three months been iniquitously 
 exiled, the popular ecstasy became uncontrollable. Cheer 
 after cheer rose and swelled upon the air. The people gave 
 vent to their wild delight in vociferous acclamations ; every 
 heart beat high with pride and triumph at the liberation of 
 their venerated leader — not by ministerial grace or royal 
 favour, but by the strict and stern vindication of that law 
 which had been so nefariously outraged in the trial and 
 conviction. 
 
 O'Connell appeared on the balcony and addressed the 
 people briefly. He exhorted them to bear their victory with 
 moderation. Let them, he said, demonstrate their fitness to 
 rule themselves by the spirit of conciliation and friendliness 
 with which they should enjoy their triumph. 
 
 On the next day (Saturday, the 7th of September) the 
 liberated patriots passed in procession through the leading 
 streets of the metropolis. It was a scene of indescribable 
 excitement. When opposite the door of the old Parliament 
 House in College Green, the cavalcade halted — O'Connell 
 rose in his triumphal car, uncovered his head, and 'pointed 
 with significant emphasis to the edifice. Then arose a 
 mighty shout from the surrounding thousands — again and 
 again did O'Connell, looking proudly around him, repeat his 
 significant gesture ; again and again did the myriads who 
 thronged the broad street upraise their glad voices in 
 deafening cheers. It was like the roar of the ocean, that 
 proud shout of a nation's triumph and a nation's hope. 
 
 On Monday, the 9th of September, the Association met ; 
 the Lord Mayor of Dublin occupied the chair. Thousands 
 were obliged to return from the door of Conciliation Hall 
 from the incapacity of that building to contain them. Floor, 
 benches, galleries, all were full. The enthusiasm of 
 O'Connell's reception was beyond the power of imagination 
 to exaggerate. 
 
 His speech embraced many topics. He exulted in the 
 vindication of the Constitution and of trial by jury. He 
 showed, in reply to the cavils of the enemy, that the 
 favourable decision of the three law-lords was a direct, 
 decision on the merits, inasmuch as the sixth and seventh 
 counts of the monster indictment, which expressly charged 
 
 s 
 
258 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 the traversers with conspiracy to hold meetings to intimidate 
 — counts which contained the very essence of the prosecution 
 — counts on which the conviction and sentence were 
 ostentatiously justified; these sixth and seventh counts 
 were pronounced to be bad and invalid by the English 
 judges and the English House of Lords ; although the 
 English judges, in condemning the counts, yet sanctioned 
 the sentence that had been based on them, by the pre- 
 posterous presumption that it was not on those counts, but 
 on some others, that the Irish Bench had rested their judg- 
 ment ; a presumption notoriously contradicted by the fact, 
 and by the charges of the Irish judges themselves. 
 
 O'Connell next complimented the Whigs for their 
 felicitous judicial appointments. He complimented Shell, 
 who had been harshly censured for seeming to solicit, as a 
 matter of favour to the traversers, some concession from the 
 Government : " I was vexed and angry with Shell at the 
 time, that he should have uttered any words to which the 
 meaning could be possibly attached of soliciting a favour on 
 my part from Sir Robert Peel. He ought to have known 
 that I would rather have rotted in jail than condescend to 
 accept a favour from Peel. I said from the commencement — 
 I announced it to the world — that, come what might, there 
 should be no compromise or shrinking. There has been 
 none; and there is not a man of us who would not have 
 died in jail rather than sully our hands by receiving the 
 slightest concession from our enemies. Shell was wrong in 
 that instance ; but he is one of those who can aflford to be 
 wrong once, for his country owes him a deep debt of 
 gratitude. Oh ! I cannot forget his past career — his glorious 
 career ! I cannot forget how he ornamented and made 
 interesting our struggle for Emancipation. Wlien I was 
 going on with my dull, prosy speech, wearying the public 
 ear with the monotony of my tones and accents, and with 
 the continued repetition of the same facts. Shell used to 
 burst forth in the dazzling effulgence of intellectual glory, 
 irradiating our cause with the coruscations of his genius and 
 the illumination of his powerful mind." 
 
 O'Connell appealed with great force to his Protestant 
 countrymen ; exhibiting the delusive nature of the fears of 
 those who were still timid, by referring to his past pacific 
 policy: " What are you afraid of 1 Did we threaten ] Did 
 we menace 1 Did we overawe 1 We were strong enough to 
 commit violence ; nothing save the spirit of conciliation and 
 
Pacific Doctrine of O^Connell. 259 
 
 love for each other could have brought us together in such 
 multitudinous masses without violence. In the midst of a 
 people who love me and trust me — with more power in my 
 hands than any monarch in Europe enjoys " (here the speaker 
 was interrupted with vehement cheering and waving of 
 handkerchiefs), "so situated, how have I demeaned myself? 
 But first — how did I acquire that power % I acquired it and 
 retained it because of the conviction that every man, woman, 
 and child feels that I would not abuse it. I have acquired 
 it and retained it because I was congenial in opinion with 
 the millions of my countrymen, and because they were 
 perfectly persuaded that in the exercise of that power with 
 which by their confidence they invested me, I would 
 sedulously guard against the commission of any crime 
 whatsoever. I have kept my compact, but I never could 
 have done this without the assistance and co-operation of the 
 Catholic clergy. They saw the jealous scrutiny with which 
 our minutest movements were watched by our Protestant 
 brethren ; they entered unreservedly into my views — and 
 here is all the secret of my success. They knew me — they 
 appreciated me. They knew that I was the first apostle and 
 founder of that sect of politicians whose cardinal doctrine 
 is this — that the greatest and most desirable of political 
 changes may be achieved by moral means alone, and that no 
 human revolution is worth the effusion of one single drop of 
 human blood. Human blood is no cement for the temple of 
 human liberty." 
 
 Such were the leading topics of O'Connell's address on 
 that important day. His manner and appearance corresponded 
 well with the triumphant style of his language. jN'ever were 
 his spirits more elate, his step more elastic, his tone more 
 exulting. There was a fire in his eye, an eager vivacity in 
 his voice, and a vigour of intellect in his address, that 
 beseemed a nation's chief disenthralled from unjust bondage, 
 and impatient to devote his unfettered energies to the renewed 
 battle for legislative freedom. 
 
 It needs not be told that the enthusiastic joy which 
 animated Dublin was diffused through the whole kingdom. 
 The glad news of the liberation was immediately telegraphed 
 all over the land by signal fires. Cresset answered cresset j 
 mountain and valley started into light. You gazed into the 
 dark distance, and blaze after blaze sprang up. The red 
 flame glowed in the sheltered hollow of the rock, and streamed 
 in the light breeze on the hill-top. The heart and soul of 
 
 s 2 
 
260 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 the land rejoiced ; the exulting shouts of the people were 
 borne far on the night wind ; glen, river, plain, and mountain 
 were vocal with their triumph. Stirring sights — ^joyous 
 sounds. I was in the country at the time, 150 Irish miles 
 from Dublin. From the roof of my house on the banks of 
 the Bandon river I looked on the national illumination. I 
 omitted to reckon the number of fires, but I think it probable 
 that from that one point not less than from sixty to seventy 
 might have been counted. 
 
 Heretofore, our prospects looked well. O'Connell probably 
 did not then know that his health had been fatally under- 
 mined by his imprisonment, and there were not yet any 
 external indications that his strength was impaired. The 
 reversal of the judgment established his "legal infallibility," 
 as the enemy ironically styled his extensive and accurate 
 knowledf'e of the law. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 CAREER OF A ROMANTIC AGITATOR. 
 
 Bold and true, 
 In bonnet blue, 
 Who fear or falsehood never knew. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Before tracing any farther the progress of O'Connell's agita- 
 tion, I shall give a short account of the career of O'Connell's 
 Head Pacificator, Mr. Steele. 
 
 " Honest Tom Steele," as he was usually called, was born 
 at Derryraore, in the County Clare, in 1788. His family 
 came from Somersetshire in the reign of Charles II. Their 
 name was then Champion, which they changed into the 
 name of Steele for reasons now unknown. AVilliain Cham- 
 pion, the lineal ancestor of the Head Pacificator, was, I 
 believe, an officer in Monmouth's regiment. He established 
 himself near Nenagh, in the County Tipperary. His first 
 experiment as a settler was inauspicious, inasmuch as the 
 Tipperary folk three times burned his house over his head, 
 the proprietor on each occasion narrowly escaping with life. 
 Unwilling to incur the peril of a fourth combustion, he 
 migrated to the more pacific county of Clare, where his 
 posterity continued to reside. 
 
 Steele received a university education at Cambridge, 
 
Steele^ s Ossianic Spirit. 261 
 
 where he obtained distinction for his scientific acquirements. 
 The death of an uncle placed him in possession of his family- 
 property in Clare, just at the time when the Spanish nation 
 was in insurrection against the tyrannical King Ferdinand 
 VII. Steele, whose love of the cause of universal liberty 
 has ever been associated with that total forgetfulness of self 
 which the world calls imprudence, resolved to assist the 
 Spanish insurgents with his hand and fortune. He was said 
 to have fitted out and filled with arms, at his own expense, a 
 vessel w^hicli he brought to Cadiz ; but he told me that he 
 had not committed that piece of extravagance. He accepted 
 a commission from the Cortes, and distinguished himself by 
 his valour in several engagements against the French, who 
 had invaded the country as the allies of a despotic monarch 
 in order to perpetuate the bondage of the Spanish people.* 
 
 When the struggle against despotism failed, Steele quitted 
 Spain and returned to Ireland. He constantly attended the 
 meetings of the Catholic Association, and watched with 
 anxious scrutiny the words and actions of O'ConnelJ. So 
 soon as his judgment convinced him that O'Connell was a 
 trustworthy leader, he immediately proclaimed his adhesion 
 to the cause, and worked with zeal to remove those dis- 
 abilities from the Catholics which he, as a Protestant, felt 
 were disgraceful only to the party by whom they were 
 inflicted. 
 
 Notwithstanding the military bent of Steele's ideas, and 
 the constitutional bravery of the man, he highly appreciated 
 the value of O'Connell's moral force system of political war- 
 fare. Seeing clearly that the wild and illegal combinations 
 of Whitefeet, Ribbonmen, Terry-Alts, and other misguided 
 parties assuming equally fantastic and absurd denominations, 
 could only tend to embarrass the friends and injure the 
 cause of rational liberty, he applied himself to the task of 
 quelling disturbances in his native county, and of getting 
 up arms from the misguided peasantry. There was in this 
 occupation something peculiarly congenial to the wild and 
 Ossianic spirit of Steele. He loved at night to traverse the 
 mountain fastnesses of Cratloe ; to watch the dark low clouds 
 
 * All this I stated, in concurrence with the common belief, in the 
 first edition of this work. Steele said my account was inaccurate ; 
 but I think his correction only applied to the statement of his fitting 
 out the vessel. But as I am not quite sure, I wish to guard the 
 reader against accepting this part of the narrative as of undoubted 
 verity. 
 
262 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 sailing slowly through the heavens as he wandered along the 
 lonely ravine by the side of the swollen brook, in whose 
 midnight wave stars shimmered as they broke through the 
 mists. Those scenes had for Steele a charm of magical 
 potency, especially when associated with the function of 
 Head Pacificator which he discharged in the midst of them. 
 His soul thrilled with an indefinable feeling, of which fancy, 
 poetry, and patriotism were constituent parts, as he paused 
 to hold communings with Nature in her sombre moods— to 
 listen to the voice of the night wind as it swept through the 
 gloomy woods, and to catch the inspiration of the hills in 
 his solemn, thoughtful, and imaginative, yet energetic career. 
 He spent many a night in the cottages of the insurgent 
 peasantry, endeavouring to reclaim them from their driftless 
 and mischievous conspiracies. In some of these nocturnal 
 excursions O'Connell accompanied Steele. They got up a 
 large quantity of arms. Steele, by constant and familiar 
 association with his peasant countrymen, convinced himself 
 that their crimes were principally, if not wholly, the fruits 
 of oppression ; while he proudly recognised the traits of high 
 and virtuous feeling which often appeared in their conduct. 
 One instance of devoted heroism in five poor Terry-Alts he 
 has often recorded. 
 
 There was a Mr. Smith who resided at Fort Fergus, and 
 who, during the period when robberies of arms were frequent, 
 habitually boasted that his house was so well defended that 
 no insurgents w^ould dare to attack it. Accordingly, the 
 neighbouring gentry, having confidence in Smith's superior 
 valour, entrusted the greater part of their arms to his keeping. 
 It so chanced, however, that five Terry-Alts availed them- 
 selves one day of Mr. Smith's absence from home, entered 
 the house, and carried off all the arms, notwithstanding that 
 a party of constables had been left at Fort Fergus to guard 
 them. 
 
 There was a man prosecuted for the outrage on the- 
 evidence of the constables, whose sworn testimony was so 
 contradictory that in any ordinary case the acquittal of the- 
 accused would have been certain. It was, however, tried by 
 a special commission ; and at special commissions jurors 
 have too frequently deemed it their duty to hang as many 
 men as possible. The prisoner was accordingly found 
 guilty. 
 
 On receiving the news of the verdict, the five Terry-Alts 
 who had really taken the arms came to Steele, and said that 
 
Gliivalrous Conduct of Terry- Alts. 263 
 
 if the innocent man who had been falsely convicted could be 
 thereby saved, the}^ would surrender the arms. They added 
 that if his life could be obtained on no other terms than 
 those of dying in his place, they would all go to Ennis and 
 give themselves up to the jailer. But there was no occasion 
 for this sacrifice, as the condemned man was saved on a strong 
 application in his favour to the Government. 
 
 In 1828 the Catholics resolved on opposing every 
 member of the Peel- Wellington Administration, whether 
 personally hostile or friendly to their claims. That Adminis- 
 tration pretended to make the Catholic question an open 
 one ; at the same time contriving that all substantial power 
 should be placed in the hands of those who opposed it. To 
 end this delusion it was determined by the Catholics to start 
 a candidate for Clare in opposition to Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, 
 who had been nominated President of the Board of Trade by 
 the Prime Minister. O'Connell conceived the idea of standing 
 for the county. An unemancipated Catholic, chosen by the 
 electors as their representative, yet disqualified by law from 
 taking his seat, would present a striking impersonation of 
 the Catholic grievances. O'Gorman Mahon proposed, and 
 Thomas Steele seconded, the nomination of O'Connell. The 
 influence of this dexterous movement of the Agitator in 
 accelerating Emancipation is now a matter of history. 
 O'Connell presented himself at the table of the House of 
 Commons to take his seat, but could not overleap the barrier 
 of the Protestant oaths. Emancipation was hastily passed in 
 the spring of 1829, and seldom had the shabbiness of 
 personal enmity been more conspicuous than in the conduct 
 of Sir Eobert Peel, who, in admitting the Catholics to Parlia- 
 ment, yet excluded O'Connell as having been unduly 
 elected. Peel was unable to forgive O'Connell for having 
 compelled him to emancipate. The exclusion was in- 
 operative for any political object ; it was solely the result of 
 personal spleen, for O'Connell — as every one necessarily antici- 
 pated — was immediately re-elected by his former constituents. 
 
 In 1839 Steele addressed a letter to the King of the 
 Belgians, requesting permission to bear arms as a volunteer in 
 His Majesty's service. An enthusiast in all his undertakings, 
 Steele incurred the ridicule of persons who were incapable of 
 appreciating, or even of comprehending, the intense fidelity to 
 Ireland by which he was actuated. His very faults were often 
 the exaggeration of high and noble qualities. If he shared the 
 extravagance of Don Quixote, he also partook of the Don's 
 
264 Eighty-Jive Years of Irish Histori/. 
 
 contempt for baseness, perfidy, and cowardice. In liis 
 language there was certainly a strong and marked peculiarity; 
 an occasional application of strong phrases to comparatively 
 insignificant objects; a Mending of the ideal and poetic in 
 undue proportions with the real and practical ; a disposition 
 to seek illustrations of his views from sources too recondite 
 for ordinary comprehension. But what of all that? The 
 man loved Ireland, and would have died for her with 
 infinitely more pleasure than even the selfish place-hunter 
 who sneered at his verbal eccentricities could derive from 
 personal aggrandisement. The people of Ireland gave Steele 
 full credit for his pure and single-hearted patriotism, and it 
 would have been shame to them if they had not duly 
 appreciated the qualities of unsullied honour and enthusiastic 
 love of freedom which pre-eminently distinguished him. 
 
 If we smile at the poetic temperament of the orator 
 who could harangue the peasantry of Connaught about the 
 Scandinavian Edda and deduce from Icelandic mythology, 
 for the edification of the Connemara rustics, comparisons 
 between O'Connell's policy and the antagonistic influences of 
 the Hrympthur and the Muspelthur; if these eccentricities 
 evoke a passing smile, it is on the other hand impossible to 
 deny that Steele had a vivid perception of all that was grand 
 and beautiful in external nature, and that he could portray 
 his impressions with force, and grace, and delicacy. Take, 
 for example, the following descriptive passages from a 
 pamphlet published by Steele in 1828 : * 
 
 " I passed late (it might have been about an hour after 
 midnight) along the Shannon side ; it was dark, and dreary, 
 and stormy, in squally gusts, and frequent showers of heavy 
 rain; the moon sometimes, but very rarely, and without 
 showing her form, lighted the clouds with a pallid watery 
 light, but so pale, and faint, and transitory, as in general to 
 be perceptible for little more than a few moments between 
 its apparition and evanishment. The night wind sometimes 
 sighed softly and mournfully on high, around the topmasts 
 and lifts of the topsail yards of a ship near the wharf ; and 
 sometimes the * winde that whistleth and cryeth like doleful 
 ghosts' did whistle and cry over the distant strand; and 
 sometimes at irregular and capricious intervals, when the 
 strong squalls and gusts rushed from the mountains, it 
 moaned and howled through the round tops and blocks and 
 
 * " Practical Suggestions on the Navigation of the River Shannon, 
 etc." By Thomas Steele, Esq. Loudon, 1828. 
 
Steele's Descriptive Power. 265 
 
 condensed cordage of the shrouds. The solitude was dismal, 
 for no one but myself was abroad by the river side. The 
 Shannon had been swollen to a torrent by the incessant 
 rains of the season, and the white foam on part of it faintly 
 appeared through the darkness. The wild and dreary shrieks 
 of some sea-gulls, or other water birds which I could not see, 
 were the only sounds of animated nature that smote my ear 
 in that midnight desolation. The darkness deepened almost 
 to blackness ; the rain came on and fell with violence, and 
 plashed and pattered upon the pavement near the wharf 
 where I was standing ; and the sound of the rain, and the 
 howling wind, and the roaring of the wide and rapid flood 
 over its rocky bed, and the dreary shrieks of the sea-birds 
 heard through the darkness, were sounds, at that hour, of 
 solemn, deep, and mystic wildness. The whole scene and 
 the hour were in accordance with the spirit of the time — 
 mysterious, ghastly, wild. When I got home I wrote a 
 description of it, and I said to myself while I was writing 
 it, ' 'Tis a night to remember Limerick in its history.' " — 
 (Pages 84, 85.) 
 
 Steele was a sort of political Ossian. The drifting shower, 
 the mountain-mist, the sunbeam sparkling in the brook, the 
 howling tempest, were all duly noted to illustrate exhorta- 
 tions to popular energy and perseverance. His public letters 
 have been sometimes dated thus: "Country of Fingal;" or, 
 "Eagle Crags, OConnell Mountains, Shores of the Atlantic." 
 The next specimen of his descriptive powers is of a less 
 gloomy character than the former : 
 
 "There is a spot upon a mountain promontory in Fingal, 
 where, in my early boyhood, external nature first burst upon 
 my vision in beauty and sublimity — not separated, but in 
 combination. Upon the eastern side of the solitary mountain 
 where it shelves abruptly into the sea, and so near its summit 
 that there was a glorious expanse of horizon, was a little 
 fountain bursting among the rocks, and wild flowers, and 
 sunbeams. A bee hummed over the flowers close to the 
 fountain and its little rill; some sea-gulls wheeled and floated 
 in the air, high above the sea that broke upon the shore; 
 and there was a bark with white sails, holding on her course 
 on the swelling tide. 
 
 "Whenever I call this scene to remembrance, 'pure, 
 bright, Elysian,' it floats in my imagination like a vision of 
 enchantment. This is the pure Elysian enchantment of 
 external nature, without any intermixture of feelings inspired 
 
266 Eiglity-JivG Years of Irish History. 
 
 by the history of times of old. 'Canst thou loosen the- 
 bonds of Orion, or canst thou bind the sweet influences of 
 the Pleiades ? ' No ; and there are other sweet influences^ 
 too, that while man retains his nature never can be bound : 
 
 There is given 
 Unto the things of earth that Time hath bent 
 
 A spirit's feeling 
 
 There is a power 
 And magic iu the ruined battlement ; 
 
 and when I stand in the ancient cathedral of Limerick and 
 listen to the choir and the organ; when I hear the chant of the 
 High Mass, the ringing of the mass-bell and view the incense 
 ascending from the altar in one of their convent-chapels; 
 when I wander through the gardens of the holy sister- 
 hood of St. Clare, and view their figures gliding among the 
 Gothic ruins, or when I stand within the sanctuary of their 
 convent-chapel ; when I sit upon the ancient bastion in St. 
 Munchin's Cemetery upon a gloomy evening, and listen to 
 the sullen sough of the wind among the dark elms over my 
 head and the rushing flood of the Shannon that sweeps at 
 its basement, and hear the roar of the bugles, the beat of the 
 drum, and the voice of the trumpet within the court of the 
 castle, I become inspired by a feeling solemn and mournful, 
 different from that of which I am susceptible in any other 
 place in the world ; but not very unlike that with which, 
 upon the shore of the solitary lake where he reposes, I heat 
 the wind whisper at night in the grass around the grave of 
 my father whom I have never seen." — (Pages 125, 126.) 
 
 How wild, how mystic, how impressive ! 
 
 Steele's personal devotion to O'Connell is proverbial. 
 Although a Protestant himself, he fitted up an apartment 
 in his house in the County Clare as a chapel to be used for 
 the celebration of mass whenever he should be visited by his 
 mighty leader, as he delighted to designate O'Connell. He 
 combined with this tribute to his political chief, his own 
 devotion to Celtic antiquity, for the altar of the domestic 
 chapel was a large, rude block of stone which for ages had 
 remained in the woods, gray, moss-grown, and solitary ; and 
 which was averred by a rather vague tradition to have been 
 used in pagan times for Druidical rites, and subsequently 
 for the celebration of the Catholic worship in the days of the 
 penal persecution. 
 
 Steele's declaration has often been quoted, that if 
 
Steele as O^ConnelVs Amhassador. 267 
 
 O'Connell desired liira to sit on a mine about to be sprung, 
 he would implicitly obey the mandate. This, which from 
 other lips would be hypocritical exaggeration, was with Tom 
 Steele the strict truth. His faith in O'Conu ell's integrity 
 and wisdom was intense. He deemed his incarceration as a 
 fellow-conspirator with O'Connell as the proudest honour of 
 his life. 
 
 The characteristics of Steele are easily summed up. Brave 
 as a lion, thoroughly honest and straightforward, intensely 
 devoted to his country, incapable of thought or deed un- 
 becoming a high-souled and chivalrous gentleman, he com- 
 bined these qualities with a certain exuberant poetry of idea 
 and of language, peculiarly liable to the criticism of the 
 prosaic multitude. His office of Head Pacificator was con- 
 ferred upon him by O'Connell inconsequence of the essential 
 services which from time to time he rendered in getting up 
 arms from the parties whom suffering and oppression had 
 driven into turbulence and disafiection. He repeatedly 
 attempted, and sometimes with success, to tranquillise dis- 
 turbed districts. Those who regarded the Irish movement 
 from a distance had little or no conception of the moral 
 authority Avielded by Steele when presenting himself as 
 O'Connell's ambassador to the turbulent inhabitants of dis- 
 tricts where local tyranny had irritated its victims and their 
 sympathisers into the commission of criminal acts. Steele, 
 aided by the Catholic clergy, enjoined peace at the behest of 
 Ireland's " mighty leader." The impressive singularity of 
 his language would appear, on such occasions, to add force to 
 the character assigned to him in the movement, by stamping 
 on him an individuality peculiarly germane to the earnest- 
 ness of purpose which was one of his most prominent 
 characteristics. 
 
 When the unfortunate division between the Young 
 Irelanders and the Old Irelanders (exasperated, I have not 
 the least doubt, by mutual personal jealousies), rose to a 
 height that permanently weakened the Kepeal Association, 
 Steele of course adhered to O'Connell ; but he could not 
 shut his eyes to the decline of the Liberator's influence 
 among the people. O'Connell refused to believe that he had 
 lost ground ; and John O'Connell ignored, as long as it was 
 possible, the diminution of his father's popularity, although 
 Steele pressed it earnestly upon his notice. 
 
 I find, in one of Sir Bernard Burke's entertaining public 
 cations, a picturesque description of the old castle called 
 
268 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 Craggan Tower in the County Clare, which is stated to have 
 been a favourite haunt of Mr. Steele, on whose property it 
 stood. " The situation of Craggan Tower," says Sir Bernard, 
 "is romantic and striking. It stands in the centre of a 
 fertile valley upon a bold, and in some parts almost perpen- 
 dicular rock, surrounded on three sides by the deep waters 
 of a small lake. On the west it is protected by an impass- 
 able morass, now planted with various aquatic shrubs and 
 trees, and on the land, or northern side, by a deep cutting in 
 the solid rock." 
 
 We are told that Steele occasionally sought the solitude 
 of Craggan. " Lonely on its bold isolated rock, it towered 
 over the valley, and cast its dark shadow on the peaceful 
 lake. The goats cropped the long grass on its deserted walls, 
 and the hoarse notes of the owl or the raven alone broke in 
 upon the stillness of its desolation. . . . This castle, and 
 much of the surrounding lands, were recently the property 
 of that misguided, but noble-hearted and accomplished Irish- 
 man, Mr. Tom Steele. In the wild and gloomy recesses of 
 this ancient fortalice he found a haunt congenial to his own 
 disappointed feelings and blighted hopes. Neglecting the 
 substantial comforts of his house at Cullane, with its well- 
 wooded park and its lovely lake, he preferred, during his short 
 visits to this part of the country, to lurk within and about 
 this old neglected tower ; he caused even some repairs to 
 be made, and the initials of his name are to be seen on a large 
 stone forming a portion of the northern coign of the building. 
 It is even said that he meditated an entire restoration, but 
 unfortunately his funds were wasted upon other objects."* 
 
 When O'Connell died, life lost all its savour for Tom 
 Steele. His heart and soul were wrapped up in the movement 
 of which his departed chief had been the leader. To him 
 there seemed nothing now worth living for. The hideous 
 visitation of famine laid waste the land he loved so well. 
 His private means had been long since exhausted ; and it is 
 painful to record that he tried to put an end to the existence 
 which was now become a burthen, by leaping into the 
 Thames from one of the bridges of London. He was taken 
 up alive, but greatly injured by his rash attempt. A benevo- 
 lent Englishman, the proprietor of Peele's Coffee-house in 
 
 • " Visitation of Seats and Arms," by Sir Bernard Burke ; vol. ii. 
 pp. 183, 184. Craggan is said by Sir Bernard to have been pur- 
 chased and rendered habitable by an Englishman, the Rev. John 
 H. Ashworth. 
 
Repeal Levee at the Rotunda. 269 
 
 Fleet Street, received the ill-fated agitator into his house, 
 "where he ministered with the utmost generosity and delicacy 
 to the wants of poor Steele during the short remainder of his 
 life. His remains were removed to Dublin, waked in Con- 
 ciliation Hall, and interred near O'Connell's last resting-place 
 in the cemetery of Glasnevin. 
 
 Steele's figure was tall and well-proportioned, and had 
 much of a martial appearance, to which his undress blue 
 military cap and frock-coat not a little contributed. His 
 face was bronzed by exposure to all weathers and several 
 climates, and the expression of his countenance was that of 
 resolute determination. 
 
 CHAPTEK XXVIIL 
 
 CONDITION OF THE REPEAL MOVEMENT AFTER THE LIBERATION 
 OF THE PRISONERS. 
 
 "To hinder insurrection by driving away the people, and to 
 govern peaceably by having no subjects, is an expedient that argues 
 no great profundity in politics. To soften the obdurate, to convince 
 the mistaken, to mollify the resentful, are worthy of a statesman ; 
 but it affords a legislator very little self-applanse to consider that 
 where there was formerly an insurrection, there is now a wilder- 
 ness." — Johnson's Journey to the Western [slands of Scotland. 
 
 The Kepeal agitation appeared to advance with increased 
 momentum for some time after the liberation of O'Connell 
 and his fellow prisoners But in October, ] 844, O'Connell 
 published a letter of great length, in which, without abso- 
 lutely committing himself to what was called Federalism, he 
 so far seemed to sanction it as to create some fear that he 
 might recede from the principles of 1782. Federalism may 
 briefly be described as a system of separate local Parliaments 
 for each island, for the regulation of their local or internal 
 interests only ; whilst the external interests of the Empire 
 were to be controlled by an Imperial Congress sitting in 
 I/ondon. O'Connell, by his Federalist letter, undoubtedly 
 disturbed the confidence his followers had previously reposed 
 in his leadership. But he speedily recanted his Federalist 
 lapse, alleging that his letter had been merely an experiment 
 to ascertain how far certain Northern Whigs were disposed 
 to advance in that direction. Some of them, he said, had 
 held out private promises to enrol themselves under a 
 
270 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 Federalist flag. He had unfurled the flag, and they came 
 not. So Federalism was discarded as inadmissible, and the 
 Irish Constitution of 1782 was once more held forth as the 
 great object of pursuit. There was no apparent diminution 
 of the popular fervour. On the 30th of May, 1845 — the 
 anniversary of the imprisonment — O'Connell held a magnifi- 
 cent levee at the Rotunda, at which Smith O'Brien presented 
 to him, and to his fellow " conspirators," an address in the 
 name of the Eepeal Association, breathing fidelity and 
 pledging perseverance. Tlie display was as impressive as it 
 could be made by gorgeous decorations, bannered processions, 
 and the blended order and enthusiasm of the multitudes who 
 thronged the streets and overflowed the building. English 
 visitors in Dublin, who were present at the levee, expressed 
 their admiration of the noble scene, and derived from it a 
 strong conviction that the political purpose which had given 
 it birth originated in a permanent, deeply-fixed principle, and 
 not in a transitory impulse. 
 
 The Agitation went on. I visited Scotland in 1842, and 
 again in 1843, and addressed meetings of the Irish who were 
 settled in that kingdom. They cheerfully gave me substantial 
 support for the Repeal Association. In June, 1845, I re- 
 turned to Scotland, where the Irish once more gathered 
 round me. AVe had meetings in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Airdrie, 
 Aberdeen, and Dundee. I find in the report of my speech, 
 delivered in the City Hall of Glasgow to a crowded audience, 
 the following passage, which I quote, because it gives a 
 faithful picture of the Repeal confederacy in the imposing 
 aspect it presented at that period : 
 
 "There is a portion of your address to which I have 
 listened with unalloyed delight. It is that in which you 
 congratulate me on the rapid advances of our cause. I re- 
 ciprocate your congratulations. Yes — let us rejoice together 
 over the triumphs we have achieved and are daily achieving. 
 Our connexions are extended ; old friends remain stanch and 
 firm ; new friends join us with enthusiasm ; the Irish at 
 home remain true to their colours ; the Irish abroad, in 
 Scotland and elsewhere — God bless them!" — (great cheering) 
 — " the expatriated Irish all over the world have combined 
 with the central body at Conciliation Hall in a firm and com- 
 pact confederation, which has really no parallel in ancient or 
 modern history. I repeat that our combination is unparalleled. 
 There is not, there never has been, anything at all like it. 
 To the eye of the philosopher and the Christian, the Irish 
 
Repeal Meetings in Scotland . 271 
 
 people at home, and dispersed all over the globe, present one 
 of the most sublime spectacles it is possible to conceive. 
 Trampled on, despoiled, slandered ; robbed of their political 
 privileges; assailed as they have been by the bigot, the tyrant, 
 and the hollow friend — yet steadily advancing in the peaceful, 
 crimeless path to freedom. Unscared by oppression, and 
 repelling by their native sagacity all efforts to delude them, 
 they at last have the Land of Promise full in view ; they wnll 
 emerge from the land of Egypt and the house of bondage into 
 the unfettered possession of self-government so justly due to 
 their virtue, their sagacity, their perseverance, their unpre- 
 cedented organisation. And if the world admires, as it must, 
 the moral phenomenon of our organised countrymen all over 
 the globe, what is the tribute due to him whose creative 
 genius gave birth to that magnificent confederacy — who 
 shaped and moulded the innumerable energies of scattered 
 millions into one vast engine of resistless potency '^ " 
 
 The reader will remember that at the time when those 
 words were spoken, the description they contain was 
 apparently borne out by the state of the Eepeal agitation. 
 In addition to local associations in every town where Irish 
 emigrants had settled in Scotland and England, we had 
 large contingents all over North America. We received 
 contributions from the colonies; sometimes from Irishmen 
 in India. The pecuniary remittances were generous and 
 constant. The letters which accompanied the money evinced 
 in general a perfect acquiescence in O'Connell's policy of 
 moral force and exclusively pacific action. The wrongful 
 imprisonment, and the judgment reversed on appeal, seemed 
 to place the agitators on a vantage-ground higher than they 
 would have occupied if they had been unmolested by Sir 
 Robert Peel's Government. Eor Peel had done his worst 
 against them, and failed. He had borne unwilling testimony 
 to the formidable strength of the Repeal agitation when he 
 said, on the 18th of April, 1845: "I believe the Irish 
 agitation cannot be put down by force." 
 
 As yet the public saw no symptoms of a dangerous 
 division between Old and Young Ireland. But O'Connell's 
 agitation had reached its culminating point. He became 
 nervously anxious to repress all indications of a warlike 
 spirit among his Young Ireland allies ; whilst they, on the 
 other hand, betrayed a growing inclination to preach up the 
 lawfulness of physical resistance to the Government, of which 
 impolitic course O'Connell anticipated no other than the 
 
272 Eiglity-fiue Years of Irish History. 
 
 worst results. I have elsewhere examined this topic of 
 dispute at some length,* and shall not dwell farther on it in 
 this place. Then there was the dispute about Whig 
 patronage; whilst O'Connell maintained that the agitation 
 of Repeal would not suffer from the appointment to office of 
 some of his followers. f An intimate friend of O'Connell 
 said to me at that time : " There is as great an outcry against 
 O'Connell on the ground of Government patronage, as if he 
 had anything to gain, or was gaining anything by it." 
 Personally O'Connell gained nothing ; but a few hundreds a 
 year were given to two or three members of his family. 
 
 In September, 1845, Thomas Davis died after a week's 
 illness. He was the ablest of the Young Ireland party. 
 His death was a serious loss to the cause, for he not only 
 possessed great information, great intellectual power, thorough 
 honesty, and indomitable zeal, but he had also the gifts of 
 calm temper and practical wisdom, which I have little doubt 
 would have been exercised, had his life been prolonged, to 
 restrain the indiscretions of the party Avho proclaimed him 
 their prophet, their philosopher, and guide. 
 
 The germs of dissension were rife in our body, and were 
 daily developing into mischievous luxuriance. Meanwhile 
 a terrible and mysterious dispensation visited the land. The 
 potato crop of 1845 was partially blighted. Although serious 
 fears were entertained, yet we flattered ourselves that the 
 visitation would be transient, and that the crop of the 
 following year would at least be of average value. 
 
 The squabbles in the Association continued. Smith 
 O'Brien had said with some humour : "I am neither Old 
 Ireland nor Young Ireland; I am Middle-aged Ireland." 
 ^Vhen O'Connell, on the questions of public policy to which 
 1 have adverted, came to open warfare with the Nation news- 
 l)aper, the organ of the Young Irelanders, O'Brien took part 
 with the Nation ; angry debates consumed the time of the 
 Association, and O'Brien, with a numerous following, seceded 
 from that body. This was in 1846. 
 
 Early in autumn it became apparent that the potato crop 
 of 1846 would bo a total failure. Famine menaced the 
 doomed land. For a detailed and faithful account of the 
 horrors of that famine, I refer the reader to John Mitchel's 
 clever little book, entitled " The Last Conquest of Ireland 
 (Perhaps)." Mr. Mitchel calls attention to the fact that 
 
 * " Personal Recollections of O'Connell," vol. ii. p. 245. 
 f For an account of this dispute, see the same work. 
 
The Famine Years. 273 
 
 Ireland, under the political conditions that afflicted her, was 
 exporting a larger amount of food, contemporaneously with 
 the potato-famine, than would have sufficed to support all 
 her inhabitants — wheat, oats, barley, pigs, and cattle. Yet 
 there was in political circles an established idea that Ireland 
 contained a surplus population who ought to be shipped off. 
 
 " Ireland, perhaps," says Mr. Mitchel, " was the only 
 country in the world which had both surplus produce for 
 export and surplus population for export — too much food for 
 her people, and too many people for her food." 
 
 While myriads starved to death in Ireland, ships bursting 
 with grain and laden with cattle were leaving every port for 
 England. There would have been no need for the people to 
 emigrate if their food did not emigrate. But the exhausting 
 results of the Union had brought matters to a point that 
 compelled Ireland to sell her food in order to supply the 
 ■enormous money drain. The food is first taken away, and 
 then its price is taken away also. 
 
 The horrors of the famine strongly illustrated the true 
 nature of the Union, and the paramount need for a domestic 
 Parliament. The potato blight was indeed the visitation of 
 Providence ; but the monstrous drain of Irish wealth, which 
 deprived the people of a reserve to fall back upon, Avas the 
 visitation of England. The drain of absentee rents, averaged 
 at £3,000,000 annually for the forty-six years the Union had 
 then lasted, reached .£138,000,000 sterling. If we average 
 at £1,000,000 per annum the Irish taxes exported from 
 Ireland during the same period, the combined drain will reach 
 £184,000,000. It is impossible to calculate with accuracy 
 the amount of actual cash sent out of the kingdom to 
 purchase the articles of English manufacture which, after 
 the Union, supplanted our own. If we average the drain on 
 this head at the very low and inadequate amount of 
 £1,000,000 per annum,* the total loss on those three heads 
 
 * I have not the least doubt that it is a great deal more. An 
 old and intelligent Dublin merchant told me that it certainly 
 exceeded £5,000,000 per annum. But I have not access at present 
 to data which would throw sufiBcient light on the question ; and 
 I prefer what I am sure is a very considerable understatement to the 
 danger of exaggeration. We learn from the ** Castlereagh Cor- 
 respondence," vol. iii. pp. 483, 484, that, in 1800, the cotton ti'ade 
 at Belfast, Balbriggan, Dublin, and Cork, employed large numbers 
 of people, and was stated by Mr. Hamilton of Balbriggan to retain 
 
 in Ireland £250,000 per annum ; and Mr. Clarke tells Lord C 
 
 that he had expended £20,000 in setting up the cotton business at 
 Palmerstown, County Dublin, which gave constant support to 1,000 
 
 T 
 
274: Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 must have amounted in 1846 to £230,000,000. Had Ireland 
 been self -governed, the greater part of that wealth would 
 have remained at home, furnishinf;; a fund for industry, 
 circulating among the people by whose labour it had been 
 produced, forming numberless reservoirs of humble opulence, 
 and thereby enabling the people to tide over the calamity of 
 the potato blight. But the Union had stripped them of 
 their means, and the only alternatives left to the perishing 
 multitudes were the workhouse, emigration, or the grave. 
 Yes — the potato blight was the visitation of Providence ; 
 but the famine was the visitation of England. There were 
 advances of money from the Government to employ the people 
 upon unproductive works. Of these the mismanagement 
 was demoralising;* and although the amount of the advances 
 was not more than a few pence in the pound of the vast 
 sums England had in various ways extorted from Ireland 
 since the Union, yet the Times kept up a constant outcry 
 that Irish paupers were thrown for support on English 
 wealth; complained that every industrious family in England 
 had a starving Irish family mounted on their backs; proposed 
 with characteristic jocularity (as an Irish famine was a 
 ludicrous event) that ''some Baron Munchausen should imme- 
 diately plant the Emerald Isle with ten million quartern-loaf 
 trees, and the same number of roast-beef and leg-of-mutton 
 trees in full bearing ; " and distanced all its other feats by 
 announcing with due gravity that if it were not for the Union 
 the Irish would not have a meal to eat. 
 
 Meanwhile the people were fast perishing. The Union 
 had done its deadly work. There were indeed many humane 
 and muniKcent persons in England who subscribed their 
 money with princely generosity to relieve the sufferers. All 
 honour to those noble and benevolent hearts ! Money and 
 vessels laden with food were sent by American friends. But 
 the calamity was too great to be effectually alleviated by the 
 efforts of individual charity, however extensive. 
 
 It is here proper to observe that the Union-plunder has 
 been destructive not only to the material interests of this 
 kingdom, but in many cases also to the souls of the Irish 
 whom it forces out of their country. The Bishop of Toronto 
 
 persona — men, women, and children. These casual statements 
 regarding one single branch of manufacture are extremely suggestive. 
 * For an exonllent and instructive account of the advances, their 
 purpose, and their mismanagement, see Mr. Mitchel's ** Last Conquest 
 of Ireland (Perhaps)." 
 
Jocularity of the " Times J^ 275 
 
 addressed to the bishops of Ireland a most painful statement 
 on this subject in May, 1864, from which I extract a few 
 sentences: "The Germans, French, and even the Norwegians," 
 says his lordship, '* come to America, provided with the 
 means of establishing themselves either as farmers or 
 mechanics ; but the large majority of the Irish come absolutely 
 penniless ; and hence they cannot reach the interior of the 
 country, and are obliged to look for the cheapest lodgings in 
 the cities ; and every one knows that such places are the 
 haunts of vice. The consequence is, they and their children 
 are lost to morality, to society, to religion, and finally to God." 
 
 Again, his lordship says : '' The number of good Irish 
 girls who arrive at New York and the other seaboard cities 
 is prodigious. Many of them are destitute of means and 
 friends; they are obliged, by their poverty, to take situations 
 wherever they can get them, and as soon as possible. Hence 
 they fall — not an easy prey either, but after many struggles 
 — into the thousand snares which profligate cities throw irl 
 their way. ... It is humiliating indeed to see numbers of 
 poor Irish girls, innocent and guileless, sitting around in 
 those large depots in seaport cities waiting to be hired. Men 
 and women enter those places, and look around to find out 
 the girl that would apparently answer their service. How 
 many of them found the protection of the wolf is known 
 only to God." 
 
 The Bishop of Toronto quotes the late Bishop of Charles- 
 ton, Dr. England, as having estimated the number of souls 
 lost to the Church in his own diocese, up to 1838, at 50,000. 
 The emigration, then considerable, received a prodigious 
 momentuui from the famine and its resulting miseries, and 
 also from the largely increased money-drain from Ireland in 
 the shape of additional taxes, imposed by Mr. Gladstone 
 while the national calamity still bore hard upon the people. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that the famine greatly 
 weakened political agitation. If, on the one hand, it 
 afforded a terrible demonstration of the paramount necessity 
 for home government, on the other hand it deprived us of 
 the means which were indispensable to the efficiency of our 
 efforts. O'Connell entered his seventieth year on the 6th of 
 August, 1846. His health, which had for some time been 
 manifestly giving way, was seriously affected by his mental 
 anxieties. These were great and grievous. He saw with 
 unspeakable pain the fatal division in the Kepeal ranks, and 
 his heart sank within him at the horrible affliction of the 
 
 T 2 
 
276 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 famine. In January, 1847, he quitted Ireland, and after a 
 short sojourn in England, proceeded to the Continent eii 
 route to Genoa, where he died on the 15th of May. 
 
 John O'Connell still continued to administer the 
 lingering remnant of the Eepeal Association. The Young 
 Irelanders had set up a Repeal League of their own, which 
 seemed to monopolise what remained of the popular activity. 
 Its meetings were addressed by Smith O'Brien, Duffy, 
 Mitchel, and other prominent seceders. I was extremely 
 anxious that the two bodies of Repealers should be reunited, 
 and I explained at some length to Mr. Smith O'Brien the 
 conditions upon which I considered such reunion possible, 
 consistently with the honour of all parties. From O'Brien, 
 with whom I corresponded from time to time, I had a long 
 letter dated 31st of December, 1847, stating the conditions 
 upon which alone he was willing to consent to the proposed 
 reunion. One of his conditions was that the existing 
 Association, founded by O'Connell, should be dissolved ; and 
 that both parties should concur in the formation of a new 
 society. I knew that the Old Irelanders would not consent 
 to this condition ; and as O'Brien insisted on it as a sine qua 
 non, I did not at that time press the matter any farther. 
 
 Notwithstanding the continued pressure of terrific distress 
 from the failure in successive years of the potato crop, the 
 Young Irelanders j)ersevered in the agitation of Repeal. 
 Protestant Repeal Associations w^ere instituted in Dublin, 
 Drogheda, and Lurgan. There was one of these in Belfast, 
 of which a respectable physician. Dr. Beck, was honorary 
 secretary. It will be remembered that Mr. Sharman Craw- 
 ford had at one time been an avowed Repealer, but that he 
 opposed O'Connell's agitation when invited to join the 
 Repeal Association. O'Connell was now dead, and Mr. 
 Crawford returned to his earlier opinions. As the un- 
 swerving advocate of the Irish small farmer, he filled for 
 many years a conspicuous position in Irish politics ; and in 
 the present hasty record of the various phases of the Repeal 
 agitation, I think the following extracts from his letter to 
 Dr. Beck are worthy of a place : 
 
 "London, July 15th, 1848. 
 " Sir, 
 
 " I have received the communication with which you 
 honoured me, containing the address issued by the Protestant 
 Repeal Association of Belfast. 
 
 '* I have long been of opinion that the centralisation of 
 
Sliarman Craicford returns to Repeal. 277 
 
 Imperial legislation was imfit for Ireland ; but if I had any 
 doubt on the subject the proceedings and results of the two 
 last sessions have been sufficient to remove them, and to raise 
 in my mind the positive conviction that Englishmen and 
 Scotchmen, sitting in the Imperial Legislature, have neither 
 the knowledge nor the feelings towards Ireland necessary to 
 qualify them for just and useful legislation ; that the 
 numerous subjects on which Parliament is required to 
 legislate do not leave the time necessary to attend to the 
 interests of a country in the condition of Ireland ; that the 
 same system of legislation which is applicable to the cir- 
 cumstances of England and Scotland is not applicable to 
 Ireland ; and an equally strong conviction that Irish Members 
 sent to the Imperial Legislature under the present system of 
 election, removed from the correcting control of the people, 
 and having no real responsibility for the laws passed for 
 Ireland, will be generally neglectful of their duties, and will 
 not even use the powers they possess to advance the interests 
 of their country. 
 
 "I see no remedy for this state of things other than a 
 representative body for Ireland, elected by such a system of 
 suffrage and laws of election as will constitute them the fair 
 representatives of the voices and interests of the nation. 
 
 " I do not deny that contingent objections may be made 
 to the system of two legislative bodies under the same 
 Crown. I have stated these objections on former occasions, 
 and with that view advocated the federative principle of 
 connexion ; but the proposition received no support, and I 
 know it would be more strongly objected to by British 
 representatives than the simple Eepeal of the Legislative 
 Union. But I am now of opinion that the necessity for a 
 local legislative body has become so manifest and imperative 
 that minor objections must be yielded. ... So long as I 
 thought that the system of Imperial legislation could be 
 brought to act for practical good, I was not much inclined to 
 agitate for a change ; but that hope has now entirely 
 vanished from my mind. I therefore feel myself bound to 
 give up minor objections, and assent to the principle of 
 legislative independence as acknowledged by the Constitution 
 of 1782, subject to such modifications as would seem best 
 suited to guard against collisions on matters of Imperial 
 interest affecting the connexion of the two countries under 
 an Imperial Crown. 
 
 •^ * * * * 
 
278 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 " I believe that Protestant power is capable of resisting 
 
 aggression from any quarter ; and therefore that aggression 
 
 would never be attempted unless provoked by Protestant 
 
 injustice. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "I highly approve the sentiments contained in the 
 
 published address to which your name is attached, and 
 
 wishing your Association every success, I am, Sir, . your 
 
 obedient 
 
 " W. Sharman Crawford. 
 
 "J. W. Beck, Esq., M.D." 
 
 The Protestant Eepealers, possessing ability, respectable 
 position, and a powerful case, were beginning to produce a 
 strong impression on the minds of their fellow-religionists of 
 the humbler class. In order to counteract their progress the 
 fanatical bellows were kept in full blast. Preachers, orators, 
 and Avriters, whose idea of Christianity appeared to be con- 
 fined to the duty of hating the Papists and shouting " To 
 hell with the Pope ! " now bellowed about Antichrist, 
 romanced about apocalyptic numerals, ranted about the 
 Inquisition, threatened that if Kepeal were obtained the 
 Papists would ride roughshod over the Protestants, and by 
 rude and vigorous appeals addressed to the sectarian pre- 
 judices of their fellow-Protetstants, succeeded in creating 
 among them a fanatical determination to perpetuate, so far 
 as in them lay, the servitude and spoliation of their country. 
 
 Meanwhile Smith O'Brien and his allies continued to 
 agitate — not in O'CoHuell's mode. The fiery eloquence of 
 some of the Young Irelanders had withdrawn the minds of 
 numbers from the moral-force policy by which O'Connell had 
 gained his victories ; insomuch that Steele, a few months 
 before O'Connell's death, had declared with poignant grief 
 that the moral-force wand had been broken to pieces in the 
 hand of the great magician. The sterling honour, the pure 
 and lofty spirit, and the single-hearted patriotism of Smith 
 O'Brien, were unquestionable. He was hurried into actions 
 of enormous imprudence by the impulses of generous indig- 
 nation. Ho saw the physical miseries of his countrymen; 
 he saw the political prostration of Ireland ; he saw the callous 
 contempt with which the suffering multitudes were treated 
 by a large class of British politicians ; he saw in the want of 
 home government the source of these horrible evils, and the 
 sight maddened him. He, Meagher, and others, set on foot 
 
Prosecution of Smith O'Brien — the Sentence. 279 
 
 the system of local clubs. On the 20th of July, 1848, he 
 wrote to me, exhorting me to establish clubs in all places 
 within my reach. I did not establish clubs, which were part 
 of a system for arming the people ; and any scheme of armed 
 or physical resistance by a population stricken to the earth 
 by famine, and destitute of every element of probable success, 
 I could only regard with the deepest apprehension and the 
 gravest sorrow. Many years later I recollect seeing in the 
 newspapers a letter from Mr. O'Brien, in which he stated 
 that while ready to bear his full share of the responsibilities 
 attaching to the unfortunate events of 1848, he had received 
 representations or promises — he did not say from whom — 
 which, if I remember aright, were calculated to encourage 
 hopes of a different result, but which promises were not 
 realised.* 
 
 O'Brien had come into collision with the law. He, 
 Meagher, Leyne, and O'Donoghue were arrested. Martin of 
 Kilbroney, Duffy, Williams, and O'Doherty, were all in 
 prison awaiting their trials. MacManus was also captured. 
 The trials of O'Brien and his immediate companions took 
 place at Clonmel, in October, 1848. Sentence of death was 
 pronounced against him, which was afterwards commuted 
 into banishment. 
 
 The aspect of the country was now most melancholy. 
 Despair seemed to cast a black funeral pall over the land. 
 The people either crowded the workhouse or took flight to 
 America. Travel where you would, deserted and ruinous 
 •cabins met the eye on every side. You frequently met large 
 parties of emigrants proceeding to the seaports, the exodus 
 <;onsisting principally of the youth and strength, the bone 
 and sinew of the population. Every emigrant treasured up 
 wrath in his heart against the power that forced him out of 
 the land of his birth. 
 
 Meanwhile there was a lull in politics, and the anti- 
 national classes flattered themselves that the people had been 
 starved and terrified into helpless provincialism. But — to 
 adopt a phrase employed by Mr. Aubrey de Vere upon 
 another subject — quiescence is a very different thing from 
 acquiescence. The national mind was never more dissatisfied. 
 
 In the summer of 1849 Queen Victoria was advised to 
 come to Ireland. Her Majesty came, and the Times, of 
 course, had a characteristic flourish on the royal visit. 
 
 * I write this from memory ; I have not a copy of the letter in 
 jwhich O'Brien made the statemeat referred to. 
 
280 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 " At this moment," said the leading journal, " the 
 Sovereign of the Empire goes as the ambassador between 
 two of its constituent nations to extinguish the embers of a 
 flickering jealousy, and ratify an amnesty of attempted 
 wrong. The Queen is at this moment the representative of 
 English feeling dindi forgiveness.^' 
 
 "Xow," says Dirk. Hatteraick to Glossix, ^'■strafe 
 mich der deyfel ! this provokes me more than all the rest. 
 You rob and you murder, and play the silver-cooper, or 
 kidnapper, as you call it, a dozen times over, and then — 
 hagel und ivindsturm ! you speak to me of conscience ! " 
 
 Pretty much in like manner did the Times talk of 
 "English forgiveness." You destroy our Legislature — you 
 grasp our surplus revenue — you enjoy our absentee rents — 
 you reduce this land to pauperism, and slay its inhabitants 
 by wholesale ; and then you tell us that you forgive us for it 
 all! 
 
 The Tir)ies showed scant respect to the Queen in repre- 
 senting Her Majesty as the ambassador of this astounding 
 species of forgiveness. It was clearly irreverent to associate 
 the Sovereign's venerated name with such a piece of jocular 
 impertinence. 
 
 The Queen was received with the respect and courtesy 
 due to her position and character. After staying a few days 
 she went away. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ENGLISH rOLITICIANS ON NATIONAL CLAIMS TO SELF- 
 GOVERNMENT. 
 
 How thrive we by the Union ? 
 Look round our native land; 
 In ruined trade and wealth decayed, 
 
 See slav'ry's surest brand. 
 Our glory as a nation gone, 
 
 Our substance drained away, 
 A wretched province trampled on, 
 Is all we've left to-day. 
 
 Then curse with me the Union, 
 
 That juggle foul and base, 
 The baneful root that bore such fruit, 
 Of ruin and disgrace. 
 
 Spirit of the Nation. 
 
 The disturbed state of Italy, the prevalence of insurrection, 
 the movements especially which menaced the temporal power 
 
The Ri'jht of a People to choose Us Riders. 281 
 
 of the Pope, elicited from statesmen and journalists in 
 England the most fervid declarations of the right of all 
 nations to choose their own Governments. Said Lord John 
 Russell : 
 
 " I think with regard to this matter of states and nations 
 regulating their own Governments, that it is not very 
 different from that of a man in a city — say the city of 
 Aberdeen — regulating his own house. I think we are bound 
 to say, and we do say, and we have said, that against any 
 interference by foreign force to prevent those peoples having 
 their own Government, and conducticg their affairs as they 
 like, we do loudly and solemnly protest." 
 
 During the year 1860, the doctrine thus proclaimed 
 by Lord John was preached by English journalists, who 
 of course overlooked its manifest application to Ireland. 
 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 interest of foreign 
 states or to abstract theories of religion or politics, the people 
 have a right to throiv off the yohe, are principles too often 
 admitted and acted upon to be any longer questioned." 
 
 " Europe," said the Daily Neics, "has over and over again 
 affirmed that one principle on which the Italian question 
 depends, and to which the inhabitants of Central Italy 
 appeal — the right of a people to choose its own rulers." 
 
 Another utterance of the Times : 
 
 " The goodness or badness of a Government should be 
 estimated with reference, not to abstract rules, but to the 
 opinions and feelings of the governed." 
 
 " As free Englishmen," said the Sun^ " we assert the right 
 of the Romans, and of all nations, to have governors of their 
 own choice." 
 
 " England," said the Times, " has not scrupled to avow 
 her opinion that the people of the Roman States, like every 
 other people, have a right to choose their own Government, 
 and the persons in whose hands that Government shall be 
 placed." 
 
 Again, the Times told its readers that : 
 
 "The destiny of a nation ought to be 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 sufficient to justify 
 
"282 Eighty -five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 armed resistance, is for those who live under that Government 
 — not for those who, being exempt from its oppression, feel 
 a sentimental or a theological interest in its continuance.'' * 
 
 Now here are political canons which more than sustain 
 the demand of the Irish for a repeal of the Union. Applying 
 to Ireland, for instance, with a slight verbal alteration, the 
 Italian doctrine of the Times, the dictum of the leading 
 journal teaches us that " the destiny of Ireland ought to be 
 determined, not by the opinion of England, but by the 
 opinion of the nation itself. To decide whether the Irish are 
 well governed or not, or rather whether the amount of 
 -extortion, corruption, and cruelty to which they are subject, 
 is sufficient to justify armed resistance, is for those who live 
 under that Government, not for those who, being exempt 
 from its oppression, feel a sentimental or a theological interest 
 in its continuance." 
 
 Smith O'Brien decided that the degree of extortion, 
 corruption, and cruelty to which his countrymen were 
 subject, loas sufficient to justify armed resistance. The ex- 
 tortion consists in an annual tribute of many millions 
 sterling drained out of the kingdom to England. The 
 corruption consists of bribes in the shape of Government 
 patronage, which is employed to purchase educated men to 
 uphold the giant wrong, or at least to be silent respecting it. 
 The cruelty consists in the sufferings necessarily sustained 
 by the multitude from the enormous pecuniary extortion 
 which defrauds them of the natural fund which Providence 
 has given for their support. AVere there such a state of 
 things in any Continental country. Earl Russell and the 
 Times would of course preach the right of the oppressed to 
 resist, and to be the sole judges not only of the necessity of 
 resistance, but of the precise mode of resisting. But when 
 Ireland is in question, the English friends of Continental 
 liberty take a different view of duties and responsibilities. 
 In the days of O'Connell's agitation the Times declared that 
 even were the Union gall to Ireland, it should be maintained. 
 And no doubt the Times, and all the other British sym- 
 
 * The above extracts, Tvith many others from different autho- 
 rities bearing upon Irish questions, have been collected by A. M. 
 Sullivan, proprietor of the National Irish National Almanack and 
 Historical Remembrancer, a most useful and well-compiled publication, 
 in which the anniversaries of Irish events of personal, political, or 
 historical importance, are substituted for the anniversaries of 
 English and other foreign incidents, in which other almanacks 
 abound, and in which the Irish reader cannot take much interest. 
 
Sir George Grey proposes an Irish Parliament. 283 
 
 pathisers with Continental insubordination, would at any- 
 time renew that declaration. 
 
 Politics in Ireland had apparently gone to sleep. A 
 Conservative friend said to me : *' How completely politics 
 have died out ; there are no political parties now." A 
 Protestant clergyman said, "The people only care about 
 their turnips ; they don't now care for politics." In both 
 cases the wish was probably father of the thought; but it is 
 true that the surface was as calm as it could be made by 
 pinching want and by dire anxiety to obtain the bare means 
 •of existence. 
 
 During Mr. Smith O'Brien's banishment he composed a 
 work entitled, "Thoughts on Government, by an Exile." 
 In 1856 he was permitted to return to Ireland. He ex- 
 pressed great delight at beholding his native land once 
 more. His return was hailed with hearty satisfaction by all 
 classes of his countrymen, for his high and unsullied 
 character and the genial kindness of his disposition had 
 won the respect and regard of even his political opponents. 
 
 In 1860 some gentlemen who were considerably struck 
 with the fervid enthusiasms for the Eights of Nations which 
 rglowed in the columns of the English press, considered 
 that it was a good opportunity to take the English 
 apostles of liberty at their word, and to put in a claim on 
 behalf of Ireland. A Declaration was drawn up by a com- 
 mittee in Dublin, and circulated through Ireland for 
 signatures. It suggested the pUhiscite, and asserted the 
 immortal principles of 1782. It received between 400,000 
 and 500,000 signatures. It was forwarded with a loyal and 
 respectful address to the Queen, and entrusted to the care 
 •of Sir George Grey for presentation to Her Majesty. I am 
 not aware whether Sir George Grey so much as acknowledged 
 ■the receipt of the document ; but at a later period he 
 published a pamphlet in which he recommended the es- 
 tablishment of a State Legislature in Ireland. He had 
 then arrived at the knowledge of the real needs of Ireland, 
 and of the only true remedy for Irish discontent, as the 
 following extract from his pamphlet will show : 
 
 "Give to Ireland," he says, "a State Legislature and a 
 State Executive in Dublin; secure thereby the residence of 
 its ablest men in the country. Open a fair field as ministers, 
 legislators, orators, to its best and wisest men. Afford, from 
 the same source, as would necessarily and certainly be done, 
 occupation to Irish architects, sculptors, painters, and secure 
 
284 Eight y-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 a resident aristocracy of worth, talent, and wisdom, and you 
 will at the same time restore the wealth, trade, and commerce 
 of Dublin and Ireland. Dumb Ireland will speak again. 
 Half -inanimate Ireland will again awaken to national life, 
 and breathe the breath of hope and freedom. Whilst, by 
 again accustoming the Irish people to the management of 
 their own affairs, and to administrative duties of the highest 
 order, a willing people will be educated in that political 
 knowledge which will enable them to put an end to the 
 ills which afflict them, the causes and cure of which none 
 can understand so well as themselves."* 
 
 Sir George goes on to say : 
 
 " Only those who have lived in populations accustomed 
 to manage their own affairs can realise the dignity under 
 such circumstances imparted to the mass of the people." 
 
 And undoubtedly the degrading sense of being held in 
 the iron chains of foreign legislation effectually tends to 
 exasperate the national mind, and to predispose the people, 
 deprived of national self-rule, to embrace all or any means, 
 however wild or desperate, to escape from the thraldom 
 which is felt as a perpetual insult. 
 
 On the 4th of December, 1860, a meeting was held at 
 the Rotunda to promote the revived movement for Repeal. 
 The O'Donoghue, M.P., was in the chair. The Round 
 Room was filled to inconvenience, and the meeting showed 
 that the spirit which had animated the vast gatherings in 
 O'Connell's day was yet alive and vigorous. Excellent 
 speeches were made by John Francis Maguire and John 
 Martin. One of the secretaries of the meeting was an 
 intelligent young man named Joyce, about two or three-and- 
 twenty years of age. I said to him : " You are so young 
 that you cannot have had any part in O'Connell's movement; 
 whence do you derive your Repeal principles 1 " " They are 
 born with us," was his answer. 
 
 In 1864 a league was formed, chiefly by Mr. John 
 Martin of Kilbroney, County Down, a Presbyterian gentle- 
 man, and the O'Donoghue, founded on the principles of 1782. 
 The League published in the Irish, English, French, German, 
 Italian, and Spanish languages a brief abstract of some of 
 the most flagrant wrongs resulting from the Union. The 
 French version of that document was republished in Paris at 
 the expense of the Marquis de Nettancour. 
 
 * "The Irish Land Question," by Sir George Grey, K.C.B. 
 London, 1869. 
 
A League formed on the Principles of 1782. 285 
 
 The First Annual Report of the League was issued in 
 February, 1865. The Second Annual Report, which was 
 issued in February, 1866, records that, owing to a concurrence 
 of adverse circumstances, the Irish Nationalists at home did 
 not gather round the centre formed by Mr. Martin and The 
 O'Donoghue, but that in Australia a generous movement in 
 support of the League had commenced, and was still con- 
 tinued. The Report announces the sympathy of the Irish 
 settlers and of the descendants of Irish settlers throughout 
 New South Wales. The movement had spread into Queens- 
 land also. " If the Irish people at home," the document 
 proceeds to say, " could be persuaded to declare frankly and 
 openly the truth of their convictions and their wishes, and 
 to present themselves before the world as a people robbed of 
 their national right and seeking its restoration, we are confi- 
 dent that not only the Irish of all the Australian colonies, 
 but the Irish of Canada and all the other American colonies, 
 and the millions of Irish of the United States, would cordially 
 give us their aid." 
 
 Unluckily the Irish in the United States had at that 
 time embarked in the Fenian experiment, and their emissaries 
 in this kingdom had succeeded in destroying to a large extent 
 the faith of our countrymen at home in Constitutional action. 
 Many whose feelings and principles were identical with ours, 
 were saddened into inaction. Many were seduced by sheer 
 desperation into the Fenian ranks. Many were led to unite 
 not with the League, but with the National Association, 
 inaugurated on the 29th of December, 1864, and embracing 
 in its programme the improvement of the Land Laws, the 
 disendowment of the State Church, and the freedom of 
 Catholic education. 
 
 To that Association I have already adverted,* and have 
 here only to add that for eight years previous to the date of 
 its inauguration the disestablishment question had been 
 persistently worked by myself and by Alderman M'Swiney, of 
 Dublin, in connection with the English Liberation Society. 
 My difficulty was at first to secure the joint action of the 
 Irish Catholic prelates and the English Nonconformists. 
 This obstacle was overcome by the influence, chiefly, of 
 Doctor Leahy, Archbishop of Cashel, who saw that the 
 aid of our English allies was indispensable to success. 
 When the movement had acquired undoubted strength, 
 Sir John Gray joined it, and gave it the valuable help of 
 * Chapter X., ante. 
 
286 Eighty -five Years of Irish History. 
 
 his advocacy in Parliament and in the Freeman s Journal^ of 
 which he was proprietor. 
 
 I believe that among the Irish in America there is now 
 scarcely one who dreams of an Irish Republic. They have- 
 in general discarded from their policy the Republican element. 
 There is not, I am certain, a single man amongst them who- 
 would not hail with delight the re-establishment of the Con- 
 stitution of 1782. We have the strongest possible demon- 
 stration of the ample efficacy of that Constitution in making 
 Ireland prosperous. Millions of the Irish at home desire its 
 restoration beyond all other earthly objects. One of its 
 essential conditions is the identity of the sovereign of these 
 two islands. It would needlessly augment the difficulties in 
 our path to introduce a project unacceptable to the great 
 majority of the Irish at home. You have adopted a Con- 
 stitutional policy — a policy which, if wisely administered, is 
 capable of welding the Irish at home and their dispersed 
 compatriots into one compact mass, formidable in their 
 numbers ; formidable in the truth and justice of their cause ; 
 formidable in the legal safety of their position ; formidable 
 in the magical strength of being, both in principle and in 
 practice, thoroughly in the right. For Republicanism in 
 America I entertain the highest respect. But whoever is 
 conversant with the actual political condition of the various 
 Irish parties, must know that any attempt to embody the 
 Republican principle with a scheme to restore to Ireland 
 self-government, bespeaks its own failure at the outset. It is 
 simply and inevitably self-destructive. 
 
 There is an influential portion of the British press in- 
 cessantly engaged in the diffusion of false and calumnious 
 statements about Ireland. An immense circulation sends 
 these statements to the ends of the earth. The Irish 
 scattered over the globe could effectually repel the mis- 
 representations of the enemy by uniting with a central 
 institute in Dublin in our claim of right, and in our peaceful 
 protest against the monster wrong of 1800, so as to enlist in 
 our behalf the public opinion of the civilised world. Such 
 a protest and demand, made by the vast majority of the yet 
 unexpelled Irish, backed by the support and sympatliy of 
 the Irish in Australia and Canada, and in the United States 
 and Great Britain, ** would not," says the Second Report of 
 the League, "fail this time, provided that the Irish 
 Nationalists bring the quality of earnest perseverance to 
 their task, undeterred by the occasional defeats which are 
 
Irish Incapacity for Self- Government. 287 
 
 always incidental to the struggles for just freedom against 
 power." 
 
 "With the examples before us," says the Eeport, "of 
 Canada, the Cape, the Australian colonies, the Ionian Isles,. 
 all which States have obtained self-government .... we 
 have reason to apprehend no obstinate resistance to such a 
 movement if renewed in these times." 
 
 The American Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, expressed 
 strong opinions on the subject of the Union. Writing in 
 1853, as appears by the Boston Pilot^ he says, when describing 
 a visit to the Irish Parliament House : " Whilst traversing 
 its apartments, I reverted to the debate when the degenerate 
 representatives surrendered their Parliament ; and I thought 
 that had I occupied a place there, I would have seen 
 English armies wade in blood over my country before I would 
 have consented to so disgraceful a Union." 
 
 Again, in the same letter, Mr. Seward says : " I confess 
 that, overleaping all obstacles which are deemed by many 
 well-wishers of Ireland insurmountable, I wish the Repeal of 
 the Union. I will not beHeve that if relieved of that 
 oppressive Act^ she does not possess the ability to govern 
 herself." 
 
 Mr. Seward is quite right. Ireland, after 1782, displayed 
 an ability for self-government that resulted in great national 
 prosperity — how and by whom overthrown the reader knows. 
 Prior to that date the usurped power of the English Parlia- 
 ment had produced a state of things unfavourable to the 
 development of Irish intellect, even among Protestants. 
 Tlie Catholic Irish of ability and ambition were compelled 
 by penal laws to seek foreign fields for the exercise of their 
 mental qualities. As to the stuff they were made of, hear 
 the evidence of Dean Swift : " I cannot," says the Dean, 
 " but highly esteem those gentlemen of Ireland who, with all 
 the disadvantages of being exiles and strangers, have been 
 able to distinguish themselves by their valour and conduct 
 in so many parts of Europe, I think above all other nations ; 
 which ought to make the English ashamed of the reproaches 
 they cast on the ignorance, the dulness, and the want of 
 courage in the Irish natives ; those defects, wherever they 
 happen, arising only from the poverty and slavery they 
 sutler from their inhuman neighbours, and the base, corrupt 
 spirit of too many of the chief gentry." * 
 
 * Swift to Sir Charles Wogan, July, 1732. 
 
288 Eiylitij-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 Lord Macaulay, who had certainly no Irish sympathies, 
 bore similar testimony to the fertility of Ireland in mental 
 wealth. Speaking of the Irish whom the penal laws sent 
 to seek their fortunes abroad, his lordship says : " There 
 were, indeed, Irish Roman Catholics of great ability, energy, 
 and ambition ; but they were to be found everywhere except 
 in Ireland — at Versailles and at St. Ildefonso, in the armies 
 of Frederick and in the armies of Maria-Theresa. One exile 
 became a marshal of France. Another became Prime 
 Minister of Spain. ... In his palace at Madrid he had the 
 pleasure of being assiduously courted by the Ambassadors of 
 George IL, and of bidding defiance in high terms to the 
 Ambassador of George III. Scattered all over Europe were 
 to be found brave Irish generals, dexterous Irish diplomatists, 
 Irish counts, Irish barons, Irish Knights of St. Louis and 
 St. Leopold, of the White Eagle, and of the Golden Fleece." * 
 
 Such is Macaulay's description of the Irish Catholic 
 intellect in exile. Of Irish Protestant intellect at home we 
 have noble representatives in Malone, Pery, Flood, Foster, 
 Yelverton, Grattan, Curran, Saurin, Plunket, Bushe, Goold, 
 Butt, Whiteside, and numerous others. Our American 
 sympathiser, Mr. Secretary Seward, does not assume too 
 much when he states his belief that a country so prolific of 
 high intellectual qualities possesses the ability to govern 
 herself. Independence quickly teaches its own uses. The 
 brave Irish generals, the dexterous Irish diplomatists, of 
 whom Macaulay speaks, were as competent to regulate the 
 political and military affairs of their own country as to 
 govern the councils and lead the armies of the foreign lands 
 where fate had placed them. The penal laws deprived 
 Ireland of the services of her Catholic intellect. The Union 
 deprives Ireland of the best and highest services of her 
 intellect, both Catholic and Protestant ; for it banishes the 
 legislative body in which that intellect could find its greatest, 
 its noblest, its most useful exercise. 
 
 In 1864 Colonel (afterwards General) Dunne, member 
 for the Queen's County, obtained, but not without much 
 difficulty, a committee to investigate the question of Irish 
 taxation. It included eight English and seven Irish members. 
 In the proceedings of the committee, as I have elsewhere 
 remarkedjt there is nothing more constantly and prominently 
 
 * " History of England," chap. xvii. 
 
 t Speech delivered at the National League, 7th November, 1865. 
 For statements on this subject see the Appendix. 
 
Smith O'Brien's Burial-place. 289 
 
 manifest than that the EngHsh members assume as an axiom 
 that Ireland has no right to her own revenues. "England, 
 under the convenient name of 'the Empire,' is assumed to be 
 the rightful owner of the revenues of Ireland. England, in 
 their view, is entitled to grasp all the Irish revenue she can 
 lay hold of, and is not bound to refund anything. The 
 Union is practically interpreted to be an identification of 
 burdens and of taxes, but not of benefits or of expenditure. 
 'The Empire' means England when there is question of 
 outlay, but it is held to include Ireland when there is 
 question of taxation. The English members disregard the 
 disparity of the two pre-Union debts, which, although it is 
 the very pith and marrow of our case, yet forms no part of 
 the ground on which Sir Stafford jN^orthcote appears to have 
 arrived at the conclusions in his report." 
 
 Yet in spite of the foregone conclusions of the English 
 members, General Dunne succeeded in extorting an admission 
 that Ireland is grievously and disproportionately overtaxed. 
 The General, on this fiscal question, was an excellent and 
 patriotic Irish agitator. His meritorious labours are appro- 
 priately mentioned in this work ; for one of the standing 
 complaints of the Repealers is the great fiscal wrong done to 
 Ireland. 
 
 On the 17th of June, 1864, Smith O'Brien, Avhose health 
 had been for some time declining, died in AVales. I need 
 not say that his death caused heartfelt grief, not only among 
 those who personally knew and loved him, but among the 
 millions of his countrymen who revered him as a brave and 
 honest man, and a true Protestant patriot. His remains 
 reached Dublin in the Cambria steamer about four o'clock 
 in the morning of the 23rd, and were met by a sorrowing 
 crowd, who had in many instances remained up all night to 
 be present at the arrival of the vessel. A procession was 
 formed through the city to the Kingsbridge terminus ; the 
 number of persons who attended at that early hour were 
 computed at 20,000. O'Brien's remains were interred at 
 Rathronan, in the County Limerick. He had reached his 
 sixty-first year. " Requiescat in pace." 
 
290 Elglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 SUCCESSIVE AGITxlTIOXS AGAINST POPULAR GRIEVANCES. 
 
 Can the depths of the ocean afford you not graves, 
 That you come thus to perish afar o'er the waves, 
 To redden and swell the wild torrents that flow 
 Through the valley of vengeance, the dark Aherlow ? 
 
 Sipirit of the Nation, 
 
 The reader who has accompanied me thus far will have seen 
 that ample provocatives exist in Ireland for that discontent 
 which, when coloured by American connexion, assumes the 
 shape of Fenianism. I have elsewhere examined the causes 
 of the Fenian phenomenon,* which is in my judgment the 
 direct result of the Legislative Union. 
 
 The popular discontent I regard as not only legitimate 
 but inevitable. The Fenian attempts at redressing the 
 national wrongs were absurd, ill-conceived, ill-contrived, 
 treasonable, and impracticable. The National Association, 
 which comprised all, or nearly all, the Catholic bishops and 
 a large number of clergymen, earnestly invited the people to 
 support it. The National League, instituted by Mr. Martin 
 and The O'Donoghue, sent forth a similar invitation. The 
 objects of both these societies were in a high degree popular. 
 Yet the great body of the people held aloof, because they 
 were destitute of confidence in the Imperial Parliament, to 
 which the appeals for removal of wrongs were to be addressed 
 by the two societies I have named ; and because they had 
 taken up a vague idea that conquering hosts were speedily 
 to come from America and set all right. This idea was very 
 prevalent, and in my intercourse with the peasantry I found 
 it extremely difficult to dispel the illusion. A particular day 
 would be fixed by the Fenian agents for the landing of the 
 armament ; and when the day would arrive, bringing with it 
 no armament, another day would be named, and another, 
 and another; successive postponements still leaving the 
 popular credulity undiminished. 
 
 The number of signatures to petitions for disendowing 
 the State Church amounted in 1866 to no less than 202,682. 
 This number does not represent the whole, for many petitions 
 were rejected in consequence of informality. The number 
 would have been much greater if the people had confidence 
 
 * In a small pamphlet entitled, " Why is Ireland Discontented ? " 
 published by Cameron & Ferguson, Glasgow. 
 
A Fenian Armament exjpeded. 291 
 
 ill the Imperial Legislature. The signatures to petitions for 
 a change in the Land Laws amounted, during the same year, 
 to 233,766. Such numbers, under circumstances, of con- 
 siderable discouragement, must be allowed to indicate great 
 earnestness in the petitioners. Sir John Gray, M, P. for 
 Kilkenny, took charge of the question of ecclesiastical 
 disendowment in Parliament. Of his speech, delivered on 
 the 11th of April, 1866, the Times of the next day said: 
 " Whoever doubts the anomaly or the failure of the Irish 
 Church, may be recommended, once for all, to peruse the speech 
 of Sir John Gray." It is indeed a very able statement. 
 
 The Fenian organisation proceeded apace. Of course the 
 Government had full and early information of the secret 
 doings of the Penians ; for there never was, and never will 
 be, an illegal conspiracy in Ireland in which spies and false 
 brethren will not swarm. The very existence of such a 
 conspiracy is certain to invite pretended enthusiasts, whose 
 sole object in swearing themselves into the society is to 
 betray its members to the Government for jDayment. 
 
 Pierce Nagle, Petitt, and Warner, in 1866, were mere 
 reproductions of John Donnellan Balfe in 1848, and of 
 Reynolds, Newell, and Armstrong in 1798. The useful 
 though infamous services of informers placed the Viceroy, 
 Lord Wodehouse, in possession of every detail of the 
 conspiracy; and it is due to him to say that he used his 
 powers not only with firmness and discretion, but with as 
 much clemency as consisted with the performance of duties 
 in themselves severe. ■ He proclaimed in Parliament that 
 Ireland had grievances to be redressed, amongst whic];i he 
 gave the alien State Church a prominent position. When 
 the first batch of Fenian prisoners had been tried, convicted, 
 and sentenced, it was fondly hoped by persons who could 
 not see beneath the surface that Fenianism was extinguished. 
 The Earl of Derby knew better ; he said it had only been 
 scotched, not killed. Lord Wodehouse was created Earl of 
 Kimberley to reward him for having killed or scotched it. 
 From his early and accurate knowledge, derived from the 
 informers, he was able to anticipate and counteract every 
 movement projected by the conspirators. 
 
 The English journals had for some time been amusing 
 the world with statements that Ireland was prosperous and 
 contented ; that she had cordially accepted the Union, and 
 had at length become sensible of its benefits. Fenianism 
 came into awkward collision with those statements. Here 
 
 u 2 
 
292 EirjIdy-fivG Years of Irish History. 
 
 ■was a conspiracy against English connexion, extending 
 nobody could tell how far among the population. Persons 
 who knew nothing about the matter imagined that it was an 
 integral conspiracy, confined to the men who were actually 
 enrolled in it. But in truth it Avas no more than a symptom 
 of a far more extensive disease — of that national discontent 
 inevitably flowing from the Union and its evil consequences, 
 and of which the Fenian exhibition was merely the accident 
 of special circumstances. 
 
 It is well to recall the solemn warnings given in 1799 
 and 1800 by the parliamentary friends of the Irish Constitu- 
 tion, that the Union necessarily tended to promote the 
 ultimate separation of the countries. 
 
 Mr. Saurin said : " It will endanger the present happy 
 Constitution and connexion with Great Britain." 
 
 Colonel Barry : " It will impair the connexion." 
 
 Eight Hon. John Foster, Speaker of the House of Com- 
 mons : "The ruinous measure of an Union — a measure 
 calculated to disturb the harmony and threaten the existence 
 
 of the Empire." "AVhich, if persevered in, must threaten 
 
 separation." 
 
 Mr. Saunderson : " It will endanger, perhaps dissolve, 
 the connexion." 
 
 Lord Powerscourt (moving an amendment) : "It would 
 tend, in our opinion, more than any other cause, ultimately 
 to a separation of this kingdom from Great Britain." 
 
 Mr. Waller : *' It will weaken, if not dissolve, the 
 connexion." 
 
 Lord Mathew : " The Union will tend more to weaken 
 than to fortify the connexion." 
 
 Lord Cole : " The strongest abhorrence of the Union is 
 compatible with the most unshaken attachment to the 
 connexion." 
 
 Mr. John Claudius Beresford : "It will undermine the 
 welfare and subvert the liberties of Ireland, and endanger 
 the connexion." 
 
 Eight Hon. "VV. B. Ponsonby ; " I oppose the Union 
 from an anxious desire to maintain the connexion." 
 
 Eight Hon. George Ogle : " A rejection of the Union is 
 the only mode by which the connexion can be preserved." 
 
 Mr. E. French : " The preservation of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment will encourage and maintain the connexion." 
 
 Mr. Gorges : " The happy conmiunion with Great Britain 
 is best maintained by the Constitution of 1782." 
 
Tlie Union disintegrates tlte Empire. 293 
 
 Mr. George Ponsonby : '' The Parliament which so 
 recently protected the Irish Crown is the firm and saving 
 bond of British connexion." 
 
 Colonel Vereker : " The Union will effect the downfall of 
 Ireland, the annihilation of her independence, and separation 
 from British connexion." 
 
 Mr. Buslie: "Union is alienation from British connexion." 
 
 Mr. Peter Burrowes : '' This Union not only menaces the 
 connexion, but the Constitution itself." 
 
 Mr. Plunket : '' This bill I oppose, not as a bill of Union, 
 but of separation; as a bill calculated to dismember the 
 Empire." 
 
 Mr. Grattan : " The two nations are not identified, 
 though the Irish Legislature be absorbed ; and by that 
 absorption the feeling of one of the nations is not identified, 
 but alienated. . . . Union is Irish alienation." 
 
 In truth, any other result than Irish alienation was out 
 of the question. That alienation rankles and festers in the 
 nation's heart. How could it be otherwise % The Union 
 seems pre-eminently calculated to destroy the attachment of 
 Irishmen to British connexion, and to render them indifferent 
 to the conquest of their country by a foreign force. If 
 Ireland's destiny is to be robbed, degraded, and dispeopled, 
 Irishmen may, not unnaturally, ask what can it matter 
 whether the robbery, the degradation, the dispeopling, are 
 achieved by Great Britain, or by any other power? 
 
 How different the case if the Union had never been 
 enacted ! Had the policy of equal laws which Earl Fitz- 
 william believed he was commissioned to effect in 1795 been 
 fairly carried out ; had the country been suffered by England 
 to advance in the career of prosperity she enjoyed under her 
 domestic Legislature ; we should have seen her own resources 
 expanding into national wealth and employed for the support 
 of her own people ; we should have seen, deeply rooted in 
 the nation's heart, the loyalty that springs from national 
 happiness and from an honourable pride in domestic 
 institutions adapted to the people's wants and dear to their 
 affections ; we should have seen no exodus of impoverished 
 millions from a land to which God has given plenty; we 
 should have seen no Fenianism. 
 
 The Times now and then tells truth. "There is 
 nothing," said the leading journal (30th of June, 1863), 
 "about which we Englishmen know so little as Ireland. 
 We are often told this, and no doubt very jastly." 
 
294 Eiglity-jive Years of Irish History. 
 
 The connexion of the countries has now lasted Avell-nigh 
 seven centuries. The Union has lasted since the year 1800. 
 If at the end of more than two generations of legislative 
 connexion, and seven hundred years of Imperial connexion^ 
 Englishmen avowedly know less about Ireland than about 
 anything else, we may safely conclude that their crassa 
 ignorantia is incurable. The legislation of ignorance can 
 neither be intelligent nor beneficial. 
 
 If Fenianism includes, like every other secret society, 
 its rascals and traitors, it has also its better representatives. 
 Kickham, and some other enthusiasts, had respectable 
 characters. Bat if Fenianism has its special hero, I would 
 say that hero is Thomas Burke. His address to the Court 
 after conviction was marked by calmness, earnestness, dig- 
 nity, and resignation. The following passages of his elo- 
 quent speech are worth preserving : 
 
 " I, my lords, have no desire for the name of a martyr — 
 I ask not the death of a martyr ; but if it is the will of the 
 Almighty and Omnipotent God that my devotion to the 
 land of my birth shall be tested on the scatfold, I am willing 
 there to die in defence of the rights of man to free govern- 
 ment — the rights of an oppressed people to throw off the 
 yoke of thraklom. I am an Irishman by birth ; an American 
 by adoption ; by nature a lover of freedom, and an enemy to 
 that power that holds my native land in the bonds of 
 tyranny. It has no godly structure of self-government. 
 Before I go any farther I have an important duty that I 
 wish to dispose of. To my learned, talented, and eloquent 
 counsel I offer the poor gift of thanks — the sincere and heart- 
 felt thanks of an honest man. I offer them, too, in the 
 name of America, the thanks of the Irish people. I know 
 that, although I am here without a friend, without a relative 
 — in fact, three thousand miles away from my family — I am 
 not forgotten there. The great and generous Irish heart of 
 America feels for, to-day sympathises with, and does not 
 forget the man who is willing to tread the scaffold — ay, 
 defiantly, proudly, conscious of no wrong — in defence of 
 American principles, in defence of liberty. ... I shall now, 
 my lords, as no doubt you will suggest to me the propriety 
 of doing, turn my thoughts to the objects beyond the grave. 
 I shall now look only to that home where sorrows are at an 
 end — -where joy is eternal. I shall hope and pray that free- 
 dom may yet dawn on this poor, down-trodden country. It 
 is my hope — it is my prayer ; and the last words I shall 
 
A Fenian Hero. 295 
 
 litter will be a prayer to God for forgiveness, and a prayer 
 for poor old Ireland. . . . True, I ask for no mercy. My 
 present emaciated form, my constitution somewhat shattered, 
 it is better that my life should be brought to an end than to 
 drag out a miserable existence in the prison pens of Portland. 
 Thus it is, my lords, I accept of the verdict. Of course, my 
 lords, my acceptance is unnecessary. I am satisfied with it. 
 And now I shall close. True it is, there are many feelings 
 which actuate me at this moment — in fact, these few dis- 
 connected remarks can give no idea of what I desire to say 
 to the Court. I have ties to bind me to life and society as 
 strongly as any man in this court ; but I can remember the 
 blessing I received from an aged mother's lips as I left her 
 for the last time — she speaking as the Spartan mother did : 
 * Go, my boy ; return either with your shield or on your 
 shield.' This consoles me ; this gives me heart. I submit 
 to my doom, and I hope that God will forgive my past sins. 
 I hope that inasmuch as He has for 700 years preserved 
 Ireland, notwithstanding all the tyranny to which she has 
 been subjected, as a separate and distinct nationality. He 
 ■will also assist her to retrieve her fallen fortunes, and to 
 raise her in her beauty and her majesty — the sister of 
 Columbia — the peer of any nation in the world." 
 
 Those are noble words, and there is not the least doubt 
 that they give true expression to the sentiments of the Irish 
 in America. ."Notwithstanding the scandal entailed on 
 Fenianism by its swindling, peculating leaders, there is not, 
 in the sentiments and aspirations of the great majority of 
 Irish- American Fenians, anything sordid or degrading. 
 They deem their country wronged, and they eagerly desire to 
 emancipate her. The purpose is lofty and honourable, but 
 the details of the project are preposterous and inadmissible. 
 
 Part of Burke's speech consisted of an able analysis of 
 the evidence borne against him by two informers, Massey 
 and Corydon. With regard to the evidence given to the 
 Government by Corydon, a curious question was raised. 
 
 Corydon, it appeared, had been in the pay of the 
 Government as a spy from the 16th of September, 1866. 
 On his cross-examination by Mr. O'Loghlen he admitted that 
 from September until the following January he continued to 
 report to the authorities the different meetings in Liverpool ; 
 the names of the persons who attended them, including the 
 American officers; the names of the places where the American 
 officers could be arrested. He told them that a rising was 
 
296 Eigldy-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 contemplated ; and twice or thrice a week he had given im- 
 portant written information to the police authorities in 
 Ireland. He admitted that he was, as a Fenian, under 
 Massey's orders. The Government, then, were aware of the 
 intended outbreak, which they could have prevented by 
 timely arrests. And although aware of it, yet in the Queen's 
 Speech in February they announced themselves able to 
 restore the Habeas Corpus Act. If they thought Corydon 
 faith-worthy, -why did they not make use of his information, 
 commencing in September, to prevent the outbreak "? Why, 
 in the Queen's Speech, did they represent tranquillity so far 
 settled as to authorise the restoration of the Habeas Corpus 
 Act 1 On the other hand, if they thought Corydon unworthy 
 of credit, why ask the jury to convict Burke upon his 
 testimony? This dilemma was proposed in substance by 
 Mr. Butt in his address to the jury, and by the editors of 
 several journals. 
 
 At the trial of one Goulding, a Fenian, at the summer 
 assizes of 1867 in Kerry, one of the principal witnesses for 
 the prosecution was Head Constable Talbot, of the Irish 
 Police force. Talbot was employed by the authorities at 
 Dublin Castle to watch the movements of the Fenians. To 
 effect this purpose he became an enrolled Fenian, out- 
 stripping all his Fenian confrhes in the fervour of his 
 Fenian enthusiasm. In his evidence at Goulding's trial he 
 stated that such were the influence and confidence he ac- 
 quired among the insurgents, "they would not hold a 
 meeting, night or day, without him." The insurgents, he 
 said, "took him to be the head of the whole thing," and 
 intended to reward his zeal by appointing him Fenian 
 Commissary-General. The London Star called public at- 
 tention to the fact that " Government employed a policeman 
 to become a Fenian ; that the policeman joined in all the 
 arrangements for an armed rising; and, indeed, took so 
 leading a part in the business as to make the Fenians believe 
 he was * the head of the whole thing.' " The circumstance 
 furnishes one more significant warning to the Irish people of 
 the ruinous folly of expecting political movements of a secret 
 and illegal character to escape the vigilance of Government. 
 Before the Fenian conspiracy began to attract notice, 
 much had been said about tlie permanent quiet and content- 
 ment that now pervaded Ireland. True, the people were 
 rushing out of the country; but then it was satisfactory 
 to think they would be better off elsewhere — better off any- 
 
Picturesque Scheme of an Old Soldier. 297 
 
 wliere than under the wing of the foreign Parh'ament sitting 
 in London. In short, British legislation had done wonders 
 in producing tranquillity, and in substituting bullocks for 
 men. We were now at last in the right path. But when 
 Eenianism ruffled the surface, the supposed contentment of the 
 people turned out to have been merely superficial. The 
 Orange journalists were of course for shooting and hanging. 
 Their philosophy did not contemplate the removal of 
 grievances. Odd exhibitions of fantastic zeal diversified the 
 monotony of Orange journalism. A young lady wrote to a 
 newspaper, boasting of her Orange principles, her heroic in- 
 difference to danger, and her proficiency in the use of firearms. 
 An *' Old Soldier " wrote to the Evening Mail to make 
 a suggestion, which I quote, partly as an amusing indication 
 of panic, partly .because it contains a touch of the picturesque : 
 " Permit me, through your columns, to suggest that in the 
 construction of all new police-barracks a better form for 
 defence could hardly be selected than that of the old square 
 towers or keeps which abound in the countr}^ three storeys 
 high, with galleries at each angle on the upper storey, the 
 windows on the ground floor to be six feet at least from the 
 ground outside, small, with iron ' frames and shutters, the 
 latter with loopholes and slides ; only one entrance, having 
 on the outside a strong iron gate, inside which a short 
 passage, say five or six feet long, closed at the inner end by 
 a ball-proof sheet-iron door, loopholed ; the side walls of the 
 passage to be also loopholed. Four stout men in such a 
 building might defy incendiaries, or, indeed, any attack, 
 except by artillery. Were these barracks built on slightly 
 rising grounds, and within signalling distance of each other, 
 intelligence of any disturbance could, in even moderately 
 clear weather, be conveyed to the nearest garrison town by flag 
 signals in the daytime, and lamps or flash signals at night. 
 For example : let each tower have a number, and if there is 
 an attack upon Xo. 4 tower, he hoists a red flag in the day- 
 time, or a red light at night, and his number. No. 3 sees it, 
 and hoists No. 4 and the red signal, and so on until it 
 reaches the sub-inspector, who communicates with the officer 
 in command of the troops, and a flying column starts in the 
 direction indicated, the tower needing assistance keeping the 
 danger signal flying until relieved, the other towers only 
 keeping its number without the danger signal. I merely 
 give this as an outline of a plan which I think might be 
 worked out with advanta;?e and at little cost." 
 
298 Eifjldy-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 FORMATION OF BUTT's HOME GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION. 
 
 And are not all our ties the same, 
 
 One sod beneath, one blue sky o'er us, 
 True Irish both, in heart and name. 
 
 One lot, or dark or bright, before us ? 
 A thousand links about us wound, 
 
 To peace and mutual kindness urge us ; 
 The very seas that gird us round, 
 
 Speak Union in their sleepless surges. 
 
 Thomas Davis. 
 
 "When the Fenian conspiracy was crushed, an agitation sprang 
 up for the disestablishment and disendowmentof the Protestant 
 State Church in Ireland. Of this agitation I have traced 
 the progress in a previous chapter.* Many years ago the late 
 Earl of Derby had predicted that if the anti-Irish State Church 
 were overthrown the Repeal of the Union w^ould necessarily 
 follow. The prediction was natural. The temporalities of 
 that Church, amounting to at least £700,000 per annum, 
 formed an excellent provision for the cadets of the Protestant 
 nobility and gentry of Ireland. The preservation of the 
 giant fraud had been expressly guaranteed by the fifth 
 article of the Union; and there is no doubt that in 1800 
 a good deal of Protestant hostility to the Union had been 
 softened by the expectation that England would for ever 
 maintain the lucrative ecclesiastical establishment for the 
 benefit of her Protestant allies in this kingdom. That 
 establishment, also, fed the sectarian arrogance of its mem- 
 bers. It pampered their pride to see the Catholics despoiled 
 of the ancient Catholic Church revenues, and compelled to 
 hand over those revenues to the dominant minority. They 
 Avere taught to believe that this outrage on honesty was 
 a just homage to the spiritual superiority of the Anglican 
 Church. A Tory acquaintance expressed their common 
 feeling to myself, saying : " Our Church is such an excellent 
 Church that it ought to be established." 
 
 "VVcll, it is not wonderful that Lord Derby and many 
 others thought that the Irish Protestants would be alienated 
 from the Union and from England if the English Government 
 should overthrow an institution that furnished comfortable, 
 and in several instances enormous, incomes to their ministers, 
 
 * Chapter x. 
 
Home Rule Declarations of Protestants. 299 
 
 stimulated their sectarian conceit, and of wliicli the perpetual 
 preservation was provided for as forming an essential and 
 fundamental condition of the legislative Union. I concurred 
 in Lord Derby's opinion ; and its correctness was soon proved 
 by the movement among the Irish Protestants to obtain self- 
 government for their country. In 1868 the Orange party 
 held a meeting at their hall in Dublin, and resolved that the 
 disestablishment and disendowment of their Church would 
 annul the Union, which, they said, could thenceforth be only 
 maintained by superior physical force. On the 19th of May, 
 1870, a large number of Protestant and Catholic gentlemen 
 met in the great room of the Bilton Hotel in Dublin ; the 
 names of the most prominent persons at that meeting are 
 given in the twelfth chapter of Alexander Sullivan's interest- 
 ing work, " New Ireland." * They resolved that Ireland was 
 entitled to self-government on a federative principle, and 
 invited their countrymen to support an agitation to obtain it. 
 On the 1st of September, 1870, the inaugural public meeting 
 of the Home Government Association was held in the 
 Kotunda, and some of the speeches then delivered by 
 Protestant gentlemen are so significant of the accuracy of 
 Lord Derby's forecast, as well as so honourable to the 
 speakers, that I deem it right to give the following extracts, 
 wdiich show the spirit by which they were animated. 
 
 Mr. William Shaw, the Protestant Member for Protestant 
 Bandon, said : 
 
 " They could not possibly regard Ireland as a county of 
 England. The sea, nature. Providence, had forbidden it. 
 History was against at. For generations this war had been 
 going on between the centralising influence of England on 
 the one hand, and the national spirit of Ireland on the other; 
 yet, with all England's power, she had never been able to 
 Avipe out the national aspirations of this country." 
 
 j\Iy next extract is from the speech of a man whose name 
 is a household word in Ireland — the liev. Joseph A. Galbraith, 
 Eellow of the Protestant University of Trinity College ; a 
 Protestant clergyman of thoroughly national principles, whose 
 splendid intelligence and generous heart impelled him to give 
 to the movement for Home Government the assistance of his 
 high character and great ability. 
 
 * "This," says Mr. Sullivan, "was not * Kepeal,' as O'Connell's 
 scheme was loosely and imperfectly called. O'Connell entirely 
 avoided defining his plan of arrangement." Mr. Sullivan is mis- 
 taken here. O'Connell defined his plan with elaborate minuteness,, 
 as I have shown in the nineteenth chapter of the present work. 
 
300 Eirjlity-iivG Years of Irish History. 
 
 *' He had never,'' lie said, " spoken in that room before, 
 and he doubted whether his voice could reach all parts of it. 
 But of this he was certain, that if his voice could reach as far 
 as his heart and his affections, it would reach from the Giant's 
 Causeway to Cape Clear, and from Ireland's Eye to the Isles 
 of Arran. . . . He defied any man in Ireland to maintain in 
 public the proposition that Home liule was a bad thing in 
 itself; no one would believe him, no one would listen to him, 
 lie would be hooted off any platform." 
 
 Mr. Galbraith quoted the memorable words of Charles 
 James Fox, who, speaking of the Union, said : " The whole 
 scheme went upon that false and abominable presumption 
 that we (English) could legislate better for the Irish than 
 they could do for themselves — a principle founded upon the 
 most arrogant despotism and tyranny. There was not a 
 more clear axiom in the science of politics than that man was 
 his own natural governor, and that he ought to legislate for 
 himself. No other being could enter into his feelings or 
 have anything common in sympathy with his nature, and 
 therefore the Legislature of a people must flow out of and be 
 identified with the people themselves. It was idle to talk to 
 Ireland of the word Union, since there could be no such thing 
 as a real union on an equal footing between countries so 
 disproportionate and unequal." 
 
 Old Richard Grattan, cousin of his illustrious namesake, 
 proposed a resolution which condemned the design to force 
 the existing system on the Irish people, *' whose legitimate 
 national aspirations it ignores or outrages." Mr. Grattan ex- 
 pressed his firm belief " that Ireland would prosper under 
 native rule to a greater extent even than she had suffered 
 under centuries of English misgovernment." 
 
 The Rev. George ^['Cutchan, Protestant clergyman of 
 Kenraare, declared that in heartily joining the Home Govern- 
 ment Association, he desired to make Ireland 
 
 A land of settled government, 
 
 A land of just and old renown ; 
 
 Where freedom broadens slowly down 
 From precedent to precedent. 
 
 Dr. Maunsell, proprietor of the Tory Evening Mail, de- 
 clared that he would belie the convictions of his whole life 
 if he did not give every assistance in his power to the move- 
 ment which ho hoped they were about successfully to 
 
Rehearsal of the Case for Rej)eal. 301 
 
 The numerous letters from persons unable to attend the 
 meeting, invariably expressed the zealous concurrence of the 
 writers in the object contemplated by its promoters. The 
 cause advanced apace. On the 18th of July, 1871, the 
 Corporation of Dublin assembled in the City Hall, to receive 
 a deputation from the Home Government Association, con- 
 sisting of the Kev. Joseph Galbraitb, John Martin, M.P. for 
 the county of Meath, and myself. The deputies were 
 members of the three chief religious communities in Ireland 
 — Episcopal Protestant, Presbyteriau, and Catholic ; and it 
 was deemed that our appearance together, associated as 
 brother champions of the cause of Ireland, would usefidly 
 typify that union of creeds for a national object which every 
 one admitted would essentially conduce to success. 
 
 We rehearsed the old story. We presented the strong 
 principles and facts of our case : the indefeasible right of 
 the Irish nation to make their own laws, to retain their own 
 revenues, to control their own national concerns ; the misery 
 entailed on our people by the invasion of that right ; the 
 inveterate hostility with which England, previously to 1779, 
 had crushed out every Irish manufacture which she feared 
 might successfully compete with her own; the prosperity 
 which sprang up when the Irish Volunteers and Parliament, 
 in 1782, inspired by the illustrious Grattan, flung off for a 
 time the pernicious usurpation of the British Legislature ; 
 the criminal conspiracy of Pitt and his agents to persecute 
 our people into insurrection in order to carry the Union ; 
 the consequent decay of manufactures, the monstrous abstrac- 
 tion of national wealth, the financial pillage, the public 
 despondency, the occasional famines, the abnormal emigra- 
 tion, the smouldering disloyalty, the utter dislocation of the 
 Irish social system resulting from the wicked destruction of 
 the Irish Parliament — these things we pressed upon the 
 notice of the metropolitan Corporation and of the country, 
 and the example thus set in Dublin was soon followed by 
 other municipal bodies. Town Commissioners, Boards of 
 Guardians, County Clubs, and Farmers' Clubs. To obtain 
 the support of an Irish constituency it now became needful 
 in almost every case that the candidate for parliamentary 
 representation should announce his devotion to Home 
 Kule. 
 
 There were occasional indications that the spirit of 
 discord would expire. Protestants of good position and 
 intelligence gradually joined the national ranks. 
 
302 Elglitij-Jioe Years of Irish History. 
 
 The Orange processions in Monaghan, held on the 12th 
 of July, 1872, had passed off quietly, no opposition to them 
 having been given by the Nationalist multitude. In recog- 
 nition of this tolerance, the following Notice to the Orange- 
 men of Monaghan was issued by their Grand Master : 
 
 "Dear Brethren, 
 
 " Having been informed on good authority that it is 
 the intention of our Roman Catholic neighbours to celebrate 
 the 15th of August by processions in different parts of the 
 county, I now call upon all Orangemen to abstain, by word 
 or deed, from interfering in any way with such processions. 
 The Orangemen of Monaghan had their processions on the 
 12th of July, and were not interfered with in any way. 
 Let us return the compliment. 
 
 "(Signed) William Wolsely Madden, 
 
 *' Grand Master, Orangemen of Monaghan. 
 " Co. Monaghan, 8th August, 1872." 
 
 With regard to a proposed Home Eule meeting in that 
 county, I corresponded with a Conservative gentleman of 
 local distinction and of large fortune in Ulster. I am not 
 aware of his being an Orangeman; but I believe he was 
 closely connected, either by kindred or personal friendship, 
 with leading members of the Orange party. Not having his 
 permission to publish his name, I do not give it. I may, 
 however, mention that he was a deputy-lieutenant, and held 
 the commission of the peace in four Northern counties. The 
 following extracts from his letter, dated 10th of August, 1873, 
 will furnish evidence that our hopes of an union between 
 Irishmen of different parties were in progress of being 
 realised. Speaking of a recent Home Eule meeting in an 
 Orange district, he says : 
 
 " A large number of my men went to it from here and 
 passed through one of the strongest Orange districts in the 
 North, with green flags, music, etc. Throughout the day the 
 best feeling was displayed, and I did not hear of a single 
 instance of an uncivil word being addressed to the proces- 
 sionists. From some of the houses on the way jugs of milk 
 were brought out by the Protestant party and distributed to 
 those who had come from a distance. And I know that on 
 a recent occasion drums were actually lent by some of the 
 Orange lodges near Monaghan on the occasion of a Green 
 procession." 
 
An Ulster Conservative Nationalist. 303 
 
 What rational and Christian Irishman would not ardently 
 welcome such blessed indications that the internecine rancour 
 which so long had cursed our country was at last giving 
 way to the influence of nationality? My correspondent 
 continued : 
 
 "Let me add — this constitutes a very marked change for 
 the better, and what I would really advise would be to be 
 content with it, and not risk compromising everything in the 
 event of ill-judged persons making foolish speeches. For 
 instance, I am utterly opposed to mixing up the Home Rule 
 question with collateral issues, such as Tenant Eight, 
 Denominational or Undenominational Education, etc. The 
 ground for us to take, as it seems to me, is the simple one of 
 obtaining the management of our own affairs, by which I 
 have no hesitation in saying an immense reduction in taxa- 
 tion of every kind might be made in Ireland, whereby 
 everybody would bo benefited." 
 
 In this opinion I thoroughly concurred. In fact, the 
 mixing up of collateral questions with the main national 
 question of Home Rule, would have been a deviation from 
 the principles on which our Association was founded. While 
 every member was free to hold what opinion -he thought 
 proper on all other public subjects, the one, only object 
 contemplated by the Association was the establishment of 
 Home Rule upon a Federal basis. My correspondent con- 
 cluded 'his letter with a statement well worth putting on 
 record : 
 
 "The only thing," he said, "which I believe prevents 
 the Protestant party and gentry generally from joining the 
 movement, is the fear that out of Home Rule may arise a 
 series of assaults upon the rights of property against which 
 England would protect them ; and these objections must be 
 removed by the force of reasoning, and not by popular 
 demonstrations." 
 
 Such was the judgment of an Ulster Conservative land- 
 lord ; and I have not the least doubt that he was right. If 
 popular agitation had thenceforth been constantly and ex- 
 clusively directed to the acquisition of Home Rule, the 
 revived sentiment of nationality would have gradually led 
 the landlords to emulate the patriotism displayed by their 
 grandfathers, who in 1782 had made Ireland ring from sea 
 to sea with the declaration that no power on earth had any 
 right to make her laws, save her own King, Lords, and 
 Commons. Combined with the masses of their countrymen, 
 
304 Eigldy-five Years of IrUh History. 
 
 and leading them in the pursuit of legislative independence, 
 the landlords of Ireland would have now been the most 
 powerful and popular aristocracy in existence. They would 
 have defied and defeated hostdity. Strong in their position 
 as spirited guardians of our national rights, they would have 
 saved their country, entrenched themselves in the popular 
 heart, and effectively preserved the special interests of their 
 order. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 PUBLIC CONFERENCE ON HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 God of peace, before thee 
 Peaceful here we kneel, 
 Huuibly to implore thee 
 
 For a nation's weal. 
 Calm her sons' dissensions, 
 
 Bid their discord cease; 
 End their mad contentions — 
 Hear us, God of Peace ! 
 
 Spirit of the Nation, 
 
 It was resolved by the council of the Home Government 
 Association to invite a public conference on the subject of 
 our national claim. We believed that, as Lord Ffrench said, 
 public opinion in England, as well as in Ireland, would be 
 much enlightened by the proceedings of a conference which, 
 from its composition, would possess a representative character. 
 The requisition received the signatures of about 24,000 
 persons, and at the head of the signatures appeared the 
 venerated name of John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam. 
 In compliance with the requisition, the Conference was con- 
 vened by four gentlemen, namely, Philip Callan, M.P., 
 William Shaw, M.P., E. R. King-IIarman, and myself. We 
 assembled in the Rotunda on the 18th of iN'ovember, 1873, 
 under the able presidency of Mr. Shaw, who at that time 
 represented Eandon. 
 
 The first resolution was moved by the leader of the 
 movement, Isaac Butt. The international arrangement which 
 he advocated, proposed to restore to Ireland the exclusive 
 right of legislation on all our domestic affairs; the revived 
 Irish Parliament to consist, as of old, of the Sovereign, 
 Lords, and Commons of Ireland. The power of legislating 
 for the local or domestic concerns of this country was thus 
 
True Peace produced hy Popidar Content. 305 
 
 to be withdrawn from the Imperial Parliament ; but that 
 Parliament was still to retain its control of all Imperial 
 business, and Ireland was still to send Members thither to 
 take part in such business. Mr. Butt's speech was a master- 
 piece of ingenious and eloquent advocacy. For myself, I 
 should have much preferred an arrangement resembling 
 Grattan's Constitution of 1782; but I acquiesced in the 
 scheme proposed by Mr. Butt and accepted by the Conference, 
 mainly because it appeared to be more attainable than the 
 other. He travelled over the whole ground; quoted the 
 numerous pro3fs of the Irish prosperity that prevailed while 
 Ireland was emancipated from English legislation ; dissected 
 objections; enforced the claim of right, and produced from 
 his personal experience resistless evidence that the system of 
 governing Ireland ah externo by an alien Parliament was the 
 fruitful source of Irish disaffection — disaffection incurable 
 while that system lasted. 
 
 The remark is trite that when Ireland claims Home 
 Government by agitation, a large section of English poli- 
 ticians exclaim that what she seeks must be withheld, 
 because nothing should be granted to clamour. On the 
 other hand, when a lull from agitation prevails, the same 
 politicians declare that Ireland needs no change, because she 
 is quiet ; that her contentment is demonstrated by the fact 
 of her being at peace. AVhat Isaac Butt thought about such 
 peace will appear from the following passage in his opening 
 speech. He said : 
 
 " Under our present system of government there can be 
 no real peace in Ireland. Corruption and coercion may 
 produce a forced and unreal stillness. True tranquillity can 
 only spring from the contentment of the people. We never 
 will have that contentment in the absence of free institutions 
 — of that National Parliament which is the greatest and best 
 of free institutions, which alone can give life and reality to 
 all others. Ten years ago English statesmen said that 
 Ireland was at rest. May I read for the Conference a 
 passage which I well remember reading at the time — Con- 
 servative testimony to the character of that stillness which 
 was called rest. . . . 
 
 " ' j^early half a century has elapsed since the cry of 
 Justice to Ireland was a watchword through the land, and 
 the voices of the men who then raised it are silent for ever, 
 but still it ascends like a wail above their graves. Then it 
 was for equal riglits and liberty ; now the Irish nation only 
 
 X 
 
306 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 asks the bare permission to exist. ]S"othing indicates more 
 plainly the miserable condition of Ireland than the utter 
 apathy with which the recent attempt to get up a Reform 
 agitation was received. Public spirit is dead, and those who 
 are not looking for a revolution from beyond the Atlantic, 
 sit down in hopeless apathy, despairing of any good result 
 from attempting to reform or move that British Parliament 
 which has so often disappointed the country's expectations, 
 and turned a deaf ear to her reiterated appeals for justice.'" 
 
 Having read the above passage, written by a Conservative 
 who afterwards occupied a high judicial station, Mr. Butt 
 proceeded : 
 
 "Is this the peace you desire for our country] A peac© 
 that is only the inaction of exhaustion and decay — an in- 
 action that is produced by the corruption of the upper ranks, 
 and the hopeless and sullen apathy of the masses of the 
 people? — a peace that, even at its best, means an ignoble 
 acquiescence in the degradation of our country — a stagnation 
 of all political and national life — a quenching of all public 
 spirit, and an extinction of all public opinion ? It is just the 
 peace that is created by an alien power, that, like the 
 vampire, sucks away the life-blood of a nation, and, as it 
 does so, lulls its victim to a ghastly repose. There was a 
 time when Ireland seemed sinking to that fatal sleep." 
 
 Mr. Butt then traced the events that had startled the 
 country from its slumber, and roused the alien Government 
 from its false security. He referred to the Fenians who had 
 dared the desperate enterprise of freeing Ireland by revolt, 
 and then went on : 
 
 " Over a torn and distracted country, a country agitated 
 by dissension, weakened by distrust, we raised the banner on 
 which we emblazoned the magic words, ' Home Eule.' We 
 raised it with feeble hand. Tremblingly, with hesitation, 
 almost stealthily we. unfurled that banner to the breeze. 
 But wherever the legend Ave had emblazoned on its folds was 
 seen the heart of the people moved to its words, and the 
 soul of the nation felt their power and their spell." 
 
 After an impressive and animated exhortation to perse- 
 verance, Mr. Butt concluded by moving the following 
 resolution : 
 
 " That, as the basis of the proceedings of this Conference, 
 we declare our conviction that it is essentially necessary to the 
 peace and prosperity of Ireland that the right of domestic legis- 
 lation on all Irish affairs should bo restored to our country.'^ 
 
Domestic Legislation indispensable. 307 
 
 The Conference lasted for four days. Its proceedings were 
 marked by great unanimity. Mr. Kenelni Digby suggested 
 that the re-establishment of a House of Lords in the revived 
 Constitution of Ireland was a project not reconcilable with 
 the democratic opinions largely prevalent in England, and 
 to some extent also in Ireland. In these opinions he 
 appeared to participate, but he refrained from pressing them, 
 as the predominating sentiment of the Conference was 
 plainly in favour of a return to the old pre-Union lines 
 of Sovereign, Lords, and Commons. Mr. P. J. Smyth, and 
 Mr. ]\Iartin, M.P. for Meath, concurred with me in pre- 
 ferring an Irish Constitution on the basis of 1782 to the 
 Federal connexion proposed to the Conference for its 
 adoption ; but, like myself, they yielded their individual 
 preference to the consideration that Federalism, although 
 in their opinion the less desirable, was apparently the more 
 attainable solution of the international difficulty. 
 
 That excellent man and true patriot, the Rev. Joseph 
 Galbraith, F.T.C.D,, communicated to the audience the 
 interesting fact that the celebrated Irish novelist, Charles 
 Lever, then lately deceased, had thoroughly sympathised with 
 the national movement. *' It may not," said Mr. Galbraith, 
 "be known to the members of this Conference, that he 
 (Charles Lever) took a deep interest in our movement, and was 
 from conviction and love of country a genuine Home Euler. I 
 hold in my hand a paper — it is labelled on the back, ' Home 
 Rule — author's proof.' It was written and revised by 
 Charles Lever for BlacJciooocVs Magazine, but he went so far 
 in expressing this sentiment that it was suppressed. It was 
 too much for Bla/ikwood.^^ 
 
 At the end of the fourth day well-merited thanks were 
 unanimously given to Mr. Shaw, the chairman of the 
 Conference, for the tact and ability with which he had 
 discharged the duties of his office, as well as for the zeal he 
 had uniformly evinced in support of the national demand. 
 Mr. Butt closed the proceedings with language appropriately 
 solemn : 
 
 " We have passed," said he, *' through four days which 
 were a crisis in the history of Ireland, and never were days 
 more nobly passed by a nation and a people on their trial. 
 The moderation, the dignity, the self-control, I will say the 
 wisdom, of these proceedings have more than answered the 
 hopes of our friends, and more than disappointed the malignant 
 expectations and prophecies of our enemies. Our meetings 
 
 X 2 
 
308 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 have been presided over in a manner worthy of the old Roman 
 senate, and not a word has been uttered which any of 
 us have need to desire to blot out from our records. In the 
 same spirit of reverence in which in my opening words 
 I offered up a prayer for that guidance without which 
 all human effort is in vain — in these closing words I will 
 say that the God of our fathers has looked down upon us. 
 We will go forth from this under His blessing ; and with that 
 blessing the efforts originated in this Conference will achieve 
 the liberties of our native land." 
 
 Thus ended the Conference ; and we strongly hoped 
 that the unanimity that had characterised its proceedings, the 
 confederation of men of different religions and opposite 
 political doctrines for a common purpose — we hoped that the 
 example thus given would be followed through the kingdom 
 of Ireland. We cared not for Whig or Tory — for Radical or 
 Conservative — we only insisted upon one bond of brother- 
 hood — a hearty acceptance of the doctrine that the Irish 
 people should alone govern Ireland, and an honest endeavour 
 to achieve that vital right. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 THE GENERAL ELECTIOX OF 1874. 
 
 " To combine classes, Eoger O'Moore embraced Preston of 
 Gormanstown, on the summit of Knocklofty, in 1641 ; to combine 
 classes, Sarsfield rode from Limerick town to Galway garrison to 
 bring back Tyrconnel ; to combine classes, Henry Grattan sent 
 the resolution in favour of Emancipation to the Convention of 
 Dungannon." — D'Arcy M'Geb. 
 
 For some months the agitation proceeded through the 
 country on the principles adopted by the Conference. Large 
 meetings were held, with the usual display of enthusiasm. 
 At the general election of 1874, which came suddenly on the 
 country, fifty-nine Repeal or Home Rule members were 
 returned to the foreign Parliament, notwithstanding the 
 restricted electoral franchise. A larger number would have 
 been returned if the constituencies had been better organised, 
 or if they had been given more time for preparation. As a 
 matter of course, our Irish claim was as unpopular in Eng- 
 land as the restitution of stolen goods is commonly ctistaste- 
 ful to the robber. England, by the Union, had struck her 
 fangs into our vitals. She had grasped Ireland in her 
 
Home Rule in the House of Commons. 309 
 
 clutches, and had no inclination to relinquish her prey. 
 Her arrogance was gratified by the control of Irish interests 
 which the Union gave her. The power of extorting in- 
 ordinate revenue from Ireland gratified her avarice. And 
 her ancient hatred of this country was gratified by the 
 destruction of the Irish Parliament and the degradation of 
 Ireland from the rank of a self-governed kingdom to the 
 condition of a tributary province. The correlative of English 
 usurpation was Irish resentment. " Conquest," says Cardinal 
 Manning, " does not create authority. It is only a sanguinary 
 investiture of the person who shall bear the authority." * 
 The Irish people felt that the Union was a conquest achieved 
 by sanguinary crimes ; and that tlie Power that had received 
 the sanguinary investiture was entitled to no other obedience 
 than superior physical force could exact. 
 
 Isaac Butt had considerable qualifications for the leader- 
 ship of a popular movement. He had great eloquence, great 
 debating power, a thorough conviction of the justice of his 
 cause which imparted to his speeches an impressive air of 
 earnestness. He was perfectly free from the miserable 
 meanness of personal jealousy, which has sometimes stained 
 the character and marred the usefulness of abler men. 
 
 On the 31st of May, 1874, he brought the Home Pule 
 question into the House of Commons. In a speech of great 
 power he moved, ''That the House resolve itself into a 
 Committee to consider the present parliamentary relations 
 between Great Britain and Ireland." He said that if the 
 Committee were granted, he would then move " That it is 
 expedient and just to restore to the Irish nation the right 
 and power of managing all exclusively Irish affairs in an 
 Irish Parliament ; and that provision be made at the same 
 time for maintaining the integrity of the Empire and the 
 connexion between the countries by reserving to the Imperial 
 Parliament full and exclusive control over all Imperial affairs." 
 
 The debate occupied two nights. I do not attempt to 
 summarise the arguments, for the reader of this book is 
 already aware of the principal grounds of our demand. The 
 Irish votes on the division stood thus : Ayes, 56 ; Noes, 36 ; 
 giving the Home Rulers a majority of 20, so far as the Irish 
 representation was concerned. But, of course, the British 
 majority sustained their usurpation by overwhelming numbers. 
 
 For some time a belief prevailed in Ireland that the 
 
 * Contemporary Review, July, 1883. 
 
310 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 Home Eule question, like the Catholic question of old, would 
 become a subject of annual parliamentary discussion, 
 gradually acquiring accessions of strength until the united 
 action of the various sections of Irishmen should finally 
 render resistance extremely inconvenient to the English 
 Government. To intensify this inconvenience, it occurred to 
 Mr. Parnell that the intervention of the Irish Members in 
 the constant debates upon all sorts of topics could be 
 effectively utilised. He felt that the foreign Legislature was 
 not in any sense an Irish Legislature, except in the bare fact 
 of having power over Ireland ; which power had been ac- 
 quired by the perpetration of enormous crimes. Its function 
 was to hold down Ireland ; to wring money out of Ireland ; 
 to repress the honourable sentiment of Irish nationality, and 
 to perpetuate this degrading condition of ruinous bondage. 
 In Januar}'-, 1878, Mr. Parnell, at a Conference at the 
 Kotunda, thus described his view of the situation, and the 
 motives of his policy : 
 
 ** Being of an active turn of body and mind myself, and 
 having gone over to the House of Commons, I found myself 
 kicking my heels about the House of Commons for months 
 with nothing to do ; so, consequently last session I thought 
 that as the Government would give us nothing to do on Irish 
 questions, it would be no harm if some of us turned our 
 attention to English ones. We took up the Prisons Bill and 
 one or two other English Bills — only two or three altogether 
 — and we turned our attention to them with very good results, 
 for everybody admits that we did improve them ; though 
 they made a great fuss about the process of improvement." 
 
 That process was denounced as being an " obstruction " 
 to the business of Parliament. The foreign Parliament, 
 however, was itself an obstruction to Irish prosperity ; so 
 that if Mr. Parnell's action were really obstructive, he was 
 only obstructing the obstructor. 
 
 Mr. Bright said in the House of Commons, in 1869, that 
 Parliament then, for the first time since the Union, displayed 
 a sentiment of friendliness to Ireland. The hostility of 
 sixty-nine years is thus admitted by that distinguished 
 Englishman ; but the friendly sentiments of the subsequent 
 period have not yet been exhibited. In truth, the persistent 
 usurpation of legislative power over Ireland is in itself a 
 position essentially hostile to our national rights, and poisons 
 every measure, of whatever nature, the alien Legislature may 
 enact in our regard. 
 
Obstructing the Obstructor. 311 
 
 Mr. Parnell continued to practise what "was called 
 *' obstruction" in that Parliament which had acquired its 
 control of Ireland b}^ the destruction oi the Irish Parliament. 
 It was no doubt amusing to see the enemy worried in his 
 own stronghold ; but the question remained — to wliat extent 
 could the process be prudently carried 1 The action of Mr. 
 Parnell and his friends was complained of as being intolerable 
 to Englishmen; but it should have been remembered that 
 the Union was, and is, intolerable to the enormous majority 
 of Irishmen, and that some inconvenience in the transaction 
 of legislative business was indeed a very small reprisal on 
 the Power that had made havoc of Irish legislative rights 
 and Irish prosperity. 
 
 Mr. Batt, however, disapproved of the process styled 
 •obstructive. He relied, apparently, on the force of argument 
 to overcome the hostility of English legislators ; and he 
 condemned, sometimes in language of asperity, the more 
 energetic policy of Mr. Parnell. From his age, from his 
 talents, from his experience, and from his unquestionable 
 ■devotion to the cause of Ireland, great deference was due to 
 his opinion ; and his feelings must have been extremely 
 painful when he found that his followers gave strong indica- 
 tions of their preference for the policy which he condemned. 
 
 Still he continued to occupy the position of leader, 
 pretty much as a Prime Minister may be said to lead in 
 Parliament, although confronted with an active and in- 
 creasing Opposition. A conference of Home Kulers, to 
 which I liave already alluded, was held at the Rotunda to 
 consider the respective merits of the two policies. It ended 
 in a compromise. Parnell did not wish to break up the 
 Home Rule party, but only desired to infuse more energy 
 into their parliamentary action. Yet Butt plainly saw that 
 his policy did not command the assent of the people. This 
 was a painful consciousness ; it preyed severely on a mind 
 much harassed by public cares and private anxieties. He 
 soon formally resigned a leadership which had become 
 scarcely more than nominal. His health gave way, and on 
 the 5th of May, 1879, he died, sincerely lamented by all 
 who had enjoyed his private friendship, and revered as the 
 founder of the Home Government League even by those 
 persons who deemed his parliamentary tactics mistaken. 
 " Requiescat in pace." 
 
 After his death a strong disposition existed among many 
 Home Rulers to invest Mr. William Shaw with the leader- 
 
312 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 ship. Mr. Shaw was a gentleman of much ability and had 
 rendered great service to the cause by his able speeches, 
 his liberal pecuniary subscriptions, and his able presidency 
 of important public meetings, where his tact was conspicuously 
 exercised. He accepted the position of leader, and in the 
 performance of its duties he evinced the business-like 
 capacity for which he had been previously distinguished. 
 He retained the leadership till the 17th of May, 1880, on 
 which day a meeting of the Home Rule members assembled 
 at the Royal Exchange to take counsel concerning the con- 
 dition of their body and its future organisation. Of course 
 the vexed question of parliamentary " obstruction " was dis- 
 cussed. The result of the meeting was the enthronement of 
 Parnell as leader of the movement by 23 votes against 18 
 which were given for Shaw. 
 
 And it is undeniable that the strength Avhich Home Rule 
 has now acquired in Parliament is tlie result of Parnell's 
 parliamentary policy. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIY. 
 
 MR. parnell's qualifications for leadership. 
 
 "It is the English people who ho'd Ireland." — The Econ07nist 
 (London journal).* 
 
 Mr. Parnell now became the central figure in Irish agitation. 
 His qualities of fearlessness, energy, and perseverance obtained 
 for him the confidence of the rural population, to whose 
 interests ho professed himself entirely devoted. His supreme 
 indifference to the opinion of the foreign Parliament was 
 duly appreciated by a people whose experience of its rule 
 was an experience of chronic disaster, and who knew enough 
 of the criminal means by which Ireland was brought under 
 its power to regard its authority as illegitimate. 
 
 The Home Rule League was founded to agitate solely 
 for Home Rule. By its original principles all persons were 
 admissible to its membership — Conservatives, Liberals, 
 Tenant Righters, Landlords — provided only that they ac- 
 cepted the doctrine that Ireland needed and was entitled to 
 S elf-Government, and undertook to assist the movement for 
 its restoration. But by degrees an attack on landlordism 
 was practically incorporated with the Home Rule agitation, 
 
 * Quoted in Irish Times of July 1, 1882. 
 
Possible Junction of Lcmdlorcls and Home Rulers. 313 
 
 and this was plainly a divergence from the programme on 
 which many of its members had joined it. The reader has 
 seen that there were at one time strong indications of a 
 possible junction of the landlords with the friends of our 
 legislative independence ; a junction which of course required 
 time to effect, but of which the progress, though slow, was 
 pretty sure to gain momentum unless checked by an on- 
 slaught on their special interests. Looking at all Irish 
 questions from a Home Eule standpoint, I had fondly hoped 
 for the realisation of the late Lord Derby's prophecy, that 
 the Repeal of the Union would follow from the disestablish- 
 ment of the anti-Irish State Chnrch. It seemed as if his 
 lordship had prophesied correctly when Protestants of dis- 
 tinction assembled in a meeting where national principles 
 were strongly expressed and loudly applauded. Our object 
 was to combine all parties in the demand for native legis- 
 lation ; for it seemed unquestionable that Home Rule, if 
 obtained by a combination of all Irishmen, would be far 
 more valuable than Home Rule if obtained by one party of 
 Irishmen against another. To promote that combination was 
 the task of the Home Rule League as originally constituted ; 
 and I thought, as time went on, that Mr. Parnell should 
 have devoted his great talents to weld, if possible, the 
 scattered parties into a solid brotherhood of Constitutional 
 nationalists, instead of dropping Home Rule for four years, 
 and supplanting it with a violent agrarian agitation that 
 drove back the landlords into the slough of West-Eritonisni 
 from which they were just beginning to emerge. 
 
 Ko propositions can be plainer than these : first, that it 
 is the interest of every country to retain her own income and 
 to develop her own resources for the benefit of her own 
 people ; second, that the external control that drags away her 
 income in large masses, overthrows her manufactures, and 
 trains every class of her aspirants to look for promotion to a 
 foreign source, must be ruinous alike to her national honour 
 and to her material prosperity. 
 
 Any rational landlord must have seen these truths if he 
 could only shake off the fears and the fetters of party and 
 sectarian prejudice. In November, 1847, Smith O'Brien 
 wrote to Charles Gavan Duffy : 
 
 "The tone of feeling amongst the gentry is much 
 changed with reference to Repeal. I hope that you will 
 abstain fi^om attacking the landlords as a class. When an 
 individual does wrong, spare him not; but do not render 
 
314 EigTity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 hostile to you a whole class — the most influential — by 
 indiscriminate and undeserved censure." 
 
 There must, indeed, have been many of their class who 
 had sense enough to see that it would be better for Ireland 
 to keep at home whatever wealth the Almighty had given 
 her, than that a powerful and jealous neighbour should rob 
 her of the means of supporting her inhabitants. But the 
 class were slow to move. They needed the spur of Dis- 
 establishment to force them into action. They were blind 
 to their own interests. John Mitchel wrote to O'Brien in 
 1847, that if the landlords would act as Irish patriots, "they 
 could make fair and honourable terms for themselves, and 
 become the most powerful and popular aristocracy on earth." 
 
 That they could have become so I have not the slightest 
 •doubt. Had they taken the initiative in the Eepeal agitation; 
 had they worked it with earnestness and with the weight of 
 their influence ; had they summoned their people to support 
 them in demanding Ireland for the Irish ; had they earned 
 the popular confidence by showing themselves Irishmen in 
 heart and soul ; had they repudiated foreign legislation as a 
 grievance and an insult ; had they lowered their rents when 
 excessive to a just and moderate level — had they done all 
 this, their people would have loved them as champions and 
 protectors, would have rallied vigorously round them, and 
 invested them with all the strength that well-earned popular 
 support can confer. 
 
 I can see no wrong in landlordism, considered purely as 
 an institution. I can see no wrong in the fact that one man, 
 possessing land, lets it at a fair and h<mest rent to another 
 man as tenant. But landlordism may be either a scourge or 
 a blessing, according to the mode in Avhich it is administered. 
 If a numerous body of landlords extort the last farthing that 
 can be squeezed out of the industry of their tenants ; if they 
 hate the creed professed by their tenants and despise them 
 for believing it ; if they uphold the pestilent system of 
 Ireland for the English, the system that makes their country 
 the bond-slave of another; if they practise the policy of 
 extensive evictions ; if, in a word, they show themselves the 
 agents of an alien power to perpetuate the degradation of 
 their country, and to effect the oppression and expulsion of 
 their humbler countrymen — then indeed landlordism, thus 
 viciously administered, incurs the merited hatred not only of 
 its victims but of all lovers of justice. 
 
 The indications of national feeling which Smith O'Brien 
 
Progress of the Land Agitatio?!. 315 
 
 recognised in 1847, appeared to revive when the State 
 Church was disestablished. I kne"\v something of the 
 progress of that feeling, and I hoped that the landlords and 
 the Protestant gentry in general would gradually join our 
 Constitutional agitation. In my opinion Mr. Parnell should 
 not have dropped the Home Eule agitation for a moment. 
 He should, I humbly think, have perpetually held up the 
 Home Rule banner. He should have abstained from attacking 
 the landlords as a class, and confined his agrarian policy to 
 attacks on the rack-renters, who, unhappily, were sufficiently 
 numerous to afford ample scope to his aggressive activity. 
 This course would have given no alarm to the landlords who 
 were not rack-renters, and would not have deterred them 
 from standing up for Home Government. An indiscriminate 
 onslaught against all rents, whether fair or unfair, was 
 •calculated to scare the whole class from any movement which 
 assailed their means of living, and to confirm the fatal 
 prejudice which had taught them to fancy that their best 
 chance of protection lay in acting as an English garrison. 
 
 The land agitation soon assumed enormous proportions. 
 It was supported by vast numbers of farmers who w^ere in 
 many cases sufferers from rack-renting, and who in all cases 
 were led to believe that it would eventuate in making every 
 tenant his own landlord. 
 
 The agitation, based on an undoubted grievance and pro- 
 fessing to rescue the aggrieved from their oppressors, was 
 unhappily accompanied by a multitude of crimes. For 
 many months the newspapers contained a black record of 
 constantly recurring murders, cruel mutilations of cattle, and 
 destruction of property. I inferred from my conversations 
 with peasants that the perpetrators of these outrages believed 
 that their crimes would promote the interests of the Land 
 League. I had hoped that Mr. Parnell, the leader of the 
 movement, would have strongly and sternly denounced the 
 outrages as horrible offences to Almighty God, injurious to 
 the cause he advocated, and unspeakably disgraceful to the 
 character of the country. He certainly pronounced them to 
 be unnecessary ; but this gentle condemnation did not 
 prevent their frequent repetition. 
 
 The social frame was dislocated by the Union, which, 
 together with the anti-national influences of the English 
 Church in Ireland, and the heartless greed of individual rack- 
 renters, operated to produce great popular discontent, prone- 
 ness to conspiracy, reckless impatience of the prevalent 
 
31 G Eifjldy-five Years of Irish Hlstorij. 
 
 misery, and hatred of the English connexion. There were 
 grave faults on all sides. The anti-Irish landlords are 
 largely responsible for the existence of the Land League. 
 They do not like it ; but they should remember that it is 
 only a revolt — often, doubtless, criminal in its manifestations 
 — but still a revolt, against their own criminal tyranny. 
 
 The social anarchy that overspread the land suggested to 
 some gentlemen of military proclivities the expediency of 
 defending their houses from attack. In a former chapter I 
 have quoted the plan communicated by an Old Soldier 
 to the Evening Mail, during the alarm excited by the Fenian 
 conspiracy. A writer who calls himself an Ex-Frontier 
 Man, gives his notions on the subject of defence to the 
 Daily Express of October 18th, 1881. His letter is worth 
 quoting, as an illustration of the state of insecurity to which 
 eighty-one years of what is called Union had brought 
 Ireland : 
 
 " It was mentioned in the Express not long ago," says the 
 Ex-Frontier Man, " that measures were taken to secure a 
 flank fire from an adjacent stable along the rear, I think, of 
 the house at J^ew Pallas in which it was lately attempted to 
 blow up Captain Lloyd and his party. Captain Lloyd of 
 course knows, but the public in general do not seem to, that 
 for the efficient defence of a building against a musketry 
 attack (artillery is not here supposed to be in question at all) 
 every face should be capable of being swept by the flank fire 
 of the defenders, and this flank fire should be delivered from 
 the main building itself. ... A quadrilateral enclosure (not 
 necessarily a quadrangle), be it merely a house alone, or a 
 house and walled yard combined, can be defended by the 
 minimum number of men, i.e. two." 
 
 But the writer does not quite approve of a plan which 
 would expose the defenders to the fire of the assailants. He 
 goes on : 
 
 "The best method of protecting them, and at the same 
 time allowing them a full view of the outside of each adjacent 
 wall, is by having projecting, partly circular iron, or, stiU 
 better, steel turrets built into the corners of the walls, twelve 
 or fifteen feet at least from the ground. These should stand 
 out enough to allow three-fourths of the circle to be outside 
 the walls, and be furnished with narrow loopholes to be 
 closed at will by sliding iron shutters. ... If I were build- 
 ing a country residence in Ireland for myself, assuredly it 
 should be on the plan here sketched out " 
 
How to make a House Defensible. 317 
 
 The defence of Dublin Castle was deemed expedient. 
 Cannon (nine-pounders) were planted, fronting the gates that 
 opened on Cork Hill and Dame Street. 
 
 In 1799 the friends of the Irish Constitution issued a 
 weekly journal styled tliQ Aiiti- Union. In the 31st number 
 an Address to the Irish Grand Jurors tells them that the 
 Union, "if carried, must make perpetual hostility the wretched 
 inheritance of your unhappy posterity." 
 
 How truly events have verified this prophecy ! 
 
 When the Ex-Frontier Max wrote the letter from which 
 I have made extracts, Parnell and some of his supporters had 
 just been imprisoned under the Coercion Act. They issued, 
 from their prison, a manifesto requiring the farmers of 
 Ireland to withhold all rents. The call was made in the 
 following words : " The Executive of the JN'ational Land 
 League, forced to abandon the policy of testing the Land 
 Act, feels bound to advise the tenant farmers of Ireland from 
 this time forth to pay no rents under any circumstances to 
 their landlords until the Government relinquishes the exist- 
 ing system of terrorism, and restores the Constitutional 
 rights of the people." Tiie names appended to this document 
 were those of Mr. Parnell and six other notable Land 
 Leaguers. The Archbishop of Cashel was shocked at the 
 reckless anti-rent exhortation, and rose from a sick bed to 
 condemn it. The writers apparently calculated on the general 
 obedience of the tenant farmers to their counsel; but very 
 many tenants tendered what they deemed fair rents to their 
 landlords. Some allowance must be made for the natural 
 irritation of men smarting under the infliction of imprison- 
 ment; but they might have recollected that if the Govern- 
 ment, as they complained, put in practice a system of 
 terrorism, the progress of the Land League had been 
 accompanied by a system of terrorism that consisted in 
 multitudinous outrages on life and property. 
 
 The Government appears to have discovered that no 
 benefit was to be obtained by keeping Parnell in jail. He 
 was accordingly released from Kilmainham on the 6th of 
 May, 1882, and speedily resumed his career of agitation. 
 He soon declared that he would not have taken off his coat 
 to work the land question, unless with the ulterior view of 
 recovering the legislative independence of Ireland. That 
 independence is indeed indispensable to our national life, and 
 I have already expressed my regret that he did not, ah iriitlo, 
 concentrate his great abilities on its acquisition. He has 
 
318 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 now the support of three provinces, and that of more than 
 half Ulster, and liis undoubted strength is emphasized by the 
 rage of the Ulster West-Britons, 
 
 Meanwhile the condition of Ireland, strangled in the 
 grip of what is termed the sister kingdom, became more and 
 more deplorable. The newspapers constantly recorded large 
 numbers of evictions, and the ceaseless emigration of our 
 people. The present Earl of Derby is reported to have said 
 that it would pay England well to advance a large sum of 
 money — I think a quarter of a million — to be expended in 
 shipping off as many of the Irish race as that expenditure 
 would pay for exporting. His lordship does not think the 
 ordinary operation of the Union drives us out of the country 
 fast enough. Yet he, and those who partake his hostility to 
 our people, may be consoled by the progress of depopulation 
 as recorded by the Ke;^istrar-General. The following summary 
 of the Kegistrar's report is taken from the Daily Neivs of the 
 3rd of April, 1883 : 
 
 " From the Registrar-General of Ireland's Report we get 
 two remarkable facts — that the efficient working population 
 of Ireland is proportionately 10 per cent, less than in England 
 and Scotland, while the possible mothers are 20 per cent, 
 less. Thus there are very much fewer possible mothers 
 in Ireland than in England and Scotland, and these mothers 
 with their husbands have a much harder task to perform. 
 It is evident from these facts that during the next generation 
 the population of Ireland must diminish at a very rapid rate. 
 Even now the diminution is going on quickly. Thus we 
 find from the Irish Registrar-General's Report for 1881 that, 
 while the excess of births over deaths during the ten years 
 1871-80 averaged 43,553 per annum, the emigration averaged 
 62,393 per annum. There was thus a yearly loss of popula- 
 tion of nearly 10,000 person?. But in 1881, the excess of 
 births over deaths fell to 35,912, while the emigration rose 
 to 78,417. There was, therefore, a decrease of population of 
 42,505. Last year the decrease of population exceeded 
 50,000. In the past two years, consequently, the loss of 
 population exceeded 92,000. As we have already shown, 
 the loss is likely to go on increasing in the future." 
 
 The conclusion of the Daily Neivs is a striking illustra- 
 tion of the state of a country deprived for eighty-three years 
 of self-government : 
 
 " It follows from all this that during the next quarter of 
 a century the decrease in the Irish population promises to be 
 
The Question of Rejieal Examined. 319 
 
 very considerable, wliile it is equally evident that the paucity 
 of effective workers must stand in the way of developing the 
 resources of the country." 
 
 The Daily Telegraph of September 12th, 1884, in an 
 article on a paper by M. Kummer, Chief of the Federal 
 Bureau of Statistics at Berne, thus lightly refers to the 
 decay of Ireland after eighty-four years of Union : 
 
 ''Famine and misery at home, and the prospect of plenty 
 and happiness in new countries, have drained Ireland of many 
 among the best of her people." 
 
 Famine and misery at home ! and in a country of natural 
 fertility! Why is this? The Economist supplies the answer 
 in the sentence prefixed as a motto to this chapter : 
 
 "It is the English people who hold Ireland." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 THE QUESTION OP REPEAL EXAMINED. 
 
 ** Ireland is far too important in itself, and too different in many 
 respects from Great Britain, to allow of its being ruled entirely by 
 the Imperial Parliament. The craving for self-government has 
 become so strong that it cannot be neglected." — Ramsay's Political 
 Discourses, p. 325, Edinburgh, 1838. 
 
 " In reality, the central system is nearly allied to despotism, as 
 the local is to liberty ; but so far as they can be distinguished, they 
 lend a mutual assistance. As centralisation leads to despotism, so 
 despotism to centralisation ; and as love of the soil prompts to self- 
 government, so self-government to love of the soil." — Ihid., p. 343. 
 
 " It was idle to talk to Ireland of the word ' Union,' since there 
 could be no such thing as a real Union on an equal footing between 
 two countries so disproportionate and unequal. Could the Irish 
 believe that in this connexion they were to have an equal voice in 
 legislating for England as the English had in legislating for Ireland ? " 
 — Speech of Right Hon. C. J. Fox, at the " Crown and Anchor,'^ 
 1th May, 1800. 
 
 I SHALL now attempt an exposition of the great question 
 which, ever since 1800, has kept the minds of the people of 
 Ireland in a state of chronic excitement, and which has now 
 enlisted the solemn attention of Mr. Gladstone's Government. 
 There is no topic on which such utter ignorance prevails 
 in England as on the Repeal of the Union. There is no 
 political question that has been more systematically misrepre- 
 sented by almost the whole newspaper press of that kingdom. 
 The prevalent English notion seems to be that Repeal means 
 
320 Eight ij-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 all sorts of Irish turbulence and riot, mob-domination and 
 universal anarchy ; total separation from England and all her 
 "civilising" influences, and a return to antediluvian bar- 
 barism. This notion floats vaguely through the English 
 brain ; for our British censors are in general content with 
 denouncing our claims with fierceness, or dismissing them 
 with scorn. An impartial examination of the merits of the 
 case appears to be the last thing that occurs to their minds. 
 Repeal has been assailed from the throne. Parliamentary 
 majorities have scouted it. Ministers have declared that a 
 civil war would be preferable to the concession of the 
 measure. And a late reverend divine protested it ouglit 
 only to be encountered with grape-shot and canister. 
 
 Yet, despite this storm of hostility, the Irish people still 
 persevere in their demand ; because they know they are in 
 the right, and they know that the success of their just claim 
 is vitally essential to the welfare of their country. 
 
 Ireland is sufficiently great to require the exclusive care 
 and attention of a Legislature of her own. 
 
 Let us now examine what are the merits of the case for 
 the Repeal of the Union, and the restoration of the Irish 
 Parliament. 
 
 The people of Ireland seek to rescind a statute which was 
 passed against the consent of the whole nation — Orangemen 
 and all — and of which the operation was to extinguish their 
 resident Parliament. 
 
 Prom the earliest period of the connexion of the islands 
 under Henry IL, the King's Irish subjects enjoyed a Parlia- 
 ment distinct from, and perfectly independent on, the Parlia- 
 ment of England.* Some efi'orts on the part of England to 
 usurp jurisdiction over the Irish subjects in the reign of 
 King Henry VI., elicited from the Irish Parliament, in the 
 thirty-eighth year of that monarch's reign, a full and un- 
 equivocal declaration of its own independence.t That Par- 
 liament declared — 
 
 * ** The statute 2 Richard III. chap, viii., recites as follows : " Que 
 le Statute de Henrxj Fitz-Emprice* (Henry II.) * ordeine pour la 
 eleccioa del gouvernor,' etc., had made several regulations for sup- 
 plying occasional vacancies in that office ; it then proceeds to amend 
 the same. Here, therefore, we have an evidence of a purely legis- 
 lative enactment of primary importance made in Ireland, arranging 
 the executive government itself, and coeval with the supposed con- 
 quest of the kingdom." — Monck Mason's Essay on the Constitution 
 and Antiquity of Parliament in Ireland, p. 3. Dublin, 1820. 
 
 t Leland's " History of Iroland," vol. ii. p. 42. 
 
Independence of the Irish Parliament. 321 
 
 " That Ireland is, and always has been, incorporated 
 within itself by ancient laws and customs, and is only to be 
 governed by such laws as by the Lords and Commons of the 
 land in Parliament assembled have been advised, accepted, 
 affirmed, and proclaimed; that by custom, privilege, and 
 franchise, there has ever been a royal seal peculiar to Ireland, 
 to which alone the subjects are to pay obedience ; that this 
 realm hath also its constable and marshal, before whom all 
 appeals are finally determinable ; yet, as orders have of late 
 been issued under another seal, and the subjects summoned 
 into England to prosecute their suits before a /<9?'e/^?i juris- 
 diction, to the great grievance of the people, and in violation 
 of the rights and franchises of the land ; they enact that for 
 the future no persons shall be obliged by any commandment 
 iinder any other seal than that of Ireland to ans^ver any 
 appeal or any other matter, out of said land ; and that no 
 officer to whom such commandment may come shall put the 
 same into execution under penalty of forfeiture of goods and 
 chattels, and 1,000 marks, half to be paid to the King, and 
 the other half to the prosecutor; and further, that all appeals 
 of treason in Ireland shall be determined before the constable 
 and marshal of Ireland, and in no other place." 
 
 It is impossible to express more distinctly and un- 
 equivocally legislative independence than it is expressed in 
 the language of the Irish Parliament, 38 Henry VI. The 
 reader will observe also, that the statute recites and es- 
 tablishes the fact that our distinct independence was then no 
 new claim, but had existed as of right from the earliest 
 periods : in the words of the Act, " it always had been." It 
 is as explicit on the question of final jurisdiction as Henry 
 Grattan or Daniel O'Connell could be. 
 
 It may be objected, firstly, that the Irish Parliament of 
 Henry VI. was the Parliament only of a portion of the Irish 
 people — of that portion which was of English descent, and 
 of those aboriginal Irish who had then combined with the 
 English settlers. I reply, that if the Parliament of a part 
 of the nation had distinct independence, it certainly did not 
 lose that independence by extending its legislative power 
 over the whole island. It surely did not forfeit its rights 
 by enlarging the area of its jurisdiction. It surely did not 
 lose its privileges because it at length embraced within its 
 sway the whole Irish nation. If its independence was distinct 
 and undoubted when it was only the Parliament of a part of 
 the nation, that independence must have necessarily been 
 
 Y 
 
322 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 fortified and strengthened when it rested on the basis of the 
 whole Irish people. Should it be urged that the whole 
 Irish people were never at any time represented in the 
 Irish House of Commons, I reply that at this moment a 
 large majority of the English people are unrepresented in the 
 English Parliament. Xo argument, therefore, can be drawn 
 from that circumstance against the right of Ireland to self- 
 legislation which will not be equally fatal to the right of the 
 people of England to govern themselves. 
 
 It may be objected, secondly, that the authority asserted 
 by the Irish Parliament of Henry VI. was de facto set aside 
 by the exercise of English power — by the English Act of the 
 6th George I. I reply that that Act was a usurpation, and 
 can no more be validly pleaded in bar of the right of Ireland 
 to self-government, than any other usurpation can be pleaded 
 in bar of the rights which it invaded. We might just as 
 well argue against the rights of the English Legislature, 
 because they were to a great extent prostrated by Henry VIII., 
 and encroached on by the First James and the First Charles ; 
 or against the rights of the English monarchy, because they 
 were temporarily overthrown by Cromwell. It is sometimes 
 weakly urged against the rights of Ireland that for centuries 
 before the Union the Irish Government was influenced and 
 often controlled by the English and Protestant party. It 
 might with equal force be urged against the right of English- 
 men to self -legislation, that the Government of England was 
 for centuries in the hands of the Norman aristocracy. 
 
 "We have seen the early origin and existence of Irish 
 legislative independence. Our right, in this respect, is at 
 least coeval with the corresponding right enjoyed by our^ 
 English fellow-subjects. That right was again affirmed at 
 intervals, and finally by the Irish Parliament in 1782, and 
 formally recognised by the British Legislature in 1783 by the 
 Act 23 George III. chap, xxviii. By that British Act the right 
 of the Irish people "to be bound only by laws enacted by 
 His Majesty and the Parliament of Ireland in all cases what- 
 ever, and to have all actions and suits at law or in equity 
 which may be instituted in that kingdom decided in His 
 Majesty's courts therein finally and without appeal from 
 thence," was "declared to be established and ascertained for 
 ever ; and at no time hereafter to be questioned or question- 
 able." 
 
 Thus was the public faith of England solemnly pledged 
 to recognise and respect the free Constitution of Ireland. 
 
Tlie Ohjed of the Union loas to roh Ireland. 323 
 
 Eefore I come to that gross breach of England's public 
 faith entitled the Union, let me quote a few authorities 
 showing the spirit in which the friends of that measure had 
 always contemplated it. 
 
 The great object of the Union was to rob Ireland. 
 
 So far back as 1699, Sir Richard Cox, an Irishman by 
 birth, but a strenuous supporter of that baleful exotic 
 entitled *' the English interest in Ireland," proposed a Union 
 in the following words : " It is your interest to unite and 
 incorporate us with England, for by that means the English 
 interest will always be prevalent here, and the kingdom as 
 secure to you as Wales, or any county in England. Your 
 taxes loill he lessened ivhen ice bear part of the burthen. . . . 
 All our money will still centre at London ; and our trade and 
 communication with England will be so considerable that we 
 shall think ourselves at home when there; and where one 
 goes thither now, then ten will go when all our business is 
 transacted in your Parliament, to which, if we send sixty- 
 four knights for our thirty-two counties, ten lords, and six 
 bishops, they may spend our money f hut cannot influence your 
 •councils to your disadvantage. . . . By the Union, England 
 ■mil get much of our money, and ahuiidance of our trade.''^ "^ 
 
 I believe that no honest Englishman will read the above 
 •extract from an Irish writer, without a feeling of contemptuous 
 disgust at the unprincipled servility it displays. Sir Richard 
 Cox is the species of Irishman manufactured by English 
 influence in Ireland. 
 
 My next proof that the Union was regarded by its friends 
 as a machine to sqeeeze all that could be got out of Ireland, 
 is taken from an English writer on trade, Sir Matthew Decker, 
 who, in 1751, says : " By a Union with Ireland, the taxes of 
 Great Britain will be lessened." f 
 
 Another English writer, Postlethwayte, in his book 
 entitled "Britain's Commercial Interest," published in 1767, 
 has the following passage : " By the Union, Ireland would 
 soon be enabled to pay a million a year towards the taxes of 
 Great Britain. ... As England does already possess no 
 inconsiderable share of the lands of Ireland, so the Union 
 woidd prove an effectual method to vest the rest in her ; for, as 
 
 * The above passage is extracted from the autograph correspon- 
 •dence of Sir Eichard Cox, in pp. 89 and 90 of the printed catalogue 
 of the Southwell Library, on sale in 1834 by Thomas Thorpe, 38, 
 Bedford Street, Covent Garden, London. 
 
 t " Essays on Trade," p. 156. 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 Eiglity-five Years of Irish Hlstor]/. 
 
 the riches of Ireland would cliiefly return to England, she con- 
 tinuing the seat of em^yire, the Irish landlords would he little 
 better than tenants to her, for allowing them the privilege of 
 making the best of their estates." * 
 
 Dean Tucker, an Englishman, in his proposal for an 
 Union, says : " The inducement of being near the Parliament, 
 the Court, the public funds, etc., would bring many more 
 Irish families to reside here than now do. In short, what- 
 ever wealth Ireland would draw from other countries by its 
 produce, manufactures, and happy situation, all that would 
 eventually centre in England." 
 
 Doctor Johnson, far more honest than the writers I have 
 quoted, was equally clear-sighted as to the operation of the 
 projected Union. " Do not make an union with us," he 
 said to an Irish friend ; *' we should unite with you only to 
 rob you. We would have robbed the Scotch if they had 
 anything of which we could have robbed them." f 
 
 The spoliation of Ireland was too tempting to be over- 
 looked by Pitt, whose expensive Government taxed to the 
 utmost his financial ingenuity. He had an old grudge, too, 
 against the Irish Parliament, having had a sharp quarrel with 
 that assembly in 1789, respecting the amount of power with 
 which the Prince Kegent should be invested during George 
 III.'s illness. He had also another and an older cause of 
 enmity ; for, as the editor of the Annual Register for 1790 
 tells us, "the defeat of his commercial propositions in 1785 
 had left an impression of resentment against the nation on 
 the mind of the Minister." And he was influenced by a 
 sentiment as powerful as any of these motives — namely, that 
 hostility to Irish Constitutional liberty wliich had for centuries 
 been the invariable characteristic of every English Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 He laid his plans for the extinction of the Irish Parliament 
 with consummate art. The reader is already aware that the 
 construction of the Irish House of Commons, the large 
 number of close boroughs imder the exclusive influence of 
 patrons, seemed to ofi'er a facility for the accomplishment of 
 his design. But even with that advantage it was not an 
 easy matter to persuade a majority in Parliament to vote 
 their own extinction. It was indispensable in the first place 
 to create a state of things that should allow unrestricted 
 operation to the two great instruments upon which Pitt 
 relied — Terror and Corruption. 
 
 * Pages 203, 204. 
 
 t Boswell's Johnson, ad ann. 1779. 
 
Bloodthirsty Policy of the Government. 325 
 
 I have in a previous chapter sketched the policy adopted 
 by Pitt and his Administration to produce the rebellion of 
 1798, without which outbreak, and the national weakness it 
 caused, the Government never could have carried the 
 Union. 
 
 It is needless here to repeat the details already given of 
 the alternate excitement and depression of the hopes of the 
 Catholics, by which dexterous policy they were kept in a 
 state of political fever. ISTor is it necessary to repeat the 
 horrible narrative of tortures, burnings, and wholesale 
 murders, whereby the agents of the Government goaded the 
 people into rebellion. The reader, I presume, recollects that 
 through the agency of the spy, Nicholas Maguan, who was a 
 member of the rebel directory. Government had constant 
 information, which, for about thirteen months prior to the 
 outbreak, would have enabled them at any time to arrest the 
 leaders, and thereby prevent the rebellion from exploding. 
 But the outbreak of the rebellion was considered essential to 
 the success of the Union. It was deemed advisable to scare 
 the Protestant party into a belief that in a Union with 
 England could they alone find protection from the sanguinary 
 violence of the Popish population. It was also considered 
 requisite to terrify the Catholics into thinking that in a 
 Union with England was their only prospect of escaping 
 from the ruthless persecution of their murderous Protestant 
 tyrants. By thus creating an internecine enmity between 
 the two great sections of the Irish people, it was calculated 
 that the national strength would be totally prostrated. 
 
 The project succeeded. Troops were poured into Ireland 
 to the number of 137,590.* Martial law was proclaimed. 
 The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. Sherifis, in the 
 interest of Government, refused to call meetings to petition 
 against the Union. 
 
 The condition into which the Government had brought 
 the nation may be inferred from the following testimonies. 
 
 The Eegulars were 
 
 . 32,281 
 
 The Militia . 
 
 . 26,634 
 
 The Yeomanry . 
 
 . 51,274 
 
 The English Militia . 
 
 . 24,201 
 
 Artillery 
 
 . 1,500 
 
 Commissariat 
 
 . 1,700 
 
 Total . 137,590 
 This table is taken from a speech of Lord Castlereagh's, prefacing 
 a motion on military estimates, and contained in a Eeport of the 
 Parliamentary Proceedings of the 18th February, 1799. 
 
326 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 The author of the Memoir of Lord Clare, in the work 
 entitled " Public Characters of 1798," concludes his notice 
 in these words : *' Such is now the miserable state of his 
 (Lord Clare's) native land, that any change must be for the 
 better : and if an Union is attended with nothing else than 
 a cessation of carnage^ every good man must rejoice at the 
 prospect of it." 
 
 Lord Castlereagh flattered himself that the Catholics 
 would deem even an Union better than the bloodthirsty 
 system he helped to administer. On the 23rd November, 
 1798, he writes to William Wickham, Esq. : "There appears 
 no indisposition" (to the Union) "on the part of the leading 
 Catholics ; on the contrary, I believe they loill consider any 
 transfer of poicer from their opponents as a boon" 
 
 Lord Cornwallis grounds similar hopes on the same state 
 of things. His Excellency writes to General Ross on the 
 15tli November, 1798: "From what I learn, the present 
 mode" (he is speaking of the Union as then projected) "is 
 not likely to be opposed by the Catholics : they consider any 
 change better than the present system." "^ 
 
 Castlereagh and Cornwallis were both mistaken in ex- 
 pecting that the Irish Catholics could be scourged into giving 
 their assent to the Union. "The Catholics still continue 
 against us," writes Castlereagh to the Duke of Portland, 
 7th January, 1799.t 
 
 But the hope expressed that the Catholics would accept 
 the Union as a release from sanguinary local tyranny, is 
 frightfully significant of their wretched condition. What a 
 state must that have been, in which the Viceroy and his 
 secretary expect that the sufferers would consider that any 
 change must be an improvement ! 
 
 Lord Cornwallis, though determined to carry the Union, 
 was sufficiently humane to regard with horror the ferocity of 
 the troops. On the 1st of July, 1798, he writes to General 
 Ross : " The violence of our friends, and their folly in 
 endeavouring to make it a religious war, added to the ferocity 
 of our troops who delight in murder, most powerfully counter- 
 act all plans of conciliation." J 
 
 On the 8th of July he writes to the Duke of Portland : 
 "The Irish militia are totally without discipline; con- 
 temptible before the enemy when any serious resistance is 
 
 * ** Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 436. 
 t " Castlereagh Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 84. 
 $ " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 3i>7. 
 
Murder the Favourite Pastime of the Militia. 327 
 
 made to them ; but ferocious and cruel in the extreme when 
 any poor wretches, whether with or without arms, come 
 within their power — in short, murder appears to be their 
 favourite pastime."* 
 
 The success with which Pitt's policy had lashed party 
 hatred into fury appears by the followin^^ description given 
 by Lord Cornwallis to the Duke of Portland of the sentiments 
 held by the leading Protestants of Ireland — the date is 8tli 
 July, 1798 : " The principal persons of this country and the 
 members of both Houses of Parliament are in general averse 
 to all acts of clemency ; and although they do not express, 
 and are perhaps too much heated to see, the ultimate efifects 
 which their violence must produce, would pursue measures 
 that could only terminate in the extirpation of the greater 
 number of the inhabitants, and in the utter destruction of 
 the country. The words Papists and priests are for ever in 
 their mouths, and by their unaccountable policy they would 
 drive four-fifths of the community into irreconcileable re- 
 bellion."t 
 
 Again, Lord Cornwallis writes to General Ross on the 
 24th of July, 1798 : '' But all this (namely, martial law) is 
 trifling compared to the numberless murders that are hourly 
 committed by our people without any jorocess or examination 
 whatever. The yeomanry are in the style of the loyalists in 
 America, only much more numerous and powerful, and a thou- 
 sand times more ferocious. These men have saved the country, 
 
 but they now take the lead in rapine and murder 
 
 The conversation of the principal persons of this country 
 all tends to encourage this system of blood ; and the conver- 
 sation even at my table, where you will suppose I do all I 
 can to prevent it, always turns on hanging, shooting, burning, 
 etc. etc. ; and if a priest has been put to death the greatest 
 joy is expressed by the whole company. So much for Ireland 
 and my wretched situation." | 
 
 Lord Cornwallis received occasional reproofs from the 
 English Cabinet for being too lenient with the rebels. The 
 yeomanry were chiefly Orangemen,§ and it would appear 
 that His Excellency had been accused of unduly interfering 
 with some of the loyal operations of that body. Against 
 this accusation the Viceroy thus defends himself in a letter 
 to the Duke of Portland, dated 11th of March, 1799 : '' Your 
 Grace may be assured that I shall omit no means in my 
 
 * " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 359. 
 + Hid., p. 360. ::: Ihid., p. 371. § lUd., vol. iii. p. 89. 
 
328 Eiglity-fivG Years of Irish History. 
 
 power to encourage and animate the whole body of yeomanry 
 to a faithful and active discharge of their duty ; but I never 
 can permit them to take advantage of their military situation 
 to pursue their private quarrels and gratify their personal 
 resentments, or to rob and murder at discretion any of their 
 fellow-subjects whom they may think proper, on their own 
 authority, to brand with the name of rebels." * 
 
 Lord Cornwallis had incurred the wrath of the ascendency 
 party by attempting to restrain the Orangemen from their 
 pastimes of robbery and murder. On the 15th of April, 
 1799, he gives General Ross the following sketch of the 
 loyal amusements which he deemed it expedient to check : 
 "You write as if you really believed that there was any 
 foundation for all the lies and nonsensical clamour about my 
 lenity. On my arrival in this country I put a stop to the 
 burning of houses and murder of the inhabitants by the 
 yeomen or any other persons who delighted in that amuse- 
 ment, to the flogging for the purpose of extorting confession, 
 and to the free quarters, which comprehended universal rape 
 and robbery throughout the country." t 
 
 To put a stop to burning, torture, murder, universal rape 
 and robbery, was, one would suppose, if not a meritorious, 
 at least an excusable exercise of the viceregal authority. 
 But the Viceroy's interference with these amusements of tlie 
 Orange loyalists provoked the violent indignation of their 
 party. The celebrated champion of Protestant ascendency. 
 Dr. Patrick Duigenan, writes to Lord Castlereagh on the 
 20th of December, 1798, that the lenity of Lord Cornwallis 
 *' has rendered him an object not onl}'- of disgust but of 
 abhorrence to every loyal man with whom I liave conversed 
 since my return from England." % 
 
 * " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 167. f Ihid., p. 74. 
 
 t " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 371. That the Orange 
 "loyalists" of our own day have lost none of their ancestral enthusiasm 
 is shown by numerous proofs ; among the rest by the riots they 
 provoked in the town of Belfast in the autumn of 1864, which lasted 
 for 14 days, during which nine persons were killed and 176 wounded, 
 and a large amount of property destroyed.— (A^orf/ierw Whig, quoted 
 in Cork Examiner, 9th September, 1864.) The pretext of the Orange 
 rioters was, that the Government had not interfered to prevent a 
 large procession and assemblage in Dublin, met to fix a place for the 
 site of the O'Connell Memorial. This was deemed an insult to the 
 Orange party, who avenged their wounded sensibility by getting up 
 an anti-Catholic riot in Belfast. Lot us reverse the case, and suppose 
 that in Belfast an Orange gathering had met to mark the ground for 
 a statue of William III. or Dr. Cooke. What would be thought of 
 
Lord Cornicallis hampered hy the ^'Loyalists.'' 329 
 
 To a complaint from Mr. Wickliam of Lord Cornwallis's 
 lenity, Lord Castlereagh replies that exclusively of all persons 
 tried at the assizes, Lord Cornwallis had decided personally 
 on 400 cases; that out of 131 condemned to death 81 had 
 been executed ; and that 418 persons had been transported 
 or banished in pursuance of the sentence of courts-martial 
 since Lord Cornwallis had arrived in Ireland.* 
 
 Considering that the unfortunate people had been de- 
 liberately driven to rebel, the amount of capital punishment 
 and transportation recorded by Lord Castlereagh, whose 
 letter is dated 6tli of March, 1799, might have satisfied 
 the most exacting loyalist that the imputed clemency of the 
 Viceroy was not excessive. But the punishment inflicted 
 did not satisfy the cravings of '' loyal " enthusiasm, unless 
 accompanied with burning, torture, murder, universal rape 
 and robbery. 
 
 Lord Cornwallis, who wished to rob Ireland of her 
 Legislature with the least possible effusion of blood, was 
 hard pressed by the sanguinary loyalists. On the 16th of 
 November, 1799, he gives General Ross a description of 
 his difficult position which is of great historical value, not 
 only for the picture it affords of the state of Ireland at the 
 period, but also for the Viceroy's distinct admission that the 
 people had been driven into rebellion by violence and 
 cruelty. Sir Robert Peel denied that fact in the Repeal 
 debate of 1834. The proofs that establish its truth are 
 numerous and conclusive. It is of some importance to 
 include among those proofs the testimony of Lord Corn- 
 wallis. "The greatest difficulty," he writes, "which I 
 experience is to control the violence of our loyal friends, who 
 would, if I did not keep the strictest hand upon them, con- 
 vert the system of martial law (which God knows is of itself 
 bad enough) into a more violent and intolerable tyranny 
 than that of Robespierre. The vilest informers are hunted 
 out from the prisons to attack by the most barefaced perjury 
 the lives of all who are suspected of being, or of having been, 
 disaffected ; and, indeed, every Roman Catholic of influence 
 is in great danger. You will have seen by the addresses 
 
 the Catholics of Dublin if they had taken their revenge on the 
 Northerns by getting up a formidable anti-Protestant riot in the 
 metropolis, with a copious show of killed and wounded, and extensive 
 destruction of property ? 
 
 * " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 90. Lord Cornwallis 
 assumed the reins of government on the 20th of June, 1798. 
 
330 Eighty-Jive Years of Irish History. 
 
 both in the north and south that my attempt to moderate 
 that violence and cruelty which has once driven^ and which, if 
 tolerated^ must again soon drive this icretched country into 
 rebellion^ is not reprobated by the voice of the country, 
 although it has appeared so culpable in tbe eyes of the 
 absentees." * 
 
 Of course the atrocities were not all on one side. In 
 Madden's " Lives of the United Irishmen," the reader will 
 find the principal outrages of the insurgents candidly 
 recorded. Their detestable act at Scullabogue, where a 
 number of royalist prisoners, including some Catholics, were 
 burned to death in a barn, merits the execration of man- 
 kind. f On the 20th of June, 1798, a party of insurgents 
 slaughtered a crowd of royalists on the bridge of Wexford 
 — the number of the sufferers being estimated at 97 by Sir 
 Richard Musgrave; but by Hay and other authorities at 36. 
 At Vinegar Hill the rebels committed a massacre, the 
 number of their victims being variously stated at 500, at 
 400, and at 84. And at Enniscorthy a body of insurgents 
 murdered 14 royalists in cold blood. Lord Cornwallis also, 
 in one of the letters from which I have made extracts, speaks 
 of "the feeble outrages, burnings, and murders, which are 
 still committed by the rebels, and these," he says, "serve to 
 keep up the sanguinary disposition on our side." 
 
 Let the patriot, or the man of humanity, who shudders 
 at the hideous scenes of carnage which Ireland then pre- 
 sented, bear in mind that Mr. Pitt was solemnly warned by 
 Lord Fitzwilliam in 1795, that the policy he adopted would 
 "raise a flame in the country that nothing short of arms 
 would be able to keep down." But Mr. Pitt chose to 
 disref^ard the Viceroy's warning. He waded to his object — 
 the Union — through the blood of tens of thousands of the 
 Irish people, reckless of the human lives destroyed ; reckless 
 of the national misery created ; reckless of the awful guilt 
 which he incurred ; reckless of every moral impediment in 
 the way of his grand purpose — the overthrow of that Con- 
 stitution which had promoted the material prosperity of 
 Ireland to an astonishing extent. 
 
 * " Cornwallis Correspondonco," vol. iii. pp. 144, 145. 
 
 t At Wexford, "he (General Lake) caused the hospital that 
 sheltered the sick and wounded of the insurgent army to be set on 
 fire, and, horrible to relate, all the unfortunate inmates were burned 
 to death in the flames that consumed the building." — KAVANAGu'a 
 Insurrection of 1798, p. 190. 
 
Pitfs Disregard of Lord Fitzicilliam^s Warning. 331 
 
 "Wlien the insurrection was put down, the nation lay 
 prostrate at the feet of the soldier. The Government deemed 
 the presence of an irresistible military force indispensable to 
 the success of the Union. This is avowed by Lord 
 Castlereagh, who, referring to a project of withdrawing the 
 British militia from Ireland, plainly intimates that with the 
 Union in view, it would be impossible to dispense with their 
 services. In his cold, diplomatic language, he writes to Mr. 
 Wickham on the 22nd of November, 1798: "Were the 
 British militia to press their recall, there is reason to appre- 
 hend that several regiments of Fencibles, who were induced 
 by the same public motive to offer their services in Ireland, 
 would do the same. The alarming effect of withdrawing 
 from this country, where the treason is rather quiescent than 
 abandoned, the flower of its army, at a period when the 
 King's Ministers have in contemplation a great Constitutional 
 settlement. His Grace (the Duke of Portland) will feel. 
 The Lord Lieutenant's opinion decidedly is, that without the 
 force in question it would expose the King's interest in this 
 kingdom to hazard a measure which, however valuable in its 
 future effects, cannot fail in the discussion very seriously to 
 agitate the public mind." And in a postscript Lord Castlereagh 
 adds that ho had communicated very fully with Lord 
 Buckingham, by the Viceroy's direction. He says that with 
 respect to the troops "his lordship (Buckingham) saw the 
 importance of their service in the same point of view with 
 the Lord Lieutenant ; he went so far as to say that, in his 
 lordship's judgment, the event of the question of the Union is- 
 altogether dependent on their continuance"'^ 
 
 And at the very time when a large army was required to 
 force the Union on the Irish people, Mr. Pitt assured the 
 British House of Commons that the national mind of Ireland 
 was in its favour. 
 
 While terror reigned throughout the kingdom, corruption 
 soon became paramount within the walls of Parliament. In 
 1799 a majority of the Irish House of Commons, despite the 
 stupendous exertions of Pitt, had negatived the Union. 
 That Minister employed the recess in redoubling his efforts 
 to bribe and overawe. For the latter purpose it is worthy 
 of note that although the rebellion had been crushed, yet 
 the military force in Ireland was increased. f 
 
 * "Castlereagh Correspondence," vol. ii. pp. 12, 13, 14. 
 
 + In the " Summary Eeport oa the State of the Poor of Ireland,"" 
 
332 Eightij-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 With respect to the effort to corrupt, it may suffice to 
 say that every man Avho had a price was bought. No 
 secrecy was observed upon the subject. Lord Clare, when 
 Attorney-General, had openly said in the House of Commons, 
 " Half-a-million, or more, were expended some years since 
 to break an opposition ; the same, or a greater sum, may be 
 necessary now."* 
 
 To effect the Union a greater sum was necessary. The 
 direct money bribes amounted to one million and a half. 
 In the purchase of boroughs the sum of £1,275,000 was 
 expended. Peerages, judgeships, bishoprics, commands in 
 the army and navy, were profusely showered in reward for 
 Union votes. There were 116 persons in the House of 
 Commons in 1800, holding employments or pensions under 
 Government, and some of these were English and Scotch 
 officers introduced into nomination boroughs by the in- 
 fluence of Government, for the express purpose of voting 
 away a Parliament in whose existence they had no manner 
 of interest. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding the gigantic efforts of the Govern- 
 ment to stifle the national voice — notAvithstanding the 
 suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and the refusal of 
 sheriffs, who had been appointed by the Government in the 
 interest of the Union, to convene meetings of the people to 
 oppose it — the petitions to Parliament against the measure 
 were signed by no less than 707,000 persons, while those in 
 its favour were signed by only 5,000. 
 
 But despite the opposition of nearly every human being 
 in the kingdom, except the corrupt band in the pay of the 
 Government, the measure was carried by the joint influence 
 of military violence without, and barefaced bribery within 
 
 issued ia 1830, the military expenditure of several years is stated, 
 and among others the following : 
 
 1798 .... £2,227,454 
 
 1799 .... 3,246,228 
 
 1800 .... 3,528,800 
 
 1801 .... 4,021,783 
 
 The Union came into operation on the 1st of January, 1801, in 
 which year it may be inferred from the foregoing figures that Pitt 
 deemed an overwhelming military force indispensable to quell the 
 discontent excited by his Union, and to secure the victory he had 
 achieved over Irish Constitutional liberty. 
 
 * In '* Ireland and Her Agitators," the declaration in question 
 was inadvertently ascribed to Lord Castlereagh. It was uttered by 
 Lord Clare, and quoted by Grattan as uttered by that nobleman in 
 Grattan's •' Answer to Lord Clare." 
 
The Union a Colossal and Sanguinary Swindle. 333 
 
 the walls of Parliament. Lord Castlereagh, writing on the 
 21st of June, 1800, to Mr. Secretary Cooke, on the necessity 
 of keeping a particular promise of patronage, says : " It will 
 be no secret what has been promised, and by what means 
 the Union has been secured. Disappointment will encourage, 
 not prevent, disclosure ; and the only effect of such a pro- 
 ceeding on their part will be to add the weight of their 
 testimony to that of the anti-Unionists in proclaiming the 
 profligacy of the means by which the measure was accom- 
 plished."* 
 
 Thus, I repeat, was the Union carried. The fraudulent 
 and sanguinary means by which it was inflicted on the Irish 
 people essentially vitiates the whole transaction. It was, 
 and is, a colossal and sanguinary swindle. 
 
 It has, indeed, been said that however void and null the 
 Union may originally have been, from the vitiating nature 
 of the means whereby it was achieved, yet the Irish people 
 have given subsequent validity and force to the measure by 
 their own act in sending representatives to the Imperial 
 Parliament. I reply that their act in so doing does not and 
 cannot give moral validity to the Union, simply because it 
 does not indicate free choice. True, they have sent repre- 
 sentatives to the English Parliament, just because they had 
 no other Parliament to send them to. Their own Legislature 
 having been suppressed by force, no alternative remained for 
 them except to return members to the British House of 
 Commons. Their act indicates nothing but their reluctant 
 and coerced adoption of a pis aUe7\ They have deemed it 
 just preferable to return members to the English senate than 
 not to return them at all. P)Ut give them the option of an 
 English or an Irish Parliament, and if they shall prefer the 
 former, why then (but not till then) shall I allow that their 
 act in returning representatives to England gives moral 
 validity to the Union. 
 
 It has been urged that to impeach the moral validity of 
 the Union statute is, of necessity, to impeach the legal 
 validity of every statute passed by the United Parliament. 
 Not so. Saurin drew the distinction with accuracy. " You 
 may," said he, " make the Union binding as a law, but you 
 never can make it obligatory on conscience. Eesistance to 
 it will be, in the abstract, a duty." The Union is binding 
 as a law — as a bad, oppressive, and iniquitous law. Being 
 
 * "Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Castlereagh," vol. iii. 
 p. 331. 
 
334 Eirjlity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 thus legally binding, the statutes enacted under its authority 
 by the United Parliament are also legally binding. 
 
 If, however, we should admit the corollary imputed to 
 our doctrine by the Unionists, '* that the post-Union statutes 
 are rendered legally invalid by the moral invalidity of the 
 Union," I should turn round upon the Unionists and ask, 
 "Whose fault is that ? Not ours, surely, who opposed in 
 1800 the enactment, and who now deprecate the continuance 
 of the Union, the source of the statutory invalidity in 
 question. The fault would rest with those who, by the 
 flagitious suppression of the legislative rights of Ireland, 
 have deprived legislation of validity, and shaken to their 
 base the bulwarks and landmarks of civil society. 
 
 The Unionists, unable to deny the infamy of the means 
 by which the Union was effected, allege that the means 
 liave nothing to do with the measure ; that the measure may 
 be good, although the means used to carry it were inde- 
 fensible, and so on. 
 
 The means have a great deal to do with the measure. 
 They demonstrate two important facts — firstly, the hostility 
 of the people of Ireland to the Union, which could not be 
 achieved without such means. No measure can be good 
 which outrages every wish, sentiment, and principle of the 
 people to whom it is applied. Secondly, the means used to 
 carry the Union demonstrate that the contrivers of the 
 measure were animated Avith the most deadly hostility to the 
 Irish nation. The men who connived at torture — the men 
 who designedly provoked a rebellion — the men who ruth- 
 lessly sacrificed the lives of thousands, and who laboured 
 with demoniac activity to corrupt the senate — were such men 
 our friends'? Were they men from whose hands a good 
 measure could possibly emanate 1 The means they employed 
 afforded a superabundant demonstration of their animus — 
 an animus totally incompatible with friendly intentions to 
 Ireland. The Union was the measure of our enemies, not of 
 out friends.* There is in this fact prima facie evidence 
 that the measure could not have been either intended or 
 calculated to benefit Ireland. 
 
 The Union, then, being a gross outrage on Ireland's 
 legislative rights — rights of as ancient a date as the correspond- 
 ing rights of England; being, moreover, the work of our 
 
 * On the 10th of November, 1796, Earl Fitzwilliam >vrote to 
 Edmund Barke : " He (Pitt) is determined not to make friends with 
 the Irish."— Burke's Corresjpondencei vol. iv. p. 359. 
 
Castlereagh^s Financial " SJietch.'* 335 
 
 deadliest enemies; being achieved in shameless breach of 
 England's national faith, pledged to iis by the 23rd George 
 III., chapter xxviii. ; being achieved in defiance of our ex- 
 pressed national will, and by means which it is no exaggera- 
 tion to term diabolical ; this Union has ever since its enact- 
 ment been opposed with more or less activity by the people 
 of Ireland, who allege that its results on their social condition 
 have been fully as disastrous as might have been expected 
 from the nature of its origin, and the character and purpose 
 of its authors. 
 
 They allege that the Imperial Parliament taxes Ireland 
 much more heavily than the native Legislature did, and that 
 the fiscal management of Ireland, resulting from the Union, 
 is grossly dishonest and oppressive. As this part of the 
 subject will be touched in the Appendix, I shall here content 
 myself with a few brief statements. 
 
 At the time of the Union the British debt wtis about 
 sixteen and a half times as large as the Irish debt. To 
 impose equality of taxation on countries whose liabilities 
 were so unequal, would have been a proposition too out- 
 rageous even for Pitt and Castlereagh to make directly. On 
 the 5th of January, 1799, Lord Castlereagh forwarded to 
 the Duke of Portland what he called "a short sketch that 
 has been thrown out to feel the public sentiment on the 
 terms" (of Union). From his lordship's sketch I take the 
 following paragraphs : 
 
 "Debts and Eevenues. 
 
 " The Exchequer of Ireland to continue separate : Great 
 Britain to be responsible for her own debt and its reduction ; 
 Ireland to be responsible for her own debt and its reduction. 
 
 " The future expenses of Ireland in war and peace to be 
 in a fixed ratio to the expenses of Great Britain. 
 
 " When' the revenues of Ireland shall exceed her propor- 
 tion of expense, the excess to be applied to local purposes. 
 The taxes producing the excess to be taken oft'." * 
 
 This sketch forms the basis of the arrangement which 
 was subsequently incorporated in the Act of Union. I shall 
 only remark on it at present, 
 
 Firstly, that the Exchequer of Ireland does not continue 
 separate; that Great Britain has shuffled off the separate 
 
 * *' Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. pp. 32, 33. 
 
336 . Eiijhty-iive Years of ItisU Uistory. 
 
 responsibility for her own pre-Union debt and its reduction, 
 and extorts from Ireland a contribution to the payment of 
 the whole British annual debt-charge. 
 
 Secondly, that Lord Castlereagh took care to fix the 
 ratio of Irish and British expenses on a false and exaggerated 
 estimate of Ireland's relative ability. By this clever con- 
 trivance, Ireland became entangled in a technical bankruptcy 
 in 1816, of which Great Britain took advantage to abolish 
 separate ratios of contribution, and thereby to mortgage 
 Ireland for the whole British debt, pre-Union as well as 
 post-Union. 
 
 Thirdly, Lord Castlereagh promised that the excess of 
 Irish revenue over Irish expense should be applied to local 
 purposes in Ireland. That promise was never performed. 
 He also promised that the taxes producing the excess should 
 be taken off. The mode in which the Imperial Parliament 
 has performed this promise is by increasing Irish taxation 
 fifty-two per cent, since 1853. 
 
 Pitt and Castlereagh both said that an income tax would 
 be the best criterion of the quota of expense each country 
 would be able to bear.* But there was not then an income 
 tax in Ireland. That criterion now exists. The property 
 and income of Ireland assessed to income tax in 1869 was 
 returned at £25,992,699. The total assessed property and 
 income of the three kingdoms at the same date was returned 
 at £434,803,957. By this test it appears that in 1869 
 Ireland had not much more than a seventeenth part of the 
 general wealth of the three kingdoms, while the alien Parlia- 
 ment extorted from us nearly one-tenth part of the general 
 Imperial taxation. The revenue of the three kingdoms for 
 the year ending 31st March, 1870, was, including balances, 
 £78,646,412 \2s.\hd. The Irish revenue, including balances, 
 was at the same time £7,620,622 ^s. ^d. Yet a writer of 
 Mr. J. E. M'CuUoch's reputation talks of " the extraordinary 
 favour shown to Ireland in respect of taxation ; " t the extra- 
 ordinary favour consisting in the exaction from Ireland of 
 nearly a tenth part of the Imperial taxes out of scarcely 
 more than a seventeenth part of the Imperial wealth. I do 
 not impute intentional mis-statement to Mr. M'Culloch, who 
 
 * See "Comwallis Correspondence" for Pitt's opinion, vol. ii. 
 p. 457. 
 
 t " A Descriptive and Statistical Account of the British Empire," 
 by J. R. M'Culloch, Esq. Fourth Edition, revised, vol. ii. p. 239. 
 Longmans, Londoo, 185:]i. 
 
Mr. J. R. M'Culloch's Mistake. 337 
 
 "was probably ignorant of the whole subject on which he 
 expressed his opinion in the words I have quoted from him. 
 
 If the Union had not been enacted, we should have long 
 since paid off every shilling of the Irish l^ational Debt^ and 
 we should now be one of the least taxed and most prosperous 
 countries in Europe. 
 
 Among our greatest fiscal grievances is the absentee drain, 
 chiefly consequent on the Union, and which is believed to 
 have frequently reached the amount of £4,000,000 per 
 annum. 
 
 The manufactures of Ireland, once the source of comfort- 
 able subsistence to large numbers of her people, have been 
 prostrated by the irresistible competition of great English 
 capitalists who drove the Irish manufacturer out of his native 
 market when the protective influence of a native Legislature 
 was removed. No person now contends that protective duties 
 should be permanent. But they may be indispensable for a 
 time, to guard manufactures in their infancy ; and until 
 manufactures acquire sufficient strength to dispense with 
 protection. 
 
 The progress of popular liberties in Ireland after 1782 
 was rapid, until checked by the vigorous interference of 
 England. Had not the Irish Legislature been destroyed, the 
 anti-national Church Establishment would have ceased, at 
 least so far back as 1831, to insult and oppress the Irish 
 people. 
 
 The very fact of being governed by laws made in another 
 country has degraded the minds of the Irish aristocracy and 
 gentry. Use has familiarised them with national servitude ; 
 and the consequent depravation of their sentiments operates 
 most perniciously on the interests of their country. They 
 have lost that pride of national honour which is the best 
 protector of a nation's prosperity. 
 
 The existence of a domestic Parliament in Ireland, en- 
 joying the Constitution established in 1782, produced an 
 increase of national prosperity unexceeded within the same 
 period by any other nation on earth, despite the counteractive 
 force of English influence, administrative corruption, and 
 sectarian intolerance. In proof of this all-important fact we 
 have the evidence of Pitt, Clare, Cooke (the Under-Secretary), 
 Poster, Plunket, Grattan, Jebb (M.P. for Callan), Dillon 
 (M.P. for Mayo), the Dublin Bankers, the Dublin Guild of 
 Merchants, and a host of equally competent witnesses. 
 Plunket thus described the progress of Ireland in his speech 
 
 z 
 
338 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 delivered 15th of January, 1800 : ''Her revenues, trade, and 
 manufactures thriving beyond the hope or the example of 
 any other country of her extent : within these few years 
 advancing with a rapidity astonishing even to herself." 
 
 Lord Cornwallis bears his testimony to the daily increasing 
 wealth and prosperity of Ireland in a letter to the Duke of 
 Portland, 28th of January, 1799: "As the general demo- 
 cratic power of the State," says His Excellency, "z's increasinc; 
 daily hy the general wealth and prosperity, and as the 
 Catholics form the greater part of the democracy, their power 
 must proportionably increase whilst the kingdoms are 
 separate, and the Irish oligarchy stationary or declining." * 
 
 It was not to be tolerated that Ireland, with her Catholic 
 majority, should increase in prosperity and wealth. A stop 
 must be put to such dangerous progress by an Union. 
 
 Pitt was of course obliged to varnish his scheme with a 
 pretext of friendship for Ireland. He admitted the prosperity 
 of Ireland ; the Union, he said, would increase her prosperity 
 and give it stability. The Union would give Ireland the 
 advantage of a thorough identification with the greatest and 
 wealthiest nation in the world. The Union Avould cement 
 the affections of England and Ireland by perfectly incor- 
 porating their previously separate interests, and thus consoli- 
 date the strength and security of the whole Empire. 
 
 Let us now see how far the Union has kept the promises 
 of its author ; and in this inquiry I shall avail myself of 
 English and Tory authority. 
 
 Firstly, touching the prosperity which the Union was 
 to have produced, take the following description from the 
 Times newspaper of the 26th of June, 1845 : "The facts of 
 Irish destitution," says the Times, " are ridiculously simple. 
 They are almost too commonplace to be told. The people 
 have not enough to eat. They are suffering a real, though an 
 artificial famine. Nature does her duty. The land is fruitful 
 enough. Nor can it fairly be said that man is Avanting. 
 The Irishman is disposed to work. In fact, man and nature 
 together do produce abundantly. The island is full and 
 overflowing with human food. But something ever interposes 
 between the hungry mouth and the ample banquet. The 
 famished victim of a mysterious sentence stretches out his 
 hands to the viands which his own industry has placed bef oro 
 his eyes, but no sooner are they touched than they fly. A 
 
 « " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 54. 
 
A Famine-striclcen People in the midst of Plenty, 339 
 
 perpetual decree of sic vos non vohis condemns him to toil 
 Avithout enjoyment. Social atrophy drains off the vital juices 
 of the nation." 
 
 Here, tlien, was the realisation, in 1845, of Pitt's predic- 
 tion of Irish prosperity. The potato blight had not at that 
 time commenced. "The famished victim of a mysterious 
 sentence stretches out his hands to the viands which his own 
 industry has placed before his eyes, but no sooner are they 
 touched than they fly." Yes. They fly to pay absentee 
 rents ; to pay taxes shipped to Jilngland ; to pay for English 
 manufactures which have found a market on the ruin of our 
 own ; in a word, to pay the gigantic and manifold tribute 
 thus extracted from this kingdom by England. While 
 Ireland possessed her free Constitution, there was no " mys- 
 terious sentence " to prevent the producer of food from 
 enjoying the profits of his industry. Can any rational man 
 suppose that if Ireland governed herself, we should behold a 
 famine-stricken people inhabiting " an island full and over- 
 flowing with human food " 1 
 
 Some such light appears to have broken at intervals upon 
 even the dim vision of the Times, for in the beginning of 
 September, 1845, I find in another article in that journal 
 the following remarkable admissions : "Whilst it is the fortune 
 — and the good fortune, we will add — of England to import 
 annually a million quarters of foreign corn, it is the mis- 
 fortune of Ireland to expoH ivhat should he the food of her 
 own population. Erom Ireland we draw a part of our daily 
 bread. But it is evident how precarious is that dependence. 
 This year, as appears by a return just out, we have imported 
 very much less than in the two previous years, notwith- 
 standing the higher prices. . . . As Ireland may he truly 
 considered in a perpetual state of famine, she should rather 
 import from foreign countries than export to us. Her vjheat, 
 harley, and oats are the rents of ahsentees." 
 
 I pray the English reader to ponder well this testimony, 
 in connexion with Pitt's hypocritical promises, in 1800, of 
 blessings, and prosperity, and wealth, to be showered upon 
 Ireland by the Union. "Ireland," says the Times in 1845, 
 " may be truly considered in a perpetual state of famine." 
 And this, it is to be observed, was before the potato disease 
 had set in ; it was in the same year in which the same 
 journal had pronounced that Ireland "was full and over- 
 flowing with human food." Just reflect on such a condition 
 of things — a country overflowmg with food, yet its people in 
 
 z 2 
 
340 Eigldy-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 a perpetual state of famine ! It would indeed be miraculous 
 if Ireland were in any other state, while the means which 
 God had given her for the support of her inhabitants were 
 constantly wrung out of her by the Union. "Well might the 
 Times exclaim : " Social atrophy drains off the vital juices 
 of the nation." That social atrophy is the want of Self- 
 Govern ment. 
 
 One more testimony to the realisation of Pitt's Union- 
 prosperity promises : '* We cannot," say the Irish Poor 
 Inquiry Commissioners in their Third Report, "estimate the 
 number of persons out of work and in distress, during thirty 
 weeks of the year, at less than 585,000, nor the number of 
 persons dependent on them at less than 1,800,000, making 
 in the whole 2,385,000." 
 
 That was the state of affairs in 1836. That would not 
 have been the state of affairs in 1836 if the annual produce 
 of Ireland had not been swept off by England as fast as it 
 was produced. That was not the condition of the Irish 
 population while Ireland possessed her Constitution of 1782. 
 Manufactures which were then rapidly growing up, would 
 have continued to extend, and to absorb the surplus agri- 
 cultural hands. The income of the country would have 
 continued to circulate at home among the Irish people, 
 forming innumerable little capitals. There would not have 
 been a perpetual decree of sic vos non vohis condemning 
 millions to toil without enjoyment. There would not — 
 there could not have been 2,385,000 destitute paupers out of 
 a population (at that time) of eight millions. 
 
 With these evidences of national misery before our eyes, 
 it is at once ludicrous and melancholy to reflect that the pre- 
 text upon which the Imperial Parliament rejected O'Connell's 
 motion for Repeal in 1834 was the " giant-stride prosperity 
 of Ireland." Could there be a more conclusive proof of the 
 transcendent ignorance of that Parliament on Irish matters, 
 or of its total incompetence to govern Ireland for the benefit 
 of the country*? The "prosperity" of a people "in a per- 
 petual state of famine " ! Of a people whose " vital juices 
 are drained by a social atrophy " ! Of a people, more than a 
 fourth of whom were at that very time reduced to a state of 
 pauperism for thirty weeks in every year, and whose numbers 
 have since then been enormously thinned by the Imperial 
 plunder that renders their native country incapable of sup- 
 porting them ! Imagine legislation gravely founded on the 
 alleged prosperity of such a people ! Wlio can wonder that 
 
Holu Irish Affection is re]}eTle(J, 341 
 
 the wronged and outraged nation should try to shake loose 
 from this heau ideal of legislative ignorance and impudence % 
 
 Let us next see whether Pitt's pretext that the Union 
 would cement the affections and incorporate the interests of 
 the countries, was in any respect better founded than his 
 promises of Irish prosperity. On this point I shall again 
 (^uote from an intelligent Tory authority. " The position of 
 Ireland," says Fraser's Magazine for May, 1845, "considered 
 as an integral portion of the British Empire, is a thing quite 
 by itself in the history of nations. Subjects of the same 
 Crown, governed by the same laws, represented in the same 
 Parliament, and partakers in the same free Constitution, the 
 Irish people are as far removed from an amalgamation with 
 the people of England as if the breadth of Europe stood 
 between them, and they were known to each other only by 
 name. Moreover, the sources of alienation lie so deep — they 
 are of such ancient date, and so continually present to the 
 minds of both races, that up to the present moment the best 
 endeavours of Kings, and Ministers, and Parliaments to 
 remove them have availed nothing. . . . Attachment (using 
 that term in its more generous sense) there is, it is to be 
 apprehended, very little between the two countries — certainly 
 none on the Irish side towards their English fellow-subjects." 
 
 True — perfectly true. It would indeed be most extra- 
 ordinary if there were any. Men do not love the spoiler, 
 the robber, the destroyer of their liberties. The attachment 
 of the Irish people is not to be won by the corruption and 
 destruction of their native Legislature, and the wholesale 
 abstraction of their national resources. It is not to be won 
 by the prostration of Ireland from the rank of a kingdom to 
 that of a province ; nor by the irritating and insolent intrusion 
 of England into all their domestic concerns. The Union 
 was a crime and a curse — a crime in its perpetration and a 
 curse in its deadly results ; and the attachment of a people 
 is not to be won by crimes and curses. Those persons who 
 yet cherish the preposterous fancy that the Union operates 
 as a bond of international affection, should think of Fraser\s 
 evidence : " Far removed from amalgamation with the people 
 of England." " Deep and ancient alienation of the countries." 
 " '^0 attachment." And is this the mutual love produced by 
 nearly half a century of L^nion 1 I think it is much more 
 like dismemberment. I cordially forgive Fraser for the 
 nonsense he talks about Kings, and Ministers, and Parlia- 
 ments trying to heal the international sore, in consideration 
 
342 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 of the testimony he bears to an important truth — namely, 
 the tried and proved incompetence of the Union to promote 
 good-will, or anything but alienation, between the two 
 countries. 
 
 It is, indeed, remarkable that whilst Unionists allege that 
 the dissolution of the Union would infallibly be followed by 
 our total separation from Great Britain, they omit all notice 
 of the tendency of the Union itself to produce separation, by 
 disgusting the Irish people with a connexion whereby they 
 are degraded and impoverished. I admit the advantage to 
 Ireland of connexion with Great Britain ; connexion under 
 the same Crown, and with separate Parliaments. But if I 
 deem, as I do deem, such a connexion greatly preferable to 
 separation, I also deem separation greatly preferable to the 
 Union. Connexion is a very good thing, but like many 
 other good things it may be purchased at too high a price ; 
 and undeniably the destruction of our Parliament is too high 
 a price to pay for British connexion. 
 
 A connexion satisfactory to Ireland would be far more 
 likely to endure than one which is the source of perpetual 
 irritation and ill-will. Norway and Sweden afford a 
 happy example of two friendly nations united under the 
 same Crown, and each enjoying its own domestic Parliament. 
 We hear a vast quantity of grave and solemn nonsense 
 about two co-ordinate Parliaments necessarily clashing 
 against each other, and destroying the integrity of the 
 Empire. The problem is practically solved by Sweden 
 and Norway. The collision of the nations was a much more 
 probable event if the one aroused the deadly hatred of the 
 other by destroying her power of self-legislation. True, the 
 overwhelming strength of one of the countries may, in a time 
 of peace, neutralise any attempts on the part of the other to 
 throw off the yoke. But the history of the world is not yet 
 ended. If England does not atone for the Union-crime by 
 restoring to Ireland her Parliament, the latter will, in all 
 probability, be yet the sharpest thorn in her so-called sister's 
 side. 
 
 The Unionists allege that the Union, by centralising the 
 legislative power, consolidates and strengthens the Empire. 
 Centralisation, up to a certain point, is indispensable for 
 Imperial integrity and safety. But when it passes that 
 point it becomes despotism ; and despotism resembles the 
 brazen statue with the feet of clay. Its strength is corroded, 
 its foundations are undermined by the just dissatisfaction of 
 
Too much Centralisation a Great Evil. 343 
 
 those portions of the Empire that are the victims of its 
 monopoly of power, of expenditure, and of influence. There 
 is no permanent political health in a State whose extremities 
 are oppressed and despoiled to augment the strength and 
 enhance the grandeur of the centre. Such a political con- 
 dition is analogous to the state of a human body affected 
 with an overflow of blood at the head or heart, which every- 
 one knows is a state of disease not unfrequently followed by 
 death. 
 
 Centralisation, in the shape of Legislative Union, is the 
 source, not of strength, but of weakness — weakness arising 
 from alienated hearts and trampled interests. Local self- 
 government in the several nations Avhich collectively con- 
 stitute an empire or a republic, aflbrds the best security to 
 the whole against foreign aggression — a security derived from 
 the greater zeal each separate portion must necessarily have 
 in defending those local institutions which are beneficial to 
 each man's local interests, and entwine themselves around his 
 best affections. On the other hand, centralisation, by 
 rendering the inhabitants of the parts at a distance from the 
 centre dissatisfied and discontented, necessarily weakens the 
 outposts of the empire, and thereby renders the provinces 
 vulnerable to the foreign invader. Men will fight better in 
 defence of happy homes than they will in defence of hearths 
 despoiled by the centralising tyranny. Men will fight better 
 in defence of their liberties than they will in defence of their 
 own bondage. They will struggle with a bolder heart and 
 a more stalwart arm in defence of free local institutions 
 prolific of blessings and redolent of nationality, than in 
 support of a system that strikes down their natural rights, 
 and brands them with national inferiority. 
 
 Among the pretexts for refusing Repeal which are 
 used by English statesmen, it is insolently urged that English 
 power is indispensably needed to keep a people so divided 
 among themselves as the Irish from absolute anarchy and 
 mutual destruction. 
 
 The direct reverse is the fact. English power has been 
 constantly employed, not to allay but to foment our divisions, 
 on the principle of Divide et Impera ; and the only possible 
 oxorcist of the baleful spirit of internal discord is a resident 
 ^N^ational Legislature, in which all Irish parties would 
 possess a proportional representation; and wdiich would 
 promote the numerous and varied interests which are common 
 to Irishmen of every sect and party. 
 
344 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 The divisions existing at the present day in Ireland are 
 analogous to those which existed in England after the 
 JS'orman Conquest. Take the following description of the 
 latter from Thierry; "The reader," says that historian, 
 " must imagine to himself two countries ; the one possessed 
 by Normans, wealthy and exonerated from capitation and 
 other taxes ; the other, that is the Saxon, enslaved and 
 oppressed with a land tax; the former full of spacious 
 mansions, of walled and moated castles ; the latter covered 
 with thatched huts and old ruined walls ; this peopled with 
 the prosperous and idle, with soldiers and courtiers, with 
 knights and barons — that with men miserable, and doomed 
 to toil, with peasants and artisans. Lastly, to complete the 
 picture, these two lands are in a manner woven into each 
 other ; they meet at every point, and yet they are more 
 completely separated than if there were seas between them. 
 Each has a language of its own which is strange to the other. 
 French is the Court language used in all the palaces, castles, 
 and mansions, in the abbeys and monasteries, in all the 
 residences of wealth and power ; while the ancient language 
 of the country is only heard at the firesides of the poor and 
 the serfs." 
 
 This description, with a few variations of detail, would 
 accurately serve for the Ireland of our own day. How, or 
 why was it, that from the jarring and apparently irrecon- 
 cilable elements of Norman and Saxon, the great and well- 
 combined English nation of the present day has been 
 formed % 
 
 It was because the Conqueror placed the central Govern- 
 ment within^ and not without, the realm of England. Had 
 England been ruled then and now by a Government seated 
 iu France, we should still see the degrading and disastrous 
 divisions described by the historian existing in pestilent 
 vigour. There would be the National English party, de- 
 testing the absentee Legislature ; and there would be the 
 French or Norman party, sustaining the national evil because 
 of some personal profit or class monopoly by which they 
 might be bribed to support it. These parties would cor- 
 dially hate each other; and doubtless French statesmen 
 would announce that French intervention and control were 
 indispensably required to keep Englishmen from cutting one 
 another's throats. 
 
 But, happily for England, all her governmental insti- 
 tutions were planted upon English ground. There they 
 
Holo to terminate Irish Divisions. 345 
 
 took root, and there they formed a nucleus around which 
 the descendants of the Saxon, of the IsTorman, of the Dane, 
 might alike forget their distinctive enmities, and blend, 
 under the shadow of an English Legislature, into one amal- 
 gamated people. 
 
 This is just what we want in Ireland to terminate our 
 ruinous divisions. A resident Parliament, representing all, 
 accessible to all, and harmonising all into one great national 
 party. 
 
 But English Whigs — especially when out of office — 
 interpose with soft and soothing accents : " Give up Repeal, 
 and we will give you full justice in a British Parliament. 
 Did not King, Lords, and Commons in 1834 promise you 
 that every just cause of complaint should be removed? 
 Every British privilege shall be yours ; full equality of 
 rights and franchises ; anything, everything, except an Irish 
 Parliament in College Green." 
 
 Yes, everything is promised, except the concession of 
 that ancient indefeasible right which is worth a thousandfold 
 more than all the rest ; I say promised — for the intention to 
 perform is far more than doubtful. But were that intention 
 as sincere and honest as I believe it to be otherwise — were 
 Whigs triumphant in both Houses with their hands full of 
 boons, ready to bestow upon Ireland, still the political 
 equality of Ireland with England under an incorporating 
 Union is thoroughly impossible. It is out of the nature of 
 things. In any distribution of members, England must 
 always have a numerical superiority in a united Legislature, 
 capable of defeating the legislative influence of the whole 
 body of Irish members in questions affecting their own 
 country. This single circumstance must necessarily render 
 a legislative Union of equality impossible. For many years 
 before 1829 a majority of Irish members uniformly supported 
 Emancipation, and that measure was as uniformly rejected 
 by the English Parliament. What equality was there in 
 that? The Coercion Act of 1833 was passed by the London 
 Parliament in defiance of a majority of Irish members. What 
 equality was there in that 1 The income tax was imposed 
 on Ireland in 1853 against a large majority of Irish votes. 
 What equality was there in that? Again, it is ridiculous to 
 expect that so long as the Union lasts, England will not 
 always continue the residence of the Legislature. That 
 also debars an Union of equality. The seat of Parliament is 
 the centre of power, and will necessarily attract the absentees 
 
346 Eight y-Jive Years of Irish Histori/. 
 
 to London. Your " equality " would still leave Ireland 
 afflicted with an absentee drain, which has been frequently 
 calculated to amount to .£4,000,000 per annum. So long as 
 the Union lasts, so long will England (under the name of 
 *'the Empire") hold the purse-strings of the Irish nation. 
 "What equality is there in that 1 Equal rights with England 
 under an Union ! The thing, I repeat, is totally impossible. 
 Common sense laughs to scorn the flimsy delusion. 
 
 Oh, but there is to be a fusion of England and Ireland 
 into one nation — just as Sussex and Kent are identified with 
 each other. This, again, is impossible. A nation, as Burke 
 says, is not merely a geographical arrangement — it is a moral 
 essence. The pregnant experience of the past and of the 
 present — the experience of seven eventful centuries — 
 demonstrates the total impracticability of fusing together the 
 moral essences of England and Ireland. To constitute 
 separate nationhood are required the moral, the historical, 
 the geographical elements. By these elements the special 
 distinctness of Ireland is as clearly marked out as is the 
 distinctness of any other nation in the world. Kent and 
 Sussex may amalgamate. Ireland can no more amalgamate 
 with England than with Holland or with France. In the 
 words of Goold, *' Her patent to be a nation, not a shire, 
 comes direct from heaven. The Almighty has, in majestic 
 characters, signed the great charter of our independence. 
 The great Creator of the world has given our beloved 
 country the gigantic outlines of a kingdom. The God of 
 nature never intended that Ireland should be a province." 
 
 So spoke Goold, as truly as eloquently. God has 
 stamped on Ireland the indelible character of national dis- 
 tinctness ; and the violent and unnatural efforts to counter- 
 act His manifest designs, to obliterate the features of her 
 individuality, and to bring her people and her institutions 
 under the control of uncongenial Britain, have resulted in 
 unspeakable disaster and misery. 
 
 As to the Whig notion that any conceivable political 
 ameliorations could render the Union endurable, I have 
 already tried to show its absurdity. Name as many good 
 laws as you please ; they would surely be as attainable from 
 an Irish Parliament as from an Imperial one. So that, 
 whilst upon the one hand Imperial legislation can give us at 
 best no advantage over home government, on the other hand 
 home government possesses over Imperial the inestimable 
 advantage of home expenditure, home sympathies, the sole 
 
Would Home Rule diminish English Power? 347 
 
 control of our national resources and revenues, the exclusion 
 of foreign hands from Irish cotiers, and the residence instead 
 of the absenteeship of the great Irish proprietors who follow 
 in the wake of the Legislature. Imperial legislation, even 
 under the most favouring circumstances, would still leave us 
 under the withering influence of absenteeism, of a swindling 
 tax drain, and of the Anglicised, anti-Irish prepossessions 
 ^nd prejudices of our aristocracy ; whilst it could not give us 
 one solitary good law that could not be far more readily 
 procured from an Irish Parliament. 
 
 I shall now examine some common objections to the 
 Eepeal of the Union ; availing myself of the language of 
 Mr. Daniel Owen Maddyn, the clever and amusing but 
 superficial author of " Ireland and its Kulers." Mr. Maddyn's 
 arguments are in substance the same as those which have 
 been used by English senators, journalists, and politicians in 
 general. "England," says Mr. Maddyn, "would (in the 
 event of Repeal) cease to be a substantive power, and 
 Europe would be left at the mercy of Russia, France, Austria, 
 and Prussia." 
 
 In the name of common sense, we ask, Why 1 What is 
 there in Eepeal to diminish the power of England? The 
 Union at this moment fills the minds of the Irish people at 
 home and in America with rancorous jealousy of England. 
 Does the rancorous jealousy of some millions of the Queen's 
 European subjects conduce to the stability of England's 
 power ? Is English power necessarily built on the depression 
 of the Irish people"? Is the strength of the Empire de- 
 pendent on the weakness of one of its constituent nations ? 
 On the contrary, the national sense of intolerable wrong 
 inflicted by England upon Ireland in the demolition of her 
 Legislature, is more calculated to perpetuate international 
 animosity and thereby produce Imperial weakness, than a 
 system in which two free Parliaments should provide for the 
 respective wants of the two countries. "A house divided 
 against itself shall not stand ; " and the Union promotes and 
 foments the perilous division of the household. 
 
 Mr. Maddyn continues as follows : "The Irish Repealers 
 may object that such a consummation (namely, the decrease 
 of England's European influence) should have happened in 
 the last century, previous to the Union, if it were likely to 
 take place again upon its supposed dissolution. But to this 
 and all similar arguments of the Eepeal party it is a sufficient 
 political answer to reply, that Ireland had never a free 
 
348 Eiglity-fivG Years of Irish History. 
 
 Parliament till 1782; that within eighteen years the con- 
 nexion was, three times, all but dissolved — viz., by Flood's 
 Convention for ultra-Reform, by the difference upon the 
 Regency Question in 1789, and by the rebellion in 1798 ; 
 that Fox and Burke, while yielding to an Irish army, led by 
 an Irish aristocracy, considered that Grattan's revolution was 
 most calamitous to England ; and that Pitt, in the very 
 outset of his parliamentary life, resolved on the measure of 
 an Union and the extinction of the Irish Parliament, from 
 his sagacious foresight of the probable results of two 
 Legislatures in one Empire." 
 
 " Ireland had never a free Parliament until 1782." This 
 assertion is, in Mr. Maddyn's sense, unfounded. We have 
 already seen the Irish Parliament in 1460 affirming, not 
 only its own independence on England, but that of all 
 previous Parliaments from the days of Henry 11. In another 
 sense, however, Mr. Maddyn is correct ; that is, if he means 
 to imply that the imperfect construction of the unreformed 
 Irish House of Commons left it, as the English Parliament 
 from a like cause was also left, open to corrupt Court in- 
 jfiuence. In this sense it is true that even the Irish Parlia- 
 ment of 1782 was not free enough ; that it was not based on 
 a representation sufficiently extensive; that too large a portion 
 of the Lower House represented, not the people, but the 
 patrons of boroughs. It may be said that the Irish Parlia- 
 ment was only the more easily managed on that account. 
 Perhaps so. But that species of management, like all other 
 international dishonesty, incurred the strong risk of defeating 
 its OMTi object; and instead of binding the two countries 
 together in the solid, lasting bonds of full, free justice and 
 fair play, it tended to exacerbate the victimised nation, and 
 to create a store of rankling hatred, fraught with eventual 
 danger to the Empire. The Repealers believe that heartfelt 
 international amity and consequent Imperial safety can alone 
 co-exist with a truly free and popular Irish Legislature ; one 
 which will do justice to the Irish people, and be placed 
 beyond the reach of all corrupt management. 
 
 Let me here notice a fallacy commonly put forward by 
 the Unionists. They say: "As long as you had a Parliament, 
 its utility was obstructed and its members were corrupted by 
 English influence. Therefore an Union was indispensable 
 to correct the evils resulting from such a state of things." 
 
 It is true that the unreformed Irish Parliament was 
 exposed to pernicious English influence. The natural and 
 
Mr. Maddyn^s Falsification of History. 349 
 
 rational course would have been to get rid of that influence 
 instead of getting rid of the Parliament. But what is the 
 remedy of the sagacious Unionists ? Why, truly, to increase 
 the disease. That disease, they themselves allege, was the 
 English influence then partially operating through channels 
 of parliamentary corruption. What is their cure 1 To render 
 the same mischievous influence dominant, paramount. To 
 render it perpetual and resistless. It was, they say, per- 
 nicious, even when counteracted by the occasional virtue 
 or the national interests of an Irish Legislature. And yet 
 they would have us believe that it becomes innocuous when 
 that counteractive power is extinct, and when no check exists 
 to its detrimental operation. 
 
 I come back to Mr. Maddyn. He blunders in his asser- 
 tion that within eighteen years from 1782 the connexion of 
 the countries was three times all but dissolved. Flood's 
 fellow-con ventionists were totally incompetent to effect separa- 
 tion from England, even had they desired it. And a very 
 small minority of them did desire it.* In truth, the parlia- 
 mentary reform for which they struggled, would, if successful, 
 have satisfied their utmost aspirations. It is absurd as well 
 as false to represent their efforts to reform the Parliament as 
 in the slightest degree endangering the connexion of the 
 kingdoms. 
 
 It is also false that the dijBference upon the Regency 
 Question in 1789 "all but dissolved the connexion of the 
 countries." Eoth Parliaments concurred in their choice of 
 the Prince of Wales as Regent during the King's illness, and 
 thus the identity of the regal power was secured. The Irish 
 Parliament invested the Regent with full royal prerogatives, 
 whilst the British senate, influenced by Pitt, placed some 
 restrictions on his powers. The party who supported the 
 popular view in the Irish Commons were as warmly attached 
 to British connexion as was their leader, Grattan. The 
 theoretic danger arising from a possible difference in choosing 
 the Regent might have easily been provided against by a law 
 enacting that wdioever at any time might be Regent in 
 England should also be Regent in Ireland. A Bill to that 
 effect was brought into the Irish Parliament by the Right 
 Hon. James Eitzgerald, and — thrown out by the Government. 
 
 Mr. Maddyn's assertion that the rebellion of 1798 was 
 n any degree ascribable to the existence of a resident 
 
 * Flood himself was one of the few conventionists who desired 
 separation. 
 
350 Eightu-fiue Years of Irish History. 
 
 Parliament, is a curious instance of the slapdash hardihood 
 with which a clever writer will sometimes lucubrate on topics 
 he knows little or nothing about. Mr. Maddyn makes no 
 attempt t6 demonstrate any connexion between the rebellion 
 and the residence of the senate. To attribute the rebellion 
 to the Irish Constitution of 1782 is a monstrous falsification 
 of history. The Government deliberately lashed, goaded, 
 shot, tortured the people into insurrection against their 
 intolerable tyranny, with the view of creating a condition of 
 national paralysis which would render possible the suppression 
 of the national Parliament. 
 
 The Irish Parliament of 1798 was eminently devoted to 
 British connexion. Foster, in his splendid anti-IJnion speech 
 of the 11th of April, 1799, boasted that that Parliament put 
 down the insurrection. The stimulants to rebel were to be 
 found, not in the residence of the Legislature, but in the 
 ample provocatives administered to the people by the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The convulsive throes of revolutionary France then 
 agitated Europe. Wild spirits — chiefly Protestant — amongst 
 the Irish middle classes, first caught the contagion of French 
 principles and preached up rebellion in their secret conclaves, 
 when they found it impossible to obtain the parliamentary 
 reform which at one time would have satisfied their desires. 
 They unfortunately found in the hearts of the Irish peasantry 
 a soil well prepared to receive the seed they scattered. 
 England had prepared the soil for the reception of that seed» 
 Persecution had taught the Irish of that day to seize on any 
 project that held out a hope of deliverance from their tyrants. 
 
 Mr. Maddyn next asserts that " The character of England 
 would be ruined by consenting to such a measure (as the 
 Eepeal). Her reputation for sagacity and political ability 
 would be destroyed ; her fame would vanish." 
 
 It may be asked how her character and fame would sufifer 
 by the mere performance of an act of justice; which act 
 would remove from the Empire a dangerous source of weak- 
 ness — possibly of eventual disruption. 
 
 He continues : ** Her material interests would share the 
 same ruin as her moral power. As in individuals, so in 
 nations, character is the creator of national rank and wealth 
 in the social scale." 
 
 Undoubtedly. But again, Mr. ^faddyn does not show 
 how England's character would be compromised by simply 
 undoing an intolerable national wrong, and by recurring to a 
 
Manufacturing and Commercial Fears. 351 
 
 system precisely analogous to that which she instructed her 
 ambassador, Lord Minto, to negotiate in the instance of Sicily 
 and Kaples. 
 
 Mr. Maddyn goes on : "It (the Eepeal) would rob 
 England of a large home market for her manufactures^ 
 for of course an Irish Parliament would adopt the political 
 economy of the national school, and pass a tariff hostile to 
 English manufactures. In so doing, it would not merely 
 cut off from England a large portion of her home trade, hut 
 it loould also set up a rival trader at her very side." 
 
 So, then, the Eepeal of the Union is resisted on the 
 express and avowed ground that it would resuscitate tho 
 manufactures of Ireland which the Union had destroyed. 
 Pitt, to be sure, had said fine things about the marvellous- 
 increase of Irish trade and manufactures to be effected by 
 the Union ; but here we have an Unionist, and an Irishman 
 to boot, apprehensive lest the restoration of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment should wake up Irish manufactures from the torpor of 
 death, and erect the Irish trader into a rival of the English- 
 man. 
 
 ISTow, if Mr. Maddyn be right — and I am sure that he is 
 — in suggesting in the above-quoted slavish paragraph, that 
 the Union has operated to extinguish Irish manufactures 
 and to throw the monopoly of the Irish market into the 
 hands of British manufacturers, it necessarily follows that 
 violent hostility to England must be excited in the breasts 
 of those who feel themselves sacrificed to the competition of 
 the English trader. Mr. Maddyn, however, startles us with 
 the discovery that it is not in any such causes that hostility 
 lurks, but in the Repeal ; which measure, he proceeds to 
 say, " would be creating a hostile country whose emigrants 
 swarm in the British colonies ; all of whom would be ready 
 to act in concert with the Irish rulers at College Green." 
 
 But he does not explain how an act of great national 
 restitution could excite the hostility of the people whose 
 goods it would restore to them. His notion is as irrational 
 as it would be to suppose that you excite the enmity of your 
 creditors by paying your debts. Their enmity would be 
 much more probably aroused by the refusal of payment. 
 He might have learned to think more accurately if he had 
 read the letters addressed to the Eepeal Association by Irish 
 emigrants in America and the Colonies. Their communi- 
 cations overflowed with hostility to English injustice. The 
 Irish in America at present teach a similar lesson. Mr. 
 
352 Eigldy-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 Maddyn should have asked himself from which of tAvo 
 causes would Irish hostility to England more probably 
 proceed — from the jealousy that crushed a Legislature, and 
 has starved out the Irish manufacturer; or the frank and 
 honourable, although tardy justice, that would restore the 
 Parliament, and adopt as its motto, suum cuique ? In truth, 
 there is no fallacy more common than to predict, as pro- 
 spective evils to result from Eepeal, the very hostility and 
 jealousy existing at the present moment, and of which the 
 Union itself is the real cause. 
 
 The fear that the Repeal of the Union would deprive 
 England of a profitable commercial intercourse with Ireland, 
 is as foolish as it is unfounded. A similar fear was enter- 
 tained by the British merchants who in 1776 believed that 
 the American revolt would destroy their trade with the 
 American colonies. But their trade, instead of being 
 destroyed, expanded into proportions commensurate with 
 the increased vitality and energy acquired by America from 
 her independence. Mr. Herman Merivale, in his work on 
 Colonisation,* asks whether the English trade with America 
 suffered by the severance of the American colonies from 
 England, and their establishment as a Republic ? 
 
 *' All the world knows," he says, ''on the contrary, that 
 the commerce between the mother country and the colony 
 was but a peddling traffic, compared to that vast international 
 intercourse, the greatest the world has ever known, which 
 grew up between them when they had exchanged the tie of 
 subjection for that of equality ; " equality, which, as Mr. 
 Merivale says in the words of a Greek poet, is " the surest 
 bond between friends, between states, and between allies." f 
 
 Again, Mr. Goldwin Smith, advocating the concession of 
 independence to the Colonies, contends that their trade with 
 England would in no way suffer by the concession. " Rather," 
 he says, "it would increase, and they would become more 
 active producers and customers, since independence sends life 
 through all the veins of a nation. The o?ivulet of trade which 
 ran between England and her American Colonies before they 
 became independent, swelled, from the moment when they 
 became independent, to a current as mighty as the Gulf 
 Stream flowing between shore and shore." % 
 
 This example should lead English merchants to inquire 
 whether the dishonest profits derived from monopolising the 
 
 * Cited in " The Empire," 1863, by Goldwin Smith, p. 25. 
 t " The Empire," p. 25. $ l^id, p. 132. 
 
Summary of Reasons for Repeal. 353 
 
 manufacture markets of plundered and impoverished 
 Ireland, would not be greatly exceeded by the commercial 
 gain of having in Ireland a prosperous and wealthy neigh- 
 bour. 
 
 Mr. Maddyn next alleges, as a result of Kepeal, that 
 "the difficulty of maintaining a standing army would be 
 increased considerably. Even if Irish soldiers enlisted in 
 the British ranks, upon any collision with Ireland they 
 would probably desert, and start up against the ' Saxons.' 
 The loyalty of a large portion of the army would be doubt- 
 ful, and the vast Indian Empire, and the Colonies, would 
 probably be left exposed for want of troops." 
 
 I might argue that here again Mr. Maddyn suggests 
 difficulties as probably resulting from Repeal, which are a 
 great deal more likely to result from the Union. But it 
 needs not. English policy has hunted the human material 
 of war out of the country. " The Celts are gone with a 
 vengeance." " Ireland will be henceforth the fruitful mother 
 of herds and flocks." Such have been the boasts of English 
 politicians. Ireland is not at present a fruitful mother of 
 recruits; and as they are not forthcoming, it is scarcely 
 worth while to speculate on what their probable conduct 
 would be if they were among us as of old. 
 
 Again — Mr. Maddyn fears that "The funds would be 
 very liberally spunged, for of course Ireland, when separate, 
 would not consent to be held responsible for debts which 
 she never contracted." 
 
 In the name of common honesty, why should she % It is 
 painful to contrast such slavish lucubrations as these with 
 Pitt's hypocritical disclaimer in 1799 of all desire to grasp 
 our financial resources for British purposes. 
 
 Let me now sum up. Ireland demands the Repeal : 
 
 1. Because self-legislation is her indefeasible right. She 
 has never surrendered that right. 
 
 2. Because self-legislation, even though accompanied 
 with the serious drawbacks of a most corrupt borough 
 system and Catholic disability, conferred great and increasing 
 prosperity on Ireland from 1782 until the Union. 
 
 3. Because the Union is the undoubted product of 
 bloodshed and corruption, and the inherent vices of its 
 origin send their poison through every vein of the Irish 
 body-politic. While the people were butchered into an 
 incapacity of effective resistance, a corrupt parliamentary 
 majority were bribed to sell what was not theirs to sell — the 
 
 2 A 
 
354 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 Constitution of their country.* ^Ye were robbed of our 
 property — the Constitution — by the most infamous means — 
 the only means, in fact, which could be employed for such a pur- 
 pose; and we now demand the restoration of the stolen goods. 
 
 4. Because the destruction of our national Constitution 
 has covered the land with decay, and has produced unspeak- 
 able suffering among its inhabitants. 
 
 5. Because Ireland is truly desirous that the integrity 
 of the Empire should be preserved on such terms as will not 
 involve her own degradation and the ruinous plunder of her 
 people. 
 
 The Union imperils the integrity of the Empire by 
 holding out the strong lure to foreign invasion which is 
 furnished by the just discontent of Ireland. Foreign invasion 
 were indeed an affliction of great magnitude. But the 
 Union is also an affliction of colossal magnitude — an affliction 
 so great that it may easily render even foreign conquest a 
 mere question in the minds of many between one species of 
 tyranny and another. Samson, in his thirst for vengeance, 
 pulled down the house to crush his foes, rejoicing in the 
 deed that overwhelmed them, even although he was himself 
 included in their ruin. Tyranny has often merged the 
 instinct of self-preservation in the burning desire to punish 
 the tyrant. 
 
 But — give to the Irish people an Irish Parliament to 
 defend, and then let the foe invade our shores — he will be 
 met with the stout arms and intrepid hearts of a gallant 
 people, fortified and inspired by the resistless, the ennobling 
 influences of triumphant nationality. Give to the Irish that 
 strong interest in repelling invasion which local institutions 
 and domestic government alone can give them. Restore to 
 them their national Constitution, and they will feel that they 
 have something really worth defending. It needs no words 
 to prove that men will fight more readily to protect a do- 
 mestic Legislature that gratifies the national pride and keeps 
 the national wealth at home, than a system of absentee 
 legislation that is in itself an insult, that drains the country 
 of its wealth, and beggars multitudes of its inhabitants. 
 
 British connexion with two Legislatures is preferable to 
 separation ; but separation would be a better thing than the 
 destruction of the Irish Parliament. 
 
 There seems no reason why Ireland should not flourish in 
 
 * " The Constitntion of Ireland is the indisputable property of 
 the nation, and not of its Parliament." — Anti-Union, 1799, p. 22. 
 
England^ s Claims to Admiration, 355 
 
 a separate existence as well as Sweden, Portugal, Denmark, 
 Holland, Belgium — countries all naturally her inferiors in 
 the qualities and resources that entitle a nation to self- 
 government. But there is every reason why Ireland, possess- 
 ing a fertile soil, capacious estuaries, a first-rate situation for 
 commerce, a brave and intelligent people, should find absolute 
 and separate independence incomparably preferable to a 
 legislative Union which cripples her powers, absorbs her 
 resources for the benefit of England, and acts as a social and 
 political blister — draining and irritating. 
 
 An Englishman may easily test the capacity of the Union 
 to attach Irishmen to British connexion, by asking himself 
 the question, whether he would submit to a political alliance 
 with any land on earth that involved the destruction of the 
 English Parliament, or which deprived the English nation of 
 self-government % 
 
 It is to be deplored that England, with her ample means 
 of securing our attachment by the simple justice of Repeal, 
 should yet prefer to perpetuate our hostility by refusing us 
 that justice. I am no blind anti-English bigot. Eor esti- 
 mable individual Englishmen I entertain warm regard and 
 deep respect. I can recognise the many claims of England 
 to our admiration — would that she could enable me to add, 
 our affection ! In the sixteenth century my paternal an- 
 cestors were English,* and a sentiment not wholly dissimilar 
 from filial reverence will sometimes steal over my mind when 
 I think that for many centuries my forefathers belonged to 
 that land, so full of glorious monuments of all that can exalt 
 and dignify the human race, rich with memories of martial 
 valour and pacific wisdom, famed for the splendid pre- 
 eminence in arts and arms of her mighty sons, covered over 
 with her stately old ancestral dwellings, adorned with 
 majestic churches and cathedrals — the venerable records of 
 the piety that once distinguished her inhabitants. Even an 
 Irish Repealer may experience a momentary thrill of pride 
 when he thinks of his remote connexion with a country 
 possessing such claims on the world's admiration ; but the 
 sentiment is quickly banished by the wrongs that England's 
 crimes have inflicted upon that far dearer land in which his first 
 breath was drawn, with which his fondest affections are iden- 
 tified, and of which God's providence has made him a citizen. 
 
 England — England ! why loill you compel our reluctant 
 detestation 1 
 
 * They had, in a previous century, been French. 
 
 2 A 2 
 
356 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 THE GLADSTONIAN FRANCHISE — HOME RULE PROPOSED. 
 
 On the opening of Parliament in February, 1884, Her 
 Majesty's Speech congratulated the Legislature on the 
 improved condition of Ireland. The alleged improvement 
 was unfortunately imperceptible to the Irish people ; for a 
 return then recently issued set forth that in the decade 
 ending in 1881 more than half a million of acres in Ireland 
 had gone out of cultivation; and that during that decade 
 the decrease in cattle was 19,777, and in sheep 977,250. 
 The outflow of the people was continuous, and the great 
 decrease of tillage was the natural result of the exodus. The 
 hands that had tilled the land were now in America. 
 
 During the year the Nationalist agitation was actively 
 carried on. Mr. Gladstone had stated that there was no 
 moral force behind the Government. Accordingly Lord 
 Kossmore, in order to supply the Government with moral 
 force, led bodies of armed Orangemen to attack the National- 
 ists. Earl Spencer was then Viceroy, and as he disapproved 
 of the Orange idea of moral force thus exemplified, he dis- 
 missed Lord Rossmore from the magistracy. It may give 
 the English reader some idea of the sort of intelligence which 
 characterises Irish Tory magistrates, to learn that a large 
 number of their body signed a declaration of sympathy with 
 Lord Rossmore, and condemned his dismissal. They deemed 
 that his breach of the peace did not at all disqualify him 
 from holding the commission of the peace. There was also 
 some talk of a subscription to console the fallen hero, but it 
 did not take a practical shape. 
 
 During the years 1883 and 1884, the extension of the 
 parliamentary franchise was hotly agitated. The Irish Tory 
 leaders, conscious that they had no claim on the confidence 
 of their countrymen, worked hard to obtain a reduction in 
 the number of Irish parliamentary representatives. They 
 argued that the great decrease of the relative proportion 
 of the Irish to the British population since the Union 
 should be accompanied by a corresponding decrease in 
 the number of members sent by Ireland to Westminster. 
 The Union had operated to banish vast numbers of the 
 people by abstracting their means of support, and the great 
 depopulation thus caused was employed as a good and 
 
Tory Safred of the Popular Franchise. 357 
 
 sufficient argument for striking off a fifth or a fourth from 
 our parliamentary representation. Mr. Gladstone effectively 
 combated this project. He reminded its advocates that at a 
 time when the Irish population bore to the British a far 
 larger proportion than at present, they had never demanded 
 an increase of the Irish parliamentary contingent on that 
 account ; and he would not now allow that the altered propor- 
 tions afforded any reason for lessening the number of the 
 Irish members. 
 
 The extended franchise was accompanied "with a redistri- 
 bution of the electoral districts. As the Tories had failed to 
 obtain a reduction of the number of Irish members, they 
 devoted their energies to the task of so arranging the 
 electoral boundaries as to limit the benefit which the 
 Nationalist electors might derive from the recent enlargement 
 of the franchise. The mode in which the Boundaries Com- 
 missioners occasionally acted in the Tory interest may be 
 learned from the following instance : 
 
 In Down there is a district in which the majority is 
 Nationalist. The only mode of preventing that district from 
 returning a Home Ruler to Parliament was to divide it 
 among contiguous Orange and Whig districts, or to unite it 
 in its entirety with a large Orange or Whig division with 
 which it has no natural connexion. This last plan was 
 adopted by the Boundaries Commissioners, although a chain 
 of mountains separates the National from the anti-National 
 portion of Down.* 
 
 But notwithstanding this exercise of Tory dexterity, not- 
 withstanding also the vociferous boast that Ulster was 
 " solid for the Union," the result of the new franchise — the 
 power which it conferred on the people to declare their real 
 sentiments — appeared in a Nationalist majority of the 
 members for the Ulster constituencies. Seventeen Home 
 Rulers were returned against sixteen Unionists ; and the 
 Home Rule majority in our northern province would have 
 been greater if it were not for the mode in which the 
 electoral divisions were manipulated by the Boundaries 
 Commissioners. Two great Orange strongholds, Derry and 
 Belfast, are now represented by Home Rulers; Derry by 
 Mr. McCarthy, and West Belfast by Mr. Sexton. The 
 Nationalists have frequently expressed their desire that the 
 political sentiments of Ulster could be tested by d, plebiscite ; 
 confident that such a test would reveal an enormous majority 
 * Nation, 27th December, 1884. 
 
358 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 of Home Rulers in the Ulster population. The result of the 
 General Election gave Mr. Parnell a party of eighty-six 
 members, of whom eighty-five were returned from Ireland, 
 and one from Liverpool. 
 
 In the spring of 1885 the Archiepiscopal See of Dublin 
 became vacant by the death of Cardinal M'Cabe. There 
 were intrigues, in the interest of the English Government, 
 to obtain the appointment of an anti-national, or unnational, 
 successor to the deceased prelate. The Catholics of Ireland, 
 clerical and lay, were well aware of the injury to religion 
 which would result from the appointment of a spaniel bishop, 
 and they consequently felt anxious to defeat the conspiracy 
 that seemed to threaten them with such a calamity. In a 
 previous chapter* I have briefly adverted to the question of 
 the veto, and to the successful efforts of O'Connell in 1813 
 to defeat the attempt of the Government to obtain an 
 influential voice in Irish Catholic episcopal appointments. 
 The Government, many years ago, had tried to induce the 
 Pope to withhold his sanction from the appointment of the 
 late Dr. Machale to the Archiepiscopal See of Tuam ; their 
 agent, Mr. Seymour, requested his Holiness to appoint " any- 
 body but him." The appeal was disregarded, and Dr. 
 Machale assumed the crozier, greatly to the advantage of the 
 cause of religion and of the kindred cause of nationality, 
 within the sphere of his extensive jurisdiction. 
 
 The agent who is generally credited with the manage- 
 ment of the recent attempt to provide a Castle bishop for the 
 See of Dublin is Mr. Errington, who, for his services in that 
 regard, has been honoured with a baronetcy. The editor of 
 United Ireland published a letter which had somehow fallen 
 into his hands, in which Mr. Errington gives an amusingly 
 complaisant account of his own diplomacy. The reader will 
 smile at the free-and-easy way in which this diplomatist 
 speaks of his ability to keep the Pope "in good humour," 
 and of the "strong pressure" on his Holiness which he claims 
 to be able to exercisa Here is his letter to Lord Granville : 
 
 " House of Commons, lUh of May ^ 1885. 
 "Dear Lord Granville, 
 
 ** The Dublin Archbishopric being still undecided, I 
 
 must continue to keep the Vatican in good humour about 
 
 you, and keep up communication with them generally as 
 
 much as possible. I am almost ashamed to trouble you 
 
 * Chap. vii. 
 
Errington^s Mode of tickling the Vatican. 359 
 
 again as you are so busy ; but perhaps on Monday you would 
 allow me to show you the letter I propose to write. This 
 premature report about Dr. Moran will cause increased 
 pressure to be put on the Pope, and create many fresh 
 difficulties. The matter, therefore, must be most carefully 
 watched, so that tlie strong j^ressici'e I can still command may 
 be used at the right moment, and not unnecessarily (for too 
 much pressure is quite as dangerous as too little). To effect 
 this, constant communication with Rome is necessary. 
 "I am, dear Lord Granville, 
 
 " Faithfully yours, 
 
 "George Errington." 
 
 Doubtless Mr. Errington deemed this letter a masterpiece 
 of diplomatic art. We admire the exquisite discretion with 
 which he will relax or increase the necessary pressure on the 
 Vatican according to circumstances ; keeping his powerful 
 forces under due control until the right moment shall arrive 
 to spring them on the Pope ! and carefully watching for 
 that moment. Twice in his letter he suggests the importance 
 of his constant intervention, impressing on Lord Granville 
 the necessity of keeping up perpetual communication with 
 Rome. In addition to his other invaluable services he has 
 composed, or proposed, a letter doubtless calculated to bring 
 his agency to a triumphant issue, which letter he wishes to 
 submit to Lord Granville. But although this astucious 
 agent could command "strong pressure," and could, as he 
 fancied, tickle the Vatican into "good humour," yet his 
 dexterity failed to procure the appointment of an episcopal 
 policeman to the English Government. The Pope, con- 
 ceiving that the clergy of the archdiocese were better judges 
 than Mr. Errington or his employers of the person best 
 fitted to rule them, wisely sanctioned their choice of Dr. 
 Walsh, whose appointment was hailed with satisfaction by 
 every Catholic lover of his creed and his country. 
 
 As the year advanced, there were increasing rumours 
 that Mr. Gladstone had given favourable consideration to 
 some measure of self-government for Ireland. What that 
 measure was to be, what shape it should assume, to what 
 extent it would restore the right of which Ireland was 
 basely deprived in 1800 — these were questions anxiously 
 debated by every class of politicians. A published letter 
 of Mr. Herbert Gladstone seemed to foreshadow a very 
 liberal concession, and excited the alarm of the domestic 
 
360 Eight y-flve Years of Irish History. 
 
 enemies of Irish legislative independence. An association 
 was formed to sustain the Union ; it was styled The Irish 
 Loyal and Patriotic Union; and the utterances of its 
 orators betrayed a craven fear of the enmity of their own 
 countrymen. At one of their meetings in October, 1885, 
 Lord Carysfort is reported to have said that " he thought 
 they would all admit that the minority in Ireland must look 
 to English support if they wished to hold their own at all." 
 
 What a shameful confession ! The minority in Ireland, 
 according to the noble speaker, must have scandalously 
 failed in their duties, since external help is needed to protect 
 them against the people by whom they are surrounded. 
 
 Again, these friends of the legislative Union thus 
 describe the condition of Ireland under that Union : "Life," 
 said the Earl of Meath, " was insecure, property was in- 
 secure ; individual liberty was abolished." His lordship is 
 reported to have also said : " They must realise that they 
 must fight for their lives and their properties at great odds." 
 
 And this in the 86th year of the Union ! So that 
 English legislation after more than three-quarters of a 
 century has failed to rescue its Irish supporters from a state 
 of perpetual siege. The evils of such a condition are all 
 their own fault. Will they not ask themselves whether they 
 would not occupy a place of strength and honour by acting 
 as Irishmen, by leading their countrymen in the noble effort 
 to recover domestic legislation, instead of sustaining that 
 alien rule under which, according to their own account, 
 their state is one of chronic terror and perpetual disaster"? 
 The weakness of the Irish minority is the direct result of 
 their estrangement from the Irish majority. It is the direct 
 result of their false and unnatural policy of holding down 
 Ireland for the benefit of England. Opposed to Irish rights 
 they are necessarily weak. They are blind to the true source 
 of their strength — identification with the great mass of their 
 own nation. 
 
 The increased importation of foreign corn and cattle acted 
 against the capacity of Irish farmers to pay rent on the same 
 scale as when prices were more remunerative. The landlords, 
 good and bad, were in general reduced to severe difficulty. 
 Among their difficulties was the merciless extortion of the 
 tithe rent-charge. If the reader will turn back to the tenth 
 chapter of this History, he will there find that the Act of 
 1869, which disestablished the English Church in Ireland, 
 preserved the tithe rent-chargo intact for fifty-two years from 
 
Nefarious Extortion of Tithe Rent-Charge. 361 
 
 the date of a certain transaction called "purchase." I have, in 
 that chapter, described the obstacles opposed to the ultimate 
 expiry of the impost. 
 
 In 1883 the grievance, always oppressive, had reached an 
 acute stage. So long as the landlords received a considerable 
 portion of their rents, although not the addition to their 
 rents intended by the Act of 1838 to cover the tithe rent- 
 charge, they had gone on payiug that tax with tolerable 
 regularity. But the vast shrinkage of rents in 1883 deprived 
 them, not only of the means to pay tithe rent-charge, but 
 also, in numerous instances, of the means for the ordinary 
 support of their families. Yet the Commissioners of Church 
 Temporalities issue writs all over the kingdom to recover the 
 tax from defaulting landlords, whose default had arisen from 
 the simple fact that they had not got the money. 
 
 Where the landlord cannot contrive to meet the extortion 
 from some other source than unpaid rents, the Commissioners 
 place a receiver on his property to recover the arrears of 
 tithe rent-charge which have accumulated from the great 
 agricultural collapse, and from the consequent inability of 
 the landlords to pay the tax. The iniquity of this procedure 
 is increased by the fact that the tax is computed on a scale 
 of prices for corn which cannot now be realised. Prior to 
 Disestablishment the tithe-tax was liable to septennial re- 
 vision, rising or falling with the fluctuating prices of corn as 
 published in the Dublin Gazette. Shortly after Disestablish- 
 ment it became pretty certain that the market value of all 
 cereal produce would permanently fall, from the great and 
 increasing facilities of foreign importation. Accordingly 
 Parliament, in order to deprive the payers of tithe-tax of the 
 benefit of the fall, passed the Act 35 and 36 Victoria, c. xc, 
 by which the right of septennial revision is abolished, and 
 the tax is permanently fixed on the obsolete rate of now 
 unattainable corn prices. 
 
 Although the sole source of payment provided by the 
 Act of 1838 has disappeared, yet the Commissioners proceed 
 to extort the amount of the tax from whatever else they can 
 lay their hands on. They demand the tax from non-existent 
 means, calculated on an impossible scale of corn prices. The 
 amount of arrears of tithe rent-charge had reached, at the 
 commencement of this year, 1887, £204,102. 
 
 The plain statement of this grievance is a record of 
 oppressive and impudent dishonesty. Our rulers, who did 
 not hesitate to squander millions in unprofitable foreign wars, 
 
362 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 should not grudge whatever sum may be needed to buy out 
 the Irish tithe rent-charge. 
 
 The Government, since 1871, have been receiving the 
 whole income of the Disestablished Church. This must have 
 gone a good way to recoup the Treasury for the advances 
 made to compensate the disestablished clergy. I do not 
 know how the account stands between the Treasury and the 
 Commissioners ; but it seems probable that the balance yet 
 remaining unpaid of their advances cannot be more than a 
 third, perhaps a fourth, of the sum advanced in 1834 to com- 
 pensate the West India planters for their losses by the 
 abolition of the slave trade. 
 
 I have elsewhere remarked that West Indian negroes were 
 not asked to pay for their emancipation from slavery ; the 
 Irish landlords are forced to pay for their emancipation from 
 State Churchism. Parliament has abolished the fund for the 
 payment of the tithe-tax, and as a matter of plain justice it 
 should also abolish the tax. 
 
 The fiscal accompaniments of Disestablishment have 
 severely scourged the unlucky tithe-payers. 
 
 As time went on, public anxiety became more and more 
 excited by Mr. Gladstone's expected proposal of Home 
 Rule. It was known that he had formulated a scheme to be 
 laid before Parliament, and every repealer of the Union 
 hoped that the approaching bill would restore to Ireland — at 
 least in a great measure — her inalienable right to make her 
 own laws. It was encouraging to find that a statesman of 
 vast ability and influence had discovered that the Union was 
 a monstrous crime, and was not afraid to announce his dis- 
 covery. It had been habitual with English politicians to 
 treat it as a compact. Lord Salisbury called it a funda- 
 mental law ; bestowing that designation on a measure which 
 broke the solemn compact by which England in 1783 stood 
 pledged to respect the free constitution of this kingdom. 
 
 The leading principle of the Union is the subjugation 
 and robbery of Ireland. The results are horrible disorder, 
 chronic disloyalty, and the expulsion of millions of our 
 people. The Union was forced on Ireland by our old 
 hereditary foe — a foe who hated us with the accumulated 
 venom of six centuries. We eagerly awaited Mr. Gladstone's 
 exposition of the mode in which he proposed to deal with 
 this great legislative crime. 
 
 On the 8th of April, 1886, Mr. Gladstone rose to place 
 before the House and tlio Empire his plan for changing 
 
Gladstone's Plan of Home Rule. 363- 
 
 historical enmity into permanent friendship. His speech 
 well sustained his reputation for splendid eloquence and 
 argumentative power. 
 
 He reviewed the condition of Ireland since the Union ; 
 showed the total failure of coercive legislation to produce 
 respect for law and social order ; and ascribed the want of 
 popular confidence in the administration of law in Ireland to 
 the fact that the mainspring of law is felt by the people to 
 be English, not Irish. To remedy this great national evil he 
 proposed to restore to Ireland autonomy. 
 
 He insisted that the concession which he proposed would 
 confirm Imperial unity instead of impairing it. He dwelt 
 with much force on the examples of Sweden and Norway, 
 governed by one king, but each country possessing its own 
 Legislature. "And yet," he said, "with two countries sa 
 united, what has been the effect 1 Not discord, not convul- 
 sions, not danger to peace, not hatred, not aversion, but a 
 constantly growing sympathy." 
 
 He also took the case of Austria and Hungary. 
 
 "At Vienna sits the Parliament of the Austrian Monarchy; 
 at Buda-Pesth sits the Parliament of the Hungarian Crown ; 
 and that is the state of things which was established, I think, 
 nearly twenty years ago. I ask all those who hear me whether 
 there is one among them who doubts % Whether or not the 
 condition of Austria be at this moment, or be not, perfectly 
 solid, secure, and harmonious % " 
 
 Mr. Gladstone contended that these examples bore him 
 out in asserting that the international harmony of England 
 and Ireland would be secured, not disturbed, by the establish- 
 ment in Dublin of an Irish Legislature for the conduct of both 
 legislation and administration for Irish as distinct from 
 Imperial affairs. 
 
 He proposed the exclusion of Irish representatives from 
 the English Parliament. In my humble opinion, their exclu- 
 sion would meet with nearly universal approval in Ireland. 
 Our experience of the English Parliament is an experience of 
 disaster, extortion, and coercion, and the less we have to do 
 with it the better. Home affairs in our own Legislature would 
 fully occupy the energies of Irish legislators. Mr. Gladstone's 
 opponents in England insist on retaining the Irish Members 
 at Westminster. He seems inclined to give some considera- 
 tion to their views on this matter. It is possible that if still 
 eligible to the English Parliament, Irish constituencies would, 
 seldom, if ever, send members there. 
 
364 EigJity-five Tears of Insli History. 
 
 The financial arrangement proposed by Mr. Gladstone 
 assumed an exaggerated estimate of Ireland's liability, as well 
 as of her financial capacity. He stated that at the time of the 
 Union it M^as intended that Ireland should pay 2-17ths, or 
 in the relation of 1 to 7 J, out of the total charge of the 
 United Kingdom. This is inaccurate. The Act of Union 
 provided that Ireland should pay 2-17ths, not of the total 
 charge of the United Kingdom, but only of that portion of the 
 charge which should remain after each country should have 
 first provided for its own separate debt charge. The pre- 
 Union debt of Great Britain was, in round numbers, 
 £450,000,000, with which Ireland had nothing to do. Her 
 own debt was then £28,000,000, for which she should of 
 course be responsible. The 2-17ths were found to exceed 
 the capacity of Ireland. Under their pressure she became 
 bankrupt. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone infers from the tests of income tax and 
 death duties that Ireland's proportional ability is one-fifteenth 
 of the British. There are, however, other tests which lead 
 to a different conclusion. In 1864 Mr. Chisholm, chief clerk 
 of the Exchequer, gave twelve tests to Colonel Dunne's 
 Committee on Irish Taxation, including the tests of income 
 tax and probate and legacy duties. The mean of those 
 twelve tests was one Irish to twenty-five British ; represent- 
 ing, so far as they go, Irish wealth as being only one-twenty- 
 fifth part of British wealth.* These, and all other questions 
 affecting our comparative financial ability, would have received 
 minute examination if Mr. Gladstone's Bill had reached the 
 stage of committee. But it did not reach that stage. On 
 the second reading it was defeated by a majority of thirty. 
 
 Among the Unionist orators was Mr. Goschen, who 
 implored the House to remember that they were only life 
 trustees, and to reject a measure that would maim the 
 Constitution. He did not reflect that the Irish Parliament 
 who were bribed to enact the Union were only life trustees, 
 and that their crime did not merely maim, but did suppress 
 the Irish Constitution. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's effort was a noble one. He tried to 
 restore to Ireland the unquestionable right of every nation 
 to govern hei*self, and thereby to extinguish the hostility 
 inevitably generated by the denial of that right. Shortly 
 after the introduction of his Home Rule Bill I addressed to 
 
 * See p. 131 of Essays on Ireland, by W. J. O'N. Daunt. Gill, 
 Dublin. 
 
Temporary Defeat of Gladstone's Bill. 365 
 
 him a letter which he was good enough to say that he read 
 ** with singular interest," and from which the following is an 
 extract : 
 
 "It seems to me clear that a settlement of the Irish 
 claim, in order to be satisfactory and permanent, should be 
 as large and liberal as can consist with Imperial integrity. If 
 it were practicable to follow the model afforded by the 
 Austrian-Hungarian settlement, it would be the best mode 
 of terminating the troublesome Irish difficulty. That settle- 
 ment secures Hungarian loyalty to the Sovereign of the 
 Empire by the free concession of their national rights to the 
 Hungarian nation. The sense of national dignity — of dignity 
 free from all infringement — the pride of honour gratified by 
 analogy of condition with the greater kingdom, is in itself a 
 potent guarantee of loyalty to the monarch under whom it is 
 enjoyed. The attachment of Ireland to the Empire would be 
 rendered firm and stable by her sense that her place in that 
 Empire was honourable, not dependent ; that her Parliament 
 was co-ordinate, not subordinate. 
 
 *' I observe that Lord Hampden and others have recom- 
 mended the present Home Rule scheme to English acceptance 
 on the express ground that it gives Ireland so little — less, his 
 lordship says — than the colonies possess. 'Half measures,' 
 said Sir Walter Scott, *do but linger out the feud'; and 
 Grattan, on a memorable occasion, said that 'the liberty 
 withheld would poison the good communicated.'" 
 
 After the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's Bill, Parliament was 
 dissolved, and the new election resulted in an English 
 majority against Home Rule. Scotland, Ireland, and Wales 
 had each returned majorities in its favour; but England 
 turned the scale the other way by a majority on the whole of 
 one hundred and ten. Mr. Gladstone resigned the seals of 
 office, and Lord Salisbury became Premier. This result was 
 hailed with rapture by the Tory and other anti-Irish parties. 
 
 The modes in which the exultant foes of Home Rule dis- 
 played their joy were characteristic and significant. The 
 Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, Doctor Knox, issued to 
 his clergy a form of thanksgiving for Gladstone's defeat to be 
 used in their churches, which throws clear light on the 
 anomalous position in Ireland of the garrison Church. The 
 prelate thus directs his clergy to address the Almighty : 
 
 " We bless Thy holy name that it has pleased Thee 
 to deliver us from those great and imminent dangers where- 
 with we were encompassed. W^e acknowledge it is of Thy 
 
366 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 goodness alone that we were not delivered over as a prey to 
 those who sought the dismemberment of the Empire and the 
 overthrow of Thy true religion." 
 
 This prelate is a leading officer of the institution which 
 •calls itself the IHsh Church, and which has existed in 
 Ireland for more than three centuries. Here, according to 
 his lordship, we have the soi-disant *' Irish " Church afraid, 
 at the end of three centuries, to trust itself to the Irish 
 people ! It has failed, during that long period, to acquire 
 their confidence, and his lordship apprehends that, unless 
 supported by the legislative Union, he and his co-religionists 
 would be delivered over as a prey to their enemies. He 
 informs the Almighty that the "true" {i.e. the Protestant) 
 religion is only protected from overthrow by an Act of 
 Parliament — namely, the Act which in 1800 destroyed the 
 Irish Constitution. What a ludicrous confession of im- 
 potence ! His lordship's feverish dreams — unreal as regards 
 -any danger to himself or his Church — very clearly indicate 
 the anti-Irish spirit of that institution. 
 
 While Archbishop Knox's satisfaction at the defeat of 
 Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill evaporated in a thanksgiving 
 address to the Almighty, the triumph of the Orange party 
 was displayed in a more practical manner. They certainly 
 needed no fresh stimulant to outrage ; but Lord Randolph 
 Churchill visited Ulster to encourage their military spirit. 
 Colonel Waring had informed them that " deeds, not words," 
 were now required, and Lord Randolph, in a burst of poetic 
 fervour, exhorted them to put their chivalry in action : 
 
 " The combat deepens. On, ye brave, 
 Who rush to glory or the grave. 
 Wave, Ulster, all your banners wave, 
 And charge with all your chivalry." 
 
 This spirited exhortation was followed by one of . the 
 periodical outbursts of Orange enthusiasm which distinguish 
 Belfast. Houses were wrecked and looted, lives were lost, 
 a large party of Catholic schoolgirls returning from a holiday 
 excursion were dragged and hustled about the streets; in 
 short, the Orange banners waved over the city, Orange 
 chivalry had charged schoolgirls as well as other obnoxious 
 individuals, and it seemed indisputable that Orange 
 heroism was pledged to resist the " dismemberment of the 
 Empire," and to protect true religion with a zeal as fervid as 
 that of their archbishop — although exhibited in a more 
 energetic manner. 
 
Lo7'd Aberdeen as Viceroy. 267 
 
 On the 10th of February, 1886, the Earl of Aberdeen 
 Avas sworn in as Viceroy. The Irish public knew that His 
 Excellency fully sympathised with the national desire for 
 Home Eule, and that he supported Mr. Gladstone's project. 
 This knowledge necessarily rendered His Excellency the 
 most popular Viceroy we had seen since the days of Earl 
 Eitzwilliam ; . and the feeling that Government was prepared 
 to concede autonomy to Ireland produced its natural result 
 in the pacification of the country. The popularity of the 
 Viceroy was reflected back upon the Sovereign whom he 
 represented. Go where he would, he was greeted with a 
 hearty welcome by the people, for the people believed that 
 he was their friend, and in that belief they were not mis- 
 taken. The defeat of the Gladstone Government necessarily 
 terminated Lord Aberdeen's viceroyalty. He departed on 
 the 3rd of August, followed to the water's edge by sorrowing 
 crowds — as Earl Eitzwilliam had been in 1795, when re- 
 called by the sinister policy of Pitt. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone looks on the defeat of Home Eule as 
 merely temporary, and thinks that the English electorate will 
 get rid of the ignorant prejudice which caused them to 
 oppose it at the last General Election. 
 
 Meanwhile, a Coercion Act has been passed, which will 
 have no more efficacy in repressing the Irish demand for 
 Home Eule than had the numerous Coercion Acts with which 
 we have been accommodated since the Union by the English 
 Parliament. 
 
 Lord Salisbury acknoAvledges that the existing relations 
 of England and Ireland have not conciliated Irish aff'ection. 
 Speaking on the 12th of June, 1886, at a meeting of the 
 Hertfordshire Conservative Association, his lordship is re- 
 ported to have said : 
 
 " Are we good friends with the population of Ireland 1 
 (Cries of ' No.') I deeply regret that there should be any 
 doubt upon that question, but only three days ago I heard a 
 Minister of the Crown, the Minister who was leading the 
 House of Lords, say that the larger proportion of Irish 
 people hated us. I deeply regret that such a phrase could 
 be used, and that it could be used with truth." 
 
 Now, the two kingdoms have been more or less connected 
 for seven hundred years ; and if Irish alienation is still alive 
 and vigorous, Lord Salisbury might discover its source in a 
 series of continuous aggressions on every Irish interest, 
 culminating in that worst crime of all, the destruction of the 
 
368 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 Irish Parliament, and the consequent misery, the famines, the 
 Coercion Acts — the expulsion of our people in great numbers, 
 and the unconcealed desire to get rid of them. In all these 
 things a source of alienation can be easily found ; and the 
 mode by which hatred can be easily replaced by international 
 friendship is equally patent to any intelligent inquirer. It 
 is simply to give Ireland her own. 
 
 The Union was achieved by force, and it is upheld by 
 force. It has not any moral validity. 
 
 " Had the Union," says Mr. Gladstone, " constituted 
 morally a valid covenant, the Irish nation would have been 
 morally bound by it; and, in the event of its proving to 
 be injurious to them, their claims to relief could only have 
 been urged on general grounds, such as are applicable in any 
 contested case of legislative improvement. 
 
 " Or, had the Union not been a compact morally binding 
 at the time, it might nevertheless have become such, as Mr. 
 G. Smith has justly shown, by subsequent ratification. 
 
 "But neither of these cases has occurred. Instead of 
 arguing what in truth requires no argument, I have put into 
 the witness-box two determined opponents, and I take my 
 stand on their declaration that the Union Acts, which were 
 in the nature of a Treaty, were absolutely ivanting in the con- 
 ditions which alone could give them moral validity" 
 
 In saying this, Mr. Gladstone substantially corroborates 
 the often quoted words of Saurin : " You may make the 
 Union binding as a law, but you can never make it obligatory 
 on conscience. It will be obeyed as long as England is 
 strong, but resistance to it will be in the abstract a duty, and 
 the exhibition of that resistance will be a mere question of 
 prudence." 
 
 We were robbed of our Constitution, and England has 
 no more moral right to withhold it from us than the burglar 
 or highwayman has to retain stolen property. England has 
 hitherto withheld it by superior force ; but there is every 
 hope that her national conscience is awaking to the justice 
 and necessity of restoiation. I will here repeat the opinion 
 I have already expressed — that the larger, the more generous, 
 the more ample the concession, the more potent and durable 
 will be its efficacy in cementing international friendship. 
 
 The financial part of the coming settlement will form an 
 important subject of inquiry. Mr.- Robert Giffen, Secretary 
 to the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade, does not 
 partake of the idea that Ireland is able to contribute very largely 
 
The Financial Grievances of Ireland. 369 
 
 to imperial expenses. I shall conclude by quoting from that 
 gentleman the following brief statements : 
 
 " In the assessments to income tax the proportion is 1 to 
 17 ; viz. United Kingdom (including Ireland), £629,000,000 
 sterling; Ireland, £37,000,000 sterling. This is more than 
 5 per cent., but not very much more. And there is reason 
 to believe that Ireland is more strictly valued than Great 
 Britain, and that it is overvalued" 
 
 Mr. Giffen also says : " Ireland as a poor country is dis- 
 proportionately taxed, although the taxes of the United 
 Kingdom are technically indiscriminate." 
 
 One more quotation : 
 
 " Ireland, while constituting only about a twentieth part 
 of the United Kingdom in resources, nevertheless pays a 
 tenth or eleventh of the taxes. Ireland ought to pay about 
 £3,500,000, and it pays nearly £7,000,000." 
 
 The benefit of Home Rule to Ireland will largely depend 
 on a just and honest financial arrangement. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS APPENDIX. 
 
 THE FINANCIAL GRIEVANCKS OF IRELAND. 
 
 One of the worst evils entailed upon Ireland by the destruc- 
 tion of her native Parliament, is the great injustice with 
 which the English Parliament has treated her in matters of 
 finance. The pecuniary loss sustained on this head is 
 enormous, and to state it in all its details would demand a 
 large volume. I only propose at present to bring before the 
 reader a few leading facts of our case. 
 
 Firstly, it is to be borne in mind that at the time of the 
 Union the National Debt of Ireland was, in round numbers, 
 28 millions sterling. At the same time the National Debt 
 of Great Britain amounted, in round numbers, to 450 
 millions. It was plain that whereas the British debt was 
 more than sixteen times as large as the Irish debt, there 
 could be no plausible pretext for subjecting Ireland to as 
 high a rate of taxation as Great Britain. Accordingly, Lord 
 Castlereagh, the leader of the Unionists in the Irish House 
 of Commons, promised that Ireland never should have any 
 concern with the pre-Union debt of Great Britain, and that 
 the financial terms of the Union should not only protect 
 Ireland from excessive or unfair taxation, but should also 
 
 2 B 
 
S70 Eighty-Jive Years of Irish Historij. 
 
 secure to her the exckisive benefit of any surplus Irish 
 revenue that might remain after defraying the public ex- 
 penses as set forth in the Union statute. 
 The financial terms were as follows : 
 
 I. Ireland was, as I have said, to be protected from any 
 liability on account of the British National Debt contracted 
 prior to the Union. 
 
 II. The separate debt of each country being first 
 provided for by a separate charge, Ireland was then to con- 
 tribute two-seventeenths towards the joint or common 
 expenditure of the United Kingdom for twenty years ; after 
 which her contribution was to be made proportionate to her 
 ability, as ascertained at stated periods of revision by certain 
 tests specified in the Act. 
 
 III. Ireland was not only promised that she never should 
 have any concern with the then existing British debt, but 
 she was also assured that her taxation should not be raised 
 to the standard of Great Britain until the following con- 
 ditions should occur : 
 
 1. That the two debts should come to bear to each other 
 
 the proportion of fifteen parts for Great Britain to 
 two parts for Ireland ; and 
 
 2. That the respective circumstances of the two countries 
 
 should admit of uniform taxation. 
 
 The proportion of two parts for Ireland to fifteen parts 
 for Great Britain was strongly protested against by Mr. 
 Foster, the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and by 
 the other opponents of the Union. Proofs were given that 
 the load thus imposed on Ireland exceeded her capacity. 
 The anti-Union members of the House of Lords entered on 
 their journals a protest containing a careful and able calcu- 
 lation of the comparative taxable ability of the two countries. 
 They contended, with justice, that the ability of Ireland, 
 instead of being two-seventeenths, or 1 to 7 J, was no greater 
 than 1 to 13. But the patriots reasoned and protested in 
 vain. The ratio of 1 for Ireland to 7 J for Great Britain, 
 became law along with the Act of Union in which it was 
 incorporated. 
 
 The predictions of Mr. Foster and his friends were soon 
 verified. They had spoken truly when they alleged that 
 Ireland was overloaded by the Union proportions. When 
 the general taxation of tlie Empire was augmented by the 
 prolonged and increasing expenses of the war, she broke 
 down beneath the enormous burden, and recourse was had to 
 
Post-Union Borrowings on Irish Account. 
 
 371 
 
 a system of disproportionate borrowing on her credit, in 
 order to make good the deficiencies of her revenue. The 
 "borrowings with which she was charged exceeded immensely 
 the comparative ratio of her taxable ability, even as that 
 ratio was stated by Lord Castlereagh and by the Union Act. 
 Lord Castlereagh had stated her ability to bear to the ability 
 of Great Britain the proportion of 1 to 7J. But the post- 
 Union borrowings on Irish account by the Imperial Govern- 
 ment were to the contemporaneous British borrowings in 
 the much higher ratio of about 1 to 3J. Here are the 
 figures : 
 
 Year. 
 
 British Debt. 
 
 Ann. Charge. 
 
 Irish Debt. 
 
 Ann. Charge. 
 
 5th Jan. 
 1801. 
 
 £ 
 450,504,984 
 
 £ 
 17,718,851 
 
 £ 
 28,545,134 
 
 1,244,463 
 
 5th Jan. 
 1817. 
 
 734,522,104 
 
 28,238,416 
 
 112,704,773 
 
 4,104,514 
 
 Parliamentary Paper, No. 35 of 1819.* 
 
 Thus, while the Imperial Parliament less than doubled 
 the British debt, they quadrupled the Irish debt. By this 
 management the Irish debt, which in 1801 had been to the 
 British as 1 to 16, was forced up to bear to the British debt 
 the ratio of 1 to 7^. This was the proportion required by 
 the Act of Union as a condition of subjecting Ireland to 
 indiscriminate taxation with Great Britain — a condition 
 equally impudent and iniquitous. Ireland was to be loaded 
 with inordinate debt ; and then this debt was to be made the 
 pretext for raising her taxation to the high British standard, 
 and thereby rendering her contributory to the pre-Union 
 debt of Great Britain. 
 
 * By another Parliamentary Paper, No. 256 of 1824, signed by 
 J. C. Herries, Secretary of the Treasury, the debts as they stood in 
 1801 are thus stated — 
 
 British Funded £420,305,944. 
 
 Irish Funded 26,841,219. 
 
 By adding the Unfunded Debts to these amounts. Great Britain is 
 brought up, in round numbers, to 446 millions, and Ireland to 28 
 millions. The difference between the two returns is unimportant, 
 as its effect on the proportions is infinitesimal. This return makes 
 the Irish debt charge less than it appears in that of 1819. 
 
 2 B 2 
 
372 Eighty-iive Tears of Irish History. 
 
 By way of softening down ths glaring dishonesty of such 
 a proposition, Lord Castlereagh said that the two debts might 
 be brought to bear to each other the prescribed proportions, 
 partly by the increase of the Irish debt, but partly also by 
 the decrease of the British. To which Mr. Foster thus 
 answered on the 15th March, 1800 : 
 
 *'The monstrous absurdity you would force down our 
 throats is, that Ireland's increase of poverty, as shown by 
 her increase of debt, and England's increase of wealth, as 
 shown by diminution of debt, are to bring them to an equality 
 of condition, so as to be able to bear an equality of taxation." 
 
 But bad as this was, the former and worse alternative 
 was what really befel. The given ratio was reached solely 
 by the increase of the Irish debt, without any decrease of 
 the British. 
 
 The following declarations of prominent statesmen in the 
 United Parliament, attest the nature and extent of the fiscal 
 dishonesty of which the Union made Ireland the victim. 
 
 On the 20th of June, 1804 (four years after the Union 
 had passed), Mr. Foster observed that, whereas in 1794 the 
 Irish debt did not exceed 2| millions, it had in 1803 risen 
 to 43 millions; and that during the current year it was 
 increased to nearly 53 millions. 
 
 In the discussion on the Irish Budget in 1804 (for up to 
 1817 the Irish and British Exchequers continued separate) 
 Mr. James Fitzgerald observed that "it was obvious that 
 Ireland could not discharge her share of the unequal contract 
 entered into for her ; and of course that England should 
 ultimately pay all." And seeing that the ** unequal con- 
 tract " was forced upon Ireland by British bribes and British 
 bayonets, it was no more than just that England should 
 ultimately pay all. But it will appear by-and-by that this 
 equitable liability is not recognised by modern English 
 statesmen. 
 
 On the 19th of March, 1811, Mr. Parnell adverted to 
 what he termed the main cause of the increase of the Irish 
 debt, and the failure in the produce of the Irish taxes. " The 
 ratio of the contribution of Ireland to the general expenditure 
 fixed by the noble lord " (Castlereagh) " was that cause. In 
 this his lordship was mistaken ; and that," continued Mr. 
 Pamell, "was the source of all those evils and embarrass- 
 ments that oppressed the country. Ireland had been paying 
 a greater proportion than she ought to have done." 
 
 On the 20th of May, 1811, Sir John Newport said, in a 
 
Taxation in Ireland carried to its Ne FIus Ultra. 373 
 
 debate on the Irish Budget : "The revenues of Ireland have 
 made no progress adequate to her debt. No instance had 
 occurred within the last three years in which the separate 
 charge of Ireland amounted to within one million of the joint 
 charge. This was one effect of the rate of contribution fixed 
 at the Union, which, so long as it was acted on, would render 
 the payment of the debt impossible." 
 
 On the 11th of June, 1813, Mr. Wellesley Pole said that 
 when the Union proportions were settled, the Imperial ex- 
 penditure was only tAventy-iive millions, whereas it now was 
 seventy-two millions. He added that it never could have 
 been expected that Ireland would be able to pay two- 
 seventeenths of so large a sum as seventy-two millions.* 
 
 On the 20th of May, 1816, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, in 
 proposing the consolidation of the two Exchequers, said : 
 
 " You contracted Avith Ireland for an expenditure she 
 could not meet ; your own share of which you could not 
 meet but by sacrifices unexampled ; by exertions, the tension 
 of which England only could have borne. Ireland had been 
 led to hope that her expenditure would have been less than 
 before she was united with you. In the fifteen years pre- 
 ceding the Union it amounted to 41 millions, but in the 
 fifteen years of Union it swelled to 148 millions. The 
 increase of her revenue would have more than discharged, 
 without the aid of loans, an expenditure greater than that of 
 the fifteen years preceding 1801." 
 
 This is tantamount to an admission that a domestic 
 Parliament would have preserved us from the insolvency 
 in which we were involved by the Union rate of contribution. 
 
 The Parliamentary Committee of 1815 which recom- 
 mended the consolidation of the English and Irish Ex- 
 chequers, admitted that the two-seventeenths were ''a burden 
 which experience had proved to be too great." — (Fourth 
 Keport, published 1815, sessional number 214.) 
 
 Mr. Leslie Foster said that "taxation in Ireland had 
 been carried to its ne plus ultra.'' On the 21st April, 1818, 
 Mr. Plunket, speaking to a motion of Mr. Shaw's on the 
 window tax, said : "Ireland certainly had not paid the two- 
 seventeenths stipulated for at the time of the Union ; and for 
 
 * The words here ascribed to Mr. W. Pole were probably in- 
 accurately reported. Ireland was not required by the Union statute 
 to raise two-seventeenths of the whole Imperial revenue ; but only 
 of that portion of the revenue which i-emained after each country 
 hould have first provided for its own separate debt-charge. 
 
374 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 the plainest of all possible reasons, because she could not; 
 because a burden utterly disproportioned to her strength had 
 been imposed on her." 
 
 In 1822 the late Eight Hon. Henry Goulburn, when 
 speaking to a motion of Sir John K^ewport, said : " The 
 Union contribution of two-seventeenths for Ireland is now 
 admitted on all hands to have been more than she was able 
 to bear." And in 1830 the late Marquis of Lansdowne 
 referred in the House of Lords to the incapacity of Ireland 
 to bear the load that had been imposed on her. 
 
 And it was precisely because of her incapacity that Pitt 
 and Castlereagh imposed the load upon her. Their financial 
 game was this : Her debt in 1801 was, as already remarked, 
 less than a sixteenth part of the debt of Great Britain, and it 
 was determined to bring her under British burdens without 
 giving her the compensation to which she was entitled on 
 the score of her greatly smaller liabilities. Instead of com- 
 pensation, the Union statesmen hit off the idea of getting 
 her heavily into debt by imposing on her a ratio of taxation 
 beyond her ability to meet; and then, so soon as this 
 fictitious debt should reach a given point, it was to be made 
 a condition of abolishing separate quotas of contribution, 
 and of taxing both countries indiscriminately. A more 
 audacious fraud was never perpetrated ; and it is a circum- 
 stance much to be deplored that Mr. Gladstone, in 1853, 
 should appeal to it as authorising his additions to Irish 
 taxation. 
 
 In 1816 was passed the Act for consolidating the British 
 and Irish Exchequers. It is the 56th Geo. III., chap, xcviii. 
 It became operative on the 1st of January, 1817. The 
 pretext for passing it was to relieve Ireland from the unjust 
 load imposed upon her by the Union rate of contribution, 
 and from the unpaid excess of so-called "Irish" debt which 
 had rendered her insolvent, and which was the inevitable 
 result of the fraudulent Union ratio. Great Britain was to 
 assume that excess ; or, speaking more accurately, it was to 
 be transferred from the separate Irish account to the general 
 Imperial account. 
 
 It is here to be noted that the excess of so-called Irish 
 debt which existed in 1816 is commonly spoken of by 
 British politicians, and also by some ignorant Irish ones, as 
 if it were really and justly Irish debt, creating on the part 
 of Ireland an equitable liability, from which Great Britain 
 generously relieved her by passing the Consolidation Act, 
 
Ireland overcharged — Britain undercharged. 375 
 
 and thereby taking on herself the liability in question. 
 Nothing can be more false than this view of the matter. 
 Firstly, the excess of " Irish " debt arose from a rate of con- 
 tribution admittedly unjust. Ireland was overcharged by 
 the Union proportion of two-seventeenths. To the exact 
 extent of the Irish overcharge was Great Britain under- 
 charged. If Ireland were taxed too much, Great Britain 
 was to the same extent necessarily charged too little. The 
 injustice of the two-seventeenths is clearly admitted by the 
 statesmen I have quoted. The unpaid excess of debt arising 
 out of that unjust proportion, is not properly Irish debt at 
 all, but British. 
 
 Secondly, it appears if possible more plain that the excess 
 of debt thus created was really British, though nominally 
 Irish, when we consider that the Act of Union that contained 
 the unjust fiscal ratio in which that excess originated, was 
 forced upon Ireland by English power against the all but 
 universal will of the Irish people, and by means of which it 
 is utterly impossible to exaggerate the wickedness. Let us 
 suppose a parallel case between two private persons. If A, 
 by violence and fraud, coerces recalcitrant B into submitting 
 to a fiscal burden beyond his ability, and which finally 
 renders B insolvent, will any one contend that A, who forced 
 the burden on reluctant and resisting B, is not the person 
 morally liable to the whole extent of the excess which his 
 victim proves unable to discharge 1, 
 
 So it was between England and Ireland. Yet statesmen 
 and publicists have talked about the generosity of Great 
 Britain in taking on herself the load of Irish debt ! 
 
 The opponents of the Union were justly afraid that the 
 balance, or surplus, of Irish taxes which should remain after 
 defraying the public expenses of Ireland, would be carried 
 out of the country by the English Government. In order to 
 quiet this fear a clause was inserted in the 7th article of the 
 Union, enacting that Ireland should have the sole and exclu- 
 sive benefit of all her surplus taxes in any one of five modes 
 pointed out in the clause; and moreover that the taxes 
 producing the surplus should be taken off. This provision 
 looked welL But its authors had taken effectual means to 
 prevent Ireland from deriving any benefit from it by the 
 ■dexterous contrivance of making her " contract " (to borrow 
 the words of Mr. Vesey Eitzgerald) "for an expenditure she 
 •could not meet." If she could not even meet the expenditure 
 forced on her, a fortiori she could not have a surplus. Thus, 
 
376 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 while a formal clause apparently secured to her the use of 
 her own money, that clause was cleverly accompanied with 
 fiscal conditions that rendered it worthless. 
 
 The Parliamentary Committee of 1815, as well as indi- 
 vidual members, had, as we have seen, proclaimed that the 
 Union ratio imposed on Ireland was beyond her ability. In 
 1816 the Consolidation Act passed, uniting the two Ex- 
 chequers. Honesty would suggest that if the former rate of 
 Irish contribution were condemned as unjustly high, a new 
 and lower rate should now be substituted for it. But then 
 a separate ratio for Ireland, fairly proportioned to her ability, 
 might leave to Ireland a separate surplus revenue. Nay, 
 when the public expenditure should fall to the low peace 
 level, even the two-seventeenths, although certainly beyond 
 the true Irish proportion, might possibly leave an Irish 
 surplus, which surplus, under the 7th article of the Union, 
 should be appropriated exclusively to Irish uses. This 
 would never do. It would not consist with the English 
 idea about Irish matters, that Ireland should retain the use 
 of her own revenues. A special Irish surplus must, therefore, 
 be rendered impossible. Accordingly the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment, by the 56th George III., chap, xcviii., abolished the 
 Union ratio of two-seventeenths icithout suhstUating any 
 other. When Ireland ceased to have a special ratio, she 
 technically ceased to have a special surplus. Thus again was 
 the Union guarantee that Irish surplus revenue should be 
 applied to the sole benefit of Ireland, rendered null by dis- 
 honest legislation. 
 
 The bankruptcy of Ireland in 1816, brought about by the 
 Union ratio of two-seventeenths and by Imperial manage- 
 ment, was turned to account in that year by the English 
 power that produced it. The substitution of an indiscriminate 
 system of taxation for fixed international proportions, mort- 
 gaged Ireland for the pre-Union debt of Great Britain, a 
 debt she had no part in contracting, and from which the Act 
 of Union professes to protect her, but to the annual interest 
 of which she is forced to contribute a portion of payment. 
 
 The transactions of 1816 were again turned to account 
 by Mr. Gladstone, who, in 1853, justified the Irish income 
 tax by pleading that in 1816 Great Britain had assumed the 
 unpaid excess of what was termed " Irish Debt." But that 
 excess was admitted to have originated in a fiscal injustice. 
 Mr. Gladstone, therefore, deems that the removal of an 
 admittedly unjust load, creates a right to impose another load 
 
JRoio far Britain sJiould he separately taxed. 377 
 
 in place of the one taken off. In other words, if you nndo 
 an avowed wrong, you are thereby entitled to inflict an 
 equivalent wrong on the aggrieved party. 
 
 The Irish witnesses underwent a very hostile cross- 
 examination from the English members of Colonel Dunne's 
 Committee on Irish Taxation in 1864. Setting aside the 
 multitude of details, many of them irrelevant, into which 
 the inquiry diverged, the following facts stand unshaken, 
 and should become familiar to every man in Ireland : 
 
 1. The British debt was in 1801 about 16 times as large 
 as the Irish debt. 
 
 2. It was promised by the authors of the Union, and the 
 promise was embodied in the 7th article, that as Ireland had 
 no part in contracting that debt, so she should be for ever 
 preserved from all concern with its principal or interest. 
 
 3. In order to give effect to . this promise, Great Britain 
 should be separately taxed to the extent of her separate pre- 
 Union debt-charge, less the pre-Union debt-charge of Ireland. 
 This would make the separate taxation of Great Britain about 
 £15,000,000 per annum ; whereas her separate taxation is 
 only between three and four millions. 
 
 4. Ireland has never received from Great Britain one 
 farthing by way of compensation or equivalent for being thus 
 subjected to the pre-Union British debt. 
 
 5. By the fifth clause of the 7th article of the Union, 
 Ireland^ as I have already said, was promised the benefit of 
 her own surplus taxes. She has never, during the eighty- 
 five years of Union, received one farthing in virtue of that 
 clause. Her taxes, after defraying her public domestic 
 expenses, have been uniformly abstracted by England ; and 
 the clause that professes to secure to Ireland the use of them 
 has been rendered a dead letter by the parliamentary manage- 
 ment I have described. 
 
 6. The amount of Irish revenue annually drawn from this 
 kingdom is a very large item in the general pecuniary drain. 
 The late Mr. Dillon, in his able report adopted by the Dublin 
 Corporation, compiled from the Finance Accounts, shows 
 that the Irish taxes expended out of Ireland in the year 
 1860 amounted to £4,095,453; and that in 1861 they 
 amounted to £3,970,715. 
 
 7. From the tone of some of the English members of 
 Colonel Dunne's Committee, when examining the witnesses 
 on Irish taxation, it seems clear that those gentlemen had 
 not the slightest idea that any separate British liability 
 
578 Eiglity-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 existed. And I cannot discover the faintest trace that 
 Messieurs Lowe, Stanhope, Northcote, and Hankey recog- 
 nised the right of Ireland to the separate use of her own 
 surplus. They seemed to be thoroughly imbued with the 
 truly English notion that Irish taxes, if expended for Irish 
 purposes, would be unfairly withheld from their rightful 
 English owners. 
 
 All this financial injustice is the inevitable result of 
 losing the protection of an Irish Legislature. The species of 
 -connexion that exists between Ireland and England is 
 designed and adapted to draw off Irish wealth to England 
 without any return. Before closing this part of my subject, 
 I desire once more to impress upon the reader the important 
 fact that we are entitled to a great equivalent for having been 
 subjected to the heavy pre-Union British liabilities, and that 
 up to this hour the equivalent has been withheld. This fact 
 should be always kept in view. 
 
 We should also keep in view the essential rascality of 
 the fiscal trick by which Ireland was brought under English 
 liabilities. The Union Act provided that whenever the 
 Irish debt should be forced up to bear to the British debt 
 the proportion of 1 to 7|, the United Parliament should 
 then be entitled to abolish separate quotas, and to tax both 
 countries indiscriminately. The authors of the Union took 
 care that the Irish debt should be thus forced up, by the 
 villainous device of over-estimating our relative taxable 
 ability. This overcharge, as its authors intended, necessarily 
 resulted in enormous borrowing on Irish credit to make good 
 the deficiencies of Irish revenue. Thus was a fictitious 
 " debt " trumped up against us ; and the fraud was made the 
 condition of imposing excessive taxation on our coimtry. 
 
 I have hitherto considered the abstraction of money 
 from Ireland with reference to its injustice. I shall add a 
 few words on the inability of Ireland to endure the drain of 
 her means, and on the effect of that drain upon her people. 
 
 It has been said that the capacity of Ireland to pay 
 taxes on the British scale is demonstrated by the fact of her 
 paying them. It would be about as rational to infer the 
 capacity of an individual for disbursement from the fact of 
 his being robbed. True, Ireland has paid ; but at what 
 cost of popular suffering 1 High taxes are indeed wrung out 
 of her ; but that they are disproportioned to her strength is 
 «hown by the evanishment of her people. The pecuniary 
 lesources that should employ and support the labouring 
 
Various Pecuniary Drains. 379 
 
 population and large numbers of small traders are drawn out 
 of the country in a variety of ways ; and millions of our 
 people, despoiled of their natural and legitimate sources of 
 support, have been forced in self-defence to fly to foreign 
 lands. It must be remembered that excessive taxation is 
 only one mode out of many in which England contrives to 
 get hold of the money of Ireland. There are also the rents 
 remitted to the absentee owners of Irish estates; which 
 rents, if we average them at 3 millions per annum for the 
 eighty-five years of the Union, amount to 255 millions 
 sterling. There is the money withdrawn for the parlia- 
 mentary expenses of passing railway Bills, and other Bills 
 of private companies ; as also for appeals from Ireland to 
 the foreign House of Lords, which, if it were not for the 
 Union, would be spent in Dublin. There is the money 
 withdrawn in the commercial profits of banks and insurance 
 companies whose head-quarters are in London. There is 
 the money sent out of the country to purchase those articles 
 of English manufacture that obtained possession of the 
 Irish market on the ruin of our own manufacture. There 
 was, until lately, the money spent in London by Irish law- 
 students, whom an absurd and degrading practice, now 
 removed, compelled to pass a certain number of their terms 
 at an English Inn of Court. There is the interest of loans 
 remitted from Ireland to English money-lenders. Wealth 
 begets wealth, and the causes that impoverished Ireland and 
 enriched England have placed the lenders of money in the 
 latter country. It is of course no grievance to an Irish 
 borrower to obtain an advance from an English lender. 
 But it is a national calamity that Ireland should be so 
 drained of her wealth that the capital whence the advances 
 are made should be sought across the water, involving, in 
 the interest paid therfeon, a large addition to the absentee 
 drain. I believe that up to this present year 1885, 400 
 millions sterling are a very low estimate of the actual cash 
 extorted from Ireland in the modes I have enumerated ; 
 and it must be kept in mind that we lose not merely the 
 enormous sums that are abstracted, but also the domestic 
 profit that would arise from their expenditure in the land 
 that produced them. 
 
 How is it possible that the annual production of a 
 country thus circumstanced can ever accumulate into 
 national capital ? Capital is said by M'Culloch to consist of 
 produce saved from immediate consumption. To employ an 
 
380 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 illustration familiar to my rural readers, a farmer's wife 
 whose cream is regularly skimmed and carried off by a free- 
 and-easy neighbour, may as well hope for a good supply of 
 butter from her dairy, as Ireland can hope for an adequate 
 growth of national capital when so large an amount of her 
 annual income is incessantly carried off by England. 
 
 Can anyone wonder that a country thus cruelly de- 
 spoiled should lose in recent years three millions of its in- 
 habitants?* Or that, when visited by famine in 1846, the 
 plundered nation, deprived by the Union of the power of 
 self-support, should have become the recipient of the world's 
 alms *? All this monstrous spoliation is styled " the identi- 
 fication of the two islands"; "the unity of their interests"; 
 and we are told that it makes Ireland " an integral part of 
 the Empire." Our money is taken, our people are driven to 
 emigrate, and we are paid off with this sort of talk. The 
 Union of England and Ireland was compared by Lord 
 Byron to the union of a shark with its prey. In its present 
 operation it degrades, defrauds, and depopulates Ireland. 
 
 General Dunne's Committee issued their Keport on Irish 
 Taxation on the 1st June, 1865. General Dunne refused to 
 sign it, very justly conceiving that it did not present a fair 
 statement of the question. He had submitted to the com- 
 mittee a draft report in which the fiscal case of Ireland was 
 very ably stated. This was rejected, and the committee, by 
 a small majority (Avhich included one Irish member. Sir 
 George Colthurst), adopted a report which had been drawn 
 np by Sir Stafford Northcote. 
 
 A question had been discussed, whether, according to the 
 terms of the Union, a separate debt might have been created 
 for Ireland to supplement the annual deficiencies of her 
 contribution. On this point Sir Stafford Northcote says : 
 " It is obvious that if a separate debt could not be created, 
 Ireland might have been required to make good, year by 
 year, her contribution of two-seventeenths to the joint ex- 
 penditure of the whole kingdom." 
 
 Yes — but only until 1820; at which period, according to 
 the Act of Union, there was to be a revision of the propor- 
 tions. Sir Stafford ignores the revision, and argues as if the 
 two-seventeenths were to have been perpetual. He admits 
 (p. vi. of Report) that "experience proved that the resources 
 
 * Population in 1841, 8,196,597, as per census; population in 
 1885, not quite 5,000,000. 
 
Sir Stafford Northcote's Admissions. 381 
 
 of Ireland were not sufficient to meet it " (viz. the contribu- 
 tion of two-seventeenths). Yet he argues throughout as if 
 Ireland were justly and equitably liable to a load admittedly 
 beyond her resources. The power reserved in the Act of 
 Union to revise the proportions clearly indicates that they 
 might have been miscalculated, and that if so, the error 
 should be rectified. Sir Stafford admits the fact of the 
 miscalculation ; yet his reasoning assumes that this admitted 
 overcharge constituted, in point of equity, a debt fairly 
 binding on Ireland. 
 
 In 1817 the English and Irish Exchequers were amalga- 
 mated, and Ireland was thereby swindled out of the protec- 
 tion she might have derived from a just revision of the pro- 
 portions. "Had that amalgamation not taken place," says 
 Sir Stafford, " and had the system of raising revenue which 
 prevailed from 1801 to 1816 been continued, the Irish 
 separate debt would have continued to increase till the 
 country might have been crushed by it." — (Page viii.) 
 
 Again Sir Stafford ignores the provision for revising the 
 proportions in 1820. One would think he had not seen it ; 
 and yet he copies at full length the section of the Act that 
 contains it. 
 
 The following admissions are worth extracting : " Since 
 1845," says Sir Stafford, "the share which Great Britain 
 has had in the remission of Imperial taxation has been pro- 
 portionally much larger than that which Ireland has had ; 
 and the additions made to the Imperial taxation of Ireland 
 have been proportionally heavier than those made to the 
 taxation of Great Britain, while at the same time it cannot 
 be doubted that Great Britain has derived a larger measure 
 of advantage than Ireland from the repeal of the Corn 
 Laws, as a compensation for which the boon was originally 
 given by Sir Robert Peel. 
 
 " It is not surprising that the large increase which your 
 committee have noticed in the general taxation since 1845 
 should have given rise to complaint. Nov is it surprising 
 that louder complaints should have been made by Ireland 
 than by other parts of the United Kingdom. The pressure 
 of taxation will be felt most by the weakest part of the 
 community ; and as the average wealth of the Irish tax- 
 payers is less than the average wealth of the English tax- 
 payers, the ability of Ireland to bear heavy taxation is evidently 
 less than the ability of England. Mr. Senior, whose evidence 
 upon the position of Ireland will be found very suggestive, 
 
382 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 remarks tliat the taxation of England is both the heaviest 
 and the lightest in Europe — the heaviest as regards the 
 amount raised, the lightest as regards the ability to bear 
 that amount ; but that in the case of Ireland it is heavy 
 both as regards the amount and as regards the ability of the 
 contributor ; and he adds that England is the most lightly 
 taxed, and Ireland the most heavily taxed country in 
 Europe, although both are nominally liable to equal taxa- 
 tion." — (Pages x., xi.) 
 
 But Sir Stafford says that if Irish taxation were specially 
 reduced on the score of Irish poverty, the poorer parts of 
 Great Britain might claim reduction of taxes on similar 
 grounds. On the first publication in the newspapers of Sir 
 Stafford's Eeport, I addressed to the National League a letter, 
 from which I take the following passage : " When Colonel 
 Dunne claims that, in conformity with Union promises, 
 Irish fiscal burdens should be lessened to the admittedly 
 small ratio of Irish fiscal ability, he is told that the same 
 claim of reduction might as fairly be set up by any dis- 
 tressed portion of Great Britain — say, for instance, Wiltshire. 
 And this shallow excuse is given by able men ! Pray, look 
 at the disparity between the cases they seek to assimilate. 
 'Wiltshire never had a distinct and separate debt. W^iltshire 
 cannot show, as Ireland can, that it was ever promised 
 exemption from the old British debt. It cannot show, 
 as Ireland can, that it was ever promised the local 
 and exclusive expenditure of its own surplus revenue. 
 In these important respects it stands in a totally different 
 position from Ireland. On the direct contrary Wiltshire is 
 morally, politically, and geographically, an integral member 
 of that country which promised to secure to Ireland ex- 
 emption from pre-Union British burthens, and the exclusive 
 use of Irish surplus revenue. It is therefore absurd to 
 pretend that Wiltshire has as good a right — or any right — 
 to make for herself claims such as we put forward. Wiltshire, 
 being an integral part of Britain, is herself a party to the 
 British promise given to Ireland. She stands in the position 
 of promise/*; Ireland occupies that of promisee. It is a 
 shallow and discreditable juggle to pretend that an identity 
 of position exists between parties who stand in directly 
 opposite relations to each other." 
 
 I conclude this section of the Appendix with the follow- 
 ing quotation from a speech delivered by Henry Grattan in 
 1800 : " Kely on it that Ireland, like every enslaved country, 
 
The Regency Question. 383 
 
 will ultimately be compelled to pay for lier own subjugation. 
 Robbery and taxes ever follow conquest ; the country that 
 loses her liberty loses her revenues." 
 
 THE REGENCY QUESTION. 
 
 Among the difficulties most commonly paraded by those 
 persons who can see nothing but mischief in the Repeal of 
 the Union, one of the most prominent is the possible 
 difference of the two Parliaments on the question of selecting 
 a Regent. Mr. Sharman Crawford, in his anti-Repeal letters 
 of 1841, copying his predecessors, insisted strongly on the 
 perils (and no man denies them) which would follow from 
 such a diversity. The Repealers, however, propose that the 
 possibility of dissension on this point should be extinguished, 
 by leaving the appointment of the Regent exclusively in 
 the hands of the British Ministry and Parliament. To this 
 proposal Mr. Crawford objected: "That it would surrender 
 the independence of the Irish Parliament on that vital point." 
 
 I quote the following passage from my reply to Mr. 
 Crawford : " I do not see how the independence of the Irish 
 Parliament would be one whit more compromised by the 
 ipso facto identity of the Regent, than it would be by the 
 ipso facto identity of the Sovereign ; and I never yet lieard 
 that this latter identity was deemed incompatible with the 
 parliamentary independence of Ireland. In fact, the identity 
 of the Regent would seem to follow as a necessary con- 
 sequence from the principle of the law that requires the 
 identity of the monarch. 
 
 " Mr. Crawford terms the Regency question ' a vital 
 point.' So it is — vital to the Imperial connexion of the 
 kingdoms; and it is therefore that we Repealers, being 
 ardent friends of the connexion, are desirous to incorporate 
 with the Constitution a provision for the identity of the 
 Regent. But the question of the Regent's person, however 
 important to the connexion of the countries, is a matter of 
 very inferior importance as affecting the general welfare and 
 everyday comfort of the people— the administration of 
 justice — the prosperity of trade, of manufactures, of 
 commerce. These are the matters of really vital importance 
 to the people — matters which require all the care of a 
 resident, well-constructed, popular Parliament. Give the 
 people of Ireland such a Parliament as this, and they can 
 well afford to leave to a British Ministry the selection of the 
 Regent's person." 
 
384 Eighty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 JOHN CONXELL OX THE COMPARATIVE COMFORT OF THE IRISH 
 PEOPLE BEFORE AND AFTER THE UNION. 
 
 ' John O'Connell, to show the greater comfort enjoyed by 
 the Irish people before the Union than in 1843, wrote as 
 follows : " A return has recently appeared in all the papers, 
 of the number of sheep and horned cattle at Ballinasloe 
 every year since 1790 to the present time. I extract from it 
 the following : 
 
 Years. 
 
 Sheep. 
 
 Horned Cattle. 
 
 1799 
 
 77,900 
 
 9,900 
 
 1835 
 
 62,400 
 
 8,500 
 
 1842 
 
 76,800 
 
 14,300 
 
 " Now, by a parliamentary report of 1834, and the Irish 
 Eailway Keport, I find that our whole export of sheep the 
 first of the above years was only 800 — and in the second was 
 125,000. What became of the 77,100 surplus sheep in the 
 former year, as well as the sheep at other fairs % They were 
 eaten at home. AVhere did the people get money to buy 
 them 1 The money of the country was spent in the country. 
 .... As to oxen, 14,000 went away in 1799, and 98,000 
 in 1835 ; yet, if we test the produce of all Ireland in the 
 former year by the amount at Ballinasloe Fair — no bad 
 criterion, I believe— she had for sale more in that year than 
 in 1835, and consumed the surplus over her export. . . . Her 
 export in 1799 was only one-seventh of what it was in 
 1835." 
 
 JUDGE (afterwards LORD) O'HAGAN ON THE SEPARATE IRISH 
 JUDICATURE.* 
 
 " We may labour, in all proper cases, to assimilate the 
 laws of the three kingdoms, giving for that purpose from 
 every district what light and help we can reciprocally furnish; 
 but we should maintain for all the integrity of their inde- 
 pendent judicatures, in the assurance that they will not the 
 less enjoy the benefits of a common code, if it do not aim to 
 subordinate any one to any other of them, or unduly exalt a 
 part at the expense of exhaustion and depression to the rest. 
 .... For Ireland, at least, it is essential to maintain a high 
 judiciary and an educated bar, if she would preserve anything 
 
 * From bis Address at the Social Science Congress at Belfast, 
 September, 1867. 
 
Irish Peeri Protest against the Union. 385 
 
 of the informed opinion, the productive energy, and the 
 public spirit, without which a people stagnates and sinks 
 into contempt." 
 
 Pitt's insincerity in regard to the catholics seen 
 through by the dublin opposition. 
 
 Cooke writes to Castlereagh from Dublin Castle, 23rd 
 February, 1801 : 
 
 "The Opposition here are angry and chagrined at Mr. 
 Pitt's taking up the Catholics : they say, however, it is a 
 humbug on his part, and that he does not fairly mean to do 
 his utmost in the question, and that, after making a mock 
 battle, he will come into power again, and leave them in the 
 lurch." 
 
 This intentional fraud against the Catholics was charged 
 on the Government by Plunket, who said in the Irish House 
 of Commons, on the 15th January, 1800: "You held out 
 hopes to the Catholic body which were never intended to be 
 gratified ; regardless of the disappointment, and indignation, 
 and eventual rebellion, which you might kindle." — Plunket's 
 Speeches^ Duffy's edition, p. 70. 
 
 IRISH peers' protest AGAINST THE UNION, 13tH JUNE, 1800. 
 
 "Because the argument made use of in favour of the 
 Union, namely, that the sense of the people of Ireland is in 
 its favour, we know to be untrue ; and as the Ministers have 
 declared that they would not press the measure against the 
 sense of the people, and as the people have pronounced 
 decidedly, and under all difficulties, their judgment against 
 it, we have, together with the sense of the country, the 
 authority of the Minister to enter our Protest against the 
 project of Union ; against the yoke which it imposes, the dis- 
 honour lohich it inflicts, the disqualification ^oassed upon the 
 peerage, the stigma thereby branded on the realm, the dispro- 
 portionate principle of expense it introduces, the means em- 
 ployed to effect it, the discontents it has excited, against all 
 these, and the fated consequences they may prodiLce, loe have 
 endeavoured to interpose our votes, and failing, ive transmit to 
 after times our names in solemn protest in hehalf of the par- 
 liamentary constitution of this realm, the liberty which it 
 secured, the trade which it protected, the connexion which 
 it preserved, and the Constitution which it supplied and 
 
 2 
 
386 MgMy-flve Years of Irish History. 
 
 fortified. This "we feel ourselves called upon to do in support 
 of our characters, our honours, and whatever is left to us worthy 
 to be transmitted to our posterity. 
 
 "(Signed) Letnster, Arran, Mountcashel, Farxham, 
 Belmore, Massy, Strangford, Granard, 
 Ludlow, Moira, William, Bishop of Down 
 and Connor, Richard, Bishop of Waterford 
 and Lismore, Powerscourt, Db Vesci, 
 Charlemont, Kingston, Eiversdale, 
 Meath, Lismore, Sunderlin." 
 
 HOW THE QUEEN MIGHT ANNUL THE UNION WITHOUT THE 
 intervention OF THE IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT. 
 
 O'Connell suggested the following mode of reviving the 
 Parliament of Ireland : 
 
 " Let it be recollected," he wrote, " that in the judgment 
 of our present Lord Chancellor,* who is keeper (in Ireland) 
 of Her Majesty's conscience, the Union was in itself a 
 NULLITY ; that is his precise expression — it was his solemn 
 judgment — and he is bound by it. 
 
 *' The Queen, therefore, might be advised to act in either 
 of these two ways : 
 
 " Firstly y she may call together in Dublin, by intimation 
 or invitation, the 105 members now representing Irish con- 
 stituencies. More than forty of them (that is, more than 
 sufficient to make a House) would certainly attend any royal 
 summons, however informal. And Her Majesty might easily 
 bring together a sufficient number of the Irish peers. And 
 thus, with the assent of Her Majesty an ordinance might be 
 enacted adopting the plan we have suggested for reconstruct- 
 ing the Irish Parliament, and authorising the issuing of writs 
 or summonses accordingly. 
 
 " The Parliament, when met under such writs or sum- 
 monses, would have no difficulty in enacting laws, with the 
 assent of the Queen, sanctioning their own appointment, and 
 confirmatory of their own legislative powers. 
 
 ^'Secondly, — Let it be recollected that it was originally 
 the exclusive prerogative of the Crown to issue to such places 
 as it thought fit, writs for the election of members of Parlia- 
 ment ; and this prerogative continued to be exercised down to 
 the reign of Queen Anne. The familiar fact of the creation 
 
 • Lord Plunket. 
 
Hoio the Queen could restore Home Rule. 387 
 
 in Ireland, by King James I., of no less than forty boroughs 
 in a single day — boroughs that from that time continued to 
 send members to Parliament until the Union — proves in the 
 strongest way the power to exercise (as it also shows the 
 abuse of) this prerogative. 
 
 "Now, there is no Act of Parliament in Ireland taking 
 away that prerogative from the Crown. It therefore con- 
 tinues to exist, unimpeached and undiminished; and Her 
 Majesty might be advised at once to issue writs to all the 
 counties, and to the several towns named in our proposed 
 plan ; and then she may either bring together, or create, a 
 sufficient number of Irish peers to constitute the Irish 
 Parliament. 
 
 "It is quite true that the proposal we suggest is one 
 intended to be enacted by the united Parliament ; but we 
 are not thereby prevented from pointing out other means 
 (such as the two modes above described) for obtaining that 
 same object. To each of such modes there are abundant 
 technical and legal objections. But we believe there is no 
 constitutional difficulty in the way. 
 
 " The Constitution of these realms is suited to meet every 
 emergency ; and the most irregular proceedings of Parliament 
 have been sanctioned, and become the law of the land. Por 
 instance, in the year 1399, the Parliament dethroned Richard 
 II., the legitimate monarch, and conferred the crown upon 
 Henry IV., who had no kind of title to that crown. Nor 
 was he even heir of succession to Richard. This Parlia- 
 mentary Act regulated the succession of the crown for three 
 generations, and several of the statutes passed during that 
 interval are binding at the present day. 
 
 " Again : the Parliament, in the instance of Edward lY., 
 assumed the like power of disposing of the crown ; taking it 
 away from the House of Lancaster and conferring it on that 
 of York. 
 
 " Again : the case of Henry VII. is yet stronger. The 
 Parliament in 1485, after the Battle of Bosworth, gave him 
 a legal title to the crown ; although he had no other title 
 than that most irregular law. It is true he afterwards 
 married the heiress of the House of York; but he took 
 especial care, and indeed the most distinct modes, of dis- 
 avowing any title as derived from her. And Her Majesty, 
 whose title is so indisputable, derives that title as one of his 
 descendants. 
 
 "But the strongest instance remains behind. It is the 
 
 2 c 2 
 
388 Eiglvty-five Years of Irish History. 
 
 case of King William III., of ' glorious, pious, and immortal 
 memory.' The Convention Parliament at the Eevolution, 
 without any king at all, dethroned the reigning and then 
 legitimate monarch, James II. 
 
 " They used the word ' abdicate,' hut a word is nothing. 
 The actual fact is that they dethroned King James and 
 enthroned King "William, who had no species of claim to 
 be King — who had no kind of legal right to he King of 
 England, as he was, not only during his wife's lifetime, hut 
 for some years after her decease. He had, we repeat, no 
 other right, save that excellent and efficient one, of a most 
 irregular Act of Parliament. 
 
 " No persons can be more thoroughly convinced than we 
 are, that a most legitimate right to the crown was acquired 
 by the transactions of the Revolution of 1688 ; we are quite 
 certain that a perfect title was made out by those transactions. 
 And our allegiance to our most gracious Sovereign, whom 
 may God long preserve^ is much enhanced by the principles 
 which were involved in, and sanctioned by, the Revolution. 
 
 '*But what a host of legal and technical objections were 
 and may be raised against each and all of the precedents 
 which we have thus cited, including the glorious Revolution 
 itself! We venture to assert that none greater could be 
 stated to either of the modes of repealing the Union we 
 have suggested — no, nor by any means so great. 
 
 " 20th May, 1840." 
 
 CONTRAST BETWEEN ORANGE AND CATHOLIC CORPORATORS. 
 
 In 1793, the partial Emancipation Act rendered Catholics 
 eligible to municipal Corporations. But as the corporators 
 were not compelled to elect them, the eligibility conferred 
 by law was worthless. In the forty-eight years that elapsed 
 from 1793 until the Corporate Reform Act of 1841, only 
 two Catholics were admitted into the Dublin Corporation. 
 In the reformed Corporation Catholics are a majority, 
 and it is instructive to contrast their conduct with that 
 of their Orange predecessors. Between the years 1843 
 and 1881 inclusive, the new corporation, with a predomi- 
 nating Catholic element, elected a Protestant Lord ^layor 
 seventeen times. I give the names of the Protestant 
 chief magistrates: George Roe, 1843; John L. Arabin, 
 1845 ; Benjamin Lee Guinness, 1851 ; Robt. Kinahan, 1853; 
 Joseph Boyce, 1855; Richard Atkinson, 1857; James Lambert, 
 
Inclusion of Ireland in Iinperial Councils. 389 
 
 1859 ; Eichard Atkinson (his second election), 1861 ; Hon. J. 
 P. Vereker, 1863 ; Sir John Barrington, 1865 ; William Lane 
 Joynt, 1867; Edward Purdon, 1870; Robert G. Durden, 
 1872; Maurice Brooks, 1874; Sir George Owens, 1876; Sir 
 John Barrington (his second election), 1879; George Moyers, 
 1881. 
 
 In addition to the above instances of the Catholic spirit 
 of fair play in the election of the metropolitan chief magistrate, 
 I subjoin the names of the following Protestants, elected to 
 positions of trust by the Dublin Corporation : 
 
 High Sheriff for 1878, Hon. J. P. Yereker; High Sheriff 
 for 1881, Sir George Owens; The City Treasurer, Thomas 
 Pry, J. P. ; City Engineer and Borough Surveyor, Park 
 Seville ; Assistant-Engineer, Spenser Harty ; Superintendent 
 Medical Officer of Health and City Analyst, Charles Cameron, 
 M.D. ; Overseer of Waterworks, Mervyn Crofton ; Super- 
 intendent of Fire Brigade, Captain Ingram ; Assistant-Super- 
 intendent, Lieutenant Boyle. 
 
 DECLARATIONS OF WAR AND PEACE. 
 
 These declarations, in the event of Home Rule being 
 acquired, must of course rest, as they did before the Union, 
 in the prerogative of the Sovereign, advised by the English 
 Cabinet and Parliament. But the Irish Parliament, as before 
 the Union, should have the exclusive power to determine the 
 amount to be contributed by Ireland to military expenses. 
 
 INCLUSION OF IRELAND IN IMPERIAL COUNCILS. 
 
 Certain English politicians seem averse to the exclusion 
 of Irishmen from the consideration of Imperial questions. 
 Lady Florence Dixie, who has written many admirable letters 
 in advocacy of Home Rule for Ireland, suggests the following 
 arrangement : 
 
 "I go on the assumption that the Imperial Parliament 
 at Westminster as at present composed will continue to 
 represent Imperial interests, in which case regarding Ireland 
 as a distinct kingdom from Great Britain, I hold that an 
 Irish Parliament should be equally composed of a House of 
 Lords and a House of Commons. When matters purely 
 British require settlement, let Westminster legislate thereon ; 
 and when matters purely Irish require settlement, let College 
 Green legislate thereon. But in Imperial matters the 'ayes ' 
 
390 EigMy-iive Tears of Irish Histot-y. 
 
 of both Parliaments should count for, and the ' noes ' of both 
 count against, any measure under discussion; so that in 
 Imperial matters the two Parliaments would be as one. 
 
 " Having said so much, I am bound to add, however, that 
 I am one of those who yearn for and eagerly expect the day 
 on which Imperial Federation shall be accomplished. I would 
 like to see Parliaments in England, Ireland, Scotland, and 
 Wales, each severally empowered to legislate on matters 
 purely connected with themselves, while sending delegates 
 or representatives to a Central Imperial Assembly at West- 
 minster, at which should also assemble the delegates or 
 representatives of all our Colonial Legislatures throughout 
 the world. It appears to me that this would be the first real 
 Imperial Parliament that we should have ever seen, and 
 when the growing necessity for Imperial Federation is daily 
 becoming more urgent, an arrangement of this sort would 
 seem to be the only workable method possible. We must 
 keep pace with Progress, it is no use hanging back. What 
 was good in 1860 is no good in 1880, and what was good in 
 1880 will be antediluvian and utterly impossible in 1900. 
 The only custom that I think will long outlive the century of 
 nineteen hundred, is Home Rule. True unity can only be 
 assured by allowing nations to manage their own affairs, 
 while many states, nay, the whole universe could be made 
 one by convening to one Central Assembly the chosen repre- 
 sentatives or Imperial M.P.S of the different Legislatures of 
 the World." 
 
A LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIIL 
 
 By W. J. O'Neill Daunt. 
 
 Mr. O'Neill Daunt has addressed the following letter to 
 his Holiness the Pope : 
 
 Most Holy Father, 
 
 I trust that your Holiness will pardon a humble Irish 
 Catholic for placing before you his thoughts on a subject 
 which appears to him of essential interest to the Catholic 
 religion in Ireland. 
 
 It is rumoured that the English Government desire to 
 effect some arrangement with your Holiness by which they 
 expect to obtain control over, or influence in, the appoint- 
 ment of the Irish bishops. Of course, I know not the 
 particulars of the rumoured proposals; but I do know that 
 on various occasions in past years it has been the strong 
 desire of that Government to acquire an influence in our 
 episcopal appointments; and it is more than probable that 
 they are now, as formerly, actuated by the same desire. 
 
 In view of any attempt on their part in this direction, it 
 is desirable to consider their historical and political relations 
 with the Irish people. 
 
 It would be wrong, in this retrospect, to refer to the 
 sanguinary efforts in former centuries to crush Catholicity 
 out of existence, if we did not find an anti-Irish and anti- 
 Catholic spirit operative at the present day — its exhibition 
 modified, of course, in accordance with the modern policy, 
 which effects by an economic process what was formerly 
 effected by violence. 
 
 In Elizabeth's reign the Reformation was sought to be 
 propagated in Ireland by "fines, imprisonment, tortures, 
 
392 Eighty-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 and death; unscrupulously employed by the ecclesiastical 
 as well as civil agents in that alleged Eeformation.'" * 
 
 King James I. confiscated six whole counties in the 
 province of Ulster, supplanting the native Catholics with 
 Scotch and English Protestants. His Majesty said : "Root 
 out Papists, plant Ireland with Puritans, and then secure it." 
 
 The reigns of King James and of his son, King 
 Charles I., were marked by the confiscation of the estates of 
 the Irish proprietors, and by a systematic endeavour to up- 
 root the Catholic religion. Yet the Irish were loyal to King 
 Charles, for they deemed his tyranny more endurable than 
 the tyranny of the antagonist power that overthrew his 
 throne and brought him to the scaffold. The extermination 
 of the whole Irish race, including the Catholic descendants 
 of the old English settlers, was the favourite object of the 
 English Parliament of the period. 
 
 When King Charles was beheaded, the reins of State 
 were assumed by the usurper Cromwell. His rule was 
 marked by the massacres of the Irish he committed at 
 Drogheda and at Wexford, and by the vast confiscations 
 of Irish estates whose owners had been loyal to the late 
 unhappy king. He died in 1658. 
 
 In 1660 Charles II. was restored. During his reign the 
 public exercise of the Catholic religion was permitted ; but 
 the Cromwellian confiscations of Irish landed property were, 
 with few exceptions, confirmed. 
 
 Charles died in 1685, and his brother James, by whom 
 he was succeeded, incurred the hostility of so large a portion 
 of his English subjects that, after a short reign of scarcely 
 four years, he. was forced to abdicate his crown. He took 
 refuge in Prance, whence in 1689 he sailed for Ireland, in 
 the hope of striking a blow for the recovery of his throne. 
 The fortunes of war were against him, and his ill-starred 
 campaign was closed by another flight to France. 
 
 The garrison and people of Limerick stood out to the last 
 for King James. William of Orange, James's victorious 
 son-in-law and rival, who had previously besieged Limerick 
 without success, renewed his attack on that city on the 25tli 
 of August, 1691. The siege was protracted for several 
 weeks; and after a prolonged struggle, in which both sides 
 displayed great bravery, the city surrendered to William's 
 
 • These are the words of the Eev. Maziere Brady in his Preface 
 to " State Papers." 
 
A Letter to Pope Leo XIIL 393 
 
 general, Ginckle, on the terms known as the Treaty of 
 Limerick. 
 
 By that treaty William undertook that the Catholics 
 should enjoy the free and unmolested exercise of their 
 religion; that all the inhabitants ^of the counties of 
 Limerick, Cork, Clare, Kerry, and Mayo who had fought 
 for King James should possess their estates and practise 
 their callings and professions undisturbed. The only oath 
 they were required to take was the oath of allegiance to 
 William and Mary. 
 
 Kot one article of that treaty was observed. Acts were 
 passed to violate every one of its articles; to reduce the 
 Catholics who still retained land to the alternative of 
 surrendering their terrritorial rights or renouncing their 
 faith; and to disqualify all Catholics from practising their 
 callings and professions. The Irish Parliament of the period 
 was largely composed of Protestants who held confiscated 
 estates. William had confiscated one million and sixty 
 thousand acres, and the holders of those and of previous 
 forfeitures conceived that their best security against any 
 possible resumption was to crush the Catholics to the dust. 
 The atrocious laws that effected this purpose constitute what 
 is called the Penal Code. 
 
 But while those laws continued to operate, the English 
 Government was incessantly employed in active efforts, 
 legislative and administrative, to paralyse every Irish interest, 
 commercial, manufacturing, agricultural, and even pastoral. 
 This persistent and powerful hostility was destructive to the 
 interests of the Irish Protestants, and as years went on the 
 imperative necessity of self-defence against English aggres- 
 sion produced in the Protestant mind a sentiment of Irish 
 nationality. The mere fact of legislating at home also 
 necessarily generated an attachment to their own country, 
 and it is most worthy of especial note that in proportion as 
 national principles advanced among the Protestants, in the 
 same proportion did their sectarian animosity to Catholics 
 decline. 
 
 In December, 1775, Henry Grattan entered the Irish 
 Parliament. A Protestant himself, he worked through his 
 long and glorious life to remove the restrictions under which 
 his Catholic countrymen laboured. He spurned the insolent 
 claim of the English Parliament to usurp legislative power 
 over Ireland. Under his influence and that of his colleagues 
 one after another of the penal shackles was removed from the 
 
394 Eiglity-five Tears of Irish History. 
 
 Catholics in 1778, 1779, 1782, and 1793 ; and there cannot 
 be a doubt that if the Irish Parhament had continued to 
 exist it would in a very few years have restored the Catholics 
 to full political equality. Influenced by Grattan, it had 
 asserted its legislative independence in 1782 ; and England, 
 by the voices of her King, Lords, and Commons, had pledged 
 herself to respect that independence for all future time. The 
 Protestant feeling towards Catholics had in general lost much 
 of its ancient acerbity, and all things seemed tending to the 
 final extinction of old feuds, and the amalgamation of Irish- 
 men of all creeds in one great national fraternity. 
 
 But Ireland would in that case have become strong and 
 prosperous ; and in order to keep her weak and powerless, 
 Pitt, the potent English Minister, resolved to check the 
 growing fusion of her inhabitants, to revive the internecine 
 hatreds that were gradually passing away, and to inflame those 
 hatreds to a pitch of sanguinary fury. To eff'ect this purpose 
 his agents in Ireland commenced a persecution of the people 
 which may be truly described as diabolical. The persecution 
 accomplished the purpose of its authors : the people were 
 driven to rebel in 1798, and the outrages on both sides which 
 necessarily accompanied such an outbreak effectually realised 
 the design of the Government in renewing the rancorous 
 hatreds of classes, and in affording a pretext for covering 
 Ireland with a large army of occupation. Under terror of 
 that army in the country, and by the employment of enormous 
 bribery in Parliament, the Union — rejected in 1799 — was in 
 1800 forced on the prostrate and unfortunate country. It 
 was a crime of the blackest turpitude. To achieve it cost 
 some millions of money, and the sacrifice of many thousand 
 lives. 
 
 Such, holy Father, were the hideous methods by which 
 the Irish Parliament was destroyed, and by which the 
 English Parliament obtained legislative power over Ireland. 
 Pitt had pretended that the Union should be followed 
 by Catholic Emancipation, but he subsequently told King 
 George III. that he never would obtrude the Catholic 
 question on his Majesty's notice. Twenty-nine years later 
 the measure was conceded ; but the concession would not 
 then have been made if O'Connell had not convinced tha 
 vernment that the alternative was civil war. 
 
 Eighty-seven years have passed since the Irish Parliament 
 was destroyed by the means I have described. The long 
 interval presents a sad record of turbulence generated by 
 
A Letter to Pope Leo XIIL 395 
 
 popular misery; enormous abstraction of Irish revenue, 
 public and private, by dishonest taxation and by ab- 
 senteeism ; decay of Irish manufacturing interests ; periodical 
 famines ; our population diminished by more than three 
 millions, partly by deaths from famine, partly by the 
 emigration of our people from their country, which the 
 Union had stripped of the means of supporting them. I do 
 not know the exact proportion of Protestant and Catholic 
 emigrants at present ; but I know that in the decade ending 
 in 1870 thirty-six Catholics had emigrated for one 
 Episcopalian Protestant, and nineteen Catholics for one 
 Presbyterian. To get rid of the Irish race has been the 
 traditionary policy of English Governments for centuries. 
 In ruder ages the object was effected by massacre ; in our 
 more civilised period it is effected by a process that goes far 
 to render Ireland uninhabitable. 
 
 Home Rule, which we have persistently sought since the 
 date of the Union, simply means that the Irish nation 
 should retain the control of their own special concerns. It 
 means the retention in Ireland of the gifts, material and 
 intellectual, which God has bestowed on our country, and 
 the development of those gifts for the benefit of the Irish 
 people. The Union, on the contrary, means that the 
 products of Ireland, material and intellectual, should be 
 utilised, not for her own benefit, but for the benefit 
 of England. 
 
 Whatever we have lost there is one possession which the 
 mass of our nation have retained — fidelity to the Catholic 
 Church, of which your Holiness is the visible head. With 
 the mass of our nation the sentiments of Irish nationality 
 and of Catholic fidelity are so thoroughly interwoven that 
 any attempt to sever them would be a most dangerous 
 experiment. It is our earnest desire that the necessary 
 ecclesiastical intercourse between your Holiness and the 
 Irish Catholics, clerical and lay, should be direct and 
 intimate, and undisturbed by the intervention, direct or 
 indirect, of the English Government. With the dark 
 record of that Government and of its policy to Ireland, there 
 could be no surer way to deprive the Irish hierarchy of the 
 confidence of the Irish Catholics than to allow the English 
 Ministry any voice or influence in Irish ecclesiastical appoint- 
 ments. And it needs not be said that religion would 
 sustain a heavy blow from such a deadly severance of our 
 bishops and their flocks. 
 
396 Eighty-iive Years of Irish History, 
 
 In all I have now written there is not one word incon- 
 sistent with our loyalty to Queen Victoria. We object to 
 the rule in Ireland of the London Parliament, knowing the 
 infamous means by which that rule was acquired and the 
 horrible consequences which for eighty-seven years it has 
 produced. We are loyal to Her Majesty, not as Queen of 
 England but as Queen of Ireland, and we loyally desire that 
 Queen Victoria should govern her Irish subjects through an 
 Irish Ministry and an Irish Parliament. To this I will only 
 add that the Irish Catholics heartily, fervently, disclaim all 
 desire for political ascendency in our restored Constitution ; 
 being firmly convinced that the peace, prosperity, and 
 stability of the Irish State can best be promoted by the 
 perfect political equality of all classes of religionists. 
 
 In conclusion, permit me, most Holy Father, in this year 
 of your Jubilee, to lay at your feet the homage of my 
 congratulations and filial devotion. I implore your Holiness's 
 apostolic benediction upon my declining years, as also upon 
 all the individuals of my family and household. I pray the 
 Almighty to prosper and protect your Holiness ; and I pray 
 Him also to preserve the Irish Church from the fatal taint of 
 English Governmental interference. I beg to subscribe 
 myself of your Holiness the deeply respectful and devoted 
 servant, 
 
 W. J. 0':N^. Daunt. 
 Kilcascan, Co. Cork, 17th June, 1887. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aberdeen, Lord, Viceroy 867 
 
 Achill, its inhabitants slandered ... ... ... ... 127 
 
 Agitation — how conducted by O'Connell ... ... ... 57 
 
 American Irish — their sentiments ... ... ... ... 62, 63 
 
 Aggressive fanaticism ... ... ... ... ... 125, 126, 129 
 
 Aristocracy of the 18th century ... ... ... ... 1, 2, 3 
 
 Anti-Irish State Church — its origin 93 
 
 How introduced and propagated ... ... ... ... 94, 95 
 
 Guaranteed by the Union ... ... ... ... ... 96 
 
 Its income ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 97 
 
 Pleas for upholding it examined ... ... ... 102 — 114< 
 
 Its social and political results ... ... ... ... 121 
 
 Anti-tithe agitation ... ... ... ... ... ... 124 
 
 Association for Kepeal founded ... ... ... ... ... 192 
 
 Bagenal of Dunleckny — his social habits ... 5, 6 
 
 Bankruptcy of Ireland in 1816 — how produced 386 
 
 Butt, Isaac — in the Corporation debate ... 230 
 
 In the Home Rule Conference 305 — 811 
 
 His death 311 
 
 Castlereagh — ^tries in vain to bribe Carew 1 
 
 His financial *• sketch" 335 
 
 He buys the Presbyterians 116,228 
 
 Catholics — how affected by the penal laws 2 
 
 Catholicity— sectarian attacks on ... ... ... 54, 56, 61, 120 
 
 Catholic Volunteers in 1782 3,4 
 
 Catholic Emancipation promised to follow the Union ... 15 
 
 Clare, Earl of — his shameless declaration of bribery ... 382 
 
 He is used and despised by Pitt ... ... ... ... 28 
 
 His death 29 
 
 Clontarf — projected meeting at, prevented by the Govern- 
 ment ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 241 
 
 Conference on Home Rule ... ... ... ... ... 804 
 
 Carrick-on-Suir — its historical castle 202 
 
 Cabins of labouring families described ... ... ...213,214 
 
 Condition of Ireland anomalous... ... ... ... ... 216 
 
 Castletown-Kinneigh — evictions at 170,171 
 
 Conciliation Hall opened... ... ... ... ... ... 237 
 
 Connorville entered by soldiers ... ... ... ... ••! 132 
 
 Chartism 156 
 
 "Chartist Christian Church" 157 
 
 Coercion Act ... 163 
 
598 
 
 Index. 
 
 Corporation of Dublin — adopts Repeal in 1843, and again in 
 
 1871 
 
 228—301 
 
 Cornwallis, Marquis, attests the sanguinary anarchy resulting 
 
 from Pitt's policy... 
 Crawford, Sharman — his political changes 
 
 Davis, Thomas — his character, his death 
 Dangan — inhabited by Roger O'Connor 
 
 Burned 
 Depopulation of Ireland, ancient and modern... 
 Deputation of Repealers to the Dublin Corporation 
 Disestablishment of the anti-Irish Church 
 Death of O'Connell 
 
 Egan family, plot against their lives ... 
 Elective Franchise, anecdotes of 
 Evictions at Castletown. Kinneigh 
 
 Exclusion of Repealers from office 
 
 Expansion of Repeal movement... 
 Extermination of the People 
 Errington's diplomacy ... 
 
 Famine — its miseries intensified by the Union 
 
 Farnham, Lord — his polemical crusade 
 
 Penianism ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 
 
 Franchise, Elective — anecdotes of 
 Federalism broached by O'Connell 
 
 GrEORGE IV. reluctant to pass Emancipation 
 
 Grattan, Henry — his last words in the Irish Parliament 
 
 Grattan, Richard, on Home Rule 
 
 Galbraith, Rev. Joseph A., on Home Rule 
 
 Grey, Sir George, on a Statutory Parliament 
 
 Hamilton, Rev. Mr. — his plot to hang the Egans 
 
 Hall, Mr. S. C— his letter on Achill 
 
 His appreciation of the inhabitants 
 Home Rule indispensable to national life 
 
 Imprisonment of O'Connell 
 
 199, 
 
 127 
 
 Keogh, John, O'Connell's predecessor as a Catholic 
 agitator 
 
 Land agitation , 
 
 Landlords — how they might have saved themselves ... 
 Landlord — an Ulster Conservative Landlord on Home Rule 
 
 Life of the Repealers in prison 
 
 Liberation of the Repeal prisoners 
 
 Letter from the Author to the Pope 
 
 Military preparations against the proposed Clontarf 
 
 meeting 
 
 M y, Lord — his financial expedients 
 
 Maguan, the spy 
 
 Magistrates — exuberant loyalty of 
 
 326, 327 
 206 
 
 272 
 133 
 133 
 62,65 
 301 
 98,101 
 276 
 
 82,89 
 
 152, 176 
 
 170, 171 
 
 205 
 
 207, 212 
 
 62,65 
 
 359 
 
 ...273,275 
 
 54 (note). 
 
 291 
 
 ,152,176 
 
 89 
 44 
 300 
 300—307 
 283,284 
 
 81,87 
 127 
 (note). 
 217 
 
 247 
 
 57 
 
 313 
 314, 360 
 
 302 
 249, 251 
 255, 256 
 
 391 
 
 241 
 
 32, 33 
 
 25 
 
 78,81 
 
Index. 399 
 
 Monster meetings 234. 
 
 Montgomery, Martin — his anti-Repeal book ... ... ... 234 
 
 Nation newspaper founded in 1842 219 
 
 Nationality— What is it ? 217,218 
 
 Night on the Shannon side ... ... ... ... ... 264 
 
 Norbury, Lord — his administration of justice... ... ... 20 
 
 Orange faction — their hostility to temperance ... ... 201 
 
 Orange amusements ... ... ... ... ... 326 — 328 
 
 Orange Repealers .. . ... ... ... ... ... ... 52 
 
 Orange and Catholic corporators compared 53, 388 
 
 O'Connell opposes the veto ... ... ... ... ... 67 
 
 His definition of Repeal 196,197 
 
 He opposes the Union 90 
 
 His speech in 1834 178 
 
 His speech in 1843 228 
 
 O'Connor, Arthur — an honest politician 131 
 
 O'Connor, Roger — his military projects ... ... ... 131 
 
 His imprisonment ... ... ... ... ... ... 132 
 
 O'Connor, Feargus — career of 133 
 
 His election for the County Cork... ... ... ... 135 
 
 His election for Nottingham ... ... ... ... 161 
 
 His death 162 
 
 Obstruction v. Destruction ... ... ... ... ... 162 
 
 O'Brien, Smith — his career ... ... ... ... ... 238 
 
 His dmeute ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 279 
 
 His death 289 
 
 Parnell, his parliamentary tactics 310 
 
 His personal qualities 312 
 
 His imprisonment ... ... ... ... ... ... 317 
 
 His release ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 317 
 
 Parliament of Ireland — its faults, its merits 36,38 
 
 Its early origin 320 (note). 
 
 Parson, an eccentric ... ... ... ... ... ... 168 
 
 YoetvY oi the Nation , 221,222,223 
 
 Prosecution of the Repealers 244 — 246 
 
 Protest of Irish Peers against the Union ... ... ... 385 
 
 Protestant Repealers 278 
 
 Quaker — opposition to a rector's demand by a Friend ... 102 
 Queen — visit of Her Majesty to Ireland — comment of the 
 
 Times thereon 279,280 
 
 *'Rigby"— his modest assurance j his political adventure ... 68, 73 
 
 Regency question ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 383 
 
 Repeal debate in 1834 — speeches of O'Connell, Spring 
 
 Rice, etc. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 177 
 
 Revival of Irish Parliament by royal prerogative 386 
 
 Rebellion of 1798, designedly provoked by the Government 15 
 
 Repeal Association founded ... ... ,., ... ... 192 
 
 Repeal defined by O'Connell 199 
 
 Repeal prisoners liberated ... ... 255,256 
 
 Rossmore, Lord — his notion of moral force ..r 356 
 
400 Index. 
 
 Slander clotlied in pious language 128 
 
 Spies in the Fenian camp 291 — 296 
 
 Sympathy of English politicians with foreign nationalities... 281 
 Separation predicted as ultimately resulting from the 
 
 Union 292, 293 
 
 Steele — career of 260 
 
 Scotland visited 270 
 
 Taxation of Ireland excessive 216,335,369 
 
 Tennent, Emerson — his anti-national servility ... ... 123 
 
 His absurdity 183 
 
 Torture inflicted on the people to goad them into rebellion... 16 — 19 
 Terry-Alts 261,262 
 
 Union — how produced ... 
 
 Productive of disloyalty 
 
 Its success dependent on military force ... 
 Foments international rancour 
 Parliamentary opponents of 
 
 Veto — opposed by O'Connell 
 Visits to Scotland... 
 
 Viceroyalty — its abolition unanimously opposed 
 Eepeal Association 
 
 War Vessels — how employed on the Irish coast 
 Webb — his anti-tithe plea 
 
 10, 13, 
 
 15, 22, 25 
 
 ... 40, 
 
 42, 44, 62 
 
 
 242, 331 
 
 ,., 
 
 ...39, 341 
 
 ... 
 
 40 
 
 
 67 
 
 
 270 
 
 "by the 
 
 ... 
 
 239 
 
 
 125 
 
 ... 
 
 102 
 
 OHASLSS DICXBITB AlTD EVAKS, CBX8TA.L FALACB PBBS8. 
 
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 FOLK AND FAIEY TALES. By Mrs. Burton 
 Harbison. "With twenty-four original whole-page Engravings 
 by Walter Crane. 2nd Edition. Crown 8vo. In hand- 
 somely designed cover, gilt edges. 6s. 
 
 CATHEDEAL DAYS : a Tour through Southern 
 England. By Anna Bowman Dodd. 6s. 
 
 OLD GOUET LIFE IN FEANCE. By Mrs. Frances 
 Elliott. With twenty-one original whole-page Engravings. 
 Royal 8vo 78. 6d. 
 
 FIFTY YEAES OF A GOOD QUEEN'S EEIGN. 
 
 By A. H. Wall. With six Portraits. Imp. 16mo. Cloth, 
 88. 6d. ; bevelled boards, gilt edges. 48. 6d. 
 
( 18 ) 
 NEW NOVELS. 
 
 Just ready. At all Libraries in Town and Country, 
 THE NUN'S CUBSE. By Mrs. Eiddell. 3 vols. 
 
 HER TWO MILLIONS. By William Westall. 
 3 vols. 
 
 THROUGH GREEN GLASSES. By F. M. Allen. 
 With Numerous Illustrations by M. Fitzgerald. 1 vol. 
 
 THE FOX AND THE GOOSE : a New Sporting 
 Novel. 1 vol. 
 
 A MODERN MAGICIAN. By J. Fitzgerald Molloy. 
 3 vols. 
 
 JOHN O'LONDON : a Story of the Days of Roger 
 Bacon. By Somerville Gibney. 1 vol. 
 
 A PRINCE OF THE BLOOD. By James Payn. 
 3 vols. 
 
 THE TWIN SOUL : A Psychological Romance. 
 2 vols. 
 
 ONE MAID'S MISCHIEF. By G. Manville Fenn. 
 
 3 vols. 
 
( 14 ) 
 
 SIX SHILLING NOVELS. 
 
 JOHN 0' LONDON : By Somerville Gibnet. 
 
 THE STORY OF ANTHONY GRACE. By G. Manville Fenn. 
 
 THROUGH GREEN GLASSES. By F. M. Allen. 
 
 AT THE RED GLOVE. By K. S. Macquoid. 
 
 A BIRD OF PASSAGE. By B. M. Crokbb. 
 
 HIS HELPMATE. By Frank Barrett. 
 
 A TERRIBLE LEGACY. By G. W. Appleton. 
 
 THE MASTER OF THE CEREMONIES. By G. Manville 
 
 Fenn. 
 IN JEOPARDY. By G. Manville Fenn. 
 DOUBLE CUNNING. By G. Manville Fenn. 
 THE ALIENS. By Henry F. Keenan. 
 AS IN A LOOKING GLASS. By F. C. Philips. 
 A LUCKY YOUNG WOMAN. By F. C. Philips. 
 TEMPEST DRIVEN. By Richard Dowling. 
 A MENTAL STRUGGLE. By the Author of " Molly Bawn." 
 LIL LORIMER. By Theo. Gift. 
 THE SACRED NUGGET. By B. L. Farjeon. 
 THE CHILCOTES. By Leslie Keith. 
 
 THREE-AND-SIXPENNY NOVELS. 
 
 THE DIAMOND LENS. By Fitzjambs O'Bbikn. 
 
 THE FOX AND THE GOOSE. 
 
 JACK ALLYN'S FRIENDS. By G. W. Appleton. 
 
 LIEUTENANT BARNABAS. By Frank Barrett. [In the press. 
 
 TWO PINCHES OF SNUFF. By William Westall. 
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF A COWARD AND COQUETTE. 
 
 By the Author of " The Parish of Hilby." 
 A LIFE'S MISTAKE. By Mrs. Lovett Cameron. 
 IN ONE TOWN. By E. Downey. 
 ANCHOR WATCH YARNS. By E. Downey. 
 ATLA. By Mrs. J. Gregory Smith. 
 LESS THAN KIN. By J. E. Panton. 
 A REIGNING FAVOURITE. By Annie Thomas. 
 THE NEW RIVER. By Somerville Gibney. 
 UNDER TWO FIG TREES. By H. FRiNcis Lester. 
 COMEDIES FROM A COUNTRY SIDE. By W. Outram 
 
 Tristram. 
 
( 15 ) 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS. 
 
 THE LAD YE NANCYE. By " Rita." 
 
 THE DEAN AND HIS DAUGHTER. By F. C. 
 
 Philips 
 
 MERE SHAKINGS. By J. F. Keane. 
 
 JACK AND THREE JILLS. By F. G. Philips. 
 
 social vicissitudes. By F. C. Philips. 
 
 PROPER PRIDE. By B. M. Croker. 
 
 pretty miss NEVILLE. By B. M. Croker. 
 
 MISS GASCOIGNE. By Mrs. Riddell. 
 
 THE PRETTIEST WOMAN IN WARSAW. By 
 
 Mabel Collins. 
 
 HER WEEK'S AMUSEMENT. By the Author of 
 
 '* Molly Bawn." 
 
 A COQUETTE'S CONQUEST. By ''Basil." 
 IN A SILVER SEA. By B. L. Farjeon. 
 GREAT PORTER SQUARE. By B. L. Farjeon. 
 THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS. By B. L. 
 
 Farjeon. 
 GRIF. By B. L. Farjeon. 
 THE LAST STAKE. By Madame Foli. 
 SNOWBOUND AT EAGLE'S. By Bret Harte. 
 THE FLOWER OF DOOM. By M. Betham- 
 
 Edwards. 
 VIVA. By Mrs. Forrester. 
 A MAIDEN ALL FORLORN. By the Author of 
 
 " Molly Bawn." 
 FOLLY MORRISON. By Frank Barrett. 
 HONEST DAVIE. By Frank Barrett. 
 UNDER ST. PAUL'S. By Richard Dowling. 
 
 THE DUKE'S SWEETHEART. By Richard 
 
 Dowling. 
 THE OUTLAW OF ICELAND. By Victor Hugo. 
 THAT VILLAIN ROMEO. By Fitzgerald Molloy. 
 
 WHAT HAST THOU DONE ? By Fitzgerald 
 
 Mollot. [In the press. 
 
 LOUISA. By K. S. Macquoid. \[In the press. 
 
( 16 ) 
 SHILLING NOVELS. 
 
 THE GREAT HESPER. By Frank Barrett. 
 A BAG OF DIAMONDS. By G. M. Fenn. 
 THE DARK HOUSE. By G. M. Fenn. 
 EVE AT THE WHEEL. By G. M. Fenn. 
 THE CHAPLAIN'S CRAZE. By G. M. Fenn. 
 LITTLE TU'PENNY. By the Author of " Mehalah." 
 A HOUSE OF TEARS. By E. Downey. 
 LADY VALWORTH'S DIAMONDS. By the Author 
 
 of "Phyllis.*' 
 
 A PRINCE OF DARKNESS. By the Author of 
 
 " The House on the Marsh." 
 
 THE SKELETON KEY. By R. Dowling. 
 MOLKA. By B. L. Farjeon. 
 A DEADLY ERRAND. By Max Hillary. 
 OLIVER'S BRIDE. By Mrs. Ollphant. 
 EATEN UP. By Eosten. 
 
 ^% Messrs. Ward & Downey's Illustrated Catalogue 
 contains Portraits of the Author of " Molly Bawn,'^ Frank 
 Barretty Mrs. Lovett Cameron^ Mrs. B. M. Croker^ Richard 
 Dowling^ B. L. Farjeon., George M'lnoille Fenn., Somerville 
 Gibney, James Grants Victor HugOj Bret Harte, Richard Ashe 
 King (" -Bast/,") The Abbe Liszt, Mrs. Macquoid, Fitzgerald 
 Molloy, John Augustus O'Shea, Mrs. Panton, F. C. Philips, 
 Blanche Roosevelt, George Sand, Florence Warden, and 
 William Westall. 
 
 A New Illustrated Catalogue with additional portraits of 
 James Payn, Mrs. Riddell, O'Neill Daunt, Mabel Colllins, 
 Harry Furniss, T. P. O'Connor, the Author of " Mehalah,"*^ 
 G. W. Appleton, Robert Buchanan, Thomas Purnell, G. L. M. 
 Strauss, SfC, is in preparation. 
 
 Ward & Downey, PubMers, 12, York Street, Covent Garden. 
 
TOMSK FROM WHICH BORROWBD 
 
 lOAN DEPT. 
 
 (J6534sl0)94l2A^A-32 
 
 Genera] Library 
 
GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY 
 
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