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CONTEMPORARY IRELAND

CONTEMPORARY IRELAND

By L. PAUL-DUBOIS

With an Introduction By T. M. KETTLE, M.P.

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INTRODUCTION

It is the French that have come closest to the secret of Ireland. De Beaumont, that great pupil of De Tocqueville, in 1839, Cardinal Perraud in 1869, painted our national life with the authoritative brush of masters. In addition to these we have had an unbroken line of studies, sketches, and monographs, in which Daryl, Béchaux, Le Roz, Foumier, Schindler, Potez, Filon, Flach, De Lavergne, and a cloud of other witnesses have said their word. Edouard Rod shaped the personal tragedy of Parnell into a novel ; and in one of his most recent stories Paul Bourget has shuddered at the dresses of fashionable Dublin, and yielded with lyrical abandon to the drowsy and purple magic of the Western lotus-land. M. Paul-Dubois rinds one half of the explanation of this old alliance in history, and the other in likeness of blood and temperament. In exchange for the swords of the Wild Geese. France sent us back priests, or at least the learning that turned Irish boys into priests. She sent too, in later and not less disastrous years, Hoche and Humbert ; and both nations have good memories, and until a very little while ago they shared a common hatred. The Irish mind, is, moreover, like the French, " lucid, vigorous and positive," though less methodical, since it never had the happiness to undergo the Latin discipline. France and Ireland have been made to understand each other.

vi INTRODUCTION

M. Paul-Dubois, then, has the. advantage of tempera- mental sympathy, wise forerunners, and a long tradition. He had, further, the advantage of language, for it is perhaps only in French that Sociology can become scientific without ceasing to be human. His personal equipment is of the first order. Son of the late President of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, son-in-law of the great Taine, and himself one of the chief officials of the Cour des Comptes, he is a member of the group which Brunetière's erudite enthusiasm gathered round the Revue des Deux Mondes. Was it not Taine who originated the phrase "well-documented," and made it the touchstone of all books dealing with social or historical science ? At all events it is in that spirit of thoroughness that M. Paul-Dubois has wished to write. The extent of his reading may be gathered from the references in his foot-notes. He paid more than one visit to Ireland, and had he but met some member of the Irish party — of which he writes with a harshness that is constantly in contradiction with itself — he might fairly claim to have met everybody. The Irish reader of his book may not be in entire agree- ment with his conclusions. To someone armed with special knowledge on this subject, his exposition may seem inadequate ; to someone moved by special passion on that subject, his criticism may even prove an irritant ; but, when all is said, his five hundred crowded pages represent the attempt of a mind, at once scientific and imaginative, to see Ireland steadily, and to see it whole. If it is comforting to be understood, it is also of some profit to be misunderstood in a friendly way. M. Paul- Dubois confesses on our behalf no sins that some one or other has not already shouted from the house-tops. Whatever he may have to say of the internal life of Ireland, his verdict on the international issue is given clearly

INTRODUCTION vii

and definitely for Ireland and against England. His voice is raised for the Gaelic League, and against linguistic Imperialism ; for the ploughed field, and against the grazing ranch ; for Home Rule and against the Act of Union. One may wish to enter a caveat against this or that contention, but the book is founded not on prejudice, or unreasoned feeling, or raw idealism but on a broad colligation of facts ; and, with all reserves made, I believe that it will in due time take rank with the great studies of modern communities like Bodley's " France " and Mvins terberg's "The Americans."

What then, is the Irish Question as seen by this sociologist, so inspired and so equipped ? It is " an extreme case of social pathology," an instance of the phenomenon called arrested development. It is to history that one naturally turns for proof and illustra- tion of this thesis ; and if, as a great Shakespearean critic has said, tragedy is simply waste, the history of Ireland as it passes before us in M. Paul-Dubois' Introduction, marshalled in sombre and picturesque lines, is essential tragedy indeed. It matters nothing whether we approach it in the spirit of those who desire revenge or of those who desire reconstruction : the impression is the same. A civilisation shaken by Norse invasion before it had quite ripened ; swept by Anglo-Norman invasion before it had quite recovered : a people plunged in an unimaginable chaos of races, religions, ideas, appetites, and provincial- isms ; brayed in the mortar without emerging as a consolidated whole ; tenacious of the national idea, but unable to bring it to triumph ; riven and pillaged by invasion without being conquered — how could such a people find leisure to grow up, or such a civilisation realise its full potentialities of development and discipline ? There are writers who would have us burn our Irish

viii INTRODUCTION

Histories. But the historical method imposes itself, not out of political passion, but by a mere scientific necessity, upon all students of contemporary social, or, indeed, spiritual problems. What is no doubt important is that the past should be studied by the social reformer not for its own sake but for the sake of the present, and from the point of view of the present. It is by this purpose that M. Paul-Dubois has been guided in his masterly Historical Introduction ; and I do not know of any summary of the same length which traces the forces of current Irish life so clearly to their origins, and sets the fabric of fact, by which we are to-day confronted, in such true and vivid perspective. But over and beyond that, his Introduction possesses the interest of literature. The period since the Union has never been outlined with more telling or more human touches. O'Connell, the inventor of that " constitutional agitation " which is now the prime weapon of all democracies, passes away leaving " a great memory but not a great party." Young Ireland affords us the supreme instance of the antithetical temperaments ever to be found in Nationalist politics : Davis, the reformer, inspired by love of Ireland, and Mitchel, the revolutionist, inspired by hatred of England. And so through Famine and Fenianism we come down to the brilliant feebleness of Butt, and the icy passion of Parnell, who " had more followers than friends," and to the struggle of the Gaelic Renaissance for " psycho- logical Home Rule "

II.

For this is, in last analysis, what M. Paul-Dubois takes to be the deep malady of Ireland : She has not gained the whole world, but she has come perilously near losing her own soul. A certain laxity of will, a certain mystical

INTRODUCTION ix

scepticism in face of the material world, an eloquence, which, in depicting Utopias, exhausts the energy that might better be spent in creating them, a continual tendency to fall back on the alibi of the inner life, make Ireland the Hamlet, or still more, the Rudin of the nations. Is this to say that she is unfit for modern, economic civilisation ? By no means. M. Paul-Dubois, having sounded every weakness and surveyed every difficulty, ends with the belief that the forces of re-growth will prevail over the process of decay ; and that although Ireland's last cards are now on the table, she is capable, if she plays them well, not only of preserving an ancient people but of creating a new civilisation.

What is the path to this achievement ? First of all, under the present regime, England is the enemy. If Ireland is to realise herself, she must become mistress of her own hearth, her own purse, and her own cupboard. She does assuredly stand in urgent need of peace from politics, and so far her Unionist critics are right. There is indubitably a deep sense in which a nation's life begins where her politics end. People speak as if the outcry against Parliamentarianism were a novel and a unique thing. But, fifty years ago, Marx taught all realists to crack the shells of political formulas and parties, and judge them by the moral and economic kernel within. To-day you can pick up anywhere in Paris or Brussels half-a-dozen pamphlets called " The Crisis of Parliamen- tarianism," "The Absurdity of Parliamentarianism," or " The End of Parliamentarianism." But that peace from the purely political struggle, which is so indispensable if Ireland is to develop character and create material wealth, can come to her only as a result of political autonomy. Until autonomy is won — carrying with it a re-adjustment of taxation — " on the cause must go. " 'And the politicians

x INTRODUCTION

who keep it going, whatever their special party or tactics, are playing the part of economic realists quite as effectively as any worker on the land or at the loom.

M. Paul-Dubois naturally devotes many chapters to the Land Question. He rightly treats it as a complexus of three questions, the tenure, the distribution, and the use of the land. The first two are being solved, in a fashion, at the expense of Irish rates and taxes, by the Estates Commissioners and the Congested Districts Board. Landlordism is dying, and dying meanly, "its last thought being of a bargain to be made." The edifice of Feudalism is being dismantled at a cost that raises a very real menace of national bankruptcy, but at all events the grim walls are coming down. But while the liberation of the Irish countryside from landlordism was necessary, it is not sufficient. The farmer must learn to use his land productively ; and so there must be a great development of agricultural education, leading up to a general system of " mixed farming." He must learn to combine ; and in this respect, at least as regards the small holders, Co-Operation possesses the secret of the future. He must come free of the egoism and pessimism which have remained in his blood since the Great Famine ; and nothing can expel these except the singing and dancing Gaelic League. But, even with all this accomplished, he will still be a snake-strangled Laocoon until he has in some wise reformed and mastered his Railways and Banks.

When we turn to the industrial condition of the country we find, since the Union, a steady degeneration of economic tissue. Population doubles between 1800 and 1841, but manufacture decays. The cotton workers of Belfast fall in number within that period from 27,000 to 12,000 ; and the factory hands of Dublin from 4,938 to 682. The

INTRODUCTION xi

consumption of luxuries, an excellent test of wealth, shows an immediate decline, tobacco falling in thirty years by 37 per cent, and wine by 47 per cent. Loss of trade follows loss of the flag. London, having become the political centre of gravity of Ireland, tends also to become her financial and commercial centre of gravity. There is a diminution of the productive, and a great increase of the parasitic classes. The home market slips away from the home manufacturer ; a sort of mania of exchange takes possession of the country ; and she ends by reaching a higher figure per unit of her population of exports and imports than any other European nation, paying ruinous tribute on both processes to the Shy locks of transit. It is a situation too sadly familiar to us all. M. Paul- Dubois' remedy, too, is familiar ; it is the programme of the men of 1779 and of the Industrial Pioneers of to-day : Use at home as many as you need of the things that are made at home, and make at home as many as possible of the things that are used at home. He neither anticipates nor desires any notable development of industry on the great scale, but looks for the prosperity of Ireland to progressive agriculture, and the smaller rural industries that come naturally to cluster around it.

Such is, in bare outline, the diagnosis of Ireland made by this detached and sympathetic student. He touches upon many other subjects, upon that of Clericalism and Anti-Clericalism with particular delicacy and insight. One may regret that, with his French experience, he does not discuss such problems as that now rising very definitely on the political horizon : Does Ireland stand to gain or to lose by Protection ? One may find a fault of line or of colour here and there, or chance on an irritating phrase. But on the whole and as a whole this is the best book that has been written in recent years on

xii INTRODUCTION

the problems of Ireland. The meaner journalism may seek in it for nothing better than party capital. But the worker in any Irish movement, who possesses the supreme wisdom of humility, and who had rather be bettered than flattered, will be glad to have seen himself :in M. Paul- Dubois' mirror. His last message is one of hope. He may, as his Conclusion shows, have underrated the resolution of Ireland to secure integral Home Rule — a National Government being a delicate and intricate machine which cannot be set working in halves. He may, by times, have seemed to forget that there are many kinds of Conciliation, that, for instance, an infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured. But, as between us and our rulers, he gives his verdict, on the evidence, for Ireland and against England. And he foreshadows a possible unification of all progressive parties on the Irish side, a tacit Concordat under which, on the sole condition that the national idea be not submerged or the national flag lowered in surrender, all progressive parties would come to regard themselves as but different regiments of the same Army of Advance. May that hope come true !

T. M. Kettle.

This book is an English translation of L'Irlande Contemporaire, Paris, 1907. M. Paul-Dubois desires to express his gratitude for great personal kindness during two visits to Ireland, and invaluable help in his studies of Irish life to Mr. T. P. Gill, The Rev. F. J. Hogan, D.D. and the authorities of Maynooth College, and Sir Horace Plunkett. He wishes further to pay a tribute to the memory of that brilliant writer on Irish affairs, the late J. F. Taylor, K.C., and to say bow much he has profited by the counsel and assistance of the late Rt. Hon. W. E. H. Lecky.

The Editor wishes to record his particular indebtedness, as regards the Historical Introduction, to Mr. A. E. Clery, LL.B., and as regards the remainder of the book to Mr. J. M. Hone, and Mr. G. F. H. Berkeley.

It has been thought well to add in an Appendix a few Notes, mainly of a statistical character. T. M. K.

CONTENTS

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

PAGE

Chapter I. — Before the Union ... i

I. — Early Ireland. II. — The Invasions. III. — The Conquest (1495-1603). IV. — The Conquest (1603-1691). V. — The Eighteenth Century : Penal Laws. VI. — The Irish Revolution and the Union (1782-1800).

Chapter II. — Since the Union ... 52

I. — O'Connell. II. — Young Ireland and the Revolution of 1848. III. — The Great Famine and Emigration. IV. — Fenianism. V. — Parnell.

PART ONE: POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS

Chapter I.— The Two Irelands : The English

Colony 89

I.— The Oligarchy. IL— Ulster. TIL— The Crisis of Unionism.

Chapter II. — The Two Irelands : National

Ireland 117

I. — Separatism or Physical Force. II. — Constitutional Agitation. III. — Parliamentary Action. IV. — Nationalist Policy.

xiv CONTENTS

PAGE

Chapter III. — The National and Anti-English

Spirit 151

I.— The Individual. II.— The Effect of the Past. III. — Public Life and Public Opinion. IV. — Anti-English Feeling. V. — Irishmen and France.

Chapter IV. — The Government . . . 183

I. — The Regime of the Conquest. II. — The Castle. III. — Local Administration. IV. — The Police. V. — Justice : The Lower Courts. VI. — The Judges of the Superior Courts. VII. — Jury-Packing.

PART TWO : MATERIAL DECADENCE.

Chapter I. — The Land Question . . . 218

I. — Historical. II. — General Data of the Problem. III. — General Data of the Problem (contd.). IV.— The Act of 1870. V.— The Legislation of 1881. VI. — The Complaints of the Landlords. VII. — The Practical Results of the Gladstonian Legislation.

Chapter II. — The Land Question — (Continued) 269

I. — Land Purchase : First Attempts. II. — Resists and Criticisms. III. — The Land Act of 1903. IV. — The Results of the Act of 1903.

Chapter III. — The Western Problem . . 296

I. — The Situation. II. — Life in the West. III. — The Remedy.

Chapter IV. — The Economic and Financial

Situation 319

I. — Nature and History. II. — The Industrial Situation. III. — Over-Taxation. IV. —

Emigration. V. — The Final Phase of Decay.

CONTENTS xv

PART THREE : POSSIBILITIES OF REGENERATION.

PAGE

Chapter I. — The Education Question . . 367

Chapter II. — The Gaelic Movement . . 390

I. — Anglicisation. II. — The Gaelic League. III. — Anti-Celticism. IV. — The Literary- Awakening V. — Social Results. VI. — Sum- mary.

Chapter III. — Economic Reform . . . 440

I. — The Evil and the Remedy. II. — Self-help and Co-operation. III. — Technical Instruc- tion. IV. — Summary.

Chapter IV. — The Religious Question . . 461

I. — The Churches in Ireland II. — The Church of Ireland and the Disestablish- ment. III. — Catholicism. IV. — The Nine- teenth Century. V. — The Power of the Clergy : its Cause. VI. — The Results. VII. — The Future : Anti-Clericalism.

Conclusion 512

Appendix : Editor's Notes .... 523

Index 531

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I.— BEFORE THE UNION

We must look to the past if we would understand the present. Hence, before we approach the study of con- temporary Ireland, it is well to turn our gaze backwards and try to comprehend the broader facts of the history of that country. We must look to the historical causes of which the existing condition of affairs is the immediate outcome. When we do so, two questions at once suggest themselves. How comes it that though it has been so often crushed, the Irish nation still survives ; and yet. though able to survive, has never been able to attain its freedom ? And again, how is it that the English, a people long famous for liberal principles and practical common sense, have failed so miserably in the task of conciliating Ireland ? Why have their efforts in Ireland borne no other crop than one of unprofitable hatred, with the result that after seven centuries and a half, that country is to-day an element of disintegration, and a dead weight in the British Empire ? What, in a word, has caused — -to employ a strong term — the bankruptcy of English rule in Ireland ?

It is difficult to give even a brief sketch of the history of Ireland. It is no exaggeration to say that Irish history is a book but half open. Students of Celtic and archaeologists are still engaged in preparing the way for the historian. Many Irish Manuscripts, records and state papers dealing with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as with earlier epochs, have not yet seen

u

2 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

the light.1 These alone could afford us accurate informa- tion not only as to the social conditions, but as to some of the most important public events in those periods. It is partly on this account, though the fact is also in large part due to the passions and prejudices of the two nations, that on the ever-burning question of Irish history, Englishmen and Irishmen put forward two widely different views. The two positions are diametrically opposed and each is tainted with extravagance.

In the view of Englishmen, the history of Ireland is that of a backward people engaged in a stupid revolt against the genius of English civilisation, and all the sacrifices which the English in their generosity make for the development of " that part of the United King- dom " meet with no better return than crime, violence and ingratitude. Irish history is the story of a barbarous people, incapable either of understanding or accepting the " lustre of English liberty," as Cromwell put it in his

1 See on the history of Ireland the following general works : — G. Keating (i 570-1640), History of Ireland (Irish Texts Society edition. Campion, History of Ireland (published in 1633 by Sir John Ware). Cox, Hibemia Anglicana, 1689. MacGeoghegan, Histoire d'Irlande, Paris, 1758-1763. Leland, History of Ire/and, 1773. Plowden, An Historical Review of the State of Ireland from the Invasion to the Union, 1803. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, 1827. Thomas Moore, Memoirs of Captain Rock, 1824. Daniel O'Connell, A Memoir of Ireland, Native and Saxon, 1843. Fronde, History of England, London, 1856-1870. Goldwin Smith, Irish History and Character, Oxford and London, 1861. A. M. Sullivan, The Story of Ireland, Dublin, 1867, John Mitchel, History of Ireland, from the treaty of Limerick, New York, 1868. Stuart Mill, England and Ireland, London, 1868. Froude. The English in Ireland in the iSth Century, London, 1872. W. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, London, 1883. Richey. A Short History of the Irish People, Dublin, 1887. W. A. O'Connor, History of the Irish People, Manchester, 1884. Emily Lawless, Ireland, London, 1887. Ball, Historical Review of the Legislative Systems operative in Ireland, London, 1883. Two Centuries of Irish History, with an Introduction by J. Bryce, London, 1888. Duke of Argyll, Irish Nationalism, London, 1893. W. O'Connor Morris, Ireland, 1494-1868, Cambridge, 1898. T. D. Ingram, A Critical Examination of Irish History, London, 1900. J. P. Gannon, A Review of Irish History, London, 1900. Rev. E. A. W Alton, History of Ireland, Vol. L, Dublin 1903, and Vol. II, 1906.

Cf. G. de Beaumont, l'Irlande sociale, politique et religieuse, 4th édition, Paris, 1840. Cardinal Perraud, Etudes sur l'Irlande contem- poraine, Paris, 1862. J. Flach, Considérations sur l'histoire politique de l'Irlande, Paris, 1885.

BEFORE THE UNION 3

proclamation in 1649. The true explanation of what has happened is to be found in the essential weakness of Irish character, which has been found wanting, when put to the trial in the struggle for life. English misdeeds, if such there ever were, have been repaired long ago. And when prescription has been running its course for a century it is criminal to re-open the case and stir up slumbering passions by recalling forgotten wrongs. Hence Irish history is a subject to which Englishmen do not like to turn their minds. No good, say they, can come of it. It is not a matter worthy of scientific study.2 As a result, not only is Irish history not taught to English children, but it was not until recently even allowed to be taught in the National Schools of Ireland.

The attitude of Irishmen upon this matter is exactly the opposite. To them Irish history is their consolation ; their greatest hope ; it is always before their eyes, always upon their lips. They live in the past. Everything around them speaks of other days. Round towers, ruins, fallen abbeys, ancient castles, nay, the very desolation of the country itself, bring memories of times gone by. England sees in the faults and vices of Irishmen the true explanation of their misfortunes ; Ireland deems the cruelty and tyranny of the English to be the real and only cause of her unhappiness. As Englishmen brazenly shut their eyes to their national misdeeds, so Irishmen complacently shut their eyes to their own shortcomings, and never weary of looking back upon that golden age of Erin, when, whilst England was yet steeped in pagan barbarism, the Irish were the protectors and the pioneers of western civilisation.

In considering the circumstances of Ireland, the influence

2 " Ireland has never realised that unity and continuity of national life which alone can furnish a worthy theme for history " (George C. Broderick, Political Studies, London, 1879, with reference to Froude's work, The English in Ireland) Cf. page 354 : "It is time for us to have done with fanciful and allegorical pictures of Ireland as a forlorn maiden, brooding helplessly over her bygone wrongs, pointing out the wounds that are now finally healed, and clanking the chains that have been struck off for ever."

4 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

exercised by its geographical position is an all-important fact. If we take them singly we can find a parallel elsewhere, for each one of the evils under which Ireland has suffered. The soil of Ireland is not less fertile than that of Holland. It is not more bloodstained than that of Flanders. Distinctions of race are not sharper in Ireland than in Switzerland. And whilst religious persecutions have in Ireland been carried out with dire cruelty, yet the country remains Catholic to-day in spite of them. But what makes the case of Ireland worse than that of any other country, even Poland, is the fact that all these evils have afflicted her simultaneously, and have continued to do so, without intermission, for seven centuries. For this result the geographical position of the country must be held in a great measure responsible. It lies far away by itself to the extreme west of Europe, with Britain, as it were, for its prison wall. Thus, the interposition of England cuts off Ireland from the current of European civilisation and intercepts all commerce, whether spiritual or material, with other countries. ' You have always been like a high garden wall standing between us and the sun," said George Canning's daughter, Lady Clanricarde, to an Englishman. If England has all the advantages of an insular position, Ireland has all the disadvantages. It need only be added that its proximity to England prevents the English people, in the interests of their own peace, from ever leaving Ireland out of account. It was then in the nature of things that of these two sister countries with interests sharply opposed, the larger island should exercise a preponderating influence upon the smaller.

I. — Early Ireland.

One result of Ireland's isolated position in early times was that Caesar's legionaries never set foot in the country. Later on, indeed, Ireland came to a greater or less degree under the influence of Roman literature ; but Roman law never

BEFORE THE UNION 5

laid its enduring mark upon the Country. Had it been otherwise, her history must have been far different. Being outside the ambit of Roman civilisation, Ireland developed from within upon her own lines. And it was at once her good and her evil fortune that she thus retained her distinctively " Celtic " character entirely unimpaired.

The early history of Ireland, as we find it in the annals and mythological poems, gives us a picture of diverse peoples combating and succeeding one another — sons of Partholan or of Nemedh, Tuatha-de-Danann, " Fomor- ians " and Firbolgs. But from a time immediately preceding the Christian era, the " Celts," together with a certain intermingling of aborigines, are found in possession of the island. These were the Gaels,3 who belonged to that great Celtic race, that had once been masters of all Europe, but had been gradually driven back by the advance of Roman power and by Germanic incursions. According to legend these Gaels were the descendants of Miledh or Milesius, who had crossed over from Spain a thousand years before the Christian era. We learn from the same source that not less than one hundred and fifty kings of Milesian stock reigned over Ireland. This much is certain, at any rate, that in the first centuries of our era, there existed in Ireland a civilisation that had reached an advanced stage of development. To the study of this civilisation the ablest students of Celtic archaeology and Celtic philology have been devoting their researches for half a century. 4

3 According to another theory (the most probable one), the Gaels belonged to the Nordic or Teutonic race. It has also been maintained that the mass of the Irish people are of Iberian or Scythian stock, and that the Gaels only mingled with this earlier population and imposed their language upon them.

4 We can only send the reader first of all to the works of the uncontested master of Celtic studies, M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, then to those of MM. Gaidoz, Loth, Ernault, Dottin, etc. Cf. O'Curry, Ancient Irish History, Dublin, 1S61 ; Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish (edited by W. R. Sullivan, Dublin, 1873). H. S. Maine, Ancient Law, London, 1861 ; Early History of Institutions, London, 1875 ; Early Law and Customs, London, 1883. Zimmer, Keltische

6 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

The most striking characteristic of this society was its tribal organisation. The social cell, standing next in order above the family, was the tribe, which consisted of a group of families, a body of freemen connected by a real or imaginary tie of kinship, who bore the same name, hYed together in a denned portion of territory, and owned a certain number of serfs and slaves. These com- munities were rural, for there were no towns. The land belonged to the tribe ; part of it was grazed in common, and the rest allotted from time to time between the free men. Yet private property was not unknown. It existed in regard to cattle, which were then the chief wealth, and even in regard to land. The chief had a private demesne appertaining to his office, which he farmed out to tenants, who paid him rent in kind. The chieftaincy was elective, but was confined to a single ruling family. In matters of politics, the " tribe " was of less importance than the " clan," or group of tribes, and the clans themselves were grouped into the five provinces5 or kingdoms, which were subject at least in name to the Ard-Righ, or High King of Ireland. The High King, however, like the Holy Roman Emperor of the middle ages, had little real authority, for he had neither civil jurisdiction nor military power. But he had a royal residence, the famous palace of Tara ; and there in a sort of Agora, were held the triennial festival and games of the Feis.

Wars were carried on unceasingly, now between tribe and tribe, now between kingdom and kingdom. Yet again there were revolts against the authority of the Ard-Righ. In the end the position of Ard-Righ came to belong exclusively to the powerful family of the Hy-Niall,

Studio, Berlin, 1 881-1884. Most Rev. Dr. Healy, Bishop of Clonfert, Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars, Dublin, 1892. Sophie Bryant, Celtic Ireland, London, 1889. Eleanor Hull, Pagan Ireland, and Early Christian Ireland, London and Dublin, 1904 and 1905. Lady Ferguson, The Irish Before the Conquest, London, 1868. Douglas Hyde, A Literary History of Ireland, London, 1903.

5 Ulster, Connacht, Munster, Leinster and Meath.

BEFORE THE UNION 7

or O'Neills. From time to time monarchs oi exceptional capacity, such as Conn of the Hundred Battles,6 Cormac mac Art,7 and Niall of the Nine Hostages,8 succeeded in making this authority a reality. In the seventh century Scotland was conquered by the Irish Gaels, and for many years afterwards they continued to invade Britain, and even extended their incursions upon the continent to the foot of the Alps.

At the commencement of the historical period the social condition of Ireland seems to have been already tending towards decay. Yet we have abundant evidence of the high degree of perfection which its civilisation had already attained. First, there are the laws or customs which the Judges, called Brehons, collected and interpreted. In them, as we may see from the Seanchus Mor, the subtlety and imaginative fertility of the Celtic spirit gave itself free play. Then, the delicate craftsmanship and purity of taste displayed in early Celtic ornaments is well known. From the Pagan period we have torques, brooches, gorgets and combs, with their strange and characteristic spiral ornamentation. Not inferior to them in beauty and chastity of design are those marvellous examples of Christian art, the Tara Brooch, the Ardagh Chalice, the Cross of Cong, and St. Patrick's Crozier, not to speak of the wonderful illuminations of the Book of Kells and other manuscripts. But it was in its literature that early Ireland showed its greatest intellectual power. As they have come down to us for the most part in manuscripts of late date the epic poems and legends, the sagas of the pagan period, and of the mythological, the heroic and the Ossianic cycles, 9 are not less valuable from a literary than

6 123-157 A.D.

7 227-266 A.D.

8 379-405. In his reign the future St. Patrick was borne into slavery in Ireland. His successor, Dathi (405-42S), was the last pagan king of Ireland.

9 Of the extent of this literature, still in existence, O'Curry says that the historical stories would occupy 4,000 pages, the stories and poems of the Ossianic (or Fenian) cycle 3,000, and the other tales and stories 5,000. As to Irish music see A. H. Grattan-Flood, A History of Irish Music. Dublin, 1905.

8 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

from a philological and archaeological point of view. Thev comprise both prose and verse, stories and poems, history and fiction. In them are found mingled primitive rudeness and exquisite delicacy, an oriental imaginative- ness and a strong common sense. Exhibiting as they do a combination of freshness of feeling, delicacy of sentiment, and at the same time perfect naturalness, these literary remains have proved an inspiration to the greatest modern poets, to Tennyson and Swinburne for instance, in our own time. It was from Ireland that Europe received her first love-songs. It was the Irish who invented rhyme, in all its varied forms, single or double, final, initial or medial, including the most elaborate assonances and alliterations. The Ossianic poems exhibit, under an extraordinary perfection of form, all the subtle rhythms and lyrical harmonies of vers libre. And it is re- markable that we never find in the bardic literature that exuberance of diction and exaggeration ot form that often grates upon us in the later epics. They show, on the contrary, as we are told by Dr. Sigerson, " classic reserve in thought, form and expression." It is no exaggeration to say, with this learned Irishman,10 that the literary sceptre, once wielded by Rome, fell in later times to Celtic Ireland.

The introduction of Christianity into Ireland must next occupy our attention. If we may believe tradition, a Celt from Gaul, named Patricius or Succat, had been brought captive to Ireland by the Ard-Righ, Niall of the Nine Hostages, but had escaped and been educated on the continent. Thence, in the year 432, he was sent as Bishop to convert Ireland. Where a former missionary named Palladius had failed, Patricius succeeded miracu- lously, and under the name of Saint Patrick, he is venerated to the present day as '; the Apostle of Ireland." It is difficult in these matters to distinguish history from

10 George Sigerson, Bards of the Gael and Gall, which contains admirable translations into English of early Celtic poetry.

BEFORE THE UNION 9

legend.11 It seems probable that at the beginning of the fifth century Ireland was already in part converted ro Christianity. Missionaries, captors, and traders from Britain, had brought about this result. There may even have been Irish bishops before St. Patrick. It is clear, at any rate, that the ancient paganism was already in its decline, and lacked the power to resist the new spirit. Ireland became Christian without a struggle, and soon earned the name of ;; The Island of Saints and Doctors." The organisation of the Christian Church in Ireland proceeded more or less upon monastic lines, modified by the clan s}7stem. Churches and monasteries sprang up throughout the country, whose abbots being, like the chiefs of clans, each independent of the other, possessed far greater power than the bishops. These latter were, in fact, not uncommonly ordinary monks, subject to the control of the abbots. Rome being far away, forms peculiar to the country naturally came into being in ecclesiastical ritual and practice. Such were the costume of the priests, the shape of the tonsure, and the date for the observance of Easter. They may be compared to those which certain Eastern Churches are permitted to employ in our own time. Some of them continued in use for many centuries.12 The Gaelic Church of Ireland is, therefore, from the very beginning to be distinguished from both the Gallo-Roman and the Anglo-Saxon Churches. The wide extension of literary culture,

11 As to the Patrician Question see among recent worksVH. Zimmer. The Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland, London, 1902 (an English translation from the German text). Zimmer's thesis is that Succat, Patrick, and Palladius are the same person, who was sent by Pope Celestine, not to convert the country, since it was already Christian, but to assure its obedience to Rome and to crush the nascent heresy of Pelagianism. His mission was a failure.

12 On the primitive church in Ireland, see Professor George Stokes, Ireland and the Celtic Church, London, 1886. H. Zimmer, The, Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland, London, 1902 ; Pelaçius in Ireland, Berlin, 1901. Moran. Early Irish Church. Dublin, 1864. Mgr. Healy, Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars, Dublin, 1892. Eleanor Hull, Early Christian Ireland. Dublin, 1905. Ozanam. La Civilisation chrétienne au cinquième siècle (Paris, 1862-1S65). Montaiembert, Les Moines Occident, Paris, i860- 1867. John Healy, The Ancient Irish Church, London, 1892.

io HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

together with the missionary enthusiasm which character- ised the religious movement in Ireland, place the Irish Church far in advance of either of those just mentioned. Schools were started everywhere for the teaching of Literature and Science, Latin and Greek, Philosophy and Theology. Libraries were erected on all sides, where scholars received books and food free of cost. Students came in pursuit of learning from all parts of Europe to the schools at Clonfert, Lismore, Bangor and Durrow. Seven hundred attended the school at Armagh, which had been founded by St. Patrick himself. Alcuin was trained at the University of Clonmacnoise, the deserted ruins of which still stand upon the banks of the Shannon. Sedulius, in the fifth century, founded with his Carmen Paschale a school of Latin poetry in Ireland. Aileran, in the sixth, knew Hebrew, and cites Origen and Philo in a treatise on the mystical significance of the names in the genealogy of Christ. St. Vergil (Fergal), an Irish Bishop of Salzburg, maintained, in the year 745, the rotundity of the earth and the existence of the antipodes, a doctrine for which indeed he incurred condemnation. Dicuil, the Geographer, examines and criticises all the ancient authorities in his work, De Mensura Orbis Terrarum, published in 825 A.D. This book contains an account of Ireland. From the fifth to the eighth century Ireland was the refuge and the home of modern culture, and may truly be said to have saved European civilisation in the days of the barbarian incursions.^

But she did more. From the sixth to the eighth century the Irish were the apostles of Europe and continued to send missionaries unceasingly throughout the whole

'3 In 665 A.D. the Irish monk Augustin wrote a treatise on the wonders of the Gospel which was long attributed to the Bishop of Hippo. Cummian, Bishop of Clonfert, shows high scientific and canonical attainments in his Epistle on the Paschal Question (seventh century). Sedulius, Abbot of Kildare (not to be confounded with the author of the Carmen Paschale), wrote a treatise on Grammar, a treatise on government, and many Latin poems, about the year 820. Dungal explained astronomy to Charlemagne in a treatise De Duplici Solis Ecir'psi.

BEFORE THE UNION n

continent. Irish monks travelled from the Hebrides in the West, far into Germany in the East, and as far South as the Apennines ; they built churches, recalled the people to their religious allegiance, and restored Christianity, which, since the decay of Roman power, seemed on the point of being extinguished by the Lombard and the Visigoth. St. Columba (or Columcille) (521-597) founded the celebrated monastery of Iona, and converted the Picts. St. Columban travelled through Gaul and founded monasteries from Nantes on one side to the Vosges on the other. He founded Luxeuil, Fontaines, Annegray, and passing through Switzerland, crossed the Alps, and built the abbey of Bobbio in Lombardy, where he ended his days in the year 615. His disciple, St. Gall, established a monastery near the lake of Constance, on the site of the town that still bears his name. Saint Killian converted Franconia and Thuringia and was martyred at Wurzburg in the year 689. Charlemagne surrounded himself with Irish monks at Aix-la-Chapelle. Charles the Bold brought Scotus Erigena, the founder of scholastic philosophy, to Paris. In the seventh century, Ireland gave two bishops to Strasburg, without counting St. Fridolin, the first bishop of Alsace, in the sixth. St. Frigidian (or San Frediano), Bishop of Lucca, in the sixth century, who converted the Lombards, was an Irishman. And in the ninth century the first bishop of Fiesole was St. Donatus, a native of the same country. " For a time

it seemed as if Celtic and not Latin Christianity

was to mould the destinies of the Churches of the West . ." says the English historian, J. R. Green.1 4

II. — The Invasions.1

Such were the glorious beginnings of Irish history, Pagan and Christian, the splendid prelude that was to have so

*4 Short History of the English People, p. 21. This missionary activity explains why we find to-day so many valuable Irish MSS. in continental libraries at Paris, Basle, Koln, Vienna, Milan, etc.

1 On this period (ninth to the fifteenth century) see, besides the

12 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

mournful and terrible a sequel. The first blow struck against Irish cvilisation came from the invasions of the Northmen at the beginning of the ninth century. The Danes (as the Irish historians styled them) first occupied the sea-board. They founded towns — -a species of community hitherto unknown in Ireland. They pierced their way into the interior, destroyed schools, and plundered churches and monasteries. The whole of Ireland soon fell under the sway of the Vikings. Manuscripts were burnt. Science perished, and morals were debased, even in the church itself. Yet the Gaels gradually regained their position, and at the end of the tenth century, King Malachy inflicted upon the " Danes " their first important reverse. At the beginning of the eleventh Brian Boroimhe (Boru), who had wrested the supreme power from the Hy-Niall, routed the Danes decisively at Clontarf on Good Friday, in the year 1014. On that glorious field, however, King Brian, his son and his grandson, perished together. Both King Brian, the Alfred of Ireland, and his predecessor, King Malachy, had done much to revive culture, and, as soon as Danish power was broken, literature and the arts regained their former position. Kenneth O'Hartigan (circ. 975), O'Flynn and MacLiag were the precursors of the renaissance. Scribes and annalists like Tighearnach (circ. 1088) resumed their labours. Everything that could be found of the older writings was brought together in books such as those two books, " The Book of Leinster " (twelfth century) and the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, the work of the scribe Maelmuire (circ. 1106), which are the most ancient among the famous manuscripts of Ireland. The Gospels were written down in the " Book of Durrow," the " Book of Armagh," and many others, that have come down to us from the same period. Ireland once again began to send

works already mentioned, Topography and History of the English Conquest of Ireland, edited by F. J. Furnivall, London, 1896 (see I'Expugnatio Hibernica). Sir John Davies, Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was never subdued, 161 2 (published in 1786 in a collection of Historical Tracts). Calendar of State Papers.

BEFORE THE UNION 13

missionaries to the continent. Marianus founded the monastery of Ratisbon, and Irish monks penetrated even into Hungary and Poland. There was a revival, an echo of the golden age of Ireland. But unhappily the Anglo- Saxon invasions were soon to come upon her and put an end to all such hopes.

Had Ireland been left to herself she would, in all human probability, have succeeded, notwithstanding her decadence, in establishing political unity under a military chief.2 Had the country been brought into peaceful contact with continental civilisation, it must have advanced along the path of modern progress. Even if it had been conquered by a powerful nation, it would at least have participated in the progress of the conquering power. But none of these things happened. England, whose political and social development had been hastened by the Norman Conquest, desired to extend her influence to Ireland. She wished, as Froude strangely tells us, " to complete the work of civilisation happily begun by the Danes." But in actual fact, she only succeeded in trammeling the development of Irish society, and maintain- ing in the country an appalling condition of decadent stagnation, as the result of three centuries and a half of intermittent invasions, never followed by conquest.

The first Anglo-Norman expedition penetrated into Ireland in the year 1169. It was a private adventure led by Richard, Earl of Pembroke, surnamed " Strong- bow," who had been invited by Dermot Mac Murrough, King of Leinster, to aid him in a war against Roderick O'Connor, the Ard-Righ of Ireland. Some months afterwards King Henry II. of England crossed over in person, fortified with the celebrated Bull containing the grant of Ireland, a document, to put the case at its weakest, of doubtful authenticity. He spent Christmas in Dublin, and had himself recognised as over-lord of Ireland, placing this new title after those of Duke of

2 Cf. H. S. Maine, Early History of Institutions, London, 1875, p. 54.

14 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Normandy, and Duke of Acquitaine. Then " he departed out of Ireland without striking one blow, or building one castle . . . neither left he behind him one true subject more than those that he found there at his first coming over . . ."3 But the crucial step had been taken. The English had established a foothold in Ireland. The invaders occupied the eastern edge of the island, which they styled the Pale, or English "march," and they gradually covered it with castles and organised it on a feudal basis. For the next three centuries and a half the English invasion continued without interruption. New colonists and adventurers kept streaming over, without intermission, to take the place of those who had abandoned the enterprise, or else gone over to the enemy, and thus the wound in the nation's side was never permitted to heal up. The Irish replied by counter attacks under the leadership of Aodh O'Connor, Art Mac Murrough, Donald O'Neill, and the Scotsman Edward Bruce. The Pale varied in extent in accordance with the turn taken by affairs. Yet, even when its area was greatest, it was not more than one-third that of the whole island. English power did not extend outside it. As regards the territory that lay beyond it English public policy was confined to fostering dissensions among the Irish and inducing the chiefs of individual clans, by fear or favour, to recognise English suzerainty and accept feudal titles and privileges in return. Thus, on the one hand, the Irish were so divided and so much inferior to the invaders in military attainments, that they could never hope to conquer them and drive them out once for all. On the other hand, the English never carried their military operations to a conclusion. They satisfied their taste for adventure in the Crusades, their ambition in the French wars, and in these and in the Wars of the Roses they exhausted their resources. Ireland they neither subdued nor conquered. A war without truce and without issue

3 Sir John Davies, Discovery (1612).

BEFORE THE UNION 15

continued in Ireland for three centuries, and was waged " with all the ferocity without the finality of conquest." 4 Far from conquering Ireland, the English had considerable difficulty in maintaining their own position there, and keeping their garrison in control. Two causes conspired, in the nature of things, to deplete continually the numbers of this " garrison," so that it had to be continually " planted " and " replanted." Planters never settled in Ireland without the intention of returning. They were never willing to accept Ireland as their country for good and all ; and after spending a few years in it, many left the island. Many also were absentees. Edward III. had already to complain of absenteeism in 1295, and Richard II. imposed a special tax on it shortly afterwards. Moreover, those who remained and made Ireland their home, were speedily assimilated by their surroundings, so that at the end of two or three generations, they became Irish themselves. They took Irish wives and surrounded themselves with Irish retainers. They spoke Irish and wore the Irish costume. They had their bards and their brehons, and were, in fact, to all appearance, Irish Chieftains. Had the country been really conquered, this " Irishisation " would have been a most fortunate turn of affairs. But it constituted a source of serious danger to the partial and precarious occupation effected by the English government, and hence that government naturally did everything in its power to hinder the process and to prevent the fusion of English and Irish. This object was especially aimed at in the famous statute of Kilkenny (1367 A.D.) by which Edward III. forbade Englishmen to marry Irishwomen, to form alliances with the Irish, to live according to Irish laws, to use the Irish language, to entertain Irishmen, to take Irish surnames, or to wear a moustache after the Irish fashion. All these things were prohibited under pain of death or imprisonment. Such laws were intended to prevent the English from

4 Sir Horace Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century, p. $j.

i6 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

sinking to the level of the Irish. It was also sought to prevent the Irish from raising themselves to the level of the English. Hence, not only were the Irish not made subject to the feudal law, but, except as a special favour, they were refused its benefits. An " Irish enemy," as he was called, was treated as an outlaw and left a prey to the brutality of the tax-gatherers. To kill an Irishman or violate an Irish woman was no crime in the eye of the law. All these measures, however, proved a complete failure. The English in Ireland became " Irished " by mere force of circumstances, and there grew up gradually a people intermediate between the native Irish and the English of the Pale. This third nationality was composed of the Anglo- Irish, " Old English " or " degenerate English " (as the servants of the government styled them) who being at all times turbulent and disloyal to the English sovereign, gained the name of being " more Irish than the Irish themselves," Hibernis tpsis Hiberniores. At their head stood certain great Anglo-Norman families, several of whom had been settled in Ireland since the eleventh century. These families occupied an almost regal position, possessing immense properties and innumerable depen- dents. Such were the Fitzgeralds or Geraldines, whose head was the Earl of Kildare ; the Butlers, Lords of Ormond ; the Desmonds, the de Courceys and the de Burghs (Burkes). Each family sought to gain the upper hand. They made alliances by treaty or by marriage with the great Gaelic chiefs, such as the O'Neills, the O'Connors, the O'Donnells or the O'Moores. Ireland was devastated by their unending contentions.

The king himself had no control over them. He was no more master of his Irish garrison than of Ireland itself. "If all Ireland cannot rule Kildare, then let Kildare rule all Ireland," said Henry VII. at a later date. There was indeed in Ireland a Lord Lieutenant ' who carried on the government for the king, or a " Deputy," who took the place of the Lord Lieutenant. But whoever he might be, in most cases he soon fell under suspicion,

BEFORE THE UNION i7

and did not hold the post for long. There were no less than ninety-five governors in the course of the fourteenth century, and no less than eighty-five in the course of the fifteenth. The inevitable result of all this was that English influence gradually diminished and Gaelic influence increased. By the end of the fifteenth century the " Pale " had been reduced to a narrow strip of territory around Dublin twenty leagues in length and eight in breadth. The great lords were almost independent and treated the government with contempt. They exacted " tribute," or " black rent," from the lesser chiefs, and not infrequently pushed their military expeditions up to the very gates of Dublin itself. Outside the Pale the ancient Gaelic society, organised on the clan system and governed by the Brehon laws, continued to exist with but slight modification. Had the Irish at this time possessed a leader like Brian or Malachy, the English would soon have been shown the door. But the English invasion had had the effect of preventing the bringing about of national unity. It had " fatally arrested the possible evolution of a truly national kingdom and national type of culture." 5 Yet after three centuries and a half the wave of invasion seemed now to have spent its force ; the invader seemed on the point of departing from the country for good. All progress had come to a stand-still. The English had neither permitted the country to develop on its own fines, nor been able to develop it themselves, and the solution of what was henceforth to be known as the Irish question appeared to be further off than ever.

III. — The Conquest (1495-1603).1

When, with the accession of the Tudors, the power of the nobles was broken and the English throne became a firmly

5 James Bryce, Two Centuries of Irish History, London, 1888, p. 15.

1 On this period see especially Ireland under Elizabeth, by Don Philip O'Sullivan Bear (translated from the Latin original, 1621 ), Dublin, 1903. The State Papers (Times of the Tudors), edited by H. C. Hamilton. Sir John Davies, Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued, 1612, Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and

C

1 8 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

established despotism, there came a change in English policy in regard to Ireland. The King's Government set itself to make the royal power supreme in the Pale, and to effect a real conquest of the whole island. Even under the new conditions, however, the Government acted only when compelled by force of circumstances, and their conduct was characterised at once by so little steadfastness of purpose and such extreme cruelty that the conquest took two centuries to accomplish. It was achieved only as the result of a series of wars, crimes, and massacres, which left the people prostrate, thinned in numbers, and filled for ever after with an undying hatred.

It is to be set down to the credit of the Tudors, that there was at any rate one among them who sought in some respects to govern Ireland well. It is a strange coincidence that this should have been Henry VIII., who was at the very same time sowing the seeds of so much future trouble by introducing the Reformation into Ireland. Under his predecessor, Henry VII., English arms, for the first time for many a long day, had proved victorious in Ireland, under the banner of Gerald, Earl of Kildare, a noble who had come over to the King's side ; and the army, profiting by its success, had pushed its way into the most distant parts of Connacht.

Henry VIII., being thus confident of the future, determined to win the sovranty of Ireland by peaceful means. He first set about establishing his authority over the nobles of the Pale. He showed the same harshness towards the great barons of Ireland as towards the great lords of England. He twice cast Gerald, Earl of Kildare, son of the Earl just mentioned, into the Tower of London ; and in 1534, after the rebellion of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald (called " Silken Thomas ") he put him to death

Ireland, London, 1577. The Carew Papers, edited by J. S. Brewer and William Bullen in the Calendars of State Papers. Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland, 1691. Annals of the Four Masters, 1636. Pacata Hibernia, by Sir George Carew, 1633. F. Moryson, History of Ireland, 1 599-1603, Dublin, 1735. R. Payne, Brief Description of Ireland, London, 1589. Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, London, 1885.

BEFORE THE UNION 19

with five of his uncles, although he had promised to spare his life. " The King would never rest until he had had the blood of the Géraldine race," said the Irish. Towards the Gaelic population of Ireland, on the contrary, his conduct was characterised by great mildness ; he sought to conciliate them, ordered that their customs should be respected, and hoped to found his power in Ireland on an aristocracy of Celtic race. The great Irish chiefs, Conn O'Neill and Brian O'Connor, had taken up arms to avenge their relatives, the Geraldines, but Henry VIII. , once he had suppressed the rising, won them over to his side, received their submission, granted them lands — lands taken from the monasteries — and gave them English in addition to their Celtic titles. Conn O'Neill became Earl of Tyrone ; Hugh O'Donnell Earl of Tyrconnell ; The O'Brien, Earl of Thomond ; The O'Quin, Earl of Dunraven.2 " He thus showed,'' as Richey tells us, " a moderation, a conciliatory spirit, a respect for the feelings of the Celtic population, a sympathy with the poor, which no subsequent English ruler has ever displayed.'^ When in the Parliament of 1542, he assumed the title of King of Ireland, the country seemed to have been brought definitely and permanently under his sway, and as a matter of fact the Irish remained at peace until his death.

But after his death there came a change, and a policy of oppression and massacre took the place of his policy of conciliation. In the " Pale " indeed Elizabeth and the Stuarts continued the levelling policy of Henry VIII., employing for the purpose the strong hand of such governors as Sir John Perrot and the celebrated Strafford. But as regards the native Irish, they no longer followed Henry's counsels. They began by forcibly and pitilessly introducing English law, English law-courts and English

2 Chiefs of Celtic clans bore (and their descendants still bear) the article The (" an ") before their name (that of their clan) : The O'Donnell, The MacDermott. When Shane O'Neill took arms in 1560 against Elizabeth he gave up the title of Earl of Tyrone and again took the name of " The O'Neill."

3 Short History of the Irish People, p. 268.

20 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

institutions into the Celtic part of the island. Henry VII. had already made English laws applicable to Ireland by Poynings Act, by which he had rendered the Irish Parliament subordinate to the English crown. The Government now decided to drive out Celtic civilisation by main force and replace it by English. They deter- mined also to conquer Ireland by force of arms, and, with this object in view, decided to take a step, which Henry VIII. had always refused to take even on the advice of Grey and Wolsey, namely, to confiscate the soil of Ireland and " plant " it with Englishmen. The era of confiscations and " plantations " was now to be in- augurated.

Plantations were indeed no novelty. From the very

beginning of the English occupation, while the Irish

chiefs were being invited to come and do homage

and receive back the tribal territories as private property

on a feudal tenure, grants of lands were perpetually being

made to the invaders. The grants were either of real

fiefs, lands which had been confiscated, or of lands which

were to be confiscated in the future, fiefs in partibus, as

it was put. But it was under Queen Mary Tudor that

the operation was for the first time undertaken on a

grand scale. In 1556 Deputy Bellingham invaded the

districts of Leix and Offally, which belonged to the

O'Moores and O'Connors, confiscated them and made

them into two counties, King's County and Queen's

County. They were then " planted " with English

settlers. In Elizabeth's reign the Desmond rebels were

attainted in the year 1580, and their lands, which

comprised almost the whole province of Munster,

distributed among a crowd of greedy " undertakers." A

similar transaction was carried out on an even more

extensive scale under James I., when, after the flight of

the Earls,4 the whole of Ulster was confiscated and

planted with from twenty to thirty thousand settlers,

4 Tyrone and Tyrconnell (1607).

BEFORE THE UNION 21

mostly Scotchmen. It was in this way that the Ulster of modern times, Scotch in nationality and Presbyterian in religion, first came into being. Worse was to come. Throughout the reigns of the two first Stuarts the work of confiscation under legal forms was pursued, by means of an odious combination of quibbling, swindling and tyranny. Under James I., Gaelic tenures were abolished throughout the island and replaced by the English land system, and when the modus operandi was thus simplified, a swarm of " discoverers " started to dispoil the land- owners of Ireland, by breaking the titles under which they held their lands. Nearly half a million acres were seized upon in this fashion. Ravages like those of war, as Edmund Burke put it, took place in a time of perfect peace. On the eve of his downfall, Strafford was making preparations to confiscate Connacht, the only province that had hitherto remained untouched.

What measure of success, it may be asked, did these " plantations," whether effected by methods of violence or under a cloak of legality, attain ? Did they achieve their purpose and secure the subjugation of the country, by filling it with English settlers ? It may be answered at once that they did not. The newcomers were, for the most part, the dregs of the English population, il a motley crew of adventurers," as Lord Clare expressed it at a later date. 5 Elizabeth and James had imposed conditions upon the settlers, but these were disregarded. Many settlers took the earliest opportunity of selling their allotments to speculators. Others did not even trouble themselves to make the journey to Ireland, and as to diffusing English civilisation, they did so, in the words of Goldwin Smith, " much as an American settler would diffuse it among Red Indians, by improving them, as far as they could, from off the face of the earth."

5 " The vultures settled upon Ireland," as Goldwin Smith puts it (Irish History and Irish Character, p. 79). Cf. the saying of Stewart, a contemporary, cited in Lecky (II., 109), " Going to Ireland was looked on as a miserable mark of a deplorable person."

22 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Everyone in Ireland was thus affected by the confisca- tions ; the Irish suffered as well as the Anglo-Irish, the Desmonds as well as the O'Neills, those who were Gaels by race equally with those who were so by adoption ; and the result that might have been expected ensued. The whole country united in opposition to the oppressions and confiscations of English law, and of the English "; planters " whom it had brought into being. Each chief felt himself individually threatened with a bill of attainder or a decree for confiscation and, perhaps, by an English dagger or English poison as well. Whatever might have been the excesses or misdeeds of the chief himself, he had the sympathy of the people, for there was no one else to defend them against the foreign foe. Whenever one of them rose in revolt the whole province rose with him ; and each of the chiefs did rise, but unhappily for themselves, never in a simultaneous and con- certed movement. There was no combined action. They never reaped the benefit of the alliances they had formed on the continent, and the English were always able to procure allies and promote defection among them.

Three great insurrections took place during the reign of Elizabeth. In 1560 came that of Shane O'Neill, who defeated Sussex, treated with the Queen in London, defied English authority, and met his end in 1567, when he was murdered by the instructions of Lord Deputy Sydney. Desmond rose in 1567 and, in a more serious campaign, in 1579. Munster rose with him, and he pushed his operations as far as the Wicklow mountains. But after a contest, protracted over four years, he was slain by his pursuers in a remote part of Kerry. Finally, in 1596, another O'Neill, Aodh (or Hugh), believing that his downfall was being plotted in Dublin, made common cause with his rival, O'Donnell, and began by defeating the English under Bagenal. He received, however, but poor support from Desmond (the " sugaun earl"). Reinforcements from Spain under Don Juan d'Aguila having come too late, he was after a time compelled to come to terms with

BEFORE THE UNION 23

Mountjoy, under which he was conceded all the honours of war.

Elizabeth had thus made an end of insurrections, many as they had been. But the price had been a heavy one. On each occasion the course of events was the same. The rebellion was first provoked by systematic oppression, by treachery,6 or by acts of violence. Then it was suppressed by wholesale devastation and massacre. The English were too busily occupied with wars, plots and religious strife, to trouble about effecting a complete and final conquest of Ireland ; hence cruelty took the place of vigorous action, and extermination was substituted for conquest. The cold-blooded and systematic savagery of Elizabeth's lieutenants, Sussex, Mountjoy, Raleigh, Pelham, Grey, and Carew, has seldom been equalled, and the accounts of their proceedings given by Englishmen, such as Carew, himself, Spenser, Holinshed and Sir John Davies, fill one with horror. " The suppression of the native race, in the wars against Shane O'Neill, Desmond and Tyrone, was carried out with a ferocity which surpassed that of Alva in the Netherlands and has seldom been exceeded in the pages of history." These are the words with which the famous historian, Lecky, opens his account of these horrors. 7

Lecky then tells us how Sussex first sought to have Shane O'Neill murdered, and afterwards sent him poison ; how Essex, having accepted Brian O'Neill's hospitality, had the house surrounded, massacred O'Neill's followers, and then sent him and his wife to Dublin, where they were both put to death ; how when it was sought to wring a confession of rebellion from the Catholic Arch- bishop Hurley, he was tortured by having his feet roasted before he was sent to the gallows. But isolated incidents of this nature serve only to distract our attention from

6 See the many instances in Leland, Moryson, Holinshed and in the State Papers. Cf. Daniel O'Connell. A Memoir of Ireland. Chap. I.

1 History of England in the iSth Century. II.. p. 95. (See pp. 95-98 Cf. Froude, History of England, ed 1875. Chaps. X. and XI.

24 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

the broad features of the history of the period, and thus prevent us from realising to the full the atrocious character of these wars. They were, in truth, campaigns of extermination in which the Irish were slaughtered like wild beasts. There was a deliberate and systematic butchery, not only of grown men, but of women and children as well. Parties of soldiers scoured the country, putting to the sword everyone they met, and the English generals made no secret of their massacres of women and unoffending peasants. Irish annalists relate, with

shocking details, how the soldiery of Pelham and Ormond used to slay i; blind and feeble men, women, boys and girls, rich persons, idiots and old people/' They tell us how, in the Desmond country, when all resistance was at an end, the soldiers forced the people into old barns, which they then set on fire, putting to the sword any who sought to escape ; how soldiers were seen to catch up children on the points of their swords, making them squirm in the air in their death agony ; or yet again, how women were found hanged from trees, with the children at their bosoms strangled in the hair of their mothers. In Ulster, too, Mountjoy " never showed mercy to any but such as had drawn the blood of some of their fellow rebels ; thus, MacMahon and MacArtmoyle offered to submit, but neither could be received without the other's head.;;s

No doubt, the cruelties were not all on one side, but is it the part of him who excels in force to excel also in inhumanity ? " The sword, ;; continues Lecky, " was not found sufficiently expeditious, but another method proved more efficacious." Year after year over a great

S Leckv op. cit. IL, 95-98. In 1 579 the garrison of Smerwick. County 8 cry seven hundred in number, having surrendered at discretion Lord Deputy- Grey had them put to death in the presence of Sir Walter Raleigh (Leland op. cit. Bk. IV., chap. II.). The same Lord Grey, accompanied by Ormond, entered Sleughlogher in open daylight and put four hundred persons to death (Rolinshed op. cit. VI.). On the massacre of Mullaghmast, accomplished by treachery, and in comparison with which that of Glencoe pales into insignificance, see Leland, op. cit. Bk. IV., chap. IL Cf. O'Connell. A Memoir of Ireland, Obser- vations, Proofs and Illustrations, Chap. I.

BEFORE THE UNION 25

part of Ireland all means of human subsistence were destroyed, no quarter was given to prisoners who sur- rendered, and the whole population was skilfully and steadily starved to death. The troops of Sir Richard Percie " left neither corn nor barn, nor house unburnt between Kinsale and Ross."

The troops of Captain Harvie did the like between Ross and Ban try. The troops of Sir Charles Wilmot entered without resistance an Irish camp, where they found nothing but hurt and sick men, ;i whose pains and lives by the soldiers were both determined." The Lord President, as he himself assures us, having heard that the Munster fugitives were harboured in certain parts of that province, diverted his forces thither, '* burnt all the houses

and corn, taking great preys and harassing the

country killed all mankind that were found therein." Thence he passed to other parts, where '; he did the like, not leaving behind him man or beast, corn or cattle, except such as had been conveyed into earth." A high English official, writing in 1582, computed that in six months, more than 30,000 people had been starved to death in Munster, besides those who were hanged or who perished by the sword. 9

These things happened during the course of a war. But even in a period of complete peace, the ;" Presidents " of the provinces devastated the country in a manner equally appalling. Malby, President of Connacht, tells us that, having made his way into the territory of the Burkes, he decided to lay waste the countryside with fire and sword, sparing neither young nor old, that he burnt everything and put to the sword everyone he met with, and that having taken a castle by assault he handed over the garrison, who had surrendered, to the mercy of his soldiers, who put them all to death.10

9 Lecky, op. cit. IL, 96-97. The quotations are from Sir George Carew's Pacata Hibernia.

10 Froude, History of England, XL, p. 197.

26 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Leland relates11 that Sir Arthur Chichester, the governor of Carrickfergus, laid waste the country for twenty miles around that town. Sir Samuel Bagenal, the governor of Newry, did the same, and the English garrisons were occupied every day in the work of rapine and devastation.

Famine was deemed the quickest and surest means of reducing the rebels, as we are told by Leland in another place. This was the view of that gentle idealist, the author of the " Faerie Queen," Edmund Spenser, who explains with perfect naivety that the famished Irish " will soon be compelled to devour each other." We may quote Spenser further as to the state of Munster after the Desmond war. The poet had received a considerable allotment of confiscated land from his protector, Grey. " Out of every corner of the woodes and glynnes," he tells us, " they came creeping foorthe upon theyr handes, for theyre legges could not beare them ; they looked like anatomyes of deathe, they spake like ghosts crying out of theyre graves ; they did eat of the dead carrions, happy were they if they could find them, yea and one another soon after insoemuch as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of theyr graves. And if they found a plot of water-cresses or sham-rokes, to these they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal! that in short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly made voyde of man or beast."

" From Dingle to the Rock of Cashel," say the Annals of the Four Masters, " not the lowing of a cow nor the voice of the plowman was that year to be heard." The work was carried out in the same way in the North. " In the single county of Tyrone 3,000 persons in a few months were starved. No spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of towns and especially of wasted counties, than to see multitudes of these poor people dead with

11 Leland, op. cit. IV., Chap. V. It must be remembered that Leland writes as an Englishman and a Protestant Minister. Cf. Spenser. A View of the Present State of Ireland, p. 654 {Globe Ed.).

BEFORE THE UNION 27

their mouths all coloured green with eating nettles, docks, and all things they could find above the ground." On one occasion, Sir Arthur Chichester, with some English officers, saw three small children — the eldest not above ten years old — feeding off the flesh of their starved mother. In the neighbourhood of Newry famine gave rise to a novel and appalling crime. It was discovered that some old women were accustomed by fighting fires to attract children, whom they then murdered and proceeded to devour.12 Ireland, brazed, as in a mortar, to use Sir John Davies' phrase, at last submitted. In the last years of the century half the population had perished. Elizabeth reigned over corpses and ashes. Hibernia Pacata. Ireland was "pacified."^

IV. — The Conquest (1603-1691).1

" Peace reigned in Ireland," but the conquest had not yet been achieved, and the work of subjugation was destined to be carried out by massacres, confiscations and " plantations," in the seventeenth century precisely as in the sixteenth. Things followed much the same course in the reigns of the Stuarts and under Cromwell as in the days of the Tudors, and the conquest of Ireland was not finally achieved until the time of William III. But in the seventeenth century the work of subjugation assumed at once more of a religious and more of a political complexion. Ireland had remained Catholic when England had embraced Protestantism ; and as an inevitable result religious persecution was added to race

12 Lecky, op. cit. IL, 98.

13 Lord Grey, one of Elizabeth's Lieutenants (Leland,o/>. cit. IV., Chap. II.).

1 See especially on this epoch, Ball, The Reformed Church in Ireland, London, 1886. State Papers (reign of James I.). Carte, History of the Life of the Duke of Ormond, 1735-1736. Sir William Petty, Political Anatomy of Ireland, 1691. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement in Ireland, 2nd edition, Dublin, 1875. J- F- Taylor, Owen Roe O'Neill, 3rd edition, London and Dublin, 1904. Thomas Davis. The Patriot Parliament (3rd edition in the New Irish Library, London).

28 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

domination. Again, Ireland being so closely connected with England, could not but be affected by the two revolutions for which the Stuarts were responsible, and to which they fell victims. The Irish took the losing side. England wreaked vengeance on them for their loyalty, real or apparent, to a reigning house that cared no more for the Irish than the Irish cared for them, that in truth regarded Ireland as but a pawn in their political game.

Again, when the English turned Protestant, they naturally desired that the Irish should do the same.2 But the Tudors, who persecuted Catholicism so sharply in England, had been tolerant, by comparison, in Ireland. The Church of England was not long in establishing a foothold in the east of Ireland, as a result of the confiscation of churches, monasteries and religious houses. 3 But at first no attempt was made to extend its influence beyond the " Pale," and hence, outside the Pale, Irish and Anglo- Irish alike remained Catholic.

Elizabeth was the first to persecute " Papist recusants," that is, those who refused to take the oath of supremacy. She imprisoned or put to death bishops, monks, and Jesuits.4 Moreover, as the " plantations " progressed, the Anglican church grew in power. Having been triumphantly endowed with the spoils of Catholicism by Henry VIII. , it embarked upon a course of persecution. From this forward the animosity between the Catholics and the new Protestant "planters " grew every day more bitter. The Puritans assumed a threatening attitude. Papists were

2 G. de Beaumont op. cit. i, 32.

3 Anglicanism was first introduced into Ireland by the Act of Supremacy of 1537, which imposed an oath which anyone refusing to take was guilty of High Treason. This was followed by an Act for the Supression of Abbeys, which was extended to all religious houses in 1542? Convents and abbeys were declared to be the property of the Crown. These Acts were subsequently repealed by Queen Mary Tudor, in 1553, but the confiscated property which had changed hands was not restored to its owners. Finally, Anglicanism was definitely established in Ireland by Elizabeth, by the Act of Supremacy and Uniformity of I 562.

4 Lecky, the great historian (op. cit. II., 99-103), lays stress on the point that the wars of Elizabeth in Ireland were entirely political and agrarian, and not religious wars. This is most questionable. Nay,

BEFORE THE UNION 29

excluded from all places of emolument, and were thrown into gaol, or had their goods confiscated, because they refused to take the oath. When we add to the rancour produced by this persecution that which resulted from wholesale confiscations, from the " planting " of Ulster in James I.'s reign, from Strafford's projected confiscation of Connacht, from deeds of spoliation carried on under legal forms, from the menace that hung over every head throughout the length and breadth of the country, there is small difficulty in understanding how it came about that all the Catholics of Ireland — save a few Government hacks, like the Ormonds — profited by the weakness of the Crown in these troubled times, and rose en masse, not for the king, but against the king, against the English Government, against the planter and the persecutor, in the Great Rebellion of 164 1.

The facts can be found in all contemporary accounts of the insurrection. The men of Ulster were the first to rise and drive out the new " planters " not a few of whom perished in the conflict. 5 The insurrection then spread through the country, having now assumed a purely religious aspect. The reprisals of the Protestants and the proscriptions decreed by the English Parliament added to its vigour. Victory crowned the campaign under the leadership of Owen Roe O'Neill. The insurgents gained supreme power throughout Catholic Ireland and proceeded to establish their Parliament — the Confederation of Kilkenny. They entered into negotiations with Charles I. and were duped by him. Their excesses, terrible as they

rather it is certain that from the middle of the sixteenth century on, the religious question had become acute in Ireland, and anti-Catholic persecutions had a great deal to do with the risings of that epoch.

5 See Lecky's refutation of the exaggerations, by which, certain anti- Irish historians have endeavoured to paint the Ulster Rebellion of 1641 as a general massacre of Protestants, a parallel to the Sicilian Vespers, some of them, putting the number of slain at 50,000, and others at 100,000/ or even 200,000 or 310,000. The number of Protestants slain was from four to eight thousand. Lecky points out the interest which the English in Ireland had in exaggerating the accounts of the massacre. They hoped in this way to strengthen their shaky titles to their property and to pave the way for the Penal Laws. (Cf. cit. II. 128, 153).

30 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

were, were far less terrible than those perpetrated by Sir Charles Coote, St. Léger, and Sir Frederick Hamilton, who, on the opposite side, proved themselves worthy successors of Mount joy and Carew.

From the first the Lords Justices ordered the troops to refuse all quarter. In Leinster, they were instructed to slay and destroy the rebels, their adherents and their accomplices, to burn and raze to the ground all towns, places and houses, where they received shelter, to put to the sword all the inhabitants capable of bearing arms. They had orders to put to death any priest that fell into the hands of the troops. It is not difficult to imagine the fashion in which such orders were carried out. The details of the massacres that ensued are best omitted.6 It is pleasanter to recall, as Lecky does, 7 how Owen Roe O'Neill made it his practice to repress excesses on the part of his troops and invariably gave quarter to prisoners ; how the Synod of Kilkenny in 1642 decreed excommunication against Catholics guilty of pillage, arson or murder ; how the rebels did honour to the Protestant Bishop Bedell, protected his ministrations, and gave him, on his death, a magnificent funeral with military honours. It was at his funeral that the crowd made use of the famous cry, " Requiescat in face, U Uirnus AnglorumV

But, in England, the revolution had been successful. It was no longer with the King, but with the " Round- heads," with Cromwell and his Iron-sides, that the Irish

t> See Lecky, op. cit. 156 et seq. Carte's soldiers perpetrated wholesale massacres and spared neither women nor children. Saint-Leger ravaged Munster with fire and sword. One day he had a woman, big with child, cut open, and her three children, taken from her arms, impaled upon spear points. Near Newry, Monroe and his troops killed in one day seven hundred peasants, men, women and children, who were driving their flocks. In Westmeath and Longford his soldiers set the country ablaze and slew everybody. In Island Magee thirty families were massacred in their beds by the Carrickfergus garrison. Sir William Coote tells us himself of the exploits of his regiment in Ulster — " Starved and famished of the vulgar sort whose goods were seized on by this regiment, 7,000." It was at this time that the phrase " Nits will be lice," was coined to justify the slaughter of children. Cf. O'Connell, A Memoir of Ireland (Observations, Proofs, etc. Chap. III.).

7 Op. cit. II., 161 -167.

BEFORE THE UNION 31

had now to deal. Ormond and the Royalist forces now sided with the insurgents against whom they had but lately been engaged, but both parties were destined to succumb before the arms of the Puritans. Cromwell landed in Ireland in 1649 and proceeded " in the name of Jesus " to massacre the garrison of Drogheda, thirty thousand in number, Englishmen for the most part, though Catholics. A similar fate overtook the garrison of Wexford. Before long, Ireland lay prostrate at the Protector's feet. He decided to deal with the country on a very simple plan, namely, to exterminate the Irish inhabitants and make it a land inhabited only by Englishmen. In the eleven years of the war 616,000 persons had already perished out of a total population of 1, 466, 000. 8 The policy of extermination had done its work. Priests were hanged, banished, or imprisoned in Arran. A campaign of persecution was maintained against the Catholics. Between thirty and forty thousand Irishmen fled to France and Spain to join those who had formerly become exiles during the wars and confiscations of Elizabeth's reign. Thousands of young girls, women and children, were sold as slaves and sent to Jamaica and the Barbadoes, as were also all rebels taken with arms in their hands. 9 In this way Ireland was turned into a desert and cleared of its inhabitants. The wolves came to ravage at the very gates of Dublin. Cromwell now desired to colonise the country with English. The lands of three provinces, Ulster, Leinster and Munster, were confiscated and divided between the Puritan soldiers and the " undertakers " who had advanced to the Parliament the funds required for the expedition. The remaining province, Connacht, was given over to the remnants of the old population, who were, so to speak, penned into it. Death was to be the portion of every

8 These are Sir William Petty's figures (Lecky.o/?. cit. IL, 172).

9 Sir William Petty puts the figures at 6,000. Others have put it as high as 100,000, but this latter figure is an obvious exaggeration. Cf. O'Connell, A Memoir of Ireland. Chap. III.

32 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Irishman found east of the Shannon. " To Hell or Connacht ! " was the law and the policy of Cromwell.

Never has a more savage design been put into execution, at any rate in modern times, than this project of destroying a whole nation and planting another in its place. Yet, even Cromwell did not dare to complete the work, and for this he has been censured by Froude and other writers. The Irish race was not entirely extinguished, and Irishmen continued to exist not merely in Connacht but throughout the whole island. The need for manual labour caused the new colonists to preserve the former inhabitants " as hewers of wood and drawers of water," if nothing better. Ireland was so far from becoming English that less than half a century later she was again strong enough to join battle with the English; once again, strange though it seem, in the cause of the Stuarts. Yet it was Cromwell who brought modern Ireland into being and fashioned it into what it is ; and it is he who is ultimately responsible for all its troubles. Any inquiry into the Irish question must begin by a consideration of his measures, for even the Jacobite reaction interfered little with his handiwork. When Charles II. was restored in England he granted a general confirmation of the " settlement," although in truth Cromwell's " planters " had turned out no better than those of Elizabeth and James I. Charles also maintained the laws by which the Catholic religion was proscribed, and it was in his reign that Archbishop Talbot of Malahide was imprisoned in Dublin Castle, where he died, and that the Venerable Oliver Plunket, Archbishop of Armagh, was dragged before a mock tribunal in London by which he was condemned to death, and suffered martyrdom. But when the second revolution broke out in England, James IL, being in sore need of the assistance of the Irish, set himself to natter the hopes of Catholics, and made promises of restoration to those whose lands had been confiscated. Hence, when he was driven out of England all the " papists " in Ireland rose in his favour, or rather rose against the English. An Irish Catholic

BEFORE THE UNION 33

Parliament was assembled, which proclaimed religious liberty for all men in 1689, and set itself to restore Irish rights by measures of violence, which, however, were not in all cases without justification.10 What followed is matter of history ; William's landing in Ireland ; James's flight to the Boyne ; the brave stand of the Protestants at Deny ; the splendid defence of Limerick by the Catholics. A treaty of peace was signed at Limerick in 1691, but the war had the same fatal issue as all other Irish insurrections ; a million acres were confiscated by William, and planted anew with Englishmen and Protestants. This was the last of the long series of English " Plantations " in Ireland.

What then was the final outcome of all these insurrec- tions, of that cruel era of conquest which began with the first of the Tudors and ended only with the reign of the last Stuart, a period in which plantations, wars and massacres, followed one the other with a dire monotony unparalleled in modern history ? There resulted from them not a single and united Irish nation, but rather two hostile Irelands, the one superimposed on the other, such as we find to-day. But the line of demarcation between the two nations was no longer one of race ; the division was a political, a religious, and a social one. On the one side were the Protestants, of Scotch or English descent, the last conquistadores of Ireland, the men who had benefited by the last plantations, or those who had succeeded to their rights. All the land, all the wealth, and all the political power in the country were in their hands. Their Church was the State Church. They constituted the English "colony," the Ascendancy, the Anglo-Saxon Hegemony or Aristocracy of Ireland. On the other side was the mingled mass of the whole former Catholic population of Ireland — Irish, Anglo-Irish, English — now brought together and made one by misery

10 Macaulay's judgment upon the Parliament of 1689 is not impartial. See Lecky's more moderate view (op. cit. IL, 183-196). The Act of Attainder against the Orangemen bears a curious resemblance to the Decrees of the Convention against Emigres.

D

34 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

and persecution. Most of them had been reduced to the condition of helots. Some even worked as tenant-farmers the land once owned by their ancestors.11 The " common enemy " was the designation usually applied to them. Two centuries of massacre and persecution had planted ineradicably in their hearts an undying hatred of England.12

V. — The Eighteenth Century : The Penal Laws.1

Out of these two Irelands, England, in the course of the eighteenth century, could have, and ought to have, made one united Ireland. The country was exhausted, the English conquest firmly established. The Jacobite move- ments of the eighteenth century did not affect Ireland. Lord Chesterfield might well say that the only " papist danger " he knew of was the beauty of Miss Ambrose, a reigning belle of the time in Dublin.

" The nation," says Lecky,2 " was as passive as clay in the hands of the potter " . . . " No country," he tells us later, " ever exercised a more complete control over the destinies of another than did England over those of Ireland for three-quarters of a century after the Revolution."

11 Lecky, op. cit. IL, 205.

12 lb., IL, 199. The total population of Ireland was very much reduced after Cromwellian times. Sir William Petty estimated it in 1672 at but 1,100,000 souls. Afterwards it rapidly increased. Petty, in the 1 7th century, estimated the proportion of Protestants to Catholics at 3 : 8 ; Coghill, in 1733, at 1 : 3 ; Primate Boulter, about the same time, at 1 : 5. (Cf. Lecky, op. cit'yll., 255).

1 See especially for this period the works of Swift, Berkeley, Burke, Arthur Young, and lives and speeches of Grattan and Flood, the letters of Primate Boulter and Archbishop Synge. Sir J. Barrington's Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation, 1833. Sir G. Lewis, Irish Disturbances, London, 1836. Two Centuries of Irish History, edited by James Bryce, 1888. Froude, The English in Ireland in the iSth Century, London, 1872, and The Two Chiefs of Dunboy. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland. 2nd edition, 1871, and 3rd edition, 1903 (it is interesting to compare the two editions, which exhibit striking differences). G. De Beaumont in the first volume of Ireland : Social, Political, and Religious (p. 75 to 131) gives a very clear exposition of the Penal Laws and their consequences. Cf. in regard to the Penal Laws the laments of the Irish poet, O'Rahilly, whose works have been lately edited by Fr. Dineen (3rd vol. of the Irish Texts Society, London, 1900).

2 Op. cit. IL, 256 — As to Chesterfield's mat, see ib., 278.

BEFORE THE UNION 35

Thus the union of the two peoples, the two nations, that then existed in Ireland, would not have been difficult to accomplish ; and if left to themselves, the Irish would, no doubt, soon have assimilated the new rulers, as they had assimilated the old. Even the " planters " of Elizabeth's time had already become Irish in large part. Many of them had assisted in stirring up the insurrection of 164 1. The grandson of Spenser, the poet, had himself been driven out of his land by Cromwell's army, as an Irish papist. We have it on the word of a contemporary that forty years after Cromwell's time, many of the children of the Protector's soldiers could not speak a word of English ; and seven years after the battle of the Boyne, many of William III.'s soldiers had already become Catholics. " The conquest of Ireland by the Puritan soldiers of Cromwell," observes Lecky, " was hardly more signal than the conquest of these soldiers by the invincible Catholicism of the Irish women. "3 To fashion these two Ir elands into one and then to civilise and develop this new Ireland, such was the task that lay before the English government. But this task it consistently refused to perform, and preferred instead to widen the chasm between the two nationalities, using the one to keep down the other, whilst in reality it oppressed and exploited both, till at last, at the close of the century, the two united in a common insurrection against English rule.

Ireland's great misfortune at this period was that it had two masters, first England, and secondly, the English " garrison " in Ireland, the English Government on the one hand, and the Protestants of Ireland on the other. From a political point of view, the regime thus imposed upon the country was the worst that could possibly be imagined ; namely, a combination of the government peculiar to a colony, or dependency, with that of a ruling caste, which, though all-powerful in Ireland, was yet not

3 Op. cit. IL, 371. Cf. Modern Ireland, by Dr. George Sigerson. London, 372, 1868, p. 382 to 383.

36 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

itself independent. 4 Had England governed Ireland directly mere self-interest must have made it protect the weak against the strong. Had it, on the other hand, handed over all power to the ruling caste, self-interest would have induced that caste to promote efficient government. But, as it was, Ireland was controlled by the " garrison," and the " garrison " was ruled by England, with the result that all sense of responsibility, all zeal for the common interest, entirely disappeared.

" Protestant Ireland," as Grattan put it, " knelt to England on the necks of her countrymen." In one aspect they were tyrants, in another they were slaves. They were at once oppressors and oppressed. There was a sort of " deal " between them and the English Government, by which the public welfare was to be sacrificed to the English Government, the Irish Catholics to the " garrison. "5 We must then consider this two-fold oppression, that of Ireland as a whole by England on the one hand, and that of the Irish Catholics by the " garrison " of English Protestants on the other.

For Irish Catholics, the eighteenth century was the epoch of persecution under forms of law. " Popery " had lived through the bloody persecutions of former times ; it was now thought to be a simpler and a surer method to put it down by a system of penal enactments. Liberty of conscience had indeed been guaranteed to Catholics by the Treaty of Limerick. But the obstacle did not prove a serious one. The treaty was torn up, and from 1695 to 1709 the Protestant Parliament of Ireland passed a series of penal laws, which, in the words of Edmund Burke, " were not the effect of their fears but of their security."6 The purpose of this legislation was to crush Catholicism and Irish Catholics by legal means in such a way that there might never afterwards be anything to fear from them.

4 Two Centuries of Irish History, p. xxi.

5 G. De Beaumont, op. cit. I., 81, et seq.

6 Letters to Sir Hercules Langrishe.

BEFORE THE UNION 37

Never was there a system so cunningly devised or worked out in such detail as this famous " Penal Code." For two centuries it served to supply fanatical persecutors in every land with instruments of torture ready to hand. " It would not be difficult," said Goldwin Smith,7 " to point to persecuting laws more sanguinary than these

But it would be difficult to point to any more

insulting to the best feelings of man or more degrading to religion." Nothing was left undone. Everything was foreseen with cold-blooded and calculating ingenuity. Violence was united to hypocrisy, perfidy to corruption, and the highest honours and rewards were reserved for the apostate and the informer. It is " vicious perfec- tion."8

Catholic worship was tolerated, but only on sufferance. All public ceremonies and all pilgrimages were prohibited ; even bells and crosses were interdicted. The ordination of any new clergymen was forbidden by law ; decree of banishment was passed against all bishops and members of religious orders, and death was to be their punishment in case they returned to Ireland. Secular priests could not exercise their office under pain of deportation, until they had registered themselves and taken, not merely an oath of allegiance, but an oath of abjuration, which their Church forbade them to take. Every Papist was ordered, under pain of fine, to inform against his clergyman. On the other hand, a public pension was assigned by the State to every priest who should turn Protestant. 9 That is how the clergy were dealt with. As for the Catholic laity, they were deprived of all political rights whatever. " The law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic," said a Lord Chancellor upon one occasion. They were forbidden to act as teachers

7 Irish History and Irish Character, p. i 27.

8 Works II., 11 ; III., 313 ; VI., 18.

9 See Lecky (op. cit., I., 296 and 297) as to the proposed law for inflicting the punishment of castration upon unregistered priests. A Bill to this effect was drawn up by the Irish Privy Council, but the English Government refused to sanction it.

38 : HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

under pain of banishment, and under pain of death in case they returned from banishment. They were forbidden to have their children educated, except by Protestants, or to have them educated abroad. They were debarred from obtaining any public employment or practising any liberal profession except that of medicine. They could not hold property in land, or take land on lease for a longer term than thirty years, and then only on the harshest conditions. If they engaged in trade or industry, they had to pay a special tax and could not employ more than two apprentices. They were forbidden to carry arms or to own a horse of greater value than £5. They could not act as guardians of their own children, nor marry a Protestant wife, nor inherit an estate from a Protestant relative. Moreover, the property of a Catholic was equally divided between his children on his death, the law of primogeniture being confined to Protestants. The object of this last provision was, of course, to secure that if a Catholic chanced to make a fortune it should soon be dissipated.

The trade of the informer was encouraged by ample rewards ; £20 for an unregistered priest, £50 for a bishop. " Priest-hunting " was quite a lucrative profession. But if a Catholic became a Protestant all was changed. Instead of a slave he had become a master, and the law heaped favours upon him. The Lord Chancellor saw to it that he had a preferential claim to succeed to the estate of his parents, and if he were the eldest of several children he at once acquired the sole legal ownership of all the family property, his parents retaining merely a life-estate. Moreover, with a view to making converts to Protestantism, whilst Catholics were forbidden to engage in educational pursuits, the country was studded over with Protestant schools, where the children of Papists could receive free tuition.

" There was thus established," in the oft-quoted words of Burke,™ " a complete system full of coherence and

10 Letters to Sir H. Langrishe, Works III., 343.

BEFORE THE UNION 39

consistency, well digested and composed in all its parts

a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance ;

and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." It was not merely the persecution of a religion, it was an attempt to degrade and demoralise a whole nation.11 It was sought at any cost to keep Papists in misery, ignorance and slavery, and this with no other purpose save to assure the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. The " planters " who had come to Ireland in the time of Cromwell or William III. knew how precarious was their title to the land, and they thus sought to adopt means that could not fail to assure their position.

" Pure religious fanaticism," writes Lecky,12 " does not indeed appear ever to have played a dominant part in this legislation. The object of the Penal Laws, even in the worst period, was much less to produce a change of religion than to secure property and power by reducing to complete impotence those who had formerly possessed them." Fanaticism, as PerraudJ3 remarks, served merely as cloak to cupidity, a circumstance which hardly tended to make it less hateful.

Such were the famous Penal Laws, destined to exercise so disastrous and so lasting an influence upon the future of Ireland. Dr. Johnson, a strong Tory, said of them — r4 " There is no instance even in the ten persecutions of such severity as that which the Protestants of Ireland have exercised against the Catholics." These laws remained in full force for half a century ; but in the latter half of the eighteenth century their severity was relaxed. They had already produced the result that was aimed at. Nothing more could be expected from them. Not that they had

11 Lecky op. cit. I., 283.

12 Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland. 3rd edition, I., 19.

*3 Op. cit. IL, 463. Cf. Lecky, op. cit. IL, 286. De Beaumont, op cit, I., 120. Arthur Young, Tour in Ireland, II., 141. *4 Lecky, op. cit. I., 302.

40 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

succeeded in destroying Catholicism. Priests living in concealment, and perpetually at the mercy of informers, had continued to celebrate the rites of the proscribed religion in undiscovered " mass-houses." Nor had Catholic education been stamped out. Small groups of Catholic children continued to receive instruction contrary to law in " hedge-schools," and always at the risk of prosecution. " The passion for knowledge," says Lecky,^ " among the Irish poor was extremely strong, and the zeal with which they maintained their hedge schools under the pressure of abject poverty, and in the face of the prohibitions of the penal code, is one of the most honourable features in their history." It is true indeed that, as apostacy was a condition precedent to all worldly success, a certain number of Papists joined the Anglican Church. Yet even in this direction the success attained was trifling. It is estimated that from 1703 to 1738 only 1,000 Catholics embraced the Protestant religion. The Anglican Primate Archbishop Boulter tells us that in the time of direst persecution an appreciably greater number of Protestants turned Catholic, than Catholics Protestant.16

What then, it may be asked, was the result of the Penal Laws ? The answer is to be found in the stream of exiles whom they hunted from Ireland, and in the condition to which they reduced those of their victims who remained in Ireland.

Emigration robbed the country of the best elements of her population, and, as in Cromwell's time, soldiers, gentry, and men of the middle classes alike fled from persecution. Each year saw a flight of the " wild geese," as they were called, who followed the example of the garrison of Limerick, which to the number of 14,000 men had enlisted in the French army immediately after the signing of the Treaty. The armies of all the Catholic powers soon contained large contingents of Irishmen. Irishmen became

l5 Op. cit. IL, 202.

1(5 Lecky, op. cit. IL, 289 to 290 — as to Primate Boulter's remark see Matthew Arnold, Irish Essays, p. 70.

BEFORE THE UNION 41

Grandees of Spain and Magnates of the Holy Roman Empire. Nugent, Brown, and Lacy attained distinction in the service of Maria-Theresa. The O'Neills and O'Donnells found asylum in Spain. A Wall became Prime Minister, an O'Mahony an Ambassador of that country. But France, beyond all other countries, was a second fatherland to the Irish exiles, and men like Tyrconnell, Dillon, and Lally, became famous in her service. A historian (though his statement is plainly exaggerated) has reckoned at 450,000 the number of Irish who perished in French armies from 1691 to I745-1? Who has not heard of the gloty of the " Irish Brigade," which for a whole century carried on to every French battlefield its banner with the brave motto, " Semper et Ubique Fidèles," struck the decisive blow, under Clare, at Fontenoy, and on the evening of Dettingen wrung from King George II. the celebrated imprecation, " God curse the laws that made these men my enemies " ?l8

But in their own country these same laws transformed the Catholics into a race of slaves. Weakened by massacres and emigration, the nation stooped unresistingly beneath the burden of oppression. The mass of the population was reduced to the condition of serfs, of pariahs, and Ireland, deprived of its natural leaders by the disappearance of almost all the old families, ceased to be a nation, and became instead an inert mass of exhausted and hopeless humanity. There was an advance, it may be, in private morality and individual piety, but will and character grew weak in the course of the unending struggle. Now that they had sunk to the condition of

x7 MacGeoghegan, Histoire d'Irlande, Paris, 1758 to 1763, III., 754. Cf. Lecky op. cit. IL, 262. Cf. O'Callaghan, History of the Irish Brigade, 1851.

18 It shows the dreadful results of persecution that whilst Irish soldiers and generals were seeking refuge in France, French Protestants came to seek a home in Ireland. William III. had a regiment of French Protestants at the Boyne to whom he said " Messieurs, vos persécuteurs sont devant vous." It was a French Protestant named Crommelin who imported the industry of weaving into Ireland. French names, such as Le Fanu, La Touche, Saurin, Lefroy, are still common in Ireland.

42 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

slaves the vices of slavery took possession of the Irish, idleness and servility, falsehood and contempt for law. Despised by the Protestants, they learnt to despise themselves, and the feeling of social inferiority burnt into their souls. They bent under the yoke of the landlords, who, in their threefold capacity of landlords, Protestants, and magistrates, treated the Irish, as Lord Chesterfield put it, " worse than negroes."10- In such conditions poverty rapidly increased, till it became appalling. " We found the people heretics and idolators," said Burke.20 " We have, by way of improving their condition, rendered them slaves and beggars ; they remain in all the misfortune of their old errors, and all the superadded misery of their recent punishment."

In 1727 Swift declares that the peasants of Ireland " live worse than English beggars."21 Two years later he published his famous Modest Proposal. In the course of twenty years there were no less than three or four great famines. 400,000 persons perished in that of the year 1740-41, according to a contemporary. In 1741 one-third of the cottiers in Munster died of famine or fever.22 At length the poverty of the people and the oppression from which they suffered gave birth to outrages and popular risings directed against " rent " and " tithes," against the exactions of the landlords and of the Protestant clergy. From 1760 onwards the Whiteboys or as they were called in some places, Levellers, Houghers5 Oakboys or Steelboys, spread terror through the country. This was the first purely agrarian movement in Ireland. Papists were hanged and transported wholesale. Repressive laws of terrible severity were enacted and applied with severity yet more terrible by the Irish

19 Lecky, op. cit. II., 291.

20 Quoted by Matthew Arnold, Irish Essays, p. 15. The population increased, it is true.for the poverty was too great to act as any restraint. Cf. Lecky, op. cit. II., 222.

21 A Short View of the State of Ireland.

22 Lecky, op. cit. IL, 217 to 220.

BEFORE THE UNION 43

judges. But, in the long run, judges and hangmen proved powerless to cope with this jacquerie.

There seems to be a retributive principle in nature which brings it to pass that the persecutor is commonly more degraded than his victim. A Protestant writer23 tells us that the net effect of the Penal Laws upon Protestant Ireland was to taint the whole body politic with profound and widespread corruption. The morals of that privileged class, the " garrison," were, in truth, not long in becoming corrupted. Luxury brought with it a certain development of the arts, but a much greater development of gaming, licentiousness, and extravagance. . The Squires and Squireens were needy, harsh, quarrelsome and dissipated, and they were often " absentees, "24 who handed over their rights to middlemen of low character. Lord Chesterfield declared towards the middle of the century that if as many landlords had been killed by the troops as Whiteboys, it would have been better for the public peace. 25 Froude's description of the abandoned lives of the smaller gentry of the period26 is well worth reading : " The Irish blackguard, the racing, drinking, duelling, swearing squireen, the tyrant of the poor, the shame and scandal of the order to which he affected to belong." Justice itself was corrupted at the fountain-head, for there was no habeas corpus in Ireland, and the judges and lawyers were mere Castle-hacks. " The poor," as Grattan said, " were struck out of the protection of the law, the rich out of its penalties." The Established Church, an authority rather temporal than spiritual, shared in all the abuses of the period. It was, in Macaulay's phrase, " a church that filled the rich with good things and sent the hungry empty away."

23 O'Connor Morris, Ireland, 1494-1868. Cambridge, 1898, p. 410.

24 Lecky, op. cit. IL, 239.

25 Stanhope, History of England, V., 123.

2b The English in Ireland, I., 279, et seq. Arthur Young spoke of them as " the vermin of the country." See his account of their lives in his Tour in Ireland (II.,, 50 et seq.). See also the famous pamphlets of Swift.

44 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

" A true Irish Bishop," declared Archbishop Bolton, " has nothing more to do than to eat, drink, grow rich, fat, and die."27 Moreover, the Protestants were divided against themselves. The Presbyterians of the North had greatly increased in numbers, as the result of a large Scotch immigration into Ulster after the Revolution. But the Episcopalians secured their exclusion from public office and emoluments. They were compelled to pay tithes to the Established Church, and Presbyterian marriages were declared null and void. ' A society which had fallen into such a state of demoralisation was not fit to enjoy the benefits of liberty, and we need not be surprised to find that the tyranny exercised over Catholics by Irish Protestants had a counterpart in the tyranny exercised over Irish Protestants in the eighteenth century by the Protestants of England. This tyranny was twofold, being in part legislative, and in part economic. The Irish Parliament — Catholics were not eligible to sit as members of it or even to vote at parliamentary elections — was made subordinate to the English Parliament and deprived of all real authority and initiative. It was a mere shadow, a caricature of a parliament, which Swift never wearied of ridiculing.28 Political subjection, as might be expected, resulted in commercial and industrial subjection. This had its origin in Henry VIII. 's time, but more especially in Cromwell's. It was the theory in those days that a colony or dependency existed only for the profit and advantage of the mother- country, and by a system of carefully marshalled laws, passed between 1663 and 1669, England succeeded in completely ruining Irish industry and Irish trade. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the work had been accomplished and Swift, when he heard the customary toast of " Irish Manufactures," proposed, was wont to declare : " I drink no memories ! "29 It was, of course,

27 O'Connor Morris, op. cit. IL, 215. (Cf. Lecky, op. cit. 226 to 236)

28 See, for instance, Swift's The Legion Club.

29 Brodrick, Political Studies, London, 1879, p. 343.

BEFORE THE UNION 45

the Protestants who suffered most by this economic ruin, since Catholics were excluded from trade and industry by the Penal Laws. The effects were soon felt, and, during the first half of the eighteenth century, there was a wholesale emigration of Presbyterians from Ulster. Most of them settled in America, where they became the bitterest enemies of England. 200,000 Presbyterians left the country in this way in the course of fifty years. 3o

The Protestants of Ireland endured this two-fold slavery with " abject servility," as an Irish writer puts it.3i But it is only fair to say that there were among them a few men of sufficiently independent spirit to protest against British tyranny and assert the rights of Ireland against the oppressor. As early as the year 1698 an Irish gentleman, named William Molyneux, a friend of Locke, had written a book, proving the Independence of the Irish Parliament upon historical grounds.32 This work the Parliament of England at once directed to be burned by the common hangman. Some time later Jonathan Swift published his Pamphlet on Manufactures (1720), his Views on Ireland and his famous Drapier' s Letters (1723), in which he denounced the oppression and abuses of the English Government, and proclaimed the wrongs of the colonists, setting out those of the Catholics to complete the picture. 33 At once the Dean became the most popular man in Dublin, though he had never concealed his contempt for Papists and his dislike for Ireland, which he looked upon as a place of exile. When he was threatened with arrest the populace of the " Liberties" rose in a body to protect him, as it rose a century later to protect O'Connell. Soon afterwards Bishop Berkeley, the philosopher, aroused a new public spirit with his Querist, and awakened interest in the condition of the Catholics. At last, in the latter half of

3° Lecky, op. cit. II., 260 to 262.

31 Sir C. Gavan Duffy, Bird's-eye View of Irish History.

32 The Case of Ireland Stated, 1698.

33 J. Flack, Swift, son action politique en Irlande, Paris, 1886,

46 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

the century, the Penal Laws were relaxed, and there sprang up in the colony an Irish party or " interest," opposed to the English party or " interest." Though it failed to reform those abuses, which were a source of profit to its members, 34 it made it its business to govern Ireland for the benefit of the Irish instead of conducting the government in the interests of England. From this party came the Protestant Liberals or Irish " Whigs," first Flood and Lucas, then Burke, and above all Grattan. These men realised that Ireland was their country and began to lay aside hatred of the Papists, realising that oppression by England was a heavy price to pay for the pleasure of persecuting Catholics. " The Irish Protestant never could be free," declared Grattan, "while the Irish Catholic was a slave." The idea of Irish nationality and Irish independence became popular, alike with Protestant and with Catholic, and both parties were soon to unite in the effort to secure its realisation. 35

VI. — The Irish Revolution and the Union (1782-1800).!

Independence ! It was the success of the American revolution that brought about the Independence of Ireland, and it was the reaction from the French revolution, or rather from its excesses, that was destined to destroy that independence. The events that illuminate the pages of Irish History during the last quarter of the eighteenth century are well known. When in 1776 war broke out between England and her American colonies, Ireland, being without means of defence, raised a militia of 40,000

34 They were called " Undertakers " (i.e., of the public service).

35 The question was, said Grattan, whether they were to be an English colon}' or an Irish nation.

1 See especially on this period, the lives and speeches of Flood, Burke, Grattan, Curran and Plunket ; the Life and Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone ; the Cornwallis, Fitzwilliam and Castlereagh Corre- spondence, etc. Cf. Madden, Literary Remains of the United Irish- men, London, 1887-S. Gordon,' History of the Rebellion of 1798,

BEFORE THE UNION 47

■ - '

volunteers for its protection. Soon the Irish came to know their own power and saw that they were in a position to force England to yield to their wishes. The famous phrase " England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity " received its first application. The Irish secured the abolition of all commercial restraints in 1779, and in 1782 compelled recognition of the independence of the Irish Parliament. No bond save that of the Crown any longer united them to England ; they had become a sovereign and independent people. At the same time, as a complement to the liberty which had been regained, many of the Penal Laws against Catholics were repealed. In 1778 Catholics once again acquired the right to own land, and to inherit according to the common law. The sumptuary laws, and the laws directed against the clergy and against Catholic education, were repealed in 1782. In 1792 Catholics were admitted to the Bar and made eligible to serve on juries, and in 1793 they, were granted the Parliamentary franchise. Thus the beginning of Catholic Emancipation went hand in hand with the political emancipation of the nation.

A new era seemed to have begun for Ireland. Once the English yoke was removed, economic prosperity returned as though by magic. The development of the country made immense strides, and the progress of Ireland in the last years of the eighteenth century was extraordinary. There remained one dark spot in the picture, the servile corruption of the Irish Parliament. It was elected by rotten boroughs and composed exclusively of Protestants. Its one desire was to maintain the privileges of the oligarchy that it represented. It proved a ready instrument in the hand of the Government and their

1801-1803. Thomas Moore, Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 1831. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland. Maxwell, History of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, London, 1845. Sir Jonah Barrington, Historic Memoirs of Ireland, London, 1832. Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation, Paris, 1833. J. K. Ingram, The Memory of the Dead (a fine poem on 1798). Ingram, History of the Irish Union, London, 1887, Swift MacNeill, The Irish Parliament. London, 1885, ; and How the Union was Carried, London, 1887.

48 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

ambitious lieutenant, John Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, who, when the Volunteers — Protestants for the most part — demanded electoral reform, rejected the demand with contempt. Its venal tyranny had the effect of uniting every Irish patriot against it.

With the coming of the French Revolution, a spirit of patriotism, liberty and democracy spread throughout Ireland. The Volunteers became, under Wolfe Tone, the " United Irishmen." Presbyterian and Catholic joined hands, and they had every Liberal and every patriot on their side. They proclaimed " the rights of man," and demanded parliamentary reform and the abolition of abuses. They denounced the intrigues, the jobbery and corruption of the Government. In the country they revolted against the tyranny of the landlords and of the Anglican clergy. In Belfast, the more advanced spirits desired complete separation from England, and dreamed of founding an Irish Republic. As the French Revolution advanced in the direction of Jacobinism, the sentiments of the United Irishmen moved in the same direction. But herein lay the Government's opportunity. The Protestant Liberals, the middle classes, and the Catholic clergy, shocked by the excesses which they saw occurring in France, deserted the party, and soon, instead of the whole nation, save the landlord oligarchy, the Government had only to deal with a small knot of revolutionaries, unsupported by the inert mass of the people. After 1793 it was able to disband and disarm the Volunteers. Their chiefs, Wolfe Tone and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, went to seek aid in France, and Hoche made a vain attempt to land at Bantry Bay. A short period of conciliation fol- lowed under Lord Fitzwilliam. But he was recalled, to the intense grief of the Irish, in 1796, and the party of coercion gained the upper hand in the " Castle." They threw down the religious question as an apple of discord between Catholic and Protestant, and, with the help of the Orange Society, which was just then founded in Ulster, they succeeded in stirring up a religious war, which put an

BEFORE THE UNION 49

end to all spirit of independence and nationality. To bring matters to a head Fitzgibbon, at Pitt's instigation, provoked the rising of 1798, which Pitt believed inevitable, by measures of excessive cruelty. They let loose " upon the homes of the peasantry," writes Goldwin Smith,2 " the license and barbarity of an irregular soldiery more cruel than a regular invader. Flogging, half-hanging, pitch-capping, picketing, went on over a large district, and the most barbarous scourgings without trial were inflicted in the Riding-house at Dublin, in the very seat

of government and justice It appears not

unlikely that the peasantry might have been

kept quiet by measures of lenity and firmness, and that they were gratuitously scourged and tortured into open rebellion."

This famous insurrection which broke out in 1798 was merely a rising of peasants maddened by provocation. The Protestant gentry, well armed and assisted by the English troops, had small difficulty in slaughtering them. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was cast into prison, where he died of his wounds. The insurgents were defeated at New Ross and at Vinegar Hill. Humbert defeated the English at Castlebar, but capitulated in presence of Cornwallis. Wolfe Tone was captured, tried, and condemned to death, though wearing a French uniform ; he committed suicide. An Orange reign of terror followed, " hardly less atrocious," writes Thorold Rogers, " though better concerted, than the Massacres of September and the Fusillade at Lyons." The loyalist faction in Ireland " must take its place in history," according to Goldwin Smith, " beside Robespierre, Couthon and Carrier."3 But the end sought for had been attained. The Irish people were once more crushed, and the Anglo-Saxon

2 Irish History and Character, p. 170.

3 Op. cit., p.. 174. See the correspondence of Cornwallis (Vol. II.). and Madden's work on the United Irishmen for the story of the massacres and horrors of which the Irish gentry were guilty.

E

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

oligarchy was confirmed in its privileges. England had achieved her purpose, and she laid her measures to take vengeance on the rebellious island, tor the humiliation of E782 and the eighteen years of Irish independence, by placing it in lasting bondage under the " Act of Union. '?

The L'nion of 1S00 was the immediate outcome of the insurrection of 179S as it was the less immediate result of the Revolution of 1782. The Irish Parliament had sought emancipation ; it paid the penalty of destruction, and was merged in the Parliament of Westminster. A legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland was carried out. and henceforth there was to be but one United Kingdom in place of the two separate States. It was England's duty to take over the government of the sister isle herself, since the English " garrison " had failed in the task. The Union was the only possible method of protecting the Protestant " colony M in Ireland and maintaining Cromwell's settlement. Moreover, the prosperity attained by Scotland under its Union was a precedent of good augury. These were the reasons put forward by William Pitt., the author of the L'nion. But the truth was that England wished to have done with the Irish nation, the Irish Parliament, and the rights of Ireland. Pitt could have imposed the Union upon Ireland bv force, but he preferred to carry it through by corruption, and to make the Parliament of Ireland pay the price of its own destruction. All the unbribed intellect of Ireland was wholly against the Union, as Lecky tells us. But even- official who opposed it was dismissed from his place. Moreover, the immediate concession of religious liberty and Catholic emancipation was promised, gifts for which, however, the Catholics had. in the event, to wait twenty- nine years. Votes were bought by the hundred. The owners of rotten boroughs received an indemnity. Peers and Members of Parliament were won over by pensions, titles, and monev-bribes. The transaction cost a million and a half of money, which, by a supreme stroke of

BEFORE THE UNION 51

irony, was debited to the separate National Debt of Ireland. " There is no blacker or fouler transaction in the history of man," declared Gladstone, ': than the making of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland. "4

4 Three yeaxs after the Union a young Irishman, twenty-five years of age, who had had a brilliant career at Trinity College, having sought aid from Napoleon, organised a conspiracy against the English G : ment in Ireland. On the 25th July, 1803, he marched on Dublin Castle at the head of a few hundred men. The raid failed, but not before the maddened crowd of rebels had murdered the old Justice, Lord Kilwarden, with their pikes. Their chief, with faithful friends, took refuge in the Wicklow mountains. Having returned to Dublin to see his sweetheart, Sarah Curran, before leaving for France, he was captured, tried, and hanged. His youth, his noble patriotism, the purity of his life, and of his love, have made Robert Emmet one of the favourite heroes of the Irish people. See Robert Emmet, by the late Comtesse d' Haussonville, Par:- : ;;. See alsc the fine pages of George Brandes on Emmet and the Patriot United Irishmen. Die Liiteratur des igth Jahrhunderts in Ihrt mungen IV., p. 182 to 221. {IrischeO': Leipsic 1900.

CHAPTER IL— SINCE THE UNION.*

There runs through the history of Ireland during the nineteenth century a sort of systematic rise and fall that is distressing to contemplate. The movement in which each effort took shape differed very little from the one that went before it and the one that was to come after it. Between them there intervened periods of dire national prostration and universal distress. At such times the nation seemed, as it were, dead, and the people lay inert, an easy prey to every form of corruption. The cause at stake in each movement was indeed different. But in each the people had to encounter the same difficulties, fell into the same errors, suffered from the same illusions. In each movement we find the same lack of preparation and perseverance, the same want of completeness. Favourable opportunities were ever let slip. The move- ments did not always end in failure, but they never achieved more than partial success. The same tragedy was re-enacted in every generation upon the same stage with dreary monotony. The actors alone were changed.

i See especially on the history of Ireland in the 19th century the following general works : — Edouard Hervé, la Crise Irlandaise, Paris, 1885. F. de Pressensé, l'Irlande et V Angleterre depuis l'Acte d'Union jusqu'à nos jours, Paris, 1889. O'Connor Morris, Ireland from 1798 to 1898, London, 1898. J. H. MacCarthy, Ireland since the Union, London, 1887. A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland, London, 1877. W. E. H. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, 2nd edition, London, 1871, and 3rd edition, London, 1903. R. Barry O'Brien, Fifty Years Concessions to Ireland, London, 1883-1885. By the same author, Irish Wrongs and English Remedies, London, 1887. By the same author, A Hundred Years of Irish History, London, 1902,. T. P. O'Connor, The Parnell Movement, London, 1886. Isaac Butt, Irish People and Irish Land, London, 1867. Davitt, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, London and New York, 1904. Sir J. Barrington, Sketches of his Own Times, London, 1869. Greville Memoirs, London, 1885.

SINCE THE UNION 53

Throughout all these vicissitudes another contest is seen in progress. There were at all times two rival factions side by side in the Irish camp. On one side stood con- stitutional agitation within the law, an agitation open and unconcealed, loud-voiced, aiming not at complete separa- tion from England, but at the attainment of self-govern- ment for Ireland. On the other side we find Fenianism, or the "Physical Force Movement," as the Irish call it. Secret in its methods, uncompromising in its ends, it recked little what means it should employ to achieve by revolution that complete separation from Britain at which it aimed. Between these two movements there was es- tablished a sort of oscillation. As either of them grew weaker the other invariably grew stronger. No sooner did the Government suppress legal agitation than an agitation of an illegal character took its place.

On the English side there is the like weary monotony. The fervent patriotism, the passionate enthusiasm of the Irish, is countered by inertia combined with a rooted egotism and indifference. In each generation throughout the century affairs passed through the same cycle. First there is the definite refusal to listen to Irish grievances ; complaints are treated with mockery and insult ; states- men shrug their shoulders and adopt an attitude of non- possumus. Then the Irish begin to support their demands by acts of violence. The Government reply by passing Coercion Acts — that is to say, a sort of " martial law," or " law of suspects," contenting themselves, in Lord Cowper's phrase, with driving discontent beneath the surface. Forgetting the famous saying of John Bright that " force is no remedy," they adopt a policy of mere repression unaccompanied by reform. Meantime, anarchy continues to increase, till at last, in the hope of putting a stop to it, the Government is forced to give way. They surrender, but only when matters have reached the worst pass, and they are induced to do so not by considerations of justice, but by dread of revolution. A premium was thus put upon disorder. Civil war was positively

54 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

encouraged, and the Irish were not slow to draw the moral. They soon perceived that no reform could be obtained from England upon its merits, that there was nothing but could be won by agitation. Gladstone himself declared that had it not been for the Land League the Land Act of iSSi would never have been passed. And before Gladstone's time, Lord John Russell, also a Liberal, had said bluntly to his fellow-countrymen : k' Your oppressions have taught the Irish to hate, your con- cessions to brave you. You have exhibited to them how scanty was the stream ot your bounty, how full the tribute of your fear.'" - Again, had English concessions ever been broad and honest measures, serious and straightforward attempts to settle questions, Ireland might have been conciliated, and perhaps cured. But the English at all times neglected the advice of Grattan, that refusals should ever be polite, concessions gracious. Worse still, these tardy reforms, wrung from England against her will, failed in their effect foi the most part. They did not go far enough, were sometimes purely illusory, and at all times bought at too dear a price. Ireland had need of courageous and drastic remedies. English legislation was hesitating and insufficient. It required, for instance, no less than five Land Acts from 1S81 to 1S96 to organise the system of judicial rent-fixing. Again, England sought to impose on Ireland her own legislative notions, her Poor Law and her system of education, for instance, and never stopped to consider whether such ideas were repugnant to the feelings of Irishmen, whether, as Lord Rosebery put it, Irishmen might not prefer their own familiar potatoes to the truffles which they neither knew nor appreciated. The English Government made it a point never to consult Irishmen as to what remedies should be applied. In the words of Swift, they sent the medicine from a distance, and had it applied by a doctor who knew neither the patient nor the malady.

2 Quoted by Barry R. O'Brien, A Hundred Years of Irish History, p. 119 and 122.

SINCE THE UNION 55

The more liberal the English Parliament shows itself in its dealings with Scotland, the more illiberal it is in its treatment of Ireland. It never gets beyond half measures and compromises ; takes away with one hand what it gives with the other ; and clogs every concession with conditions which practically cancel it. Two examples out of a great number will suffice. A system of outdoor relief for the poor was instituted bv an Act of the year 1838. All peasants who worked a quarter of an acre or more, that is to say, the great majority of Irish peasants, were excluded from its operation. In the same year the peasants were relieved from paying tithes to the Protestant Church, and the tithes were put upon the landlords. But the landlords were left free to raise the rents by a corres- ponding amount. In the result, the peasants remained liable to the same burden as before, but had not the same opportunities of complaint. In everything else it was the same. Ireland soon came to rate at their true value those magnanimous concessions made by British Liberalism, those cunning and illusory devices which took away the shadow of a grievance and left the substance.

I. — O'Connell.3

In the year 1800, after the passing of the Act of Union, as in 169 1 after the Treaty of Limerick, a favourable opportunity was offered to the English Government of redeeming the past and conciliating Ireland, by adopting a policy of concord and good will. In Grattan's phrase,

3 See especially, on the period 1800- 1847, the works of Sidney Smith; the Life, Memoirs and Correspondence of Melbourne, Palmerston, and Peel; the Speeches of O'Connell and Shiel. Th. Wyse, Historical Sketch of the Catholic Association, London, 1829. Life, Times and Correspon- dence of Right Rev. Doctor Doyle, by W. J. Fitzpatrick, Dublin, 1880. Sir C. G. Duffy, Young Ireland, London, 1880, and Four Years of Irish History, London, 1883. Shaw Lefevre, Peel and O'Connell, London, i88/\ Guizot, Sir Robert Peel, Paris, 1856. Fitzpatrick, D. O'Connell' s Correspondence, London. 1888. Barry O'Brien, Th. Drummond, London, 1889. Canon O'Rourke, Life of O'Connell, London, 1875. MacLennan, Life of Thomas Drummond, Edinburgh, 1867. Cf. Nemours Godre, Daniel O'Connell, Paris, 1893.

56 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

the marriage had been brought about, and it now remained to make it fruitful. The two parliaments had been united. It remained to unite the two peoples, to bring the different classes together, to adopt measures of reparation, which should make up to Ireland for the evils wrought by com- mercial restraints and Penal Laws. This was precisely the policy that the English Government did not adopt. The Government had been centralised. The governed were neither reconciled nor united. Nay more, by the suppression of the Irish Parliament and the fusion of the two legislatures, the chasm between the two nations was widened.

" It was much less," writes G. de Beaumont, 4 " the union of Ireland to England than an alliance between the English and the Protestant party in Ireland, who, being no longer able to govern Ireland, threw themselves into the arms of their ruler and handed over to him every instru- ment of tyranny and persecution, on condition that they should share in that tyranny as heretofore."

After the Union, as before it, Ireland remained a " colony," or " dependency." Its government was marred by all the abuses and all the oppression which that form of rule connotes. Government was based upon force or upon corruption. Coercion Acts became a per- manent institution ; and while the supreme power of the Ascendancy remained, it was relieved of all sense of responsibility, robbed even of that glamour of patriotism which had formerly illumed its actions, and left freer than ever to oppress the Catholics of Ireland, whom England abandoned to its mercy.

The Catholics of Ireland, indeed, after the Union, lay prostrate in a state of utter exhaustion and torpid despair. There was no hope for them. They were, to use a famous phrase, "like a corpse on the dissecting table." Public spirit was dead amongst them. " The country," as Shiel said, " was in a state of degrading and unwholesome tranquillity. We sat down like galley slaves in a calm

4 Op. cit. II., 17.

SINCE THE UNION 57

. . . the public pulse had stopped . . . and the country was palsied to the heart." This was the result at once of the Penal Laws and of the reaction that followed on the insurrection.

" By long bending they had become bent," writes Dr. Wyse ; ' ' their mind, like a human body long confined within too small a prison, refused itself to the free functions of other citizens. The scourge had ceased and the fetter had been unlocked; but for years afterwards the brand and the scar remained behind. "5

The Catholic religion enjoyed, relatively speaking, a considerable degree of tolerance. Men were unwilling to risk this in seeking for something better. The idea that they might perhaps provoke a revival of the Penal Laws was enough to strike terror into them. The statesmen who had negotiated the Act of Union had made a solemn promise of complete emancipation to the Irish Papists. But, just as after Limerick, the promise was destined to be broken. Every year the Protestant Liberal members of Parliament, Grattan, Ponsonby and Plunket, demanded that the Parliament should carry out Pitt's undertaking. It was mere waste of time. The King, George III., had sworn that Catholic emancipation should never be passed during his lifetime.

The Catholics, moreover, were divided among them- selves. There had existed in Ireland since the year 1760 a league, which, under various names, such as the Catholic Committee or the Catholic Association, had been working to obtain Catholic emancipation. Two rival parties ex- isted in it, the middle class or popular party led by John Keogh, and the party of the Catholic gentry, led first by Lord Kenmare and later by Lord Fingall. These latter, though prevented by their religion from belonging to the Ascendancy, were, from a political point of view, in sympathy with it. Being out of sympathy with the popular party, these " rallies " found themselves at variance with it on many points, but most of all on the

5 Thomas Wyse, Historical Sketch of the Catholic Association, I., 53.

58 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

question of the "Veto," a matter which was under dis- cussion throughout the first quarter of the century. They sought to secure the payment of the clergy, the State in return receiving a veto on the appointment of Bishops. The project had in the end to be dropped, owing to the popular opposition which it provoked. These divisions rendered the Catholic league powerless. Socially and politically things grew worse and worse. There was a famine almost every year, those of 1817 and 1825 being particularly bad. The Government could find no remedy other than Coercion Acts, of which there were twenty between 1800 and 1820. " There was no law for the Catholics." The powers of the Protestant Oligarchy were increased. "The squireens, the slave-drivers of Ire- land,"6 were allowed to oppress the poor as they liked. Orange societies rapidly multiplied and devoted them- selves to organising attacks upon the Catholics. The Catholics met violence with violence, crime, Whiteboyism, or Ribbonism. All open opposition was suppressed, and conspiracy took its place. The government of Ireland was in those days a government of landlordism tempered by assassination.

A man now came upon the scene who was to rouse the people from their state of torpid prostration, who, in his own words, " was to sound the resurrection trumpet and show that she was not dead but sleeping." 7 This man was Daniel O'Connell. By birth he belonged to the upper classes.8 His instincts were essentially conservative, but in temperament he was a democrat, almost a demagogue. For he was " a man of the people " down to the very depths of his being. Like the people themselves, he was rough, boisterous, arrogant, strong, needy, jovial, eager,

6 This phrase and the preceding one are taken from Dr. Do}de. {Life, Xitnes and Correspondence, L, 382, 383).

7 Quoted by Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, 3rd éd., II., 239.

8 His family belonged to the Kerry gentry, and was of Conservative tendencies. One of his uncles, Count O'Connell, served in the Irish Brigade and followed the Bourbons in the Emigration. Daniel O'Connell states himself that at the time of Robert Emmet's rising he was " almost a Tory." Lecky, op. cit. IL, 4.

SINCE THE UNION 59

unrefined, good-natured and egotistical, possessed of a soul at once " royal and vulgar, "9 and full of himself and of his power. The Irish Ascendancy hated him, as did the whole English people ; the Protestant Liberals and even the Catholic gentry of Ireland regarded him with jealousy and dread. A typical Irishman at once in his strength and in his weaknesses, O'Connell was possessed of all the qualities which could enable him to rouse the Irish masses and lead them forth by the mere force of oratory into the ranks of the constitutional struggle. The Irish masses were abject and unresisting slaves. The fire of O'Connell 's eloquence, his tone of defiance and of com- mand, his power of invective, his intensity of conviction, all these combined to rouse up and influence his fellow- countrymen and give them confidence in their leader and in themselves. In addition to this he was a lawyer of consummate ability. His practice at the bar had made him quick to seize upon the weak points of a new law. He had unequalled skill in " driving a coach and four through an Act of Parliament." It was O'Connell who first originated " popular agitation within the law," and at once brought that new instrument for obtaining social reform to the highest pitch of perfection. Cobden and the English were in this matter his pupils ; and all free peoples have since learnt the lesson. This weapon of popular constitutional agitation was needed to restore the courage of a people that had never known any other means of attaining liberty save insurrection.

O'Connell was violent, but his violence was only of words. Physical violence he consistently denounced. Moral force was all he sought to employ. " There is a moral electricity in the continuous expression of public opinion concentrated upon a single point, perfectly irre- sistible in its efficacy."10

The multitude must bear all before it ; but who was there to organise it, to unify it, to put it in motion ?

9 John Mitchel, Jail Journal, p. 139. 10 Quoted by Lecky, op. cit. II.,. 242.

6o HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

The question admitted of only one answer. The priests were the sole advisers the people had. Two Bishops, both of them famous Irishmen, Dr. Doyle and Dr. Mac- Hale, had already prepared men's minds for the move- ment. In 1823 O'Connell, with Shiel's assistance, had re-organised the old Catholic Association. The Liberal Protestants and the Catholic gentry joined, as did also the two bishops. The whole of the clergy followed their example. The Catholic Association was before long spread throughout all Ireland, and the entire country enrolled under its banner. Suppressed by the Govern- ment, it re-appeared under another name. The clergy and the Association combined to urge the people to action. They protected them against their landlords, roused them to exercise independence as voters, and saved them from the consequences of doing so. Meetings were held every- where. Every man paid his share of the " Catholic Rent." After five years of agitation, carried on by legal means, the Association achieved its object. In 1828 O'Connell had himself been elected as member for Clare, though, as a Catholic, he was at that time unable to take his seat. In the following year the Government, at long last, granted Catholic Emancipation.11 But it had to be bought at a dear price, for it was only granted on con- dition that the forty shilling freeholders should be de- prived of their votes, and the electorate of Ireland thus reduced from about 200,000 to 26,000. None the less, it was a great victory for " agitation within the law," and still more so for the man who had brought that agitation into being, and was henceforth to be known by the title of the Liberator.

Encouraged by this first success, while the clergy were occupied by the tithe war, or in repressing the excesses of the soldiery on the one hand, or the " Whiteboys " and their successors the " Ribbonmen " on the other, O'Connell

11 That is to say, that share of it which it remained to grant, the right of Catholics to be members of parliament, and to be admitted to all public positions.

SINCE THE UNION 61

was devising a fresh campaign. This time he sought to secure by agitation, within the law, the repeal of the Act of Union. Repeal was not a novel idea. Shortly after the Union it had been pressed forward, strange as it may seem, by Tory Protestants and Orangemen. But now things had changed. The Protestants had been beaten by the Papists and the " agitator." They would no longer listen to proposals for Repeal. The same attitude was taken up by Protestant Liberals, who, together with the Catholic gentry, now abandoned O'Connell. Protes- tant Ireland for the first time declared itself defi- nitely " Unionist." O'Connell, moreover, for some years suspended all agitation and supported Lord Melbourne's ministry at Westminster from 1835 to 1840 ; the Irish members for the first time allied themselves with the English Whigs. Ireland gained little by the compact, and no reforms of any importance were carried out, although Thomas Drummond, a Scotchman who was Under-Secretary in Dublin, distinguished himself by his courage in seeking to bring landlords and Orangemen to reason. At last the alliance was broken, and O'Connell once again took up the agitation for Repeal. As on former occasions, he received the support of the clergy, and also consented to receive that of a group of young enthusiasts, who styled themselves " Young Ireland," in contradistinction to their aged leader. The Repeal Asso- ciation spread rapidly. The Repeal Rent rapidly in- creased, and the country seemed on the eve of great happenings. In 1842 O'Connell promised that " Repeal " would be passed in the following year. The year 1843 was, in fact, the year of crisis. The agitation was then at its height ; the enthusiasm was immense ; popular demonstra- tions, attended by enormous multitudes of persons, were held throughout the country. Two hundred and fifty thousand persons took part in one of them, which was held at the Hill of Tara, the site of the palace of the ancient kings. At none of these " monster meetings " was there any disturbance. Perfect discipline was maintained — a

62 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

result due to the influence of the " Liberator," and to that of the famous Father Mathew, who was then preaching his temperance crusade with unparalleled success. But every man was stirred to the depths when O'Connell menaced the Government and pledged himself to resist- ance. " Are the Irish to be treated as slaves ? Will they submit to be trampled under foot ? Let our enemies attack us if they dare, they shall never trample me under their feet. If they do so it will be my dead body." The crisis was grave. O'Connell made every effort to avert a conflict. But popular excitement as a result of these politics at high pressure had risen to a point at which it could with difficulty be restrained from bursting forth into open rebellion. This was what men anticipated on all sides. " The Counsellor12 will give us the word," they said.

Instead of giving the order to advance at the famous Clontarf meeting the Counsellor sounded the retreat. On the morning of the meeting it was illegally " proclaimed " by " the Castle." From all sides the long processions of those about to take part in the demonstration were marching in. The troops assumed a threatening attitude, and agitation " within the law " seemed about to end in open conflict after all.

The expectation was mistaken. " No revolution is worth the spilling of one single drop of human blood." *3 The great agitator gave the order to disperse ; the " pro- claimed " meeting would not take place. The man of peace gave way. Twenty years earlier things might have been different. But O'Connell was old — he was aged sixty- eight — and worn out. The memory of the blood he had shed in his duel with d'Esterre weighed upon his mind. A dread of violence possessed him, and he yielded to fear. That day destroyed the trust of the people in their leader, and ruined the cause for which he had laboured. Not

12 Lecky, op. cit., IL, 242, 243. O'Connell was called " the Counsellor," as Swift had been called " the Dean."

J3 A phrase of O'ConnelFs quoted by Lecky. Op. cit. IL, 263, 264.

SINCE THE UNION 63

long afterwards he was put upon his trial and found guilty by a jury of Orangemen. His sentence was quashed by the House of Lords ; but his release from gaol was destined to be his last triumph, and, worn out by illness, he retired from public life. Later he sought to return to it, abandoned Repeal for a vain policy of Federalism, entered into alliance with the English Whigs, and saw himself repudiated by the Young Irelanders. He lived on for some months in absolute inaction, to see the earlier horrors of the Great Famine ; set out upon a journey to the Eternal City, and died at Genoa on the 15th May, 1847, leaving his body to Ireland, his heart to Rome.

It is difficult to pass judgment on O'Connell. It might truly be said that for more than thirty years he embodied in his single person the whole spirit of the Irish nation. The English judge him by his faults, the violence of the demagogue, the bombast of the popular orator. He made agitation a trade, they say, and levied payments for his services in the shape of the tribute. He was a' patriot for pay — the " Big Beggarman." They forget that English oppression had made agitation a stern necessity in Ireland and that Fox and Pitt, Cobden and Bright, received financial assistance from their party, just as did O'Connell. In his own country the men of '' Young Ireland " looked upon " Old Dan " with contempt. The " Physical Force " party have even regarded him with open hatred. Not long after his death, Father Kenyon, a priest and a " Young Irelander," described him as a " Grand homme manqué." John Mitchel, the revolutionary, declared that "next to the British Government he was the greatest enemy Ireland ever had." But the great mass of his contemporaries took a different view. They looked upon him as the " Liberator," and honoured him with that title in his own lifetime, and, on the whole, posterity has ratified this judgment. In many respects he may truly be called the father of modern Ireland and modern Irish democracy. In political matters, like Rieger in

64 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Bohemia.^ he roused his people from lethargy and gave them the desire to think and act. He made the public opinion of Ireland a factor with which England must reckon for the future. Whatever view we take of his work, we cannot help criticising it severely in certain directions. In three matters especially he is open to attack. First, he helped on the Anglicisation of Ireland. He neglected the Irish language, as far as he was personally concerned, and by entering into alliance with the Whigs, he fixed the attention of Irishmen entirely upon West- minster. Then again, having once aroused public opinion, he sought neither to form nor to educate it, but used it to make himself dictator, suffering none to oppose his wishes. He left behind him in Ireland, says an historian,^ " a great memory, but not a great party."

Lastly, he believed that " agitation within the law," of which he was the originator — a powerful weapon indeed — to be all-powerful. He would have nothing to do with any other method. In this he was clearly wrong. Moral force, unhappily, is not all-powerful. In many cases it must inevitably end in open conflict. O'Connell declared that no human revolution was worth the spilling of a single drop of blood. For twenty-five years this doctrine of cowardice, ''which could haidly be accepted in its literal sense by anyone except Quakers,"16 says Lecky, weighed the country down. It is proved untrue by the whole history of modern liberty. Might it not, indeed, with more justice be said that only those causes are great which have to be defended at the cost of innocent blood ?

x4 An interesting parallel might be established between Rieger and O'Connell. Both were opportunists in the best sense of the word ; glory, and, in old age, unpopularity, was the portion of both. Both saw the uprise of a more extreme party which the country preferred. But O'Connell did not, like Rieger, survive his defeat.

x5 Sir C. G. Duffy, Four Years of Irish History, p. 399.

rt> Op. cit. II., 289.

SINCE THE UNION 65

II. — Young Ireland and the Revolution of 1848. l

It was this dread of battle on the part of the grand old campaigner that drove " Young Ireland " to despair. Under that title were comprised the group of ardent new comers, who had thrown themselves into the Repeal move- ment since 1841 or 1842. They were " intellectuals," young men for the most part. Sprung from the most diverse classes, they were united in a common enthusiasm and love of country. The greatest man among them was Thomas Davis. A deep thinker, an idealist, a poet of untainted soul, his lofty genius won universal respect. He was fated to die in 1845 in his thirty-fourth year, but his teachings will never be forgotten by his country. There were also John Blake Dillon, Charles Gavan Duffy, D'Arcy MacGee, Thomas Francis Meagher, and John Mitchel. There was Smith O'Brien, a descendant of the illustrious family of O'Brien, the Earls of Thomond. Finally, there was a band of brilliant writers, James Clarence Mangan, John O'Hagan, Samuel Ferguson, and John Kells Ingram. Many of them were Protestants, but all were filled with a generous ardour for the welfare of Ireland. But what could they do to help her ? This was the question that Davis, Dillon, and Duffy put to them- selves as they were walking in the Phoenix Park near Dublin one fine summer evening in 1842. They decided to undertake the duty which O'Cormell had neglected, namely, to form and educate public opinion, and as a means to that end to found a newspaper. Yet it was not to be a newspaper, but rather an instrument for the education of the people ; in which every week in inspired verse, and in burning prose, they might send forth to the country a message of sympathy and self-respect, of

1 See especially John Mitchel, Jail Journal, New York, 1854, Dillon, Life of John Mitchel, London, 1888. Poems and Essays of Thomas Davis. The Ballad Poetry of Ireland, edited by Sir C. G. Duffy, 40th edition, London, 1869. The Spirit of the Nation (Dublin), an anthology of the Young Ireland Poets.

F

66 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

patriotism and of tolerance. Shortly afterwards the Nation appeared. Its success was immediate, and beyond all expectations. It took men of every class, save only the peasantry, by storm. The whole country, even the Pro- testants, were deeply moved. Public spirit was ennobled and purified, and in a few months the greater part of the nation was won over without a struggle to the new ideas. The concept of nationality preached by " Young Ireland " was far loftier than that which passed current with the preceding generation. O'Connell was interested only in the material grievances of his countrymen. But with Davis nationality was something above politics, a some- thing founded on language and literature, on history and tradition.2 Again, for O'Connell, Ireland meant only Catholic Ireland. Davis and his disciples preached the union of all creeds and classes, and as a natural corollary, religious tolerance. " Orange and Green will carry the day." The older men looked upon the Young Irelanders as free thinkers. The Young Irelanders in return regarded them as clericals. There was yet another dis- tinction. O'Connell led the people but never sought to educate them. Young Ireland, on the contrary, sought to free Ireland by forming public opinion — " Educate that you may be free " was its motto. It sought to turn the thoughts of the people towards their past, to educate them by historical publications, to fire them with popular poetry.3 The ballad became almost an institution in Ireland.4

Young Ireland refused to accept O'Connell's view as to moral force. It revolted against the excessive power of the priests, against the tyranny of the " leader," against the spirit of corruption and faction that then prevailed. It opposed the alliance between the Irish party and the English Whigs, which had reduced the former to a mere Whig wing of England and turned Nationalist politics into a mere scramble for places. It hoped to maintain an

2 See the programme of the Nation in Young Ireland, p. 80.

3 See the Library of Ireland, edited by Dufify.

4 See the Spirit of the Nation.

SINCE THE UNION 67

independent party of disinterested men at Westminster and to stir up in Ireland a movement that should be at once bolder in its methods and loftier and less utilitarian in its aims.

With all these sharp points of difference between " Young Ireland " and what for the future was to be known as " Old Ireland," an open rupture was bound to come about sooner or later. It had been threatening ever since O'ConnelPs retreat at Clontarf. It occurred finally as the result of a discussion about those provincial uni- versities, the Queen's Colleges. Sad times followed for Ireland. The country was divided against itself. O'Connell died and left none to succeed him, and Davis himself was just dead. The great Famine broke out. But worse was to come. In the ranks of Young Ireland itself there arose a new schism. The leader of the Young Ireland party at this time was William Smith O'Brien. He was a man of patriotism and integrity, but conservative by temperament, and strongly opposed to all revolutionary ideas. 5 Such ideas, however, had been rapidly gaining ground in the party. The failure of the "moral force " agitation, the wretched condition of Ireland, and the horrors of the famine which the Government had done nothing to relieve, all these combined to bring revolu- tionary ideas to the front. Towards the end of the year 1847 the advocates of " Physical Force " no longer hesi- tated to proclaim themselves. The " Montagnards," Mitchel, Meagher and others, separated from the " Giron- dins." The latter were not, indeed, opposed to methods of violence, but they looked upon such methods as a desperate expedient that should only be had recourse to after long preparation. The former took the opposite view. Ireland could only be saved by blood and iron. They were for an immediate rising, a holy war that should " sweep the island clear of the English name and nation." With a reformer of the stamp of Davis the dominant

5 " There is too much Smith and too little O'Brien," said somebody at the t'ime. Young Ireland, p. 559.

68 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

passion was love of Ireland ; ;vith a revolutionary such as Mitchel it was hatred of England. The former hoped to conciliate, to assimilate the gentry of English descent ; the latter thought only of destroying it. The one sought to educate the Irish and bring about a moral reform ; the sole aim of the other was to rouse them to rebellion, whatever their unpreparedness, whatever the cost. Thus between Mitchel and Davis, both of them Protestants, there existed a gulf no less wide than between Davis and the Catholic O'Connell.6

John Mitchel and the " war party " were expelled from the Nation. On the 12th February, 1848, he brought out the first number of his new paper, the United Irishman, in which he openly preached risings and street fighting. He called the Lord Lieutenant (Lord Clarendon) her Majesty's Executioner General and General Butcher of Ireland. The public were astonished. They looked upon him as a madman. But a fortnight later the revolution broke out in Paris. In quick succession came revolutions in Berlin, Vienna, Prague and Italy. Ireland caught the contagion. The whole country was fired. A chance of repeating 1782 seemed to have presented itself. Mitchel became the hero of the hour. All the Young Irelanders, even Smith O'Brien himself, were seized by the fever. Clubs of Confederates were organised through the country. A " national guard " began to drill and practice arms. Unhappily, divisions continued to be rife among the leaders. Mitchel was for instant action. He redoubled the violence of his articles in the United Irishman, with the aim of provoking an immediate conflict. They had no plans, no military leaders ; what did that matter ? Had they any at Paris or at Berlin ? Long live the Irish Republic ! The Young Irelanders, on the other hand, wished to wait for the summer and thus have time for

6 As to John Mitchel see the excellent study by E. Montégut. L'Exil de la Jeune Irlande in Choses du Nord et du Midi, Paris, 1886. John Mitchel was not a mere fanatic. He was, intellectually, the most brilliant of the Young Irelanders. See his criticism of Macaulay and Bacon in his Jail Journal. He was a writer of exceptional power.

SINCE THE UNION 69

preparation. In his heart Smith O'Brien would have liked to play the part of Lafayette and make terms with the Government. He reproached the " Reds " with en- couraging acts of individual violence . The}? on their side treated him as an aristocrat, and a " rose-water revolu- tionary." The English Government profited by these dis- sensions to nip the rising in the bud. It secretly armed the Orangemen, put Dublin under military occupation, and struck its blow by the arrest of Mitchel. On the 20th May he was condemned to transportation, and was instantly placed on board a war vessel. By the loss of their leader the insurgents were beaten in advance. But things had gone too far to turn back ; the rising had to take place. It was hopeless to attempt it in Dublin. Smith O'Brien and his friends, as a counsel of despair, decided to try a rising in the country. They went through the country parts, organising bands, and possibly they might have made the south of Ireland a second Vendee had they not had to face the opposition of the clergy, who held back the people from the act of folly that was in preparation. The Insurrection of 1848 ended miserably in the tragi-comedy of the cabbage garden at Ballingarry. Abandoned by his improvised troops, that strange leader of rebellion, the Protestant landlord and aristocrat, Smith O'Brien, to save his honour, engaged in a sort of skirmish with a small body of police, who soon had him in their hands. The other leaders went into exile, or else were thrown into prison.

Thus direly and pitifully did the Young Ireland move- ment end in miscarriage. Men of broad mind and noble character, of proud spirit and personal courage, had brought it into being. But they had been lacking in practical qualities. They had no appreciation of the realities of life. The more violent spirits among them gained a com- plete empire over the rest and led them astray. The Young Ireland movement was not a revolutionary one, and yet it was to lead to revolution, and to perish through revolution. It had been a reaction against O'Connell's

70 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

opportunism and legality ; it had resisted the call to arms of the extreme party. But carried along by the explosion of ideas in 1848, Young Ireland found itself compelled t^ force of circumstances and by considerations of honour to have recourse itself to arms, at the most inopportune time and under the most unfavourable conditions, or else lie under the charge of cowardice or treason. Now " Young Ireland " was dead. Its leaders were scattered to the four winds of the heaven. Even its ideas seemed to have perished. In reality they survived the wreck, and reappeared at a later date, when the people had recovered from the dreadful crisis through which they were now to pass, between 1847 and I849 — a crisis in winch the Irish nation seemed destined to be finally extinguished — the Great Famine.

III. — The Great Famine and Emigration.1

We must go back a little in order to indicate briefly the causes of the Great Famine of 1847. The enormous increase of the population of Ireland in the end of the eighteenth, and the first half of the nineteenth century was a striking phenomenon.2 From 1782 on, and especially during the Napoleonic wars, when Ireland had become the granary of England, the country had passed through a period of great prosperit}-. Taking advantage of this, the landlords had multiplied the number of small holdings on their estates, as by this subdivision they increased the number of their voters and raised the total of their rents.

1 The Great Famine and The Period of Emigration : — See especially, W. P. O Brien, The Great Famine, Dublin. O'Rourke, History of the Great Irish Famine, 3rd Ed., Dublin, 1902. Sir Chas. E. Trevelj-an, The Irish Crisis (Edinburgh Review, 1S4S). Report of the Census Com- missioners, 1S51. John Mitchel, Jail Journal. Sir C. G. Duffy, The League of North and South, London, 18S6. Writings of J. F. Lalor, edited by John O'Leary. Lord Dufferin, Irish Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land, London, 18,67. Nassau Senior, Journals' Conversations and Essays relating to Ireland, 1868.

2 In 1788 the population was estimated for the first time at more than four millions (4,040,000). In 1845 it was reckoned at nearly 8 millions.

SINCE THE UNION 71

As a result, the population increased rapidly, and con- tinued to increase notwithstanding a gradual change in economic conditions. On the conclusion of the war the rise in prices was succeeded by a fall. Tillage ceased to pay, and the landlords were naturally tempted to turn the agricultural lands into pasture. A campaign of " Clear- ances " was inaugurated and continued without inter- mission. It became especially vigorous when by the Act of 1829 the smaller peasants were deprived of the right of voting. The tenantry were driven out, and their houses razed to the ground. Holdings were " consolidated." Parliament looked on complacently, and passed laws to make ejectment an inexpensive process. As there were no industries to relieve the pressure, the people crowded in upon such remnants of the soil as were left to them. They were compelled to pay famine rents, which, as John Stuart Mill put it, scarcely left them enough to stave off death from starvation. They lived on potatoes as the Chinese live on rice. Were a bad harvest to come a catastrophe must inevitably ensue.

There came not one bad harvest, but three in succession. In the autumn of 1845 three-quarters of the potato crop was destroyed in a few days by a form of blight hitherto unknown. In 1846 and 1847 the whole potato crop perished. From 1846 to 1849 famine reigned throughout the land. No sooner did the plague touch them than the people seemed plunged in a sort of stupor.

" It was no uncommon sight to see the cottier and his little family seated on the garden fence gazing all day long in moody silence at the blighted plot that had been their last hope. Nothing would rouse them. You spoke : they answered not ; you tried to cheer them : they shook their heads. "3

It is better, said John Mitchel, to perish by the bayonets of England than by her laws. But what were men to do, when death was all around them, at work or at home, in the houses and in the fields, on the mountains and in the

3 A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland, Ch. VI.

72 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

glens ? The workhouses, where no one had hitherto thought of setting foot, were soon filled. At Westport three thousand persons sought admission in one day, though there was no longer any room. One morning the portei found the corpses of eight persons who had died duiing the night, leaning against the railings.

The " Unions,'' from which relief might be obtained, were soon bankrupt. Some of them refused to do anything. In many places, as Mr. Tuke, a philanthropist, tells us, the roads " became as charnel houses." Drivers seldom went out without seeing dead bodies strewn along the roadside, without passing over them if it were night. Another eye-witness informs us that in his district on opening the front door in the morning it was " a com- mon occurrence to find the corpse of some victim leaning against it, who in the night-time had rested in its shelter." All rites, both civil and religious, had to be given up. There were no coffins for the dead. The corpses were hastily carried off in a coffin with a movable bottom, from which they were thrown straight into a common grave. 4 Those who escaped the famine succumbed to the fever. Priests and doctors died by the hundred. Well-to-do families caught the malady and perished with none to aid them. It was a case of each man for himself. All who could, fled the country. The Irish turned their eyes towards America as the Jews of old towards Jerusalem. But emigrants had to endure sufferings almost as bitter as those who remained behind. The State at first exercised no supervision, and the emigrants were crowded into " coffin ships," in which they died in thousands during the course of the voyage. How many of her citizens, one naturally asks, did Ireland lose during those terrible years ? The number of those who perished of hunger has been reckoned at 729,033, " far more," as John Bright said, " than ever fell by the sword in any war England ever waged." 5

4 O'Rourke, History of the Great Irish Famine, pp. 384, 393.

5 The figure is given by Mr. T. W. Grimshaw, Registrar -General, in Facts and Figures about Ireland, Dublin, 1893. The Census Commis-

SINCE THE UNION 73

The number of deaths among the emigrants has been reckoned at 17 per cent., that is, about 200,000. Lastly, it is calculated that from 1846 to 185 1 1,240,737 emi- grants left Ireland.6 This was but the beginning of that emigration, which has never ceased down to the present time.

Could the Great Famine have been avoided, it may be asked ? It is important to remember that the disease only affected a single crop, the potato crop ; all others were up to the average both in quantity and in quality. In 1846 food stuffs and cattle to the value of £41,000,000 were produced on Irish soil ; in 1847 food stuffs and cattle to the value of £38,500,000. During the most critical period of the famine, in 1846 and 1847, Ireland exported corn, barley, oats and cattle in far greater quantities than would have sufficed to feed the people. 7 It was not want of food stuffs that caused the famine. But the produce of the land was used up in paying the landlord's rent. There was famine in the midst of plenty. It was an artificial famine, for, as Mitchel declared : 8 " The exact complement of a comfortable family dinner in England is a Coroner's inquest in Ireland — verdict : star- vation."

The Government made some attempt to avert the evil. But it did very little, and that little it did very ill. Its actions were characterised by stinginess and an entire failure to appreciate the situation. A blind attachment to the doctrines of the Manchester school, which was then at the beginning of its reign, made even its be?t intentioned efforts fail in their object. Sir Robert Peel began, after the English fashion, by introducing a Coercion Act. He then organised provision depots and public relief works, and in the spring of 1846, on the eve

sioners' Report of 185 1, p. 246, gives 985,366 deaths, from 1846 to 1851. Blight's phrase was used in the House of Commons on the 2;th August, 1848.

6 O'Rourke, op. cit. p. 499. Grimshaw, loc. cit.

7 T. P. O Connor, Parnell Movement, Ch. IV. Perraud, op. cit. I., 275.

8 Jail Journal, Introduction.

74 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

of his fall, passed his famous measure, establishing free trade in corn. England alone gained by this enactment. It would have been of more importance to Ireland that the export of corn should be prohibited than that its import should be freely permitted. His successor, Lord John Russell, stopped the great relief works, but later re-established them, making it a condition, however, that none of them should be of a reproductive nature, that is to say, of public benefit. Hills were excavated, and the excavations filled up. Highways were constructed that led nowhere. Hundreds of thousands of persons were thus employed at ridiculously small wages (as low as 5d. a day in some cases) under the control of 10,000 officials. But the people were too exhausted to work. The workmen in many cases on taking up the pick or shovel, were seized with illness and fell to the ground never to rise. More than £10,000,000 sterling was spent on these woiks. The money was not, indeed, given to the local authorities, but lent to them on the security of the rates.9

It should be added that the English public showed them- selves more generous than the Government. Subscriptions were opened all over England, as also on the Continent. Relief committees and soup kitchens were established in each district. In 1847 the Government agreed to con- tribute towards their upkeep. This proved the only practical method of helping the afflicted people. It was regrettable that these soup kitchens were too often used as instruments of proselytism, and in other cases carried on with such a lack of dignity and control that, in the words of an eye-witness, " the feeding of dogs in a kennel was far more decent and orderly."

The Great Famine was an event entailing the gravest consequences — a turning-point in the history of Ireland. Not long before it an English official, when questioned about the discontent of the Irish peasantry, said that so far from being discontented, " they were as gay as larks,

9 New Ireland, Ch. VI.

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damnably happy in their wretchedness." From this date the gay, laughing, generous, hospitable, open-handed, open-hearted Irishman of tradition ceased to exist. All joy had left the people ; cross-road dances and open-air sports became things of the past. Men grew to be ego- istic pessimists, and the hatred of England and of the landlords sank deeper than ever into their souls. The land question in its modern form first took shape about this time. From 1848 on, James Fintan Lalor began, in the Irish Felon, to preach the extermination of the land- lords and the dividing up of the lands. At this time, too, began that great exodus of emigrants from Ireland which has been draining the country and exhausting the race for more than half a century. It continued when the famine had ended, because the causes that brought it about — the evictions and the great clearances — also continued. " The Irish are flying with a vengeance," declared the Times triumphantly about this period. From 185 1 to i860 a million and a half Irishmen emigrated to that " greater Ireland " whither they carried their hatred of England and their desire for vengeance. Henceforward America was to exercise a most important influence on the affairs of Ireland. From America was soon to come a new element in the Irish question — Fenianism.

IV. — Fenianism. l

It was the name of Fenianism that was new rather than the thing itself. In reality Fenianism was but a revival and re-organisation, on a more systematic plan, with improved resources, and above all, with American assist- ance, of that " Physical Force " policy, which had at all times exercised an influence on Irish politics. This had

1 See especially, John O Leary, Fenianism — Fenians and Fenianism, London, 1896. Gerald Fitzgibbon, Ireland in 1868, London, 1868. Sir C. G. Duffy, The League of North and South, London, 1886. Speeches from the Dock, edited by T. D. and A. M. Sullivan. Cf. G. Sigerson, Modern Ireland, London, 1868.

76 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

been the policy of the revolutionaries in 1798 and 1848 ; it may even be said to have been that of the agrarian secret societies such as the Whiteboys and the Ribbon- men.2

During the fifteen years or so that followed the Great Famine and the Rebellion of 1848, the country, maimed and exhausted, and without any organisation, employing methods within the law, remained sunk in a condition of torpor and demoralisation. Corruption reigned supreme in public life ; the people could do nothing. The clergy were under the domination of a reactionary prelate, and took little part in public life, save to support the Whig candidate who was in favour for the moment at elections — a "Castle" Catholic, or even a Protestant, who usually regarded politics merely as a means to promotion. Of the Young Irelanders of former days but a few scattered individuals remained who had been converted to con- stitutionalism since the failure of 1848. One of these was Gavan Duffy, who had tried to revive the national spirit in 185 1. He had united North and South in an agrarian league — the Irish Tenant League — and had endeavoured to form an independent parliamentary party, which might constitute a national opposition. Every member of the party was to pledge himself to accept neither honour nor emolument from the Government.

But a few months after its formation the new party was destroyed, through the treachery of two of its members — the famous Sadleir and Keogh, a pair of political ad- venturers whom the Government had little difficulty in buying over. It was a painful sign of the times that, notwithstanding their treachery, the majority of the clergy, under the influence of Cardinal Cullen, continued to support them till their fall.

In 1858 the apparent calm was troubled by a trifling

2 The Ribbon Society had been the most important among the secret societies that took part in the agrarian struggle in Ireland at the time of the Tithe War (1830-1838). Towards the middle of the century it had absorbed most of the other organisations. See Davitt, Fall of Feudalism, p. 40 et seq.

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disturbance, which no one took seriously. The members of a secret society, the " Phoenix Society " had organised a small conspiracy at Skibbereen in the County Cork. The Government found out the plot and quickly put it down. Such was the condition of general prostration that the affair excited derision rather than astonishment. But there was more in it than appeared. The real leader at Skibbereen, James Stephens, an old '48 rebel, had escaped. From this time forward he devoted himself, with the assistance of O'Donovan Rossa, O'Leary and Kickham, to preparing a more widely extended move- ment, under the title of the " Irish Republican Brother- hood." In America another revolutionary named O'Mahony proceeded to organise a militia, which he called the Fenians, the name given to the ancient warriors in the time of Fionn and his companions. The Catholic clergy denounced the movement. The constitutionalists opposed it. But it continued to make headway. It had accomplices in the army, in the police, even in Dublin Castle. One small event that occurred in 1861 showed the progress it had made. Cardinal Cullen had refused to allow the coffin of Terence MacManus, one of the revolu- tionary leaders, to be placed in church ; 50,000 men followed it to the graveside in Dublin. On the conclusion of the American Civil War a number of soldiers and officers came to offer their services to the Irish rebels. Matters seemed to be coming to a head. As in 1848, the Government forestalled the conspirators, and on Septem- ber 16, 1865, threw the Fenian leaders into prison, and seized their papers, together with their organ, The Irish People. But the ground was mined underneath the Government's feet. The Fenians had accomplices every- where. Stephens made his escape and left the country. In face of the unknown danger, resolution began to weaken. The Government became troubled. Martial law was pro- claimed. Scattered risings took place, which were of course, easily put down. An American ship, the Erin's Hope, arrived with a cargo of arms and a body of soldiers on

78 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

board. Both men and arms were captured. For three years the country continued in a state of tragi-comic terror of Fenians. In England Cler ken well prison was blown up by dynamite, and some inoffending people in the neighbourhood were killed. A raid upon Chester Castle proved a failure. At Manchester the Fenians stopped the " Black Maria " in which two of their brethren were being carried off. Sergeant Brett, the officer in com- mand of the van, had his brains blown out while they were attempting to force the lock of the van. For this five men were arrested. The Press and public opinion of England cried out for vengeance. They were given a trial in which resentment played quite as large a part as the desire for justice. Justice and resentment were alike satisfied by the triple execution of those whom the Irish still call the " Manchester Martyrs."

Some criminal follies ; a few scattered and unfortunate attempts at crime, that were severely repressed — is that, some one will ask, the whole of Fenianism ? The judg- ment is natural. Yet this poor programme proved suffi- cient to change the whole course of events in Ireland, for it made men afraid. England had been living in con- tented optimism, when " like a thunderclap in a clear sky," 3 Fenianism broke out. The alarm aroused public opinion and frightened the English. Men began to under- stand the profound misery in which Ireland was sunk, and the necessity for repairing the wrongs of the past. The Act of 1867 had just then sent to Parliament a body of members chosen on a wider and more democratic fran- chise. Almost immediately afterwards Gladstone secured the passing of the Bill for the " Disestablishment " of the Anglican Church in Ireland, and the first Land Act (1869- 1870). To all appearances Fenianism had been a miserable fiasco. In reality it had succeeded where O'Connell and Young Ireland had failed. It had opened a new era in the history of Ireland. The period of concessions and reforms had at last arrived.

3 John Stuart Mill, England and Ireland.

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V. — Parnell.1

But reforms were not to be won quickly or easily. From 1874 to 1880 a Conservative ministry was in power, and Parliament refused every request made by Irishmen one after the other. Meantime, public opinion in Ireland was developing. In 1870 an association had been formed to demand Home Government, or, as it was soon afterwards styled, Home Rule — a sort of compromise between Repeal (that is to say, independence) and the Union. It was a sign of the times that all parties were represented in it, even the Orangemen and the Protestants, who constituted the English garrison. The latter were in- fluenced not so much by belief in the new idea as by hatred of Gladstone's policy. They soon abandoned the movement, just as they had done in O'Connell's time in the early days of Repeal. Whiggery, on the other hand, which, thanks to the support of the clergy, had hitherto been the dominant policy, now rapidly declined. The survivors and successors of Repeal and of Young Ireland were now formed into an independent party, the " Nation- alist " party, which was in alliance with the English Radicals. Its progress was rapid. In 1874, under the leadership of Isaac Butt, a man of great ability but weak

1 It is impossible to mention even the important works that have been published about the period between 1870 and 1893, and especially about Parnell. One of the best is the masterly study of Parnell by M. Augustin Filon in Profils Anglais, Paris, 1893. Cf. T. P. O Connor, The Parnell Movement, London, 1886. R. Barry O'Brien, Life of C. S. Parnell, London, 1898. M. Davitt, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, London and New York, 1904 (see p. 651, et seq. — a powerful portrait ol| Parnell.) George Moore, Parnell and His Island, London, 1887. Parnellism and Crime, Reprinted from, the Times, London, 1887. Diary of the Parnell Commission, London, 1887. Le Caron, 25 Years in the Secret Service, London, 1892. Ireland under Coercion. The Diary of an American, by Hurlbert, Edinburgh, 1888. Baron de Mandat- Grancey, Chez Paddy, Paris, 1887. Pour V Irlande; Réponse à Chez Paddy, by E. Piche, a Canadian priest, Paris. Ph. Daryl, les Anglais en Irlande, Paris, 1887. Charles Russell (Lord Russell of Kllowen), New Views on Ireland, London, 1880. William O'Brien, Recollections, London, 1905. Cf. The Annual Register and the numerous publications of the Irish Unionist Alliance, the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, the Irish Press Agency, etc.

8o HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

character, it obtained for the first time a majority at the General Election in Ireland. In 1878 it found a leader of supreme ability in the person of Charles Stewart Par- nell.

Parnell shares with O'Connell the glory of being the greatest of Irish leaders. Like O'Connell, he was a land- lord, and his family traditions were those of an aristocrat. Like him, too, he was overbearing, even despotic in temperament. But in all else Parnell was the very opposite of the " Liberator." The Protestant leader of a Catholic people, he won popularity in Ireland, without being at all times either understood or personally liked. In outward appearance he had nothing of the Irishman, nothing of the " Celt," about him. He was cold, distant and unexpansive in manner, and had more followers than friends.2 His speech was not that of a great orator. Yet it was singularly powerful and penetrating, with here and there brilliant flashes that showed profound wisdom. A man of few words, of strength rather than breadth of mind — his political ideals were often uncertain and con- fused— he was better fitted to be a combatant than a constructive politician. Beyond all else, he was a Parlia- mentary fighter of extraordinary ability, perfectly self- controlled, cold and bitter, powerful at hitting back. It was precisely these English qualities that enabled him to attain such remarkable success in his struggle with the English. Pride was perhaps a stronger motive with him than patriotism or faith. After the Divorce Case, when a temporary retirement might have saved him and saved

2 " This was, perhaps, the Parnell that strangers saw," said one, who had known him intimately, to the writer. " But at bottom, with his intimates, no one was more warm-hearted, more full of grace and charm . . . To those near him, he showed a simple cordiality. He inherited from his mother many Celtic traits of character. He is called proud, but he showed sufficient patriotism to leave his caste and espouse the popular cause at a time when his pride had nothing to gain from so doing. His love of Ireland was equalled by his hatred of English Rule in Ireland, a hatred like the saeva indignatio of Swift. In Parliament his oratory was as fiery in substance, as it was restrained in form. You did not know him until you saw the flame that seemed to leap out of each of his words ; he held friends and enemies breathlessly in thrall, by the mastery of his vengeful utterance."

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Home Rule, he refused to take this course. The concession would have hurt his pride too much, and the same self-centred obstinacy that had so often led him to victory in the end proved the cause of his destruction.

Until he turned traitor to his good fortune, Parnell was exceptionally favoured by circumstances. He had to deal with an England still stirred by Fenianism and disposed to conciliation. He received from the aged Biggar the weapon of Parliamentary obstruction. He took out of the timid hands of Isaac Butt a united and disciplined party. The two most striking points in " Parnellism " were, indeed, suggested to Parnell himself by Michael Davitt in 187g. First Davitt proposed that he should yoke the political question to the Land Question, so that the Home Rule cause might benefit by the strength of agrarian agitation. It was a happy opportunism. He next suggested that in his constitutional struggle Parnell should tacitly, without any formal compact, accept the aid of the more moderate members of the Revolutionary Party, those Irish and, more especially, American extremists, whose co-operation in the agrarian battle Davitt and Devoy had lately secured. 3

Hitherto Constitutionalists and Revolutionaries had ever been at daggers drawn. Henceforward the two movements were to advance along parallel Unes, and victory would be assured. The step was certainly a dangerous one. No doubt Constitutionalism would derive new force from the assistance of the Clan-na-Gael, and from contributions of American money. But, on the other hand, it must naturally be more or less com- promised. Constitutionalists would be charged with complicity in crime, and were bound to lose their power of preventing outrages. Nevertheless Parnell acquiesced in the new plans, and from that moment began the famous and terrible crisis of the years 1880 to 1893, that great revolution in which the Irish nation came

3 See Davitt, Fall of Feudalism, p. 116 et seq. for the history of the New Departure.

G

82 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

within an ace of winning the day, and from which it was destined to come forth sadly maimed, yet still living. In reality there were two successive crises, which followed the same evolution, and exhibit the strangest similarities. The first began in 1879. The country was then threatened by famine, as a result of three bad harvests. On top of them came an eviction campaign. The situation was grave. It was a matter of life and death for the country. Were the defenceless people again to perish resignedly, crushed between the famine and the landlords, as had happened in 1847 ? But this time they were armed for the contest. Parnell and Davitt had just founded the Land League to maintain the struggle against landlordism. In 1880 the House of Lords rejected a Bill, of a character favourable to the tenants, which was the first attempt to deal with the situation. The Land League branches which were in the hands of the more violent spirits retaliated by boy- cotting and resistance at evictions. The Moonlighters spread crime and terror throughout the country. This was the result of the evictions, the fatal accompaniment of excess in agrarian agitation. As a consequence, Gladstone hastened to pass at the same time as the Land Act of 1881 (which the Irish members committed the error of opposing) a severe Coercion Act, which Forster, the Chief Secretary, put into operation with fatal brutality. Instead of aiming at the real criminals, he attacked the constitutional organisation, the Land League. He tried to put down all agitation. The League was suppressed, but its place was filled by the Ladies' Land League. Six or seven hundred persons were thrown into gaol, and Parnell himself was arrested. His lieu- tenants then published their celebrated No-Rent Mani- festo, which came too late, and failed. The Moonlighters and Ribbonmen committed more outrages ; the landlords carried out more evictions than ever. Crime increased, and anarchy increased with it. Coercion had been directed against the constitutional agitation. The result

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was that it had left the field open for anarchy. At last the English were stirred. In the month of April, 1882, after two years of social and agrarian strife, — the heroic period of Parnellism — Gladstone put forward terms of peace, and entered into negotiations with Parnell, who was then imprisoned in Kilmainham. This " Kilmainham Treaty," though condemned by the more advanced spirits in the Land League as being a compromise, was in reality a triumph for Parnell and the moderate party. It marked the definite failure of coercion, and meant certain victory for the Irish. Parnell was proclaimed the " uncrowned king " of Ireland, and Gladstone and the English Liberals became subservient to him. But his triumph was short-lived. The tragic murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the messenger of conciliation, and Mr. Under-Secretary Burke by the " Invincibles," in the Phoenix Park brought it to an abrupt conclusion. Parnell had accepted the aid of those extremists, who were prepared to co-operate in an agitation more or less within the law. But there remained the other section of extremists, who were opposed to such co-operation, and these had now come upon the scene to disturb the feast. Dublin, and the whole of Ireland, was filled with terror and alarm. Parnell made up his mind to keep clear of agitation by violent methods ever afterwards ; and such was the horror caused by the Park Murders, that from that day forward the graver forms of crime dis- appeared from Ireland.4 Constitutional agitation had received a blow from which it only slowly revived. Only under the rough coercion of Lord Spencer, and the wholesale evictions that accompanied it, did it again show signs of life.

The Land League was revived as the National League, on lines at once more moderate, more parliamentary, and more under the control of the clergy. In Ulster a civil

4 The dynamitards devoted their efforts to terrorising England, from 1882 to 1885 ; but in Ireland organised crime on any large scale disappeared.

84 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

war broke out between Nationalists and Orangemen. It took two years to put down the agitation. How the crisis ended is well known. In 1885-6 Liberal and Con- servative ministries were each twice in power ; Mr. Gladstone introduced his first Home Rule Bill, together with a general Land Purchase Act. But it was sum- marily rejected by the House of Commons in 1886.

The second crisis, which lasted from 1886 to 1893, was happily of a less tragic character than the earlier one. In its main lines it passed through the same phases. First came a crisis in agriculture, a sudden fall in prices, which made the payment of rent an impossibility. In September, 1886, Parliament threw out a Bill which Parnell had introduced to afford temporary relief. At the same time the landlords inaugurated a new eviction campaign, in which they called in the aid of the troops. The peasants looked around for someone who should fight their battle. It was in these circumstances that Parnell's lieutenants started the famous " Plan oi Campaign," a second and improved edition of the No- Rent Manifesto of 1881. Parnell and the League took no official part in the agitation, but furnished the funds for it. Matters grew worse on both sides. The Unionist Government gave itself up to a policy of re-action. In 1887 Mr. Balfour secured the passing of a Land Bill that partially satisfied the tenants' demand, but passed at the same time a new Crimes Act of a permanent character. He also enforced rigorous coercion, of so severe a character, that its only result was to stir up the Nationalists to further efforts, while it won for them the sympathy of English Radicals. For three years the agrarian and political struggle continued. In some points 5 the " Plan of Campaign " proved a failure, but

5 For example, on the property of Mr. Smith Barry, at Tipperary, whose tenants were unfortunately allowed to be evicted, the idea being to build a " New Tipperary " for them. Many mistakes were committed in the choice of points of attack in the " Plan of Campaign," and in the conduct of operations in the land war. They might, perhaps, have been avoided, had Parnell not desired to keep aloof, and to restrain the League from any official participation in the operations.

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it succeeded in 95 cases out of no. At this time Parnell was in England, defending himself against an attempt made by the Tories to bring about his political ruin. The Times, in its famous series of articles on Parnellism and Crime, accused him of direct complicity in the crimes of the " Invincibles," and supported the charge by forged letters. A Special Commission, composed of his political enemies, was appointed to try him, but after long months of inquiry the bottom was knocked out of the accusation by the confession of the forger Pigott. Notwithstanding the strictures passed upon Parnell in the Report of the Commission, the Irish Leader suddenly became a popular hero in England. He entered into a still closer alliance with Gladstone. The two discussed the provisions of the coming Home Rule Bill at Hawarden. The " Union of Hearts " between Ireland and Liberal England was an accomplished fact, and once more the victory of the Irish seemed assured. But it was not to be. Like a thunderclap came the Divorce Case, and Irish hopes and the Irish leader were involved in the same ruin. . . . What followed is known to all. The Irish leader was repudiated by the Liberal Party in England, but refused to quit his post. The Irish them- selves, after the futile Boulogne negotiations, abandoned Parnell, who died, worn out, a few months later ; and the Parnellites, who were only a minority in the Par- liamentary Party, also found themselves deserted. For ten years dissension reigned supreme in Ireland. In England Gladstone returned to power, and passed his Home Rule Bill through the Commons in 1893. It was at once thrown out by the Lords. In the result, by the crisis of 1880 to 1893, the Irish gained a code of legislation favourable to the farmers, and also succeeded in estab- lishing the principle of land purchase, which was later to bear fruit. Had Parnell remained at the helm, had Gladstone been a younger man, it is not difficult to believe that they might likewise have won Home Rule. From 1895 to 1905 the Conservative Government, indeed,

86 ! HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

devoted themselves to " killing Home Rule by kindness,"6 by means of a policy of cheap concessions judiciously mingled with coercion. These efforts, however, did not succeed either in conciliating Ireland, or in bringing back union to the Disunited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

VI.

Let us now look backwards and try to appreciate the why and wherefore of the long and mournful story of Ireland.

Ireland being a small country, situate close to a large one, a conflict was inevitable. One of the two must infallibly conquer the other. Compared with her neigh- bour, Ireland was poor and weak. She was cut off by England from the life of Europe. Her people were idealistic, unstable, sentimental. It was their unhappy destiny to have to submit to the imperious and selfish rule of the Saxon. They have all along refused to bend to the yoke. Why, then, some may ask with Froude,,1 if they had not the strength to conquer, did they not " honourably " submit, a course which would have been in their real interest. Was national priae or race an- tipathy the cause ? It may be answered at once that they were not. Had Ireland desired to submit, she could not have done so. England did not leave her the choice. Risings, revolutions, and civil wars were forced upon the country from century to century. They were provoked by massacres, plantations, and persecutions ; by the oppressions of landlords, by the injustice of the laws. It was England herself, it was the English in Ireland that made the Irish rebels. But how comes it, one may ask, that after so long an agony Ireland still survives, that the name of her people has not been obliterated

6 Killing Home Rule with kindness was the policy of Mr. Arthur Balfour after 1890, and of his brother, Mr. Gerald Balfour, Chief Secretary, from 1895 to 1900. To a certain extent, it was also that of Mr. George Wyndham, Chief Secretary, from 1900 to 1905. (Cf. our article on Ireland and British Imperialism in the Revue des Deux Mondes of the 15th May, 1903).

1 The English in Ireland. I., 6, 12.

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from the pages of history ? The reason is that down to the eighteenth century, so vigorous was her race, so powerful the influence of her climate and of her pleasant nature, so great the charm of her soul 2 on the souls of the new-comers, that Ireland always assimilated her invaders. " Lord ! " said the poet Spenser, " how quickely doth that countrey alter mens' natures." England, on the other hand, was lacking in the first duty of a conqueror, which is to legitimise his conquest by the spread of civilisation, and by works of reparation. This is a truth that none can fail to recognise. " Seven centuries of rapine and violence. Carelessness alternating with ferocity. Not a gleam of humanity, nor of political wisdom. Not even the wisdom of the peasant, who takes care of his beast, lest it perish." 3 Why, then, such long-continued barbarity, one may ask, since not even Cromwell himself sought the complete extermination of the Irish ? Why was no honest effort ever made to conciliate the Irish down to the time of the Union, save, perhaps, that of Hem y VIII. ? Why were tyranny, bloodshed, and persecution, whether by legal methods or by methods of violence, the only policy attempted ; and since the Union, why has there been so much bad grace, and so little good faith in dealing with Irish grievances ? Why is it that those concessions that have been made since 1870 were won only by violent methods, and even then hampered by limitations which robbed them of all merit, if not of all value ? Filled with ambition, and born to rule, the English, from the moment they set foot in Ireland, feeling themselves stronger than the rival nation, forthwith neglected and despised it, as a property that must some day fall in to them. They contented themselves with putting a stop to all progress in the country, leaving Ireland " to stew in her own juice," as an Englishman has put it. They founded their rule upon Irish dissensions, instead of promoting

2 Aug. Filon, Profils Anglais, Paris, 1893, Chapter on John Morley.

3 John M. Robertson (now M.P.), The Saxon and the Celt, London, 1897, p. 313.

88 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

goodwill and equal justice. Instead of devoting them- selves to organisation and to the development of the country, they abandoned its whole government to a garrison of unscrupulous adventurers. Self-interest, rather than fanaticism, was the motive which inspired those Penal Laws, as to which Hallam, the historian, has declared that "to have exterminated the Catholics by the sword or expelled them like the Moriscos of Spain would have been a little more repugnant to Justice and Humanity, but incomparably more politic." Either herself, or in the person of her representatives, England exploited Ireland as a dependency, a conquered country, from which nothing need be feared, from which nothing could be hoped ; a country that was done for, that could never revive, and towards which the best policy to pursue was to draw from it as large a tribute as possible, of men for the army, and of money for the Empire. Thus, when all is said, the Irish policy of England may, perhaps, be found to be inspired not so much by hatred or vin- dictiveness, as by selfish indifference, narrowness of view, and imperfect understanding. But is this the whole explanation ? Can we not push the matter a stage further ? When we look at the sequence of events since the Great Famine ; when we recognise that England has always shrunk from taking any definite or decisive step in Ireland ; that she has toyed with problems without seriously seeking to solve them ; that she has ever been satisfied to exploit the sister island intellectually and economically, can we go on to say that at bottom the English (Gladstone and his followers always excepted) have been influenced by the idea of merely marking time till the sorely-stricken nation might sink into dissolution ; that they are waiting till, when Ireland is drained of her ancient inhabitants — some lost by emigration, others by Anglicisation — the Irish question will, in measurable time, disappear of its own accord ? The solution of this question we leave to the reader, who, having read the in- troduction to this book, has the patience to read the book.

PART I.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS1

CHAPTER I.— THE TWO IRELANDS : THE ENGLISH COLONY

History, as we have seen, has created two Ireiands in Ireland. These exist, indeed, two opposed nations, the one super-imposed on the other, the one subject, the other master. Above is the British colony or garrison — that is to say, the newcomers, the latest planters in Ireland, the feudatories of England, the privileged class, the outlanders of Ireland, or the English in Ireland, as

1 For this first part see especially besides the important works of G. de Beaumont and Cardinal Perraud already quoted : —

Political and Social works. — Ph . Daryl, The English in Ireland, Paris, 1887. De Mandat-Grancey, Chez Paddy, Paris. 1887. E. Piché, Pour rirlande (answer to Chez Paddy), Paris, Merich. George Sigerson, Modern Ireland, London, 1868. John Mitchel, Jail Journal, New York, 1854. M. Arnold, Irish Essays, London, 1882. R. Barry O'Brien, Fifty Years' Concessions to Ireland, London, 1883. By the same, Irish Wrongs and English Remedies, London, 1887. William O'Brien, Irish Ideas, London, 1893. M. Davitt, Leaves from a Prison Diary, London, 1885. The Case of the Irish Landlords, by one of them, Dublin, 1899. T. W. Russell, Ireland and the Empire, London, 1901. O'Connor Morris, Present Irish Questions, London, 1901. Ideals in Ireland, edited by Lady Gregory, London, 1901. Stephen Gwynn, M.P., To-day and. To- morrow in Ireland, London and Dublin, 1903. Sir H. Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century, London, 1904. M. Davitt, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, London, New York, 1904. Recollée dons, Lives aud Correspondence of O'Connell, of Dr. M'Hale (Archbishop of Tuam), of Dr. Doyle (Archbishop of Kildare and Leighlin), of T. Drummond, of

90 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS

Froude, who wrote their history under this title, called them. Below are the people, the conquered, the helots, the confused and mingled mass of the former occupants of the soil, be they of Gaelic or Danish, of Norman or Anglo-Norman, or even of English blood. For division does not really arise from race differences — races are merged and mixed — nor even from religious differences — Protestants may be found in the popular party, and Catholics in the English party. The line of demarcation is chiefly social and political. Interests, prejudices, national aspirations, separate the two Irelands far more than do race or religion. Thus it would not seem that the breach which history has created is definitive and im- passable. The two sections are without doubt mutually hostile ; shall we say that they are irreducible and re- fractory, one to the other, by their very definition ? Are they, as has been said, like oil and water, or like mercury and lead ? England, without doubt, has done every- thing, and still does everything, to separate the two nations. She excites the prejudices of the one and the appetites of the other, knowing well that her strength lies in their division, and that her power would be in danger were Ireland one and united. But in former days did not Ireland always conquer her conquerors one after the other ? How then can she, after two centuries of pre- scription have run in their favour, refuse the name of

Davis, of John Mitchel, of C. G. Duffy, of J. B. Dillon, of Parnell, etc. William O'Brien, M;P., Recollections, London, 1905.

Various Periodicals and Publications. — Hansard. New Ireland Review, Dublin. Journal of the National Literary Society, Dublin. Publications of the Irish Press Agency, of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, of the Irish Unionist Alliance, of the United Irish League of Great Britain.

Novels. — The Novels of Miss Edgeworth, of C. Lever, of S. Lover, of Carleton, Gerald Gtiffin, of Ch. Kickham. William O'Brien, When we were Boys. Mrs. O'Brien, Silhouettes Irlandaises, The Novels of Canon Sheehan, especially My New Citrate. The Novels of Jane Barlow, espially Irish Idylls and A Creel of Irish Stories ; of Miss Lawless, especially Hurrish ; of Mrs. Tynan- Hickson, notably A Cluster of Nuts ; of Miss Julia Crottie, notably Neighbours. Those of Seumas M'Manus, notably In Old Donegal ; and of Shan Bullock, especially The Barrys, and Dan the Dollar. O'Gara, The Green Republic, London, 1903. George Moore, The Untilled Field, 1903. George Birmingham, The Seething Pot, London, 1905.

THE TWO IRELANDS : THE ENGLISH COLONY 91

Irishmen to those landlords whose titles to their property she no longer disputes ? How can she disown those men who since the time of Cromwell and of William III. have breathed her air beneath her skies, and who, whatever may have been their faults towards the country of their adoption, gave to her in her hours of tragedy a Wolfe Tone and a Robert Emmet, a Smith O'Brien and a John Mitchel ?

The history of Ireland in the nineteenth century is that of a great and slow revolution, at once political and social, by which the English Garrison, the sovereign minority, tends to lose its privileges and to return to the ranks, while the majority, the subject people, gradually free themselves and resume their natural rights. The pro- gressive uprising of the Irish people, the simultaneous downfall of the governing classes, is one of the great social facts of contemporary Ireland. Equilibrium is not yet attained, but the arms of the balance tend to come to rest.

The British Colony or Garrison consists of two parts. First, there is the English oligarchy, the Ascendancy, so called, the landlords. These trace their descent from the English conquerors planted in the country by Eng- land after