Catholic Emancipation--Antiquity and Power of the Papal
Church--Treaty of Limerick--Catholic Penal Code of
Ireland--Opinions of Penn, Montesquieu, Burke, and Blackstone,
concerning it--Its Amelioration--Catholic Association of 1823--The
Hour and the Man--Daniel O'Connell elected for Clare--Alarm in
Downing Street--Duke of Wellington's Decision--Passage of the
Emancipation Bill--Services of O'Connell and Shiel--The latter as
an Orator.
The subject-matter of this chapter will be, the Catholic Penal Code, and
its repeal by act of Parliament, in 1829.
The antiquity and power of the Roman Hierarchy, and the sway it now
holds over 150,000,000 of people, diffused through all quarters of the
globe, is one of the most extraordinary facts in the history of the
Christian era. Whether the combined efforts of Protestanism to overthrow
it, during the next three centuries, will be more successful than during
the three since the Reformation, time only can show. In his review of
Ranke's History of the Popes, speaking of the Catholic Church, Macaulay
says: "She saw the commencement of all the governments, and of all the
ecclesiastical establishments, that now exist in the world; and we feel
no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She
was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain--before
the Frank had passed the Rhine--when Grecian eloquence still flourished
at Antioch--when idols were still worshiped in the temple of Mecca. And
she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler from New
England shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a
broken arch of London Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's."
Amongst the adherents to the Papal faith, none have shown a steadier
attachment to it, through all vicissitudes, than the Catholics of
Ireland. For centuries it has been the dominant, and at times almost
exclusive, religion of that country. Persecutions the most bigoted and
bloody have not abated the zeal and tenacity with which the Irish have
practiced and clung to their hereditary creed. The battle of the Boyne,
in 1690, was followed by the Treaty of Limerick, by which William of
Orange guaranteed in the most solemn terms religious toleration to his
Irish Catholic subjects. The treaty was to be binding upon him, his
heirs, and successors. But, a fear of the return of the banished
Catholic princes of the house of Stuart, mingled with a propagandist
zeal to convert Ireland to the doctrines of the Reformation, induced
England to disregard the stipulations of the Treaty of Limerick. Partly
by the direct legislation of the British Parliament, and partly through
the medium of the Pale, a _quasi_ Legislature of Ireland, the Catholic
Penal Code was introduced into that country. Like other branches of
British law, it was a piece of patchwork, the contribution of many
reigns. It received its worst features within twenty years after the
Treaty of Limerick. I will give a summary of its main provisions.
FIRST, _as to persons professing the Catholic religion_. No Papist could
take the real estate of his ancestor, either by descent or purchase; nor
purchase any real estate, nor take a lease for more than thirty-one
years; and if the profits of such lease exceeded a certain rate, the
land went to any Protestant informer. The conveyance of real estate in
trust for a Papist was void; nor could he inherit any, nor be in a line
of entail, but the estate descended to the next Protestant heir, as if
the Papist were dead. A Papist who turned Protestant succeeded to the
family estate; and an increase of jointure was allowed to Papist wives
on their turning Protestant; whilst, on the other hand, a Protestant
who turned Papist, or procured another to turn, was guilty of high
treason. Papist fathers were debarred, on a penalty of L500, from being
guardians of their children; and a Papist minor, who avowed himself a
Protestant, was immediately delivered to a Protestant guardian. No
Papist could marry a Protestant, and the priest celebrating the marriage
was to be hanged. Papists could not be barristers; and being
Protestants, if they married Papists they were to be treated as Papists.
It was a felony for a Papist to teach a school; to say or hear mass
subjected him to fine and a year's imprisonment; to aid in sending
another abroad, to be educated in the Popish religion, subjected the
parties to a fine, and disabled them to sue in law or equity, to be
executors and administrators, to take any legacy or gift, to hold any
office, and to a forfeiture of all their chattels, and all real estate
for life. No Papist could hold office, civil or military, sit in
Parliament, or vote at elections. Protestants, robbed by privateers in a
war with a Popish prince were to be indemnified by levies on the
property of Catholics alone.
SECOND, _as to Popish recusants_, i. e., persons not attending the
Established Church. Such Papists could hold no office, nor keep arms,
nor come within ten miles of London, on pain of L100, nor travel above
five miles from home without license, on pain of forfeiting all goods,
nor come to court on pain of L100, nor bring any action at law or
equity; and to marry, baptize, or bury such an one subjected the
offending priest to heavy penalties. A recusant married woman forfeited
two-thirds of her dower or jointure, nor could she be the executrix of
her deceased husband, nor have any part of his goods; and during
coverture she might be imprisoned, unless her husband redeemed her at
the rate of L10 per month. All other recusant females must renounce
Popery or quit the realm; and if they did not leave in a reasonable
time, or afterwards returned, they could be put to death.
THIRD _as to Popish priests_. Severe penalties were inflicted on them
for discharging their ecclesiastical functions anywhere, and if done in
England they were liable to perpetual imprisonment. Any such priest who
was born in England, and, having left, should come in from abroad, was
guilty of treason, and all who harbored him might be punished with
death. Rewards were given for discovering Popish clergy, and any person
refusing to disclose what he knew of their saying mass, or teaching
pupils, might be imprisoned a year. A Popish priest who turned
Protestant was entitled to L30 per annum. Besides this, they were
subject to all the penalties and disabilities of lay Papists.
FOURTH. Papists were excluded from grand juries; in all trials growing
out of the Penal Code, the juries were to be Protestants; and in any
trial on statutes for strengthening the Protestant interest, a Papist
might be peremptorily challenged.
In surveying the lineaments of such a Code, the blood of a statue might
glow with indignation, or chill with horror. It was inflicted on
Catholic Ireland by Protestant England, in the name of that Church which
claims to be the pillar and ground of the Christian faith. Well might
the mild William Penn be aroused to denounce it as inhuman, when
pleading before the House of Commons for toleration to the Quakers. Well
might the sagacious Montesquieu characterize it as cold-blooded tyranny.
Well might the philosophic Burke describe it "as a machine of wise and
elaborate contrivance, noted for its vicious perfection; and as
admirably 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." Even Blackstone, who
usually selected his choicest eulogies for the darkest features of the
English law, was forced to say of this Code: "These laws are seldom
exerted to their utmost rigor; and, indeed, if they were, it would be
very difficult to excuse them." Yes, though in the times when the
"No-Popery" cry was at its hight, these laws were rigorously enforced,
yet, as the mellowing light of civilization increased, the more cruel
lay a dead letter on the statute book. But the whole hung over the head
of the Catholic, like the sword of Damocles, ready to drop at the breath
of any persecuting zealot or malicious informer.
This Code was essentially ameliorated in 1779, and again in 1793. Among
other concessions, the elective franchise was extended to Catholics,
though they were still excluded from Parliament. But, he who would bring
himself within the pale of these ameliorations, must submit to many
degrading and annoying requisitions, in the form of registrations,
oaths, subscriptions, declarations, &c. In a word, down to 1829, when it
was finally repealed, many of the worst features of the Code remained,
making it an offense for seven-eighths of the people of Ireland to
worship God according to the dictates of their consciences; subjecting
them to degrading tests or heavy penalties for exercising precious civil
and social rights; goading them with a thousand petty and provoking
annoyances, till they had come to be regarded as heathens while bowing
at Christian altars, and aliens to a Government under which they were
born, and to whose support they were compelled to contribute their blood
in war, and their money in peace. To all this, one may enter his
protest, while holding at arm's length the Catholic ritual. To worship
God according to the dictates of his own conscience, without human
molestation or earthly fear, is the divine right of every man, whether
he be Irish Catholic or English Protestant, Massachusetts freeman or
Louisiana slave.
Notwithstanding the important amendments made in the Catholic Code, in
1779 and 1793, its remaining disabilities and penalties hung over
Ireland like a dark cloud, shutting out the sun of civil and religious
freedom. In the latter year, an association was organized in Dublin, to
agitate and petition for Repeal. Though ultimately rent in pieces by
internal commotions, it was the germ of all subsequent organizations for
the same objects. During the succeeding thirty years, this question
frequently convulsed Parliament and the country. The remedies which the
British Government usually prescribed for the political and religious
diseases of Ireland were insurrection acts, coercion acts, suspensions
of the _habeas corpus_, capital trials, hangings, and transportation,
administered by the batons of the police and the bayonets of the
soldiery.
The year 1823 saw a bright star of promise arise on the dark and
troubled horizon of Hibernia. The exigencies of the times had healed the
feuds of hostile factions among the Emancipationists, and they closed
hands in defense of their common liberties. In May, of that year, Daniel
O'Connell and Richard Lalor Shiel, who had long been estranged from each
other, accidentally met among the mountains of Wicklow, at the house of
a friend. A reconciliation took place, and they resolved to form a
league for the deliverance of their enslaved Catholic countrymen. The
same month they organized the "Catholic Association," in Dublin, on the
plan of admitting all persons, of whatever sect or party, who approved
its objects. It early enrolled some of the first minds in the island,
who commenced an agitation which was soon felt in the fartherest corner
of the kingdom, nor stopped till it brought back responses from France,
Germany, the United States, Canada, the East Indies, and other distant
countries. It made the realm vocal with its orators, crowded Parliament
with its petitions, and scattered its tracts over the Continent.
O'Connell and Shiel were the life and soul of the Association; the
former being its chief manager, the latter its most brilliant advocate.
Undoubtedly some of the transactions of this almost omnipotent body were
of an inflammatory character. But it gave concentration and rational aim
to the efforts of the oppressed Irish, and, by exciting the hope of
relief, withdrew from them the temptation to illegal acts of violence.
The justice of its object, and the contempt which its petitions received
from Parliament, ultimately rallied to its standard the whole of the
Catholics and an influential portion of the dissenting Protestants of
Ireland. Alarmed at its power, the session of March, 1825, after a
stormy debate, passed an act terminating its existence. Immediately
after the adjournment of Parliament, the Association was reoerganized,
with a constitution which did not come within the law. At the session of
1826, finding that the agitation could not be silenced, various efforts
were made to ameliorate the condition of Ireland. After spending five
months in vehement discussion, Parliament abandoned the country to the
rage of party spirit, and it was left for the well-directed labors of
the Association to prevent it from plunging into anarchy and revolution.
At the general election in the summer of 1826, the friends of
Emancipation took the field and achieved some signal triumphs in
returning members to Parliament. The Irish tenantry, the "forty-shilling
freeholders," who had generally been supple instruments in the hands of
the Protestant landlord, to perpetuate his domination and their chains,
had, by the labors of the Association, been converted into an engine to
overthrow the oppressors. They now voted with the Emancipators.
Canning rose to power in 1827. His professed regard for Catholic relief
induced Ireland to wait and see what would come from his ministry. His
early death quenched all hope of succor from his administration. After
the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts the next year, a struggle
for partial relief to the Catholics, which resulted successfully in the
Commons, but was defeated in the Lords, only stimulated the friends of
Emancipation to take a bolder step. The hour to strike the decisive blow
had come, and it brought with it the man.
In 1828, Mr. Fitzgerald, the member for Clare, received a place in the
cabinet, thus vacating his seat in the Commons. He was a candidate for
reelection. The Catholic Association requested Mr. O'Connell to become a
candidate for the vacancy, and in his own person seek to establish the
right of Catholics to sit in Parliament. He immediately issued an
address to the electors of Clare, in which, among other things, he said:
"Fellow-countrymen, your county wants a representative. I respectfully
solicit your suffrages, to raise me to that station. * * * * You will be
told I am not qualified to be elected. The assertion is untrue. I am
qualified to be elected, and to be your representative. It is true that,
as a Catholic, I cannot, and of course never will, take the oaths at
present prescribed to members of Parliament. But the authority which
created those oaths can abrogate them. And I entertain a confident hope
that, if you elect me, the most bigoted of our enemies will see the
necessity of removing from the chosen representative of the people an
obstacle which would prevent him from doing his duty to his king and to
his country."
The address fell like a thunderbolt upon the enemies of Emancipation.
The friends of Fitzgerald would not believe it was the intention of
O'Connell to seriously contest the canvass. The speedy arrival of two of
his agents in Clare dispelled their doubts. The county was in a boil of
excitement. The day of election approaches. Shiel addresses a concourse
of electors. His eloquence inspires a wild enthusiasm in their hearts.
The time for the arrival of the great agitator himself is fixed. An
immense throng hails him, with banners, music, and shoutings. The trial
day comes, and the candidates appear before assembled thousands of the
electors. Fitzgerald delivers an able speech. O'Connell rises and
pronounces a magnificent harangue, which sways the passions of the
peasantry as forests wave when swept by the wing of the tempest. A
violent contest ensues, and at its close the high-sheriff declares that
"Daniel O'Connell, Esq., is duly elected a member of the Commons House
of Parliament for the county of Clare."
This unexpected result carried dismay into the councils of Downing
street; for they knew that O'Connell was soon to appear in London and
demand his seat in Parliament. His fame was no stranger to the place
where his person was unknown. His reputation had long ago penetrated
every mansion and cabin in the realm. The agitation of the past five
years, whose tread had shaken Ireland from Cape Clear to the Giant's
Causeway, had ever and anon caused the walls of St. Stephen's to
tremble. And now, what seemed so terrible in the distance, was to be
brought to its very doors. Parliament was not in session; but it had
been announced that ministers would oppose Mr. O'Connell's entrance into
the Commons. The declaration drove Ireland to the brink of civil war.
The commander of the forces conveyed to the ministry the alarming
intelligence, that the troops were fraternizing with the people, and
their loyalty could not be relied on in the event of an outbreak. All
minds not besotted with bigotry felt that the great right for which the
Association had contended must be conceded. The Duke of Wellington, then
at the head of the government, saw that the hour had come when either
his prejudices or his place must be surrendered. He decided that the
former must yield. Parliament was convened on the 5th of March, 1829. On
the first day of the session, Mr. Peel moved that the House go into
committee, "to take into consideration the civil disabilities of his
Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects." After two days' debate, it
prevailed. A bill of Emancipation was introduced. Ancient hatred was
aroused, and in five days sent in a thousand petitions against its
passage. The bill passed, after a severe struggle, and Mr. Peel carried
it to the Lords. A fierce contest ensued, but it was forced through by
the Iron Duke. On the 13th of April it received the royal assent, and
was hailed with joy by the friends of religious freedom, whilst bigotry
went growling to its den.
Mr. O'Connell appeared in the House to claim his seat. Having been
elected before the act of Emancipation, the ancient oaths were tendered
to him. He declined to take them. After tedious hearings before the
Committee of Elections, extending through several weeks, and a powerful
address at the bar of the House in support of his own right, his seat
was declared vacant. He returned to Ireland, and was everywhere hailed
as "the Liberator of his country." After walking over the course of
Clare, he repaired to Westminster, and "the member for all Ireland" took
his seat in the British House of Commons.
For this great concession to the Genius of Toleration, the age is
indebted to the Catholic Association, organized and sustained by
O'Connell and Shiel, the Castor and Pollux of Emancipation. No two men
were more perfect antagonisms in the prime elements of their characters,
and no two more harmoniously blended in the accomplishment of a common
object. Each supplied what was wanting in the other. O'Connell was
unsurpassed in planning, organizing, and executing, and his unique and
vigorous eloquence could stir to its bottom the ground tier of Irish
society. Shiel was rich in the highest gifts of oratory, ornate,
classical, impassioned, and could rouse the enthusiasm and intoxicate
the imaginations of the refined classes of his countrymen. The one
contributed to the work, the learning and skill of an acute lawyer, the
knowledge of a well-read historian of his country, an intimate
acquaintance with all the details of the great question at issue, and
business capacities of the first order. The other gave to it a
transcendent intellect, adorned with the genius of a poet, the graces of
a rhetorician, and the embellishments of a polite scholar. Both
consecrated to it intense nationality of feeling, quenchless
perseverance, and indomitable courage. Each yielded to the other the
exclusive occupancy of the peculiar field of labor to which his talents
were best adapted.
Mr. SHIEL was born in 1791. In his youth, he won a high literary
reputation as the author of two tragedies, _Evadne_ and _The Apostate_,
and some beautiful essays in the periodicals. He early acquired an
enviable reputation at the Dublin bar as an advocate. But "the guage and
measure of the man" were known to a comparatively small circle till his
splendid oratorical displays in defense of the principles and objects of
the Catholic Association made his fame coextensive with the empire. The
result of his services has been recorded. To apply to himself what he so
graphically said of Grattan, "The people of Ireland saw the pinnacles of
the Establishment shattered by the lightning of his eloquence." The
Emancipation bill opened to him the doors of Parliament. He entered its
hall in 1831, heralded by a reputation surpassing that with which most
orators have been content to leave that field of their triumphs. It is
the highest proof of the solidity of his reputation, that in this new
arena he increased the brilliancy of his fame, being a marked exception
to the rule, that orators who have become famous at the bar, or the
hustings, or on the platform, have failed to meet the public expectation
on encountering the severer tests of the House of Commons.
Several years ago I heard Mr. Shiel deliver a speech in Parliament, and
I retain a vivid impression of his powers. He seemed the very embodiment
of all that was gorgeous and beautiful in the arts of rhetoric and
oratory. His sentences rushed forth with the velocity of a mountain
torrent, while for an hour and a half he poured down upon the House a
ceaseless shower of metaphor, simile, declamation, and appeal, lighted
with the brilliant flashes of wit, and mingled with the glittering hail
of sarcasm. He belongs not to the best school of oratory, but is master
of that in which he was trained. There is no rant or fustian in his
speeches, for they are eminently intellectual. Though polished in the
extreme, they are pure ore, and sparkle with real gems. His ornaments
are lavishly put on, but are never selected from the tinsel and mock
diamond mine. His defect is, that he too much discards logic, and revels
in rhetoric. In discussing even an appropriation bill, his figures are
drawn less from the annual budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
than from the perennial springs of Helicon. He aims to reach the heart,
not through the reason, but the reason and the heart through the
imagination. While his oratory lacks the logical power and majestic
strength which bear aloft the poetic imagery and affluent illustration
of Choate, it partakes largely of those embellishments that give
brilliancy and grace to the eloquence of our distinguished countryman.
He is no more like Brougham or Webster, than a dashing charge of Murat
at the head of his cavalry is like a steady fire from a park of
artillery.
As a specimen of his oratory, I subjoin an extract from one of his
speeches. In 1837, Lord Lyndhurst declared, in the Upper House, that the
Irish were "aliens in blood and religion." Shortly after, Mr. Shiel thus
repelled the charge in the Commons. Lord L. was a listener.
"Where was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, when those words were uttered?
Methinks he should have started up to disclaim them.
"'The battles, sieges, fortunes that he passed'
ought to have come back upon him. He ought to have remembered that, from
the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius
which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to
that last and surpassing combat which has made his name
imperishable--from Assaye to Waterloo--the Irish soldiers, with whom
your armies were filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory
with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the
athletic arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes
that never reeled in the shock of war before? What desperate valor
climbed the steeps and filled the moats of Badajos? All, all his
victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory: Vimiera,
Badajos, Salamanca, Abuera, Toulouse--and, last of all, the greatest.
Tell me, for you were there--I appeal to the gallant soldier before me,
(pointing to Sir Henry Hardinge,) who bears, I know, a generous heart in
an intrepid breast--tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day
when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance; while death
fell in showers upon them; when the artillery of France, leveled with
the precision of the most deadly science, played upon them; when her
legions, incited by the voice, inspired by the example of their mighty
leader, rushed again and again to the contest; tell me if for an
instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the 'aliens'
blanched? And when, at length, the moment for the last decisive movement
had arrived; when the valor, so long wisely checked, was at last let
loose; when, with words familiar but immortal, the great captain
exclaimed, 'Up, lads, and at them!'--tell me if Catholic Ireland with
less heroic valor than the natives of your own glorious isle
precipitated herself upon the foe! The blood of England, Scotland,
Ireland, flowed in the same stream, on the same field. When the chill
morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together. In the same deep
pit their bodies were deposited. The green spring is now breaking on
their commingled dust. The dew falls from heaven upon their union in the
grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not participate?
And shall we be told, as a requital, that we are estranged from the
noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out?"
* * * * *
Though approaching the verge of good taste, conceive of the present
effect of such an outburst gushing from the lips of Shiel, the
perspiration standing in drops on his knotted locks, his eye kindled
with Milesian fire, every feature of his expressive countenance instinct
with passion, every limb of his small but symmetrical frame trembling
with emotion, his shrill but musical voice barbing every emphatic word!
Since he entered Parliament, Mr. Shiel has acted with the liberal Whigs,
has held office under Lord John Russell, and generally declined the lead
of Mr. O'Connell. He stood aloof from the Repeal agitation, though he
defended O'Connell, when on trial for Conspiracy some four years ago,
with the ability and eloquence of his brightest days.