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Present Irish Questions
Publisher's Announcement
_By the Same Author_
The Campaign of 1815: Ligny, Quatre Bras, Waterloo.
Demy 8vo, cloth, with Maps, 12_s._ 6_d._ net.
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LONDON: GRANT RICHARDS
9 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, W.C.
Present Irish Questions
BY WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS
COUNTY COURT JUDGE AND CHAIRMAN OF
QUARTER SESSIONS OF ROSCOMMON AND
SLIGO, AND SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF
ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
[Greek: Nosei de moi propas stolos, oud' eni
phrontidos egchos hô tis alexetai.]--SOPHOCLES.
'Blessed is the Amending Hand.'--_Old Proverb._
London
Grant Richards
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
1901
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
A TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM
TO THE MARQUIS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA, K.P.
THE MOST DISTINGUISHED IRISHMAN OF HIS TIME
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
Preface
I have written much on Ireland from early youth, especially in the
_Edinburgh Review_ and the _Times_; and two works of mine, 'Ireland,
1494-1868' published in 'The Cambridge Historical Series,' and 'Ireland,
1798-1898,' have been received with more than ordinary favour. I have
ventured to think that the opinions of a veteran inquirer into Irish
affairs, with respect to 'Present Irish Questions' just now of much
importance, and certain to be ere long fully discussed in Parliament and
elsewhere, may be of some use to a younger generation, that will have to
examine and must be affected by them. I am not unaware of the cynical
remarks of Swift on the disregard shown to authors who may be said to have
had their day; and I do not pretend that, in the instance of myself, 'old
experience' has given something of a 'prophetic strain' to what is
contained in this volume. But I can say, with truth, that few living men
have had such opportunities as have fallen to my lot, during a long series
of years, to understand Ireland in its different parts, and the feelings
and sentiments of the Irish community; to form sound and moderate views on
the many and perplexing phenomena called 'Irish Questions;' to deal
reasonably with Irish political and social problems, free from the
influences of party prejudice and passion; in short, to do my subject
complete and impartial justice. How the accidents and associations of a
life already protracted beyond the ordinary span, have, as I hope, given
me these qualifications, I have explained at some length in my 'Ireland,
1798-1898;' I shall not repeat what I have already written. But Ireland
has constantly been uppermost in my thoughts; and as regards the
conclusions I have come to in these pages, I may say, with the Roman
historian, 'hæc senectuti seposui.'
The examination of 'Present Irish Questions,' in this work, shows the
views I entertain with regard to the actual condition of Ireland in its
various aspects, and to her probable future destinies. These views may be
censured as too gloomy, and even paradoxical; but Ireland remains, as she
was when Macaulay wrote of her, 'A member indeed of the Empire, but a
withered and distorted member;' the revolution which has passed, nay, is
still passing, over her, has destroyed a great deal that ought to have
been preserved, and has put little that is solid and stable in its place;
there is much that is threatening and even dangerous in her political and
social order, and in the sentiments of the mass of her community. In the
case of Ireland, indeed, as in that of any other people, I have faith in
the effect of salutary legislation on wise and just principles, and of
consistent good government steadily carried out, of both of which there
has been but too little evidence, during the last twenty years, in Irish
affairs; above all, my trust is large in the healing influences of Time.
But I have not forgotten that the vision of 'Pacata Hibernia,' which
flitted even before the majestic understanding of Bacon, three centuries
ago, has not been realised; the thoughtless optimism, which, during the
last two generations, has represented Ireland to be in a state of
continual 'progress,' nay, as 'contented and happy,' whenever she has not
been convulsed by disorder and trouble, or racked by poverty and distress,
has been completely falsified; and with nations, as with individuals, the
profound remark of Butler is true; a life of repentance often fails to
redeem the errors of the past. I proceed to indicate some at least of the
authorities which relate to the different parts of my subject. The
material condition of Ireland of late years may, perhaps, be best
ascertained by studying, over some length of time, the large body of
statistics compiled by the Government, and contained in that valuable
publication, 'Thom's Directory,' and by a perusal of the Irish debates in
Hansard. Reference, too, should be made to the important papers of Mr.
Childers, of Lord Farrer, and of Mr. Sexton in the Report of the Childers
Commission, and especially to the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen, and even
of Sir Edward Hamilton, in the Blue Books appended to that inquiry.
'England's Wealth, Ireland's Poverty,' by Thomas Lough, M.P., though a
one-sided book, also deserves attention; and useful information may be
obtained from 'The Five Years in Ireland, 1895-1900,' of Mr. Michael J. F.
McCarthy, too much a eulogy, however, of things as they are, and marked by
a spirit of aversion to, and distrust of, the Irish priesthood, which are
a characteristic of a small section of the Irish Catholics.
The sources of our knowledge respecting the moral, social, and political
state of Ireland are numerous and ample; I shall confine myself, as much
as I can, to those which relate to what may be called her recent
revolutionary period, though Irish history in the past, even in the
distant past, is anything but an 'old almanack.' This mass of evidence
faithfully represents the disturbances and the troubles that have
prevailed in Ireland, with intervals of time between, during the last
twenty years and upwards, and the fierce animosities and conflicts which
have been the consequence. Here a reader should again consult Hansard,
notably the debates on Ireland, during the agitated period from 1880 to
1889; of course he should only study the great speeches. The publications
on this subject are very many, and some of real importance; as regards
the policy and conduct of the Land, and even of the National Leagues, and
the frightful outbreak of disorder and crime which was the result, nothing
is equal in value to the Report of the Judges of the 'Special Commission,'
and to the immense body of evidence brought before them; 'The Verdict,' by
Professor Dicey, sums up well the conclusions at which they arrived. The
utterances of the so-called Irish 'Nationalist' Press, throughout these
years, fully verify the facts disclosed in the Report, and its findings;
they have, indeed, been continued in a less ferocious and violent, but in
a significant, strain ever since; a collection of them will be found in
the volumes published by the Irish Unionist Alliance. On this subject, and
also on the state of opinion existing among a large majority, probably, of
the Irish people, see 'The Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary
Movement,' by Professor Brougham Leech; 'The Truth about the Land League,'
by Mr. Arnold Foster, M.P.; 'Parnellism and Crime,' republished from the
_Times_; 'Incipient Irish Revolution,' anonymous but able; some valuable
articles on Ireland by the late Lord Grey that appeared in the _Nineteenth
Century_; 'Disturbed Ireland,' by Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P.; 'The Plan of
Campaign Illustrated;' and 'About Ireland,' by Mrs. E. Lynn Lynton. The
recent revolutionary and agrarian movements in Ireland have not found many
to vindicate them, or even fully to explain their causes; but reference
may be made to 'The Parnell Movement,' by T. P. O'Connor, M.P.; to the
'New Ireland' of Mr. A. M. Sullivan; to Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Irish Wrongs
and English Remedies;' and to a series of articles called 'Ungrateful
Ireland,' in the _Nineteenth Century_, from the pen of Sir G. Duffy. A
host of papers in quarterly, monthly, and other reviews and magazines on
the political and social condition of Ireland of late years has, also,
been published from time to time. Attempts have been made, quite recently,
to show that the troubles of Ireland have become things of the past, and
that she is a prosperous and happy land; but though real improvement has
certainly taken place, these are mere repetitions of the optimistic
fancies that have so often proved delusions.
The great question of Home Rule, 'present' if for a time postponed, was
first put forward formally by the late Isaac Butt. His 'Irish Federalism'
is a thoughtful and able treatise that ought to be studied. The speeches
in Parliament, from 1874 to 1885, on this subject, collected in Hansard,
deserve attention; notably the violent attacks on this policy made during
many years by Mr. Gladstone. Hansard, too, should be perused, after that
statesman became a convert to Home Rule, for the speeches on both sides,
on the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893; some are of marked power and
insight, though few rise to the heights of great constitutional
principles. Mr. Gladstone's defence of his sudden change of front will be
found in his 'History of an Idea,' a tract published soon after his defeat
at the polls in 1886; he has endeavoured to vindicate his later Irish
policy, in many pamphlets and speeches, in volumes collected by himself.
For a masterly examination of his public conduct on matters relating to
Ireland, and in some other passages in his career, I would especially
direct the reader to the 'Memoirs of the late Lord Selborne,' part ii.
vol. ii. pp. 339-360; Mr. Lecky's brilliant sketch in his 'Democracy and
Liberty,' Cabinet Edition, Introduction, pp. 19-56, is a composition of
rare excellence. Nothing is to be compared to Professor Dicey's 'England's
Case against Home Rule,' and his 'Leap in the Dark,' for a thorough
investigation, from the Unionist point of view, of the natural and the
probable consequences of the Gladstonian Irish policy, and for an analysis
of the two Home Rule Bills; few political works have attracted equal
attention. There have also been many publications, on the side of the
Union, of more or less merit; see 'Home Rule,' reprinted from the _Times_,
containing several very able letters and papers; 'The Truth about Home
Rule;' 'A Sketch of Unionist Policy;' and a number of articles in the
_Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly Review_, and in other reviews and
magazines. The publications which advocate Home Rule have not been
numerous; a reader may consult the 'Hand Book of Home Rule,' edited by Mr.
Bryce, M.P.; 'Irish Members and English Gaolers,' and 'Combination and
Coercion,' by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre; and some contributions to a few reviews
and other serials.
The 'Present Question' of the Irish land, and of Irish landed relations,
goes back to even remote antiquity, and is connected with the whole course
of Irish history. The characteristics and peculiarities of tribal land
tenure in Ireland, before the Anglo-Norman Conquest, have been admirably
explained in Sir Henry Maine's 'Early History of Institutions,' a very
valuable work. I may refer to an article on this book, from my pen, in the
_Edinburgh Review_ of July, 1875. See, also, the 'Senchus Mor,' and the
'Book of Aicile,' fragments of the Brehon Laws, well annotated by the late
Professor Richey. The state of the Irish land, from the Anglo-Norman
Conquest to the beginning of the Tudor period, has been fully illustrated
in the 'Statute of Kilkenny,' edited by James Hardiman, whose learned
commentary is useful and important; in the 'Discovery' of Sir John Davies;
in Spenser's 'View of the State of Ireland;' in the 'O'Conors of
Connaught,' by the O'Conor Don; in Hallam's 'Constitutional History,' vol.
iii. chapter on Ireland; and in Professor Richey's 'Lectures.' I have
glanced at the state of Irish land tenure during the tribal and the feudal
ages, in the introductory chapters to my 'Ireland, 1494-1868,' in the
'Cambridge Historical Series.' The most complete account, perhaps, of the
confiscations of the Irish land, from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of
Charles I., will be found in the 'Carew Papers,' edited by J. S. Brewer
and William Bullen; valuable information abounds in the 'State Papers
relating to the reign of Henry VIII.,' edited by Hans Claude Hamilton; in
'The Life of Sir John Perrott and his Letters;' in the 'Earls of Kildare,'
edited by the Marquis of Kildare; in the 'State Papers,' edited by
Hamilton, _ante_, 'relating to the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and
Elizabeth;' in the 'Annals of the Four Masters;' and see Davies and
Spenser, _ante_. Several modern writers have treated this subject in their
narratives of Irish history; Froude's 'History of England,' vol. ii. ch.
viii.; vol. iv. ch. xix.; vol. v. ch. xxviii.; vol. viii. chs. vii.-xi.;
vol. x. ch. xxiv.; vol. xi. ch. xxvii., may be consulted; but a reader
should be put on his guard against the brilliant but partisan historian.
There is a valuable chapter also, in a very different work, Mr. Lecky's
'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. ch. vi. pp. 92
_seqq._; and a great deal may be learned from the 'O'Conors of Connaught,'
and Richey's 'Lectures,' _ante_; and especially from an 'Historical
Account of the Plantation of Ulster,' by the Rev. George Hill, and from
Sigerson's 'History of Irish Land Tenure.' In the momentous period of
confiscation, from the beginning of the reign of Charles I. to that of
William III., a reader should study 'Strafford's Letters;' Carte's 'Life
of Ormond;' Lord Clanricarde's 'Memoirs;' the 'Letters of Cromwell,'
edited by Carlyle; the 'Acts of Settlement and Explanation;' the 'Articles
of the Treaty of Limerick;' Sir William Petty's 'Political Anatomy of
Ireland;' 'Macariæ Excidium;' and the Abbe MacGeoghegan's 'History of
Ireland.' The modern authorities on this period are numerous and some of
great value; see Gardiner's 'History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate'
(the Irish chapters), notably vol. iii. ch. xliv.; 'The Cromwellian
Settlement of Ireland,' by John P. Prendergast; 'The Life of Sir William
Petty,' by Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, with an article by me in the
_Edinburgh Review_ of July, 1895; 'The Patriot Parliament,' by Thomas
Davis; Macaulay's 'History of England' (the Irish chapters), vol. iv. ch.
xxii.; vol. v. ch. xiv.-xvi.; vol. vi. ch. xvii.; and Mr. Lecky's
'History,' _ante_, vol. ii. ch. ix. Many instructive and philosophic
passages on all these confiscations and their results, will be found
scattered among the writings of Burke; they are admirable.
The era of violent confiscation closed with the reign of William III.; the
modern history of the Irish land system begins from this period. For an
account of the penal code, as it affected Irish landed relations,
reference may be made to Vincent Scully, 'On the Penal Laws;' to Howard's
'Popery Cases;' and especially to Burke's 'Tracts on the Popery Laws.'
Much, too, can be gathered from Curry's 'State of the Irish Catholics;'
from Primate Boulter's and Archbishop Synge's 'Letters;' from the writings
on Ireland of Swift and Berkeley; and from various passages in the 'Works
and Correspondence of Burke.' For the state of the Irish land from the
beginning of the reign of George III. to the Rebellion of 1798, study the
celebrated 'Tour' of Arthur Young, written in 1776-78; Crumpe's 'Essay;'
an admirable sketch by Mr. Lecky in his 'History,' _ante_, vol. vii. ch.
xxvii.; and Sir George Lewis on 'Irish Disturbances,' a book which gives
an account of the rise and progress of the Whiteboy movement, and carries
the narrative down to 1836. Froude has illustrated this subject very
skilfully in his 'Two Chiefs of Dunboy;' but his account, in his 'The
English in Ireland,' is very inaccurate and one-sided. The nature of Irish
landed relations during the troubled period before the Union is fully
explained in many passages of Mr. Lecky's 'History,' _ante_, vols. vii.
and viii.; and the reader should peruse Lord Clare's speech in the Irish
House of Lords during the debates on the Union. From the Union to the
present time, the authorities on the Irish land system are very numerous;
it is not easy to make compendious selection. For the period of the Great
War, Edward Wakefield's 'Account of Ireland' is valuable, and so is, for
the immediately subsequent period, the evidence on the state of Ireland
taken by a Committee of the House of Commons in 1825. The nature and the
characteristics of the Irish land system, in 1843-44, are fully explained
and commented upon in the well-known Report of the Devon Commission, and
the voluminous evidence; and for the revolution wrought in the Irish land
by the Famine of 1845-47, see the 'Irish Crisis,' by Sir Charles
Trevelyan, republished from the _Edinburgh Review_; and a 'History of the
Great Irish Famine,' by the Rev. John O'Rorke. Much information, too, on
the subject, as a whole, may be obtained from 'L'Irlande, Sociale,
Politique, et Religieuse,' of Gustave de Beaumont; from 'Ireland from the
Treaty of Limerick to 1851,' by John Mitchell; from parts of 'Two
Centuries of Irish History,' edited by James Bryce, M.P.; from several
'Reports' of the Loyal National Repeal Association; and from parts of Mr.
Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' and 'Irish Wrongs
and English Remedies.'
The Irish land question has given birth to a literature of its own in the
last half-century; legislation on the Irish land system has been
extraordinarily active. With respect to the first, reference may be made
to 'Two Centuries of Irish History,' _ante_, and to Mr. Barry O'Brien's
works, _ante_; to 'Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land,' by Lord
Dufferin; to John Stuart Mill's 'The Irish Land Question;' to 'The Irish
People and the Irish Land,' by Butt; to Sir George Campbell's 'The Irish
Land,' a very good little book; to Judge Longfield's essay on the Irish
land in 'Systems of Land Tenure;' and to my own 'Letters on the Land
Question of Ireland,' republished from the _Times_. I am happy to think
that, on this subject, I have always 'pitched my Whiggery low;' my first
essay was on the Encumbered Estates Act; when fresh from Oxford I
condemned that scheme of confiscation as unequivocally as, in the present
and other works, I have condemned Irish agrarian legislation since
1880-81. Other books contain passages on the Irish land system that may be
read with profit; see the 'Recollections and Suggestions' of Earl Russell;
'Ireland in 1868,' by Gerald Fitzgibbon; 'Ireland,' by Lord Grey;
'Journals, Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland,' by Nassau
Senior; and 'New Views on Ireland,' by Lord Russell of Killowen. As
regards recent legislation on the Irish Land, from 1870 to 1896, the Acts
passed by Parliament must of course be studied, and also the important
debates reported in Hansard. Butt wrote a very able volume on the Land Act
of 1870; I contributed a short treatise; an exhaustive and technical work
of great value, on all the Irish Land Acts, has been produced by Messrs.
Cherry and Wakely; this, with the Irish Reports, supplies ample
professional, and even general, information. With respect to the
administration of the Irish Land Acts, see the Report of the Committee of
the House of Lords, and the evidence published in 1872; the Report of, and
the evidence collected by, the Bessborough Commission of 1880-81; the
Report of a Committee of the House of Lords on the working of the Land Act
of 1881, published, with the evidence, in 1882; the Report, with the
evidence, of the Cowper Commission, 1888-89; the Report, with the
evidence, of the Morley Commission, 1894-1895; and, especially, the Report
of Sir Edward Fry's Commission of 1897, with the important evidence it has
put together. Mr. Lecky, in his 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii.,
has criticised, almost as severely as I have done, recent Irish agrarian
legislation; no serious defence of it has ever been made or attempted.
To understand the real state of the financial relations between Great
Britain and Ireland, it is necessary to go back to the times of the Union;
those who resist the Irish demand avoid an appeal to history. The debates
in the Irish Parliament in 1800 should be carefully studied, especially
the speeches of Castlereagh, Grattan, and Foster. The Seventh Article of
the Treaty of Union, set forth in this work, should also be diligently
scanned and perused. See, too, the debates in the Imperial Parliament in
1816; the resolutions passed by the House of Commons in that year; and the
Act abolishing the separate Exchequer of Ireland. Reference, moreover,
should be made to the evidence taken before General Dunne's Committee in
1864, in which sophistry triumphed for the moment over truth. All these
sources of information, however, are scanty and imperfect compared to the
celebrated Report of the Childers Commission, with the valuable evidence
annexed to it; this for the first time completely brings out the whole
facts on the subject. The debates in Hansard on the financial claims of
Ireland may also be looked at; but they are not of peculiar importance;
the same remark applies to nearly all the articles in reviews, magazines,
and journals, in which endeavours have been made to answer the Report. I
may be allowed to say that I have some claim to have a distinct opinion in
this matter; when still quite a boy I often heard my grand-uncle, the late
Sir John Newport, one of the ablest and last of the Chancellors of the
Irish Exchequer, condemn the financial treatment of Ireland from 1800
onwards; many years afterwards I was intimately acquainted with several of
the independent Irish gentlemen, survivors of the great school of Grattan,
who protested against Mr. Gladstone's fiscal Irish measures from 1853 to a
later date; Butt and Judge Longfield, both very able economists, fully
concurred. With respect to local government and administration in Ireland,
see Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i.
books iv. and v.; the Report of the Commissioners on Irish Corporate
Reform issued in 1833-34, and the Irish Municipal Corporation Reform Act
of 1840; the Irish Towns Commissioners Acts; a report made by Mr. W. P.
O'Brien in 1878; a good treatise by Mr. Bailey published in 1888; and the
recent Irish Local Government Act of 1898, with the debates in Hansard on
this measure, should be perused. The authorities on Irish education of all
kinds are numerous, and some valuable. Froude has glanced at the subject,
with characteristic unfairness, in his 'The English in Ireland;' the
refutation of Mr. Lecky, in his 'England in the Eighteenth Century,' is
complete. A good description of education in Ireland, in all its branches,
as it existed in 1812, will be found in Edward Wakefield's 'Account of
Ireland,' vol. ii. ch. xxiv.; another in Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years
of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i. book i.; vol ii. book x.; the author
brings the narrative down to 1881. As regards high education in Ireland,
reference may be made to 'The History of the University of Dublin,' by the
Rev. W. Stubbs; to 'The Constitutional History of the University of
Dublin,' by D. C. Heron; to the Report of Archbishop Whateley's
Commission, in 1853, on the University of Dublin; to Mr. Gladstone's Irish
University Bill of 1873, and the able debates on the subject in Trinity
College and the House of Commons; to Mr. Fawcett's Act of 1873; to a
masterly pamphlet by Butt, on the whole question, published in 1875; and
to the 'Irish University Question,' by Archbishop Walsh, with recent
debates in Parliament on Irish University reform. For the nature,
constitution, and working of the Queen's Colleges and the Queen's
University, see the debates in Parliament when Peel introduced this
policy; many Reports; the work of Archbishop Walsh, _ante_; and the Act
creating the Royal University in Ireland may be examined. As regards
primary and secondary education in Ireland, see the Reports of the
Education Commissioners from 1810 to 1825; the Reports of the National
Education Board; the Reports of the Kildare, Rosse, and Powis
Commissions, noticed in this work; and Mr. Godkin's 'Education in
Ireland.' An excellent synopsis of the subject, as a whole, will be found
in 'The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,' by Mr. Graham
Balfour.
WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS.
GARTNAMONA, TULLAMORE,
_14th May, 1901_.
Contents
PAGES
CHAPTER I
IRELAND IN 1901
Ireland has passed through a revolution in the Victorian
age--Material progress--Dublin--Belfast--Improvement in
Catholic places of worship and in the habitations of the
people--State of the Irish community--Symptoms of
retrogression--Decline of agriculture--The progress of Ireland
Ireland much less than that of England and Scotland, and
why--State of the Irish land system--Recent legislation has
done some good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious
effects--Ireland divided into three peoples--Notwithstanding
great reforms Catholic Ireland is still, in the main,
disaffected--Presbyterian Ireland--Cry for the confiscation of
the Irish land--Protestant Ireland--Fall of its old
ascendency--Discontent among the landed gentry--Nature of the
government of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament--Its merits
and defects--Attitude of the greater part of Ireland towards
it--The administration of Irish affairs--The bureaucracy of
the Castle--The Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic Irish
Churches--The administration of justice in Ireland--Irish
literature and public opinion--General survey of the present
state of Ireland--Irish policy of Lord Salisbury's
Ministry--'Present Irish Questions' to be discussed in this
work 1-38
CHAPTER II
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE
The question of Home Rule not extinct--The reasons--Butt's
scheme of Home Rule--It is denounced and ridiculed by Mr.
Gladstone, and defeated in the House of Commons--Death of
Butt--The Home Rule movement becomes allied with a foreign
conspiracy--Davitt and Parnell--The Land League--Mr.
Gladstone's surrender to it--The movement makes no progress
in the Parliament of 1880-85--The General Election of
1885--Mr. Gladstone suddenly adopts the policy of Home
Rule--The probable reasons--The Home Rule Bill of 1886--Its
nature and tendencies--Decisive objections to the
measure--It is rejected at the General Election of 1886,
having been previously rejected in the House of Commons--
Policy and conduct of Mr. Gladstone--The Home Rule movement
makes some progress in England, and why--The Home Rule Bill
of 1893--It is much worse than that of 1886--The reasons--It
is rejected by the House of Lords--Home Rule under different
forms--The Union must be maintained--Proposal that Parliament
should occasionally sit in Dublin--The over-representation
of Ireland should be redressed 39-83
CHAPTER III
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND--SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE
LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND TO THE YEAR 1870
Great importance in the history of Ireland of the conditions
of land tenure--The ancient Celtic land system and its
characteristics--The Norman conquest of Ireland--Norman
feudalism in the Irish land--The policy of Henry VII., and
especially of Henry VIII.--The era of the conquest and
confiscation of the Irish land--The possessions of the
O'Connors of Offaly wrested from them--Forfeiture of the
domains of Shane O'Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond--Attempts
at colonisation--All Ireland made shire land--The extinction
of the old Celtic land system--The Plantation of Ulster--
Progress of confiscation during the reigns of the two first
Stuarts--The Civil War--Immense confiscations made by
Cromwell--His scheme of colonisation a failure--The era of
confiscation closes after the battle of the Boyne and the fall
of Limerick--The Penal Code of Ireland--Its fatal effects on
the Irish land--Dismal period in Irish landed relations--
Gradual improvement--The period described by Arthur Young--
Evil traces of the past remain--Whiteboyism and agrarian
disorder--State of Irish landed relations up to the rebellion
of 1798, and after the Union--Over-population and the
results--Distress after the Peace--State of Irish landed
relations up to 1844--The Report of the Devon Commission--The
Famine and its effects on the Irish land--The Encumbered
Estates Acts--State of Irish landed relations from 1848 to
1868 84-129
CHAPTER IV
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE IRISH LAND
ACT OF 1870--THE LAND LEAGUE AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE--THE LAND
ACT OF 1881--SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE LAND SYSTEM
OF IRELAND
State of landed relations in Ireland in 1869-70--Mr. Gladstone
Prime Minister--The Land Act of 1870--Its merits and defects--
A short period of prosperity in Ireland--Ominous symptoms--
Michael Davitt--The teaching of John Finton Lalor in 1848--The
'New Departure' in Fenianism arranged in America--Foundation
of the Land League--It was a foreign rebellious conspiracy,
with an agrarian side, under a constitutional mask--Parnell
the master spirit of the League--His visit to America and the
results--A short period of distress in Ireland--Conduct of the
Irish landlords--Progress of the Land League--Mr. Gladstone
again Prime Minister in 1880--The Compensation for Disturbance
Bill rejected by the House of Lords--Outburst of agrarian
crime, as the Land League increases in power--Rents at
Griffith's valuation--Boycotting--Frightful state of Ireland
in 1881--After a short attempt to repress it, Mr. Gladstone
surrenders to the Land League--The Land Act of 1881--Mr.
Gladstone breaks the pledges he had made in 1870--His promise
of compensating the Irish landlords--The Land Act of 1881 a
bad and unjust measure directly inconsistent with that of
1870--The 'No Rent Manifesto'--The Kilmainham Treaty--The
Phoenix Park tragedy--Coercion--Parnell founds the National
League, the successor of the Land League--Renewal of agitation
in 1886--Struggle with law and the Government--Subsequent
agrarian legislation for Ireland--This is really a concession
to agitation, for the benefit of Irish tenants, and to the
injury of Irish landlords 130-187
CHAPTER V
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE ADMINISTRATION
OF THE IRISH LAND ACTS
The administration of the Land Act of 1870 in the main
good--Difficulty about claims for tenants' improvements--The
administration of the Land Act of 1881, and of its
supplements--The Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions--
Allowances to be made for these tribunals--Principles which
the Land Commission should have adopted in fixing 'fair
rents'--The procedure and practice it ought to have
established--It made mistakes as to both--The nature of the
Sub-Commission Courts--This was objectionable in the highest
degree--These Courts have, however unconsciously, done grave
wrong to Irish landlords--Causes of this--Characteristics of
their proceedings--They disregarded the principles they
ought to have followed, and adopted faulty and erroneous
methods--Different illustrations of these grave mistakes--
The Land Commission and appeals as to 'fair rent'--Importance
of this subject--Faulty procedure of the Land Commission in
appeals--Valuers--The second Land Commission--Its procedure
worse than that of the first--Theory of occupation right--
This another wrong done to landlords--The Fry Commission and
its report--Confiscation of the property of Irish
landlords--The proofs of this--Apologies made for the Land
Commission--The administration of the Land Purchase Acts 188-229
CHAPTER VI
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--PROPOSED REFORM
OF THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM
Retrospect of the present Irish land system--Position of the
Irish landlords--Position of the Irish tenant class--This
not as advantageous as might be supposed--The effects of the
land code on Irish agriculture injurious--The effects on the
general Irish community--Confiscation, violation of
contracts, shock given to credit, increased alienation of
classes, and demoralisation--The land system considered on
the side of ownership--'Voluntary purchase'--Mischief of
this policy--It sets up a false standard against rent, and
creates unjust distinctions between different classes of
tenants--The results it has produced already--An instance of
the system--The demand for the compulsory purchase of the
Irish land caused by 'voluntary purchase'--Compulsory
purchase has some hold on opinion, but is an impossible, and
would be a disgraceful and ruinous policy--It would ruin
Irish landlords as a class--Instances--It would ultimately
bring Ireland into the state in which she was before the
Great Famine--Proposed plan for the reform of Irish land
tenure--Questions as to the means of compensating Irish
landlords, a deeply wronged order of men 230-270
CHAPTER VII
THE QUESTION OF THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN
AND IRELAND
The subject briefly considered--Financial position of
Ireland before 1782, and under Grattan's Parliament--Her
taxation and debt small before 1798--Ireland financially a
distinct country--At the Union, Pitt wished to 'assimilate
her in finance' with Great Britain, but this impossible, and
why--Ireland's contribution after the Union--This was
unjust, but it left her financially a distinct country--
Ireland made nearly bankrupt--The compromise of 1816--The
Irish Exchequer closed, and the Irish and British debts
consolidated--The object of the compromise was rather to
relieve Ireland from her burdens than to assimilate her in
finance with Great Britain--She still remained for many
years financially distinct from Great Britain, and is so
still to some extent--The conduct of Peel a striking proof
of this--Mr. Gladstone imposes the income tax on Ireland,
and her spirit duties are largely raised--Injustice of this
policy--The Committee of 1863-64--Ireland does not obtain
financial justice--The Report of the Childers Commission
made upon a reference by Mr. Gladstone following Mr.
Goschen--The Commission declares that Ireland has been
greatly overtaxed for many years--Evidence on which it has
founded this conclusion--Examination of arguments to the
contrary--Another Commission promised, but the promise not
fulfilled--Importance of settling this question 271-308
CHAPTER VIII
THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION--OTHER
QUESTIONS--CONCLUSION
Irish county government--The grand jury system in the
eighteenth century--Its merits and defects--The grand jury
system in the nineteenth century, and especially since
1836--The Irish poor law system--Elected and _ex-officio_
guardians--The local government of cities and towns in
Ireland--Municipal institutions founded in Ireland by the
Norman kings--Why they did not prosper--Boroughs and
municipalities founded by James I. and the Stuarts--Their
condition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--The
Municipal Reform Act of 1840--The Towns Commissioners
Acts--Attempts to reform the municipal system of local
government in Ireland--The Local Government of Ireland Act,
1898--Complete change in Irish local government--The County
Councils--The County Borough Councils--The District, Rural,
and the Urban District Councils--Their functions, rights,
and duties--All these bodies placed on a democratic basis--
Attitude of the County Councils in the southern provinces--
Education in Ireland--History of primary education--The
National system of education--The principles on which it is
founded--How it has worked, and what its results have
been--Secondary education in Ireland--Its history--Its
present condition very imperfect--The Intermediate
Education Act--University education in Ireland--Its
history--Trinity College--The Queen's Colleges and the
Queen's University founded by Peel--Their comparative
failure--Mr. Gladstone's Bill to reform University education
in Ireland--Its glaring errors and failures--Trinity College
thrown open in 1873--The Royal University founded in 1879--
Present state of University education in Ireland--The true
principles of reform--Other Irish questions--Conclusion 309-360
APPENDIX 361-428
INDEX 429
Present Irish Questions
CHAPTER I
IRELAND IN 1901
Ireland has passed through a revolution in the Victorian age--Material
progress--Dublin--Belfast--Improvement in Catholic places of worship
and in the habitations of the people--State of the Irish
community--Symptoms of retrogression--Decline of agriculture--The
progress of Ireland much less than that of England and Scotland, and
why--State of the Irish land system--Recent legislation has done some
good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious effects--Ireland
divided into three peoples--Notwithstanding great reforms Catholic
Ireland is still, in the main, disaffected--Presbyterian Ireland--Cry
for the confiscation of the Irish land--Protestant Ireland--Fall of
its old ascendency--Discontent among the landed gentry--Nature of the
government of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament--Its merits and
defects--Attitude of the greater part of Ireland towards it--The
administration of Irish affairs--The bureaucracy of the Castle--The
Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic Irish Churches--The
administration of justice in Ireland--Irish literature and public
opinion--General survey of the present state of Ireland--Irish policy
of Lord Salisbury's ministry--'Present Irish Questions' to be
discussed in this work.
To understand thoroughly the Ireland of the present day, it is necessary
to have studied her history in the past. Nevertheless, if we go back to a
comparatively recent period, say to the beginning of the reign of
Victoria, we can obtain a reasonably clear idea of her existing
condition. A revolution has passed over her in this space of time almost
as complete as the revolution which has transformed France; the results
have not yet been fully developed, but in nearly all respects they have
been immense. The community has, for the most part, made material
progress; but this has been far from great or decisive; it has been
interrupted by seasons of distress, one culminating in a dire catastrophe,
and has been retarded by many causes of trouble. Taking the external
aspect of Ireland first, Dublin has certainly advanced in the last sixty
years; the capital has been surrounded by fine and increasing suburbs; the
squares, the streets, the shops have improved; above all, though much
remains yet to be done, the contrast between the dwellings of the rich and
the poor is much less painful than it was within living memory. No city,
however, has made such progress as Belfast: its population, which, in
1841, was not more than 75,000 souls, was, in 1891, upwards of 255,000;[1]
its opulence has probably grown tenfold; it is the centre of the great
manufacture of Ulster; its building-yards are renowned for its magnificent
ships; its estuary is crowded with the thronging fleets of commerce. The
towns dependent on it, too, and the whole adjoining region, are
flourishing from the great trade in linen, which has been aggregated
within a comparatively small space; indeed, this prosperity has extended
over all the north-east of Ireland, and Londonderry has long been a
thriving seaport. Few of the towns of the rest of Ulster and of the
southern provinces have improved; but signs of augmented wealth appear in
other directions; in this respect they are striking in the extreme. The
places of worship and the religious houses of the Catholic Church of
Ireland have been transformed; the mean 'chapels' of the past have largely
disappeared; most parishes have a suitable church; fine cathedrals
dominate many towns; we often admire monasteries and convents in
architectural splendour. The most remarkable phenomenon, however, of this
description is the great and fortunate change which has taken place in the
habitations of the community throughout the country. The dense and
wretched hovels which, sixty years ago, barely sheltered the millions of
Irish indigence, if still too frequent, have been, for the most part,
effaced; the houses of the better class have greatly increased in numbers,
though the population has enormously declined.[2] And the face of the
landscape in most counties bears witness, on the whole, to a still
perceptible progress. The chief industry of Ireland, indeed, as I shall
show afterwards, has certainly retrograded within the last twenty years;
her agricultural area and resources have much diminished. The advance,
too, which, from about 1853 to 1876, was manifest and rapid in most of her
rural districts, has been, to a considerable extent, checked; capital has,
for some time, been avoiding her soil. But if the process was stern, nay,
appalling, the land has, within the last half century, been thrown open to
husbandry, infinitely better and more fruitful than had existed before;
the exertions which were made, for a long space of time, to improve
cultivation have left far-spreading traces; we still behold the beneficent
results. The land over the greater part of its surface is not 'puckered
up' in thousands of squalid patches, the holdings of masses of cottar
paupers; it has been made more available for real farming; and it has been
largely drained, enclosed, and covered with woodland--at least, up to a
recent period.
The material condition of the Irish community has, also, improved since
the late Queen ascended the throne. This, no doubt, is to be largely
ascribed to the effects of the great Famine of 1845-47, and of the immense
emigration that followed in its train. The resources of Ireland, before
that calamity, were unable to support, in anything like comfort, the
teeming multitudes crowded on her soil; an official report, made in 1838,
proved that two millions and a half of the poor in Ireland were for months
in the year on the brink of starvation; this huge mass of indigence, which
forced up rent, beat down wages, and was most injurious to good husbandry,
was almost incompatible with real social progress. The great and
continuing exodus of the Irish race, which has gone on for more than half
a century, has not been without untoward results; but it has relieved the
country from a destructive incubus; and this has certainly wrought a
beneficent change, though the population has declined from about eight
millions in 1837 to about four and a half millions in 1895.[3] Ireland,
indeed, is still, mainly, a poor country--in some districts she is
exceedingly poor; but the disappearance of overwhelmingly redundant
millions has enabled her to maintain the millions that have remained much
better than of old, and has distinctly raised the standard of living among
all the humbler classes. The wages of agricultural labour, seldom more
than six or seven shillings a week before the Famine, and then paid in
potatoes by a vile truck system, have risen to ten and even twelve
shillings, usually paid in cash; and they have not fallen, though Irish
agriculture is very far from prosperous. The wages of the higher kinds of
labour have also greatly increased; this is apparent in nearly all trades,
and is especially apparent in the trades of Ulster. At the same time, the
potato has long ceased to be the sole food of the poor; their dwellings,
though still too often mean and bad, are infinitely better than they once
were; their attire, and even their appearance, has greatly improved. I do
not think, indeed, that O'Connell's description of the peasantry of
Munster in 1825 could now be fairly applied to even the worst parts of
Ireland, the impoverished tracts on the seacoast of Connaught: 'They have
no clothes to change, they have none but what they wear at the moment....
Their food consists of potatoes and water during the greater part of the
year; potatoes and sour milk during another portion; they use some salt
with their potatoes when they have nothing but water.'[4] There is
evidence, also, that, even of late years, the wealth of Ireland has, in
some measure, increased, especially in the middle and lower middle
classes. The landed gentry, indeed, owing partly to the effects of Free
Trade, and partly to those of legislation I shall describe afterwards,
have been impoverished in many instances, and in many ruined; and the
Irish tenant farmer, if gorged by the spoil of his landlord, has not
gained all that an agrarian revolution was expected to give him. But the
commerce of Ireland has made progress, within the last two decades, if
this has not been by any means great; and though the capital she holds in
the best securities has perceptibly diminished of late years, there has
been a very large increase in most kinds of other investments.[5]
This picture of Ireland, however, has dark features; her welfare has been,
at best, partial; considerable deductions must be made from it. The
progress of the capital, as has been the case in London, is largely to be
ascribed to the depletion of many country districts, a change that has
been going on for a long period, and has been accelerated by the decline
of the landed gentry in wealth. The enormous advance of Belfast, and of
the adjoining neighbourhood, has been, to a great extent, caused by the
concentration of the linen manufacture within a small area; the hand-loom
has disappeared from Ireland; this has been injurious to many petty towns
and villages. The population and the trade of nearly all the chief towns
in the southern provinces have diminished; Cork, with its immense natural
advantages, has not prospered; Limerick and, notably, Galway are in decay;
most of the inland towns show few signs of improvement; the outskirts of
almost all are defaced by lines of ruined hovels, the wrecks of abodes a
dwindling tale of indwellers has left. Many of these urban centres were,
sixty years ago, seats of manufactures and of other industries, which, to
a certain extent, were flourishing; but these sources of wealth have, for
the most part, been dried up; they have been blotted out by the gigantic
manufactures of England and Scotland poured into Ireland, everywhere,
within a few hours, by steam. The collapse, indeed, of Irish manufactures
in the last half century has been striking and mournful; 696,000 persons
were employed in textile and dyeing industries in 1841; in 1881 there were
only 130,000; and though the growth of machinery may in part account for
this difference, it assuredly cannot fully explain it.[6] The same remark
applies to Irish fishing industry; the small craft which once swarmed
along the coast, and, rearing a breed of hardy mariners, gathered in the
prolific harvests of the sea, have been vanishing year after year; in
1867, 9332 boats, and 38,444 men and boys were engaged in this calling;
the numbers were 5646 and 21,940 in 1891.[7] Turning to the face of the
country, agriculture, we have seen, has improved, if we look back to the
period before the Famine; but it is still centuries behind that of England
and Scotland, and of late years it has markedly declined. It is not only
that the prices of agricultural produce are much less than they were, in
the last generation, and that its total value has fallen from £97,885,000
in 1851-55, to £88,955,000 in 1889-93.[8] The agricultural area of Ireland
has diminished from 1879 to 1899 by rather more than 400,000 acres;[9] and
it is absolutely certain that within these decreasing limits, as I shall
point out in subsequent chapters, agriculture has made little or no
progress, and in some districts has distinctly become worse; we see the
results of the vicious legislation of the last twenty years in
deteriorated farms, in hundreds of cases, in a most injurious neglect of
arterial drainage, and in the destruction of thousands of acres of
woodland. And the ruin which has overtaken many of the landed gentry has
been made only too manifest in the desolate aspect of scores of country
seats, once happy homes, that now know their owners no more.
It must be borne in mind, too, as we examine the present state of Ireland,
that if, on the whole, she has made some progress, she is still, as I have
said, a poor country, and that a considerable part of Connaught, her
western province, has, for years, been in so poor a condition, that the
Government of late has laudably made a great effort to raise it out of the
depths of indigence. Other considerations, moreover, must be taken into
account, if we would form a just conclusion as to the material position
of Ireland, and, especially, as to her material prospects. The reduction
of her population, up to a certain point, was an essential condition of
her social progress; but that limit appears to have been far surpassed;
this continuous decline, during more than half a century, has become an
ominous symptom. More than 3,700,000 of souls have emigrated from Ireland
since 1851;[10] and this number does not include the masses which fled
from the catastrophe of 1845-47. This immense drain on the life of a
nation has, for years, had a pernicious effect; in large parts of the
country labourers have become so scarce that it is often difficult to save
the harvest, which should be quickly gathered in, in a wet climate; and
hands are wanting to industry in many places. Emigration, too, has taken
away the best part of the people, men and women in the flower of
existence; the reproductive power of the community has, accordingly,
declined; the birth-rate of Ireland is less than it was; infirmity,
disease, and, notably, insanity have increased; the population of the
towns is seldom active and thriving.[11] At the same time, the taxation of
Ireland has become many degrees more excessive in the last sixty years;
the local rates have advanced from about £1,000,000 to nearly £4,000,000;
the general taxation has been well-nigh doubled; and a tribunal of the
very highest authority has recently declared that Ireland is immensely
overtaxed, and has been for upwards of forty years. Nor can there be a
real question but that large interests connected with the land have
suffered greatly in the period that has now extended from 1878-79. It is
unnecessary to refer to the condition of the landed gentry; I shall notice
it at some length afterwards; but, much as the Irish people dislike the
Poor-law, pauperism has distinctly increased during the last ten years,
though the population has fallen off in numbers, and the charge of
pauperism shows a corresponding increase.[12] The Income Tax returns, too,
as regards the land, are of sinister omen; those under Schedule A have
greatly diminished since 1890; and there is a considerable decline of
property in the Funds.[13] As to the argument that the Tenant Right of the
Irish farmer has risen in value, and that this proves Irish agriculture to
be in a prosperous state, this is a complete, nay, a grotesque, fallacy.
The rise in the value of Tenant Right is simply one of the many signs that
a huge confiscation has taken place in the Irish land.
If Ireland, therefore, has made material progress, this has been slow,
partial, and with large drawbacks; such as it is, it must be mainly
ascribed to the results of the Famine, which liberated the soil from a
destructive burden. The whole country, it has truly been said, has still
too much the look of a 'great neglected estate,' requiring development in
most of its parts; large sections of the population are poor, feeble in
health, and backward. Any advance, moreover, which Ireland has made in
well being, since 1837-38, is as nothing compared with the extraordinary
growth of the prosperity of England and Scotland, within the same period.
True-hearted Irishmen grieve as they pass from the lesser to the greater
island, and contrast the husbandry of Galway and Mayo with that of the
Lothians and Kent; as they gaze on the Shannon, with scarcely a sail on
its waters, and the Clyde teeming with its fleets of commerce; above all,
as they turn from the decaying towns of their own country to such centres
of wealth and of gigantic trade, as some even of the provincial cities of
Britain, not to speak of the mighty world of London. The causes, indeed,
of this contrast may be easily found; the mineral resources of Ireland are
scanty; her commerce and manufactures are small; she is essentially an
agricultural land, which has lost much from the effects of Free Trade; she
has suffered greatly from misgovernment, agitation, and social disorder;
all this has kept her back in the national race. The mineral products, on
the other hand, of England and Scotland are immense, and of the first
importance in an age of invention; they have decisively contributed to the
huge development of the opulence and the trade of Great Britain; the
policy of Free Trade, carried out for years, has had marvellous results in
the same direction; if British agriculture is not progressing, British
commerce and manufactures are still supreme; and Great Britain has been
for ages a law-abiding land, in which order has been happily combined with
liberty. These considerations fully explain the wide and ever-increasing
distinction between Ireland and England and Scotland, only too manifest;
they have been amply verified by unerring statistics. Two figures may
suffice for a general reader; the resources of Ireland were estimated, a
few years ago, at a sum of about four hundred millions sterling, that of
Great Britain at not less than ten thousand millions.[14]
The social structure of Ireland springs from the soil; it is most apparent
in the relations that have been formed in the land. I shall dwell, at some
length, in other chapters of this work, on the history and the
characteristics of the Irish land system, and on the revolution through
which it has passed; I can here only briefly glance at the subject. That
system, at the beginning of the late reign, still represented, in many
respects, the features it had borne in the eighteenth century, though
these had been, in a great degree, modified. The land, over four-fifths of
its surface, was still in the ownership of a small class of men, divided
in race and faith from its occupants; the conquests and confiscations
which had drawn deep lines of distinction between the Anglo-Protestant
landlord and the Catholic and even the Presbyterian peasant, had still
left their indelible traces, if these had been, to a considerable extent,
effaced. Absenteeism had increased since the Union, though absentee
estates were showing signs of improvement; middleman tenures, with their
manifold and complex mischiefs, were disappearing, but were still
numerous; various causes, to operate for many years, were diminishing the
security of the peasants' tenure. The power of the dominant landlord class
was declining; it was being weakened by the Castle bureaucracy, and by the
emancipation of Catholic Ireland; but it was still nearly supreme in
landed relations; this class was all but the absolute lords of the tillers
of the soil. It is untrue that it was oppressive and unjust as a rule; but
some of its members abused their excessive power; it had too much in
common with an exclusive caste; and a whole train of economic causes were
aggravating the evils of a land system from its origin placed on unsound
foundations. Agriculture was advancing in not a few counties; many of the
landed gentry were improving men, who were making a beginning in the
scientific farming, which, before long, was to be more fully developed.
But the population, we have seen, had increased by millions Ireland could
not support; over whole districts, especially in Munster and Connaught,
the land had been split up into petty holdings, the seats of a huge
multitude of human misery. Rents, therefore, were being unnaturally forced
up, and the wages of labour unnaturally cut down; the land system was
disorganised, and filled with dangerous elements. The worst vice of the
system, however, has yet to be noticed; from different causes which I
shall point out afterwards, the occupiers of the soil in Ireland had, as a
general rule, made even the permanent improvements on their farms, and
large sums had repeatedly been paid on the transfer of these; they had
thus gradually acquired concurrent rights in the land, in tens of
thousands of instances; and yet these were outside the pale of the law,
and could be annihilated by eviction, or even the raising of rent. These
rights had the support, in parts of Ulster, of a long-established custom,
and were usually respected in the southern provinces; but they ought long
before to have had full legal protection; and they were sometimes violated
or disregarded by unscrupulous landlords. The results were seen in the
White Boy and the agrarian disorders which had disturbed Ireland for more
than a century, and even ran back to the confiscations of the past.
This land system, essentially bad as it was, marked by evil distinctions
and pregnant with wrong, scarcely attracted the attention of British
statesmen, until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century. Peel was the
first minister who, even dimly, perceived its vices; he appointed a
Commission to report on the subject. The labours of this body were, in
part, laudable; but the Commissioners, filled with prejudice as to the
excellence of British land tenure, and without experience of that of
Ireland, made a capital mistake in the suggestions they offered. Instead
of recommending that the concurrent rights of the Irish tenant in the
land, often equivalent to a real joint ownership, should receive, as was
but just, the sanction of law, they proposed to restrict these in many
ways; they put forward a plan of 'compensation,' as they called it, that
was worse than useless. Legislation to this effect was withdrawn from
Parliament; the terrible visitation of 1845-47 had ere long shattered the
Irish land system, bringing ruin on hundreds of the landed gentry, making
thousands of farmers of the better classes bankrupt, forcing the petty
holders of the land--the cottar population, as it was named--to fly from
the country in despairing multitudes. The land was largely set free from a
dense mass of wretchedness; it was the general belief of the public men of
the day, that what was most required, at this conjuncture, was to attract
men of capital to it to do it justice, and to get rid, as quickly as
possible, of the large body of Irish landlords, who, even before deeply
involved in debt, had been made hopelessly insolvent by recent events. The
Encumbered Estates Act became law, with scarcely an opposing protest; it
was to 'regenerate Ireland,' its authors proclaimed; its results were to
develop a bad class of landlords, to annihilate the rights of the Irish
peasant wholesale, and to cause an iniquitous confiscation on an enormous
scale. The Irish Land Question, as was the phrase, was now raised once
more; in 1852 the occupiers of the Irish soil set on foot an agitation to
vindicate their rights, destroyed or endangered by what had lately
occurred; the Government of Lord Derby lent a favourable ear; but it was
defeated in the House of Commons by intrigue; the land system remained in
the state in which it had been left; no real attempt to improve it was
made. A series of years followed in which Ireland made distinct progress,
and her agriculture advanced; it became a fixed idea with British
statesmen, that there was nothing radically bad in Irish land tenure, and
that its defects would gradually disappear; the grievances of the Irish
peasant were ignored; his claims to what was now known as his Tenant
Right, urged feebly by his advocates, were voted down in Parliament; and a
general belief prevailed that what Ireland most needed was a still further
and steady removal of what was deemed 'her surplus population' from her
soil.
As has so often happened in the affairs of Ireland, her real condition at
this period was not understood; and the reform in her land system, which
had become essential, was indefinitely delayed with disastrous results.
Meanwhile, though things were serene on the surface, the inherent vices in
Irish landed relations were not really changed, and, in some respects,
were made worse. The Fenian troubles and outbreak of 1865-67 showed how
much there was still peccant in the state of Ireland; Mr. Gladstone
addressed himself, in 1870, to the task of effecting a reform in her land
system. The measure he carried through Parliament was bold, and, in the
main, statesmanlike; but it was injured by the predilection for English
land tenure its author avowed, a general misconception of British
statesmen; it was not without marked and even grave defects; and though
unquestionably it did real good, it did not satisfy the tenant class--at
least, the men who had become its leaders. In a few years the frightful
period of the Land League had begun; a Reign of Terror prevailed in about
a third part of Ireland, accompanied by far-spreading and atrocious crime.
The movement was really a huge conspiracy, formed in America to overthrow
British rule in Ireland; but Mr. Gladstone, now minister for the second
time, resolved to deal with it only on its agrarian side; he wrought a
complete revolution in the Irish land system, on principles wholly
different from those of his measure of 1870. This legislation was prepared
without reflection; it passed through Parliament when that assembly was
almost in a state of panic; its author professed that his only object was
to secure the occupier of the Irish soil in his legitimate rights; but the
methods he adopted to attain this end have never been heard of in modern
times, and have never been employed before in civilised lands. The
principle of the mediæval statutes, which endeavoured to fix the price of
bread, and the rate of wages, was extended to the Irish land system; rents
were to be adjusted through the agency of the State, by tribunals to which
no parallel can be found; tenants' improvements were declared exempted
from rent; and a mode of land tenure, hitherto condemned by Mr. Gladstone,
and known as the 'theory of the Three F's,' was applied to the great
majority of Irish tenancies, in an exaggerated, crude, and dangerous form.
This legislation, revolutionary and socialistic alike, has been given more
ample scope in the last twenty years; it probably affects four-fifths of
the rented lands in Ireland; it has fashioned the type of land tenure over
nearly all the country. The successors of Mr. Gladstone, who, indeed, had
boasted that it set the doctrines of Adam Smith at nought, were not blind
to the evils it soon developed; but it is questionable if their attempts
to mitigate these, and to place the Irish land system on a better basis,
have not been at least as open to censure. With the ignorance of Irish
land tenure common in British statesmen, they proclaimed, what assuredly
was not the fact, that Mr. Gladstone had 'created a dual ownership' in the
Irish land, and that, in order to get rid of this intolerable thing, it
was necessary, in accord with English ideas, to bring Ireland, as far as
possible, under 'single ownership,' and to make the occupiers of the Irish
soil, to a large extent, its owners. The system of 'Land Purchase' in
Ireland, begun in 1870, was freed from the limitations which made it safe
and just, and widely enlarged under new conditions; Irish tenants were
encouraged to acquire the fee in their holdings, by a process never
contemplated before; instead of having to pay any part of the price, the
State advanced them the whole purchase moneys, repayable by an annual
charge much less than any true rent. About a tenth part of the tenant
class of Ireland have become owners of their farms by these means; the
transaction has been in no sense a 'purchase;' though given the name, it
is really the exact opposite.
I shall describe all this legislation, in detail, afterwards, and shall
indicate its far-reaching effects; here I can only take a cursory survey.
The attempts that have been made to reform the Irish land system, in the
last sixty years, have been, with scarcely an exception, failures; the
Irish land, it has truly been said, is strewn with the wrecks of repeated
errors. The Land Act of 1870 was, on the whole, a well-conceived measure;
but the recommendations made by the Devon Commission, the iniquitous and
destructive Encumbered Estates Act, the agrarian revolution wrought by Mr.
Gladstone, and the 'Land Purchase' Acts, as they are falsely called, have
been monuments of want of insight and knowledge. And, what is even worse,
legislation on the Irish land has, over and over again, been too long
delayed, and has been inconsistent, fitful, founded on no principle; the
results have been in a high degree disastrous. Reforms that would have
been gladly welcomed if made years before, have been treated with contempt
when made too late; and reforms have more than once been hasty
experiments, carried out under the stress of menacing troubles. The fable
of the Sibylline books has been realised in this matter; and not a few of
the efforts to improve Irish land tenures have been little better than
sudden leaps in the dark. As to recent legislation in this province, its
consequences and tendencies have become manifest. That it has effected
some good may be admitted; it has removed grievances that no doubt
existed; it has made the government of Ireland more easy for the time; it
has allayed discontent for a moment; but the good is far outweighed by
the evil. It is not only that the nostrum of the 'Three F's,' and the
adjustment of rent by the intervention of the State, have cut down the
rental of Ireland to an extent that cannot be justified, and have
transferred to the occupier of the Irish soil a large part of what was the
owner's property by a process of confiscation concealed, but certain. It
is not only that the status of the Irish landlord has been iniquitously
transformed to his extreme injury, and that the status of the Irish tenant
has been changed to his extreme advantage, in both instances without a
pretence to right. The Irish land system has been reduced to an almost
hopeless state; it presents some of the worst features of the past; its
conditions discourage the improvement of the land, promote its
deterioration in many ways, and banish capital away from it; and its plain
tendency has been to make agriculture decline. And the revolution, which
has been thus accomplished, has aggravated the divisions of classes in
Ireland, and has been attended with ruinous litigation on a huge scale;
and it has produced demoralisation far-reaching and profound, a sense of
insecurity in all landed relations, and a far too general disregard of the
respect due to contract. The policy, too, of so-called 'Land Purchase' has
been accompanied with a train of evils on the increase. It is not
creating, as its authors fondly hoped, a class of loyal and thriving
freeholders; it is not even creating a body of industrious and improving
farmers. It is, on the contrary, developing, in some of its parts, the bad
land system of the eighteenth century; it has proved injurious to
agriculture in one important respect. Above all, from the very nature of
the case, it has drawn harsh, nay, unjust, distinctions between the landed
classes, which necessarily have been a cause of much discontent; and it
has inevitably provoked a demand for a universal confiscation of the Irish
land even worse than any of those which have been the curse of Ireland.
I pass from the material and general state of Ireland to that of the Irish
community, in its different parts. That community is still divided, as it
has been for ages, into three separate and distinct peoples, marked off
from each other in race and faith; whatever 'Nationalist' leaders may
assert, it is not, and has never been, in a real sense, a nation. The
lines of demarcation between Catholic, Presbyterian, and Protestant
Ireland are at least as clearly defined as they have always been; they
have probably been widened by the troubles of late years, and by the
legislation which has been a consequence. Catholic Ireland has a
population of some three millions and a half of souls; it is in the main a
Celtic race, but with a considerable admixture of other elements; it has
passed through a revolution remarkable and immense. Sixty years ago, the
worst parts of the Penal Code had long been things of the past; but the
Irish Catholics had only recently thrown off the last remains of that
thraldom, under O'Connell's guidance; and their emancipation had only been
effected by a great and very threatening movement. They were still
comparatively an alien and a subject people; they had not many owners of
land; they were not numerous in the upper trading and the professional
classes; education was greatly wanting among them; they were for the most
part a backward and poor peasantry, almost serfs of landlords distinct in
creed and in blood; and they formed the bulk of the teeming millions that
vegetated on the soil in indigent misery. The Irish Catholics, too, had
still many and real grievances; the tithe of the Established Church had
long been an unjust burden on the petty husbandman; it had recently given
rise to a frightful war of classes, and had only been commuted a short
time; the Established Church itself was a moral wrong, felt acutely by the
Irish priesthood at least. Catholic Ireland, besides, was deeply sunk in
ignorance; the system of national education had only begun to flourish;
and the Irish Catholic was still all but wholly excluded from county
administration and municipal government. The worst of these grievances,
however, was the state of the tenure of the land; this was especially
harsh on the Catholic peasant; if oppression was not general or even
common, he was too often subjected to excessive rent and unfair eviction.
This order of things has all but completely passed away; the position of
Catholic Ireland in the State has almost wholly been changed. Catholic
emancipation has long been an accomplished fact; Irish Catholics and
Protestants are equal before the law; and have really equal chances in
fighting the battle of life. Though still not numerous, the Catholic
owners of land have multiplied; the Irish Catholic middle classes have
made a marked advance; they have grown in knowledge and increased in
wealth; they have risen to a higher plane of existence. At the same time,
the grievances of the past have nearly all been removed by law, often
indeed very late, and by questionable means; but the Established Church
has fallen from its high estate; education has been diffused through the
Catholic masses; the Irish Catholics have obtained more than a just share
in local government and administration of all kinds; their ascendency in
this province is well-nigh assured. The most important, however, of these
changes is that which has taken place in the state of the Irish Catholic
peasantry. The process which lifted up millions of these from the land and
sent them into exile was, no doubt, terrible; but it was the condition of
the welfare and the progress of the population which remained. A great
deal of the legislation, besides, which has revolutionised the tenure of
land in Ireland, and has had a special effect on the Catholic occupiers of
the soil, has been essentially ill designed and unjust; above all, it has
been much too long delayed. But the Irish Catholic peasantry have long ago
ceased to be serfs; they are more the owners of their own holdings than
their former landlords; their rights in the land have been more than
protected; they have acquired the fee in their farms in thousands of
instances; the days of rack rents and harsh evictions have passed away for
ever. If the lines of the old Irish land system may still be traced, they
rather resemble, it has truly been said, the lineaments of a phantom than
of a living being.
The attitude, however, of Catholic Ireland, and the sentiments of the
immense majority of the Irish Catholics, must cause painful misgivings in
reflecting minds. Their aristocracy, indeed, and their landed gentry have
always been loyal and true subjects; they can scarcely be distinguished
from their Protestant fellows. The Irish Catholics, too, of the upper
middle classes are generally attached to the institutions under which they
live; and Catholic Ireland has produced many eminent public servants, and
has given splendid ornaments to the Bench and the Bar. But the spirit that
prevails among the Irish Catholic lower middle classes, and notably among
the masses of the peasantry, and the opinions and feelings they
ostentatiously avow, are deeply to be regretted in many respects.
Notwithstanding all that has been done for it, and the immense reforms
made in its interest, this part of Catholic Ireland is, beyond question,
more disaffected and disloyal to the State than it was when O'Connell was
its master spirit; it is more hostile to government, law, and the existing
order of things. The teaching of the Land and the National Leagues, and of
the successor which has taken their place, has penetrated into the
Corporations and Local Boards, in which the Catholic Irish are supreme;
these assemblies echo with revolutionary and socialistic cries, and
denounce the whole system of British rule in Ireland, aiming especially at
the Sovereign and those in the highest places. The Irish Catholics, too,
in the three provinces of the south, have gained a complete ascendency in
county and municipal affairs; their first object has been to exclude the
landed gentry from them, and to destroy the influence which belongs to
property; and they have exhibited tendencies absolutely opposed to the
Constitution to which they owe their authority. The worst symptoms,
however, appear in the state of the peasantry; they have obtained
advantages of which their fathers never even dreamed; the land system has
been turned upside down for their behoof; they have no grievance in landed
relations; and yet they remain unfriendly to the State, and show no sign
of gratitude. This class contains the multitudes, who for more than twenty
years, have allied themselves with a conspiracy against our power in
Ireland, and who, at the bidding of designing men, shout treasonable
utterances at mob gatherings, and denounce the 'Saxon' and 'landlordism'
with one voice; and though they are a timid and somewhat inert mass, and
they would not rise like their fathers in 1798, they would not lift a hand
to support our rule were foreign invaders to descend on our shores. This
state of opinion, no doubt, is intelligible to the real student of Irish
history; the Irish Catholics are a people who have been cruelly wronged;
they have only slowly risen out of serf-like thraldom; above all, they
have only attained the position they hold in the State after long years of
trials, and by giving trouble; they treasure the Celtic traditions of the
past; we may regret that they are what they are, but can hardly feel
surprise. In other respects, the Irish Catholic masses, especially in a
democratic age, must arouse the solicitude of thinkers worthy of the name.
Many thousands of them are still illiterate; they are too generally the
mere followers of priests and demagogues, tossed hither and thither as
their masters direct; they are animated by crude and wild ideas, like the
peasantry of France before the Revolution; they have scarcely anything in
common with the corresponding class in England, trained for centuries in
habits of well-ordered liberty. They form, in a word, a dangerous and
easily led democracy; and yet, owing to recent legislation, ever to be
deplored, they possess almost a monopoly of political power in Ireland,
and have sent representatives to Parliament whose acts are a byword.
Conciliation, therefore, as the phrase is, has failed in the case of the
greatest part of Catholic Ireland; this remains an alien, even a perilous,
element in the State; it is worse than useless to shut our eyes to the
truth; the time is still apparently distant when it will become contented
and loyal. Presbyterian Ireland is a people of rather more than half a
million of souls, almost concentrated within a nook of Ulster; it was
rebellious in sentiment a hundred years ago; it is now devotedly attached
to the British connection, and has firmly supported the Union during a
period of trouble. This community, nevertheless, of artisans and farmers
is rather widely separated from the aristocracy in their midst, for the
most part English in blood, and of the Anglican faith; and though the
Presbyterian farmer has obtained the benefit of the late reforms of land
tenure, and has received advantages far in excess of justice, he declares
himself to be discontented with his lot, and is clamouring for a vast
confiscation of the Irish land in his selfish interest. The Irish
Protestants are a population rather larger than the Presbyterians; but
they are scattered over all parts of the country; they do not possess the
political influence of their distant kinsmen in Ulster. They comprise at
least three-fourths of the leading landed gentry, and a considerable
number of the better class of farmers; they predominate in the learned
professions, and in the higher walks of commerce. But their lower orders
feel the loss of the ascendency which was once their birthright; they have
been thrust out from corporate and local government; they are isolated
amidst a population not in sympathy with them; as a people they can hardly
be described as prosperous. As to the Protestant landed gentry, they have
for centuries been the most loyal of subjects; it is significant that they
have been called the British garrison by the conspirators who seek to
overthrow our rule in Ireland; they have given many eminent worthies to
the State, and proved their devotion to it at the gravest crises; what
they are has been shown in the war in South Africa. At present, however,
profound and just discontent has sunk deep into the hearts of this order
of men. They are the heirs of conquest and confiscation, it is said; but
they were placed in the position they hold by English kings and
Parliaments; is that any reason that, within the last half-century, the
Nemesis of conquest and confiscation should have been invoked against
them, in the Encumbered Estates Act and predatory agrarian laws? They were
too much of an exclusive caste, separated from their dependents, and
possessing powers over the occupiers of the soil, which were sometimes
abused; is that any reason that they should have been deprived of
political influence, supplanted by the bureaucratic Castle, changed from
owners of their estates into mere pensioners, shut out by the force of law
from local and county government? What, however, the Irish landed gentry
most deeply feel is that, in the course of the last sixty years, they have
been deceived, nay, betrayed, by British statesmen, who, having repeatedly
assured them that their position was secure, have sacrificed them when it
seemed to suit their purpose.
The Imperial Parliament has, during the last century, had absolute control
over the affairs of Ireland. No impartial student of history will deny
that it has governed Ireland very much better than her old Parliament
could possibly have done, after the dreadful rising of 1798 had literally
torn the country to pieces. The large majority of thinking persons have
long ago been convinced that the policy of Home Rule, that is, the
substitution for the Houses at Westminster of a statutory legislature
seated in Dublin, would be disastrous to the Empire and Ireland alike; and
that the evils attendant on the present system would be aggravated a
hundred-fold by the revolution Mr. Gladstone tried to effect. Nor can it
be questioned that the Imperial Parliament has, for a long period,
sincerely desired to legislate and rule for the good of Ireland, and has
accomplished important Irish reforms, whatever legitimate exceptions may
be taken to them. Protestant ascendency and the Established Church have
fallen; the law has long been indifferent to Irishmen of all classes;
education has been brought home to the mass of the people; the tenure of
land has been transformed, unwisely no doubt, but wholly in the interest
of the occupiers of the soil. Nevertheless, much that the Imperial
Parliament has done, and left undone, in the Victorian era, remains matter
of censure and regret; and its Irish administration has been in many
respects unfortunate. The neglect to make a provision for the Irish
Catholic priesthood, a main object of Pitt and of our best statesmen, when
the Anglican Church was disestablished in 1869, was a grave and a
calamitous mistake; the attempts that have been made to reform the Irish
land system have, with scarcely an exception, been sorry failures; the
results have been, in no doubtful sense, deplorable. Few, too, will
justify such measures as the establishment in Ireland of household
suffrage, that is, giving a monopoly of political power to an ignorant and
priest-ridden democracy,[15] and depriving property and intelligence of
all influence, or as the handing over county and city government, in
three-fourths of Ireland, to much the same classes. Nor are even positive
errors such as these the worst, perhaps, that can be laid to the charge of
the Imperial Parliament in the conduct of Irish affairs. With rare
exceptions, the reforms it has made have been, unhappily, too late, and
have been obtained only through menacing popular movements; it has over
and over again made Irish questions the mere subjects of the selfish
strife of party, with evil consequences for Irish interests; it has
occasionally, and even for large spaces of time, shown a marked
indifference to reasonable Irish demands; and its administration of
Ireland has repeatedly been inconsistent, even contradictory,
shortsighted, and feeble. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that the rule
of the Imperial Parliament, in the circumstances in which Ireland has been
placed, is, from the nature of the case, faulty in many respects; it is
that of a dominant assembly practically controlling a subject dependency;
and, as we see in the striking instances of Athens and Rome, this kind of
government has never been free from great and real objections. This, no
doubt, is no reason that we should fly from less to unbearable evils, and
adopt the fatal scheme of Home Rule; and the causes that have made our
Parliamentary _régime_ in Ireland as defective as it is are evident, and,
as I shall point out afterwards, may probably be removed, to some extent
at least, without subverting the constitution of these realms. But the
broad fact remains, and cannot be concealed; the Imperial Parliament, much
as it has done, has not reached the hearts or gained, in any degree, the
sympathy of an immense majority of the Irish people.
This conclusion, indeed, has been made only too manifest, if we look back
at the history of Ireland within living memory. The Catholic Association
defied the Imperial Parliament, and was supreme in four-fifths of Ireland,
from 1824 to 1829; O'Connell, in 1843, rallied the Irish Catholic millions
to the cause of the Repeal of the Union, that is, to the subversion of
British rule from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear. Home Rule became a
popular cry when proclaimed by Butt; Parnell soon rose to the head of an
Irish faction, which deliberately tried to paralyse and cross Parliament,
and to make its sway in Ireland of no avail and contemptible. The Land
League and the National League were essentially conspiracies of foreign
origin, and they appealed to socialistic greed in a season of distress;
but their chief object was to annihilate British power in Ireland; they
had the support of huge Catholic masses; they returned to Parliament a
band of more than eighty men, one of whose purposes was to checkmate its
authority. Too much is not to be made of these movements; three-fourths at
least of the Irish community have repeatedly been led away by able but
unscrupulous leaders, and rush into courses to which they are not
earnestly inclined; but these unquestionable facts assuredly prove that
the institutions under which they exist are not acceptable to the great
body of the people of Ireland. This attitude has been displayed with
marked and too plain significance, within a period, as it were, of
yesterday. The United Irish League fills the place of the Land and the
National Leagues; it is a conspiracy against the State, like its
forerunners; it aims ultimately at the same objects; its organisation and
machinery are the same; it seeks to establish its domination by similar
methods. It is, no doubt, less formidable than the Land and the National
Leagues; it has received little support from America, and has no one to
compare with Parnell at its head; but it has sent more than three-fourths
of the representatives of Ireland into the House of Commons; and these
have combined to put in force the arts of obstruction with an audacity, a
perseverance, and a measure of success, perhaps never so conspicuous
before. Its authority is less far-reaching than that of its predecessors;
but it has established a reign of tyranny in not a few counties; it is
largely backed by the Irish priesthood and by much the greatest part of
Catholic Ireland; and its leaders boast, not without truth, that, disloyal
as many of their utterances are, they are completely in accord with
popular sympathies. The acts and the speeches, indeed, of these men have
never been more unequivocal than within the last two or three years;[16]
yet almost everywhere they obtain the applause and the support of the
multitude. An Irish contingent was sent to fight for the Boers; the war in
South Africa was yelled at, at huge public meetings, as an odious instance
of English tyranny and crime; every reverse that befell our arms was
welcomed; the Irish masses, especially of late, have made a display of
their antipathy to, and hatred of, the State. There was an outbreak of
disloyal rioting in Dublin at the Diamond Jubilee; but for the accident of
the Spanish War there would have been a great commemoration of the
rebellion of 1798; even the visit of the late Queen to Ireland was made an
occasion for seditious speeches; if her death was very generally mourned,
public bodies were found to refuse an expression of regret.
Irish administration, I have remarked, is in many respects faulty; this is
mainly because it is dependent on British parties; it fluctuates as one or
the other prevails in Parliament. It sometimes represents completely
opposite principles; besides, as Lord-Lieutenants and Chief Secretaries
usually hold office for a short time only, they are tempted to adopt a
hand-to-mouth policy, and to govern with little thought of the morrow. A
marked change, however, has, in the course of time, passed over the
ordinary system of administration carried on at the Castle. The
aristocracy and the leading Irish gentry had still, even at the beginning
of the Victorian age, much influence in directing local affairs; their
authority was not nearly as great as it had been; but they were still
looked up to and consulted by the central government. This state of things
has long ago ceased to exist; this order of men has long ago lost all
political, and nearly all social, power; it has been superseded by a
bureaucratic _régime_, depending mainly on paid officials and police,
which rules Ireland from the Castle, with little external support. This
mode of government is imposing and apparently strong; but it is
essentially weak, and has little real hold on the country; the
information, with which it is amply supplied, is often false, and
occasionally causes grave mistakes; it forms an administrative system
resembling that of the old centralised monarchy of France, of which
Tocqueville has exposed the defects and the vices. Under this _régime_,
however, the law of the land has certainly been vindicated more
successfully than had been the case before; the Government has acquired
decidedly increased power in dealing with disorders dangerous to the
State, and perhaps in holding the scales of justice even between divided
classes; it has not diminished the strife of hostile Irish factions, but
it has maintained order more completely than of old; and this
unquestionably is a great advantage, and a real set-off against some
mischiefs and failures. It would be untrue to assert that this system of
rule has been the paramount and even a main cause of the great decline in
agrarian crime and trouble which Ireland has happily witnessed of late
years; other and far more potent causes have concurred; but it may fairly
be said that it has contributed to it. It would, however, be a complete
mistake to suppose that agrarian disorder, even in its worst aspects, has
become permanently a thing of the past in Ireland, or that this
destructive curse of Irish social life has not immense influence even at
this moment, though its outward manifestations have been greatly changed.
It was, so to speak, only yesterday that, under the auspices of the Land
and the National Leagues, there was the most frightful outbreak of
agrarian crime that had been seen since the great tithe conflict; it
assumed the proportions, in fact, of a horrible servile war; and shallow,
indeed, the understanding must be which imagines that this state of things
can never recur. If open agrarian disorder, too, has been largely
diminished, the spirit of agrarian disorder is still strong; and it is
doing infinite mischief in many parts of Ireland. Steadily adhering to the
precepts laid down by Parnell, the United Irish League has brought the
detestable system of 'boycotting' to a hideous perfection in several
counties; whole districts are subject to this secret but villainous
tyranny; the results are seen in numbers of derelict farms, in hundreds of
victims writhing under ever-present terror, in an infamous interference
with trade and industry. This malignant influence is more or less felt
through nearly the whole of the southern provinces, and even to a
considerable extent in Ulster; it should be added that the United Irish
League, for the present, discourages active agrarian crime, though its
agents hold this force in reserve; it believes it can compass its ends
without making use of this weapon.[17]
A few words must be said, in this short survey, on the organisations that
uphold the Christian faith in Ireland. The disestablished Anglican Church
has certainly made progress in spiritual life; it has more moral and even,
perhaps, social influence than when it was an appurtenance of the Erastian
Castle. It has been admirably administered and ruled; the uses of
adversity have been sweet to it, and it has been successfully launched on
its new career; this is a strong proof of the inherent energy and capacity
of the Anglo-Protestant Irish people. Very different, too, from what had
been expected, moderation and wisdom prevail in its councils; its clergy
are sincerely pious, but not given to extreme doctrines; its members are
for the most part free from the narrow sectarian views which had formerly,
not without reason, been laid to their charge. Its funds, amassed by good
management, are, for the present, ample; but the rapid impoverishment of
the landed gentry, the class from which it chiefly obtains support, and
the confiscation with which they are threatened, no doubt expose it to
future dangers; and it must always be the Church of a small minority,
surrounded by influences hostile to it, but a Church which the State is
bound to protect. The Presbyterian Church of Ireland has but little
changed; it has felt the effect of the great religious movement, which has
stirred the Three Kingdoms in the last half-century, and it is less
rationalistic than it once was; but it is still what it always was, a
powerful centre of the faith of John Knox, with a communion of strong
democratic sympathies. The Catholic Church of Ireland still rests on the
old foundations; but it is hardly the unshaken structure it was in the
last generation. Its material resources have enormously increased; its
fine edifices spread over the land; it still exercises immense influence
over probably nine-tenths of Catholic Ireland. But a party has been
growing up within it which resents, and has even defied, its pretensions;
and though the power it possesses is, in the main, beneficent in the
extreme, this has too often been abused in the domain of politics, and
especially of late in Irish landed relations. The priesthood still largely
direct their flocks, but they are more dependent on them than they once
were; had it been otherwise, they would have hardly conformed to the
bidding of the Land and the National Leagues, as unhappily they did in too
many instances. Their leading men perceived from the first that these
conspiracies were destructive of their moral influence; and had the whole
body of the clergy received a just provision from the State, it would all
but certainly have condemned the methods of the Leagues as these were
decisively condemned by Rome. For the rest, the Catholic Church of Ireland
is no friend of Protestant England, and of many of the institutions that
exist in Ireland; but this has been inevitable from the events of Irish
history; and whatever may be said, it has been essentially an ally of the
State, by reason of its great religious authority. And if properly
understood, it is a mighty conservative power, which ought if possible to
be won over to the side of order and law; this is an ample, if there were
no other, reason that statesmen should comply with its most reasonable
demand, and remove the grievance, in high Catholic education, that only
blind bigotry can deny.
The administration of justice in Ireland is better, on the whole, than it
was in the early Victorian era. It is not only that the law's delay has
been to a considerable extent, remedied, as it has been, in England, by an
improved procedure. Traces of Protestant ascendency were to be seen on
the Irish Bench sixty years ago, though these were evanescent and few;
such a trial as that of O'Connell in 1844, marked by partiality and even
by wrong, would be simply impossible at the present time. Trial by jury,
however, in Ireland too often reflects the animosities and prejudices of
class, and is liable to grave perversion and errors; it is sometimes
necessary, in causes where religious or political feeling is engaged, to
make a careful selection in forming juries, in order that common right
should be done; this inevitable, but invidious, process, held up to
execration by the name of 'packing,' is certainly a matter that causes
regret. The fairness seen in the administration of the law in Ireland has
been strikingly illustrated of late years; leaders and agents of the Land
and the National Leagues have had to answer for their offences in the
inferior courts; but despite rabid clamour against what is called
'coercion,' the conduct of these inquiries has not been really impugned. A
laudable attempt, however, to make the magisterial bench more popular, has
lately placed on it an order of men, of whom some have abused their power;
these instances, nevertheless, have not been frequent; the experiment
cannot be pronounced a failure. The intellect of Ireland is not so
fruitful as it was in the generation before the union; she has no
political thinkers to be named with Burke, no writer of fiction equal to
Maria Edgeworth, no dramatist to be compared to Sheridan, no orators who
have reached the heights of eloquence reached by Grattan, Curran, Plunket,
and other glories of her defunct Parliament. But there has been progress
in this respect within the last sixty years; Ireland cannot boast of such
public men as O'Connell, Sheil, and even Spring Rice; but she possesses
Dufferin in the diplomatic sphere, and Lecky, and one or two others of
repute in that of letters; she has only recently lost Lord Cairns and Lord
Russell. The improvement of primary education in Ireland has been
immense; the land is full of elementary schools, which, in the last
generation, were, comparatively, very few, and though a considerable part
of the population is still illiterate, the greater part, whose fathers
were sunk in ignorance, has felt the good influence of the light of
knowledge. High education, too, has advanced in Ireland; Trinity College
is greater than before as a place of learning; if two of the Queen's
Colleges have certainly failed, the Royal University has been, in a sense,
successful. But, as I shall point out, in subsequent pages, University
education in Ireland remains defective; a University for the Irish
Catholic upper middle class is a requirement rightly demanded from
Parliament. As for Irish secondary education, it is still backward, but
there is hope of improvement in this respect; the general standard of
Irish education, it should be added, is, except at Trinity College, low,
though this has been inevitable if we look back at the events of history.
Irish opinion generally still embodies the deep-seated animosities and
strife of race and faith, at least as fully as it ever did; with few
exceptions this appears in the tone of the newspaper press. The utterances
of many of the self-styled 'Nationalist' journals have been far more
hostile to the State, and are conceived in a much worse spirit, than those
of the same class of journals in O'Connell's day.
If we examine the condition of Ireland, as a whole, we see that there has
been some material progress, but with retrogression in important respects;
and if a certain measure of good has been done, great wrong and evil have
been accomplished, in the principal and the most far-reaching of her
social relations. Her moral and political progress has been at least
doubtful; notwithstanding immense and searching reforms, the mass of the
population is more disaffected than of old; discontent largely pervades
the classes most loyal to the State; if the mere power of government has
increased, its beneficent influence is but little recognised; the great
body of the community maintains a hostile attitude. The crooked has not
been made straight in Ireland, nor the rough places plain; a state of
society exists, in which, as the Greek poet said, 'the fountains flow
backwards, and things are out of joint.' An old order has nearly passed
away; but the new order that is replacing it is but of little promise; a
type of society has been well-nigh broken up, but a strong and solid type
is not being formed in its stead; at all events, in the phrase of Bacon,
the time is still distant 'when the strings of the Irish harp will all be
in tune;' many respond to the player's hand in discord. 'The Constitution
in Ireland,' Peel once exclaimed, 'is not the British Constitution, but
its ghastly image;' let us see what it is in Ireland at the present time.
The Sovereign is, in England, a main pillar of the State; he is a great
political and social force; the Monarchy is enthroned in the heart of the
nation. In Ireland he is almost an unknown name, associated with not a few
evil memories; his influence, which ought to be immense over a Celtic
race, has never made itself sensibly felt. In England Parliament responds
to the national will, and has gathered the reverence of ages around it; in
Ireland it is a foreign and alien assembly, with which the mass of the
people has no sympathy. In England the aristocracy is at the head of
public affairs, leads society, commands universal respect; in Ireland it
has lost all authority; has no weight in the National Councils; has no
popular support, is even disliked at the Castle. In England the middle
class is enormously strong, and is the best bulwark of order and law; in
England the democracy is almost wholly free from revolutionary ideas, as
regards property, and seeks reforms by constitutional methods. In Ireland,
it is unhappily quite otherwise; the middle class is comparatively weak,
and, in its lower strata, is opposed to the existing order of things; the
democracy is an easily led multitude, ready at its leaders' bidding to
rush into socialistic courses. In England, too, the Commonwealth is
completely secure; in Ireland there is literally no Commonwealth; and such
organisations as the Land, the National, and the United Irish Leagues, are
dangerous symptoms of a kind of Jacobin antipathy to the State. The words
of Peel are still unhappily true; but painful as the contrast he pointed
out is, even this is not the worst circumstance in the present condition
of Irish affairs. What, I think, most alarms a reflecting mind, is the
restlessness that pervades the mass of the people, an eagerness for some
undefined change, a demand for the universal spoliation of a class, a
sense of insecurity spreading far and wide, a neglect of the pursuits of
calm industry in the hope of what a revolution may effect, an instability
in the social fabric from top to bottom. The agitation, the disorder, and,
I will add, the vicious legislation of late years, will, however, largely
explain these phenomena.
Lord Salisbury's Ministry came into office, six years ago, at the head of
the most powerful majority that had been returned to the House of Commons
since the great Reform era. The time was singularly opportune to consider
the state of Ireland, and to deal with the Irish questions that required
sound and wise treatment. The Opposition was paralysed by a rout at the
polls; the National League conspiracy showed few signs of life; the
'Nationalist' party was rent asunder; the community was more quiescent
than it had been for years. It would be unfair to deny that, since it
acquired power, the Government has been beset by many and grave obstacles
in legislating on domestic subjects; it has been encompassed by a sea of
foreign troubles; it has had to conduct the protracted war in South
Africa. It would be absurd, too, to expect that it could, once for all,
have placed Irish affairs permanently on a secure basis; this can only be
the result of the wisdom of years aided by the healing influence of time.
But it has disappointed enlightened Irish opinion; it has not done, or
even tried to do, what it might have accomplished. Undoubtedly parts of
its policy have been good; it has effected something, if not much, in
developing the material resources of the west of Ireland, and in
mitigating the danger and the stress of Irish poverty; it has carried on
the excellent work of Mr. Arthur Balfour in this respect; the Department
of Agriculture it has lately formed will, not improbably, be of real use
in promoting industry and self-reliance among the peasantry, on the
principles advocated, a century and a half ago, by Berkeley. But
commendation, I think, must here end; the Government, I believe, has made
grave mistakes; it has assuredly not successfully dealt with the great
'Case of Ireland,' greater now than in the days of Molyneux and Swift. It
has not reduced the excessive representation of Ireland in the House of
Commons; until this is done the Union will not be secure. It has
disregarded the verdict of the important Commission which has declared
that Ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years; here it defies
universal Irish opinion; and having pledged itself to make a further
inquiry, it has not hitherto taken a step to redeem its pledge. It is
divided on the question of high education in Ireland, and professes that
this must be an 'open question,' as if this was not unwise and perilous;
and though it has appointed a Commission to report on the subject,
Catholic Ireland very possibly may not obtain the place of learning which
it is entitled to demand. Above all, on the capital question of the Irish
land, the Government has certainly all but ignored the recommendations of
a Commission chosen by itself, and has refused to lessen the injustice
proved to have been done wholesale; like its predecessors, in the case of
the Encumbered Estates Act, it is still bent on agrarian legislation that
has done infinite mischief. Its administration, too, up to this has not
been successful; it has allowed the United Irish League to grow up and to
gain strength, with far-spreading evil results; its conduct of Irish
affairs has been weak and empirical, and notably marked by false
optimistic fancies. Of late there has been improvement in this respect; we
can only hope it will not be abortive.
'In this gigantic body,' Macaulay exclaimed fifty-seven years ago, 'there
is one vulnerable part near the heart.'[18] The Empire has expanded into
ampler proportions than those described by the orator; its subject kings,
dominations, princedoms, powers, above all, its myriads of many races and
tongues, are united by far more durable ties than those which held it
together in a generation that has passed away. Four years ago, Canada sent
messengers from her great lakes, Hindustan representatives of her ancient
dynasties, the great island continent envoys from her free nations, to do
homage to Queen Victoria; the pageant, gathered 'within London's streaming
roar,' was a magnificent spectacle of world-wide loyalty. England has seen
another and a still more wonderful sight; the martial sons of our great
self-governing colonies have flocked in thousands to do battle in her
cause, in the distant and ill-known wastes of South Africa; in a long,
bloody, and sometimes disastrous conflict, they have proved themselves to
be worthy companions in arms of the offspring of the soldiery of Blenheim
and Waterloo; they have fought and bled for England as if she was their
common country. But Ireland, as regards the mass of the people, has, on
both occasions, stood sullenly aloof; her heart has gone out in sympathy
with the Boers; she remains, for the most part, hostile to our rule and
disloyal. It is mere foolishness to shut our eyes to plain facts; still
more so to join in the false pæans of interested partisans, and ignorant
scribblers, who announce that because Ireland is, on the surface,
comparatively at peace, she is in every sense a contented or a happy land,
free from grave elements of political and social danger. She is still the
'vulnerable part at the heart of the Empire;' the spectre at the great
national festival; the warning token, as in the case of the Oriental
despot, that human grandeur and power are, in the nature of things,
mortal. She is still, as she was in the day of Spenser, a malign influence
across the path of our greatness, a riddle difficult to understand and
interpret; the many problems she still presents to the statesman are
perplexing in the extreme, and await solution. That any policy will
suddenly remove the many evils apparent in her organic structure is a
delusion a rational mind rejects; the deep-seated ills in that distempered
frame may never be completely and finally cured. Something effectual,
nevertheless, may, I think, be done; I proceed to examine, in the
following chapters, the 'Present Irish Questions' that confront our
rulers; and to consider what the amending hand may accomplish.