"The sorrows of Ireland"! What a vision of woe the words conjure up.
The late Goldwin Smith, himself an Englishman and a Unionist, in his
_Irish History and the Irish Question_, finds that "of all histories,
the history of Ireland is the saddest. For nearly seven centuries it
was a course of strife between races, bloodshed, massacre,
misgovernment, civil war, oppression, and misery."
The first of the great scourges of Erin was the coming of the Danes,
the bloodthirsty and conquest-loving Vikings of the North, the
worshipers of Thor and Odin, the gods of thunder and of strife. These
warriors, in never-ending invasions, had for four hundred years
overrun Britain and finally conquered the northern provinces of Gaul.
Until the end of the eighth century Ireland had been free from the
Scandinavian scourge. About this time the invaders made lodgments
along the caasts, passed inward through the island, burned and looted
religious houses and schools of learning, levied tribute upon the
inhabitants, and at length established themselves firmly at Limerick,
Waterford, Dublin, Wexford, and Carlingford. Fortified towns were
built, trading communications with Britain and the continent were set
up, and the Northman, though not in actual possession of the interior
of the island, was apparently in substantial control of its
destinies. Brian Borumha, or Boru, brother of the king of Munster, of
the Dalcassian race of O'Brien, refused to submit, roused his
brother, fought the Danes of Limerick at Sulchoid (A.D. 968), and
captured Limerick. Brian later succeeded his brother, became
sovereign of all Ireland (A.D. 1001), and, on Good Friday, A.D.
1014, joined battle with the Danes upon the famous field of Clontarf.
Here the power of the Northmen was forever broken, Brian falling at
the moment of victory, while in his tent, by the hand of a fugitive
Dane.
With the death of Brian the united government dissolved. The
provincial kings, or princes, resumed separate authority and a
struggle arose among them, with varying success, for the national
sovereignty. The central government never had been strong, as the
nation was organized on a tribal or family basis. In this weakened
condition Dermot MacMurrough, king of Leinster, abducted the wife of
O'Rourke, prince of Breffni, while the latter was on a pilgrimage.
MacMurrough was compelled to fly to England. He sought the protection
of the Angevin English king, Henry Plantagenet. As a result of this
appeal, a small expedition, headed by Strongbow (A.D. 1169), was sent
to Ireland, and Waterford, Wexford, and Dublin were taken. Then came
Henry himself, in 1171, with a fleet of 240 ships, 400 knights, and
4,000 men, landing at Waterford. This expedition was the beginning of
the English attempted conquest of Ireland--a proceeding that, through
all the ruin and bloodshed of 800 years, is not yet accomplished.
Henry's first act was to introduce the feudal system into that
southern half of the island which he controlled; he seized great
tracts of land, which he in turn granted to his followers under
feudal customs; he introduced the offices of the English feudal
system and the English laws, and placed his followers in all the
positions of power, holding their lands and authority under the
feudal conditions of rendering him homage and military service.
This was the root of the alien "landlordism" and foreign political
control of future times which became the chief curses of Ireland, the
prolific source of innumerable woes. The succeeding years till the
reign of Henry VIII. witnessed the extension, and at times the
decline, of the Anglo-Norman rule. When Henry VII. became king of
England the Anglo-Norman colony or "Pale" had shrunk to two counties
and a half around Dublin, defended by a ditch. Many of the original
Norman knights had become "more Irish than the Irish themselves."
Such was the great family of the Geraldines or Fitzgerald--the most
powerful, with the O'Neills of the North, in Ireland. A united attack
at this time would most certainly have driven out the invader; for it
must be remembered that Dublin, the "Pale"--"the Castle government"
of later times--was the citadel of the English foreign power, and
before a united nation would most certainly have succumbed.
When Henry VIII. ascended the throne of England, the policy of peace
in Ireland was continued during the early portion of his reign. Then
came Henry's break with the Pope over the royal divorce. The Irish
beyond the Pale, and many within it, were loyal to the Church of
their fathers, to the faith of Patrick, the faith of the Roman See.
To Henry and his daughter Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who
displaced Henry's lawful wife, this was treason. Henceforth, to the
bitterness of race hatred and the pride of the conqueror were to be
added the blackest of religious feuds, the most cruel of religious
persecutions in the history of the world. Again let Goldwin Smith,
the English Unionist, describe the result: "Of all the wars waged by
a civilized on a barbarous _(sic)_ and despised race these wars waged
by the English on the Irish seem to have been the most hideous. No
quarter was given by the invader to man, woman, or child. The
butchering of women and children is repeatedly and brutally avowed.
Nothing can be more horrible than the cool satisfaction with which
English commanders report their massacres." Famine was deliberately
added to the other horrors. What was called law was more cruel than
war: it was death without the opportunity for defense and with the
hypocrisy of the forms of justice added.
Out of this situation came the infamous Penal Code, which, by the
period of William the Third, about 1692, became a finished system.
This is the "Irish Code" of which Lord Brougham said: "It was so
ingeniously contrived that an Irish Catholic could not lift his hand
without breaking it." And Edmund Burke said: "The wit of man never
devised a machine to disgrace a realm or destroy a kingdom so perfect
as this." Montesquieu, the great French jurist-philosopher, the
author of the epoch-making _Spirit of the Laws_, commented: "It must
have been contrived by devils; it ought to have been written in
blood; and the only place to register it is in hell." Yet for two
hundred years this code of death, national and individual, was the
supreme law of Ireland.
Wendell Phillips, the great American orator, in his lecture on
"Daniel O'Connell," summed up this Penal Code in words that will not
soon be forgotten by the world. His reference to Mr. Froude is to
James Anthony Froude, the English historian. He says:
"You know that, under it, an Irish Catholic could not sit in the
House of Commons; he could not hold any commission from the Crown,
either civil or military; he could be a common soldier--nothing more.
He could neither vote, nor sit on a jury, nor stand on a witness
stand, nor bring a suit, nor be a doctor, nor be a lawyer, nor travel
five miles from his own home without a permit from a justice of the
peace. The nearest approach that ever was made to him was a South
Carolina negro before the war. He had no rights that a Protestant
needed to respect. If he was a land-holder, if all his children were
Catholics, he was obliged to divide the land equally between them.
This was the English plan for eliminating the Catholic tenure of the
land and letting it slip out of their hands. Then, if any of the
children, during their father's life, concluded to become
Protestants, in such case they took the whole estate; or, indeed,
they might compel the father to put his estate in trust for their
benefit. So, if the Catholic wife would not go to an Episcopalian
church once a month--which she deemed it a sin to do--she forfeited
her dower. But if she went regularly, she could have all the estate.
If a Catholic had a lease, and it rose one-quarter in value, any
Protestant could take it from him by bringing that fact to the notice
of a justice of the peace. Three justices of the peace might summon
any Catholic before them, and oblige him to give up his faith, or
quit the realm. Four justices could oblige him to abjure his faith or
sell his estates. If a Protestant paid one dollar tax, the Catholic
paid two. If a Protestant lost a ship, when at war with a Catholic
power--and at the time there was only _one_ Protestant power in
Europe, besides Great Britain; that was Holland: so that the chances
were nine to one that, in case of war, Great Britain would be at war
with a Catholic power--in such a case, if a Protestant lost a ship,
he went home and assessed the value on his Catholic neighbors, and
was reimbursed. So, of education. We fret a great deal on account of
a class of Irishmen who come to our shores and are lacking in
education, in culture, and refinement. But you must remember the bad
laws, you must remember the malignant legislation, that sentenced
them to a life of ignorance, and made education a felony in Catholic
Ireland. If an Irishman sent his child to a Protestant schoolmaster,
all right; but if the parent would not do so, and sent him to a
Catholic school, the father was fined ten pounds a week; and the
schoolmaster was fined five pounds a week; and for the third offense
he was hung! But, if the father determined that his child should be
educated, and sent him across the Channel to France, the boy
forfeited his citizenship and became an alien; and, if discovered,
the father was fined one hundred pounds; and anybody, except the
father, who harbored him, forfeited all civil rights--that is, he
could not sue in a court of law, nor could he vote. Indeed, a
Catholic could not marry! If he married a Protestant, the marriage
was void; the children were illegitimate. And, if one Catholic
married another, it required the presence of a priest, and if a
priest landed in Ireland for twenty minutes, it was death! To this
ferocious 'Code', Sir Robert Peel, in our own day, added the climax,
that no Catholic should quit his dwelling between the hours of sunset
and sunrise, an exaggeration of the 'Curfew Law' of William the
Conqueror. Now, you will hardly believe that this was enacted as a
law. But Mr. Froude alludes to this code. Yes; he was very honest; he
would paint England as black as she deserved. He said of Queen
Elizabeth that she failed in her duty as a magistrate; she failed
towards Ireland in her capability of being a great ruler. And then he
proceeded, after passing sentence, to give us the history of her
reign, and showed that, in very many cases, she could not have done
any different. For instance--oh! it is the saddest, blackest, most
horrible statement of all history; it makes you doubt the very
possibility of human nature--when you read that Spenser, the poet,
who had the most ardent, most perfect ideas in English
poetry--Spenser sat at the council board that ordered the wholesale
butchery of a Spanish regiment captured in Ireland, and, to execute
the order, he chose Sir Walter Raleigh, the scholar, the gentleman,
the poet, the author, and the most splendid Englishman of his age!
And Norris, a captain under Sidney, in whose veins flowed the blood
of Sir Philip, writing home to Elizabeth, begs and persuades her to
believe in O'Neill's crimes, and asks for leave to send a hired man
to poison him! And the Virgin Queen makes no objection! Mr. Froude
quotes a letter from Captain Norris, in which he states that he found
himself in an island where five hundred Irish (all women and
children; not a man among them) had taken refuge from the war; and he
deliberately butchered every living soul! And Queen Elizabeth, in a
letter still extant, answers by saying: 'Tell my good servant that I
will not forget his good services.' He tells us that 'The English
nobility and gentry would take a gun as unhesitatingly as a fowler,
and go out to shoot an Irishman as an Indian would a buffalo.' Then
he tells us, with amazement, that you never could make an Irishman
respect an Englishman! He points to some unhappy Kildare, the sole
relic of a noble house, whose four uncles were slaughtered in cold
blood--that is the only word for this kind of execution,
_slaughtered_--and he, left alone, a boy, grows up characterless and
kills an archbishop. Every impetuous, impatient act is dragged before
the prejudiced mind. But when Mr. Froude is painting Sir Walter and
Spenser, blind no longer, he says: 'I regret--it is very sad to
think--that such things should ever have been!'"
Such was the cup from which Ireland drank even into the days of men
now living. Nor was this all. The rise of English manufactures
brought a new chapter of woes to Ireland. The Irish cattle trade had
been killed by an Act of Charles II. for the benefit of English
farmers. The Irish then took up the raising of wool and woolen
manufactures. A flourishing trade grew up. An English law destroyed
it. In succession the same greed killed the cotton, the glovemaking,
the glassmaking, and the brewing trades. These were reserved for the
English maker and merchant. These crimes upon Irish industry
surpassed a thousand-fold the later English attempts upon the
industries of the American colonies.
Under the Code, and through the extreme poverty produced thereby,
substantially all the land of Ireland passed out of the hands of the
people. They became mere serfs upon the soil. Their tribute was paid
through a rapacious agent to a foreign landlord. The improvement of
the land by the labor of the tenant brought increase of rent. There
was no fixity of tenure of the land. It was held at the will of the
agent, reflecting the rapacity of the non-resident landlord. Upon
these holdings the principal crop was the potato. A failure of this
crop was a failure to pay rent, eviction on the roadside, and
starvation. The results, after the enactment of the Penal Code, and
during the greater part of the eighteenth century, are thus described
by Goldwin Smith: "On such a scene of misery as the abodes of the
Irish cotters the sun has rarely looked down. Their homes were the
most miserable hovels, chimneyless, filthy. Of decent clothing they
were destitute. Their food was the potato; sometimes they bled their
cattle and mixed the blood with sorrel. The old and sick were
everywhere dying by cold and hunger, and rotting amidst filth and
vermin. When the potato failed, as it often did, came famine, with
disease in its train. Want and misery were in every face, the roads
were spread with dead and dying, there was sometimes none to bear the
dead to the grave, and they were buried in the fields and ditches
where they perished. Fluxes and malignant fevers followed, laying
these villages waste. 'I have seen,' says a contemporaneous witness,
'the laborer endeavoring to work at his spade, but fainting for want
of food and forced to quit it. I have seen the helpless orphan
exposed on the dunghill, and none to take him in for fear of
infection. And I have seen the hungry infant sucking at the breast of
the already expired parent.'"
All these are not only the horrors of a hundred or two hundred years
ago; they were repeated in ten thousand forms in the awful famine
days of 1847. In 1841 the population of Ireland was 8,796,545
persons. In 1851, after four years of famine, the population was
6,551,970, leaving 2,244,575 persons to be accounted for, and taking
no account of the natural increase of the population during the ten
years. Not less than a million and a half of these died of starvation
and the fevers brought on by famine. The remainder emigrated to
foreign lands.
In this account of the Sorrows of Ireland nothing has been said of
the vast emigrations, thousands upon thousands of persons in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries leaving Ireland under forced
deportations, in a practical selling into slavery. The sum total of
this loss to Ireland cannot be less than 5,000,000 souls. The earlier
deportations were carried out under the most atrocious circumstances.
Families were broken up and scattered to distant and separate
colonies, such as Barbados, the New England States, and later to the
South Pacific.
This is but a glance at some of the wrongs to Ireland's religious,
intellectual, and material welfare, wrongs that have plunged her into
an age-long poverty. But one of the greatest of all her sorrows has
been the denial of her national life, the attempt to strangle her
rightful aspirations as a free people. Her autonomy was taken from
her; her smallest legislative act was the act of a stranger; in fine,
every mark of political slavery was put upon her. A foreign soldiery
was, and still is, quartered upon her soil. The control of her
revenues, of the system of taxation, was wrested from her. These
became the function of a hateful resident oligarchy, alien in
everything to the Irish people, and of the English parliament, to
which she was not admitted until the days of Daniel O'Connell. And
then she was admitted only through fear of revolution.
The dawn has come. The dark night is almost past; the heroic struggle
of Ireland is about to close in triumph. Her loyalty to her ideals of
freedom and religion is to meet its reward. The epitaph of Robert
Emmet will soon be written, for at last Ireland is certain of "taking
her place among the nations of the earth."