RESURRECTION.-DELUSIVE HOPES.
By delusive hopes are here meant some of the various schemes in
which Irishmen have indulged and still indulge with the view of
bettering their country. This chapter will aim at showing that,
for the resurrection of Ireland, the reconstruction of her past
is impossible; parliamentary independence or "home rule,"
insufficient, physical force and violent revolution, in
conjunction with European radicals particularly, is as unholy as
it is impracticable.
The resurrection of the Irish nation began with the end of last
century. As, to use their own beautiful expression, "'Tis always
the darkest the hour before day," so the gloom had never settled
down so darkly over the land, when light began to dawn, and the
first symptoms of returning life to flicker over the face of the,
to all seeming, dead nation. Its coming has been best described
in the "History of the Catholic Association" by Wyse. On reading
his account, it is impossible not to be struck with the very
small share that men have had in this movement; it was purely a
natural process directed by a merciful God. As with all natural
processes, it began by an almost imperceptible movement among a
few disconnected atoms, which, by seeming accident approaching
and coming into contact, begin to form groups, which gather
other groups toward them in ever-increasing numbers, thus giving
shape to an organism which defines itself after a time, to be
finally developed into a strong and healthy being. This process
differed essentially from those revolutionary uprisings which
have since occurred in other nations, to the total change in the
constitution and form of the latter, without any corresponding
benefit arising from them.
Before entering upon the full investigation of this uprising, it
may be well to dispel some false notions too prevalent, even in
our days, among men who are animated with the very best
intentions, who wish well to the Irish cause, but who seem to
fail in grasp in the right idea of the question. Reconstruction,
say they, is impossible-at least as far as the past history of
the country goes. Where are her leaders, her chieftains, her
nobility? Feudalism broke the clans, persecution put an
effectual stop to the labors of genealogists and bards. Where,
to-day, are the O'Neill, the O'Brien, the O'Donnell, and the
rest? Until new leaders are found, offshoots, if possible, of
the old families, more faithful and trustworthy than those who
so far have volunteered to guide their countrymen, how is it
possible to expect a people such as the Irish have always been,
to assume once more a corporate existence, and enjoy a truly
national government?
I. That the Irish nobility has disappeared forever may be
granted. In giving our reasons for believing in the
impossibility of connecting the present with the past through
that class, and thus restoring a truly national government, and
in strengthening this opinion by what follows, we shall show at
the same time that, in that regard, Ireland is on a par with all
other nationalities, among whom the aristocratic classes have
quite lost the prestige that once belonged to them, and can no
longer be said to rule modern nations.
The question of nobility is certainly an important one for the
Irish--nay, for all peoples. Up to quite recently, profound
thinkers never imagined it possible for a people to enjoy peace
and happiness save under the guidance of those then held to be
natural guides with aristocratic blood in their veins, who were
destined by God himself to rule the masses. We are far from
falling in with the fashion, so common nowadays, of deriding
those ideas. Men like Joseph de Maistre, who was certainly an
upholder of the theory, and who could not suppose a nation to
exist without a superior class appointed by Providence to guide
those whose blood was less pure, have a right to be listened to
with respect, and none of their deliberate opinions should be
treated with levity.
And, in truth, no nobility ever existed more worthy of the title,
as far as the origin of its power went, than the Irish. Its
last days were spent, like those of true heroes, fighting for
their country and their God. It is a remarkable fact that they,
the truest, were the first of the aristocratic classes to fall.
After them, all the aristocracies of Europe, with the exception
perhaps of the English, which still exists at least in name,
gradually saw their power wrested from them, so that, to-day, it
may be said with truth that the "noble" blood has lost its
prerogative of rule.
Various are the theories on these superior classes; a few words
on some of them may be as appropriate as interesting.
Of all those advanced, Vico's are the least defensible, though
they seem to rest on a deep knowledge of antiquity. No Christian
can accept his view of a universal savage state of society after
the Flood; and his explanation of the origin of aristocratic
races, and of the plebeians, their slaves, is purely the work of
imagination, however well read in classic lore may have been the
author of "Scienza Nuova." To suppose with him that the primeval
"nobles" reached the first stage of civilization by inventing
language, agriculture, and religion, and by imposing the yoke of
servitude on the "brutes" who were not yet possessed of the
first characteristics of humanity, is revolting to reason, and
contradictory to all sound philosophy and knowledge of history.
His aristocracy is a brutal institution which he does well to
doom to extinction as soon as the plebs is sufficiently
instructed and powerful enough to seize upon the reins of
government, before it, in its turn, is brought under by the
progressive march of monarchy, with which his system culminates.
The feudal ideas concerning "noble" blood rested on an entirely
different basis. The feudal monarch is but the first of the
nobles, and the possession of land is the true prerogative and
charter of nobility. The inferior classes being excluded from
that privilege, are also excluded from all political rights, and
are nothing more nor less than the conquered races which were
first reduced to slavery. Christianity was the only power which
effected a change, and a deep one, in the relations of these two
classes to each other; the rigorous application of the system by
the Northmen being entirely opposed to the elementary teachings
of our holy religion.
From the change thus brought about resulted the Christian idea
of aristocratic and monarchical government which had the support
of some gifted writers of the last and present centuries. It was
in fact a return to the old system realized by Charlemagne in
the great empire of which he was the founder--a system whose
glorious march was interrupted by the invasion of feudalism in
its severest form, which, according to what was before said,
came down from Scandinavia in the time of Charlemagne's
immediate successors. Under the regime of the noble emperor, the
Church, the Aristocracy, and the People, formed three Estates,
each with its due share in the government. This mode of
administering public affairs became general in Europe, and stood
for nearly a thousand years.
But is it the particular form of government necessary for the
happiness of a nation, as it was held to be by some powerful
minds? If it is, then are we born, indeed, in unhappy times; for
the corner-stone of the edifice, the aristocratic idea, has
crumbled away, and is apparently gone forever.
Any one, looking at Europe as it stands to-day, must feel
constrained to admit that its history for the last hundred years
may be summed up in the one phrase: admission of the middle
classes of society to the chief seat of government. Russia now
makes the solitary exception to this rule; for in England, which
seems the most feudal of all nations, the middle classes have
attained to a high position, and, through their special
representatives, have often taken the chief lead in public
affairs, ever since the Revolution of 1688, a lead which is now
uncontested. And as individuals of the middle class are often
admitted into the ranks of the aristocracy, it would indeed be a
hard thing to find purely "noble" blood in the vast majority of
aristocratic families now existing in Great Britain.
The history of the gradual decline of what is called the
nobility in the various states of Europe would require volumes.
In many instances it would certainly be found to have been
richly merited, in France particularly, perhaps, where the
corruption of that class was one of the chief causes which led
to the first French Revolution.
But in Ireland the original idea of nobility was different from
that entertained elsewhere; the action of the institution on the
people at large was peculiar in its character; and if, in early
times, those rude chieftains were often guilty of acts of
violence and outrage against religion and morality, they atoned
for this by that last long struggle of theirs, so nobly waged in
defence of both. But the destruction of the order was final and
complete, and seems to have left no hope of resurrection.
In our first chapter, when treating of the clan system, the
origin of chieftainship among the Celts was referred back to the
family: all the chieftains, or nobles, were each the head of a
sept or tribe, which is the nearest approach to a family; all
the clansmen were related by blood to the chieftain. The order
of nobility among the Celts was therefore natural and not
artificial; being neither the result of some conventional
understanding nor of brute force. Nature was with them the
parent of nobility and chieftainship; and the ennobling, or
raising a person by mere human power to the dignity of noble,
was unknown to them: a state of things peculiar to the race.
In Vico's system, aristocracy sprang from physical force or
skill; consequently, nobility was founded on no natural right,
although the author does his best to prove the contrary, chiefly
by ascribing to the aristocratic class the discovery or
invention of right (jus) which thus becomes a mere derivative of
force.
In feudalism, pure and unmixed, after it had penetrated farther
south, under the lead of the Scandinavians, nobility was derived
from conquest and armed force. It is true that, by this system,
the viking, monarch, or sovereign lord, was the one who
distributed the territory, won from conquered nations, among his
faithful followers, and thus land and its consequence, nobility,
were apparently the award of merit; but the merit in question
being equivalent to success in battle, it again resolved itself
into armed force. In fact, the power of feudalism proper rested
in the army; the chief nobles were duces or combats (dukes or
counts), the inferior nobles were equites (knights) and milites
(men-at-arms). All power and title began and ended with force of
arms, which was the only foundation of right: jus captionis et
possessionis--the right of taking and of keeping.
Eventually feudal ideas underwent considerable change among the
aristocracy of Christendom, by the gradual spread of Christian
manners; and the first establishment of nobility by Charlemagne,
which was anterior to pure feudalism, afterward revived, and
lasted a thousand years. Then it was conferred by the monarch on
merit of any kind, and it was understood that those whom
superior authority had raised to the dignity had won their title
by their deeds, which were sufficient to prove their noble blood,
and that they were empowered to transmit the title to their
posterity. The idea was a grand one, and gave proof of its vast
political and social usefulness in the immense benefits which it
brought upon Europe during so many ages. Unfortunately, the
inroad of the Scandinavians, following closely on the death of
its great founder, introduced feudalism as better known to us,
interfered with the institution which Charlemagne had
established in such admirable equipoise, and added to it many
barbarous adjuncts, which for a long time entered into the idea
of nobility itself. Thus the titles of feudal lords were
retained--duce, comites, equites, milites--with, all the
paraphernalia of brute force which the harsh mind of northern
despotism had made divine. Thus was the holding of landed
property allowed to the nobles alone; the great mass of the
population being composed of men--ascripti glebae-- who were
incapable from their position of rising in the social scale; so
that all were duly impressed with the idea that the mass of the
people had been conquered and reduced, if not to slavery, to
what greatly resembled it--serfdom. From this order of things
arose that fruitful source of all modern revolutions, the
division of Europe into two great classes antagonistic to each
other and separated by an almost impassable gulf--the lords and
the "villeins."
To be sure, the supreme lord had the power to raise even a
villein to the rank of noble, after he had proved his superior
elevation of mind by heroic achievements; but what superhuman
exertions did not those achievements call for; what a concourse
of fortuitous circumstances rarely occurring, so as to render
almost illusory the hope of rising held out by the feudal theory!
The Church alone opened her highest grades to all
indiscriminately; and, in her, true merit was really an
assurance of advance.
Further details are not needed. The difference between the idea
of the nobility entertained in Celtic countries, and that held
by the rest of Europe, is already in favor of the former.
For this reason the action of the Irish aristocracy on the
people at large was happily altogether free from those causes of
irritation so common in feudal countries. A close intimacy and
personal devotion naturally existed between the chieftain of a
clan and his men--an intimacy manifested by the free manners of
the humblest among them, and that ease of social intercourse
between all classes of people, which was a matter of so much
surprise to the Norman barons at their primitive invasion.
At first sight, the Celtic system appears, in one respect at
least, inferior to that which prevailed throughout the rest of
Europe: the simple clansmen could never indulge in the hope of
attaining to the chieftainship, being naturally excluded from
that high office. Only the actual members of the chieftain's own
family could hope to succeed him after his death, by election,
and take the lead of the sept; thus nobility was entirely
exclusive, and regulated by the very laws of Nature. The office
was really not transferable, and no degree of exertion, of
whatever nature, could win it for any person born out of the one
family. But the difference was scarcely one in fact; and we know
how illusory, often was that ambition which the system of merit
inspired in the man born of an inferior class in other races
than the Celtic. The broad assertion, that no man could rise
from the condition in which he happened to be born, remains true
for nearly all cases.
But, on the other hand, there were motives of ambition besides
that of becoming chieftain, or entering on the road thereto, by
being admitted into the ranks of the nobility, which lay open to
the Celt; and if the desire of a mere clansman to become a
chieftain lay within the bounds of possibility, the social state
of Celtic countries would have been broken up and become
intolerable, and society would have been dissolved into its
primitive elements. Two considerations of importance:
The whole of Irish history teaches one lesson, or, rather,
impresses one fact: that every member of a clan took as much
pride in the sept to which he belonged, and labored as zealously
for its head, as he could have done had the advantage turned all
to himself. The peculiar features engendered by the system were
such that each man identified himself with the whole tribe and
particularly with its leader; and this is easily understood, as
we see the same sort of feeling existing to-day among families.
It is in the very essence of natural ties to merge the
individual in the community to which he belongs, as in questions
which affect the whole family to merge self in the whole, to
forget one's own identity, to be ready for any sacrifice,
particularly when the sacrifice is called forth in defence of a
beloved parent.
To judge by the ancient annals of Ireland which are accessible,
this was undoubtedly the sentiment pervading Celtic clans, and
it is easy to conceive how, under such conditions, ambitious
thoughts of the chieftainship or nobility could not well enter
there. Moreover, we repeat, had such ambitious thoughts been
within the compass of realization, the whole system would have
been destroyed.
The greatest source of quarrels, feuds, wars, and general
calamities among the Irish people, was the insane aspiration
among the inferior members of a chieftain's family after supreme
power. The institution of Tanist, or heir-apparent, particularly,
which was general for all offices, from the highest to the
lowest, was a constant source of trouble and contention to septs
which, without it, would have remained united and in harmony.
Montalembert has well said that it seems as if an incurable
fatality accompanied the Irish everywhere, and condemned nearly
all the highest among them to have their blood shed either by
others or by their own hand, and that few indeed are those
renowned chieftains and kings who died quietly in their beds.
Their annals are filled throughout with tales of blood; and,
when we know of their strong attachment to religion, of their
tenderheartedness for women, children, old and feeble men, it is
hard to conceive how they came to shed blood so often, and show
themselves proof against the simplest claims of humanity.
But the difficulty is sufficiently explained by their own annals
and the state of society under which they lived. The Tanistry
was the great source of all those evils. The position of a
chieftain was so honorable, so influential, and powerful, that
all natural sentiments, even those of family affection, were
often extinguished by the insane ambition of attaining to it, in
those whom Nature had set on the road toward it.
It looks like a contradiction, yet nothing is so well
established as their deep affection for their near relatives and
the fury engendered against their nearest of kin when allured by
the prospect of the chieftainship. What the case might have been,
had all the inferior clansmen been influenced by the same
motive, one shudders to think. Happily the possibility of such a
position was denied them, and thus were they spared all the
crime and horrors which it entailed. Let us now turn to the fall
of the Irish nobility, in order to see how that fall was final
and decisive, leaving little or no room for the hope of their
resurrection.
The great wars of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth upon the island
often drove some of the Irish chieftains to quit their country
for a time; a thing scarcely ever known before, where the Pale
was so contracted and the power of the English kings so limited.
But those first voyages of Irish lords to foreign countries had
generally no other destination than England itself, whither they
sometimes repaired to justify themselves in the presence of the
sovereign against the imputations of their enemies, or to pay
court to him for the purpose of obtaining some coveted object.
Occasionally their children were brought up at the English court,
either with the view of instilling Protestantism into their
artless minds, or to make them friends of England, so that many
of them thus became king's or queen's men. In this manner the
Irish nobility first came to look out beyond their own country.
When, as events went on, some great family was crushed or nearly
so, as were the Kildares by Henry Tudor and the Geraldines by
Elizabeth, the outraged nobility began to think of foreign
alliances, and cast their eyes abroad over Spain, Belgium, or
France, above all toward Rome, which was the centre of their
religion, attachment to which was one of their chief crimes,
where the Holy Father was ever ready to encourage and receive
them with open arms, Thus history tells us of the narrow escape
of young Gerald Desmond.
He was still a child of twelve years, and the sole survivor of
the historic house of Kildare, when his life was sought after
with an eagerness which resembled that of Herod, but the
devotion of his clansmen defeated all attempts at his capture.
"Alternately the guest of his aunts, married to the daughter of
the chief of Offaly and Donegal, the sympathy everywhere felt
for him lead to a confederacy between the northern and southern
chieftains, which had long been felt wanting, and never could be
accomplished. A loose league was formed, including the O'Neills
of both branches, O'Donnell, O'Brien, the Earl of Desmond, and
the chiefs of Moylurg and Breffni. The child, object of so much
natural and chivalrous affection, was harbored for a time in
Munster; then transported, through Connaught, into Donegal; and
finally, after four years, in which he engaged more the minds of
the statesmen than any other individual under the rank of
royalty, he was safely landed in France."-(A. M. O'Sullivan.)
But the intercourse between the Irish nobility and foreign
powers was chiefly increased during the reign of Elizabeth, when
by the great league of the Desmond Geraldines in the south,
which was followed by that of the O'Neills and O'Donnells in the
north, they entered into open treaty with the Popes and the
Kings of Spain; and, when reverses came, no other resource was
left to the outlawed chieftains than flight to the Continent,
where they abode till the storm blew over, sometimes for the
remainder of their lives.
James Fitzmaurice stayed a long time in Italy, where, on hearing
of the imprisonment of his cousins, the Desmonds, he planned the
first great league in defence of religion, no longer for the
purpose only of righting family wrongs, but of waging a holy war
which might draw the cooperation of all the Catholic powers.
These few details are here furnished, because they mark a new
starting-point in the history of the race, when the nobility of
the land first went abroad to live with a view of finding allies
for the Irish cause; while the Irish at home looked anxiously to
their chieftains abroad to return to them with the promised
succor.
A few words on the policy exercised toward the Irish nobility by
Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and James I., at the beginning of his
reign, will give us a sufficiently clear insight into the means
adopted for the gradual attack upon them, which resulted first
in their partial subjugation, finally in their total destruction.
Those monarchs thought that, to reduce Ireland to an English
colony, all they had to do was to destroy the chieftains, and
the subjugation of the country was complete. They were
strengthened in this opinion by the outbreak of Protestantism,
which had deprived the lower classes not only of their material
comfort and religious consolations, but of all the immunities
and liberties which the middle ages had left to them. While the
mass of the nation was not only denied all political influence,
but even all right to any consideration whatsoever on the part
of the state, when the highest nobles were cowering at the feet
of royalty, utterly at the mercy of the Tudor despots, how could
the plebs of England and Ireland dare show its front even to
testify to mere existence?
The English monarchs were aware that the spirit of the Irish
nobles was not broken like that of their English vassals; and
they resolved on bringing the proud lords of the Pale and the
chieftains of the old race to a like submission with their own
nobles. But of the common clansmen they made no more account
than of the English rabble, and herein lay their great mistake.
Subsequent history proved that the national leaders of the Irish
race might be utterly annihilated, and yet the Irish question
remain as great a difficulty as ever, owing to the stubborn,
though sometimes passive resistance of the peasantry. But at
that time such a thing was not contemplated.
All the cunning of diplomacy, all the artifice of the law,
finally all the material resources of England, were called in,
one after the other, or together, to achieve that great object
of the policy of the Tudors and of the first Stuart. It is not
necessary to go over what every person conversant with the
history of the time knows by heart; it is only proper to
indicate, as briefly as possible, the gradual results of that
crafty and stern policy.
The Geraldine war ended with the total destruction of the
Catholic Anglo-Irish nobles of the south, whose place was filled
by the younger sons of Protestant nobles from England. With the
Geraldines, or shortly after them, fell the O'Sullivans of Beare,
the McGeohegans, the O'Driscolls, and O'Connors of Kerry, whom
Spain and Portugal received.
Then the whole efforts of Elizabeth were turned to the
destruction of the native chieftains of the north. She failed;
and the war resulted in a peace which left their lands and the
open practice of their religion to the Ulster chiefs.
But James I., though he seemed willing to abide by the articles
of the treaty, was driven by hard pressure to employ deceit,
fraud, intimidation, and force, to bring the northern nobility
into his power, and "the flight of the earls" was the
consequence.
From this date the "Irish exiles" began in good earnest,
originally consisting, for the most part, of families belonging
to the first blood of the land, with minor chiefs and captains
in their retinue. Many letters written at the time, which have
been preserved, as well as reports of spies and informers,
dispatched to the court of England from Spain, Portugal, Belgium,
France, and Italy, give us an insight into the life led by
those noblemen in foreign countries. They were sometimes
supported by the sovereigns who received them; but at others
neglected and reduced to shifts for a living.
The "flight" itself and all its details are given by the Rev. C.
P. Meehan. The entire number of souls on board the small vessel
which bore them away was, according to Teigue O'Keenan, Ollamh
of Maguire, "ninety-nine, having little sea-store, and being
otherwise miserably accommodated." This was indeed the first
emigration of the Irish nobles and gentry, which was to be
followed by many another, to their final extinction.
Sir John Davies took an English view of the subject when he
wrote, about that time, to Lord Salisbury: "We are glad to see
the day wherein the countenance and majesty of the law and civil
government hath banished Tyrone out of Ireland, which the best
army in Europe, and the expense of two million pounds sterling,
did not bring to pass. And we hope his Majesty's government will
work a greater miracle in this kingdom than ever St. Patrick did;
for St. Patrick did only banish the poisonous worms, but
suffered the men full of poison to inhabit the land still; but
his Majesty's blessed genius will banish all those generations
of vipers out of it, and make it, ere it be long, a right
fortunate island."
Davies's prophecy ought to have been accomplished long ago, for
it is long since all the Irish nobility, "those generations of
vipers," has been destroyed; yet the poor island is still far
from being "right fortunate."
The chief means employed at the time to encompass the
destruction of the nobles was the infamous revelations of spies
and informers. The existence of these agents has long been known
to all; but the extent of their workings was not suspected even
until the state papers and the correspondence of political men,
and holders of offices at the time, came to be examined by
writers desirous of investigating the whole truth.
It was then found that every man in the English Government,
beginning from the highest, the king's ministers, through the
Lords-Lieutenants and Chief-Justices of Ireland, down to the
lowest officials, one and all kept in their pay men of all ranks
of life, who, at the bidding of their employers, were ready to
circumvent the victims of an odious policy, and under the guise
of friendship, interest, common acquaintance, to discover, and
even, if needed, to invent facts and circumstances which might
be turned against them, or against any other persons obnoxious
to England, with the view of destroying them. So that, to
England in Europe, and to Elizabeth in England, belongs the
dubious honor of having invented that great agent of modern
governments--the secret police.
But the operations of those informers were not confined to
England and Ireland alone, although those two kingdoms may be
said to have literally swarmed with them; all foreign countries
were made the scenes of their infamous machinations, wherever in
fact the Irish nobles or English Catholics fled for refuge from
persecution. At the courts of Spain and Rome they were to be
found; in Brussels and Louvain, in Paris and Rheims, as well as
in the by-lanes of London and the lowest quarters of Dublin. The
ecclesiastical establishments particularly, which were founded
by the Irish Catholics for the education of their priesthood,
were infested with them: they found means to penetrate into
their most secluded recesses, and sometimes the vilest and most
shameful hypocrisy was resorted to in order to gain admittance
into those holy cloisters devoted to science and virtue.
All the great houses and hotels in foreign countries, where the
banished nobility of Ireland passed the tedious hours, months,
and years, of their exile, were the places easiest of access to
those base tools of the English Government.
On the reports furnished by these men the British policy was
based, and the nobility and gentry still left in the island fell
into the meshes so cautiously spread around them. How many of
their number were cast into the Tower of London or the Castle of
Dublin, on the mere word of these pests of society! How many,
suddenly warned of the treachery intended, had to fly in haste
lest they should fall into the hands of their enemies! We know
that the first "flight of the earls" was brought about by such
means as these, but our readers would be mistaken in imagining
that that was an exceptional case, scarcely ever repeated. It
was in reality the ordinary way of getting rid of this hated
race of Irishmen.
The great misfortune was that, even among the Irish themselves,
nay, among friars and priests belonging to the race, the English
Government sometimes, though Heaven be thanked! rarely, found
ready tools and most useful informers. Mean and sordid souls are
to be found everywhere; our Lord himself was betrayed by an
apostle, while giving him the kiss of peace; but among the Irish,
people this class was confined to a few needy adventurers,
sometimes to men who, from some personal grievance, real or
imaginary, were blinded by the spirit of revenge to deliver
those whose destruction they thirsted for into the hands of
their common enemies, to their own eternal shame and perdition.
The common people were too noble-hearted ever to join in such
infamy, and to those who would have tempted them with gold to
betray the men concealed by them, the response was ever ready:
"The King of England is not rich enough to buy me!"
Thus, piecemeal, as it were, during the reign of Elizabeth and
James I., and a part, at least, of that of Charles I., numbers
of the Irish nobles were imprisoned or slain at home, or
compelled to go into exile.
Nor, when James I., going lower in the social scale, began to
dispossess the ordinary people, the clansmen, the tenants of
Ulster, in order to make room for his Scotch Presbyterians, was,
the war on the nobility discontinued on that account. The most
prominent and, in its results, universal feature of his reign,
was the breaking up of the clans all over the island, whereby he
effected a complete change in the social state of the country.
But the most efficacious means of bringing that result about was
the total destruction of the nobility and gentry. The crafty
monarch knew that so long as the Irish could see and converse
with their natural chieftains and lords, so long would it be
impossible to extinguish or abate, in the slightest degree, the
clan-spirit. It was only when the key-stone which held their
social edifice together-the head of the sept-had disappeared,
that the whole fabric would tumble into ruins.
After a long trial of this policy of treachery and craft, came
Cromwell to complete the work with violence and brutal force.
There still remained in the island a great number of noble
families, and the ollamhs and genealogists kept clear the rolls
of the respective pedigrees. There is no doubt, at the time of
Cromwell's war of extermination, even when the English
Parliament had passed the Act of Settlement, that all the Irish
septs still knew where to find their lawful natural chiefs, who,
if no longer on the island, were at the head of some regiment in
Flanders, France, Austria, or Spain. But, as time went on, the
Irish brigades naturally came to identify themselves more and
more with the countries into whose service they had passed, and
where they had taken up their permanent abode; while in the
island itself, force came to degrade what was left of the nobles,
and to annihilate forever the national state institutions
preserved by the genealogists and bards.
One of the features which most forcibly strikes the reader of
the history of those times is, what took place all over the
island when the English Parliament issued that celebrated
proclamation in which it was declared that "it was not their
intention to extirpate this whole nation."-(October 11, 1652.)
By that time the chief officers of Cromwell's army had already
taken possession of a great number of the castles and estates of
the nobility who had not left the country. The rest had fallen
into the hands of the adventurers of 1641, who had advanced
money for the purpose of raising a private army to conquer lands
for themselves; while the body of Cromwell's troops looked on,
awaiting the small pittance of a few hundred acres; which was to
be their share of the spoil. Here is the strange and awe-
inspiring picture of the conquered island in the seventeenth
century:
The nobles, who had survived the fighting and defeat, were
allowed to remain a short time until their transportation to
Connaught. But, driven away from their mansions, where the new
"landlords"-the word then came into use for the first time--
occupied what had been their apartments, they had to live in
some ruinous out-buildings, and to till with their own hands a
few roods of land for the support of their perishing families. A
few garans (dray-horses), and a few cows and sheep, were the
only aid in labor and production left to them. They were allowed,
by sufferance; to raise some small crops of grain and roots,
but all their time had to be occupied in purely manual labor.
Such is the image which fixes itself indelibly on the memory of
any one who reads attentively the common occurrences of those
days. It was a picture presented in every province of the island;
in the most distant mountain-fastnesses as well as in the still
smiling plains of the lowlands.
The nobles were, as a class, utterly destroyed; few of them fell
to the inferior rank of yeomen; while the mass of the people--
was at once plunged to the dead level of common peasants and
laborers. If some of the former class still retained a few
faithful servants, their help was required for the drudgery
about the farm or the miserable dwelling. None of them could be
spared to keep up "the glory of the house." Would it not have
been bitter irony to talk to this remnant of pedigree and their
long line of ancestors? And would their enemies, who were now
their masters, have countenanced the proscribed offices of files
and shanachies, when laws against them specially had been so
long enacted if not enforced? Now was the exact time for the
rigid execution of those laws so evidently designed for the
transformation of the freeborn natives into feudal serfs.
Hence, when the bitter day at last came, which was to deprive
them of even the sight of the hereditary territory of the family,
which was to transplant them to Connaught-among countrymen,
indeed, but none the less strangers to them, whose presence
could not fail to be unwelcome, and bring disturbance, confusion,
and disorder-how, in such a case, could they hope to retain or
revive their prestige as the old lords of the country? It is
said that, for this, many of the Munster chieftains preferred to
go into exile to Spain, or even to the islands of America,
rather than take up their abode in Connaught, where they were
sure to find bitter enemies in the old inhabitants of that
desolate province.
This state of things knew no change, except with a very few of
the Anglo-Irish, when Charles II. came to the throne, after the
death of the Protector. He was in truth merely the executor of
the great Act of Settlement, and carried into effect what had
been enacted by the Parliament which had brought his father to
the block, and driven himself into exile.
He only restored their estates to a few families of "innocent
papists." Such was the phrase applied to them in derision,
doubtless. The generality of the old families continued to sink
deeper and deeper in degradation, and the forgetfulness of all
they had once been.
It took the greater part of a century, from 1607 to 1689, to
effect the almost total disappearance of the Irish nobility. As
Colonel Myles Byrne, in his "Irish at Home and Abroad," says:
"Few facts in history are more surprising than the rapidity and
completeness of the fall of the Irish families stricken down by
the penal laws. Reduced to beggary at once, and with habits
acquired in affluence, surrounded only by contemporaries
similarly crushed, or by the despoilers revelling and rioting in
possession of their forfeited lands, friendless and unpitied,
regarded as 'suspects' from the reasons for discontent so
abundantly furnished them, they seemed struck with stupor, and
utterly incapable of any effort to rise out of the abyss into
which they had been precipitated. Dispirited, heart-broken,
unmanned, they suffered the little personal property left them
to melt away; and, on its exhaustion, were compelled to resort
to the most humiliating means to prolong existence, and to
accept for their helpless offspring the humblest condition which
promised them a maintenance. A 'trade' was the general resort
sought for the son of the chief of a clan, landholder, or
gentleman.
"This gave rise to Swift's observation to Pope: 'If you would
seek the gentry of Ireland, you must look for them on the coal-
quay or in the liberty.'
"Thus, in my youth, 'the Devoy,' the head of one of the most
powerful and distinguished of our septs, was a blacksmith, I
have often seen a mechanic, named James Dungan, who was said to
be a descendant of James Dungan, Earl of Limerick; and 'the
Chevers' (Lord Mount Leinster) was the clerk of Mrs. Byrnes, who
carried on the business of a rope-maker.
"Maddened and embittered by humiliation and suffering,
renouncing all hope of recovering their stolen lands, those
victims of 'bills of discovery,' or of confiscation, burned or
destroyed, or threw aside, as worse than useless, the records of
their former possessions, the proofs of their former
respectability, and seemed, in fact, desirous to efface all
evidence of it. I know one case in which the title-deeds of an
estate were searched for an important occasion, and in which it
appeared that they had been given to tailors to cut into strips
or measures for purposes of their trade.
"A claim was set up to a dormant peerage, and a relation of mine
having been applied to for information in support of it, he said:
'You are positively in remainder; but you are in the condition
of the descendants of many Irish families, whose great
difficulty is to prove who was their grandfather.'"
The reader is naturally struck, when the sudden appearance of
James II. on the island presents to his eyes another Irish army,
and a new Irish nation, fighting again for God and the king, but
with few of the old names among those who then appeared on the
scene. The leaders throughout the three years' struggle, which
decided the ultimate fate of the country, for the most part have
names unknown to Ireland, and unassociated with its former
history, so completely had the aristocracy of the island
perished and disappeared.
It may be well imagined, then, that, after the passage of
another century of woe such as was described in the last chapter,
it would be impossible to reconstruct the genealogies of the
old families who might be entitled to lead the rising generation.
Some few names are still advanced as entitled to the hereditary
honors of once noble families, and thus we still hear of
pretensions to title of "the O'Brien," "the O'Donaghue," and a
few others. That such pretensions are acknowledged by the
generality of the nation, it would be questionable to assert.
To think, then, of reconstructing the Irish nation out of its
former elements, as they once existed, would be an idle dream.
Those elements are dissolved and forever destroyed, and all that
the nation can do with respect to its past is to preserve in
pious remembrance the former race of men who once shed down such
a glory over Irish annals. It was a happy and patriotic thought
of the antiquarian societies of the island to investigate the
old national records; to illustrate, explain, and bring them
before the public in a language intelligible to the present
generation. It is doubtful if in any other country the
aristocracy fell with a heroism and glory so pure and unalloyed.
Among all modern nations, as was said previously, the old class
of noblemen has either passed out of sight, or is fast
disappearing from living history. Ireland, then, does not stand
alone in that respect. She was the first to lose her nobility,
and she lost it more utterly than any other nation. But in the
variety of movements, complications, revolutions, which now go
to form the daily current of events in Europe, where do we find
the nobles regarded as a power, as an element calculated to
restore or even to preserve? The "noblemen" are well enough
satisfied nowadays, if they are not persecuted, proscribed, or
destroyed; if they are enabled to take their stand amid the
crowd of men of inferior rank and share in the affairs of their
country; content to see their names once so exclusively glorious,
set on a par with those of plebeians, to lead the modernized
peoples into the new paths whither they are rapidly drifting.
Nay, so low have the mighty fallen, that even dethroned kings
and princes sometimes ask to be admitted as simple citizens in
the countries which they or their ancestors once ruled.
Here the thought will naturally occur: If the phenomenon is
universal with respect to the position allotted now to men of
"noble blood"--since it is evident that for those nations which
feel no veneration for it a future history is designed, and that
future is to be utterly independent of such an idea--then
Ireland is no worse off than any other country in that regard,
nay, the veneration for noble blood perhaps exists, in its right
sense, now in her bosom alone, and, though no longer available
for any purpose, is still an element of conservatism worthy of
preservation and far from despicable.
Therefore, when we number among false hopes the one entertained
by a few Irishmen whose thoughts still cling fondly to the past,
and who would fain reconstruct it, it is not with the intention
of treating those aspirations slightingly, which we ought to
honor and would share, were there only the faintest possibility
of calling again to life what we cannot but consider passed away
forever.
II. Let us move on to the consideration of our second delusive
hope, one of a much deeper import, which to-day of all others
occupies public attention--a separate Irish Parliament and home-
rule government.
The desire for a separate Irish Parliament is certainly a
national aspiration, it may even be called a right; for the
people of the island can justly complain of being at the mercy
of a rival nation, of which they are supposed to form a part,
and are consequently heavily taxed for the support of it without
any adequate return. The day may not be far distant when this
wish of theirs will have to be complied with, as were so many
other rights once as strenuously denied.
Nevertheless it is our opinion, and we say it advisedly, there
is no reason for believing that this would prove a universal
panacea for Ireland's woes, sure to bring health, happiness, and
prosperity to the nation, uniting in itself all blessings, all
future success, all germs of greatness; nor is there reason to
believe that with it the resurrection of the nation is assured,
as without it, it would remain dead.
To speak still more clearly--the representation of a people by
its deputies being according to modern ideas an element of free
constitution for all nations, and Ireland having for so long a
time enjoyed a privilege very similar to it under her own
national monarchs, our object cannot be understood to depreciate
a political institution which seems to have become a necessity
of the times, owing to the eager aspiration of all minds and
hearts toward it. But we think it a delusion to imagine that, by
its possession, national happiness is necessarily and fully
secured.
Whatever may be the general experience of parliamentary rule,
its record for Ireland is a sad one. The old Feis of the nation
are not here alluded to; they had very little in common with
modern Parliaments, being merely assemblies of the chief heads
of clans, to which were added in Christian times the prelates of
the Church. Neither is the "General Assembly," which was
intrusted with legislative and executive powers by the
Confederation of Kilkenny, alluded to; this could not be
reproduced to-day exactly as it then existed.
The Parliament here meant is such as presents itself at once to
the mind of a man of the nineteenth century, with its members of
both Houses elected by the people, as in America, or those of
the Upper House in the nomination of the crown; its opposing
parties often degenerating into mere factions; its views limited
to material progress, and its aims and aspirations altogether
worldly; deeply imbued with the modern ideas of liberalism, yet
knowing very little, if any thing, of true liberty; often
following the lead of a few talented members, whose real merits
are seldom an index of conscience and sense of right.
Such a liberal institution as this, which, if proposed to-day
for Ireland by the English Government, would be hailed with
unbounded joy by all ranks of people in that country, would
nevertheless be no sure harbinger of happiness to the nation,
and, to repeat what was said above, the record of such an
institution in Ireland is a sad one.
There is no need of entering upon a history of Irish Parliaments.
If an impartial and fair-minded author were to take up such a
work, it might serve to open the eyes of many, and show them
that it is after all better to rely on Divine Providence than on
such an aid to national prosperity.
Dr. Madden, in his "Connection of Ireland with England,"
conclusively shows that the right of a free and independent
Parliament similar to that of England was granted to Ireland by
King John at the very beginning of the "Conquest." Such a
Parliament was granted to the handful of Anglo-Normans, who were
already busy in building their castles for the purpose of
reducing the whole mass of the clans to feudal slavery after
having deprived them of all their free national assemblies and
customs. For nearly four hundred years the Irish Parliaments,
when not completely subjected to English control, as they
finally were by "Poyning's Act," were mere legislative machines
devised for the purpose of subduing, cowing, and finally rooting
out every thing Irish in the land. The language of Sir John
Davies was very clear on this subject.
This being such a well-known fact to-day, it seems strange that
a writer who is so well informed, so acute and discerning, and
so thoroughly Catholic, as Dr. Madden undoubtedly is, should
attach such great importance to the institution of Parliament as
first granted by the English monarchs. They had in their eye
only the small English colony settled on the island, with all
their feudal customs, and no thought of granting liberty to the
mass of the nation. The case of Molyneux, which is so often
quoted and praised by Irish writers, should be set aside and
forgotten by any man animated by a true love for Irish
prosperity. It was merely a revival of the old parties of
English by blood and English by birth, without a single thought
of the rights of Irishmen. It was a case of siding with one
English party against another, both aiming at making Ireland a
colony of England, the while the unfortunate country was crushed
between them, certain in either case to be the victim. The
native race had nothing to say or do in the matter, beyond
assisting at the spectacle of their enemies wrangling among
themselves.
The same remarks will apply to the pamphlets of Dr. Lucas, which
created so much interest at the time, and which Dr. Madden
quotes at such length. Lucas, it will be remembered, was a
violent anti-Catholic, and consequently anti-Irish partisan.
Yet the Catholic Association made all the use they could of the
arguments of Molyneux and Lucas, because these possessed some
vestige of the national spirit, inasmuch as they spoke for
Ireland, whose very name was hated by the opposite party; and at
that time the Association was perfectly right: but matters have
altered since then.
It is certainly strange that, when serious attempts were made by
Henry VIII. to introduce Protestantism into Ireland, not only
were Anglo-Irish Catholics summoned to Parliament, but even
native chieftains also, some of whom spoke nothing but Irish, so
that their speeches required translating.
But, as was previously shown, this was nothing more nor less
than a crafty device to make genuine Irishmen unconsciously
confirm, by what was called their vote, former decrees in which
the Act of Supremacy had been passed; to make it appear that
they had abjured their religion, and were now good Protestants;
and, worse still, to set in the statute-book, as acknowledged by
all, the law of spiritual supremacy vested in the king, of
abjuration of papal authority, of submission to all decrees
passed in England with the purpose of effecting an entire change
in the religion of the nation.
To such vile uses was the machinery of Parliament reduced.
Thenceforth it became an engine for the issuing of decrees of
persecution. Catholic members occasionally appeared in it when a
lull in the execution of the laws occurred, and they could take
their seats without being guilty of apostasy. But, by making
close boroughs of his Protestant colonies, James I. secured,
once for all, the majority of representatives on the side of the
Protestants, and, as a natural consequence, nothing more
grinding, sharp, piercing, and strong, could be imagined than
this engine of law called the Irish Parliament, as it existed
under the Stuarts. "Nothing" would be incorrect: there was
something worse; it came in with the Revolution of 1688, and its
results have been witnessed in a previous chapter.
Owing to the various oaths imposed upon members in the time of
William of Orange, no Catholic could any longer sit in the Irish
Parliament without abjuring his faith. And, thence-forth, the
state institution sitting in Dublin became more than ever a
persecuting and debasing power, intent only on making, altering,
improving, and enforcing laws designed for the complete
degradation of the people.
There came, however, a period of eighteen years, called "the
Rise of the Irish Nation" by Sir Jonah Barrington. It would be a
pleasure to set this down as a real exception to the whole
previous or later history of Ireland; but such pleasure cannot
be indulged in.
At the period referred to France had embraced the cause of the
North American colonies of Great Britain, and the English
vessels were not the only ones upon the seas. Large French
fleets were conveying troops to their new allies, and in 1779
the English Government sent warning to Ireland that American or
French privateers were to be expected on the Irish coast, and no
troops could be dispatched for the protection of the island.
Then arose the great volunteer movement. Every Irishman entitled
to bear arms enrolled himself in some regiment raised with the
ostensible design of opposing a hostile landing, but really
intended by the patriots to force the repeal of Poyning's Act
from England, to obtain for the Parliament in Dublin real
independence of English dictation.
The result is well known. One hundred thousand Irishmen were
soon under arms, who not only took the field as soldiers, and
formed themselves into regiments of infantry, troops of horse,
and artillery, but, strange to say, as citizens, sent delegates
to conventions, and demanded with a loud voice that England
should not only grant free trade to the sister isle, but
likewise invest the Irish Parliament with independent powers.
This political open-air contest lasted two years, and, on the
receipt of the news that the British army had capitulated at
Yorktown, and that the American War had come to a successful
termination on the side of the colonists, the Ulster volunteers
decided to hold a national convention of delegates from every
city in the province. On Friday, February 15, 1782, the meeting
took place at Dungannon, County Tyrone, and there the delegates
swore allegiance to a new and as yet unwritten charter, refusing
to acknowledge "the claim of any body of men, other than the
King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, to make laws to bind this
kingdom."
The same resolution was adopted in successive meetings of
volunteer delegates, municipal corporations, and citizens
generally, all over the island.
The English Government could not resist the pressure. After some
attempt at temporizing and delaying the concession, on April 15,
1782, by the firmness of Grattan and his supporters in the
Dublin House of Commons, the great measure was finally carried
unanimously:
"That the kingdom of Ireland is a distinct kingdom, with a
Parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof; that there
is no body of men competent to make laws to bind the nation, but
the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, nor any Parliament
which has any authority or power of any sort whatever in this
country, save only the Parliament of Ireland; that we humbly
conceive that in this right the very essence of our liberty
exists, a right which we, on the part of all the people of
Ireland, do claim as their birthright, and which we cannot yield
but with our lives." The italics are our own.
"The news," says Sir Jonah Barrington, "soon spread through the
nation; every city, town, or village, in Ireland blazed with the
emblems of exultation, and resounded with the shouts of triumph."
Within a month the whole had been accepted by the new British
administration. "The visionary and impracticable idea had become
an accomplished fact; the splendid phantom had become a glorious
reality; the heptarchy-the old Irish constitution-had not been
restored; yet Ireland had won complete legislative independence."
Thus does the kind-hearted author of the "Rise and Fall of the
Irish Nation" commemorate the great event. It is a pity that it
so soon ended, as it deserved to end, in smoke; for the
"unanimous vote" of the Dublin House of Commons was not sincere,
but intended to exclude from the benefit of the newly-acquired
liberty the great mass of the people; that is, all Catholics,
without exception.
Already, during the volunteer excitement, Catholics had looked
on at the movement with pleasure and hope that, at least, some
relaxation of the barbarous code enacted against them might
ensue. Unable to take an active part in the movement, the laws
not allowing them to bear arms and enlist, they willingly
brought such muskets as they possessed to give to their
Protestant neighbors. When the final burst of enthusiasm came at
the news that a free and independant Parliament was to meet at
Dublin, surely they were justified in expecting that, at last,
their natural and civil rights might be restored them in an age
so enlightened. They had heard too of the success of the
American colonies in winning those rights for all in their happy
country, beyond the Atlantic; and we may be sure that not a few
of them had heard how, at the conclusion of the War of
Independence, the chief officers of the American army had gone
in state with their French allies to the Catholic Church in
Philadelphia, there to join in thanksgiving to the Almighty,
before a Catholic altar. Moreover, they had Grattan and many of
the volunteers on their side.
The all-comprehensive phrase, too, had been inserted in the
resolution so unanimously carried, and made law by the British
Government: "We humbly conceive that, in this right, the very
essence of our liberty consists, a right which we, on the part
of all the people of Ireland, do claim as their birthright, and
which we cannot yield but with our lives."
Was it possible for the originators and successful promoters of
this great change in the government of the nation to interpret
such a phrase in a restricted sense? Did not the Irish Catholics,
the great bulk of the people, form a part, at least, of "all in
Ireland?" One would imagine so: yet what followed soon after
showed the preposterousness of such an idea.
The new Parliament met; several measures favorable to the trade
and manufactures of the island had been carried; but it was soon
found that the electoral law, as it stood, failed to correspond
with the altered circumstances of the time. The legislative body
was returned by an antiquated electoral system which could not
be said to represent the nation. Boroughs and seats were openly
and literally owned by particular families or private persons;
the voting constituency sometimes not numbering more than a
dozen. As a matter of fact, less than one hundred persons owned
seats or boroughs capable of constituting a majority in the
Commons!
As everywhere else in revolutionary times, the question of
parliamentary reform was not debated in the Parliament only;
every man in the nation, each in his own sphere, took part in
the stormy contest which began to rage all over the island. The
volunteers were still in their glory. Flushed with victory, they
did not cease from their political agitations. In September,
1783, they met once more in convention at Dungannon, the
specific object of which, Dr. Madden tells us, was parliamentary
reform, and they then determined "to hold another grand national
convention of volunteer delegates in Dublin, in the month of
November following."
In that extraordinary assembly, the question of the rights of
Catholics was naturally brought up, and, to his honor be it said,
the Protestant Bishop of Derry proposed to extend the elective
franchise to them.
That some fanatics would oppose this motion was only to be
expected; and it would have caused no surprise to find the
opposition confined to a number of men of inferior station,
still deeply imbued with narrow Protestant ideas. But when the
leaders of the movement for national independence, Lord
Charlemont and Mr. Flood, appeared in the ranks of the
determined opponents of the proposition, it was cause for wonder
indeed. It was chiefly owing to the exertions and influence of
Lord Charlemont that the efforts of the revolution had been
finally turned to the side of freedom; while Flood was a greater
nationalist than Grattan himself, whose eloquence was so
memorable in the last momentous debates of the Irish House of
Commons. Flood carried his patriotism so far as to suspect the
British Government of not being sincere in its concessions, when
Grattan thought that "nothing dishonorable and disgraceful ought
to be supposed in motives until facts render them suspicious."
Nevertheless, it was Charlemont and Flood who stood firm for the
exclusion of Catholics from the franchise demanded for them by a
Protestant bishop; and Flood's plan was the one finally adopted.
In order to make a stronger impression on the public mind, a
number of delegates, who were also members of Parliament,
proceeded, on November 29th, directly from the convention to the
House of Commons, some of them dressed in their volunteer
uniforms, for the purpose of supporting the plan of Mr. Flood to
exclude the Catholics from the franchise.
In the midst of the tumult, the bill of reform failed, seventy-
seven voting for, and one hundred and fifty against it. There
was therefore no change in the Parliament, and Catholics
remained in their old position, in consequence of the blunders
of the chiefs of the volunteer movement for independence.
It is true that, at the same time, the whole volunteer movement
itself fell to the ground. From that moment it dragged on a
doomed life. "One would have thought," says Dr. Madden, "there
was national vigor in it for more than an existence of fifteen
years, and power to effect more than an ephemeral independence
which lasted only eighteen years."
But the Catholics had their eyes opened; they saw that the day
of resurrection was not yet come for them. It was not to be
brought about by any Irish Parliament. So far, therefore, we
were right in stating that the parliamentary record for Ireland
is a sad one. It should be said, however, that, from that time,
many Protestants, like the Bishop of Derry, Grattan, and others,
have always been firm in their demand for freedom to all, and
have remained the stanchest supporters of Catholic rights. What
we have hitherto called James I's Ulster colony, thus was
reduced to the Orange party; and, in that sense, the volunteer
movement was a real and permanent benefit to the country. There
is no need to mention the names of many distinguished Protestants
of our own times, whose whole life has been devoted by act, or
speech, or both, to the service of all. All honor to them!
But it is alleged that the Irish Legislature, as framed by the
Constitution of 1782, gave to the country an uninterrupted flow
of prosperity for eighteen years, and hence the volunteer
movement was of great benefit to the race, at least temporarily.
We will present the case in the strongest light possible
contrary to our own opinion, and for this we can do no better
than borrow the arguments of Mr. W.J. O'N. Daunt, in his
pamphlet on the "Irish Question" (1869):
"Accustomed as we are," he says, "since the Union-in 1800-to the
national distress and chronic disturbance attested by the Devon
Commissions, Famine Reports, and other official sources of
information, there seems something scarcely credible in the
account of Irish pre-Union prosperity-a prosperity which
contrasted so strongly with the condition of Ireland under a
Parliament which is called 'Imperial,' but which is essentially
and overwhelmingly English. But the accounts are given on
unimpeachable authority.
"Mr. Jebb, member for Callan in the Irish Parliament, thus
speaks of the advance of the country in prosperity, in a
pamphlet published in 1798:
"'In the course of fifteen years, our commerce, our agriculture,
and our manufactures, have swelled to an amount that the most
sanguine friends of Ireland would not have dared to
prognosticate.'
"The bankers of Dublin, tolerably competent witnesses, held a
meeting on the 18th of December, 1798, at which they resolved,
'that, since the renunciation of Great Britain, in 1782, to
legislate for Ireland, the commerce and prosperity of this
kingdom have eminently increased.'
"The Dublin Guild of Merchants did the same on the 14th of
January, 1797."
But this testimony and that of others whom we could quote was
the testimony of men opposed to the "Union." Let us look at a
few admissions made by the supporters of that measure:
"First comes its author, Mr. Pitt, who, in his speech in the
English House of Commons, January 31, 1799, having alluded to
the prosperous condition of Irish commerce in 1785, goes on to
say: 'But how stands the case now? The trade is at this time
infinitely more advantageous to Ireland.'
"Lord Clare, one of Mr. Pitt's chief instruments in effecting
the Union, published, in 1798, a pamphlet containing, as quoted
by Grattan, the following account of Irish progress subsequently
to 1782: 'There is not a nation on the habitable globe which has
advanced in cultivation and commerce, in agriculture and
manufactures, with the same rapidity in the same period.'
"Finally, Mr. Secretary Coke, in a Unionist pamphlet, said at
that time: 'We have had the experience of these twenty years;
for it is universally admitted that no country in the world ever
made such rapid advances as Ireland has done in these respects.'"