"There is much reason to believe that almost from the

commencement of his career" Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish

agitator, "formed one vast scheme of policy which he pursued

through life with little deviation, and, it must be added,

with little scruple. This scheme was to create and lead a

public spirit among the Roman Catholics; to wrest emancipation

by this means from the Government; to perpetuate the agitation

created for that purpose till the Irish Parliament had been

restored; to disendow the Established Church; and thus to open

in Ireland a new era, with a separate and independent

Parliament and perfect religious equality. It would be

difficult to conceive a scheme of policy exhibiting more

daring than this. The Roman Catholics had hitherto shown

themselves absolutely incompetent to take any decisive part in

politics. … O'Connell, however, perceived that it was

possible to bring the whole mass of the people into the

struggle, and to give them an almost unexampled momentum and

unanimity by applying to politics a great power that lay

dormant in Ireland—the power of the Catholic priesthood. To

make the priests the rulers of the country, and himself the

ruler of the priests, was his first great object. … There

was a party supported by Keogh, the leader in '93, who

recommended what was called 'a dignified silence'—in other

words, a complete abstinence from petitioning and agitation.

With this party O'Connell successfully grappled. His advice on

every occasion was, 'Agitate, agitate, agitate!' and Keogh was

so irritated by the defeat that he retired from the society."

O'Connell's leadership of the movement for Catholic

Emancipation became virtually established about the beginning

of 1811. "He avowed himself repeatedly to be an agitator with

an 'ulterior object,' and declared that that object was the

repeal of the Union. 'Desiring, as I do, the repeal of the

Union,' he said in one of his speeches, in 1813, 'I rejoice to

see how our enemies promote that great object. … They delay

the liberties of the Catholics, but they compensate us most

amply because they advance the restoration of Ireland. By

leaving one cause of agitation, they have created, and they

will embody and give shape and form to, a public mind and a

public spirit.' … Nothing can be more untrue than to

represent the Repeal agitation as a mere afterthought designed

to sustain his flagging popularity. Nor can it be said that

the project was first started by him. The deep indignation

that the Union had produced in Ireland was fermenting among

all classes, and assuming the form, sometimes of a French

party, sometimes of a social war, and sometimes of a

constitutional agitation. … It would be tedious to follow

into minute detail the difficulties and the mistakes that

obstructed the Catholic movement, and were finally overcome by

the energy or the tact of O'Connell. … Several times the

movement was menaced by Government proclamations and

prosecutions. Its great difficulty was to bring the public

opinion of the whole body of the Roman Catholics actively and

habitually into the question. … All preceding movements

since the Revolution (except the passing excitement about

Wood's halfpence) had been chiefly among the Protestants or

among the higher order of the Catholics. The mass of the

people had taken no real interest in politics, had felt no

real pain at their disabilities, and were politically the

willing slaves of their landlords. For the first time, under

the influence of O'Connell, the great swell of a really

democratic movement was felt. The simplest way of

concentrating the new enthusiasm would have been by a system

of delegates, but this had been rendered illegal by the

Convention Act. On the other hand, the right of petitioning

was one of the fundamental privileges of the constitution. By

availing himself of this right O'Connell contrived, with the

dexterity of a practised lawyer, to violate continually the

spirit of the Convention Act, while keeping within the letter

of the law. Proclamation after proclamation was launched

against his society, but by continually changing its name and

its form he generally succeeded in evading the prosecutions of

the Government. These early societies, however, all sink into

insignificance compared with that great Catholic Association

which was formed in 1824. The avowed objects of this society

were to promote religious education, to ascertain the

numerical strength of the different religions, and to answer

the charges against the Roman Catholics embodied in the

hostile petitions. It also 'recommended' petitions

(unconnected with the society) from every parish, and

aggregate meetings in every county. The real object was to

form a gigantic system of organisation, ramifying over the

entire country, and directed in every parish by the priests,

for the purpose of petitioning and in every other way

agitating in favour of emancipation. The Catholic Rent [a

system of small subscriptions—as small as a penny a

month—collected from the poorest contributors, throughout

Ireland] was instituted at this time, and it formed at once a

powerful instrument of cohesion and a faithful barometer of

the popular feeling. … The success of the Catholic

Association became every week more striking. The rent rose

with an extraordinary rapidity [from £350 a week in October to

£700 a week in December, 1824]. The meetings in every county

grew more and more enthusiastic, the triumph of priestly

influence more and more certain. The Government made a feeble

and abortive effort to arrest the storm by threatening both

O'Connell and Sheil [Richard Lalor] with prosecution for

certain passages in their speeches. … The formation of the

Wellington Ministry [Wellington and Peel, 1828] seemed

effectually to crush the present hopes of the Catholics, for

the stubborn resolution of its leader was as well known as his

Tory opinions. Yet this Ministry was destined to terminate the

contest by establishing the principle of religious equality.

… On the accession of the Wellington Ministry to power the

Catholic Association passed a resolution to the effect that

they would oppose with their whole energy any Irish member who

consented to accept office under it. …

{1785}

An opportunity for carrying the resolution into effect soon

occurred. Mr. Fitzgerald, the member for Clare, accepted the

office of President of the Board of Trade, and was

consequently obliged to go to his constituents for

re-election." O'Connell entered the lists against him. "The

excitement at this announcement rose at once to fever height.

It extended over every part of Ireland, and penetrated every

class of society. The whole mass of the Roman Catholics

prepared to support him, and the vast system of organisation

which he had framed acted effectually in every direction." For

the first time, the landlords found that the voting of their

tenants could not be controlled. Fitzgerald withdrew from the

contest and O'Connell was elected. "Ireland was now on the

very verge of revolution. The whole mass of the people had

been organised like a regular army, and taught to act with the

most perfect unanimity. … The Ministers, feeling further

resistance to be hopeless, brought in the Emancipation Bill,

confessedly because to withhold it would be to kindle a

rebellion that would extend over the length and breadth of the

land."

_W. E. H. Lecky,

Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland: O'Connell._

"Peel introduced the Relief Bill on the 5th March [1829]. The

king had given to it a reluctant assent. At the last hour, the

intrigues of Eldon and the Duke of Cumberland had so far

influenced his weak and disingenuous mind that he withdrew his

assent to his ministers' policy, on the pretence that he had

not expected, and could not sanction, any modification of the

Oath of Supremacy. He parted from his ministers with kisses

and courtesy, and, for a few hours their resignation was in

his hands. But with night his discretion waxed as his courage

waned; his ministers were recalled, and their measure

proceeded. In its main provisions it was thorough and

far-reaching. It admitted the Roman Catholic to Parliament,

and to all lay offices under the Crown, except those of

Regent, Lord Chancellor, whether of England or of Ireland, and

Lord Lieutenant. It repealed the oath of abjuration, it

modified the oath of supremacy. … It approximated the Irish

to the English county franchise by abolishing the

forty-shilling freeholder, and raising the voters'

qualifications to £10. All monasteries and institutions of

Jesuits were suppressed; and Roman Catholic bishops were

forbidden to assume titles of sees already held by bishops of

the Church of Ireland. Municipal and other officials were

forbidden to wear the insignia of their office at Roman

Catholic ceremonies. Lastly, the new Oath of Supremacy was

available only for persons thereafter to be elected to

Parliament"—which nullified O'Connell's election at Clare.

This petty stroke of malice is said to have been introduced in

the bill for the gratification of the king. The vote in the

Commons on the Bill was 353 against 180, and in the Lords 217

to 112. It received the Royal assent on the 13th of April.

_J. A. Hamilton,

Life of Daniel O'Connell,

chapter 5._

ALSO IN:

_J. McCarthy,

Sir Robert Peel,

chapters 2-7._

_W. J. Fitzpatrick,

Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell,

with notices of his Life and Times,

volume 1, chapters 1-5._

_W. J. Amherst,

History of Catholic Emancipation._

_W. C. Taylor,

Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel,

volume 1, chapters 16-18

and volume 2, chapters 1-2._

IRELAND: A. D. 1820-1826.

Rise of the Ribbon Society.

"Throughout the half-century extending from 1820 to 1870, a

secret oath-bound agrarian confederacy, known as the 'Ribbon

Society,' was the constant affliction and recurring terror of

the landed classes of Ireland. The Vehmgericht itself was not

more dreaded. … It is assuredly strange—indeed, almost

incredible—that although the existence of this organisation

was, in a general way, as well and as widely known as the fact

that Queen Victoria reigned, or that Daniel O'Connell was once

a living man; although the story of its crimes has thrilled

judge and jury, and parliamentary committees have filled

ponderous blue-books with evidence of its proceedings, there

is to this hour the widest conflict of assertion and

conclusion as to what exactly were its real aims, its origin,

structure, character, and purpose. … I long ago satisfied

myself that the Ribbonism of one period was not the Ribbonism

of another; that the version of its aims and character

prevalent amongst its own members in one county or district

differed widely from that existing elsewhere. In Ulster it

professed to be a defensive or retaliatory league against

Orangeism. In Munster it was at first a combination against

tithe-proctors. In Connaught it was an organisation against

rack-renting and evictions. In Leinster it often was mere

trade-unionism. … The Ribbon Society seems to have been

wholly confined to small farmers, cottiers, labourers, and, in

the towns, petty shopkeepers, in whose houses the 'lodges'

were held. … Although from the inception, or first

appearance, of Ribbonism the Catholic clergy waged a

determined war upon it … the society was exclusively

Catholic. Under no circumstances would a Protestant be

admitted to membership. … The name 'Ribbon Society' was not

attached to it until about 1826. It was previously known as

'Liberty Men'; the 'Religious Liberty System'; the 'United

Sons of Irish Freedom'; 'Sons of the Shamrock'; and by other

names. … It has been said, and probably with some truth,

that it has been too much the habit to attribute erroneously

to the Ribbon organisation every atrocity committed in the

country, every deed of blood apparently arising out of

agrarian combination or conspiracy. … But vain is all

pretence that the Ribbon Society did not become, whatever the

original design or intention of its members may have been, a

hideous organisation of outrage and murder. … There was a

period when Ribbon outrages had, at all events, a conceivable

provocation; but there came a time when they sickened the

public conscience by their wantonness. The vengeance of the

society was ruthless and terrible. … From 1835 to 1855 the

Ribbon organisation was at its greatest strength. … With the

emigration of the labouring classes it was carried abroad, to

England and to America. At one time the most formidable lodges

were in Lancashire."

_A. M. Sullivan,

New Ireland,

chapter 4._

IRELAND: A. D. 1831.

Establishment of National Schools.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.—IRELAND.

IRELAND: A. D. 1832.

Parliamentary Representation increased by the Reform Bill.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1830-1832.

{1786}

IRELAND: A. D. 1840-1841.

Discontent with the results of the Union.

Condition of the people.

O'Connell's revival of agitation for Repeal.

"The Catholics were at length emancipated in 1829; and now,

surely, their enemies suggested, they must be contented and

grateful for evermore? Perverse must the people be who, having

got what they asked, are not satisfied. Let us see. What they

asked was to be admitted to their just share, or, at any rate

to some share, of the government of their native country, from

which they had been excluded for five generations. But on the

passing of the Emancipation Act not a single Catholic was

admitted to an office of authority, great or small. The door

was opened, indeed, but not a soul was permitted to pass in.

There were murmurs of discontent, and the class who still

enjoyed all the patronage of the State, the Church, the army,

the magistracy, and the public service, demanded if there was

any use in attempting to conciliate a people so intractable

and unreasonable? The Catholic Association, which had won the

victory, was rewarded for its public spirit by being dissolved

by Act of Parliament. Its leader, who had been elected to the

House of Commons, had his election declared void by a phrase

imported into the Emancipation Act for this special purpose.

The forty-shilling freeholders, whose courage and magnanimity

had made the cause irresistible, were immediately deprived of

the franchise. By means of a high qualification and an

ingeniously complicated system of registry, the electors in

twelve counties were reduced from upwards of 100,000 to less

than 10,000. Englishmen cannot comprehend our dissatisfaction.

… Emancipation was speedily followed by a Reform of the

House of Commons. In England a sweeping and salutary change

was made both in the franchise, and in the distribution of

seats; but Ireland did not obtain either the number of

representatives she was demonstrably entitled to by population

and resources, or such a reduction of the franchise as had

been conceded to England. The Whigs were in power, and Ireland

was well-disposed to the party. … But the idea of treating

Ireland on perfectly equal terms, and giving her the full

advantage of the Union which had been forced on her, did not

exist in the mind of a single statesman of that epoch. After

Emancipation and Reform, O'Connell had a fierce quarrel with

the Whigs, during which he raised the question of Ireland's

right to be governed exclusively by her own Parliament. The

people responded passionately to his appeal. The party of

Protestant Ascendancy had demanded the Repeal of the Union

before Emancipation, but that disturbing event altered their

policy, and they withheld all aid from O'Connell. After a

brief time he abandoned the experiment, to substitute for it

an attempt to obtain what was called 'justice to Ireland.' In

furtherance of this project he made a compact with the Whigs

that the Irish Party under his lead should support them in

parliament. The Whigs in return made fairer appointments to

judicial and other public employments, restrained jury

packing, and established an unsectarian system of public

education; but the national question was thrown back for more

than a generation. In 1840-1 O'Connell revived the question of

Repeal, on the ground that the Union had wholly failed to

accomplish the end for which it was said to be designed.

Instead of bringing Ireland prosperity, it had brought her

ruin. The social condition of the country during the

half-century, then drawing to a close was, indeed, without

parallel in Europe. The whole population were dependent on

agriculture. There were minerals, but none found in what

miners call 'paying quantities.' There was no manufacture

except linen, and the remnant of a woollen trade, slowly dying

out before the pitiless competition of Yorkshire. What the

island chiefly produced was food; which was exported to richer

countries to enable the cultivator to pay an inordinate rent.

Foreign travellers saw with amazement an island possessing all

the natural conditions of a great commerce, as bare of

commerce as if it lay in some byeway of the world where

enterprise had not yet penetrated. … The great proprietors

were two or three hundred—the heirs of the Undertakers, for

the most part, and Absentees; the mass of the country was

owned by a couple of thousand others, who lived in splendour,

and even profusion; and for these the peasant ploughed, sowed,

tended, and reaped a harvest which he never shared. Rent, in

other countries, means the surplus after the farmer has been

liberally paid for his skill and labour; in Ireland it meant

the whole produce of the soil except a potato-pit. If a farmer

strove for more, his master knew how to bring him to speedy

submission. He could carry away his implements of trade by the

law of distress, or rob him of his sole pursuit in life by the

law of eviction. He could, and habitually did, seize the

growing crop, the stools and pots in his miserable cabin, the

blanket that sheltered his children, the cow that gave them

nourishment. There were just and humane landlords, men who

performed the duties which their position imposed, and did not

exaggerate its rights; but they were a small minority. …

Famines were frequent, and every other year destitution killed

a crowd of peasants. For a hundred and fifty years before,

whoever has described the condition of Ireland—English

official, foreign visitor, or Irish patriot—described a

famine more or less acute. Sometimes the tortured serfs rose

in nocturnal jacquerie against the system; and then a cry of

'rebellion' was raised, and England was assured that these

intractable barbarians were again (as the indictment always

charged) 'levying war against the King's majesty.' There were

indeed causes enough for national disaffection, but of these

the poor peasant knew nothing; he was contending for so much

miserable food as would save his children from starvation.

There were sometimes barbarous agrarian murders—murders of

agents and bailiffs chiefly, but occasionally of landlords. It

would be shameful to forget that these savage crimes were

often the result of savage provocation. … The country was

naked of timber, the cabins of the peasantry were squalid and

unfurnished. Mr. Carlyle reproves a lazy, thriftless people,

who would not perform the simple operation of planting trees;

and Mr. Froude frowns upon cottages whose naked walls are

never draped by climbing roses or flowering creepers. But how

much more eloquent is fact than rhetoric? The Irish landlords

made a law that when the tenant planted a tree it became not

his own property but his master's; and the established

practice of four-fifths of the Irish landlords, when a tenant

exhibited such signs of prosperity as a garden, or a

white-washed cabin, was to reward his industry by increasing

his rent.

{1787}

Peasants will not plant or make improvements on these

conditions, nor, I fancy, would philosophers. … It was

sometimes made a boast in those days that rank, property,

station, and professional success distinguished the minority

in Ireland who were imperialists and Protestants. It was not

an amazing phenomenon, that those upon whom the law had

bestowed a monopoly of rank, property, and station, for a

hundred and fifty years, should have still maintained the

advantage a dozen years after Emancipation. It was a subject

of scornful reproach that the districts inhabited by

Protestants were peaceful and prosperous, while the Catholic

districts were often poor and disorderly. There is no doubt of

the facts; the contrast certainly existed. But the mystery

disappears when one comes to reflect that in Down and Antrim

the Squire regarded his tenantry with as much sympathy and

confidence as a Squire in Devon or Essex, that their sons were

trained to bear arms, and taught from the pulpit and platform

that they belonged to a superior race, that all the local

employments, paid out of the public purse, were distributed

among them, that they had certain well understood rights over

their holdings on which no landlord could safely trench, and

that they met their masters, from time to time, in the

friendly equality of an Orange lodge; while in Tipperary, the

farmer was a tenant at will who never saw his landlord except

when he followed the hounds across his corn, or frowned at him

from the bench; whose rent could be raised, or his tenancy

terminated at the pleasure of his master; who, on the smallest

complaint, was carried before a bench of magistrates, where he

had no expectation, and little chance, of justice; and who

wanted the essential stimulus to thrift and industry, the

secure enjoyment of his earnings. As a set-off to this long

catalogue of discouragements, there were two facts of happy

augury. In 1842 half a million of children were receiving

education in the National Schools under a system designed to

establish religious equality, and administered by Catholic and

Protestant Commissioners. And the Teetotal movement was at its

height. Thousands were accepting every week a pledge of total

abstinence from Father Mathew, a young priest whom the gifts

of nature and the accidents of fortune combined to qualify for

the mission of a Reformer. … There was the beginning of

political reforms also. The Whigs sent a Lord Lieutenant and

Chief Secretary to Ireland who, for the first time since the

fall of Limerick, treated the bulk of the nation as the social

and political equals of the minority. The minority had been so

long accustomed to make and administer the laws, and to occupy

the places of authority and distinction, that they regarded

the change as a revolt; and Lord Mulgrave and Thomas Drummond

as the successors of Tyrconnel and Nugent. In the interval,

since Emancipation, a few Catholics were elected to

Parliament, two Catholic lawyers were raised to the bench, and

smaller appointments distributed among laymen. … The

exclusion of Catholics from juries was restrained, and the

practice of appointing partisans of too shameful antecedents

to public functions was interrupted. … It was under these

circumstances that O'Connell for the second time summoned the

Irish people to demand a Repeal of the Union."

_Sir C. G. Duffy,

A Bird's-Eye View of Irish History, revised edition,

pages 242-275._

ALSO IN:

_Lord E. Fitzmaurice and J. R. Thursfield,

Two Centuries of Irish History,

part 4, chapters 1-2._

_R. M. Martin,

Ireland before and after the Union._

IRELAND: A. D. 1841-1848.

O'Connell's last agitation.

His trial, imprisonment and release.

His death.

The "Young Ireland" Party and its rebellion.

In 1841, O'Connell "left England and went to Ireland, and

devoted himself there to the work of organization. A

succession of monster meetings were held all over the country,

the far-famed one on Tara Hill being, as is credibly asserted,

attended by no less than a quarter of a million of people.

Over this vast multitude gathered together around him the

magic tones of the great orator's voice swept triumphantly;

awakening anger, grief, passion, delight, laughter, tears, at

its own pleasure. They were astonishing triumphs, but they

were dearly bought. The position was, in fact, an impossible

one to maintain long. O'Connell had carried the whole mass of

the people with him up to the very brink of the precipice, but

how to bring them safely and successfully down again was more

than even he could accomplish. Resistance he had always

steadily denounced, yet every day his own words seemed to be

bringing the inevitable moment of collision nearer and nearer.

The crisis came on October the 5th. A meeting had been

summoned to meet at Clontarf, near Dublin, and on the

afternoon of the 4th the Government suddenly came to the

resolution of issuing a proclamation forbidding it to

assemble. The risk was a formidable one for responsible men to

run. Many of the people were already on their way, and only

O'Connell's own rapid and vigorous measures in sending out in

all directions to intercept them hindered the actual shedding

of blood. His prosecution and that of some of his principal

adherents was the next important event. By a Dublin jury he

was found guilty, sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and

conveyed to prison, still earnestly entreating the people to

remain quiet, an order which they strictly obeyed. The jury by

which he had been condemned was known to be strongly biassed

against him, and an appeal had been forwarded against his

sentence to the House of Lords. So strong there, too, was the

feeling against O'Connell, that little expectation was

entertained of its being favourably received. Greatly to its

honour, however, the sentence was reversed and he was set

free. … The enthusiasm shown at his release was frantic and

delirious. None the less those months in Richmond prison

proved the death-knell of his power. He was an old man by this

time; he was already weakened in health, and that buoyancy

which had hitherto carried him over any and every obstacle

never again revived. The 'Young Ireland' party, the members of

which had in the first instance been his allies and

lieutenants, had now formed a distinct section, and upon the

vital question of resistance were in fierce hostility to all

his most cherished principles. The state of the country, too,

preyed visibly upon his mind. By 1846 had begun that

succession of disastrous seasons which, by destroying the

feeble barrier which stood between the peasant and a cruel

death, brought about a national tragedy, the most terrible

perhaps with which modern Europe has been confronted. This

tragedy, though he did not live to see the whole of it,

O'Connell—himself the incarnation of the people—felt

acutely.

{1788}

Deep despondency took hold of him. He retired, to a great

degree, from public life, leaving the conduct of his

organization in the hands of others. … In 1847 he resolved

to leave Ireland, and to end his days in Rome. His last public

appearance was in the House of Commons, where an attentive and

deeply respectful audience hung upon the faltering and barely

articulate accents which fell from his lips. In a few deeply

moving words he appealed for aid and sympathy for his

suffering countrymen, and left the House. … The camp and

council chamber of the 'Young Ireland' party was the editor's

room of 'The Nation' newspaper. There it found its

inspiration, and there its plans were matured—so far, that

is, as they can be said to have been ever matured. For an

eminently readable and all things considered a wonderfully

impartial account of this movement, the reader cannot do

better than consult Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's 'Four Years of

Irish History,' which has the immense advantage of being

history taken at first hand, written that is by one who

himself took a prominent part in the scenes which he

describes. The most interesting figure in the party had,

however, died before those memorable four years began. Thomas

Davis, who was only thirty at the time of his death in 1845,

was a man of large gifts, nay, might fairly be called a man of

genius. … The whole movement in fact was, in the first

instance; a literary quite as much as a political one. Nearly

all who took part in it Gavan Duffy, John Mitchell, Meagher,

Dillon, Davis himself—were very young men, many fresh from

college, all filled with zeal for the cause of liberty and

nationality. The graver side of the movement only showed

itself when the struggle with O'Connell began. At first no

idea of deposing, or even seriously opposing the great leader

seems to have been intended. The attempt on O'Connell's part

to carry a formal declaration against the employment under any

circumstances of physical force was, the origin of that

division, and what the younger spirits considered 'truckling

to the Whigs' helped to widen the breach. When, too, O'Connell

had partially retired into the background, his place was

filled by his son, John O'Connell, the 'Head conciliator,'

between whom and the 'Young Irelanders' there waged a fierce

war, which in the end led to the indignant withdrawal of the

latter from the Repeal council. Before matters reached this

point, the younger camp had been strengthened by the adhesion

of Smith O'Brien, who, though not a man of much intellectual

calibre, carried no little weight in Ireland. … Early in

January, 1847, O'Connell left on that journey of his which was

never completed, and by the middle of May Ireland was suddenly

startled by the news that her great leader was dead. The

effect of his death was to produce a sudden and immense

reaction. A vast revulsion of love and reverence sprang up all

over the country; an immense sense of his incomparable

services, and with it a vehement anger against all who had

opposed him. Upon the 'Young Ireland' party, as was

inevitable, the weight of that anger fell chiefly, and from

the moment of O'Connell's death whatever claim they had to

call themselves a national party vanished utterly. The men

'who killed the Liberator' could never again hope to carry

with them the suffrages of any number of their countrymen.

This contumely, to a great degree undeserved, naturally

reacted upon the subjects of it. The taunt of treachery and

ingratitude flung at them wherever they went stung and

nettled. In the general reaction of gratitude and affection

for O'Connell, his son John succeeded easily to the position

of leader. The older members of the Repeal Association

thereupon rallied about him, and the split between them and

the younger men grew deeper and wider. A wild, impracticable

visionary now came to play a part in the movement. A deformed

misanthrope, called James Lalor, endowed with a considerable

command of vague, passionate rhetoric, began to write

incentives to revolt in 'The Nation.' These growing more and

more violent were by the editor at length prudently

suppressed. The seed, however, had already sown itself in

another mind. John Mitchell is described by Mr. Justin

McCarthy as 'the one formidable man amongst the rebels of '48;

the one man who distinctly knew what he wanted, and was

prepared to run any risk to get it.' … To him it was

intolerable that any human being should be willing to go

further and to dare more in the cause of Ireland than himself,

and the result was that after awhile he broke away from his

connection with The Nation,' and started a new organ under

the name of 'The United Irishmen,' one definitely pledged from

the first to the policy of action. From this point matters

gathered speedily to a head. Mitchell's newspaper proceeded to

fling out challenge after challenge to the Government, calling

upon the people to gather and to 'sweep-this island clear of

the English name and nation.' For some months these challenges

remained unanswered. It was now, however, '48,' and nearly all

Europe was in revolution. The necessity of taking some step

began to be evident, and a Bill making all written incitement

of insurrection felony was hurried through the House of

Commons, and almost immediately after Mitchell was arrested.

Even then he seems to have believed that the country would

rise to liberate him. The country, however, showed no

disposition to do anything of the sort. He was tried in

Dublin, found guilty, sentenced to fourteen years'

transportation, and a few days afterwards put on board a

vessel in the harbour and conveyed to Spike Island, whence he

was sent to Bermuda, and the following April in a convict

vessel to the Cape, and finally to Tasmania. The other 'Young

Irelanders,' stung apparently by their own previous inaction,

thereupon rushed frantically into rebellion. The

leaders—Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, and others—went

about the country holding reviews of 'Confederates,' as they

now called themselves, a proceeding which caused the

Government to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and to issue a

warrant for their arrest. A few more gatherings took place in

different parts of the country, a few more ineffectual

attempts were made to induce the people to rise, one very

small collision with the police occurred, and then the whole

thing was over. All the leaders in the course of a few days

were arrested and Smith O'Brien and Meagher were sentenced to

death, a sentence which was speedily changed into

transportation. Gavan Duffy was arrested and several times

tried, but the jury always disagreed, and in the end his

prosecution was abandoned. The 'Young Ireland' movement,

however, was dead, and never again revived."

_E. Lawless,

The Story of Ireland,

chapters 55-56._

ALSO IN:

_Sir C. G. Duffy,

Young Ireland._

_Sir C. G. Duffy,

Four Years of Irish History, 1845-1849._

_Sir C. G. Duffy,

Thomas Davis: Memoirs of an Irish Patriot, 1840-1846._

{1789}

IRELAND: A. D. 1843-1848.

The Devon Commission.

The Encumbered Estates Act.

In 1843, Mr. Sharman Crawford "succeeded in obtaining the

appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the

'occupation of land in Ireland.' This Commission, known from

its chairman, Lord Devon, as the Devon Commission, marks a

great epoch in the Irish land question. The Commissioners, in

their Report, brought out strongly the facts that great misery

existed in Ireland, and that the cause of the misery was the

system of land tenure. The following extract from the Report

indicates the general nature of its conclusions: 'A reference

to the evidence of most of the witnesses will show that the

agricultural labourer of Ireland continues to suffer the

greatest privations and hardships; that he continues to depend

upon casual and precarious employment for subsistence; that he

is badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for

his labour. Our personal experience and observations during

our enquiry have afforded us a melancholy confirmation of

these statements, and we cannot forbear expressing our strong

sense of the patient endurance which the labouring classes

have generally exhibited under sufferings greater, we believe,

than the people of any other country in Europe have to

sustain.' And the remedy for the evil is to be found,

continues the Report, in 'an increased and improved

cultivation of the soil,' to be gained by securing for the

tenant' fair remuneration for the outlay of his capital and

labour.' No sooner was this Report issued than great numbers

of petitions were presented to the House of Lords, and

supported by Lord Devon, praying for legislative reform of the

land evils; and in June, 1845, a bill was introduced into the

House of Lords by Lord Stanley, on behalf of the government of

Sir Robert Peel, for 'the purpose of providing compensation to

tenants in Ireland, in certain cases, on being dispossessed of

their holdings, for such improvements as they may have made

during their tenancy.' By the selfish opposition of the Irish

landlords this bill was thrown out. Two days after its

rejection in the House of Lords Mr. Sharman Crawford brought

into the House of Commons a Tenant Right Bill, and met with as

little success. In 1846 a government bill was introduced,

bearing a strong resemblance to that of Lord Stanley; but the

ministry was overthrown, and the bill was dropped. A Liberal

ministry under Lord John Russell came into power in July,

1846, and Irish hopes again began to rise. In 1847 the

indefatigable Mr. Crawford brought in a bill, whose purpose

was to extend the Ulster custom to the whole of Ireland; it

was thrown out. A well-meant but in the end unsuccessful

attempt to relieve the burdens of embarrassed landlords

without redressing the grievances of rack-rented tenants, was

made in 1848 by the measure well known as the Encumbered

Estates Act. This Act had for its object to restore capital to

the land; but with capital it brought in a class of

proprietors who lacked the virtues as well as the vices of

their predecessors, and were even more oppressive to the

tenantry."

_E. Thursfield,

England and Ireland,

chapter 10._

ALSO IN:

_H. L. Jephson,

Notes on Irish Questions,

chapter 15._

_D. B. King,

The Irish Question,

chapter 9._

IRELAND: A. D. 1844.

The Maynooth Grant.

Towards the close of the session of Parliament in 1844, Sir

Robert Peel undertook a measure "dealing with higher education

in Ireland. Means were to be found, in some way, for the

education of the upper classes of the Irish, and for the more

efficient education of candidates for the Roman Catholic

priesthood. Some provision already existed for the education

of the Irish people. Trinity College, with its considerable

endowments, afforded opportunities to wealthy Irish. The

National Board, which Stanley had instituted, had under its

control 3,153 schools, and 395,000 scholars. But Trinity

College retained most of its advantages for the benefit of its

Protestant students, and the 395,000 scholars, whom the

National Board was educating, did not, after all, include one

person in every twenty alive in Ireland. The Roman Catholic,

since 1793, had been allowed to graduate at Trinity; but he

could hold neither scholarship nor professorship. … Some

steps had, indeed, been taken for the education of the Roman

Catholic priesthood. In 1795, Fitzwilliam had proposed, and

his successor, Camden, had approved, the appropriation of an

annual sum of money to a college formed at Maynooth for the

education of Roman Catholic priests. The Irish parliament had

readily sanctioned the scheme; the payment of the grant had

been continued, after the Union, by the Parliament of the

United Kingdom, and, though the sums voted had been reduced to

£9,000 a year in 1808, this amount had been thenceforward

regularly allotted to Maynooth. In some respects the grant was

actually disadvantageous to the college; it was too small to

maintain the institution; it was large enough to discourage

voluntary contributions. The surroundings of the college were

squalid; its professors were wretchedly paid; it was even

impossible to assign to each of the 440 students a separate

room; it was dubbed by Macaulay, in a memorable speech, a

'miserable Dotheboys' Hall,' and it was Peel's deliberate

opinion that the absolute withdrawal of the grant would be

better than the continuance of the niggardly allowance." The

Government "asked Parliament to vote a sum of £30,000 to

improve the buildings at Maynooth; it proposed that the Board

of Works should in future be responsible for keeping them in

repair; it suggested that the salaries of professors should be

more than doubled; that the position of the students should be

improved; that the annual grant should be raised from about

£9,000 to about £26,000, and that this sum, instead of being

subject to the approval of the legislature once a year, should

be placed on the Consolidated Fund. Then arose a series of

debates which have no parallel in the history of the British

Parliament. … 'The Orangeman raises his howl,' said

Macaulay, 'and Exeter Hall sets up its bray, and Mr. MacNeile

is horrified to think that a still larger grant is intended

for the priests of Baal at the table of Jezebel, and the

Protestant operatives of Dublin call for the impeachment of

Ministers in exceedingly bad English.'

{1790}

A few years later a man, who was both a Christian and a

gentleman, declared the Irish famine to be a dispensation of

Providence in return for the Maynooth grant. … Night after

night it rained petitions; 298 petitions against the bill were

presented on the 3rd of April, when Peel explained his scheme;

148 on the 8th; 254 on the 9th; 552 on the 10th; 2,262 on the

11th, when the bill was put down for a second reading; 662 on

the 14th; 581 on the 15th; 420 on the 16th; 335 on the 17th;

371 on the 18th. The petitions hardly allowed a doubt to

remain as to the opinion of the country. Peel, indeed, was

again exposed to the full force of the strongest power which

any British Minister can encounter. The Mussulman, driven to

his last defence, raises the standard of the Prophet, and

proclaims a holy war. But the Englishman, if Protestantism be

in danger, shouts, 'No Popery!' and creates equal enthusiasm.

… Yet, vast as was the storm which the Minister had

provoked, the issues which he had directly raised were of the

smallest proportions. Hardly anyone ventured to propose that

the original vote to Maynooth should be withdrawn. A grant,

indeed, which had been sanctioned by George III., which had

been fixed by Perceval, which had been voted in an unreformed

Parliament, almost without debate, and which had been

continued for fifty years, could not be withdrawn. Peel's

opponents, therefore, were compelled to argue that there was

no harm in sacrificing £9,000 a year to Baal, but that a

sacrifice of £26,000 was full of harm. … They debated the

second reading of the bill for six nights, the third reading

for three nights, and they seized other opportunities for

protracting the discussion. Even the Lords forgot their

customary habits and sat up till a late hour on three

successive evenings to discuss an amendment for inquiring into

the class of books used at Maynooth. But this unusual display

of zeal proved useless. A majority in both Houses steadily

supported the Minister, and zealous Protestants and

old-fashioned Tories were unable to defeat a scheme which was

proposed by Peel and supported by Russell."

_S. Walpole,

History of England from 1815,

chapter 19 (volume 4)._

ALSO IN;

_H. Martineau,

History of the Thirty Years' Peace,

book 6, chapter 8._

IRELAND: A. D. 1845-1847.

The Famine.

"In 1841 the population of Ireland was 8,175,124 souls. By

1845 it had probably reached to nearly nine millions. … To

anyone looking beneath the surface the condition of the

country was painfully precarious. Nine millions of a

population living at best in a light-hearted and hopeful

hand-to-mouth contentment, totally dependent on the hazards of

one crop, destitute of manufacturing industries, and utterly

without reserve or resource to fall back upon in time of

reverse; what did all this mean but a state of things critical

and alarming in the extreme? Yet no one seemed conscious of

danger. The potato crop had been abundant for four or five

years, and respite from dearth and distress was comparative

happiness and prosperity. Moreover, the temperance movement

[of Father Mathew] had come to make the 'good times' still

better. Everything looked bright. No one concerned himself to

discover how slender and treacherous was the foundation for

this general hopefulness and confidence. Yet signs of the

coming storm had been given. Partial famine caused by failing

harvests had indeed been intermittent in Ireland, and, quite

recently, warnings that ought not to have been mistaken or

neglected had given notice that the esculent which formed the

sole dependence of the peasant millions was subject to some

mysterious blight. In 1844 it was stricken in America, but in

Ireland the yield was healthy and plentiful as ever. The

harvest of 1845 promised to be the richest gathered for many

years. Suddenly, in one short month, in one week it might be

said, the withering breath of a simoom seemed to sweep the

land, blasting all in its path. I myself saw whole tracts of

potato growth changed in one night from smiling luxuriance to

a shrivelled and blackened waste. A shout of alarm arose. But

the buoyant nature of the Celtic peasant did not yet give way.

The crop was so profuse that it was expected the healthy

portion would reach an average result. Winter revealed the

alarming fact that the tubers had rotted in pit and

store-house. Nevertheless the farmers, like hapless men who

double their stakes to recover losses, made only the more

strenuous exertions to till a larger breadth in 1846. Although

already feeling the pinch of sore distress, if not actual

famine, they worked as if for dear life; they begged and

borrowed on any terms the means whereby to crop the land once

more. The pawn-offices were choked with the humble finery that

had shone at the village dance or the christening feast; the

banks and local money-lenders were besieged with appeals for

credit. Meals were stinted, backs were bared. Anything,

anything to tide over the interval to the harvest of

'Forty-six.' O God, it is a dreadful thought that all this

effort was but more surely leading them to ruin! It was this

harvest of Forty-six that sealed their doom. Not partially but

completely, utterly, hopelessly, it perished. As in the

previous year, all promised brightly up to the close of July.

Then, suddenly, in a night, whole areas were blighted; and

this time, alas! no portion of the crop escaped. A cry of

agony and despair went up all over the land. The last

desperate stake for life had been played, and all was lost.

The doomed people realised but too well what was before them.

Last year's premonitory sufferings had exhausted them, and

now?—they must die! My native district figures largely in the

gloomy record of that dreadful time. I saw the horrible

phantasmagoria—would God it were but that!—pass before my

eyes. Blank stolid dismay, a sort of stupor, fell upon the

people, contrasting remarkably with the fierce energy put

forth a year before. It was no uncommon sight to see the

cottier and his little family seated on the garden fence

gazing all day long in moody silence at the blighted plot that

had been their last hope. Nothing could arouse them. You

spoke; they answered not. You tried to cheer them; they shook

their heads. I never saw so sudden and so terrible a

transformation. When first in the autumn of 1845 the partial

blight appeared, wise voices were raised in warning to the

Government that a frightful catastrophe was at hand; yet even

then began that fatal circumlocution and inaptness which it

maddens one to think of. It would be utter injustice to deny

that the Government made exertions which judged by ordinary

emergencies would be prompt and considerable.

{1791}

But judged by the awful magnitude of the evil then at hand or

actually befallen, they were fatally tardy and inadequate.

When at length the executive did hurry, the blunders of

precipitancy outdid the disasters of excessive deliberation.

… In October 1845 the Irish Mansion House Relief Committee

implored the Government to call Parliament together and throw

open the ports. The Government refused. Again and again the

terrible urgency of the case, the magnitude of the disaster at

hand, was pressed on the executive. It was the obstinate

refusal of Lord John Russell to listen to these remonstrances

and entreaties, and the sad verification subsequently of these

apprehensions, that implanted in the Irish mind the bitter

memories which still occasionally find vent in passionate

accusation of 'England.' Not but the Government had many and

weighty arguments in behalf of the course they took. … The

situation bristled with difficulties. … At first the

establishment of public soup-kitchens under local relief

committees, subsidised by Government, was relied upon to

arrest the famine. I doubt if the world ever saw so huge a

demoralisation, so great a degradation, visited upon a once

high-spirited and sensitive people. All over the country large

iron boilers were set up, in which what was called 'soup' was

concocted; later on Indian-meal stirabout was boiled. Around

these boilers on the roadside there daily moaned and shrieked

and fought and scuffled crowds of gaunt, cadaverous creatures

that once had been men and women made in the image of God. The

feeding of dogs in a kennel was far more decent and orderly.

… I frequently stood and watched the scene till tears

blinded me and I almost choked with grief and passion. … The

conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine period

has been variously described, and has been, I believe,

generally condemned. I consider the censure visited on them

too sweeping. … On many of them no blame too heavy could

possibly fall. A large number were permanent absentees; their

ranks were swelled by several who early fled the post of duty

at home—cowardly and selfish deserters of a brave and

faithful people. Of those who remained, some may have grown

callous; it is impossible to contest authentic instances of

brutal heartlessness here and there. But … the overwhelming

balance is the other way. The bulk of the resident Irish

landlords manfully did their best in that dread hour. … In

the autumn of 1846 relief works were set on foot, the

Government having received parliamentary authority to grant

baronial loans for such undertakings. There might have been

found many ways of applying these funds in reproductive

employment, but the modes decided on were draining and

road-making. … The result was in every sense deplorable

failure. The wretched people were by this time too wasted and

emaciated to work. The endeavour to do so under an inclement

winter sky only hastened death. They tottered at day-break to

the roll-call; vainly tried to wheel the barrow or ply the

pick, but fainted away on the 'cutting,' or lay down on the

wayside to rise no more. As for the roads on which so much

money was wasted, and on which so many lives were sacrificed,

hardly any of them were finished. Miles of grass-grown earth

works throughout the country now mark their course and

commemorate for posterity one of the gigantic blunders of the

famine time. The first remarkable sign of the havoc which

death was making was the decline, and disappearance of

funerals. … Soon, alas! neither coffin nor shroud could be

supplied. Daily in the street and on the footway some poor

creature lay down as if to sleep, and presently was stiff and

stark. In our district it was a common occurrence to find, on

opening the front door in early morning, leaning against it,

the corpse of some victim who in the night-time had 'rested'

in its shelter. We raised a public subscription, and employed

two men with horse and cart to go around each day and gather

up the dead. One by one they were taken to a great pit at

Ardnabrahair Abbey and dropped through the hinged bottom of a

'trap-coffin' into a common grave below. In the remoter rural

districts even this rude sepulture was impossible. In the

field and by the ditchside the victims lay as they fell, till

some charitable hand was found to cover them with the adjacent

soil. It was the fever which supervened on the famine that

wrought the greatest slaughter and spread the greatest terror.

… To come within the reach of this contagion was certain

death. Whole families perished unvisited and unassisted. By

levelling above their corpses the sheeling in which they died,

the neighbours gave them a grave."

_A. M. Sullivan,

New Ireland,

chapter 6._

"In July 1847 as many as three millions of persons were

actually receiving separate rations. A loan of £8,000,000 was

contracted by the Government, expressly to supply such wants,

and every step was taken by two successive administrations,

Sir Robert Peel's and Lord John Russell's, to alleviate the

sufferings of the people. Nor was private benevolence lacking.

The Society of Friends, always ready in acts of charity and

love, was foremost in the good work. A British Association was

formed for the relief of Ireland, including Jones Lloyd (Lord

Overstone), Thomas Baring, and Baron Rothschild. A Queen's

letter was issued. … Subscriptions were received from almost

every quarter of the world. The Queen's letter alone produced

£171,533. The British Association collected £263,000; the

Society of Friends £43,000; and £168,000 more were entrusted

to the Dublin Society of Friends. The Sultan of Turkey sent

£1,000. The Queen gave £2,000, and £500 more to the British

Ladies' Clothing Fund. Prince Albert gave £500. The National

Club collected £17,930. America sent two ships of war, the

'Jamestown' and the 'Macedonian,' full of provisions; and the

Irish residents in the United States sent upwards of £200,000

to their relatives, to allow them to emigrate."

_L. Levi,

History of British Commerce,

part 4, chapter 4._

"By the end of 1847 cheap supplies of food began to be brought

into the country by the ordinary operation of the laws of

supply and demand, at far cheaper rates, owing to an abundant

harvest abroad, than if the Government had tried to constitute

itself the sole distributor. The potato harvest of 1847, if

not bountiful, was at least comparatively good. … By March,

1848, the third and last period of the famine may be said to

have terminated. But, though the direct period of distress was

over, the economic problems which remained for solution were

of overwhelming magnitude. … A million and a half of the

people had disappeared. The land was devastated with fever and

the diseases which dog the steps of famine. … The waters of the

great deep were indeed going down, but the land was seen to be

without form and void."

_Lord E. Fitzmaurice and J. R. Thursfield,

Two Centuries of Irish History,

part 4, chapter 4._

{1792}

"The famine and plague of 1846-47 was accompanied, and

succeeded, by a wholesale clearance of congested districts and

by cruel evictions. The new landlords [who had acquired

property under the Encumbered Estates Act], bent on

consolidating their property, turned out their tenants by

regiments, and in the autumn of 1847 enormous numbers were

deported. It is absolutely necessary to bear this strictly in

mind, if we would judge of the intense hatred which prevails

amongst the Irish in America to Great Britain. The children of

many of those who were exiled then have raised themselves to

positions of affluence and prosperity in the United States.

But they have often heard from their fathers, and some of them

may perhaps recall, the circumstances under which they were

driven from their old homes in Ireland. … But there is a

further and awful memory connected with that time. The people

who had been suffering from fever carried the plague with them

on board, and the vessels sometimes became floating

charnel-houses. During the year 1847, out of 106,000 emigrants

who crossed the Atlantic for Canada and New Brunswick, 6,100

perished on the ocean, 4,100 immediately on landing, 5,200

subsequently in the hospitals, and 1,900 in the towns to which

they repaired. … Undoubtedly, historical circumstances have

… had much to do with the political hatred to Great Britain;

but its newly acquired intensity is owing to the still fresh

remembrances of what took place after the famine, and to the

fact that the wholesale clearances of Irish estates were, to

say the least, not discouraged in the writings and speeches of

English lawgivers, economists and statesmen."

_Sir R. Blennerhassett,

Ireland ("Reign of Queen Victoria,"

edited by T. H. Ward,

volume 1, pages 563-565)._

"The deaths from fever in the year 1846 were 17,145, in the

following year 57,000, to which 27,000 by dysentery must be

added."

_J. F. Bright,

History of England,

period 4, page 164._

"Between the years 1847 and 1851 (both inclusive) the almost

incredible number of over one million Irish—men, women, and

children—were conveyed in emigrant ships to America—a

whole population. In 1847, 215,444 emigrated; in 1849,

218,842, and in 1851, 249,721."

_H. L. Jephson,

Notes on Irish Questions,

page 298._

"The population of Ireland by March 30, 1851, at the same

ratio of increase as held in England and Wales, would have

been 9,018,799—it was 6,552,385. It was the calculation of

the Census Commissioners that the deficit, independently of

the emigration, represented by the mortality in the five

famine years, was 985,366."

_T. P. O'Connor,

The Parnell Movement,

page 125._

IRELAND: A. D. 1846.

Defeat of Peel's Coercion Bill.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1846.

IRELAND: A. D. 1848-1852.

Tenant organizations.

The Ulster Tenant Right.

The Tenant League.

"The famine … and the evictions that followed it made the

people more discontented than ever with the land system. The

Democratic Association, organized about this time, adopted as

its rallying cry, 'the land for the people.' … This

association, whose aims are said to have been 'largely

communistic and revolutionary,' opposed the Irish Alliance,

the Nationalist Society organized by Charles Gavan Duffy. …

During the years '49 and '50 numerous Tenant Protection

Societies were formed throughout the country, the

Presbyterians of Ulster taking quite as active a part as the

Celtic Catholics of the other provinces. In May, 1850, the

Presbyterian Synod of Ulster … resolved, against the

protest, it is true, of the more conservative men, to petition

Parliament to extend to the rest of Ireland the benefits of

rights and securities similar to those of the Ulster custom.

… The Ulster tenant right … has occupied an important

place in the Irish land question for a long time. … The

right differs much on different estates. On no two does it

seem to be precisely the same. It is therefore not a right

capable of being strictly defined. Nor did it have any legal

sanction until the year 1870. The law did not recognize it.

One of its chief incidents was that the tenant was entitled to

live on his farm from year to year indefinitely on condition

of acting properly, and paying his rent, which the landlord

might raise from time to time to a reasonable extent, but not

so as to extinguish the tenant's interest. In the second

place, if the tenant got in debt, and could not pay the rent,

or wished for any other reason to leave the holding, he could

sell his interest, but the landlord had a right to be

consulted, and could object to the purchaser. In the third

place, the landlord, if he wanted to take the land for his own

purposes, must pay the tenant a fair sum for his tenant-right.

In the fourth place, all arrears of rent must be paid before

the interest was transferred. These are said to be universal

characteristics of every Ulster tenant-right custom. There

were often additional restrictions or provisions, usually in

limitation of the tenant's right to sell, or of the landlord's

right to raise the rent, veto the sale of land, or take it for

his own use. There were commonly established usages in

reference to fixing a fair rent. Valuators were generally

employed, and on their estimates, and not on competition in

open market, the rent was fixed. … The Irish Tenant League

was organized August 6, 1850, in Dublin. Among the resolutions

adopted was one, calling for 'a fair valuation of rent between

landlord and tenant in Ireland,' and another, 'that the tenant

should not be disturbed in his holding as long as he paid his

rent.' The question of arrears received a great deal of

attention. The great majority of the tenants of Ireland were

in arrears, owing to the successive failures of the crops, and

were of course liable to eviction. … The Tenant League was a

very popular one and spread throughout the country. There was

much agitation, and in the general election in 1852, when the

excitement was at its height, fifty-eight Tenant Leaguers were

elected to Parliament. The Tenant League members resolved to

hold themselves 'independent of and in opposition to all

governments which do not make it a part of their policy' to

give the tenants a measure of relief such as the League

desired. It looked as though the party would hold the balance

of power and be able to secure its objects. When however

Sadlier and Keogh, two of the most prominent men in the party

and men of great influence, accepted positions in the new

government, 'bribed by office,' it has always been charged by

the Irish, 'to betray the cause to which they had been most

solemnly pledged,' the party was broken up without

accomplishing its purpose."

_D. B. King,

The Irish Question,

chapters 5 and 9._

ALSO IN:

_Sir C. G. Duffy,

League of the North and South._

_A. M. Sullivan,

New Ireland,

chapter 13._

_J. Godkin,

The Land War in Ireland,

chapter 17._

{1793}

IRELAND: A. D. 1858-1867.

The Fenian Movement.

"The Fenian movement differed from nearly all previous

movements of the same kind in Ireland, in the fact that it

arose and grew into strength without the patronage or the help

of any of those who might be called the natural leaders of the

people. … Its leaders were not men of high position, or

distinguished name, or proved ability. They were not of

aristocratic birth; they were not orators; they were not

powerful writers. It was not the impulse of the American Civil

War that engendered Fenianism; although that war had great

influence on the manner in which Fenianism shaped its course.

Fenianism had been in existence, in fact, although it had not

got its peculiar name, long before the American War created a

new race of Irishmen—the Irish-American soldiers—to turn

their energies and their military inclination to a new

purpose. … The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, in

consequence of the 1848 movement, led, as a matter of course,

to secret association. Before the trials of the Irish leaders

were well over in that year, a secret association was formed

by a large number of young Irishmen in cities and towns. …

After two or three attempts to arrange for a simultaneous

rising had failed, or had ended only in little abortive and

isolated ebullitions, the young men became discouraged. Some

of the leaders went to France, some to the United States, some

actually to England; and the association melted away. … Some

years after this, the 'Phœnix' clubs began to be formed in

Ireland. They were for the most part associations of the

peasant class, and were on that account, perhaps, the more

formidable and earnest. … The Phœnix clubs led to some of

the ordinary prosecutions and convictions; and that was all.

… After the Phœnix associations came the Fenians. 'This is a

serious business now,' said a clever English literary man when

he heard of the Fenian organisation; 'the Irish have got hold

of a good name this time; the Fenians will last.' The Fenians

are said to have been the ancient Irish militia. … There was

an air of Celtic antiquity and of mystery about the name of

Fenian which merited the artistic approval given to it by the

impartial English writer whose observation has just been

quoted. The Fenian agitation began about 1858, and it came to

perfection about the middle of the American Civil War. It was

ingeniously arranged on a system by which all authority

converged towards one centre [called the Head-Centre], and

those farthest away from the seat of direction knew

proportionately less and less about the nature of the plans.

They had to obey instructions only, and it was hoped that by

this means weak or doubtful men would not have it in their

power prematurely to reveal, to betray, or to thwart the

purposes of their leaders. A convention was held in America,

and the Fenian Association was resolved into a regular

organised institution. A provisional government was

established in the neighbourhood of Union Square, New York,

with all the array and the mechanism of an actual working

administration. … The Civil War had introduced a new figure

to the world's stage. This was the Irish-American soldier. …

Many of these men—thousands of them—were as sincerely

patriotic in their way as they were simple and brave. It is

needless to say that they were fastened on in some instances

by adventurers, who fomented the Fenian movement out of the

merest and the meanest self-seeking. … Some were making a

living out of the organisation—out of that, and apparently

nothing else. The contributions given by poor Irish

hack-drivers and servant girls, in the sincere belief that

they were helping to man the ranks of an Irish army of

independence, enabled some of these self-appointed leaders to

wear fine clothes and to order expensive dinners. … But in

the main it is only fair to say that the Fenian movement in

the United States was got up, organised and manned by persons

who … were single-hearted, unselfish, and faithfully devoted

to their cause. … After a while things went so far that the

Fenian leaders in the United States issued an address,

announcing that their officers were going to Ireland to raise

an army there for the recovery of the country's independence.

Of course the Government here were soon quite prepared to

receive them; and indeed the authorities easily managed to

keep themselves informed by means of spies of all that was

going on in Ireland. … Meanwhile the Head Centre of

Fenianism in America, James Stephens, who had borne a part in

the movement of 1848, arrived in Ireland. He was arrested …

[and] committed to Richmond Prison, Dublin, early in November,

1865; but before many days had passed the country was startled

by the news that he had contrived to make his escape. The

escape was planned with skill and daring. For a time it helped

to strengthen the impression on the mind of the Irish

peasantry that in Stephens there had at last been found an

insurgent leader of adequate courage, craft, and good fortune.

Stephens disappeared for a moment from the stage. In the

meantime disputes and dissensions had arisen among the Fenians

in America. The schism had gone so far as to lead to the

setting up of two separate associations. There were of course

distracted plans. One party was for an invasion of Canada;

another pressed for operations in Ireland itself. The Canadian

attempt actually was made. …

See CANADA: A. D. 1866-1871.

Then Stephens came to the front again. It was only for a

moment. He had returned to New York, and he now announced that

he was determined to strike a blow in Ireland. Before long the

impression was spread abroad that he had actually left the

States to return to the scene of his proposed insurrection.

The American-Irish kept streaming across the Atlantic, even in

the stormy winter months, in the firm belief that before the

winter had passed away, or at the farthest while the spring

was yet young, Stephens would appear in Ireland at the head of

an insurgent army. … Stephens did not reappear in Ireland.

He made no attempt to keep his warlike promise. He may be said

to have disappeared from the history of Fenianism. But the

preparations had gone too far to be suddenly stopped. … It

was hastily decided that something should be done. One venture

was a scheme for the capture of Chester Castle [and the arms

it contained]. … The Government were fully informed of the

plot in advance; the police were actually on the look-out for

the arrival of strangers in Chester, and the enterprise melted

away.

{1794}

In March, 1867, an attempt at a general rising was made in

Ireland. It was a total failure; the one thing on which the

country had to be congratulated was that it failed so

completely and so quickly as to cause little bloodshed. Every

influence combined to minimise the waste of life. The snow

fell that spring as it had scarcely ever fallen before in the

soft, mild climate of Ireland. … It made the gorges of the

mountains untenable, and the gorges of the mountains were to

be the encampments and the retreats of the Fenian insurgents.

The snow fell for many days and nights, and when it ceased

falling the insurrectionary movement was over. The

insurrection was literally buried in that unlooked-for snow.

There were some attacks on police barracks in various places

—in Cork, in Kerry, in Limerick, in Tipperary, in Louth;

there were some conflicts with the police; there were some

shots fired, many captures made, a few lives lost; and then

for the time at least all was over. The Fenian attempt thus

made had not from the beginning a shadow of hope to excuse

it." Some months afterwards a daring rescue of Fenian

prisoners at Manchester stirred up a fresh excitement in

Fenian circles. A policeman was killed in the affair, and

three of the rescuers were hanged for his murder. On the 13th

of December, 1867, an attempt was made to blow up the

Clerkenwell House of Detention, where two Fenian prisoners

were confined. "Six persons were killed on the spot; about six

more died from the effects of the injuries they received; some

120 persons were wounded. … It is not necessary to follow

out the steps of the Fenian movement any further. There were

many isolated attempts; there were many arrests, trials,

imprisonments, banishments. The effect of all this, it must be

stated as a mere historical fact, was only to increase the

intensity of dissatisfaction and discontent among the Irish

peasantry. … There were some public men who saw that the

time had come when mere repression must no longer be relied

upon as a cure for Irish discontent."

_J. McCarthy,

History of Our Own Times,

chapter 53 (volume 4)._

ALSO IN:

_T. P. O'Connor,

The Parnell Movement,

chapters 7._

_G. P. Macdonell,

Fenianism,

Two Centuries of Irish History,

part 5, chapter 4._

IRELAND: A. D. 1868.

Parliamentary Reform.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1865-1868.

IRELAND: A. D. 1868-1870.

Disestablishment of the Irish Church.

Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1868-1870.

IRELAND: A. D. 1870-1894.

The land question and the recent land laws.

"The reason for exceptional legislation in Ireland rested

chiefly on the essential difference between the landlord and

tenant systems in England and in Ireland. In 1845 the Devon

Royal Commission reported that the introduction of the English

system would be extremely difficult, if not impracticable. The

difference, it said, between the English and Irish systems

'consisted in this, that in Ireland the landlord builds

neither dwelling-house nor farm offices, nor puts fences,

gates, etc., into good order before he lets his land. In most

cases, whatever is done in the way of building or fencing is

done by the tenant; and, in the ordinary language of the

country, houses, farm buildings, and even the making of fences

are described by the general word "improvements," which is

thus employed to denote the necessary adjuncts to a farm

without which in England or Scotland no tenant would be found

to rent it.' Thirty years later, John Bright summarized the

matter by saying that if the land of Ireland were stripped of

the improvements made upon it by the labor of the occupier,

the face of the country would be 'as bare and naked as an

American prairie.' This fundamental difference between the

English and Irish land systems has never been fully

appreciated in England, where the landlord's expenditure on

buildings, fences, drainage, farm roads, etc., and on

maintenance absorbs a large part of the rental. Reform of the

Irish system began in 1870. Before that time little had been

done to protect the Irish tenant except to forbid evictions at

night, on Christmas Day, on Good Friday, and the pulling off

the roofs of houses until the inmates had been removed. The

Land Act of 1870 recognized, in principle, the tenant's

property in his improvements by giving him a right to claim

compensation if disturbed or evicted. This was not what the

tenants wanted, viz., security of tenure. The results of

compensation suits by 'disturbed' tenants were uncertain;

compensation for improvements was limited in various ways, and

the animus of the courts administering the act was distinctly

hostile to the tenants. Many works necessary to the existence

of tenants on small farms were not improvements in the eyes of

the landlord, of the law, or of the judges; it was often

impossible to adduce legal evidence of costly works done

little by little, and at intervals, representing the savings

of labor embodied in drainage, reclamation, or fencing.

Buildings and other works of a superior character might be

adjudged 'unsuitable' to small farms, and therefore not the

subject of any compensation; moreover, it was expressly laid

down that the use and enjoyment by the tenant of works

effected wholly at his expense were to be accounted

compensation to him by the landlord, and that, therefore, by

lapse of time, the tenant's improvements became the landlord's

property. The act of 1870 tended to make capricious and

heartless evictions expensive and therefore less common; but

it gave no security of tenure, and left the landlord still at

liberty to raise the rent of improving tenants. It left the

tenant still in a state of dependence and servility; it gave

him no security for his expenditure, for the landlord's right

to keep the rent continually rising was freely exercised. Even

if the act had been liberally administered, it would have

failed to give contentment, satisfy the demands of justice, or

encourage the expenditure of capital by tenant farmers.

Measure after measure proposed by Irish members for further

reforms were rejected by Parliament between 1870 and 1880, and

discontent continued to increase. … The Land Law Act of 1881

was based on the Report in 1880 of the Bessborough Royal

Commission, but many of the most useful suggestions made were

disregarded. This act purported to give the Irish yearly

tenants

(1) the right to sell their tenancies and improvements;

(2) the right to have a 'fair' rent fixed by the land courts

at intervals of fifteen years;

(3) security of tenure arising from this right to have the

rent fixed by the court instead of by the landlord.

{1795}

… No definition of what constituted a fair rent was embodied

in the act, but what is known as the Healy clause provided that

'no rent shall be allowed or made payable in respect of

improvements made by a tenant or his predecessors.' … When

the Irish courts came to interpret it, they held that the term

improvements' meant only that interest in his improvements for

which the tenant might have obtained compensation under the

Land Act of 1870 if he had been disturbed or evicted, and that

the time during which the tenant had had the use and enjoyment

of his own expenditure was still to be accounted compensation

made to him by his landlord, so that by mere lapse of time the

tenant's improvements became the landlord's property. … In

view of the continually falling prices of agricultural produce

and diminishing farm profits, the operation of the land laws

has not brought about peace between landlords and tenants. …

In 1887 the Cowper Commission reported that the 200,000 rents

which had been fixed were too high in consequence of the

continued fall in prices. As a result of the report of this

commission the fair-rent provisions of the law were extended

to leaseholders holding for less than sixty years; but the

courts still adhering to their former methods of

interpretation, numbers of leaseholders who had made and

maintained all the buildings, improvements, and equipments of

their farms found themselves either excluded on narrow and

technical points, or expressly rented on their own

expenditure. In 1891 the fair-rent provisions were further

extended to leaseholders holding for more than sixty years by

the Redemption of Rent Act, under which long leasehold tenants

could compel their landlords either to sell to them, or allow

a fair rent to be fixed on their farms. … Concurrently with

these attempts to place the relations of landlord and tenant

on a peaceful and equitable basis, a system of State loans to

enable tenants to buy their farms has been in operation. …

It is now proposed to have an inquiry by a select committee of

the House of Commons into

(1) the principles adopted in fixing fair rents, particularly

with respect to tenants' improvements;

(2) the system of purchase and security offered for the loans

of public money;

(3) the organization and administrative work of the Land

Commission

—a department which has cost the country about £100,000 a

year since 1881. The popular demand for inquiry and reform

comes as much from the Protestant North as from the Catholic

South."

_The Nation,

February 15, 1894._

IRELAND: A. D. 1873-1879.

The Home Rule Movement.

Organization of the Land League.

"For some years after the failure of the Fenian insurrection

there was no political agitation in Ireland; but in 1873 a new

national movement began to make itself felt; this was the Home

Rule Movement. It had been gradually formed since 1870 by one

or two leading Irishmen, who thought the time was ripe for a

new constitutional effort; chief among them was Mr. Isaac

Butt, a Protestant, an eminent lawyer, and an earnest

politician. The movement spread rapidly, and took a firm hold

of the popular mind. After the General Election of 1874, some

sixty Irish Members were returned who had stood before their

constituencies as Home Rulers. The Home Rule demand is clear

and simple enough; it asks for Ireland a separate Government,

still allied with the Imperial Government, on the principles

which regulate the alliance between the United States of

America. The proposed Irish Parliament in College Green would

bear just the same relation to the Parliament at Westminster

that the Legislature and Senate of every American State bear

to the head authority of the Congress in the Capitol at

Washington. All that relates to local business it was proposed

to delegate to the Irish Assembly; all questions of imperial

policy were still to be left to the Imperial Government. There

was nothing very startling, very daringly innovating, in the

scheme. In most of the dependencies of Great Britain, Home

Rule systems of some kind were already established. In Canada,

in the Australasian Colonies, the principle might be seen at

work upon a large scale; upon a small scale it was to be

studied nearer home in the neighbouring Island of Man. … At

first the Home Rule Party was not very active. Mr. Butt used

to have a regular Home Rule debate once every Session, when he

and his followers stated their views, and a division was taken

and the Home Rulers were of course defeated. Yet, while the

English House of Commons was thus steadily rejecting year

after year the demand made for Home Rule by the large majority

of the Irish Members, it was affording a strong argument in

favour of some system of local Government, by consistently

outvoting every proposition brought forward by the bulk of the

Irish Members relating to Irish Questions. … Mr. Butt and

his followers had proved the force of the desire for some sort

of National Government in Ireland, but the strength of the

movement they had created now called for stronger leaders. A

new man was coming into Irish political life who was destined

to be the most remarkable Irish leader since O'Connell. Mr.

Charles Stuart Parnell, who entered the House of Commons in

1875 as Member for Meath, was a descendant of the English poet

Parnell, and of the two Parnells, father and son, John and

Henry, who stood by Grattan to the last in the struggle

against the Union. He was a grand-nephew of Sir Henry Parnell,

the first Lord Congleton, the advanced Reformer and friend of,

Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne. He was Protestant, and a member

of the Protestant Synod. Mr. Parnell set himself to form a

party of Irishmen in the House of Commons who should be

absolutely independent of any English political party, and who

would go their own way with only the cause of Ireland to

influence them. Mr. Parnell had all the qualities that go to

make a good political leader, and he succeeded in his purpose.

The more advanced men in and out of Parliament began to look

up to him as the real representative of the popular voice. In

1878 Mr. Butt died. … The leadership of the Irish

Parliamentary Party was given to Mr. William Shaw, Member for

Cork County, an able, intelligent man, who proved himself in

many ways a good leader. In quieter times his authority might

have remained unquestioned, but these were unquiet, times. The

decorous and demure attitude of the early Home Rule Party was

to be changed into a more aggressive action, and Mr. Parnell

was the champion of the change. It was soon obvious that he

was the real leader recognised by the majority of the Irish

Home Rule Members, and by the country behind them. Mr. Parnell

and his following have been bitterly denounced for pursuing an

obstructive policy.

{1796}

They are often written about as if they had invented

obstruction; as if obstruction of the most audacious kind had

never been practised in the House of Commons before Mr.

Parnell entered it. It may perhaps be admitted that the Irish

Members made more use of obstruction than had been done before

their time. … The times undoubtedly were unquiet; the policy

which was called in England obstructive and in Ireland active

was obviously popular with the vast majority of the Irish

people. The Land Question, too, was coming up again, and in a

stronger form than ever. Mr. Butt, not very long before his

death, had warned the House of Commons that the old land war

was going to break out anew, and he was laughed at for his

vivid fancy by the English Press and by English public

opinion; but he proved a true prophet. Mr. Parnell had

carefully studied the condition of the Irish tenant, and he

saw that the Land Act of 1870 was not the last word of

legislation on his behalf. Mr. Parnell was at first an ardent

advocate of what came to be known as the Three F's, fair rent,

fixity of tenure, and free sale. But the Three F's were soon

to be put aside in favour of more advanced ideas. Outside

Parliament a strenuous and earnest man was preparing to

inaugurate the greatest land agitation ever seen in Ireland.

Mr. Michael Davitt was the son of an evicted tenant. … When

he grew to be a young man he joined the Fenians, and in 1870,

on the evidence of an informer, he was arrested and sentenced

to fifteen years' penal servitude; seven years later he was

let out on ticket-of-leave. In his long imprisonment he had

thought deeply upon the political and social condition of

Ireland and the best means of improving it; when he came out

he had abandoned his dreams of armed rebellion, and he went in

for constitutional agitation to reform the Irish land system.

The land system needed reforming; the condition of the tenant

was only humanly endurable in years of good harvest. The three

years from 1876 to 1879 were years of successive bad harvests.

… Mr. Davitt had been in America, planning out a land

organization, and had returned to Ireland to carry out his

plan. Land meetings were held in many parts of Ireland, and in

October Mr. Parnell, Mr. Davitt, Mr. Patrick Egan, and Mr.

Thomas Brennan founded the Irish National Land League, the

most powerful political organization that had been formed in

Ireland since the Union. The objects of the Land League were

the abolition of the existing landlord system and the

introduction of peasant proprietorship."

_J. H. McCarthy,

Outline of Irish History,

chapter 11._

ALSO IN:

_T. P. O'Connor,

The Parnell Movement,

chapters 8-10._

_A. V. Dicey,

England's Case against Home Rule._

_G. Baden-Powell, editor,

The Truth about Home Rule._

IRELAND: A. D. 1880.

The breach between the Irish Party and the English Liberals.

"The new Irish party which followed the lead of Mr. Parnell

has been often represented by the humourist as a sort of

Falstaffian 'ragged regiment.' … From dint of repetition

this has come to be almost an article of faith in some

quarters. Yet it is curiously without foundation. A large

proportion of Mr. Parnell's followers were journalists. …

Those who were not journalists in the Irish party were

generally what is called well-to-do. … At first there seemed

no reason to expect any serious disunion between the Irish

members and the Liberal' party. … The Irish vote in England

had been given to the Liberal cause. The Liberal speakers and

statesmen, without committing themselves to any definite line

of policy, had manifested friendly sentiments towards Ireland;

and though indeed nothing was said which could be construed

into a recognition of the Home Rule claim, still the new

Ministry was known to contain men favourable to that claim.

The Irish members hoped for much from the new Government; and,

on the other hand, the new Government expected to find cordial

allies in all sections of the Irish party. The appointment of

Mr. Forster to the Irish Secretaryship was regarded by many

Irishmen, especially those allied to Mr. Shaw and his

following, as a marked sign of the good intentions of the

Government towards Ireland. … The Queen's Speech announced

that the Peace Preservation Act would not be renewed. This was

a very important announcement. Since the Union Ireland had

hardly been governed by the ordinary law for a single year.

… Now the Government was going to make the bold experiment

of trying to rule Ireland without the assistance of coercive

and exceptional law. The Queen's Speech, however, contained

only one other reference to Ireland, in a promise that a

measure would be introduced for the extension of the Irish

borough franchise. This was in itself an important promise.

… But extension of the borough franchise did not seem, to

the Irish members in 1880 the most important form that

legislation for Ireland could take just then. The country was

greatly depressed by its recent suffering; the number of

evictions was beginning to rise enormously. The Irish members

thought that the Government should have made some promise to

consider the land question, and above all should have done

something to stay the alarming increase of evictions.

Evictions had increased from 463 families in 1877 to 980 in

1878, to 1,238 in 1879; and they were still on the increase,

as was shown at the end of 1880, when it was found that 2,110

families were evicted. An amendment to the Address was at once

brought forward by the Irish party, and debated at some

length. The Irish party called for some immediate legislation

on behalf of the land question. Mr. Forster replied, admitting

the necessity for some legislation, but declaring that there

would not be time for the introduction of any such measure

that session. Then the Irish members asked for some temporary

measure to prevent the evictions … ; but the Chief Secretary

answered that while the law existed it was necessary to carry

it out, and he could only appeal to both sides to be moderate.

Matters slowly drifted on in this way for a short time. …

Evictions steadily increased, and Mr. O'Connor Power brought

in a Bill for the purpose of staying evictions. Then the

Government, while refusing to accept the Irish measure,

brought in a Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which adopted

some of the Irish suggestions. … On Friday, June 25, the

second reading of the Bill was moved by Mr. Forster, who

denied that it was a concession to the anti-rent agitation,

and strongly denounced the outrages which were taking place in

Ireland. … This was the point at which difference between

the Irish party and the Government first became marked.

{1797}

The increase of evictions in Ireland, following as it did upon

the widespread misery caused by the failure of the harvests

and the partial famine, had generated—as famine and hunger

have always generated—a certain amount of lawlessness.

Evictions were occasionally resisted with violence; here and

there outrages were committed upon bailiffs, process-servers,

and agents. In different places, too, injuries had been

inflicted upon the cattle and horses of landowners and land

agents. … There is no need, there should be no attempt, to

justify these crimes. But, while condemning all acts of

violence, whether upon man or beast, it must be remembered

that these acts were committed by ignorant peasants of the

lowest class, maddened by hunger, want, and eviction, driven

to despair by the sufferings of their wives and children,

convinced of the utter hopelessness of redress, and longing

for revenge. … The Compensation for Disturbance Bill was

carried in the Commons after long debates in which the Irish

party strove to make its principles stronger. … It was sent

up to the Lords, where it was rejected on Tuesday, August 3,

by a majority of 231. The Government answered the appeals of

Irish members by refusing to take any steps to make the Lords

retract their decision, or to introduce any similar measure

that session. From that point the agitation and struggle of

the past four years [1880-1884] may be said to date."

_J. H. McCarthy,

England under Gladstone, 1880-1884,

chapter 6._

ALSO IN:

_T. W. Reid,

Life of William Edward Forster,

volume 2, chapter 6-7._

IRELAND: A. D, 1881-1882.

The Coercion Bill and the Land Act.

Arrest of the Irish leaders.

Suppression of the Land League.

The alleged Kilmainham Treaty, and release of Mr. Parnell and

others.

Early in 1881, the Government armed itself with new powers for

suppressing the increased lawlessness which showed itself in

Ireland, and for resisting the systematic policy of

intimidation which the Nationalists appeared to have planned,

by the passage of a measure known as the Coercion Bill. This

was followed, in April, by the introduction of a Land Bill,

intended to redress the most conspicuous Irish grievance by

establishing an authoritative tribunal for the determination

of rents, and by aiding and facilitating the purchase of small

holdings by the peasants. The Land Bill became law in August;

but it failed to satisfy the demands of the Land League or to

produce a more orderly state of feeling in Ireland. Severe

proceedings were then decided upon by the Government. "The

Prime Minister, during his visit to Leeds in the first week of

October, had used language which could bear only one meaning.

The question, he said, had come to be simply this, 'whether

law or lawlessness must rule in Ireland;' the Irish people

must not be deprived of the means of taking advantage of the

Land Act by force or fear of force. He warned the party of

disorder that 'the resources of civilisation were not yet

exhausted.' A few days later Mr. Gladstone, speaking at the

Guildhall, amid enthusiastic cheers, was able to announce that

the long-delayed blow had fallen. Mr. Parnell was arrested in

Dublin under the Coercion Act, and his arrest was followed by

those of Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon, Mr. O'Kelly, and other

prominent leaders of the agitation. The warnings of the

Government had been met at first with derision and defiance,

and the earlier arrests were furiously denounced; but the

energy and persistence of the Government soon began to make an

impression. … A Parthian shot was fired in the issue of a

manifesto, purporting to be signed, not only by the 'suspects'

in Kilmainham, but also by [Michael] Davitt, … in Portland

Prison, which adjured the tenantry to pay no rent whatever

until the Government had done penance for its tyranny and

released the victims of British despotism. This open

incitement to defiance of legal authority and repudiation of

legal right was instantly met by the Irish Executive in a

resolute spirit. On the 20th of October a proclamation was

issued declaring the League to be 'an illegal and criminal

association, intent on destroying the obligation of contracts

and subverting law,' and announcing that its operations would

thenceforward be forcibly suppressed, and those taking part in

them held responsible."

_Annual Summaries reprinted from The Times,

volume 2, page 155._

"In the month of April [1882] Mr. Parnell was released from

Kilmainham on parole—urgent business demanding his presence

in Paris. This parole the Irish National leader faithfully

kept. Whether the sweets of liberty had special charms for Mr.

Parnell does not appear; but certain it is that after his

return to Kilmainham, the Member for Cork wrote to Captain

O'Shea, one of the Irish Members, and indirectly to the

Government, intimating that if the question of arrears could

be introduced in Parliament by way of relieving the tenants of

holdings and lessening greatly the number of evictions in the

country for non-payment of rent, and providing the purchase

clauses of the Land Bill were discussed, steps might be taken

to lessen the number of outrages. The Government had the

intimation conveyed to them, in short, which gave to their

minds the conviction that Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and

O'Kelly, once released, and having in view the reforms

indicated to them, would range themselves on the side of law

and order in Ireland. Without any contract with the three

members the release of Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and O'Kelly

was ordered, after they had been confined for a period

bordering on three months. Michael Davitt had been released,

likewise, and had been elected for Meath; but the seat was

declared vacant again, owing to the conditions of his

ticket-of-leave not permitting his return. Much has been said,

and much has been written with regard to the release of the

three Irish M. P.'s. The 'Kilmainham Treaty' has been … a

term of scorn addressed to Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues.

… As a fact … there was no Kilmainham Treaty. … Mr.

Forster [the Secretary for Ireland] resigned because he did

not think it right to share the responsibility of the release

of Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and O'Kelly. The Government had

detained the Queen's subjects in prison without trial for the

purpose of preventing crime, not for punishment, Mr. Forster

said in vindication. Mr. Forster contended that the unwritten

law, as promulgated by them, had worked the ruin and the

injury of the Queen's subjects by instructions of one kind and

another—biddings carried out to such a degree that no power

on earth could have allowed it to continue without becoming a

Government not merely in name but in shame.

{1798}

Mr. Forster would have given the question of the release of

the three consideration, if they had pledged themselves not to

set their law up against the law of the land, or if Ireland

had been quiet, or if there had been an accession of fresh

powers on behalf of the Government: but these conditions were

wanting. What Mr. Forster desired was an avowal of a change of

purpose. He entreated his colleagues 'not to try to buy

obedience,' as he termed it, and not to rely on appearances.

The Government did rely on the intimation of Mr. Parnell … ;

there was no treaty."

_W. W. Pimblett,

English Political History, 1880-1885,

chapter 10._

IRELAND: A. D. 1882.

The Phœnix Park murders.

Mr. Forster, Chief Secretary for Ireland, resigned in April,

1882, and was succeeded by Lord Frederick Cavendish, brother

of the Marquis of Hartington and son of the Duke of

Devonshire. Earl Spencer at the same time became Viceroy, in

place of Lord Cowper, resigned. "On the night of Friday, May

5th, Earl Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish crossed over to

Ireland, and arrived in Dublin on the following day. The

official entry was made in the morning, when the reception

accorded by the populace to the new officials was described as

having been very fairly favourable. Events seemed to have

taken an entirely prosperous turn, and it was hoped that at

last the long winter of Irish discontent had come to an end.

On Sunday morning there spread through the United Kingdom the

intelligence that the insane hatred of English rule had been

the cause of a crime, even more brutal and unprovoked than any

of the numerous outrages that had, during the last three

years, sullied the annals of Ireland. It appeared that Lord

Frederick Cavendish, having taken the oaths at the Castle,

took a car about half-past seven in order to drive to the

Viceregal Lodge. On the way he met Mr. Burke, the Permanent

Under-Secretary, who, though his life had been repeatedly

threatened, was walking along, according to his usual custom,

without any police escort. Lord Frederick dismissed his car,

and walked with him through the Phœnix Park. There, in broad

daylight—for it was a fine summer evening—and in the middle

of a public recreation ground, crowded with people, they were

surrounded and murdered. More than one spectator witnessed

what they imagined to be a drunken brawl, saw six men

struggling together, and four of them drive off outside a car,

painted red, which had been waiting for them the while, the

carman sitting still and never turning his head. The bodies of

the two officials were first discovered by two shop-boys on

bicycles who had previously passed them alive. Lord Frederick

Cavendish had six wounds, and Mr. Burke eleven, dealt

evidently with daggers used by men of considerable strength.

Lord Spencer himself had witnessed the struggle from the

windows of the Viceregal Lodge, and thinking that some

pickpockets had been at work sent a servant to make inquiries.

A reward of £10,000, together with full pardon to anyone who

was not one of the actual murderers, was promptly offered, but

for many long months the telegrams from Dublin closed with the

significant information—'No definite clue in the hands of the

police.' All parties in Ireland at once united to express

their horror and detestation at this dastardly crime."

_Cassell's Illustrated History of England,

volume 10, chapter 50._

ALSO IN:

_Sir C. Russell,

The Parnell Commission: Opening Speech,

pages 282-291._

IRELAND: A. D. 1884.

Enlargement of the Suffrage.

Representation of the People Act.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1884-1885.

IRELAND: A. D. 1885-1886.

Change of opinion in England.

Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill and Irish Land Bill and

their defeat.

"All through the Parliament which sat from 1880 till 1885, the

Nationalists' party, led by Mr. Parnell, and including at

first less than half, ultimately about half, of the Irish

members, was in constant and generally bitter opposition to

the Government of Mr. Gladstone. But during these five years a

steady, although silent and often unconscious, process of

change was passing in the minds of English and Scotch members,

especially Liberal members, due to their growing sense of the

mistakes which Parliament committed in handling Irish

questions, and of the hopelessness of the efforts which the

Executive was making to pacify the country on the old methods.

First, they came to feel that the present system was

indefensible. Then, while still disliking the notion of an

Irish Legislature, they began to think it deserved

consideration. Next they admitted, though usually in

confidence to one another, that although Home Rule might be a

bad solution, it was a probable one, toward which events

pointed. Last of all, and not till 1884, they asked themselves

whether, after all, it would be a bad solution, provided a

workable scheme could be found. But as no workable scheme had

been proposed, they still kept their views, perhaps unwisely,

to themselves, and although the language held at the general

election of 1885 showed a great advance in the direction of

favoring Irish self-government, beyond the attitude of 1880,

it was still vague and hesitating, and could the more easily

remain so because the constituencies had not (strange as it

may now seem) realized the supreme importance of the Irish

question. Few questions were put to candidates on the subject,

for both candidates and electors wished to avoid it. It was

disagreeable; it was perplexing; so they agreed to leave it on

one side. But when the result of the Irish elections showed,

in December, 1885, an overwhelming majority in favor of the

Home Rule party, and when they showed, also, that this party

held the balance of power in Parliament, no one could longer

ignore the urgency of the issue. There took place what

chemists call a precipitation of substance held in solution.

Public opinion on the Irish question had been in a fluid

state. It now began to crystallize, and the advocates and

opponents of Irish self-government fell asunder into two

masses, which soon solidified. This process was hastened by

the fact that Mr. Gladstone's view, the indications of which,

given by himself some months before, had been largely

overlooked, now became generally understood. … In the spring

of 1886 the question could be no longer evaded or postponed.

It was necessary to choose between … two courses: the

refusal of the demand for self-government, coupled with the

introduction of a severe Coercion Bill, or the concession of

it by the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. …

{1799}

How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into the House

of Commons on April 8th, amid circumstances of curiosity and

excitement unparalleled since 1832: how, after debates of

almost unprecedented length, it was defeated in June, by a

majority of thirty; how the policy it embodied was brought

before the country at the general election, and failed to win

approval; how the Liberal party has been rent in twain upon

the question; how Mr. Gladstone resigned, and has been

succeeded by a Tory Ministry, which the dissentient Liberals,

who condemn Home Rule, are now supporting—all this is …

well known.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1885-1886.

… But the causes of the disaster may not be equally

understood. … First, and most obvious, although not most

important, was the weight of authority arrayed against the

scheme. … The two most eminent leaders of the moderate

Liberal, or, as it is often called, Whig, party, Lord

Hartington and Mr. Goschen, both declared against the bill,

and put forth all their oratory and influence against it. At

the opposite extremity of the party, Mr. John Bright, the

veteran and honored leader of the Radicals, Mr. Chamberlain,

the younger and latterly more active and prominent chief of

that large section, took up the same position of hostility.

Scarcely less important was the attitude of the social

magnates of the Liberal party all over the country. … As, at

the preceding general election, in December, 1885, the

Liberals had obtained a majority of less than a hundred over

the Tories, a defection such as this was quite enough to

involve their defeat. Probably the name of Mr. Bright alone

turned the issue in some twenty constituencies, which might

otherwise have cast a Home Rule vote. The mention of this

cause, however, throws us back on the further question, Why

was there such a weight of authority against the scheme

proposed by Mr. Gladstone? How came so many of his former

colleagues, friends, supporters, to differ and depart from him

on this occasion? Besides some circumstances attending the

production of the bill, … which told heavily against it,

there were three feelings which worked upon men's minds,

disposing them to reject it. The first of these was dislike

and fear of the Irish Nationalist members. In the previous

House of Commons this party had been uniformly and bitterly

hostile to the Liberal Government. Measures intended for the

good of Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been

ungraciously received, treated as concessions extorted, for

which no thanks were due—inadequate concessions, which must

be made the starting-point for fresh demands. Obstruction had

been freely practised to defeat not only bills restraining the

liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other measures.

Some members of the Irish party, apparently with the approval

of the rest, had systematically sought to delay all English

and Scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the work of

Parliament to a dead stop. … There could be no doubt as to

the hostility which they, still less as to that which their

fellow-countrymen in the United States, had expressed toward

England, for they had openly wished success to Russia while

war seemed impending with her, and the so-called Mahdi of the

Sudan was vociferously cheered at many a Nationalist meeting.

… To many Englishmen, the proposal to create an Irish

Parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand

over to these men the government of Ireland, with all the

opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in

Ireland and to worry England herself. It was all very well to

urge that the tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when

their object was to extort Home Rule would be dropped, because

superfluous, when Home Rule had been granted; or to point out

that an Irish Parliament would probably contain different men

from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr. Parnell's

nominees. Neither of these arguments could overcome the

suspicious antipathy which many Englishmen felt. … The

internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial

grounds for alarm. … Three-fourths of the people are Roman

Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant fourth

sub-divided into bodies not fond of one another, who have

little community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in

Ulster, many English families have settled here and there

through the country. They have been regarded as intruders by

the aboriginal Celtic population, and many of them, although

hundreds of years may have passed since they came, still look

on themselves as rather English than Irish. … Many people in

England assumed that an Irish Parliament would be under the

control of the tenants and the humbler class generally, and

would therefore be hostile to the landlords. They went

farther, and made the much bolder assumption that as such a

Parliament would be chosen by electors, most of whom were

Roman Catholics, it would be under the control of the Catholic

priesthood, and hostile to Protestants. Thus they supposed

that the grant of self-government to Ireland would mean the

abandonment of the upper and wealthier class, the landlords

and the Protestants, to the tender mercies of their enemies.

… The fact stood out that in Ireland two hostile factions

had been contending for the last sixty years, and that the

gift of self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize

over the other. True, that party was the majority, and,

according to the principles of democratic government,

therefore entitled to prevail. But it is one thing to admit a

principle and another to consent to its application. The

minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in England,

because the minority contained the landlords. It had the

sympathy of a large part of the middle class, because it

contained the Protestants. … There was another anticipation,

another forecast of evils to follow, which told most of all

upon English opinion. This was the notion that Home Rule was

only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the two

islands."

_J. Bryce,

Past and Future of the Irish Question

(New Princeton Review, Jan., 1887)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1886.

The "Plan of Campaign."

On the 11th of September Mr. Parnell had introduced in the

House of Commons a bill to make temporary provision for the

relief of suffering tenants in Ireland, and it had been

defeated after a sharp debate by a majority of 95. The chief

argument for the bill had been that "something must be done to

stay evictions during the approaching winter. The rents would

be due in November, and the fall in agricultural prices had

been so great, that the sale of their whole produce by the

tenants would not, it was contended, bring in money enough to

enable them to pay in full. … The greatest public interest

in the subject was roused by Lord Clanricarde's evictions at

Woodford in Galway. … His quarrel with his Woodford tenants

was of old standing.

{1800}

When the Home Rule Bill was before Parliament the National

League urged them not to bring matters to a crisis, but their

sufferings were too great to be borne, and they set the

National League at defiance, and established a Plan of

Campaign of their own. Lord Clanricarde would grant them no

reduction, and they leagued themselves together, 316 in

number, and when the November rent day came round in 1885 they

resolved not to pay any rent at all if twenty-five per cent.

reduction was refused. This was refused, and they withheld

their rent. … The eviction of four of these tenants, in

August, 1886, attracted general attention by the long fight

the people made for their homes. Each house was besieged and

defended like some mediæval city. One stone house, built by a

tenant at a cost of £200, got the name of Saunders's fort. It

was held by a garrison of 24, who threw boiling water on their

assailants, and in one part of the fight threw out among them

a hive of bees. … To evict these four men the whole

available forces of the Crown in Galway were employed from

Thursday the 19th of August to Friday the 27th. Seven hundred

policemen and soldiers were present to protect the emergency

men who carried out the evictions, and 60 peasants were taken

to Galway gaol. It was to meet cases of this kind that, after

the rejection of Mr. Parnell's Tenants' Relief Bill, the Plan

of Campaign was started. In a speech at Woodford on the 17th

of October Mr. John Dillon gave an outline of the scheme on

which he thought a tenants' campaign against unjust rents

might be started and carried on all over the country. … On

the 23rd of October the 'Plan of Campaign' was published in

full detail in 'United Ireland.' The first question to be

answered, said the 'Plan,' was, How to meet the November

demand for rent? On every estate the tenantry were to come

together and decide whether to combine or not in resistance to

exorbitant rent. When they were assembled, if the priest were

not with them, they were to 'appoint an intelligent and sturdy

member of their body as chairman, and after consulting, decide

by resolution on the amount of abatement they will demand.' A

committee of six or more and the chairman were then to be

elected, to be called a Managing Committee, to take charge of

the half year's rent of each tenant should the landlord refuse

it. Everyone present was to pledge himself

(1) To abide by the decision of the majority;

(2) To hold no communication with the landlord or his agents,

except in presence of the body of the tenantry;

(3) To accept no settlement for himself that was not given to

every tenant on the estate.

Having thus pledged themselves each to the others they were to

go to the rent office in a body on the rent day, or the gale

day, as it is called in Ireland, and if the agent refused to

see them in a body they were to depute the chairman to act as

their spokesman and tender the reduced rent. If the agent

refused to accept it, then the money was to be handed to the

Managing Committee 'to fight the landlord with.' The fund thus

got together was to be employed in supporting tenants who were

dispossessed by sale or ejectment. The National League was to

guarantee the continuance of the grants if needful after the

fund was expended, or as long as the majority of the tenants

held out."

_P. W. Clayden,

England under the Coalition,

chapter. 8._

IRELAND: A. D. 1888-1889.

The Parnell Commission.

Early in 1887, certain letters appeared in "The Times"

newspaper, of London, one of which, printed in facsimile,

"implied Mr. Parnell's sanction to the Park murders of 1882."

It created a great sensation, and, "after many bitter debates

in Parliament, a commission was appointed (1888) consisting of

three judges to inquire not only into the authenticity of this

and other letters attributed to several persons as their

authors, but into the whole course of conduct pursued by many

of the Irish Members of Parliament, in reference to the

previous agitation in Ireland and their connexion with an

extreme faction in America, who tried to intimidate this

country by dastardly attempts to blow up our public buildings

on several occasions between the years 1884 and 1887. The

court sat from the winter months of 1888 until the summer of

the following year, and examined dozens of witnesses,

including Mr. Parnell and most of the other accused members,

as well as dozens of the Irish peasantry who could give

evidence as to outrages in their several districts. One of the

witnesses, a mean and discarded Dublin journalist named

Pigott, turned out to be the forger of the letters; and,

having fled from the avenging hand of justice to Madrid, there

put an end to his life by means of a revolver. Meantime, the

interest in the investigation had flagged, and the report of

the Commission, which deeply implicated many of the Irish

members as to their connexion with the Fenian Society previous

to their entrance to Parliament, on their own acknowledgment,

fell rather flat on the public ear, wearied out in reiteration

of Irish crime from the introduction of the Land League until

the attempt to blow up London Bridge by American filibusters

(1886). The unfortunate man Pigott had sold his forged letters

to the over credulous Times newspaper at a fabulous price; and

even experts in handwriting, so dexterously had they been

manipulated, were ready to testify in open court to the

genuineness of the letters before the tragic end of their

luckless author left not a particle of doubt as to their

origin."

_R. Johnston,

Short History of the Queen's Reign,

page 65._

ALSO IN:

_Sir C. Russell,

The Parnell Commission: Opening Speech for the Defence._

_M. Davitt, Speech in Defence._

IRELAND: A. D. 1889-1891.

Political fall and death of Mr. Parnell.

On the 28th of December, 1889, Captain O'Shea, one of the

Irish Nationalist Members of Parliament, filed a petition for

divorce from his wife on the ground of adultery with Mr.

Parnell. The Irish leader tacitly confessed his guilt by

making no answer, and in November, 1890, the divorce was

granted to Captain O'Shea. In the following June Mr. Parnell

and Mrs. O'Shea were married. The stigma which this affair put

upon Mr. Parnell caused Mr. Gladstone, on behalf of the

English Liberals, to demand his retirement from the leadership

of the Home Rule Party. He refused to give way, and was

supported in the refusal by a minority of his party. The

majority, however, took action to depose him, and the party

was torn asunder. A sudden illness ended Mr. Parnell's life on

the 6th of October, 1891; but his death failed to restore

peace, and the Irish Nationalists are still divided.

IRELAND: A. D. 1893.

Passage of the Home Rule Bill by the British House of Commons.

Its defeat by the House of Lords.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1892-1893.

----------IRELAND: End--------

{1801}

IRENE, Empress in the East (Byzantine, or Greek), A. D. 797-802.

IRISH NIGHT, The.

See LONDON: A. D. 1688.

IRMINSUL, The.

See SAXONS: A. D. 772-804.