the vessel contained was seized, and put out of sight, and great part of
the wreck broken up and carried away before morning. The aim of some of
the people employed was the very amusing joke of persuading the
foreigners, on bringing them out into the daylight, that their vessel
had been conjured away bodily to a distant point, whither they were to
be sent to seek it. These people were scarcely aware how some of their
noisy operations were heard by the crew, and how well they understood
the knocking, heaving, and crashing, and especially the shouts which
followed every grand achievement in the process of destruction.
Dan was among the plunderers. He was not at liberty to decline any
enterprise proposed by the captain of the gang with which he had
associated himself; and on his return from a distant expedition, which
had detained him from his home for some days, he found himself called
upon, in fulfilment of his oath, to take part in a scene of plunder, of
a kind which he abhorred, in sight of his own dwelling. While he was
ordered to rob middlemen, terrify agents, and half-murder
tithe-proctors, he discharged his mission with hearty goodwill, under
the notion of avenging his own wrongs: but it was quite a different
thing to delude foreigners, put them in peril of their lives, and strip
them of everything; and he said so. In reply, he was reminded of his
oath (an oath too solemn to be slighted), and immediately commanded, as
a test of obedience, to take up a bale of goods from the wreck, and
carry it up to find houseroom in his cabin. He did so with a heavy
heart, dreading thus to meet Dora, after a separation of some days. She
had never yet seen him equipped as a whiteboy, or been expressly told
what occupation he followed.
He paused outside, leaning against the doorless entrance to watch what
was passing within. All was so strange and fearful, that a deadly horror
came over him, lest the one whom he saw moving about should not be the
real Dora, but some spirit in her likeness. She was employed about her
mother’s corpse, which lay on the bare ground. Her motions were so rapid
as to appear almost convulsive. Now she kneeled beside the body,
straightening the limbs, and striving in vain to cover it completely
with a piece of linen which was too small for the purpose; now she fixed
her one rush-light in a lump of clay, and placed it at the head; now she
muttered from beneath the hair which fell over her face as she stooped;
and then, leaning back, uttered the shrill funeral cry with a vehemence
which brought some colour back to her ashy pale countenance.
“Whisht, whisht!” muttered she impatiently to herself. “I have given the
cry, and nobody comes. Father Glenny forgot me long ago, and my own
father has forgot us, and Dan——I don’t know what has been done to Dan,
and he tells nobody. He won’t forget me long, however.”
“Forget you, Dora!” said Dan, gently, as he laid hold of her cloak. “Did
I keep my oath so long when you lived in your father’s cabin in the
glen, and shall I forget you now?”
She folded her arms in her cloak with a look of indifference, as she
glanced at the bale he carried.
“O, you have brought a sheet, as I was wanting,” said she; “but where
are the candles? I have but this one; and nothing in the way of a
shutter or a door, you see; and there’s no company come yet; so you will
have time. Make haste, Dan.”
“Shall I bid the neighbours to the wake?” inquired Dan, who thought the
best way of gaining her attention was to help her to fulfil first the
duties to the dead, which rank so high among social obligations in
Ireland.
At a sign from her he threw down his load and hastened to the beach,
whence he brought a plank, on which to lay the body, candles wherewith
to illuminate the bier, and spirits with which to exercise hospitality.
He gave notice, at the same time, to his captain and comrades, that when
a blaze should be seen on the cliff, and the funeral lament heard, all
would be ready for their reception at the wake:—the burning of the bed
of the deceased before the door, and the utterance of the death cry,
being the customary mode of invitation to the wakes of the Irish poor.
Dan was yet more struck with the deathlike paleness of his wife’s face
when he again joined her. He inquired whether any neighbours had helped
her to nurse her mother, and whether her rest had been much broken: but
she scarcely attended to his questions. She clapped her hands, as if in
glee, at sight of what he brought, and seemed altogether so much more
like a wilful child, than like his thoughtful and devoted Dora, that the
fancy again crossed him that some mocking fiend had taken possession of
her form. He asked her, with much internal trembling, whether she had
duly prayed this night? She started, and said she had strangely
forgotten herself; and forthwith went through her customary devotions in
a way which, though hurried, was very unlike any which a fiend would
dare to attempt; and Dan was so far satisfied.
“Bring out the bed,” said she, pointing to the straw on which her mother
had been wont to lie. “While it is burning, I will raise the cry once
more, and see if any one will come.”
Dan moved a bundle which lay on the straw, but let it go again in a pang
of horror when the feeble cry of an infant proceeded from it. In an
instant he understood all. He took up the child, and placed it on Dora’s
bosom without saying a word.
“O, my child: aye, I forgot it when I forgot my prayers; but it cannot
have been hungry long, I’m thinking. Hold him while I strip off my cloak
that keeps me as hot as if I had a fire burning within me.” And she
carelessly slipped the babe into her husband’s arms.
“O Dora!” cried he in a choking voice, “is this the way you give a child
of ours into my arms for the first time?”
She looked at him with perplexity in her countenance, said she knew
nothing at all about it, and before he could prevent her, set fire to
the straw, and gave the other appointed signal. Up came the company of
whiteboys, crowding round the cabin, rushing to the bier, and exciting
Dora more and more every moment by their looks and their proceedings.
She now, for the first time, perceived the peculiarity of her husband’s
dress. She went from one to another, observing upon the arms they
carried, and stopped at last before Dan, who was in earnest conversation
with his captain.
“So you have enrolled yourself, Dan! So you have plighted and pledged
yourself to your band since you swore you would wed me only. Much may
they do for you that I could not do! but O, may they never do you the
evil that I would not do! They may give you clothes these winter nights,
when I have nothing warmer at home for you than my own heart. They may
find you whiskey and lights for the wake, and other things as you want
them; but they will make you pay more than you ever paid to me, Dan.
They will take you among snares in the night: they will set you on other
men’s beasts to go over bogs where you will sink, and under rocks that
will crush you: they will set you where bullets are flying round you;
they will put a knife in your hand and make you dip your soul in blood.
If you refuse, they will burn you and me together within four walls; and
if you agree, they will lead you on to something worse than bogs or
rocks, or a soldier’s shot: they will send you to be set before the
judge, and refused mercy, and then....”
“For Christ’s sake stop her!” exclaimed Dan. He seized her hands to
prevent her stripping his white-boy uniform from his shoulders, as soon
as he had given his baby in charge to a compassionate by-stander.
“Move the corpse,” ordered the captain. “Keep the wake down below, and
bring the first woman you can meet with, to tend this poor creature.
Clear the cabin instantly.”
“Give the word, captain,” cried one, “and we’ll catch a doctor,—the same
that we brought blindfold when O’Leary was murthered almost. We’ll whip
up horses, and have him here and home by noon.”
“No, no; not till we see what the women say. Hilloo, boys! bring out the
bier, fair and easy, and decent.”
Dora’s struggles to follow were fierce, and her cries at being kept from
this duty heart-rending. No one could effectually quiet her till she had
been some hours committed to the care of a matron, who was brought from
some invisible place to nurse her.
Slowly and sadly she recovered. Some said she was never again the same
Dora; but others saw no further change than the melancholy which was
likely to become fixed in her by such an experience as her’s. She could
never recall any circumstances connected with the death of her mother
and the birth of her child. She could only suppose, as her husband did,
that the old woman’s exertions had sufficed for her daughter, and been
fatal to herself.
Sullivan made his appearance ere long from underground, where he had
been engaged in breaking the laws after his own method. He was duly
grieved at having been absent from the burial of his wife; but hoped to
atone for the involuntary neglect, by devoting his gains at the still to
the purchase of masses for her soul.
---------------------
CHAPTER V.
IRISH RETRIBUTION.
It was not possible that the acts of outrage, of which the whiteboys
from Tracey’s estate and others were guilty, should remain long
unnoticed by the officers of the law. The foreigners, who had been
deprived of their wrecked vessel, had been, the next morning, tied two
and two, and conducted into the neighbourhood of a road, by which they
might reach a town, and relate their hardships. Three of their number
were missing, and they did not fail to attribute their disappearance to
those who had done all the other mischief. As they went along the road,
and through small villages, they met with little sympathy in any of
their complaints against whiteboys; but the townspeople were of a
different temper, and Ballina and Killala soon rang with the tidings of
the horrible outrage which had been committed on the coast. The alarm
spread through the whole district. There was, daily, news of intended
attacks, which never took place; exaggerated reports of the numbers of
the disaffected, and of their deeds, got abroad; and many a dweller in a
lone house, many an oppressor with an unquiet conscience,—all who had
wealth in their houses, and all who suspected that they had enemies
abroad,—trembled, as often as the long winter nights settled down,
whether in starless gloom, or upon tracts of moon-lit snow. The rovers
did not fail to make use of the panic, while it lasted, to punish their
enemies, and beat up for recruits among their friends. Opposition gave
way before them in every direction; and many and various were the tokens
of welcome they met wherever the population had tasted of oppression, or
were struggling with hardship. The immediate occasion of the first check
they encountered was an insult offered to an obnoxious landed
proprietor,—an insult which roused him from fireside declamation to
military action. His finest trees, some of which had ornamented the lawn
of his mansion for an untold length of time, had been cut down in one
night. He had looked westward the preceding evening, and seen the red
sun tinge the tufts of snow that rested on their branchy heads; he
looked again in the morning, and they lay like so many monuments of the
grandeur that had been. He galloped off after breakfast in search of
brother magistrates, soldiers, informers, guides, and all that was
necessary for dislodging the enemy from their entrenchments. He would
not wait till his usual body-guard had assembled, but ventured out with
only a groom behind him. He had long suspected that some of his enemies
were no further entrenched than in their own discretion, and that they
were living and moving on all sides of him. He was now sure of it, from
the ambiguous greeting which met him on all sides. He never remembered
so many inquiries as to how all went on at the Hall, and such tender
concern about his honour’s rest o’nights, and so many remarks upon the
marvellous darkness of the preceding night. He perceived signals pass
across the road, before and behind him,—thought he detected hidings
behind the fences,—was sure that an ominous whoop travelled over the bog
westward,—and that more than one gossoon only waited till the horses
were past, to begin an expedition in the same direction.
It was indeed the case, as usual, that instant tidings were conveyed of
the motions of those who had been recently injured. Mr. Connor’s
departure from home, his application to this magistrate, and
consultation with that, and the grand letter which his groom was seen to
put into his bosom and to ride off with in the midst of an escort, and
the other letter carried to the post-office, which looked just like it,
were all faithfully reported of to Dan’s captain, in time to have the
express turned back without his dispatch, and the next mail stopped, in
order to rifle the letter-bag. These expedients, however, could not long
avail. Soldiers were at length known to be on the way, and suitable
preparations were made for their reception. In one of the most important
of these, Dora bore a principal part.
Her husband, whose absences had been shorter and less frequent, until he
saw that she was perfectly recovered and able to occupy herself with her
infant, but were now again lengthening, came to her one night, and,
gently waking her, told her that her services were wanted by himself,
and three or four companions who were waiting outside.
“Troth, then, my jewel,” said he, “there’s no need to be trembling and
staring as if we were about carrying you off. You are not going out of
this; and the whole matter is nothing in life but writing a slip of a
letter, my darling, because it’s you that will be doing it neat and
pretty.”
One of the party brought paper, pen, and ink, and as soon as Dora could
steady her hand sufficiently, she wrote to her husband’s dictation,
subject to the suggestions of his companions:—
“Major Greaves,
“Come no farther nor the big elms in Rosso’s demesne, or it will
be the worse for yourself and them you bring. What you come to ask us
for is a trifle that gentlemen should not be thinking of asking of
poor men, even if the ship was a ship still, which it is not, never
having been more than an awkward boat, and that now burnt and gone
entirely, so as not to be given up, except the arms, which will be
offered in a different way from that you expect, if a man of you sets
foot beyond the elms. Take heed to the ground, sir, which is mostly
such as would bog a snipe, and you without a guide that may be
trusted; for there’s not a boy in the glen that would do your honour
the ill turn to bring you here. There are eels in the bog, sir, that
slide easy out of the hand when you would take them; and your honour
will find we take after the eels, except that you will be much the
worse of not taking us,—being taken yourselves. One word more out of
kindness.—No enemy ever sets foot out of this place more, barring he
takes us as his prisoners, which not a man of us will ever be: so,
unless you come to pick and choose a grave for every man of you, stir
not a step farther than the big elms, near which one will meet you
with this.”
Having amused themselves with inventing gibberish for the signature, and
making rude drawings below of guns, pikes, and gibbets, ornamented with
shamrock, the letter was folded, neat and pretty, and confided to one of
the party, to be forwarded. Dan wondered that Dora made no remonstrance
against being involved in such a proceeding; and, for a moment,
suspected her of the weakness of being flattered, by the compliments
paid to her writing, into a disregard of what it was that she had
written: but Dora’s passiveness arose from a sense of the uselessness of
opposition, as far as the letter was concerned, and of its injurious
influence on her domestic state. She would give Dan no shadow of a
reason for leaving his home as he did. Her groan, when he kissed her and
bade her farewell, on the letter being finished, went to his heart. He
told her that it was for her sake, as well as for duty, that he must
leave her, the boys being now on the look out to keep the enemy at a
distance. He came back to whisper that, in case of real difficulty, she
might be easy about himself and her father, as each man had a hiding
place in the bog, theirs being below a certain stunted alder-bush, which
she well knew.
From this hour, the sole employment of Dora, when not engaged within
with her infant, was to sit with her eyes fixed upon this alder bush. No
news came to her of the proceedings either of her people or of the
enemy; but as long as she saw no sign from the appointed place, she knew
that matters were not desperate. In frost or in fog, in sunshine and in
rain, Dora sat abroad or paced along the ridge above her cabin, bending
her gaze till she grew dizzy upon the black turf around the alder bush.
There was not a tuft of moss, nor a twig, nor a rush, that was not
presently as familiar to her as if she had planted them all. Every
evening, as it became dusk, she drew nearer and nearer to the place,
and, when it was quite dark, sat on the very spot as long as her child
could spare her. Every morning, she devised some apparent reason, in
case of curious eyes looking on, for making a circuit of the alder bush;
and returned with a somewhat lightened heart, when she found no
indication of any one being there.
This painful watching could not go on for ever, though Dora began to
think it would. Some one at last appeared to be moving in that direction
through the dusk of a foggy morning, now ducking and vanishing, now
crawling among the uneven ground, now cautiously raising himself and
looking about him. After vanishing near the alder, he appeared no more.
Dora proceeded thither, and found her father.
“Where is Dan?” was her first question. Somewhere near, her father told
her, but too busy to seek a hiding at present. It was only the old and
helpless who were thus allowed to get out of the way; all who could
fight, were out against the soldiers. Dan meant to come to her by the
coast way this day, if possible, just to tell her what he was about.
Sullivan had provided himself with a supply of his own manufacture; but
he had no food. Dora hastened to bring him some while it was still dusk,
and she promised more at night, in case of his being unable to leave his
hiding place before that time. Sullivan joked on the chances of an old
man’s keeping soul and body together in such a place for twelve hours,
and promised to thank her heartily for food and warmth at night, barring
he was dead. He bade her not be scared at the soldiers if they should
cross-examine her this day; she was not his own daughter, he declared,
if she could not delude the ruffians, and save her own kith and kin at
their expense. Dora retired home to watch more nervously than ever,
since she was listening for her husband’s footstep from below; and to
meditate on the entanglements of these her kith and kin. Her father had
broken the law in the matter of the distillery, and her husband was
under ban for burning his late dwelling, for his share in the robbery of
the wreck, and probably for many more feats of whiteboyism, of which she
had yet heard nothing. Her own liabilities she did not for a moment
remember; yet the act of writing a threatening letter was uniformly
punished very severely, whenever the perpetrators could be discovered.
She stood in nearly as much jeopardy as her husband; and he knew it; and
the purpose of his intended visit of this day was to convey her to a
hiding. Her father was not aware of what she had done, and therefore
thought no more than herself of her being in any danger.
How often since being involved in these troubles had she sighed for an
opportunity of confession! It was long since she had eased her
conscience; and she felt it among the greatest of the sins the family
had committed, that they had cut themselves off from the services of
devotion, and what she thought the means of repentance. Again and again,
in her solitude, she had meditated a night expedition to Father Glenny’s
dwelling; but it was a step she dared not take without Dan’s
approbation; and he always put her off without an express permission. At
this crisis she was more than ever distressed at her own spiritual
state, and said to herself that her mind was so perplexed by her long
solitude, and her conscience so burdened with an accumulation of sins,
that she was not equal to what she might have to go through. Her
ingenuity and presence of mind were gone, and she felt that, at the
first question, she should betray either her conscience or her cause;
that is, that she should either tell a direct lie or the plain truth,
instead of being able to baffle and mislead, as she had been taught it
was meritorious to do, on such an occasion. She had not much time to
ponder her case.
As soon as the fogs began to disperse before the risen sun, she saw a
glancing and gleaming on the extreme point of the track which led from
the glen into this district. It was the glittering of the arms of a
strong party of soldiers, who were accompanied by several horsemen in
plain clothes, probably some of the neighbouring gentry who had offered
their services as guides; none of the country people having being found
trustworthy in the office. Dora’s heart beat thicker and thicker as she
traced them among the windings of the bog road. Presently they stopped
at a cross track, and separated into three parties, as if more for
purposes of search than battle. One of these parties, the smallest,
seemed to receive directions from the gentry as to the course they
should pursue, and then turned directly towards the alder-bush. Folding
her arms forcibly on her bosom, to keep down her agitation, she stood
conspicuous on the ridge of the cliff, hoping to draw their attention to
herself. They looked about them at every step; but not more keenly when
alongside the alder-bush than before. They passed it, and one pang was
over. They came rapidly towards her, and she turned to enter the cabin.
They shouted; she stopped, and awaited them with every appearance of
willingness, gazing at the officer and his six soldiers as a child gazes
at a show.
“Where do you live, my good woman?” inquired the officer. She pointed to
the cabin.
“Who lives with you?”
“My child. My mother did live here too, but she died many weeks ago.”
“And your father?”
“I had a father too, your honour: but he is in the ground. Soft may the
rain fall, and warm may the sun shine on the turf that hides him!”
“Is not your name Dora Mahony? I was told your father was alive, and
engaged in some unlawful doings hereabouts.”
“He told me nothing of the nature of his doings, and it is not from
strangers that I wish to learn them, when he is not here to speak for
himself. Keep what you have to say against him till the judgment day.”
“How long has your father been dead? We know he left the glen with you.”
“He was hid from the light of day before my mother shut her eyes upon it
for ever. One of my griefs was, that he was not here to wake her. O, it
went to my heart to lay her out with my own hands, and none to help: and
I raised the cry many times, and no one came. How should they in such a
lonesome place?”
“Where was your husband, Dora? It was not being a good husband to leave
you at such a time.”
“It was before that, that he left me, and he knew nothing of my state.
Far, far away he was before my mother breathed her last blessing on him;
if a blessing she had for him, which is just what, with many other
things, I have no memory of, your honour. I was crazed with grief, I
suppose, for my husband having left me; and all is lost and gone
belonging to that time, but the crying and crying on the cliff, and
nobody coming.”
She was next questioned about the shipwreck; and here she was safe. She
knew nothing of the matter but by hearsay, and could not answer a single
question. Then came inquiries whither her husband had gone. She did not
know; from place to place, she supposed, as he did before he married. It
was a sore temptation to a man to leave a wife when he was turned out of
his tenantcy into a pesert like this, while he knew that there were work
and wages to be got elsewhere.—When did she expect her husband back, and
how was she living in the mean time?—As for the living, it had been off
the provision of potatoes they brought with them; but it was nearly
gone, and she did not know what to look to next. She had thought many a
night and day of seeking out Father Glenny and some of her old
neighbours; but the fear lest her husband should come back and miss her,
weighed with her to stay where she was. As to when that return would be,
many was the morn when she said to herself, as she did this morn, that
he would come before the sun went down; but the sun staid for none, and
solitary it ever left her, as solitary it found her. They might as well
ask her child about it as her,—the child that was now crying for her in
the cabin, and she must go to it.
As she turned, she found herself intercepted by two soldiers, who barred
her entrance. A third went in and brought her baby to her. She smiled,
and said she did not object to being kept out of her own cabin as long
as the sky was fair overhead.
“Will you take a solemn oath,” asked the officer, “that your husband is
not concealed within, or in the neighbourhood? and will you deliver up
arms and whatever else may belong to him that is in your keeping?”
Dora declared that she feared an oath too much to swear that her husband
was not in any place near, when she did not know where on the face of
God’s earth he was. She would swear that he was not in the cabin, nor
any arms or other things of his, unless it might be any article of
clothing left behind. She would swear that she did not know whether he
was north, south, east, or west at that moment. This was thought
satisfactory, and she took the oath deliberately, looking the officer
full in the face as she spoke. This done, the soldiers were ordered to
search the cabin, and Dora sat down on the ridge to hush her baby to
sleep, and catch opportunities of throwing hasty glances down to the
beach.—Before many minutes were over, the searchers re-appeared,
bringing with them a dozen pikes, a blunderbuss, and three brace of
pistols.
“You brought them in yourselves,” said Dora calmly. “There were none
there before, to my knowledge.”
“Come, come, mistress,” said the officer; “no more speeches. A false
oath is enough for one morning’s work, and more than you will be able
easily to answer for. You must come with us and take your trial for
perjury.”
Dora declared with such an appearance of innocence that she neither knew
of these arms nor could imagine how they came there, and inquired so
naturally whereabouts they were found, that the officer appeared to be
moved. He asked whether she would furnish him with a written promise to
appear when called upon, to give her account of the matter to a
magistrate, to save the trouble of carrying her with them this day. The
simple Dora, delighted with so easy a way of escape, and suspecting no
artifice, wrote the required promise in the officer’s pocket-book. As
soon as she had done, he took out a letter and compared the hands.
“Seize her,” said he to a soldier beside her: “she is our prisoner.”
“Prisoner!” repeated Dora, falteringly.
“On two charges,” continued the officer; “one of perjury, on account of
the oath you took just now; and the other of writing a threatening
letter to Major Greaves.”
Perceiving that some whispering was going on among his men, the officer
observed that the crime of perjury was so much on the increase in
Ireland, as to make it necessary to prosecute it with the utmost
severity. The convictions for perjury in Ireland were double the number
in England, and very many more who had been undoubtedly guilty had
hitherto escaped. In the present state of the country, justice could not
have its course while the people were apt to swear falsely; and every
instance of such swearing must therefore be punished.
“What is it that drives the people to swear falsely?” cried Dora. “You
first teach them to take the holy name in vain by offering oaths that
they understand no more than this babe of mine. There are oaths to the
guager, and oaths at the fair and the market, and oaths at elections,
that have no meaning at all to those that take them; and the blessed
book is tossed about as if there was no more in it than old ballads. But
when you have driven us from our homes, and taken from us all the bread
but that which comes by crime,—when you have dug a pit under our feet,
and thrown a halter over our necks, and made our hearts sick, and our
spirits weary, and our consciences careless of what is gone and what is
to come,—when you hunt our husbands and fathers and brothers till there
is but one resting-place for the sole of their feet,—then you expect us
of a sudden to fear an oath, and to point out the one hiding-place, and
to deliver them up to be hanged in the midst of a gaping crowd. This is
the way you make it a crime to love one another as God made our hearts
to love. This is the way you breed hatred to the law, and then murder us
for hating it. This is the way you mock God’s truth, and then pretend to
be jealous for it. This is what you call the course of justice. It is
such a crooked course, that you will surely lose yourselves in it one
day.”
“If you threaten me, Dora, by words, as you threatened Major Greaves by
letter, there will be another charge against you.”
“And what are my threats?” replied she, smiling bitterly. “You may take
me and murder me by law or otherwise, and there will be none that can
call you to account, unless it be Father Glenny. You will outlive yonder
sun if your life waits on my threats.”
The officer was not so sure of this when he saw how earnestly she
glanced from time to time towards some particular spot in an opposite
direction from the alder bush. It was an artifice; for Dora now began to
be cunning, and to wish an end to this visit, lest her husband should
appear from the beach. To various inquiries respecting tracks in the
direction in which she was looking, she replied by asking, had they not
better go back the way they came, since they knew that to be safe? By
equivocating, hesitating, and giving ambiguous answers, she effected her
purpose of determining the party to cross the most perilous part of the
bog, where, if not lost, they would be disabled for further active
service this day. A soldier was left to guard her till their return. As
he ordered her into the cabin, and the rest rode away, her heart smote
her as if she had their blood to answer for. She rushed out to call them
back, but was only ridiculed for what was supposed to be her last
device.
“I did not speak the word; I did not point the way,” muttered she to
herself. “They can witness against the devil himself that I called them
back, and they would not come. But, O! when shall I see Father Glenny?
If he was here, he would tell me how much I may venture as a woman,
because I am a wife and a daughter.”
Still she felt as if murder was on her soul, and her trouble of spirit
showed itself in the hurry of what she did. She picked a hole in the mud
wall of her cabin, since her guard would not allow her to watch from
without the proceedings of the party. While thus engaged, she argued
within herself (like thousands of her countrymen before her) the
necessity of doing evil that good might come; the expediency of
betraying the agents of the law, to avoid treachery to the nearest and
dearest; the duty of sacrificing enemies in order to preserve those on
whom the heart’s love rests. Alas! for those who have taught any thus to
reason!
When she had made a chink large enough for her purpose, she saw that the
party had separated a little in order to traverse more safely the boggy
tract before them. Each, however, appeared shortly to be sinking,
sinking;—and from a distance came their faint shouts to one another;—and
the efforts to rein up and direct the struggling horses were seen. The
conviction that her scheme was succeeding,—or, as she afterwards said,
the devil in actual presence,—gave her courage to look on and act.
Presently she stole to the doorway to reconnoitre her guard. He was
standing with his back to the sea, watching his party, and as if
spasm-struck at their manifest danger. Dora sprang at him like a
tiger-cat upon her prey. She hoped to throw him down the cliff. At the
first moment, she had nearly succeeded; but he recovered his hold of her
while tottering on the verge, grappled strongly with her for a few
moments, and then mastered her failing strength. He was in a tremendous
passion at her for her momentary advantage over him, and showing it in
other ways besides oaths and foul names. He tied her hands painfully
behind her, and kicked her into the hut again. The utmost mercy she
could obtain after a time, was having her bonds transferred to her feet,
for her infant’s sake. When this was done, her guard told her to look
through the chink, and see what was coming. She thanked heaven aloud
when she saw the party returning, bemired and exhausted, but
undiminished in number.
“Why there, now,” said her guard; “there’s your Irish hypocrisy again!
You thank God that they are out of the bog, when you know you would have
them all sunk to the bottom of it this minute, if you could. And you are
the people that call yourselves generous enemies!”
“I, for one, was not given to enmity till I was driven to it,” said
Dora.
When the discomfited party arrived, the prisoner, with her infant in her
arms, was mounted behind a soldier, and carried off to jail. While
passing the alder-bush, she was in an agony lest her father should leap
out in her defence. She carefully avoided looking that way and speaking,
while they were within hearing of the place. Sullivan saw her pass; but
aware of the hopelessness of resistance, adopted the wiser course of
remaining where he was to inform Dan of her fate; thus sparing the
husband the misery,—alas! too well known to some of his companions,—of
finding his house empty, and no intimation why or whither his family had
departed.
During her somewhat long and very toilsome journey, Dora had no other
consolatory thought than that Dan had not come home this dreadful
morning.
---------------------
CHAPTER VI.
IRISH RESPONSIBILITY.
Mr. Tracey and his family returned from France about this time, in
consequence of the passing of the Relief Bill. He had found, like many
other gentlemen of station and fortune, that the disabilities under
which he laboured on account of his religious belief, were too galling
to be borne in the presence of those who were ready on all occasions to
taunt him with his incapacity; and, like many other gentlemen, he
returned, as soon as established in his civil rights, to discharge the
offices which he had committed to others during his absence, or from
which he had hitherto been excluded.
He was shocked and terrified at the aspect of his estate and of the
neighbouring country. When he gave orders for the consolidation of the
small farms, he imagined that he had done all that was necessary to
secure the prosperity of his tenantry; and as Mr. Flanagan had not
troubled him with any complaints from the ejected, he supposed all had
gone right as far as he was concerned, and that the troubles in the
neighbourhood, of which report spoke, had an origin for which he was in
no way responsible. When he found that the disaffected were those from
whose hands he had wrenched the means of subsistence, and that his
remaining tenantry dared not for their lives enter upon the new
farms,—when he heard of the acts of malice and depredation which had
been committed, of the lives lost, of the prisoners taken, of the utter
destruction of confidence between the upper class and the lower in his
neighbourhood, and remembered how large a share he had had in doing all
this mischief,—his first impulse was to go abroad again, and get out of
sight of his own work: but his friend, Mr. Rosso, roused him to a better
course.
The first thing to be done was to find subsistence for those who had
been ejected. To settle them as before would have been mending the case
but little. The great evil of over-population was to be guarded against,
at all events. Mr. Tracey could not afford to give these people the
means of emigrating with advantage; but it appeared to himself and his
friend that if he afforded them the opportunity of earning these means,
without taking work out of the hands of any already employed, he would
be making the best atonement now possible for the errors of his
management. This might be done by beginning some work which would
improve the estate; and there was little difficulty in deciding what
this work should be. A certain fishing village lay at a short distance
from the southern extremity of Mr. Tracey’s estate; but from the state
of an intervening piece of land, little or no communication was held
between this village and any of the places which lay to the north or
east of it. This piece of ground was level, and almost perpetually
overflowed, at some seasons by the tide, and at others by land springs.
During a hot summer, the health of those who lived within a certain
distance was affected by the taint the marsh gave to the atmosphere; and
by reason of the manifold evils which might be referred to this slip of
land, it had obtained the name of the Devil’s Garden. It had long been
settled that a sea wall of small extent, and a road and ditch would put
an end to the fever, would establish an advantageous communication with
the village, and probably convert this desert tract into good land: but
the consent of a neighbour or two had not yet been obtained, because not
asked in earnest.
Mr. Tracey now asked in earnest and obtained. In a short time his
purpose was made known, and candidates for emigration (to whom the offer
of employment was confined) dropped in from all quarters, and
established their claim as old tenants or labourers on Mr. Tracey’s
estate. No questions were asked as to their mode of subsistence during
their disappearance. The object was to win as many as possible from a
life of violence to one of hopeful industry, and this object was
gradually attained. Less was heard of crime and punishment, week by
week; and at length Mr. Tracey had the satisfaction of knowing that
several individuals among these labourers had resisted various
inducements both of promises and threats to become whiteboys.
“What is the meaning of their tickets?” inquired Mr. Rosso, one evening,
when the people went to the paymaster on leaving work, and Mr. Tracey
and his friend stood by to observe the proceeding.
“These tickets are certificates of a day’s work being done. The men
carry them to the clerk yonder, who pays them what they absolutely want
for present subsistence, and places the rest to their account in the
emigration list. They are getting on in the world, I assure you, by this
plan; and seem in a fair way to emigrate in a better condition than our
poor countrymen usually do.”
“What, while earning only tenpence a day?”
“Yes; you must remember that if these wages are less than half what
would be earned in England at the same employment, the people may live
for as much less in proportion. A man who earns six shillings a week
here is as well off, in his own opinion, as one who gains fifteen
shillings a week in England. An English labourer would find it
impossible to leave any part of his daily tenpence in his landlord’s
hands; but a friend of mine, who gave no more, was paid 4000_l._ of
arrears by his tenants, when he set them to work on improvements of
great magnitude on his estate. My project of enabling these people to
emigrate, seems nothing in comparison to his.”
“What a pity it seems, Tracey, that our people should emigrate when
there is so much to be done at home,—so many bogs to be drained,—so much
fertile land to be tilled! But so it must be. We want capital; and
though our capital is growing, we must limit the demands upon it before
we can materially improve the condition of the people.”
“True,” replied Mr. Tracey; “some of them will do better abroad till we
have learned to manage our resources more wisely. We may talk as we
please about the fertility of our waste lands, and the facilities for
draining our bogs; these cannot be made productive without capital; and
we have not capital to spare for such purposes, while the present
enormous demands are made upon the subsistence fund by our overgrown
population.”
“If the deficiency be of capital, Tracey, what think you of those who
carry Irish capital abroad? What think you of the patriotism of
absentees? if one who has till now been an absentee will tolerate such a
question.”
“I think that an Irishman who loves his country will do all he can to
promote the increase and judicious application of capital in it: but
this has nothing to do with the common question of absenteeism. Our
absentees do not usually apply capital, but spend revenue in other
countries; which alters the question entirely; it being perfectly
immaterial in point of wealth to Ireland whether her landlords are
supported by Irish produce abroad or at home.”
“Aye; I have heard that this was your plea for living abroad so long.”
“It was an opinion which satisfied my conscience in remaining abroad
when I was driven there by evils which are now remedied. If I had not
been satisfied that it is an error to suppose that a country is
impoverished in proportion to the absence of its landlords, I would have
borne my exclusion from all offices but that of sub-sheriff, and the
obloquy with which our Protestant gentry are apt to treat us true Irish,
rather than budge a step to the injury of the people. I am speaking now
of a landlord’s economical, not his moral influence, you are aware.”
“Certainly. The moral effect of a landlord’s residence depends much on
the man and his way of life. If he is a profligate, or brings down
profligates in his service into the country, he may do a world of harm;
and the contrary, if he and his household bear an opposite character. A
really good agent, too, may exert as favourable a moral influence as a
good landlord; and as for what a bad one can do, we need but look round
and see what are the results of Flanagan’s administration. But, in an
economical point of view, do you suppose that the entire difference
between doing harm and no harm by absenteeism consists in applying
capital and spending revenue?”
“I do, as regards the whole of Ireland. See now. My agent collects my
rents: shall we say in raw produce, or in money?”
“Both: raw produce first.”
“Very well. He sends me over to Paris five hundred head of cattle, which
I exchange for French produce to be consumed within the year. Now, how
does it matter to Ireland whether I exchange these cattle for something
of the same value to be consumed there, or whether I consume the cattle
at Paris?”
“It cannot matter at all. If Ireland kept the cattle, she would have the
same amount less of something else.”
“To be sure. I am still living on Irish produce, whether at Paris or in
this glen. With a money-rent the case would be precisely the same. If I
remained at home, Ireland would have more money and less of the money’s
worth.”
“That is clear enough. But how would it be if you fixed your revenue,
instead of immediately consuming it?”
“If I consumed only a part of my revenue and employed the rest in
setting up a manufactory, Ireland would remain in the same state as if I
consumed the whole; and in a worse state than if I set up my manufactory
within her borders. If I withdrew any of my capital from her to support
my manufactory abroad, I should inflict on her a positive injury. But
absentees never do this. When Irishmen invest capital abroad, it is as
emigrants, not as absentees.”
“Suppose, instead of setting up a manufactory, you built a mansion in
France, how would the case stand then?”
“The mansion would be Irish property; erected with Irish funds, consumed
(as long as it deteriorated) by an Irishman, and the remaining value to
revert to Ireland at my death or at its sale.”
“But supposing it to be let to French tenants for ever.”
“Then it would be an investment of capital, and cease to bear any
relation to the question of absenteeism.”
“True, true. But it seems to me that there must be a vast difference
between using your resources to put in motion Irish and French industry.
Have not the French been gainers all this time, and the Irish losers, by
your having employed French workmen? Might not the profits of Irish
work-people in your service have become substantial capital by this
time, if you had staid at home?”
“Ireland has been as busy working for me all this time, Rosso, as if I
had staid at home: not these my near neighbours, perhaps, but labourers
of one kind or another. My revenue must first be spent here before my
agent can get it for me to spend anywhere else. The only difference is
that I myself might spend it in Irish bread, fish, milk, linen, &c.,
while he lays out exactly its equivalent in purchasing that which is to
enable me to buy French bread, milk, fish, and linens; whether that
which he purchases be labour and raw material united in a manufacture,
or raw material which is the result of labour.”
“But the plain question is, after all, Tracey, whether you would have
employed French labour if you had lived at home?”
“I should not, except in as far as I live on French wines; of which you
know I am very fond; but at the same time, I supersede a portion of
French labour by the produce of Irish labour which I introduce into
France. Neither should I have employed more Irish labour at home than
when abroad. The amount of Irish commodities which I should have
consumed at home is exchanged against French commodities; that is all.
It seems to me, Rosso, that since you feel perplexed about this, you
must have the idea that this exchange is not an exchange of equivalents.
Is not that what you are thinking of? You should remember that an
exchange which is advantageous to individuals on account of convenience,
&c. is a mere exchange of equivalents as regards the country at large.
The baker gains by exchanging some of his loaves for broad-cloth; but
the same amount of wealth remains in the country as before. In like
manner, it is a convenience to me to have my rents in money rather than
cattle; but it is the same thing to Ireland whether I receive my revenue
in the one form or the other.”
“True: give me a case. Show me the effect of sending your revenue to
Paris through England.”
“Very well. Suppose the state of the exchange, or anything else, renders
it undesirable to send me money; my agent sends cattle into England to
be exchanged for something more convenient to me. Well; Ireland is minus
my year’s consumption, just as if I had been there during the year. The
cattle is exchanged for Sheffield and Manchester goods, which are to be
sent to France. Thus England is in the same state as if I had remained
in London, using nothing but hardware and cottons. France gains nothing
by me, for I consume precisely as much food, clothing and habitation as
I give of knives and ginghams. And the case would be the same if my
rents travelled round the world.”
“Is the outcry against absentees, then, so very senseless?”
“As far as regards the total wealth of a country, I certainly conceive
it to be so, much as the residence of any one landlord may affect the
locality where his capital resides. I may create a good deal of bustle
about me by settling down here; but some other class of producers will
have less to do than when I was abroad. Ireland is neither richer nor
poorer for my return.”
“Yet it is a common remark that bare fields and broken fences on the one
hand, or thriving estates on the other, show at a glance whether the
proprietor is an absentee or a resident.”
“Aye: but we forget that the industry of the resident proprietor’s
tenantry may be called into action by the wants of the absentee. Their
produce finds its way to him through the market in the shape of bills of
exchange which represent his revenue.”
“Nothing can be clearer. I see it all now. The coin which the tenants
pay purchases produce which is sent to the foreign country; and the
bills of exchange drawn by the exporter, and made payable for the Irish
produce exported, are the form in which the absentee receives his rent:
so that Ireland sells one kind of produce to the foreign market instead
of an equal value of other kinds to the absentee.”
“Exactly so. Now, how can it signify to Ireland where he eats his beef,
as long as he derives it from his own country?”
“It cannot signify to the country at large, certainly. You have
confirmed me in the opinion I have long held of the injustice of an
absentee tax, for which so many are clamouring.”
“To be applied for the benefit of the poor, I suppose. It seems to me
the last thing in the world likely to do any real good. You see the
whole revenue of an absentee is first spent at home. Any part withdrawn
as a tax would be so much diverted from its natural course, for the sake
of being arbitrarily applied. It would only affect the distribution of
capital, not its amount; and we all know that a natural distribution is
more favourable to the welfare of a country than an arbitrary one.—As a
stigma upon absentees, it would be unjust in a high degree; and as
throwing an unequal burden upon them, intolerably oppressive.”
“One pretence is that absentees contribute nothing to our domestic
taxes: but the objectors forget what taxes he is liable to as a
proprietor of land and houses, and what he pays on the materials of
manufactures.”
“And if he ought to be still further liable, Rosso, let it be done in
any way but that which assumes to repair an injury done to his country
by his leaving her. There are many ways of levying a tax on income or
property which would affect him; and thus let him pay, if his own
government is jealous of his assisting to support that of France or of
Italy; and if, moreover, it overlooks the stimulus given by the absentee
to exchanges and manufactures. Suppose an absentee should ere long be
honoured as a benefactor to his country.”
“In Scotland the estates of absentees are considered in a better
condition on the whole than those of residents; and the reverse is not
always the case here, Tracey.”
“Well: we will not decide the question any further than to agree that
the prosperity of an estate depends mainly on the qualities of the
manager, be he landlord or be he agent. As for the prevailing prejudice
respecting absenteeism, it may be trusted to go straight forward into
the gulf of oblivion, if we all help to point out its way thither. Pity
it is too late to atone to a host of absentees for the undeserved
censure which has been cast upon them.”
“If undeserved: but, Tracey, do you suppose they have most of them
thought much about their country’s good before they left her?”
“God forbid that we should judge their motives!” said Tracey. “I answer
for none but myself. I did thoroughly convince myself before I set out
that I should not injure my country by going. Many, I doubt not, have
been driven away by political wrongs, either directly inflicted on
themselves, or inciting the peasantry to hostility against their
landlords; and many more, probably, have hastened abroad to get out of
sight of misery which they could not relieve. If I were to venture on
judging my neighbour at all in these instances, it should not be the
absentee, but the government; whose evil policy prompted to
absenteeism.”
“Well: instead of judging, let us anticipate, since the past cannot be
helped, and the future may be bettered.”
“That is what I try to comfort myself with saying,” replied Tracey,
looking round with a sigh on his half-ruined estate and ragged corps of
labourers. “Let others try, like me, to remember the past only as a
warning; and let government do with the country as I am doing with my
little corner of it. Let capital be well secured and well husbanded, in
order that it may circulate with more confidence and become more
abundant. Let the people be more wisely distributed over the surface,
and let their surplus be carried where labour is wanted. Let all
usurpers of unjust authority, all who make the law odious, and justice a
mockery, be displaced from office as I have, displaced Flanagan. Above
all, let education be abundantly given, so as to afford us hope that the
people may in time understand that their interests are cared for; and
that men who differ in religion and politics may find it possible to
live in fellowship, like ourselves, friend Rosso.”
“Like ourselves, friend Tracey,” replied Rosso; “and then farewell to
all Catholic oaths to wade knee-deep in Orange blood, and to all
Protestant likenings of the pope and his flock to the devil and his
crew.”
---------------------
CHAPTER VIII.
IRISH IMPOLICY.
The friendship between these gentlemen proved of no little advantage to
their neighbours when an occasion presently arose for their co-operation
for the good of their parish.
News reached Mr. Rosso’s ears one day that a strange gentleman was on a
visit at the house of a Protestant in the next parish, who had a field
or two in the glen, just advertised for sale. It was immediately
conjectured that the gentleman came as a purchaser of this land; but it
was not till it had been repeatedly surveyed and measured that any
gossip could ascertain what he meant to do with it. In due time,
however, it transpired that the stranger was a builder, and that he was
making his estimates for erecting a church.
Mr. Rosso’s measures were immediately taken. He sent to the proper
quarters memorials of the facts that he and his household, consisting of
fifteen persons, were the only Protestants in the parish; that they
stood in no need of a church, that of the neighbouring parish being
nearer their dwelling than the field on which the new one was proposed
to be erected; and that ecclesiastical burdens already weighed so
heavily on a miserably poor population, that it would be absolute ruin
to many to tax them further. Moreover, Mr. Rosso sent a pressing
invitation to Mr. Orme, the incumbent, to take up his abode with him for
a week. Mr. Orme had not appeared in his parish for some years; and
there was hope that what he might now see would influence him to avert
the dreadful infliction of a church where there were no church-goers.
Mr. Tracey prepared Father Glenny for friendly intercourse with his
heretic brother pastor; and all parties agreed that, if Mr. Orme should
prove the reasonable and kind-hearted man he was reported to be, a
further appeal should be made to him on the subject of his tithes.
Mr. Orme came, and, before he went to rest the first night, was
convinced by ocular demonstration that his host’s dining-room could
conveniently contain the entire Protestant population of the parish. The
next morning, he was seen standing with the priest on the ridge which
overlooked the glen, and heard to sigh over its aspect of desolation.
“Whereabouts would you have your church erected?” quietly asked Father
Glenny.
“Indeed, I know little more than you,” replied the clergyman. “I have
not been consulted upon the matter in regular form, and had no idea it
had gone so far. I fear it is a job, sir.”
“The architect happens to have his hands empty of contracts at present,
perhaps,” observed the priest: “and the owner of the field may hope to
gain a higher price for his land through the agency of your church than
direct from our poor neighbours. But look round you, and find out, if
you can, where the parish is to obtain means to answer such a call upon
its resources.”
“It is indeed a different place from what I once remember it, though it
had never much wealth to boast of. When I occasionally lodged here, it
was in farmhouses where there was good food and sufficient clothing, and
sometimes a pretty dower for the daughters on their marriage day. I see
no such places now. These hovels are but the ruins of them.”
“Too true; and we preserve but the ruins of some of our former
practices. Dowries are rare among the brides of this parish. Our old
folks are less hopeful, our young ones less patient than formerly; and
marriages are therefore rashly entered into without a provision of any
kind.”
“I am sorry, very sorry for it, sir. There is more benefit than is at
once apparent in the long preparation of the marriage provision. I have
heard much ridicule of the old Scotch practice of accumulating a stock
of linen for bed and board, which could scarcely be consumed in a
lifetime; but there was much good in it. Besides the benefit to the
parties concerned,—the industry and forethought it obliged them to
exercise, and the resources it put in their power,—the custom proved an
important check upon population. Young people had to wait two or three
years before they married; and where this was universally the case, it
was thought no hardship. Those who thus began their married life were
never known to become paupers. But, sir, from the aspect of this place,
I should imagine your entire flock to be paupers, except a tenant or two
yonder.”
“The land is exhausted, Mr. Orme, and the people are therefore
poverty-stricken and reckless. There is little encouragement to prudence
while there are superiors to keep a rapacious hand in every man’s
pocket, and appropriate whatever he may chance to gain beyond that which
will support life. We know such to be the results in Turkey, Mr. Orme,
and in other seats of despotic government, and why not here?”
“Whom do you point at as these superiors?” inquired Mr. Orme. “Not
either of the landlords, surely. And you are free, moreover, from the
locust-like devastation of the poor-law system.”
“True: but what pauperism leaves, the middlemen consume; and what the
middlemen leave, the tithe-proctor consumes. Yonder field, sir, has been
let out of tillage because the tithe devoured the profits. That row of
hovels is deserted because your proctor seized all that rendered them
habitable. Their inmates are gone where they they live by plunder, since
the law of this district is to plunder or be plundered.”
“Plundered!” exclaimed Mr. Orme. “That is a somewhat harsh term, sir.”
“Is it an unjust one, Mr. Orme?—that is the question. What do these poor
people gain in return for the portion of their earnings wrenched from
them in the form of tithes? What does the Protestant church do for these
Catholic tithe-payers?”
Mr. Orme could only reply that the Protestant church was established for
the good of the people at large; and that it was the people’s own fault
if they would not take advantage of the ministrations of its clergy. He
was ready, for one, to do duty as soon as his flock would listen to him;
and, in the meanwhile, he conceived that he was causing no wrong to any
man by receiving the means of subsistence decreed him by law. He would
not defend the mode of payment by tithe in any country, or under any
circumstances. He saw its evils as an impediment to improvements in
agriculture, and as an unequal tax, falling the most heavily on the most
industrious cultivator; but while payment by tithe was the method
appointed by law, he could not allow that its exaction deserved the name
of plunder.
“With or without law,” observed Father Glenny, “it appears to me plunder
to force payment for offered services, which are not only declined but
regarded with dislike or contempt: in which light we know the services
of the Protestant clergy are justly or unjustly regarded by our Catholic
population. If you, sir, were a pastor in the Vaudois, and your flock
under the dominion of some Catholic power, could you see one deprived of
his only blanket, and another of his last loaf of bread, and a third of
his sole portion of his field-crop, for the maintenance of a clergy whom
they never saw, and not call it plunder, let the law stand as it might?
And could you acknowledge your people to be justly charged with
disaffection if they looked with an unfriendly eye on the priestly agent
of this robbery, and muttered deep curses against his employer?”
No answer being returned, the priest invited his companion into certain
of the dwellings near.
“To be looked on with an unfriendly eye?” asked Mr. Orme, smiling
bitterly. “To be greeted with deep curses?”
“By no means, sir. I question whether an individual whom we shall meet
will know the pastor of his parish. If you keep your own counsel, you
may see things as they are. If you have courage, you may hear by what
means your 400_l._ a year has been levied.”
“I will; on condition that you will allow me to speak as plainly to you
on your relation to the people as you have spoken on mine. Will you bear
with my rebukes in your turn?”
“I will,” replied the priest, “when I have finished my say. Do you
conceive it just and merciful to Ireland that she should support four
archbishoprics, and eighteen bishoprics, the total number of her
Protestants being smaller than in certain single dioceses in England?”
“Certainly not. I have long advocated a reduction of our establishment.
I would go so far as to make the four archbishoprics maintain the whole,
which would strike off at once 100,000_l._ a-year from the revenues of
the church. I would go farther, sir; and this will, I hope, prove to you
that I am not one of the locust-tribe to which you would assign me. I
would commute the tithes for lands, in order to avoid the individual
oppression of which the people complain.”
Father Glenny observed that he did not wonder the plan of commutation
was rising into favour now that it was found impossible to collect
tithes in the old method: but the nation might be found as impracticable
respecting one mode of paying tithes as another; and he wished to know
what was to be done in case of its declining the commutation proposed.
“The plan must be enforced,” replied Mr. Orme; “and, moreover, the
arrears must be recovered by the strong arm of the law.”
“Whence can they be obtained?” asked Father Glenny. “How are you to
compel the cottier who consumes his scanty crop, season by season, to
pay the collected tithe-dues of several? I say nothing of the danger to
yourselves and your families,—danger to life and property,—of enforcing
your claim. I say nothing now of the violence which must attend upon
such an effort. I merely ask whence the arrears are to be obtained in an
impoverished country?”
“They must be converted into a government debt. By this means, the
nation will learn the real disposition of the government towards its own
ecclesiastical servants and those who refuse them their lawful rights.
By this means, the consent of my brethren at large to a commutation of
tithes will be most easily obtained. Yes; the arrears of tithe must be
converted into a government debt.”
“By this means,” replied the priest, “the burden will be imposed where
it is not due. Our cottiers cannot pay; and you would therefore have
their richer neighbours discharge their arrears:—a vicarious obligation
of a new kind!—No! this will scarcely be tolerated, believe me. You will
carry neither of your points;—neither the payment of arrears nor
commutation; the people having discovered a method of evading the
payment entirely. Better waive your claim altogether, Mr. Orme, while
there is yet time to do it with a good grace, or you will have the same
trouble about tithe cattle that multitudes of your brethren have. You
will pound them in vain; attempt in vain to sell them; carry them over
the sea in vain; and find too late that all you have gained is the name
of oppressor.”
Mr. Orme muttered that it was a very hard case.
“Who can help it?” inquired the priest. “If the subsistence-fund was not
ample enough to afford tithes when due, in a poor district like this,
how should it discharge an accumulation of debt? Here we have many more
people, very little more capital, less industry, less forethought than
when the debt was contracted. All the constituents of the
subsistence-fund have become more or less debased, and yet you would tax
it more heavily than ever. You must fail in your object, sir.”
“I will learn the truth for myself, instead of taking the assertion of
any man whatever,” replied Mr. Orme, moving onwards towards a cluster of
dwellings, into which he was introduced as a friend by the priest, and
not therefore suspected of being the clergyman of the parish. All that
he heard told the same tale; all that he saw confirmed it. The new
church was spoken of in terms of execration, in which the parson and the
proctor largely shared. One woman told how the wealthy churchman was
living far away from his cure, subsisting his dogs on the food snatched
from her children’s mouths; and another showed where her son lay buried,
having been smitten with fever in consequence of his useless over-toil
to satisfy the demands of the rapacious agents of the law. Others
pointed with moody mirth to their desolated dwellings, as affording a
sign that the legal spoilers were not far off. Others observed that
there would be few conversions to the Protestant faith in the parish,
while the clergy snatched the loaves and fishes from the multitude
instead of bestowing them. Yet more exhibited their uncomplaining
poverty in their looks and dress rather than by words; and only gazed
round their little tenements in perplexity at the mention of the dues
that must be paid.
Mr. Orme had hitherto been a prejudiced man on the subject of his own
rights; but he was open to conviction, and at length roused to ascertain
the truth of his own case. He spent the whole of this day and the next
in rendering himself acquainted with the condition of the people, and
used no reserve with Father Glenny respecting the impression made upon
his mind. Towards the conclusion of his investigation, he stopped short,
and ended a long pause by exclaiming,
“I do not see how it is to be done! Setting aside all considerations of
law and justice, I do not see the possibility of obtaining my dues from
these poor people.”
“Nor I, Mr. Orme. What follows this conviction in your mind?”
“I scarcely know yet, further than that I shall give up my claim
altogether, if, after a little consideration, I view the matter as I do
now.”
“Then you will prove, as I expected, a faithful servant of your church;
more heedful to her honour and usefulness than to your own peculiar
gain.”
“Reserve your praise, I advise you, sir, till you have heard me out. By
giving up my claim altogether, I mean only while the people are in their
present state. When the subsistence-fund improves, when industry and
forethought thrive, the people will be again in a condition to pay
tithe, and will perhaps,” he added, smiling, “be my own flock, in
allegiance as well as by destination, if Mr. Rosso and you continue your
care of the school.”
“I will try the venture with you,” replied the priest, smiling also.
“Let our respective faiths be tried by the increasing light of the
people. If this is also your wish, you will dispossess my flock of the
prejudices they entertain against your church on account of her
oppressions.”
“This reminds me,” said Mr. Orme, “of what I have to say against your
relations with your flock. How do you defend your own emoluments while
you complain of mine?”
Father Glenny, astonished, began to explain that he derived from his
flock little more than would barely supply his wants. A hard couch, a
frugal board, homely clothing, left him but a pittance with which to
relieve the most pressing distress he encountered.
“Of all this I am aware,” replied Mr. Orme. “In these respects your lot
resembles that of too many faithful servants of our church, who give
their most strenuous exertions for a very poor worldly return. What I
now complain of is not the amount of your recompense, but the mode in
which it is levied. How can you in one hour lament those evils of the
people’s state which arise from the disproportion of their numbers to
their means of subsistence, and in the next, consent to receive your
emoluments in a way which exposes you to the charge of encouraging an
increase of numbers?”
“The charge is false,” replied the priest. “My brethren and I do not
make marriages, though we celebrate them with a view to the glory of God
and the fulfilment of his holy commandment. We are supposed to know
nothing of an intended marriage till requested to solemnize it; and to
refuse to discharge our office, with all the customs appertaining to it,
would be to encourage sin.”
“I lay no charge to the door of any one man among you,” replied Mr.
Orme. “I only observe that by receiving your emoluments chiefly in the
shape of marriage fees, you expose yourselves to the suspicion of
encouraging marriage; a suspicion which is much strengthened by your
emphatic approbation of such connexions as often as you solemnize them,
and by your known tremendous power over the minds of your flocks,
obtained through the practice of confession. Hear me out, my good sir. I
am not about to enter upon any controversy respecting the diversities in
our discharge of the clerical office. I would only recommend to you, if
you wish to place yourselves above the suspicion I have alluded to, to
separate your worldly interest altogether from this particular rite.
Appoint any other way you may choose of receiving your dues; but if you
really believe your people to be prone to form imprudent marriages, if
you are actually convinced that over-population is a principal cause of
their distresses, remove from yourselves all temptation to connive at
imprudent marriages and to sanction over-population: remove from the
minds of your people all idea that they are gratifying and rewarding you
by asking you to marry them; cancel every relation between the wedding
propensities of the young and the welfare of their priest’s purse.”
“I agree with you,” replied the priest, “that there is much that is
objectionable in the modes in which we each receive our emoluments. You
condemn tithes, and I condemn marriage fees, given as they are given now
by the guests as well as the parties. The fee thus exposes us to the
temptation and suspicion you speak of, without having the beneficial
effect of obliging the young couple to save before they marry, like the
Scotch ancient custom respecting house linen. It is for the state to
remedy this evil by providing otherwise for us.”
Mr. Orme thought this was jumping to a conclusion in a terrible hurry.
Why should not the same amount be given in a more judicious manner by
the flock, instead of involving government at all in the matter? This
point was argued till both gentlemen decided that the only method by
which the permanent prosperity of the people could be secured was the
general diffusion of such knowledge as would make them judges of their
own condition and controllers of their own destinies. The Protestant and
Catholic perfectly agreed that to further the grand object of education,
it was worth while to concede certain points which elsewhere each would
have strenuously insisted on; and that, should an impartial plan of
general education be framed by government, it would be the duty, and
would probably appear to be the disposition of all but a small minority
of the factious and bigoted, to render hearty thanks for the boon, and
all possible assistance towards the efficient working of the scheme.
“If this should be done speedily,” observed the Protestant, “I may live
to be called hither to receive my dues in recompense of the services
which I would fain render now, if the people would but receive them.”
“If this be done speedily,” observed the Catholic, “my brethren and I
may live to see ourselves and our flocks no longer looked down upon by
our scornful neighbours of your church as constituting a degraded caste.
The law has at length emancipated us from our civil disabilities: it
remains for education to lift us out of that worse and equally
undeserved degradation whence the law cannot raise us up.”
The result of Mr. Orme’s survey of his parish,—made known after long
deliberation on his part, much consultation with Mr. Rosso, and intimate
intercourse with the people,—was, that he relinquished altogether his
claim for tithes for the present, on the ground that it was impossible
for the people to pay them.
All the endeavours of Father Glenny and his enlightened neighbours to
make the people grateful for this concession were in vain. When they
heard of the changes made by Mr. Orme’s family in their way of living,
of the luxuries they surrendered, and the frugality they were obliged to
exercise, the only remark was that these things had been fraudulently
enjoyed thus long, as the nominal reward of services which had never
been rendered. When reminded that the remission was an act of free grace
on Mr. Orme’s part, they replied “Thank him for nothing. He would never
have got another pound of tithe in this parish, as he probably knows. He
gives up only what he could not touch.”
When he rode away, ready to bestow kind looks on every side, he only met
dubious smiles from those who gazed after him from field and cabin, and
who observed to one another that it was a great blessing to have one
priest for a guide, but rather too much to have another and a strange
one on their backs. To wish him well away was the utmost extent of their
courtesy.
From another quarter, however, Mr. Orme had thanks. The three gentlemen
whom he left behind considered themselves beholden to him for the
absence of the tumultuous excitement which elsewhere attended the
useless endeavour to exact tithes. This parish was saved all opposition
of forces between the “loyal” and the “disaffected;” that is, between
the oppressors and the oppressed. There was no need to cry out for the
Insurrection Act on the one hand, or to threaten or perpetrate mischief
on the other. The architect was seen no more. The field which he had
surveyed bore oats instead of a church,—a happy circumstance; since the
people were much in want of food for the body, while they had enough of
that for the spirit, and of the kind which they preferred, in Mr.
Tracey’s chapel.
---------------------
CHAPTER VII.
IRISH FATALITY.
Dora was long in gaol before she could form an idea what was to become
of her. The place was crowded, in consequence of the late disorders in
her native district; and her child pined for want of the bracing air to
which it had been accustomed from its birth. Night after night when she
was kept awake by its wailing, day after day when she marked how its
little limbs wasted, did the mother sigh to be one of those whose lot
she had till now thought very wretched. She would fain have been among
such as were driven from the glen to seek a subsistence in the towns,
begging by day, and nestling wherever they could find a hole by night.
When she was brought into the town, she met several of these, whose
faces she well knew, changed as they were from the cheerful or
thoughtful countenances of dwellers in a home to the listless or bold
expression which characterises vagrants. She now envied them their
freedom, however mournful their condition in other respects. They might
carry their babes abroad into the free air, and if too much crowded in
their noisome abodes, sleep under the open sky. They might meet their
proscribed connexions, if such they had, without other restraints than
their own prudence imposed: while she must see her infant languish for
want of that which nature designed for all; and live on from day to day
without hope of beholding husband or father, or of knowing what had
become of them.
The first relief she found was in forming a desperate resolution
respecting her infant. She had passed a long, wakeful night in such a
state of distress as even she had seldom known. The heat was stifling,
from many sleepers being collected within a small space. Her child would
not lie still on her bosom one moment. Sometimes screaming, sometimes
wailing, its signs of suffering wrung its mother’s heart. She was first
irritated and then terrified by the complaints of all who were disturbed
like herself, and who seemed to think it her fault that the child would
not rest. Hour after hour was she kept on the stretch, watching for
tokens of fatigue from the child, or of mercy from her neighbours; but
the heat increased, fresh cries wore her nerves, and new threats of
getting rid of the nuisance made her feel as if every pulse in her body
would burst. She threw herself down on her pallet, on the side of which
she had been sitting, and closed her eyes and ears, muttering—
“God help me! and take me and my child where we may sleep in peace and
no waking! My mind is just going as it did one night before; and let it
go, if my child was but safe with its father. Little would it matter
then what became of me; for Dan and I shall never meet more. O! hush, my
child! hush! I could part with you for ever if I could only ease you
from wailing, and from this sore strife. There is a curse upon me, and
upon you while you live on my bosom. You never caress me, my child; you
struggle out of my grasp! Other babes clasp their mothers, but you push
me away. Well you may! God gave you free and strong limbs and an easy
breath; and ’tis I that have laid a withering curse on your flesh, and a
heavy load on your little breast. ’Tis I that have dropped poison in
your veins. You shall go, my child. I will bear to be haunted all my
days with your screams and your throes; I will bear to lie down without
you, and wake, feeling for you in vain; I will bear to fold my empty
arms when I see babes laughing in the sunshine, and wonder whether you
are playing on the sod or lying beneath it,—if I can free you from my
curse, and trust your little life to those who can nourish it better
than I. O hush! my child. Bear with me this last night! If I could but
see you but once more quiet, if you would only once lay your little hand
on my lips, if you would but look at me!—Again, again, again! your life
will be spent, my child; you will die before I can save you!—O,
neighbours! do ye think it’s my will that my child should suffer this
way? Do you think its cries do not pierce my ears more than yours? Is it
worse for you to lose a night’s sleep than for me to be parting with my
child for ever?”
The softened grumblers inquired the meaning of her words, and praised
her for intending to send the babe out of the gaol immediately, only
complaining that it had not been done long before. All were ready to
help her with suggestions how to dispose of it; none of which
suggestions, however, satisfied her.
All difficulty on this head was removed the next day by the appearance
of Father Glenny, who came, as he had done once or twice before, to
administer to the religious wants of several of his flock who had found
their way hither. He was shocked at the change in Dora since he last saw
her, and thought the child dying. He engaged at once to have it carried
out of the prison and conveyed into safe hands. Whose hands these were,
he could not disclose, as Sullivan’s retreat was made known to him under
the seal of confession, and the circumstances must not be revealed even
to the old man’s only child. Of Dan the priest had heard nothing. No one
had seen or heard of him since some days previous to Dora’s capture.
The only thing which struck the priest as remarkable in Dora’s state of
mind was her utter indifference respecting her approaching trial. It
seemed never to occur to her; and when she was reminded of it, it
appeared to be regarded as a slight and necessary form preliminary to
her going away for ever. She never took in the idea of acquittal, or
remembered that she had a part to perform, and that she was one of two
contending parties, with either of whom success might rest. She made no
complaints of being a passive instrument in the hand of power, or of any
hardship in the treatment she had experienced or was still to bear. She
made no preparation of her thoughts for defence or for endurance. She
was utterly unmindful of what was coming, taking for granted that she
should never more see her husband, and beyond this, having no thought
where she was to spend her days, or how she was to end them. This state
appeared so unnatural, that the priest, after enlarging in vain on her
accusation and means of defence, ventured to rouse her by mentioning a
report he had heard that an attempt was to be made to rescue her and her
companions by breaking the gaol before the trials, or by attacking the
guard which should conduct some to the gibbet and others to the coast,
when their doom was to be enforced. For a moment a gleam of hope kindled
in her eyes; but she immediately observed that if the report was abroad,
the magistrates were no doubt on their guard, and the whiteboys would
ascertain the attempt to be vain before they committed themselves. After
this, however, it was observed that she could recollect nothing. She had
nothing to confess, nothing to ask for, no messages to leave, no desires
to express. With a dull, drowsy expression of countenance, she looked at
the priest when he rose to leave her, and seemed to ask why he stood
waiting.
“Your child, my daughter,” said he, extending his arms to receive the
babe.
With a start and a flushed cheek, she hastened to wrap it in the only
garment of her own which she could spare to add to its scanty clothing.
After a cold kiss, she placed it in the arms of its new guardian, saying
with a stiff smile,
“I wonder whether there are any more such mothers as I am! I forget all
about my child’s coming to me, and I don’t think I care much about its
going from me. I’m past caring about any thing at times.”
“And at other times, daughter—--”
“Hush, hush, hush! don’t speak of them now. Well; there have been
widowed wives and childless mothers; and I am only one more; and what is
to come is dark to us all, except that there is death for everybody.—No
blessing, father, to-day! It has never done me any good, and I cannot
bear it. Try it upon that little one, if you like.”
As soon as the priest was gone, muttering amidst his tears the blessing
to which she would not listen, Dora threw herself down on her pallet and
instantly slept. She scarcely woke again till called up, eight and forty
hours after, to prepare for trial.
Sleep had restored her to perfect sanity, and a full and deep
consciousness of her misery. A demeanour of more settled sorrow, a
countenance more intensely expressive of anguish, were never seen in
that or any other court. She was silent from first to last, except when
called upon for the few necessary words which her counsel could not say
for her. Though deeply attentive to the proceedings, she appeared to
sustain no conflict of hope and fear. In her mind it was evident that
the whole matter was settled from the beginning.
She had all that law and justice, the justice of a law court, could give
her. Her countrymen must still wait for the more enlightened law, the
more effectual justice whose office is rather to obviate than to punish
crime: but all that pertains to law and justice, after the perpetration
of crime, Dora had, both in the way of defence and infliction. She had
good counsel, an impartial jury, a patient and compassionate judge. She
was accordingly fairly tried and condemned to transportation for life,
on the first charge; the second was waived as unnecessary, the issue of
the first being a conviction.
As the condemned was leaving the court, she heard (for on this day
nothing escaped her) the lamentations of one who had known her from her
infancy, over her having had an education. “If she had never been taught
to write,” urged her sage neighbour, “this murtherous letter could never
have been brought against her.” To which some one replied that she would
still have been convicted of perjury.
“Is there no language to threaten in,” asked Dora, speaking rapidly as
she passed, “but that which is spelled by letters? Overthrow every
school in the country, empty all your ink into the sea, make a great
fire of all your paper, and you will still find threats inscribed
wherever there is oppression. There will be pictures traced in the sands
of the sea-shore; there will be pikes stuck up on each side the doors;
there will be mock gibbets for signals, and a multitude of scowling
brows for warnings. Let those who are above us look within themselves,
and as sure as they find these traces of tyrannical desires, will they
see round about them marks of revengeful plots, though the people under
them may be as brutish in their ignorance as slaves in their bondage.
When do prosperous men plot, or contented men threaten, or those who are
secure perjure themselves, or the well-governed think of treachery? Who
believes that conspiracy was born in our schools instead of on our cold
hearths, or that violence is natural to any hands but those from which
their occupation and their subsistence are wrenched together? The school
in which my husband and I learned rebellion was the bleak rock, where
famine came to be our teacher. A grim set of scholars she had——”
“What is the prisoner talking about?” cried a potential voice from
behind. “Remove her, officer!”
---------------------
CHAPTER IX.
IRISH DISAFFECTION.
The rumour of the intention of the whiteboys to break the gaol, or
otherwise rescue the prisoners, was unfounded. Since the new works were
begun on Mr. Tracey’s estate, the numbers of the disaffected in the
district had lessened considerably, and those who remained were for the
most part employed on distant expeditions. Dan had been out of his own
neighbourhood so long that he heard of Dora’s capture only a few days
before her trial, his father-in-law having failed in his attempt to give
him immediate intelligence of the event. The exasperated husband vowed,
as soon as he learned her sentence, to move heaven and earth to rescue
her; and all that one man could do to this end he did: but he was not
heartily seconded by his companions; they considering the attempt too
hazardous for their present force, and not seeing that this case
required their interference more than many which were presented to their
observation every day. If their attempt had been agreed upon and planned
ever so wisely, it would have been baffled by the fears of the
magistrates, who, alarmed by the rumours afloat, determined to send the
convicts round by sea to the port where the convict-ship awaited them,
instead of having them traverse the island. A small vessel was secretly
engaged to wait off the coast at the nearest point, to receive the
convicts, before it should be known that they had left the gaol.
Father Glenny, who was aware of the scheme, and therefore prepared to
make his parting visit at the right time to the unhappy outcasts from
his flock, repaired to Mr. Tracey’s when his painful duty was done,
dispirited, and eager for some relief from the harrowing thoughts which
the various interviews had left behind. Mr. Tracey invited him to
inspect the works, and see what had been done thereby for the estate and
for the people. They rode to the shore just as the labourers were
leaving work, and at the proper time for conversing with some of them
respecting their prospects, and the hopes and views with which they were
about to begin life in another land. An ardent desire to emigrate was
found to prevail: a desire arising out of hatred to middlemen and
tithe-proctors, discontent with as much as they knew of the law, and
despair of permanently improving their condition at home. They
acknowledged their landlord’s justice in enabling them to remove
advantageously, smiled at the victory over Mr. Orme, on which they
prided themselves as a grand parting achievement, and spoke with
gratitude of the kindness of Mr. Rosso’s family during their time of
sore distress; but the only person among their superiors in whom they
seemed to place implicit confidence was Father Glenny. To him they said
little of the barrier which they believed to separate the rich and the
poor in Ireland: on him no man among them looked with an evil eye;
against him were directed no remarks that there was one sort of justice
for the powerful and another for the helpless. Their affection being
strong in proportion as it was concentrated, they almost adored their
priest, and swore that when their wives and children should have
followed them abroad, Father Glenny would be the only tie to their
native district which they would be unwilling to break.
“How different an embarkation will theirs be!” he observed to his
companion, when he had given his blessing and passed on along the ridge
of the cliff. “How different a departure from that of their brethren who
are sent away as criminals! Here, the husband goes in hope of soon
welcoming his family to a home of better promise than they leave; there
a wife is carried away alone, in disgrace, severed for ever from her
husband and her child. It makes one thoughtful to consider that the
least painful of these departures might possibly have been rendered
unnecessary by a wiser social management; but, as for the the other, we
ought to kneel in the dust, crying for mercy, till Heaven shall please
to remove from us the scourge of crime, and the heart-withering despair
which follows it. If you had seen and heard what I have seen and heard
this day, you would tremble at the retribution which is sent upon the
people and their rulers. Let us pray day and night to avert it!”
“And in the intervals of our prayers, father, let us exert ourselves to
avert it by removing the abuses from which it springs. Instead of
applying palliatives, let us go to the root of the evil. Instead of
providing a legal relief for our poor, which must in time become a
greater burden than we now labour under, we must remove the weights
which oppress their industry, guard against the petty tyranny under
which they suffer, and all the while, persevere in educating, and still
educating, till they shall be able to assist our reforms; to understand
the law beneath which they live; instead of defying it, to respect the
government (by that time more efficient to secure the objects at which
it aims); and to act upon the belief that men of various creeds and
ranks and offices may dwell together without enmity. May not all this
come of education, coupled with political reforms, and sanctioned by the
blessing we pray for?”
“Heaven grant it may!” exclaimed the priest, who was now attentively
observing some one who was sitting on the sunny side of a fence which
ran to the very verge of the rock. It was an old man, with a babe on his
knee, to whom he was alternately talking and singing in a feeble,
cracked voice. His song was of the sea, to which he looked perpetually,
and over which the setting sun was trailing a long line of glistering
gold, to the great delight of the infant as well as its guardian.
“It is Sullivan!” exclaimed the priest, “and it is poor Dora’s child
that he holds on his knee. True it is that God feeds the young ravens
that cry. Yonder babe has thriven in this desert as if its nightly rest
were on its mother’s bosom. The old man, too, looks cheerily. You will
not take advantage, my son, of his having ventured above ground in a
still hour like this. You will not bid the law take its course on one
whose gray hairs came before his crimes began?”
“Not for the world,” said Tracey. “Shall we alight and speak to him, or
would it alarm him too much?”
They drew near while still unobserved by the old man, whose noisy sport
hindered his hearing their footsteps. At this moment, a small vessel
appeared from behind a projecting rock, her sails filled with a fresh
north wind, and appearing of a snowy whiteness as they caught the
sunlight. When she shot across the golden track, the babe sprang and
crowed in the old man’s arms.
“The saints’ blessing on ye, my jewel!” cried he, in almost equal glee.
“It’s there you would be, dancing on the blue waves, instead of in my
old arms, that will scarcely hold you in more than an unbroken colt, my
pretty one! There she goes, my darling,
Full of boys so frisky
With the sweet-smelling whiskey,
Flying over seas and far away;
Good luck go with ’em——”
“Sullivan!” cried the priest, who could no longer endure this ill-timed
mirth.
The old man scrambled up in a moment, and made his obeisance before the
mournful gravity of his pastor.
“Sullivan!” continued Father Glenny, “Do you know that vessel? You
cannot be aware what freight it bears! You——”
“I know now all about it,” replied the old man, pettishly. “How could
your reverence expect my old eyes to see so far off what ship Dora was
on board of? And what makes your reverence bring his honour to be a spy
on an old man’s disgrace, unless he comes to catch me, and send me after
Dora? ’Tis near the hour when foxes and justices come out after their
prey. You may have me for the catching, your honour; and much good may
it do you to have got me.”
He would not listen to a word Mr. Tracey had to say, but went on
addressing the child, as if no one had been present, his glee being,
however, all turned to bitterness.
“Agh, my jewel! and you knew more nor I, while you sprung as a lamb does
when the ewe bleats. Stretch your arms, my darling, for your mother is
there; and fain would I bid ye begone to her, though it would leave me
alone in the wide world, where there’s not a thing my eyes love but you,
babby dear!”
And so he went on, sitting doggedly down with his back to the gentlemen,
who retreated, intending to come again the next day, when he might be in
a more communicative mood. At some distance they looked once more behind
them, and saw that another man had joined Sullivan, and was standing
over him, pointing to the receding vessel.
“It is Dan!” cried the priest, quickly turning his horse and riding
back. Before he could reach the spot, Dan had snatched a hasty kiss of
his infant, and disappeared. The old man’s countenance was now fallen,
and his tone subdued.
“You will never see Dan more,” said he, “though you may hear much of
him. The just and merciful will never see his face again, and he has
forsworn his priest. Where he will show himself from this time, it will
be in the dead of the night, with a crape on his face and a pike in his
hand. They that have made him mad must put up with a madman’s deeds.”
“Mad!” cried Tracey.
“He means exasperated,” replied the priest. “Dan hoped to the last to
rescue his wife, and the failure has made him desperate.”
“I’m alone now in the world entirely,” muttered Sullivan, rocking the
now wearied infant to sleep. “Barring this orphan’s, I shall see little
of the face of man. It was the face of a devil that bent over us just
now. Long may it be before it scares us again.”
Sullivan said truly, that Dan would henceforth be heard of and not seen
by any but the victims of his violence. He who was once the pride is now
the scourge of the Glen of the Echoes.
_Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume._
Whatever affects the security of property, or intercepts the due reward
of labour, impairs the subsistence-fund by discouraging industry and
forethought.
Partnership tenantcies affect the security of property by rendering one
tenant answerable for the obligations of all his partners, while he has
no control over the management of their portions.
A gradation of landlords on one estate has the same effect, by rendering
one tenant liable to the claims of more than one landlord.
The levying of fines on a whole district for an illegal practice going
on in one part of it, has the same effect, by rendering the honest man
liable for the malpractices of the knave.
The imposition of a church establishment on those who already support
another church, intercepts the due reward of labour, by taking from the
labourer a portion of his earnings for an object from which he derives
no benefit.
The practice of letting land to the highest bidder, without regard to
former service or to the merits of the applicants, intercepts the due
reward of the labourer, by decreeing his gains to expire with his lease.
All these practices having prevailed in Ireland, her subsistence-fund is
proportionably impaired, though the reduction is somewhat more than
compensated by the natural growth of capital.
While capital has been growing much more slowly than it ought,
population has been increasing much more rapidly than the circumstances
of the country have warranted: the consequences of which are, extensive
and appalling indigence, and a wide spread of the moral evils which
attend it.
An immediate palliation of this indigence would be the result of
introducing a legal pauper-system into Ireland; but it would be at the
expense of an incalculable permanent increase of the evil.
To levy a poor-rate on the country at large would be impolitic, since it
would only increase the primary grievance of an insufficiency of
capital, by causing a further unproductive consumption of it.
To throw the burden of a pauper system on absentees would be especially
unjust, since they bear precisely the same relation to the wealth of
their country as its resident capitalists.
In the case of Ireland, as in all analogous cases, permanent relief can
be effected only by adjusting the proportions of capital and population:
and this must be attempted by means suited to her peculiar
circumstances.
The growth of capital should be aided by improvements in agricultural
and domestic economy, and by the removal of political grievances; from
which would follow a union in place of an opposition of interests.
Population should be reduced within due limits,
In the present emergency, by well-conducted schemes of emigration; and
Permanently, by educating the people till they shall have become
qualified for the guardianship of their own interests.
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PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES, STAMFORD-STREET.
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Transcriber’s Note
Words hyphenated on line or page breaks have the hyphen removed if the
preponderance of other occurences are unhyphenated. Hyphens occuring
midline are retained regardless of other unhyphenated occurences
(whiteboys/white-boys, goodwill/good-will, farmhouse/farm-house,
halfpenny/half-penny, almsgiving/alms-giving).
Other errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected,
and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the
original. Given the independent pagination of the original, these are
divided by volume.
A Manchester Strike.
3.17 [‘/“]Mother knows that you get Replaced.
66.26 even to the produce [the of/of the] wheels. Transposed.
67.31 and all prophe[c/s]ied that they must give up Replaced.
106.14 “Then was the time,[”] Added.
107.12 “Will our trade go on increasing?[’/”] Replaced.
114.2 during his ab[r/s]ence Replaced.
123.28 whether the misunder[a/s]tanding arose Replaced.
125.9 wages-fund of the masters a[u/n]d the Inverted.
Union-fund
Cousin Marshall.
22.15 they won[’]t hear one speak Added.
114.29 wit[h i/hi]n a due proportion to this fund. Removed.
121.33 said Mr. Burke, smiling[.] Added.
Ireland.
22.4 It[’]s just in time Added.
30.33 and it[’]s a cabin I’m wishing to give her Added.
70.3 “Shall I bid the neighbours to the wake?[’/”] Replaced.
86.33 justice could no[t] have its course Restored.
164.33 deserved the name of plunder.[”] Removed.