THE LAND-WAR IN IRELAND
A HISTORY FOR THE TIMES
BY JAMES GODKIN
AUTHOR OF 'IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES'
LATE IRISH CORRESPONDENT OF 'THE TIMES'
LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO. 1870
LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND
PARLIAMENT STREET
PREFACE.
It would be difficult to name any subject so much discussed during the
last half century as 'the condition of Ireland.' There was an endless
diversity of opinion; but in one thing all writers and speakers
agreed: the condition was morbid. Ireland was always sick, always
under medical treatment, always subject to enquiries as to the nature
of her maladies, and the remedies likely to effect a cure. The royal
commissions and parliamentary committees that sat upon her case were
innumerable, and their reports would fill a library. Still the nature
of the disease, or the complication of diseases, was a mystery. Sundry
'boons' were prescribed, by way of experiment; but, though recommended
as perfect cures, they did the patient no good. She was either very
low and weak, or so dangerously strong and violent that she had to be
put under restraint. Whenever this crisis arrived, she arrested the
special attention of the state doctors. Consultations were held, and
it was solemnly determined that something should be done. Another
effort should be made to discover the _fons malorum_, and dry it up if
possible.
A diseased nation, subject to paroxysms of insanity, and requiring
30,000 keepers, was a dangerous neighbour, as well as a serious
financial burden. Yet many contended that all such attempts were
useless. It was like trying different kinds of soap to whiten the skin
of a negro. The patient was incurable. Her ailment was nothing but
natural perversity, aggravated by religious delusions; and the root
of her disorder could never be known till she was subjected to a _post
mortem_ examination, for which it was hoped emigration, and the help
of improving landlords, would soon afford an opportunity. In the
meantime, the strait waistcoat must be put on, to keep the patient
from doing mischief.
But at length a great physician arose, who declared that this state of
things should not continue; the honour, if not the safety, of
England demanded that the treatment should be reversed. Mr. Gladstone
understands the case of Ireland, and he has courage to apply the
proper remedies. Yet the British public do not understand it so well;
and he will need all the force of public opinion to sustain him and
his cabinet in the work of national regeneration which they have
undertaken. It is not enough for a good physician to examine the
symptoms of his patient. He must have a full and faithful history
of the case. He must know how the disease originated, and how it
was treated. If injuries were inflicted, he must know under what
circumstances, how they affected the nervous system, and whether there
may not be surrounding influences which prevent the restoration of
health, or some nuisance that poisons the atmosphere.
Such a history of the case of Ireland the author has endeavoured
to give in the following pages. It it is no perfunctory service. He
resolved to do it years ago, when he finished his work on the Irish
Church Establishment, and it has been delayed only in consequence of
illness and other engagements. He does not boast of any extraordinary
qualifications for the work. But he claims the advantage of having
studied the subject long and earnestly, as one in which he has been
interested from his youth. He has written the history of the country
more or less fully three times. During his thirty years' connexion
with the press, it has been his duty to examine and discuss everything
that appeared before the public upon Irish questions, and it has
always been his habit to bring the light of history to bear upon the
topics of the day. Twenty years ago he was an active member of the
Irish Tenant League, which held great county meetings in most parts of
the island; and was enthusiastically supported by the tenant farmers,
adopting resolutions and petitions on the land question almost
identical with those passed by similar meetings at the present time.
Then Mr. Sharman Crawford was the only landlord who joined in the
movement; now many of the largest proprietors take their stand on the
tenant-right platform. And after a generation of sectarian division
and religious dissension in Ulster, stimulated by the landed gentry,
for political purposes, the Catholic priests and the Presbyterian
clergy have again united to advocate the demands of the people for the
legal protection of their industry and their property.
There is scarcely a county in Ireland which the author of this
volume has not traversed more than once, having always an eye to the
condition of the population, their mode of living, and the
relations of the different classes. During the past year, as special
commissioner of the _Irish Times_, he went through the greater part of
Ulster, and portions of the south, in order to ascertain the feelings
of the farmers and the working classes, on the great question which is
about to engage the attention of Parliament.
The result of his historical studies and personal enquiries is
this:--All the maladies of Ireland, which perplex statesmen and
economists, have arisen from injuries inflicted by England in the wars
which she waged to get possession of the Irish land. Ireland has been
irreconcilable, not because she was conquered by England, not
even because she was persecuted, but because she was robbed of her
inheritance. If England had done everything she has done against the
Irish nation, omitting the _confiscations_, the past would have been
forgotten and condoned long ago, and the two nations would have been
one people. Even the religious wars resolve themselves into efforts to
retain the land, or to recover the forfeited estates. And the banished
chiefs never could have rallied the nation to arms, as they so often
did against overwhelming odds, if the people had not been involved in
the ruin of their lords. All that is really important in the history
of the country for the last three centuries is, the fighting of the
two nations for the possession of the soil. The Reformation was
in reality nothing but a special form of the land war. The oath of
supremacy was simply a lever for evicting the owners of the land. The
process was simple. The king demanded spiritual allegiance; refusal
was high treason; the punishment of high treason was forfeiture of
estates, with death or banishment to the recusants. Any other law they
might have obeyed, and retained their inheritance. This law fixed
its iron grapples in the conscience, and made obedience impossible,
without a degree of baseness that rendered life intolerable.
Hence Protestantism was detested, not so much as a religion, as an
instrument of spoliation.
The agrarian wars were kept up from generation to generation, Ireland
always making desperate efforts to get back her inheritance, but
always crushed to the earth, a victim of famine and the sword, by the
power of England.
The history of these wars, then, is the history of the case of the
Irish patient. Its main facts are embodied in the general history of
the country. But they have recently been brought out more distinctly
by authors who have devoted years to the examination of the original
state papers, in which the actors themselves described their exploits
and recorded their motives and feelings with startling frankness. When
a task of this kind has been performed by a capable and conscientious
historian, it would be a work of supererogation for another enquirer
to undergo the wearisome toil, even if he could. I have, therefore,
for the purpose of my argument, freely availed myself of the materials
given to the public by Mr. Froude, the Rev. C.P. Meehan, and Mr.
Prendergast, not, however, without asking their permission, which was
in each case most readily and kindly granted.
The ancient state of Ireland, and especially of Ulster, is so little
known in England, that I was glad to have the facts vouched for by
so high an authority as Mr. Froude, and a writer so full of the
instinctive pride of the dominant nation; the more so as I have often
been obliged to dissent from his views, and to appeal against his
judgments. Beguiled by the beauty of his descriptions, I am afraid I
have drawn too largely on his pages, in proving and illustrating
my case; but I feel confident that no one will read these extracts
without more eagerly desiring to possess the volumes of his great work
from which they are taken.
I have similar acknowledgments to make to Father Meehan and Mr.
Prendergast, both of whom are preparing new editions of their most
valuable works. The royal charters, and other documents connected
with the Plantation of Ulster, are printed in the 'Concise View of the
Irish Society,' compiled from their records, and published by their
authority in 1832. Whenever I have been indebted to other writers,
I have acknowledged my obligation in the course of the work. In
preparing it, I have had but one object constantly in view: to present
to the public a careful collection and an impartial statement of facts
on the state of Ireland, for the right government of which the British
people are now more than ever responsible. I shall be thankful if my
labours should contribute in any measure, however humble, to the new
conquest of Ireland 'by justice' of which Mr. Bright has spoken.
His language is suggestive. It is late (happily not 'too late') to
commence the reign of justice. But the nation is not to be despised
which requires nothing more than _that_ to win its heart, while its
spirit could not be conquered by centuries of injustice. Nor should it
be forgotten by the people of England that some atonement is due for
past wrongs, not the least of which is the vilification and distrust
from which the Irish people have suffered so much. 'The spirit of a
man may sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?'
Some manifestation of Christian magnanimity just now would greatly
help the work of national reconciliation. The time is favourable. The
Government enjoys the prestige of an unparalleled success. The only
Prime Minister that ever dared to do full justice to Ireland, is the
most powerful that England has had for nearly a century. He has in
his Cabinet the only Chief Secretary of Ireland that ever thoroughly
sympathised with the nation, not excepting Lord Morpeth; the great
tribune of the English people, who has been one of the most eloquent
advocates of Ireland; an Ex-Viceroy who has pronounced it felony
for the Irish landlords to avail themselves of their legal rights,
although he put down a rebellion which that felony mainly provoked;
another Ex-Governor, who was one of the most earnest and conscientious
that ever filled the viceregal throne, and who returned to Parliament
to be one of the ablest champions of the country he had ruled so well;
not to mention other members of commanding ability, who are solemnly
pledged to the policy of justice. In these facts there is great
promise. He understands little of 'the signs of the times,' who does
not see the dangers that hang on the non-fulfilment of this promise.
J.G.
LONDON: _January 20_, 1870.
CONTENTS.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. THE RULE OF THE O'NEILLS
III. SHANE O'NEILL, SOVEREIGN OF ULSTER
IV. EXTERMINATING WARS
V. AN IRISH CRUSADE
VI. THE LAST OF THE IRISH PRINCES
VII. GOVERNMENT APPEALS TO THE PEOPLE
VIII. THE CASE OF THE FUGITIVE EARLS
IX. THE CONFISCATION OF ULSTER
X. THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER
XI. THE REBELLION OF 1641
XII. THE PURITAN PLANTATION
XIII. THE PENAL CODE. A NEW SYSTEM OF LAND WAR
XIV. ULSTER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
XV. POVERTY AND COERCION
XVI. THE FAMINE
XVII. TENANT-RIGHT IN ULSTER
XVIII. TENANT-RIGHT IN DOWN
XIX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ANTRIM
XX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ARMAGH
XXI. FAKNEY--MR. TRENCH'S 'REALITIES'
XXII. BELFAST AND PERPETUITY
XXIII. LEASE-BREAKING--GEASHILL
XXIV. THE LAND SYSTEM AND THE WORKING CLASSES
XXV. CONCLUSION--AN APPEAL TO ENGLISHMEN
XVIII. TENANT-RIGHT IN DOWN 313
XIX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ANTRIM 328
XX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ARMAGH 346
XXI. FAKNEY--MR. TRENCH'S 'REALITIES' 356
XXII. BELFAST AND PERPETUITY 381
XXIII. LEASE-BREAKING--GEASHILL 387
XXIV. THE LAND SYSTEM AND THE WORKING CLASSES 401
XXV. CONCLUSION--AN APPEAL TO ENGLISHMEN 424
THE LAND-WAR IN IRELAND.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
As the hour approaches when the legislature must deal with the Irish
Land question, and settle it, like the Irish Church question, once
for all, attempts are redoubled to frighten the public with
the difficulties of the task. The alarmists conjure up gigantic
apparitions more formidable than those which encountered Bunyan's
Pilgrim. Monstrous figures frown along the gloomy avenue that, leads
up to the Egyptian temple in which the divinity, PROPERTY, dwells in
mysterious darkness. To enter the sanctuary, we are solemnly
assured, requires all the cardinal virtues in their highest state of
development--the firmest faith, the most vivid hope, and the charity
that never faileth. But this is not the only country that has had a
land question to settle. Almost every nation in Europe has done for
itself what England is now palled upon to do for Ireland. In fact,
it is a necessary process in the transition from feudalism to
constitutional self-government. Feudalism gave the land to a few whom
it made princes and lords, having forcibly taken it from the many,
whom it made subjects and serfs. The land is the natural basis of
society. The Normans made it the artificial basis of a class. Society
in nearly every other country has reverted back to its original
foundations, and so remains firm and strong without dangerous rents or
fissures. No doubt, the operation is difficult and critical. But what
has been done once may be done again; and as it was England that kept
Irish society so long rocking on its smaller end, it is her duty
now to lend all her strength to help to seat it on its own broad
foundations. Giving up the Viceroy's dreams that the glorious mission
of Ireland was to be a kitchen garden, a dairy, a larder for England,
we must come frankly to the conclusion that the national life of the
Irish people, without distinction of creed or party, increases
in vigour with their intelligence, and is now invincible. Let the
imperial legislature put an end for ever to such an unnatural state of
things--thus only can they secure the harmonious working and cordial
Union of the two nations united together in one State--thus only can
they insure for the landlords themselves all the power and all
the influence that can be retained by them in consistency with the
industrial rights and political freedom of the cultivators of the
soil. These now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless
bondage, under grinding injustice. They are alleged to be full of
discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the
people who writhe under the system. Their advocates affirm that their
discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and
that, owing to the connection of Ireland with the United States,
it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the fury of a mountain
torrent, deeply discoloured by a Republican element.
It must be granted, I fear, that the Celts of Ireland feel pretty much
as the Britons felt under the ascendency of the Saxons, and as the
Saxons in their turn felt under the ascendency of the Normans. In
the estimation of the Christian Britons, their Saxon conquerors,
even after the conversion of the latter, were 'an accursed race, the
children of robbers and murderers, possessing the fruits of their
fathers' crimes.' 'With them,' says Dr. Lingard, 'the Saxon was no
better than a pagan bearing the name of a Christian. They refused to
return his salutation, to join in prayer with him in the church, to
sit with him at the same table, to abide with him under the same roof.
The remnant of his meals and the food over which he had made the sign
of the cross they threw to their dogs or swine; the cup out of
which he had drunk they scoured with sand, as if it had contracted
defilement from his lips.'
It is not the Celtic memory only that is tenacious of national wrong.
The Saxon was doomed to drink to the dregs the same bitter cup which
he administered so unmercifully to the Briton. His Teutonic blood
saved him from no humiliation or insult. The Normans seized all the
lands, all the castles, all the pleasant mansions, all the churches
and monasteries. Even the Saxon saints were flung down out of their
shrines and trampled in the dust under the iron heel of the Christian
conqueror. Everything Saxon was vile, and the word 'Englishry' implied
as much contempt and scorn as the word 'Irishry' in a later age. In
fact, the subjugated Saxons gradually became infected with all the
vices and addicted to all the social disorders that prevailed among
the Irish in the same age; only in Ireland the anarchy endured much
longer from the incompleteness of the conquest and the absence of the
seat of supreme government, which kept the races longer separate and
antagonistic. Perhaps the most humiliating notice of the degrading
effects of conquest on the noble Saxon race to be found in history,
is the language in which Giraldus Cambrensis, the reviler of the Irish
Celt, contrasts them with his countrymen, the Welsh. 'Who dare,'
he says, 'compare the English, the most degraded of all races under
heaven, with the Welsh? In their own country they are the serfs,
the veriest slaves of the Normans. In ours whom else have we for our
herdsmen, shepherds, cobblers, skinners, cleaners of our dog kennels,
ay, even of our privies, but Englishmen? Not to mention their original
treachery to the Britons, that hired by them to defend them they
turned upon them in spite of their oaths and engagements, they are
to this day given to treachery and murder.' The lying Saxon was,
according to this authority, a proverbial expression.
The Saxon writers lamented their miserable subjection in a monotonous
wail for many generations. So late as the seventeenth century an
English author speaks in terms of compassion of the disinherited
and despoiled families who had sunk into the condition of artisans,
peasants, and paupers. 'This,' says M. Thierry, 'is the last sorrowful
glance cast back through the mist of ages on that great event which
established in England a race of kings, nobles, and warriors of
foreign extraction. The reader must figure to himself, not a mere
change of political rule, not the triumph of one of two competitors,
but the intrusion of a nation into the bosom of another people which
it came to destroy, and the scattered fragments of which it retained
as an integral portion of the new system of society, in the _status_
merely of personal property, or, to use the stronger language of
records and deeds, _a clothing of the soil_. He must not picture to
himself on the one hand the king and despot; on the other simply his
subjects, high and low, rich and poor, all inhabiting England, and
consequently all English. He must bear in mind that there were two
distinct nations--the old Anglo-Saxon race and the Norman invaders,
dwelling intermingled on the same soil; or, rather, he might
contemplate two countries--the one possessed by the Normans, wealthy
and exonerated from public burdens, the other enslaved and oppressed
with a land tax--the former full of spacious mansions, of walled
towns, and moated castles--the latter occupied with thatched cabins,
and ancient walls in a state of dilapidation. This peopled with
the happy and the idle, with soldiers, courtiers, knights, and
nobles--that with miserable men condemned to labour as peasants and
artisans. On the one side he beholds luxury and insolence, on the
other poverty and envy--not the envy of the poor at the sight of
opulence and men born to opulence, but that malignant envy, although
justice be on its side, which the despoiled cannot but entertain on
looking upon the spoilers. Lastly, to complete the picture, these two
countries are in some sort interwoven with each other--they meet
at every point, and yet they are more distinct, more completely
separated, than if the ocean rolled between them.'
Does not this picture look very like Ireland? To make it more like,
let us imagine that the Norman king had lived in Paris, and kept a
viceroy in London--that the English parliament were subordinate to the
French parliament, composed exclusively of Normans, and governed by
Norman undertakers for the benefit of the dominant State--that the
whole of the English land was held by ten thousand Norman proprietors,
many of them absentees--that all the offices of the government, in
every department, were in the hands of Normans--that, differing in
religion with the English nation, the French, being only a tenth of
the population, had got possession of all the national churches and
church property, while the poor natives supported a numerous hierarchy
by voluntary contributions--that the Anglo-Norman parliament was
bribed and coerced to abolish itself, forming a union of England with
France, in which the English members were as one to six. Imagine that
in consequence of rebellions the land of England had been confiscated
three or four times, after desolating wars and famines, so that all
the native proprietors were expelled, and the land was parcelled
out to French soldiers and adventurers on condition that the foreign
'planters' should assist in keeping down 'the mere English' by force
of arms. Imagine that the English, being crushed by a cruel penal
code for a century, were allowed to reoccupy the soil as mere
tenants-at-will, under the absolute power of their French landlords.
If all this be imagined by English legislators and English writers,
they will be better able to understand the Irish land question, and to
comprehend the nature of 'Irish difficulties,' as well as the justice
of feeble, insincere, and baffled statesmen in casting the blame
of Irish misery and disorder on the unruly and barbarous nature of
Irishmen. They will recollect that the aristocracy of Ireland are the
high-spirited descendants of conquerors, with the instinct of conquest
still in their blood. The parliament which enacted the Irish land laws
was a parliament composed almost exclusively of men of this dominant
race. They made all political power dependent on the ownership of
land, thus creating for themselves a monopoly which it is not in human
nature to surrender without a struggle.
The possession of this monopoly, however, fully accounts for two
things--the difficulty which the landlords feel in admitting the
justice of the tenant's claims for the legal recognition of the value
which his labour has added to the soil, and the extreme repugnance
with which they regard any legislation on the subject. Besides,
the want of sympathy with the people, of earnestness and courage in
meeting the realities of the case, is conspicuous in all attempts
of the kind during the last half-century. Those attempts have been
evasive, feeble, abortive--concessions to the demand that _something_
must be done, but so managed that nothing should be done to weaken the
power of the eight thousand proprietors over the mass of the nation
dependent on the land for their existence. Hence has arisen a great
amount of jealousy, distrust, and irritability in the landlord class
towards the tenantry and their advocates.
The Irish race, to adopt Thierry's language, are full of 'malignant
envy' towards the lords of the soil; not because they are rich, but
because they have the people so completely in their power, so entirely
at their mercy for all that man holds most dear. The tenants feel
bitterly when they think that they have no legal right to live on
their native land. They have read the history of our dreadful civil
wars, famines, and confiscations. They know that by the old law of
Ireland, and by custom from times far beyond the reach of authentic
history, the clans and tribes of the Celtic people occupied certain
districts with which their names are still associated, and that the
land was inalienably theirs. Rent or tribute they paid, indeed, to
their princes, and if they failed the chiefs came with armed followers
and helped themselves, driving away cows, sheep, and horses sufficient
to meet their demand, or more if they were unscrupulous, which was
'distress' with a vengeance. But the eviction of the people even for
non-payment of rent, and putting other people in their place, were
things never heard of among the Irish under their own rulers. The
chief had his own mensal lands, as well as his tribute, and these he
might forfeit. But as the clansmen could not control his acts, they
could never see the justice of being punished for his misdeeds by
the confiscation of their lands, and driven from the homes of their
ancestors often made doubly sacred by religious associations.
History, moreover, teaches them that, as a matter of fact, the
government in the reign of James I.--and James himself in repeated
proclamations--assured the people who occupied the lands of O'Neill
and O'Donnell at the time of their flight that they would be protected
in all their rights if they remained quiet and loyal, which they
did. Yet they were nearly all removed to make way for the English and
Scotch settlers.
Thus, historical investigators have been digging around the
foundations of Irish landlordism. They declare that those foundations
were cemented with blood, and they point to the many wounds still open
from which that blood issued so profusely. The facts of the conquest
and confiscation were hinted at by the Devon Commissioners as
accounting for the peculiar difficulties of the Irish land question,
and writers on it timidly allude to 'the historic past' as originating
influences still powerful in alienating landlords and tenants, and
fostering mutual distrust between them. But the time for evasion and
timidity has passed. We must now honestly and courageously face
the stern realities of this case. Among these realities is a firm
conviction in the minds of many landlords that they are in no sense
trustees for the community, but that they have an absolute power over
their estates--that they can, if they like, strip the land clean of
its human clothing, and clothe it with sheep or cattle instead, or lay
it bare and desolate, let it lapse into a wilderness, or sow it with
salt. That is in reality the terrific power secured to them by the
present land code, to be executed through the Queen's writ and by the
Queen's troops--a power which could not stand a day if England did not
sustain it by overwhelming military force.
Another of the realities of the question is the no less inveterate
conviction in the tenants' mind that the absolute power of the
landlord was originally a usurpation effected by the sword. Right or
wrong, they believe that the confiscations were the palpable violation
of the natural rights of the people whom Providence placed in this
country. With bitter emphasis they assert that no set of men has any
divine right to root a nation out of its own land. Painful as this
state of feeling is, there is no use in denying that it exists. Here,
then, is the deep radical difference that is to be removed. Here are
the two conflicting forces which are to be reconciled. This is the
real Irish land question. All other points are minor and of easy
adjustment. The people say, and, I believe, sincerely, that they are
willing to pay a fair rent, according to a public valuation--not a
rent imposed arbitrarily by one of the interested parties, which
might be raised so as to ruin the occupier. The feelings of these two
parties often clash so violently, there is such instinctive distrust
between them, the peace and prosperity of the country depend so much
on their coming to terms and putting an end to their long-standing
feud, that it is still more imperatively necessary than in the
Church question, that a third party, independent, impartial, and
authoritative, should intervene and heal the breach.
There was one phrase constantly ringing in the ears of the Devon
Commissioners, and now, after nearly a generation has passed away, it
is ringing in the ears of the nation louder than ever--'_the want
of tenure_.' All the evidence went to show that the want of security
paralysed industry and impeded social progress. It seems strange that
any evidence should be thought necesary to prove that a man will not
sow if he does not hope to reap, and that he will not build houses for
strangers to enjoy. This would be taken as an axiom anywhere out of
Ireland. Of all the people in Europe, the Irish have suffered most
from the oppression of those who, from age to age, had power in the
country. Whoever fought or conquered, they were always the victims;
and it is a singular fact that their sufferings are scarcely ever
noticed by the contemporary annalists, even when those annalists
were ecclesiastics. The extent to which they were slaughtered in the
perpetual wars between the native chiefs, and in the wars between
those chiefs and the English, is something awful to contemplate, not
to speak of the wholesale destruction of life by the famines which
those wars entailed. On several occasions the Celtic race seemed very
nearly extinct. The penal code, with all its malign influence, had one
good effect. It subdued to a great extent the fighting propensities
of the people, and fused the clans into one nation, purified by
suffering. Since that time, in spite of occasional visitations of
calamity, they have been steadily rising in the social scale, and they
are now better off than ever they were in their whole history. When
we review the stages by which they have risen, we cannot but feel at
times grieved and indignant at the opportunities for tranquillising
and enriching the country which were lost through the ignorance,
apathy, bigotry, and selfishness of the legislature. There was no end
of commissions and select committees to inquire into the condition
of the agricultural population, whenever Parliament was roused by the
prevalence of agrarian outrages. They reported, and there the matter
ended. There were always insuperable difficulties when the natives
were to be put in a better position. Between 1810 and 1814, for
example, a commission reported four times on the condition of
the Irish bogs. They expressed their entire conviction of the
practicability of cultivating with profit an immense extent of land
lying waste. In 1819, in 1823, in 1826, and in 1830, select committees
inquired into and reported on drainage, reclamation of bogs and
marshes, on roads, fisheries, emigration, and other schemes for giving
employment to the redundant population that had been encouraged to
increase and multiply in the most reckless manner, while 'war
prices' were obtained for agricultural produce, and the votes of the
forty-shilling freeholders were wanted by the landlords. When, by the
Emancipation Act in 1829, the forty-shilling franchise was abolished,
the peasant lost his political value. After the war, when the price of
corn fell very low, and, consequently, tillage gave place to grazing,
labourers became to the middleman an encumbrance and a nuisance that
must be cleared off the land, just as weeds are plucked up and flung
out to wither on the highway. Then came Lord Devon's Land Commission,
which inquired on the eve of the potato failure and the great famine.
The Irish population was now at its highest figure--between eight and
nine millions. Yet, though there had been three bad seasons, it was
clearly proved at that time that by measures which a wise and willing
legislature would have promptly passed, the whole surplus population
could have been profitably employed.
In this great land controversy, on which side lies the truth? Is it
the fault of the people, or the fault of the law, that the country is
but half cultivated, while the best of the peasantry are emigrating
with hostile feelings and purposes of vengeance towards England? As
to the landlords, as a class, they use their powers with as much
moderation and mercy as any other class of men in any country ever
used power so vast and so little restrained. The best and most
indulgent landlords, the most genial and generous, are unquestionably
the old nobility, the descendants of the Normans and Saxons, those
very conquerors of whom we have heard so much. The worst, the most
harsh and exacting, are those who have purchased under the Landed
Estates Court--strangers to the people, who think only of the
percentage on their capital. We had heard much of the necessity of
capital to develope the resources of the land. The capital came,
but the development consists in turning tillage lands into pasture,
clearing out the labouring population and sending them to the
poorhouse, or shipping them off at a few pounds per head to keep down
the rates. And yet is it not possible to set all our peasantry to work
at the profitable cultivation of their native land? Is it not possible
to establish by law what many landlords act upon as the rule of their
estates--namely, the principle that no man is to be evicted so long as
he pays a fair rent, and the other principle, that whenever he fails,
he is entitled to the market value by public sale of all the property
in his holding beyond that fair rent? The hereditary principle,
rightly cherished among the landlords, so conservative in its
influence, ought to be equally encouraged among the tenants. The man
of industry, as well as the man of rank, should be able to feel that
he is providing for his children, that his farm is at once a bank and
an insurance office, in which all his minute daily deposits of toil
and care and skill will be safe and productive. This is the way to
enrich and strengthen the State, and to multiply guarantees against
revolution--not by consolidation of farms and the abandonment of
tillage, not by degrading small holders into day labourers, levelling
the cottages and filling the workhouses.
If the legislature were guided by the spirit that animates Lord Erne
in his dealings with his tenantry, the land question would soon
be settled to the satisfaction of all parties. 'I think,' said his
lordship, 'as far as possible, every tenant on my estate may call his
farm his castle, as long as he conducts himself honestly, quietly, and
industriously; and, should he wish to leave in order to find a better
landlord, I allow him to sell his farm, provided he pleases me in a
tenant. Therefore, if a man lays out money on his farm judiciously, he
is certain to receive back the money, should he wish to go elsewhere.'
He mentioned three cases of sale which occurred last year. One tenant
sold a farm of seventy acres in bad order for 570 l., another thirty
acres for 300 l., and a third the same number of acres in worse
condition for 200 l. The landlord lost nothing by these changes. His
rent was paid up, and in each case he got a good tenant for a bad one.
Lord Erne is a just man, and puts on no more than a fair rent. But
all landlords are not just, as all tenants are not honest. Even where
tenant-right is admitted in name, it is obvious that the rent may be
raised so high as to make the farm worth nothing in the market. To
give to the tenant throughout the country generally the pleasant
feeling that his farm is his castle, which he can make worth more
money every day he rises, there must be a public letting valuation,
and this the State could easily provide. And then there should be the
right of sale to the highest solvent bidder.
This might be one way of securing permanent tenure, or stimulating the
industry and sustaining the thrift of the farmer. But the nature
of the different tenures, and the effect of each in bracing up or
relaxing the nerves of industry, will be the object of deliberation
with the Government and the legislature. It is said that, in the hands
of small farmers, proprietorship leads to endless subdivision; that
long leases generally cause bad husbandry; that tenants-at-will often
feel themselves more secure and safe than a contract could make them;
that families have lived on the same farm for generations without a
scrape of a pen except the receipt for rent. On the other hand, there
is the general cry of 'want of tenure;' there is the custom of serving
notices to quit, sometimes for other reasons than non-payment of rent;
there are occasional barbarities in the levelling of villages, and
dragging the aged and the sick from the old roof-tree, the parting
from which rends their heart-strings; and, above all, there is the
feeling among the peasantry which makes them look without horror on
the murder of a landlord or an agent who was a kind and benevolent
neighbour; and, lastly, the paramount consideration for the
legislature, that a large portion of the people are disaffected to
the State, and ready to join its enemies, and this almost solely on
account of the state of the law relating to land. Hence the necessity
of settling the question as speedily as possible, and the duty of all
who have the means to contribute something towards that most desirable
consummation, which seems to be all that is wanted to make Irishmen of
every class work together earnestly for the welfare of their country.
It is admitted that no class of men in the world has improved more
than the Irish landlords during the last twenty years. Let the
legislature restore confidence between them and the people by taking
away all ground for the suspicion that they wish to extirpate the
Celtic race.
Nor was this suspicion without cause, as the following history will
too clearly prove. A very able English writer has said: 'The policy
of all the successive swarms of settlers was to extirpate the native
Celtic race, but every effort made to break up the old framework
of society failed, for the new-comers soon became blended with and
undistinguishable from the mass of the people--being obliged to ally
themselves with the native chieftains, rather than live hemmed in by a
fiery ring of angry septs and exposed to perpetual war with everything
around them. Merged in the great Celtic mass, they adopted Irish
manners and names, yet proscribed and insulted the native inhabitants
as an inferior race. Everything liberal towards them is intercepted in
its progress.
'The past history of Ulster is but a portion of Scottish history
inserted into that of Ireland--a stone in the Irish mosaic of an
entirely different quality and colour from the pieces that surround
it.
'Thus it came to pass that, through the confiscation of their lands
and the proscription of their religion, popery was worked by a most
vehement process into the blood and brain of the Irish nation.'
It has been often said that the Irish must be an inferior race, since
they allowed themselves to be subjugated by some thousands of English
invaders. But it should be recollected, first, that the conquest,
commenced by Henry II. in the twelfth century, was not completed till
the seventeenth century, when the King's writ ran for the first time
through the province of Ulster, the ancient kingdom of the O'Neills;
in the second place, the weakness of the Celtic communities was not so
much the fault of the men as of their institutions, brought with them
from the East and clung to with wonderful tenacity. So long as they
had boundless territory for their flocks and herds, and could always
move on 'to pastures new,' they increased and multiplied, and allowed
the sword and the battle-axe to rest, unless when a newly elected
chief found it necessary to give his followers 'a hosting'--which
means an expedition for plunder. Down to the seventeenth century,
after five hundred years' contact with the Teutonic race, they were
essentially the same people as they were when the ancient Greeks
and Romans knew them. They are thus described by Dr. Mommsen in his
'History of Rome:'--'Such qualities--those of good soldiers and of bad
citizens--explain the historical fact that the Celts have shaken all
States and have _founded none_. Everywhere we find them ready to rove,
or, in other words, to march, preferring movable property to landed
estate, and gold to everything else; following the profession of arms
as a system of organised pillage, or even as a trade for hire, and
with such success that even the Roman historian, Sallust, acknowledges
that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in feats of arms.
They were the true 'soldiers of fortune' of antiquity, as pictures and
descriptions represent them, with big but sinewy bodies, with shaggy
hair and long moustaches--quite a contrast to the Greeks and Romans,
who shaved the upper lip--in the variegated embroidered dresses which
in combat were not unfrequently thrown off, with a broad gold ring
round their neck, wearing no helmets and without missile weapons
of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long
ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance, all ornamented with gold,
for they were not unskilful in working in metals. Everything was made
subservient to ostentation--even wounds, which were often enlarged for
the purpose of boasting a broader scar. Usually they fought on foot,
but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every free man was
followed by two attendants, likewise mounted. War-chariots were early
in use, as they were among the Libyans and Hellenes in the earliest
times. Many a trait reminds us of the chivalry of the middle ages,
particularly the custom of single combat, which was foreign to the
Greeks and Romans. Not only were they accustomed in war to challenge
a single enemy to fight, after having previously insulted him by words
and gestures; in peace also they fought with each other in splendid
equipments, as for life or death. After such feats carousals followed
in due course. In this way they led, whether under their own or
a foreign banner, a restless soldier life, constantly occupied in
fighting and in their so-called feats of heroism. They were dispersed
from _Ireland_ and Spain to Asia Minor, but all their enterprises
melted away like snow in spring, and they nowhere created a great
state or developed a distinctive culture of their own.' Such were
the people who once almost terminated the existence of Rome, and were
afterwards with difficulty repulsed from Greece, who became masters of
the most fertile part of Italy and of a fair province in the heart
of Asia Minor, who, after their Italian province had been subdued,
inflicted disastrous blows on successive Roman generals, and were only
at last subjugated by Cæsar himself in nine critical and sometimes
most dangerous campaigns, B.C. 51.
Niebuhr observes that at that time the form of government was
everywhere an hereditary monarchy, which, when Cæsar went into Gaul,
had been swallowed up, as had the authority of the Senate, in the
anarchy of the nobles. Their freedom was lawlessness; an inherent
incapacity of living under the dominion of laws distinguishes them as
barbarians from the Greeks and Italians. As individuals had to procure
the protection of some magnate in order to live in safety, so the
weaker tribes took shelter under the patronage of a more powerful one.
For they were a disjointed multitude; and when any people had in
this manner acquired an extensive sovereignty, they exercised it
arbitrarily until its abuses became intolerable, or their subjects
were urged by blind hatred of their power to fall off from them, and
gather round some new centre. The sole bond of union was the Druidical
hierarchy which, at least in Cæsar's time, was common to both nations.
Both of them paid obedience to its tribunal, which administered
justice once a year--an institution which probably was not introduced
till long after the age of migrations, when the expulsion of the
vanquished had ceased to be regarded as the end of war, and which must
have been fostered by the constant growth of lawlessness in particular
states--being upheld by the _ban_, which excluded the contumacious
from all intercourse in divine worship and in daily life with the
faithful. The huge bodies, wild features, and long shaggy hair of the
men, gave a ghastliness to their aspect. This, along with their fierce
courage, their countless numbers, and the noise made by an enormous
multitude of horns and trumpets, struck the armies arrayed against
them with fear and amazement. If these, however, did not allow
their terror to overpower them, the want of order, discipline, and
perseverance would often enable an inferior number to vanquish a vast
host of the barbarians. Besides, they were but ill equipped. Few of
them wore any armour; their narrow shields, which were of the same
height with their bodies, were weak and clumsy; they rushed upon their
enemies with broad thin battle-swords of bad steel, which the first
blow upon iron often notched and rendered useless. Like true savages,
they destroyed the inhabitants, the towns, and the agriculture of the
countries they conquered. They cut off the heads of the slain,
and tied them by the hair to the manes of their horses. If a skull
belonged to a person of rank, they nailed it up in their houses and
preserved it as an heirloom for their posterity, as the nobles in rude
ages do stag-horns. Towns were rare amongst them; the houses and
the villages, which were very numerous, were mean, the furniture
wretched--a heap of straw covered with skins served both for a bed
and a seat. They did not cultivate corn save for a very limited
consumption, for the main part of their food was the milk and the
flesh of their cattle. These formed their wealth. Gold, too, they
had in abundance, derived partly from the sandy beds of their rivers,
partly from some mines which these had led them to discover. It was
worn in ornaments by every Gaul of rank. In battle he bore gold chains
on his arms and heavy gold collars round his neck, even when the upper
part of his body was in other respects quite naked. For they often
threw off their parti-coloured chequered cloaks, which shone with
all the hues of the rainbow, like the picturesque dress of their
kinspeople the Highlanders, who have laid aside the trousers of the
ancient Gauls. Their duels and gross revels are an image of the rudest
part of the middle ages. Their debauches were mostly committed with
beer and mead; for vines and all the plants of southern regions were
as yet total strangers to the north of the Alps, where the climate in
those ages was extremely severe; so that wine was rare, though of all
the commodities imported it was the most greedily bought up.
Ulster was known in ancient times as one of the five Irish 'kingdoms,'
and remained unconquered by the English till the reign of James I.,
when the last prince of the great house of O'Neill, then Earl of
Tyrone, fled to the Continent in company with O'Donel, Earl of
Tyrconnel, head of another very ancient sept. Up to that period the
men of Ulster proudly regarded themselves as 'Irish of the Irish and
Catholic of the Catholics.' The inhabitants were of mixed blood, but,
as in the other provinces of the island, the great mass of the people,
as well as the ruling classes, were of Celtic origin. Those whom
ethnologists still recognise as aborigines, in parts of Connaught
and in some mountainous regions, an inferior race, are said to be
the descendants of the Firbolgs, or Belgae, who formed the third
immigration. They were followed and subdued by the Tuatha de
Danans--men famed for their gigantic power and supernatural skill--a
race of demigods, who still live in the national superstitions. The
last of the ancient invasions was by the Gael or Celt, known as the
Milesians and Scoti. The institutions and customs of this people were
established over the whole island, and were so deeply rooted in the
soil that their remnants to this day present the greatest obstacles
to the settlement of the land question according to the English model,
and on the principles of political economy, which run directly counter
to Irish instincts. It is truly wonderful how distinctly the present
descendants of this race preserve the leading features of their
primitive character. In France and England the Celtic character was
moulded by the power and discipline of the Roman Empire. To Ireland
this modifying influence never extended; and we find the Ulster chiefs
who fought for their territories with English viceroys 280 years ago
very little different from the men who followed Brennus to the sack
of Home, and encountered the legions of Julius Cæsar on the plains of
Gaul.
Mr. Prendergast observes, in the introduction to his 'Cromwellian
Settlement' that when the companions of Strongbow landed in the reign
of Henry II. they found a country such as Cæsar had found in Gaul
1200 years before. A thousand years had passed over the island without
producing the slightest social progress--'the inhabitants divided
into tribes on the system of the clansmen and chiefs, without a common
Government, suddenly confederating, suddenly dissolving, with Brehons,
Shaunahs, minstrels, bards, and harpers, in all unchanged, except that
for their ancient Druids they had got Christian priests. Had the
Irish remained honest pagans, Ireland perhaps had remained unconquered
still. Round the coast strangers had built seaport towns, either
traders from the Carthaginian settlements in Spain, or outcasts from
their own country, like the Greeks that built Marseilles. At the time
of the arrival of the French and Flemish adventurers from Wales, they
were occupied by a mixed Danish and French population, who supplied
the Irish with groceries, including the wines of Poitou, the latter in
such abundance that they had no need of vineyards.'
If vineyards had been needed, we may be sure they would not have been
planted, for the Irish Celts planted nothing. Neither did they build,
except in the simplest and rudest way, improving their architecture
from age to age no more than the beaver or the bee. Mr. Prendergast
is an able, honest, and frank writer; yet there is something amusingly
Celtic in the flourish with which he excuses the style of palaces in
which the Irish princes delighted to dwell. 'Unlike England,' he says,
'then covered with castles on the heights, where the French gentlemen
secured themselves and their families against the hatred of the churls
and villains, as the English peasantry were called, the dwellings
of the Irish chiefs were of wattles or clay. It is for robbers and
foreigners to take to rocks and precipices for security; for native
rulers, there is no such fortress _as justice and humanity_.' This
is very fine, but surely Mr. Prendergast cannot mean that the Irish
chiefs were distinguished by their justice and humanity. The following
touch is still grander:--'The Irish, like the wealthiest and highest
of the present day, loved detached houses surrounded by fields and
woods. Towns and their walls they looked upon as tombs or sepulchres,
&c.' As to fields, there were none, because the Irish never made
fences, their patches of cultivated land being divided by narrow
strips of green sod. Besides, they lived in villages, which were
certainly surrounded by woods, because the woods were everywhere,
and they furnished the inhabitants with fuel and shelter, as well as
materials for building their huts.
But further on this able author expresses himself much more in
accordance with the truth of history, when he states that the 'Irish
enemy' was no _nation_ in the modern sense of the word, but a race
divided into many nations or tribes, _separately_ defending their
lands from the English barons in the immediate neighbourhood.
There had been no ancient national government displaced, no dynasty
overthrown; the Irish had _no national flag_, nor any capital city as
the metropolis of their common country, nor any common administration
of law.' He might have added that they had no _mint_. There never was
an Irish king who had his face stamped on a coin of his realm. Some
stray pieces of money found their way into the country from abroad,
but up to the close of the sixteenth century the rudest form of barter
prevailed in Ulster, and accounts were paid not in coins but in cows.
Even the mechanical arts which had flourished in the country before
the arrival of the Celts had gradually perished, and had disappeared
at the time of the English invasion. Any handy men could build a house
of mud and wattles. Masons, carpenters, smiths, painters, glaziers,
&c., were not wanted by a people who despised stone buildings as
prisons, and abhorred walled towns as sepulchres. Spinning and weaving
were arts cultivated by the women, each household providing materials
for clothing, which was little used in warm weather, and thrown off
when fighting or any other serious work was to be done.
I should be sorry to disparage the Celtic race, or any other race, by
exaggerating their bad qualities or suppressing any reliable testimony
to their merits. But with me the truth of history is sacred. Both
sides of every case should be fairly stated. Nothing can be gained by
striving to hide facts which may be known to every person who takes
the trouble to study the subject. I write in the interest of the
people--of the toiling masses; and I find that they were oppressed and
degraded by the ruling classes long before the Norman invader took
the place of the Celtic chief. And it is a curious fact that when the
Cromwellians turned the Catholic population out of their homes and
drove them into Connaught, they were but following the example set
them by the Milesian lords of the soil centuries before.
The late Mr. Darcy Magee, a real lover of his country, in his Irish
history points out this fact. The Normans found the population divided
into two great classes--the free tribes, chiefly if not exclusively
Celtic, and the unfree tribes, consisting of the descendants of the
subjugated races, or of clans once free, reduced to servitude by the
sword, and the offspring of foreign mercenary soldiers. 'The unfree
tribes,' says Mr. Darcy Magee, 'have left no history. Under the
despotism of the Milesian kings, it was high treason to record the
actions of the conquered race, so that the Irish Belgae fared as badly
in this respect at the hands of the Milesian historians as the latter
fared in after times from the chroniclers of the Normans. We only know
that such tribes were, and that their numbers and physical force more
than once excited the apprehension of the children of the conquerors.
One thing is certain--the jealous policy of the superior race never
permitted them to reascend the plane of equality from which they had
been hurled at the very commencement of the Milesian ascendency.'
Mr. Haverty, another Catholic historian, learned, accurate, and
candid, laments the oppression of the people by their native rulers.
'Those who boasted descent from the Scytho-Spanish hero would have
considered themselves degraded were they to devote themselves to
any less honourable profession than those of soldiers, _ollavs_, or
physicians; and hence the cultivation of the soil and the exercise of
the mechanic arts were left almost exclusively to the _Firbolgs_ and
the _Tuatha-de-Danans_--the former people, in particular, being still
very numerous, and forming the great mass of the population in
the west. These were ground down by high rents and the exorbitant
exactions of the dominant race, _in order to support their unbounded
hospitality_ and defray the expenses of costly assemblies; but this
oppression must have caused perpetual discontent, and the hard-working
plebeians, as they were called, easily perceived that their masters
were running headlong to destruction, and that it only required a bold
effort to shake off their yoke.' Then follows an account of a civil
war, one of the leaders of the revolution being elected king at its
termination. Carbry reigned five years, during which time there was no
rule or order, and the country was a prey to every misfortune. 'Evil
was the state of Ireland during his reign; fruitless her corn, for
there used to be but one grain on the stalk; and fruitless her rivers;
her cattle without milk; her fruit without plenty, for there used to
be but one acorn on the oak.'
Dr. Lynch, author of _Cambrensis Eversus_, expresses his astonishment
at the great number of ancient Irish kings, most of whom were cut off
by a violent death, each hewing his way to the throne over the body
of his predecessor. But upon applying his mind to the more profound
consideration of the matter, he found nothing more wonderful in
the phenomenon 'than that the human family should proceed from one
man--the overflowing harvest from a few grains of seed, &c.' His
learned translator, the Rev. Matthew Kelly, of Maynooth, sees proof
of amendment in the fact that between 722 and 1022 twelve Irish kings
died a natural death. This candid and judicious writer observes in
a note--'It appears from the Irish and English annals that there
was perpetual war in Ireland during more than 400 years after the
invasion. It could not be called a war of races, except perhaps during
the first century, for English and Irish are constantly found fighting
under the same banner, according to the varying interests of the rival
lords and princes of both nations. This was the case even from the
commencement.'[1]
[Footnote 1: Vol. i. p.216.]
Many persons have wondered at the success of small bands of English
invaders. Why did not the Irish nation rise _en masse_, and drive them
into the sea? The answer is easy. There was no Irish nation. About
half a million of people were scattered over the island in villages,
divided into tribes generally at war with one another, each chief
ready to accept foreign aid against his adversary--some, perhaps,
hoping thereby to attain supremacy in their clans, and others, who
were pretenders, burning to be avenged of those who had supplanted
them. It was religion that first gave the Irish race a common cause.
In the very year of the English invasion (1171) there were no fewer
than twenty predatory excursions or battles among the Irish chiefs
themselves, exclusive of contests with the invaders. Hence the Pope
said--'_Gens se interimit mutua cæde_.' The Pope was right.
The clergy exerted themselves to the utmost in trying to exorcise the
demon of destruction and to arrest the work of extermination. Not only
the _Bashall Isa_, or 'the staff of Jesus,' but many other relics were
used with the most solemn rites, to impress the people with a sense
of the wickedness of their clan-fights, and to induce them to keep the
peace, but in vain. The King of Connaught once broke a truce entered
into under every possible sanction of this kind, trampling upon all,
that he might get the King of Meath into his clutches. Hence the Rev.
Mr. Kelly is constrained to say--'It is now generally admitted by
Catholic writers that however great the efforts of the Irish clergy to
reform their distracted country in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
the picture of anarchy drawn by Pope Adrian is hardly overcharged.'
Indeed, some Catholic writers have confessed that the anarchy would
never have been terminated except by foreign conquest establishing a
strong central government. This, however, was not accomplished
till after a struggle of centuries, during which, except in brief
intervals, when a strong prince was able to protect his people, the
national demoralisation grew worse and worse. An Oxford priest,
who kept a school at Limerick, writing so late as 1566 of the Irish
nobles, says--'Of late they spare neither churches nor hallowed
places, but thence also they fill their hands with spoil--yea, and
sometimes they set them on fire and kill the men that there lie
hidden.'
Mr. Froude, following the Irish MSS. in the Rolls House, has presented
graphic pictures of the disorders of the Irishry in the reign of Queen
Mary. 'The English garrison,' he says, 'harassed and pillaged the
farmers of Meath and Dublin; the chiefs made forays upon each other,
killing, robbing, and burning. When the war broke out between England
and France, there were the usual conspiracies and uprisings of
nationality; the young Earl of Kildare, in reward to the Queen who
had restored him to his rank, appearing as the natural leader of
the patriots. Ireland was thus happy in the gratification of all its
natural tendencies. The Brehon law readvanced upon the narrow limits
to which, by the exertions of Henry VIII., the circuits of the
judges had been extended. And with the Brehon law came anarchy as its
inseparable attendant.'
The correctness of this view is too well attested by the records
which the learned historian brings to light, adopting the quaint
and expressive phraseology of the old writers whom he quotes. For
example:--
'The lords and gentiles of the Irish Pale that were not governed under
the Queen's laws were compelled to keep and maintain a great number
of idle men of war to rule their people at home, and exact from their
neighbours abroad--working everyone his own wilful will for a law--to
the spoil of his country, and decay and waste of the common weal of
the same. The idle men of war ate up altogether; the lord and his men
took what they pleased, destroying their tenants, and themselves never
the better. The common people, having nothing left to lose, became as
idle and careless in their behaviour as the rest, stealing by day and
robbing by night. Yet it was a state of things which they seemed all
equally to enjoy, and high and low alike were always ready to bury
their own quarrels, to join against the Queen and the English.'
At the time when the crown passed to Elizabeth the qualities of the
people were thus described by a correspondent of the council, who
presents the English view of the Irishry at that time:--
'The appearance and outward behaviour of the Irish showeth them to be
fruits of no good tree, for they exercise no virtue and refrain and
forbear from no vice, but think it lawful to do every man what him
listeth. They neither love nor dread God, nor yet hate the devil. They
are worshippers of images and open idolaters. Their common oath they
swear is by books, bells, and other ornaments which they do use as
holy religion. Their chief and solemnest oath is by their lord or
master's hand, which whoso forsweareth is sure to pay a fine or
sustain a worse turn. The Sabbath-day they rest from all honest
exercises, and the week days they are not idle, but worse occupied.
They do not honour their father and mother as much as they do
reverence strangers. For every murder that they commit they do not so
soon repent, for whose blood they once shed, they lightly never cease
killing all that name. They do not so commonly commit adultery; not
for that they profess or keep chastity, but for that they seldom or
never marry, and therefore few of them are lawful heirs, by the law of
the realm, to the lands they possess. They steal but from the strong,
and take by violence from the poor and weak. They know not so well who
is their neighbour as who they favour; with him they will witness in
right and wrong. They covet not their neighbours' good, but command
all that is their neighbours' as their own. Thus they live and die,
and there is none to teach them better. There are no ministers.
Ministers will not take pains where there is no living to be had,
neither church nor parish, but all decayed. People will not come to
inhabit where there is no defence of law.'
After six years of _discipline and improvement_ Sir Henry Sidney, in
1566, described the state of the four shires, the Irish inhabitants,
and the English garrison, in the following terms:--'The _English Pale_
is overwhelmed with vagabonds--stealth and spoil daily carried out of
it--the people miserable--not two gentlemen in the whole of it able
to lend 20 l. They have neither horse nor armour, nor apparel, nor
victual. The soldiers be so beggerlike as it would abhor a general to
look on them; yet so insolent as to be intolerable to the people, so
rooted in idleness as there is no hope by correction to amend them,
yet so allied with the Irish, I dare not trust them in a forte, or in
any dangerous service.'
A sort of 'special correspondent' or 'commissioner,' as we should call
him now, furnished to Cecil a detailed account of the social condition
of the people, which of course he viewed with English eyes. He found
existing among them a general organisation wherever the Irish language
was spoken--the remnants of a civilisation very ancient, but now fast
tending to ruin. Next to the chiefs were the priesthood, and after
them came a kind of intellectual hierarchy, consisting of four classes
of spiritual leaders and teachers, which were thus described. The
first was called the Brehon, or the judge. These judges took
'pawns' of both the parties, and then judged according to their own
discretion. Their property was neutral, and the Irishmen would not
prey upon them. They had great plenty of cattle, and they harboured
many vagabonds and idle persons. They were the chief maintainers of
rebels, but when the English army came to their neighbourhood they
fled to the mountains and woods 'because they would not succour
them with victuals and other necessaries.' The next sort was called
_Shankee_, who had also great plenty of cattle wherewith they
succoured the rebels. They made the ignorant men of the country
believe that they were descended from Alexander the Great, or Darius,
or Cæsar, 'or some other notable prince, which made the ignorant
people run mad, and care not what they did.' This, the correspondent
remarked, 'was very hurtful to the realm.' Not less hurtful were the
third sort called _Denisdan_, who not only maintained the rebels,
but caused those that would be true to become rebellious--'thieves,
extortioners, murderers, raveners, yea, and worse if it was possible.'
These seem to have been the historians or chroniclers of the tribe.
If they saw a young man, the descendant of an O' or a Mac, with half a
dozen followers, they forthwith made a rhyme about his father and his
ancestors, numbering how many heads they had cut off, how many towns
they had burned, how many virgins they had deflowered, how many
notable murders they had done, comparing them to Hannibal, or Scipio,
or Hercules, or some other famous person--'wherewithal the poor fool
runs mad, and thinks indeed it is so.' Then he will gather a lot of
rascals about him, and get a fortune-teller to prophesy how he is to
speed. After these preliminaries he betakes himself with his followers
at night to the side of a wood, where they lurk till morning. And when
it is daylight, then will they go to the poor villages, not sparing to
destroy young infants and aged people; and if a woman be ever so
great with child, her will they kill, burning the houses and corn, and
ransacking the poor cots; then will they drive away all the kine
and plough-horses, with all the other cattle. Then must they have a
bagpipe blowing before them, and if any of the cattle fortune to wax
weary or faint they will kill them rather than it should do the owner
good; and if they go by any house of friars, or religious house, they
will give them two or three beeves, and they will take them and pray
for them, yea, and praise their doings, and say, 'His father was
accustomed so to do, wherein he will rejoice.' The fourth class
consisted of 'poets.' These men had great store of cattle, and 'used
all the trade of the others with an addition of prophecies. They were
maintainers of witches and other vile matters, to the blasphemy of
God, and to the impoverishing of the commonwealth.'
These four septs were divided in all places of the four quarters of
Ireland, and some of the islands beyond Ireland, as Aran, the land of
the Saints, Innisbuffen, Innisturk, Innismain, and Innisclare. These
islands, he added, were under the rule of O'Neill, and they were
'very pleasant and fertile, plenty of wood, water, and arable ground,
pastures, and fish, and a very temperate air.' On this description
Mr. Froude remarks in a note--'At present they are barren heaps of
treeless moors and mountains. They yield nothing but scanty oat crops
and potatoes, and though the seas are full of fish as ever, there
are no hands to catch them. _The change is a singular commentary upon
modern improvements_.' There were many branches belonging to the four
septs, continues the credulous reporter, who was evidently imposed
upon, like many of his countrymen in modern times with better means
of information. For example, 'there was the branch of Gogath, the
glutton, of which one man would eat half a sheep at a sitting. There
was another called the Carrow, a gambler, who generally went about
naked, carrying dice and cards, and he would play the hair off his
head. Then there was a set of women called Goyng women, blasphemers
of God, who ran from country to country, sowing sedition among the
people.'[1]
[Footnote 1: Froude's History, of England, vol. viii. chap. vii.]
Mr. Froude says that this 'picture of Ireland' was given by some
half Anglicised, half Protestantised Celt, who wrote what he had seen
around him, careless of political philosophy, or of fine phrases with
which to embellish his diction. But if he was a Celt, I think his
description clearly proves that he must have been a Celt of some
other country than the one upon whose state he reports. Judging from
internal evidence, I should say that he could not be a native; for an
Irishman, even though a convert to Anglicanism, and anxious to please
his new masters, could scarcely betray so much ignorance of the
history of his country, so much bigotry, such a want of candour and
discrimination. If Mr. Froude's great work has any fault, it is his
unconscious prejudice against Ireland. He knows as well as anyone the
working of the feudal system and the clan system in Scotland in
the same age. He knows with what treachery and cruelty murders
were perpetrated by chiefs and lairds, pretenders and usurpers--how
anarchy, violence, and barbarism reigned in that land; yet, when he is
dealing with a similar state of things in Ireland, he uniformly takes
it as proof of an incurable national idiosyncrasy, and too often
generalises from a few cases. For example, in speaking of Shane
O'Neill, who killed his half-brother, Matthew Kelly, Baron of
Dungannon, in order to secure the succession for himself, he
says--'_They manage things strangely in Ireland._ The old O'Neill,
instead of being irritated, saw in this exploit a proof of commendable
energy. He at once took Shane into favour, and, had he been able,
would have given him his dead brother's rights.'