ULSTER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Let us, then, endeavour to get rid of the pernicious delusions about
race and religion in dealing with this Irish land question. Identity
of race and substantial agreement in religion did not prevent the
Ulster landlords from uprooting their tenants when they fancied it was
their interest to banish them--to substitute grazing for tillage, and
cattle for a most industrious and orderly peasantry.
The letters of Primate Boulter contain much valuable information on
the state of Ulster in the last century, and furnish apt illustrations
of the land question, which, I fancy, will be new and startling to
many readers. Boulter was lord primate of Ireland from 1724 to 1738.
He was thirteen times one of the lords justices. As an Englishman and
a good churchman, he took care of the English interests and of the
establishment. The letters were written in confidence to Sir Robert
Walpole and other ministers of state, and were evidently not intended
for publication. An address 'to the reader' from some friend, states
truly that they give among other things an impartial account of 'the
distressed state of the kingdom for want of _tillage_, the vast sums
of money sent out of the nation for corn, flour, &c., the dismal
calamities thereon, the want of trade and the regulation of the
English and other coins, to the very great distress of all the
manufacturers,' &c. They show that he was a man of sound judgment,
public-spirited, and very moderate and impartial for the times in
which he lived. His evidence with regard to the relations of landlord
and tenant in Ulster is exceedingly valuable at the present moment.
Lord Dufferin could not have read the letters when he wrote his book;
otherwise I should think his apology for the landlords of the last
century would have been considerably modified.
Primate Boulter repeatedly complained to Walpole, the Duke of
Newcastle, and other ministers, that the Ulster farmers were deserting
the country in large numbers, emigrating to the United States, then
British colonies, to the West Indies, or to any country where they
hoped to get the means of living, in many cases binding themselves
to work for a number of years _as slaves_ in payment of their passage
out. The desire to quit the country of their birth is described by the
primate as a mania. Writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1728 he
says:--'We are under great trouble here about a frenzy that has taken
hold of very great numbers to leave this country for the West Indies,
and we are endeavouring to learn what may be the reasons of it, and
the proper remedies.' Two or three weeks later he reported to the Duke
of Newcastle that for several years past some agents from the colonies
in America, and several masters of ships, had gone about the country
'and deluded the people with stories of great plenty and estates to
be had for going for in those parts of the world.' During the previous
summer more than 3,000 men, women, and children had been shipped
for the West Indies. Of these, not more than one in ten were men of
substance. The rest hired themselves for their passage, or contracted
with masters of ships for four years' servitude, 'selling themselves
as servants for their subsistence.' The whole north was in a ferment,
people every day engaging one another to go next year to the West
Indies. 'The humour,' says the primate, 'has spread like a contagious
distemper, and the people will hardly hear anybody that tries to
cure them of their madness. The worst is that it affects only
_Protestants_, and reigns chiefly in the North, which is the seat of
our linen manufacture.'
As the Protestant people, the descendants of the English and Scotch
who had settled in the country in the full assurance that they were
building homes for their posterity, were thus deserting those homes in
such multitudes, their pastors sent a memorial to the lord lieutenant,
setting forth the grievances which they believed to be the cause of
the desertion. On this memorial the primate wrote comments to the
English Government, and, in doing so, he stated some astounding
facts as to the treatment of the people by their landlords. He was a
cautious man, thoroughly acquainted with the facts, and writing under
a sense of great responsibility. In order to understand some of those
facts, we should bear in mind that the landlords had laid down large
portions of their estates in pasture, to avoid the payment of tithes,
and that this burden was thrown entirely upon the tenants who tilled
the land. Now, let my readers mark what the primate states as to their
condition. He says:--'If a landlord takes too great a portion of the
profits of a farm for his share by way of rent (as the tithe will
light on the tenant's share), the tenant will be impoverished; but
then it is not the tithe, but the increased rent that undoes the
farmer. And, indeed, in this country, where I fear the tenant hardly
ever has more than one-third of the profits he makes of his farm for
his share, and too often but a _fourth_, or, perhaps, a _fifth part_,
as the tenant's share is charged with the tithe, his case is, no
doubt, hard, but it is plain from what side the hardship arises.' What
the gentlemen wanted to be at, according to the primate, was, that
they might go on raising their rents, and that the clergy should
receive their old payments. He admits, however, that the tenants were
sometimes cited to the ecclesiastical courts, and if they failed to
appear there, they stood excommunicated; and he adds, 'possibly when a
writ _de excommunicato capiendo_ is taken out, and they find they have
7 l. or 8 l. to pay, _they run away_, for the greatest part of the
occupiers of the land here are so poor, that an extraordinary stroke
of 8 l. or 10 l. falling on them is certain ruin to them.' He further
states that, to his own knowledge, many of the clergy had chosen
rather to lose their 'small dues' than to be at a certain great
expense in getting them, 'and at an uncertainty whether the farmer
would not at last _run away without paying anything_.'
Such was the condition of the Protestants of Ulster during the era of
the penal code; and it is a curious fact that it was the Presbyterians
and not the Catholics that were forced by the exactions of the
Protestant landlords and the clergy to run away from the country which
their forefathers had been brought over to civilize. But there was
another fact connected with the condition of Ulster which I dare say
will be almost incredible to many readers. The tenantry, so cruelly
rack-rented and impoverished, were reduced by two or three bad seasons
to a state bordering upon famine. There was little or no corn in the
province. The primate set on foot a subscription in Dublin, to which
he himself contributed very liberally. The object was to buy food to
supply the necessities of the north, and to put a stop to 'the great
desertion' they had been threatened with. He hoped that the landlords
would 'do _their_ part by remitting some arrears, or making some
abatement of their rents.' As many of the tenants had eaten the oats
they should have sowed their lands with, he expected the landlords
would have the good sense to furnish them with seed; if not, a great
deal of land would lie waste that year. And where were the provisions
got? Partly in Munster, where corn was very cheap and abundant. But
the people of Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Clonmel objected to have
their provisions sent away, although they were in some places 'as
cheap again as in the north; but where dearest, at least one-third
part cheaper.' Riotous mobs broke open the store-houses and cellars,
setting what price they pleased upon the provisions. And, what between
those riots and the prevalence of easterly winds, three weeks elapsed
before the 3,000 l. worth of oats, oatmeal, and potatoes could be got
down to relieve the famishing people of the north, which then seemed
black enough, even to its own inhabitants. Hence the humane primate
was obliged to write: 'The humour of going to America still continues,
and the scarcity of provisions certainly makes many quit us. There
are now seven ships at Belfast that are carrying off 1,000 passengers
thither, and if we knew how to stop them, as most of them can neither
get victuals nor work at home, it would be cruel to do it.'
The Presbyterian clergy suffered greatly from the impoverishment of
their people. Several of them who had been receiving a stipend of
50 l. a year, had their incomes reduced to less than 15 l. In their
distress they appealed to the primate, and, staunch churchman as he
was, they found in him a kind and earnest advocate. Writing to Sir
Robert Walpole, on March 31, 1729, he pleaded for the restoration of
400 l. a year, which had been given to the non-conforming clergy
of Ireland from the privy purse, in addition to the 1,200 l. royal
bounty, which, it appears, had been suspended for two years, owing
to the death of the late king. 'They are sensible,' said his grace,
'there is nothing due to them, nor do they make any such claim; but as
the calamities of this kingdom are at present very great, and by the
desertion of many of their people to America, and the poverty of the
greatest part of the rest, their contributions, particularly in the
north, are very much fallen off, it would be a great instance of his
majesty's goodness if he would consider their present distress.' In
our own days a Presbyterian minister would be considered to deserve
well of his country if he emigrated to America, and took with him as
many of the people as he could induce to forsake their native land.
But what was the great plea which Primate Boulter urged on the English
Minister on behalf of the Presbyterian clergy of his day? It was, that
they had exerted their influence to prevent emigration. 'It is,'
he said, 'but doing them justice to affirm that they are very
well affected to his majesty and his royal family, and by the best
enquiries I could make, do their best endeavours to keep their
congregations from deserting the country, not more than one or two
of the younger ministers having anyways encouraged the humour now
prevailing here. And his majesty's goodness in giving them some
extraordinary relief on this occasion of their present great distress
would undoubtedly make them _more active to retain their people here_.
I cannot help mentioning on this occasion that, what with scarceness
of corn in the north, _and the loss of all credit there_, and by
the numbers that go, or talk of going, to America, and with the
disturbances in the south, this kingdom is at present in a deplorable
condition.'
In a statement previously made to the Bishop of London, the Irish
primate earnestly solicited his correspondent to use his influence
to prevent the Irish landlords from passing a law to strip the
established clergy of their rights with respect to the tithe of
agistment. They had entered into a general combination, and formed a
stock purse to resist the payment of tithe, except by the poor
tenants who tilled the soil, a remarkable contrast to the zeal of
the landlords of our own time in defending church property against
'spoliation' by the imperial legislature, and to the liberality with
which many of them are now contributing to the Sustentation Fund.
How shall we account for the change? Is it that the landlords of the
present day are more righteous than their grandfathers? Or is it that
the same principle of self-interest which led the proprietors of past
times to grind the tenantry and rob the Church, now operates in forms
more consistent with piety and humanity, and by its subtle influence
illustrates the maxim of the poet--
Self-love and social is the same.
However that may be, the primate contented himself in this letter
with a defence of the Church, in which he admitted matters of real
grievance, merely alluding to other grievances, 'such as raising
the rents unreasonably, the oppression by justices of the peace,
seneschals, and other officers in the country.'
From the pictures of the times he presents we should not be surprised
at his statement to the Duke of Newcastle, that the people who went
to America made great complaints of the oppressions they suffered, and
said that those oppressions were one reason of their going. When he
went on his visitation, in 1726, he 'met all the roads full of whole
families that had left their homes to beg abroad,' having consumed
their stock of potatoes two months before the usual time. During the
previous year many hundreds had perished of famine. What was the cause
of this misery, this desolating process going on over the plains of
Ulster? The archbishop accounts for it by stating that many persons
had let large tracts of land, from 3,000 to 4,000 acres, which were
stocked with cattle, and had no other inhabitants on their land than
so many cottiers as were necessary to look after their sheep and black
cattle, '_so that, in some of the finest counties, in many places
there is neither house nor cornfield to be seen in ten or fifteen
miles' travelling_, and daily in some counties many gentlemen, as
their leases fall into their hands, tie up their tenants from tillage;
and this is one of the main causes why so many venture to go into
foreign service at the hazard of their lives if taken, because they
cannot get land to till at home.'
My readers should remember that the industrious, law-abiding,
bible-loving, God-fearing people, who were thus driven by oppression
from the fair fields of Ulster, which they had cultivated, and
the dwellings which they had erected, to make way for sheep and
cattle--because it was supposed by the landlords that sheep and cattle
paid better--were the descendants of British settlers who came to the
country under a royal guarantee _of freeholds and permanent tenures_.
Let them picture to their minds this fine race of honest, godly
people, rack-rented, crushed, evicted, heart-broken--men, women, and
children--Protestants, Saxons, cast out to perish as the refuse of the
earth, by a set of landed proprietors of their own race and creed; and
learn from this most instructive fact that, if any body of men has
the power of making laws to promote its own interest, no instincts of
humanity, no dictates of religion, no restraints of conscience can
be relied upon to keep them from acting with ruthless barbarity,
and doing more to ruin their country than a foreign invader could
accomplish by letting loose upon it his brutal soldiers. How much
more earnestly would Boulter have pleaded with the prime minister of
England on behalf of the wretched people of Ulster if he could have
foreseen that ere long those Presbyterian emigrants, with the sense
of injustice and cruel wrong burning in their hearts, would be found
fighting under the banner of American independence--the bravest and
fiercest soldiers of freedom which the British troops encountered in
the American war. History is continually repeating itself, yet how
vainly are its lessons taught! The same legal power of extermination
is still possessed by the Irish landlords after sixty-nine years of
imperial legislation. Our hardy, industrious people, naturally as well
disposed to royalty as any people in the world, are still crowding
emigrant ships in all our ports, deserting their country with the same
bitter feelings that animated the Ulster men a century ago, hating our
Government with a mortal hatred, and ready to fight against it under
a foreign flag! We have no Primate Boulter now in the Protestant
hierarchy to plead the cause of an unprotected tenantry; but we have
the press, which can concentrate upon the subject the irresistible
force of public opinion.
As a churchman, Primate Boulter naturally regarded the land question
in its bearings on the interests of the Establishment. Writing to Sir
Robert Walpole in 1737 he said that he had in vain represented to the
landlords that, by destroying the tithe of agistment, they naturally
discouraged tillage, lessened the number of people, and raised the
price of provisions. By running into cattle they caused the young men
to enlist in foreign service for bread, there being no employment for
them at home, 'where two or three hands can look after some hundreds
of acres stocked with cattle.' And by this means, said the primate, 'a
great part of our churches are neglected; in many places five, six, or
seven parishes bestowed on one incumbent, who, perhaps, with all
his tithes, scarce gets 100 l. a year.' But there was at that time a
member of the Irish House of Commons who was capable of taking a more
enlarged view of the Irish question. This was Mr. Arthur Dobbs, who
belonged to an old and honourable Ulster family--the author of a book
on the 'North-west Passage to India,' and of a very valuable work on
the 'Trade of Great Britain and Ireland.' He was intimately acquainted
with the working of the Irish land system, for he had been many years
agent of the Hertfort estate, one of the largest in Ireland. There
is among Boulter's letters an introduction of Mr. Dobbs to Sir Robert
Walpole, recommending him as a person of good sense, who had applied
himself to the improvement of trade, and to the making of our colonies
in America of more advantage than they had hitherto been. He was
afterwards made Governor of North Carolina. I have mentioned these
facts in the hope of securing the attention of landlords and statesmen
to the following passage from his book accounting for the deplorable
condition of the province of Ulster at that time, and the emigration
of its industrious and wealth-producing inhabitants. In my humble
opinion it furnishes irresistible arguments in favour of a measure
which should settle the Irish land question in such a manner that it
would speak to the people of Ireland in the words of holy writ:
'And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant
vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and another
inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat.' Mr. Dobbs says:--
'How can a tenant improve his land when he is convinced that, after
all his care and toil, his improvements will be overrated, and he
will be obliged to shift for himself? Let us place ourselves in his
situation and see if we should think it reasonable to improve for
another, if those improvements would be the very cause of our being
removed from the enjoyment of them. I believe we should not. Industry
and improvements go very heavily on when we think we are not to have
the property in either. What can be expected, then, from covenants to
improve and plant, when the person to do it knows he is to have _no
property in them_? There will be no concern or care taken to preserve
them, and they will run to ruin as fast as made or planted. What was
it induced so many of the commonalty lately to go to America but high
rents, bad seasons, and want of good tenures, or a permanent property
in their land? This kept them poor and low, and they scarce had
sufficient credit to procure necessaries to subsist or till their
ground. They never had anything to store, all was from hand to mouth;
so one or two bad crops broke them. Others found their stock dwindling
and decaying visibly, and so removed before all was gone, while they
had as much left as would pay their passage, and had little more than
what would carry them to the American shore.
'This, it may be allowed, was the occasion of the poor farmers going
who had their rents lately raised. But it may be objected that was not
the reason why rich farmers went, and those who had several years in
beneficial leases still unexpired, who sold their bargains and removed
with their effects. But it is plain they all went for the same reason;
for these last, from _daily examples before them_, saw the present
occupiers dispossessed of their lands at the expiration of their
leases, and no preference given to them; so they expected it would
soon be their own case, to avoid which, and make the most of the years
still unexpired, they sold, and carried their assets with them to
procure a settlement in a country where they had reason to expect a
permanent property.'
It is a curious fact that sentiments very similar were published by
one of Cromwell's officers about a century before. The plea which
he put forth for the Irish tenant in the dedication of his work on
Ireland to the Protector, has been repeated ever since by the tenants,
but repeated in vain: Captain Bligh, the officer alluded to, said:
'The first prejudice is, that if a tenant be at ever so great pains or
cost for the improvement of his land, he doth thereby but occasion a
greater rack-rent upon himself, or else invests his landlord with his
cost and labour _gratis_, or at least lies at his landlord's mercy for
requital; which occasions a neglect of all good husbandry, to his own,
the land, the landlord, and the commonwealth's suffering.' Now, this,
I humbly conceive, might be removed, if there were a law enacted, by
which every landlord should be obliged either to give him reasonable
allowance for his clear improvement, or else suffer him _or his_
to enjoy it so much longer or till he hath had a proportionable
requital.'
But although Primate Boulter protested against the conduct of the
landlords--all Episcopalians--who were ruining the church as well as
the country, the established clergy, as a body, were always on the
side of the oppressors.
The Test Act placed the Presbyterians, like the Papists, in the
position of an inferior race. 'In the city of Londonderry alone, which
Presbyterian valour had defended, ten out of twelve aldermen,
and twenty out of twenty-four burgesses, were thrust out of the
corporation by that act, which placed an odious mark of infamy upon
at least one-half the inhabitants of the kingdom.' Presbyterians could
not legally keep a common school. The _Edinburgh Review_ says: 'All
the settlements, from first to last, had the effect of making the
cause of the church and the cause of the landlords really one. During
the worst days of landlord oppression it never identified itself with
the interests of the people, but uniformly sustained the power and
privileges of the landlords.'
It was vain to expect justice from the Irish parliament. The people
of Ireland never were governed exclusively, or at all, by her own
Sovereign, her own Lords, and her own Commons. Ireland was 'in the
custody of England,' just as much before the Union as during the last
sixty-seven years. Even during the few brief years of her spasmodic
'independence,' the mass of the nation formed no part of the 'Commons
of Ireland.' It was still, as it always had been, a sham parliament--a
body representing the colonial aristocracy--acting as undertakers for
the Government of England, for whose interest exclusively this island
was to be ruled. Provided this result was secured, it did not matter
much, at the other side of the Channel, how the Irish people were
treated. Indeed, they were not recognised as the people of Ireland,
or any part thereof. Even philosophic liberals, like Lord Charlemont,
were shocked at the idea of a Papist getting into the Irish House
of Commons; and the volunteer system was shattered by this insane
animosity of the ruling race against the subject nation. The antipathy
was as strong as the antipathy between the whites and the negroes in
the West Indies and the United States. Hence the remorseless spirit in
which atrocities were perpetrated in 1798. Mr. Daunt has shown that a
large proportion of the Irish House of Lords consisted of men who were
English to all intents and purposes--many of them by birth, and many
by residence, and, no doubt, they always came over with reluctance to
what Lord Chancellor Clare called 'our damnable country.' It may be
that in some years after the abolition of the Establishment--after
some experience of the _régime_ of religious equality--the two races
in this island will learn to act together so harmoniously as to give a
fair promise that they could be safely trusted with self-legislation.
But the '_self_' must be one body animated by one spirit; not
two bodies, chained together, irritated by the contact, fiercely
struggling against one another, eternally reproaching one another
about the mutual wrongs of the past, and not unfrequently coming
to blows, like implacable duellists shut up in a small room, each
determined to kill or be killed. If England were to let go her hold
even now, something like this would be the Irish 'situation.' The
abiding force of this antipathy, in the full light of Christianity, is
awful.
In his 'Life, Letters, and Speeches of Lord Plunket,' the Hon.
David Plunket states that, when his grandfather entered the Irish
parliament, 'the English Government had nearly abandoned the _sham_
of treating the Irish parliament as an independent legislature; the
treasury benches were filled with placemen and pensioners. All efforts
tending to reform of parliament or concession to the Catholics had
been given up as useless. Grattan and some of his immediate followers
had seceded from an assembly too degraded to appreciate their motives,
or to be influenced by their example; and whatever remained of
independence in the House of Commons ministers still laboured to bring
under their control. Scarcely thirty votes appeared in opposition
on the most important divisions, while Government could at any time
readily whip a majority of 100.'
According to a Government return made in 1784, by Pitt's direction,
116 nomination seats were divided between some 25 proprietors. Lord
Shannon returned no less than 16 members, and the great family of
Ponsonby returned 14; Lord Hillsborough, 9, the Duke of Leinster,
7, and the Castle itself 12. Eighty-six seats were _let out_ by the
owners, in consideration of titles, offices, and pensions. No less
than 44 seats were occupied by placemen, 32 by gentlemen who had
promises of pensions, 12 by gentlemen who stood out for higher prices
from Government. The regular opposition appears to have been limited
to 82 votes, of which 30 belonged to Whig nominees, and the rest to
the popular party.
It is, then, easy to account for the state of public feeling which Mr.
Plunket, with these facts and figures before him, so well describes.
He says truly that if it were possible to appeal to the country under
these circumstances, the people would not have responded. 'Gloomy
and desperate, they had lost all confidence in their parliament,
and looked to other quarters for deliverance from the _intolerable
tyranny_ under which they suffered. There can be no doubt that
this anarchy and disgrace were in a great degree the result of a
misgovernment, ancient and recent, _which seems to have been always
adopted with a view to bring out strongly the worst elements of the
Irish character_; but it was at that time said, and no doubt believed
by the Opposition, that the ministry of the day had deliberately
planned and accomplished the disorganisation of the Irish people and
their parliament, in order to enable them to carry out their favourite
project of the Union.'
Mr. Plunket, after describing the classes of 'representatives' that
his grandfather had to deal with in the Irish House of Commons,
further says: 'It is true that this corrupt assembly cannot fairly be
looked upon as the mirror of national character and national honour.
The members of the majority who voted for the Union _were not_
the representatives of the people, _but the hired servants of the
Minister, for the Parliament had been packed for the purpose_.'
Towards the close of the century, however, the French Revolution,
the American war, and the volunteer movement, had begun to cause
some faint stirring of national life in the inert mass of the Roman
Catholic population, which the penal code had '_dis-boned_.' Up
to this time they were not even thought of in the calculations of
politicians. According to Dean Swift, Papists counted no more in
politics than the women and children. Macaulay uses a still more
contemptuous comparison to express the estimate in which they were
held in those times, saying, that their lords and masters would as
soon have consulted their poultry and swine on any political question.
Nevertheless, during the excitement of the volunteer movement, some
of the poor Celts began to raise their heads, and presumed to put the
question to the most liberal portion of the ruling race--'Are we not
men? Have not we also some rights?' The appeal was responded to in the
Irish parliament, and in 1793 the elective franchise was conceded to
Roman Catholics. It was the first concession, and the least that could
be granted. But the bare proposal excited the utmost indignation in
the Tory party, and especially in the Dublin corporation, where
the Orange spirit was rampant. That body adopted an address to the
Protestants of Ireland, which bears a remarkable resemblance in its
spirit and style to addresses lately issued by Protestant Defence
Associations. Both speak in the kindest terms of their Roman Catholic
fellow-subjects, disclaim all intention of depriving them of any
advantages they enjoy under our glorious constitution, declaring that
their objects are purely _defensive_, and that they want merely to
guard that constitution against the aggressions of the Papacy quite as
much for the sake of Roman Catholics as for the sake of Protestants.
'Countrymen and friends,' said the Dublin Tories, seventy-five years
ago, 'the firm and manly support which we received from you when we
stood forward in defence of the Protestant Ascendancy, deserves our
warmest thanks. We hoped that the sense of the Protestants of Ireland,
declared upon that occasion, would have convinced our Roman Catholic
fellow-subjects that the pursuit of political power was for them a
vain pursuit; for, though the liberal and enlightened mind of the
Protestant receives pleasure at seeing the Catholic exercise his
religion with freedom, enjoy his property in security, and possess
the highest degree of personal liberty, yet, experience has taught us
that, without the ruin of the Protestant establishment, the Catholic
cannot be allowed the smallest influence in the state.'
Those men were as thoroughly convinced as their descendants,
who protest against concession to-day, that all our Protestant
institutions would go to perdition, if Papists, although then mere
serfs, were allowed to vote for members of parliament. They were
equally puzzled to know why Roman Catholics were discontented, or what
more their masters could reasonably do for them to add to the enviable
happiness of their lot. 'We entreat you,' the Dublin corporation said
to their Protestant brethren throughout the country--'we entreat you
to join with us in using every honest means of persuading the Roman
Catholics to rest content with the most perfect toleration of their
religion, the fullest security of their property, and the most
complete personal liberty; but, by no means, now or hereafter, to
attempt any interference in the government of the kingdom, as such
interference would be incompatible with the Protestant Ascendancy,
which we have resolved with our lives and fortunes to maintain.'
Lest any doubt should exist as to what they meant by 'Protestant
Ascendancy,' they expressly defined it. They resolved that it
consisted in a Protestant King of Ireland; a Protestant Parliament,
Protestant electors and Government; Protestant benches of justice;
a Protestant hierarchy; the army and the revenue, through all their
branches and details, Protestant; and this system supported by a
connection with the Protestant realm of Britain.
The power of the political franchise to elevate a degraded people, to
convert slaves into men, is exhibited before the eyes of the present
generation in the Southern States of America; even where differences
of race and colour are most marked, and where the strongest natural
antipathies are to be overcome. We may judge from this what must
have been the effect of this concession on the Irish Celts. The
forty-shilling freeholders very soon became objects of consideration
with their landlords, who were anxious to extend their political
influence in their respective counties, for the representation of
which the great proprietors had many a fierce contest. The abolition
of this franchise by the Emancipation Act made that measure a
grievance instead of a relief to the peasantry, for the landlords were
now as anxious to get rid of the small holders as they had been to
increase them so long as they served their political purpose. It was
one of the great drawbacks which deprived emancipation of the healing
effect it would otherwise have produced. If--as Pitt intended--that
measure had formed part of the Union arrangements; if the
forty-shilling freeholders had been spared, and the priesthood had
been endowed, we should never have had an agitation for repeal or even
for the separation of the church from the state. Pitt's plan of the
Union included the abolition of Protestant Ascendancy.
Edmund Burke, in one of his letters on Ireland, said: 'A word has
been lately struck in the mint of the castle of Dublin. Thence it was
conveyed to the Tholsel, or city hall, where having passed the touch
of the corporation, so respectably stamped and vouched, it soon became
current in parliament, and was carried back by the speaker of the
House of Commons, in great pomp, as an offering of homage from whence
it came. That word is Ascendancy. The word is not absolutely new.' He
then gives its various meanings, and first shows what it does _not_
signify in the new sense. Not influence obtained by love or reverence,
or by superior management and dexterity; not an authority derived from
wisdom or virtue, promoting the happiness and freedom of the Roman
Catholic people; not by flattering them, or by a skilful adaptation to
their humours and passions. It means nothing of all these. Burke then
shows what it does mean. 'New ascendancy is old mastership. It is
neither more nor less than the resolution of one sect of people in
Ireland to consider themselves the sole citizens in the commonwealth,
and to keep a dominion over the rest, by reducing them to absolute
slavery under a military power; and thus fortified in their power, to
divide the public estate, which is the result of general contribution,
as a military booty, solely among themselves. This ascendancy,
by being a _Protestant_ ascendancy, does not better it, from a
combination of a note or two more in this anti-harmonic scale. By
the use that is frequently made of the term, and the policy that is
grafted on it, the name Protestant becomes nothing more or better than
the name of a persecuting faction, with a relation of some sort of
theological hostility to others, but without any sort of ascertained
tenets of its own, upon the ground of which it persecutes other men;
for the patrons of this Protestant ascendancy neither do nor can,
by anything positive, define or describe what they mean by the word
Protestant.... The whole is nothing but pure and perfect malice. It
is indeed a perfection in that kind, belonging to beings of a higher
order than man, and to them we ought to leave it.... Let three
millions of people but abandon all that they and their ancestors have
been taught to believe sacred, and to forswear it publicly in terms
the most degrading, and nothing more is required of them.... The word
_Protestant_ is the charm that locks up in a dungeon of servitude
three millions of people.
Every thoughtful reader of the debates in parliament on the state of
Ireland, must have been struck with the difference of opinion between
the Liberals and the Conservatives, as to the facts of the case. A
still more violent difference was presented in the British parliament,
in the year 1797, when there were great debates in both houses on the
subject, and when the facts were still more glaring, one of them being
that the reign of terror established by the Irish Government prevented
the press from reporting the maddening atrocities which the ruling
faction was daily perpetrating against the mass of the king's
subjects. The debate arose in the Lords, on a motion by Lord Moira
for an address to the king on the state of Ireland. He described the
horrors of which he had been recently a witness, but softened the
recital, lest he should shock his hearers too much. Orange loyalty
was then licensed and let loose upon the defenceless Roman Catholic
population in Ulster. Lord Gosford's description of the scenes of
desolation in his own county, Armagh, is well known. He did what
he could to prevent the burning of Roman Catholic houses, and the
personal injuries inflicted upon the unfortunate inhabitants, while
their Orange neighbours chased them out of the country, giving them
Cromwell's alternative. But his mercy injured his reputation, and he
felt obliged to protest solemnly that he was a loyal man, and that he
wished to uphold Protestant ascendancy in Ireland as much as any of
his accusers. He only asked that the poor Catholic should be allowed
to live in peace. In the debate referred to, Lord Moira declared that
ninety-one householders had been banished from one of his own estates;
and many of them wounded in their persons. The discontent, he said,
was not confined to one sect. He ascribed the state of things to the
recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, which crushed the hopes of the Catholics,
and gave unbounded licence to the yeomanry, who were empowered to act
with a vigour beyond the law; to turn out, banish, or kill the king's
subjects, on mere suspicion, often prompted by private malice, and
having no better warrant than anonymous information. But for all this
the Irish parliament and the new reactionary viceroy freely granted
acts of indemnity. According to Earl Fitzwilliam 'whole parishes,
baronies, and even counties, were declared to be out of the king's
peace.'
Mr. Fox brought forward a similar motion in the House of Commons,
pleading the cause of justice and humanity in a noble speech, and
boldly affirming principles of government for Ireland, which
Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, and Mr. Bright are now
endeavouring to have carried out by the imperial parliament after
seventy years of concession, extorted by three rebellions. Mr. Fox
expressed his abhorrence of 'the truly diabolical maxim' of '_Divide
el impera_,' by which the government of Ireland was conducted. He
hoped that the discontent which threatened the separation of Ireland
would be dissipated without the necessity of war. 'But now,' he said,
'the extremity of rigour has been tried--the severity of despotism has
been let loose--and the Government is driven to that state when the
laws are not to be put into execution, but to be superseded.' The
motion was seconded by Sir Francis Burdett, who said: 'Whoever has
seen Ireland, has seen a country where the fields are desolated, and
the prisons overflowing with the victims of oppression--has seen the
shocking contrast between a profligate, extravagant Government, and
an enslaved and impoverished people.' The motion was rejected by
a majority of 136. Lord Moira made a last and an almost despairing
appeal on November 22, in the same year. In his speech he said:
'I have seen in that country a marked distinction made between the
English and the Irish. I have seen troops that have been sent full of
this prejudice, that every inhabitant of that kingdom is a rebel to
the British Government. I have seen the most wanton insults practised
upon men of all ranks and conditions. I have seen the most grievous
oppression exercised, in consequence of a presumption that the person
who was the unfortunate object of such oppression was in hostility to
the Government; and yet that has been done in a part of the country
as quiet and as free from disturbance as the city of London. He who
states these things should be prepared with proofs. I am prepared with
them.' He then went into a number of horrifying details, and concluded
as follows: 'You say that the Irish are insensible to the benefits
of the British constitution, and you withhold all these benefits from
them. You goad them with harsh and cruel punishments, and a general
infliction of insult is thrown upon the kingdom. I have seen, my
lords, a conquered country held by military force; _but never did I
see in any conquered country such a tone of insult as has been adopted
by Great Britain towards Ireland_. I have made a last effort. I acquit
my conscience; I have done my duty.'
In subsequent debates, the following sentiments were uttered by the
leading Whig statesmen of the day: 'The treatment of Ireland,' said
Mr. Fox, 'was such as to harrow up the soul. It was shocking to think
that a nation of brothers was thus to be trampled on like the most
remote colony of conquered strangers.... The Irish people have been
scourged by the iron hand of oppression, and subjected to the horrors
of military execution, and are now in a situation too dreadful for the
mind to contemplate without dismay. After the inhuman dragooning
and horrible executions, the recital of which makes the blood run
cold--after so much military cruelty, not in one, but in almost every
part of the country--is it possible for this administration to procure
unanimity in Ireland?' On March 22, 1798, the Duke of Bedford moved an
address to the king, asking him to change his ministers, and alluding
to the state of Ireland, as it was before the breaking out of the
Rebellion. He said: 'Were I to enter into a detail of the atrocities
which have been committed in Ireland, the picture would appal the
stoutest heart. It could be proved that the most shocking cruelties
have been perpetrated; but what could be expected if men kept in
strict discipline were all at once allowed to give loose to their fury
and their passions?'
Lord Holland was persuaded that his majesty's ministers could not
tranquillise Ireland even by conciliation. 'How could they conciliate
whose concessions are always known to be the concessions of weakness
and of fear, and who never granted to the Irish--the most generous
people upon earth,--anything without a struggle or resistance?' Lord
William Russell, in June following, said: 'A man's loyalty was to
be estimated by the desire he testified to imbrue his hands in his
brother's blood.' Sheridan asked: 'After being betrayed, duped,
insulted--disappointed in their dearest hopes, and again thrown into
the hands of the rulers they detested and despised, was it impossible
they should feel emotions of indignation? The struggle is not one of
partial disaffection, but it is a contest between the people and the
Government.' Mr. Tierney said: 'It was certain the people were in arms
against the Government, nor was it easy to conceive how--having been
scourged, burnt, and massacred--they could have any other feeling than
aversion to that Government.'
Every motion on the subject in both houses was rejected by
overwhelming majorities. So little impression did the reports of the
appalling facts which were of daily occurrence in Ireland make upon
that Tory Government, that the speeches of ministers read exactly like
the speeches of Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Hardy, Lord Mayo, and Mr. Warren,
in the past session. Lord Grenville, the home secretary, professed the
most profound respect for the independence of the Irish parliament,
and he could not think of interfering in the least with its
privileges, however the empire might suffer from its excesses.
'The motion of Lord Moira was not only unnecessary, it was highly
mischievous.' He dwelt on the improved state of Ireland, and the
tranquillity of the people. If there were partial excesses on the part
of the military, they were unavoidable, and could only be deplored.
'He was unable to discern what should alienate the affections of
Ireland. For the whole space of thirty years his majesty's Government
had been distinguished by the same uniform tenderness of regard,
by the same undeviating adherence to the mild principles of a
conciliatory system.... If any cruelties had been practised, they must
have been resisted by a high-spirited people. Were there no courts of
justice? The conduct of the lord lieutenant was highly commendable.
The system recommended by Lord Moira would only tend to villify the
Irish Government.' Then came the fatal announcement which sounded
the death-knell of thousands of the Irish people, and caused the
destruction of millions' worth of property. The home secretary said:
'The contrary system must, therefore, be persevered in; and to
the spirited exertions of the British military should we owe the
preservation of Irish laws, of Irish property, and of Irish lives!'
To this the Marquis of Downshire added 'that he was not afraid of the
effects of coercion. Every concession had been made that could be made
towards Ireland. Every Catholic was as free as the safety of the
state would admit. Were the Catholics to have an equal share in the
government with the Protestants, the Government and the country would
be lost.'
I will conclude by quoting the remarks of Mr. Fox, referred to above:
'If you do not allay their discontent, there is no way but force to
keep them in obedience. Can you convince them by the musket that their
principles are false? Can you prove to them by the bayonet that their
pretensions are unjust? Can you demonstrate to them by martial law
that they enjoy the blessings of a free constitution? No, it is said,
but they may be deterred from the prosecution of the objects which you
have determined to refuse. But on what is this founded? On the history
of Ireland itself? No; for the history of Ireland proves that, though
repeatedly subdued, it could not be kept in awe by force; and the
late examples will prove the effect which severity may be expected
to produce.... I would therefore concede; and if I found I had not
conceded enough, I would concede more. I know of no way of governing
mankind, but by conciliating them.... My wish is that the whole people
of Ireland should have the same principles, the same system, the same
operation of government. ... I would have the whole Irish government
regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices; and I firmly
believe, according to an Irish expression, the more she is under Irish
government, the more she will be bound to English interests. ... I
say, therefore, try conciliation, but do not have recourse to arms.'
He warned and implored in vain. The Union had been determined on; and
it was thought that it could be effected only after the prostration of
civil war, into which, therefore, the unfortunate people were goaded.