Further of the Characteristics and Resources of the Island—Present Form
of Government
GOLD, silver, copper, lead, iron, and other malleable minerals are found
in Ireland. The gold is discovered in small quantities, at least in
modern times, but the beautiful ornaments, composed of that precious
metal, and much used by the ancient Irish nobility, preserved in the
Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, and elsewhere in Ireland and
Great Britain, would indicate that it was at one time plentiful in the
island. Silver is found in paying quantities in several districts, and
silver mines are now in operation in the northern portion of Munster.
The lead, copper, and iron deposits have never been seriously worked,
and, therefore, it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory estimate
of their extent. Coal is found in many counties, but the most extensive
fields are in Ulster. Much light is thrown on this subject by Kane’s
“Resources of Ireland,” which can be found, most likely, in the public
libraries. It gives most interesting statistics, but they would be far
too heavy for our more condensed narrative.
Ireland possesses over seventy harbors. Fourteen are of the first class
and can shelter the very largest sea-going vessels, whether naval or
mercantile. Unhappily, excepting those of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, and
Belfast, they are comparatively little used for commerce, for reasons
that will present themselves in succeeding chapters.
Although in olden times a thickly wooded country, Ireland of to-day is
rather bare of forests. There are numerous luxuriant groves and
woodlands, and many of the highroads are bordered with stately trees.
The “quick-set hedges,” planted with thorn shrubs, give, particularly in
summer, a well-furnished appearance to the country, except in a few
rather barren districts, where stone walls, as in portions of New
England, are quite common. Irish farms are nearly all divided and
subdivided by these formidable fences, quick-set or stone, so that, when
viewed from any considerable height, the surrounding country looks like
a huge, irregular checker-board—a much more picturesque arrangement of
the landscape than our American barbed-wire obstructions, but at the
cost of a vast amount of good land, in the aggregate.
The island contains many populous, finely built cities, well governed
under local municipal rule. Dublin, the capital, contains, including
suburbs, about 300,000 people, and is considered a very handsome
metropolis. It is surrounded by enchanting hamlets, and the sea-bathing
resorts in the neighborhood are delightful. Belfast, the great
commercial city of Ulster, is almost as populous as Dublin, and has many
of the thrifty characteristics of an American municipality. Cork,
Waterford, Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Londonderry, and Drogheda are still
places of much importance, although some of them have greatly declined,
both in wealth and population, during the last century.
Owing to persistent agitation, and some fierce uprisings, which caused
the imperial government to listen to the voice of reason, the social and
political conditions of the Irish people have been somewhat improved of
late years. The Irish Church was disestablished by the Gladstone
Ministry, in 1869, and, under the leadership of Isaac Butt, Parnell,
Davitt, and other Irish patriots, Protestant as well as Catholic, the
harsh land laws have been greatly modified, and the Irish people have a
better “hold on their soil,” and are much less subject to the capricious
will of their landlords than formerly. They are, also, much better
lodged and fed than in the last generation, and education, of a
practical kind, has become almost universal. The national school system
has many features in common with our own, and is improving year by year.
In the higher branches of education, Ireland is well supplied. Trinity
College, Dublin, the Alma Mater of many celebrated men, has existed
since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but, until the end of the eighteenth
century, was not open to Catholics. Maynooth College, in Kildare, is the
great Catholic ecclesiastical seminary of Ireland, and there is also a
Catholic university in Dublin. Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, and other
cities have Catholic colleges, and there are Protestant seats of
learning in Ulster and other provinces. Cork, Belfast, and Galway have
each branch universities, called “Queen’s Colleges,” which are conducted
on a non-sectarian basis. These are only a few of Ireland’s educational
institutions, but they serve to illustrate the agreeable fact that a
dearth of opportunity for acquiring learning is no longer a reproach to
the Irish people, or, rather, to their English law-makers. The taxes
which support the institutions maintained by Government are paid by
Ireland into the Imperial Treasury, so that Great Britain is not
burdened by them, as many suppose. Recently, a commission appointed by
the British Parliament to inquire into the financial relations between
Great Britain and Ireland reported back that the latter country was
overtaxed annually to the amount of $15,000,000. This grievance,
although complained of by all classes, has not yet been redressed.
Dublin, Belfast, and other leading Irish cities possess very choice and
extensive libraries. That of Trinity College, in the first-mentioned
city, is considered one of the best in Europe, and it is particularly
rich in ancient Irish manuscripts, some of which have been translated
from the original Gaelic into English by the late Dr. John O’Donovan,
Professor Eugene O’Curry, and other Irish savants. There are many large
circulating libraries in all the principal municipalities, and most of
the smaller towns. These are patronized, in the main, by poor people of
literary taste, who can not afford satisfactory libraries of their own.
There is now a revival of Irish literature in Great Britain as well as
in Ireland itself. Many English and Scotch firms have taken to printing
Irish prose and poetry in the English tongue, so that Irish authors are
no longer confined, as they were, with a few exceptions, of old, to an
insular constituency. Irish literary work of merit, when not strongly
patriotic, sells readily in Great Britain to-day. This is due, partly,
to a growing appreciation of Irish talent among the more liberal classes
of the English people, and still more, perhaps, to the very large Irish
population that has developed itself on the soil of “the predominant
partner” within the last half of the nineteenth century. There is a
strong Chartist, or republican, element in England friendly to the Irish
claim of legislative independence, and this element, which we hear
comparatively little of in America, for reasons it is not necessary to
discuss in this history, is growing more powerful as time rolls by, and
some day, not very distant, perhaps, is bound to greatly modify the
existing governmental system of the British Empire, and render it more
popular.
Ireland is very rich in monastic and martial ruins. The round towers
which sentinel the island are declared by many antiquaries to antedate
the Christian period, and are supposed to have been pagan temples
dedicated to the worship of the sun, which, some historians claim, was
Ireland’s chief form of the Druidic belief.
“The names of their founders have vanished in the gloom,
Like the dry branch in the fire, or the body in the tomb,
But to-day, in the ray, their shadows still they cast—
These temples of forgotten gods, these relics of the past.”
The grass-grown circular raths, or “forts,” as the peasantry call them,
varying greatly in diameter, are supposed to be remnants of the Danish
invasion, but many archæologists place them at a much earlier date, and
give them not a Danish but a Danaan origin—the latter tribe being
claimed as among the first settlers of Ireland. The largest “fort” or
“dun” in the island is that near Downpatrick, which is sixty feet high
and three-quarters of a mile in circumference. Much of the stately
architecture seen in the ruins of abbeys, churches, and chapels belongs
to the Anglo-Norman period, as does also the military architecture,
which survives in such types as the keeps of Limerick, Nenagh, and Trim;
but the Celtic type of church construction is preserved, after the lapse
of more than a thousand years, in its primitive purity, at Glendalough
in Wicklow, Clonmacnois in King’s County, and Cong in Galway.
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Three hundred years of warfare with the pagan Danes, and five hundred
with the Anglo-Normans and Anglo-Saxons, made Ireland the Island of
Ruins, as well as the Island of Saints and Scholars.
Before January 1, 1801, Ireland was a distinct and separate kingdom,
having a Parliament of her own and connected with Great Britain by what
has been called “the golden link of the crown.” How that Parliament was,
unfortunately for all concerned, abolished will appear in its proper
order. Since 1801 Ireland has been governed by the Imperial Parliament,
sitting in London, composed of representatives from England, Scotland,
Ireland, and Wales—670 in all, of whom 103 are Irish members. Of these
latter, 82 are Nationalists, or Repealers of the Act of Union, while 21
are Unionists, or adherents of the present political connection. The
preponderating vote of Great Britain hopelessly overwhelms the Irish
representation, and hence the work of reform, as far as Ireland is
concerned, is slow and difficult. The executive functions are intrusted
to a Lord Lieutenant, who is appointed by each succeeding Ministry, to
represent the monarch of Great Britain. He is assisted in his duties by
a Chief Secretary, two Under Secretaries, a Lord Chancellor, a Lord
Chief Justice, a Master of the Rolls, a Chief Baron of the Exchequer,
many less prominent officers, and a Privy Council, which comprises
several of the officials mentioned, together with the leading supporters
of the crown in the capital and throughout the country. Some of the
official members of this Council are not natives of Ireland; and the
Lord Lieutenant himself is almost invariably an English or Scotch
aristocrat of high rank and liberal fortune. No Catholic can fill the
office of Viceroy of Ireland. The authority of the latter is, to all
intents and purposes, absolute. In seasons of political agitation, even
when there is no violence, he can suspend the ordinary law without
having recourse to Parliament. This power has been frequently exercised
even in this generation. The Lord Lieutenant’s official residence is
Dublin Castle, but he has also a commodious viceregal lodge in the
Phœnix Park. His salary is $100,000 per annum—just twice that of our
President—but, in general, he spends much more out of his private
fortune, as he is, nearly always, chosen for his wealth as much as for
his rank. When he goes among the people, he is, almost invariably,
attended by a strong cavalry escort and a dashing staff of
aides-de-camp, glittering in silver, steel, and gold. The military
garrison of Dublin is strong, not often under 10,000 men, and at the
Curragh Camp, about twenty miles distant, in Kildare, there is a much
larger force. Most of the large towns are also heavily garrisoned. Thus,
after an occupation, either nominal or actual, of seven and one-third
centuries, England still finds it expedient to govern Ireland as a
military district—a sad commentary on the chronic misgovernment of ages.
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