After six years of happiness Honora's health gave way, and
consumption set in; some months of anxious nursing followed
before she died, to the great grief of her husband. She left
several children, and her dying wish was that he should marry
her sister Elizabeth.
Mr. Edgeworth was, at first, benumbed by grief, and unable to
take an interest in his former pursuits; but in the society of
his wife's family he gradually recovered cheerfulness, and
began to consider his wife's dying advice to marry her sister.
He remarks: 'Nothing is more erroneous than the common
belief, that a man who has lived in the greatest happiness
with one wife will be the most averse to take another. On the
contrary, the loss of happiness, which he feels when he loses
her, necessarily urges him to endeavour to be again placed in
a situation which has constituted his former felicity.
'I felt that Honora had judged wisely, and from a thorough
knowledge of my character, when she had advised me to marry
again.'
After these observations it is not surprising to hear that
Edgeworth became engaged to Elizabeth Sneyd in the autumn of
1780. They were staying for the marriage at Brereton Hall in
Cheshire, and their banns were published in the parish church;
but on the very morning appointed for the marriage, the
clergyman received a letter which roused so many scruples in
his mind as to make Edgeworth think it cruel to press him to
perform the ceremony. The Rector of St. Andrew's, Holborn, was
less scrupulous, and they were married there on Christmas Day
1780.
The following summer Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth rented Davenport
Hall in Cheshire, where they lived a quiet retired life,
spending a good deal of their time with their friends Sir
Charles and Lady Holte at Brereton. Edgeworth amused himself
by making a clock for the steeple at Brereton, and a chronometer of
a singular construction, which, he says,'I intended to present to
the King ... to add to His Majesty's collection of uncommon clocks
and watches which I had seen at St. James's.'
The autobiography from which I have been quoting was begun by
Edgeworth when he was about sixty-three, and it breaks off
abruptly at the date of 1781. The illness which interrupted
his task did not, however, prove fatal, for he lived nearly
ten years afterwards.
His daughter Maria takes up the narrative, and in her
introduction she says, 'In continuing these Memoirs, I shall
endeavour to follow the example that my father has set me of
simplicity and of truth.'
The following memorandum was found in Edgeworth's handwriting:
'In the year 1782 I returned to Ireland, with a firm determination
to dedicate the remainder of my life to the improvement of my
estate, and to the education of my children; and farther, with the
sincere hope of contributing to the amelioration of the inhabitants
of the country from which I drew my subsistence.'
When in the spring of 1768 Edgeworth visited Ireland with his
friend Mr. Day, the latter was surprised and disgusted by the
state of Dublin and of the country in general. He found 'the
streets of Dublin were wretchedly paved, and more dirty than
can be easily imagined.' Edgeworth adds: 'As we passed through
the country, the hovels in which the poor were lodged, which
were then far more wretched than they are at present, or than
they have been for the last twenty years, the black tracts of
bog, and the unusual smell of the turf fuel, were to him
never-ceasing topics of reproach and lamentation. Mr. Day's
deep-seated prejudice in favour of savage life was somewhat
shaken by this view of want and misery, which philosophers of
a certain class in London and Paris chose at that time to
dignify by the name of simplicity. The modes of living in the
houses of the gentry were much the same in Ireland as in
England. This surprised my friend. He observed, that if there
was any difference, it was that people of similar fortune did
not restrain themselves equally in both countries to the same
prudent economy; but that every gentleman in Ireland, of two
or three thousand pounds a year, lived in a certain degree of
luxury and show that would be thought presumptuous in persons
of the same fortune in England.
'On our journey to my father's house, I had occasion to vote
at a contested election in one of the counties through which
we passed. Here a scene of noise, riot, confusion, and
drunkenness was exhibited, not superior indeed in depravity
and folly, but of a character or manner so different from what
my friend had even seen in his own country, that he fell into
a profound melancholy.'
It was to remedy this wretched state of things in Ireland that
Edgeworth resolved in 1782 to devote his energies.
It is curious to read his account of the relations between landlord
and tenant in Ireland at this date. He soon learned that firmness
was required in his dealings with his tenants as well as kindness.
'He omitted a variety of old feudal remains of fines and penalties;
but there was one clause, which he continued in every lease with a
penalty attached to it, called an alienation fine--a fine of so much
an acre upon the tenant's reletting any part of the devised land.'
He wisely resolved to receive his rents himself, and to avoid the
intervention of any agent or driver ('a person who drives and
impounds cattle for rent or arrears'). 'In every case where the
tenant had improved the land, or even where he had been industrious,
though unsuccessful, his claim to preference over every new
proposer, his tenanfs right, as it is called, was admitted. But the
mere plea of "I have lived under your Honour, or your Honour's
father or grandfather" or "I have been on your Honour's estate so
many years" he disregarded. Farms, originally sufficient for the
comfortable maintenance of a man, his wife, and family, had in many
cases been subdivided from generation to generation, the father
giving a bit of the land to each son to settle him. It was an
absolute impossibility that the land should ever be improved if let
in these miserable lots. Nor was it necessary that each son should
hold land, or advantageous that each should live on his "little
potato garden" without further exertion of mind or body.
'There was a continual struggle between landlord and tenant upon the
question of long and short leases. . . . The offer of immediate high
rent, or of fines to be paid down directly, tempted the landlord's
extravagance, or supplied his present necessities, at the expense of
his future interests. . . . Many have let for ninety-nine years;
and others, according to a form common in 'Ireland, for three lives,
renewable for ever, paying a small fine on the insertion of a new
life at the failure of each. These leases, in course of years, have
been found extremely disadvantageous to the landlord, the property
having risen so much in value that the original rent was absurdly
disproportioned.
'The longest term my father ever gave,' says his daughter Maria,
'was thirty-one years, with one or sometimes two lives. He usually
gave one life, reserving to himself the option of adding another
--the son, perhaps, of the tenant--if he saw that the tenant
deserved it by his conduct. This sort of power to encourage and
reward in the hands of a landlord is advantageous in Ireland. It
acts as a motive for exertion; it keeps up the connection and
dependence which there ought to be between the different ranks,
without creating any servile habits, or leaving the improving tenant
insecure as to the fair reward of his industry.
'Edgeworth's plan was to take not that which, abstractedly viewed,
is the best possible course, but that which is the best the
circumstances will altogether allow.
'When the oppressive duty-work in Ireland was no longer claimed, and
no longer inserted in Irish leases, there arose a difficulty to
gentlemen in getting labourers at certain times of the year, when
all are anxious to work for themselves; for instance, at the
seasons for cutting turf, setting potatoes, and getting home the
harvest.
'To provide against this difficulty, landlords adopted a system of
taking duty-work, in fact, in a new form. They had cottiers
(cottagers), day-labourers established in cottages, on their estate,
usually near their own residence. Many of these cabins were the
poorest habitations that can be imagined; and these were given rent
free, that is, the rent was to be worked out on whatever days, or on
whatever occasions, it was called for. The grazing for the cow, the
patch of land for flax, and the ridge or ridges of potato land were
also to be paid for in days' labour in the same manner. The
uncertainty of this tenure at will, that is, at the pleasure of the
landlord, with the rent in labour and time, variable also at his
pleasure or convenience, became rather more injurious to the tenant
than the former fixed mode of sacrificing so many days' duty-work,
even at the most hazardous seasons of the year.
'My father wished to have entirely avoided this cottager system; but
he was obliged to adopt a middle course. To his labourers he gave
comfortable cottages at a low rent, to be held at will from year to
year; but he paid them wages exactly the same as what they could
obtain elsewhere. Thus they were partly free and partly bound. They
worked as free labourers; but they were obliged to work, that they
might pay their rent. And their houses being better, and other
advantages greater, than they could obtain elsewhere, they had a
motive for industry and punctuality; thus their services and their
attachment were properly secured. . . . My father's indulgence as to
the time he allowed his tenantry for the payment of their rent was
unusually great. He left always a year's rent in their hands: this
was half a year more time than almost any other gentleman in our
part of the country allowed. . . . He was always very exact in
requiring that the rents should not, in their payments, pass beyond
the half-yearly days--the 25th of March and 29th of September. In
this point they knew his strictness so well that they seldom
ventured to go into arrear, and never did so with impunity. . . .
They would have cheated, loved, and despised a more easy landlord,
and his property would have gone to ruin, without either permanently
bettering their interests or their morals. He, therefore, took
especial care that they should be convinced of his strictness in
punishing as well as of his desire to reward.
'Where the offender was tenant, and the punisher landlord, it rarely
happened, even if the law reached the delinquent, that public
opinion sided with public justice. In Ireland it has been, time
immemorial, common with tenants, who have had advantageous bargains,
and who have no hopes of getting their leases renewed, to waste the
ground as much as possible; to break it up towards the end of the
term; or to overhold, that is, to keep possession of the land,
refusing to deliver it up.
'A tenant, who held a farm of considerable value, when his lease
was out, besought my father to permit him to remain on the farm for
another year, pleading that he had no other place to which he could,
at that season, it being winter, remove his large family. The
permission was granted; but at the end of the year, taking advantage
of this favour, he refused to give up the land. Proceedings at law
were immediately commenced against him; and it was in this case that
the first trial in Ireland was brought, on an act for recovering
double rent from a tenant for holding forcible possession after
notice to quit.
'This vexatious and unjust practice of tenants against landlords
had been too common, and had too long been favoured by the party
spirit of juries; who, being chiefly composed of tenants, had made
it a common cause, and a principle, if it could in any way be
avoided, never to give a verdict, as they said, against themselves.
But in this case the indulgent character of the landlord, combined
with the ability and eloquence of his advocate, succeeded in moving
the jury--a verdict was obtained for the landlord. The double rent
was paid; and the fraudulent tenant was obliged to quit the country
unpitied. Real good was done by this example.'
Edgeworth objected strongly to a practice common among the gentry,
'to protect their tenants when they got into any difficulties by
disobeying the laws. Smuggling and illicit distilling seemed to be
privileged cases, where, the justice and expediency of the spirit of
the law being doubtful, escaping from the letter of it appeared but
a trial of ingenuity or luck. In cases that admitted of less doubt,
in the frequent breach of the peace from quarrels at fairs, rescuing
of cattle drivers for rent, or in other more serious outrages,
tenants still looked to their landlord for protection; and hoped,
even to the last, that his Honour's or his Lordship's interest would
get the fine taken off, the term of imprisonment shortened, or the
condemned criminal snatched from execution. He [Edgeworth] never
would, on any occasion, or for the persons he was known to like
best, interfere to protect, as it is called, that is, to screen, or
to obtain pardon for any one of his tenants or dependants, if they
had really infringed the laws, or had deserved punishment. . . . He
set an example of being scrupulous to the most exact degree as a
grand juror, both as to the money required for roads or for any
public works, and as to the manner in which it was laid out.
'To his character as a good landlord was soon added that he was a
real gentleman. This phrase, pronounced with well-known emphasis,
comprises a great deal in the opinion of the lower Irish. They seem
to have an instinct for the real gentleman, whom they distinguish,
if not at first sight, infallibly at first hearing, from every
pretender to the character. They observe that the real gentleman
bears himself most kindly, is always the most civil in speech, and
ever seems the most tender of the poor. . . .
'They soon began to rely upon his justice as a magistrate. This is
a point where, their interest being nearly concerned, they are
wonderfully quick and clearsighted; they soon discovered that Mr.
Edgeworth leaned neither to Protestant nor Catholic, to Presbyterian
nor Methodist; that he was not the favourer nor partial protector
of his own or any other man's followers. They found that the law of
the land was not in his hands an instrument of oppression, or
pretence for partiality. They discerned that he did even justice;
neither inclining to the people, for the sake of popularity; nor to
the aristocracy, for the sake of power. This was a thing so unusual,
that they could at first hardly believe that it was really what they
saw.
'Soon after his return to Ireland he set about improving a
considerable tract of land, reletting it at an advanced rent, which
gave the actual monied measure of his skill and success.' He also
wrote a paper on the draining and planting of bogs, in which he
gives minute directions for carrying out the work, for he was no
mere theorist, but experimented on his own property; and he was not
ashamed to own when he had made a mistake, but was constantly
learning from experience.
He had for a while to turn from peaceful occupations and take his
share in patriotic efforts for parliamentary reform; this reform
was pressed on the parliament sitting in Dublin by a delegation from
a convention of the Irish volunteers. They were raised in 1778
during the American War, when England had not enough troops for the
defence of Ireland. The principal Irish nobility and gentry enrolled
themselves, and the force at length increased, till it numbered
50,000 men, under the command of officers of their own choosing. The
Irish patriots now felt their power, and used it with prudence and
energy. They obtained the repeal of many noxious laws--one in
particular was a penal statute passed in the reign of William III.
against the Catholics ordaining forfeiture of inheritance against
those Catholics who had been educated abroad.' At the pleasure of
any informer, it confiscated their estates to the next Protestant
heir; that statute further deprived Papists of the power of
obtaining any legal property by purchase; and, simply for
officiating in the service of his religion, any Catholic priest was
liable to be imprisoned for life. Some of these penalties had fallen
into disuse; but, as Mr. Dunning stated to the English House of
Commons, "many respectable Catholics still lived in fear of them,
and some actually paid contributions to persons who, on the strength
of this act, threatened them with prosecutions." Lord Shelburne
stated in the House of Lords "that even the most odious part of this
statute had been recently acted upon in the case of one Moloury, an
Irish priest, who had been informed against, apprehended, convicted,
and committed to prison, by means of the lowest and most despicable
of mankind, a common informing constable. The Privy Council used
efforts in behalf of the prisoner; but, in consequence of the
written law, the King himself could not give a pardon, and the
prisoner must have died in jail if Lord Shelburne and his colleagues
had not released him at their own risk."'
This law was repealed by the English House of Commons without a
negative, and only one Bishop opposed its repeal in the House of
Lords.
Having won this victory, the Irish patriots continued their
campaign, and now sought to win general emancipation from the
legislative and commercial restrictions of England. It was in 1781
that the first convention of volunteer delegates met, and some
months after Mr. Grattan moved an address to the throne asserting
the legislative independence of Ireland. 'The address passed; the
repeal of a certain act, empowering England to legislate for
Ireland, followed; and the legislative independence of this country
was acknowledged.'
Edgeworth sympathised with the enthusiasm which prevailed throughout
Ireland at this time; but he was shrewd enough to see that what was
further required for the real benefit of the country was 'an
effectual reformation of the Irish House of Commons.'
The counties were insufficiently represented, and the boroughs were
venal. The Irish parliament was, in fact, an Oligarchy, and
Edgeworth realised this danger. He, however, wished the reform to be
carried on 'through the intervention of parliament,' while the more
extreme party insisted on sending delegates from the volunteers to a
convention in Dublin. This military convention 'met at the Royal
Exchange in Dublin, November the 9th, 1783--Parliament was then
sitting. An armed convention assembled in the capital, and sitting
at the same time with the Houses of Lords and Commons, deliberating
on a legislative question, was a new and unprecedented spectacle.
'In this convention, as in all public assemblies, there was a
violent and a moderate party. Lord Charlemont, the president of the
assembly, was at the head of the moderate men. Though not convinced
of the strict legality of the meeting, he thought a reform in
parliament so important and desirable an object, that to the
probability or chance of obtaining this great advantage it was the
wisdom of a true patriot to sacrifice punctilio, and to hazard all,
but, what he was too wise and good to endanger, the peace of the
country. Lord Charlemont accepted the office of president, specially
with the hope that he and his friends might be able to influence the
convention in favour of proceedings at once temperate and firm. The
very sincerity of his desire to attain a reform rendered him
clear-sighted as to the means to be pursued; and while he wished
that the people should be allowed every degree of liberty consistent
with safety, no man was less inclined to democracy, or could feel
more horror at the idea of involving his country in a state of civil
anarchy.
'The Bishop of Deny (Lord Bristol), wishing well to Ireland, but of
a far less judicious character than Lord Charlemont, was at the head
of the opposite party. . . . Lord Charlemont, foreseeing the danger
of disagreement between the parliament and convention, if at this
time any communication were opened between them, earnestly
deprecated the attempts. It was his desire that the convention,
after declaring their opinion in favour of a parliamentary reform,
should adjourn without adopting a specific plan; and that they
should refer it to future meetings of each county, to send to
parliament, in the regular constitutional manner, their petitions
and addresses. Mr. Flood, however, whose abilities and eloquence had
predominant influence over the convention, and who wished to
distinguish himself in parliament as the proposer of reform,
prevailed upon the convention, on one of the last nights of their
meeting, to send him, accompanied by other members of parliament
from among the volunteer delegates, directly to the House of
Commons then sitting. There he was to make a motion on the question of
parliamentary reform, introducing to the House his specific plan
from the convention. The appearance of Mr. Flood, and of the
delegates by whom he was accompanied, in their volunteer uniforms,
in the Irish House of Commons, excited an extraordinary sensation.
Those who were present, and who have given an account of the scene
that ensued, describe it as violent and tumultuous in the
extreme. On both sides the passions were worked up to a dangerous
height. The debate lasted all night. "The tempest, for, towards
morning, debate there was none, at last ceased." The question was
put, and Mr. Flood's motion for reform in parliament was negatived
by a very large majority. The House of Commons then entered into
resolutions declaratory of their fixed determination to maintain
their just rights and privileges against any encroachments whatever,
adding that it was at that time indispensably necessary to make such
a declaration. Further, an address was moved, intended to be made
the joint address of Lords and Commons to the throne, expressing
their satisfaction with His Majesty's Government, and their
resolution to support that government, and the constitution, with
their lives and fortunes. The address was carried up to the Lords,
and immediately agreed to. This was done with the celerity of
passion on all sides.
'Meantime an armed convention continued sitting the whole night,
waiting for the return of their delegates from the House of Commons,
and impatient to learn the fate of Mr. Flood's motion. One step
more, and irreparable, fatal imprudence might have been committed.
Lord Charlemont, the president of the convention, felt the danger;
and it required all the influence of his character, all the
assistance of the friends of moderation, to prevail upon the
assembly to dissolve, without waiting longer to hear the report from
their delegates in the House of Commons. The convention had, in
fact, nothing more to do, or nothing that they could attempt without
peril; but it was difficult to persuade the assembly to dissolve the
meeting, and to return quietly to their respective counties and
homes. This point, however, was fortunately accomplished, and early
in the morning the meeting terminated.'
Miss Edgeworth adds: 'I have heard my father say that he ever
afterwards rejoiced in the share he had in preserving one of the
chiefs of this volunteer convention from a desperate resolution, and
in determining the assembly to a temperate termination.'
Writing of this convention many years afterwards, Edgeworth says:
'There never was any assembly in the British empire more in earnest
in the business on which they were convened, or less influenced by
courtly interference or cabal. But the object was in itself unattainable.
'The idea of admitting Roman Catholics to the right of voting for
representatives was not urged even by the most liberal and most
enlightened members of the convention; and the number, and wealth,
and knowledge of Protestant voters in Ireland could not decently be
considered as sufficient to elect an adequate and fair
representation of the people.'
The reforms were never carried, though fresh efforts, equally
unsuccessful, were made when Pitt became minister.